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.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I don’t mind the slipcase stuff. But I do want larger books.

 

[Demetrios1453]

It's a few pieces of cardboard glued together. It's not meaningfully running up any costs.

"We don't have any more room in the slipcase" is not the issue, unless the slipcase was carved out of a diamond to one size, and one size only. They can change the size of cardboard slipcases more or less at will, for pennies at most.

WotC didn't want to pay for more signatures in each of the books, which limited their size. More signatures are expensive. The fact that we got a bunch of free Spelljammer monsters for this and the rules for how fey domains work as a charity product suggests that they were going to put in more content, but didn't.

If slipcases are fairly adjustable (and I guess I don't know enough about the publishing business; I thought they would be more difficult to adjust than the rest), then if they are watching feedback on the Spelljammer set (and I would have to assume they are looking at it very closely, as they said it was an experimental format), they definitely should realize they need to make at least slightly larger sets. They aren't getting rave reviews on the Spelljammer set; this is not due to discontent on what is in it (most seem to agree that what is in it is good), but what is missing. I can't imagine that they aren't looking at making the Planescape set (if that is indeed what we end up with) bigger in order to avoid this in the future. I guess it's a balance between outcry at cost and outcry on smaller page count, and this time the erred on the side of a smaller set.

I do like the slipcase format - it looks nice and allows for segregation of DM and player material, so I don't mind if they keep it up for future releases, as long as the content doesn't suffer. Thankfully, they have probably 8 - 9 months before the Planescape product is finalized and goes to print, so they have some time to look over their options to get it as good as they possibly can...

 

[Vael]

I apparently am the only person excited about the Deck of Many Things book, but I am really excited about it. If they do a cool enough alternate cover, it'll be the first one of those I've picked up.

(And yes, Radiant Citadel was good. I'll be running a campaign later this fall, which will be fun.)

I might be in on this one. I dunno, it's hard to get too interested in player facing options until 5.5 comes out and refreshs the system. But this is a wait and see. Certainly I like the Deck of Many things, I bought a 4e Adventure primarily because it came with a physical Deck of Many Things

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I apparently am the only person excited about the Deck of Many Things book, but I am really excited about it. If they do a cool enough alternate cover, it'll be the first one of those I've picked up.

(And yes, Radiant Citadel was good. I'll be running a campaign later this fall, which will be fun.)

Its hard to say because we really don't know enough about what's in the book beyond the UA character options, a handful of feats and spells (cool ones admittedly).

 

[humble minion]

Its hard to say because we really don't know enough about what's in the book beyond the UA character options, a handful of feats and spells (cool ones admittedly).

Yeah, it's hard to know what to think about the Deck book yet, because there's just so little info on what's going to actually be in it. Presumably they'll have some encounters, maybe sample places that people who draw Donjon can be imprisoned, sample NPCs for the Knight, etc etc? I just honestly can't begin to guess what to expect, so I just have no idea what to think about it yet.

There was a nice card-themed rogue subclass in the Runeterra supplement that WotC put on the website for a while before unceremoniously yanking it. I hope they give that a bit of a polish and put it in the book.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In the press event they held for websites alongside (or before) the "live" event (I use scare quotes because the hosts wore the same outfits in the promos released days before), the Book of Many Things was mentioned to include monsters and adventuring sites.

I'm guessing we see a mix of lore, spells and feats, monsters and a bunch of short adventures featuring either sites where individual cards are located or places twisted by the deck in the past.

The biggest surprise to me is that WotC isn't making their own Deck to sell alongside this, but that's what Etsy is for.

 

[JEB]

There was a nice card-themed rogue subclass in the Runeterra supplement that WotC put on the website for a while before unceremoniously yanking it.

The Runeterra supplement was produced well before Wizards acquired D&D Beyond (and I believe it's been speculated that Wizards did not approve, which is why it disappeared so quickly).

 

[JEB]

The biggest surprise to me is that WotC isn't making their own Deck to with this, but that's what Etsy is for.

I'd be very, very surprised if we don't see an official, physical deck released alongside this book.

 

[humble minion]

The Runeterra supplement was produced well before Wizards acquired D&D Beyond (and I believe it's been speculated that Wizards did not approve, which is why it disappeared so quickly).

Yeah, you're right, I'd forgotten the details.

The subclass still had some nice features though (speaking as someone who's not terribly excited by most rogue subclasses). Given WotC now owns DND Beyond's IP, I hope they file the Runeterra serial numbers off, polish the rough edges off some of the wording, and give it another go.

 

[Maxperson]

But also every single book has stuff for players and DMs. It’s weird that people are still hollering for DM-only books like…why?

The only books I consider DM only are the DMG and MM, and really I don't care if the players study the DMG.