WotC New M:tG set announced: "Adventures in the Forgotten Realms"

[Parmandur]

Innistrad already had a Planeshift that's free on DM's Guild. I'd like to see some offical support for the parts of Ravenloft that aren't Barovia.

In terms of odds of happening, I'd rate it as follows:

1. Neither gets covered
2. Innistrad gets covered alone, as it is one of the most popular Magic Settings by a longshot
3. Both get their own books, because both are popular
4. Ravenloft gets covered alone, because eit has serious history

5. They merge two separate IPs.

 

[Parmandur]

Wow. I never realized those plane shifts were so large!

https://media.wizards.com/2016/dnd/downloads/Plane_Shift_Innistrad.pdf

They are fairly substantial: still room for a whole book with an apparatus for Adventure creation similar to what we got in Ravnica/Theros. Maybe a new variation of the Tasha's Lineage system to cover a humanocentric Gothic Setting.

 

[Parmandur]

This would make a good book. I think selling Ravenloft as one book and Innistrad as another... would be kind of dumb from a business perspective, and doubt it will every happen. But I want both, so both being in the same book makes sense to me.

I think it makes less sense to merge them, than to publish seperately. Particularly if they just leave Ravenloft as it is, with Curse of Strahd and open DMsGuild support.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Cue the M:tG grognards: this Forgotten Realms set is just a cheap marketing gimmick delaying the updating of the “Arabian Nights” set from 1993.

 

[Aldarc]

Cue the M:tG grognards: this Forgotten Realms set is just a cheap marketing gimmick delaying the updating of the “Arabian Nights” set from 1993.

No no no. Cue the FR grognards unironically posting the map with the “Remembered Realms”.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I think it makes less sense to merge them, than to publish seperately. Particularly if they just leave Ravenloft as it is, with Curse of Strahd and open DMsGuild support.

CoS is just Barovia, and the DMsGuild content lacks the professionalism, and official-rules label, of WotC. As @Remathilis says, if that material covers Ravenloft well enough, the Planeshift covers Innistrad well enough.

Fact is, material made for Ravenloft would overlap greatly with Innistrad, and vice-versa. They absolutely make sense as material in the same book, and personally I find retconning Innistrad as a plane in the Shadowfell changes almost nothing to that plane's lore.

And again, from a business perspective, WotC isn't going to publish two books covering nearly-identical settings (in themes) when one book will do just as well.

 

[Parmandur]

CoS is just Barovia, and the DMsGuild content lacks the professionalism, and official-rules label, of WotC. As @Remathilis says, if that material covers Ravenloft well enough, the Planeshift covers Innistrad well enough.

Fact is, material made for Ravenloft would overlap greatly with Innistrad, and vice-versa. They absolutely make sense as material in the same book, and personally I find retconning Innistrad as a plane in the Shadowfell changes almost nothing to that plane's lore.

And again, from a business perspective, WotC isn't going to publish two books covering nearly-identical settings (in themes) when one book will do just as well.

You are not wrong, I just would prefer if that one book was just Innistrad. I like Innistrad, and while I like Castle Ravenloft and Curse of Strahd, I could do without anything outside of Barovia.

 

[Remathilis]

CoS is just Barovia, and the DMsGuild content lacks the professionalism, and official-rules label, of WotC. As @Remathilis says, if that material covers Ravenloft well enough, the Planeshift covers Innistrad well enough.

Fact is, material made for Ravenloft would overlap greatly with Innistrad, and vice-versa. They absolutely make sense as material in the same book, and personally I find retconning Innistrad as a plane in the Shadowfell changes almost nothing to that plane's lore.

And again, from a business perspective, WotC isn't going to publish two books covering nearly-identical settings (in themes) when one book will do just as well.

Innistrad on its own is a little thin (to be fair, all the M:TG settings so far have been). It has one race (human), four provinces, and most of its monsters are variants of MM monsters (vampires, golems/skaab, zombies, ghosts/giest, werewolves). There isn't a lot of "new" elements like Ravnica or Theros had; at best a few subclasses and monster variants, but nothing like the expansion of piety or guilds.

Ravenloft, otoh, is a mediocre stew of ideas each sectioned off as a little "adventure" zone. For every truly interesting domain or Dark Lord, you have either a very stock/one note one OR a domain that's "its X campaign world, but EVIL" (glares at Sithicus). The truly great domains with interesting hooks probably count less than a dozen, and they're not all part of the core.

If it were me, I'd add a small note on Barovia (for more info: see Curse of Strahd), Mordent (ghost/seaside), Lamordia (golem/Frankenstein), Verbrek (werewolves), Hal-akir (mummy/ancient Egypt), Darkon (lich/dark fantasy) and Richtumount (wererats/urban). Six domains shouldn't take up much space, considering they once fit 30 of them in a hardback and had room to reprint part of the PHB in it...

Innistrad plus six domains of dread, tailored to do a full campaign (Innistrad) or a "night" of terror (pick a domain). Everything else (monsters, subclasses, etc) can be shared between them.

Call it Realms of Horror and get it to me tomorrow.

 

[Dausuul]

That would make sense to me. They overlap almost one-to-one, and although they are technically very different in the cosmology (Innistrad is technically in the Material Plane, Ravenloft in the Shadowfel) you could easily retcon it so Innistrad is in the Shadowfell.

I think the most logical way to do it would be to make Innistrad into an "island of terror," that is, a Ravenloft domain isolated from the rest of Ravenloft and completely surrounded by the Mists.

This does leave the question of who is lord of the domain. In Ravenloft, each domain functions as a prison and a source of torment for a being of irredeemable evil. Fortunately, Innistrad has a history of serving as a prison for just such beings; first the demon Griselbrand, and later the world-consuming abomination Emrakul. Either one would make a fair darklord for Innistrad.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Innistrad on its own is a little thin (to be fair, all the M:TG settings so far have been). It has one race (human), four provinces, and most of its monsters are variants of MM monsters (vampires, golems/skaab, zombies, ghosts/giest, werewolves). There isn't a lot of "new" elements like Ravnica or Theros had; at best a few subclasses and monster variants, but nothing like the expansion of piety or guilds.

Ravenloft, otoh, is a mediocre stew of ideas each sectioned off as a little "adventure" zone. For every truly interesting domain or Dark Lord, you have either a very stock/one note one OR a domain that's "its X campaign world, but EVIL" (glares at Sithicus). The truly great domains with interesting hooks probably count less than a dozen, and they're not all part of the core.

If it were me, I'd add a small note on Barovia (for more info: see Curse of Strahd), Mordent (ghost/seaside), Lamordia (golem/Frankenstein), Verbrek (werewolves), Hal-akir (mummy/ancient Egypt), Darkon (lich/dark fantasy) and Richtumount (wererats/urban). Six domains shouldn't take up much space, considering they once fit 30 of them in a hardback and had room to reprint part of the PHB in it...

Innistrad plus six domains of dread, tailored to do a full campaign (Innistrad) or a "night" of terror (pick a domain). Everything else (monsters, subclasses, etc) can be shared between them.

Call it Realms of Horror and get it to me tomorrow.

I'd buy that in an instant. Keep the interesting domains of Ravenloft and add a ''unreliable narrator'' theory that Innistrad may just be another domain, or one of those ''island'' plane that gravitates near the core domains of Ravenloft.

Maybe even present Avancine as a possible Darklord: do we have a fallen angel darklord as of now in Ravenloft? I think not.