Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #552: When to Keyword

Episode Date: July 6, 2018

This podcast talks about how we decide when to keyword (or ability word) a mechanic in design.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay guys, today's topic is based on something from my blog, Blogatog. Okay, so the topic is how and when do we decide to keyword something? So I'm going to talk today about sort of what the key is to when we choose to keyword things. So I'm going to start from the very beginning of exploratory design and go through the end of vision. Usually when we hand over stuff from vision, we are making a suggestion of what things are supposed to be keyword in the set. Not that in set design it can't change, but usually vision is establishing what we think the keywords are going to be.

Okay, so in the beginning, in exploratory... Oh, sorry. Before I get to that, let me do a little vocabulary setting for people. Okay, so there are actually three things. When we talk about mechanics, there's three things that get named, if you will. There are keyword abilities, there are keyword actions, and there are ability words. Let me talk a little bit about what those are. So a keyword ability is probably what you think of when you think of a keyword,

which is things that go on creatures. So a keyword, what a keyword means is that you're taking a bunch of text and replacing that long bunch of text with a short, usually one, two, or three words, a keyword. So instead of saying blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you say keyword. So it's a means and a ways to sort of save some space. So instead of saying this creature can only be blocked by other creatures that, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's like flying. And so keyword abilities are abilities that go on the creature that are shortened. Now, remember, for the keyword to work, everything has to have the exact same words.

A keyword means that literally you're replacing this string of words, always the exact same string of words, with this word or words. Always the exact same string of words with this word or words. Now, a keyword action is something that is usually a verb and that it is used to represent, it's replacing a bunch of words, but usually in the context of doing something. So, for example, a keyword ability would be flying or first strike. A keyword action would be like scry or dies. It's something in which it's an action that happens. And keyword actions are usually used in the context of rule of text. Meaning if you have flying, it just says I have flying. If you scry, it'll say blah, blah, blah, then scry, fight, or, you know, different words that are keyword actions.

Now, some keywords or some mechanics don't quite fit neatly into a keyword. Usually the reason for that is that it is not an exact replacement of the exact same words. So when we do that, we have what we call an ability word. So what an ability word is, is essentially it's flavor text for rules text or flavor for rules text. What that means is before you get to the rules text, there's a hyphen and there is an ability, an italicized word or words that's descriptive. So the idea is take something like threshold um or morbid um that it's something that says look we're going to do something um there's a little variation in how we do it a lot of times why it's an ability word um sometimes it has to do with we're setting up something but maybe the

output's different or whatever there's some differences there but an ability word says hey i'm i'm going to give you a word so you can connect things that are similar and be able to talk about it. I mean, the reason you keyword something, I actually, as I jump around, the reason we keyword something is a couple of things. One is sometimes there's mechanical identity to do it. Now, a keyword action or a keyword ability, you can reference mechanically. Where an ability word, you cannot. The trick to remember whether something's an ability word or not is, A, it's italicized. And B, if you took away the ability word, it always comes before.

If you took away the ability word, the text would just work. You don't need the ability word. The ability word isn't sort of necessary. Where in a keyword action or keyword ability, look, that text carries meaning. It means something. It's replacing certain words with that word. So those words have rules meaning. You can refer to keyword actions, keyword abilities with other cards. For example, I can say all creatures with flying get some ability to do something or tap target creature with flying.

I can't affect things that have ability words. I can't say all creatures with threshold gain some ability because you can't reference it. So the first reason you might have a keyword, at least a keyword ability or keyword action is so that you can reference it mechanically. The second reason you have a keyword or an ability word

is to shorten the comprehensive text. What I mean by that is when we put on something that is a keyword, we put reminder text to tell you what it does. So we're actually not making it less words when we keyword something because we write the words of the keyword down most of the time. But what we're doing is we're making the actual necessary text shorter because once you understand what the keyword is, you don't need to read the reminder text anymore. Same with an ability word. Once you know what the ability word is, it shortcuts what you need to know. So another reason we use keywords and ability words is to sort of allow you to have to

read less to understand the card. The third thing, and the reason we do it is we want a vocabulary for people to talk about it. You know, what we've learned in the past is when we don't name things, people don't think of them as a group. The classic story is in the set, Mercadian Masks. While we did have mechanics, we didn't actually name them. There were no named mechanics. And one of the big complaints about the set

was people wondering why we didn't put mechanics in it. Now, we had Spellshapers. We had the Rebels and the Mercenaries. We did have actual mechanics, but they were done in such a way that they weren't named. And the funny thing is, even though you would say, oh, well, that was so long ago, you know, Dominaria just came out, and historic is a keyword, but it's a batching keyword, which I'll get to in a second. And sagas are a subtype.

And cycling, obviously, is a returning mechanic. Andas are a subtype, you know, and cycling obviously is a returning mechanic and people are like, oh, where are all the new mechanics? Even though obviously sagas and historic are new things, how you use them can, can affects how people think of them. And so keywords are important also for settings. Like when people look at a new set, they're all like, what are the new keywords? So having those words there are important. It lets people talk about them and it helps people notice them. And that's going to be a big theme we're going to get to today is that keywords and ability words

help draw focus to what is going on and what matters in the set. That having a keyword is considered to be more important because it has a keyword. And that's something as a designer, you have to keep in mind. That you have to think about the tools you have and how it affects the people, meaning the tools aren't just about what they can do for you,

they're also about perception and how people perceive your product. And as I talk about all the time, perception is really important. So that is a big element of the keywords is drawing focus to what you're doing. Okay, so let's go back to the beginning of exploratory design. So in exploratory design, we're coming up with a lot of ideas for abilities, a lot of different mechanics. And basically what happens is, in exploratory design,

the way I always explain it is that we are about going wide, not going deep. It is not taking any one mechanic and going all that deep with it. It's exploring a lot of mechanics a little bit. And the reason for that is the job of exploratory design is to sort of map out the design space. You're not planning the vision yet. You are doing preliminary work so the vision team has a lot of idea of what and how they want to do the set. So one of the rules in exploratory design is every single mechanic has to be named.

And the reason for that is I want us to be able to talk about it. And I also want us, I want the person, oh, the other thing I didn't explain what keywords is, there's one other big thing

that keywords do, which is they convey flavor. That one of the big things is if there's resonance to your mechanic, which means if your mechanic represents something, it lowers the barrier to the audience understanding what it is.

The fact that flying is flying, although as a side note, flying really should be flight. I'm not sure what went with the gerund in flying, but the creature, like normally we make, I mean, not the gerunds, our nouns, I guess, but we normally do nouns on permanence, keywords on permanence, where on spells we tend to make them verbs. But anyway, sometimes we make keywords and we go back and like, what are we doing?

But anyway, the flavor context of the keyword is important, not just for flavor, it's important for flavor, but also mechanically. is important not just for flavor, it's important for flavor, but also mechanically, because the better connected your mechanic is to some sort of resonant flavor, the easier it is for your audience to understand how it works. The more your name of your keyword explains the essence of what you're doing, the better off your audience is in understanding your keyword. So anyway, we're back to exploratory design. So we're designing a lot of mechanics,

and I make them name it for a couple reasons. One is we need to refer to it, and the second is we really want to convey the flavor we're going for. So one of the things that happens during exploratory design is we often come up with good names for mechanics. It's not, and in fact, the funny thing is

often what happens is we get a great name that's really evocative and then we get a mechanic like eh I don't like that so we will often use the same mechanic like we will try to like I like the name but not the mechanic try again to capture this name because this name is really good

so a lot of times we are even designing on using the names as concept space we're trying to hit. So during the course of exploratory design, we will come up with all sorts of different design ideas, different mechanic ideas. Whether or not they're keywords or ability words usually is not deduced during exploratory design.

So what happens was we'll eventually get to vision design. And in vision design, my philosophy is I usually start by keywording anything that shows up on five or more cards. So if you have a cycle, I will often keyword you. If you are just something that shows up with some repetition, I will keyword you. That does not mean when the dust settles

that you will be keyworded, but I like to start by keywording anything in which there's repetition within the set. I will keyword you. That does not mean when the dust settles that you will be keyworded, but I like to start by keywording anything in which there's repetition within the set. And the reason for that is early vision is about figuring out what we like. And so we tend to over stuff sets because the goal of early playtesting is not getting a balanced environment, is not getting the feel of the environment, it's about finding the components that we like. And so what we do is we take all the work done by explorers or design and then we do a little extra work our own and we come up with mechanics and flush our mechanics that we want to try.

And that stays everything is just named usually everything is sort of treated like a keyword ability unless it's clear clear keyword action we don't differentiate usually between ability words and keywords right away because we're not even necessarily getting the usually I want to figure out whether the word is fun the mechanic is fun

we will do basic wording early on it's just like do we the people playing it, understand what it does? Then, if it passes that first test, which is what I call the fun test, which is we put it in the set, we've made some cards with it, we play with it, like, was this fun?

Do we enjoy this? If yes, then usually we'll go to the rules manager and get a preliminary, and by preliminary, I mean pretty down and dirty sort of, okay, if we were going to keyword this or ability word, what would we do? And that's the first time that we get any sort of inkling whether it's a keyword and ability word. Be aware whether something is a keyword or ability word can get fuzzy at times.

There are things that could be ability words that sometimes you keyword because of how you want to use it in the set and that you want to be able to reference it or it's something that needs to be talked about. Also, sometimes what you find is what you think is a keyword could end up being a super type or a subtype or sometimes you also realize that you want the thing but you don't necessarily want to keyword it. Okay, so that now, okay, we've taken stuff, we've keyworded things, we have concepts that we like and then we say, okay, these are in or these are out and that can take a little while and it's not even an in or out process as much as it's definitely in, definitely out and I'm not sure yet, let's fiddle with it more.

Once it's in the, and definitely in can be out later, but I'm pretty confident that we want to sort of make a real commitment to experimenting with it. That gets keyworded. I go and get, Eli as our rules manager and make sure Eli can give us sort of rough wording and stuff. Then what happens while we are doing vision is a couple things. One is we kind of, we make an honest attempt, by the way, when we name the keyword to make sure we're conveying the concept we want.

What happens is at some point, usually the liaison to the creative team is no longer on the vision teams, but they're a consultant and we bring them in when we need. For a long time, they would come to every meeting and finally we realized that we didn't need them all the time and they had a lot of work to do. So now we consult with them and bring them to meetings where it's important. So when we have meetings where we're talking over flavor, we have them there. But a lot of what we do is mechanic and they're not necessarily there for all the mechanic meetings. But one of the things that happens early on is we sort of make an honest attempt at a real word, and then we also bring them in and say to them, how does this word work? Do you like this word? Do you think this is what makes sense? And, for example, in the early days of sagas, we actually called them stories.

While these represent stories, It's a story. I think early on we were trying to figure out whether that, for example, that was a new card type or it was a subtype or it wanted to be some sort of keyword. And that's when we work with sort of the rules manager to try to figure out kind of what we want. Early on, we kind of figured out we liked it being an enchantment subtype and then the reason that story changed the saga in this particular case was that the creative team

always sort of looks and figures out are the words being used do they have other meaning? Does the game already use them? Are they similar to something else that we've done? So usually the reason you'll change a keyword is, A, it doesn't convey what you want it to convey. Sometimes in design, we sort of pick a word,

but the connotation of the word isn't quite right for the world. Second, it might be something that has a vocabulary meaning. So, for example, story is a good example. Because of the story spotlight cards, there were already, people refer to cards with the story spotlight cards as story cards. And so, we didn't want to call saga stories,

because then you'd have people talking about story cards and it meant two different things. So, we ended up changing it to sagas. Another thing that will happen sometimes is you're too close to an existing keyword. Because Magic has keywords, even though we might not have used it for a while, if it has some use,

especially if it's a keyword that people know well, and there's a few keywords that kind of... Even the keywords that don't get played much, we still try to keep a wide berth as to like if we have kicker as a mechanic we don't want kicking as a mechanic because that'll just confuse people now there is a caveat to this which is every once in a while we name things similarly because we want the connotation that they're similar. My example I use for this is multi-kicker. So when we made multi-kicker, we were making a kicking variant.

It worked a lot like kicker. It was different in one way. Normally for kicker, you can pay it once. Multi-kicker, you can pay it as many times as you want. So what we wanted to do was convey that, look, it's kicker, but a variant. So multi-kicker was like, well, it's kicker. It's got kicker in the name. But multi tells you there's something different about it. What's different? Oh, you can cast

it multiple times. It's not normal kicker. It's multi-kicker. Now, sometimes that works well for us. Multi-kicker was fine. Other times was like megamorph. We were trying to convey it came with a plus and plus one counter when you undid it. That just upset people. I don't know. It's odd. Why things. I don't know. Why things work and don't work. I think people were expecting a wider change for the third set because

Manifest was a pretty big change from Morph and they're expecting a little more different. I think in a different place with different expectations setting, Megamorph probably would have been fine. I admit the name is a little on the silly side. But it was alliterative, I guess. So anyway,

during vision, we will sort of look at words and usually the flavor person, the creative team person, will do kind of a word pass on things and make sure that it's sort of doing what we need. But anyway, so what happens is you're playing with stuff and we tend to err to begin

with, with having a lot of keywords. Now in the end, our goal in an actual set is the average is what we say is three and a half. And what that means is, okay, we like to have between three or four. If we have four keywords, that means they're on the simpler side. Usually if one of the keywords is a little more complex, we try to stick to three. But it also depends. Returning mechanics, if it's a mechanic that we use a

lot, carries a little less weight. I mean, for a new player it does, but for established players, so if we bring back something like cycling, which is just something we use on a frequent basis, we know that there's a little bit more familiarity with the general public. Once again, we're always thinking about new players because the barrier for entry is always on the new players. But anyway,

so the end goal before we hand off to set design is to have three or four mechanics. Will we ever have more than that? Yeah, there's times and places. There are exceptions. Will we ever have less than that? We might have less mechanics because we're using supertypes or subtypes. Oh, batching.

Let me get to batching for a second. Batching keyword is actually kind of a new thing when I was talking about keywords. I mean, technically, technically, technically, it is, well, it is kind of a new thing. What a batching keyword is, is it's a word that instead of shortening a long line of text,

says I represent more than one, when I say keywords, a little bit. It takes things that themselves are shortened versions. It could be a keyword. It could be a card type. It could be a super type. It could be a subtype. Historic, which is the first batching keyword, did, in fact, one super type, one type, and one subtype. It doesn't just have to be types.

We could reference mechanics. Basically, it says, here are things that already have a shorthand, that there's a word that means this thing. And a batching keyword says, I'm going to take multiple things that already have a word and then join them together with another word. have a word and then join them together with another word. So, for example, Historic said, I'm going to take the super type of legendary, the card type of artifact, and the subtype of saga and I'm going to say, I care about all those things. So batching is a little bit different and it was me trying something new. We kind of held off on things

until we could see the response to Dominaria. But now that Dominaria is going well and batching is going over well, once again, remember, we lagged by some amount of time, two and a half years. But we've now said, okay, these are mechanics that we think we might both have access to.

So I think you'll see more batching in the future. Batching is also a means by which we can consolidate existing concepts and give them new flavor. Like, oh, we're capturing the flavor of history. Well, what are things that are historic? Oh, well, famous people, famous artifacts of the past, stories. These are things that have a historic element to them. famous, you know, artifacts of the past, stories, you know, these are things that are, that have a historic element to them.

And so in capturing that sense, we have a branch of different things we can do. So a batching keyword is new technology. As we use it more, it is something we've not really plumbed the depth of, if you will say. I will say. And so we really have to kind of figure out how best to use it. I'm excited.

It's not often I get to mess around with new templating. So it was definitely something when I first made it, I wasn't quite sure if I could do it. And it's kind of like it seems like it worked. And so editing was really good because And it was kind of like, it seems like it worked. And so, um, editing was really good because, um, I really was kind of saying, we don't do this, but could we do this? Um, and editing was actually really cool in figuring out how to make everything work. Cause, um, whenever you kind of go to a new place, sometimes the words don't always cleanly fit. And, um, that's why we have editing to help see if we can massage things, and Eli and the editors were really great. Okay, so anyway, our end goal was at the end of the process to have three to four.

So what we do is we're keywording everything so that we can monitor and figure out, I mean, A, it does some important work for kind of like a scientist putting dye in something so you can watch and see it. Having it marked just means that it allows the design team to have a better sense of where the thing is sitting and the reaches of the mechanic. When it kind of turns back into the long words, it's easy to kind of miss it. to the long words, it's easy to kind of miss it. And it also, because we are messing around usually with more things, it allows us to shorthand and just play a little faster and talk a little more. And it just does a lot of good work for us mapping out what's going on. Okay, but what happens is, at some point, we have to figure out, well, first we have

to figure out what's in the set, what's out of the set. That's the first thing. So we're going to play with the set and we're going to map things and we're going to figure out what's in the set, what's out of the set. That's the first thing. So we're going to play with the set, and we're going to map things, and we're going to figure out what's in and what's out. And that is just a matter of what plays well, what's synergistic with other things, not just within the set itself, but the sets around it. What plays well in standard? What plays well in limited? What's going to work in different formats?

You know, do these things work with Commander? We have a few cards that are aimed at modern. You know, there's a bunch of different things we're doing. We're looking at things and sort of figuring out what makes sense. Okay, then we get to a point where I have some confidence that the set is, we kind of know where the set is at. And usually at that point, I have things keyworded. Everything basically is keyworded. If you show up on two or more things, let's say five or more things, you're keyworded. Okay, so the next thing I do is

I now figure out how we want to represent things. So at this point, sometimes things no longer are keywords. Once again, are you a keyword ability? Are you a keyword action? Are you ability word? Are you a batching keyword? Are you a super ability? Are you keyword action? Are you ability word? Are you a batching keyword? Are you a super type? Are you a subtype?

You know, or are you just text that we can write each time? So we're trying to map out what things are. So the big test now is, okay, first off, if you're a super type or a subtype, we make sure you do that. If you're a super type or a subtype, we make sure you do that. Now, the big test is, are you pulling your weight as a super type? I'm not subtype. Are you pulling your weight as a keyword or an ability word? Okay, so now we do the checklist of what matters.

Okay, so number one is, how much focus are you supposed to be doing? So in a set, there are what we call workhorse mechanics and there are what we call splash mechanics. So a workhorse mechanic gets the job done. It makes the set work. A splash mechanic draws attention to itself and makes the set sexier, makes the set, you know, more exciting. Now, it is possible for a mechanic to be

both a splash mechanic and a workhorse mechanic. It's possible, but usually it's doing one or the other. So let's take some recent sets. I'll start with Dominaria. Okay, cycling is a workhorse mechanic. The reason you know it's a workhorse mechanic is it's not a flashy name. It's not even a particularly flavorful name. But it has a lot of function for sets. Cycling does a lot of good things. It helps with card flow. It helps let us get in this.

You put things in your deck that you might not normally deck because you have an out. So it allows us to sort of have more narrow things work in the set. It helps us sometimes with connections that you can play something that you want to combo. So if it doesn't combo, you can get rid of it. So it allows us to sort

of do some stuff. It's functional. Sagas. Once again, sagas are a subtype. But for purposes of a set, when we talk about mechanics, we kind of think of what are new words that you need to learn and that words have some mechanical meaning. So sagas, while they're a subtype and not technically a keyword, is a new mechanic and it is something new to learn. Now, one of the things that also happens, which is separate from the keywords, is frames that we also have to figure out if we want to do anything with frames. And frames go all the way from subtle, nuanced things, like highlighting something, to something like the middle-of-the-road stuff, like maybe enchantment creatures in Theros,

where we sort of made the frame a little bit different, so you can tell. And you get stuff like miracles, where there's some treatment to just remind you this frame a little bit different so you can tell. And you get stuff like miracles where there's some treatment to just remind you this is a little bit different. And then we get to sort of full-blown stuff, kind of like level up or double-faced cards or side-as, where, okay, the frame, there's something fundamentally different about this frame that's telling you something about how the card functions. something fundamentally different about this frame that's telling you something about how the card functions.

And usually card frames make things splashy because they get a lot more attention to themselves. So splashy mechanics more likely, well take that back. We tend to do frames for functionality, but we are aware that the act of a frame makes it more splashy. So sagas we knew was splashy, and so we knew it could get frame help to help it, and we knew that it wanted to have the attention. It was the splashy mechanic.

Now Historic, on the flip side, was really doing a lot of workhorse stuff. It was glue. Now it was a brand new thing, and brand new things get some attention. But it was us messing around with the kind of keyword we were doing that really

is, I mean, to a long time Magic player that knows the rules in and out that might be exciting. To people that are a little less enfranchised, it's the fact that we had never done this, we might not have realized we had not done something like that. It is definitely us messing in different space.

But anyway, Historic was not meant to be splashy. It was meant to be workhorse. So before that, like Ixalan, you know, a lot of mechanics in Ixalan, the splashy mechanic in Ixalan was the double-faced land. The things where you sort of explore and then you turn the card you have a little adventure and you turn into a land

you sort of explore but we had other stuff there like the actual explorer mechanic or you know the dinosaur mechanic or I mean the pirate mechanic was a repeating mechanic raid, dinosaur was enrage but those were a repeating mechanic raid. Dinosaur was enrage. But those were a little bit more workhorse.

They were flavorful. They had some job of sort of highlighting that there were new things in the set. Dinosaurs were new. Pirates were new. Or mostly new. So the idea is you want to figure out whether or not your mechanic is a splash mechanic or a workhorse mechanic. Um, if you're a splash mechanic, you have more weight, uh, and you're, it's more important

that you're labeled and that you, we spent extra energy, be it on frame or how we flavor you. Um, obviously the art will also matter. I mean, I'm not getting... All of this works together. When we talk about doing something, it's not just a matter of what does the frame look like

and what does the art look like. I mean, there's a lot of pieces to it. Saigas, for example, it was important that it was very distinctive. So we made a choice of using a different frame and using a different art style. I mean, there's a lot of things

that went into sagas. We wanted sagas to feel really unique and special and new. So when I'm talking about the names, it's not just the names. It's not just do we keyword it or not. It's how we treat the art. It's how we treat the frame.

Sometimes how we treat the rule stacks. There's a lot of things that go into that. But from a do we keyword things, part of it is, first thing is, how much attention is this supposed to be drawing to itself? Now, if you're a splash mechanic, that's your job.

I mean, your job is always to play well and always to be fun. But part of your job is to sort of draw the eye to you, draw attention to you. And so we've got to figure out whether you're a workhorse or a splash. If you're a splash, odds are you're going to have a mechanic. When people open up a booster pack,

one of the things that people are trained to do is, what are the new mechanics? And on some level that means, what people mean when they say that, is what are the new words? What are the new, you know, I'm looking for new words. what are the new words? What are the new, you know, I'm looking for new words.

And that when you do something that doesn't have words to it, well, when you do something that isn't keyworded or ability worded or has something that points it out, it becomes a little bit more invisible. Now, sometimes that's okay. Like a workhorse mechanic that's doing strong work and doesn't need to be referred to. And, you know, the more splash you are, the more important you have a mechanic. The less splash you are, the reason workhorse mechanics have names,

we'll get to other meanings in a second, but, so first thing you look at is, how important is this from a focal point? How much do you want people to pay attention to it? And that the more you want people to pay attention to it, the more important the name is on it. And I can't stress this enough, that one of the things when you're making your game, you are trying to make a good experience for your audience. And part of that is,

you are sort of, in writing they call it foreshadowing, which is you want your audience to sort of lean into the direction you're going. You want them to get an essence from a story writing standpoint of where the story is going. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sometimes you're surprised that there's other elements in stories, but you do lean into the story, meaning you want to make sure that you're sort of giving people the clues so they understand what to expect. Because most of the time in a story, you want the audience to be

comfortable with what kind of story it is. It's not like, oh, am I reading a mystery or an adventure story? I'm not sure. Usually you want them to know. And with games, a similar thing is you want to highlight what is it? What's the flavor of what I'm doing? What's the essence of what I'm doing? What's the exciting part of what I'm doing? You want to telegraph all that. So the first reason you choose whether to keyword something has to do with whether or not it's going to, how much of the job is going to do to set expectations for the set, to draw the eye in the set, to give people a sense of what is there.

So that's the number one reason to keyword. Number two reason to keyword has to do with just functionality, which is, do I need to be keyworded? Meaning, to do what the set needs to do, must I be keyworded? And there's a number of reasons you must be keyworded. One is that in order to make the text smaller, or the, once again, you always have a minor text, but to make the functional text smaller, the stuff that you're going to read,

sometimes we need a keyword just, it's too unwieldy otherwise. It's hard to use. Sometimes we want to refer to it. And as I said earlier, you can only refer to things if they're keywords. I can't refer to an ability word. I can refer, sorry,

you need to be a keyword or a supertype or a subtype. You can refer to super or a cart type. You can refer to all the different types. You can refer to keywords. You can't be an ability word if you want to get referred to. So sometimes you're a keyword because it matters, like mechanically, either in order to pull something off or communicate something or even just fit it on the card.

One of the things, by the way, is while we put reminder text on most cards at high rarities, at rare and mythic rare, if we have a cool card and the only way to fit it is to drop the reminder text, the assumption is the first card you see usually for most people won't be on a rare or mythic rare, especially a mythic rare. So sometimes we drop the reminder text to fit on the card. So without keywording sometimes things won't even fit on the card. So there's a bunch of functional reasons why you might need to keyword something. And so you have to make sure that the functionality is there.

So yes, you want the splash. Yes, you want to draw the eye. But it also has to work. It also has to do what it needs to do to get it there. The third thing is sort of tied to the second thing which has to do with kind of the technicality of templating which is certain things

part of what good templating does is it makes people get to templating that one of the things that players don't really think about is what good templating does is it makes people get to templating. That one of the things that you players don't really think about is, oh, the card kind of does what I think it does. Because from your projection, oh, it does what I... Like, if we're doing our job, you read the cards, they do what you think the cards do. That we've made it intuitive.

We've made the text and the way we do it something that is clear to you. And keywording is a major, major tool that templating use for comprehension for a couple reasons. One is, as I said earlier, it gives resonance, meaning it allows you to get a little bit of flavor. And a lot of times when templating, you can lean on flavor to help convey something. Because sometimes, like, let's say, for example, there's four points you need to make,

and you can't fit all four points in. Oh, so another point here is, when you keyword something, reminder text does not live up to the same rigor that rules text does not live up to the same rigor that rules text does. So one of the reasons that we'll keyword something is it gives flexibility to the editors that there's a vernacular explanation that's a easy to understand explanation. Sometimes when you write in what I call magic ease, in true technical

speak, it is confusing what the card is doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the computer will understand, but the human won't understand. And so one of the things about keywording something is it then allows us to use reminder text to explain something. And reminder text does not have the same rigor that rules text has to have. So it allows us to be more vernacular and have an easier time explaining things. So the third reason that we might keyword something is we need to be able to explain to you how to use it

and the use of a keyword will enable us to do that. The use of a keyword gets us into reminder text. Also, by the way, so not only does it get reminder text, which gives us more latitude, it also allows us to use flavor for resonance, allows us to sort of word things in a way that we can pick up, like I said earlier, depending on what kind of card you're on, what kind of keyword you have will vary. For example, if we have a keyword that goes on an instant or a sorcery, often what we'll do is give it a verb. And the reason we do that is

because we want the vernacular of how you're going to talk. I'm going to do this action to this other card. So, oh, well, let me, you know, for example, kicker, although kicker is a noun, it lets people say kick. I want to kick this spell. And notice we even use that terminology sometimes in reminder text, that we've actually said, if a spell is kicked, that sometimes we use reminder text, sorry, keyword text, because it allows us to condense other words as well. That we can say things like, you know, have you been kicked?

Because the thing is called kicker. So the use of sort of vocabulary will beget other related vocabulary. So that, I mean, that's all a big thing is there's a language issue. You know, there's a splash issue. There's a a big thing is there's a language issue. You know, there's a splash issue. There's a game functionality issue. There is a language issue. There's a comprehension issue that keywords play a big role in. The other thing that keywords do, sort of the last category,

is that they make things less intimidating, um, for a bunch of reasons. Um, reminder texts, we have trained the audience to think of italicized texts as less threatening. of italicized text as less threatening. Oh, it's flavor, or it's just explaining things, but the card is with the card. Once you learn what a card does, you can ignore it. And so what we've taught people is that italicized text is less threatening text. You can ignore it.

You don't want to? So when people look at cards, they kind of zone out the italicized text. And they look at the non-italicized text. And the more words that are in the non-italicized text, the scarier the cards become. And it's one of the reasons that one of the metrics we do in R&D, especially during set design, is we look at word count. in R&D, especially during set design, is we look at word count.

Because word count is a really good kind of shorthand for how intimidating are we being. And so one of the things we want to look at is, okay, if we write this out, how wordy is it? How daunting is it? How much weight does it carry? And so another reason we might use keywords is if we have to write this out every time over, you know, like one of the things about keywords,

oh, another important part is how are we using the keywords? So basically keywords have what I call small, medium, large. So a small keyword is like five to ten cards. So a small keyword is like five to ten cards. A medium keyword is 11 to like 20 cards. And a large is like 21 and up. The more space you're going to use, the more likely to keyword you, because the more dense you are, the more sort of what you're filling up.

It depends a lot on how many words it takes to replace you. Because another thing to remember is that if you take three words to say what you're going to say, we're a lot likely not to keyword than if you take 12. Because the sort of space saved, the scariness saved is a big part of it. And actually, I forgot one last thing. So the one last reason why I'm not keyword things. I had four things, but it dawned on me that I'm forgetting a fifth one. Is, can we convey this in a way other than the keyword? Can we use art to convey it? Can we use names to convey it? Can we use names to convey it?

A lot of times, for example, especially in a cycle, for example, let's say we have a cycle of cards. Rather than keyword them, we can have a name that's shared in their name. We can have the same artist illustrate all five, or we can illustrate them, even if by different artists,

through a, have a certain, the way we do the art is similar so they come across as being the same. So I guess the final thing also is, can we convey what we would in a keyword through a non-keyword means? Usually that has to be a smaller keyword. It's harder to convey a large keyword using creative means. It's possible.

keyword using creative means. It's possible. And sometimes, for example, we tie keywords to creature types. This creature, like, is a new creature and every copy of this creature does something. So that is a way we can get a slightly bigger thing, but because you sort of know, oh well, you know, all this creature do that, sometimes we can get away with not having to keyword it. That doesn't mean we won't keyword it. Samurai did a Bushido. I mean, we will sometimes, even if you limit it to one creature. But in the end, those are the five reasons that we talk about why we keyword something.

Is it splashy? Is it pulling the eye? Is it something that will make people notice that thing in the set? Because you want them to notice it. Is it pulling the eye? Is it something that will make people notice that thing in the set because you want them to notice it? Is it functional? Does it need to be keyworded to actually work in the set? It needs to be keyworded. You can refer to it or you can do things that you need to do mechanically. Is it something that's going to help comprehension?

Is making a keyword going to make it easier to template or easier to just communicate what exactly the card does? Is keywording it going to be something that just reduces words, practical words, non-intel size words? Is it going to make something to just make the set less daunting? Is it going to make people not so scared of it? Or is it keyworded because that's the only way we can convey something? That's the only way to convey the particular flavor? That there's not other means that we can use to connect it?

Because if there's other means, we will look at those other means a lot of times to do that. And like I said, the goal is we look at all the things that we have in the set that could be keyworded or could be worded. Like I said, sometimes they become supertypes or subtypes. Those sort of have subtypes, by the way. Well, creature subtypes tend not to have

rules baggage. Subtypes from other things can and will. Supertypes normally have some sort of baggage, although I guess they don't have to, but they tend to have some sort of baggage. Um, and then, like I said, we decide whether you're a supertype, a subtype, um, or a type, or whether you're a keyword action, a keyword, um, ability, or an ability word. A keyword action has to do with how we're going to use you in templating.

Basically, are you a verb? And are we going to tell you to do that? Are we going to tell you to fight or tell you when a creature dies or do something where it's going to be sitting within sentences describing stuff. That's a keyword action. And then the big difference between a keyword ability and ability word really has to do with can we write it out? Like, once again, an ability word doesn't need the ability word.

That ability word really is us saying, oh, we don't need to keyword it. We don't functionally have to keyword it, but we want to draw your eye to it. We want you to understand the flavor, you know.

The ability word helps convey a lot of the reasons we give things names, and so we will do that. So that, my friends, and how are we doing on time today? Oh, we had a long commute today. I had extra traffic. So as we say, it's the podcast where extra traffic means more content for all of you.

So anyway, I hope today was good. Like I said, I'm driving up to work right here. But it is whether or not we keyword something, I'm hoping today shows you that there's a lot of moving pieces and a lot of reasons. It is not just yes or no. And it is not can we get a good name or can we get a good name for it. We trust our creative people to come up with good names. We make honest attempts, by the way.

Um, I'm happy, uh, I would say our hit rate in vision slash design of, of getting usable names is, we tend to hit about somewhere between a third and a half of the time. Like, if you look at something like Dominaria, both historic and sagas were named during, um, vision. Now, we changed the name and we used creative, obviously. We went from stories to sagas, were named during Vision. Now, we changed the name, and we used creative, obviously. We went from stories to sagas. But before Vision was done,

those names were the names. And cycling obviously didn't change because there was a reprint mechanic. But there's other times where, like, you know, we'll come up with names, and all the names will change. I mean, I remember in Mirrodin, I was always proud because there were four mechanics in I mean, I remember in Mirrodin, I was always proud

because there were four mechanics in Mirrodin, in original Mirrodin, which was, there was Affinity, there was Entwined, there was Equipment, and there was Imprint. And I actually,

we named all four during design and all four stayed. Usually things change. Usually there's other names. We try our best to give it a real name, but then, for different reasons that I pointed out before,

often the name has to change. But anyway, hope you guys enjoyed my extra long podcast all about keywording. But that is why we keyword. So I always forget to write down who gives me the suggestion, but thank you for the suggestion on Blogatog,

and I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast, learning about different aspects of design. But anyway, I'm now Parks. so we all know what that means. This is my... Do I know what that means? We all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work. So without talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.

Bye-bye.