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.

 

[Retreater]

It is not 6th edition, it is 5e+. They specifically said all of these books will work with the '24 edition. Did you listen to the announcement?

No, I couldn't watch the entirety of the 1+ hour livestream at work.
But I do know they are starting a 2-year-long public playtest today, which indicates that we will be seeing some substantial revisions to the game.
They're just not calling it 6E. I get that for marketing purposes, it's "D&D One Edition to Rule Them All" but this is like when Microsoft called the successor to the XBox 360 the XBox One: pure marketing talk.
With a playtest as long and involved as D&D Next was after 4E, I think everyone is deluding themselves to not expect this to change things significantly.

 

[dave2008]

No, I couldn't watch the entirety of the 1+ hour livestream at work.
But I do know they are starting a 2-year-long public playtest today, which indicates that we will be seeing some substantial revisions to the game.
They're just not calling it 6E. I get that for marketing purposes, it's "D&D One Edition to Rule Them All" but this is like when Microsoft called the successor to the XBox 360 the XBox One: pure marketing talk.
With a playtest as long and involved as D&D Next was after 4E, I think everyone is deluding themselves to not expect this to change things significantly.

Honestly it sounds like more of a change than I expected, but it is more like a 1e - 2e change versus the 2e-3e / 3e-4e / 4e-5e change. The big point (whatever you call the edition) is that they are saying you will be able to run any adventure from 2014 forward with the 2024 core books without making any changes. You can use the 2014 MM monsters with the 2024 PHB characters.

I really like how they are proposing to expand backgrounds.

PS I have no reference for your Xbox analogy, but this is not pure marketing talk. The are actually calling D&D One, so they are marketing a bit of a change.

 

[Mistwell]

I don't understand WotC's announcing the 6E playtest and then promoting what amounts to "dead edition" books.

Because it's very clearly not 6e, and there will not be a 6e. They will be using the 5e skeleton indefinitely and just offering tweaks to it over time from now on.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I'll wait and see about Planescape which is my favourite setting of all time. The changes to the Tiefling coming up in the revised PHB do seem to do a better job at making them more like they were in 2e. But now I suspect they're going to gloss over doing any changes to them, if they're just going to change them in the PHB.

The Giants book, you realize there's a ridiculous number of Giant types in previous editions out there that go beyond Hill/Fire/Frost/Stone/Cloud/Storm, almost as many Giants as they are Elf Types and Dragon Types. Volcano Giants, Sand Giants, Ocean Giants, Athasian Giants, Arcane Giants, Death Giants, Mountain Giants and so on.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It seems to me that these new books are designing forwards. The new aardvark race will probably appear in Planescape first, and I bet "Deck" previews content for the new rules the way Tasha's did.

 

[halfling rogue]

I'm intrigued by the Phandelver campaign. What I appreciated about Phandelver was that it was a good module with lots of interesting hooks and some pretty great adventuring locations. Someone here or elsewhere mentioned it having an almost generic or vanilla fantasy flavor which, I agree, worked well. I don't regard Phandalin or any other lore or fluff about the area in particular very interesting.

It would be pretty cool if they pull Rich Baker back in to work on it.

 

[Retreater]

Honestly it sounds like more of a change than I expected, but it is more like a 1e - 2e change versus the 2e-3e / 3e-4e / 4e-5e change. The big point (whatever you call the edition) is that they are saying you will be able to run any adventure from 2014 forward with the 2024 core books without making any changes. You can use the 2014 MM monsters with the 2024 PHB characters.

I wouldn't say that 1e - 2e is exactly "compatible," but that's just my opinion. Of course you had different character options (Assassins, Half-Orcs, Monks, were gone), you had THAC0, but there were harder to spot things, such as increased HP among monsters. I have never tried it, but I'd expect a 1e party dropped into a 2e adventure wouldn't fare well. Just like a 3.5 party dropped into a PF1 game wouldn't succeed.
So maybe "moderate" changes would be needed, but I expect it won't be a 1-for-1 exchange.

I really like how they are proposing to expand backgrounds.

Yes, that needed to be done for a long time. I usually don't even use them as they are now.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I wouldn't say that 1e - 2e is exactly "compatible," but that's just my opinion. Of course you had different character options (Assassins, Half-Orcs, Monks, were gone), you had THAC0, but there were harder to spot things, such as increased HP among monsters. I have never tried it, but I'd expect a 1e party dropped into a 2e adventure wouldn't fare well. Just like a 3.5 party dropped into a PF1 game wouldn't succeed.
So maybe "moderate" changes would be needed, but I expect it won't be a 1-for-1 exchange.

Yes, that needed to be done for a long time. I usually don't even use them as they are now.

Having been there during the 1e-2e changeover, you could very easily have a party from one edition play in the other. Had loads of campaigns where 2e parties played in 1e modules with no difficulty whatsoever.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Same. And because 2e had a phased release, we were literally running a campaign with 1e and 2e core books at the same time.

Having been there during the 1e-2e changeover, you could very easily have a party from one edition play in the other. Had loads of campaigns where 2e parties played in 1e modules with no difficulty whatsoever.

Will the Book of Many Things also have the potential to wreck your campaign?

Honestly, it feels kinda weird to know all the major releases for the next year.

 

[Rabulias]

I wouldn't say that 1e - 2e is exactly "compatible," but that's just my opinion. Of course you had different character options (Assassins, Half-Orcs, Monks, were gone), you had THAC0, but there were harder to spot things, such as increased HP among monsters. I have never tried it, but I'd expect a 1e party dropped into a 2e adventure wouldn't fare well. Just like a 3.5 party dropped into a PF1 game wouldn't succeed.

We used THAC0 in first edition games (it was in the list of monsters in the back of the Dungeon Masters Guide). 1st edition and 2nd edition characters were roughly the same power level in my group's experience. Yes, some 2nd edition monsters (most notably dragons and giants) were more deadly than their 1st edition counterparts. For example, the DM could not use a 1st edition module, see that it called for two adult red dragons, and use the 2nd edition stats for adult red dragons in their place. A 2nd edition module could likely be used for a 1st edition party fairly safely, though.

Having been there during the 1e-2e changeover, you could very easily have a party from one edition play in the other. Had loads of campaigns where 2e parties played in 1e modules with no difficulty whatsoever.

Indeed, we "crossed the streams" with no trouble at all.