Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1188: The History of Magic Design, Part 7

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

This episode is part seven 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 away from the curb because I dropped my son off at school. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today is another in my history of magic series. When last we left, I talked about Dominaria and we had shifted over to a completely new system from design and development to vision design, set design and play design. So it's interesting that the first three sets after Dominaria, although it was the new system, the idea of the new system is every set would be a large set, every set would be drafted

alone and mostly we'd go to different places. But if we wanted to stay in the same world, we could, which we made use of right away. So the next three sets in a row all took place on the same place on Ravnica. So it's sort of funny that like we moved away from blocks and the next magic year all stayed on the same place. So what happened was we were telling the story, the Bolas arc. So the story had begun in Kaladesh. It was a three-year arc and we were completing. And

so basically Doug Byer would come up with the core of the story and what he wanted was it ends with a giant planeswalker war between Nicole Bolas and almost every planes Walker that you knew. Um, and so we wanted that to be on a place that meant something, right? We wanted it to be in a place where the, there was jeopardy and the, the, the most popular plane was Ravnica. We're like, okay, like, let's have this on the heart of where we wanted it to matter, but we knew that we're going to be in Ravnica. We're like, okay, like, let's have this on the heart of where, and we wanted it to matter. But we knew that if we're going to be in Ravnica, we hadn't been to Ravnica in a while, that if the set was on Ravnica, but we didn't get the guilds, we thought people might be upset. So we said, okay,

here's what we're going to do. Let's first revisit Ravnica, have two sets on Ravnica, get our guild sets out of the way. And then the third set would be on Ravnica, but not about Ravnica. It'd be what we call an event capstone set, a new idea. Like one of the things we were playing around with is other than the very early days of the Weatherlight saga, we really hadn't done, I mean, the way magic story tends to work is it works a lot like a soap opera or a comic book. Like there's a lot of stories that intertwine and there's threads that lead to future stories, but most stories sort of wrap up in the context of a year.

And we wanted to have a story that was bigger than that. A story that lasted multiple years. We had created the Gatewatch, back during the oath of the Gatewatch, and we wanted to tell this epic story with the Gatewatch fighting one of their greatest villains Nicole Boland So the way we did guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica allegiance was We did the vision design all at once they did them together the idea being you want them all to be interconnected all at once. They did them together. The idea being you want them all to be interconnected.

I handed off Guilds of Ravnica to Eric Lauer and I handed off Ravnica Allegiance to Sam Stoddard. So they did the set design relatively respectively. And the one thing about Ravnica sets is we at least up to now have not done a lot of innovation in Ravnica sets. The first Ravnica set sort of set a standard. There's 10 guilds will represent all the guilds pretty equally. We'll have cycles of 10. We'll spread it out. Now the first time we did 433 that had some issues. So the second time we did 55 and the last set had 10 had had all of them again so we knew we could do five and five we didn't need the

third set and the Dragons Mace had some issues so we knew we could do five and five and the idea was they're gonna be drafted alone we knew Ravnica sets were kind of at their best when it's just five guilds in a large set that way all the guilds in the set are realistic and you can draft. Yeah, you can mix and match and do three color combinations, but you could always draft the core guilds that are in the set. And then, more of the spark was the big challenge.

We kind of knew going in for the year, one of the things we tend to look at is trying to make sure that we have some things we feel very confident in, and then we can take some risks. And the idea of this capstone set, capstone event set, that like it was a giant completion of everything that's going on, we knew was going to be the big thing.

So I was handing off to Dave Humphries, and that unto itself was quite the challenge. In the end, what we realized was it was a planeswalker war, so we needed to blow out planeswalkers. So we ended up putting a planeswalker in every pack. I think there were 36 planeswalkers in the set. Most sets had between three and five planeswalkers, so 36 was really, really was pushing things.

And we broadened what we could do with planeswalkers. We made uncommon planeswalkers, we made hybrid planeswalkers, we can do with Planeswalkers. We made uncommon Planeswalkers, we made hybrid Planeswalkers, we introduced static abilities to Planeswalkers, so we really did a lot to push out there. So the interesting thing about this first year is even though we were kind of doing new things in a lot of ways it looked more like old things than new things. It looked for a we are abandoning blocks, looked a lot more like a block than a lot of things we could have done. And part of that, by the way, was when we invented it, there was such a thing.

I mean, we did have, the original idea was that Ravnica was gonna be two sets and the war itself was gonna be two sets. The big event was gonna be two sets. That was the original plan, we mapped it out. Anyway, so we then wrap up War of the Spark and the next era is what I will call the alphabet sport sets. So from, I had learned with code names,

a lot of what I've done with code names is if we had a block, three sets, I would make a name that connected, you know, control alt delete, bacon, lettuce, tomato. And then when we got to the two set blocks, it was ham and eggs and soup and salad and stuff that were two. But now we are in a world of single sets.

And so I, the, and whenever we had pairings, people like we did Huey, Dewey and Louie and like, who was first? Is it Huey or Dewey or Louie? So I decided I wanted the simplest system that people could follow. So the idea I had is what if we just had the alphabet, pick a theme that I could do, we did sports, and then just go in alphabetical order. What's first? Archery or baseball? Archery is first, that's A. And the idea was, it was just a simple system that no matter what was going on, people could just see the alphabet and know the order,

which proved to be very successful. We in fact went all the way through sports. We are now actually to cities of the world. Okay, so originally Eldraine, our Throne of Eldraine, our visit to Eldraine was gonna be two sets. Both archery and baseball were going to be it. We audibled away from that in exploratory design for baseball.

And the idea being, I think was, we're like, okay, we're trying to move away from block. Let's really test the thing of what if we're just, each sets on a different world, how does that feel? Like I said, the year before, even though it was our first sort of full year in the new system, it acted a lot like the old system. So they, okay, we're gonna try something new.

So we audibled, we ended up scooting up Eldraine to the second set to baseball. And the third set we pulled together a monster set idea that was actually from the third year that was a little ways off. So throwing the Eldritch, I handed off to Margot Leeven, Eric Lauer. So one of the things Eric started doing in this era is Eric did a lot,

much like I had done a handoffs when we started during this era, Eric did the same thing on, in sets. Eric was in charge of set design. So a lot of these designs are like it went to Eric, Eric sort of helped fix things up and then handed off to an expert. That's what happened in Eldraine is I handed off to Eric, Eric and then handed off to Mark Ottley. I led the, I led the, so also there's a period where I led a lot of sets. You'll see I slowly start giving more sets to other people but we were sort of finding our feet and we were doing a lot of stuff for the first time so I was leaving a lot of sets during

this era. A lot of vision design sets. Fairest Beyond Death actually was Ethan Fleischer and he handed off to Sam Stoddard and Mark Gottlieb and then Ikoria was me handing off to Dave, Dave Humphries. So as we started getting into this new era, the idea of let's really explore different things. And one of the biggest changes from the block system was each set was designed to maximize that set. Each set was like, okay, we're on Throne of Eldraine. We want to be the most awesome Throne of Eldraine

set we can be. Now we're on Theros, when we were the most awesome Theros that we can be. So the idea essentially was each set is really going to shine and doing what it is doing. Now I was conscious, like one of the things that I've always had to do as this era began, and I've tried different amounts of loudness.

In some ways, the subtleness has worked a little bit better for us. So the idea for example was I would recognize themes and make sure that they're just individual themes that work for other. Early on I was trying to do block themes, like not block, cause they weren't blocks, but I was trying to do a theme that ran through

the whole magic year. Like in Eldraine, there were, Eldraine had a mono, the courts had a mono color theme. Theros had devotion, devotion has a mono color theme. So I was trying to see, okay, can we push this mono color theme out of the little mono color theme? We had a littleocolor theme. So I was trying to see, okay, can we push this monocolor theme out of the little monocolor theme? We had a little bit of theme of enchantments.

Like I was trying to find themes that could weave through. Eventually what I would find by the way, is that it works best when I find particular synergies, but I don't have to have a synergy that run all year long. That was sort of the remnants of blocks. What I need to do is find synergies that pinpoint and connect to future things we're doing. They could be next to each other. They don't have to be next to each other. It's just more of what's in standard and are there things

that click together? So Throne of Eldraine, Theris Behind Death, and Icaria. Each set really sort of went off on its own path. I think Icaria is important. We learned an important lesson in that we got a little too advanced. There was too much going on. Mutate was a mechanic that was very complicated. Companions was a mechanic that was very complicated. And what we learned was sort of a lesson of I Coria is if you overload play design like There's only so much complexity and when I say complexity we make magic sets And we keep iterative, you know, we keep designing our magic sets when we do something We've done before even if it's a new tweak on it if we have some Idea of what we're doing because we've done it before, it's just easier to understand.

If we make a brand new creature ability, that's a normal creature ability. Look, we've made a lot of creature abilities, we understand combat, we like, there's a lot of things we understand. So it's a lot easier for us to wrap our brain around it. Both mutate and companions really new space that we had not done. And it turned out that having both of them at the same time caused problems. In fact, Companion basically broke

because Set Design just didn't have enough time with Companion. And there was a really important lesson there of, look, we have to think about how much, and it's not even complexity, it's more of how much novelty may be the better way to think of it. How much are we doing that we've never done before?

And that we can handle some of it and magic should do new things that never done before. But you have to be careful how much and how novel it is. How unlike things we've done before is it. The more it's its own unique thing, hey, the more time they need on that. And I Coria really was a big lesson of us to understand

of, okay, part of like good vision design is biting off enough that set design and play design can chew it. And that, an important part, one of the big changes over to vision design that came through the time period is the goal of vision design is we are, using my house metaphor, we're making blueprints.

We wanna make the blueprints for our house where we're picking structure and themes and mechanics. But we have to make something that they can build. We have to make something that is feasible and that a lot of the role of vision design is making sure that we understand the constraints below us downstream of us and Understand that we're meeting them We started putting a play designer on vision design sets just so we had somebody who could sanity check mechanics

Hey, is this mechanic balanceable? Does this mechanic have things that we can do and we and we started also tagging just the idea of? Hot like mechanics went into three categories Category number one is we've done it. We know it. This is something mean potatoes. We know it We can do with our eyes closed. This is just something we understand Category number two is it's a tweak on something we've done If there's something new about it But you know, it's the basis of what it's messing around

with at least we have some understanding of it. And the final thing is it's new. We've not done it before. We like having the new stuff. We like the third bucket, but the third bucket has to be in moderation. And that we really don't want to have two separate things that are complete novel.

We've never done before in the same set. Spread them out, put them in different sets. Okay, so the year after Icoria, we get to Zendikar Rising, Kaladesh, or not Kaladesh, Kalltheim, Kalltheim and Strixated. So the idea there was once again, we were doing three different sets. So Zendikar Rising was me handing off to Eric Lauer and then to Andrew Brown. Kalltheim was Ethan handing off to Dave Humphreys. And then Shrixhaven was me handing off to Yanni Skolnick. So, the idea there, I did try something this year, is when we had originally made the double-faced cards in Innishrod, we realized that there was a completely different way to use them. If we refer to the ones in Innishrod as transforming, meaning you always play the front face and

you can turn into the back face and sometimes turn from back face back to front face. Modular double- face cards are like, kind of like split cards, although they can be permanent. You can play either side. And when you play either side, that's the side you play. You know, maybe if the card gets back in your hand, you can cast it as the other side. But the modular, you just make a choice

and then that's what it is. It doesn't turn into the other side. And so we had known these existed when I did all the initial design work for... So Aaron had... When we were... We originally pitched Strixhaven. One of the things I wanted to do with Strixhaven was introduce these modular double-face cards. We married it to a magic school trope and to spells matter. The thing we thought was nice because the cool thing you could do with MDFCs is one side could be a spell

and one side could be a permanent. Something you can't do with split cards, for example. Anyway, Aaron had asked me to do some exploratory work on it. I did. I realized it was so robust that we actually had enough to do three different sets with it Zendikar rising did land so Front side was whatever but the back was a land

Then in Kaltime we did gods. So one side was a god and the other side Usually was another permanent. I think it was mostly other permits. And then on the third set, a strict saving, mostly it was a spell on one side and a permanent on the other. There weren't the Dean's, so there was some exception there. So the idea is what if we did this splashy thing

and I did it all magic year long? I was trying to show some sort of mechanical cohesion. The interesting thing was I wasn't, so the lesson of that was what people want when they see cohesion is they want things that play together. And while this had a clear connection that you could see that we're using a similar tool,

they didn't play together. And so it didn't quite do what people wanted. But it was me experimenting a little bit with like, can we make a magic here, have some sort of cohesion to it? Like I said, in the end, what we've kind of learned is it's more about making sure that standards dynamic, that there's different component pieces of it that are mixing and matching.

Anyway, Zendikar Rising, we went back to Zendikar. I think one of the things we learned from our second trip is I think we want to revisit to be a little more, here's what you love about the place. That's why we're going back, to do the thing you love about it. Rather than, here's a twist and it's very different than you remember it,

than we had done on the second visit. So Zendikar Rising was meant to be very traditional. Interestingly, when I designed it, we did not know that we were gonna be doing Dungeon Dragons within a year from then. So a lot of what we did was lean into the adventure tropes and a lot of those tropes are similar to Dungeon Dragons. So like we did party, which was very much reminiscent of Dungeons and Dragons, you know,

the idea of your adventure party. But anyway, so Zendikar Rising was definitely more of a traditional return, doing the world as you like remembered it and loved it. Call of Time was a set we had talked about doing forever, of doing Norse mythology, and so we finally got to that. Strixhaven, we like doing genre stuff. Magical Schools, you know, I mean, they're, they're definitely a few of really famous examples, but it's definitely a, a genre that's been out there for quite

a while and there's a lot of fun stuff in it. I like that we really did our take on it. We did a college, a lot of other magical schools tend to be younger. So we went a little older with it. And my favorite thing is the idea of, we actually made it a school that studied normal things you study in school, and that you use magic to study those things.

But it wasn't like all your classes were like potions. It's like, I'm studying math and history. So I thought that was cool. Okay, so we'll get into one more year, and then we'll wrap up for today. So the next year, okay, so the next year was the year of Innistrad Midnight Hunt, Innistrad Crimson Vow, Kamagawa Nian Dynasty, and Shritsa Nukapena. Okay, so we can start seeing some, okay, so when we started with Dominaria, when we moved over

to the new system, away from the two and two system to what we call the three and one system, the idea was we'll have three large sets, each of its, in its own place, doing its own thing with its own mechanics, drafted by itself, and then we will do a core set. So like originally Dominaria was gonna have two set, a large and a small set, that small set turned into a core set. So we tried the core set for a couple of years. We ran into the same problem we ran into last time

we had a core set, which is it is hard to make a core set that's applicable for the beginners, but also make something that stores want to put on their shelves that they can sell. It's been an ongoing problem. Obviously, as I record this, Foundations is coming pretty soon. So we have a new take on it, we think might work. But anyway, if we go back to this year, so the Zendikar Rising year, we decided, okay, so Zendikar Rising year, we decided we were going to go back, try to, we were going to do three different

sets. I ran the double-face cards, the MFGs through them. But each set really had its own identity. I'm sorry. I'm talking about, okay. Okay, following year was mid-night, industry, mid-night hat. So what I'm saying is, okay, so what happened was we decided that we wanted to move

from three sets in a core set to just four sets, move away from the core set again. And we also decided that we needed to juggle our calendar around. We tended to have a set smack-dack in the middle of summer. We were like, oh, it kind of works better if we have two ones in the fall. So the idea was, okay, let's not do a core set. Instead of that core set, let's do a fourth magic set. And the place we wanted to put it was late fall for northern northern hemisphere seasons. Um, and so

We realized at the time that we we we pulled the we decided to do at a point where we didn't really have time to Make a new world new worlds take more time than return worlds and we were returning to Innistrad already in Midnight Hunt So like okay, what if we what if we just stay on Innistrad for two sets? We said we can stay on worlds for two sets. Innistrad is a very popular world. Let's just stay on Innistrad for a second set. Um, and we decided that, I mean, I was already working on exploratory design for hockey, which was, um, Camigonian dynasty. So by the way, the way you can tell that the set wasn't planned is Midnight Hunt's code name is golf and Kamagawa is hockey.

So the code name for Indusrout Crimson Vow was clubs. Why? Because it went with golf. We, it was not there originally, we sort of put it in. And like I said, I ended up leading the vision for it only because it was so fast that, oh, so what happened was Ethan led Midnight Hunt, handed off to Eric and then to Ian Duke. I led Vow, which was handed off to Eric and then Adam Prozac. And then coming on the end, I'm seeing it was me handing off to Dave Humphreys and then Sh in New Coppina was Mark Gottlieb kind of handing off to himself,

but then eventually to Jules. Uh, Mark Gottlieb is really good in the middle part of design. So he did all vision design in the beginning of set design, and he handed it off to Jules Robbins to do the late part of that design. Um, so anyway, we introduced the four set. Um, we've been, we also had talked about, hey, we can stay in the same world. Since we were on the same world, we carried over the day-night mechanic, which was the werewolf mechanic.

We carried over Disturb, although we did, in a block-like sense, Disturb worked one way. It was permanence into creatures into creatures, I believe. And the second set was creatures into auras, into enchantments. And so, once again, it's us trying to find our feet and understand. So one of the reasons we also did that is we were trying to get a sense,

I mean, we stayed on the same world because we needed to because of the late choice to go there. But also it was an interesting area of, hey, let's test a little bit what's going on and like, what's it like to stay on a world two sets in a row? We ended up leaning a little more into the monster themes. The first set had a little more of a werewolf feel to it. The second set a little more of a vampire feel to it.

Each of the set was built around an event. There was a harvest festival in Midnight Hunt. There was a wedding in Crimson Vow. We carried over mechanics and not all of Hunt. There's a wedding in Crimson Vow We carried over mechanics and not all of them there were new mechanics in Crimson Vow But there were we carried over like two mechanics So like it it was a little bit more like old-school designs in that there was a little bit of carryover It was on the same world. They drafted by themselves. They didn't draft together and so one of the things that was

really compelling to me was the set acted a lot like blocks acted that the first set sold out a certain route and the second set sold out of like as I explained in previous podcasts pretty much set number one assuming you adjust for cards in them, these two sets had the same number of cards, but a lot of times we had larger sets and the small set. So this is adjusted for the percentage of cards. The first set would sell like 100% and the second set would sell like 80%, meaning the

second set would sell four fifths with the first set. And it was pretty, that was very consistent. That's what happened. We tried a lot of different things to make the second set exciting. Anyway, the exact same set here, that when we stayed in the same world, doing character over some mechanics, it acted like blocks acted,

and the second set did about 80% of the first set. And so, anyway, something we've realized, like one of the things that we've definitely sort of learned is, hey, if we go to a world and people like the world, we can return to that world, and we probably can return to it a little faster, because in the old world, like in the block sense, if we were on a world, and then we went like,

the next year was one whole world, like if we went five years away, that you've only visited four worlds between your two visits, right? But here, if there's three different worlds a year and you are four years apart, you've visited twelve worlds, right? That is a lot different. There's a lot other things you've seen and that even though the same amount of time has elapsed, how it felt was very different.

Anyway, the other big thing of this of this magic year was Kamagawa Nyan Dynasty. So the original plan for Kamagawa Nyan Dynasty was we were doing a brand new world. The last time we went to Japan, we did Japanese mythology. Not a lot of people outside of Japan know Japanese mythology. And we say, you know what, what if we went into pop culture, Japanese has done a lot of things that are very big in pop culture what if instead of leading into the part that people know less we lean with our people no more and the idea at the time was we were going to build a brand new world now I on my blog I was well aware that there was an audience and in

French's audience that really wanted to go back to Kamagawa so what I said is hey look let's just build the new world. We'll figure out later whether it's Kamagawa or not. Let's just build the new world. Don't let Kamagawa in any way shape us. Let's just build a cool thing. And then we will figure out once we build the cool things, hey, does it make sense to be Kamagawa or not?

Then secretly, I built a world that kind of had to be Kamigawa. We ended up having this conflict of old versus new, of modernity versus tradition. And by doing that, like you needed things that were old, you needed things that were tradition and actually tapping into a world we've actually been to before with characters that were not just history in the world, but history in the game really, really played this up. So, but having the new part meant half of that got to be all the things that we didn't do before and we got to do all the top-down you know Japanese mythology stuff and so that worked out really well. The most interesting thing about Kamigawa Nian Dynasty is it was something

we've talked about doing forever. We talked about going back to Kamigawa and I kept getting the same response whenever I would bring it up because I'd say oh the people my blog are all excited they want to go back to Kamigawa and the response I would get response whenever I would bring it up because I'd say, oh, the people in my blog are all excited. They want to go back to Kamagawa. And the response I would get is, look, we have all these planes we've never revisited that they loved the first one. Why not go back to places that did well? I mean, Kamagawa historically did horrible, not just on sales, did bad on sales, but also on our market research. It's one of our earliest world market researchers that we did. It did horrible market research, it's one of our earliest world market researches that we did. It did horrible market research.

It's one of the worst testing worlds we'd ever done. So like whenever I would try to pitch it, they're like, look, what are we doing here? We went, people said they didn't like it. They didn't like the world. They didn't like the mechanics. They liked nothing about it. Why would we go back there when there's so many other worlds to go back to? But we sort of in the nature of how we did this, ended up going back to Kamigawa,

which is something we didn't do, and it was a smash success. It was one of the best, I mean, I think it might be the best-selling premiere set. I mean, there's other sets that have done better, but not premiere sets, but this is the best-selling, I think, premiere set of all time. Right now it is. Or at least it's up there. I mean, you might be fighting with one or two other worlds. But anyway, it was a smash success. And it really, it started what I call, if you listen to my podcast on the ages of magic design, it started at our current age. It really sort of said, hey, you know what?

There are things we've assumed, we just are givens that just aren't true. That we really need to take all our preconceptions of what we can and can't do. And another real similar thing, for example, is for a long time, early, early in magic, we had tried something called the Arc system, which was a simplified version of magic where we had other IPs in.

And the idea is, oh, well, all these different properties and you can play them together. And then that didn't quite work out. And then the idea of doing other properties in magic, we just, we've put it for so long. And finally, Aaron one time said, Hey, you know, I, I, let's re-examine this. Like magic is the most awesome game system in the world. And that one of the ways we could get other people to experience the awesomeness that is our game system is draw people in through things they love and that there are all these really

exciting properties that we could turn into magic and let people play with magic that would be a lot of fun and would draw a lot of people in. And so it's during this period that we really are rethinking a lot of stuff and we're having a lot of success with a lot of ideas that we for years are like this can't possibly work and all of a sudden we for years are like, this can't possibly work. And all of a sudden we try them and they work. One final thought before we end today, that's mentioned Shrista Nukampanna.

Shrista Nukampanna, we decided to do, we originally called it Demon Moffiter World was our code name. We wanted a world, we wanted to try a different place that had three color, like shards, arcs. Um, uh, and we, the idea is each one of them represented a different type of crime story. Um, anyway, there were things we liked about it. It had a little bit more of a modern, like a 1920 setting and, or 1920s inspired setting. Um, it

didn't quite do as well as we hoped. I mean, three color sets are really hard Players like them, but there's a lot of challenges with them. And so it wasn't I mean, there's things that like about it There's mechanics that came out of it. They're pretty good But it wasn't I mean, Kamagawa was a smash success Shishiguma was not So anyway as we wrap up here was not. So anyway, as we wrap up here, looks like we're gonna have one more at least for now. My plan is I'm going to do one more podcast, finish up the series for now, and then in a couple years from now, if we build them enough stuff that I can talk more, maybe I'll

do another in the series. Anyway, we definitely can see from a, we're getting to the point now where we are fine tuning the new system, we're getting to the point now where we are fine-tuning the new system, we're fine-tuning the sort of singular set world, we're learning more about what works and doesn't work, and we definitely have had a few things that say, hey, we really could re-examine a lot of ideas that we had and really rethink them. So as we will get into next time, we really start to like open ourselves up. And the other big thing like I mentioned earlier is really having a better understanding of what our capabilities and how do we how do we best set ourselves up for success. So that's

that's the big the biggest lessons of this era that I talked about today. But anyway, guys, I am at work. So we all know 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 all next time. Bye bye.