Most people don’t think much about trading card games. Some dismiss them as a waste of money, some lose interest shortly after starting, and some can’t get interested in it at all. Magic the Gathering has survived over two decades and stood the test of time. Why mention it? What purpose does it serve? Part of Magic’s success stems from its lore. Each card has a blurb of descriptive text on it. Usually a quote from a character or a real world proverb related to the card effect and its artwork. Effectively, each card is a one-panel comic and twenty years of work has produced hundreds of thousands of cards telling hundreds of stories. Stories all owned by Wizards of the Coast, the holders of D&D. Enter Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica. Ravnica is a fan favorite world from Magic the Gathering. Its most distinguishing characteristics are that it’s a cityscape that seems to stretch on forever and that it’s influenced by the ten guilds and their interactions. Even so, is this suitable enough for a D&D setting? Does a card game translate well to tabletop role playing games? Does it have the flavor, crunch, and portions to add to your menu of play?

The most immediate impact of playing with the Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica is its emphasis on the guilds. Each guild has its own motivations, goals, strengths, and weaknesses. Some can be similar to others, but that isn’t always enough to keep the peace. The majority of the stories from Ravnica will revolve heavily around the guilds. This adds a strong sense of loyalty and belonging to whatever guild a player decides to go with and the guild itself will color the flavor even further. The Azorius Senate, who are lawmakers and police, along with the Boros Legion, who are a headstrong, standing military, usually work together to maintain peace. Players from one guild or the other could easily be working together to thwart a series of skirmishes from the Gruul Clan, who are naturalist barbarians, or the Cult of Rakdos, who are largely murderous carnies. Part of the beauty of Ravnica is that you could even flip the script. The adventurers might be victims of overregulation from the Azorious and threw in with the Gruul or Rakdos as a means to fight back. A broad range of flavors for adventure and characters indeed!

Regarding crunch, there are new races and subclasses to choose from when creating a character. Loxodon are elephant people who are bulk and possessed of a thick natural hide. Vedalken are a race of intellectual blue humanoids who tend to pursue perfection as neutrally as possible. Minotaurs are strong and charge things, and they do it quite well. Excellent additions for sure. The real meat and potatoes, however, is the actual mechanics behind selecting a guild. A character selects one of the ten guilds to be a part of. It can give them a handful of skills related to that guild, expands the list of spells they can learn (if they have spells at all), and provides them with a ranking in the guild they must keep track of. As a member of a guild does more for his guild, they gain more benefits. Namely, they can call in favors from lesser members of the guild, but they are also awarded with the occasional magic item. Having both an actual reward on top of the status of being a high rank are excellent incentives to adventure. All very solid crunch!

There’s flavor and crunch, but just how much more can one get from this package? Quite a bit actually! At least 5 new races, one of which, the Simic Hybrid, is highly customizable, two new subclasses: the Circle of Spores for the Druid and the Order Domain for the Cleric, numerous magic items, and a chapter’s worth of new monsters to use. The monsters are drawn from cards and characters from the game itself. Mutants, undead, giants, constructs, and even some simple soldiers help round out the powerful named NPCs (non-player characters). In addition, there are tables mentioning how monsters from the Monster Manual might fit into the different guilds. One notable figure that is missing, however, is the diabolical Nico Bolas, a titanic dragon hellbent on gaining omnipotence and omniscience. His exclusion is disappointing, but not so much so as to ruin the whole book.

Does the Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica have what it takes? Its flavor is distinct and varied, allowing for a broad range of storytelling. Its crunch is robust and excellently supports the flavor with clean game mechanics. Its contents are stuffed to the breaking point for DMs and players alike. The product has become an excellent source of unexpected and unexplored gaming, bringing some Magic player into Dungeons and Dragons and some Dungeons and Dragons players into Magic. Absolutely play in Ravnica. A-.

-The_Clark_Side