Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1119: The Elephant in Boots Problem

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

In this podcast, I share what Magic R&D refers to as the "elephant in boots" problems and how we work to solve it.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today, every once in a while, I like to talk a little bit about vocabulary from R&D and discuss sort of the rationale behind it. So today is something we refer to as the elephant in the boots problem. So today is something we refer to as the elephant in the boots problem. Now, as is normally the case, normally our terminology comes from somewhere. And so this expression comes from an actual problem that came up once upon a time. This was a number of years ago.

We were making a pair of boots. I believe, I think it was equipment. We were making a pair of boots. I believe, I think it was equipment. And the question came up about who should wear the boots. In the picture, the boots clearly looked like, you know, they were for a humanoid. You know, they were for, like, a human could wear them, maybe a goblin or an elf could wear them. But it was clear that some creatures, like, say, an elephant, wouldn't possibly be able to put the boots on. And so the question came up, should we restrict who can wear the boots?

That was the question at hand. Now, it turns out that the answer to that question is a very complex answer, which is why I'm going to spend 30 minutes talking about it today. So at the crux of this issue, the crux of the elephant in boots problem is flavor. So let's start by talking about why does Magic the Gathering have flavor? What role does flavor play? Now, I should stress from the very beginning, when Richard Garfield first envisioned what it was, it came, there was a trapping of flavor that Richard had from the very beginning. The idea of it being magical spells was baked in from the very, very beginning. I mean, from the very first idea Richard had of it being magical spells was baked in from the very, very beginning. I mean, from the very first idea Richard had of it.

So let's talk a little bit about flavor in gaming as a general rule. Like, what does flavor do? So whenever you make a game, your game has mechanical components. In Magic, my opponent has a score of 20, I have a score of 20, and it's a strategy game. I'm trying to reduce the score of 20 to 0. Now, there are definitely games that are kind of devoid of flavor. A Scrabble might be a really good example.

Scrabble is a fun game, right? You're putting words together, putting letters together to form words, and there's definitely strategy to it. certain spots on the board are worth more the letters have points like there clearly is a strategy there but what what is the inherent flavor to scrabble it's not really i mean esoteric at most you know you're you have no specific role. The letters don't represent anything. Now let's move to another game, chess. Okay, chess has a little bit of flavor. It's a little bit removed.

But my pieces aren't just piece one, piece two, piece three, piece four. It's a pawn. It's a queen. It's a king. It's a bishop. It's a knight, right? That the pieces represent, they come from a certain point in time.

That they are sort of vaguely representative of some flavor. Now, the other end of the spectrum is there are games that are dripping with flavor. Like the game of life. Like the whole point of the game of life is you're living life and you get jobs and have kids and get married and maybe in different orders. But like, the whole point of the game of life is you're living life and you get jobs and have kids and get married and maybe in different

orders but like the whole sort of flavor of it is that you're doing something and some games like chess I think if you call the pieces piece 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 it loses

something but it's playable but something like the game of life once you remove the flavor one, two, three, four, five, and six, it loses something, but it's playable. But something like the Game of Life, once you remove the flavor from it, I don't even know if it holds together. I don't even know if it makes sense. So the idea is there's some amount of flavor that can be in a game, doesn't have to be, let's scrabble.

It can be light as with chess, or it can be very heavy with the game of life. Now, the idea for in Magic... Well, let me walk through what Flavor does, and then we'll apply it to Magic. So Flavor has a couple values that are pretty important to games. Most games have Flavor. In fact, in my 10 things every game needs,

one of my 10 things was flavor. And my argument was, you want your game to have flavor. Not that every game has to have flavor, but I think your game will succeed. I think the games without flavor are a rarity. And the vast, vast majority of games have flavor. Why? What does flavor add toward games? Well, it does a couple things. First off, it brings, it creates an aesthetic for the game that you want your game to feel cohesive and whole, right? You want your game to feel connected. You want to be able to make pieces and have graphic design. You want it to be a cohesive whole. And part of having a cohesive whole is that there's something that ties it all together. And flavor does a very good job of sort of tying things together. The things are

representative of something. And that really allows you to sort of make connective tissue to it. That it feels like it all goes together. Another thing is, there's something... People enjoy the creative. They enjoy stories. And that by making your game about something, you increase the ability for your players to sort of build stories around it. That it allows them to sort of internalize what's going on in a way that makes it fun.

Flavor adds fun. Flavor adds richness. It adds, it just makes the game feel more. Now, there is some important things that it does from a game function. Number one, it just makes it easier to understand. Now, there is some important things that it does from a game function. Number one, it just makes it easier to understand. There's a lot of intuition built in. And the more that you're, like, flying is always my go-to example. That we could name the flying mechanic something else,

and it would work just as fine as far as how it plays in the game. But flying is so, the flavor is so on the nose that it becomes easier to understand what the mechanic is because the name itself carries so much weight of expectation that it makes the game easier to learn. So that's another important thing of flavor is if you're intuitive in what it's doing. The classic example I gave in my GDC talk is there's a game called Plants vs. Zombies, made by George Phan, who actually worked on Magic for a while. And George, in it, it's a tower defense game, right?

That you have units that have to protect, I mean, in it, it's a tower defense game, right? That you have units that have to protect. I mean, in this case, you're protecting your house on the front lawn. But the idea is, in any tower defense game, endless creatures are going to come and try to destroy you. You have your creatures try to stop them. But George recognized that one of the things that tend to throw people is, one of the things about a tower defense game is usually once you place an army or something, it doesn't move. And it always struck George as weird because you would think like, oh, I have an army, but if I need help over there, couldn't the army just go over there?

So he came up with the idea that they were plants, that you literally planted them in the ground. Well, why can't my plant move? It's planted in the ground. It's part of its name. The immovability of plants is so core to what they are that literally they're named after it. They're planted in the ground. Can't move, planted. And for the endless creatures that just keep coming, he shows something that like is famous for endless waves, which is zombies. Waves of zombies. One of the core part of zombie stories is the idea that any one zombie

is not that much of a threat. Anybody can deal with one zombie. What makes zombies scary is the endless wave of zombies, is that they never stop. So he took his two game components, these pieces can't move, these pieces keep attacking, and he chose flavor that reinforced how it worked so that it made more sense,

that you didn't have an expectation that you can move your creatures or an expectation that these creatures are going to keep coming. And that's something we try to do in magic all the time, right? That when we make a spell, we have what we call card concepting, right? And so what card concepting is, it says, what is this card? What does it do? Okay, maybe the card deals two damage to something. Okay, well, what is it?

What if I'm throwing electricity at you? You know, what a lightning bolt, obviously like I'm doing three damage. What's a lightning bolt? I'm striking you with lightning. And those things, you know, a direct damage spell, even the idea of direct damage, it represents, oh, I'm physically harming you. Or the idea that, you know,

discard spell, I'm messing with your brain. I'm making you forget things. I'm making you have trouble thinking. That each of the items that we do, that there's some flavor that comes along with it that explains what it is, that walks you through what it is. And having flavor makes it easier, not just to learn, but to remember what things are. It makes it easier for you to sort of order things in your mind, to sort of block and figure it out. And that's a lot of the value

is that not only is creative making it more fun for the player, it's making it something that they can sort of grok in their head. That it allows you, like you need to make an internal mental mind map so you can remember what's going on.

And Magic is more complicated than most games. Chess is considered to be a somewhat complex game. And there's only so many pieces. And the board is only so big. There's only so many options of what you can do. And Magic has 27,000 plus pieces. That's a lot of pieces. I mean, not every game has all the pieces.

But there's a lot going on. So mean, not every game has all the pieces, but there's a lot going on. And so you need to remember what's going on. And the other thing that's important about Flavor is it gives vocabulary. It allows people to discuss it. It allows people to talk about it.

And as I said earlier, there is a narrative element. I talked about, there's a concept that I like called narrative equity and that one of the things that games bring and not just games, life brings, but games do specifically

is the idea that people love sharing stories. That there's something at the heart of the human experience. That stories you know as a writer I've read a lot of books talking about sort of the history of story. And it is like baked into the DNA of humans.

We need to tell stories. It's a very important way to convey information. It's an important way to talk about things. And so the idea that the game itself has a story built into it. I am fighting my opponent. We are wizards, planeswalkers, fighting with magic. And that each spell I play represents another element, another magical element to our duel. And that when I recap what happened, that story comes with it. And that story becomes part of the game

experience. Okay, so what I'm saying here is games want flavor. Flavor makes games better. Flavor makes games work. Flavor, it creates a vocabulary and a way to think about it. It allows your game to have a story to it. It does all these wonderful things, right? That flavor, the reason it's one of the ten things every game needs is it adds a lot of value to your game. It enriches your game. Okay, so let's get back to the elephant in boots.

So what's going on is we are making boots. Okay, so once again, let's get the flavor. So I don't remember exactly what the card did, but let's imagine the card was something like enchanted or equipped creature gets haste and hexproof. Meaning, okay, if I put on these boots, I'm fast. That's the flavor of these boots. These boots make me fast.

That's a trope in fantasy, and not just fantasy, but the idea of speed. You run, so you put your boots on, it makes you run faster. And so we flavor that as these boots grant you speed. That is why you have haste, that you're so fast that you're able to attack right away. And you're so fast, it's hard for them to hit you with spells because you're not in one place for very long.

Okay, now we have to draw something. So we like the idea that they're boots, the flavor of what the equipment does, and it all comes together. That's another important thing is, one of the things, because slavery is so important, we get balance. That sometimes we make a spell and figure out what it's flavorfully is,

but sometimes we kind of, it comes hand in hand. Like the idea that the boots make you fast, and because they make you fast, you have haste and hexproof. That's, you know, the boots make you fast because it makes sense that things on your feet make you fast. The fact that you're fast makes sense for hexe and hexproof. That's, you know, the boots make you fast because it makes sense that things on your feet make you fast.

The fact that you're fast makes sense for hexproof and haste. They all sort of come together. And we either can lead, you can make mechanics and flavor them, you can find cool flavor and then make mechanics to match. But what we do more and more these days is there's a back and forth.

We want them to do this, they'll be represented this way, and the card concept and the card mechanics come together in a beautiful way. Okay, so now we like the idea of their boots, and we have to draw something. So probably, if we're going to draw boots, we're going to draw boots that the player recognizes are boots. So we're going to draw probably human-looking boots. That is what people recognize as boots. Let's say, for example, we made boots that fit something other than a human, like an elephant. I'm not sure you would read those as boots right away. I mean, maybe, maybe you can, but if I'm trying to bring you to the familiar, I want to show you the familiar.

You know boots because you've worn boots. Well, I'm going to show you boots that look kind of like boots maybe that you've worn. Okay, so the problem that stems out, this whole elephant and boots problem is somebody is looking at the card and says, okay, probably what happened is there was a playtest. I assume there was a playtest. And I have an elephant and, well, I want to put the boots on my elephant. My elephant would like to have haste. It would like to have hexproof. The boots, from a gameplay standpoint, would be good for my elephant. But somebody somewhere asks, wait, well, these are boots. Like, how does the elephant wear boots?

And so that's where the question gets raised. Like, oh, are we not following flavor? Like, it makes sense. Like, if I have boots, it makes sense that my human could put boots on, or my goblin, or my elf, or my merfolk. Like, it's not that it kind of has feet that look, kind of look like human feet. I mean, maybe merfolk don't make sense, and the merfolk doesn't have feet. But the point is, it makes sense that some creatures that have a foot that looks somewhat like a human foot could wear these shoes, these boots. That makes sense. But it doesn't make sense that something that doesn't, like, there's no way an elephant can get on human boots.

They just couldn't do it. So, we have an option available to us. We could, I could say, you may only equip these to humans, for example, or only equip this to, I could list out. There's no way in magic right now to say humanoid. There's just not a way to do that. I could list things. I could say, you may only equip to humans, elves, goblins, and halflings or something. You know, I mean, I mean, I could make a subset of lists. I could, you know, make a batch, if you will. But here's the issue.

And now we finally get to the elephants and boots problem. If I say I can only put this on a human, what does that do for the card? Well, right off the bat, it lowers its functionality. Now, let's say I want to put the boots in my deck. I now have to think about, does it make sense to put them in my deck? Oh, do I have a high enough adds fan of humans? Oh, how many humans do I need to have,

or humans or goblins or whatever? How many of the batch do I need to have? And then, in order for that to make sense in the set that it's in, I have to make sure that the set delivers on that batch. If I'm going to have a card, especially a card that's common or uncommon, that is going to put this restriction on, I now have to make sure that restriction makes sense.

And what we realized was that in the set that we were doing, we weren't doing like a humanoid set that wasn't a flavor or a theme. We weren't batching humanoids together. That putting, you may only equip this to a human or some small subset of creature types, just made the card worse. Made the card less flexible. And in the end, the problem was it would make the card a worse card. It might make it slightly more flavorful. Like it doesn't make sense that an elephant can wear the boots.

But it makes it a worse game piece. And that was the argument that came up. Hey, we could make this make more sense as a pair of boots. But should we? Does that make for a better game? And the answer was no, it doesn't make for a better game. That I want to make games, like, so the essence of a trading card game is what we call modularity, right? I don't know, when I make, when I design a card or anyone R&D designs a card, we don't know exactly what cards are going together. We're trying to make things open-ended so that many things can go together.

That you want to create synergy, right? I did a whole podcast on that. You want to make things that work with other things. And that part of the fun of a trading card game is the discovery. Ooh, this card and that card work well together. And so what we want to have happen, like we make you randomize your deck. You have to shuffle your deck. So whenever we give you a card that limits what it can work with, it puts restrictions on your deck,

on your deck building. If I have a card that makes all goblins plus one plus one, okay, well, I now need enough goblins for that to be relevant. And we want some of those synergies. It's not that we never want things to be narrow. From time to time, we do want to have the goblin king that helps the goblins. But the lesson, and this is what we get into,

the whole reason we have a thing called the elephant in boots problem is that the default is not flavor in this case. The default is you want to make your game pieces as broad as you can most of the time. There are exceptions. There are flavor themes that become mechanical themes, right?

Oh, there's a typo theme in the set. I want to care about warriors or I want to care about vampires or whatever the theme is. We want some of that and there's a typo theme in the set. I want to care about warriors or I want to care about vampires or whatever the theme is. We want some of that. And there's some nice thing of taking some of your themes and having a tight flavor connection to the theme. Very fun. People enjoy that.

But as the default that we want game pieces to be open-ended. That we want as much as possible when I make a game piece, like let's say I'm making an equipment, I want most creatures to be able to use the equipment. Now maybe some creatures are better with the equipment, meaning there's higher synergy. Maybe

there's something where, you know, my opponent really is going to want to destroy it and then having haste is extra valuable because my opponent is going to try to destroy it. And so I wante is extra valuable because my opponent is going to try to destroy it. And so I want it to have haste. That's valuable for it to have haste. But there's a difference. So let me talk about another strategy.

So this came up in Innistrad, the original Innistrad. We had five different creature types we cared about, four of which were monsters, vampires, werewolves, zombies, and spirits, and then the humans. And the humans, the reason they existed on the world is they were the victims of the world, and all four monsters of the world had previously been human. That the monsters came from humanity and were once human but are no longer human,

and now prey on humanity. And in order, we were doing, you know, gothic horror in order for monsters to be there. It was important, especially in this environment, that the humans be there because the humans played an important part in the ecosystem. They both were the source of the

monsters and the victim of the monsters in a cool way. And we wanted to give the humans some strength, right? What helps the humans? How do the humans stop the monsters? And we decided a cool way to do that was, what if the humans are better with equipment? And what if all the equipment in the set weren't swords, they weren't daggers, they weren't't weapons they were everyday items that the humans turned into weapons it's a it's a a spade or a rake it's it's a cleaver from my kitchen there are things

that have some other purpose but double as a weapon and that the idea is that part of fighting the monsters is the humans have to adapt other tools to fight the monsters. And we felt that told a really cool story. Because in a horror story, usually the weapons that the hero or heroine is using against the monsters aren't weapons made to fight monsters. Usually they're just what we call found items. Okay, I'm in the kitchen. I grab a knife. The knife's not there to be a weapon. It's there to fight monsters. Usually they're just what we call found items. Okay, I'm in the kitchen. I grab a knife. The knife's not there to be a weapon.

It's there to cut food. But, okay, in a pinch, it works. Now, we could have gone down the route, sort of like the elephant in boots thing of saying, well, okay, only humans can use this, right?

You can only equip this to humans. And that was a set where there was a typal theme. Humans, for example, they showed up in all the colors, but they were concentrated in white and green. But what we said to do instead was,

well, what if anybody can use the knife, but if you equip it to a human, the human gets a bonus. So it's better in the hands of the human, but it's not usable by other people. And this is where we tend to go, which is, if you want to add flavor,

rather than using flavor to restrict what can use it, add flavor to enhance, like give bonuses to certain things. And the nice thing about that was, hey, if you're playing a zombie deck or a vampire deck or whatever, look, you still can use the equipment. You know, a vampire

can use a butcher knife if he wants to. Yeah, he's not quite as efficient with it as a human. A human has more reason to get better, You know, a vampire can use a butcher knife if he wants to. Yeah, he's not quite as efficient with it as a human. A human has more reason to get better, you know, vampires have some other weapons built in that they can use, so they have less need to master the knife than the humans do.

And the sort of realization there is the idea that we, when you're using flavor, flavor gets you a lot. Flavor adds a lot. But there comes a point where flavor starts causing problems with game mechanics. The elephants in the boots problem. And the rationale there is if you get too restrictive, if you try to match the flavor

too much, you make a disconnect, right? You start affecting the gameplay. Like, let's say all equipment, like, is only usable by the creatures that would actually use it. The game is less good. Like, oh, okay, now I have to stop including equipment in my deck. I don't, in order to use, like, if only the humans can use the cleaver, then I have to have enough humans to play the cleaver. Oh, I'm not really playing a human's deck, or I only have one or two humans. Oh, I guess

I can't play the cleaver. Like, it starts impinging on mechanical, what makes the game function. And so, the elephant in boots problem is our shorthand for flavor is valuable and useful up to a point but there comes a point where flavor can get in your way, where flavor can inhinge mechanical

flow. And that the idea that you should make, like, should you make some decisions based on flavor mechanically? Yes. Should you make all decisions based on flavor? No. And so when we refer to the elephants in boots problem, that's the core idea of what we're talking about. That flavor pushed too far starts impinging on mechanics.

And when flavor and function meet, flavor pushed too far starts impinging on mechanics. And when flavor and function meet, meaning that function talks about how it works in the game and flavor talks about sort of the feel of it to match the story and the creative, that flavor has to follow function.

Function has to lead. That if you have to make a decision and the decision makes the game play better, most of the time, there are exceptions, you choose that. And the elephant in the boots problem tries to say to us, hey, you know what? Maximizing flavor has downsides and maximizing flavor can cause mechanical problems. Now, there is an upside to this.

So there is what we'll call a discontinuity. That if I put boots on my elephant, I, the player, understand, like, it's not as if the player doesn't see the disconnect. I know that my elephant, in actuality, can't wear boots. But there's something kind of disruptive about that. For example, in Throne of Eldraine, one of the fun things we did is we had a lot of pieces from stories.

So it's kind of fun to take our version of Cinderella and play her with the fairy godmother and have her put on, you know, go in her pumpkin carriage and wear her glass slippers, right? It's fun to take all those component pieces and put them together. If you want to make a Cinderella deck, you can. But it's also fun to say, well, today, you know who's wearing the glass slippers? but it's also fun to say, well, today, you know who's wearing the glass slippers? Goldilocks or Pinocchio or the Beast.

Like, I'm going to have somebody who doesn't normally do that thing do that thing, and that there is some fun in the flavor disconnect itself can be fun. And that part of, I talked about narrative equity, part of the fun of telling stories sometimes, and this is very true for a game like Magic, that's a combinatoric game, that is a modular game, that has pieces you put together, that there is some joy and fun of the story of things that made sense mechanically, but flavorfully are a little bit of a disconnect. That there's some fun to that. The idea that, you know, in order for my elephant to do what he needs,

he had to put on the boots. How did he put on the boots? I don't know how he put on the boots. It's magic. You know, the magic let him put on the boots. Like, it's okay to, like, there is something fun about the disconnect that there is some enjoyability to it.

The idea that the flavor is not a hundred percent at all times is not necessarily a downside. That one of the neat things of a modular game like Magic is that part of the fun of mixing and matching is that there's some creative mixing and matching going on. So for example, let me talk about, I'll give you another example where this came up. So we're making vehicles. This is in Kaladesh. And so vehicles, obviously, you crew them. You take a creature.

You tap enough power creature. And the vehicle goes from being just an artifact to being an artifact creature. Now, you know, it has the power and toughness written on it. It now gains the power and toughness. And now it's a creature. So we realize, I don't know, relatively early on, that there is this dynamic that could happen where, let's say I have a vehicle that requires me to crew one to make a 3-3. And then I have a second vehicle. So the first vehicle is,

I don't know, a boat. And the second vehicle is a train. And the train is crew three. We realize that you can do this thing where I crew the first, I crew the boat, I tap my one power creature, I make the boat into a three three. Now my boat is a creature, I now could use the boat to tap to crew the train. And we ask ourselves, okay, this is not really the intent. The idea is not that you crew the boat and the boat crews the train.

Do we want to stop that? And there were words we could do that. We could define crew in such a way that it couldn't be a vehicle. But what we realized was, we said to ourselves, okay, how often is this going to happen? And what do we have to do to prevent it? Usually the problem with a lot of additive stuff for flavor is it's adding words to cards, you know. And one of the things we try to do is we want to

have less words. So vehicles is a whole mechanic. I mean, it's one thing to add words to a singular card for flavor. There's reasons we want to do that some of the time. But on a mechanic, like, there's a higher bar. That if every time I have to write out, you know, the crew mechanic, if I have to put five extra words so that vehicles can't do vehicles, that has to be worth it. The bar of caring is higher. And so what we said to ourselves is, how often is this going to happen?

And the answer was, not very often. I mean, there's a very specific circumstance that has to happen where you're going to do that. The kind of one I made up, right? Where I don't have something big enough to crew the second thing, but the act of crewing the first thing gets me there. I don't have something big enough to crew the second thing, but the act of crewing the first thing gets me there. And then what we said is,

and this is kind of where the elephant boots thing comes from, a little bit of the disconnect can be fun. If every once in a while I crew my boat to crew my train, there's a story there. There's a cleverness there. There is, I'm breaking expectation to do something people don't expect. That makes a little story that's fun. If that becomes the norm,

if the correct thing to do all the time is this thing that's a little bit disconnective, that's not ideal. We don't want you breaking suspension constantly, but breaking it every once in a while, a little bit, where there's clever moments,

that can be fun. And so the elephant in the boot's problem is trying to understand when is flavor impinging on mechanics in a way where we don't want to do it? Where's the line? And that is the problem. That is what we've dubbed the elephant in the boot's problem. And that is the problem. That is what we've dubbed the elephant in the boots problem.

Flavor is valuable and useful up to a point, but then there comes a point where it impinges on mechanics. And flavor follows function. It is more important that the pieces play well than match flavor to 100%. And once again, the idea of this whole issue is not that flavor isn't important. It's not that we shouldn't use flavor in lots and lots of places.

It's not that flavor shouldn't guide design. All that stuff is true. But what it's saying is that there is a point that can come where flavor can cause you problems in mechanics. That can cause you problems in design. And you as a designer, one of the things that's important is for you to understand that line, right? You have to know where is flavor helping me? Where is flavor a boon to what I'm

doing? And where is flavor a bane? Where's flavor causing me problems? And that problems and that is what that idea, that concept was so important that we have dubbed it the elephant in the boots problem and what we basically the takeaway we got is and this is sort of the lessons here don't sacrifice function for flavor especially in larger things

there are small case by case, card, card-by-card reasons occasionally to do it. You know. And there's what we call trinket text. Trinket text is I'm adding text that adds flavor that doesn't really add to gameplay.

It's something like protection from demons and dragons on Banelayer Angel. That doesn't come up a lot. Never. It can come up, and it has actually in construction come up. But the idea is they're more for flavor than mechanics.

And we can do that from time to time. It's okay to have Trinketex. It sometimes adds some richness. But the key to Trinketex is it doesn't matter most of the time. It's adding flavor, but it's not impinging on mechanics. The elephant in boots issue was if we restricted the boots, if we only let a human or humanoid wear the boots, there would be a lot of gameplay that would be lost. And we think that card just would see less play, less people would put it into their deck.

And so that is the issue at hand, which is part of making the designation is, where is flavor adding to the card, enriching the card, making it a better card, and a better game piece? And where is it impinging? Where is it causing problems? Where is it making less of a good game piece?

And the elephant in boots problem basically states there is a point in which flavor becomes a negative. There is a point in which flavor is problematic. And the understanding of another core part of the elephant in boots thing is that some discontinuity, that some of this wouldn't really happen, adds some charm to the game. And like I said, you want to be careful where and how, and you want to make sure it's the exception and not the rule. You know, you want to make sure that you, if I give you a card, if I make boots for you, hey, a lot of the time, the boots are going to be worn by creatures

that would, in fact, wear the boots. The idea is that the flavor holds true. The fact that boots look like that holds true. It makes sense. It is flavorfully accurate, and it is something. But we don't need to hold flavor to such high standard that it causes problems. And anyway, in a nutshell, when I talk about Elf in a Boot's

problem, that is the core problem that we're talking about. And mostly what we're saying is when I use it, when I talk about it, is there's a limit and there's a time and there is that point of which there is some fun in the discontinuity. Anyway, so that, my friends, in 36 minutes, was the explanation of the elephants and boots problem.

So I hope this gave you a little bit of insight, a little more thought behind the scenes, and like I said, one of the reasons that it's fun to do these from time to time is there's a lot of philosophy and a lot of larger points that go into it. And so it's fun to talk these through. So hopefully if you like stuff like this, like the philosophy talks, let me know.

But anyway, guys, I am at work. So we all know what that 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.