the history of characters, but coming up with a full background for a character can be a little intimidating for someone that's never done it before. Xanathar's Guide has a few class-specific elements that can help like tables for a bard's worst performance or the vice a rogue likes to indulge in, in between adventures. It also has a big section full of tables that determine important character details like siblings, upbringing and other points that can help sketch a character backstory during play. There's a running gag that all D&D characters are orphans that were born, grew up and became adventurers, but with this section, characters get a skeleton of a backstory to help shade how they react in play". Richard Jansen-Parkes, for the UK print magazine Tabletop Gaming, wrote that "in many ways the slightly unfocused air of XGtE is a reflection of how modern games – both tabletop and digital – are no longer static products, eternally fixed at version 1.0. It was clearly shaped by community feedback and directly addresses many of the questions and concerns that regularly crop up in Reddit threads and Twitter feeds. [...] In many ways, the fact that the new rules feel fun without seeming over-powered is perhaps the book's biggest success of all. [...] There are a few things that appeal to the power gamers out there, but this is always going to be the case and none of them seem to make any existing abilities or characters completely obsolete. Indeed, plenty of the content doesn't have any impact on the gameplay whatsoever, such as a guide for generating character backstories or long tables of random names for the DM to consult when players insist on speaking to everyone in the tavern. The best way to describe XGtE, perhaps, is that it upgrades your experience to D&D 5.1. It's a huge content update that tweaks things here and there, presented with all the usual top-notch design and writing work we've come to expect from the D&D team. Arguably some of the rules clarifications should be presented as errata or an update to the existing core books rather than requiring you to buy a new one, but when that's the biggest complaint going you know you have a success on your hands". Rollin Bishop, for Comicbook, wrote that "though the supplement's name does it no favors, it's mostly a reprinted collection