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.

 

[Demetrios1453]

And now that I actually physically have it (instead of just on D&D Beyond), there's one simple solution to this if they continue in this format for Planescape: drop the DM screen. It's half as big as any of the books, and ~32 pages or so could have made all the difference between an OK product (and, in my opinion, yes, it's OK, and not the utter disaster some are making it out to be) and a complete product.

Either that, or just make it larger overall, but that would likely drive the price up even more.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You forgot Half Elves and Half Orcs and the Conjure X spells, where PHB One D&D will have Summon X, but they won't ban Conjure X spells, they just won't get reprinted.

Where did you hear the Conjure X spells won't be reprinted? I've been following this story as closely as I can and have never seen that.

 

[Parmandur]

Where did you hear the Conjure X spells won't be reprinted? I've been following this story as closely as I can and have never seen that.

Yeah, we don't know that is the case. Seems probable, all things considered, but we don't know for sure.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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

Yes.

And they’re not being unfriendly or insulting to 3pp in any way, so…

 

[MockingBird]

It's still over a year out, so that's presumably a fixable issue at this point. Either do thicker books, or just go back to the one-book model. Given that the big complaint about the Spelljammer set is about the page count and missing important info as a result, they should have time to take that feedback for Planescape.

There's a QR code in the SpellJamer book that takes you to a survey. Hopefully people have used this to voice their complaints.

 

[MockingBird]

Where? Serious question.

In the early chapter of the book it gives you advice on how to balance the serious tone with some humor.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sales are only an indicator of sales. Nothing else.

I mean I’m a socialist but even I can see that this statement is objectively incorrect.

People aren’t buying a luxury product because they don’t want it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It's still over a year out, so that's presumably a fixable issue at this point. Either do thicker books, or just go back to the one-book model. Given that the big complaint about the Spelljammer set is about the page count and missing important info as a result, they should have time to take that feedback for Planescape.

Yeah for me, a DMs Screen isn’t much value, but we will find out if I’m in the minority or not when Planescape comes out.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And we're back to my extreme distaste for publically-traded companies.

Yeah, I’m right there with you.

However, I don’t think that wizards are being made to make certain kinds of products right now. They’re practically taking over the parent company at this point, and seem to not have a leash, much less a short one. They are making the products that they think will please the broadest segment of the community and draw in and then keep new players, and they’re making things they enjoy making.

Profit is part of the calculation, sure. That’s true for every game studio with bills to pay. But when your weakest books stay in decently high ranks on Amazon years after release, the lights aren’t in any danger. If they both wanted to write the books some folks are clamoring for, and thought even a large chunk of the player base was also clamoring for them, and didn’t see 3pp products that do deep dives they don’t want to do as assets, rather than competition, they’d be giving me a DM-centered lore deep dive on Rashamen.

Or the people of the Anaurach updated to be less...let’s say problematic and hopefully avoid the political debate.

But instead, what hits with the current community is books that give and overview of a setting or theme with brief rundowns and hooks, evocative art, advice for running and roleplaying in a type of game, and DM and player facing mechanical bits to add to our games.

 

[dave2008]

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

How are they being unfriendly to 3PP. I mean the DMsGuild, SRD, OGL, and free Basic Rules are all a great help to 3PP content providers and things WotC did not have to do (see 4e). Not to mention the HUGE amount of 3PP 5e settings and KickStarters. How can you reasonable determine they are anything but surprisingly generous to 3PP?