If so... meh?
So I looked back at what Nathan Stewart said on comicbook.com ...
"Next month we're going to talk about a couple of different settings that people can start playing as early as this year," Stewart said.
These new publications won't be full-blown storylines, but rather an introduction to different worlds set inside the D&D multiverse. t."
Stewart declined to say which campaign settings D&D would be revisiting this year, but he did note that the books would please "hardcore fans" of the franchise.
Dungeons & Dragons plans to start talking about the new product as early as next month. "We have two surprises that I think hardcore D&D fans are really going to love coming this summer," Stewart said. "And then I think we got one surprise that's going to release later this year that we've not told anyone about. We're going to announce it in July."
Nathan seems to be implying there are two surprises for "hardcore D&D fans" (and believe me, Ravnica isn't going to please hardcore fans of D&D's franchise the way Stewart is talking) and the last sentence implies as third surprise coming "this year" which sounds like Ravnica to me. In addition, Stewart was the one who tweeted the dice-pic with the Eberron Campaign Setting cover in the background. Top it off with the fact that July's Unearthed Arcana was pushed back to 7/23 (same as the announcement) and I wager that tomorrow, we get an announcement of three settings: Eberron (with a UA of races and other mechanics to playtest until the proper book in 2019 comes out), Ravnica (the third mystery product Stewart mentioned and the fourth D&D book also hinted at) and a third product also setting-related (either Planescape, Spelljammer, another prime setting, or a planar-themed module).
I don't get this interpretation at all.
Re-read the Nathan Stewart quotes that Remathilis posted. Stewart clearly says that there will be two settings that will please hardcore fans--so, "classics"--and a surprise later this year.
That's three settings that WotC is going to support in some form or fashion.
Now what does that mean? That's what we don't know. All we know is we're getting a Ravnica book and something for two (probably classic) settings that will (allegedly) please hardcore fans. That something could be anything from:
*Opened up to DM's Guild
*3PP licensing
*PDF primers/gazetteers
*Unearthed Arcana articles
*Actual hardcover books
Or probably some combination of the above.
Do you have any idea how many Magic players there are, or how much money they are demonstrably willing to spend on fantasy gaming product?People actually care for MtG in D&D enough for WotC to spend their precious, extremely limited hardcover lineup space for it? Since when has this been a thing?
If I were a betting man, I would put down quite a lot of money that this is not secretly Sigil. Putting up a Ravnica setting as a placeholder for a Sigil setting would be like Disney announcing a new Star Wars movie as a placeholder for a new Black Hole movie.I agree with an earlier poster. It's a placeholder for a "Sigil: City of Doors" campaign, bringing Planescape back to D&D.
I am really interested to see if/how they do a robust adaptation of MtG's five-color system to D&D. Because that could be a lot of work. But if they don't do it, like they didn't for the little PDFs they've been doing, would it really be the same setting as in MtG?
(And thinking pessimistically, Ravnica might not be the best setting to introduce the five colors to D&D, because a city-plane has very... idiosyncratic definitions of "plains", "islands", "swamps", "mountains", and "forests".)
Or maybe this will just cause Jace the magical white saviour of the universe to contaminate D&D as well.
I agree - presumably any other setting book would be next year, hopefully in the first half (which during that span this year there was a dearth of books). Would it being released early next year be that much of a disappointment? I know I have enough to spend on D&D this year, even without this book...There's no way they're doing a fifth hardcover this year, let alone three books in a single month. Anything else is going to be small PDFs, likely adventures, or a half-tested Unearthed Arcana.
On paper, nothing.And the problem with getting MTG players into D&D, and D&D players into MTG is...what exactly?