Should questions with the dungeons-and-dragons tag include the worlds of Magic the Gathering?

Question

Simply put, the dungeons-and-dragons tag is for edition-agnostic questions about Dungeons and Dragons. By default, should questions about the worlds and/or lore of Dungeons and Dragons in general without specifying a particular world include the worlds and lore of Magic: the Gathering?

I ask this question because over the last few years, Wizards of the Coast has been releasing a series of pseudo-official PDF documents titled Plane Shift that focus on playing Dungeons and Dragons 5e in those worlds, and they recently released a hardcover supplement named The Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica, which was a book about playing Dungeons and Dragons 5e on Ravnica.

As a result, whether we should consider the worlds of MtG as a part of the worlds of DnD seems ambiguous to me. If so, it also raises the question of if questions on the lore or worlds of MtG specifically are on-topic for this StackExchange site, or if the tabletop games site has jurisdiction over them (they obviously have jurisdiction over questions about the game itself).

Answer 1

No, Ravnica Is Not Part Of The Default D&D World Lore

I don't think everyone else is getting what your question is.

You're saying that some people ask lore questions they just tag with dungeons-and-dragons because there are certain commonalities between the assumed D&D default settings over time that makes "How do bugbears reproduce" or "Why do Asmodeus and Belial hate each other" answerable largely with information from any edition. So does the Magic: The Gathering milieu count as part of that since it's a published D&D setting?

The answer is no. The reason this kind of "generic D&D lore" question is valid at all is because of the commonality of that core assumed D&D setting that is a milieu unto itself. It's a bit of a weird thing - Dragon magazine articles about "the ecology of this" or "race that" often didn't bother to be beholden to Greyhawk or the Realms or anything, they were presented as "you know - that's how it works in D&D." When game worlds gain stronger character that takes them away from that "Tolkien-lite" Gygaxian-heritage format, however, then questions crossing edition/setting don't make sense at all.

This is the case for the M:tG setting. It's a very distinct setting based on a rich IP of its own. How elves work there is not highly relevant to how Player's Handbook D&D elves have worked across editions - they're not going to worship Corellon Larethian, etc. This is the case for other settings too; Eberron and Dark Sun were deliberately created to be non-core settings that don't share that base lore assumption. Asking a generic dungeons-and-dragons lore halfling question about what halflings like to eat that gets answered "Well, they're cannibals of course" (because they are in Dark Sun's world of Athas) is pointless. That's not what anyone is asking.

Being able to ask lore question about base D&D is a somewhat unique exception to lore being about campaign worlds and rules being about rulesets (of course many non-D&D games just publish one set of rules tied to one campaign world...) because of the odd "default D&D world" that emerged early in the game and has been continually embraced. Distinct campaign worlds that deliberately set up their own lore in opposition to "core D&D" lore are not useful answers for "core D&D" lore questions.

But It's An RPG Campaign Setting So Ask About It

But it's a published RPG campaign setting, so feel free and ask about it specifically here. Some questions might better be asked on B&CG to get an answer, especially if you're looking for lore from the card game not the RPG, but eh. Use ravnica just like you'd use eberron or whatever. Game system isn't really that helpful of a tag in that case but you might use it to keep people who don't understand that it's a D&D setting from bugging you about "take that to B&CG!!!"

Answer 2

If it is relevant

Lets, go through the relevant tags and their intended use:

• dungeons-and-dragons is for the set of systems of D&D, it does not itself describe a setting, but there are lore questions which spans both multiple systems and often multiple settings and so this tag is applicable.

• Any setting can have its own tag, such as forgotten-realms and eberron. These setting tags don't have to be exclusive to one family of systems either, such as interface-zero¹ which exists for Savage Worlds, Pathfinder, and Fate.

So, questions about MtG worlds would have their own tag (AFAIK only ravnica exists at the moment), and may have the dungeons-and-dragons tag if it is relevant to multiple editions of D&D.

Whether lore from MtG is applicable to questions about D&D is going to have to be up to askers, and possibly more so answerers, similarly to how it is up to them to mix lore between editions and settings (or care at all, but if they take part in questions its probably safe to say they do).

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1: Chosen because I interacted with a question on it today and no other reason.

Answer 3

Magic: The Gathering lore in D&D questions

If someone asks about D&D lore with the dungeons-and-dragons tag, and someone answers with Magic: The Gathering lore that accurately answers the question, more power to them, I think. I think if it were me asking the question, there is a good chance that such an answer wouldn’t be the one I accept—but I probably would upvote. Obviously, it would be a better answer still if they connected the Magic lore to other D&D lore, or referenced D&D Magic products, but I don’t think either is absolutely necessary.

Questions about Magic: The Gathering lore

Note that we do not have any questions of this sort yet, and we should do nothing until we do. Still, some thoughts on how to handle it if such questions get asked.

If someone wants to ask about Magic: The Gathering lore, they should use an appropriate tag—probably magic-the-gathering to emphasize we’re talking about it within the context of D&D. (Magic does refer to its setting as “the multiverse,” but that name is far too generic to use for this purpose.) Such questions could probably also be asked at Board & Card Games, but it’s OK for a question to be on-topic at two different Stack Exchange sites—being on-topic there doesn’t automatically make it off-topic here. Of course, questions about the actual cards and rules of Magic: The Gathering are and always will be off-topic here and should be migrated to Board & Card Games.

I don’t think it would be necessary to use dungeons-and-dragonsmagic-the-gathering for questions about Magic lore; that combination should probably be reserved for questions dealing with how Magic’s planes are embedded in D&D’s multiverse, campaigns traveling between Magic planes and traditional D&D planes, and so on. On the other hand, we do tend to use dungeons-and-dragonseberron et al. for other D&D settings, so maybe we should.

Questions about individual Magic: The Gathering planes

The problem with dungeons-and-dragonsmagic-the-gathering then becomes, if someone wants to ask about the lore of any particular Magic plane, like Ravnica or Zendikar, that would imply they should use dungeons-and-dragonsmagic-the-gatheringravnica which is super problematic when there are only 5 tags allowed on a question. Tags should not be “nested” like that. I would be inclined to say they really ought to just use ravnica for that—but again, that’s inconsistent with how eberron and the like are used.

Honestly, it’s beyond the scope of this discussion, but I’d actually push for eliminating “redundant” uses of dungeons-and-dragons with D&D setting tags. Probably deserves its own question.

Until then, though, since we have no magic-the-gathering and no real need for it, using dungeons-and-dragonsravnica is fine.