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."

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.


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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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I hope they go full campaign setting product with this. It's well presented and expands the DnD playing universe. I'd prefer this mash-up over a revisiting of most of the classic settings.
 

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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.

Considering how long it took them to do this, and how lightly they are dipping their toes in, I'm not sure there's much reason to worry for the near future. In the long-run, though, with the number of people building their own D&D settings (even 3rd party companies since the OGL) on such a large scale, it's not surprising at all -- or bad -- that the (potential) next D&D setting from Wizards would be something with serious market power. They can only do so many Eberrons, or in a worse-case-scenario, so many Planescapes and Birthrights and Al-Qadims that are beloved by many but not quite enough for it to be a big market. M:tG setting books, however, are a potential goldmine, without any licensing fees or something like that (after all, Wizards ended their Star Wars run for a reason).

I will argue one point, though. The Curse of Strahd's symbol was not new to 5E. All of the modules so far produced have a "Storyline Symbol" that crosses all media releases in that storyline. Additionally, every class in the PHB has a unique symbol, and these correspond on releases like the Spellbook cards and the Martial Archetype cards. I don't see this as "Magic-ifying" D&D so much as using common symbols and language across releases to make it easy for players of the game to parse information. It's not like organizational symbols first appeared in Magic; look at the different campaign setting branded logos in 2nd edition. Common language = better decision making tools.
 

Am I just blind (which is very probable) ? I don't see a link to download it here or on the WOTC site.

Nevermind...I figured it out. Reading comprehension skills are apparently pretty rusty.
 

I hope they go full campaign setting product with this. It's well presented and expands the DnD playing universe. I'd prefer this mash-up over a revisiting of most of the classic settings.

Actually, if this type of thing is HOW they rehash older settings, I'd be cool with it. Light, sweet, covers the necessaries with advice on how to handle the rest, Minimal crunch. There is so much out there for all of the older settings already, why not just help people use it? Sort of a smaller-scale Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.
 


About the only thing that could get me exited aboy D&D MTG would have been a new set of spells to replace the one in PHB; with the five colors instead of the schools.

This is just yet another campaign world destined to slowly rot in the Realms shadow.

When do we get a new set of spells for our Wizards and Clerics to try out?
 

Well, makes sense that James Wyatt would want to keep his toes in the D&D water.
As he's the sole writer, this seems to be his pet project, likely published for fun.

While I don't want too much Magic peanut butter in my D&D chocolate, this kind of small free product is just win-win.
 

Just finished reading through it, and it sounds like getting most of the setting fluff is going to require investing in the Art of MtG - Zendikar book (currently $25.87 USD on Amazon), but it has a lot of potential.

My read of the article (not the PDF but the web article with the link in it) is that it's implicitly there to get some players who play both D&D and Magic but who might not buy an "art" book a reason to buy it.

Honestly I'd love to see them do the same thing with some of the D&D properties. There's been some beautiful art in the D&D multiverse - especially in the Eberron, Dark Sun and Planescape settings. Making a beautiful art/map/world book with no game mechanics in it and releasing a free web supplement to "encourage" people to buy the art book might work.
 

I think for a lot of groups the take-home point here is going to be a playable vampire race. It's not organized-play-legal, but it's still got an implicit WotC stamp of approval.
 

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