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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Yes because Theros Merfolk have legs, always did, but Lorwyn Merfolk have tails.
Lorwyn was the last Magic setting to feature tailed merfolk. Players really liked merfolk and didn’t respond well to the many attempts to replace them as the default blue-aligned species, so Lorwyn brought them back. And it was such a worldbuilding constraint they immediately decided to just make merfolk with finned legs the standard and never looked back.
 

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Double weird since, frankly, MtG is abstract enough that I don't think the card game lore really needs to worry about that compatability the same way that a D&D party does?
It doesn’t really matter for gameplay purposes - though in the past they have actually tried to express aquatic creatures’ waterbound status through game mechanics like the now-defunct Islandhome keyword (can’t attack if your opponent doesn’t control any islands, and dies if you don’t control any islands). But such attempts proved to produce really unfun gameplay patterns, so they abandoned them. More importantly though, such limitations do matter for the story. If merfolk are the iconic blue-aligned humanoids, people are going to expect the storyline to feature merfolk characters sometimes, and those characters being unable to go far from water is a pretty significant writing constraint.
 

It doesn’t really matter for gameplay purposes - though in the past they have actually tried to express aquatic creatures’ waterbound status through game mechanics like the now-defunct Islandhome keyword (can’t attack if your opponent doesn’t control any islands, and dies if you don’t control any islands). But such attempts proved to produce really unfun gameplay patterns, so they abandoned them. More importantly though, such limitations do matter for the story. If merfolk are the iconic blue-aligned humanoids, people are going to expect the storyline to feature merfolk characters sometimes, and those characters being unable to go far from water is a pretty significant writing constraint.

So what solution do you think the up coming D&D setting book & the MtG set will come up with for Lorwyn merfolk?

And remember there are at least two different kinds of Lorwyn/Shadowmoore Merfolk, Merrows & Selkies, both very different from each other, Selkies are mostly humaniod looking from the waist up, but Seals from the waist down, so they are a mammalian form of Merfolk vs the part fish Merfolk.
 

So what solution do you think the up coming D&D setting book & the MtG set will come up with for Lorwyn merfolk?

And remember there are at least two different kinds of Lorwyn/Shadowmoore Merfolk, Merrows & Selkies, both very different from each other, Selkies are mostly humaniod looking from the waist up, but Seals from the waist down, so they are a mammalian form of Merfolk vs the part fish Merfolk.
Either Merfolk will be unplayable, as in standard D&D, or they will be brought into like with more recent MtG walking Merfolk, I reckon. And the reason? Because Magic.
 

I think alot of Lorwyn's Elementals would have other creature types if it'd been made today, because alot of them, besides stuff like Flamekin which fit Elementals in both D&D & MtG terms, aren't very Elementals at all, they have more in common with Glimmers & Nightmares.

In D&D terms I'd make them a mix of Fiends, Fey, Celestials, Monstrosities, Aberrations, only stuff like Flamekin would have Elemental as their D&D creature type.

Also I'd assumed each of the Lorwyn Demigods was an individual creature, but they aren't they are 10 different kinds of creature that shares a creature type, because none of them are Legandary creatures. There creature type is Spirit Avatar, which could be interrupted as Celestials, Undead, Fiends, or Fey in D&D terms, but I lean towards Celestials & Fiends personally, although they could decide to just use Empyreans to denote these Demigods.
 
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I think alot of Lorwyn's Elementals would have other creature types if it'd been made today, because alot of them, besides stuff like Flamekin which fit Elementals in both D&D & MtG terms, aren't very Elementals at all, they have more in common with Glimmers & Nightmares.

In D&D terms I'd make them a mix of Fiends, Fey, Celestials, Monstrosities, Aberrations, only stuff like Flamekin would have Elemental as their D&D creature type.
Yeah, looking at some of those "Elementals" I don't think they would fit in D&D Elemental Monster Type terms: still some pretty wild and interesting stuff.
 

So what solution do you think the up coming D&D setting book & the MtG set will come up with for Lorwyn merfolk?
Well, there’s a good chance they just soft-retcon Lorwyn’s merfolk by giving them legs and saying “a wizard did it” since legs are the standard in MTG now anyway. But, assuming they do decide to keep the tails, I figure they’ll just use the same solution original Lorwyn did, and say the wanderwine extends basically everywhere, and all Lorwyn merfolk have an innate magical ability to shape new canals when they need to (in D&D terms, probably something like at-will use of the “redirect flow” function of control water).
And remember there are at least two different kinds of Lorwyn/Shadowmoore Merfolk, Merrows & Selkies, both very different from each other, Selkies are mostly humaniod looking from the waist up, but Seals from the waist down, so they are a mammalian form of Merfolk vs the part fish Merfolk.
Well, Shadowmoor’s merfolk are very literally Lorwyn’s merfolk. They transform when the plane does - every thousand years initially, and every night after the events of the novel. I suspect this would be handled by a universal day/night transformation mechanic for all characters and NPCs native to Lorwyn/Shadowmoor. Knowing 5e, having the merrow fish-type tail or the selkie mammalian tail will just be an aesthetic choice with no mechanics tied to it.

Though, now that you mention it, with some of the Shadowmoor merfolk being called selkies… Celtic selkie myth has the Selkie become a full-on leg-sporting human when she removes her seal skin… that does seem like a decent “wizard” to perform the handwavium of giving the merfolk legs. Maybe Selkies could always do that, and after the plane’s cycles were restored the Merrow gained the same ability.
 
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I think alot of Lorwyn's Elementals would have other creature types if it'd been made today, because alot of them, besides stuff like Flamekin which fit Elementals in both D&D & MtG terms, aren't very Elementals at all, they have more in common with Glimmers & Nightmares.

In D&D terms I'd make them a mix of Fiends, Fey, Celestials, Monstrosities, Aberrations, only stuff like Flamekin would have Elemental as their D&D creature type.

Also I'd assumed each of the Lorwyn Demigods was an individual creature, but they aren't they are 10 different kinds of creature that shares a creature type, because none of them are Legandary creatures. There creature type is Spirit Avatar, which could be interrupted as Celestials, Undead, Fiends, or Fey in D&D terms, but I lean towards Celestials & Fiends personally, although they could decide to just use Empyreans to denote these Demigods.
Apart from flamekin, Lorwyn’s elementals embody concepts and emotions rather than the classic four elements. It’s like the whole joke of an “elemental of surprise” but played straight. They often look like amalgams of animal parts, but they’re not fully corporeal. They’re more like spirits than anything, and I would think in D&D’s creature types they’d probably be best represented as fey, or maybe celestials.
 

Only on page 1 of this thread, but prior to that they also did the Planeshift series. These are MtG settings converted for D&D. Proof of concept...if you will.

These are direct links to them...from Wizard's own site.

Zendikar

Innistrad

Kaladesh

Amonkhet

Ixalan

I think there was one more (so 6 total) but the last one evades my memory right now (being old does that).

Edit: Ah...got it. Last one

Dominaria
Thanks for the links, much appreciated.
 

Apart from flamekin, Lorwyn’s elementals embody concepts and emotions rather than the classic four elements. It’s like the whole joke of an “elemental of surprise” but played straight. They often look like amalgams of animal parts, but they’re not fully corporeal. They’re more like spirits than anything, and I would think in D&D’s creature types they’d probably be best represented as fey, or maybe celestials.

I think in later sets, like Core sets, they introduce Leafkin, Living Lightening (Lighteningkin), Cloudkin, so I don't think it'll just be Flamekin anymore.

But yeah I agree, it doesn't mean really fit Elementals in MtG, even less in D&D.

Leafkin might be Elementals or they might end up plants.
 

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