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.


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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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CapnZapp

Legend
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.
What people want when they say "I want an Al-Quadim Campaign Guide" or "Birthright Campaign Guide" is pretty much the opposite of this.

I have never even heard of Zendikar before this, but I dutifully browsed the PDF. It's basically a cheap-ass pamphlet to go buy something with real images with real resolution. As for actual advice, it does contain a handful of new monsters. Other than that, though, it contains such gems as "use griffins for griffons" (or vice versa, I really can't be arsed to remember inane stuff like that).

The gold mark of "campaign support" is and remains the 3rd edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting with its companion supplements. Glorious detail, both crunchy and fluffy at the same time. Deep deep useability for everyone interested.

And it's not like 4th edition ruined WotC's ability to make satisfying supplements. There were two D&D Next adventure campaignlets that never got the recognition they richly deserve: the descriptions of Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate in respective supplement was excellent.
 

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Ath-kethin

Elder Thing
What people want when they say "I want an Al-Quadim Campaign Guide" or "Birthright Campaign Guide" is pretty much the opposite of this.
To each their own, I suppose. I need another comprehensive Dragonlance campaign setting sourcebook about as badly as I need another movie featuring Batman's origin story.

Though I will concede that releasing setting updates as free PDFs though the website is not likely to add much to WotC's bottom line.
 

I haven't played M:TG since the mid-90s and have no idea about its settings and lore....

but this is really cool!

I would like to see this fleshed out even more in the future. I would buy a full priced product at retail if it was available. Although I am don't really need 30 different M:TG settings. One full fledged 240 page book like this would get my wallet's vote.
 

Yeah, I think that one’s going to be popular. I kinda like it – it’s a pretty low-key take on vampire PCs (so maybe not so popular, without all the uber-abilities).

I’m no Magic player, but the Zendikar art book really is gorgeous.

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.
 






Azzy

ᚳᚣᚾᛖᚹᚢᛚᚠ
I think that an expanded version of this sort of thing would suffice for many settings (at least the ones that don't blow up and reinvent themselves with every new edition release)—there's only so many times you can retreading information about a setting before it becomes a waste of a product.

All you really need to do is release a pdf or booklet that covers the crunch (unique races, classes, backgrounds, monsters, etc.) necessary for play for most campaign settings. All the setting information can either be gleaned from previous edition products on D&Dclassics, or, if necessary, a new, evergreen product that that's dedicated to the presentation of the setting and has no game mechanics.

After all, are you going to get a better presentation of Eberron than the setting books for 3.5? Or a more exhaustive setting overview for Greyhawk than the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer? Sure, some settings (like Forgotten Realms and its sub-settings like Kara-Tur, Zakhara, & Maztica and Dragonlance) might get short shrift because it went through a stupid New Edition Apocalypse and needs updating, but most settings are fairly static in their presentation.
 

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