Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1178: The History of Magic Design, Part 2

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

This episode is part two of an eight-part series where I go through the entire history of Magic design to talk about design evolution over the years.

I'm pulling on the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so this is a part two of my history of magic design where I'm talking through all the magic designs To sort of talk about how the the nature of making sets. I I'm not talking about the individual designs of that individual set I'm sort of talking about how the nature of design has changed over time. So last we were talking we talked about Tempest Tempest and Weatherlight of how we brought things in for the very first time we were The designs were being done by people inside of wizards rather than our freelancers or people outside of wizards. Um, so Tempest so this we start getting into the idea with Mirage we've started making blocks and with Tempest we now were making blocks internally. So the idea was we would make the large set. The

large set would have two mechanics for Tempest it was flanking and phasing, not flanking and phasing, that's Mirage. It was shadow and buyback. And then the small sets would start later on and the small sets just could do whatever they wanted, but they were on the same world and they would build. Now for Tempest Black specifically, we were telling a story. It was the weather life saga. And so we chopped up a story it was the weatherlight saga and so we chopped up

the story into different pieces and so for example in the first small set our heroes have to go to the Volrass stronghold to they're there to free the reason the whole reason they're there is to get sissay and to car who is Stark's daughter and Karn had been kidnapped and Tom Garth had jumped on the ship and anyway, there's a whole bunch of people they had to rescue from From vorus stronghold, so we made a set called stronghold and then the final part of it was about leaving the plane So we made a set called Exodus Now it was during Exodus by the way, this is I guess is important of a larger picture Michael Ryan and I had pitched the Weatherlight Saga. We were there for the first year or so of making it in the middle of Exodus

There was I don't know friction between the person running the creative team and Michael and I And the person who ran magic Decided to go with them and not us. So Michael and I stopped doing creative the reason this is important is I Was kind of the link to the creative team and that when that schism happened, so Urza Saga We definitely I mean we we Loosely knew where they were going with the story, but not to be honest. We know a lot about the story

We just decided we were going to make a fun set And you know we could add in some characters that they need characters But we're just going to make a fun set and we decided to make a set about enchantments. So Urza Saga was run by Mike Elliott. But it was mostly I was on the design team. We didn't have a large pool of in-house designers. So there's a period of time where Mike and I, occasionally Bill, were doing most of the designing of sets.

Most sets were designed by one of the three of us. And the design teams, we'd pull in other people, so there was a little bit of a mix with the design team was, because you didn't have to be the strongest of designers to be on the design team to add other, I don't want to say strongest, I mean the idea of a lot of like, beginning designs about making things, you know, blue sky design but we would pull different people in and Mostly that period of time is most of the same group of people Mike and I doing the lion's share of sort of designing the mechanics and such

so Ursus like so anyway, what happened to Ursus Aja is we made this We made this enchantment set and then the people who were doing the story decided that it was all about Urza. Michael and I had pitched a three block where it was first act was in wrath, second act was in Mercadia, third act was on Dominaria. They decided they wanted to change stuff so instead of going to Mercadia, instead of having three acts, they had four acts. And so we went back, they wanted to tie it more into Urza.

I mean, our story had loosely tied it into Urza, but not as, or at least our story had tied it into the Phyrexians and it was tied into Magic's larger story, but Urza wasn't directly involved in our version. And in the revamped version, Urza was like the champion of everything. Urza was behind everything. That was in true and randomized version. Anyway, so there was, we kind of, the design team was making things and the creative team after the fact was then layering on stuff onto it and so

they ended up calling it the artifact block that was the name of the the block because it was reflecting the story so we had a set all about enchantments that literally called it the artifact block and then it turns out Urza Saga so oh and that the other important part of Ursus Saga is, at the time we were making stuff, when Mike and I and Bill got hired, we did not have the rigor. I was very clear at the time that I was not good at development. I was not good at, sorry, I was not good at balance. I was fine with development. I wasn't good at balance.

I wasn't good at saying how powerful things were. Um, and William kind of did the lion show that Mike helped him, but it, it was kind of clear, um, Urza saga from a power level was a disaster. Probably the most broken set we've ever made outside, maybe of alpha. And even then maybe more powerful than alpha. I'm not sure. Uh, the joke at, uh, Pro Tour Rome was the early game was Rolling the dice you went first the mid game was the mulligan and the late game was turn one. That was the joke Anyway, so what happened was We this is the for those that don't know the story after the set came out and things broke horribly, we got pulled into Peter Atkinson's offices, the CEO, and he chewed us out.

And he told us, if this ever happened again, if we ever made a set that's broken in the sorts of saga, he was gonna fire us all. So that had an impact. Anyway, so we're in the same sort of period where the design teams are a mix of the same group of people, but the large set was designed in Urza Saiga in specific, the two main mechanics in Urza Saiga, which is cycling and Echo, were both interestingly turned in, cycling by Richard Garfield and Echo by Mike Elliott during tempest design

When I'd hand it over tempest design, there's just was too much in it Joel mix said to me. Yeah too much going on. You got to cut stuff out So we cut out cycling echo Michael Mike Mike Mike. I like ended up using it in the next year set. So But there's a definitely the era of next year set. So, but there's a, that definitely is the era of Michael and I and Bill, sort of like the new wave of people. And we were doing the vast amount of designing,

but it was very similar. We'd make the large set, we'd pick our two mechanics. Then there'd be teams to do the small sets, but it pretty much was following along. The one thing we did do with Urza Saga, just because we were trying to reflect some story points, is we jumped around a little bit in time. Urza Saga was like way back in time and then Urza's legacy was, each time got a little closer to modern day. It did allow us to finally make cards for a bunch of characters from

the past that we had heard about but we hadn't seen before. And so we definitely had the ability to start making legendary cards and stuff. Although I must stress, back in the day, we did not make a lot of legendary creature cards. We were very, very stingy with it. So usually if we made a legendary creature card there were there's some story point or something. Oh also once we had started the Weatherlight Saga We the idea was from every set of the Weatherlight Saga the set would have at least one character from the Weatherlight Saga Sometimes more we spread the crew out over four years. So like All the crew eventually got cards, but they they got over time, and we tried to divvy them up so mostly every set during the course, there's a few exceptions, had a member of

the crew. Urza's Saga was interestingly challenging because it was back in the past. So I believe Karn was in Urza's Saga because Karn goes all the way back to Urza's past and ties to Urza. And then like Ruffellos, for example, who was, there's a Llanowar elf that was friends with Mirri and Gerard that died with the reason that Mirri and Gerard left the Weatherlight. So we used the opportunity in the past to do some characters that we did, you know, we did Multani which was the person who trained them.

And anyway, okay, so then we get to Mercadian masks. So the thing I should stress is, one, we, Urza Saiga had been a bit of, like we had been called into the CEO's office, president's office and chewed out. So we were, we were like, okay, we are not gonna make that mistake. We're gonna make sure that Mercadian mask is,

and we also had an offset, because Urza Saiga was so powerful. So Mercadian mask was kind of purposely pulled back a little bit on the power. There's some individual powerful cards in it. But anyway, we're still in the same sort of, the same general group of people. Mike Elliott also saw, ran Urza Saga. And oh, one of the things, Urzas's destiny which was the second small set of that block um we were starting to get really pinched uh this is the point where the fact

that arnie didn't have a lot of people were starting to come up and um so individual people would were doing individual project i think henry did all of Portal 3 Kingdoms. And so one of the things that I did is I ran the complete design, I was the design team for Earth's Destiny, it's not something we do other than I think Arabian Nights, there's not a lot of sets that one person did all the design for, but I did all the design for Earth's Destiny, which I'm very proud of

being that I was the team. There are a lot of cool cards there. And I've been told by Play Design that it was the least broken set of the Urza block. Okay, we're getting Mercatia masks. So the story, the only thing they kept with the story was it was still a Mercatia, although what Mercatia was got radically shifted

because Michael and I weren't there anymore. And again, like I said, Michael ran the large set. Then we had two small sets. The one thing we did with Mercadia mask is in order to cover some story points, it actually jumps around Mercadia and masks is on Mercadia. But then nemesis is set mostly on wrath and prophecy set mostly on Dominaria I believe but anyway at this point there's not a lot of interworking between creative and I mean some we're doing enough to understand

the big points of what's happening but a lot of it is getting sort of layered on later. Anyway so, okay, oh and the other thing that's going on during this time is there's a little more experimentation with people leading sets. So the large sets, Michael or I or Bill are leading the large sets because the large sets are sort of dictating the year. But the small sets we are experimenting and trying other people. So for example, William Jockeish led Prophecy. Now it ended up like William was a little more spiky than the average person and Bill

and I ended up coming back and doing a lot of what we added in some cycles that were a little more Timmy and Johnny and Jenny And Tammy and we added some more stuff in there was a little more a lot of mechanics that um That women put in stuff like a wrist dick where you're like Oh, my opponent can pay man to keep my effect from working So I have to be careful when I can I start like everybody has a built-in counter spell which not a fun thing, but um Anyway, okay. So now we get to invasion.

So what had happened was Bill Rose, Joel Mick had been the head designer. Joel Mick got a promotion to brand manager. He became the brand manager of Magic. When that happened, he picked Bill to take his place as head designer. So Bill Rose became head designer. So I think really, and this is what we started getting into what we call the third age of

magic design. One of the big things that I've been proposing and Bill and I were on the same page was our blocks were a little, I mean, really, like I said, the way we would make blocks is we'd pick two mechanics. Were the two mechanics even mechanically connected in a way? No, flanking and phasing have nothing to do with each other. I mean, Shadow and Buyback, at least I was trying to do a fast one and a slow one,

but they were not, like blocks did not have themes in any way. And so starting with invasion, Bill's like, okay, we're gonna have a theme, the blocks gonna be about something that it's gonna have a mechanical core to it. And so the idea we did first was we're going to do multicolor. So Bill and I and Mike Elliott went to my dad's house in Tahoe. I think I told this story when I was doing my podcast with my dad. And we spent the first week putting together the set.

Now I mentioned in a previous podcast, one of the sets that Richard had people make, Barry Reich made a set called Spectral Chaos. That was all about multicolor. We were doing a multicolor set, Bill knew that existed. So we decided, and I think Wizards had bought it long ago, that we would incorporate stuff. Domain, at the time we called the Barry Mechanic came from that.

So elements of that got pulled in. It wasn't, I would not say invasion was Spectral Chaos by any stretch of imagination, but there were elements of that got pulled in. It wasn't, I would not say invasion was spectral chaos by any stretch of imagination, but there were elements of spectral chaos, the main being the biggest one, that got pulled into it. So the interesting thing that happened during this block is one of the things that had always bugged me was the way we tend to design blocks

is made block one, made block two, made block three. But block one and block two, like block one would make a mechanic or two mechanics that block two and three would use. And we would try to make something that had some, like we would try to not use up all the design space so later sets could evolve it. But we definitely got into weird cases

where we were sort of painting ourselves in corners where there wasn't a lot left of what there was to do. And so Invasion is kind of interesting. So we were doing multicolor and originally I think we were doing both Ally and Ennemy. We were doing all the multicolor. And then Henry Stern and I had a pitch that we made to Bill. We said to Bill, it's like, what if the first set is just ally, the second set is just ally, and the third set is enemy?

We sort of saved something from the last set. And the idea of having the last set be something the first two sets didn't do was pretty revolutionary at the time. I know it doesn't sound that revolutionary, but at the time it was pretty revolutionary. And that one of the things, I mean, when we pitched it to Bill, Bill was all excited for it.

As I noted, by the way, in my history of ally and enemy, there was a period of time back then where we really treated ally much better than enemy. We just made more ally cards, the ally cards were better. But this is the first time we made a set There was a period of time back then where we really treated Ally much better than the enemy. We just made more Ally cards, the Ally cards were better. But this is the first time we made a set that was enemy, so we were really giving enemy a focus. Now given, if you look at the block, there was a large set and a small set that were

Ally, and just one small set that was enemy. So we weren't, we still weren't treating them the same in quantity, but at least in order to be their own set, we had to have individual cards that were exciting. So we were finally at least making some quality. That you know Apocalypse had some very powerful enemy cards. And Apocalypse was one of the best third sets we had done at the time. Magic has always had, as we'll get later in this history, blocks were always a challenge. And one of the challenges basically were, not just from the design side,

but from is we would put out a large set, people really liked it, it would sell. Then we put out a small set, it never sold as well as a large set, not just because it was a small set, even proportionate to its size, it sold less. And then we put out a third set and it always sold worse than the one before.

I think Apocalypse was one of the few times where I think the third set might've outsold the second set or at least was competitive with the second set, which never happened. So there's a little sign there, they go, okay, maybe we, the idea that people want something new and fresh and that part of doing blocks can't just be just more of the same.

There has to be something there. So that was the first glimmers. And I would take the lessons of apocalypse to heart, which we'll see in a little bit, but I would really take that to heart. It was a very important lesson for me, which would shape me when I became head designer. Okay, invasion block. So, Roketian Mask Block, by the way, had a lot of issues to it. We really didn't push power level because of the saga and we were trying to be extra careful not to break anything. But another thing that happened during Mercadian masks was it became clear after Urza Saga that

we didn't have the expertise in development in play design as we needed. That Urza Saiga was so broken, we're like, you know what, we need to find better, so Urza Saiga pushed us to start trying to hire some people off the Pro Tour. Now I, when the Pro Tour began, I had been, I had done a lot of judging before I came to Wizards

because I wasn't allowed to play in it because I was doing the puzzles and things. So when I found out about the Pro Tour, I asked to be involved. I became sort of Scaff's right-hand man doing Pro Tour stuff. For the first eight years, I went to all the Pro Tours. I ran the feature match area. I did videos in the final day.

I ran the feature match area, I did videos in the final day, I ran the video production. So I was well versed with not just the pro tours but the pros. And so Bill gave me the assignment, he goes, okay, who do you think, who should we hire from the Pro Tour? So the first two people I pitched was Randy Bueller and Michael Donay. They're both people that I thought would be, you know, would do a good job for us. They're people that were both interested in the job and eventually we would hire both of them. And that was just, once that opened up, Brian Schneider, Eric Lauer, Matt Place, Mike Turian,

Dave Humphries, like we, that was just the opening of the idea of, you know, one of the things about being a pro player is, one of the skills that's important is that you understand power level. That the way you do well at competitive magic is that you understand power level that the way you do well at a competitive magic Is that you understand what the powerful cards are and what the powerful combinations are so? Randy Bueller got hired and I believe the first set I think Randy led the development for invasion

So Mercadion mask had all sorts of problems the story the story had issues It wasn't super powerful. There was a lot of disconnect. The block as a whole wasn't the most cohesive thing in the world. Oh, another thing we had learned is when Mike Elliott made Mercadian Masks, none of the mechanics had names. Two of them were tied to mercenaries and to rebels, which we just called the rebel mechanic and the mercenaries mechanic.

Another was spell shapers, but none of them had actual name. They were tied to other parts of the card. And one of the big feedback we got was players that were upset that we had no new mechanics. Even though Michael had put in mechanics, we didn't name the mechanics, and that was very important to us.

And I think the big takeaway from there was this idea that we have to be more conscious, not just of what we're doing, but how it's perceived by the audience. And that became pretty important. So Invasion brought in Randy. We started getting more development. And like one of the things Randy did, which is ironic looking back, like one of the funny stories is Randy really pushed hard to get better dual ends and at the time we were just

skittish with making good dual ends and so we made the tap lands meaning enters tapped and Randy had a fight to get those in. We were like I don't know is it too good? Randy's like it's not too good and as we know now looking back like we now do those at common with a rider, right? We can get much better than that. So anyway, so Invasion definitely was a lot of changes as I talked about,

the reason it's the beginning of the third age. We're doing black themes, we're getting in developers, more trained to do power level. And Invasion also is the big finale of the Weatherlight saga. And little by little we're starting to get, our relationship with the creative team is getting a little bit better, although it is still much more strained than it'll become. I mean, nowadays there's a lot of synergy between creative and design. We haven't got there yet.

Okay, so after Invasion, we get to Odyssey. So I led Odyssey. So interestingly, one of the things that would happen is Richard usually was working on other games, but every once in a while, every couple years, Richard would go, oh, you know, it'd be fun to work on Magic. And he'd tell me, and then I'd put him on a Magic team. So the vast majority, not all, but the vast majority of sets that Richard was on, all but one, I think, I led the design for.

I think what Richard was comfortable with me me and usually if Richard wanted to be on a team and I was leading a team I would just put Richard on the team because a little design tip for you ever running a magic team Richard wants to be on the team let Richard be on your team. He's a he's a good Okay, so then Odyssey, so Odyssey, I was not informed, like, Bill liked the idea of having themes, I liked the idea of having themes. We didn't walk into Odyssey exactly knowing what our theme was going to be, but as we explored with things that we liked, we very quickly got, Richard had a mechanic that he was playing around with, the threshold mechanic that really became,

I did a whole podcast talking about things that were very influential, Threshold was one of those. I came up with Flashback, and so very soon we realized we had a set up on the graveyard. It didn't take long, and then we sort of leaned into that and we did a lot of stuff. So we're still, we still haven't got out. And we're still, we're getting into the,

in the era of Bill Rose designs. Mike and I are leading most of the large sets. Bill led, Bill led invasion was the first one. But after invasion, I led Odyssey, Mike led Onslaught, I led Myrrdyn. So most of during, I guess, Brian Tinsman will lead Champions. We'll get there in a second. Anyway, mostly what happened is Mike and I were leading a lot of stuff at that point. There were other people that were slowly showing, and I'll get to like Brian Tinsman in a second.

Anyway, I am in Odyssey. So in Odyssey, oh, okay, so Odyssey, we start getting a little more experimental. What Odyssey says is, I have this idea of, well, we want Torment to be this dark set. What if it had more black cards?

What if it just wasn't, what if it wasn't color balanced? And so we tried this experiment where Torment had more black cards than less white and green cards. And the set after it, Judgment, had more white and green cards and less black cards. And sort of, we wove into the story to sort of make some sense of that. Now at this point, we're back to the point

where R&D is dictating sort of like, here's the mechanical identity and then story would make sure that a mechanical identity did fit what the creative was going on. I think what happened, oh, I think what happened at this point, if I remember correctly, is when Bill became head designer,

or no I'm not sure the timing of this Bill either bill did this or bill convinced Jim Lynn to do this who was the head of R&D Bill was big on consolidation and he really liked the idea that the creative team and the and Should be reporting into the same structure that design is. That design and creative were interconnected enough that it was weird to have a completely different reporting structure.

What I mean by that is the creative team, like their bosses, other bosses, when we're different people. And so if we wanted something on our side and they didn't, there wasn't much accountability. I mean, they had to convince their bosses to do it, but, and I think Bill and Jim realized that, you know what? The creative is so important part of making the magic cards

that the creative team should report into R&D. And so that was going on during this time period. I, it might not have happened all at once, but the creative team was responsible for creatively addressing what mechanic was going on. We didn't want the, the artifact saga thing going on again, where literally the packaging is like, and the flavor is contradicting what the set is doing.

is like, and the flavor is contradicting what the set is doing. And so anyway, we are experimenting, we're trying color imbalance and ended up being, I mean, I'm glad we tried it. I think it's important for us to try new things. It ended up being a big problem. Color balance is really important, not just because there's people out there that love all the colors and you want sort of a general balance to the colors, which is important, but when you're trying to do balance to a set, there's a lot of what we've learned comes from experience.

And there are certain things that when you sort of change it, it becomes really hard to balance things. And all of our systems are based upon an even color balance. And like it didn't make sense to sort of redo all our systems hey there's certain things that are core to magic and one of them we decided was color balance hey we can play around with things we can test things like we're gonna get to oh it wasn't vision we get to time straw table planner cast we mess around with things and learn we shouldn't mess around with that. That's the thing that happens.

But anyway, still the same general idea of large set, make mechanics, small set. Now we start getting into the idea during sort of Bill's reign that small sets were allowed to introduce new mechanics. In the olden days, no, you have big mechanics and just these are the two block mechanics and that's all you get. I mean, we would, to be fair, in the olden days, small sets would introduce new things,

but we wouldn't name them, they'd be small. But now the idea is, hey, if you're gonna make a new set, it's okay to have a new mechanic and we can advertise a new mechanic. And so the idea that small sets couldn't do a new mechanic, we stopped doing that and said, part of that is also the lesson of Bill, I'm not Bill, of Mercating Masks of how,

like if you don't have name things, people don't recognize it. And we're like, hey, part of advertising a set should be, hey, what's new that we wanted new things. And so we started doing new stuff there. And the other thing that happens during Odyssey Block is the idea of we start getting very conscious about we need to advertise. Now, the way we did advertising during that period is we said we need to make sure we

have something. We were showing cards and ads at the time and so, okay, we need to make sure we have something. We were showing cards and ads at the time. And so, okay, we need to do some amazing thing that I can just show with a card in the ad. People go, oh! So like wishes in judgment were made just to be the splashy thing we could show in the ad. We started bringing back,

we brought back Singer Vampire, we brought back Ernim Jinn, so we could show off like these popular reprints that we were doing, though. I find Singer Vampire, we brought back Ernim Jinn, so we can show off like these popular reprints that we were doing, though I find Singer Vampire funny. But anyway, so there's a lot going on now that we are starting to do more experimentation and we are starting to think about stuff like advertising and just, you can tell as we evolve

that more things are happening, that more things are being taken into account. Okay so I'm at work so we're gonna wrap up for today. So as our story wraps up today Bill is taking over as head designer. Mike and I are doing the lion's share of the large sets. We are doing more mechanics, we are naming more things, and we are being much more conscious of the idea of what the marketability. There's a phrase that we use which is called a key selling point, which means oh when we sell the set what are the most exciting things to be. I think this is not we didn't invent the term key selling points an advertising term but I

I think this is the area where we this kind of thinking of okay when we sell the set what's going to excite people about the set and we are consciously thinking about that starts raising in this period. Next time we will get to onslaught and onslaught was its own kettle of fish so we will have that next time so I hope you guys are enjoying This jaunt through the history of magic design it is fun reliving it and hopefully you guys are fun hearing about it But anyway guys I'm at work So we all know that means means at the end of my drive to work instead of talking magic it's time for me to be Making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye. Bye