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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RPG settings with metaplots can be problematic as we learned in the 90s . . . but Magic settings are different, as each new Magic release strives to be different from what came before in many ways.
Yeah, Magic metaplot faces basically zero of the problems of RPG metaplot: blowing up a world entirely has zero impact on gameplay.
 

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OK, so looking further into this, the Tenth District is about 70 square miles (but also mega stacked, so bigger in terms of real estate), and is one of ten historical districts from the "Old City" before the city took over the entire planet which is actually about the size of our Moon. That means the 10th District which gets some detail represents about 0.000005% of the whole city itself. Lots of room for DM creativity.

Thank you for that. I hadn't read the novels, but read most of the online fiction. I really dug around trying to find that. Anyway, that campaign we played as episodic, with everyone in the group running adventures, each having several characters, and everyone world-building as they went.
 

Phyrexians are very easy to be added to every homemade setting

Now I am thinking about adding a second great aurora linked to moon phases. Then most of no-sentient beasts and some humanoids become theriantropes.
 



Lorwyn is sort of like the Feywild and Shadowmoor is sort of like the Shadowfell.

Eldraine leans even more heavily into Feywild while Innistrad leans even more heavily towards Ravenloft/Shadowfell.

The cool bits about Lorwyn-Shadowmoor is that it combines the two into one alternating plane, it lacks humans, the denizens (save faeries) lack memory of their lives in the other version of the plane when there's a shift, and it leans more heavily on Celtic mythological tropes than on Eldraine's Camelot + Grimms Fairytales or Innistrad's Gothic/Hammer/Universal/Eldritch Horror. It's almost like what you'd get if you removed the Material Plane entirely and just had the Feywild and Shadowfell as mirror planes of each other!
 

Lorwyn is sort of like the Feywild and Shadowmoor is sort of like the Shadowfell.

Eldraine leans even more heavily into Feywild while Innistrad leans even more heavily towards Ravenloft/Shadowfell.

The cool bits about Lorwyn-Shadowmoor is that it combines the two into one alternating plane, it lacks humans, the denizens (save faeries) lack memory of their lives in the other version of the plane when there's a shift, and it leans more heavily on Celtic mythological tropes than on Eldraine's Camelot + Grimms Fairytales or Innistrad's Gothic/Hammer/Universal/Eldritch Horror.
Yeah, Lorwyn leans heavily on actual pre-19th century Fey folklore and such vibes, whereas Eldraine is like what Innistrahd did for Gothic Horror but applied to 19th Romanticism about chinvalric Knights and reconstructed didactic "fairy tales". The former is about vivesz the latter about tropes as game mechanics.

Still think Eldraine D&D would have been pretty dope, NGL.
 

Yeah, Lorwyn leans heavily on actual pre-19th century Fey folklore and such vibes, whereas Eldraine is like what Innistrahd did for Gothic Horror but applied to 19th Romanticism about chinvalric Knights and reconstructed didactic "fairy tales". The former is about vivesz the latter about tropes as game mechanics.

Still think Eldraine D&D would have been pretty dope, NGL.
Agreed. The little DDB supplement was nice but I'd have liked at least something like the Planeshift articles. An Artbook like what we got for each block of 2015-2019's Gatewatch Saga (save Ravnica due to Guildmaster's Guide) would be lovely too.

The other thing I like about Lorwyn-Shadowmoor is that it went hard on D&D tropes before that became Zendikar's shtick for MtG to imitate D&D.

So we got Lorwyn and Shadowmoor card sets (the two large expansions) focused on Kindred typal matters (equivalent to D&D Species), while Morningtide and Eventide card sets (the two small expansions) focused on Class typal matters (i.e., D&D classes or subclasses). This is in regards to the draft archetypes. It didn't work quite as well as they hoped given the conflicting matters – it probably would have done better to have each mini block focus on a single typal matters and not split their focus, but it was a fun way to explore the different tribes and adventuring careers of the peoples of Lorwyn and then see how those tribes and jobs manifested in Shadowmoor later.
 

Agreed. The little DDB supplement was nice but I'd have liked at least something like the Planeshift articles. An Artbook like what we got for each block of 2015-2019's Gatewatch Saga (save Ravnica due to Guildmaster's Guide) would be lovely too.

The other thing I like about Lorwyn-Shadowmoor is that it went hard on D&D tropes before that became Zendikar's shtick for D&D. So we got Lorwyn and Shadowmoor card sets (the two large expansions) focused on Kindred typal matters (equivalent to D&D Species), while Morningtide and Eventide card sets (the two small expansions) focused on Class typal matters (i.e., D&D classes or subclasses). This is in regards to the draft archetypes. It didn't work quite as well as they hoped given the conflicting matters – it probably would have done better to have each mini block focus on a single typal matters and not split their focus, but it was a fun way to explore the different tribes and adventuring careers of the peoples of Lorwyn and then see how those tribes and jobs manifested in Shadowmoor later.
Yeah, this is going to be sort of a riot of difand wild stuff for D&D...but at the same time, Lorwyn D&D just makes a lot of sense in a heavy metal Jim Henson's Dark Cryatal sort of way.

I sort of feel that the Golden Age of Msgic Lore was when James Wyatt was working on their world building team...but I just kind of like Wyatt's work, I guess?
 

Still think Eldraine D&D would have been pretty dope, NGL.
Was in the middle of looking up what Wldraije meant when I saw you updated your post. Google at least asked me "did you mean Eldraine?" Ecosia thought I meant Eldridge. Honestly, that spelling made me think more of Eldrazi than anything.
 

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