Coming home
August 8th 2008 04:33
Courtesy of our old friend Anonymous, here is our first look at Shards of Alara.
It’s a big change from both Lorwyn and Shadowmoor. I wonder if anyone will fail to adapt?
The look is much more high-fantasy compared to the two Celtic blocks and their quirky, abstract, watercolor-heavy style. This is something of a tradition in Magic; each new block depicts a self-contained world, and with a few rare exceptions (one being Lorwyn and Shadowmoor, in fact), the same world is never used twice in consecutive blocks. But in Alara’s case, the characters above barely look like they’re from the same place as each other, much less anyone else. It’s hard to imagine the desolate, smog-choked landscape where the Archdemon originates bordering on the unspoilt primeval forest where the Godsire roams.
So, the current educated guesstimate is that the “Shards” in the new set’s name refers to at least five planes, each one dominated by a certain color of Magic and its worldview, and that each of these characters is from a different one. Does that sound familiar? If you’ve ever played Dungeons and Dragons, it probably does. Specifically, it recalls the “Great Wheel” cosmology of the Third Edition, where the outer planes border on and interact with each other, and each has a relatively homogeneous population and ecology and a specific alignment affiliation. You could almost write the Dungeon Master’s Guide entry for the Akrasan squire’s home – mildly good-aligned, strongly law-aligned. Similarly, I would divine neutral and lawful for the Windwright, evil and chaotic for the Archdemon, and neutral on both axes for the Godsire dinosaur.
The shadow of Dungeons and Dragons hangs long over modern fantasy, but especially over Magic, which was invented after an off-hand remark by a friend of Richard Garfield’s who wanted an extra diversion between sessions. Although it's now often the subject of jokes (some crueler than others), it was one of the most influential fantasy works of this era. The conflict between “high” and “hedge” fantasy – between stories about epic, world-shattering events and stories about ordinary people living their lives in worlds where magic exists – is still around, with absolutists still claiming that you can only like one or the other. But post-Dungeons and Dragons, writers learned that it was okay for something to be both. The game puts equal emphasis on making a character’s personal history as on deciding whether he’ll take Dragon’s Breath or Comet as his first high-level ability.
After many years of experimenting with Jules Verne’s skyships and Arthur M. Miller’s nuclear wastelands, Slavic folklore and Japanese mysticism, sentient squids and murderous redcaps, Magic is coming home. The amusing part is that Dungeons and Dragons is now owned by Wizards of the Coast – meaning that they could put Bahamut, Lolth, and Mystra themselves in Shards of Alara, and no-one could sue them for it.
"Akrasan Squire"
"Archdemon"
"Godsire"
"Predator Dragon"
"Windwright Mage"
It’s a big change from both Lorwyn and Shadowmoor. I wonder if anyone will fail to adapt?
The look is much more high-fantasy compared to the two Celtic blocks and their quirky, abstract, watercolor-heavy style. This is something of a tradition in Magic; each new block depicts a self-contained world, and with a few rare exceptions (one being Lorwyn and Shadowmoor, in fact), the same world is never used twice in consecutive blocks. But in Alara’s case, the characters above barely look like they’re from the same place as each other, much less anyone else. It’s hard to imagine the desolate, smog-choked landscape where the Archdemon originates bordering on the unspoilt primeval forest where the Godsire roams.
So, the current educated guesstimate is that the “Shards” in the new set’s name refers to at least five planes, each one dominated by a certain color of Magic and its worldview, and that each of these characters is from a different one. Does that sound familiar? If you’ve ever played Dungeons and Dragons, it probably does. Specifically, it recalls the “Great Wheel” cosmology of the Third Edition, where the outer planes border on and interact with each other, and each has a relatively homogeneous population and ecology and a specific alignment affiliation. You could almost write the Dungeon Master’s Guide entry for the Akrasan squire’s home – mildly good-aligned, strongly law-aligned. Similarly, I would divine neutral and lawful for the Windwright, evil and chaotic for the Archdemon, and neutral on both axes for the Godsire dinosaur.
In the Great Wheel cosmology, the material world exists at the center of this construction. The rim of the “wheel” is taken up by adjacent small planes like Arcadia and Gehenna, each of which has a unique set of inhabitants and features.
The shadow of Dungeons and Dragons hangs long over modern fantasy, but especially over Magic, which was invented after an off-hand remark by a friend of Richard Garfield’s who wanted an extra diversion between sessions. Although it's now often the subject of jokes (some crueler than others), it was one of the most influential fantasy works of this era. The conflict between “high” and “hedge” fantasy – between stories about epic, world-shattering events and stories about ordinary people living their lives in worlds where magic exists – is still around, with absolutists still claiming that you can only like one or the other. But post-Dungeons and Dragons, writers learned that it was okay for something to be both. The game puts equal emphasis on making a character’s personal history as on deciding whether he’ll take Dragon’s Breath or Comet as his first high-level ability.
After many years of experimenting with Jules Verne’s skyships and Arthur M. Miller’s nuclear wastelands, Slavic folklore and Japanese mysticism, sentient squids and murderous redcaps, Magic is coming home. The amusing part is that Dungeons and Dragons is now owned by Wizards of the Coast – meaning that they could put Bahamut, Lolth, and Mystra themselves in Shards of Alara, and no-one could sue them for it.
Just the other day, I was thinking this guy could be an interesting adversary in a mid-level campaign.
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