D&D 5E Planescape, Bigby, Phandelver and the Deck of Many Things: Covers & Details Revealed!

The covers of the upcoming D&D books — including Planescape, Glory of the Giants, and the Deck of Many Things have been revealed.

• August 15th -- Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants ($59.95)
• August 15th -- The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons ($39.95)
• September 19th -- Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk ($59.95)
• October 16th -- Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse ($TBA)
• November 14th -- Book of Many Things ($TBA)

Coming August 15th with two variants. Lore about giants, 76 stat blocks, feats, and a giant subclass.

3 hardcovers in a boxed set-- 96 page guide to Sigil, 64-page bestiary, and 96-page adventure, along with a poster map and DM screen. Coming October 16th.

224-page adventure for levels 1-12, poster map, 16 new monsters. Coming September 19th.

66 illustrated cards, 192-page book with lore, character options, magic items, and monsters, 80-page card reference guide, all in a slipcase. Coming November 14th.​

These Are Dungeons & Dragons' New Products For 2023

New books for the fantasy role-playing game include Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, and a look at the legendary Deck of Many Things.

themessenger.com

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

In the internet age the lore and the possible metaplot aren't so easy to be sold when you can read the fandom wikis about different franchises.

I wonder why they stopped to publish new novels. There are some comics, but these are only FR.

I miss Greyhawk, although I realise the original setting is not ready for the changes after diverse editions.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I wonder why they stopped to publish new novels.

Because they where taken over by a toy company, not a publishing house. Hasbro are interested in the toy and game market, not the fiction market.

 

[mamba]

It's terrifying how people's skills decay when they get out of school. "Are you smarter than a 5th grader" etc.

no, it shows that the excess baggage you never need in real life gets forgotten. You retain what you need / use. That is your brain being efficient.

This is not to say there is no point in learning it at school, you never know what that 5th grader will become. I never needed to know the details of photosynthesis after school however, so those get lost.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Actually, you never completely lose anything. It just becomes harder to access with lack of use.

 

[mamba]

It may simply be that rent-seeking is so much more profitable than book sales that anything they can't easily charge a recurring fee for lacks the ROI required to dwell on it.

then they wouldn’t publish books, they do however, and the same stuff you can buy digitally, so even if that were their focus, it would still exist, at least digitally

I assume settings books simply do not sell very well. That is all there is to it

 

[Stormonu]

I assume settings books simply do not sell very well. That is all there is to it

Well, not sell well enough for WotC/Hasbro's bottom line. There's plenty 3rd party groups that are making decent enough off them.

 

[Remathilis]

If you're going to 2e to get setting info to run a 5e setting, 5e has failed at setting.

There is no way WotC could support the depth of lore 2e had. That many books, all competing with themselves? Books made to extremely niche markets? Not feasible anymore. As a majority of DMs homebrew anyway, you'd be making products to smaller and smaller audiences reach time you added a setting.

The only way you get a detailed setting is to go the Pathfinder model and have ONE setting. One world you can dive into with sourcebooks and modules filling in details. Basically the early 5ev model of "oops, all Faerun". You'd get a single detailed setting, all the cost of Eberron, Ravenloft and everything else. The other option is the travellers guide style: bare basics plus a module but after that you're on your own. But we're never getting whole supplements devoted to esoteric elements of multiple settings anymore.

 

[Maxperson]

This is both correct and wrong. What WotC has recognised is:

a) setting lore is edition neutral;
b) you don't need vast amounts of lore to play D&D. The old setting books where written to be read, not played in. The place where you need to have the detailed descriptions is in the adventures that are going to use them.

a) You don't need any lore to play D&D, but if you're going to make a setting, you should make it right.
b) They shouldn't be trying to force people to play their adventures to get the lore that they want to use. Lots of us don't play their adventure paths.

So the 5e "setting books" are about the mechanics of running the game in a setting, lore is peripheral. VGR is a good example. This is a book about running a horror game in D&D. The lore is exemplar material and idea seeds. So really, there is nothing more to say apart from in adventures that make use of a location. So there is never any reason for an additional setting book.

This is a flaw of 5e. Those of us who aren't going to shell out $50 for a few pages of setting since we aren't going to run their adventure are just as deserving of setting lore as those who do.

In addition, they are trying to avoid a situation where you must have dozens of refrence books in order to run the game. WotC have quite rightly realised this was a con trick to sell books.

This is wrong. They're trying to force us to have dozens their adventure books to run it if we want setting lore, rather than reference books. Hell, it's actually the opposite of what you just set. I need a dozen adventures right now at $50 each to get the amount of lore(or less) that I could get in a single $50 reference book.

 

[mamba]

Well, not sell well enough for WotC/Hasbro's bottom line. There's plenty 3rd party groups that are making decent enough off them.

yes, that is what I meant. WotC releases, let’s say 4 books a year. They try to maximize sales of those, so that means adventures sell better than pure settings books.

That leaves a gap for small 3pps to fill (with the downside being that it cannot be for official settings, unless they publish on DMsG)

 

[Mecheon]

That's an abject failure of the edition to make a setting. I mean, I could go to World of Warcraft for a setting. Does that mean 5e is successful at making a setting because I can get it elsewhere? That's just silly.

5e fails at setting if I have to go anywhere but 5e to get a decent one.

Going off this though, simply due to it being the most well known Planescape related thing, you'd want to spend most of your stuff going off that. And, well.... Planescape: Torment took place mainly in Sigil with a bit in a border town and two brief little sojurn in actual planes, namely Avernus and the Plane of Shadows. So simply due to the most well known part of Planescape stuff out there focusing on it, of course the edition doing call-backs to it is going to rely specifically on that

(also I got Opinions about how well Planescape actually handles its other planes and the worthiness of most of the planes as places to really visit but, that's an issue that pre-dates Planescape and it inherited from earlier editions)