Planescape 5 New D&D Books Coming in 2023 -- Including Planescape!

At today's Wizards Presents event, hosts Jimmy Wong, Ginny Di, and Sydnee Goodman announced the 2023 line-up of D&D books, which featured something old, something new, and an expansion of a fan favorite.

The first of the five books, Keys from the Golden Vault, will arrive in winter 2023. At Tuesday's press preview, Chris Perkins, Game Design Architect for D&D, described it as “Ocean’s Eleven meets D&D” and an anthology of short adventures revolving around heists, which can be dropped into existing campaigns.

In Spring 2023, giants get a sourcebook just like their traditional rivals, the dragons, did in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants will be a deep dive into hill, frost, fire, cloud, and storm giants, plus much more.

Summer 2023 will have two releases. The Book of Many Things is a collection of creatures, locations, and other player-facing goodies related to that most famous D&D magic item, the Deck of Many Things. Then “Phandelver Campaign” will expand the popular Lost Mine of Phandelver from the D&D Starter Set into a full campaign tinged with cosmic horror.

And then last, but certainly not least, in Fall 2023, WotC revives another classic D&D setting – Planescape. Just like Spelljammer: Adventures in Space, Planescape will be presented as a three-book set containing a setting guide, bestiary, and adventure campaign in a slipcase. Despite the Spelljammer comparison they did not confirm whether it would also contain a DM screen.

More information on these five titles will be released when we get closer to them in date.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

maybe its my OCD, but is there a reason why Winter 2023 is to the left of Spring and summer 2023 with fall releases at the bottom? My brain wants to rearrange them in chronological order....I first thought maybe it was a mistake and should have been Winter 2022.

Probably arranged around the fiscal year, so "Winter 2023" is referring to January/February 2023, and the "year" cuts off in the Fall, around the time they'll presumably be making a presentation for the 2024 release calendar, as they just did for the 2023 lineup yesterday.

 

[Faolyn]

In the days before the internet, it was pretty hard to know how something was targeted apart from what it said on the box.

Advertising--such as in Dragon Magazine--was a thing...

Pseudointellectual, pretentious, edgelord, whatever you prefer. Plenty of people didn't like WoD either, but at least the box indicated that if you didn't wear black eye liner the product probably wasn't for you.

I've never worn eye liner of any color and I adored Planescape. I wasn't that big a fan of WoD. Or at least not of Vampire. I enjoyed the Mage game I played.

Dungeon crawls are easy and fun.

All the more reason for more dungeon crawls.

My table hates them because they have minimal room for roleplaying.

 

[agrayday]

Probably arranged around the fiscal year, so "Winter 2023" is referring to January/February 2023, and the "year" cuts off in the Fall, around the time they'll presumably be making a presentation for the 2024 release calendar, as they just did for the 2023 lineup yesterday.

That makes sense thank you.

 

[Quickleaf]

Hard disagree and I think this attitude was the result of narrow-mindedness (and yes I am specifically saying Jim Davis is that) and inability to conceptualize what a Planescape adventure looked like, even though there were pretty good examples. A subset of DMs definitely just want to have mindless planar jaunts, which didn't really require or involve Planescape at all, and were simply vexed/flummoxed by Planescape's material. Making Planescape more "normal" is just dreadful. Truly dreadful. And whenever I see this stuff described (and this was discussed a ton in the '90s), that's all it amounts to - less Factions, less politics, less NPCs, less Sigil, less talking, less roleplaying, more going to a dungeon (that just happens to be on another plane) and bonking monster heads and taking monster loot. It reminds me of the sort of people who played Dark Sun as a bog-standard dungeon crawl setting, and only used Dark Sun at all because it let them have particularly OP characters for their bog-standard dungeon crawls.

Planescape even had wonderfully game-able stuff that didn't even focus on being game-able, like Uncaged: Faces of Sigil, which just an incredibly useful book for actually running a campaign in Sigil. If you actually wanted to do that. But again, some people just wanted like "Dungeon Crawl: Planar Tourist edition". The same people tended to the ones who wrote rants about how the Factions sucked or were too "fancy" and had weird anger issues about the Lady of Pain (I mean that was a weirdly common thing "The Guy Who Is Totally Enraged By The Lady of Pain", back then).

Ouch. Ok. I'll assume that's not directed personally, and lean on my better angels.

Well, I'm glad you were able to easily ground the metaphysical themes of Planescape at your table and make them playable. That's good!

It definitely took me some hefty work and coloring outside the pages to get my old campaign to maybe a fraction of that.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That's the key. They now clarified very well what they meant with compatibility i.e. they believe the 2024 core rules should work with all previous adventures and supplements, but obviously not with 2014 core.

• 2014 PHB will not be compatible with 2024 PHB because core 2024 characters will be straight more powerfule than core 2014 characters, so it would be just unfair to let someone use the 2024 PHB unless everyone does

That isn’t incompatible, at worst it’s power creep. Also very easy to just…let the 2014 phb character take a level 1 feat.

• some core rules changes are being considered that can also make the 2014 DMG and MM obsolete or incorrect to some degree (for instance, should anything in 2014 MM refer to a monster scoring a critical hit, that could become invalid), but how much this will happen is not yet known

This is possible, but definitely not certain.

• pre-2024 adventures will be easily compatible, the minimal additional crunch might be unaffected by new rules except for maybe very minor adjustments (e.g. spells by class will need to be treated as spell by source)

Actually spell by class will still be usable, judging by JC’s comments in the long UA video.

• pre-2024 supplements not necessarily so easily IMO, there will be areas which probably will require some adaptations, for example early supplements playable races

Well, no. There aren’t any general rules that will come into conflict due to a 2014 and a 2024 wood elf being in the same group.

I don't expect other planes than Sigil, they'll just "refer to the DMG" and hope for future products, but all other planes except Sigil have already scattered to lots of other fantasy setting and aren't more "Planescape" than they are "Greyhawk".

I think there is a good chance that one of the books in the slipcase will be a monster book that also serves as a manual of the planes.

One of my biggest gripes with the updates, which has been clear for a while already through other books, is the loss of freedom.

What on earth!?

When 5e came out, the mantra was "allow as many playstyles and preferences as possible". They took great care to make multiclassing and feats optional. To have short-rest based abilities and long-rest based abilities. To have some rules stay somewhat generic (advantage, inspiration, passive checks) so that they were not too intrusive, and relatively flexible to the point that they could even be mostly ignored.

Now feats are mandatory. Inspiration is mandatory. Short rest abilities are being progressively phased out in favor of "proficiency bonus times per day" i.e. long rest abilities.

For me it's a net loss of freedom. But they'll always tell you "you can always change the rules if you don't like them", then insult you for being a house ruler.

This is wild. Show me where wizards has ever insulted anyone for houseruling!? The game literally encourages it!

 

[Micah Sweet]

That isn’t incompatible, at worst it’s power creep. Also very easy to just…let the 2014 phb character take a level 1 feat.

This is possible, but definitely not certain.

Actually spell by class will still be usable, judging by JC’s comments in the long UA video.

Well, no. There aren’t any general rules that will come into conflict due to a 2014 and a 2024 wood elf being in the same group.

I think there is a good chance that one of the books in the slipcase will be a monster book that also serves as a manual of the planes.

What on earth!?

This is wild. Show me where wizards has ever insulted anyone for houseruling!? The game literally encourages it!

The community seems to enjoy insulting people for houseruling. Otherwise, why is all the talk and angst focused on WotC's rule set?

 

[TwoSix]

The community seems to enjoy insulting people for houseruling. Otherwise, why is all the talk and angst focused on WotC's rule set?

Personally, I'm just talking about it because it's new and interesting. Right now, I don't feel much of a need for the new book, because 2014 rules plus my large amount of homebrew work just fine.

 

[ngenius]

So I was excited to hear Planescape makes a return, having never played the original, but totally loved the computer game form childhood.

Excitement turned to disappointment that the format will be be that three book set like 5th Spelljammer (mine arrived, and only the first two books are actual rules and lore, the third is just an adventure).

Is there a financial reason that Wizards do not do splat books for campaigns anymore? I saw someone selling of all his old Planescape and that has many books, but too out-of-date for my tastes, and expensive.

 

[ngenius]

I don't understand WotC's announcing the 6E playtest and then promoting what amounts to "dead edition" books.

I think 5th Planescape is probably the first true One D&D book. Hence, my initial excitement for it, turned to disappointment when I read it would follow 5th Spelljammer format, considering I got 5th Spelljammer, and only two books are rules and lore.

 

[Malmuria]

I think there is a good chance that one of the books in the slipcase will be a monster book that also serves as a manual of the planes.

this is a really good idea