Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #520: GDS3, Trial 1

Episode Date: March 16, 2018

To make it into the Top 8 of the Great Designer Search 3, you needed to pass three trials. In this podcast, I talk about the first trial, the essay test.

I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk all about the first trial of the GDS-3. So, in long form, the Great Designer Search 3 has started already. By the time you've heard of this, it's well in motion. But I'm going to walk through, do a couple podcasts on all the different trials. So in order to be a finalist in the Great Designer Search, the idea of the Great Designer Search, super quickly, I've done a lot of podcasts on this. Many years ago, I was told that I could have a design intern. I didn't know how to find one. And then I came up with the idea of like a

reality show to find one so that I could find somebody out there that had good design skills. GDS won. Alexis Jansen won it. Ken Nagel came in second. Graham Hopkins came in third. Mark Globus came in fourth. All of them ended up getting hired by Wizards. Then we did a second GDS, one by Ethan Fleischer.

Second, Sean Main. Third was Scott Van Essen. All three came to work for Wizards. was Scott Van Essen. All three came to work for Wizards. Also, there are a few other people between those two that actually ended up working for Wizards. But anyway, it's been very successful.

And so we got the green light to do the third Great Designer Search. So we have to narrow down the field because a lot of people would like to have a job in R&D, but we only actually have room for eight people in the final competition. So what we have to do is there's three trials that people have to take to end up as one of the eight finalists. So trial number one we're talking about

today it's an essay test. Basically what happens is there's 10 essay questions you have to answer each question from with 250 to 350 words, so an average of 300 words. So on average, you are writing 3,000 words. The reason the essay test is so important is a couple things. One, it gives an insight into how you think. That's important. We want to know about how you think about the process, how you think about design. Two, and the reason we do it first is it's a lot of work. And there's a lot of people that say they'd like to be designers but aren't willing to put the work in. And we really need dedication.

We need people that really want to do this. And so one of the reasons we put the essay trial first is it's a good way to weed out people that like, oh, you know, I kind of want to do it, but I'm not really willing to put a lot of work into it. Like, well, that's not the people we want. And so 3,000 words is a good way to sort of make sure that people show some sense of dedication and narrow down the field. So, for example, we went out there and we had to let people sign up. We said, hey, who wants to be in the Greatest Diner Search 3? So almost, by the time we were done,

almost 8,000 people said they were interested. When the dust settled, who actually turned in the first trial, it was a bit over 3,000. We haven't figured out, there might be some duplicates yet, we haven't figured out, but it was like, it was 3,200 before counting duplicates.

So my guess is it might be like 3,000. The reason it might be duplicates is sometimes people were not sure if their thing came in. And so sometimes people submitted it twice just to make sure that it was in fact in, you're not penalized for doing that, but I don't have the final numbers as of the recording here. My guess is it's 3,000 ish is my guess. Okay. So what I'm going to do today is I'm going to go through the 10 questions of the Great Designer Search, and I'm going to answer them, or give my answers.

I'm going to talk about what we were looking for in the question, and then give potential answers that I would give. Okay. Oh, by the way, one of the important things about the trial, the first trial, the essay test, is it's not about getting the right answer. This is not a test in which there's a right answer and a wrong answer and you get marked wrong for the wrong answer. The point of this test is looking at how you think. So if you give a quote-unquote wrong answer,

but you do a really good job supporting it, then it's not a wrong answer. You know what I'm saying? Like, there are answers you can give that I don't agree with, but if you can defend what you think, this is not a test about being correct. This is a test about showing how you think and how you defend what you think. So you can give an answer that I might think of as being a bad answer, but well defended, it might be a very good answer.

So, like I said, there's no definitive answer for any of these questions. You know, the craziest answer well defended could be wonderful. Okay, so question number one. Introduce yourself and explain why you're a good fit for this internship. I'm not going to go too deep into answering it for me, because if you don't know who I am or where I come from or why I love magic, you have not been paying any attention to my podcast or my articles or my blog or my social media or any of the stuff I do. I will say the biggest trap that people fall into on this question is that they explain why they want to work for us, not why we want them to work for us.

Meaning they explain why the job would be beneficial for them, not why they would be beneficial for the job. And this is true, by the way, of any job interview. I've talked about this before, but it's really important to explain why they want you, why you would be good for them, why having you would make their life as your employers better. Okay, so we'll skip over that one just because there's not, I mean, like I said, if I wanted to sell myself, you should hire me for magic because I've been doing it for 22 years. Okay, number two, an evergreen mechanic is a keyword mechanic that shows up in almost every set. If you had to make an existing keyword mechanic evergreen, which one you'd choose and why? So the interesting question here is saying, take something that's not an evergreen mechanic

and introduce it to being evergreen. What would you do? So there's a bunch of different ways to go on this one. So one of the areas, if you sort of know the needs of R&D, one of the biggest ones we've been having problems with is there's not a real clean blue black keyword. We recently have put black secondary in Flash to let blue black have a little bit of overlap. The problem there is that Flash doesn't work in a lot of situations. A lot of times the ability of putting on things, it flashes isn't,

it doesn't tend to work. So when you're making the cycles, flash isn't always going to help you there. Um, so one of the things you could do is look around for a black blue, a mechanic that would have fit for black blue. Um, and there's a bunch of ones that are out there. There's nothing great. Obviously we haven't done that yet. So there's no perfect fit. Um, you know, Skulk was an attempt to do that. People might say, Oh, bring the Skulks back, but Skulk doesn't have a lot of design space. Another thing you could do is maybe there's some functionality. Like the thing, for example, that I'd be tempted to answer this question is something that gives you general card flow. Because one of the things we always are trying to do is get more card flow.

And now we brought Scry, and Scry is now evergreen where it wasn't before. And that's one of the ways to help with card flow in. Now we brought Scry and Scry is now evergreen where it wasn't before and that's one of the ways to help with card flow. But there are a few other mechanics that are pretty generally useful. The key to me to an evergreen mechanic is that you want something that has a lot of design space and that fixes a problem that you tend to have time and time again. That's why I tend to go to card flow. So I think one of the things I might say is cycling. Cycling, I think, is a pretty good mechanic. It goes in any card type. It has a lot of flexibility.

And mostly what cycling does is just help sets with synergy because it just gets you closer to getting the thing you want. I think cycling is a pretty good mechanic. Anyway, that's the key to this question. The key to this question is finding something that is flexible and has a lot of design space to it

so that it really would be a tool to help that's what we were looking for here's the thing that everyday magic could use here's a good thing you did that did that I could see someone trying to make the argument for flashback or make the argument for kicker. You know, you want to pick something that is successful and broad. Like, the argument for kicker is, look, a lot of the stuff you do is kicker.

Maybe you just want to make kicker an available thing so you have means to spend extra mana because kicker is all about giving you things in late game to spend extra mana. Maybe Flashback's the kind of thing you're like, oh, there's a lot of utility there, gives a lot of depth of play. Maybe you want to bring that in and not do it in a large amount and not do it at common, but something you would do just to give a little bit of extra space to sets, for example, give a little extra depth without having to add too much into it. Okay, question number three.

If you had to remove evergreen status from a keyword that is currently evergreen, which one would you remove and why? Okay, the obvious one for this one is hexproof. Hexproof has caused us a lot of problems and we've been constantly looking for a replacement for hexproof. Hexproof does do some good. I'm not sure necessarily I would get rid of Hexproof, although if I could find a replacement for Hexproof,

I feel like Hexproof is doing something important. We might be able to find a Hexproof alternate and then use that and make that evergreen. The actual trouble child that we've been having recently, by the way, if you pay attention, is Prowess. Well, we like Prowess a lot, and it's a lot of fun, and the gameplay is great, and it's a red-blue overlap, which is something we needed.

Prowess is proving to be problematic in a couple different ways. One is, it's the only evergreen mechanic that stacks, meaning having prowess twice is better than just having it once. And so,

when we have things that grant abilities and stuff, the fact that prowess can stack means it's hard to put in things where you're granting abilities. And it's one of the things we've discovered is there's just a lot of different set designs that it gets kind of weird with.

And so when you're messing in different space with things, it's the kind of mechanic, if you guys will notice, that there's been a bunch of sets in the last couple years where we just didn't use prowess. You know, that prowess is just, prowess is almost acting like a deciduous mechanic rather than an evergreen mechanic, and that we're using it, but we're not using it every set. And the fact that we keep running into problems with it, it's not really a design space issue, although there is a complexity issue, which is we've been trying to be careful about how many non-static creatures at common change their stats. And so it's been kind of making us not do a lot of prowess at common,

because there's not a lot of even stat prowess. There's not a lot of combinations that work so great. So anyway, prowess is the one that I think right now is actually causing us the most problems. Hexproof is defensible. Now, the other mechanics, you can pick any evergreen mechanic you want. Maybe you think scry isn't worth it, or maybe you think that first strike you could defend, and that first strike is a little more defensive than we like. Trample is a little more complicated.

It's a little more defensive than we like. You know, trample is a little more complicated. It's a little more of a complex mechanic. You could pick vigilance for it's hard to understand what it does. And so its flavor is not so great. I mean, you can pick whatever you want. The key is trying to pick something and figure out why. In this question, the key is explaining why the every-way mechanic as is is failing in some way and then talk about why, you know, why removing it might make sense. Like, where's the failure? So number four,

you're going to teach magic to a stranger. What strategy do you have for the best possible outcome? Okay, now this is a multi-level question here. First off, as a stranger, first thing you want to do is you want to take deck building out of the equation. Deck building is hard. So you want to build some decks. The reason I would build more than just one or two decks is you want the person who's playing to be invested. So I would want them to have some option because you want them to be excited about what they're doing. So what I would do is build probably four decks, but

build a bunch of decks so that there's a little bit of choice for them. And then you've got to give them themes that are easy to understand. It's hard, for example, to give them archetypes because if they're first starting out magic, they're not going to understand the difference of a control deck or an aggro deck or whatever. What I would do

is I would build it around tribal. I think tribal is very easy to understand. This is a goblin deck. This is an elf deck. This is a dragon deck. You can make things that have a little more oomph and flavor to them. Something that players who don't know much, because fantasy is pretty well known. If you build it around some known fantasy characters, known elves and such, it's easy for people to go, oh, I know what those are. Oh, elf decks sound fun. I would also diversify the color.

I would not do more than two-color decks. I might even do mono-color decks. Usually when I teach people, I tend to do mono-color decks just because it makes it easy when you're playing for the first time for land. The thing I also would do is I would have a math that shows where everything

goes. I would have a scorekeeping device that is something I control but shows my opponent where their life total is at. Use probably an app on a phone so that I'm tracking everything. The least things they have to do, the less they have to do to monitor things, the better because it's complex.

And so if I can sort of take care of things, then when I teach them, I would get the ball rolling pretty fast, and I would teach them while we play. And I would only teach them what they need to know right before they need to know it. And if they finish the first game and they don't know all the rules, that is fine. The goal for me of somebody playing is to make sure that they enjoy and they want to play again. If they're enjoying it, they'll eventually learn all the rules. If they're not, it doesn't matter. So this mistake of trying to use the first game as a way to download everything,

it is not crucial someone understands everything at the end of the first game. What they have to understand is that they're enjoying things and they have enough of a grasp of it that they can play. If they're getting a few things wrong, you can gently correct them along the way. But once again, accuracy is not the number one goal here. Having a perfectly played game is not the number one goal. Also, be very careful about strategy. Strategy is usually not needed in the first game, meaning let them do what they want to

do. If they're interested in later games, you can start teaching them some strategy. But in the first game, make them feel comfortable. Let them do what they want to do. You know, but the key is trying to invest their own interest. Another thing that's very valuable is making sure that they really quickly

get their hands on the cards and they can look at the cards and see the cards. The cards are bright and colorful. You know, don't spend a lot of time lecturing them. Start right away by just getting the cards in their hand and go. All they need to know when they start is essentially we each have 20 points. And if you get me from 20 down to zero, you know, if you get your point to zero, you win. And then just start playing, you know, it explains you go along.

I did a whole podcast on this topic, so if you're interested, you can go listen to that. Okay. Question number four. That was question number four. Question number five. What is magic's greatest strength and why?

There are so many answers to this question. And this is a topic I talk about a lot. So if you're a long time listener, there's lots of options here. The strength that I normally talk about is I say that magic is mini-games to mini-people, meaning that it's a game that lets you, the player of the game, have more input in what kind of game you're playing. I think that's a big strength. The flexibility matters a lot. Also, what I call ego investment is when you play the game, you put a lot of yourself into the game,

into your deck, and that you feel very, like, when I win, it's not just my deck wins. I won. I made it. It's mine. I made it. And there's a lot of personal satisfaction that comes from that. The game has a lot of self-expression. There's a lot of ways to demonstrate who you are. The game has a lot of flavor built into it. There's a lot of cool top-down-ness that is exciting.

The game is fun. I think it's just a really, really well-made game. I think it's, you know, and well-made game. I think it's a, you know, and it's flexible. And it's a game that has 25 years built into it. So there is infinite amount of, you know, like it has a great depth. If you like exploring a game, there's a lot to explore here. There's a lot of cards out there. And there's a lot of ways to play. You know, it's very adaptable. And so there's many different options of how you can play.

The answer is funny. The answer that I gave in my article on this is so I was at GDC in 2015 and 2016. 2016 is the year I gave the speech. You guys know my speech that I'm doing my series on. But 2015, I saw a poster.

And the poster was something like, the top 30 games. Um, and it was based on revenue or something. Um, I don't know the criteria they named him on, but anyway, they showed these games. And what I realized was it was 29 video games and magic. Um, and that, you know, of all the games that were listed in the top 30, a few of them had, you know, tabletop versions, but the core of the game was a digital game, where Magic was the only game where, oh, yeah, we have some digital versions, but the core of the game is a tabletop game.

And then one of the things I realized is, you know, for a long time, we really thought, like, it was a disadvantage that, you know, our lack of sort of, I mean, not that we don't have video stuff. We do. You want to play on video. Obviously Magic the Gathering Arena is up and running now and we have Magic the Gathering online and all sorts of different ways to play. But the game in its heart is a tabletop game. The game is a game about sitting across from real people, not staring at a screen, but sitting across from actual people and playing. And I've come to realize that this has actually become a big advantage for us in that there's a lot of trading cards nowadays,

but not on paper. Most trading cards these days are digital trading card games, and there's a lot of them. But one of the things that's really interesting, one of the things I realized when I was at GDC is Magic is played at most... Most game companies have a Magic Night. You know, they'll play Magic, have Magic Leagues and things. And that Magic is, I mean, A, it's a really, really good game.

But B, it is just, like, here's people that are doing digital day in, day out, and sort of like, hey, you know, it's nice to interact with other people. And I really think that's a big strength of Magic. Something that, I mean, obviously, it's not where Magic started. When Magic started, there wasn't really a lot of competition that was video games. But now, it is interesting.

That's one of the things I think is really interesting is that I do think that Magic has, one of its strengths is kind of its old schoolness in a way. The fact that you do have to interact with way. The fact that you do have to interact with people. The fact that you do have to, I mean, not that you have to, that you're able to. That you're able to interact with other people. And that there's a lot of socialness that I think in today's day and age,

because of all the screen time and all the interactions we have to the world through our screens, that we just have less interaction with humans than we as a people once did. And so actually, I think that's a big strength for magic. Okay, what is magic's greatest weakness and why? This is another topic I talk about all the time. So if you're a common listener, which I hope you are, if not, welcome. You'll know that I always talk about magic's Greatest Weaknesses as barrier to entry. What I mean by that is that it is a hard game to learn.

That everybody who plays the game, everybody who doesn't play the game starts at zero. They know nothing. And then they have to learn how to play. That's a big step up. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of pieces. I mean, one of the reasons I don't teach everybody all the rules when they start to play is there's a lot of rules.

And that what I learn is if you do a good job teaching somebody how to play, the response they get really early on is that is fun. But one of the biggest things I find when you try to teach people how to play is magic is really intimidating. It is really intimidating. Especially because most people at this day and age know somebody who plays magic. Magic is a big enough game

now that people have heard of it. And the people that play magic tend to be really into it. I mean, it is the game that sucks you in. It's a fun game. It's a fun game that's really deep and has a lot...

If you like games and you really like to explore, it's a game that really lets you dive, you know, it's a game of the deep end of the pool, if you will. But, using my swimming metaphor, the deep end of the pool is the scary end of the pool. And so a lot of the way I talk about teaching people is there's what's called a zero entry pool. So it's the kind of pool where you walk into the pool, kind of like a beach, but it's sloped in.

And so the idea is if you want to go just one inch deep, you can. You want to go a foot deep, you can. You want to go three feet, you can. And the idea is you want to sort of slowly get people in. That's a big problem, and that's hard to do, the magic tricky. Now, are there other weaknesses? Magic has all sorts of weaknesses. It's complex.

That's not just a barrier to entry issue, but just to play the game. There's a lot of moving pieces. Often in the game, rules will happen. You have to look up the answer, or you have to ask somebody how something happens in the game. Magic also is very constant, that if you want to just sort of go do something happens in a game. Magic also is very constant. That, you know, if you want to just sort of go do something else for a while,

you're missing things. You know, magic doesn't sort of turn the spigot off, if you will. You know, magic also... One of the things I like to say is that your greatest weakness is your greatest strength pushed too far. Magic is deep. Awesome. But it is intimidating. Magic is complex and strategic.

Oh, but it's hard to learn. And even if, take for example, the magic requires human interaction, the game has a lot of human foibles to it that in some ways are also a downside of that. One of the nice things about video games is

it tracks information for you. Magic doesn't do that. You've got to track the information. And there's a lot of... We try so hard to be very intuitive that we want the game to have a very human-like quality to it. And sometimes humans can be

inconsistent. Humans can be contradictory. And one of the things about Magic Rules is we work really hard to sort of create an intuitive sense, but not everything works intuitively and not everything works the same way. Oh, this works this way

and that works that way. oh well this this what works this way and that works that way and that there's a lot of you know there's a lot of things that that sort of where intuition fights itself that's another big weakness of the game of there's a lot of sort of like in trying to sort of make magic the organic thing it is and then one of the strengths is that it is this organic thing that sort of keeps evolving itself, which is cool, but it also is constantly changing, and that's also negative for a lot of people.

If you really love the game in a certain state, it's going to move beyond that state. And I get people like, oh, I like magic, but I loved magic at this window, and it might never be that way again. Magic is like a river. You know, that there's, magic is like a river.

You know, you can never cross the same, you can never see the same river twice or you can never cross the same river twice. Magic is just ever-changing. Now, hopefully, like I said, one of the greatest strengths is that change allows you to sort of find different things you might enjoy, but its weakness is

that sometimes if you really love something, it doesn't stay. You know, and that it, it keep moving, can be happy when you don't like the thing, but sad when you do. Okay, number seven. What magic mechanic most deserves a second chance? A.K.A. which had the worst first introduction compared to its potential? I went back to some research for this,

and I came to the conclusion that it was Meld. Because my takeaway from Meld was that MELD was popular, but what I realized was it was very divisive. The people that liked it liked it. I mean, it definitely had a crowd that really liked it. But I think that when we did it for the first time, we tended to make it splashy and a little less functional. We didn't do a lot of it, so a lot of people didn't really get a chance to play with it, especially in Limited.

So, I think MELD is something that, done right, is just really splashy and really can make a lot of people happy. I mean, obviously the... Not the answer to give in this question, but the answer of the best second chance was probably

Weird Mechan mechanic in... What was it? Eventide called... What was it called? It became Devotion. It was called Chroma. It's called Chroma. We just didn't quite execute it just right.

We were a little too... We gave a little bit too much flexibility on what you could look at to count. And so it wasn't quite consistent enough. We didn't give it great flavor. And at the time, we didn't really push it. So like none of the cards were that good for constructed. It didn't have the best flavor.

And it just didn't quite gel. But I believed in it. Brought it back, reworked it, made it a little bit tighter, gave it better flavor, and all of a sudden, Devotion is super popular. Other mechanics that deserve a second chance.

I mean, there's things like Infect that I want to bring back because I feel like there's some mistakes we made with it that maybe we could fix coming back. I think we made Infect a little bit too one path or the other um and that how we designed it and that i would like to find more ways to crisscross the paths um i feel that um investigate i think was a really strong mechanic um and that showed a lot of potential although people liked it I guess, maybe that's

not a good example and that deserves a second chance maybe second chance implies that it did badly the first time, I mean it's definitely a mechanic that I want to look at more you know and there's mechanics like not imprint I do like imprint what was I going to say You know, and there's mechanics like... Not imprint. I do like imprint.

What was I going to say? The Kamigawa to Arcane. I can't even think. It's the mechanic where you attach it to an existing spell, and it went on Arcane. What is the... I mean, maybe sometimes, maybe in my head it says too many things in my head, and when I go to get something that should be really simple, and it went on Arcane. What is the... I'm amazed sometimes. Maybe my head just has too many things in my head.

I go to get something that should be really simple. It is... You want to say imprint? No, it starts with an I, right? It is... I'm blanking on the name. You guys know the name. I know you know the name.

The idea of doing that on... Rather than on to Arcane spells, which is a super parasitic thing, trying it with instants or sorceries, um, I think some potential there maybe. Um, anyway, there's, there's a lot of things that I think we can go back and look at. Um, I mean, there are truly some flops that I wouldn't revisit, but there are a lot of things that like was doing something interesting that didn't quite take off, but, you know, I liked.

Okay, what's the next question? Number eight. Of all the Magic expansions that you played, pick your favorite and then explain the biggest problem with it. I mean, my favorite is Innistrad, I think. I'm really proud of Innistrad. Innistrad weaknesses. Spirits weren't developed enough.

We had a really, really good identity for the werewolves and the vampires and the zombies. But the spirits really didn't have a strong enough identity. I also would have liked the humans to have a slightly stronger identity, and I think we bled humans a little too much in the other colors from a focal point standpoint, although some of that we needed to do. I wish we were a little more exacting

in the exclusion of white in the cycles. I didn't explain that well enough to Eric, and so that flavor didn't quite come through. The idea of the humans against the monsters as a conflict, I wish it was brought up a little bit more. I would have liked to do a little bit more with Curses in the time. I mean, we've come back to do more with Curses, but I think Curses could have done a little more within that set. Those are the major things. I mean, like I said, I think Innistrad's a little more within that set. Those are the major things. I mean, like I said, I think Industrials is a really, really strong set. But then, the idea of this question, by the way, is...

Oh, I didn't really... I was talking about what we looked for each question, real quickly. So, number one was all about understanding who you are. Number two and number three were about you understanding what evergreen mechanics are and their function and what they're doing. And we were trying to get a sense of do you understand why we make things evergreen or not? Number four was talking

about do you understand the new player experience? Number five and six was get inside your mindset of do you understand sort of what makes magic tick? You know, and where lie strengths and weaknesses. Number seven is sort of your knowledge of mechanics and your eye on mechanics and eye on potential.

Number eight and nine is looking at your magic history a little bit and then understanding sort of set analysis. Okay, so my favorite set was... My least favorite set... The funny thing is, I often call Homelands the worst design set, which I think it is. But if I account for time, meaning if, like, the one thing I'll give

Homeland a little bit of a buy on is it was made at a time where we didn't know a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of problems with it, but at least to, you know, the designer's credit, they were kind of designing

in a vacuum, you know. The game had just come out. The only thing they had to look at was Alpha, you know. And in fact, they didn't even see the other games that came out before their game, so they really, really were designing in a vacuum, where there are other games later on that knew a lot more, so the one I think my least favorite set is actually Prophecy,

I think Prophecy, the other reason on my list of my least favorite is I felt like it tried to do something and then just did it wrong. That it was trying to make a little more analytical set, but it just made it so unfun. But, so what about Prophecy do I like? I actually think there's a lot of

fun things in Prophecy. I think the Prophecy's, I think the goal, so William a lot of fun things in prophecy. I think the prophecies, I think the goal, so William Jockers was the lead designer. I think William's goal was a noble goal. I think that he just didn't accomplish his goal in a way that was fun for the majority of the players. And that is a big

big strike against a set in which it's just not fun to play. Like his main mechanic, Rhystic, it's like I get to do something cheaper than normal, but my opponent can pay two to stop me. And it's like, people don't like counterspells. So your main mechanic is, it comes with a counterspell. It seems not really, not a top-notch mechanic.

I do like the idea of resource management. Like, for example, I think sacrificing lands in small amounts is interesting. I think the volume he was doing in Prophecy is just way too much. But I think a little bit of that is interesting for some late-game choices. There are a lot of fun cycles in that block. I like the avatars. I like the winds. There is a couple other cycles. I mentioned in my article a couple other cycles.

There's one where you discard two cards. Uh, it's all casting cost if you discard two, I think, basic lands. Or either two cards or two basic lands. Um, that cycle's interesting. Um, you know, there's a bunch of interesting cycles in this deck. Like, I kind of feel that if you shaved away the mechanics in general, you know, I'm not a big fan of

you can counterspell me, mechanic, oristic, or the sack lands is done at way too high a volume. But if you pull down some of these themes, put in some more positive themes, I think this could have been an element of the set.

What I think, in retrospect, what I would have recommended, I was not pen and sign at the time, what I would have recommended to William is to make this aspect, this sort of spiky, sort of check your resources aspect, to be something you can opt into, but not something you're forced into. Because I believe there's players that really do enjoy that kind of thing. I just think that the majority of players aren't.

And so to force all the players to get in this mindset that really is a minority opinion is problematic. You know, I think it definitely causes a lot of issues, and it's something you've got to be conscious of. Okay. Oh, okay, so my advice on this one was, both your favorite and least favorite is,

I don't care what you pick. You don't even need to honestly pick your favorite or your least favorite. I just want you to pick something. What I wanted you to do is pick a set you liked and see the negative in it and then pick a set you didn't like and see the positive in it. I actually asked a similar question. If you'll notice, by the way, all three GDSs have started with the essay test and all the questions are not that far apart from each other. They are asking very similar things. Slightly different. I think in GDS 2, I was like,

oh, you have to remove an ability and a color. I always am doing things where I'm sort of like, do you understand color pie? Do you understand different aspects of things? So I'm always looking at different elements here. And one of the things I'm super interested in is and the reason that I like to start with the essay test

is I really am interested in how someone's mind works. That if I'm going to hire someone to be the designer, I want to get a sense of how they see the game. And ideally, what I want is not someone that sees the game the way I see the game. That's really not as interesting to is not someone that sees the game the way I see the game. That's really not as interesting to me as someone who sees the game differently than I see the game. Someone who sees the world as I see the game is just more likely to make the cards I'm going to make. Well, I'm going to make those cards.

You know, I don't, I don't really need another me. I got me. I understand, I understand how I see the game, you know. And then one of the great things about bringing in, you know, previous great designers is that we get people like, for example, Ken Nagle is a perfect example. Ken has some theories that I, I don't think I agree with. But I, I like that he has passion that, you know, he sees the game in a certain way. And there's certain things that he thinks are fun. And the reality is, that is true for some players. And the fact that Ken sees that, that there's certain things that he thinks are fun. And the reality is that is true for some players. And the fact that Ken sees that, that there's fun that Ken sees that's invisible to me. That I go, oh, that doesn't seem like fun to me.

But Ken sees it. And that one of the things that's important in doing this job is there's lots of different players and you want to make a lot of different players happy. And so having designers that are really just doing different kinds of things just increases the chance that you find designers that can reach larger amounts of the audience. And Ken has gone on to make lots and lots and lots of awesome cards. And make awesome cards that I wouldn't make

and that other people wouldn't have made that uniquely are Ken cards. And that's one of the things that to me is a sign of a great designer is you make things that no one else would think to make. You make things that just approach it differently. And that's super exciting to me. Okay, question number 10. You have the ability to change any one thing about magic.

What do you change? So the interesting thing about this question was it got interpreted by people in a bunch of different ways. So number one is you're going to change something moving forward. What do you change? Version two is you can go back to meet Richard before Alpha is even made and make a suggestion to Richard to change one thing about the game. So some people wrote this question as if it's sort of, I'm forever changing it. And some are saying, well, given 25 years in and what we've done, here's the change I want to make. And those are slightly different answers.

If you're going to go back in time and make the change to affect all of magic, I'm more inclined to make a change where there's some system that through inertia is not what we want, but makes things, like things we would want to change

but can't because of inertia. For example, I've talked about this one, but it's a popular one, is the idea of making instant a super type and getting rid of, making instant a super type

and then all instant sorceries would just be super type. And then all instant sorceries would just be sorceries. Some would be instant sorceries, some would be sorceries. It just would make the, how we explain things a little bit simpler. It would,

Flash would not need to be a keyboard mechanic. Just you could have instant creatures or instant enchantments or instant artifacts. It's just an example where we could

clean things up a little bit and be a little bit simpler. The other thing I might be tempted to do if I can go back in time is, there's some terminology stuff that I wouldn't mind just to have been there from the beginning. And if I'm going to go back and start from the beginning, there is just some

flavor things we could layer on that aren't there right now. I just would have, I mean, like, for example, I would love to start from scratch on creature types and say, okay, let's really think about what the best way to do creature types is. Because I'm not convinced what we have now is 100% the way I would do it. Also, it would be dog. It would be dog. There's the one change. I change when I think dogs. Okay.

If I'm going to change things now, there's a bunch of different things. There's all sorts of things I'd like to change now. When do I want to... I mean, one of the things that I'm... uh, oh, the other thing I would do if I started the game all over is I would look at keywords and try to balance the colors and the keywords a little cleaner than we have. And, and, and more keywords start in multiple colors.

I would have done that. Okay. Okay. Sorry. Okay. So modern day, um, probably the one that I want to change most, that I, it sounds, I don't know, people really don't quite grasp this, but it's a big deal to me,

is the fact that Legendary, the super type, carries rules baggage is all sorts of headaches. And it makes us make choices all the time between here's a popular character, which of the audience we want to make this character for, and that if Legendary didn't carry Rules Wade, I could just make a better Legendary. I could make more Legendary cards. I could make better Legendary cards. It would allow

me to just do some stuff that right now it's hard to make. And the gameplay of Legendary as a mechanic is really not great gameplay. We purposely don't do restricted cards in any format other than Vintage because we don't like the gameplay of it and that it just adds a lot of variance to it.

And I feel like a lot of the reasons we don't do that is reasons why I'm not sure why Legendary is something that we do. Anyway, other changes that I might make. I think there is some revamping I would do. Like, I might be willing to do something like the creature types or evergreen mechanics and say, you know what? We're going to do a major reworking of them. I'd be tempted to do that, even though we have years of history built in. I think those are things that the game

can adapt to. It's hard to add make instant a super. There's so much inertia. There's a lot of problems that run into it, and you end up with a lot of cards that say one thing that means something in the game, but don't do what they say. Where I think

that there's some stuff we could do with evergreens and creature keywords that we couldn't do, that we could do now. Yeah, there's a lot of little things. I mean, one of the interesting things for me is that

Magic is a game in which it's a group design. And so there's a lot of things I individually would do. Like another thing that I, one of my other pet peeves is, I think there's a lot of decisions we make to make digital a better experience. And a lot of those I think make sense, but I think at times we go overboard. My biggest pet peeve is I don't think we target enough at the time where there's interesting things that can happen.

Like, I love the fact that drawing used to always be targeted and that you had that discovery that, oh my god, I can win the game by making my opponent draw cards and losing less because they don't have enough cards in the library. But the idea that you can mill them out with a draw spell, I always thought was interesting. And yeah, yeah, occasionally we do targeted draw spells, spell I always thought was interesting and yeah yeah occasionally we do targeted draw spells but I I'd be tempted to to make to make things a little bit more targeted I mean I I get some

of the concerns for digital I'm not saying I would make digital's life hell or anything but I would definitely be encouraged to do that so anyway I'm almost to work so um like I said I got a lot of people. By the way, it's early enough that I have not, you know, once I've read the essays, I might do a podcast later on talking about sort of where people went in the essays. This is, we're still in the thick of, I mean, for example, I spent all yesterday finishing the test,

the second test, the trial two, the multiple choice test. And so I haven't quite got to do all the trials just yet. But anyway, I was excited. I was happy so many people turned in Trial 1. And once again, this is,

because I'm recording this, you know, sort of as it's happening, I have no idea. Trial 2 hasn't happened yet, so I have no idea what's going to happen there. I know a lot of people are taking it. So I'm going to be doing a podcast on Trial 2,

probably more than one just because there's 75 questions on Trial 2. And I will be doing one on Trial 3. I've been running through all the trials. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast. And there are... The reason that I really love the essay questions, I love going deep on magic and thinking deep on magic. And obviously, if you guys are regular listeners of my podcast,

I do that on this podcast all the time. So it's neat to get others to think about the game in ways that i think about the game so it's sort of fun to get other get other people to sort of think about where they would go and how they think and how they see the game and that one of the things i hope is i want to make sure that the trials are fun for people even look only eight people are going to make the show and And so I want to make sure the experience of trying out itself is a fun experience. And while I know it was a lot of work, I've got a lot of people who took the first trial that were like, wow, this was a lot of fun. Yeah, it made me do a lot of thinking and writing, but it was really interesting and neat things to

do. So hopefully the people that took the first trial enjoyed the first trial. I'm trying to make all the trials enjoyable. I worked really hard to try and make sure we had questions that were interesting questions. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed it. And like I said, I'll be doing future podcasts on trial two and trial three. But, I am now at work. So we all know what that means.

It means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make it magic. I'll see you guys next time.