D&D 5E February's Keys from the Golden Vault Appears on Amazon

Announced in August, along with the rest of 2023's D&D lineup, Keys from the Golden Vault -- an anthology of adventures with a 'heist' theme -- has appeared on Amazon with a release date of Frebruary 21, 2023. The entry indicates that the book is 208 pages long.

"Greetings, adventurer. You’ve snuck in and found a wondrous treasure! Keys From the Golden Vault is a Dungeons & Dragons adventure anthology with a heist at the center of every tale. Nothing else is yet known about the contents of this tome, but keep an eye on your favorite D&D news sources for your first sneak peek inside."

So far, it only has the now-familiar D&D preview image, so we should expect a cover reveal in the coming weeks.

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[Whizbang Dustyboots]

One shots in particular, due to time constraints, deserve singular big setpiece battles that sit on the edge of TPK worthy.

Yeah, balance around the players going nova, since the smart ones will walk in with that plan.

 

[Ibrandul]

The Deck of Many Things book I need actual info on, like I know it's got some Player mechanics, but WTF is it otherwise?

I think it might simply be a third grab-bag book along the lines of Xanathar’s and Tasha’s, only this time themed around an artifact rather than an NPC. That’s pretty much what it sounds like from the description, and it makes sense: there’s a very obvious and plausible story you can tell about why it would be called “The Deck of Many Things” if it’s just another odds-and-ends book. Here, I’ll tell it:

It seems the original name for Xanathar’s was “Xanathar’s Guide to Adventurers”: that is, a monster’s guide to adventurers, following an adventurer’s (Volo’s) guide to monsters. But due to the inclusion of non-adventurer-related material, they decided “Everything” was more suitable than “Adventurers,” thus unfortunately ruining the joke. Later they reused the “X’s Y of Everything” naming template for the next grab-bag, Tasha’s. I suspect they were looking around for another NPC to theme the next grab-bag book around when someone noticed that the name of one of D&D’s most famous artifacts already sounded similar to the established naming pattern, and voila.

The good news is this almost certainly means we’ll get a tie-in product of actual Deck of Many Things cards next year, so DMs who haven’t purchased one of the out-of-print decks of yesteryear will finally have the opportunity to ruin their campaigns in style.

 

[jasper]

Nothing on D&D Beyond yet.

 

[bedir than]

I do wonder if this will be a dual format physical-and-pdf deal like they're testing with Dragonlance?

That deal is only if purchased Direct-to-Consumer from DnDBeyond

 

[Reynard]

I think it might simply be a third grab-bag book along the lines of Xanathar’s and Tasha’s,

That actually feels a little weird this close to the 1D&D launch.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

That actually feels a little weird this close to the 1D&D launch.

Not if it's being designed to be compatible.

 

[Reynard]

Not if it's being designed to be compatible.

Sure, except lead time would suggest that can't be certain-- assuming the playtest packets are actually intended to affect the "new edition." Which I don't buy, given the methodology. So you're probably right.

 

[Alby87]

That actually feels a little weird this close to the 1D&D launch.

Not to much: I think (well... hope) that both the Deck of Many Things and Planescape books are high level books: Deck of Many Things can grant people a castle, and I hope that some kind of domain system/warfare rules can be put in. So, Tier 3 adventures. And Planescape, Tier 4 adventures. Those rules and informartions can be so high level respect to base rules, that can be both usable by 5e and One D&D.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The good news is this almost certainly means we’ll get a tie-in product of actual Deck of Many Things cards next year, so DMs who haven’t purchased one of the out-of-print decks of yesteryear will finally have the opportunity to ruin their campaigns in style.

It will be hard for WotC to equal what Etsy creators have produced.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That actually feels a little weird this close to the 1D&D launch.

Yeah, I'm betting on a wacky Deck of Many Things-themed book with monsters, player locations, spells, lots of magic items, etc., rather than an Everything title.

 

[Reynard]

Not to much: I think (well... hope) that both the Deck of Many Things and Planescape books are high level books: Deck of Many Things can grant people a castle, and I hope that some kind of domain system/warfare rules can be put in. So, Tier 3 adventures. And Planescape, Tier 4 adventures. Those rules and informartions can be so high level respect to base rules, that can be both usable by 5e and One D&D.

That doesn't make any sense to me. High level stuff will exacerbate small differences between 5E and 1D&D. It's like a change in angle: close to the origin it is hard to see the difference but the farther out you get the bigger to measured distance.

 

[Retreater]

5e works for heists like a procrustean bed.

 

[Reynard]

5e works for heists like a procrustean bed.

5E works fine for heists. The GM just has to understand the genre and enforce genre expectations -- and account for the "high tech" tools the PCs have in the form of magical abilities. Ultimately, hesit stories are about how everything goes terribly wrong just when it looks like the job is successful, and you can definitely do that in D&D.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This DMs Guild product basically replicates the central heist mechanic of Blades in the Dark in 5E. I've used it to run heists and it works very well. It would not shock me if WotC included a similar structure for this compilation.

But "heist" can also just mean "the heroes break into a location to steal the guarded/locked-up treasure without fighting with all of the overwhelming force in the complex," which is basically just one flavor of dungeon, which we know 5E can do.

 

[Reynard]

This DMs Guild product basically replicates the central heist mechanic of Blades in the Dark in 5E. I've used it to run heists and it works very well. It would not shock me if WotC included a similar structure for this compilation.

But "heist" can also just mean "the heroes break into a location to steal the guarded/locked-up treasure without fighting with all of the overwhelming force in the complex," which is basically just one flavor of dungeon, which we know 5E can do.

"Heist mechanics" are great but hardly necessary.

 

[sevenbastard]

I only hope the adventures are better than the last few anthology books' have been. I was really disappointed in how thin the stuff in, f'rex, Radiant Citadel was; none of the adventures felt like they had much meat on their bones to me. The recent focus on very short, done in one or two session adventures is leading to... lackluster results, at least in my opinion. Both Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Tales from the Yawning Portal managed to have meaty adventures with pretty low page counts, so it definitely can be done.

Well rewriting old 1e adventures is a sure way to get lots of meat per page. They didn't pad things with back story back in the day.

 

[darjr]

Well rewriting old 1e adventures is a sure way to get lots of meat per page. They didn't pad things with back story back in the day.

Dragonlance had whole Novels.

 

[sevenbastard]

Dragonlance had whole Novels.

Touche.

And DL1 is kind of a heist stealing the mcgruffin from the black dragon.

 

[CM]

You son of a <bleep>, I'm in.

 

[nicolas.carrillos]

It would be interesting if not all heists involve the retrieval of valuable objects for profit's sake, and ideas on adaptation to other settings are added as well -e.g., some adventures could deal with retrieving blueprints of weapons to be manufactured by a rival nation in Eberron; recovering a holy artifact, etc.