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.

 

[Reynard]

Will it? D&DOne is right around the corner and we still really do not know how compatible it is with 5e. We had previews of 3e that made it seem like it was going to be pretty compatible with 2e and when it finally came out it was a lot of changes.

Emphasis mine.

We did? I followed that development very closely (on this very site, as well as in Dragon) and it was always going to be different from my recollection. So much so that the edition wars started before it was even out.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Emphasis mine.

We did? I followed that development very closely (on this very site, as well as in Dragon) and it was always going to be different from my recollection. So much so that the edition wars started before it was even out.

We did. But we're talking very early here, before really anything significant was known about 3E's mechanics except stuff like they were killing THAC0 and making to roll high was always good and so on. It was mostly just the designers saying it was going to be fairly compatible, and "easy to convert characters" and so on.

The edition wars did start before it was out, but they started once we'd seen the actual mechanics. Also any character that wasn't single-classed was completely impossible to meaningfully convert, and I dunno about you, but easily 80% of 2E characters I saw were multi-classed.

 

[Reynard]

The edition wars did start before it was out, but they started once we'd seen the actual mechanics. Also any character that wasn't single-classed was completely impossible to meaningfully convert, and I dunno about you, but easily 80% of 2E characters I saw were multi-classed.

Not so much from my recollection, if only because I would say a solid 80% of 2E characters in my games were human, and of those that weren't the only ones that I feel were "always" multiclassed were elves.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Not so much from my recollection, if only because I would say a solid 80% of 2E characters in my games were human

I've always been fascinated by groups like this. I'd say about about 15% of PCs were human in my experience running 2E for dozens of people over the years, maybe lower. Elves and Half-Elves were the commonest by far, followed by Dwarves, then humans, then all sorts of freaks (who probably were more than 15%, but no individual race of them was more than 15%). Virtually every non-human was multi-classed, with the sole exception being Half-Elf Bards, but pretty much only I was playing those lol.

 

[Reynard]

I've always been fascinated by groups like this. I'd say about about 15% of PCs were human in my experience running 2E for dozens of people over the years, maybe lower. Elves and Half-Elves were the commonest by far, followed by Dwarves, then humans, then all sorts of freaks (who probably were more than 15%, but no individual race of them was more than 15%). Virtually every non-human was multi-classed, with the sole exception being Half-Elf Bards, but pretty much only I was playing those lol.

To be fair I always used to create human-centric worlds, with demihumans either being rare or alien or distant or whatever. I would still prefer human only campaigns, but that's a really hard sell in the days of 40 odd official races (I think that is where the number is with MotM).

 

[Mind of tempest]

To be fair I always used to create human-centric worlds, with demihumans either being rare or alien or distant or whatever. I would still prefer human only campaigns, but that's a really hard sell in the days of 40 odd official races (I think that is where the number is with MotM).

it has nothing to do with how many alternative options instead of humans, the large selection of options just provides different people with a reason to pick non-human, some like magic non-humans, some like big and strong, some like flat hard to kill and some just want to look cooler whatever that means to them.

Fundamentally some people just want to not play a human, personally, I just want out of being human.

 

[Incenjucar]

We used to pick humans and half-elves in 2E because we naively thought that the level limits would be factor.

Outside of that, humans are just generally less interesting. I'm already a sneaky human with swords, bows, and the capacity for pyrotechnics, and who looks like a vampire, so playing a slightly different human isn't much of a fantasy.

 

[Mind of tempest]

We used to pick humans and half-elves in 2E because we naively thought that the level limits would be factor.

Outside of that, humans are just generally less interesting. I'm already a sneaky human with swords, bows, and the capacity for pyrotechnics, and who looks like a vampire, so playing a slightly different human isn't much of a fantasy.

that is why you pick one with a cool look like four-armed mantis men.

 

[Reynard]

it has nothing to do with how many alternative options instead of humans, the large selection of options just provides different people with a reason to pick non-human, some like magic non-humans, some like big and strong, some like flat hard to kill and some just want to look cooler whatever that means to them.

Fundamentally some people just want to not play a human, personally, I just want out of being human.

I get that. That's why I don't ban everything scaly or furry, even though I really, really want to.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I get that. That's why I don't ban everything scaly or furry, even though I really, really want to.

why do you want them all gone? as it is a popular position but I have never really learned why?
is it just the animal people thing? as I consider that lazy you need to custom-make your races from lots of things to make something truly worthy.