D&D + MTG = Fun?

[FiendishCentaur]

My players and I are all highly interested in playing d&d 3.5 in the MTG Multiverse. We all play MTG almost every night as we live together. None of us, however have read/will read the books (probably not, anyway).
I'm hoping to find good sources to use to build the setting without having to read the books.
Any links/suggestions would be appreciated (or actual help, we could swap usable handmade mini-sourcebooks or the like).

[Forrestfire]

Personally, I would start here (http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Dominia). MTG Salvation's wiki's got pretty much everything you could want to know about MTG's fluff.

[Psyren]

Flavor text on the cards is another good source of fluff/setting info. http://magiccards.info/search.html

[Troacctid]

The "Planeswalker's Guide" series of articles is chock-full of worldbuilding straight from the MTG Creative Team's internal files. You can find it on the official magic.wizards.com website. I think they're archived under Uncharted Realms.

[thethird]

Don't forget to use the color wheel (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?174163-Alignment-Replacement-The-Color-Wheel-Now-With-More-Green!) alignment replacer.

[FiendishCentaur]

Nice! Thank you! Quick response too. Google only gave me info as to why wotc never cross-bred the two. Too much inter-team squabbling and branding issues.

[Buufreak]

If you are looking for a well thought out world (although might be reserved for levels in the teens) might I suggest this? http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?186026-Phyrexia

[Denver]

I suppose it might depend on the Plane or setting you take from M:tG. It's been a while since I played, but I believe that the first few set releases were in a somewhat unnamed and rather nebulous setting - akin to early Greyhawk. I believe that Arabian Nights was the first expansion that also gave a setting, and then the post-Revised "Ice Age" was the first cycle to have a consistent theme and arc.

So, you might want to take a look M:tG's various planes and settings. I know the setting for Urza's Saga was very artifact and magic-intensive (moreso than normal for a game *called* Magic) - and that the Onslaught cycle was full of critters and less on powerful artifacts. The Weatherlight Saga almost exactly lends itself to a D&D party style adventure, with quests and side-quests and twists and all that.

Seriously, sounds like a damn fun idea! I hope you guys get it to work!

[SwordChucks]

You might consider Zendikar as the setting. It already has a D&D style adventure feel to it and I'm sure you could come up with something long term using the eldrazi. Then just make some player races (Kor, vampire, merfolk, elf, goblin, and whatever else you want).

[Teh_das]

I've just started a Pathfinder campaign based in Otaria, and my players seem to like it. I'm fluffing the PCS as planeswalkers.

There are a LOT of different settings you can chose from, and the settings fit anywhere between low fantasy, high fantasy, and low/high fantasy. Do you know where you want to start?

[Sayt]

I always wanted to run The Phyrexian Overlay of GreyHawke/Golarion/Faerun/Krynn/Whichever.

[SwordChucks]

I always wanted to run The Phyrexian Overlay of GreyHawke/Golarion/Faerun/Krynn/Whichever.

Krynn would be hilarious. Compleated kender.

[Auron3991]

My suggestion for setting depends a lot on what the feel of your games are:

High Fantasy: Zednikar or Alara
Sword and Sorcery: Dominera (plane for most of the MtG sets before modern block), especially around Onslaught block
Horror: Innistrad

The only planes I would keep away from are Mirrodin and Kamigawa. Mirroden because it's too far away from normal D&D style and Kamigawa because it's lore heavy.

[Sayt]

Krynn would be hilarious. Compleated kender.

"Oh Gods, why is the armouy empty?! WHY ARE ALL THE WEAPONS GONE?!"

[FiendishCentaur]

Might just roughly base it. Just enough fluff to make it feel like a hybrid. My player's can't decide what they want to play in, so I'm just going to build a few races. Most of them like the anthropomorphic races of kamigawa.

[Vhaidara]

My suggestion for setting depends a lot on what the feel of your games are:

High Fantasy: Zednikar or Alara
Sword and Sorcery: Dominera (plane for most of the MtG sets before modern block), especially around Onslaught block
Horror: Innistrad

The only planes I would keep away from are Mirrodin and Kamigawa. Mirroden because it's too far away from normal D&D style and Kamigawa because it's lore heavy.

Also
Intrigue: Ravnica

[atemu1234]

Krynn would be hilarious. Compleated kender.

Wouldn't they just be writ off as failures?


What happened to the sea of oil? What? They took it? Seriously? What did they do with it? ...
...
YOU'RE TELLING ME THEY PUT THE ENTIRE SEA OF OIL INTO BUCKETS?

[ben-zayb]

Krynn would be hilarious. Compleated kender.
So like combining suspense thriller with annoying slapstick comedy?

Makes more sense for Planescape, though. Oh gods, compleated Modrons and Primus, new father of the machine! The Great Modron March never sounded as terrifying as this!

[kellbyb]

Wouldn't they just be writ off as failures?

Oh, I imagine Urabrask would take a liking to them.

[sonofzeal]

I've actually been thinking of something quite like this. Really, though, given the nature of the MTG cosmology, it would make sense to have the various planes AND the various D&D campaign settings all be accessible. Planeswalkers in Sigil could go on a shopping trip to Waterdeep and then head off to Ravnica for lunch, passing notes between the Harpers and the Selesnya Conclave. There's a lot of potential there.

[FiendishCentaur]

sonofzeal, your actually close to what I was thinking. We have an ongoing campaign where the players have encountered a questline involving this thing called "The Codex". They have yet to discover what it is, so I can't post it on here... They have a bad habit of reading over my shoulder, lol. Anyway, this thing is opening portals from the abyss and the nine hells, might just open it to Phyrexia, introducing the other planes. I'm thinking Rakdos has something to do with the chaos they are now facing.

[turbo164]

sonofzeal, your actually close to what I was thinking. We have an ongoing campaign where the players have encountered a questline involving this thing called "The Codex". They have yet to discover what it is, so I can't post it on here... They have a bad habit of reading over my shoulder, lol. Anyway, this thing is opening portals from the abyss and the nine hells, might just open it to Phyrexia, introducing the other planes. I'm thinking Rakdos has something to do with the chaos they are now facing.


If there's anything the past few years have taught us, it's that everything is Nicol Bolas's fault.

EVERYTHING.

[sonofzeal]

If there's anything the past few years have taught us, it's that everything is Nicol Bolas's fault.

EVERYTHING.

How so? I'm still catching up on recent lore, and his isn't a name that has come up as often as Jace, Chandra, Lilliana, etc.

[FiendishCentaur]

So, I came up with the plan (telling my players not to read this or face being banned from the game). The Codex is the only book- the only account - of what happened at the beginning of creation. The Primevals, or Elder Gods, were all that existed. They all wished to have followers. One cliched creation myth later, the gods managed to combine their powers to split the souls of each of the Elder gods, in a cataclysmic event that split the one plane (Dominaria) into the multiverse. Each of these divisions, as the souls of the Elder Gods could not be destroyed and imprisonment seemed insufficient, were then seperated into two individual beings, each with a Twin-Soul on an unconnected plane of existence. Then all memory of the event was erased, with most of the gods destroying themselves for this to happen. The Codex chronicles the life of whomever reads it, unless that reader has a Twin-Soul. If the reader does, that reader then instead sees the entire life of his other half, before and after being split.
Then I read Fiendish Codex II, Tyrants of the Nine Hells.
Rakdos is the other half of Asmodeus. This would explain his initial power.
Still working on connecting the creation myth in that book with mine. Maybe the one one I wrote caused the chaos, destroyed all order and law?
Any thoughts?

[sonofzeal]

So, I came up with the plan (telling my players not to read this or face being banned from the game). The Codex is the only book- the only account - of what happened at the beginning of creation. The Primevals, or Elder Gods, were all that existed. They all wished to have followers. One cliched creation myth later, the gods managed to combine their powers to split the souls of each of the Elder gods, in a cataclysmic event that split the one plane (Dominaria) into the multiverse. Each of these divisions, as the souls of the Elder Gods could not be destroyed and imprisonment seemed insufficient, were then seperated into two individual beings, each with a Twin-Soul on an unconnected plane of existence. Then all memory of the event was erased, with most of the gods destroying themselves for this to happen. The Codex chronicles the life of whomever reads it, unless that reader has a Twin-Soul. If the reader does, that reader then instead sees the entire life of his other half, before and after being split.
Then I read Fiendish Codex II, Tyrants of the Nine Hells.
Rakdos is the other half of Asmodeus. This would explain his initial power.
Still working on connecting the creation myth in that book with mine. Maybe the one one I wrote caused the chaos, destroyed all order and law?
Any thoughts?

Seems... complex. What's the payoff? Why not simply have the Great Wheel be one portion of the multiverse, perhaps rather more interconnected than usual, with Theros, Ravnica, Xendikar, etc as other portions? Perhapse that's one of the functions of Sigil and the Lady of Pain - all travel from the MtG Planes to the Great Wheel has to go through it and her, and that's why there isn't much travel or knowledge. The Lady of Pain is pretty much an Eldrazi-level badass anyway, but at least one that can be negotiated with.

I know the designer impulse to add layers and depth, but after a certain point it either needs to have some sort of payoff, or it's just going to confuse people and muddy things up more than it helps. Sure you can find interesting Twin-Soul analogues, but if they ever start prying into the details you can expect all sorts of unexpected questions and complications to come up. I'd only do it if you don't mind handling those and think it'll be worth it.

[FiendishCentaur]

Good point, maybe it is a bit to complex. I'm just brainstorming on here, in a manner of speaking. I'm working on incorporating it into an ongoing storyline, however, and this is all I came up with so far. I'm still mulling over some ideas, and will give yours some thought.

[Svata]

If there's anything the past few years have taught us, it's that everything is Nicol Bolas's fault.

EVERYTHING.


Unless its the Phyrexian's fault.

[ericgrau]

If you start statting MTG items and creatures in D&D here are some guidelines and maths to not shatter the campaign:

Use existing creatures and items as a baseline then adjust. Find something similar as a starting point.

If you want to boost something then a +2 above normal is a significant boost. No, really it is. If you want a big boost to something to make it major then a +4 above normal is a large, often overwhelming boost. No, really it is. Also remember stacking. 4 seemingly unimportant +1s that stack is a +4. Unlike MTG don't let items/artifacts stack because D&D doesn't have a hand size and someone might get 10 cheap ones.

Basically on average against a difficult foe you succeed 10 out of 20 times so each +1 is another 10% to your effectiveness, not 5% as many people think. And while at high level you might have +15 in various items, these have COMMON TYPED bonuses which means they are part of the expected scaling by level. Whether you have a +10 to hit 20 or a +110 to hit 120 it makes zero difference and another +4 UNTYPED will still help just as much. Thus if you want to make items that don't stack or that have common typed bonuses then you can make the bonus a little bigger without worrying because that bonus is somewhat expected and more to keep up with par than to actually help.

Likewise be wary of MTG special effects that don't normally exist in D&D. If it already exists then it's expected. If it's totally new then you open a big can of worms of unexpected interactions with everything else. Always use existing material as a baseline whenever possible. If it's new then be conservative on how strong it is and how cheap it is. For example darksteel should probably cost quite a bit more than adamantine and you shouldn't have an entire citadel made out of it. Either players will find a way to move it and sell doors and so on, or if it's cheap then brand new shennanigans will abound.

[turbo164]

How so? I'm still catching up on recent lore, and his isn't a name that has come up as often as Jace, Chandra, Lilliana, etc.


http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Nicol_Bolas

"Oh cool, they brought back a cool old character for the nostalgic Time Spiral block, I dig it."
"He's even the major villain in Alara 2 blocks later, cool! He was hurt pretty bad, will probably need to lay low for a while.
...except he's in the next block, Zendikar.
...and the next...
...and the core set...
...and Duel Decks...
...and Duels of the Planeswalkers...
...and some of the standalone planeswalker books..."

They thankfully kept him out of 3 blocks after that, he's back for the current one though. It just felt like a bit of an overload to see him show up so often in the span of a few years, every single set now feels like they're going to pull a "Oh by the way [villain] is secretly being manipulated by Bolas! WHAT A TWEEST!"

[ben-zayb]

^At least he doesn't have as much reprints as Jace has. I mean, I love the mind-mage character concept, but he practically became M:tG's poster boy at this point and I've already had enough of him.

[Svata]

Jace has enough different forms (cards) to justify the several printings. (Babyjace, JtMS, Mill Adept, AoT, and NewJace. Bolas just has Dragon and Planeswalker. Heck, Ajani has as many printings as Jace does, and the rest of the lorwyn 5 aren't far behind.)

[SwordChucks]

http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Nicol_Bolas

"Oh cool, they brought back a cool old character for the nostalgic Time Spiral block, I dig it."
"He's even the major villain in Alara 2 blocks later, cool! He was hurt pretty bad, will probably need to lay low for a while.
...except he's in the next block, Zendikar.
...and the next...
...and the core set...
...and Duel Decks...
...and Duels of the Planeswalkers...
...and some of the standalone planeswalker books..."

They thankfully kept him out of 3 blocks after that, he's back for the current one though. It just felt like a bit of an overload to see him show up so often in the span of a few years, every single set now feels like they're going to pull a "Oh by the way [villain] is secretly being manipulated by Bolas! WHAT A TWEEST!"


Also Bolas was the big bad of the Legends cycle two. No matter how often he fails it gets played off as "just according to plan". At this point he's a Saturday morning cartoon villain just without a mustache to twirl.

[Troacctid]

You should have seen Bolas in Test of Metal. Tezzeret totally kicks his ass in an epic battle of wits.
But it turns out it was actually a Doombot the whole time!