Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1184: The History of Magic Design, Part 5

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

This episode is part five 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 my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to let their drive to work So today is another part in my history of design series So last we talked What do we last we talked? Last we talked we talked about Zendikar and we are moving into Scars of Mirrodin car and we are moving into scars of Myriden. Okay, so Myriden was the first sort of new world or you know non-dominarian world that we decided to return to.

So the origin of this is Brady Dommermuth and I were huge fans of the Phyrexians. And so we made original Mirrodin, we planted the seeds for the return of the Phyrexians. For those that don't remember, in the invasion, in the Weatherlike Saga, which ends in invasion, Urso wipes out all the Phyrexians. The entire Phyrexian threat is gone,

is purged from the multiverse But they were too good a villain to keep down. So We created a story Um, and the idea is karn when he lost his spark Got infected by some phyrexian oil when he ends up making miridin. He he unwittingly brings it there In the book on miridin We see the main bad guy like in the first few pages find this oil and it goes into his skin and then we don't talk about it again right it's like very subtle but the idea was the original

idea for this block was that it was going to be new for Exia and we were going to spend a whole block in new for Exia and only at the end I'm inspired by like the end of Planet of the Apes I don't want to spoil a whole block in New Phyrexia and only at the end, inspired by like the end of Planet of the Apes. I don't want to spoil a movie that came out in the 60s, but in Planet of the Apes you find that there's an astronaut played by Charleston Heston. He crashes on an alien planet filled with where apes are the supreme form and humans are mere like you know slaves of the apes. But he finds out at the end that he hasn't changed planets, but he's gone through time. He's on earth.

I apologize for spoiling that movie. Um, anyway, so the idea was we were going to do a set that's all about herb, a block that's all about new phyrexia. And then only at the end do we realize it was Mirrodin. That was the plan. Um, I really struggled with this block. I've had other podcasts where I've gone into a lot more detail on it. Suffice to say, I end up really rethinking a lot of how we structured stuff.

It's the beginning of the next age of magic. It's such a profound change for me. It changes the stage of magic. It's such a profound change for me. It changes the stage of magic. And I spend a lot of time really getting into the idea of, I want the idea of a block is this idea of this emotional resonance that I want you to, you the player to feel something. And we spend a lot of time and energy trying to get a sense of what are the Phyrexians and how can the gameplay of the Phyrexians match the flavor of the Phyrexians? How can we make you play in such a way that the mere act of playing itself is flavor? Anyway, um

The other big thing about this block is I realized part way I really really I really struggled with block by the block I struggled most with I eventually came to the conclusion that we had a really cool story that we weren't telling and that was the fall of Mirrodin to the Phyrexians. So the idea is instead of New Phyrexia being the first set, we moved it to be the last set and then the idea I had was what if we make some suspense and the idea being the first set we we're back on Meriden, but like, like 10% of the set is Frexan. We'd have water marks to show you that. And the second set, it's 50-50 and there's a war. And then the third set, you know, the Frexans win. So while

I'm pitching this to Bill, cause I'm suggesting a change for what we were doing. Bill says, well, what if we don't tell people what the third set is? And I'm like, well, what do you mean by that? He's like, what if we don't tell them? What if we say it's either, it was either going to be called new for XIA or mirrored and pure. And we didn't tell, I think people even ordered the set for their store without knowing the name of the set. We revealed it right a little bit before previews, I think it got revealed. And the other thing we were trying to do at the time was we were spending a lot more time thinking about

how to make pre-releases more of events. And so the idea of Mirrodin Massage, which was the middle set, was we designed the set, so half of it was Mirrodin and half it it was Phyrexian and then divided them up such that in the pre-release you chose either a Phyrexian box, a pre-release box, or a mirror in pre-release box and then you only played cards with your watermark on them.

Now once again, there's a lot of things where we try something and we learn that the amount of effort it takes to do it is not worth... Now unlike some of the gimmick sets, especially the gold one, people did like the pre-release. I think the pre-release was cool. There was a fault. So the idea being they're going to fight a war and then we don't know the outcome. Some people somehow thought that was like somehow there were two different sets and that the Mirrod and Belize pre-release would determine

which set were released. We're not doing that much work. It was always going to be New Phyrexia. But there's something cool about the pre-release. I think that we have since learned that it was too much time and energy of something that people didn't care enough about. Although it was cool, I think it was a neat thing. The other thing we did with the new Frexia as far as stretching magic a little bit is, when we were putting the set together, we realized that having a small set

didn't quite give us what we needed. And so we ended up making it a medium sized set, which I think is the first medium sized premier set in magic. Meaning, you first medium-sized premier set in Magic, meaning not as big as a large, but not so small as a small. Anyway, the whole idea of that, but also something else is we were trying to get more into telling larger stories. We had done the Weatherlight Saga and then after that ended, a lot of our stories were kind of block by block, right?

The block was telling the story of that block. And we wanted to start getting in the habit of, you know, on some level, the magic story has the qualities of a soap opera or almost like a comic book. Like, you know, there is, there are storylines, but you pick up threads of earlier storylines. And so the idea of the Frexians, we wanted to reintroduce the Frexians in a bold way, right? We wanted to say these guys are a threat and go, no, really, these guys are a threat. And the idea of the Frexians was their, um was their fatal flaw was they didn't have a means to

travel between planes. They weren't planeswalkers. And so while they took over Mirrodin, they couldn't get off Mirrodin. And that's where we left them. Like they're dangerous. And Mirrodin, one of the reasons we also liked Mirrodin, I mean, obviously, Brady and I had set this up before this was true, but it turned out to be true. Mirrodin ended up to be a very, very powerful set. One of the most, from a developmental standpoint, one of the most broken sets in magic history, following only Urza's Saga, I think.

So the idea that when the Phrexians overtook Mirrodin, you had the sense of, Mirrodin, well, that was a powerful place. So it really gave a sense of the Phrexians overtook Myriden, you had the sense of Myriden, well, that was a powerful place. So it really gave a sense of the Frexians were this danger. And we were setting ourselves up. And like I said, we didn't pay that off for a while. Okay, so after, after Scars of Myriden, we get to Innistrad.

So Innistrad has an interesting story. When we originally made Odyssey Block, which had this graveyard theme, Brady Dobramov and I were talking and Brady said it was really odd. Now, at the time we did Odyssey, the story, the people who did the story, the creative and the designers were very separate. We would make our design and they would add a story to it, but they weren't connected. I mean, we would learn a little bit about the story and make a few cards for it, but they weren't organically connected.

And so Brady wasn't working on the creative team yet. I think he was still on editing. But he and I had had this talk and what he said is, hey, a graveyard set, why, the story didn't make any sense. Like a graveyard set wanted to be like, you know, gothic horror. Like, like, like, you know, it's all about the graveyard. It should be a theme that matched that. And the idea of having a horror based set really excited me. The idea of, I know

we had done Shem Toh Kamagawa was based on Japanese mythology, but Japanese mythology was very, not a lot of people know, I mean, outside of Japan, no Japanese mythology. Whereas, you know, the horror genre, we're talking about the classics of screen and books and TV, like that stuff's a lot better known. Pop culture, when you're doing something, actual pop culture genre stuff is just more resonant

than cultural stuff only because less people know it. Not that we do plenty of cultural stuff, I'm saying that just less people know it. The pop culture stuff is just more more people are aware of it and and the tropes space you're playing in is just a little broader and deeper because a lot of movies and things had to work there so there's a lot of stuff that's been formed and and and media does a good job of reaffirming tropes. It's the nature of how media works. So anyway, I had wanted to do a top-down set based on the genre of horror.

That's what I wanted to do. And I got a lot of resistance. This was another set that kept getting pushed back And originally by the way, I think the plan originally was So it's gonna happen is this was another year that we didn't have a core set so bill said, okay I want large set small set different world large set new mechanics and so the original plan was that Small set, different world, large set, new mechanics. And so the original plan was that

Indus Rod was gonna be the second large set. We were gonna do something completely different. And we had a, I think it was a company-wide contest to create a brand new plane. I think Brian Tinsman won it and it was a world inspired, I don't know how to even describe it, it was inspired by a lot of video game stuff. Anyway, so that won and that's what we were going to do but as we started planning it I think Bill didn't have a lot of confidence in it so and at the same time someone had talked about how it

was odd that we were doing the horror set in the spring rather than the fall because the fall would be right by Halloween. So Bill came to me and said we're thinking thinking of moving it. If we move this to the fall, it has to have a small set. Do you think you can support a large set in a small set? And I was like, Bill, I'm doing the genre of horror. I have enough material. We can do it. So we swapped the two. And then much like happened with rise of the audrazi with Zendikar creative team said look we we just don't have the resources to build two worlds. They were not staffed up like they are now What if we do a giant event that changes the world and so they ended up creating this thing

there's this angel called Avacyn, for those who know Innistrad would know, and Avacyn disappeared and it was her disappearance, like the humans were in disarray, like things were going bad for the humans. When we open up an Innistrad, like the humans on their last legs, it goes to Dark Ascension where it gets even worse. And then we realize that she's been trapped in something called the Hell Vault.

And then the Liliana comes and she's trying to find one of her demons, Griselbrand. And Griselbrand's also trapped in the Hell Vault. In fact, I think what happened was Avacyn was trying to put Griselbrand in the Hell Vault. The angels were putting on the demons in the Hell Vault to try to clean up Innistrad. And Griselbrand trapped Avacyn in with him and so in order to get uh, Grizzle Ben out um, uh, I tried to wait for it to work um, I think that Liliana has to trick Fassa into breaking open the hell vault um, and anyway and then what happens is once Avacyn is restored, Avacyn is restored, then

it becomes like the tides have turned, the humans have the advantage and the monsters are on the run is the idea. So the set follows a lot of the traditional stuff. You know, like I said, this was sort of the alternate year where the second set was large. I did actually the first and small, I did both the Innistrad sets. The following, the large set of the following was returned to Ravnik, which I will get to. I thought that would be a good place to let Ken Nagel, oh I'll have to get to, I'll get to why Ken Nagel said we'll get to that in a second.

A good place for Ken Nagel to get his shops. While we have on Ken Nagel real quick and another important thing that happened, I'm trying to think when it happened, it happened during Lorwin it happened. So I didn't, I should have mentioned this during Lorwin it happened. So I didn't, I should have mentioned this during Lorwin. My boss at the time was Randy Buehler. Randy Buehler came to me and said, look, we've discovered that the Pro Tour is a very efficient way to get new developers,

play designers. But we need more designers, more like, you know, people who can make mechanics out of blink things, you know, who can just, we need raw blue sky sort of designers. How would I find some more? So my wife and I had watched a lot of TV and we watched a lot of different reality shows.

And there's a bunch of reality shows, Project Runway, Top Chef type things where okay you get a bunch of people that have a skill, they're good at a skill, you test them on the skill and then the best one you know gets some job or something, gets some you know or wins money whatever. They get something that will help their careers the idea. So I said I would like to do a reality show to find a designer. So the very first great designer search. The idea was if you met the qualifications you could enter. I mean you had to be 18, be able to work in the US and be willing to move to Renton. The first place prize was a six month internship.

And then we let whoever wanted to enter that meet those qualifications enter. The first one we cut down to 16. Later ones we've cut down to eight. And then every week we would have a challenge and then eliminate some number of players. When there were 16 we eliminated more per week. When there was eight we eliminated one per week. We've done three great designer searches and all of them produced really good designers, one of which was Ken Nagel. So that's where Ken Nagel came in. So that had happened during Lorwin. I think Ken and Alexis,

Alexis Jansen won. Ken came in second. We gave both of them internships. And then Alexis ended up working on Magic online and Ken ended up staying in R&D. But anyway, their first set I think was Shadowmore. So okay, so sorry, back to Innistrad. So we were making Innistrad. I did the first, I did both sets of Innistrad. The only second small set I think I've led. And then Brian Tinsman did Avacyn Restore. I was actually on the design team,

but Brian led that team. And like I said, the one thing we had learned from last time when we had done Rise of the Odrazi is the audience wanted a little bit more connection than we had since we were on the same plane. So we did connect it a little bit on dying, which was a mechanic we introduced in, we introduced in Dark Ascension, stayed.

There's a little bit more carry over. There's a little bit of typo that we carried over some stuff just so it felt cohesive as a world and not completely different. Rise of the Drazi, there just wasn't enough Zendikar on it with sort of the notes we got from people. Even though we were still on the plane of Zendikar, it felt a little bit too removed. So we had a little more continuity, although it was mostly new mechanics in a new set. Okay. So after Innistrad was returned to Ravnica.

So I had, so originally when we've gone to original Ravnica, it was large, small, small, and we had done four, three, three. There were four sets in the large set, uh, four guilds in the large set, three guilds in the medium small set, sorry, in the small set, the medium small, sorry, the small set in the middle, the second small set and the third small set or third set, which was the small set, also had three people in it. Going back, we realized, I think the guilds were so popular. So this was, we had returned to Mirrodin. Mirrodin was our first return.

Like once we had entered the, starting with Mirrodin, we had sort of left, we left the safety of Dominaria. And then we did not go back. I mean, we eventually would go back. I'm sorry. We went back in Time Spiral. So we did revisit in Time Spiral. And then we would not go back after Time Spiral for 13 years.

So once we had sort of been exploring the multiverse phase of Magic Sets. The first one we came back to was Mirrodin and Scarves of Mirrodin, but Mirrodin went through a lot of changes and it became Nufrexia. It pretty much got remade and the first set was Mirrodin, so it was a return, but it slowly got shaped and became Nufrexia. Ravnica, we weren't really interested in a major shape. People loved Ravnica. It was more of we wanted to deliver People loved Ravnica. It was more of we wanted to deliver

more of Ravnica. And the idea we came up with was a tiny change. We realized that one of the things that we liked was large sets drafted better. Like the nice thing about the large set of original Ravnica was, hey, you had five guilds and you could draft those five guilds and you could play those two colored decks. The second we introduced the second and third sets to it, it got a lot more, like it was hard to play two colors. So the idea we had was, what if we had two large sets? And we've gotten the habit now of saying, hey, we can just have extra large sets.

What if we had two large sets, instead of going large, small, large, what if we went large, large, small? Although the small would become a medium. But what if we did a large set not in the third slot, but in the second slot? And the idea is that that way we could do two back-to-back sets with five guilds in them. Not four like the first time, but five.

So you could actually draft like we just felt like having five was more balanced. And the idea was you would draft each set by itself. So you start to get in the mindset of we have large sets, but you could draft a large set by itself. And the idea is we would make a third set. So the first set was called Return of Ravnica. The second one was called Gatecrash. And the third was called Dragon's Maze. So the idea was the third set would be drafted with the first two sets. So like you had a chance to draft each of the guild sets

by themselves. And then when we drafted them together, the third set would have all 10 guilds in it. That's why we made it medium rather than small. So I, Ken Nagel ran Return of Ravnica. I ran Gate Crash. Although I think I co-led it with Mark Gottlieb, who we were training. And then the third set was Alexis Jansen, who had won the first great designer search. So, and the interesting thing there is, is a good example where we didn't change the basics of what made Ravnica Ravnica.

It was a guild set, there were 10 guilds, each guild had a mechanic, there were cycles of 10 that ran through both of the main sets, and then we had additional stuff that would run through the third set. We made a couple mistakes, but in general, one of the things that was interesting is one of the progressions of us making multi-car sets

over the years is getting a better understanding of what we need to do. And a big part of that is making sure that you have the resources to do it. So one of the big innovations of Return to Ravnica is we made the gate land, the gate duals. And the idea was we wanted you to have better manifixing. So we gave you tapped dual ends at common.

And so we had done tapped dual ends before, but not at common. That is, okay, we're just gonna give you, we wanna make sure that you have the access in limited to what you do. So we put them at common, but because at at rare we were bringing back the shock lands which were very popular from the first time and we didn't want the shock lands to seem strictly better we made the gate subtype and so anyway I think a lot of the

second trip to Ravnica was us doing a lot of general improvement things the 433 which was cool did not draft great, at least it got very muddy later on if you were drafting more sets. And so we wanted more opportunities to draft two color. Like part of the promise of Ravnica was it was a two color block. Well only the first set could you draft two colors. We wanted to, so now the first two sets you both could draft two colors. The third set, you probably drafted more than two. I think you could draft two in the third set. At least there were offerings of all combinations.

It turns out that the third set was a little crowded. I do think there's a way to put 10 guilds in one set. I don't think we quite understood it at the time. I mean, it looked at something like Bloomberg. We have learned how to have ten two-color pairs with definition in a way that I think back then we didn't understand we also just like we named it Dragon's Maze because Dragon referred to Niv-Mizzet, but Niv-Mizzet wasn't in the set and there wasn't really dry

I don't think there was even I don't think there was a creature type dragon in the set. And people somehow would drag it in the name. We had made, oh actually Scourge is upcoming, I think Scourge is upcoming. Anyway, oh no no, Scourge was the third set in Onslaught and that had had a dragon theme but we didn't really have that many dragons in it and people were like, hey this set people thought, I mean we didn't advertise that with dragon theme, it didn it had a dragon theme, but we didn't really have that many dragons in it And people were like hey this set people thought I mean we didn't advertise that the dragon theme It didn't have a dragon theme but dragon in the name made people think there was a dragon thing either wasn't so We were all for two for delivering on what people perceived as a dragon theme. We would eventually fix that um But anyway a good example of that year is we didn't change a lot of fundamentals of what the world was

But we did change a like we changed our tools a lot. We restructured how we made sets. We added components to the set. And the other thing you're starting to see here is there's just a new guard coming. I think Brian Tinsman would leave soon. Like there's this new, we're training a new set of designers. You'll see as we look at who's leading sets. That we're part of going into the next evolution

of new sets of designers and such. But anyway, I mean Return to Ravnica did fine. People like Ravnica. Okay, so Return to Ravnica was followed by Theros. So Theros, the interesting thing about Theros was I originally had pitched a block. I was definitely getting more into doing experimental things with blocks. I was trying to shake blocks up and I was trying to give them an identity. So the idea I had pitched was it was a block in which the first set was a prehistoric

set, the second set was like a medieval set, and the third set was a futuristic set. But the gimmick was they were all the same world, that we would come to a world and then jump thousands of years at a time and come back to see that world. The problem was, even though I got thumbs up from the design side of things, Brady, who ran the creative team, said, look, we have trouble doing, you know, the reason they didn't want to do a twist in Innistrad is they were worried about doing two sets. This was not just, this was three and they got no way in the world we can do three words. So we had talked about doing a Greek mythology set

in fact it was the runner up to when we were for Chansey Kamigawa, Japanese one out but Greek mythology had been a close runner up. Greek mythology was a huge influence on lots of I mean lots of precursors to magic, Dungeon Dragons and to magic itself. There's a lot of Greek mythology running through magic. Richard was very influenced by Greek mythology. So we had talked forever about doing a Greek-inspired set. And so Brady said, how about that? Let's audible to that, something we talked about doing forever.

And I think Brady was the one that said, hey, maybe we can put enchantments in. Because even though Urza Saga had done enchantments,, maybe we can put enchantments in because we've had Even though Urza saga had done enchantments. We hadn't really done enchantments in any loud way and not since Invasion started the block theme. What if we had the setting was Theros and the mechanical theme was enchantments. That's where we started and one of the cool things about it was Early on we had figured out that the way to imbue Like we've started realizing that part of building a real cool world Was you had to imbue the color wheel organically in the world and for Theros that the idea came really quickly was let's make our pantheon

Represent the color wheel so the five main guys are the five main colors and the ten minor guys are the ten two color combinations And gods are the five main colors and the 10 minor gods are the 10 two color combinations. And one of the things that was going on was I was constantly there's what we called the third set problem. Like I said before, I said this in previous podcasts, we would make a set, a large set, then we make two small sets and the small sets just keep selling worse than the one before it Even even proportion to the number of cards in it And so we were trying to figure out how to undo this So like one of the things I did in Theros was I knew that people wanted an enchantment matters deck

We were doing for the first time outside Urza Saga, which I guess people wasn't as loud as it could have been I guess in retrospect I wanted to do an Enchantment Matters block, but I held back on the Enchantment... I wanted to do an Enchantment block. I held back on the Enchantment Matters and made that a huge theme in Journey to Nyx, which was... So is Theros, Born of the Goddess, Journey to Nyx. And the idea was, okay, I'm gonna take something I'm gonna withhold it and hold it to the last set.

What ended up happening was the third set ended up being more exciting and the second set ended up not being exciting. Like we pulled enough stuff away from it. I think Theros did a lot of things right. I really, there was a lot of cool ingrained flavor in Theros. I think we used enchantments in a cool way to represent the influence of the gods.

I think the gods themselves were very popular. We managed to take a mechanic that players, that we were very excited about that didn't excite players, and bring it back and reinvent it in devotion. Yeah, the chroma had been mechanic in even tied and it was something that I had really high excitement for that just didn't work out. And the idea was, hey, maybe it wasn't that people didn't like it. I mean, people didn't like it, but maybe the reason people like it was us, was execution. And so we revamped it, did devotion. Devotion was a giant hit, which was an important lesson. But you can see with Theros,

the interesting thing about Theros block is that there's a lot of experimentation going on. And the funny thing for a long time is we just accepted that that's the way blocks were. The first set was gonna sell the most. So, hey, make sure the first set sells as much as possible because every set after it can't sell as much as the first set. So let's maximize the first set sells as much as possible because every set after it can't sell as much as the first set

So let's maximize the first set and we're spending a lot like I was the important thing to me was I Really wanted every set to have an identity and I wanted to be something unique to itself I mean we're well in the point where every mechanic had its own mechanics and we didn't in blocks We did carryover mechanics, but we also made sure that each set introduced something new that wasn't there before. We also did something interesting in that block that we had done where we stopped using mechanic in the second set realized we were it was a mistake monstrosity and then brought it back from the third set which was we had not

done that before. Normally if we carried through a mechanic sometimes we carried from the first set into the second set and stopped before the third set but i don't think we had stopped in the second set and brought it back in the third set so um lots of experimentation the other thing that's happening in the Theros i think was a really good example was is we were getting better and better of imbuing a sense of feel. Like I said with kind of the second age, not second age, but the New Age that started with Scarsamiriden was the idea of we really, you know, Scarsamiriden, we wanted to feel what does it feel to be the Phraxians and Innistrad is like, okay,

it's Gothic horror, we want you to feel afraid. Ravnica, Ravnica was a little more more old school than new school, because we were really recapturing that the... We didn't really reinvent it. I asked if we could reinvent it a little more. But we got to Theros. Theros had the sense of adventure, the idea that you built up and all the different aspects of the set. I call it the gods, heroes, and monsters.

Your gods could, through devotion, level up and take form. Or your heroes could through heroic and different auras get stronger and better and become true demigods and such. Or your monsters could level up and you could use monstrous and you could make them even stronger and make the most powerful version of your monster that everything sort of built up and created the sense of adventure and scope that we wanted. So the thing that is interesting is I think that we were getting better and better at sort of evoking and feeling things and evoking things.

We were getting a lot more into resonance also. That's another thing that Innistrad really had done was a lot of what we realized was look our goal is to make all of you excited and one of the things that we found was very compelling and obviously when we get into more modern day resonant is something we've leaned in heavy maybe a little too heavy that that's a fine note, but anyway, it really taught us the value of resonance, of the idea of Innistrad was like, okay, we're tapping into all this cool horror that people like. Theris was tapping into Greek mythology and we could do it in such a way that really sort

of drew people in. It made the sets really exciting and people really enjoyed them. But anyway, that is where we are, We're up through Therese Block. So next time, we'll get to Khans of Tarkir Block, which was very innovative in its own right. And a lot of changes came from that. But I will talk about that next time. So anyway, guys, I'm here at work. So we know what that means. It means 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 next time. Bye-bye.