Ravnica: Is This The New D&D Setting? [UPDATED & CONFIRMED!]

If so... meh?

 

[Parmandur]

Even if they did decide to risk it, there's not really enough time to playtest a revised Artificer class for April (barely enough for subclasses). It'd be races at best.
Plus, do you remember seeing a Ravnica playtest? Why would we get an Eberron one?

We've had a number of Ravnica playtests in the past year, such as the M:tG Centaur & Minotaur. Warforged and Artificers would be more blatant, but not much.

 

[fjw70]

Don’t know any Mage lore but this looks interesting so I will give it a shot.

 

[Sunseeker]

But it's not the future. It's cross-brand marketing. Ravnica is established MtG IP. It's 15 years old. The "future" would be a completely new campaign setting. I'm sure that would also upset a segment of D&D hobbyists, but it at least wouldn't be a ham-handed marketing push coming from Hasbro. Get ready for a Player's Guide to Cybertron, or, Rita's Dumpster Delve.

It's amazing how many people have no posts except to dump on this topic. Like seriously, do you people get paid?

 

[Greatwyrm]

I had to go read up on this, since I quit MtG way before the Ravnica got there. It looks okay, but the main hope that I have is that this will have lots of tools for urban adventuring. I don't think I've run an official setting since Dark Sun was new, but city info would be great.

I'm still sure I heard on one of the youtube/twitch shows that they had *two* surprises left for the end of the year.

 

[Remathilis]

So... I got my hopes up and was disappointed. And so I should get my hopes up again?
Won't I likely just be disappointed again?

Your first mistake was assuming all the noise was about this and only this product. You are looking to be let down rather than see what shakes out. I recall a lot people were upset with Dragon Heist was announced; there was a lot of "that's it?" until Dungeon of the Mad Mage came out as well.

Again, there's pretty much no way they'll do two campaign settings back-to-back.
Even if they did decide to risk it, there's not really enough time to playtest a revised Artificer class for April (barely enough for subclasses). It'd be races at best.
Plus, do you remember seeing a Ravnica playtest? Why would we get an Eberron one?

They pulled the artificer off the DM's Guild a few months back, which to me says they have enough feedback and are opting for in-house fine-tuning.

Ravnica didn't need a playtest because... its all new to D&D! Seriously, there has never been Loxodons, Vedalken, or Viashino before, so we have no basis of comparison.

HOWEVER, Eberron has four races that are both mechanically complex AND have changed over the two editions they appeared in. Remember the first UA article? Its universally reviled for its poor takes on changlings, shifters and warforged (along with its half-assed artificer subclass and dragonmarks). I can easily see them releasing a new take on that old UA article that, with three years of experience under their belt, tries new takes on warforged (attempting to balance the mechanical life-form rules and finding some fix for the armored body mechanic), shifter (which was feat-intensive in 3.5 and stripped-bare in 4e) and changling (which was fine, but needed some oomph). In addition, another pass at dragonmarks would be greatly appreciated.

Basically, I expect them to show those mechanical elements again, looking to see if the new version respects the 3e/4e versions while still being balanced enough to play. That's worthy of a UA.

They've been pretty clear that they're not doing the same books they did previously. So no Manual of the Planes.
And the "Guide to the Multiverse" was half expected by the content we ended up getting in Tome of Foes. The idea of a "big book of setting crunch" is pretty much wishful thinking. Like the requests for more boxed sets.

MotP = Some planar/Planescape book; be it a guide, an adventure like Modron March, or a hybrid of both. And WotC is going to need to do something to get things like Warforged, defilers, kenders, and the like into player's hands if they are remotely serious about support "the multiverse" beyond cheeky references.

They're not. Because they'll announce the spring 2019 book in January or February of that year.
Anything they announce tomorrow will be the stuff they tease that's coming out this summer. Which, since we don't have Amazon listings or ISBNs, will be digital offerings.

Again, all WotC has to do is say "Next year, we'll be going to Eberron. For now, here is a UA of the core Eberron races and dragonmarks, and we're opening it up to the DM's Guild effective today. We'll be announcing a new Eberron book in 2019."

You get a taste of it now, something to play with until the Eberron book is ready next year. Maybe no in April, but certainly by November.

Remember, WotC is shaking up the formula this year; source book instead of adventure in the spring; two-part adventure in Sept, and a setting book in Nov. Plus whatever they announce tomorrow. We're venturing into uncharted territory.

Again, I expect PDFs akin to the MtG Planeshift books, only for the other settings.
Possibly with an updated draft of the artificer. Which won't appear in Ravnica, as there's not enough time to playtest it before it goes to print.

I expect we'll see more than that. I'd put it up to a friendly wager, but seeing how you were adamant the "4th D&D book in 2018" was either the art book OR the coloring book, it might be in your best interest to decline to wager on this.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Not my style, so this'll be the first thing I'm not pre-ordering but awaiting reviews. I'm not big into DnD as Shadowrun, which is what this seems to be. Hopefully it's good enough to draw old grumpy peeps like me in!

 

[MechaPilot]

My impression of Dragon Heist is that it's at least 50% Waterdeep sourcebook and no more than 50% adventure. Now, if you're not interested in FR, it's probably not the book for you, but saying it's "$10 per level" is implying that it's all adventure and has no value for money at all.

I neither run nor like FR. For me, and probably for other homebrew setting DMs, the book IS just an adventure book. If it's done well, there might be a handful of elements apart from the adventure that can give me inspiration for my own creations, but I can't expect that to be present before buying it (these things often come up only on a thorough reading of the product). If it's tied too heavily to the FR setting, the amount of work I'll have to put in to make it fit my setting will make the book not worth the full $50 price tag (especially for a book that covers the fastest moving character levels).

 

[cbwjm]

So as someone who has zero background in M:tG, but is really excited about this - are there any good sources to get some background on Ravnica (other than just digging through pages of Google results)?

I see there is a novel trilogy and novella trilogy - those any good? I have no idea how much lore and setting information there is for part of a card game, but I'm excited to find out.
(Oh, and I don't mean that in a disparaging way. Like I said, I have no experience with M:tG, so I really have no idea how much setting information they put into things. Thanks!)

To get some background on Ravnica, I would suggest looking at the story page of the plane on the MtG website: https://magic.wizards.com/en/story/planes/ravnica. This should give a good overview of the setting's guilds and races.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Where has that been said? It's not in the product info.

They talked all about it during the Stream of Many Eyes when it was introduced. And the current issue of Dragon+ has an extensive preview article detailing how it works.

 

[Kite474]

To get some background on Ravnica, I would suggest looking at the story page of the plane on the MtG website: https://magic.wizards.com/en/story/planes/ravnica. This should give a good overview of the setting's guilds and races.

I second this. Another good thing to look through would be the actual card sets themselves. While not giving the entire story they really show off the flavor and mood of Ravnica

Old Set (this was when Ravnica was first released):
http://www.mythicspoiler.com/rav/index.html
http://www.mythicspoiler.com/gpt/index.html
http://www.mythicspoiler.com/dis/index.html

Return (this was around 2013 when the setting was revisited):
http://www.mythicspoiler.com/rtr/index.html
http://www.mythicspoiler.com/gtc/guilds.html
http://www.mythicspoiler.com/dgm/index.html