Humans. I hate them. In Dungeons and Dragons, that is – they’ve got the best abilities and the most boring everything else. They’re a lodestone that tethers the players and the DM to medieval fantasy tropes, when we could use DnD to do literally anything. So imagine my delight when Wizards of the Coast teased its next DnD crossover with Magic: The Gathering – a new supplement set on the twin planes of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, a world with absolutely zero humans.
The new DnD crossover supplement was announced on Friday 21 during the MagicCon Chicago MTG event. WotC hasn’t yet said when it will fall on the DnD release schedule. So far all we’ve seen of the supplement is a piece of art by Jesper Ejsing, which shows a pair of kithkin goat riders in the foreground and some giants riding cloudgoats in the background. But as Lorwyn-Shadowmoor is an established MTG plane, we know a lot about this world already.
First, that name – why is it called Lorwyn-Shadowmoor? Well, it’s kind of two planes in one. Lorwyn was once a plane of endless summer daylight, while Shadowmoor was its night-time mirror. The planes once existed in a cycle, with one plane turning into the other every 300 years.
When WotC wrapped up the original run of Lorwyn and Shadowmoor MTG sets in 2008, the story concluded with a magic ritual that merged the planes together – though we don’t exactly know how they’re joined.
Lorwyn and Shadowmoor are based on European and particularly Celtic folk lore, tales more earthy and ancient than Grimm’s fairy stories. There’s a big focus on the cultures of the different species: proud giants, communal kithkin, trickster faeries, genocidally vain elves, wild goblins, elusive merfolk, passionate elementals, ancient treefolk, and mercurial shapeshifters. When Lorwyn transforms into Shadowmoor, the cultures and personalities of all these creatures metamorphose, becoming far more sinister – except for the faeries, who are always up to mischief.
Notice who’s missing? There are no humans native to Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, or at least there haven’t been so far. The MTG release schedule for 2026 will feature a new set of cards on the plane, and the current MTG metaplot involves interdimensional ‘Omen Paths’ that allow easy interplanar travel. Even so, this is a world where humans are extraplanar visitors, if they exist at all.
With the way that DnD races work in the 2024 rules, having a party with no humans – and indeed no Dwarves, Goliaths, Dragonborn, Halflings, Tieflings, Gnomes, or Aasimar – shouldn’t be a problem.
In the 2014 DnD rules non-human races got bonuses in various different DnD stats, which meant that there were mechanically better and worse race choices to pair with each of the DnD classes. So for example, a plane without Dragonborn and Tieflings would have worse Warlock, Bards, Paladins, and Sorcerers. Those stat bonuses are now tied to backgrounds, which are far more transferrable across worlds.
And frankly I’m glad to leave humans behind. They’re the best of the current race choices, as the free DnD feat they get is so much more flexible than the random spattering of bonuses each of the other species gain, even as it’s the least interesting. And while human culture on earth is infinitely and intriguingly varied, in DnD it’s a default setting which all the other species differ from in marked and more interesting ways.
I want to play a game with a party of absolute weirdos. Weirdos, I say! While I think we may not get rules for giant or treefolk characters in the Lorwyn DnD book – since PCs that are bigger than medium size completely mess up the balance of combat – we could well get the others. Goblins, elementals, and shapeshifters feel like a shoe in, and Kithkin may appear – though they are pretty much just Lorwyn’s Halflings.
Lorwyn specific DnD backgrounds could be excellent too, because even the familiar races have very unusual societies. The elves of Lorwyn are so vain as to be genocidal murderers, and ugliness is a sin that will see you cast out of their society (assuming you aren’t executed first). The Kithkin of Lorwyn work as tight knit communities, but when the plane becomes Shadowmoor they are bound by an eerie shared psychic awareness that turns them into viciously paranoid isolationists.
If you want to learn more about Lorwyn, both narratively and as a Magic set, I can’t recommend Spice8Rack’s video on it highly enough. I’ve embedded it below for your convenience:
Speaking of packing an RPG party with weirdos, I’ve been greatly enjoying The Painted Wasteland, a supplement for Old School Essentials that’s easily compatible with the oldest DnD editions and similar retroclones. You can read my initial thoughts on it here – since I wrote the article I’ve had a chance to run the campaign, and it’s living up to the extremely trippy art.
Source: Wargamer
