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.

 

[see]

You must have played a lot at higher levels than us lol.

Really, you didn't have games reach 7th level? Man, there was a lot of sweet gameplay there!

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

Really, you didn't have games reach 7th level? Man, there was a lot of sweet gameplay there!

This is 1e ya'll are talking about. It's entirely possible they got TPK'd by some slime before they got to that level.

 

[Demetrios1453]

To slide things back onto subject a bit, I wonder when we'll start getting info on the 2023 products? I imagine that we will be getting some info concerning Keys from the Golden Vault here soon - I assume probably shortly after the new year? I wonder if they'll start teasing the Bigby's Giants book (which I'm very interested in) as well, or hold off until after Keys is out...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Really, you didn't have games reach 7th level? Man, there was a lot of sweet gameplay there!

Not 14th, I mean, so it was irrelevant. We weren't usually in settings where you could prance around paying 14th-level Clerics (incredibly rare even in the FR) for anything. Even 9th level ones you'd be lucky if you could find them and they were willing. I think we managed to pull that off once. Either way you're looking at near impossibility unless there's a PC Cleric (which was where virtually every raise/res we saw came from, that and a few magic items/scrolls).

More to the point, I don't think anyone who wasn't originally a 1E player or learned from 1E players even really understood that restriction. It's completely unstated and barely even implied (thanks to "other creatures") in 2E material, even Complete Elves (where you'd expect some coverage). I didn't even see a copy of Deities and Demigods until 1993 (and I only glanced through it then), which is apparently where it was explained.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

To slide things back onto subject a bit, I wonder when we'll start getting info on the 2023 products? I imagine that we will be getting some info concerning Keys from the Golden Vault here soon - I assume probably shortly after the new year? I wonder if they'll start teasing the Bigby's Giants book (which I'm very interested in) as well, or hold off until after Keys is out...

So far they've had a very "one product at a time" approach to giving out major info, so I would expect that'd continue.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The highest level player character I saw in 1st/2nd edition was level 12. But they where a druid, so their XP curve was a bit wonky.

And they didn't start at 1st level. Levelling was dead slow in those early editions, I can't see how you could reach level 14 within the lifespan of an edition, playing RAW.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

To slide things back onto subject a bit, I wonder when we'll start getting info on the 2023 products? I imagine that we will be getting some info concerning Keys from the Golden Vault here soon - I assume probably shortly after the new year? I wonder if they'll start teasing the Bigby's Giants book (which I'm very interested in) as well, or hold off until after Keys is out...

My guess is they want to wait until after the holidays. Great time of year to be marketing something people can buy as a gift right now, but not so much for something still a couple months down the road... Or so I would assume - I'm hardly an expert.

I expect they'll probably start ramping up the coverage for Keys in the next week or two.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

February is coming up fast, that's for sure. If it is at all related to Honor Among Thieves, I imagine they'll be doing double-duty to advertise both.

My guess is they want to wait until after the holidays. Great time of year to be marketing something people can buy as a gift right now, but not so much for something still a couple months down the road... Or so I would assume - I'm hardly an expert.

I expect they'll probably start ramping up the coverage for Keys in the next week or two.

 

[Remathilis]

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?

This was the fatal flaw in Gary's D&D; there was never an expectation of emotional attachment. You don't grow fond of the Monopoly top hat, or of Miss Scarlett, or of the 14th French Light Cavalry Unit. They are all pieces of a game. Which is why the Pre-Hickman style of D&D treats PCs as pieces in a game rather than characters in a story.

 

[Clint_L]

This was the fatal flaw in Gary's D&D; there was never an expectation of emotional attachment. You don't grow fond of the Monopoly top hat, or of Miss Scarlett, or of the 14th French Light Cavalry Unit. They are all pieces of a game. Which is why the Pre-Hickman style of D&D treats PCs as pieces in a game rather than characters in a story.

This has some truth to it, but let's not overstate things. Players could and did keep characters for a long, long time and we became very attached to them. GG himself had a number of characters that he played for years - Mordenkainen, for example.