Ravnica Table of Contents & More

Thank you.

 

[dave2008]

Yes, there is a misunderstanding. The items, spells, monsters, NPCs present in the book aren't the iconic ones associated with MtG. What is present in this book is uninteresting and not what MtG fans want to see in D&D.

Well there are 2 issues. 1) There are many fans of MtG that are just fine with this product (like my 2 teenage sons). 2) This is not a MTG setting book. It is Ravinica setting book for D&D. It seems that you keep missing that point. It is not trying to bring all of MtG to D&D, it is trying to bring a small part of it Ravinica into the fold as a D&D setting.

There are far more monsters, items, spells and NPCs from MtG's lore that should come before Jarad.

Again, this is not MtG book, it is a Ravinica book. Not to mention, there are many people that don't feel the same as you about the NPCs. There was a good post earlier that explained that the best parts of the setting are not the planeswalkers.

Like Nicol Bolas. He is a ancient (25,000 years), evil and very powerful dragon and planewalker. He also wants to conquer Ravnica.

I know Nicky, I even made 5e stats for him. But, he is MtG NPC, to really crucial to Ravinica.

He'll soon invade it and Ravnica will probably have a "Realms Shaking Event" pretty soon. The big bad of the setting isn't present.

And I for one am glad for that. We don't need another setting with "Realms Shaking events." Another good reason to keep Nicky out.

I'm not surprised, but at the same time it is why designers are paid for and why those books are sold 50$ a pop. So that creative solutions are brought to problems.

But that is not what they were paid to do. That may be what you want to pay them to do -

Bringing MtG to D&D made this book interesting. Unfortunately, MtG isn't in this book. It is just a generic book about guilds. And that novelty act wares out pretty fast.

Sounds like you might be starting to get it - it is not MtG book. It is a D&D book about the Ravinica setting. You might have noticed, or not, that there is no mention of MtG on the cover. I understand your angst now. You thought you were getting a MtG book, and that is not what they made. It is not for you, and that is OK. I don't play MtG for published settings or APs, but I will definitely look through as the ToC has me interested enough that I am think of buying it.

 

[Jester David]

Sounds like you might be starting to get it - it is not MtG book. It is a D&D book about the Ravinica setting. You might have noticed, or not, that there is no mention of MtG on the cover. I understand your angst now. You thought you were getting a MtG book, and that is not what they made. It is not for you, and that is OK. I don't play MtG for published settings or APs, but I will definitely look through as the ToC has me interested enough that I am think of buying it.

Ummm.... Magic the Gathering is repeatedly mentioned in the sample page we have, linked in the first post.
And Magic the Gathering is mentioned on the cover. It’s mentioned before D&D on the back cover.
And the name of the product on Amazon is: “Dungeons & Dragons Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica / D&D/Magic: The Gathering Adventure Book and Campaign Setting”

Arguing it is a Ravnica book and not a MtG book feels like arguing a Dragonlance product isn’t a D&D product.

It’s not a MtG card game product but it is very much part of the same brand.

 

[MidwayHaven]

But the more I think about the guilds, the more I think of WotC's RPGsport/streaming/competition thing they want to do.

WotC is not hosting the RPGSports duels. It's been mentioned multiple times already.

 

[Parmandur]

Ummm.... Magic the Gathering is repeatedly mentioned in the sample page we have, linked in the first post.
And Magic the Gathering is mentioned on the cover. It’s mentioned before D&D on the back cover.
And the name of the product on Amazon is: “Dungeons & Dragons Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica / D&D/Magic: The Gathering Adventure Book and Campaign Setting”

Arguing it is a Ravnica book and not a MtG book feels like arguing a Dragonlance product isn’t a D&D product.

It’s not a MtG card game product but it is very much part of the same brand.

Dragonlance SAGA was not a D&D product.

 

[Li Shenron]

View attachment 102521​

Races: Centaur, minotaur, simic hybrid, and vadalken races.
Subclasses: Clerics of order, druids of spores.

60-pages on the guild
24-pages on the city/world
10-pages of magic items
70-pages of NPCs and monsters.

Interesting... with perhaps less than half the crunch of even the SCAG, it looks almost a rules-free / edition-agnostic product.

 

[flametitan]

It's the Guilds, yes. Their interlocking, pseudo-Cyberpunk web of relationships is a different setting for D&D.

Honestly, I don't expect to run or play in Ravnica anytime soon (though I have some thoughts percolating about retooling Dead in Thay from TftYP for Ravnica). But I am interested in the fluff, the player options and the monsters. The procedural generation tools can have definite use as well.

Right, I see. I'll have to take a deeper look when the book comes out, but right now the guilds feel like a bit of a weak hook. The interplay between factions with differing goals and ideals is a crux of many settings to me, so it feels odd to go, "yeah, this setting's interesting thing is that it has factions."

Part of that, though, is because when I look into whether a setting interests me or not, it's the encouraged style of campaign that interests me, rather than a setting element. This book focuses heavily on the factions element, and seems to lack in the interesting locales (unless the Tenth District is more varied than the name implies), and I know nearly nothing of what sort of genre the setting wants to encourage, though I imagine political intrigue is going to be a focal point.

 

[Parmandur]

Right, I see. I'll have to take a deeper look when the book comes out, but right now the guilds feel like a bit of a weak hook. The interplay between factions with differing goals and ideals is a crux of many settings to me, so it feels odd to go, "yeah, this setting's interesting thing is that it has factions."

Part of that, though, is because when I look into whether a setting interests me or not, it's the encouraged style of campaign that interests me, rather than a setting element. This book focuses heavily on the factions element, and seems to lack in the interesting locales (unless the Tenth District is more varied than the name implies), and I know nearly nothing of what sort of genre the setting wants to encourage, though I imagine political intrigue is going to be a focal point.

It's not just that they are ten factions, it is that these ten factions are everything: government, business, religion...all of it. The Ecumenopolis is a unique factor, from r D&D settings. The chapter following the location Gazeeter (the Tenth District is a megacity itself!) is apparently chock full of procedural generation tables, as in Chapter 3 of the DMG, to help with generation of Urban Fantasy adventures based around the Guilds.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm glad to be the first one to tell you Ravnica is in the MtG universe and that MtG has had a few blocks set on Ravnica since then. Welcome to 2005!

Congratulations on your attempt to use sarcasm to disguise the fact that you have no answer to my challenge.

Ravnica was a MtG setting. Now it is a D&D setting. And the marketing has been perfectly clear about that from the start, that this would be a D&D book, not a MtG book, and it wouldn't be adding planeswalkers or coloured magic to D&D.

You can argue that it's a bad decision, you can state without argument that it's not what you want (I wanted Dark Sun, but we rarely get what we want, welcome to Real Life), but you can't argue that MtG-in-D&D was promised without gross dishonesty.

 

[flametitan]

It's not just that they are ten factions, it is that these ten factions are everything: government, business, religion...all of it. The Ecumenopolis is a unique factor, from r D&D settings. The chapter following the location Gazeeter (the Tenth District is a megacity itself!) is apparently chock full of procedural generation tables, as in Chapter 3 of the DMG, to help with generation of Urban Fantasy adventures based around the Guilds.

Yeah, that still doesn't quite make me excited for Ravnica itself, sorry. The factions controlling everything, again, does not make me think, "Oh, that's unique to Ravnica!" Again, the interplay of different factions and how they try to influence and manipulate each other feels like a core part of worldbuilding. The Ecumenpolis is cool, yes, but what does expanding the city out to cover the world add that a regular urban campaign doesn't? Nevermind that the book itself doesn't seem to really care about the fact that it's a world spanning city, though the table of contents makes it hard to judge.

Perhaps it's just not a setting for me, but I'm still not really seeing the appeal for it that I couldn't get out of, say, playing in Sharn.

 

[dave2008]

Ummm.... Magic the Gathering is repeatedly mentioned in the sample page we have, linked in the first post.
And Magic the Gathering is mentioned on the cover. It’s mentioned before D&D on the back cover.
And the name of the product on Amazon is: “Dungeons & Dragons Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica / D&D/Magic: The Gathering Adventure Book and Campaign Setting”

Arguing it is a Ravnica book and not a MtG book feels like arguing a Dragonlance product isn’t a D&D product.

It’s not a MtG card game product but it is very much part of the same brand.

My mistake on the marketing end then! I need to do a bit more research before I post. I just looked at the front cover and didn't see anything about MtG.
However, if I were not on these forums and I came across this book in my FLGs I would have no idea it was MtG setting. I still think there is some significance in that.