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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A new skin on the magic system would be cool, but I'm not sure the planeswalker-as-PC concept translates well to D&D. Planeswalkers would work better as patrons/BBEGs.

Pretty sure planeswalkers are now powered-down significantly from their original concept (which was basically archwizards/gods). I don't think it'd be needed as a class because as I understand it, a planeswalker is just anyone who can magically travel between planes now, which pretty much encompasses anyone who can cast Plane Shift or something similar.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong however, as while I played the game I wasn't 100% on the lore.
 

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Two things:

Like most rock groups eventually who say, "We are never going to play together again!"and ,"When hell freezes over!". Well I guess Zendikar is a frozen hell because just like the Eagles, Guns & Roses, Black Sabbath and many more, here you have it the cross over I heard that would never happen.

KISS is the worst offender. And one of the bands you mentioned at least put out a semi-relevant album recently.

I guess the new "Cock" guy

Is that really necessary? Google his name and write it out or simply refer to him as "the new guy" or something. It is not very good form to represent yourself with phrasing like this, even if it's unintentional.
 

Pretty sure planeswalkers are now powered-down significantly from their original concept (which was basically archwizards/gods). I don't think it'd be needed as a class because as I understand it, a planeswalker is just anyone who can magically travel between planes now, which pretty much encompasses anyone who can cast Plane Shift or something similar.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong however, as while I played the game I wasn't 100% on the lore.

I just mean, in D&D terms, they're pretty powerful. It would work better as a FATE or AW game, I think.
 

Cool, I can save my money for the thing after this. I was not a fan of MTG so this does nothing for me BUT there are millions of MTG players. May they spend a lot of money on this! :)
 

click the image

Thank you. It took me forever to find the actual document trying to follow the links in the article, and then realizing that the link was in the image banner in one of them. If I'd known before that the image in the OP was the link, it would have helped. But really, the link should have been the very first thing in the news story.
 


There is plenty of potential to expand on this based on public reaction. Not only do the planeswalkers flit between MtG's setting, but the apocalyptic Eldrazi also love to find new planes to devour. Some of the immortal planeswalkers (think vampires and ghost dragons) have secretly been trying to defeat or seal away the Eldrazi for millennia. Here is a great official MtG short story as a springboard into the P'walker v Eldrazi lore: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/ur/lithomancer-2014-10-29

cool, but 15 years too late
15 years too late in terms of the particular plane chosen, or it terms of MtG's popularity? The source material seems most driven by 2010's Zendikar block. As for the game's popularity, while it doesn't feature in my life the way it did in high school (*cough* 3rd edition, 1994 *cough*), it's actually more successful than ever, like in this news report from 2013:


  • "Magic is bigger than it's ever been," Mark Purvis, global brand director for "Magic," told NBC News. Looking at the numbers behind "Magic: The Gathering" today, it's hard not to take him at his word. With more than 13,000 unique cards made, "Magic" now has 12 million active players globally, and Hasbro said that it's the biggest brand in its $1.2 billion games portfolio. In its 2012 annual report, the company said that "Magic's" revenue has grown by 25 percent or more in each of the previous four years.
Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/video-g...strong-not-just-school-lunchrooms-f8C11044163

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.

He made a smart decision by not hybridizing the rules/magic systems of the two games. Having the mana/color wheel stay strictly as lore, rather than as a alternative system of classifying or casting spells, avoids what would have been a when-worlds-collide rules lawyer meltdown. No casual attempt at representing Magic's rigid system of magic in D&D would hold up well. What we get instead is a clean, rules-light approach to the color wheel with races that associate with the colors, and the knowledge that the colors of mana are a part of these societies. It also avoids the artificial meta constraints of color focus in deckbuilding; from that meta standpoint, PC casters are in essence "playing muliticolor decks" by default... and any color focus is player/lore driven.

Pretty sure planeswalkers are now powered-down significantly from their original concept (which was basically archwizards/gods). I don't think it'd be needed as a class because as I understand it, a planeswalker is just anyone who can magically travel between planes now, which pretty much encompasses anyone who can cast Plane Shift or something similar.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong however, as while I played the game I wasn't 100% on the lore.

In game terminology, Planeswalkers were for much of the early days (1993-2007) of MtG the actual players of the game, archmages dueling each other for dominance of the aptly named plane of Dominaria (and eventually other planes as well). In 2007, Planeswalker cards were added to the game, representing NPC archmages that the player is teaming up with.

Storywise, planeswalkers were originally super powerful, nowadays not so much. This is due to the combination of the events of the MtG novels, as well as some outright retconning of lore.

Sources:
http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Dominaria
http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Planeswalkers
http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Planeswalker's_spark
 

I have little to no interest in the MTG setting, but I do love new races, creatures, etc...

As a DM I would let players choose from these additional races. The Kor are interesting, the Vampire is well balanced, and I the Goblin race rules are good enough to actually make it worth taking.
Yes, new races and creatures are always good. I've never played MTG, but I wouldn't mind a MTG Monster Manual. I'm sure there are a lot of unique creatures that could be brought into D&D.

I'd drop money on a hardcover MTG: Zendikar supllement to D&D, but not a MTG stand alone RPG.
While I'd be interested in a Zendikar book for D&D, it sounds like Theros would be my go to MTG setting.
 
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As a D&D player that's never been interested in MTG, I personally think this is great. I'd love to see a full campaign guide to Zendikar as it's more distinctive and fantastical than the majority of D&D's settings.
 

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