I love Magic The Gathering. I love the artwork as well as the game. I love the quotes on some of the cards. Today I am at the computer watching the Magic the Gathering panel with Mark Rosewater. I must say, though the pandemic has been rough on everyone, some good things have come from it. Accessing all the panels online has brought some of the Comic Con experience to more people. I admit, attending the Comic Con online doesn’t hold a candle to being there in person. Let’s see what the panel had to say…

The panel brings Mark Rosewater, head designer, and Jules Robins, lead designer to tells us about the new set of Magic the Gathering cards. The new set is Dungeons & Dragons. Finally! My favorite set to date is the Throne of Eldraine but I really like D&D and have thought many times that it would be awesome to combine the two. Today we get to find out how the new set came into being. As Mr. Rosewater started talking about the journey to a D&D set, Mr. Robins said that the Core Set 2022 would have a lot of references to D&D. They started out and felt that it was too Magicy and not D&D enough so they decided to straight out make a D&D set.

Mr. Rosewater takes the lead in the panel and does more of an interview type of lead but it was great. He kept it moving along and did well clarifying and expanding on ideas. As Mr. Rosewater introduces the idea of MTG and D&D, he says that Dungeons and Dragons have been linked from alpha. Richard Garfield who work started in Alpha, played D&D when he was younger and before his job at Wizards of the Coast. James Wyatt who previously worked on D&D was welcomed to the team at MTG. In working in the creative department, he noticed that what he was doing at MTG was a lot like his work at D&D. He created the Planes Shift worlds so they can be played in D&D. Zendikar, Innistrad, Kaladesh, Amonkhet, and Dominaria are all made for this. The upcoming Strixhaven is also written for this. D&D reciprocated by writing MTG into campaigns. Aaron Forsythe suggested an idea he had. Universes Beyond that different IPs appear on cards. Mr. Rosewater explained how they came up with the dungeons.

Mr. Robins was determined to ensure that players got the experience of D&D while playing MTG. As Mr. Rosewater and Mr. Robins continued to speak on the path to bringing us a D&D set, they explain how they picked the cards to go in the collection. They brought in a number of different mock-up cards for MTG players, D&D players, players of both, and those who were interested. There were several categories that the cards fit in. They show the public for the first time the concepts for the D&D set. They really wanted to bring the dungeon/adventure aspect to life.

Spoke about how they wanted to work the skill checks from D&D into MGT cards. While D&D doesn’t particularly have dungeons, they put them in so players could have “adventures”. We move on to class enchantments. To give players a sense of playing a character, they redid Vanguard cards. When that didn’t pan out, they figured out how to give a player a class and a way to level up. Continuing on Mr. Robins’s quest to bring all of D&D to MTG, he explains the problems he had getting this part into the game. Mr. Robins is definitely proud of the new D&D set. They tried a number of ways to make it work before settling on three specific dungeon cards. Both gentlemen were excited to talk about the dragons because you can’t have D&D without dragons. D&D has a color of dragon that matches each color in MTG. So they of course brought them in.

It was a fun panel to watch. I love getting information about the history or inner workings of the game. If you have an extra forty minutes and love MTG or D&D or even both, check it out. I will link the panel below. Did you watch this panel? What are your thoughts on it? Let me know in the comics