It is a new year! Annually, Wizards of the Coast tends to release books on a somewhat regular schedule. Typically, we get a new big adventure/campaign book in the fall, and typically some kind of general supplementary book in the spring. However, in recent years, we've seen a bit of a transformation to that pattern - last year we got three autumn releases, with Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Strixhaven as adventure books, as well as Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, which served primarily as a monster book but with a fair number of other features all themed around dragons.
This year, the big thing to anticipate is the return of two classic settings. WotC has not officially confirmed which of these will be coming, but between the Travelers of the Multiverse Unearthed Arcana post and the tease of a sketch for the cover of a book by Hydro74 (who has done special covers for D&D books since Volo's Guide to Monsters) that depicts Boo, the Miniature Giant Space Hamster, things seem to strongly point toward Spelljammer.
(I'll throw in a caveat that Boo is more of a Forgotten Realms character, as the animal companion to Minsc, the fan-favorite Ranger/Mad Man from the Baldur's Gate computer games. But Boo's apparent origins - if he's not actually just a regular hamster - point toward Spelljammer, as in that setting, Gnomish ships are powered by Giant Space Hamsters running on exercise wheels.)
We don't actually have a strong indication as to what the other classic setting we're likely to get will be. Personally, I'd love an updated Planescape book, but I also recognize that they might want to present a more conventional setting given that they're likely to be doing Spelljammer (and they just did Ravenloft). If that's the case, my money is on Dragonlance, thanks in part to the fact that legal disputes with the Hickmans (who created Dragonlance, and also kind of Ravenloft, though I think they didn't hold the rights to that setting) have been settled. I know very little about Dragonlance as a setting, but I do know that a lot of elements in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons tie into that world (including the character of Fizban).
This month will see the release of the Rules Expansion Gift Set, which contains Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and a new book called Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse.
The latter, if I understand it correctly, will see revisions made to the monsters depicted in Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes (and also makes it harder to use "Mordenkainen's" as shorthand for the latter). Not only are we probably going to see the races introduced in those books given the Tasha's treatment, freeing up ability score bonuses (something I 100% support,) but we're also likely to see changes to design of spellcasting monsters and NPCs, which is something that I am very excited to see.
As far as I know, the "of Everything" books are not getting any changes, so I'll be curious to see what they might need to change with the 5.5/6E books coming in 2024. That is still a ways off, of course, but my understanding is that the Monsters of the Multiverse book will be something of a preview for future monster design.
WotC seems to be happy with the anthology adventure books like Candlekeep Mysteries, and I wouldn't be shocked to see a similar book come out some time this year.
I also know that they've been fairly happy with their Magic the Gathering crossovers. These have tended to have something of a cross-promotional element to them - the planes depicted in the three we've gotten so far have all coincided with card sets on those planes coming out the same year (though Strixhaven came out with MTG many months before a Curriculum of Chaos was released). My hope is that if they do another campaign setting book, it'll be for Dominaria, which is the original MTG setting and the one that has the most fleshed-out history and diversity of locations and cultures. This fall will see the release of two sets taking place on Dominaria, one being Dominaria United, which continues the contemporary story, and the other being the Brothers' War, which takes place in the distant past, revisiting the events depicted sort of retrospectively in Antiquities, which was the second ever Magic expansion set.
Dominaria, to be fair, has a less high-concept theme to it than the other Magic settings we've seen - it was designed more to be a catch-all of fantasy tropes. But over nearly 30 years (with, admittedly, only rare visits to it after the designers started the tradition of visiting new planes with each set) the place has gotten a more idiosyncratic identity. I think it just benefits from being the most fully-realized of the MtG settings and thus would make for a great D&D setting.
Regarding adventures, I think that if they want to keep doing Forgotten Realms stuff, they're probably not at risk of running out of possibilities. They haven't yet done much with Neverwinter in 5th Edition, which is one of the major cities of the Sword Coast.
Chris Perkins did also mention at last year's D&D Celebration that they're in development on two brand-new D&D settings (original to D&D, as opposed to those derived from other IPs like Ravnica). The impression I got, though, was that we're unlikely to see these until 2023, if even at all, given that he gave the disclaimer that they're still at a stage where they might pull the plug if the ideas don't come together.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to future announcements. I suspect we might get one around or after the Rules Expansion Gift Set comes out, as there won't be any D&D products to look forward to after those arrive.
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