Plane Shift series The various planes from
Magic: The Gathering were first adapted for
Dungeons & Dragons in a series of free PDF releases called
Plane Shift by
James Wyatt, a "longtime Wizards employee who worked on D&D for over a decade before moving over to
Magic in 2014". Wyatt also writes the text for the series of
Art of Magic: The Gathering coffee table books, which reprint illustrations from the cards with details for each plane's lore; the
Plane Shift releases were created to allow players to use those books as campaign setting guides by providing the necessary rule adaptations. However, these articles are not considered official material for organized play. In 2017,
Mike Mearls wrote: "It's basically a thing James does for fun, and we don't want to burden it with needing all the work required to make it official". The positive response to the "Plane Shift" articles led to the publication of ''Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica
(2018), the first full hardcover Dungeons & Dragons
guide to the Magic
setting, and the success of that sourcebook led to the publication of Mythic Odysseys of Theros'' (2020).
Strixhaven: School of Mages The plane of Arcavios and its magical university Strixhaven were "created from scratch by the world-building team" for the 2021
Strixhaven: School of Mages post-block
Magic set expansion.
Polygon reported that "on the surface,
Magic: The Gatherings new set,
Strixhaven: School of Mages, looks like a simple pastiche of Harry Potter's Hogwarts. That's definitely part of its charm. But the intricacies of this new set — and the promise of its accompanying lore — could make it the biggest release of the year. [...] Fledgling mages who apply to Strixhaven must narrow their field of study during their first year of schooling. To represent that, developers have remixed the game's classic multi-color deck combinations" which are represented in the various colleges.
Dot Esports highlighted that Wizards of the Coast "made substantial efforts to make the colleges of
Strixhaven feel distinct from their Ravnican counterparts. This was accomplished by leaning into the tension between each color pair, leading to conflicts between and within colleges. [...] Within each college are two separate philosophies that students can align with. [...] The team created a magic system that applies specific forms of spellcasting and philosophies to each college".
Dot Esports also commented that "mage schools are a common fantasy trope and often appear in popular fiction, from
Harry Potter to the College of Winterhold in
Skyrim. [...]
Strixhaven subverted these expectations by creating a world that was all
Magic, with little to no references to other popular media". parts of
Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos were developed through this playtest. Lead rules designer
Jeremy Crawford stated that "the Unearthed Arcana playtest did the job we asked it to do. Occasionally, we put some very experimental things in front of D&D fans and ask them if they want to see more of it. In this case, the very simple answer was 'No'. We learned two really important things from this playtest that reinforced something we've been seeing from the D&D community [...]. People love for D&D subclasses to speak to the distinctiveness of a particular class. 5E fans also want subclasses to be usable in as many settings as possible, since so many DMs homebrew their own settings". == Reception ==