D&D General Teased Lorwyn-Shadowmoor Supplement Crosses Magic: the Gathering and D&D

WotC has teased an upcoming Magic: The Gathering / Dungeons & Dragons crossover supplement. No info has been given other than a mention of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor and an art piece by Jesper Ejsing.

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Lorwyn-Shadowmoor is a Magic: the Gathering plane. The official MtG page for it describes it as:

Lorwyn is an idyllic world where races of fable thrive in perpetual midsummer. Its dark reflection, Shadowmoor, exists in perpetual gloom, its citizens bitterly transformed and locked in a desperate battle for survival.

Lorwyn is the land where the sun never set. Covered with dense forests, meandering rivers, and gently rolling meadows, it knows no nights or winters. One of the few planes without humans, it's populated by the short-statured kithkin, hot-tempered flamekin, petty-thief boggarts, territorial treefolk, diplomatic merfolk, iconoclastic giants, and mischievous faeries, all living together in harmony.

Also among them: the elves, Lorwyn's most favored and feared race. In a world of unspoiled nature, they consider themselves the paragons of this beauty. Signs of elvish supremacy are widespread, from their gilded forest palaces to their mercilessness toward "lesser" races. Despite the elves' dominion, Lorwyn's people thrive, respecting community and tradition.

The land itself, ancient and verdant, is locked in a perpetual cycle—and every three centuries, that cycle transforms the plane into Shadowmoor.

The mirror-image of Lorwyn, Shadowmoor is a realm of perpetual dusk and gloom. Here, the plane's races, without knowledge of their previous selves, are locked in a life-and-death struggle for survival. Like the plane itself, its denizens are transformed into darker versions of themselves.

The kithkin, once communal and cooperative, are isolated and xenophobic. The helpful, silver-tongued merfolk are now assassins and saboteurs. The boggarts, once mischievous and hedonistic, are vicious and warlike. The blighted treefolk are murderous. Wrathful giants drag around huge pieces of the land.

The transformations of the flamekin and elves are perhaps the most dramatic. Once bright and seeking transcendence, the flamekin are now smoking skeletons seeking revenge. Meanwhile, the vain elves are humbled and heroic in Shadowmoor, protecting every glimmer of beauty and light.

Only one race and one place remain unchanged: the faeries and their home of Glen Elendra. The fae are the fulcrum of this transforming plane—for it was their queen, Oona, who caused it.


This isn't the first such crossover--Ravnica, Strixhaven, and Theros were all Magic: the Gathering settings. Additionally, over the past few years, WotC has put out PDF D&D supplements for the MtG worlds of Amonkhet, Dominaria, Innistrad, Ixalan, Kaladesh, and Zendikar.
 

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I feel emasculated just looking at that picture. Relax, I jest. Mostly.
That’s not an unintended reaction. Lorwyn was incredibly twee, very bright and picturesque, representing the soft, storybook interpretation of its Celtic myth inspirations. They even went as far as to keep “removal” (cards that directly destroy your opponent’s creatures) less common and less cost-efficient than in a typical set, and tried to depict such effects as more pranks and trickery than actual murder. The one exception was the elves who were… uhh… well, fascist, frankly. Obsessed with aesthetic perfection, to the point of having a caste system based on their beauty standards, and murdering other creatures under the guise of mercy-killing, because better to be dead than ugly.

Shadowmoor was the dark mirror of Lorwyn, representing the dark aspects of those same myths and fairy tales, and in an ironic twist, the elves who had been the darkest thing in the intentionally hyper-twee Lorwyn were the least changed aspect of the setting, but became the last defenders of what little beauty still remained in the twisted and ugly world of Shadowmoor. The plane switched between the two versions of itself every thousand years or something like that, and the plot of the tie-in novel revolved around the switch coming several centuries early due to the machinations of the Queen of the Fae, and by the end of the story, the cycle was altered such that the switch coincides with the plane’s day/night cycle. So everything is cutesy and fairy tale esque during the day and spooky scary dark fantasy at night.
 

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They will never get the crossover audience $pending they want.

Mtg and D&D are two very different games with two different player bases. Most mtg players could care less about any mtg lore. They care if they have a winning deck.
This is much less true in the Commander-centric, post-Universes Beyond world than it once was. Competitive Magic players are kind of a dying breed now.
 


That’s not an unintended reaction. Lorwyn was incredibly twee, very bright and picturesque, representing the soft, storybook interpretation of its Celtic myth inspirations. They even went as far as to keep “removal” (cards that directly destroy your opponent’s creatures) less common and less cost-efficient than in a typical set, and tried to depict such effects as more pranks and trickery than actual murder. The one exception was the elves who were… uhh… well, fascist, frankly. Obsessed with aesthetic perfection, to the point of having a caste system based on their beauty standards, and murdering other creatures under the guise of mercy-killing, because better to be dead than ugly.

Shadowmoor was the dark mirror of Lorwyn, representing the dark aspects of those same myths and fairy tales, and in an ironic twist, the elves who had been the darkest thing in the intentionally hyper-twee Lorwyn were the least changed aspect of the setting, but became the last defenders of what little beauty still remained in the twisted and ugly world of Shadowmoor. The plane switched between the two versions of itself every thousand years or something like that, and the plot of the tie-in novel revolved around the switch coming several centuries early due to the machinations of the Queen of the Fae, and by the end of the story, the cycle was altered such that the switch coincides with the plane’s day/night cycle. So everything is cutesy and fairy tale esque during the day and spooky scary dark fantasy at night.
Thanks, that makes sense. Kind of cool and very Jungian ;)
 

Very interesting! So those who speculated that the Ictober Surprise would be Magic related, such as @Henadic Theologian , were correct.

Lorwyn is a very curious choice: it is the most "out there" Setting for Magic, so the dabs gave been waiting nearly 20 years for a return to the card game, and the same reasons that made it off the wall for Magic means thst it will be even weirder for D&D. We will definitely get a playable Plant Species, among other things like Goblinoids.

The Lorwyn card set got pushed from the end of 2025 into 2016, and is the first set after the Magic multivrse cosmological reset.
 
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I’ll be curious to see how they handle species options, since one of the more noteworthy elements of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor’s worldbuilding was the total absence of humans on the plane (apart from 4 of the original 5 planeswalkers). I’m sure that will change in the new set with the addition of Omenpaths, but I hope they don’t use that to handwave D&D species into the setting too…

Aww, who am I kidding, that’s probably exactly what they’ll do… 😩
I would bet against that, actually, especially if this is coming from James Wyatt. Ravnica and Theros resisted the genrefication of their Settings in the D&D books (no Dwarves or Gnomes in Ravnica, no Elves or Tieflings in Theros), while Strixhaven had a strong "anything goes" approach in the card version.

Now, will the metaplot shenanigans in the Magic side change Lorwyn...? Probably, and probably a lot. But we shall see.
 
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Also, it was the first, maybe only, book that added significant new mechanics: piety (aka deity champions) and mythic monsters. Mythic monsters alone make it one of the most influential 5e books IMO.
Satyrs are also a real head-slapper of an ancestry. Satyrs/fauns* are a traditional fantasy ancestry (Mr. Tumnus, anyone?) while still carving out a fun niche that is easy to grasp.

* Yes, they're technically different critters. Don't play with pedantic Ancient Greek scholars.
 


I would bet against that, actually, especially of this is coming from James Wyatt. Ravnica and Theros resisted the gentrification of their Settings in the D&D books (no Dwarves or Gnomes in Ravnica, no Elves or Tieflings in Theros), while Strixhaven had a strong "anything goes" approach in the card version.
I definitely felt the Strixhaven was more of a D&D setting, as it felt like something you could easily put into the D&D multiverse without having to change around much about Arcavios. I feel it's a multiplanar location (like Sigil and the City of Brass) despite being on some world in the Material Plane.
 

I definitely felt the Strixhaven was more of a D&D setting, as it felt like something you could easily put into the D&D multiverse without having to change around much about Arcavios. I feel it's a multiplanar location (like Sigil and the City of Brass) despite being on some world in the Material Plane.
Yeah, making it a sort of gonzo D&D style world in the background of the school feels like a very conscious choice from the Magic designers.
 

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