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.

 

[dave2008]

No, I've explained my reasoning several times, you just don't agree. And that's ok. I said before I'm tired of talking about this anyway.

Perhaps I missed it, but I don't remember the explanation. Can you point me to previous posts if you don't wat to explain it again?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No, I've explained my reasoning several times, you just don't agree.

No, we don't understand.

The First World is worse than the additions of the Shadowfell and Feywild because it "damages" lore. But how? Why?

You are jumping ahead to people understanding your argument and disagreeing it, when you are just stating your conclusion ("it's damaging") not your actual argument.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Other planes are an alternate history of the multiverse. Similar to the first world. How is the inclusion of completely new realms of reality not a change to the history of D&D settings that never had them?

Does their existence factor into the history of the setting? Show me an example please.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But the first world is not that. It is an idea that dragons have about the history of the universe. Thus far, it has not extended its scaly claws into any WotC D&D lore beyond that. It is not a retcon or change.

Personally I like it, and would use it. However. I can understand, and respect, not likely it for exactly the reasons you stated. However, it isn't an example of WotC destroying other settings IMO. That is the characterization I am pushing back against. This bit of lore, thus far, changes much less than the Far Realm, Shadowfell, and Feywild. I also like those realms, but they have changed more of D&D history and lore than the First World.

EDIT: as a follow up, per WotC, Fizban's is not canon. Only the corebooks are canon. So the first world is specifically only relevant to those who want to use it.

Ok, so the First World is, as I said, a piece of lore I don't like. Is that ok with everyone?

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, we don't understand.

The First World is worse than the additions of the Shadowfell and Feywild because it "damages" lore. But how? Why?

You are jumping ahead to people understanding your argument and disagreeing it, when you are just stating your conclusion ("it's damaging") not your actual argument.

If it were true, it means that every campaign setting in D&D is derived, in some fractured way, from the First World that is no more. I feel this damages the value of those other worlds because they were created, in the real world, with the assumption that they existed in their own right, not as broken and twisted copies of some other world that was invented by a new set of game designers in a supplemental product many years into an edition literally less than two years ago. I feel that they are lesser than they were if you accept the legend of the First World.

Now, if it is just a legend, and not backed up in future products (like the upcoming giant book) then it becomes, as I've said more than once now, a piece of lore I don't personally like and would not use. I don't use dragons much at all anyway, so that wouldn't really be that difficult for me. But I am on record as caring about D&D's settings as a continuing story, not much different from Star Wars, Star Trek, Middle-Earth, or the comics version of the Marvel Universe, and don't like it when current management messes with (false) history.

 

[Cruentus]

Every campaign world made by WOTC might be derived from the First World, or some other random bit of lore that someone thought would be fun or make some money for some splatbook.

Every campaign that I run would have zero, zilch, nada, no impact from whatever WOTC says about the First World. Just like it doesn’t include a feywild, or a flogiston, or a planescape or crystal spheres, etc.

I mean, I was easily able to ignore midiclorines in Star Wars, I can ignore the First World too.

I don’t understand the problem.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Why do you all have a problem with my dislike of the First World? Are we not allowed to like different things?

It doesn't affect my game personally. It affects the history if the universe, in the same way something like this would affect the history of, say, Star Wars, or Middle-Earth, or the Marvel Universe. In Star Trek, there was an episode where it was revealed that most of the species of the galaxy, including humanity, were in fact seeded on different planets by a progenitor race. Wasn't a big fan of that either.

I do not have an issue your dislike of the first world, I just wonder why you give such weight to the publisher. You seem to say that the existence of the First World makes the existing lore lesser to you, that it reduces the pleasure that it gives to you. That seem to me to be really strange.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

If it were true, it means that every campaign setting in D&D is derived, in some fractured way, from the First World that is no more. I feel this damages the value of those other worlds because they were created, in the real world, with the assumption that they existed in their own right, not as broken and twisted copies of some other world that was invented by a new set of game designers in a supplemental product many years into an edition literally less than two years ago. I feel that they are lesser than they were if you accept the legend of the First World.

Now, if it is just a legend, and not backed up in future products (like the upcoming giant book) then it becomes, as I've said more than once now, a piece of lore I don't personally like and would not use. I don't use dragons much at all anyway, so that wouldn't really be that difficult for me. But I am on record as caring about D&D's settings as a continuing story, not much different from Star Wars, Star Trek, Middle-Earth, or the comics version of the Marvel Universe, and don't like it when current management messes with (false) history.

Although I still disagree, at least I can follow your thoughts.

 

[Stormonu]

I can't speak for @Micah Sweet , but my dislike for the First World is similar to my distaste for the FeyWild and Shadowfell. It's another (destroyed) plane being shoehorned into the cosmology that I have no interest in incorporating into the game worlds I use (homebrew and Greyhawk mostly). I'm irritated because WoTC products will most likely continue to use and incorporate the First World into future products, and new players will likely come to the game expecting it to be Truth, when I don't want to add it in the first place.

Its kind of like ordering steak & potatoes and getting a pizza thrown in on the side you didn't ask for.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I am of the view that canonicity should be taken out the back and shot. Canon may have some merit in theology but real world myths have differing version of the same tale floating about and sometime even actual recorded history have conflicting account of events.
Players should not be coming to the table with the notion that the lore they have read is true in the gameworld they are playing. Even if their characters believe that a particular version of the lore is true that should not mean that it is actually so.