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.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Absolute worst case scenario, this will still open up Planescape on DMsGuild, meaning that 3rd Party creatives can get their hands on Sigil in the same way they have all the other settings WotC has opened up there and give it the treatment it "deserves" by whatever metric they feel appropriate.

I would certainly prefer the official 5e Planescape release to also be good, but that's a win in and of itself.

Hear, hear, although I really don't care about official release as long as it opens up the Guild.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

The Planewalker fan site has been largely defunct for some time (unless there's been a revival I don't know about), but I'd love it if the crew that wrote their old 3e Planescape setting fan update came together to create some DMsGuild Planescape material.

 

[Incenjucar]

It's a chance, and I'd rather have a chance rather than none. If they bake Planescape into 0E enough to at least have support for play, we old Planescape fans have a fresh opportunity to try and share it with new folks. After that, it's up to them whether it goes viral or not, but cripes it's such a great setting for the highly varied crowds like Twitch VTubers and such.

 

[Parmandur]

I mean, you can't treat Planescape worse than 4E and 3E did, but will this revitalize it?

Having DiTerlizzi art is a huge good sign, for sure, because it illustrates at least basic understanding of Planescape and what made it cool. Especially as that colour palette is super-Planescape-y, which suggests to me the visual design in the books will be at least on-point.

But if they do the same format as Spelljammer, it's not going to revitalize anything at all! 64 pages of rules & setting gives room for nothing (esp. given they'll likely have multiple races, tons of feats, spells, etc.), 64 pages of monsters, and 64 pages of "maybe run it once" adventure is not how you "revitalize" a setting. If they're divided up differently - i.e. 64 pages setting, 64 pages rules & maybe v.short adventure, 64 bestiary we might see a small chance of them actually doing something cool. And if they don't stick to the idiotic 64-page approach (but I think they will as it has to be cheaper to keep doing it), but go longer with the setting part, I think there's a chance.

However, until I hear specifically otherwise, all information says this is going to be the Spelljammer format - so at best we'll have a pretty-but-worthless product for collectors, that doesn't actually present a playable setting, doesn't "do justice" to Planescape or Sigil, and so on. So my hopes remain low despite this welcome news.

EDIT - To be clear I am 100% Tsundere about this. Like, I am utterly praying that this is a great product and all my attitude and negativity is shown to be completely dumb. I wanna look like dumbest least-Cassandra person on the planet. Because I love this piece. I love how his art style developed. But I'm so doubtful.

When theybannounced it last year, theybsaidnit was a box set, but today Crawford pointedly called Planescape specifically "a book." So that plan may have changed.

 

[vecna00]

When theybannounced it last year, theybsaidnit was a box set, but today Crawford pointedly called Planescape specifically "a book." So that plan may have changed.

I'm down for it either way!

 

[Henadic Theologian]

When theybannounced it last year, theybsaidnit was a box set, but today Crawford pointedly called Planescape specifically "a book." So that plan may have changed.

Damn good catch, I missed that key detail, I rewatched it, he did say book and at no time did it sound a slip case. I think they got the message from those of us unhappy with the amount of content in Spelljammer, especially in comparsion to its premium price.

Its an absolutely relief that mistake will not be repeated.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

When theybannounced it last year, theybsaidnit was a box set, but today Crawford pointedly called Planescape specifically "a book." So that plan may have changed.

Let us bow our heads in prayer lol.

 

[humble minion]

Its an absolutely relief that mistake will not be repeated.

Don't worry, I'm sure they'll dream up a whole lot of different mistakes instead!

Seriously though, I'm very unsurprised about the format change for Planescape (though it'll make no damn difference unless they bump the overall page count - 180 pages of content in 1 book is just as inadequate as 180 pages of content in 3 books). Spelljammer's poor reception has been quoted as one of the major reasons Winninger was moved on. It must have absolutely TANKED sales-wise if that's the case.

I'm still bummed about SJ though. What a wasted opportunity. I was legit excited for that thing, I went and bought a bunch of Spelljammer stuff off DMGuild - and then it landed with a wet splat. I read it though once and haven't picked it up again. Such a sad disappointment.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Don't worry, I'm sure they'll dream up a whole lot of different mistakes instead!

Seriously though, I'm very unsurprised about the format change for Planescape (though it'll make no damn difference unless they bump the overall page count - 180 pages of content in 1 book is just as inadequate as 180 pages of content in 3 books). Spelljammer's poor reception has been quoted as one of the major reasons Winninger was moved on. It must have absolutely TANKED sales-wise if that's the case.

I'm still bummed about SJ though. What a wasted opportunity. I was legit excited for that thing, I went and bought a bunch of Spelljammer stuff off DMGuild - and then it landed with a wet splat. I read it though once and haven't picked it up again. Such a sad disappointment.

They wouldn't have changed the format if they were still planning to keep the same page count. No one complained about the three-books-in-a-slipcase format - in fact, it's nice and convenient. What everyone complained about was the page count, so if they are changing the format, it's very likely due to a change in the page count.

 

[Vaalingrade]

They wouldn't have changed the format if they were still planning to keep the same page count. No one complained about the three-books-in-a-slipcase format - in fact, it's nice and convenient. What everyone complained about was the page count, so if they are changing the format, it's very likely due to a change in the page count.

I remember all kinds of complaining about the slipcase even before we knew the contents.