Ravnica Table of Contents & More

Jester David · Oct 20, 2018

Mercurius said:
Looks great, although I wish there was more gazetteer-style setting info - seems rather sparse to run a full campaign.

Kramodlog said:
I know what is bothering me so much with this campaign string book. It suffers from the gnome effect. What is missing isn't gnomes though. It's the campaign setting. And planewalking. And iconic MtG spells, artifacts and monsters. And colored magic.

This concerns me as well. If the book doesn't contain enough information to run the campaign setting, then what's the point? Just make a setting neutral guild product that people can drop into their homebrew.

There is a pushback against expansive campaign settings of late. The idea that a big book of lore and knowledge and facts doesn't help your game. Which is somewhat true. There's a point where the lore becomes unwieldy and there's no room to make the world your own. But you do need a minimum amount of description to work with, or you're pretty much making up everything, which defeats the purpose of using a pre-published world.

Prakriti said:
This just makes me want Planescape all the more.

Kramodlog said:
Yeah, this is just a book with factions in it. But they have no history in any DnD setting and the setting from which their come from isn't detailed. A Sigil supplement with its Factions would have made more sense.

The catch being, now they've done a city-focused campaign book that heavily focuses on and details factions. They're unlikely to do another. As that would be redundant.
This pretty much kills any and all chance to a big Guide to Sigil and Planescape.

Kite474 · Oct 20, 2018

Looks pretty good. A little disappointed in the lack of subclasses and races, but I think the NPCs make up for it somewhat.

As for the rest its shaping up to ve what I wanted: more fluff outside the established stuff for Ravnica. Shaping up to be super useful for my MtG corssover game.

Paul Farquhar · Oct 20, 2018

Kramodlog said:
I know what is bothering me so much with this campaign string book. It suffers from the gnome effect. What is missing isn't gnomes though. It's the campaign setting. And planewalking. And iconic MtG spells, artifacts and monsters. And colored magic.

Guilds aren't what MtG is about. This is a MtG setting book in name only.

I've pointed this out before, but it isn't a MtG book. Not even in name.

Lord Mhoram · Oct 20, 2018

Kramodlog said:
I know what is bothering me so much with this campaign string book. It suffers from the gnome effect. What is missing isn't gnomes though. It's the campaign setting. And planewalking. And iconic MtG spells, artifacts and monsters. And colored magic.

Guilds aren't what MtG is about. This is a MtG setting book in name only.

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.

Parmandur · Oct 20, 2018

Jester David said:
This concerns me as well. If the book doesn't contain enough information to run the campaign setting, then what's the point? Just make a setting neutral guild product that people can drop into their homebrew.

There is a pushback against expansive campaign settings of late. The idea that a big book of lore and knowledge and facts doesn't help your game. Which is somewhat true. There's a point where the lore becomes unwieldy and there's no room to make the world your own. But you do need a minimum amount of description to work with, or you're pretty much making up everything, which defeats the purpose of using a pre-published world.

There is a Gazeeter there for the area of the world that has been detailed in stories (The Tenth District). On the initial announcement interview for Dragon Talk, they discussed how the book is more going to supplement Chapter 3 of the DMG with oodles of tables for DIY adventure building in this Urban Fantasy genre (looks like most of Chapter 4 in this book, with the sample adventure following the Guild specific tables and guidelines for adventure generation), rather than detailed breakdowns of a planet-wide megacity. They also emphasized that they wanted these genre=specific tables to be useful to folks using other settings and homebrewing, so you can take the Cult of Radkos, file off the serial numbers,m and generate an adventure around a Cult of Orcus. This seems to match with what Mearls & Co. have been saying in recent years as to a new approach to settings as genre supplements to the base game. I can easily imagine a similar layout for Eberron and Dark Sun books.

Jester David said:
The catch being, now they've done a city-focused campaign book that heavily focuses on and details factions. They're unlikely to do another. As that would be redundant.
This pretty much kills any and all chance to a big Guide to Sigil and Planescape.

But there is nothing Planar or Cosmic here, and Gonzo Cosmic oddity would be a very viable concept for a similar genre setting book as outlined here, which would be very different in content.

Kramodlog · Oct 20, 2018

Lord Mhoram said:
The way I look at it - this isn't the "Guide to MtG in D&D" it's about Ravnica.

Ravnica isn't even in this book.

Jester David · Oct 20, 2018

Parmandur said:
There is a Gazeeter there for the area of the world that has been detailed on stories (The Tenth District).

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

Parmandur said:
On the initial announcement interview for Dragon Talk, they discussed how the book is more going to supplement Chapter 3 of the DMG with oodles of tables for DIY adventure building in this Urban Fantasy genre (looks like most of Chapter 5 in this book, with the sample adventure following the Guild specific tables). This seems to match with what Mearls & Co. have been saying in recent years as to a new approach to settings as genre supplements to the base game.

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.

Parmandur said:
I can easily imagine a similar layou for Eberron and Dark Sun books.

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.

Parmandur said:
But there is nothing Planar or Cosmic here, and Gonzo Cosmic oddity would be a very viable concept for a similar genre setting book as outlined here.

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.

Kramodlog · Oct 20, 2018

Josiah Stoll said:
The Gnome effect?

A concept that comes from 4e's PHB excluding the gnome race and some classes.

The effect is even bigger with this campaign book as Ravnica isn't in he Ravnica campaign guide. But also MtG elements aren't in the book either. And that is weird cause Ravnica is part of the MtG universe.

Lord Mhoram · Oct 20, 2018

Kramodlog said:
Ravnica isn't even in this book.

I was speaking of the world, not character. I don't have the book yet, but looking at the ToC - I see it all over - I'm sure the guild sections will be giving info on the world, Chapter 3 looks to be all about the world, and the adventures section looks to have lots of information on the world. Seems like it is.

I don't want a super detailed timeline, a huge gazetter - previous editions version of Forgetten Realms setting or Pathfinder's Guide to the Inner Sea books I've found pretty much useless in play - I want something that helps give me the tools to run games set in the setting - this seems to do that very well.

I guess what I am saying - I don't want a conversion book from another game - but a D&D book from the ground up that is a D&D take on the information (but not mechanics) of the setting.