There Was a Magic: The Gathering RPG Being Developed at WotC And You Can Bid On The Draft For Charity

Johnathan Tweet--who you will know from Ars Magica, D&D 3E, and 13th Age--worked on a Magic: The Gathering roleplaying game while at Wizards of the Coast back in 1996. Now he’s giving away the draft as a fundraiser.

Here's a draft manuscript of the Magic: The Gathering roleplaying game from 1996, and I've giving it away as a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood, with permission from the authors. Not sure how much to ask for. Vanishingly rare. $1,872 raised so far.

It seems that in order to bid you need to contact Tweet directly via the BlueSky platform.

It is its own game, not like anything else, and eventually I'll ship it off to the fan who offers the most for it as a donation to Planned Parenthood. I'm going to let word spread for a while. You can DM me.

 

[Juomari Veren]

The image shows that it's copyright Wizards of the Coast, so it couldn't legally be shared. Unfortunately.

It'd be equally unfortunate if it wound up shared in a way other than legally, which is as likely as that not happening. And fortunately for us, it's perfectly okay to pontificate on the possibility of both things happening!

 

[TheHand]

Wow that’s very cool!

Many, many years ago some friends and I threw together a very primitive MtG rpg together as a lark. It was similar to Ars Magicka in that you had one mage and 1 retainer, and to cast spells you played a very accelerated version of the card game.

I’m sure their version was a thousand times better!

 

[Youshang]

I would love to see a full system for it or more sourcebooks for it's diverse settings.

 

[Staffan]

I remember when WotC bought out TSR, a lot of fans were against the idea of making a Magic RPG for D&D. I was shocked that it wasn't developed. Seemed like a natural mash-up to me. Then to realize it would be somewhere around two decades later before we got the Plane Shift PDFs and Ravnica. I am so glad we have them now. New campaign settings are awesome.

I believe Ryan Dancey at one point said that the reason there was no Magic RPG was that Wizards already had the best-selling TCG and the best-selling RPG, and that trying to make a Magic RPG would draw attention away from D&D which would be bad. I think that was also the reason they shelved Alternity – my understanding is that the sales were fine, but Wizards weren't happy with something selling "fine" taking resources away that could be spent on D&D.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Version 4.1? Guess it went through several revisions. Wonder how long it was under development?

Knowing that the people who made MtG were undoubtedly gamers already, I'm guessing they were kicking this around since before the card game hit store shelves.

 

[Alzrius]

Knowing that the people who made MtG were undoubtedly gamers already, I'm guessing they were kicking this around since before the card game hit store shelves.

It wasn't as though WotC had ignored the TTRPG market before they bought TSR; they put out The Primal Order, along with several supplements for it, before M:tG was ever released.

 

[Staffan]

It wasn't as though WotC had ignored the TTRPG market before they bought TSR; they put out The Primal Order, along with several supplements for it, before M:tG was ever released.

Wizards started with The Primal Order, and fairly quickly moved into board and card games (there's an anecdote about how Richard Garfield tried selling Peter Adkison on RoboRally originally, to which Adkison responded "That looks amazing but it's way too much stuff for a company our size. Got anything smaller, like a card game?"). But once they were flush with Magic money, they expanded into RPGs, both via acquisitions (e.g. Talislanta and Ars Magica) and homegrown (e.g. Everway). But pretty soon their accountants (and possibly shareholders) asked them why they were spending a lot of money on RPGs with negligible RoI instead of the money-printing machine that is Magic, and since they didn't really have a good answer they got out of the RPG business. They were pretty good about finding new homes for their RPGs though – many companies would just have dropped them, but Wizards made sure most of their games were sold off to companies that would keep making them.

So at that point, Wizards foreswore the RPG business, as there was not enough money in it unless you were publishing AD&D or something like that. And, well...

 

[Omega Probe]

If I buy it can I freely share it, or am I prohibited from posting copies online because its copyrighted?

You obviously need permission from the copyright holder in order to distribute anything that's under copyright, Jonathan Tweet had to ask permission to auction the manuscript. That said, it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that the copyright holders might gran permission for something like that, under certain restrictions to protect their copyright.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

Legally? No.
Copyright still applies.

That was my initial thought. But I've been surprised by the language used my Jonathan Tweet.
Example:

https://bsky.app/profile/jonathantweet.bsky.social%2Fpost%2F3mgpzuryrrc2m

He has several posts on Bluesky that kinda suggest that it could be shared?

 

[Deset Gled]

For reference, here's the 2013 thread from Ryan Dancey with his insights about the MtG/D&D crossover:

Thread 'Ryan Dancey: This is why there was no M:tG setting for D&D'

Nov 4, 2013

Hi! I was the brand manager for Dungeons & Dragons and the VP of Tabletop RPGs at Wizards of the Coast from 1998 to 2000. I can answer this question.

There were plans to do a Magic RPG and several iterations of such a game were developed at various times. After Wizards of the Coast bought TSR, there were discussions about making a Magic campaign setting for D&D.

After the release of 3rd edition, we had planned to do a Monstrous Compendium for Magic monsters which would have been a tentative cross-over product to see what the interest level was for such a book.

In the end, the...

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