Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1011: Mental Processing

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

In this podcast, I talk about all the different ways cards can impact the players mentally and how we have to account for it in design.

I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today I'm talking about mental processing. So, a little while back I did a podcast on logistics, which talks about all the extra physicalness that comes with certain cards. And I said that there was a companion to that that we care about, which we call mental processing. And what that means is, the metaphor I will use, because I like metaphors, is imagine a human brain like an engine. And as you rev your engine, it starts getting up into the red zone, right? There's a point at which you're just revving a little too hard.

into the red zone, right? There's a point at which you're just revving a little too hard. And so the thing we've got to be careful about is, if we make, like, whenever we make cards, it's going to make people have to think and process. And some of that is good. Magic is a mental game, you know. It's a game in which people want to think, you know. But you can exhaust people's ability,

and you can overrun, you know, you can rev their engine a little too hard, right? You can make them think a little too hard. So we want to be very conscious when we make cards to think about what mental processing is going into it. Now, another tricky thing is that different things matter to different players, that there's different things to process, and in general, as you get better at the game, you learn to shorthand some processes, and then your mental energy goes elsewhere. So I'm going to walk through sort of the three stages.

I did a podcast in the past where I talked about complexity, and I divide a complexity into three parts. What I called comprehension complexity, which is what do my cards do? There is board complexity. How do my cards interact with all the other cards? And there's strategic complexity, sort of how do I win? What do I have to do big picture to win? In general, comprehension complexity is about my hand, the here and now, what can I do? Board complexity is about the battlefield

and dipping into other zones, but sort of it's still, like, comprehension complexity is immediate. What can I do right now? Board complexity thinks comprehension complexity is immediate. What can I do right now? Board complexity thinks about the whole turn. What's going to happen this turn? How do things interact? Strategic complexity thinks multiple turns ahead. It's thinking not just about what's happening now,

but what will happen next turn, or in three turns from now. It's thinking in the long term. Normally what happens is, as you play Magic, you start thinking about the immediacy, which is comprehension complexity, and eventually graduate to border complexity and then to strategic complexity. Now that doesn't mean that if you're thinking about strategic complexity, you never have to think about comprehension complexity or never have to think about border complexity.

It just kind of adds on. What it means is somebody who's in the phase about comprehension complexity or never have to think about board complexity. It just kind of adds on. What it means is somebody who's in the phase of comprehension complexity usually isn't ready yet to worry about board complexity or strategic complexity. Mostly what happens is you start playing magic. Magic is a lot. There's a lot to process. There's a lot of mental processing. You tend to focus where you need your attention,

and you tend to ignore things that either you've learned to shorthand or you haven't learned to understand yet so you just don't think about it. What we've learned about a lot of, you know, beginning players is there's a lot of stuff they just don't bother. A, they either they know there's something to think about it's overwhelming for them or they don't even know yet it's something to think about and it's overwhelming for them, or they don't even know yet it's something to think about. A lot of strategic complexity is just invisible to the beginning player. We'll get there. Okay, so let's start with comprehension complexity. So what are the mental processing that goes into comprehension complexity?

So first off, the absolute earliest stuff is just understanding how the game works. How do I cast the card? What does a mana cost mean? What do the different card types mean? You know, so the first thing you have to sort of get by is just understanding the basic workings of the game. You know, if you watch an absolute beginner, all they think about for the first game is just,

what can I do? How do I do it? And just learning the mechanics in a very broad sense of the game. Okay, now once you sort of understand the basic gist of what it means to cast a card, the next thing that starts coming to play is vocabulary. So there are a lot of, I mean, magic, while is, whatever, I mean, magic's in many languages. And while a lot of the words are in, you know, let's say you're playing in English, are in English, a bunch of them really mean something beyond what you could know without learning what they mean,

the vocabulary words. Usually those are key words or ability words. They're just words that have a meaning within the context of the game. When I see vigilance, vigilance in a vacuum doesn't necessarily mean anything. I've talked about this in some other podcasts where the better the word, the more it carries weight. But nonetheless, even if we pick good words, you still sort of have to make the association.

Oh, vigilance means I don't tap when I attack. Oh, okay. This means that. And there's a lot of vocabulary in magic. There's a lot of words that, I mean, some of our words, you know, some of our words, you know, but not in the context, you know, like target, some of them are words you know. Some are words you know, but not in the context you know. Like target, for example. It's not how you use the word target in normal speaking.

So you have to learn what target means. You have to learn what dies means. You have to, there's lots and lots. What does fight mean? There's a lot of words that you have to learn. Now, hopefully, we've done our job, tried to make them as flavorful as possible and put them in context where you can pick them up.

But nonetheless, when you first look at a card, you have to understand the vocabulary of the card. There might be symbols involved. You know, for example, I mean, obviously, there's the mana symbols, which come with learning the basics of the game, and the tap symbol, and the colorless mana symbol. But there's other symbols that come along along the way. Maybe you're seeing a hybrid symbol for the first time. Maybe you're seeing Phyrexian mana. Maybe you're seeing snow mana. Maybe you're seeing energy. You know, there are symbols along the way that mean something and you have to understand what those symbols mean. Symbols, we found, are a little bit more overwhelming than vocabulary words.

And the reason is, if the vocabulary word is in your language that you speak, at least you recognize the word as a word. Maybe you don't know quite what it means, but there's clues that come from the word. Where visuals tend to not give you nearly as much clues of what's going on. So symbols

are a little more intimidating to players. Now, some number of symbols is needed to make the game work, but we're very careful not... like you could... a lot of times people say, hey why don't you take this concept and just make a picture out of it? And the answer is if we did that too much it would make the game even more intimidating. Yes, vocabulary is intimidating, not as intimidating as symbols that you just don't know what they mean. Because there's not a lot of handhold on symbols to understand what they mean. Okay, next. There are a lot...

We put variables in magic. X is probably the most famous variable. And just understanding what that means can be complex. Like, we tend not to put X spells at common. We do every once in a while. And one of the reasons is, you know, people can call into customer service and ask questions. And we've learned over the years

that X spells are just complicated to people. That math gets complicated for people and understanding variables is complicated. The other big thing is that costs, there are, you know, you can think of the normal mana cost, but there's things that go beyond that, right? You could have an extra cost, like kicker, where, you know, you could pay the normal cost, but if you pay more, you can change the card or get an additional effect. You could have an alternative costs, like Prototype,

where I could cast a cost for this, and it's this thing, or I could play it for this, and it's another thing. And that other thing usually is different. In the case of Prototype, it's a smaller card. There are additional costs. Maybe you have to pay life. Maybe you have to discard a card. Maybe you have to, you know, there are other costs that can come

along. And one of the things that can be very complicated, and this is not just for beginners, is like, if we have a card that says, hey, for two mana you can do this, but for four mana you can do that, players have to realize that even though, if they look

at the upper right-hand corner, it says a two on it, it's actually a two or a four, right? You have this alternative cost you can cast. And so it's important, like there's a lot of complexity in trying to understand the nature of what is going on and how you can cast a certain card. Sometimes there's requirements to cast cards, right? There's restrictions. So you also have to be aware of that. Oh, I can only cast this. I mean, Sorcery Instant do that as a general rule.

I can only cast sorceries at a certain time. But there are also cards that say, only cast this after blockers are declared. Only cast this on your turn. There are other restrictions. You have to learn those restrictions. Okay, the next thing that gets into when you're trying to comprehend something, I talked about vocabulary. Well, the next level up is templating. So, as I like to say, cards, you know, if you play with English cards, cards aren't quite in English.

They're in sort of a magic ease. You know, they're templated in such a way that if we have whenever or when or if, you know, if there's the word target, you know, there's certain things on the card that say something about how the card works. And so part of understanding how a card works is understanding the templating so you can understand what's going on. works is understanding the templating so you can understand what's going on. And that templating, I mean, some cards are pretty straightforward. Draw two cards. Okay, it's not that hard to get that off on something. Target player draws two cards. Okay, I now understand what targeting is. And I have to understand, you know, one of the things that will happen on something like target

player is there's some strategic complexity. Oh, there might be a reason why I'm not the person drawing the cards. I'm going to defeat my opponent by making him draw the last few cards. Or I'm playing in a multiplayer game where I want to help my friend or something. You know, there is, as you keep adding things on, it gets more, you know, the more text there are, the more complicated it can be. And the more you're sort of going deep into templating, the more complex a card. And there's some famous cards where we didn't template them particularly well. And because of that, people are like, what? What does this card do?

And another important part of that is what we call intuitiveness. And another important part of that is what we call intuitiveness, which is players don't tend to understand cards if they don't understand the essence of what the card is doing. And a class example, so there's a card called One with Nothing. It costs a single black mana, and the effect of the card was discard your hand. And a lot of people really had trouble understanding the card, not because the words didn't make sense to them. Discard your hand. Most people, you know, you have to know what discard is and what hand is,

but those are pretty basic terms. But the idea that why would I do that? Why would I spend a card and mana to discard my hand? What's the reason for that? And the fact that it wasn't intuitive to why you'd want to do that, that players sort of, like, it was hard for them to process it. Not because they couldn't process the words or even the template,

but they couldn't process the idea. And so we have to be careful that, in general, we want intuitive to work in our favor. If a card seems like it should do something, we kind of want it to do that thing. We don't want you to go, well, it seems like it does this, but it doesn't do that. So we have to be careful about that. Another things that come into comprehension is rules. That magic, you know, the rule book is, I would say, thicker than a phone book.

And then I realized that a lot of my listeners might not have ever interacted with a phone book. Way back when, in the olden days, you would, it's your house, you could deliver this giant book that had everybody's phone number in it. It's how you would look up phone numbers. But anyway, phone books are multiple inches thick. That's why. So the rules of all printed up are inches thick.

Think of a book. Thicker than War and Peace. It's, you know, very lengthy. And so the rules, you have to understand the rules and we try on common cards to make sure the rules are pretty straightforward. But when you get up to rares and mythical rares, the rules can

get wonky. And we can definitely and plus we'll introduce new mechanics. So for example, let's take split cards. I did a podcast on mana values the other day, and I talked about how something like a split card, you know, first you have to understand how do I cast a split card, and then you start getting things about other cards caring about mana value of cards, and what's the mana value of a split card.

You know, things can clearly, you know, there's many levels of understanding how to use something. You know, just the base case of what is a split card, how to use a split card, what does that mean, what's on the stack, what's on the battlefield... well, not necessarily on the battlefield of the split card, but... Anyway, the rules can be something that you have to navigate and understand, and even for an advanced player, you know, when we have new mechanics, you've got to wrap your brain around it. And every once in a while we do something like mutate, which is a very complex mechanic. And we don't do mechanics that complex most of the time.

But every once in a while, we find something that's really fun. Like, okay, it's complex, but it's fun. And we do do that from time to time. But anyway, understanding the rules, that adds another complexity to it. The other big thing, the final thing for comprehension complexity is decisions. That certain cards make you choose something. Most obvious is they make you choose targets. Sometimes it's a single target.

Sometimes it's multiple targets. But maybe they make you choose a color. Maybe they make you choose a card type. Maybe they make you choose a creature type. You know, there's cards that make you make decisions. Maybe it's modal and you have to choose how many modes, you know, one or two. Maybe the card, like I said, has an alternative cost, you know, or an additional cost or a different way to cast the card. And you have to process what's the best way to do that. So there's a lot. The mere

act of just understanding what a card does and then being able to cast it, that unto itself is a lot. And even though it's the beginners that have the biggest issues with comprehension complexity, it's an issue that goes on, you know, when we introduce a new mechanic, you have to understand that new mechanic. You know, there is no matter what we do, there's always cards that you have to comprehend. We always make new cards. There's always new sets. You know, especially in limited sometimes where you're playing cards that you might never have played before because you opened it up

and it's in your colors. You know, there's always comprehension complexity. Now, what tends to happen is, as you start to learn magic, you start to learn the vocabulary of magic. You start to learn the symbols. start to learn the vocabulary of magic. You start to learn the symbols. You start to understand what variables are. You understand how different costs work. You start to understand templating and rules. And you get a better sense of what

the decisions you have to make are. So what happens is you start shorthanding those. Not that new things can't come along that are confusing, but you shorthand them. And now you focus the next phase, which is board complexity. So board complexity is all about sort of understanding not just the card you're casting, but the relationship with everything else. And when a beginner casts a card, they're like, I'm just understanding what I can cast. They're not really thinking about the ramifications of what's going to happen to the board. So let's talk a little bit about board complexity. Okay, so the first big thing of board complexity is memory. And there's two big memory components. One is, well, I'm sorry, before I get to memory, I guess the biggest thing is card interaction. I have to understand how my card,

how the card I'm casting interacts with all the other cards. And then once it's on the battlefield, how it interacts with all the other cards. I have to understand where there's relationships. And one of the things that can get out of hand pretty fast is we can't have too many different... Like, for example, let's say we're making a set about creature types. We have to be careful that we don't make it too intermeshed. The classic example is,

let's imagine I have a card that says all my goblins get plus one plus one. And then I have another card that says all my elves get haste. Or not even haste. Let's say all my elves get plus one, plus one.

All my goblins get first rank. So now, let's say we decide to make some elf goblins. The more classic example might be goblins get plus one, plus one and warriors get first rank. So let's say, that's a little cleaner example, I guess, that we would actually do.

So I have a goblin warrior. Well, and then I have a Goblin that's not a Warrior, and then I have a Warrior that's not a Goblin. Well, my Goblin Warrior gets plus one, plus one, and first strike in combat. My Goblin that's not a Warrior gets plus one, plus one. My Warrior that's not a Goblin gets first strike. And as you start adding those on, it just becomes a lot harder to figure out how things interact.

So we have to be very careful with the card interactions to make sure that we are limiting how many how things interact. So we have to be very careful with the card interactions to make sure that we are limiting how many different things interact. And normally what that means is we tend to concentrate what we care about. And so this is a theme I will hit across on board complexity. That when we're doing interactions, let's say we're doing creature types,

we want to be careful not to make sure, like, usually we want to be careful that things don't line up too often where following what's going on becomes too hard. And that's a matter of thinking through about how things interact in a way that they're not splintering too much. Okay, another thing I think I talked about was memory. So memory, there's two main things in memory. One is what I call repetition, which is I have a card that's going to do something.

I have to remember when it's going to do that thing. Usually for memory, it's a repetition issue with, hey, every upkeep, I have a card that's going to do something. So I have to remember that every upkeep, that card is going to do something. I got to remember that. Or at end of turn or end of combat, there's different times

that things can happen. Normally in the set, once again, if we're playing in a space that makes you care about something, we tend to, if there's a lot of cards that make you care,

we'll make you care at the same time usually. So that like, okay, in this environment, this limited environment, okay, we are going to care about something happening at the end of turn,. So that, like, okay, in this environment, in this limited environment, okay, we are going to care about something happening at the end of turn, but we're going to make the things mostly happen at the end of turn so you can think about them at the same time.

Or sometimes, for example, we've started doing sagas, and so maybe we'll make other things that happen at a similar time as sagas so you can think about them at the same time. The other memory thing has to do with sort of where things are at, not just on the battlefield, but in other zones. Like, oh, I have a card in my graveyard that can interact with the battlefield. And one of the things we tend to do is when things sit in other zones, we want to be careful to make

sure that there's not too much surprise to them. Like, for example, flashback cards sit in the graveyard, you can cast them. We tend not to make instants in the graveyard that are combat relevant. So the opponent doesn't go, okay, I'm just not paying attention to the graveyard, and all of a sudden I get blown out because of something that was just sitting there that I wasn't paying attention to. So we want to be careful with that. Now, I talk about repetition of effects, you have to remember, there's also triggers. So triggers are, I have to remember that whenever something happens, this is going to happen. Now there's two different ways we do triggers. We do positive triggers and negative triggers. Positive triggers means I get a benefit, I get a bonus.

Usually we do positive triggers as not mandatory, meaning you can choose to do them or not do them. So whenever you do thing X, this can happen. And the reason we make most of them optional is if you forget to do them, one of the things that's trickiest in competitive play, in tournament play, is on mandatory things that somebody forgets it and you got a call of a judge and like, okay, let's recreate the situation and what happened since then. And it can get very messy. So not all the time, but a lot of the time with positive things, we make them something that is an option.

So if you forget to do that, okay, you just forgot to do it. And then the incentive to do it is, hey, there's this incentive because you get a reward, so remember it. Negative things are where, okay, I have a trigger that says a bad thing is going to happen to me. That we have to take mandatory. Obviously, it's a drawback, so we can't make it optional. You would never choose to do it. But those are trickier because we have to make them mandatory. And so the key is we want to make them big enough that the player can remember them.

One of the good examples is for a long time, we've done like sort of life loss, you know, every turn to lose a life. And what we found is that one life loss usually isn't quite enough to remember. And so we're doing more, like, two life loss and stuff. Just, we want to make sure that if it's negative, it's big impact enough that you're encouraged to remember it and your opponent's encouraged to remember it. It is your job as the person who controls the card to remember it, but it is also the opponent's job, at least in a tournament setting, to remind you of things. The other things we want to keep care of is the number of different things you have to care about.

Like, when you look at the board, if there's too much going on, I tell a story about the beginning of New World Order where we were playing at the pre-release for Morning Tide. And Morning Tide had tribal... Lorwyn cared about races, and Morning Tide cared about classes. And so, I was talking about the Goblin Warriors

thing. That was just happening all over the place. And there was just too much going on. There was too much to observe that people couldn't... Their engines, their brains were revving too hard, and they just too much going on. There's too much to observe that people couldn't, their engines, their brains were revving too hard. And they just couldn't remember everything. So we want to be very careful when we're making a set, sort of what we care about. A very common thing is, let's say, for example, we're doing something where we care about something we don't normally care about. Landfall could be an example.

Oh, we're doing landfall and you're caring about lands being played. And that's not something you normally think about. So most often, you know, we'll do a bunch of Landfall on a set. And so, you know, we'll make a theme out of a set. Okay, well, we're on Zendikar and Landfall's the thing. And keep in mind land because land really matters. And so a lot of times what we'll do

is we'll build themes into a set where it really is reinforcing that this matters more. So especially in Limited, you can keep in mind that, oh, I got to matter about this thing. I don't normally matter about this thing, but here I do. Okay, so once you understand board complexity, once again, there's a lot of shorthanding that goes on in board complexity,

a lot of little things you can remember that help you, as you get better at playing Magic, you can read the board faster. So the final type of complexity is strategic complexity. So strategic complexity has to do with thinking beyond just the single turn. First off, there's length of effect. So the default for us is, whenever we do an effect, we tend to make the effect end of turn, unless, normally, if it lasts longer than a turn, we tend to make the effect end of turn, unless normally, if it

lasts longer than a turn, we tend to give you some reminder. It's a card that sits on it, or an equipment, or it has a counter on it, or there's an enchantment sitting on the battlefield to remind you, or an artifact. There's something that's sitting there as a means to remind you.

Now, we don't 100% do that. Like, every once in a Now, we don't 100% do that. Like, every once in a while, we'll have an effect that ends at the beginning of your next turn. And that's a little out of the ordinary. And we have to be careful. You know, we have to be careful how long we remember things. And then, if it's longer, we have to make sure that you understand the duration. And then we give you some means to remember.

Now, one of the trickiest things is effects that only last for so long. Vanishing is a classic example. So Vanishing is a card that comes with so many counters. You remove one counter every turn. And when the last counter is removed, it goes away. Now, you have to remember to remove the counter every turn. And I got into this a little bit on logistics. But there's still a mental thing.

You have to remember to do it every turn. And when you're thinking strategically, you have to keep that in mind. So in strategic thinking, strategic complexity, there's two big things we talk about in magic, what we call the clock and outs. What a clock means is I need to keep track of how much damage my opponent can do and how many turns I've left before that unchecked would beat me. So let's say my opponent has three power in the air and I don't have any means to block flyers. I do have means to block the ground creatures, but I don't have means to block flyers. That means every turn they can do three damage. Let's say I'm at nine life. I have a clock of

three turns. If I don't find an answer to that flying creature within the end of three turns, I will be dead. That's what they call the clock. And then outs are understanding what you have in your deck that can help you solve the problem. So I have a clock on me. My outs are, oh, well, what do I have in my deck that can defeat this thing that's going to beat me? And the reason outs are important is you have to do what's called play to your outs, which means that I have to remember what I needed. Sometimes the outs are straightforward. Oh, it's just a murder that I can just

target the creature and destroy it. That's straightforward. Well, I got to draw it. But sometimes it's like, well, if this situation is true and I draw this card, I can defeat them. So sometimes you have to sort of playing to your outs means I have to do all the things. So if I draw this card, I can defeat them. So sometimes you have to sort of, playing to your arts means,

I have to do all the things, so if I draw the card, I'm ready to use it when I draw it. And so that requires you thinking ahead. So a lot of strategic complexity is saying, okay, I need to understand what I have, what it's doing. I need to understand the comprehension of the cards in my hand. I need to understand the board complexity, what's going on. But then I need to think long term. One of the classic things I talk about

is watching Mark Justice. He was a famous pro player. I was at a store tournament. It wasn't a pro tour. And he was playing. I was watching him. And he was doing things I just didn't understand. Like, why is he doing that? And then seven turns later, he plays a card and wins the game that only would have been possible if he hadn't, for seven turns, been doing this thing that I wasn't understanding. He had figured out, like, he knew his outs, and he understood his clock, and so he was working toward there. Even though I couldn't see it, because I mean, I didn't understand his deck,

I didn't necessarily know, you know, I couldn't read the board as well as he could. But he was playing toward his deck. I didn't necessarily know, you know, I couldn't read the board as well as he could. But he was playing toward his outs. And so that's a lot of strategic thinking, is just thinking many turns ahead. Now, for strategic thinking, it's important that you understand stuff like the rules, that there's a lot of interactions and a lot of things that you need to know how things interact. Like sometimes your outs is, oh, card A and card B will interact in such a way that it will allow me to get rid of a threat or to create a threat. It allowed me to either end the game for myself or stop the game from ending for my opponent, and I need to understand those interactions.

Or I just need to understand how a single card works. Like I said, comprehension complexity can apply because sometimes if I understand how the card works, it'll give me options. And that's an important thing, knowing what each card can do. For example, I talked earlier about targeted draw, where target player draws a card. Knowing that if my opponent has to draw a card and can't draw a card, they lose the game. So if I have draw two and my opponent has only one card in the library,

that draw two card can win me the game. So it can be a win condition, but I have to be in the right state where that will be. And I, as a player, have to know that's even a possibility. Another thing that happens that's important for teacher complexity is understanding the different functionality. There are cards that can do different things, and you have to understand what the activations are. What can you do that allows the card to do something? And sometimes, once again, maybe you're building towards something.

Or maybe this card can do something and interact in a way that'll allow me to do what I need to do. And maybe I don't have all the component pieces yet, but at least if I understand the component pieces, maybe when I'm chump blocking, I don't chump block the piece that's going to win me the game because I know when I draw my other card, those two things will win the game for me. So I want to be careful to protect it. That is the kind of strategic thinking. Also, cards with decisions take on a different means when looked through a strategic lens. Let's say, for example, I'm picking a creature type. Well, if I'm just thinking about the here and now, maybe I look at what's in my hand, what's on the board, and I go, okay, right

now, this is the best option. But if you're being strategic about it, you might say, well at what's in my hand, what's on the board, and I go, okay, right now, this is the best option. But if you're being strategic about it, you might say, well, what's left of my deck? What other things could I draw? So when you're making a decision, you might make the decision not based on what you know now, but what's potentially true. And once again, if you're looking ahead, maybe that's my out. Maybe that is the means by which I can answer my opponent's clock. I have to make decisions for cards that don't maximize right now, but maximize what's best for the game as a whole. And that is the biggest thing about strategic complexity,

is it is about how things interact in a different context. So there's a concept I call... What do I call it? I'm going to put in the name of it. The idea of it is, I'll give the name in a second. The idea of the concept is that beginners can't see a lot of strategic complexity. And they, because of that, you can do things that will add a lot of strategic complexity for the advanced player that the beginning player can't see. Because the beginner isn't prepared yet to see that. So that's a way to take a card that seems very simple on its surface, making something easy for the beginning player,

but allows the player who wants more complexity out of it to get it. Oh, Lenticular. It's called Lenticular Design. but allows the player who wants more complexity out of it to get it. Oh, lenticular. It's called lenticular design. And the idea, a lenticular thing is a thing that you can hold where it looks one way, one direction,

and one way, different direction. As you turn it, it looks differently. And that's the idea that different cards can be perceived by different players

because the important thing to remember, so my wrap-up today is, I've been talking a lot about mental processing through the player cycle, right? When you first begin, here's the stress points. And as you get better, here are the stress points. As you get even better than that, here are the stress points. The other thing I want to keep in mind to stress is another issue that comes up is different kinds of thinking are hard for different kinds of players.

Some players, for example, have a harder time with memory issues. Some have a harder time with processing issues. Some have a harder time with, you know, sequencing issues. Actually, I didn't even get into sequencing. Sequencing, and this is a combination of board complexity and strategic complexity.

Sequencing is, oh, if I do thing A, thing thing B, I get an advantage that I wouldn't have otherwise. Oh, my second card counts the number of goblins, and my first card's a goblin. So I want to play my goblin before I play the card that counts the goblin. Or, you know, this card gets back an instant or sorcery, so maybe I want to cast an instant or sorcery before I play the card that gets back an instant or sorcery, so maybe I want to cast an instant or sorcery before I play the card that gets back an instant or sorcery.

And so sequencing can also be. So, like, processing, sequence, memory, each one of those is a different mental skill that different players have different abilities at. And some players might be amazing with memory, and they're really good at remembering things, they don't forget things. Other players can have a real problem with memory and need to make notes and do things. They don't forget things. Other players can have a real problem with memory and need to get,

you know, need to make notes and do things so they don't forget things. They need to do shorthand. Some players might be great at processing. Others are very bad at processing. Some are good at sequencing. Some are bad at sequencing. You know, the mental processing isn't just a

how long have people played and what can they do. That's a general sense of where people are at. But also, like one of the things when we're making magic cards, and this is the same kind of thing as logistics, is there's a point at which you just overload the players. Now, overloading them on logistics is a different factor than overloading them on mental processing, but it's similar in we have to care. We have to think about how hard something is. We have to think about how hard it is to process, and we have to keep that in mind. And what that means is we only get so much of something.

You know, every card, like, every card that adds to mental processing, we have to think about them in its entirety for a set because limited, you know, is a thing. And so if i'm going to for example i'm making mutate mutate is a complicated mechanic i should be and this is probably why uh companions weren't a great fit um you want to make sure the things around it are simpler then when we put in a mechanic that's harder we want to surround that with simpler

mechanics and so we want to make sure that yes we want you to have to think about something. It is a game. We want some mental processing going on. We just don't want too much. And as, as, you know, a lot of what I talked about today is consolidating things or making things work the same, or if something works harder, making other things easier, or if there's a lot of memory, maybe being a little bit careful in processing or sequence. You know, like, try to make sure that you're not revving the engine on everything you can and that people,

like, one of the reasons we like to make some simpler cards is also so, like, okay, I get this. I know what's going on. So anyway, that is me talking

about mental processing. If you haven't listened to my podcast on logistics, which I did a few weeks back, you might want to listen to this. This is sort of a companion piece for that. Logistics is talking about sort of the physicalness, and this is the mentalness.

But they go together. And if something is logistically complex, sometimes we want to be mentally not as complex. If it's mentally complex, we want to be not as logistically complex. They all go together. It's not separated. We have to think of all these component pieces.

But the reason I wanted to do this is, this is a thing we have to think about. It's something we have to really be careful about. And it's something we have to be careful about, not just on an individual card, but in cards at large. How cards interact with each other. The set as a whole.

And anyway, it's an important part of the design process, so I thought I would talk about it today. But anyway, I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. and anyway it's an important part of the design process so I thought I would talk about it today but anyway I'm now at work so we all know what that means means this is the end of my drive to work

so instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic I'll see you guys next time bye bye