Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #608: Other People's Lessons – Poetry

Episode Date: February 1, 2019

This is a new series called "Other People's Lessons" where I look at lessons from other areas of art and examine how those lessons apply to Magic design. Today's lesson was by a poet named Kara Ziehl and talks about how to better write poetry.

I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today, many years ago, we used to do these talks in R&D where different designers would pick a topic and then give a speech to the rest of the designers on the topic. And at one point, I took a thing called the 10 Principles for Good Design by a designer named Dieter Roms, who is an industrial designer. And I talked about how his 10 principles for designing things like lamps apply to designing magic. And then I ended up writing an article about that and did a podcast about it. But anyway, that inspired me to try, I'm going to try a new series, which I am calling Other People's Lessons. And the idea of this is, I take people giving a top

10, usually top 10, it might not always be top 10, but giving lessons about something, some design-oriented thing, but not specifically magic. And what I'm going to do is derive magic lessons, magic design lessons, and game design lessons from those lessons. So today, I am doing 10 poetry tips by a woman named Kara Zeal. So I think she was in a class, a poetry class, and she wrote this for an assignment, I think she was in a class, a poetry class and she wrote this for an assignment I think, and the teacher liked it so much that he, he or she I'm not sure anyway, they posted it, and I thought it was really

interesting, and so I'm going to use it's ten lessons about how to be a better poet, and I thought that would be a really interesting jumping off point and one of the things I like about this series, or the idea of the series, is that I'm going to show the universality of creation, is the idea. Okay, so lesson number one, know your goal. So what Kyle is trying to say here is, when you're writing a poem,

you need to know, well, what are you trying to do? What's your subject matter? What are you trying to say? What's your message? You know, that if you're you trying to do? What's your subject matter? What are you trying to say? What's your message? You know, that if you're going to sit down and write a good poem, you need to start by knowing what it is you're trying to do. Well, I don't need, this one's pretty, I don't have to, some of these I have to find my version of it, but this one's pretty straightforward.

Are you going to make a magic card? You know, you could design, whether you're designing a game or specifically designing a magic set. What are you trying to do? What, you know, if you're designing a game or specifically designing a magic set, what are you trying to do? If you're trying to design a game, what's the point of your game? What kind of game are you trying to make? Who is the game for? How long will the game take to play?

You have to have basic ideas of what you're aiming toward. It doesn't mean you need to know everything, but you need to know, okay, I'm trying to make a casual game that will take 20 to 30 minutes for four to six people. You need to have a general gist of where you're going. You might also want to know what kind of, not just the style of game, but your subject matter. Like, oh, it's a casual game about hitchhiking zombies or something that sort of gives you some general sense of where you're going.

Now, when designing a magic set, you want to understand what is this particular set trying to do? You know, when you're designing individual cards, you want to know who are those individual cards for? Am I making this for one of the psychographics? Is this for Timmy and Tammy or Johnny and Jenny or Spike? Is this something that I'm doing for a certain format? Am I trying to make a cool commander card or something people will play in modern or

something people will put into their cube? You know, what am I trying to make? Who is this for? And a really important part of doing design is understanding, like, if you don't know what you're trying to do, you will wander aimlessly. That a lot of the importance of having clean and clear design is starting with a target, a bullseye, a goal. Now note, that doesn't mean the goal can't change.

You could start doing one thing and while exploring, discover something different and you can shift. while exploring, discover something different, and you can shift. So that having a goal doesn't mean that you can't discover new things and change over time, but you at least need, at any one moment, you need to be aiming towards something. You need to be making an effort, oh, I know what I'm trying to do. And a lot of, I've talked about leading teams, a lot of what leading a design team is about is getting your team all moving in the same direction, is providing sort of, I call the bullseye design. We're like, okay team,

that's our bullseye, that's where we're going. And you want to get everybody in the same direction, headed in the same way, because if everybody's sort of scattered and going in different directions, you could be working in odds with each other. Where if you're working together with a unified goal, it allows you to sort of all move closer to that goal. So lesson number one, know your goal. Lesson number two, avoid cliches. So what Carr's talking about with this one is in poetry, you are trying to evoke something out of your audience and that cliches are using expressions that are sort of well-worn. They're used very, very often and that if you say something in a way that people have heard before, people kind of gloss over like, oh yeah, yeah, I know that and that it doesn't sort of pull them in.

That what you want to do when you're writing is find a unique and cool way to say something, not just say it the way it's always been said. That a poem that, you know, only uses sort of worn cliches, it's not going to pull at the reader's attention. Because it'll just be sort of things that seem like part of what a good poem does is it pulls you out. It makes you think about things in a different way. But part of doing that is presenting language in a way that is unique and different. Okay, so for magic, I'm going to talk about reprints. So one of the tools in making magic is that we have 25 plus years of cards.

Well, right now 25, but we have 25 years of cards that have been made. Actually, technically, I guess we have more than 25 since we work ahead. So there's lots and lots of cards that have been made. One of the things I say to designers is reprints are an important tool. What you don't want to do is sort of, you know, the best reprints are the ones that feel very special to the set you're making. Like when I know we have a real good reprint, it's like, this is not the card we could just reprint anywhere. You know, that this feels so organic to what we're doing that it's just a perfect fit. You know, maybe mechanically it's just playing in the space the set is doing.

Maybe the name and flavor just really resonates with the kind of world you're building. That when you're working with reprints, I mean, obviously, there are what I will call functional reprints, which are sort of basic effects. It's naturalized or plummet or cancel or things that just every set does and there's no reason to reinvent the wheel

if the simplest form works best in the set that's okay but what i'm saying is when you are trying to sort of um pull in reprints that are going to more draw the eye you you want to bring things that people aren't used to seeing um you want to sort of like one of the things i love is reprinting a card that's never been reprinted before and this is the perfect place to reprint it and to people that might not even know the old game, it'll just feel like a cool new card, but for the old timers, they'll go, oh, oh, I remember

that card. And that I, in general, you know, and this is sort of game design in general, which is, you know, you want to understand the basics of what games are, but when you're making your own game,

you want to make sure that you, like, in some way, the same way that making a poem of nothing but cliches, making a game of nothing but sort of just pieces from other games, is not going to have its own identity. That something about what you do needs to ring true as original.

And that when you're designing a game, you want to make sure you have that original component. In Magic, I mean, one of the things you want to do in a Magic set is A, make sure that you have new cards that are kind of doing things in a way you haven't done before. You know, that part of avoiding the cliche in card

design is finding new tweaks and twists. Okay, maybe I'm going to have a giant growth, but oh, can I combine it in some way? Can I make this giant growth organic to the set that I'm making? Now, if I need to, like I said, it's fine to reprint simple things if you need to, but when you're doing tweaks, try to find ways to make these effects

unique to what you're making. And that, you know, a lot of what this is talking about is, you know, it's not a bad thing to understand sort of what's come before, but you want to make sure the thing you're making stands out

and has things that make people go, oh, I haven't seen that before. And so part of that is, you know, the importance of innovation, the importance of figuring out when and how to do things such that, you know, you're reinforcing what you are making in a way that, you know, giving a fresh eye to something, giving a fresh perspective, really will make a set feel new and different or make your game feel new and different. And that, you know, it is not that your game can't borrow from other things, but you can't borrow solely from other things.

That you sort of have to stand on your own. Okay, number three, avoid sentimentality. So what she's talking about is, I'll use my stand-up days to talk about this a little bit. There are things you can do when doing comedy that will make people laugh, just because there's very base things that people will laugh at. The problem is, they're what we sort of call cheap laughs, which is, it's a laugh that's not really earned. It's kind of a laugh that like, well, you know, certain words and stuff you can get people to laugh at, but like a good comedian

doesn't want to get laughed for the sake of laugh. They want the laughs to mean something. They want the person to appreciate what they're doing. I mean, poetry, that's the same thing. What I think Kyle is saying here is sentimentality is, it is kind of a cheap and easy reaction. You know what I'm saying? That there's certain things you can do that, you know, I can talk about puppies and you'll go, oh, puppies. But that's not, that's not quite as earned. And that one of the things she's talking about is when you lean on sentimentality, when you lean on sort of known low-hanging fruit kind of emotional responses, in some ways you're cheating. You're getting the easy laugh. You're not really earning the emotional response you're trying to get out of your audience,

your reader. And so she's saying, you know, try to avoid that. Yeah, yeah, people will respond to this stuff because it's, you know, the sentimental stuff. I mean, it's hard not to, you know, people have responses to babies and animals and, you know, you want to sort of figure out how best to use the things in which you're not over relying. In screenwriting, it's the same sort of thing, which is, look, if I put innocent people in

jeopardy, yeah, yeah, the audience is going to root for the innocent people. But you want to make sure that you, you know, there are easy ways to evoke emotion that aren't really digging deep or aren't really going to the core of what the person is. And you want to be careful about that. So my example in magic is a power level, which is if I want to make somebody like a card, one of the ways I can do that is just make it really powerful. And people will respond to power. But the problem is it's kind of an easy, I mean, A, there's power level issues.

I mean, there's all sorts of reasons not to just make everything powerful. But from a design standpoint, if the only reason people like something you've done is because it's powerful, then they don't really like what you've done. Anybody can cost something too cheap. I can take any spell and say, oh, instead of four,

which is what it's supposed to cost, I'll cost it a two. Okay, it's powerful. People like overpowered things. But you as a designer are cheating. You are not really, you know what I'm saying, you are not earning the response that you're getting.

And that is a similar thing to what Kara said with sentimentality, which is I want you as a designer, whether a general game designer or a magic designer, to earn what you are doing. And be careful not to sort of tap into means and ways to get a response out of people that aren't earning that response fairly.

And Magic Card's power level to me is a perfect example, which is one of the things I notice, I mean, I don't get to see novice people design all that much, but every once in a while we'll do things like you make the card or something where I can. And the number one thing I see is new players tend to just overpower their cards. Now part of that might be from a poor ability to cost things, but part of it is just it's exciting if it's really broken. Okay, yeah, there's some excitement to things being broken, but that really, you are not

earning your stripes as an imagine designer if the way you make people like something is it just it doesn't cost what it's supposed to cost. That is a cheap and easy

it's not earning it. And I think as a designer you want to make sure that what you're making is something the audience truly respects for its own merits.

Not because you used some easy out or, you know, you... Not because you sort of took advantage of something that is basic in the way people will respond. Okay, number four, use images. So what she's talking about is when you're making poetry, you are trying to evoke something out of your reader. You want them to get invested in your poem. Well, one of the ways to do that is poems are words. That one of the things that's very powerful is

the audience brings to the words their own visuals. powerful is the audience brings to the words their own visuals. And what she is saying is when you sort of build images into your poetry, you bring vision, you know, you bring visuals to the reader, that you help them make it an experience larger than, you know, a larger experience than just the words. And images are very powerful, and the reason images are powerful is people come to media, come to art, already with emotional investments in things. This taps into a lesson I talk

all the time about resonance. That if I'm going to make something, if I use something that the audience already knows, so my example is, in Innistradrad doing a gothic horror set. I really wanted to make zombies that had a unique feel. Magic uses zombies all the time, but I wanted to get a very horror feel to my zombies.

So I said, okay, when you see zombies in pop culture, what do you see about them? And the thing that I really liked was the idea that an individual zombie is not inherently that scary in the sense that they're slow, they're dumb, you know. An individual person in a post-apocalyptic zombie world can deal with a zombie, usually. But where zombies become dangerous is

not that there's one zombie, it's that there's a horde of zombies. That no matter how much you can deal with one zombie, at some point you tire. At some point, you can't, you know, you can't look every direction, and then the zombies will get you. And I worked really hard in Innistrad to sort of

build that into how the zombies felt and how the zombies played. And that worked really hard in Innistrad to sort of build that into how the zombies felt and how the zombies played. And that gave the zombies in that set a different feel than a lot of the ways we play zombies. And that's the kind of thing is when you're building, I mean, just building a general game, not necessarily magic,

you want to figure out your flavor and figure out where am I playing in spaces the audience knows and recognizes and will be excited by. Now, the interesting thing is I just said, you know, in avoiding cliches, you want to make sure you take your own take on things. But using images,

I'm also talking about playing into resonance. The key there is there's a happy marriage between making use of things that are known and that shortcut. I call this piggybacking, where I use a known thing to help communicate game components to players. Oh, well, I know that zombies are slow and overwhelm you. Oh, well, if I build my zombies to be like that, it starts helping you understand how the gameplay works. Oh, I get it. I'm going to slowly build up a horde of zombies.

This archetype is a slow build-up archetype, not a fast one. And you get part of that by going, oh, I see what they're going for. And so, you know, resonance is very powerful because if you're trying to evoke something out of the audience, you can tie into something that they know. Now, the key is, it's not just enough to go, oh, I'm that thing. You want your gameplay to reinforce it in a way that

feels fresh, but feels endemic to what that thing is. You know, a lot of resonance and piggybacking, a lot of the reason I keep talking about that is my audience comes invested with feelings and emotions, and if I'm trying to make them feel something, using things they already know can help that. But the key to it is you then have to put your own spin on it. You have to make something in which you're making it part of your game in a very organic way that, you know, makes it part of the experience.

Okay, lesson number five, use metaphor and simile. So in poetry, metaphors and simile are comparisons. It's saying this thing is like that thing. The reason that metaphors and similes are very powerful is it allows you to take something that might be a little bit more unfamiliar and make it more familiar. I mean, anybody who listens to my podcast knows I love metaphor. Like a lot of times when I'm trying to explain something, I use metaphor as a teaching tool. Because, oh, the new thing you don't know,

but this old thing that I'm comparing to, you do know. Oh, it's like that. Oh, I see. And that one of the powerful things of using metaphors and similes is it just does a really good job of pulling people in and helping them understand and helping them see what you're trying to do.

So, my parallel here in magic and game design is you need to understand the tools at your disposal. my parallel here in magic and game design is you need to understand the tools at your disposal. So what she's talking about, Kara's talking about is here are powerful tools that you can

use to make good poems. Make sure to use these tools, they're really good. What I say to a magic designer is if you want to be a good magic designer, you also have to be a good magic designer, you also have to be a good magic historian. That you need to go back and look at all the sets that you haven't played and see what

we did, what went on. And one of the things that I think is really valuable for a young magic designer is to go to any database, the Gatherer we have, and there's other databases, any magic database, and pick up, pick sets, go in order. Say, okay, let me look at Alpha.

What are the cards in Alpha? What do they do? What was Richard up to? And you can both look at the original printing and then look at the Oracle printing, which also will tell you a little bit about how things have evolved over time. And go through the sets and say, oh, what did Alpha do?

What did Arabian Nights do? What did Antiquities do? What did Legends do? What did the Dark do? And that really get a sense of what magic has done and what tools are available to us. Because a lot of what this lesson is to me is know your tools. Know what you have access to. Like, for example, if you're making a magic set, one of the things we try to do is

we try to bring back at least one mechanic every set. There's a few sets we don't, for reasons that make sense. But we do try to bring back mechanics. In fact, we try to consciously bring back mechanics. Sometime we'll bring back two or three mechanics. Usually we want something new,

so not every mechanic is a reprint because we are, you we are being brought back. But one of the things I say to people who are making magic sets is you need to know what tools you have at your disposal and then feel free to use them. If there's a perfect mechanic that just 100% fits what you're trying to do,

you don't got to reinvent the wheel. You can use that mechanic. And that a lot of good design is understanding the tools available. Now, in general game design, you need to understand what genre are you playing in? What are you making? What I would say is be familiar with other games in the genre you're working in. For example, if I'm making a card game, we'll have a good understanding of card games. There are a lot of components to card games that overlap. You want to understand what makes a card game tick. You know, let's say you're making a board game or even more specific,

I'm making a party game or even a certain style of party game. Go and see other people that are close to you and, you know, understand you you and understand when you go to make your game you want to understand what exists in the marketplace and what people have previously done in the area you're playing around in A. because you don't want to just recreate a game that's already there and B. there's a lot of lessons to be learned

of understanding what has and hasn't worked and if you find tools that work, I mean, make sure you add your own components to it. If you just take all the mechanics from somebody else's game, you've just made somebody else's game. But if you find components from different games

that you think really will be an enhancement to what you're doing, that's okay. You know, the part of good design is not necessarily making everything from scratch. It's doing the work and understanding what tools exist and involving some of those tools in what you're doing. Okay, number six, use concrete words instead of abstract words. Okay, so the lesson the car is talking about here is

concrete words are like apple, cat, Joe, or I don't know Joe, I mean, if you know who Joe is. Concrete words are like apple, cat, Joe. I don't know if you know who Joe is. Abstract words are like happiness, liberty, love. And what she's saying here is that the problem with abstract words is, A, they're somewhat ambiguous. If you're trying to get your audience to understand something, if you get too vague in your words,

people might go too many different directions. And so what she's saying is the more concrete your words can be, the more that it's an exact thing that someone can picture versus a sort of larger concept that's somewhat abstract, you'll, a sort of larger concept that's somewhat abstract. You know, you'll just help your audience be able to have a better understanding of what it is

you're trying to get them to picture with your words in your poems. And there's a good example of her saying, look, you are playing with words. Words are what you are doing to build your art. You need to understand the impact of your words. And her point is concrete things are received very differently than abstract things. And not that there can't be a time and place to be abstract, but you want to do it very carefully and you want to do it infrequently.

Okay, so my parallel here in magic design is templating. So what templating is, is there's a way we word things. There's a way that the rules work. So another thing you need to do if you want to become a magic designer is you need to have some familiarity with templating. You don't have to be a templating expert. But what I recommend is when you write a card, go look up a card

similar to what you're making and look at how we word it. And then look at the latest Oracle wording, since wordings change over time. The reason this is important is, part of designing stuff for Magic is understanding what exactly your card will do and how it

will look. Sometimes you have a great idea, but once you actually template it, you realize, like, it points out flaws or points out how it's more complicated than it thinks. Like, one of the things that templating always teaches me is, oh, this is a lot more complicated of an idea than I thought. I thought it was very simple, but once I write it out, suspend, for example, from time spiral block. Suspend basically said, I once I write it out, suspend, for example, from time spiral block, suspend basically said, I can cast a spell cheaper,

but it takes so many turns before it happens. So suspend three is, okay, every turn, I exile it, and then in three turns it sort of happens. And suspend seemed like,

on the surface, such a simple, oh, instead of casting, I get a spell cheaper, but I have to wait some number of turns to cast it. But when you actually write it out, when you actually explain what has to happen for you to do that, it was a mouthful. It really was overwhelming for newer players or less experienced players.

And it caused some problems. It was not that popular because it was just a little bit hard to wrap your brain around. And a lot of that had to do with just seeing the words. So when you're making your cards, you need to template them, or at least get a rough template because you have to understand, sometimes what you want to do can't be done. Because when I say templating, I also

mean the rules. That sometimes to do the thing you want to do is like, oh, I can't do that. There's a lot of rules, like layers and things, that sometimes prevent certain effects from working. You know, I can't do that. There's a lot of rules like layers and things that sometimes prevent certain effects from working. You know, I can't make every flying creature blue, for example, just because of the way layers work. But anyway, there's a technical side to game making,

and you have to understand your technical side. In Magic, rules and templating is a big part of that. In other game design, it depends on what kind of game you're trying to make, but you need to understand sort of the larger structure and rule set that you are working with. That you can't be ignorant of how you have to build the things and how they have to work together. So the lesson there is really be aware of things like templating and rules. Understand the underlying rule system to what you are building. Okay, number seven, communicate theme.

So what she's trying to say is a poem wants to be about something. I would argue a magic set wants to be about something. A game wants to be about something. That, you know, I did a whole podcast about my wife and I like throwing parties. And one of the biggest lessons we learned about throwing parties is you need a theme. If you have a theme, everything comes together. You have this thing that ties your stuff

and it inspires you. But you have no theme and things become immensely harder. Or measurably, maybe measurably harder. So what I'm saying is, if you are making something, it is very important, and this ties into knowing your goal, but in particular, what exactly is the theme? The world you're building, what kind of world is it?

What's the flavor of the world? If you're building a general game, what's the flavor of the game? What am I trying to do? What exactly is this game about? And what you'll find is once you hook on a theme and center on a theme, you will make it so much easier to sort of build on that. Because once again, you have direction. The biggest thing that will get in your way of doing any kind of design is a lack of direction. The ability to do anything and go anywhere is very paralyzing. And then when you start, okay, I'm about this.

One of the first things I do in any magic set is, what is the take on the set that's different from what we've done before? Oh, we're doing a gothic horror set. We're doing a set where the middle set's not drafted with the first and third set. We're doing a set where lands matter. I've started from all sorts of different places, but each time I'm like, okay, I've never started from this place before.

And that theme really helps you sort of do that. Oh, we're doing a blah world. We're doing a blah set. Having that focus really helps you build around it. And if you're just building a general game, part of what you have to do is you want your game to really hold together tightly.

And part of some of the best games I've seen is because they understand what they're about, they understand their theme, and then they really hammer home what they're doing. Okay, number eight, subvert the ordinary. What this talks about is part of being an artist is, if you ever talk to me, you talk about the communication theory. Communication theory is about comfort, surprise, and completion.

I've done podcasts on this. Surprise is the middle one. Surprise, what it means is the audience doesn't want to know everything coming their way. The audience wants to be caught off guard. The audience wants to go, I didn't expect that. So one of the things you need to do is you need to make sure that somewhere in what you're making, you're taking something and doing it different than you normally do it. Especially with Magic, where, you know, we've made a hundred expansions. You want to make sure that you are pushing somewhere in some place that is a little different than you've done

before. A, that allows you to sort of make new cards and new content, but it also allows you to surprise your audience. Like, I love, for example, taking tweaks of cards and doing something that's really endemic to the set I'm doing it in, but in a way that we never would do that in a normal set. Why would you do that? Like, for example, I remember Brian Tinsman made a set that cared about converted mana costs. So he made

a morph creature that had a converted mana cost of 8. It was a 1-1 that cost 8 mana to cast. And the idea was it was a morph creature you could turn up and then it had a converted mana cost of 8 and it set the cared about converted mana cost. But it really was this thing that sort of, like, the first time you saw it, like, what is going on? And it really made people sit up and look at it. And that's an important part of any, whether it's a magic set or a game in general,

you want your audience, you want to do something where you're not doing quite what they're expecting. Where you're having fun pushing in a neat place, but you're doing so in a way that draws them into the game. That sense of surprise is very important. Okay, number nine, rhyme with extreme caution.

Okay, what Kara's talking about here is rhyming is very difficult to do right. The funny thing is that you need to rhyme, you need to rhyme to, I mean, a lot of poems have rhymes. You know, rhyming is a very basic part of a lot of poems. But what she's saying is, if you're not good at your rhyme, you're not good at your scansion, you're not good at making your rhymes work, you can, your rhyming can be a distraction that actually pulls away from the effectiveness of your poem.

your rhyming can be a distraction that actually pulls away from the effectiveness of your poem. That if you make something too sing-songy, instead of, it sort of pulls away from the seriousness of your poem. That the sing-songy tone makes it less, pulls the audience out of it. And my example here is the color pie. A good set will make use of the color pie and will even bend the color pie in directions that enhance the set. Every magic set has some color bends. Color pie bends aren't necessarily bad.

The idea is, hey, this set's about thing X. We're going to push toward, you know, it's a graveyard set. Okay, certain colors don't normally do all that much in the graveyard, but for a graveyard set, we'll push more toward it so that all the colors get to play into the theme of the set.

But the thing about color pie bends is, if done well, they enhance the set. If you do a rhyme well, it enhances the poem. But if you do it poorly, it really, really detracts. A, if you break the color pie you're fundamentally doing something you're not supposed to do

and if you're bending the color pie but not in a way that serves the set that it's in you are doing a disservice to both the color pie and your set that the idea is you use color pie bends judiciously and to reinforce what your set is about not to just do something you

want to do. If it's not organic to what you're doing, it's a negative to what you're making. And for game design in general, you know, one of the things to think about is you want to make sure that if you're playing into a certain game space, that you want to understand the natural elements of that kind of game and make use of them where it makes sense, but you have to use it correctly. You have to use it in a way that is organic to what you're doing and is reinforcing what you're doing,

enhancing what you're doing. That, you know, you... If I'm making a card game, let's say, there are certain elements that go into card games, and I want to make sure that I'm using them correctly in a way that's reinforcing what I'm doing. And that... If you don't understand how something works,

you shouldn't do something without understanding the underlying workings of how it works and why it works. So that you're making something that's reinforcing what you're doing. I think I said the word reinforcing like four times. Okay, number ten. Revise, revise, revise. So this one is another one that I don't need to change at all. In poetry what she's saying is your first poem is far from your final version of the poem.

You're going to write your poem. You're going to write your poem. You're going to put it away. You want to come back with fresh eyes. And that you really want to approach your poem numerous times and allow yourself the ability to slowly inch up and improve each time. And that can't be more true for game design. Game design, as is any artistic thing, to be honest, is about iteration. You're going to make something, you're going to get some feedback, you're going to make changes

on that feedback, and then you're going to continue that loop a number of times to the point where you get something you're happy enough that you want to put out. You know, if you're going to make a magic set, can't stress enough you have to play that set you have to you have to play test you have to take notes on the play test you gotta get feedback from the play test you gotta make changes on the play test

and then you gotta play again with the changes and that what makes a good game is that it plays well how do you know if it plays well? you play it and you get feedback from, as always, make sure when you do your playtesting

it is best to playtest with people that do not have emotional investment in you the designer. What you want is very honest, blunt opinions and people who care about you sometimes will not be quite as blunt as they need to be. And so playtesting with people that don't inherently know you or at least aren't invested,

emotionally invested in you, it's for the best. Okay, so I'm almost to work. So hopefully today, I mean, I'm sort of curious what you guys think of this serious idea. It's something you like. I like a lot the idea of approaching lessons from somebody else's discipline because in some ways it just makes you think about, like, one of the things I had to do when doing this is I had to sit down with each

of these lessons and go, okay, well what's the what's the magic or game design lesson here? Because some of them are some of these are very specific to poetry. But if you back up a second and understand the larger framework of what's being said, it's all pretty universal. That's one of the things I like about design lessons in general, is they tend to be pretty

universal. So let me wrap up. Number one, know your goal. If you want to make something, be a game or a magic set specifically, a magic expansion, you have to know what you're trying to do. You have to be, you and if you have a team, all be moving in the same direction. Two, avoid cliches. Understand what has come before and, you know, you want, don't, don't, you know, you want to be well-versed in the things that are part of what you are making and you want to make sure that you are not getting the easy, you're not necessarily getting the easy, the easy laugh. Well number three, avoid sentencing mentality. Avoid cliches, avoid mentality are the same in a larger context of you want to be doing something that takes advantage and understands

what came before you, that uses the tools of things that are pre-existing, but not in a way that's sort of not getting an honest response from your audience. You want to make sure that what you're doing is evocative because it itself is pulling what it needs from the audience. Number four, use images and or resonance. You want your audience to feel invested and to have an emotional connection. Be aware that part of doing that is making them make connections to other things, which ties into number five, using metaphor and simile.

You want your audience connected to the thing you're doing. You want them to understand and you want to be evocative. Well, they come to your game or magic set with experiences. Take advantage of that. And within magic, understand what you're doing that magic has done before and be very knowledgeable of that. Know your tools. Know the things that you have access to. And don't be afraid to use the tools where they're helpful to you, but don't over rely on the tools. Number six, use concrete words instead of abstract words. This is talking a lot about understanding

the technicality of the art form you're working in understand the rule set understand um the the pitfalls and the dangers you can have so that when you're making something you're working within the system in a way that will enhance what you're doing not detract from it um number seven communicate theme um your game and or magic expansion is going to be better if it's about something. If everything about it is, once again, it ties into having a goal, but if your component pieces have something to work off of, it'll be more thematic, it'll be more resonant, it'll tie together better. So you want to have a theme and you want to make sure you're communicating that clearly. Number eight, subvert the ordinary. You want to have a theme and you want to make sure you're communicating that clearly. Number eight, subvert the ordinary.

You want to surprise your audience. You want to do things they don't see coming. Yes, you want to build comfort. Yes, you want, you know, there's a lot of things you also want to do, but one of the things that's important is you want to have some innovation and you want to do things in a way that people don't necessarily see coming. That one of the things that really makes people fall in love with your game and or magic expansion is that you're doing something that they haven't seen before. Something about it is unique to what you

are doing. Number nine, rhyme with extreme caution. This is about understanding the technicalities of what you're doing and using them in a way that enhances things. I use the color pie as a good example of magic, which is understand your resources in a way that enhances things. I use the color pie as a good example of magic, which is understand your resources in a way that are reinforcing what you're doing. A lot of these lessons sort of tie together. And that, you know, don't break the system you're using. That it's very easy to take component tools

and do things with them that are not supposed to be used. That you can take advantage of your tools and use them wrong. So you need to understand the work so you're making something that is pulling your game together. And number ten, revise, revise,

revise. Iteration is important. Play testing is important. You want to make a game, you want to make a magic expansion, that's going to come from you sitting down and playing and watching other people play and getting notes and getting feedback and making changes and then repeating the process. That is how you make great magic sets.

It's how you make great games is an iterative process. And so don't be afraid to be iterative. Things are going to change over time. You've got to accept that part of making the best you can make it is things that you make your baby sometimes will change and grow and you've got to let them. Okay guys,

once again, I hope you guys enjoyed this idea of other people's lessons. If this is a serious idea you like, I will try to do more of them. I'll get some feedback from all of you. But anyway, I'm now at work.

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 next time.