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This is a post to share a campaign I ran earlier this year. The campaign, titled A Starlit Day, took place a slightly modified version of the Magic the Gathering, MTG, setting of Ixalan. It was ran in a system new to all players and GM, Pathfinder 2nd Edition, better known as PF2. In addition to the new system, this was my first time GMing. I leaned many things during, developed even more, and it seemed that everyone enjoyed their time in the world. The players are fully aware and have agreed for the campaign to be posted. Hopefully you can find this world, its mechanics, and the characters enjoyable. If you’d like to run the same scenario or something like it, you are welcome to.
The setting of Ixalan was created by Wizards of the Coast for their Magic the Gathering set released in September of 2017, Ixalan, and its sequel set released in January of 2018, Rivals of Ixalan. The sales pitch of the setting is dinosaur riding Mesoamerican coded natives fighting off an invasion by vampire conquistadors, with pirates. While there is more to it than that: amphibious shamanistic merfolk, an El Dorado analog, the rebuilding of the brand’s then central character, a sharp example of the fallout of imperialism and conquest; as soon as the art book explored more of the world, I was drawn in and needed to run a campaign in it.
In order to better graft the setting onto PF2’s existing rulesets, several things were tinkered with beyond what was suggested in Planeshift: Ixalan, a free supplemental pdf for running MTG settings in D&D Fifth Edition. The overall history of the world was expanded upon and some events with unknown dates or time were given dates and time. Many of PF2’s native deities were grafted into the pirate group in order to show their supposed multi-culturalism and provide more options for clerics and champions. The player races were modified from existing PF2 ones or created wholesale: vampires from elves and dwarves, goblins had the tailed option better incorporated as Ixalan goblins are all tailed, humans were unchanged, merfolk from lizardfolk/iruxi and gnomes with a little elf thrown in, orcs from existing orc feats and halflings, and sirens from gnomes with a way to fly that wasn’t game breaking. Saprolings, MTG’s small plant/fungus creature, was represented by the leshy. The vampires were shifted from being undead to fiends, and the pirates were given a bit more cohesiveness as a group.
Analogies for lifelink, the vehicle card type, enchantment creatures, and the bestow mechanic were created as well. Only one really was tested by the players, vehicles, the others didn’t have a real chance to be strained.
This campaign was ran using the Ancestry Paragon variant ruleset, but it never really showed up as the players reached 5th level as part of the epilogue.
For those familiar with MTG’s lore or concerned about how this Ixalan relates to the official version, this is not a continuation of what officially happened and is its own version. Orazca doesn’t go to the Sun Empire, The Legion of Dusk isn’t immediately booted off Ixalan, and Gruulfriends is still a thing. There are references made to other planes and major events, I did my best to ensure the time lines matched up, as information was primarily sourced from the mtg wiki and the official stories. Yes I am a Vorthos.
If you have any questions, please ask. I'm always happy to explain my thought process.