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.

 

[TrainedMunkee]

Has the average quality of 5e trended up in your opinion? It certainly hasn't in mine.

I have bought every 5e book up until recently. The quality has dropped so much that I have quit buying them. That is saying a lot. I am a hardcore fan and have been since 1e. I can afford every book. My opinion was influenced heavily by the terrible Spelljammer set. I am not their target audience anymore. Which is fine. I enjoy the popularity of the game. I remember the old days when you could actually get a hotel room at GenCon and it was a dying hobby. Nobody wants to go back to that.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Mike Shea had a video the other day where he talked about how the font size has also increased in recent years, so that we're getting fewer words per page (although I'm sure many of us enjoy the easier reading), meaning the newer books are effectively even shorter than they appear.

 

[Stormonu]

Not quite. Looks like it's two 96 pagers and one 64 pager. Better than Spelljammer, sure. Still pretty light on pages. (Though that would be the old HC page-count of 256, if they put it in one book, not the more recent ~192-224).

Some of that info in the box set it repeated/reworded between the DM and player's book (and there's a lot of 3/4 or full page art in the boxed set). Still, unless the adventure has lore stashed away in it, that's 64 pages that could have been used to expand on the setting.

I can see the value of WotC trying to use a "show, don't tell" aspect by using the book adventures to pass on lore, I just don't think the quality of the adventures thus far has been engaging enough to do so successfully - most especially, with Spelljammer.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Mike Shea had a video the other day where he talked about how the font size has also increased in recent years, so that we're getting fewer words per page (although I'm sure many of us enjoy the easier reading), meaning the newer books are effectively even shorter than they appear.

Here's a side-by-side photo I took a while back with the 5e Spelljammer set and the 2e Planescape box set. The 2e font is noticeably bigger.

 

[Incenjucar]

If you have a PDF, you can pretty easily find out how much text there is.

The Planescape Ethereal book for 2E was 96 pages, and about 40K words.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Here's a side-by-side photo I took a while back with the 5e Spelljammer set and the 2e Planescape box set. The 2e font is noticeably bigger.

Recent years regarding 5E. He was discussing the ongoing pricing changes. The 5E books over the last two years have bigger fonts than they had six years ago.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I can see the value of WotC trying to use a "show, don't tell" aspect by using the book adventures to pass on lore, I just don't think the quality of the adventures thus far has been engaging enough to do so successfully - most especially, with Spelljammer.

Trying to shoehorn this approach into setting books like Strixhaven has been an especially poor fit. Sometimes, the gazetteer approach is best.

 

[Parmandur]

Some of that info in the box set it repeated/reworded between the DM and player's book (and there's a lot of 3/4 or full page art in the boxed set). Still, unless the adventure has lore stashed away in it, that's 64 pages that could have been used to expand on the setting.

I can see the value of WotC trying to use a "show, don't tell" aspect by using the book adventures to pass on lore, I just don't think the quality of the adventures thus far has been engaging enough to do so successfully - most especially, with Spelljammer.

This Adventure is 96 pages, not 64.

I'd say the Spelljammer Adventuqas actually a really solid way to use Adventure material to illustrate Setting.

 

[TrainedMunkee]

This Adventure is 96 pages, not 64.

I'd say the Spelljammer Adventuqas actually a really solid way to use Adventure material to illustrate Setting.

If you would prefer to run their adventure and not your own.

 

[Parmandur]

If you would prefer to run their adventure and not your own.

Even if you are making your own Adventures, the Spelljammer book has solid material for repressing and common scenarios