D&D General Teased Lorwyn-Shadowmoor Supplement Crosses Magic: the Gathering and D&D

WotC has teased an upcoming Magic: The Gathering / Dungeons & Dragons crossover supplement. No info has been given other than a mention of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor and an art piece by Jesper Ejsing.

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Lorwyn-Shadowmoor is a Magic: the Gathering plane. The official MtG page for it describes it as:

Lorwyn is an idyllic world where races of fable thrive in perpetual midsummer. Its dark reflection, Shadowmoor, exists in perpetual gloom, its citizens bitterly transformed and locked in a desperate battle for survival.

Lorwyn is the land where the sun never set. Covered with dense forests, meandering rivers, and gently rolling meadows, it knows no nights or winters. One of the few planes without humans, it's populated by the short-statured kithkin, hot-tempered flamekin, petty-thief boggarts, territorial treefolk, diplomatic merfolk, iconoclastic giants, and mischievous faeries, all living together in harmony.

Also among them: the elves, Lorwyn's most favored and feared race. In a world of unspoiled nature, they consider themselves the paragons of this beauty. Signs of elvish supremacy are widespread, from their gilded forest palaces to their mercilessness toward "lesser" races. Despite the elves' dominion, Lorwyn's people thrive, respecting community and tradition.

The land itself, ancient and verdant, is locked in a perpetual cycle—and every three centuries, that cycle transforms the plane into Shadowmoor.

The mirror-image of Lorwyn, Shadowmoor is a realm of perpetual dusk and gloom. Here, the plane's races, without knowledge of their previous selves, are locked in a life-and-death struggle for survival. Like the plane itself, its denizens are transformed into darker versions of themselves.

The kithkin, once communal and cooperative, are isolated and xenophobic. The helpful, silver-tongued merfolk are now assassins and saboteurs. The boggarts, once mischievous and hedonistic, are vicious and warlike. The blighted treefolk are murderous. Wrathful giants drag around huge pieces of the land.

The transformations of the flamekin and elves are perhaps the most dramatic. Once bright and seeking transcendence, the flamekin are now smoking skeletons seeking revenge. Meanwhile, the vain elves are humbled and heroic in Shadowmoor, protecting every glimmer of beauty and light.

Only one race and one place remain unchanged: the faeries and their home of Glen Elendra. The fae are the fulcrum of this transforming plane—for it was their queen, Oona, who caused it.


This isn't the first such crossover--Ravnica, Strixhaven, and Theros were all Magic: the Gathering settings. Additionally, over the past few years, WotC has put out PDF D&D supplements for the MtG worlds of Amonkhet, Dominaria, Innistrad, Ixalan, Kaladesh, and Zendikar.
 

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Here is all 4 Noggle creatures ever printed, all for Lorwyn, all a mix of red blue, although based on behavior black & red makes more sense to me. A trio of rogues and a wizard so all of them have a player class at that! Hedge-Mage would be a cool Wizard subclass, I'm thinking maybe with some Druid flavour to the Wizard subclass?
I had never seen the noggles before, but now that I have, I NEED more of them!! Little Donkey Lads!!
 

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I think at minimum we will get a lot of Goblinoid family variant star blocks.
So here's a question to speculate on. Even though we got revised goblinoid PC stats for Bugbears, Hobgoblins, and Goblins just a few years ago in Monsters of the Multiverse, there's a decent chance we get re-revised ones more in line with the updated mechanics and lore. And goblins are central to both Eberron and Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, which are getting books later this year.

So do we get re-revised goblinoid PC stats in one of the books or both of the books? And if it's both of the books, is there any chance we get different stats to reflect the different settings?
 

So here's a question to speculate on. Even though we got revised goblinoid PC stats for Bugbears, Hobgoblins, and Goblins just a few years ago in Monsters of the Multiverse, there's a decent chance we get re-revised ones more in line with the updated mechanics and lore. And goblins are central to both Eberron and Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, which are getting books later this year.

So do we get re-revised goblinoid PC stats in one of the books or both of the books? And if it's both of the books, is there any chance we get different stats to reflect the different settings?
If they have playable Noggles, them yeah, I'd say so.
 

I wonder if they will go for some way of having all 9 main tribes represented as playable races? I mean Elves already are and I can see Goliaths as small giants or something.

I mean think about it the Tribes are:

1. Kithkin
2. Elementals (Flamekin as playable?)
3. Merfolk (Merrows & Selkies)
4. Giants (possibly represented by Goliaths)
5. Treefolk (not sure how they would do this one, size being the issue, tree tend to be large or bigger, unless saplings)
7. Goblins (Boggarts, there might be some other kinds too)
8. Fairies (good place to update the Fairy stats)
9. Changels (challenge here is that Lorwyn Changelings don't have D&D changeling limitations).


Although I hope some of the odd ones like Noggles are playable too.

Noggle

They might only be monsters, but I think it's really out there and interesting if they end up a playable race.

It occurs to me that maybe one way to make Kithkin more distinctive from Halflings is to give them a Fey, Aberration, or Celestial creature type, instead of humaniod.
Don't forget Dwarves (Duegar) as a core tribe in Shadowmoor. We just didn't see their Lorwyn equivalent. I'd love to see Noggle's Lorwyn equivalent too.

I also wonder if they can get away with Merrows = Tritons; the reason Triton as a species worked in Mythic Odysseys of Theros was that Merfolk were already were called Tritons there and I believe they already had legs in Theros specifically.

I could also see them going with something akin to the 5e art for Locathah for Selkies or Merfolk - not really walking on legs but being able to waddle on their fins on land enough to not be completely useless there.
 

I wonder if they will go for some way of having all 9 main tribes represented as playable races? I mean Elves already are and I can see Goliaths as small giants or something.

I mean think about it the Tribes are:

1. Kithkin
2. Elementals (Flamekin as playable?)
3. Merfolk (Merrows & Selkies)
4. Giants (possibly represented by Goliaths)
5. Treefolk (not sure how they would do this one, size being the issue, tree tend to be large or bigger, unless saplings)
7. Goblins (Boggarts, there might be some other kinds too)
8. Fairies (good place to update the Fairy stats)
9. Changels (challenge here is that Lorwyn Changelings don't have D&D changeling limitations).


Although I hope some of the odd ones like Noggles are playable too.

Noggle

They might only be monsters, but I think it's really out there and interesting if they end up a playable race.

It occurs to me that maybe one way to make Kithkin more distinctive from Halflings is to give them a Fey, Aberration, or Celestial creature type, instead of humaniod.

Kithkin are pretty much Brownies so Fey Halfling works for me
Elementals = Genasi with shiny hair
Do you think Wood Woad would work for Treefolk, in 3e theyre medium sized but they could be given goliath 'large traits' to compensate.
Noggles are just goblins with donkey heads arent they? and iirc theres a Netheril goblin with large rhino heads already innit?
Changelings I'd probably just do as a type of Plasmoid
 



Kithkin are pretty much Brownies so Fey Halfling works for me
Elementals = Genasi with shiny hair
Do you think Wood Woad would work for Treefolk, in 3e theyre medium sized but they could be given goliath 'large traits' to compensate.
Noggles are just goblins with donkey heads arent they? and iirc theres a Netheril goblin with large rhino heads already innit?
Changelings I'd probably just do as a type of Plasmoid
Or maybe Dryads - remember that in the 2024 MM they're not exclusively female-presenting, and could very easily represent a playable PC Spp of Treefolk (albeit a younger sapling rather than a full Treant). Honestly, this solves the "tree person PC species" connundrum D&D has had for its entire life (4e created Wilden but also Hamadryads but the latter were exclusively female presenting; 3e had Killoren which were just Wilden before a name-change to avoid the word Kill in the name). Dryad is just a much more iconic term and works really well now that they've broken the always-female rule for them.

I think Ashling could easily be represented by a Fire Genasi, and while Flamekin are the "main" elementals in Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, they're not the only ones, and the others are of all colors even though Flamekin are exclusively Red or BR (Lorwyn vs Shadowmoor).
 

Kithkin are pretty much Brownies so Fey Halfling works for me
Elementals = Genasi with shiny hair
Do you think Wood Woad would work for Treefolk, in 3e theyre medium sized but they could be given goliath 'large traits' to compensate.
Noggles are just goblins with donkey heads arent they? and iirc theres a Netheril goblin with large rhino heads already innit?
Changelings I'd probably just do as a type of Plasmoid

Kithkin aren't Haflings, WotC has been very clear on this point in the past.

They could just use Genasi as the Flamekin/Cloudkin/ect..., but it really doesn't line up properly, for example they may wish to do Leafkin as well.

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=466932
 

Kithkin aren't Haflings, WotC has been very clear on this point in the past.

They could just use Genasi as the Flamekin/Cloudkin/ect..., but it really doesn't line up properly, for example they may wish to do Leafkin as well.

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=466932
They really haven't. Kithkin have always been the in-universe Halflings of MtG.

Halfling creature type was created to refer to Halflings by their actual species name in the D&D Crossover sets and this had dividends because then they could refer to Hobbits as Halflings in the LotR set without having to come up with a new creature type here.

If anything, Kithkin should go the way of the Viashino and just get merged into the Halfling creature type, because that's what it's been for used since 1994's Legends expansion first introduced them (Viashino were a creature type until last year, when the were merged into the Lizard creature type ahead of Bloomburrow which is filled with BR Lizardfolk that AREN'T Viashino, and 90% of the time Viashino have been Lizardfolk. The only exception has been Streets of New Capenna, where they're more akin to Dragonborn as they have breath weapons there.

I'd note that same set reimagined Cephalids (creature type Octopus) as humanoid beings walking on 2 legs, but with octopus heads, instead of being just Octopuses with humanoid intelligence and language to converse and treat with the other peoples of Otaria (when they last showed up - in 2001-2003's Odyssey and Onslaught blocks). But even despite the changes, they're not creature type Cephalids. They're creature type Octopus. And in New Capenna, Viashino are now creature type Lizard due to errata, not Dragon, even though Dragonborn in the D&D set are creature type Dragon.

This all comes down to WotC only using D&D creature types in D&D sets (unless the creature type has a reason to show up elsewhere such as Universes Beyond). Tiefling even has a MtG equivalent in the Azra of Kylem, but Tieflings weren't typed Azra in the D&D sets, nor were they typed Devil the way Dragonborn were typed Dragon; Tieflings were creature typed Tiefling. Probably because in 4e & 5e lore, Tieflings are NOT devils, but have a connection to devils. While Dragonborn -are- Dragons, just a cadet branch of them a la the Dragon Turtles (which appropriately typed both Dragon and Turtle in the D&D set of MtG).

Kithkin can and should be represented with Halflings. I could see an argument to represent them with Gnomes or Halflings, pick either. I could even see an argument for "Human, but size Small only" – though that would be hard to play "as is" out of the box.

These connundrums, I think, are a big part of why we didn't get Viashino in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. People weren't sure why they were there if we have playable Dragonborn and Lizardfolk and Kobolds already. The other playable spp in GGtR were either entirely new to 5e (Centaurs, Loxodons, and Simic Hybrids), or Goblins, who were on a PR journey and a reworking over years since Volo's Guide to Monsters.
 

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