D&D Going to Lorewyn/Shadowmoor

 Evidently announced at MagicCon, along with some art previews from the Dragon Delves adventure anthology, we had the brief announcement of a supplement taking place in the Magic the Gathering plane of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor.

Notably, the last time that MtG visited this plane was in 2008, with the culmination of the four-set block comprised of Lorwyn, Eventide, Shadowmoor, and Morningtide.

It's surprising to see this plane brought up, given how long it has been since the game that it was created for has looked at it - though I take this as strong evidence that we'll be seeing a card set that takes place there some time in the next year or two. One reason we haven't seen this plane much is that it shares a lot of DNA with another recently-introduced plane, Eldraine. Eldraine is the "Fairy Tales and Arthurian Knights" plane, with the recent "Wilds of Eldraine" putting a greater emphasis on the former than the first visit, "Throne of Eldraine," which was more evenly balanced.

Like Eldraine, there's a real fairy-tale vibe to Lorwyn and Shadowmoor, but it's definitely different. Notably, while most worlds in Magic have humans, Lorwyn/Shadowmoor (I'm just going to call it Lorwyn for now) does not. The block was built around creature-type tribes, with merfolk, kinder (kind of Halfling-like,) changelings, goblins, elementals, and elves, and some others if memory serves (it was 17 years ago,) with each tribe being based in two colors.

Lorwyn was a pretty cheerful, low-conflict setting where the biggest problem were the elves, who deemed all other peoples less beautiful than themselves, and thus had a kind of elvish supremacy thing going on. However, Lorwyn is a plane that goes through cycles. When it is Lorwyn, it is an endless daytime. However, when the Eventide comes, and night finally falls, the entire plane transforms into the grim and dangerous Shadowmoor.

In D&D terms, I think both Lorwyn and Shadowmoor would still probably both be rather analogous to the Feywild, but the latter reflects the dark, "Unseelie" elements of the Fey. Ironically, again, if memory serves, in Shadowmoor, the elves are more heroic, representing the last vestiges of beauty and serenity in a world where the Kinder have become cultish hive-minds, the treefolk have become burned-out, gnarled menaces, and goblins are not the goofy tricksters they were, but are instead murderous little monsters.

Personally, I'm not as familiar with this setting because it came out around the time I entered by "second interrgnum" regarding Magic the Gathering (first playing with physical cards from about Fallen Empries through Tempest Block, then playing MTG Online for Kamigawa through about Time Spiral, before picking things up again in Arena I think when Theros Beyond Death came out (whatever was out when Arena became available on Macs and iOS.)

I think this setting has a lot of potential. While I've obviously gotten a lot out of Ravnica, I did think that Theros and Strixhaven were kind of odd choices for other crossovers. This feels a little more unique and original, and as I said in my previous post, I think a setting really needs to do something to distinguish itself.

Now, does this count as one of the two brand-new settings for D&D coming in the next few years? It's possible, though I'd argue this is not "brand-new."