Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #610: Bends and Breaks

Episode Date: February 8, 2019

Often on my blog and social media accounts, I talk about things being "bends" and "breaks." In today's podcast, I go in depth defining what those terms mean and talk about why bends (in moderation) are good for the game and why breaks are bad.

I'm put on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about color pie bends and breaks. So I'm going to talk all about what exactly they are and why we do them. And this started from the fact that I have a lot of discussions online, on my Tumblr, on Twitter, on different social media, about people saying, why can't you do thing X? And me often saying, oh, well, we can't do that. That is either a bend or a break.

Well, we can do bends. Okay, let me get into what exactly I'm talking about. So a bend or a break. So the color pie, of which I've done many podcasts on, one in particular that you might want to listen to if you haven't, I did back in the early days, was there's something I call the golden trifecta, which is what I

consider to be the three genius ideas that Richard Garfield had when he created magic. And one of them was the mana system, one was the concept of a trading card game, and one of them was the mana system. One was the concept of a trading card game. And one of them was the mana system, the mana pie, the color pie. Sorry. One of them was the color pie. And the reason the color pie is so important is a trading card game lets its users

use whatever pieces they want. So the way Richard would describe it is, let's say you're playing chess, and you could pick whatever pieces you wanted. Why wouldn't you have 15 queens and a king? Like, why wouldn't you do that? Why not just use the most powerful possible combination you can? And the answer is that he needed to have means and ways to chop it up so that you had reasons to separate and do different things.

Now, one of those was the mana system, because different spells cost different amounts of mana. There's early game, middle game, and late game. That's one way he did it. The other is the color pie, because what he said is, okay, I'm going to take this and chop it up into many pieces, in five pieces, and then different colors will have different flavors and access to different mechanics, those different strengths and different weaknesses. And the reason I might want to play one color versus another color is by what's available in that color. Now, the color, the mana system pushes you toward playing less colors,

and the color pie will push you toward playing more colors. That's an internal tension. That's a key tension to the game. So what is a color pie break and a bend? Okay, so a color pie bend is something we don't normally do. Well, actually, let me explain break first. A break is something that fundamentally undermines some aspect of a color. It could be through how it's flavored and through, essentially, each color has its strengths and weaknesses.

Are you undermining that? For example, if a color is supposed to be bad at something, you don't want to do something that makes the color good at it. Because that's undermining its weakness. you don't want to do something that makes the color good at it because that's undermining its weakness. So a break is when you're doing something that fundamentally is at odds with the color pie and it is letting the color do something it's not supposed to be doing. A color pie bend is when you're doing something you're not supposed to be doing, but not quite up to the extreme of it's undermining the color. And there are three different types of bends, three categories of bends. What I call

minor bends, medium bends, and major bends. So let me talk about each of those. So a minor bend means that the color already does something in this area. So, for example, to give some difference between black and red, we made the choice to give cannot block to black and must attack to red. Now, those aren't identical. There's subtle differences between them, but they're close. And a lot of the functionality overlaps a little bit it's like oh I have a creature that's not going to be able to block most of the time

or all of the time I guess in canon block but what we did is we said okay in order to just let black and red feel a little different we'll give one to one and one to the other okay so black we gave can't block red we gave must attack we decided that red was a little, so black we gave, can't block. Red we gave, must attack.

We decided that red was a little more impulsive, so it just can't help itself but attack. Black's a little more selfish. It's just going to, you know, I'm not going to harm myself protecting you. But at some point, play design came to us and said, oh, sometimes must attack causes us problems. What we really like right now

is to let red have some can't block. Is that a problem? And so we looked at it and said, okay, look, red can already do must attack. There's not a major difference between must attack and can't block. They are similar in nature. So letting red have can't block,

you're not, I mean, you're undercutting some flavor thing. Like the reason we do one in black and one in red is sort of to play up a little bit of flavor. But other than that, other than the minor flavor issue, it's not as if you're letting the color do something it can't do. It kind of does it already. So a lot of minor bends are, look, the color can essentially do that. Maybe not that exact nuance of how to do it, but it can do it. You're not letting the color do something fundamentally it can't do, but you are executing it in a way that's a little bit different

from the way it normally does it. That's what we call a minor bend. It's not the normal way. It's a little bit different, but it's playing in space that's not at odds with what the color can do. The color basically can do it. Usually it can do it in a slightly different means than how we're asking to do it. Otherwise it wouldn't be a bend at all. A medium bend is when we made the color pie or Richard made the color pie,

you know, he chose what to put where. And over the years we've definitely allocated, okay, who gets this? Who gets that? You know, this is a blue ability. This is a white ability. And we've divvied up the abilities. Now, philosophically, you could, like, Future Sight sort of did this, which is, if you started from scratch and said, okay, I'm not going to change the philosophies of the colors one iota. I'm not going to change that at all. Could I redistribute the abilities? Yeah, you could. You definitely could. You know, card drawing, we tie to intelligence and knowledge, which we make more of a blue-centric thing.

But maybe it's wisdom. There's different things you could use to convey that other colors have that would make some sense. It's not as if it's an impossibility to do something that would make some sense. You know, it's not as if, you know, it's not as if it's an impossibility to do something that would make that make sense. But we made choices, we went down a certain path, and once we made those choices, other choices were made. You know, for example, we've woven card drawing in green to its weakness of over-reliance

on creatures. So, you know, we've woven how green does draw cards in a certain way. So it's not as if we can just willy-nilly change things, but it's something in which we, the idea is this isn't something that the color, we've chosen for the color, but philosophically it's, we could have. You know, in a parallel world, this could have been an ability we did in that color. Once again, it's not undermining the weakness in any way. It's not something that is letting the color kind of do something inherently it's not supposed to be doing.

But it's more so than a minor bend in that it's not something it normally does. It doesn't do this. But it's something that, like, oh, it could do. You know, it's not going to cause a major problem if it does it. Okay, a major bend. A major bend is, look, we are playing in space that is getting close to a break. This is not something the color normally does. It is not something the color, you know, it really is pushing the boundaries of what something can do. And so, I mean, the reason we do major bends is that it's something that's very thematic to the world we're in.

And it's something that, like, really it makes a lot of sense for what we're doing. And there's strong reasons why here and now we think we want to push something. But major bends are not something we do very often. We do infrequently. And usually when we do them, we do them on single cards and not like whole mechanics and stuff. But anyway. Okay, so we have minor bends, medium bends, major bends. Why do we do them?

Why even do bends? And the answer is that magic is constantly trying to sort of push the pendulum around. It's trying to do new things. We always have different themes. And that part of the idea of bends is the game can handle a little bit of maneuver in the color pie. There's some flux that's allowed. And so too much bending can cause problems, but a little bit the game can handle. So what we do is we say, okay, we're going to use bends as a means to really communicate and help sell this set as what it is. For example, let's say we have a theme of the graveyard. We're going to do a graveyard set.

So Odyssey was the first time we did a graveyard set. Well, I. So Odyssey was the first time we did a graveyard set. Well, I guess Weatherlight was the first set we did a graveyard set. But anyway, Odyssey, it was a major theme of the block. And we'd really never done I mean, I guess Weatherlight was the first set that had it as a theme, but it was a

smaller theme. Odyssey was a pretty big theme. Every color, we wanted every color to participate. But normally, we talk about the graveyard, black does stuff with the graveyard all the time, green does some, white does a little. Blue and red traditionally don't do all that much with the graveyard. So,

we set out to find some space to do that. And sometimes, by the way, when we bend, sometimes we go, you know what, we like this, and we sort of add it in, and it stops being a bend, and it starts becoming naturally part of the color. Other times, it's something we're like, oh, we're not going to do this all the time,

but in this moment, when we're pushing this direction with this theme, we're willing to do a little bit of that. And so the idea of the bends is, we want to use bends strategically to enhance the set. In fact, let's talk a little bit about the Color Pie. Not the Color Pie. The Council of Colors. So for many, many years I was kind of the sole arbiter of the Color Pie. I would just sort of whenever I would see something violating it, I would speak up. But we make

a lot of cards and there's just one in me. And so we made the Council of Colors. I've done a whole podcast on the Council of Colors if you want to hear about what we do and how we function. The important thing we do is we go through sets and we talk about any card we think might be contradicting something inherent to what the color is. So for example, we have a meeting. Everybody, each color has its own council member.

And when they go through the file, they look at all the cards that are in their color, and they rate them one to four. So here's what this means. One means this is in color. This color does that. There's no conversation. Yeah, this color can do that.

Two means it's a bend, but I believe it's a bend that's appropriate for the set that it's in. Yes, it's bend. And the idea is we are more willing to do minor bends than medium bends than major bends. A set can have a bunch of minor bends, kind of a few medium bends. We don't tend to do all that many major bends and subsets or no major bends. But the idea of the grading is two means, okay, yes, it's bending, but we think it's an acceptable bend. Three means it's a bend, but we don't think it's an acceptable bend. And what that means is there is a time and a place where maybe that'd be okay to do that card, but this is not the time and place.

And a lot of times what happens is somebody makes a card that's kind of a bend that's not really playing into a larger theme of the set. There's no larger reason for the bend. And we really like to save bends so that they're, you know, a set, not only does a set only get so many bends but it gets so much, in conglomerate there's only so much bend it gets that even minor bends, if you're not careful, if you make too many minor bends you can start warping things in a bad way. So when we talk about how

many bends there are, we don't just talk about is this a minor, major, or minor, medium, or major bend, but also how many total bends do you have. Sometimes what we'll say to people is, look, each of these individual bends in isolation is okay, but you have too many of them. You can't have eight of them.

You could do four of them. And so there's also some note about volume. Anyway, so three means it's a bend, but we don't feel it's appropriate for this set. Four means it's a break. So if it's a one, no problem. You can do it. If it's a four, you shouldn't do it.

Two and threes are what we discussed, because what one person will deem a two, somebody else might deem a three. You know, the bends is where we have a lot of discussion of, is this the right bend? You know, is this going in a direction that is going to cause any problems for the color long term? Is it really reinforcing what the set is doing? Is it allowing us to make new and different cards that are really you know will stand out here and anyway so we have a lot of conversations about sort of how many bends and how to bend and such like that one of the things that we try to do in the council colors is

a lot of times we normally will have the lead of the set come in when we discuss a set. And one of the reasons is, sometimes it's a matter of saying, what do you want? Why are you doing this? So I'll give a good example. We were in a set design where somebody was interested in making a green counterspell that countered spells that targeted one of their creatures. that countered spells that targeted one of their creatures. And what we said was, okay, that's a pretty big bend. Green does not counter spells. There's nothing green does.

But if you want green to protect its own creatures, well, green can grant hexproof. Green can have an instant that grants hexproof. And an instant that grants hexproof to one of your creatures is not too far apart from a counterspell that counters something that targets your creatures, and it just feels more organically green. And so we might say to them, okay, well, here's the effect you want, here's something we can offer that's similar, that'll have a similar gameplay, that'll just feel a little more in color, and a little less, you know, it will be less bendy, if you will. And so we work with the leads of the set to try to make sure that we are helping them find the most appropriate design they can, the best fits their needs in a way that's most appropriate to the color pie. Okay. So, let me ask some questions.

There's a bunch of questions. So, number one question is, who cares? Who cares? So, you bend and break, whatever. What does it matter? Well, it matters a lot. So, let me talk a little bit about why.

The reason that Richard created the color pie in the first place is it is trying very hard the reason that Richard created the color pot in the first place is it is trying very hard to allow a framework to let us make a lot of cards. So for example, let's say every color could do everything.

That every ability is available to every color. Well, what problem would that have? Number one, there would never be a reason to go to other colors. You know, that if red could do everything, why ever leave red? The mana system already says, hey, play one color. So for starters, it just wouldn't have any impetus to make you play other colors. Second is, it would undermine a lot of flavor. Like, part of what makes Magic Magic is that the five colors of Magic each have their own identity.

You know, that if I'm playing red, it doesn't feel the same as if I'm playing green, or white, or black, or blue. That each of the colors has its own feel. An important part of that, part of it's the flavor of the cards, but part of that is just what it can do. The fact that each color has strengths and weaknesses really makes it play differently. And part of what we're trying to do is, we want a variety of play.

And so, by having different colors do different things, it just makes the game richer. It just makes, there's more cool things that can happen. And that when I play a blue block deck, that just plays really differently than a red-green deck. And that when I play a blue black deck, that just plays really differently than a red green deck.

And that the different combinations keep the game from getting boring. There's different options in the ways you can do things. And even in just like draft and limited formats, oh, this time I'm drafting white and black. Next time I'm drafting red and blue. And that just the kind of deck

I'm going to play, the kind of strategy, the archetype, all the different nuance of how I'm doing it is changing because I'm drafting red and blue. And that just the kind of deck I'm going to play, the kind of strategy, the archetype, all the different nuance of how I'm doing it is changing because I'm changing colors. And that variety, you would lose that variety. That sense of variety is really important. That you don't want every color playing the same. And, you know, breaking the color pie really undermines one of the key conceits of how the game works. One of the key... So the way I explain it, if you've ever heard me talk about design, I like to compare design to building a house. One of my favorite metaphors.

So my metaphor here will be when you build a house, architecturally, some of what you're doing is holding the house up. What we call bearing walls. So for example, let's say your house has multiple stories.

You need some things that are going to support the house as a whole and we call those bearing walls and the way architecture works is you have to understand what you need to build the house like there's there's guidelines structurally so how the house will stay up you know you have to build in such a way that there's support. And then to do that, you put in things that need to be there. Now, let's say you own a house and you want to redecorate your house,

or seriously redecorate. There's some walls that you can knock down. If you want to knock that wall down, open up the room or whatever, you can do that. Because some walls are decorative. They're there solely to give the room some feel, you know, the house a certain feel and stuff. And that it can be knocked down. It serves no

larger purpose. But some things are bearing walls and they're holding the house up. And so in magic, to me, a color pie break is knocking down a bearing wall. That you're knocking down something that is holding up the game. Now, in any house, there are a lot of bearing walls. You might be able to take out a bearing wall and not have the house collapse on you because maybe enough of the other bearing walls can support the weight. But you don't know that. It's a danger. Taking out a bearing wall is always a danger.

And so, you know, the reason when we talk about bends and breaks is I want to make sure, you know, a lot of people are going to live in this house. We're going to redecorate it and we can repaint and we can redo the interior decorating. And hey, from now on, we can actually knock down a wall or two. You know, we can make this house look different to different people if we want to. But at some point, you know, there is only so far you want to do that before you risk the health of the game itself. And that is why I'm so protective of the color pie that the the color pie is protecting something that inherently is like

it's the backbone, it's the foundation of the game and as the head designer, one of my jobs is I'm looking out for the game in a larger sense, like I'm looking out for design space, I'm looking out for, you know, where are we going to get in trouble?

Like, one of the things I always ask is, what can we do that would destroy the game of Magic? How do we destroy Magic? And there's a bunch of different ways we can do it, some of which are my responsibilities, some of which aren't. Things like Power Creep could kill the game, but that's play design, that's not me. But Color Pie pie design space

just making sure that things complexity creep there's things that I do care about that I have to care about and the integrity of the color pie is super super important ok so let's walk through some of the

whenever I talk color pie I get certain replies okay so let's let's walk through some of the the whenever I talk about color pie I get certain replies so let's talk through some of these replies and I will answer them so number one

is look it's just fun it's a game you know yeah it'd be fun to do this why wouldn't you

let us have fun why are you why are you being the fun police and the answer there is that part of designing a game is I want you to have fun. I want you to enjoy what you're doing. But this idea that anything that is fun, I should just let you do it is false. idea that anything that is fun, I should just let you do it, is false. As a parent, for example,

I want my children to grow up happy. I want them to have good experiences. I want them to enjoy themselves. That doesn't mean that every whim that they want to do, I'm supposed to indulge them as a parent. That I want you to have fun with the game. I want magic to be a good game. But I also have to watch out for the game. That the game collapsing in on itself is not good for you, the game player. And so it's not the job of the players

to look out for the larger health of the game. It's just not your responsibility. Hey, play the game, have fun. That's great. I want you to have fun. You're the one paying money for it. You get to have fun. But're the one paying money for it. You get to have fun. But it also means that, look, you're not looking out for the larger health of the game necessarily

because you're just enjoying the game. And that it's very easy when you get sort of in the weeds of doing X will be fun. Why can't we do X? And the answer is a lot like, look, you know, why can't we just knock down this one wall? We just want to knock down this one wall. Why can't we not? And the answer might be, well, while your process is, ooh, I would like this room to be bigger, or I'd like these two rooms to connect, you might not be thinking about, ooh, how is this building structurally put together? But you're not going to knock down a wall,

or, you know, someone you hire is not going to knock down a wall, until they talk to an architect and understand what's holding the building up. Because they're not going to just knock down a wall if knocking down that wall might cause something to collapse. And so it is... One of the things in general that's really hard is whenever you look at something from the vantage point of it's just one thing.

Why can't... Anything you could do. It's just one thing. It's just one. Just, come on, one card. But the problem is that every time you break something... Like, we... There are formats played in this game that are all the cards um you know

vintage commander being two of the big ones um legacy or let's say all the cards almost all the cards um and the idea is when we make a card you know if we were if the game was only standard if we rotated all the time and the old cards whatever went away then we could be a little more willing to try things because if something was damaged, we could just wait and then it would go away and that problem is not there anymore. The problem is

there are people who use all the magic cards and so every time we put a little tiny fracture into the system it's there and so like one of the concerns, for example, is I think that we don't really, green has been a hard color to understand. And I don't think we've always been as clean and clear on what green is and isn't supposed to do. And that one of the problems of the early days is there's no one

person looking up for the color pie I mean I did it where I could but it was sort of like we just made cards and you know when I caught things that I thought were wrong I would speak up on it but we made things that we shouldn't have made or even after that point there's a period in time where we just made too many products for me personally to even observe them and especially in supplemental products we were making cards that weren't really you know that were pushing the boundaries too many products for me personally to even observe them. And especially in supplemental products, we were making cards that weren't really you know, that were pushing the boundaries of what the color pie could be.

And the biggest place we did that was in green. And that green's weakness is supposed to be its over-reliance on creatures. That green is like I'm the creature color, I have the best, I have the biggest creatures, I have the best mana curve for creatures, you know, I get more for less in how I, what. I have the biggest creatures. I have the best manicure for creatures. You know, I get more for less in what it costs me to play creatures.

I have the most creature abilities. I'm very creature-centric. But the downside is that I over-rely on that. And that I have a hard time killing creatures without using my own creatures. I have a hard time drawing cards without my creatures. That a lot of what I do is reliant on my creatures. So you get rid of my creatures, I have a problem. So the idea in green is, if I'm playing and I have no creatures on the battlefield, there are things of yours that I'm supposed to have real trouble with, especially other creatures. But this wasn't that well understood and we we over the years made desert twister or

uh beast from with beast within beast within um we made cards that said hey don't worry we'll let you handle creatures even if you don't have to handle creatures which is directly directly undermining the weakness of green and so what happened over time is in larger formats like commander green has doesn't really have its core weakness that the weakness has been answered and so one of the reasons that people like playing green in larger formats especially especially commander is green's weaknesses are kind of addressed they're kind of answered and so it's just there's less ways to deal with green, you know. And the funny thing is what people are sort of saying is, oh, well, green is great. Could you help undermine red and white's weakness?

No, that is the identity of what the colors are. And I understand that one of the challenges in making a game with as many formats as Magic is that, you know, Magic was designed originally for two-player, and we've adapted it into multiplayer, but, you know, not every color and every format is as efficient because that wasn't what it was originally made to do. Now, we've been trying to do that. We've been working on red. We're working on white to try to make them a little more commander-friendly, the key to that is not undermining the colors. You know, I mean, I... A lot of the conversations I have with people is that people, when they want to fix something,

they go to the most immediate fix. Let's take white in commander, for example. People are like, oh, well, the reason white has problems in commander is it doesn't have, you know, its mana flow is not as good. You know, the ability to get lands and its card drawing is not as good.

So, hey, hey, just give it more mana fetching and more card draw. We're good to go. Okay, hey, just give it more manifesting and more card draw. We're good to go. Okay, we're done. Solved your problem for you. And the thing is that the way to make white feel better in any format is not to make it feel less white. The answer is not to go, oh, well, let's just make the colors act more like other colors.

Oh, other colors have this. Let's just give that to this color too. let's just make the colors act more like other colors. Oh, other colors have this. Let's just give that to this color too. And like, the goal of magic design is not to make every color feel like every other color. I don't want every color to have every resource.

I don't want every color to answer every problem. I want colors to have problems. I want colors to have weaknesses. I want there to be an impetus to go to other colors. You know, I want playing red to not feel like playing green, like playing black, like playing blue, like playing white. I want you to feel the sense of the colors you're playing. And so the solution to the problem is not make this color act more like other colors. It is

how do we take what's endemic to this color and find ways to take that and make that more naturally, like, how do we let white excel in Commander being more white? I want to find the things that white does well in the format and let it do it better. Not take the things that it doesn't do or things that are supposed to be a problem for it

and undermine those problems. Okay. Another big question that I get all the time about the color pie is, hey, artifacts exist. Colorless things exist. So a mono green deck can already do thing X or a mono blue deck can do thing Y. Why not just let the colors have it? The colorless things can do it. Two things about that. One is we are very careful about the rate by which we do colorless things to make sure that we are not setting it at a rate that is undermining what is good and what is bad. So, for example, if a certain color is good at something,

another color is bad at something, we set the artifact and color stuff at a point where it is closer to the bad level. And the reason that's important is that, like, when we define what colors can do, it's important from a flavor perspective that literally the cards in that color do or don't do something. And that colorless cards are made as a means to support things. Like, the reason we make artifacts from a game standpoint is, hey, if you have some weaknesses,

we will give them to you at a low rate. As not to undercut the color pie, but as a means to say, okay, you know, if you want to play white and you really need some card drawing, okay, we have some tomes and things that you can play. Now, the rate of drawing is not good. It's not equivalent to other colors that are better at it.

But okay, if you want some access, there's some means to do that. So one is that the rate does not undercut the color pie. The second thing is a lot of the flavor has to do with you're looking at cards of a certain color. What do they do or not do? Artifacts aren't of that color. The fact they go in a deck that has cards of that color does not matter. That when we're trying to set sort of the flavor for colors,

it is what can that color do? Not what can that color do, not what can a monocolor deck of that color do, what can that color do on cards of that color? And so, you know, which gets into the next question, which is, hey, maybe a really good way to communicate how bad a color does something is to let it do it, but do it at a bad rate.

Oh, this color is bad at that. So look how expensive it is to do it. And the answer there is twofold. One is most players are not good at recognizing rate. So the idea of, I'm going to do something, but do it so it's bad, that's not always easy to communicate. That if I say, oh, well, red's bad at enchantment destruction, so I'm going to cost it really expensive.

And you'll get that, oh, see how bad it is? Look at how expensive it is. A lot of players don't get that. What they see is, oh, we can do it. Oh, yeah, Red's able to do that. And then if we're trying to communicate Red or whatever color can't do that, I don't want to show you that it can do that. That doing it at a weaker level does a bad job of communicating,

that you need to have a lot more context to understand that it implies it's bad at it. Second, colors will play cards. For example, we made a card called Hornet Sting. So Hornet Sting is a green direct damage spell that does one damage. is a green direct damage spell that does one damage. It was a riff on... It was a riff on a card from Mirage that was a bee-themed card.

And so... It's like, oh, get it. You know, it's in flavor. Oh, and one of the things, a little side note, by the way, is flavor is never a reason to break color pie. You can always... Flavor is color pie. You can always flavor is super flexible.

You can always come up with a reason and a means by which you can make it make sense. There's so many times when someone's made a card and like, oh yeah, flavor's dead on. Yeah, color can't do that. Color is super flexible. You can come up with an answer. If you really try

hard, you can come up with a flavor answer for anything. Example with Hornetsing is, oh, it's a bee, it's a bee. How are bee insects are green? Yeah, come on. Like, where would bees be? Probably white, by the way. But anyway, so they made Hornetsing.

Ha, ha, ha. It's direct damage. But oh, G to do one direct damage. That's horrible. You know, that's really bad. You know, that's horrible. That's really bad. That's a bad rate. But the problem was, there was a green deck that had a problem with one toughness creature.

And like, oh, hey, this thing that I'm not supposed to be able to do at all, hey look, there's an answer that lets me do it efficiently. And in fact, it did it even slightly more efficiently than what you do in artifacts. So what happened was, this horrible card, you know, this card that was supposed to represent what the color isn't supposed to So what happened was, this horrible card, you know, this card that was supposed to represent what the color isn't supposed to do,

that was at a horrible rate, got played. Because the answer is, there is so much disadvantage to moving colors that you want to stay in color so bad, from a mana standpoint, that you'll just play really bad cards. And so, making something that does bad is still letting the color do it.

That, you know, in that environment, green was getting rid of one toughness creature that it had trouble dealing with. Because we gave it a card that let it undermine. That it was supposed to be something it wasn't supposed to be good at. And it didn't have a problem doing it. Because we gave it something it wasn't supposed to. So making a card that is worse is bad, both on a perceptual flavor standpoint and on a, just a technical, are we letting the color do it or not? That it is undermining the weakness. How are we doing here? I am sitting in traffic today. so the big question for me is do i have

um so i often talk about this is that i normally when i make stuff i give myself about 30 to 40 minutes um and then when i get in traffic like today where i'm at the 35 minute marks um i mean i can talk about this clearly for five more minutes no problem can i talk about this clearly for five more minutes, no problem. Can I talk about this for 20 more minutes? I don't know. So, we'll continue on. Here's another important point. Let me make this point. One of the, like, one of the biggest complaints I get is players are like, I am playing Color X, and man, I can't deal with this. Can you please just give me a way to deal with this? And the answer I give is

this idea that every color is supposed to have an answer to every problem is just fundamentally wrong. Like, the whole point of the Color pie is that colors have strengths and weaknesses. There are supposed to be things that a monocolored deck is supposed to have real trouble with. Now, there are some answers to that. We make artifacts. You could splash a second color. I mean, there's things we can...

The game gives you answers to things, but the idea that I don't want to play artifacts and I don't want to splash a second color, well, guess what? That's some of the ways you deal with things. As I like to explain, the point of a game is not to make things easy for the player. In fact, the entire point of game design is here's an obstacle. Here is a goal. I'm going to put obstacles in your way. I'm going to make it

hard for you to accomplish your goal. And the color pie is part of that. Like the idea that I'm having trouble with something, good. You're supposed to have some trouble. It's not as if anything I run into is supposed to be a piece of cake for me. I'm supposed to have troubles. And what that means is I have to solve my problems. Is that me using a card in a weird, quirky way that I hadn't thought of? Is it going to artifacts?

Is it going to a second or other color? You know, you have to figure out how to solve that problem. But the easy answer is just give me the card that does it. That is not fundamentally, you know what I'm saying? A lot of times when I'm talking with people about games in general,

the audience is always going to want things to be easier. And that's fine. I have no problem with the audience saying, hey, why don't you do thing X? And then I explain, well, here's why we don't thing X. You know? And it's weird in that games are designed, like I said,

games are designed, most objects, when you design them, the goal of design is to take away all barriers. And here's the metaphor I've used, but I haven't used this one in a while, is building a lamp. That when you're building a lamp, the goal is, I want that lamp to function, I want you're building a lamp, the goal is I want that

lamp to function. I want it to make a light and I want to make it as easy as possible for you to understand how to use that lamp. I don't want turning the lamp on or off to be a challenge. I want it to be functional and easy and accessible and most designs about making things as easy as you can. It's about making the user's life easier by removing whatever obstacles you can. That's not how games work. The goal of the game designer is not making things as easy as possible.

Because the reason people come to games, the people who play games, is for the mental challenge. They like to have somebody who, you know, part of what makes it fun is not that it was easy and you can do whatever you want. Part of what makes it fun was it was a challenge. And you were tested. And you had to use your wits. And you had to, you know, use what resources you had available. and you had to do the best that you can do with what you had. And what that means is if I'm going to make a good game experience for you as a game designer, I have to force you to solve your problems, you know, and, you know, a lot of the color pie discussions I have are people basically asking me to do something that fundamentally I shouldn't be doing.

And like I said, it's not that I begrudge people wanting it. I get that you want it and that's fine. And I don't even mind people asking me, you know, hey, why can't I do this? And what I try to do online or here is explain to people, well, why? Why won't you let me do that? Hey, my minor red deck really, really has problems with enchantments. Why won't you give me answers to that? Now, part of it is that I do occasionally

try to find ways to do answers but I don't want to I want to do answers and the key is not to give you easy answers the key is to give you

more nuanced complicated answers that require you working your way through them and that's a big part one of the reasons I wanted to do today's podcast is that it's funny that a lot of times when I interact with people, when I tell them that I'm not going to do the thing they want, they get very mad because they want the thing they want.

And that one of my goals is that I try to explain why they can't have what they want in a way that makes them understand and go oh okay that's like why why i'm doing today's podcast is i want you the player the the informed player to say you know what i i don't want breaks in my game i don't want color pie breaks. That's a bad thing. And recognize that what I'm trying to do is not, I'm not trying to be some mean, evil person that's preventing you from the fun thing. I'm actually trying to make the game the best game it can be. And to do that, you know,

I have to step up sometimes and do things. I have to sort of not do things that are asked of me. Now, that said, you know, I do listen to what is being said. When people tell me there's a problem, I don't ignore the problem. Like, I love when I did my GDC talk, one of the lessons was the audience is very good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them. I want to hear the problems.

You guys are great at isolating problems. Oh, in Commander, white or red or whatever, these colors are unbalanced versus other colors based on the dynamics of how Commander works

and here's the things that are going on. The thing to be aware of is that I'm not necessarily, like, I don't mind you giving me solutions. Here's the problem. Here's my solution. But your solutions usually don't take into account a lot of the issues I have to deal with. So your solutions don't always work.

Not that I don't want to hear them, and sometimes they do work, so keep giving me solutions. I don't mind hearing them. that I don't want to hear them. And sometimes they do work, so keep giving me solutions. I don't mind hearing them. But sometimes, I know sometimes what happens is people complain about something

and I go, no, we can't do that. And they're like, oh, why? Oh, I and all my friends and everybody I interact with are convinced that this is 100% the right thing to do and you not doing it is you just being mean and whatever.

And the answer is, look, I get why you want them. And usually if there's an underlying problem, I'd like to solve the underlying problem. Sometimes the underlying problem is no, no, no, no, that problem's supposed to be there. You know, red is supposed to have trouble with enchantments. White is supposed to have card drawing issues. You know, blue is not very good at dealing with things that are, you know, once permanents are in play, it doesn't destroy things. So its answers are a little more nuanced.

You know, it's more reactive than proactive. You know, we want black getting itself into trouble of overindulging on resources and committing to things that cause itself problems. You know, we want the colors to do things that are super flavorful for the color. cause itself problem. You know, we want the colors to do things that are super flavorful for the color. And I get that if you play a color that it's annoying that, like, you appreciate the color's strengths

and are annoyed by the color's weaknesses. But what I'm saying is if you're truly a fan of the game, don't be annoyed by the weaknesses. Admire the weaknesses. So my example here is, I will share with you, one of the best writing tips I ever got. I was taking a class in college and we were talking about creating characters. And what my teacher said is, he says, what you want to do to make a really good character

is figure out their fatal flaw. And what that means is, what is the thing that the character will always get wrong? That there's something about the character that this is just the thing that they can't seem to get right. That it's just something in which they... It's the thing where they make mistakes. Because one of the big things about creating characters is mistakes make great characters,

is the saying. And that flaws make an interesting character. That character just always being perfect is less interesting. And so one of the things my teacher was saying is, understand your character's fatal flaw. So for example, let's say your character is vain. That they just overvalue their appearance over everything else. Okay, well if you want to make a good story, create some situation where their vanity is what gets them into trouble.

Or maybe, for example, there's, I mean, the fatal flaw doesn't necessarily always have to be, I mean, it just has to be something where the reason they make bad choices and the reason they get themselves into trouble. And then what my teacher was saying is build your character around the fatal flaw okay well they're always like it's a great starting point for the character well okay if the character's fatal flaw is this

why is that and then build a reason into that character why they are that way like in psychology I'm going to have extra time here in psychology one of the big things they teach you

is a lot of what therapy is is people will learn things growing up as coping mechanisms and then when they get to adulthood

like the reason they did the thing when they did it was an important coping mechanism but as an adult they learn to do something and even though they're no longer in the situation where that would be helpful they did the thing when they did it was an important coping mechanism. But as an adult, they learn to do something. And even though they're no longer in the situation where that would be helpful, they continue to do it. And the problem there is that it causes problems.

You know what I'm saying? Like if I do certain things to protect myself in a time of danger, but then I keep acting that way, it causes problems. So one of the ways to build the fatal flaw is understand how the character got to where they are, why that was important, and why they did that, and it helps inform who the character is. The reason I bring this up is that one of the things

that I now admire when I look at characters as a writer is, I like to find the fatal flaw. Where is the fundamental problem? Where does that character get it? And what I find is the characters with the most realized fatal flaws are some of the most fun characters. Because one of the things that humans identify with is flaws, is mistakes,

is that we make mistakes. And so when we see characters making mistakes, we go go, oh, oh I've made that mistake. It's really bonding with the character. And so one of the things that really speaks to me about magic or games in general is when you're designing your game you essentially want to build in some flaws for your game player. What are to build in some flaws for your game

player. What are they going to have trouble doing? And the idea of part of what makes your game fun is that you're forcing your audience to offset their own game flaws, if you will. And that, oh, I would just do thing X. Oh, but you can't. So, for example, you know, let's say I was making a car that's a game car. What is a fatal flaw I could give to it?

And I say, oh, what if it can't turn right? Okay, all of a sudden, getting places is a little harder. I can't turn right. Now, I got to figure out every time I want to do something, okay, how do I do that by turning left? Oh, instead of going right on this block, I've got to go one further and go left three times. And they'll end up on the same road.

That when you figure out what your flaw is, it makes your audience, it gives your audience something to build around and to overcome. And that overcoming obstacles, that is what games are. That is what games need to be. That is the essence of games. That I could make a game that's like, it's called the hit this button game. Here's the button.

Oh, you hit the button. Very good, you hit the button. Not a very compelling game. I don't think hit the button is going to be a big seller. So when I'm protective of the color pie, when I'm talking about bends and breaks, it is me saying that I,

the game has these beautiful built flaws into it. And those flaws aren't, aren't negatives. They aren't, they aren't, they aren't something to be fixed necessarily. Like a lot of times, the conversation I have with players is

them trying to fix something that fundamentally is doing important work. The mana system is a big one. I did a whole podcast on this too, where it's not that the mana system doesn't have its flaws, but if you could just have whatever mana you wanted whenever you wanted it and have whatever colors you needed whenever you needed it, the game would be less fun. It just would be.

And the way I describe that to people is try playing Magic the following way, which is you have your deck of cards with no lands in them, and you have a pile of lands. And any turn, you can draw have your deck of cards with no lands in them, and you have a pile of lands, and any turn you can draw from your deck or just go through your pile of land and get whatever land you want and play that game. You will find that game is not as much fun because you always get to know, you know, oh, I opened up a seven drop. I know on turn seven I'm playing that, That I can guarantee that's going to happen.

And that there's no drama, there's no suspense. You know, a lot of what the mana system does is the uncertainty is part of what makes it fun. The, oh, I need a land, I need a land, I didn't get it, I didn't get it, oh, I got it! That's the big dramatic part of the game. And the idea that I fall behind because I'm missing some resource, but then, oh, I finally get what I need. Can I scramble and

catch up from a losing position? You know, the stories you tell, you know, the glory stories is not the story in which you won with no resistance. It's the story in which you can't believe you won. That's the story you tell. And so in order to have that, we need the obstacles. And so my big lesson of today is that why don't we make breaks? Because having the flaws inherent in the game is necessary and important and fundamentally what makes the game fun. Okay. Bends, bends are an interesting thing in that it's a tool that we can use in moderation. Like one of the challenges of making magic is what we're trying to do is every year, multiple times a year, make a game that's basically the same game, but not.

And that magic has this, you know, balance it's trying to create between, I want every game of magic to feel like magic. You know, I mean, you could take the rules of magic and make a game that feels nothing like magic. That's not our goal. Our goal is to have familiarity and be something that you recognize and you've fallen in love with the game. We want it to be the game you love.

But we also don't want you to be bored. We want to have flux. And one of the identities of Magic is that it's constantly changing. So we want to be able to do that. And part of doing that is giving each set its own unique identity. It's why we visit different worlds and have different mechanical themes. You know, this year it's about this. And so these are the kind of cards we make. And this is what these colors do in this world. Well, now we're here and we do that. And, you know, we have to constantly changing things up. So the color bands are an important tool. And that part of being good

at magic design is differentiating when something is a minor bend, when it's a medium bend, and when it's a major bend. And knowing that. And knowing when it's okay to push something and when it's not. When it's, you know, like I said, you want the flaws built in. And so you have to figure out how to, like like it is fun to give the public means to do something they don't normally get to do and we want to do some of that we definitely want to do some of hey here's a new ability or here's something that this color hasn't done you know in this form before that's exciting and we want to do that but there's a balance between doing that in a way that is keeping the game novel

without sort of fundamentally removing the things that makes the game what the game is and like I said it is very hard I kind of feel for example if people gave you notes on a character in a story,

one of the things that people would try to do is fix the character. Oh, it makes me, I really love this character. Man, watching them suffer is bad for me. Could you make it so they don't suffer in that way? And you as the writer goes, well, kind of the suffering's the point here. Like the character having the problems is the point. That, you know, writing a story isn't about that character wants something, and wow, it's easy. Man, it's easy for that character to get what they want. It's not a good story. You know?

That character really needs money. Oh, look! Someone gave them money. Okay. You know, not... That's not compelling. And the same thing sort of happens here in that a lot of understanding bends is figuring out how to use them judiciously and carefully in a way that is doing what we want. And that's why a lot of the problems come in is telling a bend from a break at times can be... Bend from a break at times can be, like, the console colors, we argue many, many times about, is something a two or a three? Is this an appropriate bend or not? Does this bend belong here or not?

Is this bend in this color or not? There's a lot of nuance. It is not an easy decision. not an easy decision. It is not as if the fact that we have meetings and we will talk for quite a while about just any one nuance of whether this particular bend is okay or not

says it's a complex thing. And one of the reasons we make breaks is not that we mean to make, we never mean to make breaks. There's never a point where we're like going in and go, we know that's a break, gonna print that. We never print breaks on purpose. Breaks are always somebody printing something

that they think is a bend and not understanding that it's a break. And even then, like I said, just knowing what a break is from a bend can be difficult. There are cards that I consider breaks that other people don't consider breaks. Now given, this is something that I spend more time on than most others, although

not that we have the concept of colors, there's a whole bunch of people that are spending time on it. So it's nice to train up new color pie experts. That's good. But that's a lot of what's going on. A lot of when people are complaining about things and I'm answering them is, it is not, like I said, one of the interesting things about doing social media and having the outreach that I do is that people are unhappy when you don't do the thing they want to do.

Normal human nature. But on social media where there's less boundaries, you know, like in person, if somebody disappoints you, there's a certain amount of decorum that just keeps you

from yelling at them. Not just on the internet. And so a lot of times when people ask me to do something and I'm like, well, here's why I'm not doing it. Some people are very respectful.

They go, oh, I didn't know that. I understand that now. Okay, thank you. And some people are like, well, I just don't accept your reasoning. You know, and all I can say is, look, the reason you're asking me is I'm the expert in the field. Like, I do magic design. I've done magic design for a long time.

It is an area that I have expertise in. I've gotten my 10,000 hours in it. I have lots of feedback on it. I have a lot of experience. I've tried to make,000 hours in it I have lots of feedback on it I have a lot of experience I've tried to make many many sets and so I have experimented with things and seen what happens when you try them and so when someone asks for something

and I say we shouldn't be doing it not that I'm never wrong I can be wrong but odds are I'm not wrong most of the time I'm not going to be wrong and you know when people attack me, you know, I'm not the villain. I often get portrayed as the villain as if I'm somehow

like the all evil and magic stems from me not doing the things that should be done. I add my heart of hearts. Like I said, I'm not saying I don't make mistakes. I'm not saying that every choice I've made has necessarily led to better magic, although I will say the majority of them have. I believe, you know, I do a good job of making magic, you know, doing my

contribution of making magic a better game. But when I say we can't do something, when I say we shouldn't do it, I mean, I will say one of two things usually when someone wants to do something we can't do something when I say we shouldn't do it I mean I will say one of two things usually when someone wants to do something we haven't done I say it's a break we're not going to do that or I shouldn't think we're going to do that

or I say look that is a bend we need the right time and place to do that not that we never do it but I don't want to do a bend for no reason in the middle of a set where it doesn't like we only get so many bends I want to use the bends in reason in the middle of the set where it doesn't, like, we only get so many bends. I want to use the bends in a way that's enhancing the set that it's in. So sometimes people will ask for something, and I'm like, you know what, maybe one day we can do that.

But the answer I give a lot of time is, if we're going to do that, it's going to be because we find the right place to do that. And I've learned to be patient. I mean, I've done this for a long time. There are ideas that I really liked, but I needed to find the right place to do that. And I've learned to be patient. I mean, I've done this for a long time. There are ideas that I really liked, but I needed to find the right place. And sometimes that can take years. There are things that I wanted to do that took 10 plus years for me to find the right spot to do it. Energy, for example, is a great example. Energy, I designed energy in original Mirrodin, and it wasn't until Kaladesh that I found a place to do it and I think I'm really happy we did in Kaladesh

it fit the world, it was a really cool thing but I needed to find the right place to do it and it took a while for that to be the case and part of my job is learning the importance of patience is, you know, I'm going to be doing something I'm going to be doing something.

I'm going to be making magic for a long time. I will find the right time and place to do something. If something is a good idea, we will, like, one of the things that happens early on with new designers is they come up with a brilliant idea and go, I want to do it now. And the answer is,

especially if it's doing a bend, now's not always the best time for it. That there'll be a time in the day where that thing shines in an environment where that thing is what we want. And that part of good design is waiting until you have the right time and place to do it. You know, you really, early on when you're making cards, you're so excited to get the card made,

you're like, I just want to see this in print. And as you sort of mature a little bit as a designer, as a magic designer, you're making cards, you're so excited to get the card made, you're like, I just want to see this in prints. And as you sort of mature a little bit as a designer, as a magic designer, you're like, I want to see print at the right time in the right place. Because that's where I'll have the chance to shine. That's where it'll do good work. That I want to make sure that each thing I'm doing

is maximizing the set that's in. Like one of the things, I mean, an ongoing theme if you listen to me, is I believe that every piece of your art needs to contribute to the whole. I don't want any card in my set that's not adding to the overall whole that the set's supposed to be. And that if a card is not moving in the same direction as the other cards, okay, let's wait until it is. Let's wait until there's a right place. And so a lot of my answers on bends is, hey, one day we might do that.

Or one day we might at least address your issue. Sometimes the way we'll address it isn't the way you're thinking of. Once again, we recognize it's a problem. A good example might be, hey, I do want red to have some way in flavor to deal with enchantments. It shouldn't be destroying enchantments, but there should be some way. And like we recently, or not, maybe recently for you guys, we made it a while ago. Um, like a card that says, oh, well, I'm going to punish you for having enchantments.

You know, okay, that, that makes some sense. That, that is at least red damages you things, and it can damage, you know, that's not saying that red doesn't have a problem with enchantments, but at least says, okay, I can punish you for having it. There are ways to address enchantments in a way that's red.

It's not exactly the answer maybe the red player wants. It's not getting rid of the problem, but at least it's giving you tools to think about how to deal with the problem. And that's what I want to do is, once again, I want the obstacles. I want to give you tools to deal with the problem. And that's what I want to do is once again, I want the obstacles. I want to give you tools to deal with obstacles, but they shouldn't be as straightforward and easy.

They should be something that will really require you to have to challenge yourself because it is the challenge and overcoming the challenge, well it's the challenge and overcoming the obstacle that is really where a lot of the fun comes. And I want magic to be fun for you. And part of it being fun for you is understanding why it's fun and how it's fun. And just you having everything you want in the moment you want it, while it might sound good in the short term, long term for the game really is not. Okay, guys, I am driving up to work right now.

So there was an accident on the freeway, and I was in traffic. So that's why we got a very long podcast about color pie bends and brakes. But I thought there was a lot of, and I hope this is interesting, I hope you guys enjoyed it. My takeaway from you guys is, mostly what I wanted to say today is, I'm not some mean overlord. Me preventing brakes or being careful about when to use bends is not me not caring. It's not me being mean. If anything, it is me showing as much love as I can for the game.

And for all of you, the players, I'm trying, along with a host of people that I work with, to make an awesome game for you and make it the best game it can be. And sometimes doing that might be doing things that are counter to what you think you want because I understand in the frustration of I have a problem, I just want to solve it. But some of those problems need to exist or some of those answers need to be a little subtler than you want.

And so that is why, that is how we handle bends and breaks. Hope you guys, hope this was an interesting, long podcast. But I'm finally at work and I got a meeting to go to. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.