Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1201: Card Preview Articles

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

Part of writing a weekly Magic column involves writing card preview articles for new sets. In this podcast, I talk all about what goes into writing them.

I'm pulling away from the curb because I had to do a chore. We all know what that means. It's time for my drive to work. Okay, so today my topic is writing preview articles. I'm gonna talk all about my history of writing preview articles and how I write them and what's important and everything you ever wanted to know in 30 minutes about writing preview articles. Okay, so I'm going to start with a little bit of history. So prior to my working at Wizards, I used to write for television, but I'm a writer. So when I first got involved with Wizards of the Coast with Magic, I wrote for the Duelist magazine.

Once upon a time, Wizards produced a magazine about magic. The very, very first thing I did were the magic puzzles. But shortly thereafter, I flew myself to Gen Con of 1994, which is where the very first World Championship for magic happened. And I went there to pitch. So the editor in chief was a woman named Katherine Haynes. And I wanted to write articles for Magic.

I was doing the puzzle column. So basically I met up with her at the event and I said I'd like to write articles. And she's like, okay, well, pitch me good ideas. If you give me a good idea, I'll let you write it. And so I started writing articles. In fact, I pitched her two ideas at that very show, one of which was an article about magic at Gen Con with the lovely name of an MTG or at Gen Con that the term MTG or didn't catch on. And then the other thing

is I covered the world championships. If you've ever seen the final table, the final match at the very first ever World Championship, there's a young man wearing an underdog shirt taking notes. That is me. I'm in that picture. But anyway, so I, and I was writing the article for the duelist. I wrote the article on the World Championship. Anyway, I would go on to write lots and lots of articles. As it turned out, A, I knew how to write, B, I knew magic, and C, I would go on to write lots and lots of articles. As it turned out, A, I knew how to write,

B, I knew magic, and C, I turned my things in on time. So I was very involved. In fact, the very first thing I was involved in on magic was the duelist. So much so that when I got hired to Wizards, the duelist actually fought to hire me. There were three different sections. R&D, the Magic team, the Magic brand team, and duelists were all interested in hiring me. What we ended up doing was I was working in R&D on Magic and then I

was the liaison to the duelists. And then eventually I became the editor-in-chief of the duelists. But anyway, I was very connected to the Duelists. Once again, I like writing and So if you ever heard I did a podcast when I got accepted into the Hall of Fame Talking about my very early beginnings of Magic And what I explained was or not magic beginning of game design When I was a game designers before magic even came out, I was an amateur game designer, I wanted to be a game designer and I really wanted to find information about how to be a game designer. And the problem I ran into was there were

just so little written about game design, very, very little. So much so that when I sort of came to Wizards, I just, I wanted, like a be the force you want to see in the world. I really wanted more information on game design. I knew I desperately wanted it. So I said, okay, I'm going to produce that. And so once I got to Wizards, I was very active in trying to write about the process of making magic.

I think I did, I started writing a column called insider trading, where I sort of gave a behind the scenes look at making magic. And then I did my first teaser in Insider Trading for Mirage. It's a 12-12 trampler for one man. And then Tempest was the first set that I led. So real quickly, I've talked about this before

in other podcasts, but just for context. I was hired not as a designer, but as a developer, but I wanted to be a designer while working. But I took the job, I'm like, okay, I'll get my foot in the door. And then I realized there was an opportunity. We were bringing design in-house as of Tempest. And Richard Garfield had mentioned to me that he was interested in working on a magic set

So I took that and I went to Joel Mick was head designer at the time and I said hey I would like to leave the design for Tempest and Richard Garfield said he'd be on my team and that was enough for Joe's go fine I ended up putting Mike Elliott on my team. He and I talked a lot about wanting to design He and I were in the same thing. We were hired as developers, but we wanted to be designers. I ended up Charlie Coutinho rounded out the team. Anyway, when it was time for Tempest to come out, I wrote an article all about it.

A behind the scenes article. Then in two, so in, while the duals existed, I both wrote a lot of articles behind the scenes and convinced other people to write articles but behind the scenes I thought that was really important and then in 2002 I was tasked with starting the magic website of having content on the website so we had originally an article every day eventually went up to two articles every day making magic my article started back in January of 2002 it is the only article still

standing. Little by little we stopped doing a lot of regular articles. I continue to do mine. It was popular and I like writing about magic. And I firmly believe that an important part of what I do is communicating to the audience. And I believe sharing with all of you how we make magic makes you appreciate it more and makes you notice things and you know like I just think us being open about design is good not just for amateur game designers but just for the average magic player so you can learn things about magic. I like to think that I set the standard nowadays. Back when I first started writing everybody was like very quiet because like, oh, you're giving away trade secrets.

I somehow started doing it, no one stopped me. And by the time someone thought to stop me, it becomes such a standard of what magic did that like, well, it doesn't seem to hurt anything. But a lot of other writers started coming out, like nowadays there's a lot more writing about the process. I like to believe I was a contributor to that. Anyway, part of making magic, my article on the website was that I write preview articles.

That's what today's topic is. So the idea of a preview article is, hey, there's a new set coming out. We want to let you know about it. A, because we want you to be interested and we want to excite you and make you, oh, that sounds cool, I want to buy it. I mean, we're, you know, definitely, we're trying to drum up excitement. But also, I, in my quest to sort of

have people better understand, it's the time period where I sort of explain how the set get made. So really when I do a preview column, there are three things that I do. Number one, I introduce the design team or design teams. Number two, I often show a preview card or cards. And number three, I tell the design story.

Those are the three things I do in a preview column. Usually my preview columns are at least two long, two articles long. Sometimes they're longer, they can be three. On occasion they've been shorter, they can be one. Often universe beyond articles are one and not two. Just because anything we write that has to do with the partner, it has to go, we have to send it out to the partner and they have to review it. It just, so we limit about how many articles we write about other properties just because there's a lot more we have to go through to get the okay to do them. But for magic, you know, for in-universe, in-multiverse magic articles, normally I write

at least two articles. The other difference between universes beyond and magic, in, in universe stuff is I'm on all the design teams for all the in-universe Magic sets. I'm on some of the design teams for Universes Beyond. Occasionally I lead, you know, I lead a Marvel set for example. I was on, you know, the very first booster release we did was Lord of the Rings, so I was on Lord of the Rings. I didn't lead it, but I was on Lord you know, the very first booster release we did was Lord of the Rings, so I was on Lord of the Rings.

I didn't lead it, but I was on Lord of the Rings. So anyway, from time to time, I'm on University of Beyond sets. So sometimes I can speak from firsthand, but most of the time I'm not. Just we make a lot of magic. So when we do those, I have to interview the lead that made them so that I can tell the story. But when I'm there, when I lived through the story, it's a little easier, I can write more about it

because I was there, I just have more content to write about. Okay, so let's start with introducing the teams. So something, there is a way we do post our credits online, but as someone who's had to try to find the credits, it's hard to find, they're not easy to get to, they exist, but they're not easy to get to. So if someone wants to know who led a certain design, it's not easy to know. So I made it an effort from the very beginning that when I write a preview article, I introduce

the design team. Now, originally, I would just introduce the, at the time, the design team, and then there was a development column, and the development column introduced the development team. Then when that went away I started introducing both the Explorers Art Design team, the Vision Design team, the Set Design team. Play design is not there's not an allocated team more of like all play design tends to work on it so there's not a dedicated team for each set and then I started recently writing about the commander design team. The reason I write about this is I think it's important that you know who's making the game you know like I I'm a big believer in in giving credit

and letting people know who it is and I think part of that is also hey learning about designers you like and oh so so let this set and stuff like that. Now I used to write all the bios myself. The problem I would run into is they just sounded very samey because it was always me writing them. So what I started doing a couple years ago is I had the lead of the set write about it. I think I started doing that when I started doing set design credits or wrong there. For example set design I'm not on. So it's very hard for

me to write. Like sometimes I would have to write bios for people that I didn't even know I hadn't worked with. Like, you know, so the nice thing about the set lead writing it is they can talk a it's different people. So you get different vantage points. So it's not the same thing every time about the same person. And they can really get into deep about what that particular set was about. Right? Here's what this person did on this set. You know, they help with this mechanic so they can get really into the specifics of

what happened. And the other thing that a lot of people have had fun when they write the credits, write the bios is that they can put themes into it. So Mark Gottlieb, for example, did the for murders at Cuttle of Manor and he put a puzzle into it. So Mark Gottlieb, for example, did the, for, for murders at Cuttle of Manor and he put a puzzle into it. There was a logic puzzle woven into the bios. When Annie did the bios for Dusk Mourn, she asked everybody to list up their greatest magic fear, their greatest fear that had to do with magic. So we, we can, you know, people have fun sort of feeding them. But anyway, oh, and another big thing is,

it's a big deal internally. You know, it's nice when you work on something to get credit for people to see that you did it. And like I said, it's not easy to find our credit. So really the high profile thing we do where people, outside people learn who did something is the credits in my articles. And those are a pretty big deal.

Most of the people who work in R&D now grew up reading my articles and seeing other designers in bios. And so the idea to become a bio is a big thing. So anyway, that's why I continue that. I do do something where we have one of the tools in design where you can hide text. So basically the way I do it is I introduce a team and you have to click it to see the team.

So I always say, if you want to meet the team, click here. You have to click the button, click here, and it'll reveal all the text. But it's a lot of text and we make it opt in. But hopefully you take out and check out who the designers are. Getting a sense from set to set who the designers are really will help you get some bigger pictures of how things are made.

OK, the second thing I need to do is a preview card. The way the preview cards work is Blake Rasmussen, who oversees the preview process. He's in charge of assigning cards to everybody. There are some internal things, but the majority of them are actually external. We work with a lot of different content creators and that the reason a a preview card is the big deal is it is a huge driver for traffic. For example, we can look at our articles and we can see how many people read an article and when there is a preview card in it it shoots up

People like magic cards people like cards they've never seen before it's just fun content And so having preview cards just draws people in I also tend to use it in my article As it means if I want to explain something sometimes showing you the card helps me then make a point of it Like I'm talking about a new mechanic Well, let me show you the new mechanic and then I can to explain something, sometimes showing you the card helps me then make a point of it. Like I'm talking about a new mechanic. Well, let me show you the new mechanic and then I can sort of explain it. So I usually put the preview card somewhere in and that's also hidden behind the click. Once again, I'll say to meet this card, to see this card, click here, you click here

and you'll see it. The way the process works is Blake always talks to me early and says, what card do you want? Every once in a while, there's a very particular card I need but usually what I say to Blake is oh here's my theme so I'm gonna use Duskmore for my examples for this just because it's a recent set and foundations is not sort of the average set so I'm gonna use Duskmore for my example. So he said to me okay what do you want? I'm like well I know the very first article is going to be about

Enchantment the enchantment theme and rooms are a big part of that. So in rooms are the big splashy new thing I'd like to show a room. So he ended up giving me two rooms I think I had an uncommon and a mythic rare, I believe but anyway, I get anywhere between one and three preview cards think once I got four but um Anyway, and I can show off the preview cards and talk about them and it it's a it's a driver I mean most people come in my article because they wanted the preview articles but it helps you know and it also sometimes when people hear about it they'll come you know anyway it's a good driver to what we do and it does a good job of showing off

what the new set is in a fun exciting way. Okay, the main thrust though of the articles is telling the design story. So normally when I want to tell the design story, there's three main things I care about. I want to talk about what was the goal of the set. Number two is what is the theme of the set and number three, what are the mechanics of the set? And the other important thing, and this is true about any writing, but especially for the preview column, I want, my goal of writing a column is to be entertaining.

I want people to enjoy reading it. And so one of the ways to do that is I want to tell a story. And so articles are just easier. Like if you give a narrative component to it, like it's not just, here's random facts. It's like, I'm going to tell you a story. This is more compelling. And so normally where I start is I start with what were the goals of the set.

So for example, I usually, when we green light a set, which means, um, we have what's called an arc planning team. The arc planning team. The arc planning team usually puts together two to three years worth of sets. We then have to run to buy upper management. We officially get the thumbs up from them. Normally what arc planning does, we get the thumbs up. It's not like they often rigid, but they'll give notes sometimes.

Maybe we move around things. But anyway, once we officially get green lit, there's like, for example, with Dusk Mourn, the two things that we sort of decided on the set when we greenlit it, one was, it was going to be inspired by modern horror, influenced specifically by media of the 70s and 80s. And we loved the idea of a haunted house that had absorbed the whole plane.

Like this creepy haunted house that just it goes on forever Those were the two ideas. So when we started design we're like, okay, those are the two things we're doing Trying to make a modern horror Had some trickiness the the biggest thing about it was a Magic when it started did a lot of what we call high fantasy. A lot of, think of like Tolkien or Dungeon Dragons or Greek mythology. There's a certain sort of era of high mythology, just the way it looks, it tends to be medieval in sort of technology. There's just a certain look and feel to there's castles and kings and dragons and um but that is not the only way to

do fantasy and one of the things magic I think it's been very good over the years is expanding how we can do fantasy and it's not just magic other mediums has expanded as well but we really like pushing boundaries we had done Kamagawa Nian Dynasty we had a lot of modern influences could be influenced by Japanese pop culture and so the set had a lot of modern influences could be influenced by Japanese pop culture. And so the set had a very modern element. I mean a traditional element too, but a very modern element. And people really liked the set. So like, okay, let's keep pushing boundaries and seeing what we can do. So we liked the idea of okay, we had done horror before, Innistrad with Gothic horror, New Frexia was what I call sort of alien horror.

We want to do horror, but like as we're doing more magic sets, we're slicing our genres a little thinner. Like once upon a time, it's all about horror. But now it's like, well, okay, this is Gothic horror. Then we did some cosmic horror. This is alien horror. Okay, we're doing sort of a modern horror. And modern horror has a different sensibility to it.

And so our goal was, how do we mechanically make the set feel like modern horror? That was our goal. And so my article is, I'm trying to, that's the story I'm trying to tell. We start with a goal, we're doing modern horror, we're doing endless house. And so what I need to do is I want to build the story. So now I have to write two articles.

Normally the way I do it is I like the two articles to feel connected, meaning the story feels connected. But I usually like each article to have its own theme so that if you start and finish the article, I do true to part of sometimes where it's like cliffhanger come read next week. I do, but I also want the articles to be as self-contained as possible in the sense that I want when you finish the article you feel like okay it wrapped up at a logical point. Not that there's not more to tell but it wrapped up and I learned something. So for example for Dusk Morn now we get into theme. I like to talk

about the theme of the set and usually there's a cohesive theme, a connective theme. And for Dusk Mourn it was the modern horror thing. And so a lot of what I was trying to do was figure out, okay, you know, the team was trying to figure out how do we do that? We early on exploratory design, we recognize the idea that modern horror has this component of mood and tone that a lot of times, like one of the things. So gothic horror first got founded in books, right? And so, and it was based on the fears, like horror has always been a genre built around fear. It is taking people's fears and bringing them to life

so that people can sort of interact with them, right? That some of the people can really, you know, understand this idea that, you know, that facing your fears is a pretty human experience. But Gothic horror, we're talking Dracula and Frankenstein like its fears of when those were created Which was a very different time and modern horror is more about more modern fears. It's a lot more psychological And the fears that get brought to life are just different kinds of fears A lot of early gothic horror was about you becoming a monster. What will I do and do I do the wrong thing and I become the monster?

That's a lot of Gothic horror. Modern horror is much more about facing the fears that, am I doing things that are causing destruction? You facing your individual, facing the fears as more tangible things. It's a little less metaphorical and more, you know, I'm facing my literal fears. Anyway, once we understood mood and tone, we got to the idea that enchantment. So my first article was the theme of enchantments. Kind of the way I looked at it was, I'm going to talk about the vision design, but mostly

I'm going to talk about how vision design really led for us to do to make the enchantment theme work. And I talked about how in order for enchantment theme to work, you need to have a lot of enchantments and you need to care about enchantments. So I talked about eerie. But the big thing was I talked about rooms. And one of the things that I'm always looking for when I'm writing my preview articles is what is the most dynamic story?

What is the coolest thing? And I knew that the exploration of rooms was a really fun story. We did a lot of crazy things. We had a separate deck like attractions and contraptions. We had a separate deck, like attractions and contraptions. We had a little meeple that you moved around. We had multiple rooms represented in one car. We tried all sorts of different things. And we have what we call the gates,

gate zero through gate 11 now, I think. Where there are check-ins by the rest of the company to make sure things are going on. If you're the lead of a set, you'd normally do some of the gate check-ins. Annie had made some presentations for some of those gates that she had that included images. So not only did we try things, we had images.

So an important thing is articles are first and foremost words, but they're also pictures. And whenever you can find good visuals, visuals really add to an article. So when I'm telling a preview article, I'm always on the lookout for what visuals. For example, I will always make sure I know what cards I can show.

I try to show as much cards as I can. In fact, to write a preview article, my editor, Adam, will always get me a list of all the cards that are public at the time my article's coming out. Because obviously, I don't want to give away cards that aren't public at the time my article, but there's a mechanical articles and there's early previews and there's things

that would allow me the opportunity to show you cards without giving anything away, but helps make my point. I'm also looking for other visuals. In the case of Dusk Morn, I had a gold mine. Like not only was the story of the creation of rooms really cool, but we tried a lot of very weird things and Annie had graphics of it. You know, Annie had examples of what we had done. And so anyway, that was really compelling. So I made sure to include that.

And the other big thing that I like to do is I wanna walk you through the different steps of what we've done Like one of the real fun parts of behind the scenes is hey We didn't start that whatever we ended with normally we didn't start with that. I mean every once in a while We we get lucky, but usually we go like Mechanics go through change. We make it we play with it. We adapt it, you know the iterative process We and so it's fun to sort of walk through different ideas because early on, usually when you're trying to do this for the first time, look,

you don't know it's something that you're unfamiliar with. And so you're trying things, but then as you play test it, you learn from it. And from learning from it, you know, it changes for the better. So I like showing like, for example, I talked about the eerie mechanic, right? Well, I knew that the eerie mechanic was not what we had turned over. We had turned over a mechanic called afraid. Now both afraid and eerie do the same role

of carrying button enchantments getting played, but the fine tune, like, we had made constellation in Theros, Theros was also about enchantments, and we wanted to kind of a riff on constellation. A, the word constellation wasn't great. And B, we wanted to incorporate more elements of it. So it's fun that in the article I can show you, well here's what we handed off and here's what we were thinking and here's what a freight is. But here's why we changed it and talked about what the changes were. Normally, by the way, when I, the first week is usually

more focused on vision design. It's when I introduced the exploratory design teams and the vision design teams. The second set is more about set designs when I introduced the set design teams and the commander design teams. But the first week, for example, was more about enchantments. So I did talk about the elements of enchantments and then finished following through on them. I'll introduce the frraid, but then I'll get to Eerie because Eerie is about enchantments. So I do want to have a larger theme. And yes, I'm telling a bigger story. Like I said, it's somewhat chronological.

So normally vision comes first and then set design. But it depends on what I'm telling. And the big thing, it's sort of my point today of preview columns is there is an art to writing a good preview column. A, I wanna make sure that you know what's coming. I want you excited. So I wanna be informative.

I wanna make sure you know, okay, what are all the new mechanics? But I also wanna give you context for that. I want to explain why why do we do it this way? Why is that important? How do different things maybe interact with one another? You know, I want to make you understand sort of a larger thing of what we're doing because once you can see the big picture You know, it's more exciting for you and something that you get you invested in so a lot of the preview column is sort of wetting the appetite for the audience and informing the audience.

But there are some secondary goals. Another one is I want to entertain you. Look, I'm a writer. The average article is 3,000 words, or at least my minimum is 3,000 words. Normally I try not to go over 4,000. Like I usually have to talk to my editor if I go over 4,000, because added words have meaning down the stream,

and I don't want to make extra work for people. But anyway, my article on average is 3,000 words. I want people to enjoy it. I want people, you know, I need my articles to be entertaining as much as being informative. And so that is how I, what I'm talking about is figuring out what I'm going to tell, what am I going to explain,

but then I want to figure out the story. What's the cool story? With the example of Dusk Mourn, I knew I had a really cool story. I had two cool stories. One was sort of the the quest for rooms and enchantments as a larger theme and the second story was Vision design had been very cautious about not stepping on the toes of the other horror sets especially in a fraud and

Set design decided to make some like we we avoided the graveyard. Set design decided, no, no, no, we need to do the graveyard. So like they added some stuff back in that we perfectly avoided. But that's an interesting story. Like why didn't we do it? Why did they add it? Like that's the kind of thing people want to read, which is why did you add something? Why did you take something away? Why did you tweak it? Why did you change it?

And the key for all the preview columns is I wanna make sure that each column itself has a through line and it has something fun for people to read. Normally, I like finishing if I do a two-parter. Then my first part leads you into the second part, does what we call a throw forward. Every once in a while I'll do what we call a cliffhanger. What a cliffhanger means is dramatic moment,

what's gonna happen? Tune in next week. I don't do a lot of actual cliffhangers I I wouldn't one presents itself on doom every once in a while normally I like the articles to sort of be self-contained nothing it ends the story there's more story next week but it at least it wraps it up like the first article at dusk morn really talks about the journey of enchantments and how we brought the enchantment theme to life and then the second article is more about okay there's things beyond enchantments and how we brought the enchantment theme to life. And then the second article is more about, okay, there's things beyond enchantments.

What are those other elements? And then the main through line of the second article was how the set sort of changed in set design because the set definitely had some differences. Things were added and stuff like that. And the key to a preview article is not every preview article is the same because not every design is the same. Sometimes the design goes through a lot of, you know, different designs can, different things can happen.

And my job as the guy writing the preview article is what's the through line? What's the story? Now, the good news is like my background is writing and like finding the story, finding the good beat is something I'm good at. So I try whenever possible in the preview articles. I want you to sort of like, I want to show evolution. I want to show what happened, but I also want to make something compelling. And it's also neat to sort of explain why something didn't work or why we made a change. I try to do that as much as we can. But anyway,

that my friends is the core of telling a good preview article. Introduce the team, show off some cards, walk through the story. The story, once again, is making sure you explain what your goals are, explaining what your themes are and how you brought those to life, explaining what your mechanics are and how those came to be. And then the idea at the end of my article is I don't get too much into the minute details. I'm talking bigger picture. I'm talking about what the mechanics are. I'm talking about the set as a whole

because preview is sort of what your appetite. And then later on other articles, sometimes I'll do like card by card, right? I go really deep in how one card got made or something, or sometimes I'll talk about mechanic if there's a much larger story. But anyway, anyway guys that my friends is how you write a preview article. So I hope you guys enjoyed that

but I'm now at work so we all know that means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time bye bye