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.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

In your game you are totally free to alter the lore or background. For example you can add a second layer to Sigil city. This "New Sigil" is bigger than the original, as if the original was a toroid within a second toroid. This second layer was secret, ruled by the "Lock Master" (whose image shows with a crystal eye and a steel gaulent), but cultists of the elder elemental eye infiltrated and started to cause serious troubles. There is a love-hate relation between both Sigil. The second is mainly ruins, but allow space to farm. And now it is the new battlefield of the faction war, as if the tainted elementals didn't cause enough troubles!

How was created New Sigil? Maybe it was fault by Vecna when that time was in the original Sigil.

Maybe there is a third Sigil, or this is one of different dark domains imitating or as parodies of the original cosmopolis.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think they should focus on the Outlands. Sigil has been done to death, and I found it to be quite boring. Of course, if they're going to give it the short shrift they gave SJ, Sigil is ok I guess.

I think it would be hard for them to put out a book with "Planescape" on the cover and not offer at least as much as Spelljammer got on the Rock of Bral. At that point, presumably, fanpro folks could detail every last rivet and screw of Sigil over on the DMs Guild.

 

[Faolyn]

I think they should focus on the Outlands. Sigil has been done to death, and I found it to be quite boring. Of course, if they're going to give it the short shrift they gave SJ, Sigil is ok I guess.

While I love Sigil personally, what I would really love to see done more are the Gate-Towns. I think that touch of the Planes makes them really fascinating.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Sigil itself needs a level detail that describes the different Wards (The Hive, Lower Ward, Lady's Ward and so on) and some significant locations like faction headquarters (The Gatehouse, Hall of Speakers, so on) and some unique locations of interest like that shop with the Demon-possessed printing press. But not so much detail that it completely maps out the streets or gives a solid number on the diameter of the city or the population numbers, which one book did and I was disappointed on how low it was, as I think Sigil should have a population in the millions.

Of course the Dabus are always working on things, so the city is always changing in some ways. And I could see some more of the concepts from Planescape: Torment will start slipping into "canon", like living streets and so on.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

While I love Sigil personally, what I would really love to see done more are the Gate-Towns. I think that touch of the Planes makes them really fascinating.

The Gate Towns are amazing. It'd be really cool to use one as a home base for level one characters. Even a "traditional" D&D low level campaign based around one would have neat flavor to it.

 

[teitan]

I think they should focus on the Outlands. Sigil has been done to death, and I found it to be quite boring. Of course, if they're going to give it the short shrift they gave SJ, Sigil is ok I guess.

Sigil hasn’t been touched for more than a couple paragraphs in 20+ years. In 2e sure and yes they are available on DMSguild but knowing WOTC stance on older material and even that DMSguild is not a standard reference source for the majority of gaming groups, Sigil could use an update especially considering where it stood. Plus with how they handled Ravenloft and Spelljammer do you really expect same old same old? Being done to death would be yet another Sword Coast supplement and calling it a Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Doing a PS book and having Sigil as the focus of the book is… doing a Planescape campaign setting.

 

[Faolyn]

OK, assuming that Sigil has to be in Planescape (otherwise, it's just a Manual of the Planes), and it's a given that there's going to be changes, maybe even really major changes (like what was done to Ravenloft), then... what sort of changes--minor or major--could or should be done to Sigil?

 

[teitan]

OK, assuming that Sigil has to be in Planescape (otherwise, it's just a Manual of the Planes), and it's a given that there's going to be changes, maybe even really major changes (like what was done to Ravenloft), then... what sort of changes--minor or major--could or should be done to Sigil?

Well the factions would need to be revisited including their power structure. Some no longer exist for example. But even beyond that just the basics. Do you realize how much Planescape stuff costs on EBay these days? Sure it’s on DMSguild but most of it is not very well printed and the maps are next to useless printed into the spines. The books were originally printed saddle stitched so the perfect binding that DTRPG uses messes with the margins on the boxed sets. Plus again, DMSguild isn’t a go to for a lot of tables. It’s great as a resource but people aren’t buying Ravenloft and then running to DMSguild to buy more Ravenloft stuff for more information. The way WOTC has been updating the settings what IS on DMSguild is not congruent with the new material and “not official” as far as the fan content, no matter how well it’s done, is a pretty big issue unless it comes through Kickstarter or off an actual bookshelf in a store or Amazon

 

[Ondath]

OK, assuming that Sigil has to be in Planescape (otherwise, it's just a Manual of the Planes), and it's a given that there's going to be changes, maybe even really major changes (like what was done to Ravenloft), then... what sort of changes--minor or major--could or should be done to Sigil?

A couple of ideas come to mind:

• Retcon the Faction War. Splatbook-induced metaplot advancement has proven to be unpopular anywhere it was done in the 90s, and noone I know likes the way factions became after the war. Instead, keeping the setting in a perpetual starting point like Eberron might be a better idea.
• Lean into the fact that Sigil is a cosmopolitan city in the afterlife/realms of spiritual thought. Since Ravnica also exists for 5e, the niche of "culturally diverse megacity with competing factions" is suprisingly contested. In order to show what makes Sigil unique, the game really needs to focus on the philosophical ideas underpinning each faction and use the whackiness that comes from the outer planes to make them interesting. The Fraternity of Order isn't just the Azorius Senate without the colour palette, they literally discover new laws about the multiverse — and their discoveries push the multiverse into order. The inhabitants of the city shouldn't be just exotic material plane races, but extraplanar outsiders of all types - and the setting should really lean into the weirdness that comes with it instead of reskinning the merchant as an air elemental.
• While the city dealing with the dark of a lot of things and dealing with bigger matters than usually "clueless" adventures is fun, I really think Planescape needs to drop the holier-than-thou cynical attitude. It shouldn't be that the inhabitants of the Cage are philosophers with clubs that are better than your material plane party because they know the real chant. It should be that they are philosophers with clubs that happen to be interested in the Chant that most people take for granted. In other words, the perspective of the setting shouldn't be your average philosophy undergraduate student, but a philosophy graduate student. Less attitude, more pondering interesting questions.
• They should take a page off of the Radiant Citadel and make the Cage much more culturally diverse. The 19th-century London aesthetic with razorvines can only go so far. Since this is a cosmopolitan city (not only that, but a cosmopolitan city in the Outer Planes!), I want to see diverse and supernatural architecture! A district for air genasi where Arabian-style buildings are made of clouds! A Japanese-style shrine that sits on an impossibly high hill (as in, the height of the hill literally defies physics and all visual sense) where kami come to hang out! You can still add Planescape's doom-and-gloom to it (especially for neighbourhoods in the Hive), but that doesn't mean it has to be stylistically boring.
• Do not, under any circumstances, reveal the chant about the big secrets of the Multiverse. None of that business about the Lady's identity or the extent of her powers, who exactly was Aoskar or if belief literally shapes the multiverse. These should be presented as big mysteries for any Planescape game that the DM has to answer by themselves (kinda like how Eberron leaves open the questions about the reason for what happened in Cyre and what The Lord of the Blades is really planning).

Ideally, what I'd want is something like Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition. Brings out all the fan-favourite features from older renditions, fixes what went wrong and gives a DM a host of options about specific metaplot questions.

The cynic in me says that we'll just get a glorified Ravnica knockoff that replicates the best-remembered parts of the 2E books without understanding what made them so great.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

One reason not to worry about razorvine so much now: It's in the DMG as a mundane hazard. (We've all been playing Planescape all along!)