The official D&D Youtube channel put out a video about the new MtG crossover book Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos:



So, between the new pieces of artwork here and the ones we've already seen, there are tieflings(!) in this supposed Magic setting, not to mention weird purple-/pink-/blue-skinned elves that look nothing like the elves in the Strixhaven set. What's more, the video also mentions "classic D&D monsters" like slaadi being put "together side by side" with Magic's worldbuilding. When you also consider the free adventures they put up for download when AFR came out - you know, the ones that mentioned a planeswalker from Ravnica visiting the Sword Coast - it looks like at least the D&D side of WotC is now pretending that both IPs are either set in the same multiverse or that their multiverses are somehow connected.

So, what do you make of this? Do you think we'll see Magic do the same?

Personally, if this stuff is really in the book, I'm never buying another D&D product ever again, and I will do the same with Magic if it ever goes the same route and acknowledges D&D as part of its universe. I'm not even kidding. The IP crossovers they keep shoving into Magic constantly make me question my willingness to keep supporting Hasbro/Wizards as it is, I certainly won't accept them going even further than that.

It would be genuinely tasteless if this was canon, though granted D&D has been integrating Magic canon for a while. Hopefully the extreme backlash against the Stranger Things thing will give WOTC the wake up call.

Was there backlash?
I recall the Walking Dead catching flak, but not so much stranger things

As a fan of Planescape and Spelljammer, I'm vehemently against a sloppy union of D&D and MtG core cosmologies. That said D&D is kind of a lawless wild west of canon because each and every group is expected to make up at least some of their own stuff, so it seems pointless to get too frustrated on the behalf of D&D. At that point the worry is more about what it does or doesn't do to Magic.

Though if the new Weatherlight got outfitted with a spelljamming helm to make it work kind of like the old one (albeit with some quirks) that would be hilarious.

Got so bad that there are videos explaining why Stranger Things should not be associated with Magic's IP. Generally the only people interested in it are simply in to see the characters' alignments, with even the cards apparently not being well liked mechanically.

The big things is we don't know is or is not on Arcavios, they justified in the world building that the planes has huge range of fantasy races so tieflings (or Azra or w/e) or different groups of elves, ect could be on the plane and just never made it on a card.

Sure, I agree, I'm definitely more up in arms about what D&D is doing to Magic's integrity here than to its own. Then again, as you suggested, the two cosmologies and wider multiverses are fundamentally incompatible, so they'd both cease to make any sense as soon as you brought them together. And I still expect D&D to properly maintain its own canon as a baseline or reference point, even though every game of D&D ultimately creates its own version of it. I really thought about buying Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft for example because horror is right up my alley, but the bazillion retcons and the blatant disrespect the book shows towards its own lore made me decide against it. I haven't even been playing D&D for that long, mind you, but I don't want to get too attached to IPs with red flags like this in the first place. Magic has taught me some valuable lessons in that regard...

But yeah, D&D and other tabletop RPGs are a lot more resilient to retcons and greedy corporate moves than, say, Magic. "If you don't like it, don't buy it" largely holds true in D&D where every table agrees on its own version of the game and is free to just ignore a new book. Magic, on the other hand, is largely one shared game with physical game pieces, and once a game piece exists, it's forever part of the whole. I can refuse to own cards from IP crossovers, but I'm going to have a hard time avoiding them if the people I play with want to use them, which, after twenty years, ultimately forces me to play Magic under a completely new premise I never agreed to (or stop playing, or at least stop supporting the company that decided to print them). Likewise, if WotC chooses to retcon the backstories of their entire main cast and replace them with dumb and inferior versions, there is basically nothing I can do to change that. Heck, I guess running a D&D campaign on Dominaria is my ironic compensation mechanism for my frustration with the state of Magic's IP or something... At least you aren't going to find any slaadi or tieflings there, and no Gatewatch either, and I don't have to wait a couple of years between adventures. Also, I totally have a back-up plan for Teferi's returning Zhalfir, just in case the official version of the story is going to suck

"Hilarious" isn't exactly the word that I would use, but okay...


Sure, if Wizards is trying to win the Backpedal Olympics or something...

How is it a backpedal?

It's not yet, mind you, but what I'm trying to say is: If they used a flimsy and unlikely excuse like that to justify what was obviously intended as D&D races on a Magic plane, that kind of backpedalling would be Olympic.

On a semi-related note, I despise azra. They are nothing more than an early attempt to bring an iconic D&D race to Magic. They aren't even something as generic as anthropomorphic animal race No. 435363, no, they basically are tieflings. That said, the one or two clear images of the horned people we've seen from the Strixhaven book clearly have horns that join at the forehead, like most tieflings but none of the azra we've seen in Magic so far.

I feel like if you play D&D adhering to the official storyline, then you're missing the whole point of RPGs. I'm a little surprised that WOTC hasn't gone out of their way to plant the idea in people's heads that everybody's game of D&D is its own universe/ timeline. OK, I'm not actually surprised, but it's a would've been a neat idea. You can even planehop your PCs into the "official" timeline or another DM's.
It doesn't help that core D&D is banal as all heck. I maintain that was a big reason the Forgotten Realms fell flat with so many people.

The Walking Dead backlash didn't stop the Stranger Things crossover. I don't know how far ahead of time these things are negotiated, but I suspect this trend isn't stopping any time soon


"Tiefling" would have worked. Tiefling was a weird word to begin with, but at least it has some currency today. I also could have gone for "demon" or "demon human". Heck, call them "demonoid" and at least that gets an idea across.
Unrelatedly, "kithkin" and "moonfolk" were huge misteps.

Oh they have, multiple times they noted that the DnD canon is only the base setting for Dm to use, abounded or adapt as they see fit.

Strixhaven book is similar, its being set up more of an adventure path than a setting book and in multiple source they noted that you can easy adapt it so Strixhaven can be a magic college on any setting you want/need it to be on.

Strixhaven book is out and pic of it are going around and turns out Pavor Nocturnes paranoia was proven incorrect. The books notes the most common races and other possible races on Arcavios but notes as Strixhaven is very cosmopolitan as beings from across the plane and multiverse come to learn so any DnD race from other books works if the players and DM wants to have them.

So no lore cross overs just encouraging Dms and players to not be bound by the canon races on the plane if they don't want too.

Pity he's no longer here, he'd love that there's some vestigial integrity left.

That's all nice and well, but I don't think some pics on the internet are conclusive evidence of everything that it says in the book. And I mean, is all the artwork of tieflings, moonelves (and I think even dragonborn?) and what have you actually in the book or not? Because then the book would still be a depiction of a Magic setting with D&D races in it, effectively making it a crossover (unless the illustrations in questions are somehow contextualised as "This is what life at a magic academy in the D&D multiverse could look like"). There just seems to be a distinct lack of separation between the two IPs, a separation that was for the most part still intact with the Theros and Ravnica books.


*shambles out of crypt*

Who dareth speak my name? Nah, I'm still here, I've just been busy and there wasn't really all that much I was interested in talking about. The day might come when I turn my back on Magic fandom for good (and it's probably closer than ever), but I'll let you guys know when that happens. Looks to me like nothing I want anything to do with is going to come out before Dominaria United and The Brothers' War, though, and we'll see how that's going to turn out.


I'm not really convinced that there is, but if so, "vestigial" is certainly a good word to describe it...


Speaking of IP crossovers, they even put a D&D card in the new vampire commander deck and I want to take a second to vent my frustration with that (they reprinted the version of Shadowblood Ridge from the AFR commander deck that mentions gnolls in the flavour text). I was going to order two copies of the deck originally because I love Blood tokens and vampires are my favourite tribe, but immediately decided against it when the full card list was spoiled and I saw the printed version of the land. I expect them to at least clearly label their crossover products as such, and putting a D&D card in an otherwise awesome deck makes it a product I don't want to support, own, or play with, and it frankly killed a good chunk of my excitement for Crimson Vow. If I have to buy all the relevant cards in the deck as singles to get the most out of Blood tokens and vampires in casual formats, I might as well not bother.

I would agree if it mentioned anything except races we saw on Strixhaven already.



The simple thing is the art isn't canon, though I didn't too see much of the original art. As for the differences the book seems very much more focused on the adventure and even states that you don't have to have Strixhaven on Arcavios, it could be on eberron or swords coast or you own homebrew. Arcavios section is the book is kinda foot notes and really is only given if your wanna be fully mtg canon and the party happened to end up leaving the school (which doesn't really happen during the adventure).

Okay, that at least is genuinely a good sign. I guess I'm starting to buy the vestigial integrity thing...


Yeah, that's the impression I'm getting from the new info as well. That makes the crossover feel even weirder and more pointless IMO, though. I don't think they put a lot of thought into who this book is supposed to be for in the first place.

At the end of the day, I'm willing to accept that they didn't explicitly go for "officially merging both multiverses" the way I thought they might when I made the thread, and that's a good thing. Still, the art and the lack of separation really rub me the wrong way, I certainly expect the D&D team to approach their Magic crossovers with more respect than they did here.



Looking at the bigger picture, I'd argue that current Magic and current D&D basically share the same problem that makes the quality of their respective brand suffer. They both have amazing assets (mostly in the form of overall worldbuilding and specific settings, plus some stuff that's particular to each game) that many fans are clamouring for and would be thrilled to see more of. But instead of focusing on those assets, both games keep rushing out weird new stuff that nobody asked for, or crossovers that don't even belong in the respective game.

Take Planescape for instance. I'm relatively new to D&D, only been playing for about two years, but I think the larger cosmology of D&D and the way everything fits together is probably the coolest and most fascinating aspect of the D&D universe. I know old school fans of D&D have been waiting for Planescape to come to 5E since forever, and I agree with them. Now, the Planescape setting is huge and complex, but the thing is, I think there would have been a smart way of implementing it by taking the Theros and Ravnica books and replacing them with actual D&D.

A setting that's essentially one huge, cosmopolitan city full of different races and with mechanics for joining one of many different factions that define the place? Yeah, this should have been Sigil, not least because it would have been the ideal starting point for bringing Planescape to 5E. People want Greek mythology in D&D? Well, good news, Arborea is a thing. So, instead of making that Theros book, why not print a sourcebook about, say, Arborea and Ysgard? You could easily fit those into one book, and they not only have the Greek and Norse pantheons, which are the most accessible and well-known of the real-world pantheons, there is also the Elven pantheon in Arvandor on Arborea, plus some other stuff that people would recognise. And I guess the lore surrounding the Drow might be a bit convoluted in places, but non-evil Drow are a thing people want apparently, and I'm pretty confident that the dark elves from Svartalfheim on Ysgard wouldn't be a bad place to start. Arborea and Ysgard also have the advantage of their unique connections to other planes (especially the Material Plane) in the form of Mount Olympus, Bifröst and Yggdrasil, which would allow DMs to connect them to whatever campaign setting they started in.

Somewhere in there probably would have been room for rules on how spellcasting and magic items work as you move from plane to plane, and for creating player characters from the Outer Planes, plus some fitting race options, maybe more info about the Outlands... The bottom line is, they could have made much better books that are actually relevant to D&D as such and that would have fit together way better than the products they actually released.

If I had to guess (besides the normal benefits of a crossover) I think they are bring in magic setting as its helps save on resource. Why spend time and money to bring Arborea to 5e* when you have Theros already there and pretty popular already. For Strixhaven I could see DnD wanting to come up with a magical school advent, see that magic is already doing that and figure they can just do an adventure while the MtG team dose the creative leg work.

*Not a DnD player much (pathfinder yo) so not sure how popular or requested Arborea is. I do know Theros is the "2nd" most popular plane behind the three way tie of Dominiara, Ravnica and Innistrad. Like I know Ravenloft was always popular so makes sense to not use it vs Innistrad but not sure on DnD Greek inspired settings.

Here's the thing, though. Planescape is an afterthought, and not the only explanation of D&D cosmology. D&D, by its very nature, cannot have a consistent cosmology, because every D&D setting started out as someone's home game. Sure, Planescape does a pretty good job at connecting stuff, but only if you don't look at it too close. Like, there are some gods and their connected lore which appear in several settings (but not necessarily all of them), while others only appear on one. Some settings have an active history where each edition and each sourcebook brings about major changes, while other settings are mostly static, and each edition happens in the same time period. There is no way to actually make D&D cosmology consistent, and there shouldn't be. Because it is a game where you tell your own stories, and the story you want to tell is always more important than the setting as written.

That's point one. Point two is, they have recently dropped some major hints that Planescape is coming to 5e in the not too distant future. So the argument of "why this and not that" could soon be replaced by "why not both?"

Also, as to why they keep making the crossovers, I can think of two good reasons: first, a lot of the popular settings were created by people outside of WotC, which can cause some licensing headaches (there was recently a legal conflict with the creators of Dragonlance, which would have thrown a massive wrench in any plans to release that as an official 5e setting, for instance). The Magic settings are fully owned by the company, which means they can do whatever they want with them. Second, they are trying to get people who are playing one of their flagship games to also start playing the other one. Which makes a lot of sense. If you have people who have already shown themselves willing to spend money on your products, why not introduce them to more products?

Thank you for your sharing
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