MTG as a campign setting

[blelliot]

A friend of mine who still religiously plays Magic the Gathering (I became disenchanted with it a few years ago) were discussing how similar the two WOTC properties we love so much (D&D and MTG) were so similar. Then we got to talking how cool it would be if WOTC decided to make a MTG campaign setting where your characters are planeswalkers. This got the gears of my head turning and I figured I'd ask in the Playground if anyone had done this ever and how successful the game had been. Any information you lovely people had on an endeavour would be appreciated! Thanks everyone!

[UXLZ]

I've always liked the idea of a DnD campaign set in Ravnica.

[Darkzekkai]

I've always liked the idea of a DnD campaign set in Ravnica.

This! I have wanted to do that for a while too but haven't had the chance.

[MrConsideration]

Someone on this very board wrote an adventure in Innistrad. (https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/3c42sr/5e_army_of_the_damned_my_free_dd_adventure_set_in/)

M;TG makes a great setting in all kinds of ways - I often steal concepts and artwork from it for my own campaigns. Plus, there are tonnes of great worlds out there to use with very different feels. Gothic Innistrad, Gonzo Ravnica, Asia influenced Kamigawa....

The only question you'd need to answer is whether you're keeping the coloured-mana thing which doesn't fit D&D spellcasting at all. If you fancy a job of work you'd maybe be able to divide spells into colours (Inflict Wounds is Black, Bless is White, Entangle is Green...) and homebrew appropriate classes. I'd personally choose to ignore it and just use D&D casting in a M:TG world. Ditto Planeswalkers, except as potentially Epic-level threats,

[Regitnui]

The only question you'd need to answer is whether you're keeping the coloured-mana thing which doesn't fit D&D spellcasting at all. If you fancy a job of work you'd maybe be able to divide spells into colours (Inflict Wounds is Black, Bless is White, Entangle is Green...) and homebrew appropriate classes. I'd personally choose to ignore it and just use D&D casting in a M:TG world. Ditto Planeswalkers, except as potentially Epic-level threats,

Here's the thing; none of the planeswalkers identify as a "x mana" planeswalker. Gideon is a Human Oath of Devotion Paladin, Chandra a Wild Magic Sorcerer favouring pyromancy (Elemental Evil is her favourite 5e book), Jace is a 'Mystic', and mildly annoyed that he doesn't have a full class yet. Liliana is a Fiend Patron Warlock, and Nissa is quite plainly a Circle of the Land Druid. Elspeth was a War Cleric...

You get the picture. The all-pervasion of manager colour is an artefact of the game, and can be glossed over in universe. It doesn't matter if you used red mana to cast Ray of Frost or blue. What matters is that it was cast.

[Naanomi]

Planeswalker Spark as Feat or Boon?

[UXLZ]

Boon. If the players were Walkers they'd be starting out at way higher than level one. Planeswalkers basically determine the weave of reality, they don't slay kobolds with shortswords.

I'd considered making a homebrew class for every color combination at one point, but that was for 4E where such a thing would be significantly more simple.

Still, I wouldn't actually like having the players be Walkers. A lot of the planes have significantly different themes/tones to them, and much mood whiplash would occur if you went from some palce like Kamigawa to Innistrad or the place with the Eldrazi I forget.

On the other hand, that could lead to a truly epic campaign.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

My DM ran us through a Ravnica adventure he called "A Day in the Life of an Orzhov Tax Collector".

It started off as you'd expect, and then ended in an utter clusterf*** of GLORY we still all talk about today.

[Darkzekkai]

My DM ran us through a Ravnica adventure he called "A Day in the Life of an Orzhov Tax Collector".

It started off as you'd expect, and then ended in an utter clusterf*** of GLORY we still all talk about today.

Please, do explain

[Naanomi]

Once we had a small campaign diversion of 'phyrexians try to invade Athas and fail' which was fun

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Please, do explain

The Characters:
1) Izumi, a human female Sorcerer Guildmage of noble birth and skyrocketing fame amongst the ranks. She specialized in Necromancy and dreamed of joining the Ghost Council.
2) Karl, one of the White Knights of Orzhov, basically a Knight of Justice and public face for the church. He was big. And carried a chained maul that would put the Witch King to fright.
3) A Squad of knights as backup.

Our lord, Henric, sent us out to an apartment building (as wide as a city block and several hundred stories tall) with the task of wringing out some taxes from the schleps who lived there. We spent close to an hour or more going into people's rooms and demanding their tithes. It went pretty smoothly, up until the 40th story or so. That's where a belligerent old timer decided to give us some guff. When diplomacy failed, we used our intimidating power to get what we wanted. Unfortunately, this old bloke was made of sterner stuff, and just before Karl smashed him into paste, he used a small Guild Seal to cause a red-flash of light to fill the room.

Izumi was...perturbed. And a bit anxious. Her suspicions were confirmed when a strange voice sounded in the next room.

"CLEAR!"

The wall exploded and over a dozen Boros Legionaries and Viashino Blade Claws flooded into the room out for our blood. Izumi dropped half of them with a Deep Slumber spell, and Karl handily took on the rest with the knights. In short order the enemy were dead, especially as Izumi had started bashing in the skulls of those in her Slumber, and now the party could hear dozens of THUDs coming from above and below them. Obviously Boros was making a push to cleanse this part of the city of "Orzhov Filth" and we decided to beat feet back to base camp. But first, Izumi decided she now had a use for the small Guild Seal she bore, and the Animate Undead spell within. Now backed up by a dozen zombies as their honor guard/trapfinders, the Orzhov collectors tried to retake the stairs.

This was a mistake. The walls of the building were exploding as we were in the stairwell, and rappelling Boros soldiers were gunning for us every moment. Karl and his Knights held them at bay while Izumi's skeletons grabbed the nearest enemy and hurled themselves into open space. Blindness and Deafness caused many rappellers to fall to their doom, as did the thunderous hammerblows of Karl and his Flail. The stairs integrity was eventually compromised, and it was only Izumi's critical threats which caused the Legion to falter and apparently flee from the exhausted Knights of Orzhov. We thought it was a straight shot out of there. We thought the enemy were on the run.

How naive we were.

At the bottom of the stairs we rushed through the gutted lower levels of the building, only now noticing the second and third floors were now rubble on the first. We fled out of the building, and into the presence of an Angel. A Boros Angel. Of FIRE.

"Are you they who have killed my legionnaires?" She said with wrath boiling in her throat.

Izumi stepped forward. "We only defended ourselves from your peoples' unlawful attack! We are agents and keepers of the peace, and we have done nothing but our duties here today, while your men have attacked us!"

"So...you admit it."

Ah. Sh***. Izumi threw up a fog cloud and ordered her last zombies into it, as the barest form of distraction. We retreated back into the building. As we discussed our options, we could see the Angel's Flaming Sword reap through Izumi's distraction. All hope seemed lost. We knew we were screwed. That was, except for Karl, who was busy climbing up to the 3rd floor just above the doorway. He had a plan.

The angel was approaching now. Izumi managed to raise her men's spirits a touch with a "Band of Brothers" style speech. The Angel was wreathed in flame and ruin, and she spoke to us as she prepared for the execution.

"Now, the Fury of Justice comes upon you! Fear the oblivion to come, Orzhov! For the final......!"

Karl leaped from the roof, flail swinging in a fell arc as we gazed in awe.

The d20 hit the table, rolled, jumped up, and clattered on the ground for several seconds. In the middle of my den floor, a lone 20 stared back up at us. The DM looked at our jubilant faces, and said, "It didn't roll on the table. Roll again."

Our hearts sank. Karl's player (Greg, let's call him) was absolutely livid. He bit is tongue though, and with a shivering hand he rolled that s*** as hard as he could. It cracked off a soda can and one of the books before it spun out on the table.

Natural.

G****mn beautiful.

20

Now, to put this into more perspective, we were playing Trailblazer. TB is basically a 3.5 Modifier like Pathfinder, though not even remotely similar. In TB, Fighters were GODS. And Karl was a good one. Fun fact: A 5th level TB Fighter could burn every single one of his per-level resources in a single attack, guaranteeing a single auto-crit if he lands, and generating somewhere in the ballpark of 200 points of damage if he's optimized and rolls well.

Karl was not optimized. But in this case, it didn't matter at all. Just over 100 damage came crashing down through Karl's Flail. It smashed into the Angel's back, collapsing her rips and tearing one wing free with that single Calamitous hit. Her armor shattered, her flames dimmed, and blood poured from her mouth as she hit the floor with a grunt. We could not believe it.

She tried to surrender. Orzhov was a Lawful organization. She was almost entirely tapped out and most certainly a single point of life from dying. Orzhov would accept a surrender. They were lawful. She was dying and she knew it.

Izumi always had a cruel streak about her though. She walked up and liquefied the Angel's head with a high level Magic Missile. The Angel melted away back into the raw stuff of Mana. We killed her so hard her soul exploded, never to reform again. The Boros Legion fled in terror at this realization. And the Party was free to limp to safety, back to Henric with the last taxes he would ever collect from THAT particular apartment block.

It was a good fight.

[qube]

I actually ran 2 huge campaigns in MTG. (D&D 3.5,level 1 - 17; and D&D 4E, level 4 - 30) - Located in dominaria

Planewalkers basically took over the role as gods. (some poeple in fact pray to them, but obvioulsy to no avail), while divine spellcasters just become arcane.
Planewarker was a prestige class (3.5) a epic destiny (4E)

D&D 3.5 campaign:

(seperate) level 1 characters meet an old man (Urza), who explains he forsees them doing great things, and forcefully teleports each of them to a ship. If they try to run (>50 miles away from the ship) they automatically teleport back into the ship.
They pretty much do simelar things like Gerard of the Weatherlight did, in addition to preparing for the phyrexian invasion. end combat the phyrexian devourer

D&D 4E campaign:

100 years after the phyrexian invasion, they play characters on Otaria (one of the PCs played the great grandson of his former PC). Do some quests, and end up finding Khamal's cused sword, battling pit fighters, prevent the cephalid of flooding the plane, battle Ixidor & Akroma; Battle the three Numera, Defeat Karona; Help Teferi close down the portals, and end by fighting Nicol Bolas

[blelliot]

Thank you all for your input. I'm definitely interested in the idea of planeswalking pcs for an epic campaign. It would be awesome, I think.