MTG's next card set is going to be a return to a plane first introduced in 2004, when I was a freshman in college (which is, dear lord, 18 years ago, though closer to 17 1/2). This was when MTG would typically have a year dedicated to a new plane (actually, it was only the second year of such a pattern, after Mirrodin started them on the tendency of spending more time off Dominaria than on it).
Kamigawa had a mechanical theme - it was filled to the brim with Legendary cards, and also focused on a conflict between the kami (spirits) of its world and the mortal races - and it had a major flavor theme, being set on a Japanese-inspired plane. (Actually, come to think of it, going from Mirrodin, an artifact-themed world, to Kamigawa, a legend-themed world, sort of mirrored the 2nd and 3rd expansion sets for the game, Antiquities and Legends, but that's a tangent).
Kamigawa was based largely on medieval Japan, drawing from its folklore but also very much from the Western impression of it in terms of pop culture. I don't know if there was anything there that was profoundly offensive, but there were some inaccuracies that WotC has acknowledged and is looking to fix in the new visit.
I will throw out here that I think there's a nuanced discussion to be had about taking inspiration from real-world cultures to build something new in a fantasy setting, and you could argue that Kamigawa is, after all, not Japan, and thus inaccuracies could be explained in that way. On the other hand, it's not like accuracy will detract from the fantasy, and for those who do notice the inaccuracies, getting it right will allow them to buy in more easily to the world you're building. This subject could fill a book, so I'm going to set it aside here.
The IPs of Magic and Dungeons & Dragons have, since 2018, been seeing a bit more of an overlap. Three MTG settings have seen publication in D&D 5th Edition books (the latest of which is less of a setting sourcebook and more of an adventure series, but set at Strixhaven) while MTG saw Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, a card set based on D&D's most popular setting.
I have been running a campaign set in Ravnica, enabled by 2018's Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, but even though Ravnica is definitely my favorite MTG setting, I've been planning to gradually allow all of my players to become Planeswalkers and thus get access to other worlds in Magic.
The main commonality between the various Magic settings is that they're all fantasy. The nature of that fantasy can vary greatly - from Ravnica's urban intrigue to Ikoria's untamed wilderness - but still, these are all places where you can generally fit the standard trappings of D&D - swords, armor, spells, and the like.
However, our second visit to Kamigawa is going to see something very new: Sci-Fi.
Averting a common fantasy trope, namely Medieval Stasis, Kamigawa 1200 years later now has dense cities of skyscrapers with neon lights and digital electronics everywhere. It looks much more like modern Japan, or perhaps near-future Japan (honestly, really what people in the 1980s imagined what Japan would look like... five years ago).
In other words: Cyberpunk.
Now, Magic has played with technology in certain ways before. Mirrodin, being an artifact world, had all sorts of magical devices, and indeed all its biological life even had metallic components. Some of the things that Urza created on Dominaria, in part inspired by the works of the long lost Thran civilization, had a sort of futuristic vibe to them. We've also seen Ravnica portrayed perhaps less in that High Medieval/Renaissance context but more in even an early 20th century feel (there's some art in the Guildmaster's Guide that shows a cafe with those black and white hexagonal tiles that feel at least late 19th century to me). And some settings, like Vrynn, Jace Beleren's home plane, have weird pseudotechnological structures that could easily be seen in some far-future sci-fi like Dune. Likewise, the Phyrexians bear a bit of resemblance to the art design work of H.R. Gieger in the Alien franchise.
But in a strange way, Kamigawa's digital, cyberpunk-inspired reintroduction makes it feel very distinct from other stuff we've seen in the past, in part because it feels more closely tied to the near-future sci fi of cyberpunk.
And, in a way, I think this makes it a little trickier to handle as a D&D setting, even if we're only going for a visit.
Many years ago, D&D released an Unearthed Arcana article about "Modern Magic," which honestly pointed a lot toward cyberpunk as a genre - there were new spells introduced specifically to allow hacking computers, along with a Warlock Patron called the Ghost in the Machine, which was essentially a supercomputer patron, and the City Domain Cleric (used beautifully in Dimension 20's The Unsleeping City).
So, D&D has flirted with this idea of modern or modern-ish D&D content, but that UA never really went anywhere.
Still, it makes me wonder if there's a possibility for some revisit to the basic concept.
I've been thinking about how I'll approach Kamigawa if and when my party visits. I do think I want it to match up with modern Kamigawa as we'll be seeing in Neon Dynasty. But I'm also sort of trying to figure out how I'll handle it mechanically. There is an Artificer in my party, and I've had them use Tinker's Tools to sort of hack into computer-like systems in dungeons in the past, but I think it would be interesting to get more specific guidance on all of this.
Really, I've always been a proponent of modern fantasy settings - and not just this-world urban fantasy, but true "second world" fantasy settings that have modern trappings both socially and technologically, along with magical phenomena and creatures.
Indeed, one of my hopes (based on nothing in particular) is that one of the two brand-new settings that Chris Perkins mentioned were in development will be a modern fantasy world. I'd love to see a revisit to ideas like firearms and new interpretations of classes to fit in such a world.
Reading through the Starfinder Core Rulebook of course showed how one could approach converting an RPG system from fantasy to sci-fi, and while Starfinder is clearly focused more on planetary romance and space opera, it does have a bit of hacking and rules around computers to give you the opportunity for a bit more of a cyberpunk story.
That said, I think it would be cool to find a way to add such elements to D&D while still being D&D - Starfinder does give guidance on converting Pathfinder characters to Starfinder, but it's not just a modular piece you can drop into the rules for the fantasy game. I suspect WotC would prefer, if they do such a thing, to make their sci-fi or modern fantasy simply compatible with the rest of 5E.
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