Blizzard has talked about how they want 8.2's new zone, Nazjatar, to feel like a place that is endlessly replayable. In WoW's long history, we've had a number of zones added in later patches that are meant to provide max-level content that isn't dungeons or raids or PvP.
While the curated experience of a dungeon or raid (and mechanically, the two are basically the same concept) is something WoW is famous for doing very, very well, its focus on the world itself has declined over time. Cataclysm and Warlords of Draenor were two expansions in which players felt that there was little reason to leave capital cities and garrisons, respectively, because the content that really mattered was all in instances.
We've seen experiments and developments in the past that led to more outdoor engagement. I think one of Legion's great strengths was the introduction of the World Quest system - an update to daily quests that felt less repetitive and gave players greater choice - you could simply do four world quests in a zone to get the emissary cache, and choose which among those four you were interested in, or you could knock out every quest in the zone for rewards and reputation if you were in the groove.
I still think world quests are a really good system, but they aren't perfect. For one thing, the limitation on them - that there are only so many world quests up at a time - ironically makes them feel more mandatory (I think there's a whole post to be written about how weekly or daily caps are meant to be maximums but often wind up feeling like minimums) and a lot of the time there's little sense of story progression or stakes to them - why, for example, is Storm's Wake just as happy that I heard a story about Loh the Tortollans were telling me when I could have been defending the town from marauding Horde who are going around murdering civilians?
The most successful unlimited world content I think they've done is the Timeless Isle. And aside from my ears perking up any time there's anything to do with time travel or time anomalies in World of Warcraft (Bronze Dragonflight is the best dragonflight) there actually wasn't a ton that made the Timeless Isle all that obviously good. There were practically no new art assets and very little story (even if we eventually discovered that the stuff we were getting for Kairozdormu turned out to cause way bigger problems in the long run) but it still wound up being fun.
Rare enemies came with some really interesting designs - the ghost ship, for example, was really cool. While there were daily and weekly quests that got you the biggest contributions to player power, there was a sense that you could just go around the island and keep playing and know that you were still contributing somewhat to your power.
One of WoW's tensions is between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. The joy of pulling off your rotation perfectly and seeing big numbers flying at the screen, taking down a new raid boss, or wrecking someone in PvP are all joys you feel in the moment, as you are playing - what is called an intrinsic reward. Getting gear and reputation rewards, earning toys and mounts and titles for challenging feats or persistent grinding is a reward where it's less about joy in the moment than satisfaction once you've earned it, and that's called an extrinsic reward.
WoW has always been focused a lot on the latter, but when it is intrinsically enjoyable, players are going to be happiest. The thing is, because the extrinsic rewards are such a focus on the game, Blizzard has this problem where they can come up with fun game systems and modes, but players feel a weird sense that they are wasting their time by doing them if the rewards aren't right. Take island expeditions - while I do think some work could be done to make them a little more varied in terms of the things you're getting azerite from, I think their biggest problem is that the rewards are really not that interesting. Azerite as a resource is so obscured by other issues (like finding the piece of azerite gear with the correct traits) that just getting a chunk of azerite that you could easily earn through other game systems makes the Islands feel sort of inconsequential.
Warfronts I think do a better job here, because there are interesting transmog appearances and sets to earn, not to mention decent gear that is a lot easier to evaluate than "a big chunk of azerite."
Anyway, one important aspect to how unlimited content ought to work is that there needs to be a sense that a player is working toward something even if they're done with their daily quests or whatever the zone has.
But I also think that experimentation in the gameplay is important.
On the Timeless Isle, the most exciting rare mob was the ghost ship. Yes, Hu'lon had a cool mount that never dropped (for me at least,) but the ghost ship was A: unlike any other attackable object we've seen in the game and B: really changed the environment, giving players water-walking and providing a challenge that really required a raid's worth of players to attack it.
Dynamic events I think would contribute a great deal to making Nazjatar interesting. There should be big, zone-shaking creatures that change the feel of the zone while you're adventuring within it. Maybe some C'thraxx shows up and suddenly a wave of faceless ones start moving through the zone.
I'd love to see bases and points of interest that can be captured, and that as long as your faction (or maybe just the players versus the Naga) controls it, everyone gets a buff in the zone. But the Naga are fighting back with ferocity, and perhaps endless waves assault these locations, growing more and more powerful until it inevitably falls, requiring players to assault it again.
Giving rewards coming and going for this sort of dynamic event is also a good idea - if there's a currency for "relinquished" gear, you might get a big burst when you take one of these camps and then earn more each time you wipe out a wave - getting more and more of the currency as each wave gets more powerful, such that an organized raid that is capable of holding off raid-boss-like foes along with elite adds could be getting massive amounts of this currency until you get to the point where even a group of mythic raiders ultimately has to call a retreat.
One bit of world content that I thought was profoundly cool was the pre-Legion invasions in Westfall, Dun Morogh, Azshara, Hillsbrad Foothills, Tanaris, and Northern Barrens. I actually liked them more than the later Broken Isles invasions. Despite liking World Quests, I felt that the utterly free-form nature of the original Legion invasions worked really well to give a sense that we were dealing with an unexpected and unpredictable threat (I'm also always happy for them to use old zones to give that "close to home" feeling and raise the stakes.)
I loved that the nature of the invasion meant you could either join a big group wiping out massive demonic hordes or you could go to the more remote parts of the zone and find small clusters - there's a place in the western part of Westfall where a simple road runs next to a tree, and there were always a couple demons hiding behind the tree. Something about the aesthetics of this very normal little road - one you could imagine a kid walking back from school along - being threatened by little wyrmtongue demons really made all my protective paladin instinct kick in.
Now, dynamic environments are great to keep a zone feeling fresh. I will say that on the other hand, one of my favorite things in Legion was Suramar. To a large extent, the success of Suramar was that they took a max-level zone and treated it like other zones. Leveling zones tend to have full quest chains with a story that progresses over the course of its quests. Suramar was no different, except that you started it only at the level cap.
Another of WoW's issues has always been that the story is front-loaded - once you've leveled up, there's little left to do except go into the dungeons and raids and kill the bad guys.
That's something that's been getting a lot better, starting in Mists of Pandaria. But I think Suramar was the best example yet - before we went into Nighthold, we got two complex and interesting chapters to the story of the Dusk Lily Rebellion - literally starting the whole thing with just you and Thalyssra and eventually rallying most of the city to overthrow Elisande, which then led to a huge raid. (And the Nightborne abandoning us to go hang out with the Blood Elves, grumble grumble.)
I was, to be honest, pretty disappointed that the War Campaign in BFA was not as involved, complex, and frankly long as the Suramar stories. What we got was instead something more like the chapters that unfolded on Argus - interesting, but really just a couple of sporadic chapters rather than a rich and ongoing story.
Now, can the dynamic world and the rich ongoing story coexist? One advantage to being light on story is that you can have parts of the world change significantly for things like world quests without disrupting player's engagement. If you were on a quest to get keys off of naga soldiers to free an NPC from their prisons but then all the Naga there were dead and there was a big sea-monster in their place because of some world quest, it wouldn't feel great.
So I don't want to be asking conflicting things here.
Still, I think I'm going to be watching the development of Nazjatar with great interest. The idea of it - an island existing within a big rift in the ocean, with titanic walls of water surrounding the zone on all sides - is really cool.
Thursday, November 8, 2018
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
House Dimir Story Hooks
House Dimir has been around as long as the other guilds, but until relatively recently (I can't remember how long it has been in the in-universe timeline, but the reveal was part of the first Ravnica block) it was a total secret. Rumors may have existed, but the public generally considered there to be nine guilds in Ravnica, and presumably didn't think in terms of Magic's color pie to realize that they were missing a Black and Blue guild.
For so long the Dimir have existed as the ultimate hidden conspiracy. A clandestine organization that employs stealthy spies and assassins as well as spellcasters who are capable of erasing a target's memory, the Dimir have honed their secrecy to a lethal edge.
Secrets define the Dimir, and even now, in an era where the Dimir have a public face, there's still a sort of tendency in Ravnica to pretend they don't exist.
Fun story: ever since I got a Royal Assassin in my first 60-card, Revised Edition pack of Magic cards in 1993 or maybe 1994, I've been a fan of black. I got a Lord of Atlantis in another pack soon after, and blue was always my favorite color, so I started playing a Blue Black deck (once I figured out that you should actually stick to fewer than five colors unless you had some real tools to make that work.) I added red once I got a copy of (the Chronicles version of) Nicol Bolas, but Blue Black tended to be my favorite color combo. When Ravnica: City of Guilds came out, I forced myself to start with the colors I played the least of (this was once I started playing Magic Online,) and so I went with the Red and White Boros. But then I started to see the flavor of House Dimir and while I liked Boros a lot, I just had to make a control/evasion deck which I called "The House Always Wins." It didn't always win, but it was one of my most consistently powerful decks. But I fell in love with the flavor of House Dimir, and I think it's had a profound effect on my writing. Anyway...
The Dimir have been outed, but the public face they have crafted provides many good story hooks for an adventure or campaign.
First off, I think that two genres function very well with the Dimir as a major element. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is that of a Film Noir detective story.
And I'm talking here about the Dimir serving as allies, or perhaps such stories working with a Dimir player character. See, the thing about being an ancient conspiracy that controls all knowledge is that there is no one better at uncovering the truth than the Dimir.
In Ravnican society, the Dimir can act as couriers and librarians. But in my version of the world, I'd add private detectives as well as journalists - indeed, I'd probably have a newspaper called the Observer (with a Dimir symbol as the O) as a popular publication within the city. Because the Dimir have agents everywhere, they are uniquely positioned to expose corruption in the other guilds.
It is ironic in some ways, but the guild that keeps the most secrets is the best at unveiling those of other guilds.
An investigation into anything from police brutality within the Boros to embezzlement in the Orzhov, or possibly much larger conspiracies that threaten the plane itself, would be a great plot to involve the Dimir in.
Noir works great for the petty stuff, but the genre that I think works even better for the Dimir is the conspiracy thriller.
Stuff like Three Days of the Condor, the Parallax View, or even the nonfictional All the President's Men are great inspiration for this sort of plot. Indeed, Deep Throat would be a fantastic inspiration for a Dimir operative who is friendly to the party. Or you could have that hypothetical Dimir newspaper be the equivalent of the Washington Post, taking down a corrupt leader who has been covering up their crimes.
But this is a fantasy setting, and so I suggest you also get into far crazier conspiracies. The X-Files is a good reference point.
The thing that's great about the Dimir is that they are both capable of being the guild fighting to expose the grand conspiracy (like in the current block, where they're taking the lead on opposing Nicol Bolas' attempts to place his agents in leadership positions of the guilds) while also being a perfectly good conspiracy for the party to expose.
Dimir villains can be a ton of fun - between shapechangers, necromancers, and masters of illusion, enchantment, and divinations magic, the Dimir are going to keep your party paranoid and always leave them wondering if what they are actually doing is all by the House's designs.
The fact that the guildmaster is a shapechanger means that even if you have your campaign-ending final boss fight against Lazav, you could easily imply that either what you fought wasn't the real Lazav or that Lazav wasn't even truly the guildmaster, and that there is someone else pulling the strings from higher up (such as the ghost of the vampire Szadek, the guild's parun (founding guildmaster) who died in the first Ravnica block.)
I would recommend that if you want the Dimir to show up as major villains (or even allies) in your campaign, you should build up slowly to them. Dimir operatives infiltrate every other guild as a matter of course, and having a grand reveal in which several seemingly unrelated and friendly NPCs turn out to be Dimir could be a great moment in the game.
A Dimir villain might also turn out to be using the party to do something good, and is simply playing the villain in order to spur them to action. Fake-outs will play well - I imagine a party finally arriving at Duskmantle, the secret headquarters of the guild, only to discover that after a huge effort to find this mythical place, they realize that it's actually a fake that was constructed to lure them into a trap.
Environments:
As the Blue and Black guild, Dimir lands are Islands and Swamps. Islands, as we've said, translate into canals and aqueducts in Ravnica. Foggy docks and perhaps canal-side cafes where operatives meet to speak in code with one another are great "island" locations for the Dimir. (I'm also really found of the idea of a bookshop with secret back rooms hidden by bookshelves.) Their "swamps," which take the form of undercity sewers, are likely either nondescript and mundane but with hidden passages to actual meeting places, or they might be cavernous spaces that seem totally abandoned but hide functional buildings among the rubble of previous ages of the city.
Second only to the Golgari, the Dimir know the Undercity well. But while the Golgari use it to hide their massive numbers and wage civil wars that the rest of the city doesn't even know about, the Dimir primarily use it because the remoteness and the darkness allows them to hide their operations. The Dimir have some undead (typically skeletons and ghosts) that work for them, but they also have what in Magic are called Horrors, and generally translate to aberrations in D&D terms. Unspeakable and incomprehensible beings are the perfect sort of creature to work for a guild that prefers to play things close to the vest.
For so long the Dimir have existed as the ultimate hidden conspiracy. A clandestine organization that employs stealthy spies and assassins as well as spellcasters who are capable of erasing a target's memory, the Dimir have honed their secrecy to a lethal edge.
Secrets define the Dimir, and even now, in an era where the Dimir have a public face, there's still a sort of tendency in Ravnica to pretend they don't exist.
Fun story: ever since I got a Royal Assassin in my first 60-card, Revised Edition pack of Magic cards in 1993 or maybe 1994, I've been a fan of black. I got a Lord of Atlantis in another pack soon after, and blue was always my favorite color, so I started playing a Blue Black deck (once I figured out that you should actually stick to fewer than five colors unless you had some real tools to make that work.) I added red once I got a copy of (the Chronicles version of) Nicol Bolas, but Blue Black tended to be my favorite color combo. When Ravnica: City of Guilds came out, I forced myself to start with the colors I played the least of (this was once I started playing Magic Online,) and so I went with the Red and White Boros. But then I started to see the flavor of House Dimir and while I liked Boros a lot, I just had to make a control/evasion deck which I called "The House Always Wins." It didn't always win, but it was one of my most consistently powerful decks. But I fell in love with the flavor of House Dimir, and I think it's had a profound effect on my writing. Anyway...
The Dimir have been outed, but the public face they have crafted provides many good story hooks for an adventure or campaign.
First off, I think that two genres function very well with the Dimir as a major element. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is that of a Film Noir detective story.
And I'm talking here about the Dimir serving as allies, or perhaps such stories working with a Dimir player character. See, the thing about being an ancient conspiracy that controls all knowledge is that there is no one better at uncovering the truth than the Dimir.
In Ravnican society, the Dimir can act as couriers and librarians. But in my version of the world, I'd add private detectives as well as journalists - indeed, I'd probably have a newspaper called the Observer (with a Dimir symbol as the O) as a popular publication within the city. Because the Dimir have agents everywhere, they are uniquely positioned to expose corruption in the other guilds.
It is ironic in some ways, but the guild that keeps the most secrets is the best at unveiling those of other guilds.
An investigation into anything from police brutality within the Boros to embezzlement in the Orzhov, or possibly much larger conspiracies that threaten the plane itself, would be a great plot to involve the Dimir in.
Noir works great for the petty stuff, but the genre that I think works even better for the Dimir is the conspiracy thriller.
Stuff like Three Days of the Condor, the Parallax View, or even the nonfictional All the President's Men are great inspiration for this sort of plot. Indeed, Deep Throat would be a fantastic inspiration for a Dimir operative who is friendly to the party. Or you could have that hypothetical Dimir newspaper be the equivalent of the Washington Post, taking down a corrupt leader who has been covering up their crimes.
But this is a fantasy setting, and so I suggest you also get into far crazier conspiracies. The X-Files is a good reference point.
The thing that's great about the Dimir is that they are both capable of being the guild fighting to expose the grand conspiracy (like in the current block, where they're taking the lead on opposing Nicol Bolas' attempts to place his agents in leadership positions of the guilds) while also being a perfectly good conspiracy for the party to expose.
Dimir villains can be a ton of fun - between shapechangers, necromancers, and masters of illusion, enchantment, and divinations magic, the Dimir are going to keep your party paranoid and always leave them wondering if what they are actually doing is all by the House's designs.
The fact that the guildmaster is a shapechanger means that even if you have your campaign-ending final boss fight against Lazav, you could easily imply that either what you fought wasn't the real Lazav or that Lazav wasn't even truly the guildmaster, and that there is someone else pulling the strings from higher up (such as the ghost of the vampire Szadek, the guild's parun (founding guildmaster) who died in the first Ravnica block.)
I would recommend that if you want the Dimir to show up as major villains (or even allies) in your campaign, you should build up slowly to them. Dimir operatives infiltrate every other guild as a matter of course, and having a grand reveal in which several seemingly unrelated and friendly NPCs turn out to be Dimir could be a great moment in the game.
A Dimir villain might also turn out to be using the party to do something good, and is simply playing the villain in order to spur them to action. Fake-outs will play well - I imagine a party finally arriving at Duskmantle, the secret headquarters of the guild, only to discover that after a huge effort to find this mythical place, they realize that it's actually a fake that was constructed to lure them into a trap.
Environments:
As the Blue and Black guild, Dimir lands are Islands and Swamps. Islands, as we've said, translate into canals and aqueducts in Ravnica. Foggy docks and perhaps canal-side cafes where operatives meet to speak in code with one another are great "island" locations for the Dimir. (I'm also really found of the idea of a bookshop with secret back rooms hidden by bookshelves.) Their "swamps," which take the form of undercity sewers, are likely either nondescript and mundane but with hidden passages to actual meeting places, or they might be cavernous spaces that seem totally abandoned but hide functional buildings among the rubble of previous ages of the city.
Second only to the Golgari, the Dimir know the Undercity well. But while the Golgari use it to hide their massive numbers and wage civil wars that the rest of the city doesn't even know about, the Dimir primarily use it because the remoteness and the darkness allows them to hide their operations. The Dimir have some undead (typically skeletons and ghosts) that work for them, but they also have what in Magic are called Horrors, and generally translate to aberrations in D&D terms. Unspeakable and incomprehensible beings are the perfect sort of creature to work for a guild that prefers to play things close to the vest.
Izzet League Story Hooks
I was good in the last series of entries and avoided my urge to save my favorite for last, but here, in the penultimate story hook post (I'll confess that part of the reason for my rapid updates yesterday was election anxiety - but this isn't a politics blog) I'm going to talk about the Izzet League and save their fellow Grixis guild (I didn't play during the Alara block so Shards feel less intuitive to me than Guilds) for the final spot.
If you're familiar with World of Warcraft (and if you read this blog, you likely are,) I can't really think of a better analogue for the Izzet than their Goblins and Gnomes. Ravnica doesn't have Gnomes, but you can certainly make a Goblin character who fits in here.
The Izzet are one of two super-science guilds in Ravnica. But while the Simic Combine focuses on biomancy, the Izzet are arguably the more conventional of the two, being interested in magic and technology and the intersection between the two. Discovery and experimentation are their greatest ideals, and they place a very high value on intelligence.
More than any of the other guilds, the Izzet guildmaster (and parun, meaning its founder, which puts his age at over 10,000) is central to the identity of the guild. Niv-Mizzet, a red and blue dragon who is also a wizard, is extremely egotistical, but he is smart enough that the ego is sort of justified. He is constantly working on myriad projects, and only he can keep the details of them all straight.
In terms of aesthetics, the Izzet are very steampunk, its researchers wearing magitek-like armor and their laboratories all powered by steam vents.
The Izzet are in charge of construction in Ravnica, but their expertise in technology has given the city steam power and heat, and while I don't think it says explicitly, you could even imagine them providing electricity, breaking Ravnica out of the typical medievalism you find in most of the game's settings.
The Izzet are great catalysts for stories because they are always working on some exciting new project, and the possible results of such experimentation is practically limitless. Time travel, planar travel, opening portals to extra-planar threats, all manner of reality-warping, or just plain old explosions that kill you just as dead as anything else can be the result of Izzet experimentation.
But if you want lower-key stuff, you can always look at the practical side of things. Given their projects, the Izzet will probably be a good source for fetch quests - whether it's a one-session adventure that takes you into some mini-dungeon or a campaign-spanning project that requires many rare components.
The Izzet are also susceptible to sabotage, and you could easily have their projects threatened by nefarious individuals, requiring your intrepid adventurers to protect or investigate what has happened.
As villains (and a lot of those campaign-level stories mentioned three paragraphs above could be the result of villainy,) the Izzet are a great mad-scientist kind of guild (though this works just as well for the Simic.) For instance, you could have some Izzet researcher who is balking at a new Azorius regulation limiting his dangerous experiments and decides to just let loose on the city. In fact, this actually would work really well for a superhero/supervillain style narrative (which, come to think of it, would actually work great in Ravnica regardless of which guilds you use...)
An Izzet villain could be intentionally malevolent, but you could also easily have Izzet villains who don't think they're doing anything wrong - they're just so obsessed with getting results from their experiments that they have lost track of any regard for the safety of the citizens.
Wild and unexpected things are likely to happen with the Izzet - as villains or allies. If your party establishes a comfortable home base, an Izzet experiment going wrong could easily allow you to, well, blow it up.
Environments:
As the Red and Blue guild, the Izzet lands are Mountains and Islands. Their mountains are likely massive towers bright with activity - steam and flames bursting out of smokestacks and vents, lightning rods capturing atmospheric electricity, and explosions from the many labs within. Their islands, which in Ravnica tend to be canals, aqueducts, and other waterways, are probably either used for power-generating mills or pumped into their labs to produce steam or cool overheating systems. Indeed, the combination of Red's heat with Blue's water really makes steam a big element of the guild, and their territories are probably cacophonous with all the industrial activity and explosive experimentation.
All right, and with that, we've done the nine guilds of Ravnica! What a journey it's been. Well, the book comes out on Friday in game stores, so until then, we should...
What's that?
There's a tenth guild?
And the public has been aware of them since the first Ravnica block twelve years ago?
Ok then. We'll close things out with my favorite guild, House Dimir.
If you're familiar with World of Warcraft (and if you read this blog, you likely are,) I can't really think of a better analogue for the Izzet than their Goblins and Gnomes. Ravnica doesn't have Gnomes, but you can certainly make a Goblin character who fits in here.
The Izzet are one of two super-science guilds in Ravnica. But while the Simic Combine focuses on biomancy, the Izzet are arguably the more conventional of the two, being interested in magic and technology and the intersection between the two. Discovery and experimentation are their greatest ideals, and they place a very high value on intelligence.
More than any of the other guilds, the Izzet guildmaster (and parun, meaning its founder, which puts his age at over 10,000) is central to the identity of the guild. Niv-Mizzet, a red and blue dragon who is also a wizard, is extremely egotistical, but he is smart enough that the ego is sort of justified. He is constantly working on myriad projects, and only he can keep the details of them all straight.
In terms of aesthetics, the Izzet are very steampunk, its researchers wearing magitek-like armor and their laboratories all powered by steam vents.
The Izzet are in charge of construction in Ravnica, but their expertise in technology has given the city steam power and heat, and while I don't think it says explicitly, you could even imagine them providing electricity, breaking Ravnica out of the typical medievalism you find in most of the game's settings.
The Izzet are great catalysts for stories because they are always working on some exciting new project, and the possible results of such experimentation is practically limitless. Time travel, planar travel, opening portals to extra-planar threats, all manner of reality-warping, or just plain old explosions that kill you just as dead as anything else can be the result of Izzet experimentation.
But if you want lower-key stuff, you can always look at the practical side of things. Given their projects, the Izzet will probably be a good source for fetch quests - whether it's a one-session adventure that takes you into some mini-dungeon or a campaign-spanning project that requires many rare components.
The Izzet are also susceptible to sabotage, and you could easily have their projects threatened by nefarious individuals, requiring your intrepid adventurers to protect or investigate what has happened.
As villains (and a lot of those campaign-level stories mentioned three paragraphs above could be the result of villainy,) the Izzet are a great mad-scientist kind of guild (though this works just as well for the Simic.) For instance, you could have some Izzet researcher who is balking at a new Azorius regulation limiting his dangerous experiments and decides to just let loose on the city. In fact, this actually would work really well for a superhero/supervillain style narrative (which, come to think of it, would actually work great in Ravnica regardless of which guilds you use...)
An Izzet villain could be intentionally malevolent, but you could also easily have Izzet villains who don't think they're doing anything wrong - they're just so obsessed with getting results from their experiments that they have lost track of any regard for the safety of the citizens.
Wild and unexpected things are likely to happen with the Izzet - as villains or allies. If your party establishes a comfortable home base, an Izzet experiment going wrong could easily allow you to, well, blow it up.
Environments:
As the Red and Blue guild, the Izzet lands are Mountains and Islands. Their mountains are likely massive towers bright with activity - steam and flames bursting out of smokestacks and vents, lightning rods capturing atmospheric electricity, and explosions from the many labs within. Their islands, which in Ravnica tend to be canals, aqueducts, and other waterways, are probably either used for power-generating mills or pumped into their labs to produce steam or cool overheating systems. Indeed, the combination of Red's heat with Blue's water really makes steam a big element of the guild, and their territories are probably cacophonous with all the industrial activity and explosive experimentation.
All right, and with that, we've done the nine guilds of Ravnica! What a journey it's been. Well, the book comes out on Friday in game stores, so until then, we should...
What's that?
There's a tenth guild?
And the public has been aware of them since the first Ravnica block twelve years ago?
Ok then. We'll close things out with my favorite guild, House Dimir.
Golgari Swarm Story Hooks
The guild most affiliated with Ravnica's undercity, the Golgari promise a ton of interesting stories of both a traditional and unconventional nature. Unlike, say, the Rakdos or the Orzhov or the Dimir (the other Black-mana guilds) the Golgari have a very real and very tangible service they provide to the city that is unquestionably indispensable. They get rid of the garbage.
Indeed, garbage disposal as well as corpse disposal is the purview of the Golgari, and in a city where there's nowhere outside the city to get rid of waste, you're not going to ask much about what the Golgari are doing with it.
While all black-mana guilds have some presence down in the undercity, the Golgari really thrive and more or less rule down there. One gets the sense that there is a lot that the Golgari get up to that the rest of the city doesn't know about (though the Dimir are the obvious winners for secret-keeping.) In fact, the Golgari are fractured like the Gruul Clans. But while the Gruul and their values of freedom and independence keep the clans willing to let the others do their own thing, the Golgari is in constant upheaval as lich-lords and gorgons (the Magic, and you know, classical mythology version of gorgons that for some strange reason are called Medusas in D&D because there's a different monster called gorgons) vie for control of the guild, animating zombie armies out of the discarded dead of the city in order to fight over leadership of the guild.
Most Ravnicans stay away from the undercity, and so most adventurers will probably consider any journey down into these ruins and forgotten structures that have successively been built upon as a voyage into a dark and scary unknown.
But while the Golgari might appear sinister, they often act as guides to this underworld, taking people who need to be down there through the maze of tunnels and buried canals where monstrous creatures and roaming zombies threaten to pop out of any corner.
The Golgari might contact a group of adventurers to deal with unusual monsters or humanoid cults and gangs that threaten their operations. Outsiders might also play an important role in settling disputes between factions within the swarm. A politically powerful Golgari druid might need to eliminate some rising necromancer who threatens the peace, but cannot be seen to take a part in their destruction.
The Golgari also recycle organic material in order to provide low-cost food for the poor of Ravnica. While there's definitely some creepy Soylent Green shenanigans going on there, the demand for food in such a massive city must be incredibly high, meaning that Golgari operations have to continue or people could start to starve.
The undercity of Ravnica is basically the plane's equivalent to the Underdark, and between the various factions within the Golgari (not to mention the presence of other guilds down there,) you could easily have an entire campaign set there in which the Golgari play a big role - most of the undercity population centers are under Golgari control.
They can serve as guides and allies down here, but they can also make for excellent villains.
First off, the Golgari believe that one day, the beings of the undercity will rise up and take over the entire plane. This could mean anything from giant insects to zombie hordes, and likely both. You could easily have a campaign that starts with a descent into the undercity, only for the party to discover that some ambitious Golgari lich is planning to lead an utterly massive horde of zombies and skeletons up to the surface, and the party's job is to try to stop this menace that the people in the surface city have no idea exists.
Indeed, any time you want to throw in some undead creatures, you can have the intra-guild Golgari conflict spill out into the surface world.
The Golgari are great "strange bedfellows" NPCs - allowing a good party to work alongside them even if they're really uncomfortable doing so.
Environment:
As the Green and Black guild, your lands are Forests and Swamps. The "swamps" (represented in Ravnica by underground sewers) will probably dominate the type of territory you think of with the Golgari, but they do have some territory above ground. However, these "forests" are probably not the manicured parks of the Selesnya or the wild-growth woodlands of the Gruul. Instead, you're probably going to mainly find these around large inlets into the sewers. The Golgari would likely cultivate these forests as gardens and farms, but probably in a very industrial and functional way. You're probably not going to have a pleasant stroll through a Golgari forest, but you might be able to pick up fresh vegetables! And maybe some meat from a giant insect!
Indeed, garbage disposal as well as corpse disposal is the purview of the Golgari, and in a city where there's nowhere outside the city to get rid of waste, you're not going to ask much about what the Golgari are doing with it.
While all black-mana guilds have some presence down in the undercity, the Golgari really thrive and more or less rule down there. One gets the sense that there is a lot that the Golgari get up to that the rest of the city doesn't know about (though the Dimir are the obvious winners for secret-keeping.) In fact, the Golgari are fractured like the Gruul Clans. But while the Gruul and their values of freedom and independence keep the clans willing to let the others do their own thing, the Golgari is in constant upheaval as lich-lords and gorgons (the Magic, and you know, classical mythology version of gorgons that for some strange reason are called Medusas in D&D because there's a different monster called gorgons) vie for control of the guild, animating zombie armies out of the discarded dead of the city in order to fight over leadership of the guild.
Most Ravnicans stay away from the undercity, and so most adventurers will probably consider any journey down into these ruins and forgotten structures that have successively been built upon as a voyage into a dark and scary unknown.
But while the Golgari might appear sinister, they often act as guides to this underworld, taking people who need to be down there through the maze of tunnels and buried canals where monstrous creatures and roaming zombies threaten to pop out of any corner.
The Golgari might contact a group of adventurers to deal with unusual monsters or humanoid cults and gangs that threaten their operations. Outsiders might also play an important role in settling disputes between factions within the swarm. A politically powerful Golgari druid might need to eliminate some rising necromancer who threatens the peace, but cannot be seen to take a part in their destruction.
The Golgari also recycle organic material in order to provide low-cost food for the poor of Ravnica. While there's definitely some creepy Soylent Green shenanigans going on there, the demand for food in such a massive city must be incredibly high, meaning that Golgari operations have to continue or people could start to starve.
The undercity of Ravnica is basically the plane's equivalent to the Underdark, and between the various factions within the Golgari (not to mention the presence of other guilds down there,) you could easily have an entire campaign set there in which the Golgari play a big role - most of the undercity population centers are under Golgari control.
They can serve as guides and allies down here, but they can also make for excellent villains.
First off, the Golgari believe that one day, the beings of the undercity will rise up and take over the entire plane. This could mean anything from giant insects to zombie hordes, and likely both. You could easily have a campaign that starts with a descent into the undercity, only for the party to discover that some ambitious Golgari lich is planning to lead an utterly massive horde of zombies and skeletons up to the surface, and the party's job is to try to stop this menace that the people in the surface city have no idea exists.
Indeed, any time you want to throw in some undead creatures, you can have the intra-guild Golgari conflict spill out into the surface world.
The Golgari are great "strange bedfellows" NPCs - allowing a good party to work alongside them even if they're really uncomfortable doing so.
Environment:
As the Green and Black guild, your lands are Forests and Swamps. The "swamps" (represented in Ravnica by underground sewers) will probably dominate the type of territory you think of with the Golgari, but they do have some territory above ground. However, these "forests" are probably not the manicured parks of the Selesnya or the wild-growth woodlands of the Gruul. Instead, you're probably going to mainly find these around large inlets into the sewers. The Golgari would likely cultivate these forests as gardens and farms, but probably in a very industrial and functional way. You're probably not going to have a pleasant stroll through a Golgari forest, but you might be able to pick up fresh vegetables! And maybe some meat from a giant insect!
Tuesday, November 6, 2018
Zandalari Warlocks Out, Kul Tiran Mages In
Whether it was a response to feedback or simply oversights on the part of the team, the announced classes for the upcoming allied races were revised.
Zandalari Trolls no longer have access to Warlocks. The argument is that Zandalar never really had access to fel magic. I'm not sure I totally buy that - Warlocks are generally not something a culture as a whole pursues, but is more of an individual's choice. On the other hand, Warlocks are not terribly wanting for race representation. But I don't think they needed to get rid of them.
Kul Tiran Humans will, as it turns out, get access to mages. While the post points out that they don't have a strong arcane tradition (I guess they really are just priests and shamans among the Tidesages) there's obviously one very prominent Kul Tiran mage, and so it makes sense that, especially given her ascendence from pariah to leader, the Kul Tirans might start studying arcane magic.
I'll still contend that Kul Tirans ought to have access to Paladins, though I suppose there's some logic to the notion that their priests are really more about the animistic/shamanistic view of the ocean rather than worship of the Light. I still think the Order of Embers is exactly the sort of organization that should be producing paladins (and if we start getting class-themed gear again I'd love to see a dark "burn the witches" style paladin set,) but you can't win them all.
For the fun of it, let's do a race/class combo count! (I'm counting Pandaren separately when it comes to factions rather than double-listing them.)
Warrior: 21 total, 10 Alliance, 10 Horde, 1 Pandaren (Warriors are easy to count.)
Paladin: 8 total, 5 Alliance, 3 Horde (given the events of Legion, I'm really wondering when the hell we're going to get Night Elf Paladins - we got two NE class champions and not a single dwarf!)
Death Knight: 12 total, 6 Alliance, 6 Horde (and until they change the starting experience, probably never getting more)
Hunter: 21 total, 10 Alliance, 10 Horde, 1 Pandaren (I think every allied race can be them, and with gnomes added in Legion they're just as universal as warriors.)
Shaman: 12 total, 4 Alliance, 7 Horde, 1 Pandaren
Rogue: 17 total, 8 Alliance, 8 Horde, 1 Pandaren (With a base race and allied race on both side for hooved people, it's an even split among those who don't clomp around.)
Druid: 7 total, 3 Alliance, 4 Horde (Horde gets more, but it's just two sets of related races, whereas the Alliance has more varied Druids.)
Monk: 18 total, 8 Alliance, 9 Horde, 1 Pandaren (for some reason Monk skills are apparently very easy to pick up, I guess. Or perhaps it's just a less popular class and they don't want to put a lot of restrictions on it.)
Demon Hunter: 2 total, 1 Alliance, 1 Horde (another hero class, this would probably be hard to add new races to.)
Warlock: 12 total, 6 Alliance, 6 Horde (an even split, now that Zandalari don't get them.)
Mage: 10 Alliance, 8 Horde, 1 Pandaren (Tauren seem to be the only ones to shun arcane magic.)
Priest: 10 Alliance, 9 Horde, 1 Pandaren (the Highmountain don't have Sunwalkers, so no priests nor paladins.)
Assuming I got the counts right, this means that the Alliance has 81 total race/class combinations (or 88 if you count the Pandaren) and the Horde has 81 as well (again, 88 if you count Pandaren.)
Well, that looks pretty balanced, and probably intentional. I suspect that the rearrangements of classes might have been meant to balance these numbers (again, assuming I counted correctly.) I think that flavor should be the first consideration, but I also understand Blizzard's desire to appear evenhanded between the factions on such fundamental gameplay matters (can the Alliance get some inner conflict that the Horde has to worry about for a change?)
Even though we're twelve years past Paladins and Shamans being exclusive to one or the other faction (at least until Classic goes live,) I still do feel that the Alliance ought to have greater access to Paladins and the Horde should have more Shamans, and that holds true. Druids used to be the class that was very carefully balanced between the factions, but this is an area where they really have gone more with flavor than balance, and that's fine. Those dinosaur forms are very cool and all, but I am so excited about the terrifying wicker beasts the Kul Tirans get that it makes up for having one fewer Druid race.
Zandalari Trolls no longer have access to Warlocks. The argument is that Zandalar never really had access to fel magic. I'm not sure I totally buy that - Warlocks are generally not something a culture as a whole pursues, but is more of an individual's choice. On the other hand, Warlocks are not terribly wanting for race representation. But I don't think they needed to get rid of them.
Kul Tiran Humans will, as it turns out, get access to mages. While the post points out that they don't have a strong arcane tradition (I guess they really are just priests and shamans among the Tidesages) there's obviously one very prominent Kul Tiran mage, and so it makes sense that, especially given her ascendence from pariah to leader, the Kul Tirans might start studying arcane magic.
I'll still contend that Kul Tirans ought to have access to Paladins, though I suppose there's some logic to the notion that their priests are really more about the animistic/shamanistic view of the ocean rather than worship of the Light. I still think the Order of Embers is exactly the sort of organization that should be producing paladins (and if we start getting class-themed gear again I'd love to see a dark "burn the witches" style paladin set,) but you can't win them all.
For the fun of it, let's do a race/class combo count! (I'm counting Pandaren separately when it comes to factions rather than double-listing them.)
Warrior: 21 total, 10 Alliance, 10 Horde, 1 Pandaren (Warriors are easy to count.)
Paladin: 8 total, 5 Alliance, 3 Horde (given the events of Legion, I'm really wondering when the hell we're going to get Night Elf Paladins - we got two NE class champions and not a single dwarf!)
Death Knight: 12 total, 6 Alliance, 6 Horde (and until they change the starting experience, probably never getting more)
Hunter: 21 total, 10 Alliance, 10 Horde, 1 Pandaren (I think every allied race can be them, and with gnomes added in Legion they're just as universal as warriors.)
Shaman: 12 total, 4 Alliance, 7 Horde, 1 Pandaren
Rogue: 17 total, 8 Alliance, 8 Horde, 1 Pandaren (With a base race and allied race on both side for hooved people, it's an even split among those who don't clomp around.)
Druid: 7 total, 3 Alliance, 4 Horde (Horde gets more, but it's just two sets of related races, whereas the Alliance has more varied Druids.)
Monk: 18 total, 8 Alliance, 9 Horde, 1 Pandaren (for some reason Monk skills are apparently very easy to pick up, I guess. Or perhaps it's just a less popular class and they don't want to put a lot of restrictions on it.)
Demon Hunter: 2 total, 1 Alliance, 1 Horde (another hero class, this would probably be hard to add new races to.)
Warlock: 12 total, 6 Alliance, 6 Horde (an even split, now that Zandalari don't get them.)
Mage: 10 Alliance, 8 Horde, 1 Pandaren (Tauren seem to be the only ones to shun arcane magic.)
Priest: 10 Alliance, 9 Horde, 1 Pandaren (the Highmountain don't have Sunwalkers, so no priests nor paladins.)
Assuming I got the counts right, this means that the Alliance has 81 total race/class combinations (or 88 if you count the Pandaren) and the Horde has 81 as well (again, 88 if you count Pandaren.)
Well, that looks pretty balanced, and probably intentional. I suspect that the rearrangements of classes might have been meant to balance these numbers (again, assuming I counted correctly.) I think that flavor should be the first consideration, but I also understand Blizzard's desire to appear evenhanded between the factions on such fundamental gameplay matters (can the Alliance get some inner conflict that the Horde has to worry about for a change?)
Even though we're twelve years past Paladins and Shamans being exclusive to one or the other faction (at least until Classic goes live,) I still do feel that the Alliance ought to have greater access to Paladins and the Horde should have more Shamans, and that holds true. Druids used to be the class that was very carefully balanced between the factions, but this is an area where they really have gone more with flavor than balance, and that's fine. Those dinosaur forms are very cool and all, but I am so excited about the terrifying wicker beasts the Kul Tirans get that it makes up for having one fewer Druid race.
Azorius Senate Story Hooks
In a city of presumably billions if not trillions of people (if Ravnica's as large as Earth and the city is truly at urban density levels, it'd be the latter at least,) maintaining order is a high priority. Laws and the enforcement thereof are necessary for the city to function, and it's the Azorius Senate that writes and enforces those laws.
I think a lot of players automatically assume that chaotic characters are going to be more fun to play, but there is something to be said for playing someone who absolutely plays by the book, crosses all their "t's" and dots all their "i's." Indeed, much as I mentioned that humor was a good play when it came to the Rakdos, you can get a lot of comedy out of the rules-sticklers of the Azorius Senate (examples of good and hilarious Azorius-type characters in D&D would be Omin Dran and Walnut Dankgrass from the Acquisitions Incorporated streams.)
That being said, you don't necessarily have to heighten everything to such an extreme level. Fundamentally, the Azorius are the bureaucracy and one of the two law enforcement guilds. The guild is divided into three branches that mirror the American three branches of government, with separate legislative, judicial, and executive branches.
The Azorius are not exactly the government of the city - really all ten guilds play a part in governing the city through the Guildpact - but the Azorius more than any other guild look and feel like a government.
This of course comes in both good and bad aspects, but let's start with the good.
The Azorius are still around because their efforts to maintain order have, indeed, allowed the city of Ravnica to survive for the last ten thousand years. Azorius investigators look into crimes and bring criminals to justice, keeping the citizenry safe and allowing for the business of the city to continue to function.
As such, they are natural quest givers - while they might prefer to use their own members, the Azorius might offer contracts (likely very complex and indecipherable contracts) to parties in order to capture particularly dangerous criminals or those that are in territory hostile to the Azorius. Uncovering some grand criminal plan or threat to the order of the city would be a way for a party to get into the Azorius' good graces. Likewise, if you want some element of a legal drama in your story, it would most likely take place within an Azorius court.
Really any threat to Ravnica's status quo would be something the Azorius would try to hinder, and such problems often kick off grand fantasy epics. Anything from corruption on the streets to some extraplanar threat are things that the Azroius would consider under their jurisdiction.
But while the Azorius are lawful, they are emphatically neutral when it comes to morality. In a sense, compliance with the rules is the way that the Azorius understand morality to be judged. What this means is that people who break the laws for justifiable reasons will often find themselves punished just as strongly as if they had done some real public harm.
The Azorius as villains can work as an overbearing bureaucracy - not malevolent, but so devoted to following the letter of the law that they might do some great harm to the people. A good low level hook with Azorius villains might see Arresters showing up to the house of some guy who merely made an error in his paperwork or perhaps stole bread to feed his family.
On a higher level, though, I think that the Azorius' desire to keep everything under control could lead to an attempt to take over the city. Perhaps they'd find some loophole in the laws that gave them authority to change the laws of the city. Alternatively, you could have some truly selfish and malevolent villain who manages to climb the ranks of the Senate and the party is in a desperate rush to incriminate him, because until they do, most of the Senate follows his orders.
An unflinching devotion to the law is the sort of thing that can spiral into chaos, and if anyone on Ravnica is going to lead to that, it's the Azorius.
Environments:
As a White and Blue guild, the Azorius have Plains and Islands. I think these can combine together quite well as broad public squares that might be connected by bridge over large canals and public pools. Buildings with fountains built into them, probably made of white marble in classical geometries would probably be very pleasing for the Azorius. Their courts are likely grand halls with marble floors, but their offices are probably labyrinthine in design - if you're Azorius, you know the logic behind it all, but anyone else is going to be confounded.
I think a lot of players automatically assume that chaotic characters are going to be more fun to play, but there is something to be said for playing someone who absolutely plays by the book, crosses all their "t's" and dots all their "i's." Indeed, much as I mentioned that humor was a good play when it came to the Rakdos, you can get a lot of comedy out of the rules-sticklers of the Azorius Senate (examples of good and hilarious Azorius-type characters in D&D would be Omin Dran and Walnut Dankgrass from the Acquisitions Incorporated streams.)
That being said, you don't necessarily have to heighten everything to such an extreme level. Fundamentally, the Azorius are the bureaucracy and one of the two law enforcement guilds. The guild is divided into three branches that mirror the American three branches of government, with separate legislative, judicial, and executive branches.
The Azorius are not exactly the government of the city - really all ten guilds play a part in governing the city through the Guildpact - but the Azorius more than any other guild look and feel like a government.
This of course comes in both good and bad aspects, but let's start with the good.
The Azorius are still around because their efforts to maintain order have, indeed, allowed the city of Ravnica to survive for the last ten thousand years. Azorius investigators look into crimes and bring criminals to justice, keeping the citizenry safe and allowing for the business of the city to continue to function.
As such, they are natural quest givers - while they might prefer to use their own members, the Azorius might offer contracts (likely very complex and indecipherable contracts) to parties in order to capture particularly dangerous criminals or those that are in territory hostile to the Azorius. Uncovering some grand criminal plan or threat to the order of the city would be a way for a party to get into the Azorius' good graces. Likewise, if you want some element of a legal drama in your story, it would most likely take place within an Azorius court.
Really any threat to Ravnica's status quo would be something the Azorius would try to hinder, and such problems often kick off grand fantasy epics. Anything from corruption on the streets to some extraplanar threat are things that the Azroius would consider under their jurisdiction.
But while the Azorius are lawful, they are emphatically neutral when it comes to morality. In a sense, compliance with the rules is the way that the Azorius understand morality to be judged. What this means is that people who break the laws for justifiable reasons will often find themselves punished just as strongly as if they had done some real public harm.
The Azorius as villains can work as an overbearing bureaucracy - not malevolent, but so devoted to following the letter of the law that they might do some great harm to the people. A good low level hook with Azorius villains might see Arresters showing up to the house of some guy who merely made an error in his paperwork or perhaps stole bread to feed his family.
On a higher level, though, I think that the Azorius' desire to keep everything under control could lead to an attempt to take over the city. Perhaps they'd find some loophole in the laws that gave them authority to change the laws of the city. Alternatively, you could have some truly selfish and malevolent villain who manages to climb the ranks of the Senate and the party is in a desperate rush to incriminate him, because until they do, most of the Senate follows his orders.
An unflinching devotion to the law is the sort of thing that can spiral into chaos, and if anyone on Ravnica is going to lead to that, it's the Azorius.
Environments:
As a White and Blue guild, the Azorius have Plains and Islands. I think these can combine together quite well as broad public squares that might be connected by bridge over large canals and public pools. Buildings with fountains built into them, probably made of white marble in classical geometries would probably be very pleasing for the Azorius. Their courts are likely grand halls with marble floors, but their offices are probably labyrinthine in design - if you're Azorius, you know the logic behind it all, but anyone else is going to be confounded.
Selesnya Conclave Story Hooks
The Selesnya compete with the Boros Legion to be the most traditionally "good guy" guild. In a Tolkien-friendly mixture of love of nature and moral fortitude, the Selesnya seem to be the most ideal guild in the city. On the other hand, your fear of collectivist groupthink or a buzzkilling hatred for hippies might put you in opposition to the Selesnya.
As a guild of humans, elves, and friendly elephant people known as Loxodons, with its emphasis on beautiful green spaces in the city, the Selesnya are likely to come off looking trustworthy and probably serve as a good starting place for most traditionally heroic characters. The beauty of Selesnya territories and the peace and serenity in which their people live is something a party could be convinced to fight for without too much convincing.
The Selesnya are not defenseless - they have their own soldiers and protectors - but given their "everyone is welcome" philosophy, it stands to reason that they could benefit from outsiders helping to defend them in addition to their own warriors. Whether you're just trying to keep the occasional Rakdos arsonist away from their trees or preventing some Izzet experiment from destroying Selesnya groves, there are plenty of reasons that the Conclave might ask adventurers to assist them.
To get up to the campaign level plots around the Selesnya, I think it's important to talk about the weirder aspects of the guild. While to a large extent it's a group of hippies who maintain the city's parks and orchards, the emphasis on selflessness and collectivism extends to a sort of groupthink and, let's call it a mental harmony. The unity of the Selesnya means that if someone were able to influence its leadership, you might have the entire guild operating in a way that serves the villain's purposes.
The Selesnya might be viewed as a kind of "soft target" by those who would wish to upset the balance of the city, and while a frontal assault is unlikely to succeed (they have soldiers and powerful beasts all working together) they are probably not well-equipped to deal with infiltrators and intrigue.
If you want Selesnya villains, I think you're better suited to holding them back until later in a campaign. The Selesnya are outwardly quite benevolent, and frankly, they see themselves as benevolent. But their admirable belief in cooperation goes to an extreme where individual freedom and even thought might not be tolerate by the most zealous among the Selesnya.
An ally who turns out to be the villain would work very well in the Selesnya, and you could easily have a lot of mind-controlled or maybe just well-intentioned but misled zealots who turn on the party when the party tries to prevent whatever grand plot is in the works.
Environment:
The Selesnya Conclave is the White and Green guild, which makes its lands Plains and Forests. As I've said about these lands, they translate quite well to large public squares and city parks. The Selesnya in particular find a nice balance between these, as lush but carefully manicured parks and green spaces might house holy temples that are overrun with beautiful vines. The Selesnya have a number of massive trees that they live in, some of the trees supporting temples and similar structures within their branches. This is some seriously pretty elf stuff, and while it's got an urban feel to it, you'll probably get a bit of a Lothlorien vibe to it.
As a guild of humans, elves, and friendly elephant people known as Loxodons, with its emphasis on beautiful green spaces in the city, the Selesnya are likely to come off looking trustworthy and probably serve as a good starting place for most traditionally heroic characters. The beauty of Selesnya territories and the peace and serenity in which their people live is something a party could be convinced to fight for without too much convincing.
The Selesnya are not defenseless - they have their own soldiers and protectors - but given their "everyone is welcome" philosophy, it stands to reason that they could benefit from outsiders helping to defend them in addition to their own warriors. Whether you're just trying to keep the occasional Rakdos arsonist away from their trees or preventing some Izzet experiment from destroying Selesnya groves, there are plenty of reasons that the Conclave might ask adventurers to assist them.
To get up to the campaign level plots around the Selesnya, I think it's important to talk about the weirder aspects of the guild. While to a large extent it's a group of hippies who maintain the city's parks and orchards, the emphasis on selflessness and collectivism extends to a sort of groupthink and, let's call it a mental harmony. The unity of the Selesnya means that if someone were able to influence its leadership, you might have the entire guild operating in a way that serves the villain's purposes.
The Selesnya might be viewed as a kind of "soft target" by those who would wish to upset the balance of the city, and while a frontal assault is unlikely to succeed (they have soldiers and powerful beasts all working together) they are probably not well-equipped to deal with infiltrators and intrigue.
If you want Selesnya villains, I think you're better suited to holding them back until later in a campaign. The Selesnya are outwardly quite benevolent, and frankly, they see themselves as benevolent. But their admirable belief in cooperation goes to an extreme where individual freedom and even thought might not be tolerate by the most zealous among the Selesnya.
An ally who turns out to be the villain would work very well in the Selesnya, and you could easily have a lot of mind-controlled or maybe just well-intentioned but misled zealots who turn on the party when the party tries to prevent whatever grand plot is in the works.
Environment:
The Selesnya Conclave is the White and Green guild, which makes its lands Plains and Forests. As I've said about these lands, they translate quite well to large public squares and city parks. The Selesnya in particular find a nice balance between these, as lush but carefully manicured parks and green spaces might house holy temples that are overrun with beautiful vines. The Selesnya have a number of massive trees that they live in, some of the trees supporting temples and similar structures within their branches. This is some seriously pretty elf stuff, and while it's got an urban feel to it, you'll probably get a bit of a Lothlorien vibe to it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)