D&D: Who is Ravnica for?

Possibly useful for an urban homebrew campaign?

Yesterday’s announcement of a new hardback for a Ravnica D&D campaign setting has a lot of fans scratching their heads.

Eberron fans only got a PDF update with some fleshed out UA content that has gotten a bit of a “meh” reaction. Forgotten Realms fans are griping, “Where is our full campaign sourcebook?” (Given the release of SCAG and other edition resources from the DM’s Guild, a campaign guide is not likely to happen any time soon). Greyhawk fans are pissed that 2nd Edition was really the last time the setting saw any love what-so-ever… And there’s Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Planescape, and others... One can only hope for a PDF update on DM’s Guild (which I discussed yesterday).

So Why Ravnica?

It’s actually not too hard to figure out… Money.  As in, Magic the Gathering brings in way more money than D&D ever has. On a 2016 earnings call, Hasbro management estimated that they have from 15 to 20 million active Magic players. That's a lot of potential consumers.

D&D as a brand is growing and Wizards/Hasbro wants to leverage that brand for their other consumers. Magic is an obvious low-barrier avenue to expand the player base. Even though it’s a Pokemon-esque card flopping game, it is fantasy-themed and has a deep lore associated with it. Wizards of the Coast already has their internal “lore bibles” for all the Magic releases, so why not leverage all that unseen content?

EDIT: To be clear, I am not against this decision. It is a smart and profitable move by Wizards to expand the D&D audience.

There is a certain synergy in bringing the brands together in a joint marketing push.

1. Magic players are already familiar with Wizards of the Coast, and even if they don’t play D&D, they are certainly aware of it. There is already some Wizards of the Coast brand loyalty that exists.

2. Retailers can display the new D&D book right alongside their Magic decks and booster. There is a perfect “Hey, have you heard they released a D&D campaign setting?” sales pitch built in.

3. Don’t discount the power of the parent’s wallet. Younger kids may be playing Magic, but the purchase power really comes from Mom & Dad. Many of the parents may have played D&D in their younger days. Many of them even play Magic with their kids today. It makes sense to court the parents as well as the kids.

But Will It Sell?

There is always financial risk in courting a different market from your core fan base. Magic has deep lore built into the game… But how many Magic players actually care about the flavor text on their cards? Are there fans of Magic who are deep into the fluff of the game? Will they actually care enough to spend the money?

Hmm... This could be a thing...

What we also don’t know is whether Ravnica will be a complete game with PC classes, game world, and monster stats all included, or if it will mostly be only a D&D campaign guide (the book cover and Planeshift PDFs seem to indicate the latter). We do know that D&D does not have a magic system that would support the “5 mana color” flavor of Magic spells. Will those lore fans be disappointed at a spell slot system that has none of the feel of Magic the Gathering?

Wizards likely has the market research that tells them this will at least be a moderate hit, and I’m sure they know exactly how many people have downloaded their D&D Planeshift PDFs… but downloading a free PDF is a far cry from purchasing a $50 hardback book.

However, if they are able to sell this book to one-tenth of 1% of their Magic fan base, that’s at least a half-million dollars in revenue. If they sell to half of 1% of their existing Magic players, that will likely be between $1.5 and $2 million in revenue for the D&D brand.

Final Thoughts

One thing I have noticed, is that the Plane Shift PDFs have come out in close proximity to similarly themed D&D adventures. Innistrad went with Curse of Strahd. Ixalan matches somewhat well with Tomb of Annihilation... and now Ravnica corresponds roughly with the release of a Waterdeep-based urban campaign.

For me personally, Ravnica holds little interest. Plane Shift: Ixalan feels like it could have been fleshed out even more into a full blown campaign setting. I’ll likely browse the Ravnica book when it hits retailers to see if there might be anything useful for a homebrew game, but I admit I am not the target market. The goal of Wizards is to turn at least a small percentage of their Magic players into D&D players.

And that would be a damn big payday for D&D... But it also risks of a big pile of unsold books. Let's hope for the former.

D&D: Eberron for 5th Edition is a Seismic Shift

Wizards of the Coast announced not just one, but two new campaign settings for D&D 5th Edition. The Wayfinder’s Guide to Eberron is an PDF update release through the DM’s Guild for $20.

Eberron was originally introduced during D&D’s 3rd Edition and remained popular even during the D&D 4e rule set. Releasing this update through the DM’s Guild instead via print will be sure to upset some fans, but make a lot of business sense from Wizards’ perspective.

1. It allows them to gauge interest in the setting without the massive costs of publishing a hardback book. Assuming interest is strong, Wizards may offer a hardcover print-on-demand version through DM’s Guild. (Mike Mearls has already confirmed a POD version will be available when the rules are out of beta).

2. It opens up another setting to the DM’s Guild creators aside from Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft. This is especially nice for those with magic-tech ideas that might not fit more traditional D&D fantasy genre.

This is a seismic shift for Wizards of the coast, since no other official 5th Edition product has been offered direct-to-consumer through the DM’s Guild. There are some drawbacks with this move, though.

As noted, fans of the setting may feel slighted that Eberron is not getting a print release while Ravnica is. Additionally, the Friendly Local Game Stores may feel a bit of trepidation as this is the first direct-to-consumer offering from Wizards of the Coast. Up until today, no official D&D 5th Edition product has been offered as a PDF. If I were a bricks & mortar retailer, I might be somewhat unsettled by this development (while feeling somewhat calmed that Ravnica is coming -- more on that later).

Other Updates to Come?

For my part, I am immensely excited at the prospect. I’m not a big fan of the Eberron setting, but this development means there may be hope for other 5th Edition updates that are unlikely to get a hardback book. Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, and Planescape are all likely candidates for a PDF-only release.

Greyhawk hasn't seen an official release for... well, longer than most people can remember. Dragonlance had a major update during the 3rd Edition and Dark Sun got its own 4th Edition hardback... but any one of these could be a nice outreach to fans of those settings. Given that psionics is openly being worked on at Wizards of the Coast, Dark Sun would seem to be a strong candidate for the next PDF update, and since it is not as "generic fantasy" as Greyhawk and Nentir, it doesn't compete as much with the Forgotten Realms.

However, I’d really love to see an update for the Nentir Vale. During D&D’s 4th Edition, a Nentir Vale campaign setting almost (but-not-quite) saw print. It hit the release schedule, but was later removed. A fair amount of the content for the proposed book made it into Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale, which was probably one of the best products of the entire 4th Edition line. However, a stand alone setting book was never released.

Recently, Mike Mearls has been updating his “home game” version of the Nentir Vale document and showing the occasional sneak-peek on Twitter. These peeks look a lot like what one might find in an official update. A Nentir Vale update on the DM’s Guild would be an amazing win for fans of 4th Edition and the Vale.

GM 101: Build Meaningful Encounters

There is little doubt that combat encounters with fantastic creatures is a core focus in Dungeons & Dragons and its like. Often times, this contact may involve the judicious use of deadly force, but not always. Non-combat encounters also make up a large portion of the game.

When building encounters, present them in such a way that they don’t automatically result in a fight to the death. Encounters, as a general rule, should serve some larger purpose or meaning within the game beyond just rolling dice and killing orcs.

So as a GM, when you design an encounter, ask yourself, “What is the story goal?”

D&D: Myths and Legends of Encounter Balance

In my day, we even didn't have armor. We tied dead raccoons
to our bodies to protect us from orcish arrows and we loved it!

“In my day, we didn’t have encounter balance. That’s the way it was and we liked it! The party would either run away or get eaten. We loved it!”

I constantly hear a old school grognards bitching and moaning about how the game is “terrible” now that “all encounters are balanced”. They rail against CR (or EL) as a tool because somehow believe it puts training wheels on the game.

I call bullshit.

First, CR is a tool, like any other, at the disposal of the Dungeon Master so that they might know how difficult a group of opponents may be to a party of of a particular level. Does this mean all encounters must be matched with the level of the party? 

Of course not. It’s a canard to suggest otherwise, to put it nicely. Or to put it less nicely, “Bullshit.”

GM 101: How Not to Run a D&D Convention Game

I debated whether I wanted to write this. I am the first to admit I am not the greatest DM out there. Almost all of my advice columns come directly from mistake that I made at the table that I only recognized in retrospect.

This is not a substitute for a room description.

However, I had yet another sub-par experience with D&D Adventurers League and there seem to be some obvious adjustments DMs could make for both games at conventions and in their home. Forgive me if this gets a bit ranty, but looking back in retrospect has bubbled up all those frustrations I had during play.

Don’t Skimp the Descriptions

This is my single biggest beef with organized play… and it has happened to me on more than one occasion.

DM: You’re enter the room and here’s what you see (places some markers on a map). Roll initiative!

Seriously, this pisses this shit out of me. D&D is a game of imagination. Players can’t immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the game if you don’t freaking give them any mental picture. A square with some squiggles on a dry erase map is not freakin’ enough!

Gaming 101: Bullies and Samaritans

Miniature skirmish games often have awesome terrain.

I hate to start a post-con wrap up with this topic, but I think this is singularly important to point out what I witnessed this weekend. Notice I didn't say “discuss” because there is no discussion. What happened was awful behavior and I want everyone to recognize it and put a stop to it when they see it.

While this incident happened in a miniatures game, I've seen this kind of behavior in many different kinds of games, and even once at my own table... so the lesson here is universal.

My wife and I attended a miniatures event this weekend at a well known convention, which should have been incredibly fun, but was hamstrung by events that occurred in the first turn. The set up was this: the players were all monsters and the town was the focus of our destructive behavior. It was a players vs. the environment situation. It was like “Rampage” (the video game) but with giant miniatures and a pseudo-medieval setting.

However, there was a caveat -- PvP was allowed in the game. It wasn’t against the rules to attack another player, but it was obvious (to me at least) that this kind of thing might happen later in the game when chaos was in full swing and the event was winding down.

So, here’s where things went sideways.

Ep 8: The Slog at Grudd Haug - Running Storm King's Thunder

The long overdue episode 8 where you can learn from my DM'ing mistakes!

Not only did it take my group forever to finish off this particular giant lair (basically, my fault), this video also runs a bit long... So if you just want the meat of my advice, watch the beginning and the end using the index below.

Addendum: One thing that I don't think I stressed enough in the video, is that I didn't create enough of a sense of urgency. As an example, the party didn't know Guh had prisoners that were on the menu. Even when the thief scouted, he did not specifically scout the prison area. I should have created a scene for him to witness with the prisoners suffering at the hands of the bugbears or similar to emphasize that time was a critical factor in their assault on the lair.

01:45 Considering the challenges in running a large lair with a multitude of opponents
2:00 Will it be a cakewalk or TPK?
4:20 How will the lair react once combat breaks out? Where will the creatures move?
6:40 When the PCs do commit, how to the monsters react based on their intelligence and allgiences?
8:40 How does one present clues and options to the players without telling them what to do?
9:00 When you group meets infrequently, how do you optimize sessions and keep momentum to get through a large lair like Grudd Haug?
10:00 - 35:00 My group's hit and run tactics on Grudd Haug
38:48 Send opponents in waves to amp up the combat pressure.
46:45 Give scouting hints.
47:10 Don't save them if they get over their heads, but consider non-TPK options if it happens.
50:00 Don't hold back intel. Better to overshare clues to keep them party moving than to give them too little.
52:00 For giant lairs, chop it up into larger combats, instead of lots of small combats with few opponents. YMMV.