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 play magic rarely and D&D 5e even more rarely (still primarily a PF Play, but even that is on the decline); but I love this. I would love it even more if each of the Magic planes were to receive the full-on, hardback, campaign setting treatment-- maybe one every other year, alternating with a hardback campaign setting based on the classic TSR settings. That, more than anything else, would keep me buying D&D product for a long time.

Oh, and I'll echo what others have said-- Zendikar was a great plane with which to start!
 

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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.

I'd drop money on a hardcover MTG: Zendikar supllement to D&D, but not a MTG stand alone RPG.
 


I'm pretty excited about the fact that this happened at all.

The races seem to be very spread out in ability. The Kor are at the top. The goblins, merfolk, humans in the middle. The vampire has great flavor but the it's lacking in ability. The Blood Thirst ability is interesting and the possibility of creating Nulls is cool but there's not much of a guideline as to whether they follow the vampire who turned them. It does say they follow the "vampire nobility" but it doesn't say PCs are connected to nobility at all. Lots of room for interpretation there. If the nulls do follow the vampire who turned them, then this ability is incredibly strong. I'm also annoyed that they mention nulls being faster and stronger than typical zombies but there's nothing indicating a stat increase for them. It's entirely possible that the book about Zendikar explains this better in lore.

Aside from my issues with the vampire, this is a very well done article. The suggestions for representations in the bestiary are welcome and the new stat blocks added are quite nice.
 

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.

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.
 


Hmm - is Wizards joining in on the Expanded Universe game? It seems like it's all the rage these days. But really this expansion makes a lot more sense than some others.

I agree that a core M:tG hardback rule book with Campaign Setting/Adventure Path PDFs for the different worlds would be a nice combination. (perhaps the PDFs - once complete - could collected into a "Worlds of M:tG RPG" hard back.)

Seems like a license for WotC to print money...?
 



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