Magic the Adventures

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 7:27 am

So, now I'm thinking about Magic the Gathering and D&D having a baby again. I don't think I'd ever really thought about sitting down and just translating one world over, but is that the way to do it? I mean, it's certainly easier than trying to translate magic in general over to D&D, but at the same time, you want playing the Magic RPG to feel like you're playing in the world of magic, and there's a lot of shit.

If you were going to write up a MtG set as a campaign setting, which would you choose? What's a good level for Planeswalker shenanigans to come online? I mean, ostensibly any sapient being can become a planeswalker, even the schmuck in rank 3 of your phalanx, but there's a powerset there that should probably be given an equivalent level.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 7:45 am

After the Mending, does being a Planeswalker give you anything other than immunity to aging and (self-only) Plane Shift at will? Because that's a power set that you could have at 1st level in a game that was set up for it, with no trouble.

To answer your question though... most of the Magic settings are gimmicky, derivative or both, even the ones I rather like (Innistrad for example is Ravenloft done right, but it would still be a wasted opportunity to pick Innistrad as the showcase for Magic & Dragons). Alara would probably be the best marriage of D&D playspace and Magic tropes, but that setting really bores me. Mirrodin circa the Phyrexian invasion might be an option, but that setting is too homogenous... hmm. Rath, maybe?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 8:48 am

Ok, so far as I can tell, the Spark applied the following things-

-one save from death, sort of. Typically they ignite to save the planeswalker.
-the ability to personally travel planes
-the ability to draw on things from other planes, including mana and creatures

Apparently, taking anything other than yourself from one plans to another requires practice. This implies that every planeswalker's first trip involves them showing up naked somewhere.

Being a planeswalker lets you make a deck and tap lands for mana. It used to make you invulnerable, immortal, unaging, etc, but not anymore.

So, I guess it could be it's own class that is gatekept behind just the requirement of "your spark must ignite."

I actually really like Innistrad, but I could we the case for it being a bad showcase for Magic & Dragons.

Antariuk · Post by **Antariuk** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 9:29 am

I think Zendikar is the best MtG world for a D&D game (both the old and the recent Zendikar blocks). You have weird ruins - some of them flying, a constantly shifting landscape, some Great Old Ones, and forgotten history. What you don't have is empires that lasted some 10.000 years, which I consider a good thing, and you also don't have the entire roster of D&D's core races (although one could say that with Elves, Merfolk and Kor you basically have three kinds of elves around, but whatever).

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 9:33 am

I don't think you'd want to let characters to have planeswalkers as PCs, because unless everyone's a planeswalker (which would be weird) a mixed group is probably going to feel narrative unbalanced even if it's mechanically balanced. It might make more sense for the party as a whole to have a planeswalker patron that they got to intermittently control through some kind of minigame or as an extension of the kingdom management minigame that higher level D&D ought to have.

As for planes, I think Zendikar (pre-Eldrazi) is a good match for D&D, it already contains many core elements (elves, goblins), has PC race options people would want (Kor, Vampires), and the floating lands mechanic is a cool thing you could build around as a way to support D&D adventuring.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 10:25 am

There's a bit of a problem here where the most popular MtG planes (Ravnica, Mirrodin, Innistrad) are popular precisely because they're unusual ideas built atop the familiar five mana concepts of the Magic meta-setting, which means they're a terrible place to use for a core set even though most people will play the bulk of their games in them if they end up using the system for more than one campaign. It's hard to sort out how much of the talk about Tarkir is due to lasting popularity and how much is because it's been the setting for the newest expansions for the past little while, but it has the same problem.

So sticking to things that are mostly familiar, the options more or less come down to Dominaria, which suffers really badly from being the only plane in MtG for the first few blocks so it ended up having whatever theme the guys thought would be cool shoved somewhere into its pointlessly and absurdly long history, Ulgrotha, which has exactly one set (not one block, one set) associated with it and was apparently built around its (moderately lame) story, or Zendikar, which is the correct answer for reasons stated above.

And since I had to look up all the MtG sets to make this post and I want to inventory the ones that weren't even in the running for my own future reference if nothing else: Lorwyn/Shadowmoor and Theros are also kind of non-standard but not even in a particularly interesting way (especially Theros), no one would want to play a game set in Kamigawa when they could be using Rokugan, and Alara is moderately interesting but also makes it extremely difficult for a party comprised of one character each aligned to a different color to meet up, since the entire premise is that each sub-plane is completely devoid of two colors on a metaphysical level. Also, are there really only eleven planes in MtG to date? For some reason I'd always thought they were at or near two dozen.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:44 pm

Prak wrote: If you were going to write up a MtG set as a campaign setting, which would you choose?

Zendikar, the Eldrazi are a good ultimate badguy and the ground coming alive everywhere is fun. It's got fantasy staples like green elves and red goblins but still has distinctiveness with the eldrazi and other monsters.

What's a good level for Planeswalker shenanigans to come online? I mean, ostensibly any sapient being can become a planeswalker, even the schmuck in rank 3 of your phalanx, but there's a powerset there that should probably be given an equivalent level.

dunno, I'm not really sure how powerful a planeswalker is suppose to be. MtG the card game is abstracted to the point where a guy who can summon dragons and exterminate all life will still die if enough goblins stab him.

Maybe you could do a Maid RPG style game where the PC's are in the employ of a planeswalker.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:55 pm

I always kind of like Dominaria, but that's because I started playing Magic in '94-ish, and so the first Magic novels I read were about the Brothers' War, and even without reading more until Onslaught, I got to know Urza and Mishra enough that The Mending pissed me off because it was motivated by "We need a 'Mickey Mouse,' and no, Urza isn't our Mickey. For reasons."

Zendikar was one of those post-Mirrodin sets I didn't play. I stopped playing in Mirrodin, because Affinity was bullshit on bullshit toast with a side of bullshit, and only really came back when there was an interesting set and I had time and money and opportunity to play. So I played Kamigawa (and would totally play in Kamigawa over Rokugon any day of the damned week) and I'm familiar with Lorwyn, but other than that, I stayed out and didn't buy many cards until Shadows Over Innistrad. But I have some idea of what's going on with Zendikar, and I can see that being a good starting set. I guess the Core books for Magic & Dragons could present Zendikar as it's main setting, with Dominaria an alternate main setting that has an apocalypse of the week feel? And then the other planes get splatbooks?

edit: I don't think it's particularly odd to have a party of Planeswalkers. That's what WotC's set up for right now. Gatewatch was all about the four not-black planeswalkers coming together to face a world-ending event. SOI is Jace's adventures in Ravenloft where he's joined by the asian planeswalker Tamiyo to find the native planeswalker Sorkin. I think the Planeswalker class could be something you could reasonably take from level 1, with some slightly different abilities, but may be the only real way to play above like 10th level. Like how by 10th level the fighter needs to pick up a new schtick to stay relevant.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 3:24 pm

Since each Planeswalker has 'unique abilities' it doesn't really feel like a 'class'. If it were a class, it'd probably work like a Prestige Class, adding additional abilities on top of your base abilities.

Summoning Dragons and Summoning Plant Creatures are similar enough, but turning into an indestructible fighter and dealing damage to all creatures in play are very different. Draw card abilities, while they work in Magic, wouldn't have a clear point of comparison in D&D.

I'd see it as a special 1-3 level Prestige Class that offers +1 CL at each level and some interesting abilities. The first level ability would have to be 'Plane Shift' with some regularity.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 3:26 pm

Drawing a card would probably translate into swapping available spells at combat speed. I don't know that you really want to go with Vancian magic, but I could definitely see Magic & Dragons having a WoF system, and so abilities that draw a card in MtG do exactly that in M&D.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 7:04 pm

I already like Kamigawa more than Rokugan on the basis of Rokugan being around long enough to be filled with many editions of dumb, but what about Kamigawa stands out as a setting?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 10:08 pm

Well, for one thing, I have to first fess up to being innately turned off to really old, really grognardy-feeling settings like Rokugon/Forgotten Realms/etc. I like Greyhawk, and it's old as balls, but whereas Greenwood is a lech who has a false sense of self-importance, Gygax is just a damned weirdo. But I digress. That just means that for my personal tastes, Rokugon starts a point down, but I still think it's kind of cool.

On the other hand, Rokugon seems very Hollywood-Hong Kong/Crystal Dragon Jesus Pan-Asia, while Kamigawa is very specifically fantasy Japan. This gives it a better focus than Rokugon seems to have. I mean, the selling point of both is "Ninjas and Samurai!!!!1!!" so trying to make a pan-asia setting is actually working at cross purposes. I think. I'm no scholar of Rokugon like Frank.

The fact that, in the big Animu Hey Day, WotC said "no... we're going to try to actually be at least somewhat authentic to Japan" gets props from me, and I was an animu kid.

I don't know, I can't really point to anything concrete. It's more just that was the fantasy asian setting of my teen years that appealed to me. And Magic's "Mage Punk" thing is very similar to the "Dungeon Punk" thing WotC was trying to do with D&D back then. And Rokugon is not D&D Dungeon Punk, and Dungeon/Mage Punk is my fucking jam.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 10:15 pm

Cooler and more gameable nonhuman races. (Which to some extent comes down to just "less dumb", since they're mostly the same with better implementation, but Moonfolk are neat).

Actual animism with a diverse spirit world instead of humanocentric, pantheonic polytheism.

Other than that, they're pretty interchangeable, because they're both drawing from the same sources for fairly similar purposes. And don't understimate the appeal of "less dumb". It's strong enough that I for one would rather play in Kamigawa.

Edit: Prak has a good point too, that I couldn't put my finger on. Focus makes for a better setting.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 10:42 pm

And in return- what Schleiermacher said.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Apr 30, 2016 12:04 pm

Chamomile wrote:Also, are there really only eleven planes in MtG to date?

Magic Origins did a sort of soft reboot where they declared we were now concerned with the goings-on of ten planes:

Alara
Dominaria
Innistrad
Kaladesh
Lorwyn
Ravnica
Regatha
Theros
Vryn
Zendikar

Now, I know what you're saying: "Kaladesh? Regatha? Vryn? Dafuq are those?"
And the second thing you'd be thinking is something like "What about Mirrodin, Ulgrotha, Tarkir, and Kamigawa?"

And the answer to that is soft reboot, bitches! So a lot of older planes got thrown under the bus, especially ones that were for one reason or another unpopular (like Ulgrotha and Kamigawa). I have no idea if Tarkir is being thrown under the bus or not, because one set of it is still current in Standard so it isn't weird for it to have not gotten any reach around in Origins.

Kaladesh, Regatha, and Vryn don't have much written about them, and are mostly just shown on a few cards from what is essentially a "things to come" type preview set. This actually means that I am more excited by them than by most other planes, because Magic writing has historically been pretty bad. Some cool concept art and no shitty metaplot about Yawgmoth sounds like a much better place to start than most of the other planes.

-Username17

codeGlaze · Post by **codeGlaze** » Sat Apr 30, 2016 2:50 pm

Is this inspired by the Planeshift: Zendikar 5e, thing?

codeGlaze · Post by **codeGlaze** » Sat Apr 30, 2016 2:50 pm

--postx2--

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Sat Apr 30, 2016 2:51 pm

So what hapened to Mirrodin and the neo phyrexians? They seemed to be winning last time I checked.

Prak wrote: On the other hand, Rokugon seems very Hollywood-Hong Kong/Crystal Dragon Jesus Pan-Asia, while Kamigawa is very specifically fantasy Japan. This gives it a better focus than Rokugon seems to have. I mean, the selling point of both is "Ninjas and Samurai!!!!1!!" so trying to make a pan-asia setting is actually working at cross purposes. I think. I'm no scholar of Rokugon like Frank.

The fact that, in the big Animu Hey Day, WotC said "no... we're going to try to actually be at least somewhat authentic to Japan" gets props from me, and I was an animu kid.

I loved the ninjutsu mechanic. "Oh you think that's just a puny soldier that you're letting approach you? NOPE NINJA!"

I heard it got poor sales, but I would say it wasn't because people didn't like it, but simply because you needed less rares to make effective decks:
-No super dual lands anywhere.
-The main theme of the whole set was legendary creatures everywhere, and legendary permanents are the kind of card you do not want to include 4 copies each.

So Kamigawa decks didn't 'gasp' demand you to spend hundreds of bucks just for your mana base, and you could get away with 2-3 copies of your deck's best cards. All in all there was less need for people to buy boxes to find multiple 4 sets of rares.

Of course hasbro would not stand for that. Cue several multi-colored sets with super rare dual lands and the whole mythic rare shit that meant you needed to buy even more cards to make any sort of competitive deck. Fuck you hasbro.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Apr 30, 2016 3:35 pm

Maglag wrote:So what hapened to Mirrodin and the neo phyrexians? They seemed to be winning last time I checked.

Probably the biggest incentive for getting rid of the three set block pattern was that each block ended with them basically blowing the fucking world up with some stupid cataclysm in set three.

Maglag wrote:I heard it got poor sales, but I would say it wasn't because people didn't like it

Q&A with Mark Rosewater wrote:Q: Isn't it strange that Kamigawa is received so positively on social media yet (old) survey statistics argue otherwise?

A: Don’t confuse what is loudest in the echo chambers of enfranchised social media with what the majority of players enjoy.

Kamigawa was poorly received at the time from a storyline standpoint and from a mechanics standpoint. People genuinely, profoundly, did not like it. There are a number of cards from Kamigawa that live on in eternal formats, so its reputation continues to improve over time. But the block where people were actually expected to play with decks made of Kamigawa cards was not well liked. MaRo is talking about what a Return to Kamigawa might look like, and it's basically "make a new Japanese flavored set, call it Kamigawa, Go Fuck Yourself." That might sound like an exaggeration, but it's not.

Maro wrote:We could make a brand new Japanese inspired works and then call it Kamigawa and say a lot has changed in the thousands of years. Would that make people happy or sad?

MaRo wrote:Let’s say we did Return to Kamigawa but things changed massively. If you could pick three things that didn’t change flavorwise, what would those be?

-Username17

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Sat Apr 30, 2016 4:32 pm

maglag wrote:I loved the ninjutsu mechanic. "Oh you think that's just a puny soldier that you're letting approach you? NOPE NINJA!"

I heard it got poor sales, but I would say it wasn't because people didn't like it, but simply because you needed less rares to make effective decks:
-No super dual lands anywhere.
-The main theme of the whole set was legendary creatures everywhere, and legendary permanents are the kind of card you do not want to include 4 copies each.

So Kamigawa decks didn't 'gasp' demand you to spend hundreds of bucks just for your mana base, and you could get away with 2-3 copies of your deck's best cards. All in all there was less need for people to buy boxes to find multiple 4 sets of rares.

Of course hasbro would not stand for that. Cue several multi-colored sets with super rare dual lands and the whole mythic rare shit that meant you needed to buy even more cards to make any sort of competitive deck. Fuck you hasbro.

Dude do less drugs. Kamigawa era standard caused people to quit Magic and Block constructed wasn't much better. Like Standard wan't entierly Kamigawas problem with Affinity and Tooth and all but fuck Kamigawa block was practically a two deck metagame. Either you played green or you played white weenie and every deck ran 4 Top or 4 Jitte. Like have you ever played a mirror when those cards dominate the format? It was hell.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Apr 30, 2016 4:45 pm

I'm pretty sure the fact that Kamigawa wasn't stupid animu shenanigans was a contributing factor to it's poor reception with a lot of players.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Apr 30, 2016 5:14 pm

Prak wrote: I mean, the selling point of both is "Ninjas and Samurai!!!!1!!" so trying to make a pan-asia setting is actually working at cross purposes.

Oh, if only it were so. People assumed Kamigawa would be samurai and ninjas and pitched it to their friends that way but ultimately it was a misrepresentation of the product. What it's really about is kami going apeshit and hogging all the screen time. So much so that every fourth card has the fucking spirit sub-type. So instead of having hot courtesans, ninja assassins and scheming lords you end up with the Kami of the Tea Pot brawling with He of the Abstract Concept. As far as I'm concerned they tainted the brand pretty much irrevocably because I honestly don't know what there is to care about aside from ghost busting.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Apr 30, 2016 5:19 pm

The story is about the Kami going apeshit because the White villain is fucking shit up. The selling point is ninja and samurai.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Apr 30, 2016 6:01 pm

I get where you're coming from but a selling point is not just a feature that sells, it's a feature of the product you're trying to sell. When I said that spirits were every fourth card, I meant that very literally and wasn't even counting things that merely interact with spirits. There's seriously about 140 spirits in a block of around 600. Samurai and ninja are present in Kamigawa but if you shelled out some clams for a booster draft odds were good you'd find yourself staring down a bunch of rats, snake people and spirits instead of bad ass ninjas and that was super disappointing. My usual habit is to skip constructed and dabble in booster drafts but with Kamigawa I quickly bailed out on sealed play because I got tired of people passing me back the lolwut pear.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Apr 30, 2016 8:29 pm

Well, and I love the spirits and have a black green deck I call sniping akubas.

But it was The Japan Set, in the hey day of animu. The set themes were legends matter (a big mistake, as previously mentioned), and all things Japanese myth. And it failed because of your exact experience. People went in expecting Ninja and samurai and got surrealism with power and toughness.

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