Magic (MTG) and D&D: Games are Colliding

Wizards of the Coast quietly posted a PDF document over on their Magic: The Gathering site this week that has potential to eradicate barriers between the company's two flagship (fantasy) creative teams.

Here it is:  Planeshift: Zendikar

For the first time ever, we have a Magic guide to using one of Magic's premier settings a D&D milieu.

So what's the big deal?  Magic has been a 30+ year gaming juggernaut, steadily embracing more and more story elements to drive the gameplay.  The Magic card game features a series of powerful, magic-using characters called "Planeswalkers", whose  soap-opera intrigues and conflicts take them from plane to plane in the Magic multiverse.  In this way, every two or three sets of Magic cards shifts the action to an entirely different thematic world.  The Magic creative team works very hard to develop fully realized fantasy settings for each new set of cards - including settlements, civilizations, monsters, threats, culture, and character names.

Let's just look at the past few Magic settings:

• Ravnica:  the world is dominated by a massive metropolis, the city of Ravnica, where 12 competing guilds each seek to control the city - it's full of intrigue and urban noir fantasy
• Theros:  inspired by Greek Myth, the city-states of Theros are beset by a pantheon of jealous gods and titanic monsters
• Tarkir:  Tarkir is a war-torn plane where clans inspired by the cultures of South East Asia fight for dominance - it's seriously cool
• Zendikar:  - Magic's high fantasy "adventure world", where Cthulhoid monsters, the Eldrazi, rise from the ground and terrorize civilization
• Innistrad:  Magic's Gothic horror setting, full of vampires, demons, ghosts, and werewolves

There is a nice online gallery of the major planes in Magic:  MTG: Planes

What really drives Magic's storytelling is the amazing art for all of the cards. Magic's visit to one of these planes is embellished over a couple of card sets, meaning the creative team will commission several hundred pieces (400-700 paintings) of evocative fantasy art to convey  the story and themes of the world.  By contrast, a D&D book might have a few dozen pieces of art at best, and many of them are mini portraits or maps.

With Zendikar, Wizards of the Coast released a coffee table style book called The Art of Zendikar, which acts as both an art book and travel guide to the plane.  With the recent Planeshift: Zendikar, they've complimented the art book by providing guidelines on game stats and using D&D to run RPG games set in Zendikar.  Based on the survey attached to the article, this is also being looked at as a market test, to evaluate potential new products.

The test makes sense; the Magic product line invests in a massive portfolio of art, and leveraging that art and intellectual property for D&D game worlds gives them more opportunities to drive value from the art investment.  It's "low hanging fruit".  They can create more planar-guide coffee table books to sell the art, or shift these Zendikar-style game supplements into formal pay-to-own game supplements.  Plus, it might enhance both brands by getting some Magic players to try D&D, or getting D&D players to pick up a Magic deck.

Meanwhile, it's becoming clear what is the D&D 5E strategy and how it's working.  The core books are evergreen products, and the design team has been true to their word on keeping away from splat books and rules sprawl - no Player's Handbook 4, for instance.  (Thank you).  Instead, the product team seems focused on  releasing two "stories" per year, a large adventure campaign hardcover book, which is then cross-developed in novels, board games, and computer games.  Play the adventure, read the novel, buy the t-shirt, and then download the video game, that kind of stuff.  Something for everyone.  The quality of the stories seem to be improving as it goes along - Out of the Abyss was better than the previous two campaigns, and Curse of Strahd is absolutely full of win.  (I should get around to posting a review of Curse of Strahd, but it will gush with enthusiasm).

Overall, this foray into cross-promoting Magic and D&D is super interesting.  I'm guessing the Magic creative team is thinking like entrepreneurs and looking to harvest value from their creative work, with D&D fans getting a chance to benefit now that the iron curtain is falling.   5E seems to be doing well as a product line. The PHB is back in the Amazon top 100.  I greatly appreciate that the market isn't getting flooded with official splat books like DMG 2 and PHB 3, and this focus on multimedia stories is fairly benign; I can focus on the tabletop specific stuff and let folks enjoy the other media if that's their thing.  There's no downside.

I'll be watching the space closely.  The latest Magic set is Shadows over Innistrad, a visitation back to Magic's awesome Gothic horror setting.  The next set of cards for Innistrad will come out mid-summer, and that would be a good time to see if WOTC is going to publish a Zendikar-style art book and setting guide for D&D Innistrad.  I'd love for them to go back and do some recent worlds like Theros or Tarkir, but it seems more likely to be a forward-facing change.

Magic does nice trailers for each upcoming set, here's the recent trailer for Shadows Over Innistrad:

Shadows Over Innistrad Trailer

ACKS report - Adventurer Conquer King

So check it out - I signed up for the ACKS kickstarter and have had the chance to read the rules a couple of times.  Here to bring back some news from the sidelines.

I signed up because I was intrigued by the prospect of a D&D rules set that followed in Mentzer's footsteps and tried to improve on the Dominion economics, ruler ship and demographics rules from the old Companion set.  Ever notice how you can pinpoint someone's formative RPG years through their writings, discussions, and "go-to" set of rules?  The ACKS team has one foot in Mentzer and Moldvay's classic D&D, one foot in D&D 3rd.

The economics stuff seems well-thought out and usable at the table - it includes rules for castle building (along with hideouts for thieves, towers and dungeons for wizards, temples for clerics, and the demi-human equivalents), settling the wilds, growing the kingdom, taxes, revenue, army building, and trade.  As a world builder and someone who thinks too much about this kind of stuff already, I love it.  There were some problems with the old Companion economics (such that there have been a few attempts - either by Bruce Heard in Dragon or the old Mystara gang at Vaults of Pandius) to fix them.  I plan on sitting down with Greyhawk and Sterich and applying them to my current campaign as a trial run to get a sense on how well they work in practice.

Point is - if you play campaign style D&D and expect to reach high levels, the campaign rules will be super useful.  I expect I'll have them at the table regardless of system - 1E, classic, retro, whatever.

I'll save discussion of the classes and rules for another time - I'm hoping to drop in on an ACKS play test at Gencon and get the chance to see it in action.

I was a bit skeptical that a retro clone would get sufficient support as a kickstarter fund-raiser, but the project blew through the target goal in like 2 weeks (ie, the books will be funded) and now they're looking to co-publish the mass combat rules at the same time, which should get funded shortly as well.  I'm a bit surprised more folks in the OSR aren't talking about it.  Backed by the publisher of the Escapist, it's an entrant to the OSR world that comes backed by some muscle.   I'll post a longer thought about it, but we could be seeing the start of a new model - large online media property and publisher publishes games on the side but can leverage a new model for reaching gamers, beyond word-of-mouth or the book  shelf at Borders.

Links:
The Adventurer Conqueror King site
The ACKS Kickstarter

ACK! Adventurer Conqueror King (System)

ACK - it was inevitable...

ACK - Adventure Conqueror King System, another wordy sounding "I'm not a retro clone" game has shown up on the radar, with a name almost as unfortunate as Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying - which I tend to just abbreviate as LOTFP these days, and refer to it as Lamentations with the group - as in, "When we're done with this campaign, the next one will be back to using Lamentations rules".  So now I can foresee a future where we're referring to the ACK rules like so; "We're still using Lamentations for classes, but I love the ACK system for economics and dominions".  Maybe saying it A-C-K (Ay-See-Kay) will work.  (Hopefully it's as good as LOTFP too).

After seeing a note on Mule Abides, I started following the new blog for it here (
http://www.autarch.co/blog/ ).  It's been super interesting reading so far and I highly recommend checking it out; as a world builder I love systems that address background demographics and economics, and so far the designer has focused on tackling those issues right up front.  The post on "The demographics of heroism" is excellent.

It's funny, a few weeks ago I remarked how this is such an amazing time in the RPG hobby for D&D players - the suits have left the building, and in the post-OGL world we can build the games we want and redress the omissions perpetrated by the corporate machinery.  James can put his frisky Medusa art in LOTFP, and build a better thief and a better magic-user spell list and beat the tar out of the cleric with the nerf bat, and Goodman can wallpaper Rolemaster-style critical and spell effect tables all over the place, and now these ACK guys can put together a rules set that fulfills D&D's early promise about castle building and army building and ruling your own kingdom and having it all make sense.

Anyway - it's way too early to say whether we'd play ACKS or just borrow from it, and it's even unclear if they'll get off the ground (unlike a lot of hobbyists, they're going with a kickstarter event up front to raise money).  But I'm willing to check out any rules-set that marries old school D&D classes, sandbox gaming support, beaucoup random tables, and dominion economics (done right).  After playing LOTFP, the old school percentile-based thief is a drag, and so is old style encumbrance - I want to port that stuff into every D&D game I play.  I foresee people's home games becoming more and more like "Frankensteins", as designers create incremental improvements to old school D&D - we'll pick and choose the best rules bits and subsystems for home use, not married to any one rules set.

Good luck ACKS guys, it looks promising so far.

PS:  I didn't realize the Hill Cantons domain game was going to be a print product too - looks like there will be two supplements in the near future that support name level dominion play!

Unspeakable!

I caught wind of a new podcast through Yog-Sothoth.com about The Unspeakable Oath.  The Oath is an old magazine put out by Pagan Publishing in the 90's that resurfaced a few months ago under new leadership.  The podcast is mainly of interest to folks that do some Call of Cthulhu type gaming, but the primary interview on this one was with Jon Tynes, and he had some things to say about game design that are worth looking at in light of D&D (so I'm putting it here).

About Jon Tynes - he was the founder of Pagan Publishing, writer of the totally awesome 1990's Delta Green setting for modern Cthulhu, an ex-WOTC employee, co-writer of WOTC's Cthulhu d20, now a video game developer.  I would imagine anyone that's done Cthulhu gaming knows Pagan, they were Chaosium's major licensee and produced excellent stuff.

One thing that really stood out in the interview was the recognition from a video game developer how video games fail against the table top experience in creating "derived stories" through a shared world.  Through the table top's collective 'Socratic method' - asking and answering questions about the game world - a story emerges through actual play that can't currently be matched by the disjointed cut scenes and limited decision trees in the video game world.  He went on to hold out the table top sandbox game as the highest form of RPG gaming because of the degree of agency given to the players and the shared world that emerges from those player actions.

On making the Mythos Coherent:
Our goal  (as monster maker/adventure writer) should be to make an amazing experience, not write the missing page in the Cthulhu Encyclopedia.

This was wrapped in a larger section on keeping a sense of mystery in the game by not providing explanations around the horrors and monsters in your game, coming up with your own interpretations of Lovecraftian monsters, and getting away from using published bestiaries.  Trail of Cthulhu attempts to keep the Mythos creatures fairly ambiguous.  I'm pointing it out here because we're seeing OSR folks like James Raggi advocate 100% custom monsters, and I can see the value in keeping all those things beyond the realm of man strange and unknowable.

The rest of the podcast might not be as interesting if you don't follow the Call of Cthulhu RPG or the Lovecraftian gaming scene.  Otherwise, you can find it over on iTunes under The Unspeakable Oath.

GM Day Plunder

Busy week for me taking advantage of GM day sales!

These are adventures in the group's current level range that might make an upcoming appearance in the sandbox:

Stonesky Delve
Barrow Mound of Gravemoor
The People of the Pit

Here are some higher level adventures that had been on the wish list for a nice sale (the epic quality of higher level adventures means you should start foreshadowing them earlier in the campaign).

Red Mausoleum
Forgotten Temple of Baalzebul
Iron Crypt of the Heretics

These next adventures, I just wanted for inspiration / reading:

Lesserton & Mor
Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom
Tower of Iron and Crystal
Knowledge Illuminates

Expect some reviews (and / or some playtests) in the next few months.

Most Anticipated Gaming Products - 2011

Today is a light posting day - won't have the chance to write later tonight.  When I head home from work, it'll be a birthday party for my son (he's turning 9), and we've had family in town, keeping me from locking myself in the study and working on The Black City.

If you've followed the kid's game over at Dragonsfoot, be sure to wish Soap the Wizard a happy birthday; he'll be having a sleepover tomorrow and I'll be running a special game of B4 The Lost City for the assembled youths, while we take a short break from Stonehell Dungeon.

Thinking ahead to the rest of the year, here's a bunch of stuff in the world of D&D and Cthulhu gaming to which I'm looking forward.  How about you?  What are your most anticipated gaming products for 2011?

Goblinoid Games - Realms of Crawling Chaos
My head exploded when I saw this announcement; it went right to the top of the wish list.  Sounds like it's less than a few months away, so I won't wear a hole in the carpet pacing back and forth in anticipation.  I recently got my hardback of Mutant Future, so that should help wile away the time.

LOTFP - Various Things
I'm looking forward to getting a high production value version of Carcosa; I go for a lot of PDFs but will break the rules on this one.  The Island of the Unknown is interesting, as is Death Ferox Doom.  I'm still on the fence about the Grindhouse Edition - it might depend on the box; I'm not sure about a not-safe-for-kids game when the game room is constantly invaded by 8-9 year olds.

Trail of Cthulhu - Cthulhu Apocalypse
There's been 30 years of epic, world-spanning campaigns in the Call of Cthulhu line, and someone has finally asked the question - okay, what if the first group of investigators/heroes failed to stop the end of the world, and the PC's are the ones trying to figure out how it happened, after a Great Old One returned and wrecked everything.  Cthulhu and post-apocalypse; almost as good as peanut butter and chocolate (D&D and Horror).

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG
I don't exactly need another set of rules, but I'm intrigued by the 'back to Appendix N' approach, and from what I've seen about the proposed magic system, it might fit the pulp source literature and sorcery better than D&D's system - it's worth watching.  Not ready for Gencon, though?... ouch.

There are some other items I'll be picking up or keeping an eye out for - I tend to get some PDF adventures from the little guys, and will continue to do so; I'm still keeping an eye on Frog God Games as they get rolling; there's a good chance I'll get the Cthulhu Invictus campaign (Cthulhu Invictus is for Cthulhu gaming in historical ancient Rome); I'm intrigued by Sword and Sanity - it's right in my wheelhouse of interests.  And I'll hope to hear that Chaosium will finally reprint Beyond the Mountains of Madness...

Perhaps the best news - looks like I'll be heading out to GenCon.  The recent OSR announcement was enough to overcome my malaise and inertia.  Besides, I want to be there playing Moldvay, Labyrinth Lord or WFRP when WOTC announces 5th edition...

Edit:
Weird Adventures
Trey over at From the Sorceror's Skull just posted a preview for Weird Adventures - I forgot that his stuff might be compiled as a book in 2011; that one goes right on the list too.  D&D classes and monsters in a pulp action world reminiscent of early 20th century America.

Lovecraft and Labyrinth Lord

Does it get any cooler - Lovecraft and LL?

Check it out!  Lovecraftian critters are coming to Labyrinth Lord.
I just need to call out a few things that seem exceedingly cool - new Race-Class options for Labyrinth Lord!  Tired of Tolkien Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings wringing the "Weird Horror" vibe out of your game with their Middle Earthness?  The Innsmouth Look is coming to Labyrinth Lord.  Arthur Jermyn would be proud of the horrible White Ape Hybrids...

Alright Dan & Co, can you tell me if there are Valusian Serpent Men in there too?

Looks like the Black City campaign will be getting a dose of cool monsters.  And stuff.  Although this part of the blurb interested me - Evil cultists consummate their union with Shub-Niggurath in dark woods... to the best of my knowledge, Shub didn't originate with HPL and *may* not be public property... but I'm sure those guys did their diligence - could LL have gotten use of Chaosium's whole bestiary?*

I will even do my best to stifle complaints that once again, Lovecraftian critters will be used as fodder in standard D&D campaigns everywhere, stand-ins for ordinary monsters, instead of dread-inspiring antagonists in horror scenarios...

*Geeky clarification; the name Shub-Niggurath appeared in Lovecraft, but the creatures commonly encountered in Cthulhu scenarios, the Dark Young, seem to be Chaosium's, so it could be the open source stuff only...

DCC game announcement - the non-retro-clone retro-game?

Edit:  So this post got nuked when I was editing some posts to play around with the templates.  I think I need to look into how to archive a blog.  Sorry all!

Here was the gist:

• Goodman Games is publishing a game inspired by Pulp Fantasy
• They're claiming the game won't be compatible with D&D or the retro-clones
• That made my head explode

In the meantime, I've had the chance to visit the discussion board over there a few times and see that they've got some pretty interesting ideas for the magic system; although it won't be a retroclone, I think this game will be super interesting to check out, especially in light of my own Appendix N reading goals this year.