Why I feel so abysmally let down by the "Ravnica" news...

[QuietBrowser]

While I mostly was going to comment on some of the comments made here, I thought I owed it to the opening poster to give my two bits.

In all honesty? I am probably more excited for Ravnica than I would have ever been for a 5e Planescape. I have ranted on this subject enough that anyone who remembers my name is probably already cringing, so I'll be brief; I do not like the Great Wheel, I think 5e's rendition of it is a marginal improvement, and I have always found Planescape in general to be a poor execution of a great idea.

I am mildly disappointed about the Eberron treatment, but I would rather have something polished and refined through community feedback than something that shamelessly allows itself to be broken just to wring money out of its fanbase.

I didn't know much about Ravnica. The simple fact it was something other than yet more Forgotten Realms material was all I cared about; that was enough to make me happy. But the more I find out about it, the more interesting I find it. This is the kind of genuinely off-the-wall, crazy high fantasy that I love. I know it sounds strange, since on the surface the two are completely unalike, but it reminds me of the Nentir Vale. It's got that same willingness to shuck off stale "D&Disms" and go with interesting, new, exotic ideas; the Black/Green Guild of vermin-tamers, necromancers and fungus-druids is actually a provider of food and shelter to the poor; the Green/White Guild is a cult of well-intentioned extremists out to eliminate free will and independent thought; the Blue/Red Guild and Blue/Green Guilds are shamelessly crazy magical versions of mad science. Ravnica is something NEW to me, and it's already looking promising.

I could be mad about the settings I'm not getting. I would have liked a 5e Spelljammer. I would have killed for a 5e Nentir Vale. But it's unproductive. I'm getting something different to the Forgotten Realms, something different to Planescape. That's all I care about. I have high hopes for Ravnica - I want to see things like a Gorgon PC race or rules for magitek. But it will have to work very, very hard to disappoint me, even though I will probably be paying something like $10-20 more than the US fans will be.

Honestly, I hope Ravnica does well. I want, more than anything, to see more of these "D&Difications" of MtG worlds. I don't care if it has to be included as just one chapter in a single MtG splatbook; I would kill, maim and burn for a 5e Kamigawa splatbook giving me official ratfolk and kitsune PC races for 5e.

It's simple. We were led to believe that the offerings on the table would appeal to "longtime D&D fans." Ravnica does bear a lot of similarity to something that longtime D&D fans would love: Planescape and the city of Sigil. It isn't, however, Sigil. In fact, its existence forces one to ask, "where is the design space for Sigil now that Ravnica is being released?" It seems to me that the existence of Ravnica makes an official Planescape product less likely, as so many of the concepts that would have been covered in a Planescape product are now being covered by Ravnica.

This is the way I see it: Planescape does NOT equal Sigil. At its core, Planescape as a setting is built on the idea of Cosmic Fantasy; its "hook" is adventuring across the high fantasty realms of the multiverse, traveling the planes and adventuring in the most exotic of regions.

That's not what Ravnica is about. Ravnica is hyper-Urban Fantasy; it's about cityscape adventures and political factioneering. There have been Planeswalkers visiting, but it's not like Sigil; it has no particular connections to other planes.

On the surface, yes, that is overlapping with Sigil. But let's be fair; it's overlapping with Sharn, it's overlapping with Waterdeep, it's overlapping with a lot of "big cities" across D&D.

Ravnica doesn't invalidate the idea of Planescape because, at its core, Planescape should be about exploring the planes - which gives Sigil a role because it's always supposed to have been a "gateway hub", an easy way to explain how you're getting across the multiverse. Ravnica arguably does the urban fantasy and magical realpolitik angle better, because Sigil's Factions were always kind of... incoherent, but let's face it; Sigil's intended purpose was a glorified waystation, and it grew beyond its boots mostly because the Great Wheel was so damn hard for many people to work adventures out of.

Didn't Sigil blow up, at the end of 2E? I thought there was a Faction War that basically did to Planescape, what 4E did to Forgotten Realms.

Don't know if this was answered already, but the Faction War was NOT that destructive. It ended the political power of the Factions, but Sigil itself just kept on ticking on just fine. It's been shunted from its AD&D status as The Most Important Place In The Multiverse since 3e, but it's still around and it's still doing its job of being a planar nexus.

 

[Zardnaar]

While I mostly was going to comment on some of the comments made here, I thought I owed it to the opening poster to give my two bits.

In all honesty? I am probably more excited for Ravnica than I would have ever been for a 5e Planescape. I have ranted on this subject enough that anyone who remembers my name is probably already cringing, so I'll be brief; I do not like the Great Wheel, I think 5e's rendition of it is a marginal improvement, and I have always found Planescape in general to be a poor execution of a great idea.

I am mildly disappointed about the Eberron treatment, but I would rather have something polished and refined through community feedback than something that shamelessly allows itself to be broken just to wring money out of its fanbase.

I didn't know much about Ravnica. The simple fact it was something other than yet more Forgotten Realms material was all I cared about; that was enough to make me happy. But the more I find out about it, the more interesting I find it. This is the kind of genuinely off-the-wall, crazy high fantasy that I love. I know it sounds strange, since on the surface the two are completely unalike, but it reminds me of the Nentir Vale. It's got that same willingness to shuck off stale "D&Disms" and go with interesting, new, exotic ideas; the Black/Green Guild of vermin-tamers, necromancers and fungus-druids is actually a provider of food and shelter to the poor; the Green/White Guild is a cult of well-intentioned extremists out to eliminate free will and independent thought; the Blue/Red Guild and Blue/Green Guilds are shamelessly crazy magical versions of mad science. Ravnica is something NEW to me, and it's already looking promising.

I could be mad about the settings I'm not getting. I would have liked a 5e Spelljammer. I would have killed for a 5e Nentir Vale. But it's unproductive. I'm getting something different to the Forgotten Realms, something different to Planescape. That's all I care about. I have high hopes for Ravnica - I want to see things like a Gorgon PC race or rules for magitek. But it will have to work very, very hard to disappoint me, even though I will probably be paying something like $10-20 more than the US fans will be.

Honestly, I hope Ravnica does well. I want, more than anything, to see more of these "D&Difications" of MtG worlds. I don't care if it has to be included as just one chapter in a single MtG splatbook; I would kill, maim and burn for a 5e Kamigawa splatbook giving me official ratfolk and kitsune PC races for 5e.


This is the way I see it: Planescape does NOT equal Sigil. At its core, Planescape as a setting is built on the idea of Cosmic Fantasy; its "hook" is adventuring across the high fantasty realms of the multiverse, traveling the planes and adventuring in the most exotic of regions.

That's not what Ravnica is about. Ravnica is hyper-Urban Fantasy; it's about cityscape adventures and political factioneering. There have been Planeswalkers visiting, but it's not like Sigil; it has no particular connections to other planes.

On the surface, yes, that is overlapping with Sigil. But let's be fair; it's overlapping with Sharn, it's overlapping with Waterdeep, it's overlapping with a lot of "big cities" across D&D.

Ravnica doesn't invalidate the idea of Planescape because, at its core, Planescape should be about exploring the planes - which gives Sigil a role because it's always supposed to have been a "gateway hub", an easy way to explain how you're getting across the multiverse. Ravnica arguably does the urban fantasy and magical realpolitik angle better, because Sigil's Factions were always kind of... incoherent, but let's face it; Sigil's intended purpose was a glorified waystation, and it grew beyond its boots mostly because the Great Wheel was so damn hard for many people to work adventures out of.


Don't know if this was answered already, but the Faction War was NOT that destructive. It ended the political power of the Factions, but Sigil itself just kept on ticking on just fine. It's been shunted from its AD&D status as The Most Important Place In The Multiverse since 3e, but it's still around and it's still doing its job of being a planar nexus.

Ravnica is an added bonus I think, its not replacing anything. I assume they can make it cheap as well as they already have plenty of art+ story line they can recycle

 

[gyor]

I was fairly disappointed as well.

There's already a dozen worlds D&D isn't supporting, and they choose to bring a new world into the fold. At the expense of classic settings.
I've played two hands of Magic in my life and never bought more than a starter deck, which I gave away to a friend. And I've never seriously been tempted to get back in. I have no affection for its settings. But I don't really hate the game. So, that it's a MtG world doesn't phase me much (I can totally understand the reasoning behind that) but I think I would have reacted just as negatively to a brand new world. Because it means far lesser support for the settings we DO care about.

Yes, it's something cool and new. Something different that we really haven't seen before in D&D... but ANY 3rd Party company can do something new. Morrus started a list of campaign settings, and there's twenty-five "new" settings you can play in. And that list is *only* for 5th Edition settings and doesn't include edition neutral settings.

New campaign settings are a dime a dozen.
But ONLY WotC can do Dark Sun or Planescape.

*

While I don't agree with the rest of the OP's first post, this does echo my thoughts.


And as the OP says, now there's far less chance of a Planescape product or product focused on Sigil. Just like Tyranny of Dragons pretty much killed any chance of a Dragonlance adventure, or Waterdeep leaves little room for a Castle Greyhawk style adventure.

Similarly, WotC is being very conservative with its releases for 5th Edition. And trying hard not to compete with past products, which stay on the shelf. So releasing this product means we're unlikely to see a hard copy of another setting anytime soon, to give Ravnica enough time to move as many copies as possible.
And it seems unlikely that they'd release a lower cost product like this (where they can use assets from the MtG team, such as art and the setting bible) if they expected another setting to do very well; they would have saved this for the follow-up.

So this makes it far, far less likely we'll see any other campaign settings in stores. Other settings will make do for the "Eberron" treatment, where they get a PDF update.
But, in fairness... the weight listed for Ravnica on Amazon is pretty small. Comparable to each of the Tyranny of Dragons books. So it could be 96-pages. Which would mean the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron is significantly larger. Still, it's unlikely to make any new Eberron fans. The DMsGuild is pretty niche and most players don't go there. I wouldn't be surprised is a large number of players hadn't heard about the product.

I'll point out that WotC owns the rights to Ravnica, so only WotC can do Ravnica too.

 

[gyor]

Ravnica is an added bonus I think, its not replacing anything. I assume they can make it cheap as well as they already have plenty of art+ story line they can recycle

At least some of the writers, perhaps most of them come from the MtG side, supervised by Jeremy and maybe Mearls, they already have tons of great art for the setting and MtG in general, so it's so little of D&D departments resources to do this book (and WGTE was written by Keith with help from Mearls and Jeremy on some stuff), that it displaced nothing, the Waterdeep Books are coming out still, and that was always going to get the lions share of effort from whatever they did. (Actually they even got a bunch of free lancers to help with Dungeon of the Mad Mage, freeing more people to focus on Dragonheist).

 

[AtomicPope]

The popularity of Prime Rib goes back to the industrial revolution. So we're talking "Little Wars."

So Red Box. Huh! I would guessed 1st Edition.

 

[Zardnaar]

At least some of the writers, perhaps most of them come from the MtG side, supervised by Jeremy and maybe Mearls, they already have tons of great art for the setting and MtG in general, so it's so little of D&D departments resources to do this book (and WGTE was written by Keith with help from Mearls and Jeremy on some stuff), that it displaced nothing, the Waterdeep Books are coming out still, and that was always going to get the lions share of effort from whatever they did. (Actually they even got a bunch of free lancers to help with Dungeon of the Mad Mage, freeing more people to focus on Dragonheist).

MtG has had great art for a while. I think this card was in Guildpact its one of my favourite.

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=397728



That is very 5E art and it came out over a decade ago while 3.5 was legal with the poo brown covers and the small window art. Then 4E and Pathfinder went all cartoony and they looked mostly bad IMHO along with 3.5 where I thought he art was generally worse than the TSR/AD&D full colour art. MtG moved away from the cartoony art generally around Invasion block circa 2000 with a few exceptions of course, Ravnica looked great and its around when MtG art really picked up IMHO.

If AD&D and MtG can have good art why was 3.5, 4E and Pathfinder art so terrible by comparison? MtG had 5E type art around a decade before 5E landed.

Google fu this is Ravnica. Ravnica came out 2005 IIRC.

https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=B...cAhXBS7wKHalnDq0Q7Al6BAgDEA0&biw=1920&bih=898

 

[billd91]

If AD&D and MtG can have good art why was 3.5, 4E and Pathfinder art so terrible by comparison? MtG had 5E type art around a decade before 5E landed.

Good art is in the eye of the beholder. The quality of the art from AD&D, both 1e and 2e, was uneven and, in many cases, pretty cheap-looking. You may not have like the style of later editions, but I'd say that the overall consistency improved considerably over the years from TSR's earlier days to now. That may mean that, if you don't like the style, its consistency may work against it - in your eyes.

 

[oreofox]

That is very 5E art and it came out over a decade ago while 3.5 was legal with the poo brown covers and the small window art. Then 4E and Pathfinder went all cartoony and they looked mostly bad IMHO along with 3.5 where I thought he art was generally worse than the TSR/AD&D full colour art. MtG moved away from the cartoony art generally around Invasion block circa 2000 with a few exceptions of course, Ravnica looked great and its around when MtG art really picked up IMHO.

If AD&D and MtG can have good art why was 3.5, 4E and Pathfinder art so terrible by comparison? MtG had 5E type art around a decade before 5E landed.

My view is the opposite. Personally, I think a lot of the 5e art looks like garbage, where as the art from Pathfinder looks great. Certain artists in 3rd edition that WotC employed I absolutely hated (Crabapple and England), but there was a bit of good art. I liked a lot of the art in both editions of AD&D, but like billd91 said, some of that art looked cheap and bad. My opinion is that Pathfinder's art has been 90% awesome, where as the non-landscape art for 5e looks like crap. Most notably: the Halflings in the PHB, and the various giants in the MM.

 

[cbwjm]

All editions have had good and bad art, like all art, whether it is good or bad is largely subjective. I think that on the whole 5e has had great artwork throughout with only a few that I ultimately thought looked bad.

After oreofox's comment about the giants I had to go back and have another look, I think the artwork for them is brilliant but everyone is going to take home something different when looking at a piece of artwork.

 

[solamon77]

I feel the exact same way as the op. I feel mislead and I just can't bring myself to care about Ravnica. If I was interested in this setting, I'd probably already be playing Magic. Maybe I just don't like it when my peas and carrots mix.