Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica Review
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- Interested in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica but not sure if it's worth purchasing? In this review of the newest 5e campaign setting, my friend Jon and I take a look at various components of the book: artwork, world building, player options, monsters, and hooks & plots.
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My DnD campaign which is set in Ravnica placed in a timeline after Phyrexia invasion, so players need to tackle the consequences of the invasion and guilds have a somewhat common enemy. Thanks for the video!
I consider Ravnica my favorite setting in Magic and was predicting the eventual merging of the brands (to reuse art assets if for nothing else) for a LONG time. My own home brew setting is heavily inspired by Ravnica, and I have a lot of affection for the art and the simple premise of "let's create ten distinct groups with their own look and philosophy that have to work together in an urban sink.
When this came out, i bought it quickly.
Yeah, as Jon was talking through it, I was thinking it sounded cool to run a game in a setting with 10 rival factions. It seems like the DM could just take the guilds and plop them into his normal campaign setting too with minimal effort.
Maybe a good plot for a multi-guild party would be rooting out a usurper who also threatens another guild. For example, maybe Simic Combine is supporting a usurper within Orzhov Syndicate. One of the party members is Orzhov and has to go against their own guild in order to save it.
Then the simic has a izzet friend. A rakdos cultist wants to see what crazy things they can do with them. A boros joins so they are protected. A orzhov joins to protect some investments. And a dimr joins to steal some secrets.
what is wrong with a villain in your own guild coruptiuon and itnernal faction are a good story tool^^
Correction on the races: Half-Elf is included, they just didn't put anything new about them in the "Character Creation - Races" secton, for some reason. If you look under the "Suggested Races:" for Dimir and Selesnya, Half-Elf is included on both lists as recommended, best fitting player character selections for those guilds.
Personally, though, I wish they had included more of the MtG races as posibilities. Viashino are not too uncommon in Ravnica and I would have loved to have seen Vampire, Half-Giants (Goliaths), and perhaps some of the other races that showed up in the "Planes Shift" packets. Naturally, most of those races are less common than the included races, so I kinda' get it... /sigh
When you say vampire as a playable race, are we talking about the same undead vampires we have in D&D?
@@theDMLair If you are referring to the excerpt "Player Characters as Vampires" in the Monster Manual, no, that would be far too powerful. I was refering to something like what was created for the "Plane Shift - Zendikar" packet. Admittedly, I think it could use more developement, but that is atleast something to start from. I just wish there were more race options included in the Ravnica guide in general, really. Ravnica is a huge part of a planet-wide city, meaning there is a LOT of potential to draw on races from all over the MtG multiverse.
My hope is that this isn't just a one time thing and that they expand on this concept in the future. It would be amazing to see officially designed and balanced resources for champaign settings in other MtG worlds! Personally, I'm itching to fight the Eldrazi or visit Kamigawa!!!
Yeah, that's odd. They definitely should have included more playable races if Ravnica has so many more of them. That would be half the coolness of playing in Ravnica it seems.
Fun Fact: while the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica is the first officially printed MtG setting for DnD, it's not the first MtG world ported over to DnD 5e. Back in 2014-2015, WotC released a free PDF called Planeshift: Zendikar which was a small setting module for the Magic plane of Zendikar which came with new playable races (Goblins, Vampires, and Kor) as well as new monsters. Ever since PS: Z, after every new magic set, there has been a new Planeshift to accompany it all of them are free. Currently there are 6 Planeshift worlds, they are Zendikar, Innistrad, Kaladesh, Amonkhet, Ixalan, and Dominaria. While each comes with new or variant race options only two come with new subclasses, Kaladesh has the Pyromancer subclass for the Sorcerer (as well as rules to change the elemental type so that you can create other types of "Mancers") and Amonkhet with the Ambition, Solidarity, Zeal, and Strength domains for the Cleric (and rules for Planeswalkers in your games).
Where can I find those?
@@Lockehart1289 just type in Planeshift: *insert plane name here* and it is typically the first link, otherwise, Planeshift: Innistrad is free on DMs Guild
Note all of them are free PDFs
@@samtheactualkenku6205 I did that and found a wiki page that connects to each of the ones available. Got them all except the on for Ixalan that required payment.
@@Lockehart1289 you can get the Ixalan one free from an old copy of Dragon+ Magazine (DnD's online magazine)
My characters have been 99% Good, alignment-wise, yet the Cult of Rakdos fascinates me more than any other guild on Ravnica. I'd love the opportunity to play a Chaotic Neutral Cult of Rakdos guild-member!
Do you have Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica yet? What do you think about it?
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You know, I actually think that the guilds do better as factions you could meet in the wilderness, where you go out, see a settlement or wizard's tower, get hopeful, then realize that its this guild's unique style of architecture as you get closer, realize its those terrifying Dimir guys and instantly start Hexcrawling in the opposite direction. There's a really great video on the Structures of Ravnica and the artwork used to bring these guilds to life.
ruclips.net/video/fC64JQXnTH8/видео.html
But, the world-wide city really flies in the face of the Green guilds. I know that trees and greenery have been incorporated into the city, and nature exists on the boundaries, but I can't help but think that the giant monsters need more room to move around, especially in a battle. Maybe, in a particular campaign, Ravnica was destroyed and returned to nature, like the Grull clans wanted, and now every single guild other than the Grull are trying to rebuild civilization in their own image. Maybe the Muggles are sick of all the Mages' crap and begin revolutions/witch hunts. The more rosy side of Ravnica and the stability brought by the guild pact become stories of myths, and ideals for people to aspire to, or to absolutely denounce and you might have a super philosophical campaign....
Youd be surprised how well the monsters can move around when they dont care how many buildings they break in the process, lol.
Plus, yeah, the Grull do a good job making space for some of the larger spaces.
I like how you cover the different sections of the book. That being said, I find this video difficult to engage with, because you both tend to look at one another more than the camera. Still, good content.
Cool, glad you liked it. Thanks for the feedback, too!
One of the first things when on camera is to not look at the camera
Wow. I have the book, and for some reason I didn't realize you could be a goblin. I see the vedalken, loxodon, centaurs and minotaurs. But somehow I missed those. Running the game Sunday, and the party (which has a dwarf) is going to be dodging the Boros, I'm going to give them a Dimir guide, but he's going to guide them to the Simic for "experimentation" on the dwarf, instead of the Izzet to get them home.
Isn't Niv Mizzit pretty much the only true dragon in Ravnica? I think he killed all the other ones and any dragons are imperfect clones of him but there's lots of drakes and wurms tho.
I think that was mentioned somewhere when Ravnica first came out, but they also included Rakdos Pit Dragon and Hunted Dragon in the original block. A few more were added in Return to Ravnica block, so they really don't seem to be sticking with that. I suspect it's one of those things that was part of the creative freedom of the novel writers and that set designers were never committed to.
Yeah, Jon said... LOL
I love this book as a MTG player. I've ran a homebrew pathfinder MTG setting the plane of Alara, but was afraid of tackling the Ravnica build.
It's not perfect, but it is really good. I know people really wanted classic D&D settings first, but this is both a good business move, and well executed and fun. When people get upset because they would have rather Greyhawk came out first (for example), they forget that certain settings, no matter how much you love them, are a hard sell. Greyhawk doesn't offer too much difference from the Realms. Dark Sun mechanically cuts out significant player options (which can be a feel-bad situation). Spelljammer adds elements that, while fun, are very off-kilter to D&D as most 5e players understand it. Ravnica has the benefit of being mechanically similar to the standard Realms setting, and only really expanding on one, pre-existing mechanic (renown); as well as having a large fanbase inside and outside of the D&D community. And here's my point: if Wizards is going to allocate funding to create setting books for 5e, the first one has to prove that they can sell and make money. Is that cynical, kinda. It's also kinda cynical to demand that people and organizatons spend thousands of man-hours of work to create something fun for us without any reward for their efforts. So, of course the first version of a thing is going to be the safest financial bet possible. They need a positive prescident to be set early in order to justify further projects. So, it you're mad that you didn't get your favourite setting, that's ok. If Ravnica doesn't tickle your fancy and you don't want to buy it, that's fine too. But if you ever want them to print a book for your favourite setting, then you should be helping connect people who do love Ravnica with this book. If the most popular setting from a game with three times the players that D&D has can't make money, then there's no way for them to justify making books for settings with far smaller fanbases, no matter how much you, personally, may love them. Thankfully, the group that seems to be wishing failure on this book seems relatively small. Most D&D fans, even if they're not fans of the Ravnica setting, seem to get my point.
Great points all around. I definitely agree that it was a smart business move and that Wizards deserves to make money for their efforts. Jon and I were poking fun at the people who whine about it being a cash grab. 😀 As far as other settings go, we have them from previous editions, so I'm happy to see something nee. Shoot, I run all my games using the 2e FR setting books. 😂
The two color combinations for each guild are an interesting mechanical gymnastics. Some where easy some where hard.
White Green: White likes order and is community centered. Green likes nature and is centered on natural communities. Slesnya is a guild about nature and acceptance. You can join and you will be classified on a role, you will be part of a collective.
White Red: White like order, Red like chaos. White is about the good of the many, Red is about what you want. White is about control, Red is about freedom. Two enemy color come together to form a chaotic faction that tries to impose order and justice. Boris does not agree what order and justice means but are willing to bring chaos to accomplish it. Best description would be militarized vigilantes. You break the law, watch me break the law to break your law breaking. You don't technically break the law? Watch me break your arm, what you did was wrong no matter what the law says. It about what the law intended not what it is saying.
White Black: White is about the power of the community, Black is about my power. White is about order, Black is about any means. Orzhov is a group of people who want to become stronger by screwing anyone outside their group. Know as the church of deals, with locations as Godless shrines. Orzhov is a predatory bank. Great stability for you investment but terrible money lenders. Selling your soul as collateral is a standard in all contracts and they will look for a way to make your ghost work until you pay your debt, which is never. You never pay your debt. Orzhov help orzhov only, and its help always comes with strings attached.
White Blue: White is about order. Blue is about control. Azorious likes to know things and organize it. Then Ban them or regulate them for the safety of everyone. They can be the policeman who stops the crazy neighbor from building his own explosive labs but they are also the overbearing mother who won't let you play Doom because it is a devil game. Freedom costs safety and azorious would rather you be inside a hamster ball than let you harm yourself or others. They make the rules, and the rules have rules, think lawyers but with addendums to the addendum.
Green Red: Green is about nature, red is about freedom you are always free in nature and society is just shackles to keep you down. Gruul have the jobs of gamekeepers and preservers of nature. They are pissed that the other guilds ignored them and made the entire plane a city. The way they see it, they have been betrayed and to right that wrong they just need to destroy all the city that took nature.
Green Black: Black is about death and ambition. Green is about nature and community. Golgari is about the natural cycle of nature. Life brings death brings life. They are farmers, making food out waste, making you work until you die, and then your corpse will work, while growing food on itself. They have an ambition, to be able to bring this efficient natural cycle to the rest of city.
Green Blue: Green likes nature and evolution. Blue likes improvement and innovation. Sonic was a scientist who looked at nature saw it did things better and decided to improve that instead of wasting time to start things from scratch. You want several mechanical limbs to use several tools at the same time? Nature made octopuses, they have several limbs they use, just copy that. Your experiment escaped? Well, I needed to see how it survived in the city, this is a good opportunity to do a controlled experiment. Their knowledge of biology is good enough to make doctors out of them.
Red Black. Red wants freedom, black is selfish. Rakdos is a circus. Where you go to entertain yourself while the audience slowly get butchered and the MC is getting his skin peeled. Rakdos does what it wants, because he finds it fun. Both the guild and the guild master.
Red Blue: Red wants freedom, Blue wants knowledge. Red is chaotic, blue is methodical. Izzet is a chaotic methodically inclined Gus who want to learn whatever it feels like it, whenever it thinks it. Someone said: "We don't know what we invented until we do it", "There are never failures, just hypothesis you never knew you had." These guy are in charge of engineering. Houses, boilers, transportation, and it is as unstable as it sounds. Because it was done with no idea how it go there. They wanted more stable elemental so they mixed two opposing elements in hopes it would even out the extremes. They got mixed results.
Black Blue: Blue is all about knowledge. Black is about selfishness. Dimir is about selfish knowledge. Knowledge is power and if others don't know they have less power. But you don't know why you want to hoard that knowledge and the currier delivering the newspaper is actually a vampire that reads you mind. Also, they are a myth. I mean, Dimir is just a perfectly normal set or information distribution courriers. And even that is not really a guild, less the assassins people claim them to be. Then again people think psychic vampires are thing. Let's move on to the next guild Red Green. Red is about freedom and green is about...
I had to get Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica ASAP, because I had been chomping at the bit for hardcover crossover content.
The book is a lot more useful than it lets on, because the adventure generation tables can be reskinned and tweaked to run non-Ravnica adventures.
If done right, you could possibly run a meat-grinder campaign of all Gruul guild characters, working together to tear down civilization.
As for upcoming stuff, I'm intrigued with Ghosts of the Saltmarsh.
As for camera engagement, such depends on how much people are used to the various hosts/co-hosts to looking at the camera. I'm cool either way.
Other things Have your ever had problems because of elves and dwarfs with story building? 100 is not that long of a time if There are elfs and Half-Elfs, dwarfs and gnomes since there live span is greater then that so to have an true long forgotten evil you have to go over 500 or 1000 year if not even more ?
I've never found that to be an issue because in all honesty most players for get about the longevity of those races when we're at the table playing or at least never bring it up. And I never bring it up. So it just fades into the background. But yeah, the solution is to have ancient evils be thousands or tens of thousands of years old. Or come from a different plane/universe.
I give this video 5/5 behirs.
I'm tempted to use dndbeyond's option to pay ~$11 for all the monster stat blocks and work on making them more usable in Homebrew campaigns, but since I am not a Magic the Gathering player I'd probably only but it if there was large player request in my group
Does that $11 get you all monster stat blocks for ALL D&D books, or just Ravnica?
@@theDMLair just ravnica. You can pay for parts of books on dndbeyond and not the whole thing, and if you decide to buy the whole book they'll discount it by the amount you've already paid
Wow... Because I can buy the entire Ravnica book for $30 on amazon. I'll be honest, I've never been impressed with DnD Beyond. I have a couple players who like it though.
@@theDMLair the entire book is on dndbeyond for only $30 as well, and there are plenty of tools to make my DMing life easier. I'm not here to sell dndbeyond to you, but I think there's plenty to love, especially since they plan to add loads of new things next year like an encounter builder and a dynamic monster calculator, in addition to all their easy search functionality and filters
@@geoffreyperrin4347 plus their character creator makes making them rather easy and user friendly.
I only wish that the app would let me do that instead of just letting me look at all it's content I've purchased.
But I'm excited for the new features mentioned.
My only issue is they don't explain how to use their tools. I've been trying to figure out how to create homebrewed races, items, etc but I have trouble trying to understand all these fields you put information in and how it works. :(
I've tried looking for vids but I haven't really found anything helpful. So right there I can say that Homebrew interface is not user friendly but the character creator is.
Another great video!!
Thanks, dude! 😀👊
What I found intersting is that you can play drow in Ravnica, but the colouration of their skin is normal.
Really? That's odd. Is there a setting reason for that?
@@theDMLair The word "drow" isn't used on Ravnica,
but the Devkarin elves are sometimes called the elves
of shadow. They are closely connected to the Golgari
Swarm, and because they generally live underground,
they share other dark elves' sensitivity to sunlight. Unlike
the drow of other worlds, their coloration is much
the same as that of wood elves, though their bair is usually
dark brown or black.
This is what is said
I think that with War of the Spark, a DM could create almost an infinite number of campaigns that are peripheral to the WOTS battles which would unite members of other guilds. Of course, this book came out before WOTS but I'm sure that WOTS was already in production when the book came out.
Also, hey, that "Marmalade" shirt, what is it?
It's from the Marmalade Dog convention I go to every year in Kalamazoo, Michigan. This year it was that red shirt. Very slick, IMO.
@@@theDMLair Looks awesome!
Yes, agreed. It's one of my favorite dnd shirts. Also comfortable and not one of those paper thin cheap deals. 😀
I felt they should have done what they did but they should have left a giant map of ravnica
Technically lizardman is entirely correct as we are not called hufolk
I pre ordered this book when I heard about it. It's a fun read. However, I'm upset. I thought we'd have more exotic races like which we did get some but the one I was hoping for is the Leonin(lion people) I mean yeah I can just use the tabaxi but then it just feels like reskinned tabaxi. So that was disappointing. Then they cut the viashino which again same problem you can play a lizard folk with a bladed tail but again reskinned lizard folk.
SMH wotc I hope we get more books that span multiple planes like Kaladesh, Shandalar, Innistrad, etc etc
It's kinda like a knock off planescape?
There are key differences.
Ravnica is a city that covers an entire planet. Sigil is the inside of a stone donut.
Ravnica is run by ten guilds that each fill some societal function that keeps Ravnica running.
Sigil is run by the Lady of Pain, and if the factions step out of line, she can and has banished them all from Sigil.
The factions of Planescape were designed by someone who took an Introduction to Philosophy class.
The guilds of Ravnica take their philosophical underpinings from the ten two-color combos in the MtG color pie, but each guild also has set goals and objectives that set it apart from; "We're the nihilist faction." And "We're the hedonist faction."
Lastly, and most importantly, the Ravnica book has multiple chapters dedicated to running the guilds, generating guild focused plots, hooks, villains, and quests, example hideout battle maps, and all the tools anyone could need for running faction based campaigns.
The Planescape book, by contrast, has about as much rules support for running factions in games as the Spelljammer book had for ship to ship combat.
I feel like the major flaw to this video is that it fails to point people towards the VAST VAST VAST Ravnica resources out there. Is the book lacking this information, sure, but you could also point people in the right direction.
Very peculiar book. Not really sure I'm too keen on this book sadly.
What were your issues with it? I certainly see a few, but I'm also biased as a Magic player :)
What did you find unappealing?
@@wewriteweirdshit9765 Well, I'm not really into MtG at all and what little I heard from this and other videos it's just not my cup of tea. I would have preferred them releasing a book for an already established D&D setting (preferably Mystara or even the 4e Points-of-Light setting).
@@theDMLair Not unappealing, the book looks well done and pretty, just not something that is really interesting for me. I'd much prefer an already established setting get proper attention and love rather than try to do a full-blown crossover setting book. And it doesn't look like I'm alone since the local game store can barely seem to keep other D&D books in stock when they are new but this one has barely been touched by people there. Sure it's my specific game shop (and one I'm going to be going to less to help out a new one that has opened closer to home) but it's still pretty telling imho.
That's an interesting point. I haven't bought the book yet either. If I do it would probably be to steal things like the guilds and place them into FR, my setting of choice.