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]

If every bit of new information that provides additional context for the world is a retcon, than essentially everything is a retcon, and the term is basically meaningless.

Good thing no-one suggested that!

What I said was:

It can absolutely be a retcon without saying previous information was outright false, if it massively recontextualizes previous information. In fact, that's one of the most common kinds of retcon - for example "Oh yeah you thought that guy died, but turns out he uploaded his brain, and we just didn't mention it before even though it seems like it was kind of important and also something he might mention". Does that make the previous film a liar? No. Does it recontextualize things in a pretty serious way? Yeah. Would I call that a retcon? 100% I would and so would pretty much everyone I know.

"Massively recontextualizes" is not a mere addition of a limited amount of information, but recasting things significantly, particularly when you change how things were.

If, in the new season of the show, we learn that Ted Lasso's ex-wife was dating someone else off-screen during the first season of the show, that's not a retcon. We had no reason to believe that wasn't true, and just not expressed. It's just new information.

I have mixed feelings about that show but I would say that's only even arguably not a retcon because they worked so extremely hard to minimize the information we have about Ted's wife in S1 and indeed his whole situation. If we'd know more about her and the situation, even a little more, I'd call that a retcon.

I am OK with you and everyone you know (you have some odd discussions at work, I must say) being incorrect here.

And yet we're not, because your overly-narrow definition doesn't remotely reflect real-world usage of the term over the last nearly-40 years. It might reflect usage in the '80s or something. I don't think I heard it until the early '90s. I did hear "no-prize" before that, but didn't really get what was being referred to (it's essentially the same thing).

Also you're wrong about the term-originator - Retcon - TV Tropes

Also wow that article is 100% in support of my approach to what a retcon.

Also yes we do have some fairly ridiculous discussions at work, though I was referring more to people I talk about nerdy TV shows and the like with.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Also wow that article is 100% in support of my approach to what a retcon.

Is it? Because this argues against what I think you and Micah are saying:

Take the page image: a pre-existing space elevator is in the city, but one did not appear to exist earlier in the work despite the fact that a building reaching up into space would be plain to see in any wide shot.

The legend of the First World, Ted's ex-wife's theoretical other man, etc., are all things that simply weren't in the metaphorical first shot, because the first shot never looked in that direction. There is no "wide shot" in Planescape or other D&D texts that should have mentioned the First World before now.

We also don't know, as I recall, what kind of car the former Ms. Lasso drives. Learning that it's a hybrid, while mildly shocking for the ex-wife of a former Midwestern college football coach, would simply be new information, because the show never talked about it before.

I had forgotten about the whole World's Fair nonsense in All-Star Squadron. I was wrong about the trope originator. The article is pretty poorly written (it's a wiki, so yeah) about what the retcon is. The fact that there was a previously unseen team-up isn't a retcon. The fact that characters' histories had to be rewritten to make that possible is the retcon.

Post-Crisis, them swapping in other characters to replace Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, who now (well, "then," since this was rewritten a bunch of times since then) were no longer part of the JSA, major retcons, because fans had the comics showing that they were. Similarly, the rewritten origin of the JLA to remove Wonder Woman as a founding member and replacing her with Black Canary, to match up with the new post-Crisis origin of Wonder Woman, also a retcon.

 

[SkidAce]

Something is true (usually in a story) and the author changes it: Retcon.

We thought something was true, and the real truth is revealed: Not a Retcon.

Autheros making up the framework of a story after parts of the story have already been told and getting new ideas that had never been revealed? Murky at best.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Dude, no. I was there when the term was first used and throughout its decades of use since.

"New stuff I didn't know that bothers me" isn't a retcon.

The Star Wars prequels aren't retcons. The midichlorians, as awful as they are, aren't retcons.

If the prequels had said "well, actually, all of this took place in the Matrix and Luke Skywalker actually works at a 7-Eleven when he's not jacked into VR," that would be a retcon, because it says what we knew before was wrong.

Words have meaning.

You can't say everything new you don't like is a "retcon." It can just be stupid crap you don't like.

Please read @Ruin Explorer 's reply to you above. I stand by my statement.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Is it? Because this argues against what I think you and Micah are saying:

You had to work hard to find one line that's even questionable. The whole supports my position, and many of the examples of retcons are exactly what I'm saying. It certainly goes hard against what you're saying, that only an actual change to a known and unavoidable fact is a retcon.

At absolute best, you're using it very precisely and only its strict original meaning, but that is absolutely not how it's been used for the last 20-odd years.

There is no "wide shot" in Planescape or other D&D texts that should have mentioned the First World before now.

Hard disagree. There's loads of stuff that's been "since the dawn of tiiiiiiiiiiiiime" and none of it involved "The First World".

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Please read @Ruin Explorer 's reply to you above. I stand by my statement.

Wait, I thought that you were of the opinion that "adding lore is good, changing lore bad". The First World doesn't actually change any older lore, besides the changes to Sardior, and you probably don't care about that anyways. The addition of "this is what dragons believe created the Multiverse" is just that: additional. It's not confirmed to be true, and the fact that it could be doesn't invalidate any older lore anymore than the possible existence of the gods in Eberron invalidates the Church of the Silver Flame or Blood of Vol.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Wait, I thought that you were of the opinion that "adding lore is good, changing lore bad". The First World doesn't actually change any older lore, besides the changes to Sardior, and you probably don't care about that anyways. The addition of "this is what dragons believe created the Multiverse" is just that: additional. It's not confirmed to be true, and the fact that it could be doesn't invalidate any older lore anymore than the possible existence of the gods in Eberron invalidates the Church of the Silver Flame or Blood of Vol.

If it isn't true, then yes, its just a bit of lore I don't like. If it is true, it lessens the value of every campaign setting by presenting them as fractured copies of the true world. This is the third time I've said it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If it isn't true, then yes, its just a bit of lore I don't like. If it is true, it lessens the value of every campaign setting by presenting them as fractured copies of the true world. This is the third time I've said it.

Yeah whilst I don't necessarily share it, it seems like your position here is pretty clear and simple, not sure why people are confused by it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You had to work hard to find one line that's even questionable.

I started reading and got to that line almost immediately.

He jumped out in front of my car, officer.

At absolute best, you're using it very precisely and only its strict original meaning, but that is absolutely not how it's been used for the last 20-odd years.

Look, if we're not being picky originalists here at ENWorld, what are we even doing here?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Look, if we're not being picky originalists here at ENWorld, what are we even doing here?

Fair point well played!