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.

 

[Incenjucar]

All kinds of preferences exist. It's also important to understand that a lot of people do not communicate or necessarily understand their preferences. On average, people dislike feeling irrelevant or to feel like they are on the poor side of an imbalance. There are certainly people who don't mind, but there are also people who will just stop showing up to play rather than rock the boat.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Are you basically saying that I've fever-dreamed 20+ years of D&D discussion on this board, as well as on various other forums? Look at my join date: I was here through 3e, 4e, and now 5e. I've seen what many people have wanted. Not all, but some. YOU might not care if a demi-god adventures with a commoner, but I can assure you more people than I do. I played D&D in the days when human's only racial trait kicked in at 19th level. I was there when fighters and thieves watched mages eclipse them in importance. I PLAYED the thief who watched as wizard's did his job with better speed and efficiency than he did and still had spell slots to incinerate an entire room of orcs before the fighter could draw his sword. Conversely, I was also there when the magic user used his one sleep spell, and then threw darts for the remaining encounters until a kobold put a knife in his back. Do not cite Deep Magic to me, I was there when it was written.

You have a nasty habit of demanding respect for your preferences while demeaning the preferences of others. You demand equality every time someone puts forth an opinion that runs counter to you. This isn't CNN, I don't have to give equal time to both sides. I know what I like, and on the grand cosmic scale, the game is moving away from your preferences and towards mine and I'm elated that is happening. I don't care if D&D ever supports that style again. It can go die in the same ditch as racial- and gender-based ability modifier, alignment restrictions, and race/class restrictions. Sorry the game you love is dying. You remind us in every post. But I'm not sorry that the game I love is improving.

I don't recall being a jerk to you about my preferences. Not a big fan of schadenfreude personally. I'm not generally happy that other people aren't getting what they want.

 

[dave2008]

First of all, Monopoly is wildly unfun no matter what you do.

Hey now, in a recent thread (maybe even this one) you got all upset with people calling level limits dumb. I feel much more offended by the blanket statement that Monopoly is "wildly unfun!" I had a blast playing it with my parents as a child and I have had quite a few hours of fun playing it with my children (particularly the "Monopoly Deal" variant). Might want check your own language if you're going to police others.

Thirdly, what matters more between game balance and function emulation is very subjective, as you implied. For me, nine times out of ten fiction wins. Portraying the world I want to portray matters more to me than fairness, on the rare occasions they come into conflict. And if it does happen, I won't be blindsiding my players either.

Except apparently level limits. It must be one of those 1 out of 10 times things.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

For example, what's the actual problem with having magic-users start weak and get strong? What is the objective issue with that? Is there one?

Yes, there is an objective issue, so let's keep this polite like last time:

It creates a huge, long-lasting disparity in terms of contribution to the group, and only the Wizard's player has any say in that. It's not consensual. There's no buy-in. There's no veto.

This is the crux of the problem. There three phases to it:

1) Wizards, in earlier editions of D&D are an extremely weak compared to both other PCs and even monsters at lower levels (really increasingly "coming online" from 3rd to 5th, but particularly 5th).

They have low HP, low AC, no damage output to speak of, no cantrips (barring some stuff most people sadly ignored), and their spells are rapidly expended and a lot of them are quite weak.

So it's almost like you're saying "I want you guys to play my babysitter, whilst I'm just sort of along for the ride. Oh and btw you have no choice in the matter unless you're so mean you just let me die.". If everyone got a vote on that, maybe that'd be fine, but that sure as hell didn't happen in that era. Even in real friend-groups, you're essentially deciding to be virtually a freeloader for a few levels at least.

2) From 5th to about 8th level, Wizards are increasingly strong, but fit into the group fairly well, and aren't outrageous compared to other PCs.

3) But from 9th onwards, Wizards start becoming so powerful (remember Clerics didn't have the same spells progression as Wizards back then, and had a spell selection even more pointed towards support than they do now, esp. as you needed a Cleric to heal everyone - which is a whole other problem!*), that the rest of the group decreases in importance, and particularly suddenly goes from being serious bodyguards for the Wizard, to being almost his "minions", because the Wizard can solve most serious combat encounters better than them, and also can do vastly more out of combat.

This obviously impacts how much fun people have. Generally speaking, people don't enjoy being completely outshone. It's particularly bad if the Wizard is anyone but the most kind, generous, spotlight-avoiding player possible, and I can't speak for everyone, but my experience is that most people who were keen to play single-class Wizards, were the exact opposite of that. Only CN Thieves and LG Paladins seemed to attract more "personality issues" players. Not all were of course, but a significant chunk. And generally the nicest people ended up playing Clerics or the like.

Anyway, I digress. This means that whilst Fighter, Clerics, Thieves and really most other classes are fairly even in power (I mean to a reasonable degree, and looking at XP rather than precise level), Wizards are out-of-whack except for a pretty brief window of levels. First much weaker than the rest, then increasingly outrageously stronger, to the point where they're basically gods and everyone else is just a a mere mortal.

Which again, wasn't what people signed up for, generally-speaking. It's not even what people expected, certainly in 2E and beyond, because the very notion of the way Wizards progressed wasn't expressed. I know I didn't fully "get it" until I'd played D&D for like 5 years maybe?

Most PCs didn't have great progression after L10. Clerics got some more spells, but not that much. Everyone potentially got fortresses etc. but in practice most groups weren't as into that as one might expect - hence them vanishing from 3E and beyond. Ironically in my experience, Wizards were by far the keenest on the "base" idea. But anyway, point is, they still got major progression every other level, which was pretty wild in comparison, and created another significant fun-disparity.

So objectively we can say that the fact that Wizards are not something the group makes decisions on (certainly not formally, nor are they encouraged to by the game), combined with the fact the Wizards go from deadweight, to equals, to significantly stronger or even godlike in comparison, isn't a good design, and doesn't produce good results, particularly in terms of creating a fun game where everyone feels like they contribute. It's something people have moaned about on and off certainly since 2E (and I assume far longer).

Now, to be clear, you can do what D&D did with Wizards, and get something consensual and interesting. Ars Magica demonstrates this. But it does this by having people have multiple PCs, and not forcing anyone to basically be the minion of the Wizard.

EDIT - I'd further add that the issues with this design are strongly evidenced by the struggle, for over 20 years, that WotC has had to rectify the issue, and the fact that in the two most recent editions, they did (for the most part - full casters are still more powerful than other 5E PCs, but it's so much less of an issue. Also the "dead weight" issue is entirely resolved.)

* = So this was another objective design issue with earlier editions. Natural healing was extremely slow, generally speaking. But if a Cleric was even pumping Cure Light Wounds and similar into people, what could have been weeks of rest would quickly become days, maybe even just a day. The trouble is, this made Clerics into what was later described in MMORPGs as "healbot", a character who essentially did nothing with their power but cast heals and maybe buffs to support the other players. This was a pretty boring way to play for most people, and certainly lead to a lot of attempts to convince someone, anyone, to "play the Cleric", or to find a way around that necessity. This issue continued into 3E, but was totally resolved by 4E and 5E.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Hey now, in a recent thread (maybe even this one) you got all upset with people calling level limits dumb. I feel much more offended by the blanket statement that Monopoly is "wildly unfun!" I had a blast playing it with my parents as a child and I have had quite a few hours of fun playing it with my children (particularly the "Monopoly Deal" variant). Might want check your own language if you're going to police others.

Except apparently level limits. It must be one of those 1 out of 10 times things.

I was making a joke. I apologize it was offensive. And if you want to use level limits (I don't), you could make it fit the fiction if you are so inclined.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I was making a joke. I apologize it was offensive. And if you want to use level limits (I don't), you could make it fit the fiction if you are so inclined.

It doesn't matter if it was a joke, it was still hypocritical of you to demand respect for your playstyle and how the early game was designed (even mechanics you don't use anymore) and then demean another.

You can make anything fit the fiction. A mechanic fitting the fiction or having fiction designed around it isn't inherently a good thing. There are bad DMs that do that with their fetishes in their homebrew games. The quality of the mechanic and lore is generally more important than if they fit together.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It doesn't matter if it was a joke, it was still hypocritical of you to demand respect for your playstyle and how the early game was designed (even mechanics you don't use anymore) and then demean another.

You can make anything fit the fiction. A mechanic fitting the fiction or having fiction designed around it isn't inherently a good thing. There are bad DMs that do that with their fetishes in their homebrew games. The quality of the mechanic and lore is generally more important than if they fit together.

Ars Magica does a pretty good job showing how you can line up lore and gameplay in a way that makes for a game that's actually fun, rather than merely creating a weird long-term power disparity. If the lore is that Wizards become stronger than everyone else, then maybe design the game so it's fun like that for everyone, rather than just letting Wizards go from Kato Kaelin to Gandalf.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, there is an objective issue, so let's keep this polite like last time:

It creates a huge, long-lasting disparity in terms of contribution to the group, and only the Wizard's player has any say in that. It's not consensual. There's no buy-in. There's no veto.

This is the crux of the problem. There three phases to it:

1) Wizards, in earlier editions of D&D are an extremely weak compared to both other PCs and even monsters at lower levels (really increasingly "coming online" from 3rd to 5th, but particularly 5th).

They have low HP, low AC, no damage output to speak of, no cantrips (barring some stuff most people sadly ignored), and their spells are rapidly expended and a lot of them are quite weak.

So it's almost like you're saying "I want you guys to play my babysitter, whilst I'm just sort of along for the ride. Oh and btw you have no choice in the matter unless you're so mean you just let me die.". If everyone got a vote on that, maybe that'd be fine, but that sure as hell didn't happen in that era. Even in real friend-groups, you're essentially deciding to be virtually a freeloader for a few levels at least.

2) From 5th to about 8th level, Wizards are increasingly strong, but fit into the group fairly well, and aren't outrageous compared to other PCs.

3) But from 9th onwards, Wizards start becoming so powerful (remember Clerics didn't have the same spells progression as Wizards back then, and had a spell selection even more pointed towards support than they do now, esp. as you needed a Cleric to heal everyone - which is a whole other problem!*), that the rest of the group decreases in importance, and particularly suddenly goes from being serious bodyguards for the Wizard, to being almost his "minions", because the Wizard can solve most serious combat encounters better than them, and also can do vastly more out of combat.

This obviously impacts how much fun people have. Generally speaking, people don't enjoy being completely outshone. It's particularly bad if the Wizard is anyone but the most kind, generous, spotlight-avoiding player possible, and I can't speak for everyone, but my experience is that most people who were keen to play single-class Wizards, were the exact opposite of that. Only CN Thieves and LG Paladins seemed to attract more "personality issues" players. Not all were of course, but a significant chunk. And generally the nicest people ended up playing Clerics or the like.

Anyway, I digress. This means that whilst Fighter, Clerics, Thieves and really most other classes are fairly even in power (I mean to a reasonable degree, and looking at XP rather than precise level), Wizards are out-of-whack except for a pretty brief window of levels. First much weaker than the rest, then increasingly outrageously stronger, to the point where they're basically gods and everyone else is just a a mere mortal.

Which again, wasn't what people signed up for, generally-speaking. It's not even what people expected, certainly in 2E and beyond, because the very notion of the way Wizards progressed wasn't expressed. I know I didn't fully "get it" until I'd played D&D for like 5 years maybe?

Most PCs didn't have great progression after L10. Clerics got some more spells, but not that much. Everyone potentially got fortresses etc. but in practice most groups weren't as into that as one might expect - hence them vanishing from 3E and beyond. Ironically in my experience, Wizards were by far the keenest on the "base" idea. But anyway, point is, they still got major progression every other level, which was pretty wild in comparison, and created another significant fun-disparity.

So objectively we can say that the fact that Wizards are not something the group makes decisions on (certainly not formally, nor are they encouraged to by the game), combined with the fact the Wizards go from deadweight, to equals, to significantly stronger or even godlike in comparison, isn't a good design, and doesn't produce good results, particularly in terms of creating a fun game where everyone feels like they contribute. It's something people have moaned about on and off certainly since 2E (and I assume far longer).

Now, to be clear, you can do what D&D did with Wizards, and get something consensual and interesting. Ars Magica demonstrates this. But it does this by having people have multiple PCs, and not forcing anyone to basically be the minion of the Wizard.

EDIT - I'd further add that the issues with this design are strongly evidenced by the struggle, for over 20 years, that WotC has had to rectify the issue, and the fact that in the two most recent editions, they did (for the most part - full casters are still more powerful than other 5E PCs, but it's so much less of an issue. Also the "dead weight" issue is entirely resolved.)

* = So this was another objective design issue with earlier editions. Natural healing was extremely slow, generally speaking. But if a Cleric was even pumping Cure Light Wounds and similar into people, what could have been weeks of rest would quickly become days, maybe even just a day. The trouble is, this made Clerics into what was later described in MMORPGs as "healbot", a character who essentially did nothing with their power but cast heals and maybe buffs to support the other players. This was a pretty boring way to play for most people, and certainly lead to a lot of attempts to convince someone, anyone, to "play the Cleric", or to find a way around that necessity. This issue continued into 3E, but was totally resolved by 4E and 5E.

Most of the OSR games out there have wizards operate very much as they did back then. This is not a dead rule set. Is this a strike against all of them?

 

[Micah Sweet]

It doesn't matter if it was a joke, it was still hypocritical of you to demand respect for your playstyle and how the early game was designed (even mechanics you don't use anymore) and then demean another.

You can make anything fit the fiction. A mechanic fitting the fiction or having fiction designed around it isn't inherently a good thing. There are bad DMs that do that with their fetishes in their homebrew games. The quality of the mechanic and lore is generally more important than if they fit together.

Fine. It was a  hypocritical joke, and I apologize. Again. Can we move on now, or do you need to call me out some more?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Most of the OSR games out there have wizards operate very much as they did back then. This is not a dead rule set. Is this a strike against all of them?

Most?

Hmmmm. I'm aficionado of OSR games and I don't really agree that that's true.

I think we could separate OSR games into retro-clones and OSR games.

Retro-clones mostly absolutely do have this issue - they often have numerous other issues which have been changed/resolved in later editions because most D&D players didn't seem to enjoy them. The big difference now is that being into retro-clones is a bit like being into BDSM (I say that with respect to both, I have no negative judgement on either), in that whilst maybe most people wouldn't enjoy it, the people who, with a wide variety of choices, choose to do it, are going into it with their eyes open, and it's very consensual in most cases.

I believe there are also some retro-clones, though I'd have to think hard about it, which do in fact strengthen low-level Wizards and pull back high-level ones a bit.

With OSR games in general, which are hugely broad and a blossoming genre still, I'd say this issue is not consistently present. Like, with for example a game we both like, Worlds Without Number, the spellcasting classes are not weak at level 1, nor unstoppable at level 10 (which is where it goes to barring optional rules), and the other classes are pretty serious too. What WWN does is basically add cantrips (including attack cantrips) and really chunk down the number of spells/day a caster can cast, whilst simultaneously making all those spells kind of badass. So a few times a day a caster will make you go "OH WOW", but the cantrips etc. prevent them being "dead weight" at other times. I'm sure there are counter-examples, but I don't think it's a constant.

As for a strike against those that have it, the big difference is that there's now a real choice, and where this design does appear, it's conscious. Is still a design that objectively creates an issue? Yes. You might call that a strike against it. I wouldn't personally.

The reason I wouldn't is that, as stated above, it's now usually consensual and consciously sought-out as an experience. I wouldn't like to be slapped with a riding crop, but a lot of people would! (again, I genuinely say this with respect, you could probably use an extreme sports or marathon running or the like as an analogy, but I'm honestly less familiar with them, so this is what I've got).

TLDR would be I don't think it's a strike against them because it's now a niche thing people seek out, rather than the main experience, and people now understand game design so much better that they can understand and potentially articulate what they want here.