All of the books coming to Dungeons and Dragons in 2023 and beyond

It’s a big year for Dungeons & Dragons, with a total of five new D&D books scheduled for 2023 as well as the soon-to-be-released Honor Among Thieves movie. However, Wizards of the Coast has managed to put a damper on its plans for the year with the scandal around the OGL, which would have crushed the game’s community of creators with draconian licensing agreements. Though the scandal had a good ending for the community with WotC releasing the whole 5e SRD under an irrevocable Creative Commons license, it’s safe to say some gamers are still wary.

At the latest D&D Direct, Chris Perkins explained that “D&D fans are truly the heart of this brand” as he walked through the list of D&D books for 2023 and beyond. And we can’t deny that this year’s releases look pretty exciting, from a compilation of heist-themed adventures in Keys from the Golden Vault (available now) to the long-anticipated return of the classic setting Planescape.

So let’s take a look at everything coming to D&D in 2023.

New D&D books available now

The first book from 2023 has already arrived with Keys from the Golden Vault.

• Keys from the Golden Vault adventure anthology

This heist-themed adventure anthology should be similar to recent books to Candlekeep Mysteries and Journeys through the Radiant Citadel, with 13 adventures for players from levels 1 – 11. But this time it’s all about heists and the commuting of same — think Ocean’s 11 but with a fantasy setting, or  The Palace Job series of novels by Patrick Weekes. The book is setting-agnostic, so you can drop these adventures into your home game to give your players a criminal (or at least sneaky) caper, run them as one-shots to offer your players something different than the classic fantasy game, or string them together into an epic heist narrative.

Here’s the full description:

PULL OFF THE HEISTS OF A LIFETIME

Some jobs require more than simply wielding a sword or slinging a spell. Whether it’s procuring a well-guarded item or obtaining crucial information from an imprisoned contact, these tasks require careful planning and flawless execution. The secretive organization called the Golden Vault specializes in hiring crews for such jobs, and for the most daunting assignments—pursuing fabulous treasures and stopping dire threats—that crew is your characters.

You buy digital copies from D&D Beyond or Roll20.

New D&D books coming in 2023

There’s quite a lot yet to come this year, though the roadmap at D&D Direct showed two releases have been delayed — Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants and The Book of Many Things have both been pushed back a quarter. That means we won’t see any new books this spring, but will have four books coming out rapid-fire in the second half of the year.

Here are all the books coming to D&D in the rest of 2023:

• Q3 2023: Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants sourcebook

A spiritual successor to Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons, this sourcebook focuses on the large, angry folk of Dungeons and Dragons. wherein Bigby — yes, that Bigby, of Bigby’s Hand fame — lays out the history and role of Giants in the 5e D&D multiverse. There’s an Unearthed Arcana that serves to playtest some of these ideas in case you’re curious to see where this is headed.

• Q3 2023: Phandelver Below: The Shattered Obelisk adventure

Based around the intro adventure Lost Mine of Phandelver, this new adventure will take us back to Phandalin where a mysterious obelisk is unleashing monstrous danger beneath the earth. There’s a fair amount of established history for Phandalin and its roots in a prosperous community sacked by Orcs some five centuries past. If you like the Forgotten Realms or campaign style adventures in D&D this one might be a bright spot out of this year’s books.

• Q4 2023: Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse sourcebook

The Planescape campaign setting released in 1994 explored the then-current planar cosmology of Dungeons and Dragons, and we’ve speculated before that it would return for 5e. This book will take us back to the city of Sigil, a major hub for interplanar travel where you could meet just about anyone from just about any universe. We’ll also have “wild and weird” planes of existence to to explore. Planescape could very well serve as a nice, one stop shop for planar adventures and dovetail nicely with Spelljammer, Radiant Citadel, and even books like Fizban’s or the various Magic the Gathering settings brought into 5e like Strixhaven, Theros, or Ravnica. 

• Q4 2023: The Book of Many Things sourcebook

Like the Deck of Many Things itself, it’s not entirely clear what will be in this book. It will unveil the “multiverse-spanning story” behind this item, and we expect it will include some chaotic new content, like the Fate Domain Cleric and some of the spells and feats from the Wonders of the Multiverse Unearthed Arcana.

D&D books coming out in 2024 or later

Though we don’t have a lot of specifics, we do know about a few projects coming out in 2024 and 2025. The biggest is One D&D, a brand new edition celebrating the game’s 50th anniversary, due out in 2024. The new edition is currently in playtesting, and it will be fully compatible with all 5e content — so you can buy books this year and know they’ll still be useful when One D&D comes out next year.

But we’ll also be celebrating the game’s anniversary with Vecna, who will star in a world-hopping adventure that will highlight people, places, and events that we’ve seen in five decades of D&D. The game seems to be focusing heavy on the multiverse and interconnected storytelling moving forward.

“Vecna is just the beginning,” explains Jeremy Crawford. “You’re going to see so many more surprising connections emerge during the next five years.”

That apparently means a lot more villains. The means a new story centering on Red Wizards in 2025; a new adventure featuring Venger from the D&D cartoon; and the League of Malevolence, a group of villains (including some classics like Warduke) from Wild Beyond the Witchlight who will be seeking power across the multiverse.

Originally published August 25, 2022; updated March 28, 2023