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.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah, I love a lot of the OSR, but the fetishization of early designers is silly. They didn't know they were making bad decisions, so they made a lot of them. Every new field starts the same way.

I imagine there are car purists who would love to own a Model A, but YouTube is not full of videos insisting we should all go back to hand-cranking our car engines. (It would be pretty wild to see, though, considering how many motorists' arms got broken that way.)

I love a lot of OSR stuff too, and the funniest thing with it is, it often ends up being ahead of 5E in some ways. Certainly I'd say that, all in all, Worlds Without Number is a slightly more modern and together RPG than 5E, despite being consciously OSR. It even solves some long-standing problems with D&D that 5E doesn't even attempt to address (most notably KO'ing/killing enemies from stealth without the system becoming cheesy). Hell I think a case could be made that RC D&D was "more advanced" than AD&D 2E when RC D&D arrived in 1991, and probably until quite late in the '90s (after Combat & Tactics and so on).

 

[Incenjucar]

The Complete Book of Humanoids was goblins and orcs and giants, not furries (I guess gnolls count, and one or two more if you include scalies, but it is very much not the focus of the book).


I also never quite understood the point of level limits. Either you hit them and the character rapidly becomes unplayable, or you don't (either because the character never gets that far or because they are easily replaced) and they do absolutely nothing. Either way, they utterly fail as a balancing mechanism.

Back when I played 2e, we houseruled them out and gave humans a couple of bennies instead (+1 to any stat and the ability to multiclass, IIRC).

Humanoids book contained:
: aarakocra, alaghi, beastman, bugbear, bullywug, centaur, fremlin, giant-kin (firbolg), giant-kin (voadkyn), gnoll, gnoll (flind), goblin, hobgoblin, kobold, lizard man, minotaur, mongrelman, ogre, half-ogre, orc, half-orc, pixie, satyr, saurial, swanmay, and wemic.

Wemics are cat-taurs, and reptile, bird, and amphibian folk do generally count. And yes gnolls are anthro hyenas.

 

[Reynard]

And yes gnolls are anthro hyenas.

DEMONIC anthro hyenas!

 

[Faolyn]

DEMONIC anthro hyenas!

Not back then they weren't. They were just another humanoid species.

 

[glass]

Humanoids book contained:
: aarakocra, alaghi, beastman, bugbear, bullywug, centaur, fremlin, giant-kin (firbolg), giant-kin (voadkyn), gnoll, gnoll (flind), goblin, hobgoblin, kobold, lizard man, minotaur, mongrelman, ogre, half-ogre, orc, half-orc, pixie, satyr, saurial, swanmay, and wemic.

Wemics are cat-taurs, and reptile, bird, and amphibian folk do generally count. And yes gnolls are anthro hyenas.

OK, to be fair I forgot about aarokokra and bullywugs. OTOH, I would not count wemic any more than I would count the actual centaurs, and minotaurs I suppose should technically count but they are not what people normally mean when they say "furries" either. But even if you count all three, that is still only nine out of twenty-six (if I have counted right).

I stand by my opinion that "furries" were very much not the focus of the book, even if there were a few species that meet the definition.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I love a lot of OSR stuff too, and the funniest thing with it is, it often ends up being ahead of 5E in some ways. Certainly I'd say that, all in all, Worlds Without Number is a slightly more modern and together RPG than 5E, despite being consciously OSR. It even solves some long-standing problems with D&D that 5E doesn't even attempt to address (most notably KO'ing/killing enemies from stealth without the system becoming cheesy). Hell I think a case could be made that RC D&D was "more advanced" than AD&D 2E when RC D&D arrived in 1991, and probably until quite late in the '90s (after Combat & Tactics and so on).

The DIY culture of OSR and the "nobody is really paying attention to us" of the BD&D team definitely meant more experimentation and creativity.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

minotaurs I suppose should technically count but they are not what people normally mean when they say "furries" either.

The weird dudes who post cartoon porn in response to every Twitter trending topic (the geekier version of the political types who do something similar) would disagree with you.

 

[Reynard]

Not back then they weren't. They were just another humanoid species.

You know what I miss? Thouls.

 

[Nikosandros]

You know what I miss? Thouls.

Thouls are in OSE. However I wonder how legal is that. Some monsters are listed as being OGL thanks to the Tome of Horrors, but thouls are not among them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Players get attached to their characters. They've invested time and thought into their background and mannerisms. Why should they give them up and make a new character?

I heard that, but I have never been so attached to a PC that I had any real issue with then dying if circumstances demand. I have plenty of character ideas, so a dead PC is just an excuse to try out a new one.

I really don't understand that degree of player attachment. On either side of the screen.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If the goal is to have a human-centric game and you don't want to just ban the other choices entirely, there need to be better incentives to play humans than just "we broke everyone else to pressure you into making the choice we want you to make."

Well, there don't  need to be, but it's probably a good idea.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The weird dudes who post cartoon porn in response to every Twitter trending topic (the geekier version of the political types who do something similar) would disagree with you.

For real lol.

I mean, I will say there's clearly a crossover between "actual furries" and "anthro animals which people are keen on", but like, which of that line something falls on, and whether there's even really a line, I'm not so sure about.

Certainly I used to be rather hostile to furries as a youth, and as an adult I'm like, whatever floats your boat, man, just don't say "yiff" in my presence please. Also being real furry stuff seems to have gradually become less sexual and less mystical (there used to be a lot of wacky claims of mystical connections and otherkin-ness and so on) and more expression-of-personality-oriented.

Minotaurs are certainly uhhhhh appreciated by the furry community though.

 

[Faolyn]

I heard that, but I have never been so attached to a PC that I had any real issue with then dying if circumstances demand. I have plenty of character ideas, so a dead PC is just an excuse to try out a new one.

I really don't understand that degree of player attachment. On either side of the screen.

It's like writing a character in a novel or other story. If they have to die, that's one thing--but you don't want to go killing them willy-nilly.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I love a lot of OSR stuff too, and the funniest thing with it is, it often ends up being ahead of 5E in some ways. Certainly I'd say that, all in all, Worlds Without Number is a slightly more modern and together RPG than 5E, despite being consciously OSR. It even solves some long-standing problems with D&D that 5E doesn't even attempt to address (most notably KO'ing/killing enemies from stealth without the system becoming cheesy). Hell I think a case could be made that RC D&D was "more advanced" than AD&D 2E when RC D&D arrived in 1991, and probably until quite late in the '90s (after Combat & Tactics and so on).

LOVE both of the "Without Number" games!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Humanoids book contained:
: aarakocra, alaghi, beastman, bugbear, bullywug, centaur, fremlin, giant-kin (firbolg), giant-kin (voadkyn), gnoll, gnoll (flind), goblin, hobgoblin, kobold, lizard man, minotaur, mongrelman, ogre, half-ogre, orc, half-orc, pixie, satyr, saurial, swanmay, and wemic.

Wemics are cat-taurs, and reptile, bird, and amphibian folk do generally count. And yes gnolls are anthro hyenas.

That's pretty damn furry, but you'd have had to have had a gun on me to get me to admit that in the 1990s lol.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

LOVE both of the "Without Number" games!

Cities Without Number is on the way and keen to disprove my theory that "you couldn't use a D&D-like chassis to make a good cyberpunk game" (and no, it has not successfully been disproved yet, though there have been many terrible attempts). I suspect it may make it.

Thanks to this website and the "Most exciting game of 2023" poll for giving me a heads-up it existed btw.

 

[Nikosandros]

LOVE both of the "Without Number" games!

A third one, Cities Without Numbers (cyberpunk) is coming to KS next year!

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's like writing a character in a novel or other story. If they have to die, that's one thing--but you don't want to go killing them willy-nilly.

The circumstances i refer to are not solely narrative. I have no issue if my PC dies in a random combat, or to a trap, bad saving throw, etc. It doesn't have to be some kind of explicit agreement with the DM, because I'm fine with whatever happens in the game. I know a lot of people seem to feel differently, but I don’t really get it.

 

[Nikosandros]

The circumstances i refer to are not solely narrative. I have no issue if my PC dies in a random combat, or to a trap, bad saving throw, etc. It doesn't have to be some kind of explicit agreement with the DM, because I'm fine with whatever happens in the game. I know a lot of people seem to feel differently, but I don’t really get it.

Personally, I like running and playing both sort of games. Simplifying, in one you more or less tell a story and the main characters are very important, in the other type, you play a game. The story is emergent (i.e. what happened in the game). Characters may die randomly and they get substituted.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Thouls are in OSE. However I wonder how legal is that. Some monsters are listed as being OGL thanks to the Tome of Horrors, but thouls are not among them.

I cannot imagine anyone going to court to claim the exclusive right over thouls, arguably the silliest of all D&D monsters. (Yes, even worse than the adherer.)