Is there a MtG RPG? If not, what system would you run it with?
I've played the card game, and it's fun, but my favorite part of it is easily the flavor. I don't just want to play some cards, I'd love to be a wizard, hoping from plane to plane, learning powerful spells and drawing energy from the places I visit.
The idea of a plane walking exploration game is just so appealing, surely someone's made a system for it by now?
I was working on a sort of kingdom-building+hex crawler, but gave up years ago.
Every set since BfZ they released a mini-expansion telling you how to play d&d on that plane.
magic.wizards.com
Here's the one from amonkhet, you can find the rest in the archive
By extension there's not an official rpg as they'll just refer to d&d
Literally any fantasy system, just replace battles with games of MtG?
As for deck building I guess they go around and discover/befriend the creatures to get new cards?
Wizards are coming out with setting books for multiple planes.
Isn't MTG lore a retarded and disjointed mismash of mary sues?
Why in the world would you want to play in that setting? It's barely a setting it's more like "lol heres a tree place, all the tree cards live there"
Mutants and Masterminds. A game I was briefly in was using it as a base. The Gm didn't really mod it very well imo and that was probably the reason I was removed from the room shortly after but my idea was to set the game at a low basic PL of maybe 4-8 but with a seperate 'deck'
Your deck (can use real cards if you're playing irl) is like a wizard's spellbook in DnD. Vancian casting if you will. When the player receives a card, they are allowed to make their own interpretation of it using the M&M rules worth up to CMCx10 PP on it (so one player's Lightning Bolt might be pure damage, another's might bounce, or afflict etc etc, although heavy emphasis on working with the GM so it's thematically appropriate), these spells can break the PL limits of the game.
Crucially, these abilities ignore action economy and may be used at any point. Basically everything's an instant. Anyone who's familiar with the stack will know roughly how that works out.
To balance this there's also a mana system. Nothing as tortuous and random as drawing land cards though. Simply gain one mana of your choice at the beginning of each turn. It refills at the start of your turn, similar to Hearthstone.
The reason for this thematic split is to represent the difference between a planeswalker's intrinsic abilities (Gideon's invulnerability, Jace's telepathy etc) that are always working, and their more powerful one-off effects like counterspells, any sorcery with the word 'chandra' in it, etc etc.
Like I said, it's never been playtested since the game never happened, but I am fairly confident it would feel like a proper magicians duel since people would be throwing spells, reacting to them in order, summoning creatures in the way of lightning bolts, throwing up walls to block off escape. I just wish it had actually happened...
Yes there is
DnD5e, using the Planeshift PDFs
Placeshift PDFs kinda suck though. They're basically made during the 5e staff lunch break.
Dungeon Master's Block does a better job of converting MTG lore to 5e, they have dedicated episodes, and their Forum is... honestly pretty top knotch for homebrew like that. Although 5e isn't really the correct tool for the job.
Son, what you really want is Mythras, using the Classic Fantasy Supplement for some spells and abilities, and Core for everything else.
You see, 5e, fine enough as it is, lacks the one thing that you need in a good MTG system: Dynamic Magic.
The class system really limits how Planeswalkers can be statted. It assumes a specific scope of abilities at every level and thus spells are kind of a poor way to represent the way Magic works in MTG, and Class/Magic limitations only hinder that even more.
Mythras, on the other hand, has six unique casting systems, including that in the Classic Fantasy Supplement, which you can tailor entirely to fit a specific character. Additionally, with the way the system works, character advancement feels more natural with characters developing their magic organically, more in line with what's depicted in the lore, rather than simply picking up abilities they should have at the start when 5e allows you to have them.
DnD 5e remains the official system for MtG roleplaying though, regardless of what twee microbrewed systems people might recommend.
I think you're on to something. I'm just thinking of creatures for the moment here but Power could translate to Attack + Damage, Toughness could translate to all Saves (Dodge, Fortitude, Parry, Toughness, Will). So if I have a 1/1 creature I could start by assuming it has a Damage 1 Effect with +1 to Attack (Close or Ranged - varies on the creature) as well as a +1 to Dodge, Fortitude, Parry, Toughness, and Will. From these I could extrapolate a 1 in all eight Abilities except for Intellect and Presence. From there I can use the art and flavor text for further reference.
Ooh I am going to explore this further.
Fate Accelerated, replace the approaches with colors.
Could also pull it off with a PbtA hack, using similar modifications.
Doesn't make it good or appropriate to the setting.
OP asked if a MTG RPG exists and I answered that
Its quality doesn't matter
It's a decent solution for "creature"-scale stories confined to a single plane but I agree that it completely fails at doing anything planeswalker-styled.
Was gonna post this. Kind of planning a game in it now. No walkers, just a problem on a plane.
The system seems to have some issues though. Any "roll playing" is very loose, as is rules for... anything out of combat. Before you start a game settle on a tone and tell your party what you expect from them since the sty stem doesn't have rules for traditional things.
Also you'll have to houserule how certain types of spells work.
Yes and no. Recently the lore has been a little lacking, but for instance Mirroden as a plane has a huge backstory, mystery, originality, ties to precious stories, and unique creatures. Dominaria has 8-9000 years of history, different cultures that rose and fell, different types of human and elf factions, several major and minor story lines detailing dozens of characters (with varied writing quality).
Even recent characters do have some interesting aspects and story lines, even if marred by a shift in storytelling philosophy that kind of killed any new developments, and two retcons in a matter of two major releases.
Every main protagonist is too stupid to be a Mary Sue.
Jace
>gives up a life as a rich extortionist to be physically abused by a metal man and emotionally abused by a cunt
Nissa
>thinks releasing !notCthulu will SAVE her mana rich world rather than destroy it
Sarkhan
>dragons are cool!
>no, dragons are not cool
Checks out.
Also getting BTFO'd by Bolas helped. I'm hoping that they're going to use this defeat to do a soft-reboot on the Gatewatch personalities, giving them some character elements to help round them out.
Actually, these recent sets all feel like Wizard's getting ready for a complete tonal shift in the way Magic as a whole is done, this time for the better.
I dont know where that Nissa meme comes from, but thats not what happened. A zendikari vampire says 'release the eldrazi, nothing bad will happen', Nissa tells him thats bullshit, Sorin chokeslams her into a wall anyway because he thinks she might actually do it, and Nissa blows up the Eye of Ugin because Sorin is a cryptic untrustworthy shit and if the Eye can control the Eldrazi she doesnt want him to have it.
Nissa fucked up, but that fuckup happened because Sorin never actually told her what the Eye was for, and was generally being his usual edgy self and triggering Nissa's 'this motherfucker is evil' flags. And then he attacked her without provocation, so fuck him.
>this time for the better
I'm curious what you see that makes you believe this? Not being a dick; actually want to see what you see, because all the sets since... Origins seems intent on making every character as static and generic as possible to me.
That and plot holes. Of Sarkhan doesn't exist anymore, who helped Ajani? Or provoked Chandra and Jace at the Eye?
That meme comes from the story itself. Nissa broke the Eye to release the Eldrazi. She was told by Sorin that he was going to sure up their locks, and she thought that releasing them would result in them fucking off (if I remember correctly Anowan encouraged this choice as well).
Of course I'm referencing the novel that has since been retconned, and I haven't read into the revised version where Nissa is a cute shy waifu who befriends the flowers and no guys really Sorin is a dick.
Though he was a dick in the original timeline too. He mind controls Anowan and starves him. Eats people and gets caught and is like, "Oh yeah I'm a vampire by the way." Nissa breaks the Eldrazi out and he just says, "You're an idiot," and leaves. The Teeth of Akoum was kind of amusing at times because of how much of a dick Sorin was every page he was on.
The trick is that each player gets to create their own interpretation, making them slavishly fit the numbers to the cards leads to cards becoming more powerful than each other and tournament staples being the only cards worth having. Think of all the shitty cards with fun effects that could be great.
For thatreason I'm loath to put too much of a system on it. Someone's interpretation of Siege Rhino could simply be the rampaging, anti-wall battering ram the lore paints it as, while another could carry medical supplies to represent the life drain effect it has. The mana cost gives it a rough ballpark to give a rough idea of what you should be spending
I was working on a homebrew conversion of Legend of the Five Rnga, with colors standing in for rings, but I got distracted and moved on to other stuff. I still think it's a good idea, but I've just been too focused on other stuff to hash out a lot of the important stuff. Quick summary in case anyone wants to run with it:
L5R has 5 rings which represents how attuned an individual is to that element. For the most part these rings are not increased directly - they're linked to a pair of ability scores, one mental and one physical. Increasing those stats increases your ring. You use the ring directly when casting spells, but otherwise use your ability scores for skill checks. The exception is the fifth ring, void. Void has no associated abilities but instead provides a supply of points which are very flexible temporary boosts (think fate points or hero points). You boost void ring directly (this costs more to upgrade).
So I did something similar with the colors. Black ring works like the void ring, being linked to a single ability named Ambition. You don't use
Ambition directly but instead spend it like Void points. The other four colors use the paired abilities:
Green - Strength / Instinct
White - Stamina / Integrity
Red - Agility / Passion
Blue - Finesse / Guile
Some of the stats are pretty self explanatory. For the ones that aren't:
>Finesse: Stealth, lock picking, pick pocketing, any other physical activity that requires a gentle touch.
>Instinct: Perception, insight. Contributes to initiative.
>Integrity: Leadership, honesty, resisting temptation and fear.
>Passion: Art, emotional appeal, berserking, crafting.
>Guile: Underhanded or tricky mental/social stuff
As your color score gets higher, you get access to better and better abilities to purchase associated with that color.
People I Have Trolled, by Sorin Markov.png
Goddmanit Sorin you asshat! How you you have internet access while in rock!?
Too bad my favorite walker will probably never show up again. That is the fate of a lot of walkers introduced however.
Elspeth will remain effectively dead sadly. Why is it the white walkers who die a lot?
I like that idea conceptually. It's a good way of adapting a system to be Magic. What would you do if someone wanted to be green but not focus on stealth or instinct?
>strength
>but my favorite part of it is easily the flavor
>posts the Gatewatch
I didn't know I could cringe this hard.
That's not a very green character, then, is it? Unless you're thinking of a particular character who doesn't fall into that category. I can't off the top of my head think of any green character who's not invested into one of those.
Note that the idea of the system was geared more towards playing the equivalent of legendary creatures than walkers, like Odyssey through Ravnica were focused on. Though there's no reason you couldn't add walking in, I suppose.
>Wizards are coming out with setting books for multiple planes.
Hey, I know you're a time-traveler from 1998, but I have some bad news about WotC buying TSR.
It's been almost 20 years and they still haven't put out a M:tG RPG.
Eh, mostly tone of game design and sets release. Each set seemed to do something good for us.
Khaladesh gave us the Artifact support and Techno-plane we've been wanting.
Amonkhet gave us !Egypt, though it sorta failed, but more importantly it BTFO'd the Jacestice League, which I'm hoping will give MTG designers the chance to step away from the Planeswalker story focus and put more focus on the Planes' story. Planeswalkers should be more observers of lore than arbitrators of it.
Pirates-and-Dinos.set
And Unstable, which I'm hoping will go nuts on crazy mechanics, receive great feedback, and result in Wizard's deciding that Set releases need not be utter bland and balanced.
So more of a design thing than a story thing.
They're already actively doing it, it's just half assed 5e rules in 5 page PDFs.
>Khaladesh gave us the Artifact support and Techno-plane we've been wanting.
Yeah, no, Kaladesh was a disaster from a flavor standpoint.
really? I'm not that guy and I only pay a bit of attention to modern plot, but isn't the world design for it okay if you ignore the neo walkers which are always a disaster?
Jace has been an asshole ever since he became the leader of the Gatewatch.
>These chicks don't even know about the Gatewatch
>But they're wanting to suck on my crotch
>And so my bedpost gets a new notch
>All because I'm the best wizard in the watch
>So I walk to the plane, and scope the sitch
>Walk up to the hot chicks to scratch my itch
>"Nice place, you can call me Jace.
>Who wants to come with me and get shitfaced?"
>They're all like, "Oh my god, it's Jace!"
>"Let me get down, so that we can embrace"
>"I swear to the Pharaoh, you're the best"
>"Please Beleren, help me get undressed."
>And by now, the other walkers have gone bonkers,
>They all wish that they had the gift that gets me all the stalkers
>All the chicks are prayin', down on their knees
>Getting down to worship and they're ready to please
>So the gatewatch wanna leave and wanna blow this scene
>But I'm not gonna leave 'til things are fuckin' obscene
>So the gatewatch babes get treated like queens
>While Gid's gettin' wasted, and 'Jani's gettin' preened
>But both those planewalkers are shiftin' from white to green
>'Cause they're both jealous of my fuckin' rockstar routine
>And muttering about threats unseen
>All the gatewatch crew are mean because
>These chicks don't even know about the Gatewatch
>But they're wanting to suck on my crotch
>And so my bedpost gets a new notch
>All because I'm the best wizard in the watch
Stop, you're giving flashbacks to Chapin's abortion
My argument is mostly semantic really. Instinct is definitely he most green of those, and can be extrapolated or interpreted as required for whatever archetype you'd try to fit it in.
I don't 100% agree with , but I also liked the visuals of Kaladesh . Superfluous and extravagant decor, tiger dragons, Aetherborn, sky ships and silly cars for swords and swashbuckling.
Ah. Yeah, I had some difficulty deciding on a mental stat for green since green is pretty anti-thinking, instinct seemed to be the best since it's not so much a conscious thing.
The other hard decision was giving Blue Guile instead of Knowledge, but I think that was the correct decision. Characters of any color might know things depending on domain, and I wanted a stat well suited for deception. Blue characters can still get a leg up knowledge wise by casting spells which grant them knowledge.
Because of how the colors sometimes bleed it's hard to clearly define themselves. Is learning about nature from your class blue because learning, green because nature, or white because communal wellbeing? (as an example)
I also like the mechanical flavor you gave black, warping other personality types through ambition. Ambition+instinct=survival. Ambition+guile=deception and scheming. Ambition+passion=obsession or avarice. Stuff like that.
Yeah I think Black works extraordinarily well as a Void points substitute. The flavor I was thinking of was "Black doesn't give a shit how you get it done, only that it is done." Allowing Black to use any means necessary, so long as you want it bad enough, feels perfect.
It's also worth noting that this is meant to be a point-buy system, not a class system (a la L5R). So if you want to take some Integrity as a green-focused character, or some Finesse for a sneaky goblin, you can. This'll increase your rank in the other color, but if you don't want to use that color you can just not take spells/abilities from it and spend it like colorless mana. And if your white character gathers enough Ambition, maybe it's time he started looking at some more flexible means of achieving his goals...
Not that guy, but my problem with Kaladesh is that it's all very surface deep. There are a lot of names dropped and details mentioned, but they're not very meaningful. For instance, I can tell you that the Glint-Sleeves, the League of Aeronauts, the Countless Gears, and numerous other organizations exist, but I could only give you a sentence or two about each one before I start trailing off into headcanon because the lore just isn't there. The fact that the lore is hyperfocused on Ghirapur makes it so that the rest of the plane is similarly sparse, and admittedly I don't really appreciate how quick and easy the revolution was, though that might be a personal preference. Kaladesh feels a lot like Ravnica to me, but without nearly as much meat to it. I like Kaladesh in theory, but the execution was sloppy, especially where the presentation of the lore on the cards was concerned.
Ah. Yes, I agree that's a big problem with modern mtg world design. They generate an outline and run with it instead of ever fleshing anything out. It's been that way since Zendikar.
>Of Sarkhan doesn't exist anymore, who helped Ajani? Or provoked Chandra and Jace at the Eye?
Where are you getting that Sarkhan doesn't exist anymore? He does. His own personal timeline hasn't changed, and nothing he did on Tarkir affected timelines any plane other than Tarkir.
Don't worry, Elspeth will absolutely be back. They've been dropping hints that Gideon needs to go back to Theros and have a reckoning with Erebos left right and centre recently, and visiting Erebos means Elspeth.
Plus, they need to address Phyrexia sooner or later and they can't do that without putting Elspeth and Karn back on the board
>Is there a MtG RPG?
myabandonware.com
There's a mode for "Shandalar" which is the RPG. You essentially run around the map, trying to stop an evil Planeswalker named Azarkon from fucking up your home plane of Shandalar through some of his puppets. You have to eventually defeat 5 masters of different colors before running off to fight Azarkon himself. (who is pitifully weak, but oh well). Duels are actually done by playing a game of magic, and the game has a forced ante system to represent gaining and losing power; more cards, after all, equals more strength. Really rare and high powered cards can only be found in dungeons whose locations you need to learn and often have to face monsters under special rules that work against you.
It's not amazing, but it's pretty neat.
I'd argue Innistrad and Theros largely avoided that problem.
Amonkhet did better than Kaladesh too but probably doesn't count cause there really only is one city on the whole plane.
Really? I don't think the world building in either was very detailed. It just paints with very wide strokes and your brain fills in the rest because things like "big church fighting zombies" are, depending on how generous you're being, either resonant or generic.
I'll definitely agree with you that Theros is pretty sparse and generic. It's got some bits of greatness, but tell me anything about how the Polis' actually work or how any day-to-day life things occur in Theros, and I'll be surprised.
With the advent of the Art of Innistrad book though, they did give a lot of actual worldbuilding and depth to it, as much as it is filled with eldrazi bullshit. For example, did you know that in Kessig, before traveling a traveler is supposed to eat sour root-soup, as it is claimed to make one less appetizing to the myriad predators of the road. They also hang live wooden wreaths upon the door after births, to ward against vampires, despite the wood losing its effectiveness in a day or so.
Oh, okay. Just looked it up. I misinterpreted not being born and the time shenanigans. So he "wasn't born" in the least impactful and most convenient way possible. Got it.
When I said he didn't exist I was exaggerating because I thought he didn't exist in that timeline at all until we warped in.
What I would give for a set that included Phyrexia but not walkers winning because they're destined to. Maybe with the new block structure we'll get some one-set planes that fit into a block theme, like going to Phyrexia, Kaladesh, and some other plane and checking in on rebel progress.
There was also that big guide to Innistrad on the website that heralded the original block that's full of shit down to details like the five walls of Thraben and what purpose they serve culturally.
Oh man the Five Walls are some crazy shit. The one where they impale vampires on it and wait for them to die in the sun was brutal as fuck.
I was also fond of the one parents save money to travel to so they can write their kids' names on it in hopes that they'll have divine favor and won't get murdered. Innistrad's honestly pretty metal.
I wish we'd seen more about Nephalia beyond "lol mad scientists guys" because the stuff about the corrupt merchant-mayors all seemed cool.
Yeah, Nephalia definitely needs more fleshing out, because it seems like the most interesting parts of it have nothing to do with the regular people. It's basically just a triumvirate of "lol, mad scientists" "lol, geists" and "lol, vampires", though I do appreciate the in-depth explanation of the Skaabstitching process. Also Runo Stromkirk's cult tourism stuff was pretty cool.
>They're basically made during the 5e staff lunch break.
I'm relatively certain they're made by the MtG department, not D&D.
The details on skaberen were really nice, yeah. I always appreciate when settings include details like that, rather than just relying on everyone already knowing how something like flesh golems generally work in fantasy fiction.
Well, now I'm just disturbed. Fitting the color alignment into the 9-point alignment seems like a D&D mistake, not an MTG one.
Seriously, just use the Color Alignment as-is
I'm actually working on a Mythras conversion for Ravnica at the moment. Assigning all the guilds a magic system has been pretty interesting; here's what I've got so far:
Azorius: Sorcery
Dimir: Mysticism
Rakdos: Theism
Gruul: Animism
Selesnya: Theism
Orzhov: Animism
Izzet: Sorcery
Golgari: Not sure on this one.
Boros: Theism
Simic: Sorcery, maybe with a dash of Mysticism (adapt some of the "give myself an ability" powers into spells).
As for planeswalkers, I think Nobilis would be a great system for an oldwalker game. The idea I had was to replace the Domain and Persona stats with one stat for each colour. Each colour functions as both Domain for things relating to that colour, and Persona for its properties. Players still get to define propertues for each colour separately, so two Red-focused planeswalkers can still have very different styles of magic if they have different properties listed for Red.