D&D 5E (2014) How do you run a game in Ravnica?

[Paul Farquhar]

Eberron has a metaplot that's advanced through the Editions, so you're factually wrong again.

It had some none-KB content in 3rd edition, because of the obsession with metaplot at that time, but the timeline was reset to 10 years after the great war, and none of that ever happened. KB himself is keen to point out things in Eberron for which there is no "canon" and the DM should decide for themselves, such as the actual cause of the Mourning.

DMs have to either pick a previous era or deal with whatever revelations the next Ravnica storyline brings about.

No, you do not. As WotC keep pointing out, the version of [setting] at your table is not the version at Bob's table is not the version at Kate's table is not the version in MTG is not the version in the novels. For very good reasons. If you let yourself become a slave to metaplot, then the players can never do anything, can never change anything, in case their actions contradict future metaplot developments.

 

[Cheshire Sphinx]

I recently ran Waterdeep Dragon Heist set on Ravnica - it went rather well, if I do say so myself. I basically said in my own head that the War of the Spark was not going to happen, and that all the inter-guild tension described in the book was over the missing treasure horde in Dragon Heist. I did tone the Rakdos down a bit since I had a player who wanted to play one without being disruptive. The players made characters all from different guilds - which I encouraged, since GGtR says it can support multi-guild parties! It worked fine. Broke down the faction missions and whatnot and reassigned them individually to appropriate guilds rather than trying to match the Dragon Heist factions 1-to-1 to guilds. The biggest problem I ran into, I think, was properly communicating how bizarrely exaggerated the architecture of Ravnica could get. The map in GGtR really doesn't match the art on the cards in the sets when it comes to the scale of buildings - which is unfortunate, because I remember "there's a map of the Tenth District" being a pretty big selling point in the marketing.

 

[Necropolitan]

No, you do not. As WotC keep pointing out, the version of [setting] at your table is not the version at Bob's table is not the version at Kate's table is not the version in MTG is not the version in the novels. For very good reasons. If you let yourself become a slave to metaplot, then the players can never do anything, can never change anything, in case their actions contradict future metaplot developments.

Nah, if you change too much about a setting it stops being that setting.

If you don't want to deal with the Guilds then why are you even playing in Ravnica?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Nah, if you change too much about a setting it stops being that setting.

If you don't want to deal with the Guilds then why are you even playing in Ravnica?

Well, it stops being the author's/designer's/publisher's setting at the time the book was written... but it is still (general) your setting. But of course that is true of every single setting book. As soon as a DM runs a game in any setting, there is no more so-called 'canon' because everything done at the table is not "real" so far as the author/designer/publisher is concerned. Even for settings that have supposed 'metaplot'. So one can run a published setting quite fine and it just evolves into their own as a matter of course.

As far as the Guilds question... I am not familiar with Ravnica so I cannot say for certain... but any setting is not just one thing, they are many things. Some might be written to have more focus that other things, but that doesn't mean one has to subscribe to that focus. So there are quite possibly other things within the world of Ravnica that might be interesting to a DM that do not directly relate to the Guilds. The same way one can run an Eberron game where the Dragonmarked Houses have very little influence over the game, or a Theros campaign that doesn't involve the Gods at all. Sure, it might be ignoring a large flagpole that a particular setting raised their flag on... but that doesn't mean it's impossible nor not interesting to look at the small flags.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I would say the guilds are pretty important to Ravnica. They are the megacorps of Ravnica's pseudo-cyberpunk dystopia.

And, of course, I clearly did not at any time suggest removing them.