Saturday, June 5, 2021

Whoops, Missed One: Also, Curriculum of Chaos Will Bring MTG's Strixhaven to D&D

UPDATE: I had misread! Curriculum of Chaos is not a campaign setting book! Instead, it will be an adventure! This will mark not just the first adventure book to be set in an MTG world, but also only one of a tiny number of adventures in 5th Edition not set in the Forgotten Realms (Curse of Strahd and Ghosts of Saltmarsh, I believe, being the only other exceptions, and the former more or less starts in Faerun by default.)

 Well, they told us that they weren't done with MTG settings coming to D&D, and apparently the next one is going to be set in Strixhaven. Yes, Amazon spilled the beans again here.

Strixhaven is actually the most recent setting for MTG's latest card set (the next is actually the Forgotten Realms, doing a crossover in the other direction.) Strixhaven is a university of magic on the plane of Arcavios. The university is divided into five schools: Lorehold, Prismari, Silverquill, Witherbloom, and Qunadrix (which correspond to each "enemy color" pair.)

Having only just gotten back into MTG after a few months away, I can't say much about its lore, except that I think it's a relatively low-stakes setting, acting more as a Hogwarts-like (though I think more of a college than a middle/high school) setting in which the schools or houses engage in friendly competition.

I know that Lorehold (the Red/White school) focuses on history and archaeology and I believe summoning spirits of the past to aid them. Silverquill (White/Black) is about performance and seems to have these creatures made of ink that they summon. Witherbloom (Black/Green, obviously) is all about biology and has little creatures called Pests designed to be sacrificed for magical purposes. And then Quandrix (Green/Blue) is about the fundamental forces of nature. Then Prismari (Blue/Red) is... I think, about pure spellcraft.

The main connection to larger MTG lore that I know of is that "Professor Onyx," who teaches at I believe Witherbloom (though I could have that wrong) is actually Liliana Vess, who has gone into hiding after her coerced participation in Nicol Bolas' assault on Ravnica.

While I think there's probably lots of potential here, I have to say that as someone who played MTG back in the early 90s, I feel like this is a weird choice. To risk a bit of cynicism here (and let's be clear, WotC, and especially its parent company Hasbro, are part of the cynical capitalist machine, no matter our sense of loyalty to the creatives working in said machine,) there's a whiff of cross-promotion here. I still think the best MTG setting they could do in D&D would be Dominaria, because it's the world that feels like it has the most substance for adventures.

I also think that I'm less enamored of the "wizarding school" trope than most (it doesn't help that the author of the Harry Potter books that popularized that trope so much has revealed herself to be a hateful bigot, which has somewhat chilled my formerly warm feelings toward that series).

On the other hand, the MTG books have been kind of a bonus on top of D&D's regular schedule of releases, so I can't really complain. Obviously, I've made great use of Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica (which, to be fair, was my favorite MTG setting already) and while Theros would never have been my first choice (or second) and was probably chosen mainly because Theros Beyond Death came out a little before its release, I do enjoy Greek myth.

I don't mean this post to be such a downer. In fact, I'm very excited for this book to come out, even if the nitpicker in me feels like there are other MTG settings I'd prefer. But a D&D setting book is actually a great opportunity to flesh out a world, and so we might get some really awesome details about this world.

Also, with only five schools (as opposed to ten guilds or fifteen gods) this book might be able to go very deep indeed on its setting's factions.

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