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ZENDIKAR -- Where Magic: The Gathering and D&D Collide!

I've never played Magic: the Gathering, so while I"m reporting on this, bear in mind I personally can't fully contextualise it. However, it appears that a M:tG world called Zendikar is now available as a D&D 5th Edition setting via a free 38-page PDF available from WotC's website. It contains three sections -- The World of Zendikar, Races of Zendikar, and A Zendikar Bestiary. There's an added note that the material is not fully playtested or legal in D&D Organised Play events. "Plane Shift: Zendikar was made using the fifth edition of the D&D rules. D&D is a flexible rules system designed to model any kind of fantasy world. The D&D magic system doesn't involve five colors of mana or a ramping-up to your most powerful spells, but the goal isn't to mirror the experience of playing Magic in your role-playing game. The point is to experience the worlds of Magic in a new way, through the lens of the D&D rules. All you really need is races for the characters, monsters for them to face, and some ideas to build a campaign."

I've never played Magic: the Gathering, so while I"m reporting on this, bear in mind I personally can't fully contextualise it. However, it appears that a M:tG world called Zendikar is now available as a D&D 5th Edition setting via a free 38-page PDF available from WotC's website. It contains three sections -- The World of Zendikar, Races of Zendikar, and A Zendikar Bestiary. There's an added note that the material is not fully playtested or legal in D&D Organised Play events. "Plane Shift: Zendikar was made using the fifth edition of the D&D rules. D&D is a flexible rules system designed to model any kind of fantasy world. The D&D magic system doesn't involve five colors of mana or a ramping-up to your most powerful spells, but the goal isn't to mirror the experience of playing Magic in your role-playing game. The point is to experience the worlds of Magic in a new way, through the lens of the D&D rules. All you really need is races for the characters, monsters for them to face, and some ideas to build a campaign."

Races include Humans, Kor, Merfolk, Vampires, Goblins, and Elves. Monsters include angels, archons, griffins, felidars, sphinxes, drakes, krakens, surrakar, demons, dragons, giants, ogres, minotaurs, hydras, hellions, trolls, and more. Click on the image below to download the 38-page PDF.


Screen Shot 2016-04-27 at 16.50.32.png

Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering are two different games, but that doesn't mean their Multiverses can't meet.

From the beginning, Magic's plane of Zendikar was conceived as an "adventure world" where parties of explorers delve into ancient ruins in search of wonders and treasures, fighting the monsters they encounter on the way. Many of the plane's creative roots lie in D&D, so it should be no surprise that The Art of Magic: The Gathering—Zendikar feels a lot like a D&D campaign setting book. It's littered with adventure hooks and story seeds, and lacks only the specific rules references you'd need to adapt Zendikar's races, monsters, and adventures to a tabletop D&D campaign. And it's all surrounded by amazing fantasy art that holds boundless inspiration in itself.

You can think of Plane Shift: Zendikar as a sort of supplement to The Art of Magic: The Gathering—Zendikar, designed to help you take the world details and story seeds contained in that book and turn them into an exciting D&D campaign. The easiest way to approach a D&D campaign set on Zendikar is to use the rules that D&D provides mostly as written: 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).

Plane Shift: Zendikar was made using the fifth edition of the D&D rules. D&D is a flexible rules system designed to model any kind of fantasy world. The D&D magic system doesn't involve five colors of mana or a ramping-up to your most powerful spells, but the goal isn't to mirror the experience of playing Magic in your role-playing game. The point is to experience the worlds of Magic in a new way, through the lens of the D&D rules. All you really need is races for the characters, monsters for them to face, and some ideas to build a campaign.

Finally, The Art of Magic: The Gathering—Zendikar will help you create a D&D campaign in Zendikar, but you don't actually need the book to make use of the material in Plane Shift: Zendikar—you can also refer to the abundance of lore about Zendikar found on MagicTheGathering.com and the Zendikar plane profile.
 

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GX.Sigma

Adventurer
I see now, resistance to fire and psychic damage... That is interesting actually. Might be worth the lack of another bonus. A raging Goblin Bear totem Barbarian would be resistant to all damage types...
Hmmm....

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EDIT: Joking aside, I just realized that Jace probably is competeing with Drizzt. Seriously. They are both introverted, special snowflake, rebellious, Mary Sue characters that were popular with young kids. I think Jace probably eats into Drizzt sales, or at least Jace prevents Drizzt's revival: Kids can only have so many hero rolemodels in their life.

Yeeeeah, no. I can tell you that while Agents of Artifice (the Jace-focused Magic novel) did comfortably well, its sales numbers, while good, would have been a rounding error to Bob Salvatore. :p
 

ZzarkLinux

First Post
Yeeeeah, no. I can tell you that while Agents of Artifice (the Jace-focused Magic novel) did comfortably well, its sales numbers, while good, would have been a rounding error to Bob Salvatore. :p

But did it sell better than Jace's artbook series titled: MtG: Worldwake Expansion :)

If there is one thing I've learned from the MtG cultists, it's that Jace is the true wallet-sculpting god. No one budget can survive his summoning!
 

I don't think this is a case of the MTG creative group finally trusting those D&D guys - it looks more like an MTG-initiated initiative to drive more book and art sales from their side. They have a ton of sunk cost in Magic art and world building, and this is another opportunity to harvest value from Magic's IP, safely. It looks like having ex-D&Ders like James Wyatt move to the MTG product line may have helped.

Let's see where it goes - I wouldn't be surprised to see an Innistrad art book later this year (when the second Innistrad set comes out) followed by another one of these simple D&D guides to Innistrad - but it's the MTG creative team driving it, not D&D,

Yeah, my theory, as well, would suggest that the M:tG initiated this. My conjecture was regarding the question "why not sooner?"
 


sulimo0310

Explorer
So fire and psychic resistance is that good?
In a vacuum, maybe not. But when it shores up the the only chink in the proverbial armor of a prospective build, it's worth considering. Especially when you can get a plus one to an ability through leveling, but you aren't getting resistance tp psychic damage through any short of a magic item. And those are never garuntied.

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk
 

Azzy

ᚳᚣᚾᛖᚹᚢᛚᚠ
Yeah, my theory, as well, would suggest that the M:tG initiated this.

According to James Wyatt's blog...

"This was one of those crazy ideas that came into being as a result of separate conversations with different people. I talked about it with Jeremy Crawford on the D&D side of things and Adam Colby on the Magic brand team, who are both in the position to help make such a thing happen. Adam’s enthusiasm for the idea helped make it happen. I worked on it in my spare time, including doing all the writing and the layout. When I was done with it, Project Manager Extraordinaire Will Ansell took it over and coordinated with all the other people who needed to work together to make it happen—Greg Bilsland, Nathan Stewart, Blake Rasmussen, Tom Jenkot, Chris Gleeson, and a few others who jumped on various tasks along the way. "
 

Tallifer

Hero
Well I was worried about this since WotC acquired TSR/D&D...and I'll admit I'm amazed it took as long as it has before they tried mashing them together. I understand the desire...a "tricksy" way by WotC to get some of that MtG money over into D&D. Clever. I'll not argue the brands share a lot commonalities...but I don't see this ending in any other way that D&D eventually becoming little more than a MtG expansion (Curse of Strahd's visual aesthetic and little MtG expansion-styled symbol gave that away).

I personally don't have a good feeling about this...but we'll see how it pans out. I can't argue I'd like to see D&D get way more investment put into it by WotC beyond the farming out to 3rd parties and "leave it to the community" approach of DM's Guild (despite the few gems each has generated), and this looks to do just that....but I just can't yet shake that bad feeling.

I have to disagree completely with your sentiment. I have never played Magic, but i am excited to see any new races, worlds and other fluff for running D&D. Just more to add to the pot of soup.
 



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