Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #682: Connecting Set & Story

Episode Date: October 18, 2019

In this podcast, I talk about what we have to do in design to make sure that the set and story align.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is another podcast sort of generated by a topic that I've been talking a lot on my blog and on social media. So the thing that prompted it, so the topic today is connecting the cards to the story. is connecting the cards to the story. So the things that prompted this conversation is we revealed the card, Lindon, Queen Lindon, who is the leader of the white court and the wife of the king who is the leader of all five courts who disappeared.

She's the stepmother of five courts, who disappeared, who's, um, she's, um, she's the stepmother of Rowan Will. Anyway, um, she is a, a major character, uh, in the book. Um, but the complaint was that in the book, so one of the things they talk about in the book, uh, little mini spoilers for the book, I guess I should upfront front say, there's a few spoilers as I'm talking today about the book. So if you really, really have not, if you haven't read the book and you care, just a heads up, maybe shut this off, go read the book and then come back. So in the book, we learn how King Kenrith became

the king of all five courts. And he had to sort of pass this test for five, and he did. And he passed the test for five different, he passed all five tests. I guess there's a test for each court. And on his card, he was the buy a box, he has five activated abilities, one for each color. But Queen Lyndon, who in the book passed four of the tests, wait a minute, she doesn't have four activated abilities. What's going on? And the answer is, she was the leader

of the white court. So what we did in the set was we designed the five court leaders. All of them cost MMM, so she was white, white, white. Uh, and they had an ability that wanted you to play that color. Um, and so we designed those five cards as a cycle. So it was a very tightly thing that we designed. And the other issue that we'll get into today is at the time we wrote or not wrote, sorry, at the time we made the card, the story had not yet been written. In fact, I believe we might have finalized the set before the story.

The story gets written far after we make the set. The design happens way before the story. So the complaint is, wow, this card doesn't really reflect her as she appears in the story. And on some level, this is an ongoing... The idea that there's some disconnect between the story and the card sets goes way back. This is not as if this is a new issue. For example, way back in the days of Urza Saga, we made a book for Urza Saga, and the main character was a character named Xantcha.

And Urza's Saga, none of the whole block, the character never showed up in the entire block. There was no Xantcha card. Or, if you saw the Innistrad, you know, one of the characters that were very popular in the flavor text was Gisa, Garolf and Gisa, which was a brother-sister. He is, she's a necromancer, and he's a stitcher, meaning she raises zombies

much like the black Dawn of the Dead-ish zombies. And he makes zombies much like the Frankenstein blue zombies, and that, you know, they sort of quibble about the right way to make zombies. And they did not appear in Innistrad. They were all over the flavor text. They didn't appear in Innistrad. And people are like, wait, what happened?

The same thing happened with Ludwig. I mean, there's the idea that there are characters or things that are a part of the environment or the story and then don't get cards happens all the time. This really isn't even a new thing. It's not like all of a sudden

this starts happening. It's not a new thing. But one of the things I want to talk about today is what's going on? Why do the card set, you know, why would we have things like characters appearing in flavor text that are so cool, but yet we don't have cards for them? Or why are they in the story? Or why does the story version not reflect necessarily exactly the card version? And so today, I'm going to talk about something we don't talk a lot about. Logistics! Ooh, exciting! Mark's talking logistics.

Okay, so let me explain the Linden thing, and then I'll go back and talk about some other things. So the Linden thing, well, in general, the answer for all of these is basically the same thing, which is making a magic set requires a lot of people doing a lot of different things. All of it can't be done at once. It is very hard, for example, to do a lot of creative things concurrently when there's a lot of reaction you need to make. So, for example, we do design before we name the cards. We do design before we write flavor text for the cards. We do the design before we write

the novel for the cards. There's a lot of things that get done because you kind of have to finish the cards first to be able to do some of the other work. And one of the things that I think is interesting is when I talk about making magic, I talk about my part of making magic the most. And my part essentially is there's a blank page. What are we doing? Figure it out. Come up with themes and mechanics and get the basic structure of what the set is. And then I hand it off and there's a whole other team that spends all this time sort of fine-tuning, taking the blueprints that we've made and building a set out of it.

And then there's another team, the play design team, that has to then balance it and make sure all the cards, we push the right cards and that it fits in the environment in a way that's fun and, you know, nothing's broken. But then, after play design's done, it's editing. And editing has to edit it and make sure the cards are templated correct and, you know, everything is clicking together and there's no mistakes and, you know, make sure that everything is just right.

But once editing is done, it has to go to the people that are going to physically print the cards. So we have to ask for layouts. We have the actual layout so we can make the cards that the printers can print. And in congruence to that, there's also, you know, packaging and all sorts of graphic design elements and stuff that have to get done, you know. And then I've done a whole podcast on the long version of this, but then there's people that have to then, you know, get the cards printed. And then there's people that have to sell the cards.

And there's people who have to market the cards. And there's people who have to, like, there's infinite number of people that are crafting and making this. And that's even within the building. Like, for example, writing the novel, that's external to the building. You know, somebody on the franchise team

has to work with an external author to make sure that they're, you know, understand what the story is and work with them to make sure that, you know, they're putting this together. But because of the nature of making something, like, magic is not a singular venture. It is not like one person has an idea and that is, you know, it's not the act of one person. It's not the act of, in some ways, a singular vision. I mean, part of vision is to create a unified vision so that people are

coming together. But it's not as if there's a lot of art forms where there's one person fundamentally making all the calls. That's not the case with magic. There are many, many different people making decisions. And there's a lot of group decisions that remain where there's a lot of different input from different people and that it is I mean, it takes a village to make a magic set. There's a lot of people involved. And because of that, because of the sheer amount of work that has to get done

we have to have an order to making things happen. So, funny, real quickly, when I talk about logistics, there is an actual department at Wizards that's in charge of logistics. And what that means actually is dealing with all the logistics external to the building. So the idea is, okay, we need to get cards printed. Well, where? We've got to find a printer. And then we've got to get the cards from the printer to wherever we're getting them to so they can be distributed in. And there's a lot of work that goes into

making sure that all the magic cards are all the places they need to be when they need to be so that the finished product is where it needs to be and magic can get sold. So that's the team we refer to as logistics. But when I'm talking about logistics here, actually I'm talking more about inside the building. So probably what we call project management is the internal thing. So using technical behind-the-scenes terms, I'm talking a little bit more today

about project management than technical logistics. I mean, what I'm talking about is a kind of logistics, but to use the internal thought. So project management means, okay, here's how project management works. This is the date that we need to have everything done such that when we hand over to the logistics team, they can take the file we've made, you know, and go make a magic set and get it printed and get it, you know, distributed and all that. So there's a drop-dead date. This is the date that in order to meet all our requirements,

in order to get everything where it needs to be, in order to have magic on sale, so let's say we're making Throne of Eldraine. I know the release date of Throne of Eldraine off the top of my head, but October or something. Let's say it's October 10th. I'm just making up a date. I don't know the actual... I do not know the release date of Throne of Eldraine off the top of my head, but let's say it's October 10th. I'm just making up a date. I don't know the actual, I do not know the release date

of Throne of Eldraine, Throne of Eldraine off the top of my head, but let's say it's October 10th. So October 10th means there's going to be a pre-release two weeks before that or two or three weeks before that, which means that

we have to have the product done such that it is in stores for pre-release on a certain date. That's the earliest that someone needs to have the product is pre-release. Okay, well, that's a date. You know, there's a date on the calendar, September, whatever, that's the date. Okay, well, that's the date. How much time do we need for shipping? How much time do we need for printing? You know, somebody has to work backwards to go, well, you know, essentially, so logistics is people outside the building. They have to figure all that out as far as how much does it take to get everything done? Because it takes time, you know, to get to

the printer and printing and then packaging and then shipping. And then, you know, there's a lot of things that have to happen that you have to figure out. So you're backdating all those things and we figured out, well, how long does it take to do this and take to do that? And then at some point we go backwards. We figure out, okay, this is the sort of leave the building date. Like if there isn't a finished file on this date, we're not going to get to the printer in time, blah, blah, blah. Things will be late. Magic won't come out. Like one thing to remember, by the way, is magic is released in 11 languages in some crazy number of countries, simultaneously,

meaning all those places, Magic goes on sale on the same day, worldwide, same day. And same with the pre-release. The pre-release is on the same day. So we have a date we have to meet. Okay, so in order to meet that internal file done date,

you know, everything we need, and when we say file's done, there's all sorts of things that gotta get printed. Not just the cards themselves. The booster wrap has to get printed. The booster boxes have to get printed. We often have multiple product lines. Everything we need has to be done by a certain date

so that all that stuff can be organized and done and produced. Okay, well, in order to make that happen, in order for it to be out the door, you start backtracking things. Well, what? And there are, you know, 80 steps that go along the way

to making a magic set. And so they, the project manager, has to have dates when everything has to happen. This is the date for this to happen. This is the date for has to happen. This is the date for this to happen. This is the date for that to happen. This is the date for that to happen. For example, let's go back to me. I'm basically the beginning of the project.

When I work on something, I'm the start of the project. There's a little bit, I mean, exploratory world building and design happen at the very, very beginning. And I'm involved, obviously, in the exploratory design. But anyway, that's all scheduled. So the absolute earliest thing we do is exploratory

world building and exploratory design. Usually, exploratory world building starts a little bit before exploratory design. It depends on the set. So the earliest, earliest date is exploratory world building has to begin on such and such a date, which means exploratory design has to start on such and such a date, which means vision design starts on such and such a date, which means set design starts on such and such, and everything is mapped out. So, for example, when I'm given assignments, like when I'm working on exploratory design or vision design, I'm given an amount of time that I have to work on something to do something, and I'm given that so that I can figure out what I need to do.

So, I have a certain amount of time Um, so I think like I have, I have a certain amount of time and then I have a deliverable, which I mean now between exploratory design and vision design, uh, that one's a little bit fuzzier since it's me handing off to me mostly. Um, but I mean, there's certain things, I mean, there's certain things I like to get done in exploratory design. Um, there's a little bit, because it's me handing off to me, it's a little, I have a little more flexibility there. Uh, but when I'm handing off from vision design to set design I have to hand off a vision design document, I have to hand off a full set of proof of concept, like I'm

there are things I have to do and like okay, it's time to hand it off, here are the things I'm handing off, here's the things that I'm going to be doing so anyway, there is this whole long here are the things I'm handing off. Here's the things that I'm going to be doing. So anyway, there is this whole long list. Like we have the schedule. I've seen the schedule. There's a schedule which just shows every bit of time who has to do what when. Now notice early, early on,

there's a one-for-one handoff. What that means is I'm the only person working on it. I hand to a group and they're the only people working on it. But very quickly, I'm weird in that when I tend to work on sets other than the creative team, there's not a lot going on when I'm working on a set. I mean, the creative team is working on it too.

Those are the two teams that work the earliest. But as you start going along, more and more people are working on things concurrently and so the chart that we have is not one line. It's a whole bunch of lines because you have to be able to show what's going on concurrently. So a lot of times we'll have the design line,

the creative line, all the different components. And part of what's going on is... Let me use the art as an example. We want to produce art because the cards have art on them. So at some point in set design, the set design team has to sign off on, okay, we're happy enough, you know, we're happy enough for the card that we're ready to, card concept, we're ready to figure out what the card is supposed to be in its art. And then send it to an artist and get the card made. And so during set design, there are moments where things have to happen

so that the art process can happen. Like set design has to go, okay. Usually we have waves. So like, okay, it's wave one. Okay, I'll flag these cards. These cards are now ready for you guys to go get card concepting and make art for these cards. And, you know, so for example, while set design is going on, there's just art getting made.

There's art getting made at some point during set design. And so it's a matter of understanding, you know, what that means is there's a point at which you have to start producing the art. And so you have to know what you, you have to commit and say, these are cards that I want to have because I'm going to have art. And once there's art for them, not that you can't change the card, but you have to change the card with the knowledge of that's the art that's on the card. So for example, if I make a creature and, you know, I choose what the creature is, it's not that I can't tweak it some, but if it's a really big creature, it can't be that small. I can't change its size that much. If it's flying, it has to be flying. Like, there's things that you sort of get locked

into that you have to be careful of. And that's one of the things that I, um, that I think it's important to stress is understanding when and where and how, um, things are happening. Okay. The reason I'm explaining all this is, um, that certain, there are certain priorities. I mean, certain, that's the word I want. Um, some things can't get done until other things get done. So, for example, let's talk a little bit about flavor text, and names in flavor text. In design, when we make cards, we tend to give them some name. The more top-down the set is,

the more there's a chance they're real names. But even the real names in top-down are us making a sort of stab at what we think they are. But nonetheless, the names we name the cards are more for markers so that we can talk about them when we're playing them. In a Top Down set, I mean, the names might also help kind of explain

the flavor we're going for so people get the essence of what the card is. But one of the things that's very common to do in Top Down is we'll just name it after the trope that we mean. This is Count Dracula. The finished card's not going to be called Count Dracula. In fact, it's called Olivia. It's Olivia.

What's her last name? You guys know. She we will name it after the trope and then later on when the creative gets their hands on it, they go, okay, how do we, how does magic take the trope and do something fun with it? So, names and flavor text. What we've learned is it doesn't make a lot of

sense to name cards or to write flavor text for cards until it's known what they are that you can't really name a card until you for sure know what it does it just there's there's no you know i'm saying i we can name a card but then like you kind of have to go okay we're not changing what the card does this is what the card does that's the time that you would want to name it and it's the time where it makes sense to write flavor text because once again um the time that you would want to name it. And it's the time where it makes sense to write flavor text. Because once again, the reason that names and flavor text are done together, A, the same people tend to work on it, but B, the role of

names and flavor text, besides just being an additive, making the card more exciting and more fun, is sometimes the name and or the flavor text has a little bit of weight to make sure the audience gets the card. Like, one of the things about flavor is that good flavor can help people understand what the card is about. And so, I mean, so the art is done the earliest, so usually by the time, and the reason the art is done earlier, I mean, in a perfect world, it'd be great to finish the set, go, oh, I know what the cards are, now that I for sure know what the cards are, let's go get art for them. The problem

is the art process takes a while to happen, takes seven weeks, I think, in a wave to make art, and there's multiple waves, so we don't have the luxury of waiting until we're done to do the art, because we need time to get the art done. But names and flavor text are much faster. There's no, there's not a seven week, you know, there's not an artist producing, I mean, there is an artist making the names and the flavor text, but it is something that can be done faster than seven weeks. So a lot of times when we get to names and flavor text, the it is something that can be done faster than seven weeks. So a lot of times when we get to names and flavor text, the reason we hold back a little bit is we get to see the finished art,

we get to see what the card does, and that gives us some ability. Sometimes you're naming them before the art is finalized. Sometimes you just have a sketch, but at least you understand a rough idea of what it's going to look like and you know what the card is going to do. And then you have the ability with the names and the flavor text to massage things a little bit. Because sometimes the art and the card mechanic are I mean, most of the time

they're a beautiful union of that's come together to make something larger than the sum of its parts. Sometimes it's like, oh, this art and that card, it needs a little bit of massaging. And that's where names and flavor checks can come along and can sort of help define things in a way that helps explain what's going on. So the classic example,

I've told this story, but it's a good story. So this is back in Odyssey, I think it was Odyssey. We had a policy back in the day, it's not something we do anymore. Before we'd finalize something, we would look at all the art and sometimes we would swap art. And we were much more aggressive back in the day in swapping art. We've gotten better at our card got something that needed to swap art. So one of the things that would often happen is we would sit down with all the different

cards and we'd do a bunch of art swapping. And then in the end what you'd end up getting is you'd get a card art and a card that weren't meant to go together that are kind of the oddball pairing. Because you were careful to line everything up. But

usually there was like one thing at the end like like, oh, this is just a mismatch that kind of, everything else is perfect, but we got to make this one card work. And so, uh, the card was, the card was, it was a white card and I think it prevented damage. Um, that was the, that was the effect. The effect of the card prevented damage. That was the effect. The effect was the card prevent damage. And the art we ended up using was, it was just like this bonfire. And it was very

vague. The reason we kind of held on to it was, it was very you didn't quite know what was going on. It was kind of like people were on a fire and there was all this smoke. And it's like, okay, well, this is the, this abstract piece we're not sure what to do with. But, and here's the card that's left. And it's a damage prevention card, you know? And so, like, I came up with the name Ceasefire, which is like, okay, it does this thing where Ceasefire says,

hey, I prevent damage, I'm a Ceasefire. But also the card shows a fire. So the names are like rifts to the art and kind of just tied it all together the art and the the art and the mechanics don't have much to do with each other I mean the art was at least vague but it didn't have much to do

but the name just kind of was connective tissue that tied them together that was the extreme case but in general a lot of times there's this little nuance where like the sometimes it's just a matter of the art was doing something that if you're aware or your eyes are drawn to the right place, it does what it needs to do.

But if you're not focused, you know, it might, you might be a little off, you know. So sometimes the name is just, I'm going to refer to the thing I want you to focus. But when you see the name, it makes you go, oh, it's this creature or whatever. And it just helps you sort of focus your eye where to look. Or sometimes it just sort of says, what? What's going on? It just gives you some clarification.

Sometimes it has in-world definition or something where it helps tie it to the story or tie it in a way that maybe you wouldn't necessarily get that, but with the name or the flavor text, it can help lead you there and help, you know, talk about how, you know, sometimes, for example, we do a story moment, but it's a little unclear it's a story moment, so the flavor text can sort of describe the story moment or something. But anyway, the reason is, there is a very important reason that names and flavor text come late in the process, because they allow us to sort of do some adjusting late in the set making. let's say the flavor text authors come up with a really cool piece of flavor

in defining the worlds that they can do their flavor text. Geese and Grolf is a great example. They were trying to sort of have some fun humor. Oh, well, what if we had this brother sifter that kind of argued about the best way to make a zombie? That's kind of fun. That's cool. And it just generated some really neat flavor text. But the problem was,

the people that made that, that generated that, because of the logistics of how we make things, that happened at a point where the card set was done. We weren't making new cards. So the idea of, oh, here's some really neat characters. You know, let's make cards for them.

We're just past that window where that can happen. And so what will happen is the set will come out and people go, hey, this flavor text, that's funny. I like it. These cards are great. Where is Giesinger off? And we're like, they did not exist when we made the set. They existed when we made the flavor text. The flavor text writers, in order to get the job done, in order to make something, created something, you know, like there's a craft to it. And I don't want to say to the flavor text writers, you can never generate anything that's not already in the cards, because that keeps them from doing really cool things.

And so it's a good example where here's something in which the set's really talking about it, yet, huh, I don't get it. Why is it not there? Another big disconnect comes from the story. So, um, we have novels that describe what's going on in the stories. Um, somebody has to write those novels. Um, we've chosen, you know, uh, we have a franchise team that goes out and finds world-class fantasy writers and gets, you know, the best of the best to write our stories. Well, okay. We want those people, much like we want the flavor text people to have

creative, you know, room to, if they need to make things to make better flavor text, we want them to do that. The same is true of the person writing our story. Yes, the card set is done. And look, we have to do the card set before we write the story because it's the act of making the card set that really gels the world. For example, the reason that ether was a major, major part of the world of Kaladesh was because energy was the main mechanic of the world of Kaladesh was because energy was the main mechanic

of the set. The whole ether, the whole byproduct of ether and all the stuff that came from that did not happen until we early on said we're doing energy. Can we make energy part of the world? And the Grand Theft Auto was, yeah, we'll run with that.

And then the etherborn and all sorts of things came out of let's make Aether and make Aether a key part of this world. But none of that would happen without some prompting because part of what we want to do when we're making a magic set is be responsible. We want the

card set to come alive in the world. But what that means is the act of making the set also helps us sort of define what the world is you know another classic example is in making of Innistrad I really needed the werewolves to be red and green and you know I was doing this color balancing

thing and the monsters were different colors and vampires were black and red and zombies were black and blue and spirits were white and blue and humans were green and white and like it just is where I naturally needed to go for a lot of structural reasons and I sat down with the greater team we walked through why like how do we make it green and red and what does it mean and play more into the impulsiveness and the instinctual nature of werewolves and we found a place to make it happy where it really made sense but that's not you know all the werewolves we had ever found a place to make it happy where it really made sense, but that's not, you know, all the werewolves we'd ever made before then, only three, but they'd all been black.

I mean, in a vacuum, they'd be black, but I can't make all my monsters black, because I had to make five colors, and so I had to work with the team to sort of, and then they wove that into the world, and the fact they were ready to remake something, and define the world. So, one of the reasons that we have to write the novel after

we make the set is, the making of the set does a lot to define the world, and reasons that we have to write the novel after we make the set is the making of the set does a lot to define the world and it's very hard to write the story until the world is well crafted. And so, once again, legitimately speaking, we're going to have things done

really before the novelist is going to start their work. Now, if you go way, way back, back to like the days of Versus Saga, there's even more of a disconnect. Like literally, if you saw, like the way it used to work way back in the day is they would write the book around the time we were making the set, usually a little bit later, but there wasn't, they were just doing stuff and we had no idea what they were doing at all. They were just doing stuff, and we had no idea what they were doing at all.

Now, the creative team works with the franchise team to flesh out a basic outline. We want to give the novelists lots of room to flesh out a story, but we understand who the major characters are, so we are making cards of the major characters. There's no more books where the protagonist doesn't exist in the set. I'm not saying there aren't flavor text characters. Or, once again, in Throne of Eldraine, Linden has some children.

You know, like, um, King Kenrith and Queen Linden and Rowan and Will all are in the card set. But there's two other children. What are their names? I'm not going to remember their names off the top of my head. But Linden, it's a joined family. Lyndon has two kids from prior to marrying the king, and they play a role in the novel.

But we didn't know they existed when we made the cards. That's because, you know, while they play a role, they weren't the major characters, and we had mapped out the major part of the story. But part of figuring out, you know, the story was creating this characters and we had mapped out the major part of the story but part of figuring out the story was creating this family and talking about who they are and, you know, look, this is Will and Roman's family and that's important to flesh that out

and the card said, yeah, we showed a bunch of their family, but not all of them, because as, you know, Kate was writing the book, she said, you know what, I really need more components here and I want to show a joint family, so I need the queen to have had some kids from before marrying the king. And anyway, it made a lot

of sense that in the story you wanted to create those characters, but you know, logistically it's past the window where we're able to do that, and you know, a lot of what people say is, can't you just change things, can't you just change things, so like, there's never been a time in magic. The thing I want to stress today is, it is not as if this is a new problem for magic. It is the eternal problem for magic. In that, we have to build sets in order, you know. And there's always going to be things that are done later in the stream that, um, are going to require, are going

to keep us from matching everything. They're always going to be, oh, why didn't you make such and such? Why didn't you make feather? Why didn't you make, uh, I mean, whatever, name the thing. Um, you know, we will generate characters through all sorts of means. And now the good news is, and this is a positive thing, we make a lot of magic cards. Magic, as I like to say, is a hungry monster. Having characters that people want? Great!

You know, we didn't do it this time. But we're going to make other products, and we're going to make other supplemental products, or we're going to return to the worlds, and we get to capture that. You want, you know, you want to capture somebody that you really fell in love with through the flavor text, or through the novel, or through whatever, and we didn't do that the first time,

we have other chances to do that. You know, like, for example, War of the Spark was a really good example where we were on a set set on Ravnica, but without the guild structure. And one of the problems with the guild structure, I mean, not a problem, but one of the byproducts of the guild structure is that there's things that are hard to fit in. You know, everything is, there's a lot of cycles, and like, oh, our legendary creatures are cycled. This is the leader of the guild. This is the champion of the guild. Well, what if I have a character

that's just a member of the guild that doesn't really make a sense for those two roles? Feather was a great example, where she was the partner, Argus Koth's partner, and Argus Koth was in, we had a card for him,

but Feather just, we didn't have room for her, and, you know, she was Boros, but every time we're trying to do something, there's other things we're doing, and we really had trouble fitting Feather in. Massacre Girl was another, we just had trouble fitting her in. She was a mono-colored thing, and we didn't have a lot of mono-colored legendary characters in Ravnica, because we saved that space for the multi-colored, and anyway, we're doing World of Spark, we're on Ravnica, we're not a guild set, and it just let us make a whole bunch of cards that people have been wanting us to make. We were able to make a Fiblethip, we were able to make Massacre Girl, we were able to make Feather, we were able to make these cards that there was

this pent-up desire for that we hadn't had a space before. In Commander, we've been doing a lot more of going back and saying, here are characters that people really wanted that, through whatever means, through the process, fell through the cracks, and here we are trying to address those things. Likewise, we've also used that to upgrade. Sometimes we make a character and the first version of the character really doesn't capture the character as well as it could,

or the card is not as good a card as it could be, you know, maybe it's not as flavorful, maybe it's just, it's weak and this is a really popular character, we want to make a little more, a card that might actually get played. Hold on a second. I'm about to sneeze. Gesundheit to myself.

So, there are opportunities, there are things that are going to fall through the cracks, and one of the things that every time it happens, you know, other classic examples is Dak Faden dying in the, spoilers, in the War of the things that every time it happens, you know, other classic examples is Dax Faden dying in the, spoilers, in the War of the Sparks story, and dying in the trailer, but yet not in the set. Or the gingerbread woman's in the trailer,

but not in the set. Similar things there is where, you know, Dax Faden is an example where Dax Faden, they needed to kill, Greg, the author for story purposes needed a planeswalker to die

somebody that you knew who they were and so he came to us and said the planeswalker is someone who makes sense here who's not a major role of upcoming stories that could die and we spent some time and he talked to us and we came to the conclusion of Dak's the right person here but once again it happened late

enough that the set had already been locked down. There wasn't a card for him. And then the trailer took elements of the book because, oh, this is cool. It's from the book. And they made the trailer because they were really trying to bring some cool moment to the book they thought

would really make a good trailer. And it did make an excellent trailer. But it just reinforced, oh, where's this thing, and it did make an excellent trailer. But, you know, it just reinforced, like, oh, where's this thing? But, eh, it's not in the set. And same with the gingerbread woman. You know, there's that gingerbread man in the set. Gingerbroots in the set. But in making the trailer, they came up with this cool thing, and they ended up, you know...

In fact, I think originally she dies, and he's saying, at the end, he avenges her, but it was kind of cooler if she avenged him, and, you know, like, things changed. Um, and they made this really fun character, but it was made after we made the set. So, you know, there's no gingerbread woman necessarily in the set. But people really liked the character, and so that gives us the option of maybe one day doing that. And so, um, I get the frustrations.

I understand that, oh, this would be really cool. And if I had control over the space-time continuum, yeah, it would be cool. Let me just go back in time and make that happen. But the point of today's podcast is there's a lot of technicality of making a magic set. I don't talk about it all that much. You know, I don't really get into really get into how we do art waves. There's so much logistics and so much planning and so much stuff that happens that the idea of can't you just

can't people just talk? We do a lot of talking. The author, for example, has somebody in franchise who they talk with, and franchise comes and talks to the creative team, and there's a lot of discussions about what happens in this and that, and we try really, really hard, for example, to make sure that the

set doesn't, I'm sorry, that the novel doesn't contradict the set. Meaning nothing in the novel, there's something opposite from what the set, so we try really hard to make sure the novel isn't saying something that the set says is something different. But having the characters line up exactly, you know, as far as, like,

having the character, like, really play up the, whatever's the most notable thing in the book, that sometimes doesn't happen. Or there's components that just didn't exist that got added, and it is almost impossible for us to add things later on in the process when we're late in set design. Yes, Ugin being Bolas's twin brother was awesome.

Spoiler again. Was awesome in 2019. But it happened late. We hadn't made Ugin, and by the time we knew that Ugin was a thing, there wasn't the space to fit the card in. And so I understand the frustration, but it is not an easily solved problem.

It is not just like, oh, well, all we have to do is this person talk to that person. We do a lot of talking. We do a lot of confirming. We do a lot of structuring and plotting and making characters. There's an immense amount of work to make it line up as much as it does and the thing that's frustrating is like 98% is all lined up and there's just one or two little tiny things and that is where the focus goes because they don't line up like you know i'm saying it's sort of like um when something's just a little bit off you that's the thing you notice. And so that is, you know, War of the Spark, so much of War of the Spark is in the card set. Yes, this one thing wasn't. But that's

where the eye goes because it wasn't there. And so part of what I want to say today really is a matter of making something as big as magic requires a giant team to make it. And there's so many benefits of the giant team. There's so many wonderful things that happen. There's so many small nuances. There's so much craft that goes into making magic. And there's so many awesome things that happen. And there's so many awesome things that are there.

But the nature of something this big means that there are little incongruities that are going to happen. That have always happened. It's always been true. There's no time in which, oh, we have it all worked out, so no problem. Everything is referenced and everything is a card and that's never happened. It's never going to happen. We're always going to have little blips like that. But magic is an ongoing game. We keep making stuff. So if you like something and we missed it, let us know. We record that stuff. And odds are, if enough people ask for

it, you'll see it. You know, one day you will see the thing. Oh, why didn't you do it? Here you go. Here's the thing. And so people, you know, people were upset that we didn't have Geese and Garel. Well, guess what? We eventually made Geese and Garel. People were upset that we didn't have Geese and Girl. Well, guess what? We eventually made Geese and Girl. People were unhappy we didn't have... There's a giant list of Feather and Massacre Girl and Fibble Fib. There's a giant list of, yeah, we didn't make it. Now we did. And so that part of today's is saying...

Sometimes my blog, when I sort of say we can't do it, people are like, oh, come on. You're just not trying hard enough. And some of the time it's like, oh, you know what? If we know to focus on this, we can solve this problem. We can make sure that people that we don't repeat this mistake. But there's some things like this where it is inherent in the system. We will do the best we can. We can find ways to improve things. I'm not saying we can't be a little more careful about stuff, and we're always trying to refine our processes. I'm not saying we can't get better.

But the idea that we're going to change things so we never miss something is just not going to happen. It is an impossibility with the nature of how we make magic. And that's kind of the point of today's podcast, is it's going to happen a certain amount. I promise we will catch things after the fact and we will later make cards. So if you love a character, Oh my gosh, why didn't you make this character of enough people communicate that we will make the character.

Eventually we will, we'll make those cards. Eventually it just might not be in that set. Okay, guys, I'm here. Actually, I talked a little bit while I was parked.

Um, but anyway, I'm, I'm here. So we all know what that means this is the end of my drive to work so instead of talking magic

it's time for me to be making magic hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast I'll see you next time