Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #737: Richard Garfield

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

For years, this has been the number-one request for a carpool guest for the podcast, but as Richard doesn't live near me, nor work at Wizards anymore, it's been an unobtainable goal. Thus, he seemed like a great guest for my at-home edition where I could call him on the phone. Richard and I talk about the design of Alpha.

I'm not pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. Okay, so I've been doing a lot of interviews now, and I have a very fun interview. So, it is Richard Garfield. Hi, this is Richard. So, I've been doing a bunch of these interviews, and you are my number one request, by the way. Back when my interviews were all people that were riding in my car with me, people used to request you being on my podcast, and I'm like, Richard doesn't live anywhere near me, so this doesn't work. But now that we have a chance to do it on the phone, so the coronavirus, some good will come of it, I finally get to interview you. Oh, okay. Well, happy to be here.

Okay, so I thought it would be fun. I get a lot of questions from the public, and a lot of them I know the answers for because they're things that I worked on. But I get a lot of questions about Alpha and Magic in general that I don't know the answers because they were something you did. So I thought I would ask you all about Alpha

and just some questions that I get all the time. Okay. Okay. Okay, so question number one. Why five colors? Five colors, it's rooted in games that I was making in the early 80s. Some friends and I were making a bunch of card games based on each other. And there was a book that was going around then called The Master of the Five Magics, I think it was. I never read it, but one of my friends did. And so that probably is where the

number five came from originally. I probably would have changed it, except it works really well for a lot of things. The way that you can get this interesting arrangement of allies and enemies, you can't do with four. It just becomes a lot more predictable. But there's so many different combinations with five that it works really nicely. So was it always those five colors? Yes, yes, it was always those five colors. There were some earlier prototypes where I began relating the colors to the lands, and it was always those lands as well.

I think I might have done something different for islands for a while, for blue, because it felt weird that you had a bunch of land that could be connected and one type that wasn't really connected. But I forget what it was. Maybe lakes, I don't know. It had something to do with water. Okay. Okay, so next question.

Why 20 Life? Yeah, I don't know. 20 Life was just the very first number that I put down, and it gave a good game length. And so entirely intuition and the rest of the game was probably designed largely around it. So it ends up becoming the best choice retroactively. You didn't try any other life total?

Never. I mean, after the game was well play tested and it was definitely going to be 20 life, we did play around with, uh, 10 life and, uh, 30 life and 40 life just as variants. Uh,

and they were interesting. Uh, but, um, but, uh, but 20 was, was,

uh, worked really well. Next question. Uh, why seven card hand? That's, uh, that's a good question. Why seven card hand? That's a good question. It was probably something in my game that I was thinking of where seven was standard. I can't think of what it was, though. Did you ever try anything other than seven or seven is what you tried and that's what you stayed with? Seven is what I tried and that's what I stayed with.

In my games, I often pick these numbers by intuition. So, for example, my recent game, Key Forge, has six card hands. And I picked six early, and I have no idea why I did it, and it just works pretty well for that game. Okay. Okay, so next one. Why a 40-card deck? And just to remind the audience, originally, in Magic's original rules, it was a 40-card deck. It later became 60. original rules, it was a 40-card deck. It later became 60.

That one I can actually have a reason that doesn't just say I forget or it was intuition. In the early days, we expected people to get one deck and maybe a booster or two, but we didn't expect people as a rule to get a lot more than that. We saw the upper end purchasers we thought would be like five decks. So 40 cards is just, if you get your 60-card deck and you strip down, where do you end up? So 60 is unreasonable because then you've got to play your entire purchase. 40 cards allows you to strip down to something which is, it wouldn't be playable by these day's standards, but back in those, it was fine.

So, and then I wanted it to be as large as possible because I didn't want to, because the more cards in your deck, the more variety you have. Just to remind some of the audience who might not know this, when Magic first was sold, it was not only sold in 15-card boosters, but also 60-card decks. That's what Richard's talking about. That is what I'm talking about.

Okay, next, let's talk a little bit about the card types. So Magic started with seven card types. So it started with Artifact, Creature,, land, sorcery, instant, and interrupt. So what card type came first? Creature? Land? Land. Land. And, I mean, land, creature, and spell were pretty much all at once.

They were packed package deal. If I had to put an order on it, I'd say land, creature, spell, but the idea that the land was what you used to pay for your cards was the dawn of magic as it exists today. And I wanted two types of cards, one which stayed in play and was an investment in the future, but didn't pay off immediately,

and that's what a creature is, and one that had an effect right now, but then it wasn't there anymore, and that was what a spell was. So was a spell originally sorcery or was it an instant? Could you do it any time or was it limited in the first version? I think

probably the very first version they were all I probably distinguished between those really early, because I know I had things like counter spells. You obviously have to play those at any time. And I had things like fireballs, which you could play as an instant or tsunami or whatever.

So probably that was very early, and if I had to pick one, I don't know, probably instant. Okay. But it was clear you needed if you wanted to have it so you could do something on other people's turns which I did with again counterspell that you needed you needed two different classes of a spell how early did that come in the instant sorcery how early did that happen? Very early. Very early. I'm guessing the first 120 card,

the very first version of Magic, which looks like modern Magic, I called Alpha Magic, which is confusing, because later on Alpha was something published. But that was 120 cards done on, like, each one was maybe half a 3x5 card.

And I would split it into two parts and play, and so we'd each get a random 60 cards from this deck. And in that, there were instants and sorceries. Okay, but in that original version, there was creatures, land, instant sorcery, but none of the other card types existed yet? There was probably artifacts, too. Okay, well, how did artifacts come about? Artifacts are less certainly... Like, the others, I think, were kind of at the same time.

It's like building a bridge. You kind of got to do it all at once. But the artifacts probably did come a little later, even though it was in there at the very beginning. Again, these are things where I wanted something that was going to be a long-term

payback for the player, which creatures are, but they weren't going to be creatures so they could explore other mechanics. And that's where artifacts were. Okay, so artifacts predated enchantments? Oh, no, enchantments were probably before that also. I forgot about enchantments. Okay, so did enchantments come first or did artifacts come first, do you remember?

Enchantments would have come first. Okay, so what prompted enchantments would have come first. Okay. So what prompted enchantments? So you were playing with creatures and spells and land. What got you to enchantments in the first place? I think probably something when exploring what you could do with a spell. It's natural to come up with effects like, well, I'd like a spell to make my creature bigger. So call it giant growth, and then it'll go away if it's an instant,

but what if it was permanent? And then say, well, you can make it permanent, but that's a problem for memory, so let's use the spell to remind us what's been done, and that's where the enchantment comes from. So when you made enchantments, do. So, when you made enchantments, do you think they first were global enchantments, or they were like auras sitting on things?

I think they were probably both. I'd have to go back and check. I know that there were things, like in the very beginning, there were things like Circle of Protections, which that's not, I mean, that's not neither sitting on anything particular nor is it global since it only affects one player. Would you consider that global? I mean, global, in the game terms, global just means it has a general effect.

That's considered global. Yes, some enchantments affect everybody, but when we use global, it just means it's an effect that's not located to one thing. Yeah, I'm pretty sure at the very beginning there were circles of protection. There was things like karma and things like unholy strength and holy strength. So you bring up karma. Were color hosers very early? They were, yeah. Okay. Okay.

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about Interrupt. When did Interrupt show up? Oh, real quickly, just for the audience, because some of the audience does not know what the word Interrupt is. Early, early magic, counter spells and things that couldn't be reacted to, except by other Interrupts, were a different card type called Interrupt. Sorry, go ahead, Richard.

Yeah, Interrupt was certainly the one that came last. And it came as a consequence of beginning to look under the hood at the timing of certain things in the game, like playing cards and counterspelling and other things, and realized that some things had to be faster than other things.

Some instance had to be faster than other instance, otherwise you couldn't counter-stop them. That was what I was thinking at the time. And I talked myself into believing that really to make it work, you needed something at an interrupt speed, something that was faster than an instant. You needed something at an interrupt speed, something that was faster than an instant. Later on, we decided with proper timing and so forth that we didn't actually have to go there. Once we started doing the stack, I guess, in more formal terms. Yes.

Okay, so next let's talk a little bit about evergreen keywords. So we'll start with flying. So my guess is flying was the first keyword. It's my guess. I think that's right, yeah. Was that just solely flavor? Like, it makes sense people can't black birds or something? Yeah. Yeah, well, a lot of my design in general, once I've got a theme for the game I'm working on,

I begin to think about what I want, what is in that theme, and how it should be reflected in the game. And so, you know, when you start saying, okay, I'm going to have a game where wizards are casting spells at each other and they're summoning creatures, what are the different characteristics? What sort of creatures are you going to come up with? I came up with a bunch that pretty clearly their defining characteristic was that they flew. And so I tried to figure out what that would mean within the context of this game and came up with the no blocking rule. Okay. So I'm going to list all the creature keywords that were there in Alpha. And I'm curious, my guess was flying came first.

So I'm going to name them and tell me what you think is the second one. First strike, trample, protection,eration, Banding, and Landwalk. I would say probably, weirdly, Regeneration might have been. regeneration might have been because again it was something where creatures in those in these games in these worlds regenerate and I was trying to figure out what that would mean so but landwalk came very early landwalk could have been second because once once I had the flying mechanic, it becomes a very natural mechanic to explore. So regeneration would have been a power designed based on the world, and land walk would definitely have been one which is designed from mechanics.

So that's an example of the two different directions you're designing from, world or mechanics. But both of those are pretty early. I think, yeah, first strike probably would have been pretty late. Trample? Trample was probably pretty early. I think I had this probably before First Strike, but yeah. When did banding happen, you think? Was that later? Banding.

Banding was probably, it was on the later side as well, and that was one that was being driven from the world point of view, not a mechanical, which is why it's so sort of pieced together, because I had this idea of what I was looking for. I wanted creatures to be able to team up in some way, and was trying to figure out a mechanical method for them to do it, as opposed to me having a good mechanic

and then figuring out what that would be in the world. So how did you decide what got a name and what didn't? How did you figure out what got keyworded and what just was written out? was written out? I guess I had this idea of how common the mechanics were going to be, even though it wasn't often reflected. There weren't too many tramplers,

for example, or a lot of flyers. So, you know, I think I have an inconsistent idea about it, but in the long run, certainly one of the things I've always liked is when you have a good mechanic, whether or not you write it out, having a name associated with it was powerful. So calling Trample Trample rather than writing it out, the real thing it did was give this valuable way to imagine it

and this flavor that it would be attached to in the world. And I don't know how I chose which ones got that and which didn't, but over the years I became sort of much more sensitive to that because I think those keywords really add a lot to the game. Well, it's funny because modern magic, we have a lot more evergreen keywords. Like a lot of the ideas existed in Alpha. You know, Vigilance existed, it just didn't have a name. And Haste existed, it just, we have a lot more evergreen keywords. Like a lot of the ideas existed in alpha, you know, vigilance existed just wasn't, didn't have a name and haste existed.

It just didn't have a name. So it's interesting that we look at modern, like we have, I don't know, about 12, 13 sort of evergreen creature keywords. So we've gone up a lot, I think because of what you're talking about is the flavors is pretty powerful having a word. It is. I think because of what you're talking about is the flavors is pretty powerful having a word. It is.

That's one of the things I really like about that development. I remember Vigilance being added, and yeah. I mean, in some ways, I guess I'm glad that I didn't name it originally because I think Vigilance is an excellent name, and I don't know if I would have come up with that. But yeah, the names are really good. And I know that when I work on set, I'm always advocating, like every mechanic I come up with is like what I really want is a keyword there, even if you have to say what the mechanic is afterwards, just because it gives some people a single word to talk about and add so much flavor. Yeah, one of the things we do in early design is we name everything,

even if in the end it doesn't get named because we just want to talk about it, and having a name on it just allows us to have all that conversation. Yeah. You know, uh, back in the day, I didn't have the tech of writing a keyword and then writing what came after. I don't know that. I don't think I ever did that. Oh, reminder text. You did not do reminder text. Right. And so, and so if, if you don't have reminder text, that puts an upper limit to how many keywords you will have oh yes and and so that's that's uh while i can't say why i chose some things to be keywords and other things not with any uh uh conviction i can say the reason why they some things weren't keyworded is because you just

can't do too many keywords unless you do reminder text as well and And I hadn't thought of that. Okay, so next question is, you added a rule to the game that decking, you know, running out of cards, you lose the game. How early was that, or was that a later edition? That was very early. It was probably in our very first playtest. Okay, so that happened right away. Well, we did not deck right away, but I think I had said that if you run out of cards,

the question came up, what's going to happen when you run out of cards? I guess you lose. That's sort of a very typical thing in games is pretty common is that if you can't make a move, you lose. So a lot of mathematical games work that way, for example. So it seemed like a natural place to start, even though there's lots of other things you could do, like you could reshuffle and keep going. So I think it was a natural thing for me to think of because there's so many examples that way. And then once we were playing with it, it became pretty exciting as this long-shot alternative way to win.

And I also like the way that there's a lot of deck construction push towards making a smaller deck. And even though if deck constructors had their brothers, they would still make very small decks and having it so that when you, when your deck do you lose, put some small impetus towards making a larger deck, especially back in the day. Sure. Um, yes. Okay. I've talked a lot about sort of system, system design so far. So I want to get a little bit into like alpha itself. Um, so what, do you remember like, what were the early cards that really sort of were the signpost that I'm doing

something right? This is what, what you are the ones that really were the early markers of, you know, they existed really early and they really set the tone for what you were making. Oh, uh, They existed really early and they really set the tone for what you were making. Oh. Well, I guess the relationship between land and spell and the rest of the cards just worked very well right off the bat. just worked very well right off the bat.

Then the interesting stuff that came out of, like, the fact that in blue I was sticking all these sort of wacky effects, even though in those days wacky effects was just like, you know, draw two cards. That's of wacky effects, even though in those days, wacky effects was just like, draw two cards, that's a wacky effect. How it led to these unexpected things was a sign that I think that the game was on the right path. So is there a card that is like, one of the early cards that you really think is like putting the stake in the ground

the card that really sort of made you realize this was going in the right direction? Hmm I can't think of a particular card, no Okay Was there a card that got added very very late that you're glad you added in,

but it got added very late in the process? Oh, yeah. I could probably think of several of those. The... Boy, I think I want to pull up a list. Boy, I think I want to pull up a list. You know, there's... Like, for example, I know that Bird of Paradise happened late because it was based on a piece of art for a different card.

That's true. That would be, in fact, probably the latest card that was in because of that. That was designed on the fly. And I guess there's certainly no reasonlin balloon brigade or something like that, that you had to pay a red manat lie. Yes, yes. and it was beginning to, it was where I felt like the design was really beginning to open up where you could look at it and it was more than just, the mechanic wasn't particularly complicated, but it told a story with its little mechanics. And I thought there were a lot of possibility along those lines. So, I mean, obviously I'm sure all of Alpha, as someone who creates Magic cards,

you have a soft spot for all of the whole set, but is there any one card that's sort of just from Alpha that's kind of your pet favorite? Hmm. Yeah, this would be easier if I had Alpha sitting in front of me. But, you know, I really like the Nightmare. Oh, Nightmare, okay. So nightmare is a flying, it's a horse on fire that flies,

power toughness equal to the number of swamps you have. And I thought the force of nature, lord of the pit, were pretty exciting. So big creatures which had big downsides, uh, were, were a lot of fun. Oh, we didn't really, let's talk about power toughness for a second. How did you, how did you come up with the definition of deciding to do a power and a toughness? How did that come about? Um, I don't know. I probably, I probably was need a power, how hard you're going to hit. And then I was probably thinking a lot in terms of hit points.

We never did play the game with, how do they call it, sticky hit points or sticky damage? Yeah. I never played the game with that because I didn't I knew I didn't want to play with counters. But I was probably just looking for an analog of hit points and settled on toughness. And so it was pretty much as close as you can get. And the stats were always two numbers and that was true the whole time? Yeah, I don't think i i i'm pretty sure i never played with a single number um and uh i don't think i was ever tempted to go up to three later on with like uh battle tech we we added armor and things like that yeah star wars had a speed as well it's not it's not like you can't add

extra stats, but for Magic, I was never tempted. So, is there, looking back, you know, with 2020 hindsight, what is the thing you most wish you had thought

in the moment to do? Like, it's clear not looking back, but at the time, you missed what what is your oh if i if i just done this that something you know is there something that you look back and and i know when i look at early writing and always little things i do will annoy me because like oh why didn't i do this a little bit differently oh well certainly uh looking looking back my yeah my biggest change would hands hands down, be getting the rules right. The rules were a mess because there was this idea of how the cards worked,

and they worked that way in casual play almost all the time. But when you began thinking about some of the timing, then you realized, oh, maybe it should work a different way. And then that led to the first several years of Magic being sort of just a bunch of Band-Aids put on it to make the cards work. If I were designing it today from scratch, I would be designing it as a computer game in the sense that I would be making sure that a computer could resolve all the different interactions and it would work a lot better. All that has been done in the interim. Yes.

But it was a major, major task for the developers over the years. And yeah, so I wish I had thought that through a little more. So we're coming near the... I'm almost to work. So I'm curious, is there any... Did you ask to stop for coffee? What? I did not stop for coffee. Darn.

Is there anything... I mean, I've sort of opened into a question for you. Is there any cool story about Alpha, something that I didn't get into, that is a neat sort of, maybe something you haven't talked a lot before, about creating some aspect of the game? Well, sure. Like, one of the people has asked me in the past what cards didn't make it into the final cut. And for the most part, most of the cards made it from the beginning to the end. When we added them in, they stayed, although they did get varied in cost from time to time and effect.

But one major category of cards that got dropped was cards which messed with the ownership of your cards, with the exception of Anti. That was the one part that was left. So not in Alpha, well, actually, probably in my Alpha, but certainly in Beta, which is my second playtest version, there was a card called Eco Eco Shift where when you play it you shuffle together your lands and your opponent's lands and then you deal them back so everybody gets the same amount

and then there was a card, a Pixie which had an effect I think when it hit you, it's flying you would swap cards randomly from between your hands. So, you know, there were maybe half a dozen different things like that where ownership would change. But there were players that began to not care about winning or losing. They were just playing for these change in ownerships. And Scaf is certainly one of them, I remember.

And so, for instance, they would make their pixie deck, and they would just have their deck filled with the trash they wanted to get rid of, and they were just fishing, and they didn't really care whether they won or lost. And it quickly struck me that even though I really liked what those cards were trying to do, which was to make it so that the card, because again, I viewed the card play back in the day as being something where people would be getting a few decks and that was it, or what we say, a handful of boosters and that's it. And so, and I didn't think everybody would be comfortable trading,

even though that was part of the game. And so I wanted some way for cards to circulate without needing people to negotiate. And so that's what I was thinking for these pixies and EcoShift, and eventually what only Ant ante was left to do. But I decided it was unhealthy for people to not care who won or lost the game, and so got rid of those.

It's funny, I mean, you and I have talked about this a lot, but one of the... I know there's a lot of different things that influence magic, and that marbles, that you played a lot of marbles as a kid and i think a lot of this kind of play i think came from your love of marbles yes that's true yep um there's a certain magic to marbles uh everybody's uh uh different different collections and the ones that had uh uh the different sizes and weights meant something, but mostly it was about their history and

the good luck you attributed to it. And in marbles, you can walk away with other people's marbles. Yes. Both by trade, by playing for keeps, and if you're a bully, I guess just taking them.

So anyway, Richard, it was awesome having you on. You were always welcome back, but it was fun. As a fan of Magic history, it's always fun to sort of dive deep into sort of the hows and whys of how Magic came to be.

So thank you very much for being here. It's a lot of fun talking about it, walking down magic memory lane. So anyway, I'm now in my den, so we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work, so instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic.

I'll see you guys all next time. Bye-bye.