Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1234: Vorthos

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

This podcast is part one of a two-part series on the aesthetic profiles. Up first, I talk all about Vorthos, the player who aesthetically appreciates flavor.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work Okay, so I Recently did a bunch of podcasts on the psychographics And I realized maybe I should also do ones on what we call the aesthetic profiles Vorthos and Mel so today is all about Vorthos and I will do a separate one all about Mel so basically a couple things. One, I want to explain the difference between a psychographic and an aesthetic profile because a lot of times people want to group these all together.

The idea of a psychographic is what is the psychographic, oh sorry, what's the psychological? A psychographic is what is the psychological motivation you have to want to play? What about playing the game of magic? What does it do for you psychologically? What are you getting out of it? What what is it what? What element of your psyche is it satisfying and so a lot of the psychographics is about pure psychology? So a lot of the psychographics is about pure psychology. The aesthetic profiles is less about psychology and it's more about aesthetics, which is what element of card making most draws you to it.

And the idea of aesthetics, so in college, I had to take, so I went to Boston University's College of Communications. And one of the classes that was required for every member of the College of Communications was an aesthetics class. So what is aesthetics? I guess if we're going to talk about aesthetic profiles, let's start by talking about aesthetics. So the idea of aesthetics is that there are built in human responses to things that, um, when you look at something, something can feel more or less right to you, depending on these, a lot of the internal things. Uh, for example, the human brain really likes symmetry.

The human brain likes patterns. Um, you know, that the, there's things that you can do that just feel better to the human brain and we as humans like it. So the reason that they've made us take aesthetics is look if your job is to communicate with people and you know interact with people it helps to understand what it is people, what makes people happy, what makes people, you know, and the interesting thing here is we're not talking psychologically. I mean, there's a whole bunch of like what psychologically makes people happy. This is more of aesthetics. A lot of it's visual, but it just has to sort of do with like what feels right to people. And like I said, there's a lot, like,

I went to school and studied writing, right? I studied screenwriting and writing for television stuff. And one of the big things in writing, one of the truisms in writing is that you are trying to create something that feels proper to people. And a lot of that has to do with, there's just certain things

that feel more right than others. There's certain types of stories, there's certain types of structures that it's not that it's any more real because it's not, but it just, it feels right. And there's a lot, a lot of communications, whether that is writing, whether that is journalism, whether that is advertising, there's a lot of communicating, which is interacting with other people and giving information to people where if you put it in a proper form is received better. It feels better.

And that is sort of the crunch of aesthetics, meaning we're going to make magic cards, right? There are things we can do when we make Magic Cards that feel better to people than other things. And there's a lot of moving pieces to Magic Cards. Obviously, there's words on Magic Cards, there's images on Magic Cards, and not just the art. There's frame elements, there's graphic elements. There's a lot of moving pieces. A magic heart has a lot going on on it and one of the things that we have to figure out is, okay, how do we maximize that rectangular piece of

cardboard so you're happier rather than sadder when you see it, that it draws you in? And the reality is the aesthetics of magic design itself is very complex. There are a lot of moving pieces. You know, one of the things we worry about is we want to make sure that the concept of the card and the mechanics of the card feel cohesive to each other. We want to make sure that the templating makes sense, that it feels like it does what you think it does There's a lot about placement of things and so the The core idea is we make a magic card we want to do everything we can to optimize

the card feeling right to you now It turns out that there are two core areas that we can plan that tend to most satisfy that internal aesthetic need. One of those things is flavor-based, and one of those things is much more mechanical based. For a while by the way I thought that Vortathos and Mel were opposites. They're not. They're not. Vortathos just means how much you care about the creative elements of aesthetics and Mel talked about how much you care about the

mechanical elements of aesthetics. They both have to do with aesthetics but they're different and so really what we're saying is how much to... so the answer is there's four groups of people. There are Vorthoses that really care about flavor. There are Mels that very care about mechanics. There are Vorthos-Mels that care about the combination of mechanics and flavor and there's kind of the null set, meaning none of that is what excites me necessarily. That last group I don't think is very big, but it does exist. There are people that aren't that enthralled by the creative and aren't that enthralled by the mechanics.

There are other component pieces to that, the socialness. I mean, there's other reasons they play the game, that the cards themselves, like I said, most people, there's something about magic cards that when they see a magic card, it excites them, right? For example, one of the ways we think about this is we have to preview cards. Now, obviously we want cards not just to preview well,

but to play well. So previewing in the vacuum itself isn't enough. But we do want cards when you see the card for the first time, we want it to sort of draw you in. And that is where the aesthetic profiles come from. What are the tricks? What are the tricks we have? So today I'm talking for those. So today I want to talk about the flavor tricks. What, what do we do flavorfully to sort of draw you in? Okay, first and foremost, and this is pretty simple, but pretty powerful, is the art.

So let's talk a little bit about the art. When Richard Garfield went and pitched RoboRally to Peter Ackerson, and Peter said, "'We can't make it, too many component pieces.'" And Richard said, "'What can you make?' Peter said, "''t make it too many component pieces and Richard said what can you make Peter said hey I Can make pieces of cardboard with art on them because Peter knew a how to print how to print because I Wizards because at the time was a role-playing company, but that's what they did is printing But he knew that his printer could print cards and he had an inn.

There's a local school for art that he had been getting people from and like he knew he had access and contacts to artists. A lot of them were younger artists, but that was fine. But the idea essentially was from the very creation of what magic was, from the very like Peter describing what Richard had to make the idea of art being a component was from the very beginning baked in. And the reason is there is something very, very visceral and exciting. Like one of magic's great, like one of the competitive advantages, I guess, that Magic

has going for it is it has really nice art. That you know, when people look at Magic cards for the first time, usually the comment we get first, the number one comment, the first thing people notice is the art. It is very bold and loud and you don't need to know anything to understand the art. The art is something that you get like, I mean, not that knowing magic doesn't mean you can't appreciate the art more. There's a lot of details to worlds and there's a lot of, you know, art has layers to it. So, but as far as just the seeing what it is and appreciating it for what the artistic

element is very strong. So first and foremost, I believe there are Vorthos' who just love art. Do you like fantasy art? You know, one of the things that I've heard Peter Axan talk about, which is prior to magic, like the amount of places, not including magic, outside of magic, the places to do fantasy art, there's not a lot of venues. There's more than there used to be, but you know, when magic first began. But if you want to draw fantasy art, there's not a lot of avenues for you to draw fantasy art. There's not a lot of places, not zero. There's other games,

for example, and there's, you know, the occasional movie that might need concepting and I mean, there's a few places and maybe there's a few, you know, the occasional product that likes to do a fantasy, you know, it's not nothing, but it's pretty slim. Magic came along and said, you know what, we're gonna produce thousands of pieces of fantasy art every year. And if you're a fantasy artist, you know,

you can freelance and make a lot of fantasy art for Wizards of the Coast. And once again, we also have like Dungeon Dragons, there's a few other games that we have. But Magic produces more art than any of the rest of them. And so Magic has really been a place for a lot of really good artists to showcase a lot of really fun art.

And so first and foremost, there's just that. I mean, there are people who collect magic cards, not because there's a game associated with it, but because they love the art. And so I can't understate the importance of art. We spend a lot of time on the art. Every time we build a new world, we work with an art director. They do world concepting. You know, they try to shape the world so it's new. Even when we return to worlds, we try to upgrade and make the world even better.

And each world, you know, the art director has a pool of artists and they maximize what artists would best bring this particular world to life. Sometimes, for example, if we're doing a very specific thing, we might seek our artists that have never done magic, but do that thing particularly well. I know with Booster Fun that they find a lot of people that don't normally do magic art, but give them an opportunity because there's a lot,

I mean, there's just so much, there's so much room for growth and opportunity for expression in art. So first and foremost, just having amazing art. I think magic does this very well. You know, the way Magic works is most of our artists are freelance. The vast, vast majority of freelance. We have a few on staff that do concepting and stuff. But, and so the idea is that we have access to all these amazing artists. So that, that's first and foremost. And one of the things we do when we pick worlds is trying to pick worlds that we can have

amazing and really cool images to. We want to pick worlds that have a visual aesthetic to them. And so that is a big part of it. So one of the big things about how do you make Forth Artists happy, have really nice art and variety of art, styles of art. We try to make sure our worlds look differently. We try to make sure there's different moods and tones. And so it's not a mistake that we did Bloomberg followed by Duskborne. You know, we like, I talk about pushing the pendulum. We don't just do that in mechanics.

We do that in world. We do that in visuals that we want, you know, each set. We want each set of the year. Like if I show you a car from last year, even if you weren't necessarily familiar with every car and every day, you should be able to know what world is from. Oh yes. That is Innistrad. That's Ravnica. That is Thunder Junction. That's Dusk Morn. That's Bloomberg. You should know where things come from. Okay. The next creative element is the name. And the name carries a lot of weight.

We spend a lot of time and energy. It used to be, by the way, back in the day, when I first started working at Wizards, usually the name, the design name was nothing, was just a placeholder. You know, oh I'm making elf that's four four, it's big elf, you know. We tended to make very, a lot of the early name, design names were just pretty blunt explaining what it was. But one of the things we learned pretty quickly is names have a lot of impact in how people perceive the set.

For example, when I do a vision play test or we have a vision summoner, I'm doing something where it's early. There's no art yet. I can't put art on cards. Art doesn't exist yet. One of the things I've realized is the power of the words, of the titles. That if you title your cards correctly, a lot of, ooh, I'm getting a sense of this world

comes through. Now the names have a couple different functions. One is the names have to ground the mechanics of the card and the visuals of the card. Like we're gonna have a piece of art and we're gonna have mechanics. And that name has to make that art and those mechanics make sense.

Sometimes that's very, very easy. Sometimes the art and the mechanics flow. And ideally we want that. I mean, I'll get to the card, to the rule text in a second. But the idea is we want the name to do that. Sometimes the card to the rule text in a second but but the idea is we want the name to do that sometimes the name the art and mechanics aren't perfect fits and there's a lot of clever examples where you're trying to sort of

use one of the tricks we do in name sometime is that you need the name to match the art and need the name to match the mechanics sometimes you can be clever with the name so that it does both of those, even though the art and the mechanics aren't always a perfect fit. We try to make them a perfect fit, but sometimes due to many factors, they're not. The name also gets to tap into some resonance. One of the things that's really important in making sets is we want people to sort of associate cards. We want to make cards that represent things. And so a big part, and we'll get to card concepting in a second, but a big part of making magic magic is that the cards represent something.

And the names carry a lot of that weight. And the names can reference real things, especially like in Universes Beyond, where we can make exact references. Names can have, can play with words, you can do puns, you can do alliteration. There are a lot of aesthetics in words by the way, like alliteration's a real good example. In my aesthetics class, I learned people like alliteration, that there's something very poetic about it. And so a lot of what you wanna do with names,

it means a lot of different things names can do, but names have the ability to draw you in, to make you laugh, to make you think. Like there's a lot of things names can do. So we spend a lot of time and energy trying to find the right name for cards. Also tied with that is flavor text. So flavor text is at the bottom of the card,

it's in italics, and it gives us a little chance to glimpse the world. Maybe we can tell you a little factoid about the card, or maybe the card that we can have the character in the card talk, you know. There's a lot of things that we can do, and little factoid about the card. Or maybe the card, we can have the character in the card talk. You know, there's a lot of things that we can do. And the flavor text really is the place where we can do world building from a verbal sense. We can verbally build the world.

The art gets to visually build the world. But there's a lot of cool concepts. And when we build worlds, the creative team spend a lot of time creating concepts of the world. We have a world guide that not just shows what the world looks like, but explains how the world functions. And some of that maybe can be conveyed through the names, maybe art conveys some of that, maybe the names convey some of that.

But the flavor text takes the brunt of kind of explaining the world. And on top of that that the flavor text also I like to compare flavor texts the two things that I compare to is poetry and stand-up comedy both are our art forms where you have to kind of really thin down what you're saying and that you have to sort of get to the The crux of your thing and there's have to sort of get to the the crux of your thing and there's that there's an art to writing flavor text there's

lyrical flavor text there's thoughtful flavor text there's humor humorous flavor text the the flavor just can do a lot of different things and it also is kind of creating a feel like once again all these different component pieces need to come together. And so I'm walking through the components of it, but you know, just like the art can grab people and the names can grab people, the flavor text can grab people. People have favorite flavor texts. And in fact, there's flavor text, for example, there's flavor text that inspired me as a

designer. Like the one I love to talk about is Lurgoif from Ice Age had the flavor text Akhans Run, it's for Lurgoif, Safi, Erik's daughter, final words. I love that flavor text. It might be my favorite flavor text in Magic. It got me to make Safi, we later made Erik, we made Akhans Run, we've made numerous cards. Like that one piece of flavor text inspired all sorts of things. In fact there's another piece of flavor text on

a future site card that mentioned Ugin for the first time and from that piece of flavor text we Ugin became a character and I think all this stuff came from us sort of having this one line so they've sort of hinting at something. So flavor text can do a lot to really sort of communicate. And like I said, flavor text is something you can appreciate in a vacuum. And a lot of the Vorthosian thing, what Vorthos is trying to do is there's just appreciation. Vorthos appreciates a pretty picture, can appreciate a clever name, can appreciate a literal piece of flavor text, that each

of those things themselves does something. Okay, now we get to the card concept. Oh, sorry, before we get to the card concept, there's creature type. Creature type has a little bit of a mechanical role. We have cards that care about creature type. We do typal themes. So sometimes it matters that this is a goblin or an elf. But most of the time it doesn't. Most of the time the decision for what it is, what the creature types are, is a creative decision.

That it's another way to say something about the card. Now because there's a mechanical component, something we work with, the designers work with the creative team because sometimes they're like, oh, well, we really want this to be a goblin, you know, and we'll work through. And sometimes the creator come back and says, hey, is it important that this card is a goblin? And sometimes you go, yes, it is. And sometimes they go, no, no, no, it needs something else. It can be something else.

And there's definitely working through that to sort of get the things. But the reason I bring up creature type is it's another tool to sort of flesh out what the creature is. And most creatures are something, they're a species, and they do something. They have a role or a class. So anyway, all that can, okay, those are, the next big thing is what I'll call the card concept, which is the card is going to do something mechanically and we want what the card represents to match what the card does mechanically. We spend a lot of time on card concepting and really what goes on in card concepting is we look at what the card mechanically does and

they're like okay what piece of art Caps not just captures that idea, but itself is an entertaining concept For example, I like I don't do a discuss. I'm in the earlier part, but on finity I was the set lead so I did the card concept of for 50 I was in those meetings and for example, we might say, okay What is this car? We want it to be a vampire, but you know, this is a humorous set. Is there some joke we can play? What, you know, cause we're at a carnival,

we're at an amusement park. Oh, well, amusement parks have fun houses. Fun houses have mirrors that, you know, stretch your face and do funny things. What if we play and there's a vampire who's sad because he can't use the mirrors. There's all these fun mirrors and he can't use them. And, you know, obviously we built the flavor text around it,

you know, the idea to him the mirrors aren't fun because he can't see himself, you know. And we had this sort of joke and we got the art and the art played into that. Like all the things came together so that we made some of it's bigger than the sum of its parts. That yeah, it was a vampire.

Yeah, it flew, it did vampire things. But there's this fun joke we gotta play because it's not just a vampire. It's a vampire at an amusement park. Well, what would a vampire, like, what, is there a joke there? And that was a fun, like, oh, well vampires can't see their reflections. So they couldn't enjoy the fun house mirrors there and that was a fun like oh well vampires can see the reflections so they couldn't enjoy the fun house mirrors

and that was a fun joke we build the car around that and so and a lot of that is I mean sometimes the concept is driven by the name just to use on unsets because those are the ones that I do the concepting for but sometimes we get a name like beast in Show, which was a funny name. And then like, okay. And the concept we played in was, oh, well what if it's like a petch, like a dog show,

but instead of being dogs, they're famous magic monsters, you know? It's a bail off, you know? And we had different art for that. So we could show different monsters, which was super fun. Sometimes it's just an art concept you want. There are definitely concepts where we start with the art. Sometimes there's an important story point we're trying to get. You know, sometimes, sometimes we put a little planeswalk or something, which means it's part of the story spotlight. And that means, oh, we're using this card to represent

and tell a part of the story. You know, there's a lot of different ways we can concept, but the idea is we want everything to come together to be cohesive. The other thing, by the way, that ties into this, I guess I should mention is, the card is gonna mechanically do something. Yes, the mechanical part of the card

is more about gameplay, but there is flavor in it. For example, we do what we call trinket text. Trinket about gameplay but there is flavor in it. For example, we do what we call trinket text. Trinket text is here is flavor text that is more about adding flavor to the card than it is about mechanically mattering. I have protections from demons and dragons. Yeah, that'll matter every once in a while but is there more to give flip to the car? I'm the 100 handed one. I can block up to 100 creatures or 99 extra creatures. Well, yeah, I can block extra creatures.

That might be irrelevant, but the fact that I'm nine, you know, 99 extra creatures is, hey, it's the 100 handed one. We're leaning into what's going on. So sometimes we can use the mechanics to do that. But anyway, so the idea, the reason I bring this all together is what Vorthos wants is Vorthos appreciates all these creative elements. They appreciate the art, the name, the flavor text, the creature type, the lyricism of the mechanics

as it explains what the thing is, the trinket text, and the overall card concept. That is the most important idea. And the reality is, and once again, there's voracousis that care about all the different component pieces we're talking about. There's voracousis that just love art and collect art, it's all about art and artist and you know the reason

they love the new card is oh my gosh this artist did it and it's an amazing piece of art. Maybe they love the card because it just it's clever, it's name, it's flavor text, something about it that just you know so Vortithust' can appreciate the individual component pieces of Magic Hearts but but uh I think the number one thing that really excites Vorthos' the most is when all those are put together and are kind of working together in the same direction that the card has a vision the card is doing something and that um those pieces come together in it. Like

I said, there is an art to making a magic card. There clearly is a, and then there's a well called creative art. There's also mechanical art. When I do the mail podcast, I'll talk about the mechanical art, but there is a creative art. And the creative art is that you want everything on the card to feel like it's organic to the card. Like if you do a good job, the best card design feels like, so I've talked a lot about the paperclip phenomenon. So the paperclip phenomenon in invention means when you do such a good job of finding a solution to a problem that your end user isn't impressed because it feels like, well, that's the only

solution. What else could you have done? And the idea is a paperclip is so kind of well-made that you're like, well, I'm not that impressed with the inventor of the paperclip. How else could you have made it? That seems to be the only way to do it. And the reality is there's infinite ways to do it. That's the right, you know, that's a good way to do it.

And the idea is somebody had to figure out that. Magic design has a lot of the same qualities. When you make the right choices with all the component pieces come together, it feels like what else could it have been? Like when you really, when you really nail sort of a card from a holistic standpoint, the nice thing about it is it feels like, well, there's no other, that's the only choices you could have made.

This card is so perfect in its exactness. How else could it have been? But the reality is that's a lot of work. And like I said, trying to keep Vorthosas happy is something that creative and the creative team and the designers have to work together on. Yes, there are creative elements that the creative team is responsible for that can excite Vorthosas in a vacuum. You can have amazing art, you can have amazing names, you can have amazing flavor attacks. There's a lot of component pieces that itself

can be beautiful. Um, but I think that the, the true, the thing that's most exciting to the Vorthosis is not things in the vacuum, although they can appreciate those. It's them in conglomeration and it's not even a singular card. Another interesting thing about, for Vorthos, is that the cards work together, that the cards create a world, create an environment, create a society. That one of the neat things about a magic set as a whole is not that the, I mean, once again, the art in a vacuum

can be amazing. The card in a vacuum can be amazing the card in a vacuum can be amazing but all of the you know the art is part of the card the card is part of the set that there's a lot more going on and that one of the really exciting things about making a magic set is that all those component pieces can come together for example and I keep using infinity because it's the sets that I do the card concepting on. One of the things that we like to do and we do this in normal sets but I know we do it a lot in infinity or sorry in unsets is I like having a

cohesive sense of world to it. So one of the things that we do a lot is we like cards referencing other cards. My classic example is I was making a card for Unhinged, I think. It was a Bacillus, Stone Cold Bacillus, I think it's called. And the idea was it's the card that if you look at it, you the player turn to stone and you can't do anything for the rest of the turn. But I wanted to show that the card concept that we thought was very funny was that there is a Gorgon at a magic convention turning their opponent into stone. Not just their opponent, like most of the tournament into stone. But it was funny if we wanted some people that weren't turned to stone and then we realized

there's a different card called enter the dungeon and the card enter the dungeon has you play a sub game but it makes you play it under the table. So we had this group of people playing the game under the table. They didn't see the Gorgon because they were under the table. So A it leaned into the joke of well she turned a lot of people in stone, but not everybody. And if you know the cards from elsewhere on the set, you're like, oh, they're playing enter the dungeon. Um, and there's a lot like, or like there's a card, uh, also in the hinge, uh, called AWOL where the creature has ripped itself out from the card and you just see like an empty torn space from where the creature used to be.

Then there's a separate card called Erza's hot tub and in Erza's hot tub we put the creature that had been torn out from from AWOL. The idea is why is he AWOL? Oh he's with Erza in the hot tub. You're like so jokes like that are really fun and And you can enjoy Ursus hot tub and not understand that the creature that one of the creatures in it is a creature from AWOL. It's not crucial you get that. But when you do, it sort of ties things together. And there's a lot of doing that in making worlds and sets where we want the world to feel cohesive. So not only do you want the car to feel cohesive, you want the set to feel cohesive. And even you can go beyond that. We revisit worlds.

So we want all worlds in the same place to feel cohesive. We want return to Ravnica to feel like Ravnica. We want shadows over Innistrad to feel like Innistrad. We want Tarkir and Dragonstorm to feel like Tarkir. That we want, you know, we want the idea that the worlds feel larger than the sum of even one set. And so there's a lot of continuity and that's a big part of the Vortho.

So anyway, sort of my topic today was the key to making a Vortho's happy is really understanding all the different executions that we have, all the different ways to shine. We want the best art, the best name, the best flavor text, the best creature line, the best mechanical execution of concept, the best overall card concept, you know, the best cohesive card design, the best cohesive set design, the interplay between things.

We want all that going and then when all that does it, that is what makes what makes Vorthos happy is that all these things that the craft and care that we put into them is something that they can appreciate, that they can see and that is really what makes Vorthos happy is seeing us at the top of our game bringing things to life and, and executing in all the different ways to like hit the little synapses in your brain that were, we're hitting the aesthetics. We're making magic cards as aesthetically pleasing as we can.

And there's, there's a dopamine hit there. There, there definitely is. There is something that is just so pleasing. And the Vorthoses are the one that that is the aesthetics that most excite them. And that is who Vorthos is. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed my talk on Vorthos. But I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. Means that I'm about to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make a magic.

I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.