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.

 

[Parmandur]

How do we decide which audience to please, then? Should we have elections every two years?

I mean...that's ort of WotC is doing, with all the playtwsts and surveys. Not an election per se, but calibrating for where the audience is at.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I mean...that's ort of WotC is doing, with all the playtwsts and surveys. Not an election per se, but calibrating for where the audience is at.

I think they've said the answer to that question typically comes down to "I steal bits and pieces from published works and add them to my home campaigns," which probably argues against comprehensive lore dumps.

Honestly, if I wanted a hyper-detailed setting, I don't think I would have ever turned to TSR or WotC. I would have been using Harn, which has detail to a degree that Ed Greenwood could only dream of.

 

[Micah Sweet]

How do we decide which audience to please, then? Should we have elections every two years?

I'd be cool with that. Seriously though, all of the fans some of the time should be possible. They did it during the 3e era.

 

[Parmandur]

Of course they don't. But the content has become more bland and safe IMO, so the fact that so many people seem to like it tells me that yes, bland and safe is what a lot of people seem to want now.

In your opinion...but that's one opinion. WotC is going to chase the audience where the money leads.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So, my choice is to pay for dozens of pages of lore I don't care about? The argument is we should just flip which group of players we make unhappy?

Different books for different interests.

 

[Parmandur]

Different books for different interests.

Well, they do different books for different interests. Do note thr the 3.x business model died very fast.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, they do different books for different interests. Do note thr the 3.x business model died very fast.

3.0 and 3.5 collectively lasted for nearly a decade. Both spread a lot of books for different interests.

 

[Parmandur]

Like I said, 30 years of being a fan of official D&D is hard to break, but they just stopped making stuff for me, rather abruptly, without even changing editions. I'm still in shock really.

For what it is worth, the book that seems to mark the changing point for you is Ravenloft...which is the first post-Mearls product, when you factor in the design cycle. So you were in tune with Mearl approach but not so much the pot-Mearls approach.

 

[JEB]

Different books for different interests.

For example, Eberron: Rising from the Last War seemed to do just fine, and that had hundreds of pages of lore that some players surely didn't care about. By contrast, one criticism of Spelljammer was its lacking approach to lore.

 

[Parmandur]

3.0 and 3.5 collectively lasted for nearly a decade. Both spread a lot of books for different interests.

3.0 lasted 3 years before they had to violently reet it due to failing sales, and 3.5 lasted only 5 years before being completely thrown out the window.