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.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I'm pretty sure a lot of the old Planescape fans would get extremely mad if Sigil and it's factions weren't described in detail. Which, at 64 pages, isn't going to leave room for anything else.

I don't know which way WotC will jump, but either direction will make lots of people seriously unhappy.

We don't know that each book will be 64 pages. I would want 94 pages each myself.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

We don't know that each book will be 64 pages. I would want 94 pages each myself.

Same format as Spelljammer, and Spelljammer is 64 pages per book.

And 94 pages wouldn't be sufficient to detail Sigil and all the other planes. There are 25 pages on planes in the DMG. And that is small text and light on art.

 

[Demetrios1453]

We don't know that each book will be 64 pages. I would want 94 pages each myself.

Page counts come in multiples of 16, so 96, not 94.

Three 64-page books would be hard pressed indeed to fit in everything here; Spelljammer failed doing so, and trying it with Planescape would be even worse. If they try to do everything, including an adventure, in one slipcase product, they will need have a larger page count.

I could also see a three book set with book 1 being Sigil and the Outlands, book 2 being the other Outer Planes (with 16 other planes, this divides neatly into whatever book size they use), and book 3 being the bestiary. Alongside an independent adventure (Great Modron March?); no one has said so far that Planescape would be just one product - Dragonlance after all is getting two. There's also the possibility that the adventure and Outer Planes gazateer could be combined if the adventure visits them all like the Great Modron March.

(Also, given that the guardinals were mentioned in the playtest UA discussion as potential ancestors of the ardlings, I would be willing to bet they're appearing in this product's bestiary. That was a good liklihood anyway, but that mention sealed the deal for me.)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Page counts come in multiples of 16, so 96, not 94.

Three 64-page books would be hard pressed indeed to fit in everything here; Spelljammer failed doing so, and trying it with Planescape would be even worse. If they try to do everything, including an adventure, in one slipcase product, they will need have a larger page count.

I could also see a three book set with book 1 being Sigil and the Outlands, book 2 being the other Outer Planes (with 16 other planes, this divides neatly into whatever book size they use), and book 3 being the bestiary. Alongside an independent adventure (Great Modron March?); no one has said so far that Planescape would be just one product - Dragonlance after all is getting two. There's also the possibility that the adventure and Outer Planes gazateer could be combined if the adventure visits them all like the Great Modron March.

It doesn't need to have an adventure book at all. It could have a Sigil book, a Planes book, and a bestiary. They could include a single short starter adventure.

But personally, I suspect that Spelljammer is so successful that Planescape will be identical.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Same format as Spelljammer, and Spelljammer is 64 pages per book.

And 94 pages wouldn't be sufficient to detail Sigil and all the other planes. There are 25 pages on planes in the DMG. And that is small text and light on art.

One thing about future books from WotC that seems very likely is that they won't be light on art.

 

[Weiley31]

Also: Planescape 5E is getting the 64-page book set up that Spelljammer: Adventures in Space got.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

No doubt that will be in the bestiary book. Big question for the Planescape slipcase is what, exactly, goes into the Adventurer's Guide...? There isn't the same sort of mechanical system like Spelljamming ships, sonI would assume Planar Gazateer would be the order of the day.

Speaking for myself, I'm of two minds...

My ideal 5E Planescape product would serve as both a city guide for Sigil as well as a Manual of the Planes for the Great Wheel (plus all the typical bells and whistles - player options, new monsters, etc.), but in my mind that would be more than enough for a standard setting book hardcover (a la Eberron, Ravenloft, etc.) in and of itself.

The choice to make it a three-book slipcase makes that a bit more difficult. At a minimum, I'd want a Sigil city guide comparable to the one we got in 4E's DMG2, which was a solid ~15 pages or so with very little in the way of artwork to break it up. Assuming they throw in a typical art allotment and don't bump up the page count, I could realistically see such a city guide easily taking up half of the "Adventurer's Guide" book by itself, leaving the other half for character options, Faction descriptions, etc.

The 3E Manual of the Planes, by contrast, spent ~60 pages detailing the Outer Planes alone, plus another ~30 or so if you add in the Inner and Transitive planes, again with surprisingly little artwork. Throw in the Feywild and Shadowfell as well, and I have a hard time seeing a "Manual of the Planes" fitting in a slipcase book without doubling its page count at least, and even then there would be sparse room for anything else.

Assuming they want to follow the model from Spelljammer and have the slipcase made up of an Adventurer's Guide, a Bestiary, and an Adventure Book, that means either the page count needs to go up dramatically, Sigil and the Planes are going to have to be drastically trimmed down, or something's going to have to be cut.

And as much as it pains me to say so, if something has to be cut, I think it's the in-depth Manual of the Planes. If they're going to do Planescape, it is pivotal that they get Sigil right, but they can touch lightly on the Great Wheel and lean on the DMG and locations in various adventure modules to give the broader overview of the planes writ large - perhaps heavily expand the planar section of the '24 DMG or even put together a proper Manual of the Planes as a separate product down the road.

We'll see how things pan out, though. Still very early in the process.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Also: Planescape 5E is getting the 64-page book set up that Spelljammer: Adventures in Space got.

Citation? Heck, we're only discussing a slipcase because an article on Polygon mentioned it (and no page count was mentioned there) - there's been no actual confirmation of even that from WotC themselves...

 

[Weiley31]

Citation? Heck, we're only discussing a slipcase because an article on Polygon mentioned it (and no page count was mentioned there) - there's been no actual confirmation of even that from WotC themselves...

D&D is reviving Planescape with a three-volume boxed set, coming in 2023

The release schedule includes a book focused on giants and a new Phandelver campaign

www.polygon.com

Next year's D&D releases include Planescape

Following the revival of Spelljammer and Dragonlance, 2023 will see the return of Planescape.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[Weiley31]

It seems that Chris Lindsey and Chris Perkins did a press conference with a bunch of venues to give some talking points on these products, whence the Phandelver Campaign being "tinged with cosmic horror" and confirming the three book format for Planescape.

Now, knowing that it is a 3 book slipcase like Spelljammer, first I hope that it has larger books. Second, I would love it if the main book was a Manual of the Planes diving a bit deeper than the DMG into the Planes, while the Advebture was a Great Modron March style story.

Citation? Heck, we're only discussing a slipcase because an article on Polygon mentioned it (and no page count was mentioned there) - there's been no actual confirmation of even that from WotC themselves...

Dungeons & Dragons Reveals Phandelver, Heists, Giants, And Planescape For 2023

Here's our first look at the full 2023 line-up for Dungeons & Dragons.

www.thegamer.com