D&D 5E D&D Mythic Odysseys of Theros Previews!

Mythic Odysseys of Theros may have been delayed until the end of July for most of us, but Fantasy Grounds has revealed some (undoubtedly specially approved) previews for us to look at in the meantime!

 

[dave2008]

The names of the deities are rather weird. Luckily, they can be easily converted back to their real Greek versions, e.g. Helios instead of Heliod (ugh!) and Thalassa instead of Thassa.

Heliod is more like Zeus than Helios though (depending on how far back you go)

 

[Sunsword]

Ah, cool, and thus are many cool things born of skunkworks.

why now though? Why did the Magic and D&D mashup result in product now? And why does it work? Is there something special in the air now? Some kind of gathering magic?

Wasn’t it tried many times?

For the longest time WotC and the Magic Team didn't want to dilute product lines.M:tG was a much bigger deal than D&D and I don't think there was as much crossover of personnel.

However, with Wyat working on M:tG and 5E blowing up, I think it was a right time, right place situation.

I will say in my stores that I've lost a good number of M:tG players to DnD, which is a new situation. In the past it had been losing DnD players to M:tG.

 

[darjr]

For the longest time WotC and the Magic Team didn't want to dilute product lines.M:tG was a much bigger deal than D&D and I don't think there was as much crossover of personnel.

However, with Wyat working on M:tG and 5E blowing up, I think it was a right time, right place situation.

I will say in my stores that I've lost a good number of M:tG players to DnD, which is a new situation. In the past it had been losing DnD players to M:tG.

That’s a thing I’ve never heard of! That’s very interesting!

 

[Bupp]

That monster list already looks utterly amazing I wonder if we would see stats for the gods themselves?

I know I've been pimping 5e-card-a-day in these Theros threads a lot, but they've done a few of the gods.
Heliod
Erebos
Nylea

 

[Marandahir]

Amazingly enough, the last Innistrad card set came out at the same time as Curse of Strahd...and nobody at WotC did that on purpose or conciously. Then the next year, Ixalan came out alongside Tomb of Annihilation, and that wasn't planned either. James Wyatt has said that moving forwards there would be more awareness of the respective product schedules...

There was the "Curse of Innistrad" adaptation notes for Curse of Strahd in that particular PlaneShift pdf, though. And Before Ixalan PlaneShift came out, an Ixalan adventure pdf was published for free by WotC, and it worked pretty well alongside Tomb of Annihilation. I thought these were intentional co-releases.

Regarding the Rabiah scale, obviously we're not going to get another Ravnica setting book, and I doubt an Innistrad one just because D&D R&D would prefer to make a Ravenloft or perhaps Shadowfell incl. Domains of Dread official setting book, I gather. I'd totally be up for Innistrad being packed in with a book on the Shadowfell, Ravenloft, and the various Domains of Dread! Could be a very fun gazateer of related but separate "planes" for the same genre.

if the Rabiah scale is then the most important reason for getting a setting book in D&D, Dominaria could be coming our way…

 

[Parmandur]

There was the "Curse of Innistrad" adaptation notes for Curse of Strahd in that particular PlaneShift pdf, though. And Before Ixalan PlaneShift came out, an Ixalan adventure pdf was published for free by WotC, and it worked pretty well alongside Tomb of Annihilation. I thought these were intentional co-releases.

Regarding the Rabiah scale, obviously we're not going to get another Ravnica setting book, and I doubt an Innistrad one just because D&D R&D would prefer to make a Ravenloft or perhaps Shadowfell incl. Domains of Dread official setting book, I gather. I'd totally be up for Innistrad being packed in with a book on the Shadowfell, Ravenloft, and the various Domains of Dread! Could be a very fun gazateer of related but separate "planes" for the same genre.

if the Rabiah scale is then the most important reason for getting a setting book in D&D, Dominaria could be coming our way…

Those were intentional on Wyatt's part in the end (he ran Curse of Strahd at home in Innistrad, making Strahd just an evil local Vampire Lord), but we're not foundational in either case: D&D had Curse of Strahd lined up and ready to go, and Magic had Innistrad lined up and ready to go, but nobody had talked about that beforehand and made it a concious strategy to put them out at the same time: it was literally an accident that James Wyatt took advantage of for his side project. Same with ToA and Ixalan.

Weirdly, Innistrad is better suited to traditional D&D adventure than Ravenloft, and it would surprise me if WotC made that a thing I'm the fullness of time.

Dominaria getting a D&D book seems like a no-brainer, and people have been asking for that for over 20 years. Magic is currently doing one new Setting and two returned Settings a year, so Dominaria returning won't be too terribly far off in the future, and a D&D tie-in for, say the 30th anniversary of Magic would be killer.

I wouldn't say that the Rabiah scale is the be-all, end-all of which will get D&D tie-ins, but I doubt they will do any D&D books without coordinating with a Magic card release, and I don't think they are likely to do an RPG release for a new untested Setting, so the Rabiah scale is useful for considering what is an open possibility.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Dominaria getting a D&D book seems like a no-brainer, and people have been asking for that for over 20 years. Magic is currently doing one new Setting and two returned Settings a year, so Dominaria returning won't be too terribly far off in the future, and a D&D tie-in for, say the 30th anniversary of Magic would be killer.

I think it's just alternating between new and old, at least this is the pattern I've seen since Ravnica (which was all of 2019 but Eldraine).

Not sure how long they can keep that return pace with just Innistrad/Ravnica/Theros/Dominaria... they may have to be revisiting places with worse Rabiah.

 

[Dyson Logos]

I always do find it funny how many people chanted for brand new D&D settings and not just old recycled classic settings from 2e only to see Ravnica and Theros and quickly amend their statement with "... but not that!"

SO MUCH OF THIS.

I was really excited to get tapped to work on the Ravnica book because to me it was the first new D&D setting since Eberron and I'm one of the people constantly chanting the "new settings, not rehashes!" mantra. I mean, I was also stupid happy to get to redraw the maps from the Saltmarsh trilogy too because I'm an old school gamer, but seeing new settings coming out is EXACTLY what I want from D&D.

And then they tapped me again for Theros.

 

[darjr]

Lovely work too

 

[Fenris-77]

I'm not pushed either way by the MtG thing, but I really enjoyed Ravnica, I don't get the resistance to the MtG setting at all. I'm not sure I'll ever run a game in Ravnica, but the faction rules were very cool and there are lots of moving parts to mine for other purposes. It may get some use if I end up running a Spelljammer thing. I'm excited about Theros for most of the same reasons (well, not the Spelljammer part I guess).