New D&D Monsters and More in Guildmasters’ Guide to Ravnica

Muso said:

... the D&D team produced a lot of Planeshift play-test material

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Muso said:

I totally agree with you. Also, I would like to see the old D&D players and fans that asked for the old settings to be treated with more respect. I am not against new settings, I am against top-down commercial operation (like D&D 4E).

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Hussar said:

And, let's not forget, that while fans have requested updates to older settings, those older settings are so incredibly unpopular with the larger hobby population that doing any one of them is basically pouring money down the drain. According to those surveys, it was homebrew for about 50% of gamers, Forgotten Realms was the next big chunk, and everyone else was essentially a rounding error. Taken together, they might have appealed to about a third of gamers, but, individually? They're very much a non-starter.

I know that's not what setting fans want to hear. They think that their favorite setting is the greatest thing. Unfortunately, it's a simple fact that most settings just aren't popular enough to justify the effort to update them.

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Muso said:

In a survey two/three years ago a lot of people asked for the old setting updated for the 5E. Wizards can show respect giving to us the old settings first and then new settings, not the opposite.
In answer to your second question: yes, I think that WotC (or maybe Hasbro) executives direct the D&D development, expecially after the 4E flop and Pathfinder overtaking. We know that the D&D team is very small if compared to the large ammount of people working on D&D 3.x edition. The D&D team was obliged to succeed. They took their time, with a lot of pubblic play-test and surveys and actually did the job. But now I feel that they are abliged by WotC/Hasbro executives to achieve a sort of cross-over with Magic the Gathering: the D&D team produced a lot of Planeshift play-test material and now they are almost ready with Ravnica, even before the update of the old settings requested by the D&D fan-base.

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gyor said:

"The popularity of settings in the survey fell into three distinct clusters. Not surprisingly, our most popular settings from prior editions landed at the top of the rankings, with Eberron, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planescape, and the Forgotten Realms all proving equally popular. Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Spelljammer all shared a similar level of second-tier popularity, followed by a fairly steep drop-off to the rest of the settings. My sense is that Spelljammer has often lagged behind the broad popularity of other settings, falling into love-it-or-hate-it status depending on personal tastes. Greyhawk and Dragonlance hew fairly close to the assumptions we used in creating the fifth edition rulebooks, making them much easier to run with material from past editions. Of the top five settings, four require significant new material to function and the fifth is by far our most popular world."

That is directly from WotC. And take into account how many of these settings are completely new to younger gamers who might not be that familiar with them, but given a taste might become invested in them.

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Parmandur said:

It is true some people are very interested in other settings, but WotC has been working and planning carefully how to introduce them in a way generally interesting to a wider play base. It looks like their "setting as genre" approach just might work.

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gyor said:

No this is James Wyatt and another guys baby, this did not originate at the top executives of the WotC, that would require far to much creativity for a suit, James Wyatt has explained on youtube how this came about.

The original idea for a D&D and MtG crossover actually first came up during 3rd editions time and there were plans to make a monsters of Dominara book or something, but it got kibashed. There was a bunch of people at WotC the really did not like the idea of D&D and MtG crossing streams and this kept the idea on ice for along time.

Then eventually a whole bunch of my people moved on to other things and James Wyatt found out everyone who opposed mixing the streams was gone, and so he took the idea and shopped it around to see if anyone objected and they didn't, so be sold WotC on the idea, likely not that hard of a job, and Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica was born (or concieved).

Ravnica was chosen I believe for several reasons. 1. It is the most popular MtG world right now 2. It's not overlapping thematically with FR (Dominara is basically the same type of world as CR) or Eberron ,3. When this book is being publish is around the time of 3 Ravnica sets being released (Guilds of Ravnica, Alliagance of Ravnica, and a third one tied more to an event on Ravnica then the Guilds) which are also doing to be added to MtG video games, at least two novels (two have been announced, but I think there will be a third), and an Art Book, 10 premade Guild Kit decks, and possibly more.

With GGR that makes 3 Ravnica sets of cards (we are talking hundreds of cards), 10 premade guild kit decks, an Art Book, Video Games, 2 or more Novels (first ones since 2010), a Ravnica D&D setting/source book, opening DMSGUILD to Ravnica is likely, Ravnica D&D Dice, Ravnica life counters, Ravnica Map Pack and Miscellaneous, Ravnica Minis, and who knows what else, so I can see when James Wyatt went asking to do a D&D MtG crossover why they said yes and choose Ravnica, this allows them to milk an extreme level of synergy and people love synergy.

What really began all this was sticking a D&D designer in to MtG's division, cross pollenization that eventually bore some serious fruit.

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Muso said:

Thank you for the explanation, I learned something about the conceiving of the D&D/Magic cross-over. That said, it is impossible that the D&D team was not aware of the ideas of James Wyatt and probably they spent a lot of time on the Ravnica project instead of thinking about the realization of the D&D fan desiderata. I see the commercial potential in this Ravnica operation. And for me it *just* a commercial operation. Nothing to do with D&D. As I said, I would have preferred a completely new setting instead of this commercial operation or Ravnica *after* the release of the old settings updated for the 5E. In the results of the survey that you reported above there is not reference to any "new setting" or "setting from another game" and so on. Coming out with Ravnica before any other setting looks really bad to me.

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gyor said:

No this is James Wyatt and another guys baby, this did not originate at the top executives of the WotC, that would require far to much creativity for a suit, James Wyatt has explained on youtube how this came about.

The original idea for a D&D and MtG crossover actually first came up during 3rd editions time and there were plans to make a monsters of Dominara book or something, but it got kibashed. There was a bunch of people at WotC the really did not like the idea of D&D and MtG crossing streams and this kept the idea on ice for along time.

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