OR MKM and DFT Were Good, Actually
By Rames Williams
Murders at Karlov Manor and Aetherdrift are, on the surface, two wildly different sets. One’s a deep and involved murder mystery, and the other is a high-octane race between ten factions and across three planes. But despite the obvious differences, they have more in common than one might think. Both had a somewhat lukewarm reception by the fanbase, and both were unconventional return sets to previously introduced settings. The way they approached the archetypical return set was drastically different than usual, and these differences are both the source of their contention and, in my opinion, their greatest strength. By analyzing what makes these sets tick, we can find the core issue of their poor reception, and whether they are actually as bad as people say.
What’s a Genre Set?
Both Murders at Karlov Manor and Aetherdrift focus heavily on a specific theme that can be found in other pieces of media. I’ve started calling them “Genre Sets”. Genre sets are defined by embracing a given genre in their themes and mechanics. Contrast a set like Outlaws of Thunder Junction, which is very much building off the trope space of the Wild West, with something like Lorwyn Eclipsed or Alara block, which instead focus more on creating a setting in which to have interesting interactions take place. Lorwyn and Alara still pull on some level from genre- it’s impossible for magic to not be in some way referential- but the references are more toned down compared to hard genre sets. MKM and DFT are the main examples I’m talking about today, but we could just as easily apply this definition to Streets of New Capenna or the more recent and much-beloved Edge of Eternities.
Where Murders at Karlov Manor and Aetherdrift differ from the usual genre sets, however, is that they are also revisits to previous planes through the new lens of a particular genre. Usually, when Wizards of the Coast decides to engage with a particular genre, they either create a new plane to do so or pull an older plane out of cold storage to wholly reinvent, as in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. MKM and DFT, on the other hand, are not quite reinventions of their planes, but more reflections, something that focuses on a given subculture within the boundaries of the established setting. To use the term WotC themselves use, these are “Backdrop sets”, a technique they first put into practice with Lost Caverns of Ixalan. Lost Caverns of Ixalan was supposedly also a Genre revisit, but the theme Wizards chose for it was “Underground Set,” which is so vague it barely qualifies as a genre. The theme of exploration and delving into previously unknown wonders were such a natural fit for Ixalan that the new lore and worldbuilding slot in seamlessly, and LCI ended up becoming more of a setting-focused set like Lorwyn, with an occasional random Minecraft reference. As such, I won’t be discussing it at length.
What’s Up with the Hats?
One of the most common complaints about Murders at Karlov Manor was the question of why everyone on Ravnica was wearing detective hats. This complaint confuses and astounds me to this day because it is, at its core, a question of why there are so many detectives in the murder mystery detective set. In talking to others about this, the key to the issue seems to be the way people come to magic sets assuming the cards in a set demonstrate the totality of the plane, rather than simply a small fraction of it. When the average player sees a bunch of detectives on Ravnica, they’re not seeing a small number of crime solvers in the Ravnica they know and love, they’re seeing Ravnica suddenly transmogrify into a murder mystery noir plane. Hence arises the complaints that MKM doesn’t “feel” like Ravnica. It’s a departure from what Ravnica sets were in the past and balks those expectations for better and for worse.