DianaOfTheRose | Background art TiamatTiamat by Chris Rahn

Diana Fay, also known as DianaOfTheRose, is a well-known Dungeons & Dragons content creator. Her work as a DM is documented in livestreams on Twitch, reels on Instagram, and videos on TikTok and YouTube. As she has begun a foray into Magic: The Gathering content, we have gotten the opportunity to interview her about her DMing, her content, and how Magic and D&D interweave in her hobby.

A huge thank-you to Diana for allowing us to conduct this interview with her!

Interview with DianaOfTheRose

How did you first get into Magic, and how did you get into Magic content creation?

I remember I first touched Magic back in early middle school, since a neighbor of mine had a ton of cards lying around and was super into gaming (way before I ever was). I gravitated towards them mostly for the art, and never really built any decks or learned how to play, before selling them for way too cheap at a garage sale a few years later.

Nowadays, it was actually my D&D creator friends who got me into it! Every time I was at a tabletop convention, folks would have decks on them and be playing in hotel rooms, media rooms, and even at the hotel bars we hang out at after hours.

One friend in particular, Austin Hartell from Dungeon Artist, once handed me a free metal token from his stock that was just absolutely gorgeous one day at Gen Con, and I wandered the rest of the con just holding it and showing it off to folks. Eventually, later that weekend, I gave in and wandered up to a booth selling cards, and asked them for something "earthy" and "druid-like" for a Commander deck, and they handed me a LathrilLathril deck for like $130.

Cut to now, and I'm several thousand dollars into the hobby (still mostly obsessed with the art, haha - and still blaming Austin as the root cause), and have turned around and dragged almost the entire rest of the TTRPG creators I know into it. We all have a server on Discord that I made to help us play online between cons via Spelltable and Tabletop Simulator.

Content-wise, videos just naturally follow whatever I'm into, to be honest - I definitely still have a majority of my content focused on TTRPGs, since that'll always be my biggest hobby, but I found it easy to sprinkle in humorous or beginner-friendly content about MTG. Notably, I'll always try to stay away from news-style or cEDH-rules-heavy style content that serves as tutorials on how to be good at the game.

Before Magic, you were originally well established as a Dungeons & Dragons content creator. In your experience, how much community crossover do the two games have?

Certainly a lot more than there used to be, or at least, it feels like it! I recall knowing (and hearing) almost nothing about the MTG community from my comments sections on the inside of the D&D space for years and years, and even when the Ravnica and Strixhaven D&D sourcebooks came out as multiverse crossovers, I didn't know anyone who played them outside of maybe one other friend I knew, who just liked the school setting of Strixhaven and didn't actually know anything about Magic at the time.

Nowadays, I find that I'm seeing more and more overlap, especially as more and more content creators from the D&D space have begun dabbling in creating MTG content [...] My audience was already really into Magic, and so once I began trickling in content for it, my comment section adapted smoothly (comments like "Wow, my favorite D&D creator is into Magic now! This is great!" or "Oh man, Diana's into Magic now, I can't wait for the inevitable credit card debt over shiny cardboard").

That being said, obviously, I'm seeing a lot more crossover now that I'm on the inside of both worlds.

To date, excluding multiple Secret Lair drops, Magic has two Dungeons & Dragons set releases. Speaking as a D&D creator, how faithful to the original source material do you feel those sets were?

To be honest, as a D&D creator, I actually spend surprisingly little time immersed in Forgotten Realms/D&D lore in general. Whenever I run my own games, I do so using a homebrewed world, and even modules are adapted with homebrew names and adjustments, so I really haven't spent too much time on the established planes.

And while I did play Baldur's Gate 3, I couldn't finish it (Act 3's sheer number of NPCs fried my computer when I tried to stream it and I just haven't had time to go back). So faithfulness-wise, I'm not super sure that I'm the best source on that one, but I know the Secret Lair lands and Strahd sets definitely drew me in!

Loreley Weisel-Librizzi, a freelance writer with Wizards, once blogged about the D&D alignment system in an expanded scope based on the Magic color pie. What other lessons could Dungeons & Dragons learn from Magic, in terms of system?

Ooh, this is a great question, and I love that analysis of the alignments versus the color pie! I do think that some of the mechanical aspects of spellcasting and spell-tweaking could be more heavily implemented into D&D to provide more customization for characters when it comes to expressing themselves in combat. I'm not an expert at mechanics and mechanic-building, so forgive me if this doesn't quite make sense, but I think that things like the sheer variety of spell/deck archetypes (if that's the right word) in MTG could be implemented into D&D in future expansions, spell variety, and subclass options.

For example, if you take blue players, a blue deck alone could really do all sorts of things. That deck box could be full of summons for a specific type of creature, countering other players' abilities, whittling down an opponent's defenses, being able to mess with the timing of phases and abilities, scrying into future turns, and so on. Meanwhile, if you want to do that sort of thing in D&D during combat, you have a very limited set of options.

And conversely, when someone comes up to me and tells me they're playing a certain subclass of Wizard, or even just a Wizard in general, I already have a really strong idea of what their turns are going to look like.

Magic does a really great job of introducing mechanics that make games, colors, and even individual rounds or turns unpredictable. D&D doesn't have nearly as much variety and unpredictability - people often follow the same exact patterns each combat, and within each subclass, there aren't too many customization options to tweak your loadout into something really unique.

I feel like, especially given the framework for how closely comparable different MTG color combinations and deck types are to D&D classes and subclasses, the framework and inspiration is already there. For example, can you imagine a Barbarian whose entire purpose is nullifying enemies' abilities and auras? Or a Sorcerer who can take over and change the target of an enemy's spell? TL;DR, I wish MTG's dynamism had more of a presence in D&D.

Pivoting to Commander, as someone relatively new to the game and community, how many Commander decks do you currently own, and what commanders are currently running as mains as of late?

Ooh man, I've managed to collect 19 Commander decks so far, hahaha. Lathril was my main gal and remains my favorite deck, but beyond that, I was gifted three others from friends and fans, received five Strixhaven ones from Wizards of the Coast [...], bought five on my own [...], and built five from bulk (largely unsuccessfully, but I just have fun doing it).

Valgavoth, Harrower of SoulsValgavoth, Harrower of Souls is probably a second favorite. I absolutely adore the Duskmourn set, and the deck works really well for quick games when it gets to past 1 a.m. on Tabletop Simulator and everyone at the table wants to wind down with a match that won't take an hour to play. Beyond that, I'm also quite fond of my Vren, the RelentlessVren, the Relentless deck, since it was the first I'd ever built myself with pretty limited cards at the time.

But in general, I just love having plenty of decks around to adapt to the table with!

What were the biggest challenges you faced when learning Magic: The Gathering? And coming from D&D, what was the most intuitive thing you learned about how to play?

I honestly think that Magic, rightfully so, has so many little niche rules that take quite a while to pick up on. For ages, I didn't know the difference between +1/+1 counters and a card simply receiving +1/+1, as one example. Or niche rules that differentiate between gaining life and setting a life total to a new number. I think a lot of my decks are intentionally quite simple in build (mostly typal decks) to help avoid potential rules pitfalls.

But thankfully, the MTG rules are very easily accessible, and the internet's forums have done a wonderful job of clarifying even the most niche of situations and interactions, so it's all easily resolved with a quick Google.

D&D is the same way - in fact, when I tell people not to be afraid of hopping behind the DM screen in my videos, my number one piece of advice for folks who are nervous about it is to not bother learning all the rules. There are far too many of them, and some of them are just really niche - like knowing how far your character can do a standing long jump, for instance.

I always let GMs know that whatever situation they're going to run into, they can always take two quick seconds to Google it and get a rules-as-written answer faster than it would take to try and memorize the whole Player's Handbook/Dungeon Master's Guide.

That being said, I do find that if anything, the rules complexity with Magic does serve as a barrier to people learning the game from the ground up, only because when it comes to Commander, especially, you really can't just start someone on any old deck. When I teach people to play, I hand them KrenkoKrenko, haha. Anything else might get too overwhelming for a new player with rare interactions and rules that don't come up every match. I guess that could be said for any game, really, but I find Magic has a lot more of it than other games.

Regarding what was easy and intuitive in TTRPGs, I actually found that the multiple-choice aspect of a sandbox-style game like D&D was super easy to get used to once you got out of the mindset of other games. At first, it's a bit tough to break out of the video game-style response to scenarios, where the GM tells you that you're in a conversation with someone, and your gut instinct is to say "Well, what are my options?" as if they're selecting from a menu.

As soon as I got used to the idea that anything I could think of, I could attempt, it was off to the races. And chances are, there would be a rule for it that the GM would be able to Google to guide me - I didn't have to actually know much about the game's crunch myself.

DianaOfTheRose (photo provided)

Finally, what would you say is the biggest lesson you learned from D&D that you have carried over into your Magic content?

I think a great takeaway from this new hobby actually has a lot to do with meeting people where they are when it comes to trying to get them into a game for the first time. I've always had beginner-friendly D&D/TTRPG content, which aims to help people explore and develop themselves through gaming (TTRPGs are proven to have significant psychological benefits, which is a huge part of why I make the content that I do), which meant breaking down complex Critical-Role-style sequences and cinematic moments into bite-sized templates that everyday GMs and players could use at home.

I circumvented the rules-heavy aspects of the game entirely and instead focused my content in on making a flavorful character or an impactful, emotional moment, or making combat out to be exciting and not just a series of robotic exchanges of blows. I found that approach to be a lot more inspiring for people who had a passing interest in TTRPGs but weren't sure if they wanted to take the leap. D&D isn't intimidating once you realize the PHB is the least important part, and that the rules don't matter until they come up individually; it's the character expression and creativity that matter.

I took that approach when I was beginning my MTG content and first really pulling my TTRPG friends into it. I would start by asking them what type of game they wanted to play, what their favorite archetypes in other games are, and what styles of player characters appeal to them the most. Then from there I'd hand them a deck that I think they would find pretty or interesting, and then we just jumped into a game from there and tackled how phases work as they came up (walking through just a few phases at a time, mana, playing spells, and most importantly, ignoring combat for several turns just until they got the hang of the rest first).

It's had a 100% success rate so far when it comes to coaxing my friends to give it a try, haha - giving my cottagecore friend a Ms. BumbleflowerMs. Bumbleflower precon, showing a Wizard-player a spellslinging blue-red deck, gifting a set of Uncharted Secret Lair cards to a nostalgic PlayStation gamer, etc.

Lowering barriers to gaming is key, and that includes the mental ones.

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