Ravnica Table of Contents & More

Thank you.

 

[gyor]

Guilds, factions, clans, groups, whatever, rarely work for PCs. They often do not mess well when members of different groups are together. Like member of the Boros Legion working with a member of the the Cult of Radkos? At least Sigil is an interesting location and connects all the planes.

Who cares? Who really wanted to play a Loxodon? Races are the least interesting part of D&D. The archetypes of fantasy have been done and now it is just about doing weird stuff. What archetype Dragonborn are filling? Big lizard guy that always is in every fantasy novel? The tiefling has been the real last racial innovation and that dates back to the 90s.

Meh. New classes would be more interesting.

What a new setting needs is a whole manual. And there are more iconic MtG monsters than psychic vampires or Orzhov angels.

Not the most iconic MtG NPCs. Urza, Nicol Bolas, Jace, Gerrard on the other hand...

Yeah, not the list of iconic MtG spells that could have filled a whole book by it self.

Again, not the MtG we are looking for.

Those are the least interesting locations MtG has to offer.

Colored magic could have gone beyond vancian spellcasting and expends 5e magic system. Something a long the line of power points.

This whole thing is a wasted opportunity and will be forgotten rapidly. Like 5e's APs.

Honestly I agree with almost nothing you wrote. Races are far from the least interesting part of D&D, and I'm not a fan of reducing races too 2 dimensional archetypes. Dragonborn aren't Lizardfolk who aren't Vashino who aren't Purebloods just because they all have scales and reptilian blood. Each comes with a culture and a history and unique quirks.

And Tieflings aren't the last interesting race released. Shadar Kai are/were cool for one example, Purebloods Shades, Shifters, Goliaths, Changelings, Loxo (FR Loxodons), Wemics, and many more. Simic Hybrids and Vedelken are cool as well.

The NPCs were are getting are far more interesting to me because they AREN'T Planeswalkers. They actual fit the setting and more important to the function of the Setting. The only Planeswalker who is important within the time period GGR is set in is Jace Beleren and only because he is the living Guildpact. Even Ravnican Planeswalkers like intruders. The Planeswalkers are the biggest reason why the original trilogy (Ravnica Cycle)
was 1000 time s better the stories and Novella that came after it. In the original books, the city itself was a character, it was gritty, and immersive, and Agrus Kos was more interesting then any of the Planeswalkers, none of which showed up in the original novels.

Once the Planeswalkers showed up they hijacked the setting and made everything about their Drama, and they were glorified tourists. The immersive setting faded away into a backdrop, a simple location where the Planeswalkers happened to be. They where not a positive addition to Ravnica.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy crossovers, and plane hopping characters, like say Elminister, it's just I adored the original novels, and some of short stories, but anything with a Planeswalkers just seems to be more about the Planeswalker Metaplot, the plane it was on was just a tourist destination.

I'm really more of a Ravnica fan then an MtG fan (although I like a couple of their other setting somewhat, Dominara okay, Therose is cool, Innistrad I actually like better then Barovia, I'm not a fan of Strahd, ironically Rabia I like, maybe Alara, and Ixalan, not interested at all in the rest, and only Dominara has any real meat to it beside Ravnica and maybe Therose). In fact I had little interest in MtG until reading the Ravnica Cycle, even the Planeshift articals didn't hold my interest for more then a day.

I'm okay with color magic being in the book, but again I have very little attachment to it emotionally.

As for Sigil, I love Planescape, it's just a matter of time before it returns in some form. But I love Ravnica because it feels like real city, a metropolis, bigger even, where even cities like Waterdeep, even Sigil itself feel like large towns in compareson. They are vary different.

 

[dave2008]

Guilds, factions, clans, groups, whatever, rarely work for PCs. They often do not mess well when members of different groups are together. Like member of the Boros Legion working with a member of the the Cult of Radkos? At least Sigil is an interesting location and connects all the planes.

Who cares? Who really wanted to play a Loxodon? Races are the least interesting part of D&D. The archetypes of fantasy have been done and now it is just about doing weird stuff. What archetype Dragonborn are filling? Big lizard guy that always is in every fantasy novel? The tiefling has been the real last racial innovation and that dates back to the 90s.

Meh. New classes would be more interesting.

What a new setting needs is a whole manual. And there are more iconic MtG monsters than psychic vampires or Orzhov angels.

Not the most iconic MtG NPCs. Urza, Nicol Bolas, Jace, Gerrard on the other hand...

Yeah, not the list of iconic MtG spells that could have filled a whole book by it self.

Again, not the MtG we are looking for.

Those are the least interesting locations MtG has to offer.

Colored magic could have gone beyond vancian spellcasting and expends 5e magic system. Something a long the line of power points.

This whole thing is a wasted opportunity and will be forgotten rapidly. Like 5e's APs.

You seem to be confusing this for a MtG book. It is not. It is a D&D book, it just so happens to be about a MtG setting. It is trying to let you play D&D in a MtG setting, not create a MtG version of D&D.

PS I am not sure what you mean by 5e APs as they have all been a part of FR, so that would be hard to forget (despite the settings name). If you mean the adventures themselves, well they still sell well and outsell about all other RPG APs including PF. Will they be remembered 30 yrs down the road? You knows, but that seems like an odd standard for a game where over 50% of the players don't even play the APs anyway.

 

[gyor]

Without the MtG elements, it is just a vanilla setting not much different from the FR. It is a bit pointless.

It's massively different from FR, all the Planeswalkers do is distract from the setting. Ravnica hasn't had a full fledged war in over 10,000 years, FR has a bunch of wars going on at any given time, making of them civilization ending. FR has tons of nature, Ravnica has no completely wild areas, only condemned urban areas, Ravnica is less diverse, but more broadly tolerant then most places in FR. People in Ravnica don't know about other planes, FR the way existence of Planes well known. Religion is super different on Ravnica and FR and an FR deities' most powerful servants could wipe out what passes for deities on Ravnica. Rakdos might, just might be more powerful then a Solar, but I'm betting not an Empyrean. Just a guess. The rest won't even be close. Again, I could be wrong. Only old school Planeswalkers came close to FR demigods. An FR Greater God would normally be way beyond anything in an MtG setting.

 

[guachi]

Since I know so little about Ravnica the high possibility that the setting will officially be left high and dry after one release means I have little incentive to buy this product. At least the 5e Eberron release can be paired with older products if I needed them.

 

[cbwjm]

Without the MtG elements, it is just a vanilla setting not much different from the FR. It is a bit pointless.

Not really, it's a great setting that doesn't need the MtG metasetting elements to be great. Ravnica is very different from FR, I think it is going to work well within the DnD system.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Settings an rules are too different things. For example, MERP was a Rolemaster based version of Middle Earth. There is also a 5e version. They use the same setting for very different games. The Star Wars setting has had three very different RPGs based on it.

Ravnica is now both a D&D setting and a MtG setting. That doesn't mean MtG rules apply in D&D, any more than D&D rules apply in MtG.

 

[Dualazi]

This one looks to be a hard pass for me, as I have no interest in running a game in Ravnica since it's basically a poor-man's Sigil, but I held out hope that it would be something akin to Mordenkainen's where the crunch (specifically for monsters) would be worth the purchase. As it stands 38 pages worth doesn't cut the mustard, and many of the other aspects (races/classes) were awful based on their previews. Oh well, I hope their next offering is more worthwhile.

 

[gyor]

BTW it says I has a three capitals side bar, but I think it was supposed to be three columns.

 

[gyor]

This one looks to be a hard pass for me, as I have no interest in running a game in Ravnica since it's basically a poor-man's Sigil, but I held out hope that it would be something akin to Mordenkainen's where the crunch (specifically for monsters) would be worth the purchase. As it stands 38 pages worth doesn't cut the mustard, and many of the other aspects (races/classes) were awful based on their previews. Oh well, I hope their next offering is more worthwhile.

I think the NPC section will have value as well. Maybe templates and stuff. Refluff some of the Guildmasters for homebrew settings.

 

[Kramodlog]

I don't know enough about the setting to say what is missing, but there is whole chapter on treasures and another on NPCs and Monsters. That would seem to cover 2 of the 4 issues you have, but perhaps I misunderstand the issue.

Yes, there is a misunderstanding. The items, spells, monsters, NPCs present in the book aren't the iconic ones associated with MtG. What is present in this book is uninteresting and not what MtG fans want to see in D&D.

There are far more monsters, items, spells and NPCs from MtG's lore that should come before Jarad. Like Nicol Bolas. He is a ancient (25,000 years), evil and very powerful dragon and planewalker. He also wants to conquer Ravnica. He'll soon invade it and Ravnica will probably have a "Realms Shaking Event" pretty soon. The big bad of the setting isn't present.

Though I am not surprise colored magic is out, I never expected that to be ported to a D&D setting.

I'm not surprised, but at the same time it is why designers are paid for and why those books are sold 50$ a pop. So that creative solutions are brought to problems.

Bringing MtG to D&D made this book interesting. Unfortunately, MtG isn't in this book. It is just a generic book about guilds. And that novelty act wares out pretty fast.