Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1044: Beginner Design Mistakes

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

In this podcast, I talk about the biggest design mistakes made by less experienced designers.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so some of the times I like to go back and look at old articles I've written, because I've written a lot of articles, and do podcast versions of them. So this one was from way back when. It was called Design 101. I think what happened was we had done a great designer search, and so I had to read through a lot of design submissions. Now, normally, I don't get to see unsolicited designs, but the great designer search and You Make the Card. I'm sorry, it wasn't for the great designer search. It was for You Make the Card.

So You Make the Card was a thing we used to do where we'd let the audience vote on things and sometimes, like for mechanics, people could send in suggestions. So at one point, we were getting mechanics in for this card

and so I forget. I had to read through, I mean, thousands and thousands of submissions. I think I did have a little bit of help. But anyway, it was a chance for me

to see a lot of designs by a lot of more amateur designers. Anyway, it inspired me to write an article, which I call Design 101. And in it, I explained what I thought the biggest beginner design mistakes were. So for people that are just starting out as designers, what were the biggest mistakes? The article, I listed five mistakes, but for extra content here on the podcast, I've upped it to seven mistakes. So that is the topic today. I'm going to walk through what the mistakes are that I see most commonly in, you know, beginning designers and, or less experienced designers. And I'm going to walk through why it's a problem, how to fix it,

and such. Okay. The number one problem I see with, you know, beginning designers is there's too much text. They put too much on the card. And I think the idea behind this is I have all these ideas and I want to make my card as awesome as I can so I put as many ideas as I can on the card and like if one idea is amazing five ideas even more amazing the problem is that a lot of good design is about restraint it's about you know focus and so what I think happens is when you just pile lots and lots of things on a card, it kind of loses its focus and it's just not as crisp a design. So there's a couple reasons for

this. First off, there's this dynamic that players cannot ignore text on a card. The classic example is, let's say I made three and a green for a 5-5 creature, which is crazy. That's overpowered. I don't think play design will let me do that. But let's say I made that, and then on it I put if you control two or more enchantments,

you know, card name has trample. Now, what happens is, players will get this card, they look at it, they go, card name has trample. Now, what happens is players would get this card, they look at it, they go, oh, I don't think I have that many enchantments in my deck. Oh, yeah, I guess I better not run this. I don't have that many enchantments in my deck. Even though, forget that line of text, three green for five five, you should run that. That's good. That's a good card. And I think what we've learned is that players just absorb it all and that one things we have to be careful of is when we put extra text on a card we

want to make sure that extra text isn't distracting from what what the card is about like a really important part of design is you want your cars to sort of sing right you want your cards whatever they're about you want that to be loud and clear so that people can get excited about what's most exciting about your card. But if you add extra things onto the card,

it distracts and it makes people, you know, it keeps it from being as clean as it can be. The other thing, and I mean, this is something that we always have to be careful about,

is there is, you can overload the audience. If there's too much going on a card, the players can sort of shut down, go, whatever, you know, I'll move on to the next card. Now, I mean, we do make wordy cards, especially at higher rarities from time to time. But your words have to be worth it. Your words have to be doing something. Like, one of the things I always say to people is, if you're going to make the player do work, the payoff needs to be amazing, right? If you're going to make them do work, they have to go, ooh, well, that's exciting. Like double-faced cards, for example, there's extra work there. There's two cards worth of text.

But what we found in general is people find double-faced cards really exciting. So they're willing to go the extra mile. But that's not true of all mechanics. And when you're starting out, I feel like making a good wordy card is hard. It requires a lot of, there's a lot that goes into it. And if you're a beginning designer, I'm like, just don't make that many wordy cards. That if you're, if you

find, you know, if you find that you're writing six, seven, eight lines of text, just assume that's more than you should. One of the things I always actually say to beginners is one of the best things you can practice is designing commons. Because commons, all magic cards should be clean and clear, but commons kind of force your hand, right?

Commons, usually commons do one thing. And it's good to get practice at, like, it's just a good thing for beginning designers to learn how to be short and precise. The thing I always want to say is, and this comes from my writing day. So in writing, one of the big truisms of writing is that most of writing is, in fact, rewriting, right? You get your ideas out. And then a lot of what happens is you coming back and crafting what you've written. your ideas out and then a lot of what happens is you coming back and crafting what you've written and you and a big part of of writing and i would say a big part of of magic design is editing is going back and saying do i need this so one of the things i always say to players uh to designers

is if you can pull something from a card and the card is just as good without it pull it you know everything on the card should be serving a purpose on the card and that one of the things you need to do when you are designing your own things is come back with an editor's touch and say, oh, is this doing something? Is this fun enough? And I always talk that you want to playtest your cards. That's crucial. When you playtest your cards, keep track of when things happen. Now, we do make what we call trinket text,

which is every once in a while we put something on the card that doesn't come up much, but it's just really flavorful. Trinket text is hard, and when you're beginning, I wouldn't do tons of trinket text. That's something that I would, that is a little more advanced. I would save that. And I would, that is a little more advanced, I would save that. And I would, when beginning, trying to get every card you do to be as simple and concise as possible is a really good way when you're first designing.

Of just, what is my card about? Let's make it about that and not make it about anything else. Okay, so now this segues into the second mistake. So the second mistake is having two abilities on a card that are not synergistic or not, they don't relate to the other mechanics on the card. So if you're going to have more than one thing on a card, and like I said, a lot of cards should have one, but if you're going to have multiple things on the card, it's important that those things have a relationship to each other. That you usually don't want to have two abilities on a card in which the two abilities are just, don't speak to each

other in any way. The best design is, when you have multiple abilities, is that the abilities have they can be blatant. Sometimes it's very loud how they interconnect. Sometimes it can be subtle. And there's fun sometimes in players sort of learning how the component pieces play with each other. So I'm not saying it necessarily, I'm not saying the synergy has to be, always be loud.

Although, loud is good. Loud makes the card easier to understand. There's only so many cards you want to make where the player has to sort of figure it out. We want to make some of those. Like part of the fun design sometimes is there's a few cards that go, I don't quite get this card, but I'm going to play with it and go, ooh, wow, this is really natural in play. I didn't, from reading the card, I didn't quite get it. From playing the card, I can feel it.

Also, the other thing that you can do, and you don't want to do tons of this, your cards can be anti-synergist if you want. What we call tension. It is okay to have two abilities in which it sort of makes the player make a choice. You know, now, you want to be careful with tension. And what I would say to beginners is, I don't think when you're first starting out, I would worry about tension. And what I would say to beginners is, I don't think when you're first starting out, I would worry about tension. I don't think, I think tension is a lot like Trinketex and some other stuff where, like, it's a little more advanced to be able to do well.

So when you're first starting out, I don't think you need tension on cards. But as you get more advanced, I do think it's okay to have two abilities that have some anti-synergy in the sense that they create interesting decisions for the player. You know, every once in a while, for example, we'll make a creature that's a good attacker, but it has a tap ability. Okay, how am I using it? Now, we don't want to do that a lot. And when you're starting out, I wouldn't do much tension when you're starting out. In general, as a rule, when you're first designing cards, if there's two abilities on the cards, they work together, and they work together in a positive way. And the biggest thing about that is, the way I like to think about it is, I think your card kind of wants to do one thing in concept. That doesn't mean it

can't have multiple abilities, but those multiple abilities want to be synergistic. In a way, and what I mean by that, for example, let's say I have a creature that is a saboteur ability. That means when it deals combat damage to the opponent, it does something. If I then put some sort of evasive ability on it, even though the evasion and the saboteur ability are two separate abilities, they feel connected because you want to hit the player, your opponent, and evasion helps you hit the opponent. So those feel connected because you want to hit the player, your opponent, and evasion helps you hit the opponent. So those feel connected.

Those feel like, ah, you know, I get why this evasion ability and this saboteur ability are on the same card. And that if you're doing a good work of interconnecting your things, then it makes the card feel like a cohesive whole. And that's part of what you want. When you make a design, part of what you want the player to feel is that the card is a singular thing. And that it's okay if there's multiple elements to it,

but it really needs to feel like it's that thing. And that when you make things that don't feel connected or that don't have some larger sort of story to them, it just feels disconnected and it feels less cohesive. Like one of the big things about designing magic cards is aesthetics. And aesthetics is the study of feel, right? That certain things just feel better to humans than other things. Humans like patterns.

just feel better to humans than other things. Humans like patterns. Humans like things being in, they like groups. They like certain orientations. There's just certain things that calms humans because they like them. And they call it aesthetics in that there's something about something being designed in a certain way that is calming to somebody, that it makes them, it feels like it's right. And a lot of those things, if you design anything, and I'm not just magic cards,

you design, you know, kitchen appliances, you design tools, whatever it is you design, within each field, there are certain aesthetics that you learn. There are certain things that you learn about what feels right. And so the aesthetic I'm talking about right here is what I call the cohesive whole. That if a card feels like everything on the card belongs together, it just, it makes it feel right. It feels comfortable. And when the audience can't understand why two things are on the same card, it feel right. It feels comfortable. And when the audience can't understand why two things are on the same card, it is disruptive and it feels not right. And so a lot of what I'm trying

to tell you here is, in the specific I'm saying makes things feel connected, but in a larger way, why am I doing that? It's because we want the aesthetic feel to be right. We want the cards to feel correctly. And for example, one of the things you might notice is if you're somebody who sees other, you know, your own cards or other fan-made cards, how magic cards tend to have a feel to them, right? That if you see a card that feels like Wizards made it. And the reason for that is a lot of these aesthetics.

There's a lot. One day I will do a whole podcast on aesthetics. But there's a lot of little things in magic that matter. And trying to get those. And the cohesive whole is a big part of it. That's a very big aesthetic thing. Okay, number three. The card designer is ignoring some basic rules.

So magic is 30 years old. We've made 25,000 some cards. There's a craft to making magic cards. And there are a lot of tools that we use to do it. And so if you are going to be a magic designer, you need to understand the tools. First and foremost, the color pie. You need to understand the color pie. If you make cards that are doing things that are out of color, especially if they're breaks, it'll just feel wrong

because that's not how it works. Like you need to know what colors can do what. Now I've made an article called the mechanical color pie. I did one, I think last year, last year or the year before. And then I did one like four years, I did one in 2017. And I think I did, last year or the year before. And then I did one like four years, I did one in 2017.

And I think I did one in 2021. Anyway, in that article, I take all the basic effects or the vast majority of the basic effects. And I list them and I say, what color is primary? What color is secondary if there is one? What color is tertiary if there is one? And I talk about specifics of, well, this color does this, you know, red does flying, but it tends to be on larger creatures like dragons or phoenixes. And we do a little less of smaller, you know, flying creatures in red, stuff like that.

I go to great detail explaining things. And so if you want to make magic cards, you need to understand the color pie. In fact, when we did the Great Designer Search all three times, we started with a multiple choice test. And a lot of that multiple choice test is testing these things. Do you understand the color pie? Another thing you have to understand is car type. Each car type has its own rules. Enchantments don't tap.

You know, there's different things we do. So understanding how we use the car type is important and what the rules. Same with rarity. You know, if you're what the rules. Same with the rarity. If you're actually designing where you're designing different rarity cards, like commons and uncommons, there's certain things we do at common and certain effects we don't do at common. There's certain effects we only do at rare. You need to know sort of how the rarity works and what we do.

Also, timing. I did a whole article recently, a whole podcast recently on timing. Timing talks about when you can do things and how you can do things and how and where we're doing them. And also related to that, also related to car types, I guess, is certain effects we do mostly at sorcery speed. Discard is mostly at sorcery speed.

If you're going to design magic cars, you need to learn a lot of that. Some of it is I've written a lot of articles, there's podcasts. I mean, some of it is there's a lot of content out there, the majority of which written by me. But you also can look at magic cards that exist, and that'll tie into a lesson down the road here. But, you know, if you're not sure, go look. If you're making a discard card, look at a bunch of discard cards. You might notice they're almost all sorceries. And so, that is important. Also, there is a

general feel for magic that's a little harder to wrap your brain around. The more magic cards that you've played with and looked at, the more familiar you become with magic cards. And that's why looking at databases and stuff is really good. There's a general feel. That's another thing. That's a little bit harder. That's a, you know, looking at databases and stuff is really good. There's a general feel.

That's another thing. That's a little bit harder. That's a little next level. For the first level, I would say care about color pie, care about card type, care about rarity. Understand what those are. Like I said, I've done podcasts on all that. I've written articles on a lot of that. Try to understand sort of what the basic rules are.

Okay, number four. Mistakes that players make. It just doesn't work in the rules. It doesn't work. Another thing you need to be familiar with if you want to make magic cards is you need a decent understanding of the rules. Not an amazing level five judge,

but like a level two judge. You probably want to look at the comprehensive rules. You probably want to find some, there's a bunch of people who write judge articles and things like that. You might want to find

some of those resources. And when you're trying to do something, you know, look at what magic is done to understand, you know, what can and can't be done. I will admit when you're doing brand new things, meaning you're doing something we have never done before, that can get a bit tricky. And that's a little bit more advanced, I think, than beginning stuff. In the beginning, I mean, I'm not saying you shouldn't design things that we haven't done.

Have fun. Just be aware that the rules will be a little muckier there. And note, by the way, that as you design, what you can and can't do, there's sort of levels, you know, as you get more in understanding the rules. For example, it can get very nitty gritty. There's this thing called layers, for example. Layers have to do with,

there's an order by which the game checks certain qualities of cards. So, for example, if I want to make a card that says, all flying creatures are blue, I can do that. But if I want to say, all blue creatures are flying, I'm sorry, I said that backwards. I can say, all blue creatures gain flying. I can't say, all flying creatures become blue. The reason for that is you check for color at a layer lower than you check for whether that creature is flying.

So by the time you're checking for flying, it's past looking at whether or not it is blue. So, like, understanding layers is important. Understanding, anyway, that's more advanced, but that there's a lot of like, there are things that you can and can't do. Now, I, even I, look, I'm the head designer, been head designer for a long time. Um, even I have to talk to the rules manager, you know, I'll make a brand new mechanic and I'll say, okay, I think we can do this. Okay.

Rules manager, can we do this? And, you know, I have probably about 95% of the time I, I can, I know whether we can do this. Okay, rules manager, can we do this? And, you know, I have probably about 95% of the time, I know whether we can do something or not just on what we've done in the past. But there's still a 5% where I'm like, okay, I'm messing in space we haven't really messed in. You know, let me talk to the rules manager and understand the ramifications of this. but anyway, um, the, uh, the rules are something that a designer has to understand at least enough that the cards you are making are working. Um, there, there are a lot of nuance to what we do that you as a beginning designer don't need to worry about.

We have to care about digital. We have to care about tournament play. Um, there's templating issues that we're going to worry about that, you know, I wouldn't. As a general rule, the way to get templating correct, by the way, is just find the card that did it in a printed magic set

and copy that. We do that all the time. And if you're doing something we've never done, use your best judgment. I would recommend figure out who you know that knows the rules the best

if that person isn't you. And, you know, it doesn't hurt,'t hurt if you know a judge, for example, somewhere you play where there's a judge. You know, you might want to say okay, hey judge, I'm working on something. What do you think? You know, and run ideas by as knowledgeable a judge as you can find. Okay, mistake number five. The card is underpowered. I'm sorry, not underpowered. Undercosted or overpowered.

Sorry, I combined my two words here. It's undercosted, overpowered, what we in R&D like to call barochen. I think there's a desire when you make a card that you want people who see it to get excited by it, right? That there's definitely this idea of I made a card, I want to show it to people, and I want people to really like it. And one of the ways to get people excited is to make the card powerful.

Obviously, we make cards that are powerful. It's not that you can't make cards that are powerful. I'm not worried about powerful. I'm worried about overpowered. And one of the things, one of the issues there is that a lot of players, they make cards that are not even in the ballpark of what we would make.

A lot of players, when they make cards, you know, for example, I have a general sense. I've been making magic cards a long time. I'm not great at costing things, but I have a general sense. I've been making magic cards a long time. I'm not great at costing things, but I have a general sense of costing things. Meaning, when I look at something and it is broken, like I can tell it's broken, that's not subtle at all.

That's significantly over the power level. Because as close to the line, I'm not good at judging that. I'll go to play design. So when I can look at something and I, like, in two seconds can tell it's broken, that means it's not just overpowered but significantly overpowered. And one of the things I notice about players when they make stuff is there's just—

and I get it, I get it, you want to make something super exciting, you know, but one of the things that's important is if you want to make magic cards, you want to make them such they play well with other magic cards. So one of the things when you're playtesting that I say to people that's a good thing, sometimes you want to mix in existing magic cards with your magic cards. And the reason for that is the existing magic cards are at the power level that's obviously we print at. So if you play a mix of your cards and normal cards,

and your cards are just dominating the normal cards, if your cards are just better than the normal cards, that's a sign that probably your stuff's overpowered. The other thing, when I say play with existing Magic cards, don't play with the most broken things we've made. I like, for example, not that we make a lot of core sets, but stuff you would find in core sets, maybe Jumpstart,

things in which, that it's in a product that's a little more geared to a less advanced player. Just because that stuff is simple and it's straightforward, so it's easy to mix in, and we usually put that at a power level that is reasonable without pushing the line. In sets, especially more, you know, premiere sets and some supplemental stuff,

you know, we want to be exciting and we definitely want to get up to the line. And every once in a while we go over a line. We don't mean to, but when you're designing cards, you kind of don't want to go up against the line just because it's so hard to know what the line is and a lot of people really miss the line now what I would say the same thing rather than finding a judge for this one

find the best player you know find the player that you think is the most skilled player and have them look at your cards and say what do you think of the cost of these cards and if that person thinks that they're too aggressively costed maybe you want to pull back a little bit. The key is, when you're making magic cards,

the reason that being overpowered is problematic is it will feed you false information about the cards. The cards will get played. The cards will excite people. But, you know, one of the biggest turn-offs,

from time to time, when we have applicants, I will judge, you know, a common thing when we have applicants is we'll make them design cards and then I will judge the card designs. And if the very first thing I see from somebody is just overpowered cards, that's a warning sign, right? So I want someone that's going to make magic cards. Like when I look at design, I wanted someone to make a card that I go, we could just throw them the next set. That design is the way we would make it and we could just use it. And so being overpowered, like I said, it causes many issues, but especially if you're, if your goal one day is to professionally make magic cards,

get in the habit of learning how to make them at the right power level. That is an important skill. And there's nothing wrong with getting expertise from other people to help you do that. No one is saying, like, when I talk about you need to know the rules, you need to know color pie, you need to know power level. The thing that's most important is the design tools like the color pie. That's the thing the designers most need to know. But stuff like the rules, especially the advanced rules, stuff like power level, there's other people that can help you. And I'm not an expert at power

level. I'm not an expert of the rules. I have people who are experts that I consult all the time. And I have a working knowledge, meaning, you know, I can definitely get by. But, you know, there's a reason on my vision design teams, I have a play designer to cost cards just to make sure that our... Oh, that's another thing. Your playtests get disrupted with overpowered cards. Let's say, for example, you do a playtest and just one card is really overpowered. The whole playtest might be about that one card. Then what did you learn? You learned this one card is really overpowered, the whole playtest might be about that one card. Then what did you learn?

You learned this one card was costed wrong. And that's just overpowered cards lead to bad playtests. And you want to have good playtests. Playtests are where you get a lot of important information. And to waste a whole playtest because one card just wasn't costed correctly is a big cost. Okay. Mistake number six.

They didn't do their research. Um, and what I mean by that is when you're making cards for a game that has 30 years of cards, 25,000 cards, you know, use that as a reference. For example, a very common mistake I see is people turning in a card that is something we've made. Now, it's not, I mean, we make cards all the time, and sometimes we'll re-skin them because we're doing flavor, so we take reprints. The thing that you've got to be careful of is, at least if you're ever showing off your cards, make it clear to people that these are reprints. The way I always do that is just make them reprints.

There's nothing wrong with your set having reprints. We do reprints all the time. If you have a very top-down set and you're very flavored, it's okay to reflavor to match your flavoring. But sometimes what I like to do is just have a little indication on your card that this is a reprint so that your playtesters know, oh, it's okay. Yeah, it's this card. The other reason that you want to do your research is you want to understand what we have done and haven't done. And, you know, the key to this is magic has learned a lot of things and we apply those lessons in how we make the cards. So if you're going to make cards,

why not understand, learn from our lessons? I will give an example. So Flashback first showed up in Odyssey, and we've made Flashback, I don't know, we put in a whole bunch of stats, it's deciduous now. One of the things we've learned about Flashback is we don't like to create moments where the opponent is just surprised and blown out just because they didn't remember that card is sitting in the graveyard. It's just a bad feeling. And so one of the things we do when we do flashback cards is we tend not to do instants that are board affecting, especially in the middle of combat.

So if we do, for example, a giant growth, nowadays, we won't make it an instant, because we don't want you to go, ha ha, all of a sudden I, you know, destroy you in combat, because you just forgot that I had this sitting in my graveyard. What we'll do is, if we have stuff we want to do like that, we'll make it a sorcery, and that way you have to do it before combat, so your opponent is aware of that.'s like oh well i had giant growth i made it bigger now you can block or not block dependent on that information um i don't know if i've ever said that somewhere maybe i have i've talked about um i've talked about flashback but it's the kind of thing that the easiest way to sort of understand that is look

at what flashback stuff we've done. And that whenever you're doing something, especially if you're doing something, like when you're first designing, one of the things that I say to beginning designers is, you know, it's okay to start with mechanics that exist. You don't have to start by reinventing brand new mechanics. Mechanic design is very hard, especially making mechanics we haven't made. So when you're first starting out, hey, use mechanics we've made. Use existing mechanics. You can make new cards with them. You can do new things with them. You can mix and match them in ways that we haven't.

You can make a really exciting magic set where none of the mechanics are brand new mechanics. And once again, I'm not saying you can't make new mechanics, but as a beginner, don't feel obligated to have to make all new mechanics. If Kicker works in your set or Flashback or Cycling or whatever, use it. There's no problem with that. There's nothing wrong with doing that. You know, in our design, when we are working on a set and we find an answer that we've already made that works really well, we will do that first. One of my things I love is you don't look outside the box after you've looked in the box. You know, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. If you have the wheel, you can use the wheel. And so that's another reason to do the research is understand what we

have, like what tools are available? What has Magic done? A lot of being a good Magic designer is having a knowledge of what Magic has done. I mean, a lot of my a good magic designer is having a knowledge of what magic has done i mean a lot of my job is being head designer is just holding in my head all the different things we've done so that when we do something and i also hold in my head things that we tried but didn't do which is a little more um so that when we talk about something i say okay well you know here's here's all the things we've done here's the things that we tried but didn't do, but we tried. And a lot of times when we try something, the reason we didn't do it isn't it isn't a good thing or wouldn't play well. It just didn't fit the set. So a lot of times we have unused ideas that might be a perfect fit.

The other thing that research will do for you is it'll just help make your card feel more like a magic card. Like I said before, you can match our templates. You can match, you know, there's a lot of things. Like let's say you're trying to do a card to do a certain thing. Go look and maybe we've done something like it before. You know, take a database and put words in when you're trying, you know. If you're trying to do something, see what we've done before. See how we've done before. You know, take a database and put words in when you're trying, you know, if you're trying to do something, see what we've done before.

See how we've done before. That can be very illuminative either because you might want to do what we've done before or maybe you want to do something new and you want to figure out what we've done

in a way that sort of might be informative for you. But anyway, it's a huge mistake. A lot of people when they're turning in cards, I'm like, these people just didn't

do any research. And it's very, mistake. A lot of people, when they're turning in cards, I'm like, these people just didn't do any research. And it's very, very, very apparent when I see cards whether or not someone's done their research. I can tell instantaneously. Okay, the number seven mistake is they don't use flavor appropriately. Flavor to designer is a tool, and it's a very valuable tool the biggest reason is one of the things you are trying to do when you make a magic card sort of the basic thing you're trying to do is you want to make an object that somebody else wants to play with you know that you want to make a card that people see and go oh this looks fun i want i want to play this card that people see and go, oh, this looks fun. I want to play this card. That's what you want

designs want to do, is you want to make cards that play well. Now, not every card necessarily has, you know, I mean, some cards are more exciting on the surface than others. I'm not saying every card has to read well in a vacuum, but you're trying to make something that plays well that people want to play with. In order to do this, flavor is a very valuable tool. You will notice, you know, one of the things that magic does is we will go to a world

and we will define that world in very clear terms. This is Greek mythology world. This is gothic horror world. This is fairy tale and Camelot world. You know, there's something about the world, you know, and even, and I named a bunch of top-down systems, but even like bottom-up. Ravnica is guild world. Zendikar, you know,

has a land flavor to it. Like, there's some mechanical identity, even in bottom-up worlds. And even Zendikar, while it was top-up land world, it was top-down adventure world, right? We gave it a flavor. Much like we gave the guilds in the city world a flavor, even though it's about two-color cards.

And that flavor carries a lot of weight. First off, there's a thing I call piggybacking. I did a whole podcast on this. What piggybacking is, is the idea of using flavor to reinforce a mechanic. That, you know, for example, if I'm making a card and I want you to think about it

in a certain way, I'm like, okay, what flavor could I do that reinforces the mechanic that I want? I'm going to give a creature a defender. Well, what if I make it a plant that's stuck in the ground?

You're like, well, it's not going to attack, it's stuck in the ground flavor can reinforce what you're doing and flavor also sometimes can take unconnected things and make them feel connected remember I talked earlier about you want the sense of a hole a card is a cohesive hole well, flavor can also help you with that so there's a couple whole. Well, flavor can also help you with that.

And so, okay, so there's a couple mistakes I see with flavor. First mistake is just not using flavor or using flavor very poorly. There's some people who, like, barely put flavor on things. Now, it's funny. A lot of times I will show you design designs. And sometimes when we're making functional things early in design we give them very boring names. Sometimes very functional names. You know

like you know I make a goblin with haste so I just call it speedy goblin. That's not the final name and there will come a point in design even during vision design where we will rename the cards to reinforce the flavor that we need but sometimes very early on when we're just trying to feel things

out where we haven't committed to things yet we're not worrying about that yet because it's too early for that so sometimes when I show up cards they seem like oh whatever it's just silly names but you'll notice as the later in the process I show you the cards, the more it's starting to get a real name. And that is important. That the finished product wants to have a real cohesive name that has flavor that does something.

Now, here at Wizards, I have a whole team that's job is to concept cards and get art. And there's a lot of people helping me make that work. If you're making cards at home all that responsibility usually is on you although although uh once again one of the themes of today is if you have people that can help you you know you don't need to design alone a you can design without designers that's great we do that all the time and if you have if there's skills you're bad at you know if you want to make cards and you want to put art on them, because when you play them, it just, they feel better with

art because they do. Find somebody you know that's an artist or is good at, you know, manipulating images or Photoshop or whatever. Find somebody that can help you put pictures on your cards and put pictures on your cards. You know, the set isn't better because nobody helped you. You know, it's not like people go,

oh, well, it could be better, but you did it by yourself. So, you know, people look at what you've done. And so, you know, at Wizards, no one person makes a magic set.

A lot, a lot, a lot of people make a magic set. Hundreds of people make a magic set. All working at the, you know, working together and different people with different expertises. If you're making a set, don't be afraid to do that. But anyway, so the lesson here is flavor is a friend and a tool to you. So you want to use flavor.

So if you're not using flavor efficiently, like flavor will enhance what you're doing. Flavor is just, if you use flavor well and appropriately, it will take anything you're doing and make it better. It just will make it better, make it more resonant. It'll make it more approachable and then make it friendlier. It'll make it more of a cohesive whole and make it more aesthetic. So use flavor. The second mistake is the opposite mistake in which they let flavor dictate too much. Like, for example, oh, I'm doing this thing, and so I put a lot of words on the card, so at every level, everything about it is exact as it can be to that thing.

And the reason that's a mistake is it doesn't lead to good gameplay. Like, I get it, you're trying to make the thing as real as possible. But I will give you an important tip here. In order for something to feel resonance, it only needs one thing to be resonant. It does... I'm not saying you can't do multiple things if they make sense and it makes to a good magic card.

Like, if multiple things all together work together and make a fun fun playable card. But as long as you have one resonant thing, as long as you have one mechanical thing that ties into resonance, players will read that as resonant. You don't need lots of things. That one really good resonant thing, one really fun, flavorful, mechanical connection is all you need. And that I'm not saying there's not times and places for stuff like trinket text, but mostly what we've learned is being simple and being connective does the work of being resonant. Having more things that match doesn't actually make it more resonant.

That people, oh, I get it's this thing. Oh, I see how the mechanic makes sense of it. Okay, I'm in. That's that thing. And that the less is more also applies to flavor in the sense of, or mechanically speaking. When you're making something, figure out the flavor you're trying to get,

especially on top-down resonance, what is the most important thing about the flavor you're trying to get what especially on top down resonance what is the most important thing about the card you're making what is the quality of the thing that you're connecting to what is it best known for what you know what does it have a certain function that it's most known for does it have a certain quality it's known about like what is the thing when if you said this thing whatever it is it could be a character it could be an object if you said that thing and just wrote down you went to people and say say the first thing you think of when you think of this and you wrote down all the comments after you talked to like 20 30 people and by the way you can do that fine exercise um if the majority of people would say one word or you know just more people say one word than the other. Okay. Lean into that. You know,

lean into the, I can't stress enough that, um, being simple and direct has a lot of power. And that is true. Even with top-down design, capturing the essence in the simplest form is super powerful. And that muddying it up by putting a lot of things on it doesn't lead it to be any better. In fact, I think it detracts from it. And sometimes it can even make it less resonant because if the person who's looking at it isn't as familiar with all the component pieces, they might go, well, I get this, but why that?

And that's another reason to edit is, sometimes this happens a lot. For example, you're making a character that's a known character and you're very well versed on the character. Well, there might be people who know the character, they don't know that quality of it. And so that thing reads weird to them just because they don't know. Even though it might be true for the character, if not enough people know that about the character, it might not help the resonance.

Okay, guys, I am pulling up to Wizards. So let's recap, shall we? So the point of today was if you want to design magic cards, design magic cards, I guess I should have left with that today. There's no greater skill to getting better at designing magic cards than designing magic cards. And getting feedback is important. Another big lesson of today is you don't make magic cards. And getting feedback is important. Another big lesson of today is

you don't make magic cards in a vacuum. You need people to help you. You need people to give you feedback. You want to involve other people. And that is a critical part of making cards. Magic cards are not made in a vacuum. You don't win a prize because you did it all by yourself. Make use of other people.

And make use of players. You know, you want to playtest your cards. Make sure you're making use of the playtesters so you can do that. Okay, a quick recap. Mistake number one, too complicated. Make your cards as simple as they can be. If you can remove text from them, remove text from them. The simpler they are, the better.

Especially the lower they are in rarity. But in general, the simpler, the better. Mistake number two, abilities have no synergy. If more than one ability is on a card, those cards should mean something to one another. They should interconnect in some way. If you don't do it, it makes the card not feel cohesive. It fights aesthetics. And it just leads to a less exciting card and a less fun card.

Mistake number three, card ignores basic design rules. You're ignoring the color pie. You're ignoring card types, rarity, how different timing works. You're just ignoring the general flavor of how we make magic cards. That stuff, you know, if you want to be a magic designer and make magic cards that work like magic cards, they got to work like magic cards. To do that, you, the designer, have to know your tools and color and card type and rarity. Those are all tools. Those are design tools. You need to know them. Mistake number four, the card doesn't work in the rules. I'm not saying you need

to know the rules as well as you need to know the card design tools. And it's fine to get outside people who have knowledge of the rules to work with them, but your cards have to work. That if you make cards that don't work, you know, cards being functional, if you're going to make something, it needs to be functional. If I, you know, I'm going to make a lamp that doesn't light up, not much

of a lamp. So your magic cards have to work. So even if that involves involving other people that know the rules better than you, or involves you learning more about the rules, your cards need to work on the rules. Stake number five, they are under-costed, overpowered, broken. Broken cards will mess up your data, hurt your playtesting, and it will get false positives out of people. You will get bad feedback. People will like it for the wrong reason.

Not because it's a good design, but like, ooh, people are attracted to power. And so you want to make sure your cards are, once again, act like real magic cards, or balance like real magic cards. Again, you can go outside, find people that are better at power level than you if you're not good at it, and get their help. Mistake number six. Didn't do the

research. We have 30 years of magic cards. If you were doing something, odds are we've done it before. Look at what we've done. Learn from what we've done. That a lot of, you know, if you're going to be an artist, you should understand art. You should study art. If you're going to be a writer, you should read books. If you're going to be a magic player, you need to understand magic cards and you need to really research magic cards. And as you're making it, there's nothing wrong with borrowing from what we've done.

Use our templates. Use our naming conventions. Use actual reprints of cards we've made. Use our mechanics. All of that is fair game. But do the research. Number seven, understand how to use flavor. The mistake is flavor gets misused.

Make sure you're using it as a resource. Make sure that it's enhancing what you do. And if you need outside assistance with that, that is fine. If you need other people to help you name the cards or if you want to do flavor checks, you can get other people to help you if you don't feel good about yourself. And the second thing about misusing flavor is

make sure that you're not breaking other rules because of flavor. Don't put too much of the card because of flavor. Don't overcommit to mechanics because of flavor. That simple is better in communicating flavor. Okay, guys. I had some traffic today, so you got an extra long podcast. But that's good because there's a lot to

get through today. So, my final big takeaway is, hey, you can be a magic designer. Design a magic card. Poof! You're a magic designer. And if you want to get better, there's a lot of resources. I've made infinite podcasts and read many, many articles that are resources for you to learn all the things I've talked about today. So you can do that research as well if you want to get better. And there are communities

online. I'm not allowed to look at them, but you guys are. Go online. You will find communities of people that make cards. Share information. Give feedback to other people on their cards. They'll give you feedback on your cards. So there's a lot of resources out there. So go and find them. But anyway, you too can be a designer. That's the lesson of today's podcast. But I'm now at work.

So we all know what that means. It means that 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.