I don't know how popular Mythic Odysseys of Theros will be. Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica was, actually, a controversial addition to 5th Edition, though the quality and potential it introduced made it a pretty well-received book once it came out. After several years in which there wasn't any official setting sourcebook other than Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide (even if there were some adventure books that started to hint toward others) the first they came out with was one for a world from Magic The Gathering - seen by some (ok, many) as a cheap ploy for corporate synergy to get players from Magic to try D&D, while neglecting fan-favorite settings from D&D's history. Perhaps viewed as insulting, at the same time as GGtR, the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron was released as a simple pdf. It took a lot longer for Eberron: Rising From the Last War to be released.
So far, the true "Campaign Setting" books that have come out (I'm leaving out Acquisitions Incorporated because it's more of a "Different Tone" book, still set in the Forgotten Realms) are those for the Sword Coast in Forgotten Realms, Ravnica, Eberron, Wildemount (and thus sort of Exandria) and soon Theros. So some Old School D&D fans might be disappointed that only two of those are previously-established D&D.
Now, I think Wildemount makes perfect sense as something to introduce to the game. D&D has always been a game designed by its fans, and Matt Mercer crafted a deep and intricate setting that a lot of people have fallen in love with thanks to Critical Role.
But I also think that the Magic team, perhaps because they're less bound to the intricacies of geography and such, have been able to create some really interesting, heightened fantasy worlds. By turning them over to the D&D team and countless dungeon masters, they've given a broad prompt that those people can run with.
Magic has high-concept worlds, and I think stories that can take high concepts and then flesh them out can be very fun.
So, the question, then, is where to go next?
Generally, I think that the setting should be one that remains in the public consciousness: I don't think anyone's itching to go to Ulgrotha (though I would find it kind of hilarious if they used a D&D book to rehabilitate the setting of the least popular Magic set.) But I also think the setting would need to be one that can sustain more than a single visit. Alara, for example, was "fixed" in the final set of its block, unifying the five shards into a whole.
It should also probably be a popular setting, too, given that that might encourage people to actually check it out. They nailed this one with the first book, taking what I'm pretty sure is the most popular Magic plane, Ravnica.
So I'm going to go through a couple setting I think fit these bills and talk about pros and cons.
Innistrad:
Innistrad is Magic's Gothic Horror plane. It was hailed as a massive success of top-down card design, where the story and flavor of a concept informed the mechanics on its card. There have been two blocks set on that plane: Innistrad/Dark Ascension/Avacyn Restored and Shadows Over Innistrad/Eldritch Moon. The short pitch: Innistrad is a world where humans are at the bottom of the food chain, hunted by vampires, werewolves, geists, skaabs (flesh golems), and zombies. Humanity only survives thanks to the power of Avacyn, an angelic protector who empowers its priests and "cathars" who fight back against the monsters. The latter block saw the gothic horror start to transform into cosmic horror with the arrival of one of the Eldrazi titans (see Zendikar).
I think this could work, but I also think that it steps on the toes of one of D&D's most beloved settings, Ravenloft. There is also the fact that you'd probably only have humans as a playable race (though there was a time when werewolves were transformed into benevolent nature guardians, but I think that "solution" was broken in the return to the setting.) I think you could do a lot, mechanically, with curses and transformations. Personally, because I'm a secret goth I guess, I'd love to see this, but I'm somewhat less confident this would be their choice, and I think a dedicated 5E sourcebook for the Ravenloft setting would be a better choice.
Zendikar:
Zendikar was conceived as an "adventure world," even using mechanics inspired by RPGs. So this is sort of a gimme. Zendikar is a world that constantly changes as part of a phenomenon called The Roil, which sees mountains rise or fall in mere days and islands rise up from the sea to float in the sky. Additionally, a massive number of strange hedrons - stone diamonds carved with intricate runes - are found everywhere in the plane. Secretly, the hedrons are there to keep the three Eldrazi Titans, Emrakul, Kozilek, and Ulamaog, trapped on the plane lest they threaten the rest of the multiverse.
Again, Zendikar being inspired by RPGs makes it an obvious choice. The only thing I could imagine making it tricky to pull off is figuring out what state the Eldrazi are in at the point the book is set. There's some clever cosmic horror foreshadowing before they're released - the Merfolk of this setting worship three gods that they don't realize are actually world-consuming monsters. But it would also be weird not to feature the Eldrazi.
Dominaria:
The original setting for MTG, Dominaria has one thing that is both going for it and against it. Because it was the primary setting of the game for about ten years, there's very little central theme to the place. Recently, they made another card set based there, and they decided the theme should be its vast and extensive history. More than any other Magic setting by far, the history of Dominaria is fleshed out. Likewise, there's a great diversity in locations within the setting itself.
The only downside, then, is that Dominaria starts to feel a bit like any other general fantasy RPG setting. That being said, I think that if you really placed an emphasis on the sheer number of apocalypses that Dominaria has gone through, you could have a lot of fun with it.
Kaladesh:
Ok, I don't know how interested they are in returning to this plane. I think the initial impulse to go there was to show off the homeland of Chandra Nalaar, one of the major characters of Magic's ongoing story. But this is also a fairly interesting high-concept setting. It's a sort of magical steampunk India where the major conflict is between a well-intentioned but authoritarian government and radical libertarian renegades, who clash over the resource called Aether, which is used to power the various wondrous inventions.
Visually and conceptually I think this place has a lot to offer.
New Phyrexia:
Ok, this one's almost certainly a no-go, but hear me out: New Phyrexia started as the metallic plane of Mirrodin, where all life was sort of partially inorganic - ironically, this was the set where they made "human" a creature type, despite the fact that their humans all had metal plates or spikes in their bodies. But Mirrodin was corrupted and eventually taken over by the evil contagion known as Phyrexia, the "big bads" of the first roughly eight years of Magic. Since then, the plane has become a horror wasteland, where monstrosities that have emerged from this contagion have developed distinct cultures, all dedicated to corrupting the multiverse with their machine-plague. Players would probably be members of the dying-out Mirran Resistance, who are the few people who have not yet been "compleated" and transformed into Phyrexian horrors.
This would be the most grimdark possible setting from Magic, and I could see interesting mechanics for how Phyrexian corruption would work, but damn would it be bleak. Unless...
Planeswalker's Guide to Dominia:
This might be unwelcome without a new Planescape book, but one of the things that's fantastic about Magic as a broader setting is that there are so many world to travel. Why limit yourself to just one? In my game, I've created a special feat to allow players to become Planeswalkers, which, at level 13, gives them a once-a-day use of Plane Shift that can only target themselves initially (while I know the current canon is that you need a super-rare planar gate like the one Bolas got made on Kaladesh, I want to allow the whole party to travel the multiverse, so they can train to summon their friends with them.)
But I'd love to see formalized rules for planar travel in the Magic games. In fact, here's how I'd want that book structured:
Focus first on Dominaria, giving us a rough outline (maybe not quite as detailed as Wildemount or Eberron, given that we've got more ground to cover,) but then put in rules for Planeswalkers (maybe make it a rule that if you're going to do this sort of campaign, all PCs are Planeswalkers.) Then, we get chapters giving us a rough pitch for some of the planes they can visit (much less in-depth for Ravnica and Theros) and the sort of adventures that might take place there.
And then, throw in a couple subclasses (I feel like a new Artificer subclass would be perfect, given how important Urza et. al. are to the oldschool story) and a bestiary with some of the most iconic Magic creatures. Give me stats for a freaking Atog!
Much like Spelljammer and to an extent Planescape, this would be a great opportunity to smush campaigns together. Hell, I'd love to see an Izzet Engineer, a Satyr from Theros, and a Cathar from Innistrad bumbling around the multiverse.
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