Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #581: Narrative Equity

Episode Date: October 19, 2018

This podcast is about a concept that I wrote about in an article earlier this year which talks about the importance of games allowing its players to tell stories about the game.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, so today's episode is all about a column I wrote earlier this year about something I came, an idea I had about design, something I call narrative equity. So I'm going to explain what narrative equity is and go into detail about how, why it's important for games, why games need it, and different ways that games can help ensure that they work narrative equity into their game. Okay, so let's start. What is narrative equity? So I'm going to start by telling a story about my eldest daughter, Rachel. Many of you might know her because she's been on this podcast numerous times.

Okay, so there is a place up here in Washington. There's a chain of them, but it's called Great Wolf Lodge. And it's a place that it's a hotel that has a water park inside it. And so the idea is you go and it's sort of a family resort. And we go there from time to time. It's not too far away. There's one up here near Seattle. So we go there, and there's many things. Beside the water park, there's a lot of different, you know, sort of family-friendly activities. One of which is an arcade. And for those that have not been to an arcade recently, there's a lot of video games.

But one of the things that's very popular in video games or in arcades is a lot of the video games will give you tickets. And then you can take those tickets and you can spend them and buy prizes. They have like a prize wall and you can spend tickets on the prize wall. As is normally the case, most of the time you don't get that many tickets and you can't buy that much with it. But what they do is they tend to have a lot of little things, like little tiny, like sort of party favor things. Or they have a little bit of candy. So the idea is, you know, you get these tickets and most of the time they don't turn into much of anything.

But if you get a lot of tickets, you know, there's larger things that you can get. So anyway, we go to Grim Wolf Lodge and we go to the arcade. So I get money for my kids so they all can play the video games. And all three of them seem fascinated by the tickets, which is why they're there. And so they are all trying to do it. Now, one of the things you can do, a bunch of the things are ways to get a lot of tickets. Like there's things you can spin where like most of the time you get four tickets or ten tickets. But oh, hit the jackpot, you get a whole bunch of tickets. So my daughter, Rachel, is doing one of these things and she hits the jackpot.

And like I said, normally when you do this thing you get maybe 10 tickets, let's say. But she hit the jackpot, I don't know how many, she got thousands and thousands of tickets. And the way it works at this place is they literally spit out the tickets because you didn't have to then feed them in a machine. The new, some of the new arcades put it on a card, but this one still had the actual tickets. They're putting out tickets. So, like, she's sitting there for quite a while while the things are spilling out all these

tickets. Anyway, at the end of the, you know, we wrap up, it's time to go. She takes all her tickets up and you feed them into a machine and get, like, a ticket that says how many tickets you have. And Rachel got enough tickets because she really did well.

She got enough to maybe be in like the medium category where you're getting sort of like a not so great stuffed animal or something that's sort of their medium type prize things. But there's nothing she really wants. And so Rachel asked them how much a piece of licorice is. That's one of the candies, like the low-end candies you can get. And they explain how many tickets it is, five tickets or whatever.

So Rachel gives it and says, okay, I'd like all of this in licorice. And the woman's like, oh, okay. Yeah, I don't, let me go in the back. I don't have that much licorice out here. And so she goes in the back and ends up giving Rachel like two and a half boxes of licorice. Just an insane amount of licorice.

And Rachel's taking pictures with the licorice and doing stuff and as we're walking back to the room I'm thinking about this and I'm like okay, we have licorice at home. Rachel could have licorice. She never has licorice. It's not that she dislikes licorice, but it's not like she's a giant fan of licorice.

Why did she get two and a half each one's an individually wrapped piece of licorice and she got two and a half giant boxes of licorice. Why did she do that? And then it dawned on me that she had had an exciting moment, right? She had, normally when you play, you get, you know, 10 tickets, 20 tickets. You don't get some giant, but she won the jackpot. She got a giant number of tickets. And she wanted it to be something memorable.

You know, she wanted to have a story. Like I said, she took pictures to post online. And so she was looking for something that just sort of made the story have a capper to it. And the idea to sort of get all the licorice was, look at what I did. I got hundreds and hundreds of pieces of licorice. Jess was grandiose and was kind of a fun ending to her story.

And it dawned on me that the decision she made was based more about the story she was going to tell than even the thing she got. I don't think she particularly cared about the licorice. If I remember correctly, I think she took it to school and just gave it away to all her friends at school. And so that got me thinking. So it got me thinking back to an event in my own life.

So when I was in high school, actually, I think junior high and high school, I played softball. So softball, for those who might not know, it's kind of like baseball. The ball's a little bit bigger, a little softer, and you pitch it underhand instead of overhand. But it's a variant on baseball. A lot of kids will play softball. I played softball.

And so I think back. Now, I was never much of an athlete. I mean, I'm an okay athlete. I mean, I've never been much of an athlete. Probably the only sport I even participated in was softball. I didn't really go out for sports. But I did play softball. I was the catcher.

And, you know, I was okay. I mean, I actually got pretty good at being a catcher. A softball catcher is a little bit different than a normal baseball catcher. But anyway, one of the things in softball is if the ball, and maybe this is true in normal baseball, but it happens in softball a lot more, if the ball gets tipped up, if you try to hit the ball, but instead it sort of goes up, and if the catcher catches that, that's considered an out, as long as I think it's above the head of the person who hit the ball. Anyway, I was very good at catching those. So anyway, I was an okay fielder. I was not a great hitter.

I was very, the best thing I was when I hit was, in baseball and softball, you get pitched. And if the pitch is a good pitch, and you don't hit it or you swing at it and miss, it's called a strike. And if they pitch it and it's a bad pitch and you don't swing at it, it's called a ball. Four balls, you get a walk to first base.

I was pretty good at getting first base, mostly because I didn't hit at balls that weren't good hits, and I got walked a lot. But when I actually hit the ball, I got to first every once in a while. I mean, I think I hit a few doubles. Every once in a while, I hit a double. So anyway, we're in a game. The team had already, we were out for the season, meaning you were playing to make the playoffs. We were already, we had done bad enough that we had no chance of making the playoffs. We were just kind of playing for fun. And I hit the ball, the best hit I've ever had in my life.

I did a really solid to like deep, I'm not sure if I hit it to left field or right field. But anyway, deep in the outfield. And so I'm running sure if I hit it to left field or right field. But anyway, deep in the outfield. And so I'm running. First base. And I hit first base. And I look, and the ball's still out there. No one's even close to the ball. I get to second base, and somebody is running toward the ball.

So I have enough time to get to third base. Now, as I'm running toward third base, a couple things hit my brain. I played softball all my youth, and I knew that the correct play was, you know, I saw him go to get the ball when I was running from second, meaning that he's about to throw the ball. You know, I'm going to touch third. I can make it a third. The ball won't get there before I hit third. But if I go home, look, he's going to throw the ball. There's a decent chance that I can get thrown out at home. And if I, home, look, he's going to throw the ball. There's a decent chance that I can get thrown out at home. And if I, there's no outs in the game yet. If I stop at third, the chance of

somebody else hitting me home, really good. In fact, once they know that there's no outs and I'm at third, they'll start doing things to get me home. So strategically, I'm supposed to stop at third. That is like the textbook, you know, what's been drilled into me as a player, what I'm supposed to stop at third. That is like the textbook, what's been drilled into me as a player, what I'm supposed to do. But something else goes through my mind. I've never hit a triple in my life. And you know what I've never also done?

Hit a home run. Home run is when you run all the way around the bases. And there's a chance if I keep running that, you know, I mean, just because they throw the ball at home doesn't mean that I get tagged out. It could be a bad throw. I mean, there's lots chance if I keep running that, you know, I mean, just because they throw the ball at home doesn't mean that I get tagged out. It could be a bad throw. I mean, there's lots of things. Plus, as I'm running, you know, I don't quite see his throw. I mean, I don't, there's a little bit of wiggle room. There's a chance that I can make it home. I don't know for sure I won't make it home. And I'm sort of going through my head. I'm like, I can, I can hit

a home run. Like in my life, I'm like, I could hit a home run. Like, in my life, like, that was a feat I thought I'd never have a chance to say, that I hit a home run, that I got all the way on the bases. That's a pretty cool thing. Never done it. Now, it's cool to get a triple. I'd never done a triple either, but not as cool as a home run. And part of me said, look, when am I going to get another chance? Like, when am I going to, like, I never hit a triple ever in my life.

You know, I felt like this was just a lucky thing that happened. I just happened to hit the ball just right. It was a one in a million hit. I didn't think it was going to happen again. So I decide I'm not slowing down. I'm running home. I'm going to risk it because I want to get a home run. Now, once again, it wasn't to win that game because the best thing to do for that game was stop at third.

I was thinking bigger. I was thinking of, I want to have the story of the time I hit a home run. Now, what happens is, the throw's a little bit off. I make it to home place, and I score. So I end up getting a home run. In fact, I'm telling you the story. So it made me think about something, which is, like, here's a good example of, it's a game. I'm in the game.

I have an opportunity to make a decision. I understand all the strategic ramifications of my decision. Yet, that's not what I do. And I'm like, okay, well, what's going on here? And what I realized was there's a dynamic that was interesting to me. And the dynamic was how much value do people place on stories? And when I mean by stories, I mean personal stories. I did something. Let me tell you what I did. And what I realized was that there is value to that. That people place value on stories about themselves. Or even stories about other people, but in this case, stories about themselves. And that part of being a game designer is understanding

what exactly it is that you are doing. And it's very easy to sort of get locked into, well, within the context of the game, here's what you're doing. But part of what is going on is you're creating entertainment. You're making something larger than just the game itself. And part of that is, I talk a lot about self-expression. I talk a lot about self-identity. Like, game players, one of the reasons you play games is there's a lot that goes on that kind of extends beyond the game itself. There's skills that you learn. There are, you know, in a lot

of ways you're testing things so that when you come when you face things in real life outside of the safety of the game that you're learning skills. You know, there's a lot to be gained from playing a game beyond the scope of the game itself. And the idea I had here is, you know, maybe the idea that the game can produce stories that you can share, maybe that is worth something.

That maybe that is a quality that people care about that is something you can put into your game. So I dubbed it narrative equity, meaning that there's equity in the idea that a game can, that there's stories that come from it. And the interesting thing is when I think of magic,

you know, a lot of my favorite magic has been where something happens and it creates a story and then I get to tell, some of the stories I'll get to tell today. So that is really a cool thing. And a cool idea is something I hadn't seen written before.

I apologize if someone else has written about it. I just hadn't seen anybody write about it before. So as a game designer, I like to explore things. And I like to sort of open up and talk about new ideas of how to think about game design. So once I had that in mind, I said, okay, let's talk about how do you build in narrative equity? What can you do as a game designer to increase narrative equity in your game? And the idea of what I'm saying is, here's a quality that'll enrich your game, that'll make people happy with your game, because it'll add something to the life that they value. How do you

do that? So I came up with six things you can do, which I will share with you now. Okay, so number one is create components with enough flexibility that players can use them in unintended ways. Okay, so each one of these, I'm going to give an example from Magic. These examples are all over time. I decided to sort of spread them out over the years just on things that sort of tickle me to stories I enjoy. years, just on things that sort of tickle me to stories I enjoy. Okay, so the first one goes all the way back to Tempest, which is the first set I designed back in 1997.

Okay, so the card in Tempest was called Head to Head. So it was a red instant, no, not instant, red enchantment. It was a red enchantment, and it said basically that instants and activated abilities can't be used during combat. And the idea was, I'm playing a deck where I just have bigger, badder creatures. I don't want you messing with it. I don't want you killing my creatures in combat.

I don't want you making your creatures bigger or something. Look, I have the better creatures. Let's just fight. And so the whole point of Head to Head really was it was meant to go in a creature deck that just didn't want interactions during combat that might kill their creatures. That was the intent

of what I made. But the interesting thing is the way it got used, at least in tournaments, was completely different. Way back when, when the game first came out, Richard made something called the Circles of Protection. There were five of them.

Actually, there were other ones made later, but there were five basic ones at one of each color. And so Circle of Protection Red was an enchantment, and that to activate it, I think it costs one and a white, I think, to play.

Then to activate it, it costs one generic mana, and by activating it, you prevented all damage from a red play. Then to activate it, it costs one generic mana, and by activating it, you prevented all damage from a red source. So the idea is, once I get out the Circle Protection Red, I can start protecting myself against red things. Well, if you're playing a red deck, and you have a lot of creatures, maybe you can overwhelm your opponent. Maybe you can attack with enough creatures, little enough mana to prevent all the damage but if you're attacking with a few big creatures

you know, they just save the mana and like, okay, my 5-5 or 6-6 attacks and they're like, prevent it but it turns out that the time they have to prevent it, when this card came out, was during combat the rules for how protection

changed over the years, especially with 6th edition rules. This is prior to 6th edition rules. Actually, yeah, this is prior to 6th edition rules, because 6th edition rules came during Earth of Psycho Black. Anyway, so it turned out that you could use head-to-head, if you put it out as a sideboard card,

your opponent, it shut down your opponent's circle protection red, because activations couldn't happen during combat and that is when you needed to use it to prevent the damage. So people use the card in a complete, like I made it as a means to protect creatures and it was used in a way to proactively shut down defenses against creatures. And a lot of people say, well, you know,

when I make a card and somebody uses it differently than I intend, you know, I'm upset about that. No, no, that's awesome. And one of the things that we try to do in Magic all the time is

we make cards that have value and do things, but we kind of want the players to figure out what to do with them. Now, sometimes we build in, you know, we will build in synergies and things within the sets we make, but it is really fun and something that I, like one of the things is when you are playing with a game component,

usually the game component sort of makes it clear what the intent of the thing is. So when you use, sorry, when you use it and do something differently than what was clearly intended, you're being a rebel, right? You're doing something, you're sort of paving your own path. And that is ripe for stories. That is, you know, I mean, you were MacGyver, right? It's like you had tools at your discretion and you needed to get something done and you figured out how to use those tools to get that job done even if that was not how they're normally used um and that just like i said part of narrative equity is setting up the player for an opportunity

to do now the key here is the player has to do the cool thing. You know, if you just let the... If you sort of just say, here's the card to do thing X and do thing X, that's not as exciting. But if you say, here's the card to do thing X and they do thing Y, now that's exciting. And so one of the things about when you're designing your game, just be conscious of,

give yourself enough flexibility within your structure that people have the ability to use your pieces not exactly the way you intend it. And from that, it just comes from making enough modularness in the way you build

your mechanics and your game that people have some flexibility to sort of go off script a little bit. And that is very compelling. So something you want to do is you want to get people the opportunity to go okay I don't think I was supposed to do this but I did it anyway very powerful okay number two create open

ended components that can be mixed and matched for unforeseen ways so this is a quarter that number one is sort of make cards that like how people can use some kind of some variants the other thing is something magic does exceedingly well by Number one is sort of make cards that, like, how people can use them can have some variance. The other thing, and this is something Magic does exceedingly well by the nature of a trading card game. Next, this is saying make components that can be mixed and matched. That can combine in cool ways. Now, imagine, obviously, we have a game in which we have, you know, 16,000 plus pieces. Well, are there combinations that we didn't foresee?

Of course there are. So, I there combinations that we didn't foresee? Of course there are! So I'll use one of my favorites. So in Ice Age, way back when, in 94, there was a card called Illusions of Granger. And on it is a picture of a little tiny bunny, and there's an illusion created that that little bunny is a giant dragon.

And the way the card works is when you play it as enchantment, you gain 20 life. An additional 20 life. Until that enchantment goes away. Once that enchantment goes away, then you lose the 20 life. By the way, this is not particularly a blue effect.

It was blue at the time. Blue can't just gain 20 life. Even if it's illusionary and temporary, blue can't do that. But anyway, this card existed. And the idea was, I play this card, I get extra life,

maybe I even have a chance to use it. But at some point, if my opponent can deal with his enchantment, especially if I'm below, if I've used all the 20 life, I'll instantly die. Okay. So all was good.

This is the kind of card that got used a little bit as a... I'm losing, but if I play this, I can... If I'm playing against a black and red deck that can't deal with enchantments, I can buy myself a little extra time. Okay. Then, five years later, I made a card in Urza's Destiny called Donate. So Donate was a card. I think it cost two and a blue, and allowed you to give, I think it was a sorcery,

allowed you to give one of your permanents to your opponent. Give control of it to your opponent. And, I mean, Donate was made very much with rule number one in mind. Like, what are you going to donate? I don't know! The game has lots of things you can give away. What do you want to give away? the reason I made it was

I had a lot of fun when I first started building there was a card called Gauntlets of Chaos and a different card called Juxtapose and both those cards let you trade one of your creatures for one of your opponent's creatures and so what I did is I would make a creature that had some downside to it that my opponent probably couldn't deal with.

Like there was some upkeep that was a lot of mana that might be a color that you don't have. And what I would do is I would get this creature and then I would give it to my opponent. And then my opponent would lose because they couldn't deal with the creature. And I thought this was funny and I enjoyed it, so I decided to make a simple version. Because both Juxtapose and Gauntlet of Chaos you needed to swap with your opponent.

So my deck literally had to find ways to give the opponent creatures just in case they weren't playing creatures. And this card says, whatever, you don't have to get something from them. Just give it to them. So it turns out that if you take illusions of grandeur and donate it to an opponent, what happens is you gain the 20 life

because you played the enchantment, then you give it to your opponent, all they've gained is the enchantment ability that they lose 20 life and the enchantment goes away. So basically what happens is you gain 20 life, donate to your opponent, then destroy it. And obviously if you're doing this, you have it built into your deck to do it. And then they lose 20 life. And this combo is built, there's a

for a long time in in, I think it was extended, it was a format we used to have, which was like a rotating format, but it had like 8 to 10 blocks in it. A lot of, there was a thing for a while where all the decks in it were named after breakfast cereals. Started with a deck called Fruity Pebbles. Anyway, they called this deck Tricks, because it was a trick, you see.

Silly rabbit. And it was a powerhouse and extended for a while. It was a really, really good deck. And, look, somebody came up with an interaction, and that was not something planned at all. But, like, you know, when you find that interaction, when you're the one that's able to go, oh, this and ooh!

So, you know, when you can sort of find component pieces and put them together and do cool things, that also is exciting. That also makes neat stories. That is something that makes you go, ooh, I care about the time I put A and B together. And as a game designer,

part of that is making enough components and having enough modularity to your game that players can find that. Now Magic, I mean, a trading card game in general, it's all about, look,

you get to pick and choose your pieces and so you can figure out pieces get to pick and choose your pieces. And so you can figure out pieces that are synergy and put them together. So Magic does this one really well. But all games can do it. It's just a matter of figuring out how you can give, not all games, many games can do it. How you can give your opponent modulator in their pieces to mix and match. Okay, number three.

Design in unbound challenges that allow the ability to create memorable moments. Okay, so my example for here is a card called Chameleon Colossus from Morning Tide. So we were at the World's... I forget what year it was. We were at the World Championships in Memphis. It was in Memphis, Tennessee, I believe.

And we were doing this interesting thing. There was a multiplayer tournament going on. And each one of us in R&D, or a bunch of us, entered and we were given a morning-type card to preview. This was before the set was even out, before previews had started. And the idea was that I was supposed to take this card,

just nonchalantly play it until the players figured out that wait a minute, what's that card? And they go, oh, it's a new card we've never seen this card before. So the card I took was a card called Colossus, Chameleon Colossus. Basically, it was a creature that you could, as a green creature,

that you could activate to double its power and toughness. And it wasn't a one-time use. It cost, I think, four mana. As many times as you can do it, you could activate to double its power and toughness. And it wasn't a one-time use. It cost, I think, four mana. As many times as you can do it, you could double it. And the creature started relatively small. It was like a three, I think. But the idea was, the more mana you had,

the more you could pump into it, the bigger you could make it. And the idea here is, when I say open-ended, I mean, there's no limit. As much mana as you have is how much you can put in it. So one of the things that often happens in multiplayer games is a lot of people play cards that are friendly to everybody to sort of encourage people to not attack them and attack somebody else. So we had a bunch of mana flares or some equivalent to mana flare,

which meant that every time you tapped a land, instead of getting one mana out of it, you got more than one. And there were a bunch of them in play, so I don't remember exactly, but like, every time I was tapping a land, I was getting four or five mana, so some crazy amount of mana. And it was late enough into the game that there was

a lot of mana available for me. So I play my Chameleon Colossus. I don't remember whether I had a way to Grant it haste or I waited a turn. But anyway, eventually I'm able to attack with it. I put on...

There was some equipment that gave it lifelink, and at the time, lifelink stacked. Meaning that if you had lifelink twice, each one would gain its own life. Now it doesn't stack anymore. So anyway, what happened was I ended up pumping my creature. I doubled it many, many, many times. And I ended up attacking for something like 26,000 damage. And I gained like 55,000

life. And it was an amazing story. You know what I'm saying? It was like the way I tell the story, obviously, is like I was tasked with, you know, premiering a card and getting people excited for this new card. And how did I do that?

By gaining 55,000 life with it. You know, doing 26,000 plus damage with it. You know, I really took a card and I was able to really show it off in a really cool, fun way. This was such a big deal. At the time, we wrote a big article about it.

I later talked about it in my column. I'm obviously sharing the story now. And the funny thing is, when I tell the story, it doesn't matter. How did it end? It doesn't matter. It turned out it was the top two advance to the next round. when I tell the story, doesn't matter. How did it end? Doesn't matter. I mean, it turned out it was the top two advance to the next round.

So I ended up being in the top two. Didn't... The ending of the story doesn't matter. I didn't even win the game necessarily. I mean, I advanced, but it doesn't matter. The whole point of the story wasn't that I won a game. The whole point of the story is I did a crazy thing. And that, you know,

for the rest of my life as a magic player, I'm like, I gained 55,000 life in one turn at one moment. That's not easy to do. I did it. And so it's a feather in my cap. It's a story I get to share. And the idea for this one is, it's a perfect example. Chameleon Colossus, most of the time,

it costs like four mana to use, most of the time, you can only do it so many times. Maybe you can do it once or twice, maybe three times, and you can get it somewhat big, but you're not getting it crazy big. But then, every once in a blue moon,

such is the situation I was in, where I just had all these Hallowed Mines, or not Hallowed Mines, we might have had Hallowed Mines, but we had Mana Flayers, and anyway, I was in, where I just had all these hollow mines, or not hollow mines, we might have had hollow mines, but we had mana flares, and anyway, I was set up with all these resources to do something that probably I would never be able to do in a normal game

without crazy setup, and so I just was in a situation where I could do something fun and something cool. And that existed because, like we could have said, use this once per turn but we didn't we're like wow let him use it multiple times

knowing that hey there will be the story of the person that activated it eight times nine times ten times eleven times

twelve times you know there's somebody that I mean I attacked with a 26,000 26,000 creature I'm sure somebody attacked with much bigger than that.

I activated it 12 times, somebody activated it 15 times, and someone else activated it 30 times. But the key here is we made something that there was enough open-endedness, meaning we didn't lock it off. We said, you know what? If somehow you get enough mana,

crazy, crazy things are going to happen. And we just said, hey, that's okay. Not going to happen often. You know, that it's okay in your game to let nuttiness happen infrequently. Because when it does happen, it's this narrative equity. It really will bond your players to your game. You know, once, for example, you've played a game that you share a story with, like once a game is in your repertoire of stories to share,

that game is bonded to you. I'm now, for the rest of time, I'm going to say, hey, I played this game because I want to tell this story about it. That's really potent. That's really powerful. Like the number of magic players that have stories about magic is

insanely high. And that's very much to our value because it helps bond people and makes magic, like, an intrinsic part, not just of their life now. Like, even if you stop playing magic, it'll always be a part of your life because you have a story to tell, or maybe stories to tell. That is really potent.

And that's a lot of what I'm talking about today is the reason this tool is so important is it gives some gravitas to your game. It gives an element to your game that lets it go beyond the game itself. That lets it seep into the player's life. And that, that is just so potent.

Okay, number four. Create near-impossible challenges that can become a badge of honor. Okay, so this is an extrapolation number three. So number three, I'm like, make open-ended cars that crazy things could happen. And there's another thing you can do, which is you can

sort of create things that kind of encourage a challenge that the players then have to figure out. So my example for this one came from a set I did called Unhinged, which was a silver border set. The unsets are definitely something that really allow people the opportunity to do things they don't normally get to do. So Unsets are really good with narrative equity, by the way. One of the reasons I like them so much. So the idea was I made a card called Little Girl.

And Little Girl, in Unhinged, we had half. We used the fraction half. So Little Girl cost half a white mana, and she was a half power, half toughness creature. And one of the fun things about Little Girl was that the card was not particularly strong. A half-half creature.

And the card sort of begged you to find a way to use it in some way that was practical. Now, it was an open-ended challenge. You know, okay, maybe just get one, just do some damage with little girl maybe do the final half point of damage

with little girl maybe do all the damage with little girl it just sort of said hey here's something you have to figure out how to use but if you do if for example I manage to make a game where I defeat my opponent in which every piece of damage is done by a little girl

meaning I hit him 40 times with a little girl I get to tell that story to the end of time and my friend's going to hear about it to the end of time you know it is just like just like the unbound things just building components into your game

that kind of say hey can you use me we sometimes make what I call Uber Johnny or Uber Jenny cards, which are cards that are so, like, so hard to use that you're just daring the player, I dare you to find a way to make, to use this. You know, we make cards like, oh, I play this card, and then I have to throw away my hand, or I have to, I lose my entire library, or just something crazy happens. Like, well, why would you do that?

How do you take advantage of that? What can you do to make that a card you want to play? And that really is encouraging because it sort of says to the players, okay, I, the game player, I'm throwing down the gauntlets. I am challenging you. Can you solve this? Can you figure this out?

And that when they do, it's just really compelling. And remember, one of the things I talk a lot about John and Jenny is that they like to express things. And that this really plays in that sensibility is, I'm going to do something crazy so that when I do it, I get to talk about it. Like, for example, back in the day, I used to be a very Johnny Deck builder. And I would always build decks that would win in weird ways. And it wasn't that they won a lot. The win percentage was actually pretty low. It was just, if they ever did this thing...

You know, like, for example, I've talked many times about the deck where the whole point of the deck was, I kill you by casting the card Tunnel. Tunnel says, destroy target wall. Well, how do you kill somebody with a card that says destroy target wall? Well, it took a lot of work to get there, but I did it. I made the deck. I made it happen. And I, I, I targeted to death many people. Uh, sorry, um, tunnel to death. I tunneled to death many people, um, because I just made a deck and I figured it out and I played and played and played and played. Yeah, maybe I only won one every four or five games

or maybe less than that. But when I did, I beat you with tunnel, you know, and that was an impressive thing. And that was something that sort of, to this day, I get to tell that story. Okay, number five. Create alternate ways to win. Okay, so my example here was when Legends came out,

there was a... In it, Legends came out in 1994, summer of 1994. There's a card called Pit Scorpion and a card called Serpent Generator. And they created this thing called Poison Counters. That when these things, when Pit Scorpion hits you or the Serpents made by Serpent Generator hit my opponent,

they gave them a Poison Counter. And 10 Poison Counters won the game. Or actually, sorry, 10 Poison Counters, they lost the game, which meant you won. And that was fascinating to me. That was so different from how the game had worked.

And I was so enamored by it that I built endless decks with it, which were all horrible decks because neither Pit Scorpion nor Super Gendry was particularly good. But it encouraged me and when I got to Wizards, I started putting poison cards in. Now there was a hiatus for a while

where we stopped making poison, but I didn't giveards, I started putting poison cards in. Now, there was a hiatus for a while where we stopped making poison, but I didn't give up, and eventually I bought poison back, and, in fact, in Scars of Mirrodin. And, you know, that really spoke to me, in that when you give your players, if you say to them, look, you don't always have to do things the way I tell you. There's some other ways you could do this. There's alternate ways.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can win this way normally. And then alternate winning conditions are very compelling. They really, you know, I talked about how you want to sort of throw the challenge down and get your players to pick it up and take the challenge. Well, alternate ways to win are really compelling. Because the swing is, you know, when the payoff is and you win, you know, once you win,

it's like, I won. How did you win? I won in this way. That's such a strong, compelling story that it really makes people go, oh,

well, maybe I should, I should do that. Maybe I should do that alternate victory. And, you know, Poison definitely

had an impact on me. It shaped a lot of the stuff I made as a designer, and it shaped how I played as a player. And, by the way, before Poison was any good, did I ever win with Poison? Of course I did. You know, once again, it's not that I won all the time,

but I won occasionally, and when I did, I did my little happy dance, and I told that story because I managed to do something that was hard to do. Okay, number six. Give players the ability to customize, allowing them opportunities for creativity. Okay, so this one, I was making a card unstable, which is an unset that came out last year,

and I needed a creature answer for blue. So I decided that I was going to do a dehydration variant. So dehydration is a card that you put on Enchanted Creature and it doesn't untap. Sometimes it taps a creature when you play it, sometimes it doesn't. It varies. So I decided that I wanted a lockdown

card for blue. Blue just needed creature control. And then one of the things about blue in the unsets is that blue has a verbal component. Blue's the color that sometimes will talk. And I hadn't done much verbally in the set. And so it dawned on me that I could do something where I, the creature doesn't tap as normal. I'm sorry, the creature doesn't tap as normal. But I could say a word and tap the creature. And I could say it whenever I want. There was no mana cost to it. And tapping the creature at whenever I felt like it,

really close to having it tap down. If it costs you nothing to tap it down, you can basically tap it on every turn. So the key was I needed a word or a phrase or something that you had to say to lock it down. And every time I would try to come up with something, I came up with things I thought were funny. But when I would try it out, what I found was

there's no universal, no matter what I picked, some people might find it hysterically funny, others like, eh. And that's when I decided, what if I don't choose? So the card was called Magic Word. What if for Magic Word, I make you choose? And then whenever you whisper the word you've chosen, you get to tap the creature.

And then, the idea there was that you would pick something that you are going to have fun saying. Probably it'll have to do with you and your opponent. And what I found with the card is it does exactly that. That when I'm playing with it, I'm just trying to make my opponent laugh and that I'm sort of gauging my names based on my opponent, based on the kind of game we're playing. Maybe there's some jokes that came up earlier in the game. You know, I'm sort of

using it as a means to sort of interact socially with my friend or the person I'm playing. And the cool thing about it is some of the times I've been able to come up with things that were fun and once again, it creates stories. It's something where I'm giving the player enough flexibility that they have the ability to stamp it with something that is their own.

And in this case, it was a creative element that had a minor mechanic. I mean, it doesn't matter what the word is. You can say any word. You know what I'm saying? But tapping on the creature, you could use the most boring word you wanted. The reason people don't tend to give boring words is there's fun in sort of embracing and specifying. is there's fun in sort of embracing and specifying.

The one other thing, by the way, that is important to remember when trying to interact or trying to create narrative equity is another really powerful tool to create narrative equity is other people. That if you stop to think about stories that you tell, a lot of those stories involve other people. And a lot of those stories involve you interacting with other people. That people love to talk about people. And so the other thing that you want to do is make sure that you are maximizing your ability within your game for your players to socialize with one another, to increase opportunities for fun things to happen.

An example for this one took place in Unstable. So what happened was we did these outside assistant cards, and the way they worked is you had to talk to somebody that wasn't in your game, and then get them to do or say something, and then that impacted your game. or say something and that impacted your game. And the idea being that you might ask somebody who doesn't play magic and then they have no idea what you're asking about. So they're giving you basically a random answer.

Or maybe you ask somebody that does know magic and they do understand what's going on and now it becomes a game of, are they going to help me or not going to help me? Are they going to help my opponent? Where do their loyalties lie? And, you know, it became this fun little game of trying to figure out who will say what I want them to say. Or if I pick somebody that, you know, I don't have a lot of choice, can I do anything to sway them to sort of do what I want them to do?

And the outside assistant cards have proven to be a lot of fun. In fact, my favorite story, and I've told, this is a super brief version, but there's a game that was played between, I think it was between Ben Hayes and Mark Purvis, where Ben calls over one of the editors,

or editor at the time, a guy named Tim, and Tim goes on to wreck Ben. He brings him over for a thing called friend slaver, where the new person gets to play your opponent's turn for them. And so, you know, Ben's about to lose. He plays friend slaver.

Tim comes over, looks at the board state, and then beats Ben, and basically says, next time, don't bother me. You're like, I'm trying to work. And that is a funny, funny story. I've told it so many times. I tell a longer version. There's another one of my Unstable podcasts.

I do have a long version, sorry, which is a little bit funnier. But anyway, you know, that is a story that I've told infinite times. I wasn't even in the game. I was a spectator of the game. I wasn't even playing in the game. And that might be the unstable story I've told more than any other.

And that's the power of really involving people, that people do a good job. You know, people by their nature want to be social. So interacting with people just increases fun things happening and increases stories. So interacting with people just increases fun things happening and increases stories. Okay, so there are seven things that you can do to create narrative equity. And once again, I want to stress that the reason it's so important is that the goal of any game, I believe,

is to integrate that game into the person's life in a personal way. Now, maybe that just means they think about the game when they're down time. Maybe it means they talked about it when they're down time. Maybe they're part of a community that interacts with it. I want my game to be a part of the life of its player. Not the whole life. I want them to do other things. But, I mean, I like when,

you know, I make lifestyle games. Like, I want to make a game that really has an impact on the person who's playing it and means something. And part of narrative equity says, and I want that to impact

their personal life in a way that they bond with it. That it's something that's part of who they are and their identity. And that is really important. And building in this opportunity, these sort of handholds to let people sort of bring it into their life in a way in which they get to share with other people is so, so potent. I mean, I really, I mean, the reason I put this to words, one of the reasons that I,

one of the things you'll notice is I'm big on finding concepts that exist in gaming that have not been identified, identifying them and naming them. Because in naming things, you allow people to discuss them and talk about them.

And part of what I want is, I want other game designers to go, you know what? Yeah, he's hitting on something important. And now that we have words for it, let's talk more about it. Like something similar happened. I introduced two different terms. One was piggybacking.

Another was lenticular design. And both of those have expanded beyond magic. And now people in other fields of game design have talked about that and used that terminology. magic and now people in other fields of game design have talked about that and used that terminology. And that's one of the things that I really, as a game designer and an educator, you know, I love the idea of getting concepts into words so that we can talk about them, so that game designers can go, oh, okay, how do I get more narrative equity into my game? I now recognize it as an important thing. It's something that I talk about. I can hear other people talk about. And now I can say, okay, what do I need to do? How do I do that? So once again, I'm almost at work. Let me wrap up. Here are my seven suggestions

for how you can create narrative equity. Number one, create components with enough flexibility that players can use them in unintended ways. What that means is try to be as open-ended as you can with your components and your game systems to allow your players to have flexibility in how they use it. Number two, create open-ended components that can be mixed and matched in unforeseen ways. What that means is not only do your components have to be flexible, used by themselves,

you want to make sure that they can blend together and do cool things. When I talk about modularity, I mean the idea that you have things that are open-ended. Like a lot of times we make cards and I'm like,

I'm not quite sure what people are going to do with this, but there's a lot of potential things that they can and let them have fun and find things. Number three, design in unbound challenges that allow the ability to create memorable moments. The idea here is make things that most of the time do something normal,

but every once in a while do something, you know, not ordinary, but extraordinary. And that's a great way to make stories is, hey, I use this card I always use. And normally you just do this mundane thing. But one time I did this crazy thing. Number four, create near impossible challenges that can become a badge of honor. So another thing you can do is build into your game things that most players in your game won't do. But that a lot of people in your game are aware that it can happen.

So that when you pull this off, when you do it, when you're able to do this kind of extraordinary thing, you talk about it and you share it. And it's something that becomes a cool moment. Because you're the person that did the thing that everybody knows about, but not everybody did. Number five, create alternate ways to win. That one of the fun ways to let people personalize your game is, and to tell stories about it, is for them to do something that's off the beaten track. And sometimes you can build the thing that's off the beaten track.

You know, you can be the you are allowed, like, sometimes you build stuff in where they find their own stuff. Sometimes you just put a challenge that's so hard that even though they didn't build it, just the mere fact of accomplishing it is something. Number six, give players the ability to customize, allowing them opportunities for creativity. allowing them opportunities for creativity. And the idea there is you can build in means to your game to allow the players choices to dictate things and have some, especially, by the way, like as in Magic Word,

where it doesn't have huge gameplay implications. It just has, it just makes the game more fun. It's just flavoring on your game. You know, giving your opponent, well, giving your players the ability to influence it in a way where when people talk about it, it has, you know,

interacting with flavor especially can be very potent because players can then feel like they had something to do with the game. And finally, don't forget the power of other people. People want to tell stories, but stories with people interacting with other people are the majority of stories. And so don't forget that people are a resource in your game, and your players are a resource.

And try to give ways for your players to interact with one another, or even with people, as with an unstable, outside the game. You know, just interact with people. People themselves are a great source of a lot of fun. Okay. Wow, we had a lot of traffic today, so we had an extra long podcast. But luckily, it was a good topic and I had plenty to talk about. So,

hopefully, if you're just a game player, you can think about the impact of how this affects games, like Magic. If you're a game designer, part of what I'm trying to say today is, this is a cool component of games. You have some control how much is in your game. Not complete control, but some control. And that if you want to make the best game you can,

this is yet another facet you should think about. Narrative equity is important. How do I incorporate narrative equity into my game? Okay? Well, anyway, I'm now sitting in the parking lot. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic,

it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys all next time. Bye-bye.