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.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Yeah, there's more vitriol on here than I remember, or more than usual. Maybe it's just the temper of the Internet these days. Maybe it's some sort of temporary madness related to OneD&D.

It's really unfortunate, because my excitement to engage with others on ENWorld has really diminished because of it. I often find myself bracing or having to remind myself to thicken up my skin to endure some needlessly unkind statement or sniping for no good reason. It's like, I really would rather not report somebody or get an admin involved. That does not make my day at all, and I'd rather be the better man.

Can't we just lean on our better angels more?

I've stopped using Reddit and other forums almost completely too, same reason.

About the only places I feel truly comfortable online these days are Discord servers with folks I've made personal connections with.

we are just at the trail end of a global crisis and stuff sucked beforehand and we are bracing for the plunge into the abyss tempers are understandably frayed at the moment but your sentiment hold weight we are a bit unpleasant of late I doubt it will end anytime soon the world feels like it is coming apart at the seams.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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.View attachment 258548

DM screens are cheap to produce, as is adding a few millimeters more to a slip case. The screen is not meaningfully impacting how many signatures (sets of pages) that are bound into each of these books.

 

[Vael]

The heist book intrigues me, as I have found Radiant Citadel better than I expected, so I'm liking the adventure output these days. TBH, the rest is probably a skip for me, but that's fine, I'm probably going to be all in on 5.5/One DnD.

 

[Demetrios1453]

DM screens are cheap to produce, as is adding a few millimeters more to a slip case. The screen is not meaningfully impacting how many signatures (sets of pages) that are bound into each of these books.

It's literally 50% the width of the book next to it. As that book as 64 pages, that comes out to ~32 pages that could have been fit elsewhere. Put 32 more pages of campaign info into the Adventurer's Guide, and probably 90% of the complaints over what was missing would be gone.

(And that picture is of the set unopened - you can see my reflection in the plastic wrap towards the bottom).

 

[FitzTheRuke]

That is EXACTLY what I am talking about.

BAH. I say ignore them. I mean, you are perfectly entitled to your feelings on the subject, but I just read, roll my eyes, and scroll past that sort of commentary.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It's literally 50% the width of the book next to it.

It's a few pieces of cardboard glued together. It's not meaningfully running up any costs.

As that book as 64 pages, that comes out to ~32 pages that could have been fit elsewhere. Put 32 more pages of campaign info into the Adventurer's Guide, and probably 90% of the complaints over what was missing would be gone.

"We don't have any more room in the slipcase" is not the issue, unless the slipcase was carved out of a diamond to one size, and one size only. They can change the size of cardboard slipcases more or less at will, for pennies at most.

WotC didn't want to pay for more signatures in each of the books, which limited their size. More signatures are expensive. The fact that we got a bunch of free Spelljammer monsters for this and the rules for how fey domains work as a charity product suggests that they were going to put in more content, but didn't.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The heist book intrigues me, as I have found Radiant Citadel better than I expected, so I'm liking the adventure output these days. TBH, the rest is probably a skip for me, but that's fine, I'm probably going to be all in on 5.5/One DnD.

I apparently am the only person excited about the Deck of Many Things book, but I am really excited about it. If they do a cool enough alternate cover, it'll be the first one of those I've picked up.

(And yes, Radiant Citadel was good. I'll be running a campaign later this fall, which will be fun.)

 

[Henadic Theologian]

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.

It's an educated guess.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Heh heh... well, not to put words in @Micah Sweet 's mouth... but plenty of times I see people post that talk about how they refuse to even consider 3PP products because they just dismiss out of hand the possibility that 3PP have actually been playtested and balanced. So while people may not be outright insulting... dismissive is the word I might choose-- as though the idea that independent designers have actual brains and can make quality product is impossible and that the only people who can make balanced D&D material is Wizards of the Coast.

When you couple that with the fact that those same people will often then get rather crabby that WotC isn't actually producing the material they specifically want nor do they think they should have make their own fixes or product to get what they want because "Why should I do WotC's job for them?!?"... we're left with a perpetual cycle of invectives here on the boards.

That is EXACTLY what I am talking about.

Yeah. So you're getting angry at a much larger group than the offending parties. And a lot of the time people have valid reasons to not like some 3rd party publishers (I'm not fond of Kobold Press for a variety of reasons, but I obviously don't apply that to all 3rd party publishers, as I have written articles for EN5ider). And you directed your anger at people that are dismissive of all 3rd party publishers at WotC, which is ridiculous.

So, sure, be angry at the people that decry all 3rd party publishers are bad. But I haven't seen anyone say that in this thread or recently on this site, and, from what I've seen, since the start of 5e WotC has been nothing but supportive of 3pps (they've done multiple collaborations with a few of them, have the DMsGuild to support them, have commissioned popular publishers on the DMsGuild to write for their adventures, and so on).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah. So you're getting angry at a much larger group than the offending parties. And a lot of the time people have valid reasons to not like some 3rd party publishers (I'm not fond of Kobold Press for a variety of reasons, but I obviously don't apply that to all 3rd party publishers, as I have written articles for EN5ider). And you directed your anger at people that are dismissive of all 3rd party publishers at WotC, which is ridiculous.

So, sure, be angry at the people that decry all 3rd party publishers are bad. But I haven't seen anyone say that in this thread or recently on this site, and, from what I've seen, since the start of 5e WotC has been nothing but supportive of 3pps (they've done multiple collaborations with a few of them, have the DMsGuild to support them, have commissioned popular publishers on the DMsGuild to write for their adventures, and so on).

I backed down on blaming WotC, if you look upthread. But I have seen people on this site, recently, decry basically all non-WotC content.