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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Hopefully I now get a little less abuse from some of the local magic players.

Seriously if you dont know the jargon locally they look at you like you have VD
 

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I want Mirrodin so bad. Actually, screw it, they should just make a 5e-compatible "Magic: The RPG" and I'd buy a million copies. I've never cared much about generic high fantasy settings like the Realms, but Magic has a wealth of interesting worlds, stories, characters, creatures, spells, not to mention the exquisite relationships and conflicts of the five color alignments, and the very concept of the planeswalker... a gold mine of RPG material.

Wouldn't it be cool if they opened up all the Magic IP for DM's Guild? They'll never do it, but wouldn't it be cool?
 


Interesting. Even though I'M not a MtG player, I wouldn't mind seeing more MtG settings for D&D. AFAIK, they have some interesting lore and great art.
 


I want Mirrodin so bad. Actually, screw it, they should just make a 5e-compatible "Magic: The RPG" and I'd buy a million copies. I've never cared much about generic high fantasy settings like the Realms, but Magic has a wealth of interesting worlds, stories, characters, creatures, spells, not to mention the exquisite relationships and conflicts of the five color alignments, and the very concept of the planeswalker... a gold mine of RPG material.

Wouldn't it be cool if they opened up all the Magic IP for DM's Guild? They'll never do it, but wouldn't it be cool?

+1 for a MtG RPG!

We just need ONE class (the Planeswalker) and a redo of the magic system (not the spells, just the system), and maybe more functional summoning rules, and we're good to go!
 

This is cool, I have to agree with the 'About time' sentiments some have posted above.

Our group started mixing MtG with our homebrewed 2E about 1994; being from the Puget Sound, we were inundated with the material in our local hobby shops, and some of us ( well me mostly) being huge comic book collectors had already been experimenting with using collector cards as visual aids/avatars. It was an 'if you cant beat them join them' approach, as we feared that the CCG would destroy our beloved RPG, and some of us regarded it as anathema. We have played several campaigns now with MtG cards as Spells, as well as the artifact cards as items. It's not our main thing, we currently do not play the 'hybrid', and as we have 3 of us DMs, and we do still play AD&D 1E/2E under a different DM.
 

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.

It really isn't the visual style or aesthetics that cause me concern, nor the settings themselves, it's the eventual bleeding of mechanics from one to another. Do I suspect this will suddenly happen in a massive avalanche? No, of course not. As you've mentioned, this is a toe in the water...it's the ripples it creates that unsettles me (not even the ripples themselves, but what they portend and eventually bring with them).

I could be worrying over nothing. I probably am. I just can't shake the feeling this'll go bad before it gets good...and I honestly have no issues seeing the MtG worlds get used as settings for D&D...provided we get PROPER setting books and are not required to buy anything on the MtG side...I walked away from that game twice (physical AND online)...I have no intentions to ever go back again.
 

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. I guess the new "Cock" guy has seen the light and it is called do whatever we need to (Whoever the new guy was they just hired way up in management).
 


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