Dungeons and Dragons Ravnica: Buddy Cop One-Shot

Design Goals:

1. Create a Fun and Enjoyable Experience

2. Does not require players to have knowledge of Magic the Gather or Ravnica setting to play

3. Help players to step into the role of being a defender and protect of Ravnica

4. Play with the Buddy-Cop theme, allow players with different goals to still work together

5. Use characters’ abilities and playstyle as ways to communicate their values

6. Easy to pick up and put down

Project Overview:

Some time ago, Wizards of the Coast released a supplemental product for Dungeon and Dragons fifth edition entitled The Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica.  This supplemental product provided players the opportunity to explore one of the most iconic planes of Magic the Gathering, Ravnica.  With in-depth discussion and information about the ten major guilds, several important districts, and adding new player customization and racial options, many Magic and Dungeons and Dragons fans were excited to one day walk the streets of this grand, plane-wide city. 

A few weeks ago, my usual Dungeons and Dragons team was cut in half by the dreaded killer of most tabletop, roleplaying games, the intrusion of everyday life.  As such, at the table would be myself as Dungeon Master, and two of my regular players which meant we could not pursue our regular campaign.  However, my players still wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons, so I began to think about situations, short quests, and contained adventures that could be accomplished by just two players.  After some brainstorming, I settled on creating a session centered around two Ravnican police officers with a kooky, B-grade buddy cop structure as they patrol the roads and streets of Ravnica.

Understanding the Pieces and Challenges:

One of the key aspects of a typical “buddy cop” movie is how the two main characters interact.  Each character has foibles, goals, and/or ideals that directly or indirectly conflict with the other main character.  One character might not care how the criminal is brought in as along as the criminal is brought in.  The other desires it done in a specific way, usually “by the book.”  A great example of this can be seen in Hot Fuzz, where you have the no-nonsense, hyper serious cop Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), partnered with Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) a cop who barely takes his job seriously and feels he is missing out on all the “cool” stuff that comes with being a cop. Angel is a big city cop who pursues a pickpocket as if he had just cornered a serial murderer while Butterman is obsessed with the idea of being a cool cop yet when his father is revealed as the villain, struggles to go against him. However, ultimately the two opposing characters need to have some goals that overlap so that in the final act of the film, the two can put their differences or inadequacies aside in order to stop the bad guy and let justice prevail.  Thankfully, Ravnica provides the perfect setting for such a narrative thanks to Magic’s color philosophy and Ravnica’s ten guilds.

One of the defining features of Ravnica are its ten guilds, each one a combination of two of Magic’s five colors: White, Blue, Black, Red, Green.  Each color has certain core ideas which help to define each color’s specific flavor and role in the game.  For example, White is the color of civilization, life, equality, balance, and law.  Meanwhile, Green is the color of nature, individual strength, growth, wildlife, and survival.  Each of the Ravnican guilds has its own ideals and goals based on two of Magic’s colors.  For example, the Azorioius Senate is the guild whose dominate colors are blue and white.  Since Blue is the color of control, intelligence, and manipulation and White is the color of community, law, and balance, the Azorioius Senate is a collection of law makers, bureaucrats, and law enforcers.  Individuals of the Azorioius Senate work to ensure that Ravnican society and civilization functions and prospers through the implementation and enforcement of laws, by-laws, and regulations, sometimes caring more for the enforcement of the laws than the individual citizen.  Meanwhile, the Boros Legion is a military organization that stands ready to defend the people of Ravnica no matter the cost.  Their colors are Red and White, White showing their devotion to protect society and Red showing their dedication to jump into danger, to fight with the fury of a roaring fire, and to strike down foes with righteous vengeance. 

With the idea of a “buddy-cop” movie in my head, I knew I wanted to provide the two players each a character to play, one from the Boros Legion and the other from the Azorious Senate.  The Azorious player character would be someone interested in the enforcement of the laws, believing in the necessity of laws to insure society’s continuation, the typical “by the book” character. On the other hand, the Boros character would desire to protect the people more than the law, showing compassion where possible, and striking down perceived evildoers whenever possible, even if it was to the character’s detriment.  That said, the two characters would still have the unifying idea of wanting to protect the people of Ravnica from the forces that would cause the city harm, allowing them to over come their differences and fight together.

Another important aspect of this experience that I wanted to emphasize was to make the experience easy to pick up and easy to put down.  While my players were familiar with the ideas of Magic the Gathering and Ravnica, they were not avid players of Magic.  This meant a couple of things:

1. I could not tie the experience into the main story of the Magic universe as my players did not have the context as to why it would be important.

2. Being only somewhat familiar with the setting, I figured my players were bound to ask plenty of questions about various topics so they could roleplay and act accordingly.   

3. Lastly, because we play Dungeons and Dragons at a local game store which closes at midnight, we had a hard cut off for when we had to be done with our game and I did not want to be forced to leave the game as a cliffhanger.

With these goals, important information, and limitations in mind, I began to work out a series of solutions to create a short and enjoyable experience.

Using Playstyles and Bite-Sized Quests to Build Player Knowledge of the World:

Since the ultimate goal of the experience was to allow my players as easy a time as possible in diving into the world of Ravnica, I felt it was best to set up as many guideposts as possible. First came the characters the players would use during the game. I did not want my players to be stuck in the confusing mess of looking over their character sheets during every turn of the game. As such, I chose classes that were either very simple in terms of mechanics (Fighter and Barbarian) or chose classes that my players were already familiar with due to what they played in our regular game (Cleric and Wizard). Ultimately, I decided to focus on Cleric, because one of our players is fairly experienced and I knew he could handle the complexity, and Barbarian, because it is a straightforward class. I then broke down each piece of each character into easy to read sections, typed them out, and placed them in PDF form. To the right is an example of how one of these sections looked.

Next I chose the race of each character and added extra features that encouraged a certain playstyle. Continuing with the barbarian, I started by making him a minotaur which innately gains bonuses when they charge into battle. This is something that works very well with the Boros Legion, again wanting to protect and yet letting the fire of their emotions carry them forward. Additionally, by giving the character a maul and taking the zealot subclass, it further incentives the player to charge into battle, to get into melee where they can really do some damage. Now, I will say that there is an argument to perhaps making him a fighter instead, to create a grey area and allow the player to discover the “correct” playstyle, but again we only had a limited amount of time and I wanted to create a smooth a game as possible. Lastly, I gave the character the Charger feat which grants the character a +5 to hit if they have moved more than 20ft in a turn, which yet further pushing the idea of the character ramming into combat to get that first big hit in, and making it count.

With playstyles, classes, and even races helping my players understand their characters and their guild’s underlying values, I then had to tackle the problem of how to show off the values and ideals of the other guilds without telling my players everything. The answer I decided to pursue was by creating simple, bite-sized encounters. These encounters could take on any form and could have multiple solutions, as is the nature of D&D, but each would be focused around one of the remaining guilds or explore one guild’s relationship with another. An example of this can be seen in the short encounter I created called, “The Rampaging Snapjaw.”

The Rampaging Snapjaw Encounter:

The encounter begins with the players walking along their beat as they begin to hear the sound of smashing crates, the screams of civilians, and other sounds of destruction. If the players choose to investigate, they arrive in a smaller marketplace, off one of the main roads. There they see a large creature with the head of a hammerhead shark, a frilled back, the powerful tail of some lizard, and the body of a rhino. As the players approach, they see it chewing on a mouthful of fruit from a nearby stall, only for it to spit it out in disgust. Turning to the players, the creature rears up, opens its mouth filled with teeth, and attacks.

The players will easily be able to tell that the creature is of Simic creation, the blue and green guild of Ravnica. They are a guild that sees the value of growth and the strength of natural creatures, but feel they can create better, perfect creatures through intelligent design and gene manipulation. They are a guild that seeks to be adaptable, changing to meet the challenges they face in order to avoid or over power their foes. I decided to take this idea of adaptation and play with it in order to provide my players and interesting encounter.

For starters, I figured out what a medium to hard encounter would be like for two players of level five. After using a few online resources, I started by taking the stat block of a beast around challenge rating three. This gave me about 65-75 HP, decent attack bonus, multi-attack, and an armor class of 15 as a baseline. After that, I began to create my monster. To the right is a view of its over all stat block after a few iterative passes. The idea is that the Krasis reacts to the player’s so if one character is casting spell after spell trying to control the beast, the creature can gain advantage against a single save type for an entire round, but gives up a lot of potential armor class to do so. This creature can, in some ways, encourage players to work together, with one character holding their action until the other hits, forcing the creature to spend its reaction on one save, providing an opening for a different attack.

After the creature falls, depending on how the players deal with the creature, a Simic biomancer will arrive to claim the experiment. If the creature is alive, the biomancer will thank them for stunning the creature and allowing the biomancer to reclaim his property. If the creature is dead, the biomancer will demand to know what caused the creature to go erratic, even though it was under control at the time. Here, the players can potential accuse the biomancer of being reckless for transporting the creature through such a populated area, or investigate further to discover what made the creature lash out. The investigation will reveal that an orphaned teen throwing a rock at the creature angered the beast, allowing it to break its bond and attack. The Azorious character will know if told the truth, the biomancer would be in the right to claim the teen as collateral for the loss of his property. This can potentially lead to disputes between characters with the Azorious character arguing for the upholding of the laws and the Boros character protecting the child from becoming another experiment. It might also lead to the Azorious character bowing to the Boros, understanding that it is the boy is who they protect and not the law, or the Boros legionnaire might see justice in having the child pay for his actions. Its is these type of complex quests that can allow players to really step into their characters and ultimately decide what each character is willing to protect and willing to give up.

To the right is a simplified map of the combat arena for this encounter. In summary, the area is a small marketplace only about 75 feet across. A large fountain dominates the middle of the marketplace and in the center stands a statue to a fallen Boros Angel. Around the fountain are various market stalls, each one offering their own collection of foods, goods, and treats. However, this once peaceful place has been disturbed by the Simic creature who has slammed through various stalls and taken to drinking out of the fountain. I wanted to keep the area simple and easy to use so players can focus on using their characters and not trying to worry about positioning and extraneous level information. The players have a wide selections of directions they can go once they enter the market and can easily take cover behind some of the stalls to avoid the tail like whip. Players can also hop into the fountain to close the distance between them and the creature, but the fountain is deep meaning it will be difficult terrain to move through. Overall, I feel this is a simple arena that allows players the chance to learn their characters and deal with a relatively easy, but flavorful mini-boss.

The Weirds on Parade Encounter:

Another example encounter to show a different, exciting, yet dangerous guild is the encounter I planned for the Izzet League. The Izzet are the blue and red colored guild of Ravnica, interested in researching, gaining knowledge, all while their fervor for discovery drives them forward, sometime with total abandon and with plenty of colorful explosions. If something does not explode, then it is not really an Izzet experiment.

In this encounter, the players are walking along when an explosion is heard in the distance followed by a scream. If the players choose to investigate, they see that the side of an Izzet building has just collapsed and atop the rubble are several small elementals also known as weirds. In total there will be four icy weirds on top of a mound of frozen and broken stone. The players will need to contend with these relatively weak enemies before they escape into the city.

As you can see from the map provided, the battle area is split in half, with one half inside, the other outside. This is so that players do not know what could happen next. Is something else going to come out of the hole in the building, is this all the enemies, what is going on? This level of uncertainty adds to the experience and may end up with the players pushing into the building and into the reach of these weirds. This is very dangerous as these particular elementals explode on death. This means if players are too eager to push forward and climb the rubble, the players may find themselves surrounded and eventually dealing with multiple detonations.

Once the players are able to stop the ice weirds from escaping. The players will be free to look into the Izzet lab and will see two Izzet wizards battling a larger, final elemental. This larger elemental will be well on its way to defeat once the players push into the lab thanks to the two wizards. With this final elemental defeated, either through description or in actual combat depending upon the health of the players, the Izzet wizards will thank the players for helping them to contain the weirds. Upon asking questions about what the wizards were working on or what purpose the lab serves, the lead wizard will explain that he had an idea for how to chill food so it keeps for longer. Things were going rather well, the scientist had figured out the general design, built it, figured out where to put the built in coffee maker because everything should have a coffee maker built into it (the character will say this while pouring a cup of coffee from a spout built into their armor), but they just had not figured out how to actually get the chilling effect they wanted. That’s when they had the idea of stuffing the sides of the machine with ice weirds as they naturally exude cold energy and just slapping them in there would have worked fine, had they not escaped. If the players press further about the design or what the scientist will do next, the players learn the scientist has grown bored of the idea and wants to return to making things that really matter, that can really improve the lives of Ravnicans everywhere… like rocketpowered shoes. The wizard will then thank the players, take a swig of coffee, then walk over to a nearby table and begin making inquires to get the wall fixed. Possibly left stunned or silent, the players will eventually make their way out of the lab and back out into the street having officially had their first encounter with an Izzet Wizard.

Conclusion:

No one likes to be told no. No one enjoys having their ideas curtailed by this, that, or another thing. We want to be able to be creative how we want to be creative and damn the expense, to explode out of the box, and paint on every wall we can reach. However, sometimes instead of fighting the limitations and playing within the box, we can discover that the box has enough depth that we can discover amazing experiences we never would have thought of otherwise. After implementing my plan for the short Ravnica experience, I feel confident in saying that I was able to provide players a fun experience. After taking in some feedback, my players were happy with the content and now knew more about the world Ravnica than when they first sat down. And while the session was not perfect, I still feel the idea has plenty more depth to be explored and I cannot wait for the next opportunity to walk the streets of Ravnica.