Ravnica Table of Contents & More

pukunui said:

Looks like the viashino got cut?

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The Viashino, School of Invention, and Brute. I blame blame School of Invention not being popular on misleading people to to it's true purpose, they tried to sell it as a generalist wizard WTF?

Still disappointed Viashino, Vampire, and Reverent aren't in as playable races. Still at least got a few interesting races.

One thing I noticed is each guild has a guild spells list, I don't know if that is a list of preferred spells or some new spells. Also for some reason Chaos Bolt is has its own section.

I like that Keyrune's are in, each can turn into a guild aligned artifact creature. Orzhov's Keyrune turns into a Thrull, Rakdos turns into a devil, Simic a Crab, Selsynia a wolf, Boros a Soldier, Dimir a Horror, Izzet an Elemental, Golgori Insect, Gruul Beast, and Azorous bird.

Jester David said:

Yes. And it has a page count smaller than the description of Waterdeep at the end of Dragon Heist.


Supplementing the DMG is fine. But that's not the content you expect from a book dedicated to and focused on a campaign setting. That's generic information that could be in a DMG2 style book.

There's no shortage of books that could have generic DIY urban fantasy support. But only this book can detail Ravnica.
If you cannot run an extended Ravnica campaign without having to invent wide swaths of details or turn to the MtG Wiki, than this product has failed.


Keep in mind that the Wayfarer's Guide to Eberron has about as much world lore as this book will have, if not more. And if it had a similar number of monsters as Ravnica, it'd probably be larger.
So look at WGtE and decide if you could run an entire campaign with just that product.


A general guide to the planes is in the DMG. Perkins has already directed people to that in place of a revised Manual of the Planes. So they're unlikely to do a big dedicated planar book without something new to add. Sigil and the Planescape factions could have been that, but now that content overlaps too much Ravnica.

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One important point on Ravnica, is that "small" Gazeeter (actually about the size of one of the old BECMI Gazeeter books, really) is all that has been detailed geographically for the setting, period. All of the stories take place in that section of the city, by and large.

The point of making it a GENRE setting book as much as anything, is to increase value for folks in general. Most people write their own adventures: providing them tools to do so, or convert official AP products, makes sense. They can't detail an entire planet, but they can provide tropes and tables for a genre that can generate content.

Just because they do ten Guilds here, doesn't mean they can't do nine Factions in a future Planescape book, should this model prove popular. Other than being factions, they don't seem to share much in common as regards narrative terms or story possiblities.

Of course the Wayfinder's Guide is sufficient to run a campaign...?

Lord Mhoram said:

I don't want a super detailed timeline, a huge gazetter.

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I do. It gives me tools to make campaigns and aventures.

It is also fun to read. Since 4e WotC has forgotten that lore is also one of the reasons people bought D&D products.

gyor said:

The Viashino, School of Invention, and Brute. I blame blame School of Invention not being popular on misleading people to to it's true purpose, they tried to sell it as a generalist wizard WTF?

Still disappointed Viashino, Vampire, and Reverent aren't in as playable races. Still at least got a few interesting races.

One thing I noticed is each guild has a guild spells list, I don't know if that is a list of preferred spells or some new spells. Also for some reason Chaos Bolt is has its own section.

I like that Keyrune's are in, each can turn into a guild aligned artifact creature. Orzhov's Keyrune turns into a Thrull, Rakdos turns into a devil, Simic a Crab, Selsynia a wolf, Boros a Soldier, Dimir a Horror, Izzet an Elemental, Golgori Insect, Gruul Beast, and Azorous bird.

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The UA act as a sort of Populist veto, if enough people don't like an option, they cut it. Like Skill Feats.

Crawford has given a ~12 month timeframe for a UA test to make it into a product or it never will. The Revenant is dead and buried, I'm afraid.

Lord Mhoram said:

The way I look at it - this isn't the "Guide to MtG in D&D" it's about Ravnica - and that is all about the guilds. I didn't want to see any spells, or planeswalking in the book. I wanted the setting that informs those magic sets to be written for D&D. It looks like that was done.

So I am happy for the way this looks.

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Look under the guilds in the table of contents and it lists Guild Spells and there is a section for magic items.

Kramodlog said:

I do. It gives me tools to make campaigns and aventures.

It is also fun to read. Since 4e WotC has forgotten that lore is also one of the reasons people bought D&D products.

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Exactly it's not just for function, reading it is supposed to be fun in its own right.

Parmandur said:

One important point on Ravnica, is that "small" Gazeeter (actually about the size of one of the old BECMI Gazeeter books, really) is all that has been detailed geographically for the setting, period. All of the stories take place in that section of the city, by and large.

The point of making it a GENRE setting book as much as anything, is to increase value for folks in general. Most people write their own adventures: providing them tools to do so, or convert official AP products, makes sense. They can't detail an entire planet, but they can provide tropes and tables for a genre that can generate content.

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They can't detail the entire planet, no. But that's no reason not to even try.

If people have to invent everything anyway... why even name it Ravnica? Just leave it setting neutral and let people use the book for Ravnica and Waterdeep and Palanthas and Sigil.

Parmandur said:

Just because they do ten Guilds here, doesn't mean they can't do nine Factions in a future Planescape book, should this model prove popular. Other than being factions, they don't seem to share much in common as regards narrative terms or story possiblities.

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I highly doubt that. They publish too few books each year to do anything with that much overlap. For the same reason I don't think we're going to ever see a Dragonlance storyline or product. It overlaps too much with Tyranny of Dragons.

Really, I think the Ravnica book literally replaced a Sigil book that was loosely planned or outlined. They decided to go with something new rather than republish something that had already been done.
After this fall, they've have "done" cities and "done" stories and expansion products that focus on factions. Boxes checked.

Parmandur said:

Of course the Wayfinder's Guide is sufficient to run a campaign...?

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I disagree with that.
It's a taste of the setting, but I don't think a new DM with just that and no other Eberron books will have enough to run a campaign in that setting without ending up inventing more content than they were supplied.

Jester David said:

Straight from Amazon are not only Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica's tablet of contents, but also a double page spread featuring the introduction of character creation!

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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.

The focus is really on the Guilds as the defining feature, which makes some sense. But likely means that details of the setting unrelated to the Guild might be sparse, likely little more than has been seen in the various existing Planeshift PDF products. It's almost a monster & Guild book more akin to Volo's Guide to Monsters with a focus on Guild lore rather than monster lore.

The book also appears to be in the range of 256-pages, which is larger than the shipping weight previously implied. I had almost been expecting a svelte 160-page product.

View attachment 102522​

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Comparing it to VGTM is the perfect comparesion yes. But with just a dash of SCAG and W: DH added to it (Welcome to Ravnica, Chapter 3, and the intro adventure), but yeah otherwise it's the Guild version of VGTM and MTOFs. Actually it's like they threw in Volo's Encraditition (sorry about the misspelling) to Waterdeep into VGTMs.

But I didn't expect say a full FRCG style book, it was never big enough to do such a task.

Jester David said:

They can't detail the entire planet, no. But that's no reason not to even try.

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But why fail at an impossible task, when they can succeed at a useful task...?

Jester David said:

If people have to invent everything anyway... why even name it Ravnica? Just leave it setting neutral and let people use the book for Ravnica and Waterdeep and Palanthas and Sigil.

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Again, they do detail all of the story-related geography: six novels and various web short fiction are almost entirely Tenth Disctrict centric. The Millions of square miles of Megacity are not detailed, and billions of sentient beings not named in the fiction, why expect that here? The important elements are the Guilds and the Guildpact which binds the world.

Jester David said:

I highly doubt that. They publish too few books each year to do anything with that much overlap. For the same reason I don't think we're going to ever see a Dragonlance storyline or product. It overlaps too much with Tyranny of Dragons.

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In between Sky Kings Thunder and Tomb of Annihilation, they published a book that had Against the Giants and Tomb of Horrors to acclaim and financial success. I doubt they are that concerned with repeating a theme from 5+ years earlier (at the time of any potential DL book) as you suspect.

In terms of what they do plan for settings, we do have big clues. The DMsGuild used to have all of the D&D Settings listed, now they have a smaller list that is identical to the shortlist from the recent marketing survey: Ravenloft, Dark Sn, Eberron, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Dragonland, "Plane Shift" (M:tG material) and "Search Settings" (Which includes Mystarra, Spelljammer, Nentir Vale and Birthright material).

An argument can be made for all of the named settings they are mentioning on a frequent basis as being a unique genre style (Mearls intermittently tweets about how Greyhawk his favorite setting, has unique genre elements, like he is making a case to somebody).

Jester David said:

Really, I think the Ravnica book literally replaced a Sigil book that was loosely planned or outlined. They decided to go with something new rather than republish something that had already been done.
After this fall, they've have "done" cities and "done" stories and expansion products that focus on factions. Boxes checked.

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I doubt it. They have probably been thinking about doing a M:tG crossover officially for a while, given the success of the free booklets. Still plenty of room for Cosmic fantasy as a unique genre, with need for other Races, Subclasses, tables, monsters, etc.

Jester David said:

I disagree with that.
It's a taste of the setting, but I don't think a new DM with just that and no other Eberron books will have enough to run a campaign in that setting without ending up inventing more content than they were supplied.

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I think Keith Baker has other ideas. I take it as a given that a DM will need to invent more content than supplied, for any setting.

Jester David said:

They can't detail the entire planet, no. But that's no reason not to even try.

If people have to invent everything anyway... why even name it Ravnica? Just leave it setting neutral and let people use the book for Ravnica and Waterdeep and Palanthas and Sigil.


I highly doubt that. They publish too few books each year to do anything with that much overlap. For the same reason I don't think we're going to ever see a Dragonlance storyline or product. It overlaps too much with Tyranny of Dragons.

Really, I think the Ravnica book literally replaced a Sigil book that was loosely planned or outlined. They decided to go with something new rather than republish something that had already been done.
After this fall, they've have "done" cities and "done" stories and expansion products that focus on factions. Boxes checked.


I disagree with that.
It's a taste of the setting, but I don't think a new DM with just that and no other Eberron books will have enough to run a campaign in that setting without ending up inventing more content than they were supplied.

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That is true of every single setting in 5e, they've starved all of them. Compare what FR got in 1e, 2e, 3e, 4e, to the crumbs it gets in 5e, and it's the default setting! The SCAG is what passes for a setting guide for FR and it's smaller then GGR. They rely on DMSGUILD to fill the the gaps. Problem is is that DMSGUILD is unofficial.

I mean look at W: DH, AL had to write up their own product, Durnan's guide to Tavern Keeping to fix the glaring gaps in Chapter 2 because it's cool idea of Chapter 2 was so insanely unsupported by the book itself.

If other editions suffer from bloat 5e suffers from anorexia. Seriously I've seen regions in previous editions of FR with far more details and support then I think Ravnica will get.