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.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No, ROI is the return on the money spent on the project. Books are pretty much fixed cost. A 300 page book for a given quality, stable of creatives and so on cost the same. If the target market is me it is 0 because I cannot afford a $500k book and something greater than 0 if the market is the US population so all thing being equal they will target the largest market.
That is not to say they will never bring out something that targets DMs only as a goodwill project but probably not a book.

But also every single book has stuff for players and DMs. It’s weird that people are still hollering for DM-only books like…why?

 

[Parmandur]

You could be right. Sort of how software companies no longer support old APIs but continue to maintain and support them in the background years after they are no longer official to avoid breaking existing applications built on them.

D&D rules as an API I'd a solid analogy actually.

 

[Parmandur]

But also every single book has stuff for players and DMs. It’s weird that people are still hollering for DM-only books like…why?

I don't think there is ahard dichotomy in practice. A book of D&F material will appeal to people who want to use D&D material.

 

[TrainedMunkee]

They aren't going to risk a 4e scenerio where they fracture the Player base trying to force all players to buy the One D&D PHB. What will happen is they will errata the naughty word out of the 5e PHB, bringing all common elements between 5e PHB & One D&D PHB in line, but certain exclusive PHB 5e content will remain mostly the same, and still be legal, like the Half Elf and Half Orc, which the PHB 5e has, but One D&D doesn't.

If they ban the 5e PHB a huge chunk of the player base will be like screw you WotC drop D&D or ignore One D&D and only use 5e products, costing sales on supplemental materials.

The majority of the fan base have no idea what 4th edition is. We are the minority here on ENworld. I am positive that Wizard’s has done their market research. The environment is not the same as when 4e was released. I play with a lot of 20 something’s, 5e is D&D to them but they are not married to it.

I recognize corporate avoidance when I see it, but I totally agree with most of what you said, you will be able to use the 2014 books with books released after 2024, but it will take some conversion work. Think 1e to 2e jump or 3e to 3.5. The 3.5 to 4e jump was much different, not easy to convert.

Wizards have shown that they aren’t stupid. They won’t say that you can’t use your 2014 books. You can play your half-elf, but the option just won’t be as good. Eventually I will have to buy a new iPhone to get whatever cool option Apple offers. Considering that they have been getting their executives from Microsoft, I guess the new Xbox to play the games with groundbreaking graphics would be a better example. This younger generation are used to this.

 

[Mind of tempest]

You buy products from the Third Parties that make stuff for DMs that WotC specifically decided not to do-- because they were more niche and that was the whole point of having 5E under the OGL, so WotC wouldn't have to produce a lot of low-selling niche product and could let smaller Third Party companies do it for them instead. And perhaps if certain product lines do well enough, then maybe WotC would come to the conclusion that what they thought was a niche product had a fanbase that was actually larger then they thought and thus decide to maybe make a version too.

The problem of course is too many players (at least here on EN World) have this hang up that they think anything done by 3P companies haven't been playtested enough and is going to suck. So they instead don't buy the products that might actually be useful to them and instead just wait and wait and wait for WotC to hopefully get around to doing it. But until it is proven to WotC that all these isolated DM-focused ideas actually have a substantial number of people wanting them... they have no reason to jump in to step on the work the 3PPs are doing.

that assumes you find a third party to make what you want, I have yet to see a hard copy book for psionics which is simple to work.

 

[Reynard]

Not if those active GMs are like me and run multiple groups. I currently have 16 individual players across three groups. 22 if you count the players from the organized play event I ran last night. This is the number of players in one week.

I wonder what that number is. I have 10 individual players across 2 weekly groups, but I assumed that was not representative.

 

[Reynard]

But also every single book has stuff for players and DMs. It’s weird that people are still hollering for DM-only books like…why?

Because the DM stuff in those books is shallow. I can't speak for anyone else but I am looking for deep dives.

Btw,BTW, it having a portion being player facing, Fizban's is a really good focused DM facing book and I am excited by the giants version of the same.

 

[mamba]

So, you're saying the D&D logo and official status have no impact on sales? That's an interesting take.

I did not say that, agreed, chances are the same book from WotC would sell more, case in point the MM, which basically is that same book - but that assumes WotC does not have a similar book already, when they clearly do.

WotC already has a MM, creating the same monsters again with a different flavor does not increase sales. One group will buy one flavor, the other the Flee Mortals version, in the end you spent twice the money for the same number of sales (and worse yet, fractured your player base).

If FM were selling 50% of what the MM sells, then they would listen, but at 2% or so, that is not worth noticing. (This btw was what I was trying to say)

WotC is too big to cater to every niche, they tried that with 2e and look where that got them. This is precisely why we have the OGL and 3PPs.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I challenge you to find any instance of wizards, during the run of 5e, being anything but friendly toward 3pp.

Does right now count as during the run of 5e?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes. A very big problem... this is why they don't sell well. Most of them are at the bottom of Amazon ranks, even in the most niche category. How wizards can survive with D&D constantly dragging them down is amazing.

Sales are only an indicator of sales. Nothing else.