#ravinca

first image for the Month of Ship. I was going to start with some Gruulfriends fun, but I decided to use this week to work on something in image that I’ve been meaning to do in writing: Tell a better story for my two fanwalkers: Prisma and Svolmia.

Here they are, Mia inviting Prisma out into the Ravnican snow. This will be the night Priss learns of her new nature and the place she will call home.

She is a bit shorter, and by far less buff then she would become. But from this moment, she will have a little over a thousand years to get that delightful physique. X3

Before anything I'm going to state right now that I have biased. I love Dungeons & Dragons, Isle of Ravnica and I love this book. Let us begin.

But first with every new Dungeons & Dragons release comes with a disclaimer: these are usually tongue in cheek humorous blurbs about what the reader will find in the book. If you are familiar with the setting you will find this quite humorous.

How does it read?

The book begins with a note Lavinia of the tenth a character from the novels and recurring magic storyline writing a letter to Jace Beleren explaining how dangerous it is for him to keep disappearing as it puts not just the guilds in danger, but the entire world and that he must start taking his job as the living guildpact seriously. Jace response with a note he clearly wrote without reading the letter about how he'll get back to whatever she was talking about after he gets back from a trip. This does an excellent job of setting up the tensions in the book, these two characters and honestly just how much of a jackass Jace can be.

From there we are given a delightful paragraph and a half of a story about a sky Knight going to fight a dragon. This serves as an introduction to the city and a clever way of connecting the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons and Ravnica. The next page explains briefly who the ten guilds are and what they do briefly, giving people who are new to the setting and idea of the world they are entering. The history of the world is given three sections and explained lately as to not bog you down with lore. The next few sections explain what life is like in the big city and different odds and ends you will need to understand for the setting such as the currency and level of Technology. There's also a useful brief section on the languages, the typical speakers and what script the language is written in.

What's neat?

If you are a magic the Gathering vorthos this section will make you smile with Glee. The names of Ravnica months on the calendars are each given names and compared to a real-world month, we are giving an explanation for the currency zibs and Zinos, as well as a price guide for cosmopolitan conveniences such as cups of coffee and newspapers!

From the side of someone who is new to this setting and Only Knows Dungeons & Dragons this serves as a great introduction to the setting. It does not treat you like you're a child who needs her hand held but it explains things that every person needs to know about the setting.  this is also a great section to sit down with a with players and ask them to read through before creating characters to give them an idea of the setting.

Downsides?

Well starting off if you're hoping for a book that explains the history of Ravnica in detail including what's happened in the novels and card sets I'm afraid you're going to be a bit disappointed. As far as I can tell the three short sections and this part of the book are the only sections about history in the entire book. You can find a lot of the stories very easily online, but it would have been nice for a section to include a proper timeline of events.

Although it is nice to have the currency explained and show the three guilds that meant gold the azorius, the boros, and the Orzhov, but unfortunately I don't see the detailed amount of currency they created being used as it can be a bit complex at times. In my home games I am already confused by current saying described in the books so I can't imagine this section being used for more than fluff.

Conclusion:

I have some minor petty complaints about this section, but all in all I think it is a magnificent introduction to the book  those familiar with the setting will not feel like they already know this information and those new to the setting won't feel as if they are being talked down to or treated as lesser for not knowing this information already. As mentioned before I plan on showing this section to my players before they create characters.

Go ahead, I'm all ears. No like seriously, I drank a potion my buddy gave me and now my body is made of ears.