Preview: Dungeons & Dragons: Monsters Of The Multiverse Shows Us The Future Of D&D's Playable Races

thegamer.com:

Over the years, Dungeons & Dragons has had dozens of playable races for your character to inhabit. Maybe they're a half-Orc bard trying to make some coin in a local tavern, or a Gnome artificer hoping to test their latest inventions. Seeing if there are any new races with each new book is one of the most interesting aspects of each release, and Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse will be the biggest influx of player races since the core Player's Handbook released back in 2014.

But this is more than just dumping 33 new or reworked races on our plate and then leaving us to it; Monsters of the Multiverse marks a key turning point for Dungeons & Dragons with some of the most radical shake ups to the character creation system in years.

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As the "Multiverse'' in the title might suggest, Monsters of the Multiverse brings together creatures from across D&D's many settings and puts them together in a new, setting-agnostic book. While we may closely associate the Minotaurs with Theros or the Centaurs with Ravnica, this book presents them in a location-agnostic way that allows them to fit neatly into virtually any campaign you can think of. There are even a few debuts, like the tortoise-like Tortles.

They've all been balanced against each other, and Wizards claims they're all likely at least a bit stronger than they were in previous printings to accommodate for it. As Dungeons & Dragons principal rules designer Jeremy Crawford put it, the aim is to make it so that every race can "bring something comparable" to the table.

You might think trying to distance some species from the lore of their homeworlds may put a dampener on your worldbuilding potential, but