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.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Seeing the new DLance book and how it’s very light on lore, I feel kind of bad for Planescape because it will get the same barebones treatment when there is a wealth of lore there

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Seeing the new DLance book and how it’s very light on lore, I feel kind of bad for Planescape because it will get the same barebones treatment when there is a wealth of lore there

The Dragonlance book is primarily an adventure. Planescape will at most have a third of its page count be for an adventure.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Planescape will at most have a third of its page count be for an adventure.

I believe it was explicitly compared to the 5E Spelljammer in the original announcement, so while it will have more lore than Dragonlance had, it won't necessarily have a lot, especially since recent books have had their settings doled out in the adventure. (I remain cranky about Strixhaven in this regard.)

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I believe it was explicitly compared to the 5E Spelljammer in the original announcement, so while it will have more lore than Dragonlance had, it won't necessarily have a lot, especially since recent books have had their settings doled out in the adventure. (I remain cranky about Strixhaven in this regard.)

It depends on the Length. If the 3 books are not 64 pages each, they could do more.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Seeing the new DLance book and how it’s very light on lore, I feel kind of bad for Planescape because it will get the same barebones treatment when there is a wealth of lore there

I'm thinking that the DL adventure might be a test run like Curse of Strahd - if the adventure does well, they might release a setting book down the line.

I really want to see the page count for the Planescape set (although being a year away, that will likely not be for a while yet). If the Spelljammer set had even like 16 - 32 more pages with system info and more ship stuff, it would have been fine. Planescape is likely going to need to have an even larger page count than that to even start to do the setting justice. Granted, maybe they won't include an adventure, and the three books will be player-focused setting info, DM info on Sigil and the planes, and bestiary. Honestly, they've been hinting the Great Modron March for years, and there's no way to do that justice as an adventure in as small a book as the SJ adventure, so maybe we'll get an adventure alongside the set?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I'm thinking that the DL adventure might be a test run like Curse of Strahd - if the adventure does well, they might release a setting book down the line.

I really want to see the page count for the Planescape set (although being a year away, that will likely not be for a while yet). If the Spelljammer set had even like 16 - 32 more pages with crystal sphere info and more ship stuff, it would have been fine. Planescape is likely going to need to have an even larger page count than that to even start to do the setting justice. Granted, maybe they won't include an adventure, and the three books will be player-focused setting info, DM info on Sigil and the planes, and bestiary. Honestly, they've been hinting the Great Modron March for years, and there's no way to do that justice as an adventure in as small a book as the SJ adventure, so maybe we'll get an adventure alongside the set?

As far as I can tell it's the same naughty word basic set up Spelljammer, Player/Setting book, Beastiary, Adventure, and I'm guessing the art will be amazing, great material quality, but you'll be able to fluce your teeth with each of the hard cover booklets, and the product will be basically useless as it'll be too thin.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I would bet after Baldur's Gate 3 and expansions/DLCs the next title would be a sequel of the Planescape videogame.

Will we see the bariaurs as a PC race specie? There were one of the iconic traits of the setting, next to the planetouched people.

I agree about the great potential of the Gatetowns. Maybe the faction war can continue there.

* And what about the planar dragons? At least to sell Wizkids miniatures.

* The princes of the elemental evil can be interesting antagonists in the hands of the right writter.

* What if a "schismatic" group said the metal should be a separate element of earth? Or "Wood" is also an cosmic element.

 

[Scribe]

As far as I can tell it's the same naughty word basic set up Spelljammer, Player/Setting book, Beastiary, Adventure, and I'm guessing the art will be amazing, great material quality, but you'll be able to fluce your teeth with each of the hard cover booklets, and the product will be basically useless as it'll be too thin.

I'm hoping they take some of the feedback from Spelljammer, and put it into practice for Planescape and increase the page count.

As to what I hope to see....

• 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.

All this.

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).

And this.

The 19th-century London aesthetic...

I'm afraid this is what I need....

I really want Planescape to lean into the style it had already, and bring in the crazy via the populations of the planes all coming there, and having the subversion of expectation and having Sigil really be a place of Angels and Demons, and everything in between all coming together.

I'm sure I'll be disappointed, but I would love it if they kept that style going.

Then, I want the Gate Towns, Gods, Alignment, and how it all ties together, in theory.

 

[Incenjucar]

I think PS:Torment is old enough and specific enough that it should just be a reference in a new PS game. There are so many other stories to tell in the planes, including ones that you could actually replicate a bit more without tons of homebrewing.

It would be especially great to see a larger variety of environments. PS:T tended to stay on the grimy side of things, but the planes are also filled with beauty unimaginable. And, actually - has there ever been a D&D game that really dug into how beautiful fantasy worlds can be?

 

[Mecheon]

I think PS:Torment is old enough and specific enough that it should just be a reference in a new PS game. There are so many other stories to tell in the planes, including ones that you could actually replicate a bit more without tons of homebrewing.

Thing is though, Torment is the most popuar Planescape out there ever. They're going to lean into that simply because its what folks know. Other stories to tell, yeah, but as far as "Hey here's a character you can meet", folks are gonna care moe to run into Fall-from-Grace or Nordom than anyone from a Planescape book