'Dungeons & Dragons' Will Crossover With 'Magic: The Gathering' Later This Year

Dungeons & Dragons has officially announced an upcoming crossover with Magic: The Gathering via a new campaign setting book.

As Amazon leaked yesterday, Dungeons & Dragons will be publishing Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, a new campaign setting book that brings the world of Ravnica into the D&D multiverse. Ravnica was first introduced as a Magic: The Gathering setting way back in 2007 and will be the subject of several expansions to the game later this year. D&D published a product page for the new book on their website earlier today.

Ravnica is a world-sized city dominated by ten guilds (each of which combine two of the five different types of mana seen in Magic: The Gathering.) The guilds' range from the macabre to the fantastical and compete with each other for power and influence inside the massive city.

Dungeons & Dragons teased that they would be releasing a new campaign setting for Fifth Edition earlier this year, but no one expected that it would be a Magic: The Gathering world instead of a setting previously introduced in past versions of the game. Fans were hoping to see Dark Sun, Eberron, or Spelljammer make an appearance via a new campaign setting, although we could still see news on one or more of those fronts later today.

The D&D/Magic: The Gathering crossover makes sense for a few reasons. First, Dungeons & Dragons is set to release a publication called Waterdeep: Dragon Heist later this summer, which will add how to run a campaign in an urban setting. Ravnica should benefit greatly with those rules.

Secondly, both Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons are both owned by the same company (Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro) and it makes sense from a purely corporate perspective to have a crossover of two very different game that utilizes unique fantasy worlds. D&D fans get a world that they've (possibly) never seen before, and Magic: The Gathering fans have their own gateway to get into D&D. It also helps that Magic is using Ravnica for an upcoming expansion - giving the book even more crossover corporate synergy.

Finally, this could help sate fans' desires for campaign settings that aren't the Forgotten Realm. Settings like Spelljammer or Dark Sun will have tons of supplemental rules, races, and other content, and probably shouldn't be shunted aside into "just" a new campaign setting book. Publishing a book on Ravnica gives more campaign settings to explore while allowing the D&D team to plan for a bigger rollout of other popular settings at a later date.

Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica will be released on November 20th and will cost $49.95.

What do you think about the D&D and Magic: The Gathering crossover? Let us know in the comment section or tell me on Twitter at @CHofferCBus!