First Impressions – Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica

A segment of the Dungeons & Dragons' fan base have been clamoring for setting releases and while Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica won't appease those who want a 5^th Edition update of an older setting like Greyhawk, Planescape or Spelljammer, it is a fresh setting that Wizards of the Coast clearly hopes will bring the Magic the Gathering crowd to D&D.

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So what's my first impression of Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica? Fresh and familiar at the same time. Now don't take that as an insult MtG players. This is a first impression article. A more nuanced review will follow after I have read the entire book. This is based on an overall skim of the book and reading of selected passages.

For any veteran D&D player, Ravnica is new but has enough overlap with classic D&D that it won't be a shock to the system. For example, races include humans, elves, goblins, minotaurs and centaurs along with new-to-D&D races Vedalken and Simic Hybrid. Charts break down which classes work best with the 10 guilds, though you can be guildless.

Ravnica is a fantasy world with the magical technology flavor of Eberron. That's not to say it's derivitive of Eberron. Both settings offer modern conveniences through magic but get there and express them in different ways.

The introduction and first three chapters focus, understandably, on Ravnica as a setting and how to create a character and it gives you a lot of meat with which to work. Chapter 4 is about creating adventures, with some broad adventure ideas at the start of the chapter and then each guild section has more adventure hooks, specific to that group. I like the “Cross Purposes” charts and “Complications” for ways to make a villain affect the players without doing a blanket “you have to stop X” approach. It feels more organic. Having done similar things in my own home games for D&D and other RPGs, it can work really well.

Guild intrigue is, of course, a part of the adventure seeds. With 10 guilds and Ravnica's backstory, including the broken Guildpact and how things function now that it's been restored, intrigue really should be a key story driver in Ravnica adventures.

One odd note for those who might buy Ravnica on D&D Beyond is that you really want to tap the “View Welcome” button on the upper right instead of diving directly into chapter 1 and the rest of the leftside sidebar links. “View Welcome” actually takes you to the book's Introduction, which has a LOT of useful, downright essential, material for anyone new to Ravnica and even MtG players wanted to learn how the popular setting has been adapted to D&D. It covers everything from the history of Ravnica, both in-game and as part of MtG, to its currency and calendar.

Obviously readers of the physical book will naturally go to this essential chapter and all of the D&D Beyond editions of the hardcover books have the “View Welcome” button that separates the introduction from the chapters, but it's an odd layout issue. I handed my tablet to a friend who has played both MtG and D&D for years but never used D&D Beyond, and he was confused by the lack of introduction until I pointed out the “View Welcome” button.

I like the precinct by precinct breakdown in Chapter 3. The people and rumors tables in each section are a nice way of adding flavor, misdirects and possible adventure hooks as your players wander the city of Ravnica.

The art is very good and provides the context for this new (to D&D) world. It as much as anything helps to set a different tone than Forgotten Realms' adventures.

Really, I'm going to pay Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica the highest compliment I can in a first impressions article – that I can't wait to dive in and read the entire book.

This article was contributed by Beth Rimmels (brimmels) as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. If you enjoy the daily news and articles from EN World, please consider contributing to our Patreon!!

 

[Parmandur]

The Themes for Ravnica is straight up urban issues and political intrigue taken to the greatest extreme. No other setting has a planet wide government like Ravnica and the closest it comes to wilds is urban Parks and urban decay. It's about dealing with the global institutions that run the world. To explore all the themes ask yourself what sort of issues do cities face (not just environmental ones, but economic, social, spiritual, entertainment, and more), then multiple that by a whole planet.

And it's important to note that because of it's extreme Magi tech and urbanization and massive population, it's more like the modern real world in issues and themes and character then any other D&D setting, so you can take stories from the news and use them in the game, adjusted for setting, which is a lot harder to do in say Icewind Dale in FR.

I think it is the most new thing in D&D in possibly decades.

 

[Remathilis]

Because FR has it beat when it comes to details. The only fantasy/Sc-Fi setting that comes close to FR in detail is likely Star Trek and maybe Golarond, which is basically Pathfinder's Forgotten Realms, clearly inspired and shaped by FR, to the point of using Ed Greenwood for some of it.

You have never read Kingdom's of Kalamar. They released an Atlas for their setting in 2002 that detailed, among other things, local cuisine, wind patterns, trade routes, latitude and longitude coordinates for every town, village, and hamlet, and even dialects and sub-dialects spoken. It almost reaches real-world encyclopedia levels of detail. You can read the review of it here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?118275-Kingdoms-of-Kalamar-Atlas

Kalamar's selling point was a logical, well-defined and internally consistent setting with a level of detail that rivals real-world social science textbooks. If such levels of detail were desirable in RPGs, I think more settings would have adopted Kalamar's through design. As it stands, its the oft-forgotten setting that, despite being published with the D&D name on it, is barely recognized or remembered to the majority of the fandom. Instead, settings like the '83 Greyhawk box, the Gazeteers of the Known World, Nentir Vale, and the like are discussed for their open-spaces and room for the DM to design as he sees fit.

While not for everyone, I think Ravnica is closer to THAT than some hyper-detailed setting.

 

[cbwjm]

Something interesting from Mike Mearls happy fun hour. The DnD team is treating the Ravnica multiverse and the DnD multiverse as separate multiverses.

 

[Azzy]

Golarond, which is basically Pathfinder's Forgotten Realms, clearly inspired and shaped by FR, to the point of using Ed Greenwood for some of it.

Actually, many of the creators of Golarion are Greyhawk fans that did a lot of work in Greyhawk through Dragon and Dungeon magazines before WotC chose not to renew Paizo's licence. Where Paizo has taken their setting since, I don't know, but Greyhawk was very influential to its creation and the early AP set in it.

 

[Parmandur]

Something interesting from Mike Mearls happy fun hour. The DnD team is treating the Ravnica multiverse and the DnD multiverse as separate multiverses.

Which episode was this?

 

[cbwjm]

Which episode was this?

I believe it was the 4th to last episode (can't remember the date). Someone asked about how Ravnica worked with the rest of the DnD multiverse and he mentioned they were treating them as separate. I believe one example he gave for why was it meant they didn't have to explain how demons worked in Ravnica and how they work in the rest of the DnD multiverse.

 

[gyor]

Something interesting from Mike Mearls happy fun hour. The DnD team is treating the Ravnica multiverse and the DnD multiverse as separate multiverses.

That is not what they were saying at first, so now I feel hoodwinked. I would not have bought the product if I had known it wasn't going to be apart of D&D multiverse. Actually that doesn't even make sense given that parts of it refer to D&D gods for example like Bane and Tyr for example, in the Order Domain.

All because because they want to be creatively lazy about how they connect the setting with the rest of D&D.

 

[Azzy]

That is not what they were saying at first, so now I feel hoodwinked. I would not have bought the product if I had known it wasn't going to be apart of D&D multiverse.

See, with the power of DM magic you can make Ravinaca part of the D&D multiverse regardless of what some game designer says in some video. DM magic is THAT powerful.

Actually that doesn't even make sense given that parts of it refer to D&D gods for example like Bane and Tyr for example, in the Order Domain.

Sure, like they do is all the cleric domains. Probably because they expect that there will be those that use the subclass outside of the setting.

All because because they want to be creatively lazy about how they connect the setting with the rest of D&D.

That and/or they didn't want to peturb any MtG ultra-zealots more than they already have.

 

[cbwjm]

That is not what they were saying at first, so now I feel hoodwinked. I would not have bought the product if I had known it wasn't going to be apart of D&D multiverse. Actually that doesn't even make sense given that parts of it refer to D&D gods for example like Bane and Tyr for example, in the Order Domain.

All because because they want to be creatively lazy about how they connect the setting with the rest of D&D.

I'm not sure what I thought they were doing at first. I know they were making the setting so that it fit DnD mechanics rather than trying to fit MtG mechanics into DnD. I don't think it will stop people cross pollinating and bringing Ravnica options into an FR game, subclasses are probably the easiest to bring across as well as some race options. Certainly it won't stop me using ideas in whichever setting I use or even possibly planehopping to Ravnica.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

All because because they want to be creatively lazy about how they connect the setting with the rest of D&D.

It's not laziness, it's fear of splitting the fan base. A very justified fear, given that it sunk D&D in the 1980s.

They don't want to create a situation where a consumer says "my game is Ravnica, so I can't buy Dungeon of the Mad Mage because it is FR". So they connect them (whist making it clear {as does the Eberron book} that the DM is free to use alternative cosmologies if the wish to).

I will say that the Eberron book does describe the alternative cosmology in reasonable detail, whist stating that the DM is free to use the Great Wheel or World Tree cosmology instead. The Ravnica book doesn't go into it, probably because they would have to do the whole of MtG rather than just one setting, which would be far to much content for a single book. It is perhaps reasonable for them to assume that a MtG fan would know that stuff anyway, whilst anyone else wouldn't care and would be happy to stick with the great wheel.