Monday, September 3, 2018

The Guilds of Ravnica and Rotational Antagonists

Ravnica, D&D's newest setting and Magic's 13-year-old-but-still-quite-popular setting, is defined by its ten guilds. The city and plane of Ravnica (which are one and the same) is dominated and governed by these ten guilds.

As a D&D setting, guilds are built into character creation. The assumption is that every player character is affiliated with a guild. There are guildless people in Ravnica, which I imagine the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica will touch on, but I expect that the setting is more or less built on the premise that every player is a member of one guild or another.

In fact, a lot of the new races and classes are pushed toward certain guilds or even certain individual guilds. Simic Hybrids, for example, obviously make the most sense as members of the Simic Combine (though they do say a rebel hybrid might join another guild if they don't agree with the Simc ethos.)

A lot of class options that they've tested out also present themselves as clearly aligned with certain guilds. The Druid Circle of Spores has Golgari written all over it - a druid who uses fungal spores to animate zombies. The Wizard's School of Invention is very clearly affiliated with the Izzet League and its chaotic experimentation.

Similarly, I expect a lot of existing class options are pretty well-suited to one guild or another. The Rogue's Mastermind archetype seems ideal for House Dimir, for example.

One thing I find really appealing about the setting is the option to determine an antagonist for your campaign based on your group. In fact, I think the best way to run a Ravnica-set campaign is to roll characters before you even begin to think about the arc of the campaign (or, given Ravnica's compatibility with noir-like stories, you could have a MacGuffin that any of the guilds would be happy to have - I intend to run a short-term adventure for level 5 characters involving a murder that turns out to be part of a plot to steal a Black Lotus - Magic's most valuable card but also an in-lore as well as in-game-mechanics item of incredible power.)

For example, let's say you have four players and they make Boros, Dimir, Golgari, and Selesnya characters (which were the four guilds in the original Ravnica: City of Guilds set.) Obviously these guys are all going to have conflicting motivations. The Boros Paladin wants to solve the crime and bring the murderer to justice. The Selesnya Cleric wants to ensure that this incredibly rare specimen is preserved. The Golgari Druid wants to claim the artifact for the swarm, and the Dimir Rogue wants to ensure that the person who winds up with this powerful item is in the right position to serve the House's interests in using it.

But then you're left with all the other guilds as potential antagonists - some Gruul extremist wants to use its power to destroy a big chunk of the city. Maybe a Simic biomancer wants to breed the Lotus' incredible magic into a new race of hybrid supermen who will take over the world. Maybe some very misguided Izzet technomancer is curious to see what would happen if they powered their new airship with the Lotus, and unbeknownst to them, doing so would cause a devastating catastrophe.

But on the other hand, maybe you have a Simic Ranger, a Gruul Barbarian, an Izzet Sorcerer, and an Orzhov Fighter who are all trying to keep the Boros, Selesnya, Golgari, or Dimir guilds from doing something dastardly with it.

Some of the guilds are clearly more easily villainous than others, but because of Magic's less polarized sense of morality, you could easily play around with that trope. Hell, you might have a Rakdos Bard who does, truly, just want to entertain people as best they can, and just like to go for a bit of a Grand Guignol aesthetic style, while you might have a villain from the Boros Legion - usually the most obviously "good" guild - who is basically practicing police brutality.

In an interview somewhere (I think it was an episode of Dragon Talk) they seemed to suggest that the Ravnica book actually had about as many monster stat blocks as Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, which is incredibly exciting to me. Having essentially a fourth Monster Manual for the edition is great, but on top of that, I would really love to get some of my favorite Magic monsters like Thrulls, or variations on Vampires like the Moroii.

And holy crap, if there's a stat block for Lazav, the House Dimir guildmaster who is also a shapeshifter, I'd be really happy.

No comments:

Post a Comment