Ravnica Table of Contents & More

Thank you.

 

[Remathilis]

COPYPASTA

So what does MTG in D&D rules look like? From previous Planeshifts…

On Colored Mana.

"...A druid on Zendikar might call on green mana and cast spells like giant growth, but she’s still just a druid in the D&D rules (perhaps casting giant insect)." (PS: Zendikar)

"There’s no rules weight to this material; it’s simply about roleplaying your character. If you’re playing a cleric, you might find it helpful to imagine your character drawing on white mana, and you’ll find that a lot of your spells could indeed be white spells in Magic. You might also find inspiration in the personality traits and ideals described in the white mana entry. But there’s no rule preventing your character from using spells like divination (a blue spell), stone shape (a red spell), create undead (a black spell), or insect plague (a green spell). On the other hand, you might find that thinking about your cleric as a white-aligned caster shapes your choice of spells as well as your personality. someone from green aligned to black aligned (or both green and black aligned). A terrible loss that spurs someone to vengeance might add red to the person’s color alignment—temporarily or even permanently." (PS: Ixalan)

On Monsters

"...For the most part, there’s no need to craft new monsters out of whole cloth to reflect the creatures of Zendikar. The D&D Monster Manual is full of creatures that have obvious equivalents on Zendikar. That plane’s loam lion is just a kind of lion, for example. There are also plenty of close equivalents. An ankheg from the Monster Manual is a fine way to represent a caustic crawler, and similar examples abound." (PS: Zendikar)

"The best way to represent Eldrazi in D&D terms is to adapt a variety of monster statistics to reflect the diversity of these creatures. Almost any demon or aberration could represent an Eldrazi, and bizarre fungus monsters, oozes, or monstrosities can work as well." (PS Zendikar)

"Any of the angels in the Monster Manual can serve as Serra angels. The deva represents the most common angels, while the planetar and solar are appropriate for powerful angels such as Lyra and Shalai." (PS: Dominaria)

On Dominaria

"There’s not a lot of rules content in this article, largely because Dominaria is as close as Magic comes to the classic fantasy that D&D draws from. Feel free to make extensive use of class options, monsters, and other parts of the fifth edition D&D rules..." (PS Dominaria)

On Artifacts

"Of course, you’ll find a lot of information about aether-powered devices and invention in this document, in keeping with the spirit of Kaladesh. But it’s more along the lines of rearranging the building blocks and altering the appearance of existing magic items, rather than creating a lot of new things. If you want your character to look like the guy on the Dispersal Technician card, just give him a ring of the ram." (PS Kaladesh)

On Planeswalkers

"Fundamentally, no game rules are attached to being a Planeswalker. Traveling from plane to plane in this sort of campaign is a lot like overland travel in a normal campaign: it’s about getting to where the adventure is. It’s a story function, not a rules one. If planeswalking is part of the campaign, then everyone in the party has to be able to do it, so they can travel together. (In modern Magic, there’s no way to bring another living person along with you when you planeswalk.) That means there’s not really any question of game balance where planeswalking is concerned—it doesn’t make one character more powerful than another, and it doesn’t make characters any stronger against the enemies they’re fighting. So it’s something that can be added on to any other character, without changing the character’s class, race, or background." (PS Amonket)

On Crossing over

"So can Planeswalker characters travel from Amonkhet to whatever plane the Forgotten Realms lies on? That’s up to you. The Plane Shift series more or less assumes a certain continuity from one Multiverse to the next, even as (for example) it makes no attempt to model Magic’s five colors of mana in the D&D magic system. So there’s no real reason an elf from Evereska couldn’t “spark out” and find herself on Kaladesh, as long as it works for your players and your campaign." (PS: Amonket)

---

So THERE are your MTG rules. Mana color is a RPG consideration. Planeswalkers are just an extra ability given to your PCs if they want to wander the multiverse, and 90% of the stuff in MtG can be mimicked with rebranding D&D stuff.

Ravnica, which is a PS article spun out to book-length and given a proper paper release, will be little different from these ideas.

Sorry you wanted MtG the RPG. You're not getting a planeswalker class with a mana/spell point subsystem and a re-aligning of classes and spells based on the color pie. You're not getting a conversion of Serra Angels, Shivan Dragons, or any other monster that can be reskinned from the MM. You're not getting spell conversions for lightning strike, shock, or any other spell that can be emulated with lightning bolt.

You weren't lied to, betrayed, or fooled. You set your expectations too high.

 

[Jester David]

Logically speaking, to an extent "Dragonlance" and "Ravnica" are separate intellectual property from either D&D or Magic.

The trade dress of this book is that of D&D. Did you listen to or watch the Dragon Talk that was done the day the book was announced? Jeremy Crawford was pretty clear that he wanted this to be in no way a Magic RPG book, but a definite D&D book that happens to be in the Ravnica setting, removing all Magic specific references. At one point, Wyatt had written up a bunch of color mana as alternate alignment system material (which is in Planeshift booklets previously), but Crawford cut it and made it all the in to D&D. They have made every effort in marketing to emphasize this is a D&D book.

Which makes it MECHANICALLY D&D, but still a Magic the Gathering book in terms of flavour and lore. In the same way the art books contain zero MtG cards but are still Nahic books.

Much like the three editions of Star Wars WotC published were mechanically D&D (to the point fears and species could often work in 3.0e and 3.5e) but we’re still Star Wars and not D&D.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, that still doesn't quite make me excited for Ravnica itself, sorry. The factions controlling everything, again, does not make me think, "Oh, that's unique to Ravnica!" Again, the interplay of different factions and how they try to influence and manipulate each other feels like a core part of worldbuilding. The Ecumenpolis is cool, yes, but what does expanding the city out to cover the world add that a regular urban campaign doesn't? Nevermind that the book itself doesn't seem to really care about the fact that it's a world spanning city, though the table of contents makes it hard to judge.

Perhaps it's just not a setting for me, but I'm still not really seeing the appeal for it that I couldn't get out of, say, playing in Sharn.

I'd recommend checking out the Lore You Should Know segments with Ari Levitch. He goes into detail about the philosophies and Modus Operandi of the various Guilds.

In Magic terms, the setting came about mechanically from the desire to build dual-color Mana decks, and figuring out how weird combos like Green-Black or Blue-Red could be philosophically reconciled. The Ecumenopolis came from the idea, it seems, that weird combos Land cards such as White-Black or Green-Blue would have to be artificial (Banks or factories rather than swamps or forests).

This book goes to great lengths to describe these differences in plain language D&D terms, with no reference to Magic game concepts, which I find interesting. In D&D terms, an Ecumenopolis means the players can't "leave the city," because the city is all that is. A complex, more industrial society provides different story opportunities, and the Guilds firm the basis for the DM to procedurally build material.

 

[Parmandur]

Which makes it MECHANICALLY D&D, but still a Magic the Gathering book in terms of flavour and lore. In the same way the art books contain zero MtG cards but are still Nahic books.

Much like the three editions of Star Wars WotC published were mechanically D&D (to the point fears and species could often work in 3.0e and 3.5e) but we’re still Star Wars and not D&D.

They specifically removed any Magic flavor, other than the setting itself: the book, unlike Star Wars, does bill itself as D&D and use the trade dress. Everything in the book is in D&D terms. Crawford has been extremely specific about this, and the marketing has followed suit.

 

[Parmandur]

Yes. I've seen Ravnica as part of the MtG universe since 2005. True story. It is, in part, why they used it instead of some new setting build from scratch. If you can't wrap you hear around Ravnica being part of the MtG universe, I can't help you and you'll just have to live in denial.

Magic Ravnica is part if the M:tG multiverse, but D&D Ravnica is part of the D&D multiverse. Earth-One and Earth-2 style. Again, WotC made this clear from word go: this is a D&D book set in the D&D multiverse even (Crawford said that specifically).

 

[dave2008]

"Ummm.... Magic the Gathering is repeatedly mentioned in the sample page we have, linked in the first post.
And Magic the Gathering is mentioned on the cover. It’s mentioned before D&D on the back cover.
And the name of the product on Amazon is: “Dungeons & Dragons Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica / D&D/Magic: The Gathering Adventure Book and Campaign Setting”

Arguing it is a Ravnica book and not a MtG book feels like arguing a Dragonlance product isn’t a D&D product.

It’s not a MtG card game product but it is very much part of the same brand"

Yep, as I mention in my response to [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] (who made the same points you did, in fact did you copy his post or am I suffering from deja vue here), I made a mistake here. I just looked at the front cover and there is nothing about MtG there. I still think that is significant.

 

[epithet]

They specifically removed any Magic flavor, other than the setting itself: the book, unlike Star Wars, does bill itself as D&D and use the trade dress. Everything in the book is in D&D terms. Crawford has been extremely specific about this, and the marketing has followed suit.

It certainly seems to be true that all of the concepts in the book are expressed in D&D terms, without adding any significant new sub-systems of game mechanics to expand D&D with "Magic flavor." However, despite D&D players collectively asking for updates to D&D settings like Planescape and Dark Sun for years now, WotC chose instead to include Ravnica, because it is a Magic property. Yes, it is a D&D book, but it is one seemingly designed to sell D&D to Magic customers, and perhaps the other way around, too.

I wonder, when they announce the Magic cards with Elminster and Drizzit, will you be as certain that those are Magic products and not at all D&D products?

 

[Kramodlog]

So THERE are your MTG rules. Mana color is a RPG consideration. Planeswalkers are just an extra ability given to your PCs if they want to wander the multiverse, and 90% of the stuff in MtG can be mimicked with rebranding D&D stuff.

Ravnica, which is a PS article spun out to book-length and given a proper paper release, will be little different from these ideas.[/quote]Yes I know and it is pretty terrible and lazy. It is a wasted opportunity to enrich D&D with MtG and expend MtG beyond a card game. What is even worse is that the novelty of guilds will ware off fast and MtG will be quickly forgotten as a part of D&D.

What a waste. Such lackof vision.

 

[Kramodlog]

Magic Ravnica is part if the M:tG multiverse, but D&D Ravnica is part of the D&D multiverse. Earth-One and Earth-2 style. Again, WotC made this clear from word go: this is a D&D book set in the D&D multiverse even (Crawford said that specifically).

With MtG advertized all over the book and Ravnica being part of the MtG universe. Got it.

 

[Kramodlog]

Yep, as I mention in my response to [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] (who made the same points you did, in fact did you copy his post or am I suffering from deja vue here), I made a mistake here. I just looked at the front cover and there is nothing about MtG there. I still think that is significant.

So a D&D inspired MtG card block wouldn't involve D&D. Got it.