Ravnica: Is This The New D&D Setting? [UPDATED & CONFIRMED!]

If so... meh?

 

[vecna00]

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 can get behind this.

 

[Jester David]

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.

They've also referenced Curse of Strahd as the model.
So at most I'm expecting a 30-page PDF that is mostly an introductory adventure with very limited new crunch, followed by opening up the DMsGuild and letting the fans do it. At very likely just the latter with the Guild and fans doing the work.
Which is okay, but hasn't exactly resulted in a whole lot of support for the setting or really introduced the setting to new fans as the vast, vast majority of D&D players don't visit the Guild.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

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?

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?

I agree with an earlier poster. It's a placeholder for a "Sigil: City of Doors" campaign, bringing Planescape back to D&D.

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.

 

[Sunseeker]

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".)

Yeah but you're not really using "plains" to cast spells. Plains just represent sources from which white mana is often found. Ravnica associates mana more closely to ideals, life and duty are white, death and corruption are black, aggression and violence are red, growth and nature are green, science and knowledge are blue. Which is probably closer to how D&D spells have been tagged with [Fire], [Chaos], [Evil] and so forth in the past.

Disconnecting "mana" from "lands" is probably a better move towards implementing a mana-points-based system for D&D spellcasting.

 

[SkidAce]

BLUF (for me)

I like it. I liked the planeshift articles.

I played D&D from the beginning, and I've played MtG from the beginning. Heck, I even own the Primal Order, a d&d compatible supplement from WotC from BEFORE MtG.


---------------------

I will be spending tomorrow evening doing two things.

A. checking and reading for updated announcments (hoping for Dark Sun or Ebberron, I need psionics).

B. re-reading this thread to chuckle at all the gloom and doom that may not be warranted in hindsight.

 

[HawaiiSteveO]

I was waiting until tomorrow to decide what my new campaign is going to be.

Option 1 Adventures in Middle Earth , love the different flavour.

Option 2 Dragon Heist city adventure nice change after finishing ToA.

Option 3 was waiting to see what new stuff was.

CHOICES man this is sweet and I have to pick something. Was reading Ravnica is city that covers whole planet? Sounds like Waterdeep Plus!!

looking forward to full info tomorrow !

 

[SkidAce]

Or maybe this will just cause Jace the magical white saviour of the universe to contaminate D&D as well.

blue....but I hear yah!

 

[Demetrios1453]

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.

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...

 

[Jester David]

And the problem with getting MTG players into D&D, and D&D players into MTG is...what exactly?

On paper, nothing.

In practice, it's marketing to a theoretical audience. It's releasing a product not for your actual fans, but fans who might exist.
The book is gambling that MtG fans want this book and will be swayed by it buy said book and then play D&D.

It also assumes that large numbers of MtG fans are somehow unaware of D&D. Which seems unlikely. And that they will have both the free time and money to invest in D&D over MtG.
More likely the money for this book will have to come at the expense of MtG cards as the player chooses which to spend their disposable income on OR will not play D&D because they're spending their limited free time playing MtG.

 

[Kite474]

Holy freaking crap this is the best news ever!!!! I have always hoped of doing an MTG D&D campagin and this thing is the perfect ticket.

Man this is gonna be awesome! Ravnicas an amazing setting with so much cool stuff.

Aaaaaaaaaaah this is so awesome!