Volo's Guide to the Dalelands

Contents

Volo's Guide to the Dalelands details the Dalelands, with its guide Volo taking readers from Daggerdale in the North through to the High Dale in the South. Volo's rating system goes by five pipes or tankards to indicate a top tavern, five coins to mean high prices, and five daggers a dangerous place to hang out. Locations and characters described in the book can be used as foundations on which proper Dalelands scenarios can be built.

Publication history

Volo's Guide to the Dalelands was published by TSR in 1996, and was designed by Ed Greenwood, with cover art by Cireulo Cabral and interior art by Theresa Brandon, Tony Crnkovich, Ned Dameron, and Valerie Valusek.

This is the fifth installment of Volo's guides to the Forgotten Realms.

Reception

Trenton Webb reviewed Volo's Guide to the Dalelands for Arcane magazine, rating it a 6 out of 10 overall. Webb criticized the poetry that begins the book and calls the cover "dreadful", but cautions that "these are functional trappings rather than an honest indication of content". While he initially felt that "the Dalelands seem too settled to be worth bothering with", he realized that "this is an illusion - there's intrigue afoot, monsters in the mountains and war around the corner". He felt that Volo's journey is "not always an interesting trip, but it's effective at highlighting the sinister via Volo's rating system". He felt that the locations and characters could be dropped into most campaigns, and concluded that "In revealing its low-level secrets the guide alludes to darker riddles, the effect of which is to pique the interest of the reader in the Dalelands."