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!!

 

[gyor]

I don't think I called anyone lazy. That's an odd thing to say.

In regards to the campaign settings, that in and of itself does NOT bleed money. Paizo for example has tried to say they only have one campaign setting, Golarion. However, if you really look at it, each nation inside Golarion is itself a min-campaign setting in and of itself replicating almost EVERY campaign setting TSR had at it's height (and then some).

The key isn't how many different settings you have, but HOW you market and do your business. TSR would spend a gob of money on a project, and then automatically sell the product for a loss. That's stupid business decisions.

TSR would hedge their bets on current sales of one item and feel it would hold over for another item without any research or reason to expect it would sale similarly...and when it didn't...that's BAD business decisions.

TSR had a ton of bad business decisions and marketing choices that led to it's downfall. It's amazing how many simply disregard a pretty blatantly obvious thing on the face of it and go along with the bandwagon instead by trying to say that too many campaign settings split the fanbase.

Campaign settings CANNOT split a fanbase in and of themselves if you make good business decisions. If you do research and you see that something is going to cost more money than it is going to make...you stop producing it. You simply stop making it. You focus on what sells and expand your market in that area. You do NOT continue to pour money into money losing propositions.

They continued to do that and lost money. Furthermore they expected certain books to sell just as well as other bestsellers with no backing in research or anything else to indicate that this would happen. When returns occurred and rents came due...this came crashing to a sudden and realistic ending of BAD decision making in regards to business and financial squandering.

I think he was referring to me, I called it lazy that they all of sudden changed their minds and decided that Ravnica is in a separate multiverse then DnD multiverse, because it posed a few creative challenges.

I can think of dozens of ways to resolve the issue.

but I do agree the idea of Setting bloat is bogus, there is no evidence it's a real thing, because TSR was under going all kinds of issues at the time like you said, and the truth is if one includes 3rd party settings, 5e should already be suffering from setting bloat if that was an actual thing.

 

[gyor]

If they did that, most Greyhawk fans would be pissed. The other settings don't need to keep to the Forgotten Realms ludicrous time advancements.

It's all one multiverse, how do they explain why one world FR interacts with doesn't seem to change, but another does?

Eberron and Athas' isolation gets them out of this and Mystara, Birthright, and few other settings have not had any major interactions with FR, but Planescape, Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Nentir Vale and Greyhawk all have. Nentir Vale already is in sync kind of as it's interaction with FR was after the beginning of 4e.

 

[Irennan]

It's all one multiverse, how do they explain why one world FR interacts with doesn't seem to change, but another does?

By not adding any significant change to GH? It's fiction, they decide whether a world changes or not.

 

[gyor]

By not adding any significant change to GH? It's fiction, they decide whether a world changes or not.

Then it makes no sense if it's interacting over time with FR which changes, but Greyhawk doesn't. I don't see it as a problem as long as the changes aren't radical, I'm not suggesting they blow up Greyhawk like they did FR in 4e, but an acknowledgement that passage of time does occur in Oearth.

And for Planescape it's actually a bonus because it allows wotc to fix the aftermath of the Faction War, like the Sundering did for FR.

So Nentir Vale is largely in synic, a leap forward helps them fix some stuff in Planescape, Dragonlance is largely a living setting already, just line things up properly, that leaves Greyhawk, which FR has half eaten already, key Greyhawk NPCs already appear in FR, and I think Greyhawk links to the FR nation of Evermeet now too.

 

[Irennan]

Then it makes no sense if it's interacting over time with FR which changes, but Greyhawk doesn't. I don't see it as a problem as long as the changes aren't radical, I'm not suggesting they blow up Greyhawk like they did FR in 4e, but an acknowledgement that passage of time does occur in Oearth.

The narrative of D&D is a joke now, nothing in the current canon really makes sense. They can just pull out a random mac guffing and justify GH remaining basically the same even after a century. Or they won't even bother with that and just state that it hasn't changed.

 

[Azzy]

It's all one multiverse, how do they explain why one world FR interacts with doesn't seem to change, but another does?

Eberron and Athas' isolation gets them out of this and Mystara, Birthright, and few other settings have not had any major interactions with FR, but Planescape, Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Nentir Vale and Greyhawk all have. Nentir Vale already is in sync kind of as it's interaction with FR was after the beginning of 4e.

Let the DM explain it if they're the rare breed that has campaigns that float between different settings enough to make this an issue. Say the Spellplague and/or Sundering caused a temporal distortion between Forgotten Realms' material plane and the other material planes or something. No need to burden other settings just because Forgotten Realms has to advance their timeline every time someone sneezes.

 

[Demetrios1453]

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.

Well, the book itself encourages that cross pollination. It specifically says in both the centaur and minotaur entries that they could be used for centaurs and minotaurs of other settings, and the Order Domain lists a large number of deities (both generic and those specific to various settings) that would be suitable for such clerics.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I don't think I called anyone lazy. That's an odd thing to say.

In regards to the campaign settings, that in and of itself does NOT bleed money. Paizo for example has tried to say they only have one campaign setting, Golarion. However, if you really look at it, each nation inside Golarion is itself a min-campaign setting in and of itself replicating almost EVERY campaign setting TSR had at it's height (and then some).

The key isn't how many different settings you have, but HOW you market and do your business. TSR would spend a gob of money on a project, and then automatically sell the product for a loss. That's stupid business decisions.

TSR would hedge their bets on current sales of one item and feel it would hold over for another item without any research or reason to expect it would sale similarly...and when it didn't...that's BAD business decisions.

TSR had a ton of bad business decisions and marketing choices that led to it's downfall. It's amazing how many simply disregard a pretty blatantly obvious thing on the face of it and go along with the bandwagon instead by trying to say that too many campaign settings split the fanbase.

Campaign settings CANNOT split a fanbase in and of themselves if you make good business decisions. If you do research and you see that something is going to cost more money than it is going to make...you stop producing it. You simply stop making it. You focus on what sells and expand your market in that area. You do NOT continue to pour money into money losing propositions.

They continued to do that and lost money. Furthermore they expected certain books to sell just as well as other bestsellers with no backing in research or anything else to indicate that this would happen. When returns occurred and rents came due...this came crashing to a sudden and realistic ending of BAD decision making in regards to business and financial squandering.

You didn't. Gynor did, and it's an attack I commonly see levelled at game developers and publishers that is never valid.

As for the rest, it pretty obvious that even if you treat the various areas of Golarion as separate campaign settings (a claim I would consider dubious at best) it is pretty easy to travel from one to the other - which is what WotC is trying to maintain by making it possible to travel between Ravnica, Eberron and the Forgotten Realms.

As for your assentation that campaign setting bloat was not a major cause of TSR's collapse, that's irrelevant. All that matters is that WotC/Hasbro believe it to be the case.

 

[Parmandur]

One reason to publish a Greyhawk setting is that it is so interconnected to FR that it makes sense for Greyhawk to undergo a time jump too. That actually makes sense for Dragonlance and Planescape and Spelljammer as well actually.

Mearls has talked about the possibility of a Greyhawk book, and his pitch is actually a timeline revootnto the original boxed set date.

Don't hold your breath waiting for some sort of unified timeline.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's pretty much already established that time passes differently in different planes anyway.