How good is ravnica?

[Particle_Man]

Is it meant to be core plus one? Are other core races like dwarves banned? Are most monster Manuel critters banned or allowed?

How does it play? Is the setting book fun if you never played magic the gathering?

Is it intrigue only or is there room for more traditional dungeon crawls?

Should all pcs be in the same guild? Can they be guildless?

[Sigreid]

Is it meant to be core plus one? Are other core races like dwarves banned? Are most monster Manuel critters banned or allowed?

How does it play? Is the setting book fun if you never played magic the gathering?

Is it intrigue only or is there room for more traditional dungeon crawls?

Should all pcs be in the same guild? Can they be guildless?

1. No idea how it plays in AL. I think the core races are fine.
2. I don't think it's MTG specific. Personally, my group plays in a kind of mythic earth setting and I simply decided to place it in Australia.
3. Plenty of room for dungeon crawls. One of the guilds is even dedicated to destroying civilization and returning to the "old ways". It also talks about an ongoing war between angels and "evil" so dungeon crawl should be fine.
4. PCs can be of different guilds working to the same temporary purpose, or be guildless mercenaries. My reading of the setting is that the guilds are out to be the top dog, but are not out to destroy each other, believing that the guild system is necessary for society.
5. I basically got it because I like having lots of character options in the game and it's got some neat additions.

[Madfellow]

Is it meant to be core plus one? Are other core races like dwarves banned? Are most monster Manuel critters banned or allowed?

The book does refer to subclass options out of Xanathar's Guide to Everything, as well as monsters from Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, in addition to what is offered in the Guildmaster's Guide itself, so all of those options are on the table if your DM is okay with it. The bestiary chapter is meant to add options, not outright replace them.

The PC races on Ravnica are: centaurs, elves, goblins, half-elves, humans, loxodon (elephant folk), minotaurs, simic hybrids, and vedalken (blue Vulcans). Anything not on that list is assumed to not be on Ravnica unless your DM says otherwise. If you're a fan of dwarves in particular, the loxodon occupy some of the same cultural space (community-minded, physically strong, stoic, etc.)


How does it play? Is the setting book fun if you never played magic the gathering?

This is definitely a Dungeons & Dragons book. You don't have to be super invested in Magic in order to get into Ravnica.


Is it intrigue only or is there room for more traditional dungeon crawls?

Ravnica is a city that has been building on top of itself for ten thousand years. There are ages upon ages of old structures, many of them crumbling and forgotten, hiding in all of the nooks and crannies of the city. Some of these may be occupied by monsters, or repurposed for some nefarious scheme. The sky's the limit here.


Should all pcs be in the same guild? Can they be guildless?

The book doesn't make any assumptions. Your party can be all the same guild, all different guilds, or have no affiliation at all. You do have the option to be guildless. The benefit to joining a guild is that you have the opportunity to gain renown and get access to the guild's resources, like magic items and NPC allies backing you up.

[Sception]

Is it meant to be core plus one? Are other core races like dwarves banned? Are most monster Manuel critters banned or allowed?
No idea how Ravnica plays in adventurer's league. In regular games, Ravnica is a super cosmopolitan, planet-wide urban setting with a massive population of different peoples and creatures. Apart from deities, pretty much any creature or monster from any other setting or product could reasonably be found there.


How does it play? Is the setting book fun if you never played magic the gathering?
It doesn't require any familiarity with magic the gathering generally, and the description of the setting within the campaign book is largely divorced from magic the gathering meta-setting details like mana, colors of magic, alternate planes, or planeswalkers. There's some reference to a couple individual planeswalkers, but only in so far as they're not really around right now.

THAT SAID, as much info as you get from the campaign book, the guilds do seem to be excessively pigeon holed into relatively narrow stereotypes, missing some of their nuance. The Golgari aren't just the garbage collecters, they're also the largest source of food for the greater populace, using their massive subterrainian mulch fields to grow great fungal harvests that feed the vast majority of the city's population. Yes, the food grown in Selesnya's terraced gardens is more pleasant, but there isn't nearly enough of it to go round.

Orzhov aren't just organized criminals, they're also basically the state religion, and that religion isn't just a front. They are responsible for and do a successful job of ordering and organizing and laying to rest (or putting to work) the souls of the dead, which is an absolutely critical function in a world with a MASSIVE population where there is also no intrinsic connection to any underworld or afterlife for dead souls to drain into. Souls in ravnica just stick around /in/ ravnica, only fading away very slowly, and the plane would be overrun by haunting specters and hungry ghosts were it not for the work done by the Orzov. And that's only their religious work, their banking work is likewise presented as more a front for criminal activity in the campaign book and while the guild does abuse the power it offers them, the service itself is still absolutely critical.

So it is with all of the guilds that at first seem somewhat adversarial. They all serve important roles in Ravnican society that the campaign book doesn't always manage to convey, while even the friendlier guilds have their darker side - Boros's zealotry can lead to exactly the same sorts of unnecessary bloodshed that real world zealotry can produce, particularly when they're acting as a police force. Arzorius can be overly litigious and utterly lacking in empathy. Selesnya can be cultish, etc.

So while you don't need familiarity with MtG to play in the D&D version of Ravnica, I do recommend spending some time on MtG lore wikis to get a bit of a more fleshed out take on the setting in general and the guilds in particular.


Is it intrigue only or is there room for more traditional dungeon crawls?
Ravnica is a planet-wide city, but it's not all populated at once. In a setting steeped with unstable magic that contains not one but two guilds full of mad scientists and multiple others that are, at least in part, doomsday cults, magical calamities the render large chunks of the city uninhabitable for centuries at a time aren't at all unheard of. More even then that, though, over time buildings decay and crumble, and older sections of the city get more and more expensive to maintain with less and less motivation to do so. Populations slowly shift into other areas, and the Gruul come in to tear down the old edifices and return that section of the city to the wild. In time people come back to the ruined area to settle and build new city structures overtop the crumbled remains of the old. In this way, at any given time, there are major populated urban regions fit for intrigue adventures, but those regions are built over layers and layers of undercity and boardered by slightly less ancient decaying ruins half-reclaimed by nature, which hide their own layers of undercity beneath them.

Regions within the undercity are occupied by the Golgari or the Dimir or other groups; and barbarian Gruul tribes wander the ruined outskirts, but large expanses of both are left to themselves, great crumbling dungeon environments populated only by wild creatures, magical monsters, ghosts of the dead, and lone madmen or small cults looking to escape from the prying eyes of the populated regions. So yeah, there's plenty of room for dungeon crawling adventures in Ravnica, with plenty of abandoned treasures and forgotten doomsday devices to discover.


Should all pcs be in the same guild? Can they be guildless?
Same guild adventures give an easy reason for parties to be working together and can heavily theme a campaign, and is definitely suggested as an option, but is not the assumed default. In general, each player picks what guild they want to play, and the DM looks for any overlapping interests within those guilds to devise a situation where those guilds would wish to cooperate. For instance, if golgari and selesnya players are together, maybe there's some threat to the food supply or plant life in general. Or if there are arzorius and dimir players, maybe the arzorius suspects some conspiracy against the government and hires dimir spies to help investigate it. While the colors of mana aren't really 'cannon' so much for D&D ravnica, the original colors of the guilds do suggest overlapping themes that can inspire campaign ideas bringing particular guilds together. Again, checking MtG lore wikis will help there, particularly in terms of giving more fleshed out takes on the guild that make it easier to come up with campaign scenarios where the Grull or the Golgari or the Orzhov or the Rakdos might play a helpful role rather than a purely antagonistic one.

Alternatively, if you're more interested in a dungeoneering adventure, members of just about any guilds could be interested in exploring the outskirts or undercity to see what treasures and artifacts might be found there.

[Particle_Man]

The book does refer to subclass options out of Xanathar's Guide to Everything, as well as monsters from Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, in addition to what is offered in the Guildmaster's Guide itself, so all of those options are on the table if your DM is okay with it. The bestiary chapter is meant to add options, not outright replace them.

The PC races on Ravnica are: centaurs, elves, goblins, half-elves, humans, loxodon (elephant folk), minotaurs, simic hybrids, and vedalken (blue Vulcans). Anything not on that list is assumed to not be on Ravnica unless your DM says otherwise. If you're a fan of dwarves in particular, the loxodon occupy some of the same cultural space (community-minded, physically strong, stoic, etc.)

Ok so am I right to assume that the stuff referred to in other books is not reprinted in the Ravinca book so I would need to have a look at these other books?

Also, aside from some core book pc races like dwarves, gnomes, etc. is there anything that is specifically not in Ravinca that is in other core or supplemental books?

[Azreal]

The Circle of Spores Druid archetype
The Domain of Order Cleric archetype

Encode Memories cantrip
Chaos Bolt first Level Spell

Centaur
Minotaur
Vedalken
Viashino
Simic Hybrid

Then the ten backgrounds for each of the Guilds

Not to mention the slew of NPCs and monsters.

[Ivor_The_Mad]

Is it meant to be core plus one? Are other core races like dwarves banned? Are most monster Manuel critters banned or allowed?

How does it play? Is the setting book fun if you never played magic the gathering?

Is it intrigue only or is there room for more traditional dungeon crawls?

Should all pcs be in the same guild? Can they be guildless?


As a big MTG fan and player, I am a bit bias. Not to mention Ravnica is my favorite setting (return to Ravnica specifically)
I don't yet own the book my self but I have read through it.

From what I can tell, without actually playing it, it plays well and it is fun for people who have not played MTG because it focuses more on the lore as opposed to mechanics and I think it's easy to understand what's going on enough to use the book. I do however think that knowing about Ravnica and how it works beforehand is good but not necessary. As for the dungeon crawls, definitely. There are so many underground sections and sewers and other locations that a dungeon crawl is not hard to play if that's what you want to do.
Not all PCs have to be part of the same guild. Brazenburn actually ran a Ravnica campaign last year and all our party members were in different guilds.
as for the monsters. There really aren't any nonhumanoid creatures native to Ravnica. Unless it's specifically brought there or some Simic experiment there aren't a ton of creatures. They do exist though and you could probably incorporate some but I personally think that the MM, in general, doesn't have a ton that can be used in Ravnica.

[Damon_Tor]

If you're a fan of dwarves in particular, the loxodon occupy some of the same cultural space (community-minded, physically strong, stoic, etc.)
physically strong

Except for some reason they decided not to give them a strength bonus. Despite 80% of official Loxodon art showing them swinging warhammers the size of engine blocks. I'm still confused by the choice.

[Damon_Tor]

Are other core races like dwarves banned?

Dwarves aren't native to Ravinca, but they exist in other MTG settings. PCs are exceptional: a dwarf PC could have been pulled from another plane by a Planeswalker, something that happens all the time. He would have a hard time fitting in anywhere, but who cares? You're a PC, stand out, let them stare.

[Particle_Man]

Also, aside from some core book pc races like dwarves, gnomes, etc. is there anything that is specifically not in Ravinca that is in other core or supplemental books?


The Circle of Spores Druid archetype
The Domain of Order Cleric archetype

Encode Memories cantrip
Chaos Bolt first Level Spell

Centaur
Minotaur
Vedalken
Viashino
Simic Hybrid

Then the ten backgrounds for each of the Guilds

Not to mention the slew of NPCs and monsters.

That is interesting information but I was asking about what is not in Ravnica, like dwarves, as opposed to what is in Ravnica, like chaos bolt.

[Madfellow]

Ok so am I right to assume that the stuff referred to in other books is not reprinted in the Ravinca book so I would need to have a look at these other books?

If you own Xanathar's Guide, the Guildmaster's Guide tells you how all of the different subclass options fit into the world. That's the extent of it. You don't NEED anything more than core if that's what you have, but if you already have Xanathar's, that's taken into account. The same thing goes for the monsters in Volo's Guide and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. They're listed according to their most likely guild affiliation, but that's it. You don't need them, but if you have them you're taken care of.


Also, aside from some core book pc races like dwarves, gnomes, etc. is there anything that is specifically not in Ravinca that is in other core or supplemental books?

I don't know if the book goes into this in great detail, but the cosmology of Magic is very different from that of D&D. In Magic, there are no Inner or Outer Planes; all planes are Material planes. I'm pretty sure there's an Ethereal and an Astral, but that's about it. You can't travel between Material planes unless you have the Spark, which only one person in a million has. Otherwise, exposure to the Astral plane is fatal for living things.

Because there are no Inner or Outer planes, beings such as celestials, elementals, fey, and fiends are native to the various Material planes they're found on. Angels are (almost) always female, and fiends are always male. On most worlds, it's impossible for anyone to prove definitively that gods exist.

My fellow Vorthoses, did I miss anything? :smallconfused: