Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #479: When to Keyword

Episode Date: October 13, 2017

I am often asked what factors determine when we choose to keyword a mechanic. In this podcast, I talk all about this topic.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. I took my son to camp. Okay, so today's topic comes from my blog. One of the things that I get asked all the time is people who want to keyword something that isn't keyworded. And there's a lot of discussion about when and why something gets keyworded. So today I thought I'd talk all about keywording and why we keyword. But before I can do that, I want to talk a little bit about what keywords are, explain a little bit of terminology, and sort of talk a little bit about just some

differentiation between some elements of how we make mechanics. Okay, to do that, I'm going to look at mechanics at some recent blocks. Okay, so let's start with Amonkhet block. As I record this, I know by the time you hear this, Ixalan will almost be out. My problem when I record this ahead of time is I have a gap. So I'm going to talk about Amonkhet. It's quite possible Ixalan's out when this comes out, but I don't definitively know that when I'm recording this. So I'm going to talk about Amonkhet. Okay, so first let me explain what is a keyword. but I don't definitively know that when I'm recording this. So I'm going to talk about Amiket.

Okay, so first let me explain what is a keyword. So the point of a keyword is to take a long amount of text and shorten it so that it is less text. Usually what that means is you're taking a string of text and reducing it to one to three words. Usually a keyword is one to three words. And the idea is that it allows you to sort of take a concept and make it shorter, more brief. And as I'll talk about today, there's a whole bunch of reasons you want to do that. Before we get to the reasons you want to do it,

let's first talk about what it is. Okay, so let's look at Amonkhet. So first we'll start with embalm, which turned into internalize and Hour of Devastation. So that is a keyword. Basically the idea of that, it says, oh well if this creature is in your graveyard you're allowed to spend mana and then you get a token copy of this creature. Now it becomes white. You know there's a few riders on it, but basically it's kind of like this thing and it becomes a zombie. So the idea is this creature, you use it normally, but when it's in its graveyard, you can now do this thing to it. Now note, in this particular case, the mana you spend, the input to get the effect, that changes. The different embalms use different amounts, but the output is always the same,

which is you're going to get a token copy of the creature that's white in a zombie. In Eternalize, instead of white, it's black. Instead of it being the same power and toughness, it's by default a 4-4. And so the idea there is that it's a keyword that says, okay, here's what I do. I'm going to abbreviate this for you

so that you can learn about it. So another mechanic in the set is exert. So exert is what we call a keyword action. So it's very similar. It's a kind of keyword, except it's a verb. So the idea is what you're doing is taking a bunch of things and shortening. Usually, usually keyword actions are one word. Sometimes they're not.

But the idea of exert is, okay, here's an action you will take. Well, if you want to do this, you have to exert the creature. Well, what does exert the creature mean? Oh, it means to tap it, and it doesn't untap during your next untap. And there's a bonus, but in this case, for example,

exert just says what you're going to do. What you're keywording there is this effect is going to happen. The result of doing it, that's not part of the keyword. The output is not part of the keyword here. So notice, for example, with embalm, it was all about sort of the output is what's unified. With exert, it's the input or the effect, essentially, that is unified. Okay, cycling.

Cycling is also a keyword. Cycling is something in which it says, okay, you're going to spend mana, the input, which can vary, and then you're going to discard this card to draw a card. So you're going to, once you pay the mana, then you have a set thing that's always going to happen. So that keyword, once again, the output is always the same. That you're going to pay mana, that can vary, but then the output is going to be the same. Aftermath. So aftermath was a mechanic that went on sort of a split card, and it said,

hey, I'm like a split card, but you can only cast this half in the graveyard. But once again, the reason it's a keyword is, it's like, okay, this right half of the card says, I have a special ability, which is, you may only cast me from the graveyard. Okay, now, auto-devastation had a flit. That's a creature keyword. That's a keyword that says, okay. And that had a number associated. Oftentimes, keyword mechanics will have a variable,

usually right after it, and so a flicked number meant, okay, whenever I am blocked, I am going to make you lose life. Now, there's a variable about how much life you're going to lose, but the input, whenever I am blocked, and the output, you're going to lose life, are pretty locked in.

The one thing is there's one variable in there, which is sometimes we use a number, which says, oh, well, you don't know how much life you're going to lose life, are pretty locked in. The one thing is there's one variable in there, which is sometimes we use a number, which says, oh, well, you don't know how much life you're going to lose. That's the variable. But other than that, afflict, sort of the input and the output are the same thing. Okay, let's go to Kalanesh. Okay, vehicles. The vehicles technically are a artifact subtype, but the mechanic, the actual mechanic is crew. And crew is, I think, a keyword action. So crew basically says, hey, if you want to turn this non-creature into a creature,

there's a means by which you can do that. And then it turns into. Now, crew exclusively shows up on this artifact subtype called vehicles. So, but vehicles itself is not actually the mechanic per se. It's not the keyword mechanic. Crew is the keyword mechanic. There's a similar thing, for example, on double-faced cards. That is, it's technically the mechanic, the keyword action, if you will, is transform, which is the thing that gets you from one side to the other side. But that the, you know, and a lot of times it's very easy to think of the different thing as being

the keyword, but it's not necessarily. So for example, let's think energy. Energy wasn't a keyword. There's no keyword to it. There's nothing that shortened. What energy was, was a type of counter that came with a symbol. So there's some shorthanding in how we demonstrate it. And clearly energy, just because you're not a keyword doesn't mean you're not a mechanic. Energy is clearly a mechanic. There are often mechanics we put in sets. If you go back to Amiket, for example,

the monuments with the bricks, or the trials with the cartouches, there are mechanics. You know, deserts, for example. There are mechanics, things that actually haves, for example. There are mechanics, things that actually have a mechanical relevance, but they're not necessarily always keyworded. So, for example, fabricate is a keyword.

That when you play this creature, you have a choice. Now, there's a variable, once again, there's a number, but you can either make so many tokens or get so many plus one, plus one counters. But the idea there is it always works the same way. So it's a keyword. Okay, now we get to revolt. So revolt is not a keyword. Revolt is an ability word. So what revolt says is when you cast this card or this creature enters the battlefield, if another permanent has left the battlefield this turn. Kick, you know, extra ability.

So the reason this is an ability word is you're not shorthanding anything. What you're basically doing is writing out all the text. And then you're just labeling it with flavor to help make people realize it is similar. And the reason we do ability words sometimes is that there are in order to do a keyword you have to be able to exactly match the text it is a shortening of the text sometimes what we find is either the ability we're doing isn't exact or there's enough variance in it that technically we need to write it out that we can't sort of do the shorthand. And I'll talk about today, ability words and keywords are similar, and a lot of the reasons we keyword actually applies to ability words, but not all of them.

The final one, so let me just get through the mechanics, was improvise, which was a keyword. It basically said to you, you can tap artifacts to pay for mana to pay for this spell. It was sort of a variant on Convoke, which tapped for creatures, but this taps artifacts. Okay, so now let's talk about this. So what exactly do keywords do? Why do we keyword things? Because here's one of the interesting things about keywords is if the game had zero keywords,

it would actually be harder to play the game. It would be harder for it to function. Yet, if you have too many keywords, it gets in the way and makes it harder to play. So there's an interesting balance between none makes it harder to play, too many makes it harder to play. So what are keywords doing?

So number one, it is consolidating an idea. That if I, for example, if let's say we wrote out first strike. So I read a card that says, when this creature gets into combat, it deals its damage before the other creature, whatever the text for first strike is. So the second time you read that, you know, at some point in reading, you're like, oh, well, this seems like the other one. I guess this is like that other one. But by putting a word on it, by saying, oh, well, this is first strike, the second you see first strike, you don't need to read the long paragraph. Now, be aware. Keywords don't often reduce text.

The reason is we use what we call reminder text. Usually, the text that we do to explain the keyword is written on the card, but it does shorten the virtual text because once you know what it does, you don't necessarily have to read the reminder text. The reminder text is there kind of for people who need it, but it's kind of meant to be invisible for people who don't. So if I have a card that says, and some of the evergreen stuff, you know, we don't. So if I have a card that says and some of the evergreen stuff you know, we don't necessarily put reminder text on all versions of it. It depends where we're using it.

So there is a time and a place where you can save space. Sometimes by the way, on rares and mythic rares if we have a new ability and we can't fit it if we put the reminder text on, we'll sometimes leave it off. So it does sometimes allow us to print something

we couldn't normally print. But the number one reason is not saving text. A lot of people think that's a reason, but really it is not. The number one reason for it is a consolidation of the idea of making it easier for people to sort of understand what's happening. Because what we want to do is,

if we use something multiple times, we want to say, okay, here something multiple times, we want to say, okay, here's the thing to learn. And then, okay, you've learned this thing. This is that thing. And that keywords really allow us to sort of help simplify sort of understanding the larger structure of what's going on. That if a lot of things are similar and we use a keyword, we're sort of educating you that they're similar, you know, and that there's something that has a common bond to it. Okay, also, it's important to remember that when we use reminder text, reminder text does

not have the same sort of restrictions on it that normal rules text does. The way to think of it is, for example, we do digital forms of magic. So we have to be able to program our cards. The computer has to be able to understand what the card is doing. So we kind of write magic, what I call magic ease. But it is kind of, on some level, a very exacting language that says what happens. And the one thing that happens about reminder text is, what happens. And the one thing that happens about reminder text is reminder text doesn't have sort of the legality or the strictness of normal text. So one of the advantages we

also get from a keyword is we can put a keyword, we can kind of behind the scenes write technical text to make it work for, you know, digital, but we can put slightly more vernacular when describing it to you. So that's another advantage we have of keywording something is it allows us to explain it in a little more easy to understand, simplistic might be wrong, but easy to understand way. We can use more flavorful terms and such. Speaking of which, flavor. That's another very important part of a keyword.

That a keyword does a lot to sort of help frame what you're doing. Like one of the things to remember is flavor is super flexible. One of the problems we get into all the time is people who come up with a reason they want to do something. They want to bend or break the color by and their defense for it is, oh,

I've come up with a good flavor. And the problem is flavor is super flexible. You can always come up with a good flavor. And the problem is flavor is super flexible. You can always come up with a good flavor. There's an infinite number of things you can compare to that you can try to make things work. So when you make a mechanic, that there is many options of sort of how to get the person to respond to it. But by using flavor, usually by tying it to some sort of resonant thing, like I always talk about flying. That's my go-to of a mechanic that is, not that it's simple, but that it's so connected to something else that people can grok it really easy. They can understand it really easily.

That when I say to somebody, like when I say how flying works, I'm like, this is a flying creature. And then I'll even ask questions like, do you think this non-flying creature can block my flying creature? And then, you know, they'll think, they'll go, well, no, I don't think so. That wouldn't make sense. You know, and then I can explain the rules to them. And the reason that things that are flavorful make it easier is that they just click and then you use pre-existing knowledge to understand the new thing. They just click and then you use pre-existing knowledge to understand the new thing. Now, that is why a keyword might make it easier to understand the mechanic.

Another thing is why the keyword might make it easier to understand the set. So one of the things that we're trying to do when we make a set, when we design a set and a block, is we want a cohesiveness to it. We want it to be about something. We want a flavor to it. We want to create an experience in which the mechanics reinforce the overall world that you're in. So keywords are a big way to help us do that because it allows us to take something. Because on a lot, a lot of time when we do mechanical things, there is a disconnectedness in the sense that what we're doing, it has a mechanical point to it.

But then you layer in just a little bit of flavor. Like a good example would be Miracles from Abbotson Restored. That Brian has this mechanic that was kind of a cool mechanic. But the question really was, what is this doing here? Why is this in this set? And we said, okay, well, it's the angel set. If we can flavor in such a way that it feels like, oh, the angels are coming to protect you and save you, it's a miracle. You know, and all of a sudden, this mechanic that seemed distant starts to connect in and then starts to bring the set into focus.

And so a lot of the reasons you want to use keywords is it helps sort of both, it helps the player with the keyword, and it helps the keyword help the set. Now, another thing to keep in mind is there is only so much brain space of our players. There is only so much vocabulary that we want them to learn. And like I said when I started earlier on, no keywords is bad. Because if every single time you ever saw a card that was the same thing, and every time you saw it you had to go, oh, oh, it's one of those things, that just is extra work for the player. But on the flip side, so for example, we made a game on, we made a trading card game out of G.I. Joe a while back. We're part of Hasbro, G.I. Joe's part of Hasbro, they came to us and asked us to

make a G.I. Joe game, so we did. One of the experiments we tried in the G.I. Joe's part Hasbro. They came to us and asked us to make a G.I. Joe game. So we did. One of the experiments we tried in the G.I. Joe game is for every single ability, every ability on every card, we named it. We flavored it. And the idea being is we wanted the flavor to sort of come through. You know, we were doing a top-down design based on G.I. Joe, and we really wanted the flavor to come through. But we found an interesting thing that happened when we did this, which was

when there was infinite vocabulary words, there was no way to know which vocabulary words mattered. Let's say I did mechanic A and mechanic B, you know, and A had a name and B had a name. Now A, that was one card. We just named one card.

B, it was the number one mechanic in the set. There was more cards I did than anything else. There was no way for the audience to see card A and card B and know that A and B were any different. To know that, oh, A, I don't really need to learn A. This is the only card. But B, oh, wow, I need to know that.

That's important. And what we found was that when you sort of oversaturate, there's some flavor. you get some flavor, but wow, you start to lose it as a tool for comprehension. That the audience, like I've talked about this before, you can only, there's this, I don't know what to call it, but like a little Zen story about a student, like a Zen master and a student. And the Zen master says, would you like some tea?

And he pours the tea. And he keeps pouring the tea. The tea gets up to the edge of the cup and then he keeps pouring it. He starts pouring over the edge of the cup. And after a minute he stops and there's just tea everywhere. And he says, so what, my student, what have we learned today? And the student goes, I don't know.

And the teacher goes, if you want more tea, you must first empty the cup. The idea being that your brain can only hold so much information. That you can't, there's a point at which, and this is one of the big things in game design we have to keep conscious of, is there's only so much that the audience can take in. There's a point at which their brain fills up. And once their brain fills up, they have to start not taking everything in. They have to start sort of figuring out what they want to take in and not take in. And the problem is that the less clear you are to the audience of what

matters, the more they take in things that are irrelevant. The more they take in things that don't help them understand. And so a big part of keywords is we are very judicious when and where we use keywords. That it is not the, it's not a, can we keyword this? A lot of times what I find from the players is, hey, here's something you do. It appears on multiple cards. You should keyword this. And the answer is, well, we don't always want to keyword things.

And part of that is we have a volume we want to look at. We want the right number of keywords that is aiding the players and helping them, but not so many that it's impeding them. And there's a gentle balance. Right now, for example, in large sets, we, what I say is we have three and a half mechanics per set. What that means is we do three or four. If we do four, we want them on the simpler side.

But we're sort of leaning toward a world in which we name three to four things in a set. That doesn't mean there aren't other things going on. Not every mechanic necessarily is keyworded or ability worded. Okay, so far, everything I've talked about, sort of the conservation, educating people, adding flavor, all of this seems like, doesn't Ability Words do all that? And it does. Ability Words do help sort of define the set and give flavor and, you know, really sort of educate on what the mechanic is. It does all that. And it's the reason we use Ability Words. The one thing that's important for a keyword that Ability Words cannot do

is in order to reference a mechanic. So let's say, for example, I want to make a card that says, I want to make a tutor. I want to go in my library and find a subset of cards. I am not allowed, I can reference keywords. I cannot reference ability words. Because the ability words isn't sort of really there. Notice that the name's in italics,

much like reminder text and flavor text is in italics. It's kind of there for flavor, but it doesn't have any actual rule support. So for example, let's say I have revolt. I cannot look at my library for a card with revolt. Revolt is an ability word. I can't do that. I can't search for that.

Now I can search for a cycling card. I can search for an embalmed card. Like, anything that's a keyword, I can search for. So one of the things that sometimes determines whether we want to make something a keyword has to do with whether or not we need to reference it mechanically. Because if we need to reference it mechanically, then we need to make sure that it can be a keyword. Now, here's another important point. Not everything can be a keyword. Now, here's another important point. Not everything can be keyworded. So once again, let's go back to the definition I talked about early on. Keywords are

when you take something and reduce it down to fewer words to explain a concept. But the concept doesn't always stay the same. So my story here is, for a long time, we had creatures could be unblockable and creatures could be indestructible. And both sounded like they were keywords. They were individual words like, oh, well, my creature has unblockable. My creature has indestructible. And there are some rules. They're not the major rules, but there are some rules that care whether something is a keyword ability or not. And people were misunderstanding. So what he said is okay let's go make indestructible and unblockable keywords um by the way when the keyword itself

has a name that implies what it does so that people can easily understand it it's less weight on a keyword so when we talk about keywording or not keywording something not all keywords are the same flying carries a lot of information that helps you. Vigilance less so. We have to explain what vigilance means. Vigilance, like once you understand it, maybe the name helps you a little bit, but the word in a vacuum doesn't tend to get you to what the mechanic does. So anyway, we wanted to make indestructible and unblockable keywords. So indestructible we did. Very easy, no problem. Indestructible always means the

same thing. It's always keyword in the same way. Card name is indestructible. But what we found with unblockable was that there actually is a lot of different ways we make creatures not make it so they can't be blocked. So for example, when we turn death touch into a mechanic so death touch first showed up in Alpha, the ability, basically, or, well, the Basilisk ability first showed up in Alpha. There was Thicket Basilisk, there was Cockatrice,

later Legends had a Gorgon, and, you know, basically between Basilisk and Cockatrice and Gorgons, it's like stony gaze. I look at you and I turn you to stone. We like that mechanic. But before we named it, before we made a keyword out of it, every time we did it, we did it slightly slightly differently is it about when I do damage to you is it about when you block me

is it about when I attack when am I turning the thing to stone and what we found was when we put a keyword to it it kind of forced our hand and made us do it all the same way now sometimes that's great in fact I think that was really good for Death Touch because it got confusing sometimes that if you're used to playing against one of them and played against a different one, all of a sudden it works differently. And that causes

confusion. So I like when cards work similarly that we can use keywords to make sure that people understand how they work. The problem with Unblockable was that there were a lot of different riders in how we used it. There were a lot of different ways in which things were unblockable. One of the things about unblockability is we often use subsets of unblockability, where this is unblockable by a certain kind of card. And what we found was there was no way for us to make a keyword out of it that didn't cause problems, that didn't make us sort of write wonky texts and things in places we didn't want.

So what we did instead is we changed the text instead of is unblockable to can't be blocked to make it not sound like a keyword so people wouldn't confuse it for a keyword because there wasn't an easy way to keyword it. And so not everything can be keyworded. And so sometimes when we're talking about whether to keyword something, that is an important part of it, to understand whether or not that thing can be keyworded. Okay, so I'm almost to work, so we're going to recap here. So why, how are we doing time today? Okay, we have a little bit of time. Why is something keyworded or not keyworded?

Okay, number one, we look at volume. We say, is there enough of this that it's worth keywording? The lower ab is, I think the smallest we've ever keyworded is five. Usually we like closer to like eight. I guess five is the bare minimum, but five to eight is about the bottom end. Now, keywords can have a lot more. We've had keywords that, you know, have 30 plus cards. There's no upper bounds to keywords. I mean mean the upper bound to keywords really is mechanically how many can the mechanic support but we'll make as many as we want but in order to get the keyword though you have to exist in enough amount that we want

to use it now be aware that evergreen keywording and normal keywording are different evergreen keywording is we use this enough all the time on a regular basis to be worth keywording, where within a set is a little different. Evergreen, we don't necessarily have to include a lot of mechanics with an evergreen keyword as long as we often do it, most sets do it. It's possible that a set might only have one or two

of an evergreen keyword, but if it's something we always do, then we're willing to do that. Okay, number two is a comprehension issue. Does the keyword help people understand what it is? So my example here where we had problems is one of the most common things people ask me to keyword is milling, which is taking cards from the top of a library and putting it into its owner's graveyard. Milling is a slang term that comes from millstone, a card in antiquities which was the first set to ever do it.

It's not... Nicknames come from nickname places. They often will come after the first card that does it. The problem is in a vacuum, even though people get used to saying milling, milling means to crush grain to wheat. I mean, even millstone as the first

card that did this, like the flavor text had a, like, the constant grinding made them crazy. I mean, like, they had it kind of justified in the flavor text because it wasn't that connective of a flavor. So, one of the problems we've had, like, we've talked about keywording. In fact, during Shadows over Innistrad,

where there's a period in time where milling was going to play a really, really big role. It still played some role, but it ended up playing a bigger role earlier on. And what we found was both the hand and the library represent your brain. The library is kind of your long-term memory,

and the hand is kind of short-term, what you're actively thinking about. But the problem is any word we would pick that communicated the idea that, oh, you're messing thinking about. But the problem is any word we would pick that communicated the idea that, oh, you're messing with memories, really, it confused players and they didn't know whether they were discarding cards or milling cards

because conceptually what it was representing because of the way we flavor the hand and the library causes confusion. So one of the problems and one of the reasons we flavor the hand and the library, causes confusion. So one of the problems and one of the reasons we haven't keyworded yet is we haven't found a way to pick a word that clearly connotes one thing without the other. So when we look at keywords, that comprehension part is, is giving it a name helping us? Is it making it easier for people to understand? Number three is, is it aiding in the design?

Is it, like I talked before about vocabulary can help players understand the word and it can help players understand the set. Is it helping the set? Sometimes we keyword something because it's thematically, it ties directly into what we want the theme to be. Sometimes we don't keyword things because while it's there, it's not quite on point of

what we want to do and if we keyword it it pulls the focus a little bit to make people think that's a little different than what it is so there's a big question sometimes on keywords of what impact it has on how it affects the design number four flavor is it helping with flavor well there's two parts of that one is is it helping the flavor of the set? You know, by giving it a name, is it sort of tying things more into the set? And the second thing essentially is, is there a good thing to flavor it by? Now, we will keyword things that don't have great flavor.

A lot of spelled mechanics, cycling probably is the perfect example. What does cycling mean? It's a pretty vague term. It ties with mechanic. Like you get the idea that you cycle it out of your hand. There's some... One of the things about when you name things has to do with the usage in the gameplay. I didn't want to get into that.

That's more about how you name it less than do you. Do you keyword it. But one of the things that we're always very conscious of is we want to make sure that when we do something, there is proper flavor for it and that the flavor reinforces. The sort of the, does it help design and is it flavorful, you know, both sort of click together to, is it helping in the larger sense of getting people to understand what's going on? And we

always, once again, we always look within. Is the word helping the mechanic and helping people with the mechanic? And is the word helping the set helping around it? And the final thing of whether or not we want to keyword something is really, can we keyword it? Is it something keywordable? Now, sometimes it's no, but we can use an ability word. And then, you know, sometimes the reason we use ability words the reason ability words started in the first place was we had things we wanted to connect that we had flavor for but that didn't technically work as a keyword and then we created the ability words

um but often the time we won't keyword something and sometimes we won't even ability word something is it just it can't be um so in the, we keyword something when we think it helps the audience with the mechanic and helps the mechanic help the set. And we don't keyword something when that isn't true, when we feel for some element of it, it isn't doing the things we need it to do, or it just mechanically can't function the way we normally need it to function. And that, my friends, is why we keyword things and how we keyword things.

So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed today's show. A little insight and sort of a structural look into how we do magic. I tried to mix these up, but the notes I've been getting

is you guys like some of the structural stuff. So anyway, here you go. Think all about keywords. So anyway, I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic.

I'll see you guys next time.