D&D 5E Planescape, Bigby, Phandelver and the Deck of Many Things: Covers & Details Revealed!

The covers of the upcoming D&D books — including Planescape, Glory of the Giants, and the Deck of Many Things have been revealed.

• August 15th -- Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants ($59.95)
• August 15th -- The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons ($39.95)
• September 19th -- Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk ($59.95)
• October 16th -- Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse ($TBA)
• November 14th -- Book of Many Things ($TBA)

Coming August 15th with two variants. Lore about giants, 76 stat blocks, feats, and a giant subclass.

3 hardcovers in a boxed set-- 96 page guide to Sigil, 64-page bestiary, and 96-page adventure, along with a poster map and DM screen. Coming October 16th.

224-page adventure for levels 1-12, poster map, 16 new monsters. Coming September 19th.

66 illustrated cards, 192-page book with lore, character options, magic items, and monsters, 80-page card reference guide, all in a slipcase. Coming November 14th.​

These Are Dungeons & Dragons' New Products For 2023

New books for the fantasy role-playing game include Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, and a look at the legendary Deck of Many Things.

themessenger.com

 

[Maxperson]

Sure, a boxed set...but not in the main box set. And it never did get any attention in 3E or 4E.

You said box set!!!

"Kara Tur is about as well covered in SCAG as it is the FRCS or any box set."

See,I'm the only.one in my player circles who has much mental space invested in FR stuff, so they don't think like that. They do all sorts of crazy stuff, but wanting to do a dull tour of Gaerûn just doesn't occur to them.

Yeah. Folks are different. And to be fair, two of my four players probably wouldn't care, either, if it wasn't for the other two motivating them to be interested in the world.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I can’t speak for everyone, but my DM has told me he buys the setting/adventure books mostly for the monsters. He might use some of the ideas in the setting book or adventure, but we run our own setting and we don’t use published adventures ( at least not in whole).

So he basically spends $60 for a few pages of monsters and some setting and encounter ideas. It does happen.

Me too. I eventually own all the adventures on ddb, because they have lore and monsters and items and maps. I can’t imagine even trying to run a published adventure as written. I can’t do it. I’ll be bored and oh hey the random orcs in the hills outside Phandelver are there seeking allies and what trade they can manage to get what they need, not to attack gnome archeologists.

Now the adventure is different. In three more sessions this adventure will only resemble the written one in names and places.

You have no evidence of this one way or the other.

That is a rather narrow minded approach, beyond not being factual. I’m surprised that is your conclusion.

It’s one of the most obviously absurd positions I’ve ever seen on these forums.

It’s content…of a setting. It’s setting content.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I need the whole world. I don't railroad my players into narrow areas. And again, if I have to go to a prior edition for a setting, 5e has failed at setting.

How? Why? You are basically complaining that a London guidebook does not include a map of Beijing. However freely I wander, I'm hardly likely to find myself 5000 miles away.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

My reaction when people think 5E Planescape is going to be a lush, comprehensive and faithful iteration of the setting.

No one thinks that. That would be silly. It's just that some people feel the need to get their entitled whining that it isn't that in well ahead of publication.

 

[Incenjucar]

From a practical standpoint, if one wishes their complaints to be registered by a corporation they really need to do so via social media. Forums are more for resigned grumbling.

 

[Mecheon]

I get that. It's not what a FR setting is, though. It doesn't matter that it's the size of Europe, because the players will want to go to Cormyr, Halruua or Kara Tur. I need ALL the world in a setting or it's simply not going to cut it. I don't railroad my players into staying in one or even more than one region.

Yeah. I unshrunk it for 3e.

While I do understand some of the drive, I gotta disagree on one of these places.

Max, let's be honest. You could undoubtedly make a better Kara Tur than either WotC or TSR ever did and, well, they're never going to touch Kara Tur again with a ten foot pole because that place is downright tainted at this point. Just... Make it up. Do whatever you want with it. Its never going to get a new canonical depiction because its basically tainted ground, and while there's some interest for sure, there's also the looming specter of "Boy, the original OA was Not Good" hanging over the place.

Ed had the right of it when he said it was a bad idea to drag it into FR. Its dated (and not in a good way), doesn't make sense as part of the larger world of Faerun, and honestly fails at bringing the whole East Asia vibe due to being as Japan-centric as it is

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I need the whole world. I don't railroad my players into narrow areas. And again, if I have to go to a prior edition for a setting, 5e has failed at setting.

Has any product given you the “whole world?” I mean even FR has unexplored areas. What setting has given us the whole world?

Heck, we have been playing games in the same setting for 30 years and have explored only a small fraction of our world and only a tiny fraction of the multiverse. If we had to detail the whole setting we would spend all of our time writing and not playing!

 

[dave2008]

1e because I was young and didn't really know what a fleshed out setting looked like. 2e had good settings, so that's why I bought those. 3e had good settings, so that's why I bought those.

You said WotC didn't make good settings though. And all of those 2e settings are owned by WotC now.

4e I didn't spend a dime on as I skipped that edition entirely.

That's to bad, it has my favorite D&D setting. I have ported more from the 4e setting into my own setting than any other edition of D&D.

5e has burned me on the few settings that I bought and doesn't look to be changing, so I don't expect to spend another dime on 5e settings.

Most 5e settings are previous edition settings, so you have already purchased them it sounds like to me. No need to purchase them again.

 

[dave2008]

Which makes it less than useful for a general setting which is what I've been asking for, so those books are now out the setting equation, leaving us back at 5e not putting out any setting material for the FR since the Sword Coast.

Putting out setting material and not putting out what you consider a "complete" setting book are different things. I like the 4e approach, which 5e has mostly adopted, of sporadic setting info spread across many sources.

Now, I would be fine if the did both. A general setting book (like Eberron) and then additional info through multiple adventures and splat books. However, I don't want as much info in my general setting book as you appear to want. I just need/want the basic overview.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Being "Japan-centric" is not a crime when in the Western society the Japanese "soft power" has been more influential. Maybe there was some mistakes in the past but the possible offenses weren't intentional. A disclaimer for apologies should be enough.

Some Japanese animation studios could be happy working with a D&D licence. They could borrow some D&D elements, mainly PC species and creatures, and with these they could enjoy enough creative freedom to tell their own stories. I have listened in youtube toda Japanese studios don't dare to create original content from zero instead adaptations because it is too economically risky.

Has anybody said anything about Kamigawa, based in Japanese culture?

I guess Hasbro has got some experience with China. Maybe they know anything we don't. I unknown about the experience of Hasbro in South-Korea.

Kara-Tur, Maztica or Al-Qadim don't need unlocking in DM Guild because they are FR spin-off. You can find them.

Technically you can create your own setting in DM Guild if you say they are wildspaces in Spelljammer.

 

[dave2008]

Not of much use to me, though, as I want a good world setting, not the nth detail of some towns or whatever. If I want apples, you can't tell me that the adventures have oranges which means that they have what a setting book would have. They don't according to @dave2008.

It depends on what you want. You have clarified now you want a whole world setting book. WotC has not made a FR setting book as you describe for 5e, but they have released a lot of setting information for FR throughout 5e. It is just not a general overview of the whole world. It is more area and adventure specific.

I feel for you, but I can't say I disagree with their approach because it works better for me! Though it does seem like they could do both.

 

[Mecheon]

Being "Japan-centric" is not a crime when in the Western society the Japanese "soft power" has been more influential. Maybe there was some mistakes in the past but the possible offenses weren't intentional. A disclaimer for apologies should be enough.

If someone makes a fantasy China, I expect it to be a fantasy China. Not "We've made Samurai, Bushi and Yakuza all classes, trust me, its totally China".

Regardless, a low-fantasy land has no business being tacked on at the other side of one of the highest fantasy settings out there. I'd expect like 90% of the posters on this board could come up with a Kara-Tur equivilent more thematically suitable for how Faerun is set up than Kara-Tur ever was simply due to wanting it to fit with how Faerun is actually presented, and the 10% left over would back down because they admit to not knowing enough about Faerun to give it an honest shot

 

[Maxperson]

How? Why? You are basically complaining that a London guidebook does not include a map of Beijing. However freely I wander, I'm hardly likely to find myself 5000 miles away.

That's not at all what I am saying. I don't run an adventure in "London," I run it on magical Earth, so I need magical Earth, including "Beijing." And while YOU may not wander 5000 miles, PCs in games like mine do in fact wander that far, and often farther. I'm not going to railroad my players into staying in "London."

 

[Maxperson]

You said WotC didn't make good settings though. And all of those 2e settings are owned by WotC now.

1) That's not what I've been saying. I have said throughout this thread that there are a few good 5e settings. Eberron and Matt Mercers.
2) Owning =/= creating, so they didn't make the good 2e settings.

Most 5e settings are previous edition settings, so you have already purchased them it sounds like to me. No need to purchase them again.

I already answered this in a prior post.

 

[Maxperson]

Now, I would be fine if the did both. A general setting book (like Eberron) and then additional info through multiple adventures and splat books. However, I don't want as much info in my general setting book as you appear to want. I just need/want the basic overview.

The 3e Forgotten Realms campaign book was good for information. Was that too much for you?

 

[Parmandur]

I don't want as much info in my general setting book as you appear to want. I just need/want the basic overview.

For me, the Platonic ideal of a full big picture Setting product, from those I am familiar with, is the 1983 Greyhawk set. Plenty of overview of a huge area with hooks, not much set in stone. I didn't read it till the late Teens, so that's not even nostalgia speaking.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I understand you don't like a fantasy chop-suey culture, mixing things from different sources, but some times this can be intentional, and justified. Players could use the fantasy version as darts against the real version. For example in jianghu story the antagonists could be opium traffikers wearing smokins and bowler hats, as an allegory of the British empire for the colonial age. Or the bad guys are the formians, as a parody of the red revolutionary army, or alien wasps from outer space (I doubt W.A.S.Ps. to be very happy with the idea). We try to be polittically correct, but they are no-Caucasian people who aren't ashamed for their supremacist or xenophobes predjudices against their next neighbours. Then to stop those possible pejorative stereotypes against other communities, then all those groups are within the same land.

And usually the PCs are or visit cosmopolis, populations with people from different points.

 

[Maxperson]

No one thinks that. That would be silly. It's just that some people feel the need to get their entitled whining that it isn't that in well ahead of publication.

Buuuuuut iiiiii wannnnaa... No wait, you can't be talking about me, since I haven't been whining.

 

[Maxperson]

While I do understand some of the drive, I gotta disagree on one of these places.

Max, let's be honest. You could undoubtedly make a better Kara Tur than either WotC or TSR ever did and, well, they're never going to touch Kara Tur again with a ten foot pole because that place is downright tainted at this point. Just... Make it up. Do whatever you want with it. Its never going to get a new canonical depiction because its basically tainted ground, and while there's some interest for sure, there's also the looming specter of "Boy, the original OA was Not Good" hanging over the place.

Ed had the right of it when he said it was a bad idea to drag it into FR. Its dated (and not in a good way), doesn't make sense as part of the larger world of Faerun, and honestly fails at bringing the whole East Asia vibe due to being as Japan-centric as it is

I was just pulling names out of the air to make a point with that post, not making a list of what they haven't made

On Kara Tur, though, I have to disagree a little. They've hired cultural folks(can't remember the title) to help them with creating things that touch on real world cultures. Kara Tur could be made with those folks and with writers that represent the cultures in Kara Tur.

 

[Maxperson]

For me, the Platonic ideal of a full big picture Setting product, from those I am familiar with, is the 1983 Greyhawk set. Plenty of overview of a huge area with hooks, not much set in stone. I didn't read it till the late Teens, so that's not even nostalgia speaking.

While I liked Greyhawk a lot back in 1e, I found it to be too vague even then. For me the ideal setting book is along the lines of the 3e Forgotten Realms campaign book or the Eberron book. Lots of details included, while still leaving 90%+ of each country undetailed.