Magic The Gathering's Head Designer Asks Community About A Return To Arabian-inspired Plane Rabiah

thegamer.com:

Magic The Gathering's head designer Mark Rosewater has been discussing with the community what a return to the game's Arabian-inspired world of Rabiah might look like.

Rabiah has only ever been seen once before, in the game's very first expansion, Arabian Nights. Since then, Rabiah has been considered one of the settings least likely to ever return, even giving name to Rosewater's "Rabiah Scale", where he ranks how likely a plane is to return.

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This discussion through Rosewater's Tumblr blog, Blogatog, was sparked by the successful return of Kamigawa in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. Like Rabiah, the original Kamigawa sets were considered by Wizards of the Coast to be a failure, making their return in the future less likely. Despite that, Neon Dynasty has come along and potentially been one of the best sets of all time, leading the community to ask whether, if Kamigawa can get a successful revival, could Rabiah as well?

Talking to the community through Blogatog, Rosewater said that Rabiah has a few challenges unique to it. In particular, Arabian Nights was essentially a straight adaptation of the Arabian Nights stories themselves, with characters like Scheherazade (as Shaharazad) and Ali Baba making appearances on the cards themselves. This contrasts to planes like Theros, which was based on Greek mythology but didn't use any names from the mythos itself – Zeus is Heliod, Hades is Erebos, and so on.

Another difficulty is that, compared to Kamigawa, which a return to was a common fan request for years, nobody has been really clamouring for Rabiah until now. According to Rosewater, this "makes it harder to tap into nostalgia equity" in the same