Guildpact

I care just enough about Ravnica to think it would be a cool place to run a campaign in, but not enough to read some books so I got questions. What does Jace being the Guildpact actually mean? Like does it give him special powers and what are they? I thought the 5e sourcebook would actually give him stats or something, but it doesn't. Apparently there whole schtick is that he's never around so why would you want him involved in your campaigns?

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    a n t s

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Fine, I'll do it myself.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Simic > Selesnya > Golgari > Dimir > Gruul > Boros > Azorius > Izzet > Orzhov > Rakdos

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          What a fricking moron

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        https://i.imgur.com/Sh4Er0Q.jpg

        I care just enough about Ravnica to think it would be a cool place to run a campaign in, but not enough to read some books so I got questions. What does Jace being the Guildpact actually mean? Like does it give him special powers and what are they? I thought the 5e sourcebook would actually give him stats or something, but it doesn't. Apparently there whole schtick is that he's never around so why would you want him involved in your campaigns?

        Izzet looks nothing like a mad scientist. She looks like a vampire e-girl instead, bizarre.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Not all Izzet members are mad scientists. Many of them are test subjects. A dumb vampire e-girl that signs up for dangerous experiments and only survives them because of vampiric healing is perfectly Izzet.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >every girl is a guild steryotype
            >except that one
            Why can't you admit is weird.

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              >every girl is a guild steryotype
              Orzhov is a nun instead of a fat bastard, and Gruul is a kemonomimi instead of a mad max-looking raider barbarian.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous
      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Which ones have peepees?

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          The ones with skirts, dresses, or robes.
          They clearly have something to hide.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          All of them after Simic-tan gives them an +1/+1 counter.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Mtg is obviously doing poor in JP, since it's selling as much as shit like Buddyfight even with JP-exclusive incentives like alternate art and keychains and whatnot. They should just split into two, and have a JP management branch handle things there.
        Maybe now I will finally have mtg with decent art and a lore that I give a frick again.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        what the frick are these names

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >No Azorius gf to tie me up, edge me forever and detain me if I cum.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        I choose Boros.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Guild-tans was peak M/tg/.

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >not enough to read some books so I got questions.
    consider suicide lazy Black person

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Frick you, I spent 50 dollars on a sourcebook WOTC isn't getting any more of money on this question.

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >What does Jace being the Guildpact actually mean?
    From what I recall from some of the short stories, it means he was tasked with having an office and handling a bunch of inter-guild disputes, which are then enforced by the magic of the Maze that he won. Obviously complicated by the fact that he didn't really want to do that and was a planeswalker so people couldn't always find him when they needed him.
    >Apparently there whole schtick is that he's never around so why would you want him involved in your campaigns?
    You probably wouldn't. If anything, it'd be better to try and use classic Ravncia where the Guildpact wasn't a single person, use the time prior to Dragon's Maze where there's no guildpact at all, or use the more recent developments where Niv-Mizzet revived himself as the living guildpact to have someone who's going to be around more regularly.

    Largely the Guildpact just exists as a magical excuse for why the 10 guilds have managed to last for centuries without any of them wiping out the others. It isn't overly necessary to bring it up unless you want the players to be dealing with some very, very large-scale problems in the city.
    If I remember right, they did release some official 5e statblocks for a few of the Planeswalkers. I think Liliana for example was just a high level Warlock. Jace you could probably similarly pull off as a powerful Wizard with plenty of illusion and enchantment spells.

    But overall I wouldn't say 5e is a great system for representing MtG's style of magic regardless.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >It isn't overly necessary to bring it up unless you want the players to be dealing with some very, very large-scale problems in the city.

      I was thinking of a Gruul focused campaign, reestablishing the guild as a major power block and making them something more than violent anarchist. Would upset a lot the powers at be and lead to a lot of destruction as the wilds take the land back from the city.

      >which are then enforced by the magic of the Maze that he won.
      So what kind of magic does the maze actually give him? Is it just like a flat power boost or something more?

      >But overall I wouldn't say 5e is a great system for representing MtG's style of magic regardless.

      True, but I know 5e and Pathfinder 1e and given the choice between the two I'd probably have an easier time fricking around in 5e.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >So what kind of magic does the maze actually give him? Is it just like a flat power boost or something more?
        Less. It's legal power, but magically binding legal power. If people who would be subject to the Guildpact normally (basically guild members or leaders) come to him to resolve a dispute, then whatever decision he says goes. Basically the two sides that came to him can't immediately choose to ignore him and go back to fighting if they dislike the outcome.
        I think this also technically translates to some pretty potent control abilities when it comes to him going against anyone who's a member of the guild, since if I remember right he used that status to slap around Azor on Ixalan and get him to do what he wanted. All the more reason to not bother with stats really, since if Jace is half as smart as WotC pretends he is, he'd probably already have stated a "no attacking the living guildpact" clause.
        Which in some sense is a power boost, but only on Ravncia if he's trying to fight specific people. Meanwhile he'll go to Innistrad and nearly get killed by some random werewolves.

        >I was thinking of a Gruul focused campaign, reestablishing the guild as a major power block and making them something more than violent anarchist. Would upset a lot the powers at be and lead to a lot of destruction as the wilds take the land back from the city.
        Arguably the existence of the guildpact benefits the Gruul more than it hurts them, since it does mean no other guild has ever been able to wipe them off the map even as things urbanized and industrialized. They're in an odd state following War of the Spark though especially after Domri's bizarre heel turn.
        Gruul being violent anarchists is sort of the point though, since their original roll as nature wardens doesn't have much meaning in a world covered in cities. Technically speaking I think their big world-ending prophecy even partially came true as of War of the Spark with Illharg showing up.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >Gruul being violent anarchists is sort of the point though, since their original roll as nature wardens doesn't have much meaning in a world covered in cities.

          The idea was that Ravnica being a world completely overtaken by urbanization, would be on the brink of collapsed because the cities had over encroached, ocean levels rising, the Golgari are having trouble producing enough food, signs that things were going to get very bad very soon unless the wild came back in a meaningful way. So it would be about organizing the Gruul and pulling on old magics to forcefully take back parts of the world for the wild.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >Niv-Mizzet revived himself as the living guildpact

      So the Izzet guild master is the now the guild pact? That doesn't seem useful.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        It's very much not. I mean he's PROBABLY a step up from jace but not by much.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        It is more useful in the sense that the living guildpact is now someone bound to the plane. You have to consider that the big reason why Jace got the job initially was because of his telepathy putting him in a good position to understand both sides of any guild argument, along with general plot contrivance.

        It is questionable whether a several thousand year old dragon will do any better at the job, especially since Niv-Mizzet has also managed to disappear for extreme lengths of time, but at the very least he is one of the original paruns who signed the first guildpact, and his guild is largely dedicated to infrastructure and keeping the city running, so he's presumably not the worst candidate.
        It's sort of the case where Ravnica really doesn't have anyone more neutral that they could pick for the role though. At least nobody with the same level of importance who isn't also a planeswalker.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Experienced Ravnica DM here. Gonna go full autist.

      Like this anon said:

      You shouldn't. The only time Jace ever added to anything was when he got mindfricked and became a pirate, and that wasn't on Ravnica. MTG lore has always been at its best when planeswalkers weren't in the spotlight, so keep your game that way too.

      That anon's advice is really good, the only "um ackshually" I have with it is that the time before Dragon's Maze did (eventually) have a Guildpact that Teysa wrote up, it just didn't have any magical bindings to it. Basically as toothless as a UN treaty but people mostly followed it because it was better than complete societal collapse.

      Strongly recommend not doing current-day "Niv-Mizzet is the living guildpact" Ravnica. Greg Weisman's shitty excuse for prose fricked up the plane so badly it caused WotC's entire Creative management group to "restructure" (i.e. heads rolled).

      All that said -- I fricking love Ravnica and can't wait to make a new game set in it again.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        True, I did overlook the intermediary guildpact, since I didn't want to go on a tangent about a nonmagical version.
        And yeah, War of the Spark and everything that surrounded that wasn't exactly great. It might work if you want to use the more modern Ravnica with merfolk and such that the sourcebook seems to be drawing on ignoring that 5e's Ravnica book lacks merfolk stats but you wanted to have Jace out of the picture completely.

        Of course, it's also comparatively easy to just handwave events and just implement whatever solution you find most interesting into whatever time period seems the most interesting. I tend to find that the overlap between people who play 5e and people who read too much MtG lore is shockingly small, and it's only the latter category of people who would probably even call you out for having a game set prior to the original Ravnica block but not having the ghost quarter as a separate sub-plane or whatnot.

        Depending on the goal, a simple answer might just be to pick one of the other selected runners from Dragon's Maze and stick them in the position of living guildpact instead.

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    1 2 3 4 5
    6 7 8 9 9

    Rolling for Ravnica gf.

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    So who was fricked over the most by Bolas meddling in their guild?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Teysa Karlov, though also the Orzhov as a whole, and the Obzedat most directly. Teysa had a whole arc going trying to undermine several millenia-old ghosts, and Bolas has Kaya frick it up in an afternoon, after which Kaya is appointed guildmaster and fricks it up even more afterwards.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      The Orzhov ran the entire Ravnica banking system and economy. Then Bolas had Kaya kill the entire Obzedat, after which Kaya cancelled ALL the debt and ALL the wealth of Orzhov. Other guilds might survive, but Orzhov is finished.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Teysa Karlov, though also the Orzhov as a whole, and the Obzedat most directly. Teysa had a whole arc going trying to undermine several millenia-old ghosts, and Bolas has Kaya frick it up in an afternoon, after which Kaya is appointed guildmaster and fricks it up even more afterwards.

      The Orzhov ran the entire Ravnica banking system and economy. Then Bolas had Kaya kill the entire Obzedat, after which Kaya cancelled ALL the debt and ALL the wealth of Orzhov. Other guilds might survive, but Orzhov is finished.

      Guys don't fricking lie to try and mislead people, Kaya wasn't that bad of a guildmaster
      You forgot the part where she realized that the entire economy of ravnica was built on the ghost debt system so to rectify her previous mistake she set the tax rate to FIFTY PERCENT and caused planewide riots that likely did more damage to the plane than all of bolas' other agents COMBINED.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        She didnt want to run that frickery at all, she's a ghost killer, not an admin. If anything, It could have ended worse.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        If that's true then it's actually hilarious. Is Kaya's character "arrogant frickup who doesn't give a shit about collateral damage?" If so wtf I love Kaya

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          It's okay she's a sassy black lady who doesn't take no shit (Unless you're Bolas)

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >kills a bunch of undead israeli Catholic Mafiosos
            >destroys your economy
            >finger wags and "mmm HMM!"s away to find more ghosts to Unmake
            You lied to me, /tg/. You said I was supposed to hate this character. She sounds great.

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              She basically turbofricked Ravnica anon. The plane needs a heavy rewrite by people who understand how to design a setting.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Yes.
          I mean didn't she first kill off an undead spirit king that, while undead and unfeeling, wasn't actually that bad?

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Well to be fair the Obzedat are terrible creatures.
    A second death is what the deserve.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Yeah, the Obzedat aren't exactly a good thing to leave alive, but there was also a much clearer replacement that WotC had already worked towards and foreshadowed with Teysa. Kaya taking the council's place instead was rather bizarre. Really the fact that a council of several ghosts could be replaced with a single individual was already pretty strange.

      She didnt want to run that frickery at all, she's a ghost killer, not an admin. If anything, It could have ended worse.

      The question is who ended up getting fricked over the most, and the fact that Kaya was also at odds with the fundamental goals of the guild is why Orzhov ended up getting screwed.

      Domri leading the Gruul did what he was always doing. Vraska is from the Golgari, and the Golgari have leadership changes all the fricking time, but at least she knows what their regular operations are. Isperia dying might have been a major loss, but at least Dovin was still operating with the Azorius Senate's framework, and during his tenure the guild just had an even heavier handed approach to the law.
      Kaya and the Orzhov is unique specifically because she has 0 idea or concern about what she was doing. Her freeing the ghosts from their debts was even after Teysa specifically told her not to. She increased the demand for tithes to a ridiculous level to try and undo that damage and only caused more damage in the process.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >Kaya and the Orzhov is unique specifically because she has 0 idea or concern about what she was doing
        and she suffered no consequences, just to planeswalk away to Kaldheim to hunt down Vorinclex (and failing to do it)
        dear god... I hate Kaya so fricking much

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Kaya is a good character but a terrible fricking person. From her POV, she assumes she is doing good work because it tickles her poorly informed sense of justice and she never actually sticks around long enough to see the long term harm she has caused. She is the equivalent of a time traveler from the future dropping into the deep south with 21st century morality, mowing down a rich plantation owner and the foreman with a machine gun, and telling the slaves "You're all free, no need to thank me!" before rocketing off into the sky on a jetpack never to be seen again. Technically, you have freed those slaves. Good for you. Buy you also abandoned them in a situation where they are undeniably FRICKED, because there is no good outcome for them here. All they have to look forward to is being hunted down and either killed or re-enslaved, depending on who is after them and how much of a fight they put up.

          "Ghost king bad", so she kills Brago and dumps an entire setting into a fresh hell of civil war.

          "Obdezat bad", so she fricks up Ravnica.

          Both times she got paid to do it, but told herself it was justice, and both times she was just a useful pawn in the machinations of someone who wanted to destabilize the current order for their own benefit (Marchesa and Bolas, respectively).

          One of these days, Kaya is going to end up actually forced to confront the harm she has done and she wont be able to just Rick Sanchez out of the conversation as soon as she doesn't like how it makes her feel. And thats going to be a good story, when it happens.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >One of these days, Kaya is going to end up actually forced to confront the harm she has done
            that will not happen... ever
            Kaya was made by comittee (literally) to be INCLUSIVE™ and she will never be shown in anything resembling a bad light because WotC would be accused of racism
            she is a Frankeinstein monster constructed by Wizards and powered by wokeness, and I'm not surprised that she ended burining down a couple of planes during a rampage

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              You guys say that about literally every character in any work of fiction thats not a straight white male, and thats never how things work out because no one else cares about pol schizo logic.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                that's not the point
                Kaya was explicitly designed for that end
                she must be shown to be on the right because she was created to attract a certain set of the population, otherwise WotC would lose the money those people would produce

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                But when she admits to being wrong and tries to unfrick things alongside Tomik you ignore it because it doesn't fit your narrative?

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                >she admits to being wrong
                Are you moronic?

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            She certainly doesn't feel like a good character. Someone with ghostly abilities working as an assassin? Makes sense. Somebody who exclusively assassinates ghosts? Kinda weird, would probably make more sense if she called herself an exorcist if she's got such a sense of justice to her.
            But there's also the factor that she just sort of effortlessly kills six ultra-powerful ancient spirits in their most fortified location in a manner of moments. She comes across feeling more akin to some weird deus-ex-machina. I don't think anyone could look at the rest of Ravnica and then look at the Obdezat and think "the only thing keeping them in power is the fact that people can't stab ghosts".

            Not only does she frick up everything she does, but much like your example it's just effortless. There's no meaningful sense of achievement to effortlessly slaughtering what is supposed to be a noteworthy enemy, regardless of how much of a good idea it is from a moral perspective. There have been entire blocks dedicated to plots and villains that were less noteworthy than the Obdezat.

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              >But there's also the factor that she just sort of effortlessly kills six ultra-powerful ancient spirits in their most fortified location in a manner of moments. She comes across feeling more akin to some weird deus-ex-machina.

              Isn't that every planeswalker dealing with their specialty, though? Kaya is a ghost killer, she kills ghosts. Jace is the fricking mindsculpter, he can frick up pretty much anyone that isn't Bolas tier so much they don't even remember their own name. Lilianna with the Chain Veil regularly does absolute bullshit, Chandra burn two ELDRAZI to death, etc.

              Why do those other characters get a pass to be extremely good at the one thing they are good at, but Kaya doesn't?

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                >Why do those other characters get a pass to be extremely good at the one thing they are good at, but Kaya doesn't?
                because she is so fricking smug about it

                but in all seriousness, did you read the previous post?
                the problem with Kaya is not that "kills ghosts really good" but that she killed six (6) beings of almost god-like power that ruled the plane for millenia with little to no effort
                Chandra burning two ledrazi titans was terribly egregious, too... but at least that was a team effort

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                >but that she killed six (6) beings of almost god-like power

                Lol, what? They were just ghosts, dude. They had immense wealth and political power, yes, but its not like they had any actual magical might. Everything that made the ghost council powerful and impressive was organizational. They cheated death and kept their minds, but none of them got to their position by being good in a FIGHT.

                Much in the same way that the president of the united states isn't the greatest fighter in all of the US Armed forces, capable of Supermaning his way through enemy armies. Thats now how being the president works.

                You have made yourself mad over something that was never even true.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                let's use your comparison
                imagine, then, if she killed the president of the United States while in the oval office, with full security deployment
                does that seem feasible to you?

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                For someone that can teleport, turn intangible, and has magical powers? Yeah. What the frick is the secret service going to do against someone that bullets just pass through harmlessly?

                You can't evacuate the president fast enough, you have to go around walls and she can just go through them. Get him to the panic bunker and she just phases in through the wall anyway. Unload every bullet you have on her and it does nothing. She walks up, stabs the president, and leaves.

                How else is that supposed to end, given her powers?

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                let's use your comparison
                imagine, then, if she killed the president of the United States while in the oval office, with full security deployment
                does that seem feasible to you?

                It's a worse comparison than that, because the Obzedat usually hangs out in their sanctum deep underground, so it's more akin to managing it while the president was in his super secret doomsday bunker.

                Saying they were just old ghost also ignores the fact that their representations on cards gave them pretty beefy statlines, rather than just being a 0/6 sack of ectoplasm.
                But an even easier thing to point to would be that the 5e Ravnica book pins each of the ghosts at CR 8, and do in fact boast an impressive amount of spellcasting. Godlike might be an exaggeration, but they clearly aren't supposed to be total pushovers.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                Wasn't the whole deal that Kaya can do it because she's from another plane and has abilities that the Obzedat can never foresee? They have every countermeasure possible... against the people of Ravnica, not for outsiders of the plane.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                You'd think ghosts of all people would consider "but what if somebody walks through the wall and stabs us with a ghost knife?"
                I'm pretty sure there are multiple Dimir spirits alone who could potentially qualify. Not to mention the sheer variety of exorcists and necromancers who are surely on the Orzhov payroll. Not to mention the fact that the Boros and Azorious would presumably need methods to fight or arrest ghosts in the case where normal weapons wouldn't work.
                There's even pic related if you want to try to say that they were only prepared specifically for defenses against members of guilds.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                Thats all speculation and supposition on your part, though. All that actually matters for the story is that Kaya has the abilities, skills, and motivation to do what everyone else either couldn't do or thought was impossible.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                >Thats all speculation and supposition on your part, though.
                So is "it's not like they had any actual magical might" and "has abilities that the Obzedat can never foresee".

                >All that actually matters for the story is
                Yes, Kaya does things that the plot demands, because Kaya is a walking deus-ex-machina, thank you for understanding. Your post-hoc rationalizations for why it makes sense doesn't make it any less of an anticlimactic ass-pull.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                There is a difference between speculating on things that you think should exist in a story, but apparently don't, and noting the absence of support for someone else's claims.

                Its not 'supposition' to say "But the text doesn't support your argument".

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                Yes, the story conveniently forgets many things that have been established in the setting in order to get the result they want.
                Colloquially, this is what's known as "bad writing"

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                If the story is ignoring a point they did on a whim without foreshadowing or proper introduction, that's called an asspull.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                >Chandra burn two ELDRAZI to death
                You're citing another deus-ex-machina as a reasoning why Kaya isn't a deus-ex-machina? Chandra still required Nissa's help for that and that was the culmination of the plot of an entire block, and it was still a shitty asspull.

                You also severely overestimate how often Jace actually pulls off his mindfrickery. Really the fact that he's routinely a PoV character for various stories simply means there are plenty of times where Jace ends up in over his head simply to maintain some level of stakes.
                Jace being "THE MINDSCULPTOR" does not mean that it makes for a good story if he where to routinely and universally sculpt all minds that got within 20 yards of him without any resistance, thereby instantly dissolving any hostile conflict.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            If you mean "good character" as in well developed I might agree, with the caveat that it's only well-developed relative to other MtG walkers. Across fiction more broadly she's fricking miserable.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >Kaya is going to end up actually forced to confront the harm she has done
            Won't happen in Current Year, anon. You know that as well as anybody.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      It's more that they dumped the storyline they had been developing for Kaya, demonstrated an embarrassingly infantile awareness of how an economy works, and on top of that wrote everybody involved like utter shit. Kaya was very blatantly and clearly, I felt, a late stage forcing in of a character for no good reason.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >embarrassingly infantile awareness of how an economy works
        So, like most people

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Wouldn't it have been cool if some guildless wretch had won the dragon's maze? Because, you know, it's supposed to be unwinnable? But it also is built around one of the most populous cities in the multiverse, so it doesn't make sense that any of the guild champions would win on purpose, but it makes sense that someone could get Totally Lost and win by accident?
    >And the guild champion who wins the dragon's maze is... none of them!
    Frick yea!
    >LOL IT'S JACE
    Frick you!

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I'm also just going to address this whole Kaya-Obzedat thing with another example from the same storyline, being how Vraska killed Isperia. Because ignoring everything that could be debated like how plausible it is for their respective assassinations, Vraska has had motive to kill Isperia since her fricking introduction, since she was caught up in a mass arrest by the Azorius. Thus Vraska being the one to kill the guild leader of the Azorius works from a storytelling standpoint, because Vraska has actual motives and personal investment in killing her.

    Honestly it's a microcosm of why Planeswalkers are often bad for MtG's storytelling, because having some ultra-power individual from a world nobody has heard of suddenly swoop in to solve the current problem's of the world's inhabitants often ends up robbing any of those inhabitants from having proper narrative arcs of their own.
    Of course, three set blocks also helped with this, where the first sets could actually foreshadow things while having payoffs later, instead of the cards depicting a conflict being showed off alongside their immediate resolution.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >Honestly it's a microcosm of why Planeswalkers are often bad for MtG's storytelling

      You're not wrong, but I still think it's possible to tell good stories about planeswalkers and the settings they impact, I think the truth is that Wizards is good at worldbuilding (because that is central to the appeal of their product) and bad at storytelling (because that is secondary or tertiary to the appeal of their product). The story would be good if people thought there was money in it.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        It's certainly possible, but it makes it easy for WotC to forget to lay the foundation for a proper conflict, because as you say it is more of a secondary appeal.

        To use a less contentious example, I'd point to Strixhaven. The fact that the Kenrith twins just sort of swoop in and take care of not!Voldemort and the giant blood monster he summoned is the sort of thing that ends up very devoid of personal stakes. I don't even think the two learn the villain's name until the attack on campus has already started, let alone his motives.

        Really fixing it also isn't too impossible based off of just some of the existing story beats and setting info. Rowan hates studying, and the Oriq are known to try to recruit students. Have her wander off or get invited to some shady meeting, learn something about Extus in the process, maybe even get into a conversation/argument/fight with him. It's hardly anything convoluted, but it'd at least be somewhat better in terms of dramatic stakes when the heroes and villain of the story have at least some idea of eachother's names and motives before they're in a battle to the death.

  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >think guild-tan thread is back
    >it's just dweebs complaining about Black person woman again (again (again))

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      I'm sorry, anon
      it was my fault
      I just hate Kaya a little too much

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        You post like a moron, write normally.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          I'm sorry anon
          It was all my fault, I just,
          Hate Kaya too much

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            No.

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous
              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous
    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      I blame wotc and their terminal Planeswalker obsession.

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