Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1099: The Dark

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

In this podcast, I talk all about Magic's fourth expansion.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so one of my goals, I have many goals here in my podcast, is I want to do a podcast about every Magic expansion and talk about the design of it. Now, there have been a lot of Magic expansions. I've covered many of them, but I've not covered all of them. In fact, I'm making a chart to figure out which ones I haven't done yet. And one of the ones I haven't done is The Dark. So, for those that might not know,

early Magic. Magic comes out in 1993. That's Alpha. And then Beta also comes out in 93. The very first expansion, Arabian Nights, comes out December 93, January 1994. And then after that, there's Antiquities, which is another small set. Then there's Legends, which is a big set that comes in the summer of 94.

And then the fall of 94 is The Dark, which is a small set. That is the set I'll be talking about today. which is a small set. That is the set I'll be talking about today. Now, I started working for Wizards full-time in 95, the fall of 95. And the first set I started working on was Alliances. I had people... When I was in Los Angeles, I set up a playtest team for Homelands. So I did work a little tiny bit on Homelands,

although I didn't, I wasn't really part of the design. But Homelands is the seventh Magic expansion, I think. So the previous six, I had nothing to do with. I mean, I was a fan of Magic. I played with them. And for a lot of them, not for the Dark, but for, like, Ice Age Forward, I was getting what we call

god books. I was getting cards early so I could make my puzzles. I was aware of them earlier than most people, though I didn't have anything to do with making them. But I'm trying to cover all sets, not just sets that I had something to do with. So today we're talking the dark. So I'm going to try to give you some context for the dark. So a little bit about early magic. Um, so I'm going to try to give you some context for the dark, uh, the dark.

So a little bit about early magic. Um, so magic comes out in the summer of 93, uh, and it sells out right away. Right. So, um, the, the story is they had printed enough that they thought was going to be a year supply and it sells out in three weeks. And so then that's alpha. So then they decide, okay, we're really, really going to make enough for a year, and that sells out in a week. That's beta. They eventually would get

the third, what's it called? Unlimited. Unlimited would come next. They would get that out in the spring of 94. But anyway, the sets sold out so fast, like, they realized, oh, there's an audience here. We need making more content.

Now, what had happened was, Richard understood that eventually they would need more content. So Richard had went to his play tefters and asked them to start designing sets. Now, there was no rush. I mean, no one could sort of see the phenomenon magic would become. So the idea that they would need stuff designed so fast, you know, nobody was rushing to get it done.

They thought they had time. So there were three major sets that the play tefters worked on. One was Ice Age, made by what we call the East Coast playtesters, Scott Elias, Jim Lynn, Chris Page, Jay Petty, who will come up again in today's podcast. They worked on Ice Age, which would eventually be released as Ice Age.

There was the people from the Bridge Club that Richard had met. Bill Rose, Charlie Cattino, Joel Mick, Howard Kallenberg, Elliot Siegel, Don Felice, those people would end up to make a set called Menagerie, which would later come

out as Mirage and Visions. And then who am I forgetting? Oh yeah, After All or not After All, who am I forgetting? Oh yeah, Astral, oh not Astral, Spectral Chaos was made by Barry Reich,

who I've had on my podcast. And that, elements of that would go on into Invasion. Invasion wasn't exactly Spectral Chaos, but like the domain, the domain mechanic came from Spectral Chaos. So anyway, Richard had set up people to sort of design some magic sets.

But Peter Atkinson, the president, the original president of Wizards of the Coast, had also set up some stuff. So he had set up some people to make legends, some of his role-playing friends. he had set up some people to make Legends, some of his role-playing friends. But there also was... So let's talk about Jesper Mirfors. So Jesper Mirfors was the original art director for Magic. He was the one that, along with Chris Rush, did all the original mana symbols and all the original sort of graphic design. And then he was the art director for Alpha. You might know his name because he's also an artist. And so he made some art

in Alpha. So he is an artist and he was, like I said, the original art director, did a lot of early graphic design and was very, very, in the early days was super, super involved with magic. So when Peter was looking for people to make sets, Jesper said, I'd like to make a set. And Jesper had an interesting goal. Jesper was an artist, so he really approached it from, I want to have a mood and tone.

I want to have a set that feels a certain way. Now we would, as we get into world building years later, we would start doing a lot more of that. Our worlds would be much more crafted and we'd make a style guide and they'd have a unified look. But this was the first set. This is the early, early days where Jesper was like, okay, I'm the art director. I'm going to, you know, I can, well actually he wasn't the art director for the set, but Sandra Everingham was the art director for the set, but he's like

I want to base this around a certain sensibility and a feel so the dark, I think, takes place after the Brothers War basically what has happened is to end the Brothers War Urza sets off the Psylics, which causes great devastation.

Among other things, it creates the Ice Age. But it also sort of, for a while, blots out the sun and creates the Dark. That is why the set is called the Dark. I should also, real quickly, a little behind the scenes. So the code name for the set was The Dark because it was the dark times. What happened was, and this is sort of a lesson for us,

most names will sound weird, but the more times you say them, it's like oh, it starts becoming normalized. And so there are some early code names like Ice Age, like The Dark, that just sort of got used and became so, everybody got so familiar with calling it that, that when it came time to name it, they're like, oh, that seems fine.

We've been calling it that forever. No, not Ice Age, I think, is a better standalone name. The Dark has a bunch of problems. One is having the in the name is not ideal, especially when it's just a single word. Like, for example, technically, when you're talking about the expansion, The Dark, it is the The Dark expansion, which is weird. And it's just having a the is kind of odd, especially with only one word.

Dark also, while it can be evocative, it is kind of vaguely evocative. It's the dark. What is it about? Well, things are dark. Well, what does that mean? You know, it's not, we want our names to sort of spring forth something that is, it tells the audience what to expect. Dark's a little bit vague.

But I will say, because of the dark, we started having code names. Meaning, past the dark, they said, okay, we are not going to call, like, we are going to give this a specific name, a code name that by definition isn't the name we're going

to give this at. And that's when we started doing code names. The early code names in Magic were named after Macintosh sound files. Everybody in the office had a Macintosh in the early days. And when you would open the folder, it would make a sound because it was named after the sound. So the Dark was responsible sort of indirectly for making magic code names. Okay, so the idea was it's a dark time, things are in a dark place, and what Jesper was really interested in was sort of thematically saying, what if you took each color and you showed the dark underbelly of the color? Like, the idea was, let's show each color in the darkest sort of way we can,

that times are bad and things are rough. And so a lot of what Jesper was trying to do was mood and tone, which is something, years later, became a staple of how we make magic. But it really was the first set that did that. Like, it's interesting. Arabian Nights, which was the first expansion, was the first time of us sort of doing a top-down set. Antiquities was the first set with a really strong mechanical theme with all artifacts. Legends definitely had a very top line. It was very story-based.

Arabian Nights was based on a known existing story where Legends was sort of influenced by the Dungeon Dragons campaigns of a lot of the people that worked at Wizards or friends of the people that worked at Wizards. The Dark was the first mood and tone set. So one of the things about early sets

is you can see us exploring in space that we would later explore more in. Okay, so the design team of the sets, four people are listed. Jesper Mirfors, I talked about. Steve Bishop, Glenn Elliott, and Beverly Marshall Sailing. Let's talk about who those people are, just because they are people that play a big role in early magic. So Steve Bishop was a friend of was a friend of I think

Peter I think? Anyway Steve was involved early on in I think an organized play. He was, yeah for a while he was the person that ran organized play. Um, if you've ever talked about, uh, about the guy with the leather pants that ran early like world competitions and U S national tournaments, that is Steve Bishop. Um, uh, Glenn Elliott, uh, worked in R and D. I believe Glenn was technically the first head designer.

He didn't hold that title for very long. Joel Mick would take it from him pretty early. Then Bill Rose would take it from Joel Mick. I would take it from Bill Rose. So if you ever have a trivia question, name the four head designers of Magic. Glenn Elliott is the tough one. Not that Joel Mick is super easy,

but it's Glenn Elliott, Joel Mick, Bill Rose, and myself. Glenn Elliott was one of the first hires in R&D that wasn't a play tefter. In fact, I think all the early members of R&D, which essentially were

Scaffoli, Jim Lynn, Dave Petty, Richard Garfield, were people that playtested. Glenn, I think, was the first hire, and I don't know where he got hired from. He was the first hire that wasn't from the pool of the playtester, the pool of the playtefters. Glenn would go on to work for a while in R&D. He, years ago, moved on to another company. But I think Glenn, when I got there in 95,

Glenn really had moved on to work on other games because we made a lot of other games. And he wasn't involved in Magic anymore Joel Mick had by the time I got there Joel Mick had taken over as head designer of Magic and then Beverly Marshall Saling

was the very first editor one of the first employees of Wizards of the Coast I believe that when Beverly was originally hired I think they couldn't pay her a salary He's a Wizard of the Coast. I believe that when Beverly was originally hired, I think they couldn't pay her a salary and paid her in stock instead, which, by the way, turned out very good for Beverly. Beverly was the first editor and then for many years was the lead editor

in charge of editing. There was a point at which editing wasn't part of R&D. In the early days, editing was his own department, and Beverly oversaw editing. So those are the four people credited with the design. I know that Jesper was sort of the lead designer, if you will. But anyway, and then the developers of the set were Scafalias, Jim Lynn, Dave Petting, Chris Page, who I always refer to as the East Coast Blade Hefter. So, I believe

that the development for the set wasn't done in-house, meaning I don't think at the time they were working on this that the, well, Scaffolius, Jim Lynn, Dave Petty would all move to Seattle or Renton to work at Wizards. Chris Page stayed back in

wherever they were, Pennsylvania. So the fact that the four of them worked on it says to me that this wasn't yet at work. They were still sort of freelance developing. I know they did the development on Legends, which that's a separate story in a separate podcast. But anyway, so this was very early days. The R&D is not fully in the office. My guess is Glenn Elliott was in the office

because Glenn Elliott, he had no connection to early magic. He was hired by Wizards. But I think that R&D wasn't staffed up really such that, and Glenn, I guess, had worked on the design. So they did out of house for development. And as I said earlier, Sandra Everingham was one of the early art directors. Jesper was the very first art director, but the second ever art director was Sandra.

And she actually came back to work at Wizards for a while. She's not there right now, but she many, many years later came back and was at Wizards for a while. She's not there right now, but she, many, many years later, came back and was an AD again for a while. Okay, so the set definitely, first off, there were no mechanics. So let me talk a little bit about big and large sets. Oh, and let me talk about cards. So the way early Magic worked was there were big sets and there were small sets. But small sets were small.

What we think of as small sets, I mean, if you've been playing Magic long enough, then you remember small sets, which at this point is a little while ago. Small sets during most of Magic's life were in the, like, 143 to 165 range. Early sets were smaller than that. Or maybe Knights had, I believe, 98 cards.

Antiquities was around 100, slightly over 100, I think. So the dark had 119 cards. And the way it worked is the early small sets weren't sold in a normal booster. They were sold in a smaller booster, a booster that had eight cards in it. And the way that the smaller sets would work is normally in a larger set, there were three sheets in the early days.

There was like, or four sheets technically to count the land. But there was, other than the basic land, oh no, no, I take that back. Basic land wasn't its own sheet in the early days. There was just three sheets. There was a common sheet, an uncommon sheet, and a rare sheet.

And then intermingle the basic lands on the sheets. They would later break that out and basic lands would get their own sheets. For small sets, though, they didn't have three sheets. They had two sheets. They technically had a common sheet and an uncommon sheet. And then the way they did different rarities is they would print different cards a different number of times. So, for example, technically there are 119 unique cards in the dark, but here's how they did it.

There was a common sheet. The common sheet had 41 unique cards on it. So when I say C1, that means it appears on the common sheet one time, and C3 means it appears on the common sheet three times. So the common sheet was one C1 and 40C3s. So what that says, by the way, for those that like collation, that is 121 sheet, 11 by 11.

So there's different size sheets that we print. Early Magic, which was done at Card of Monday, I think Card of Monday, at least at the time, did 121 up sheets, 11 by 11. And the idea is you print the cards 11 by 11, then you chop them out and, you know, cut them into cards. The uncommon sheet had 75 unique cards on it. There were 35 U1s and 43 U2s. So I think technically, for rarity purposes, the C3s on the common sheet, which were 40, I mean, there's 40 commons. The uncommons are considered the C3s on the common sheet, which are 40, I mean there's 40 commons, the uncommons are considered the C1 on the common sheet

and the U2s on the uncommon sheet, so there's 44 uncommons, and then there's the U1s on the uncommon sheet are considered the rares, so 35 rares. Now note, this is before this is before rarity was a thing put on cards, so the idea that there was different things showing up at different rank, rarity wasn't sort of a locked thing yet also. It wasn't like a card set on its rarity. So there was less worry about being exact in what was what rarity.

Now we spend a lot more time trying to make sure the commons are about the same rarity. But anyway, so yeah got eight card boosters. You got six cards from the common sheet and two cards from the uncommon sheet. I assume they mixed the U1s and U2s, meaning you probably got two cards that were next to each other, and I'm sure they spread out the U1s

so the U1s weren't next to each other. What that means is when you open up a pack, you would get six from the common sheet. You could get the C1, which is kind of the rarest of the common sheet. And then you got two uncommons. I think you couldn't get more than one U1 because they weren't next to each other. So you could get sort of one rare. It's possible that you got two uncommons and not one rare based on if you have 43 U2s. Anyway, so we do not announce printing of current Magic sets, but we did back in the day. So there were 62 million cards printed of the Dark.

I don't know. Actually, I don't know if that's 62 million packs or 62 million cards. I'm not sure. Anyway, The Dark was also known for being the first set released in a second language. Italian, which was the second language for Magic Reprinted in. The first set that was The Dark. They would go back and do Legends in Italian, but I believe the dark was the first Italian set released.

And then they went back and did, they went back and did legends in Italian. There are no mechanics, well, sorry, no named keywords in the dark. Early magic sets, the small sets did not introduce new keywords Magic sets, the small sets, did not introduce new keywords. And even the large

sets, like Legends, I guess it introduced Rampage, but a lot of the new things in Legends was like the legendary super type.

And or Legend was a creature type. Or creatures originally. Or multicolor cards. So some of what happened in the dark. Like there weren't really new mechanics yet in small sets. So there wasn't any new named keyword in the set. But it did do a couple things for the first time. First off, it was the first small set to have multicolored cards, because Legends

was the first set with multicolored cards. It was the first set to have common multicolored cards. The first set to have a non-creature, a multicolored non-creature. It was the first set to have enemy, two-color enemy cards. And a lot of that was kind of how Magic worked back in the day was a set would do something and once it did it, it was open to other sets.

And the idea of evergreenness was a little vaguer in the early days. It was sort of like whatever magic is done, it could do now, but some things will continue and some things we won't. It was a little more vague. But multicolored was considered to be something that they could do now, but some things will continue and some things we won't. It was a little more vague, but multicolored was considered to be

something that they could do. I also think I'm trying to think whether the dark had legendary creatures in it. It might not have had legendary creatures, now that I think of it. I don't know if it did have legendary creatures in it. It did have lands, and the lands in the dark had a new, had a purple text box. We definitely experimented with how land should look for a while. They went through a lot of different colors and shapes, or not shapes, but colors. And eventually we sort of settled on a certain look.

Basically the idea is if you produce one color, you got a pin line of that color. And if you produce multiple colors, then I guess you get pin lines of two colors, and if it's more than that, it's gold. But anyway, as far as mechanically, so it was the first set that had a

typo theme that was more than like, Alpha had Goblin King, Lord of Atlantis, and I don't remember what the zombie card was called. So it had three cards that were typal cards that cared about, you know, gave plus one, plus one and some ability to its creature type. Although the zombie didn't get plus one, plus one. But anyway, there were

individual cards in other sets that cared a little bit, but the nice thing about the dark was the first set that said, okay, we're going to make a theme of it so much so that you could build a whole deck. I mean, in early Magic, you could play as many cards

as you wanted. So, I mean, if you wanted to play lots and lots of Merfolk of the Pearl Trident and Lord of Atlantis, you could. But literally, the only Merfolk other than Lord of Atlantis was Merfolk of the Pearl Trident. So if you were making a Merfolk deck, most of your deck was a single card. So what they did in the dark is there was Goblin Type Ball. So there was a whole bunch of cards that cared about goblins um and there are even cards that negatively care about goblins there's tivadar's crusade that blows up goblins but the idea was the goblins sort of in the world of the dark the goblins

exploded and there were many many goblins and so it was the first set to have multiple type of cards like there was enough cards they were all all, other than the ante one was white, but the cards that helped goblins were all red. So it was the first time that, like, there was kind of a giant deck made of a creature-type theme

that you could, like, oh, well, if you took all the cards from this set and the few that preexisted this set, you could just make a deck. You know, in fact, you could make a goblin deck mostly out of cards

from the dark if you wanted. I mean, there were some goblins to supplement. It was the first set that really played around at all with the graveyard. I mean, once again, Alpha, a lot of these themes showed up in Alpha. Alpha did, in fact, have some graveyard cards. Cards that came out of the graveyards, returned things from the graveyards. But once again, there's a little more of a focused theme. Like I said, part of what was trying to go on was finding the dark underbelly

of the colors and the idea of interacting with the graveyard. And not just interacting with the graveyard, but using the graveyard as a resource. That was something that was kind of innovated in the dark. I think it was the first card that actually exiled something. Not the term exiled. At the time, it was called removed from the game. That term was confusing because technically you were part of the game. So we would later change

Remove from the Game into Exile, but I believe that's the first set that... Oh, I take that back. Alpha had Alpha had had Source of Plowshare. So it wasn't the first thing that removed things from the game. But it was, it did have a theme of removing things. Once again,

a lot of this, I guess, is taking themes that showed up in Alpha. You know, like, okay, there's a Goblin Typhoon card, but now there's a whole bunch. And there's a Great Beardist Resource, but now there's a whole bunch. And there was Exiling as an effect, but now there's more of that. The other thing they did do was Poison had been introduced in Legends on two cards, and I think there was another Poison card in the set. So, a lot of what the Dark did,

it wasn't so much the Dark, I mean, I think the innovation of the Dark was the mood and tone. And the other thing I would say is, if you really want to understand the Dark, you need to go look at the pictures of the Dark. One of the things before that, like, if you go back and look at Alpha,

Alpha, like, they just went to an artist and said, draw whatever. Alpha does not have an overlap, like, there's a lot of good art in early magic, but it is, if you took the art and, like, let's say you took the art of Alpha and then just other fantasy art and mixed them together and said,

hey, what art is from Alpha? Other than just memorizing the art from Alpha, the tone and style of Alpha wouldn't tell you what's from Alpha. It is sort of all over the place tonally. But the Dark is the first magic set where if I said, okay, I'm going to take a different magic set and mix cards in, you could say, oh, these are the Dark. There's a look and feel to it. That is something we do all the time now. It is something that sort of maybe is just given for granted that we have a style guide and that we hire artists and, you know, like we very much cultivate a look for a set that if you think of any

one set, you know, Wilds of Eldraine looks very different from Lost Caverns of Ixalan, which will look different from Murders of Cardalove Manor, that each set has a very distinctive look and feel to it. Early Magic did not have that. And that the dark very much was the set that was saying,

hey, what if we had a mood and tone? What if the art sort of felt a certain way? So if you really want to get a sense of the dark, you know, you might want to go look at the dark. I can't do that on my podcast because it's not a visual medium. But I will say that if you've never, ever interacted with the dark, if the dark isn't a thing you know anything about, it's interesting to go look at it. And the other thing that the dark did that's something we hadn't done a lot of is

I think in early magic, we played toward the sort of more the stereotypes of the colors, if that makes sense. You know, white was more goody two-shoes, sparkling, you know, chivalrous knights, and black was dark and creepy. And that this set said, you know, all colors can be kind of dark and creepy. And so, I mean, black had always been dark and creepy, but it sort of said, ooh, what's the underbelly of white? What's the underbelly of blue? What's the underbelly of red? What's the underbelly of green?

And it really sort of did some interesting tonal things, and it really demonstrated that the color pie had a lot more flexibility in what it could be. Yeah, there were sort of the stereotypes of the colors, but that is just one aspect of the colors. And this set really looked at other parts of that. So it had an expansion symbol of a moon, of a crescent moon.

And there were definitely some cards, Ball Lightning, Blood Moon, Tivadar's, I mean, Tormod's Crypt. There were definitely some cards here that would go on to be cards. Like Ball Lightning, Blood Moon, Tivadar's I mean, Tormod's Crypt. There are definitely some cards here that would go on to be cards. Like Ball Lightning, for example, is a card that would... We've made infinite versions of it. Ball Lightning, basically

it's like red, red, red, 6-1, Trample Haste, and then you sac it at end of turn. And we have made infinite versions of Ball Lightning. It is definitely a card. The idea

that it's kind of a creature, but kind of direct damage. You know, it's direct damage that's kind of delivered in the form of a creature. Anyway, we've made infinite of those. And so, that's my sort of note on the dark, just to give you some historical context on the dark, is

early magic was very much about finding our feet and exploring what magic could be. And Jesper really said, hey, here's a neat idea. And it was very art-centered. It was very tonal and mood-centered. It's interesting when I look at early Magic that everybody was trying different things. And most of those things, or at least the successful ones, which is a good chunk of them, would go on to greatly influence what came after. You know, Rabian Nights and Antiquities and Legends and The Dark.

I mean, there's a lot of what Magic is that got shaped by those sets and got discovered by those sets and so i really tip my hat to the dark in that um it really was the first set that made us understand and think about mood and tone as a collective piece for putting sets together um there's a lot to come i mean the other thing about looking at early sets is like the idea that we made a set there was no new mechanic or no keyword mechanic or, you know, like, I think we would get better with time understanding

sort of what audience wanted and how to draw them in. And one of the big factors now for a new set is, ooh, what's the new mechanical things going on? This set definitely plays into themes that had been popular or Magic had dipped its toe into and did it more,

but it didn't really innovate. There wasn't a lot of innovation in the mechanical space. I mean, there was a little bit like doing the first, doing multicolor for the first time, but there was a lot more to set that sort of expanded on what had been done rather than invented something new. But a lot of its newness wasn't in the mechanical space. It was in the tone, the mood, the art space. Anyway, guys, that is my podcast all about the dark.

So I hope you guys enjoyed it. It was fun looking back. And it's interesting to talk about sets that I wasn't involved in, that I was sort of more of a player than I was a designer. So I have fondness for cards from the dark. There's a lot of things, like Ball Lightning is a perfect example of us. It was one of my favorite cards from the dark, there's a lot of things. Like Ball of Lightning is a perfect example of it. It was one of my favorite cards from a long time. And when I say we made a lot of Ball of Lightning variants,

I myself made a lot of Ball of Lightning variants. I mean, other people did too. Anyway, guys, I'm now at work. So we know what that means. That's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.