Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #741: Bill Rose

Episode Date: May 21, 2020

In this podcast, I talk to Bill Rose, the vice president of Tabletop Magic. Bill and I have worked together for 25 years.

I'm not pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. So what I've been doing for these, because I'm recording them at home, is I had the opportunity to have guests on, which are a little harder to do in my car. So today, I have the VP of Magic, Bill Rose. So Bill, say hi. Hello, Magic fans. So Bill and I have worked together a long time. You started three weeks before me? Yeah, 25 years. Okay, so we're going to go back to the very beginning, Bill,

because you start very early. You've been playing Magic longer than almost anybody. Yeah, I'll throw out a weird claim here. There's only a handful of people who started before me. I think I'm the person in the world who's played magic the longest consistently. Like, I've never taken a break from magic. Yeah. Yeah, I think that quite might be true.

Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about you starting. So, I mean, I know this, but the audience doesn't know this. So how did you start playing Magic? I started playing Magic because I was a friend of Richard Garfield. We played bridge together, of all things. Richard came to UPenn and joined the bridge club that I was playing in, and he's a gamer and i'm a gamer and we just started playing with my friends and richard's friends we all just started playing games together i think i think like roborally was one that we would test richard always had a game

for us to test and then one day he came back and he had an early version of magic i mean the first version of magic was one deck of cards that both players drew from and it was five colors like it was miserable um you know you could have a hand of black cards and you've drawn 20 land but none of them are a swamp and it was just like it was chaotic but that only lasted a couple of weeks before he got to each person having their own deck. So that's how I got in. I was one of the original playtesters. Okay, so talk about that. When we say alpha, we don't mean the published alpha. We mean the playtest alpha. What was that like? So it was interesting. Like we had these cards that were maybe a quarter of the size of original cards that Richard handmade.

They were cardboard, right? In fact, he used art from D&D. He used art from the Calvin and Hobbes comics. But he had these little handmade cards. And if you think the rules were complicated now like back then like counterspell would just say you know spell fizzles and you'd be like okay we'll just kind of work around it um but cards were really limited then like even commons like you just you know if Richard printed up 500 cards for a play test, that's all the cards that existed in the world. So, you know, if you wanted another common grizzly bear, you had to go out and trade for it.

So how many cards did you get when you like that first when he gave cards to you? A deck. I don't remember if it was 50 or 60, but like you had this deck of cards that was given to you. It was a five color deck. It was like, it was like the original starter decks. Like you were given this deck of cards and you had to just trade. Like it was a mess. You had a few extra cards, but you know,

you just had to go out and trade. And, and like the original starter decks, like you could be given a deck that had like a Sarah angel, or you could be given a deck that had like a sarah angel or you could be given a deck that had a crawlworm and like you just hope you got the deck sarah angel so do you remember what the first deck you built was for me like i've always so not exactly um there, there was, there was a lot of people that tended to blue, um,

just for sort of the illusion. So I, I kind of never played a blue deck just because the cards were so much more valuable to trade. I typically would play either white or green mixed with black and red right sort of like creatures and kill okay i mean it was a more limited environment right so you know and it's hard like um though i do remember one guy dave petty building the land destruction deck back when you know he had sinkholes and i I think Stone Rain originally only cost three.

Yeah. You just go sinkhole, sinkhole, Stone Rain, of like you're on turns two, three, and four, and game was over. But that's what got Stone Rain to cost four. Well, Stone Rain Alpha cost three. Or three. Right.

It might have cost two, and then they changed it to three. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we had we had some yeah there were some crazy things i mean look originally um all the boons which were like giant growth healing sab lightning bolt uh brains what is the uh salve, giant growth, ancestral recall. Yeah, that was common. Yeah. They were all common. Like, it was like these boons. And it was like, gain three life or draw three cards.

That's even. So you can imagine when you opened up your deck, you were looking like, which common boon did I get? Like, for the love of God, don't give me healing salve. Yeah. Okay, so you guys, how long did you playtest? Like how long did the playtest portion last? Playtest portion, well, it lasted probably a year. But then quickly, like after Richard sort of locked down Alpha, half of the group went to playtest Ice Age and the other half of the group build on playtest Ice Age and the other half of the group went to build and playtest Mirage.

Yeah. So I sort of went from Alpha playtest to Mirage playtest seamlessly. And Mirage and Visions were kind of all one thing, right? Yes. I mean, it was Mirage, Visions, Weatherlight, and... But most of what they know as Weatherlight, you guys didn't, that was a separate team mostly, right? Yeah, I mean, it was, right.

I mean, you worked on the Weatherlight. It was, I mean, obviously I worked on the Weatherlight, so there was this through line, but originally, um, and, and to be honest with you at the very original concept, both Ice Age and Mirage were not concept with concepted with visions or alliance. Okay. Okay. It was, but, but, you know, early, you know, halfway through the design, it was like, oh, we'll do an expansion. So start thinking about how you do an expansion. But, yeah, it was, you know, the whole thing of Mirage was, it was an interesting, I mean, we just started from scratch.

Well, here, I'll tell you an original idea. I'll tell you something I don't know if most people know. Oh, here, I'll tell you an original idea. I'll tell you something I don't know if most people know. The idea behind Weatherlight and Mirage was that Alpha would be retired and that Ice Age would become the only way that you played. Like you just throw away or put away your cards and that these sets would come out. And because of that, Ice Age had a lot of repeats from Alpha in its very early design because it was meant to replace Alpha. It was more like the way we used to do core sets, like this one retires the other one.

By the time we were into the heavy design of Mirage, we had already realized that no Magic cards will ever get retired everywhere. Right, because Raven-Nyce was going to have a different back originally, right? In that world. Yes. Well, no. Yes and no. Ice Age was really going to get a different back. And that we were deciding what to do with the sets between you know i've had well you've been involved in this we've talked about not necessarily a different back but updating and changing the back of magic cards for for uh 25 years like what does deck master mean yeah like we could do you know it's like you know the

deck the back looks like it's 1995 and the front of the cards look so cool but you know i think uh i think the backs are here to stay forever unless you're talking about digital we have some really cool backs in arena yeah okay so you were on the playtest team. Yes. When did you know that it was going to be made? At what point was it clearly being made? Are you talking about Magic? Magic, yeah.

Or just Magic? You know, Richard at one point had to go out and, you know, sort of recruit funds. I don't know that I was that involved. Like, I just I'm basically a very positive person. So I just believed it was going to be made. I was not really, you know, involved in the logistics then like I am now. And then Richard one day just sort of I mean, this is this this is before before cell phones. So like he, you know, how to find you and tell you, but told us that, you know, they had reached a contract with Cardamondi and they were going to have a limited run. You know, we were wondering at first, like, could we you know, could you sell the million boosters?

People just didn't know. Yeah, we really didn't know. And it just blew your mind like, you know, we're going to print a million cards. Well, that's a lot. I mean, well, it's actually not. Well, so talk about it coming out. So magic is coming out. So it came out. I mean, it came out in the stores and like it was just evaporated.

But each of us on the playtest team was sent a display of Alpha. Okay. And we just sat at home one night and opened it up. And, you know, it was fun because for us it was really seeing the cards. I mean, it's like doing a playtest now. Well, it was more than a playtest now because we had known a lot of the final names, right? Because back then, even through Mirage, the designers named the cards. They did everything but the art.

So the names were finalized. So it was just really cool to see these cards that you played with no art or alternate art what they look like in their real form it was just it was just fun to play with the cards but in some ways like when alpha came out we were we had been playing we had been playing alpha for months because we had the the final play test cards yeah so that's pretty interesting you know and it was just it was like this crazy thing where you know we were wondering well you know like we were wondering would magic last long enough for us to publish mirage like that was a question that we talked about in in the design team like okay like we

talked to some of our design because we said like we're going to do a lot of work here to put the set together and we just wanted everybody on the design team to know there's some chance that like we do all this work and the set never gets published because we don't know what's going to happen for magic so we just wanted to let people know like you know you may do three work three years work of design work and the set never gets published because magic's not here so obviously you look back at that and you're like that's just crazy talk well we didn't know you didn't know you just didn't i mean that but that just sort of goes you to your mindset like you know people were like can we sell a million boosters will magic

be here in two years like these were real conversations at the time. And then you look at them back now and you're like, how, how naive were we? Okay. So what is your, what is the story of your first interaction with seeing magic being a hit? Like what was your first sort of like interacting with people or players? Like what was your first kind of like, Oh people or players? Like, what was your first kind of like, oh, my God, this is a hit story? I mean, the first to me, it was more. It was less about interaction and more about going to the store and trying to buy cards.

And they're like, no, we're out. So you go to the because we already had a we already had a display so like you're playing with it you're doing things yeah you go to the store and you're like we'd like to buy another display and they're like we're out so you go to another store and like they're out and then you talk to richard and he's like yeah we're trying to do another print run and then i know like it's i didn't know it was going to be the mega hit that it is today. But like I knew I knew at that stage that Mirage would be published. OK, so how do you go from being a play tefter to being a Wizards of the Coast employee? OK, so this so I this if you want to go into crazy story time, this will give you crazy story.

this if you want to go into crazy story time this will give you crazy story so one of the other way so as it turns out um you know i i knew i was very good friends with richard's first wife lily right so and that's sort of how we got connected and then i was also friends with and my design lead design partner was Joel Mick. And, you know, Joel and I are are are really good friends. And we were we were friends from college. So I got a lot of Joel stories. So anyway, Joel was Joel. Joel had already joined Wizards of the Coast, as well as Richard and Dave Scaff and Jim Lynn. And I was friends with Scaff and Jim, but I mean, not not like I'm good friends with them now. Back then, I wasn't you know, we didn't know each other all that well and anyway joel called me up and actually he called me up to take over to come in and lead the design of mirage right he

just like come in and we were wizards of the coast had a lot of creativity back in the early 90s and not a lot of business sense right and i have a business degree and I had been managing, you know, a multimillion dollar budget. So that's really why it came. He got me to come in. The interesting story is I fly in for my interview and like Joel's supposed to lead the interview. And he calls me the day before. He he says i'm not going to be there that week i'm not going to be there so other people are going to interview you i'm like okay so i come in on like a wednesday night or thursday night i forget which one and i'm there through the weekend i spend you know two days at the office i know people i'm hanging out with my friends, going to dinner with them.

Fly back home. Joel calls me on Monday morning and says, how did the interviews go? And I said, nobody interviewed me. So that just gives you the insight. So like a month later, I fly back. I actually have my interviews. They offer me a job and I come out and here I am. I originally came out, I was just going to stay for a year or two and, you know, do Mirage and maybe a little bit more and go home. But, you know, I like I fell in love with magic. I, you know, instantly when I played it, even though when I played my first game of magic, it was miserable. Like the lands didn't work. You were you stumbled over the rules because you had rules interactions that Richard would go. I have no idea. But I loved it. Like I knew instantly, like as clunky. I mean, it was almost like playing a digital game nowadays that crashes all the time. Like you play the game and it's crashing and you hate it for crashing but you know it's this wonderful game that you need to make better and that's what magic was to me and when i came out

to wizards of the coast after a year i was like i really like the people i love the mission i just want to you know i just want to stay and like you i'm you know i'm here like i you know i kind of you know dedicated a lot of my life to making magic better. So real quickly, fill the audience in, and then we'll go on. I often call this the second wave. So R&D had a bunch of people, mostly early playtafters and stuff. You actually didn't come out with Scaf and Jim and some of the early playtafters. And a bunch of them decided they wanted to make other games,

so they hired a bunch of people to be the people who would do magic. And it was me and you and William Jockish and Mike Elliott. Yeah. And the four of us, like, there was a period of time where we were the development team. Every set we did. We were, yes. We were the design and development team, for good or bad.

Yeah. Yeah, no, there's a lot of, you know, um, yeah, it was a very interesting period. Um, and how we designed, I mean, nowadays, like Mark, if you and I went back and, you know, just told all the new people in the office, how we, uh, you know, first developed Ravnica and some of these things like it would just blow their mind yeah you know we just we did crazy stuff well it's funny i go back and i think about what i would have thought right go back 25 years and just pitch things we actually did and yeah they would have sounded crazy but uh so but who knows like maybe some of the crazy things we did in the first five years

will come back yeah some of the stuff keeps coming back yeah things return okay so uh so you and i get hired in the fall of 1995 october 95 yeah oct 95. You started early October. I started late October in 1995. I got the last computer. You did. I had no desk or computer for a while because Joel saved you your desk. I remember you were there was like this period, November and December

because we were moving to the new building in January where you had no desk or computer and you had to run around and borrow. Right. I had to use people's computers when they weren't using their computer. I mean, right. You think about it today.

It's like you don't have your own computer. Like, this is crazy. Yeah. Okay. So what, when you think back to the early days, to that period, the period of me, you, William and Mike, what is your, what is your memory of that time period? Like, what do you remember? You know, I just – you, me, and this goes with Scaf and Joel and Jim.

We argued a lot, but in a good way. Like, we – all of us enjoyed arguing. we argued a lot, but in a good way, like we, all of us enjoyed arguing. So, and I know like with Scaf, like I could have screaming matches with Scaf and somebody would come by and think like these guys hated each other. And this was this toxic work environment. And after the argument, like Scaf and I just loved it. Like, we just, like, it was, and we truly, like, we argued, like, we didn't, like, put the other person down. We

just argued our ideas. So there was this very interesting environment where we just did these things. And then the other thing I remember from arguments with cards and negotiations. I remember offering to buy William pizza for lunch if he voted for me on a topic in a design meeting and staff was so annoyed. Like, we have a two to two tie, but William, if you change your vote and vote for me, I'll buy you pizza for lunch and he was like done i i wish i could remember what i won in the cards that happened

the other interesting story i'll tell you is we would remember we would go through before final editing we would go through the card sets card by card with the whole team. Yeah. And it would take us like 12 hours. Yes. I mean, it was just crazy. And to make it – and I thought, okay, one of the things I'll do to make it better, I'm like, you're only allowed three – you're only allowed to stop three times. You can have three complaints with the card set. Because this was after months and months of playtesting.

So I said to everybody, you've got three times where you can stop the group, we'll listen to you, we'll, you know, like, it's all going to be important. And SCAF, and, you know, we used to go through color. We do white, then we do blue, then, you know, we go and move our color and we do like white common, white uncommon, white rare, blue common, so on.

We didn't get through white common and Scaf used all of his three. And he was like, we got to white uncommon and Scaf's like, I got a problem. And I'm like, you used your three. And then we argued about that for an hour. So anyway, it was pretty fun. Like it was, you it was it was a good time like we really didn't know what we were doing everybody got along you know like we were like working you know working till 11 o'clock at night was not uncommon at all like in on some of

those periods and like we hung out together it was like it was a really fun time it was a really fun time i i look back at those days very fondly and i also look back at those days and i'm like good god how did we not destroy this game we had no clue of what we're doing when i look at it towards today's standards yeah well i mean it's funny when you look back to me at the old times. We've learned a lot over the years, but back then we just didn't know because we hadn't done it, and there's a lot of us sort of figuring out as it went along. I'll say this.

If you look at magic in, like, five-year periods, like take Alpha, take a set five years later go five years five years five years you see a giant step forward in the quality of the product um from the gameplay to the art to the story to the names to draft like every part of the the game takes a a leap forward and like that's one of the things i'm most proud of of you know what what the wizards you know team has done over the years the and not just you know me or my direct team or r&d but it's like it is the entirety of wizards that is just better um even like from a production like every other tcg has its production based on what magic pioneered in the early days yeah like we are so and that and that you know makes me very i'm very proud of what wizards as a family has accomplished okay so i'm

gonna go through your career a little bit here so at some point so when you first got there joel was sort of a head designer developer it was one role at the time and then joel went to become the brand manager of magic right yeah like here's in some weird like it was this weird thing where joel was never in r&d he was always like this he was always in the business marketing person. I mean, Joel's a lawyer by train by training. And back then, we really didn't have a lead designer position. Because we were so independent by set by set, like nobody was really thinking about all of magic. People were thinking about Mirage or Ice age yeah so when i came in right i probably this is probably with um you leading

tempest is when i would say the lead designer of magic really developed because back then i was leading magic as a whole but clearly you were leading that set like i was leading how's tempest going to plug into all of magic what are we going to do after tempest right so so you spent some period of time as the head designer head developer were sort of condensed into one role in the early days and you you had that role probably to like 2002 2003 in december okay well i think like my i think like in you became vp in like 2002 and you know i i became a vp um when did you become vp well i became vp but i stayed in magic in like 97 okay but in 2002 we had a major rework okay and i took over a lot of i started i think 2002 i started taking over a lot of more business oriented ideas and that's when like at the like in august of 2002

that happened and that's when we started to i'd say like for the next year was sort of re-design the the structure of r&d and then part of that was to hand off the lead designer role right i know at the period of time you were trying to sort of do both things and it's just R&D. And then part of that was to hand off the lead designer role. Right. I know that a period of time you were trying to sort of do both things and it's just clear you couldn't do both things. Yeah. And it was just figuring out like, I mean, when we had a major reorg in August of 2002 and I didn't really have, I knew before the average person did, but I didn't like but I didn't get to plan. So 2003 was a lot of planning. And that's where I turned the reins over to you.

And at the time, I guess, where was Randy in all of this? Randy was my boss at the time. He was the director of Magic, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I took over Dun dungeons and dragons yeah like until in july of 2002 i the the only i i played dungeons and dragons uh in college and i enjoyed it but like i was just some scrub player who played and then in august of 2002 it's like bill you you have the dungeons and dragons team now i mean i never i'm i'm a magic designer in my history i'm not a dnd designer but

yeah you know obviously i guess my dean the the accomplishment i'm most proud of of D&D is while I never I didn't I don't take I take zero design credit for fifth edition but um I created the environment that we could do fifth edition yeah that's like that was my bit and then and then D&D went off to be on its own great studio so that's my little D&D excursion on the magic podcast okay so basically since then I mean, you've been the VP of R&D since you're saying late 90... 97, I mean, keep in mind

you know, VPs back then were a dime a dozen. Yeah, that's true. Like, Peter was like, oh, we'll make you a VP. I don't know. It was crazy. But don't know what, like, it was crazy. But yeah, so really where I'm going, and it sort of like connects my business,

my pre-Magic love, like I understand design and I love design, but really where I look is like connecting the business. And, you know, since the early aughts, I've been more focused on where magic's going to be three years from now than where it is now yeah right like i would say like right now i am much more focused on the 2022 products than i am on the 2020 or 2021 products completely i mean i mean like you and i partner in a lot of things, Mark.

Yeah. Well, one of the things that's interesting, when people talk about sort of influence on magic, I'm the public face. So people know I've had a big influence on magic, but one thing I want to point out is, I think you and I are the two people that just have had the largest influence.

I mean, part of it, we've both been there for 25 years, but I think one of the reasons it's fun to interview you, I don't think people realize sort of how much you've done for magic behind the scenes. Right. Something I have been referred to

is like my Star Wars character is the Emperor. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yes. I mean, there's a lot. Yeah, I'm quietly behind the scenes but you know we're um obviously there's nothing that magic does every everything good that you've seen with magic i've had my hand in and everything bad that's happened with magic i've also had my hand in so good or bad, but you know,

as I said, like everything, you know, everything moves forward at the end of the day. Like I'm a gamer. Um, I love all games. I really love card games.

Um, and I really love magic and you know, my mission is to make magic better, whatever, whatever that means. So it looks, uh, I'm about to get to my den. It looks like our time is up cause I'm, I'm always almost there. Uh, but I want to thank you. Um, like I said, uh, for people that don't really know, uh, there, Bill has had more influence on magic than, than, I mean, I'm the

only person that even rivals Bill with a lot of input on magic so uh i might have been more front-facing than bill but bill's been behind the scenes doing a lot a lot of stuff six edition rules and all sorts of things you might not know that bill had his hand and tried to do that that was a mess hey i want to leave with one thing uh a little easter egg If you take a look at 2019 and 2018, Magic had a lot of positive surprises that our fans loved and things that people thought we would never do. So the puzzle for people to figure out is I think over the next 18 months, there's as many cool new innovations as we've had in the last 18 months. So try to figure out what they are. Yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff coming your way.

I tell when I have the distributor conference, you know, when I sit there, I told the distributors we're going to blow your mind once again. The last two distributor conferences we've blew your mind. The next two we're going to blow your mind once again. So last two distributor conferences, we've blew your mind. The next two are going to blow your mind once again. So, good stuff.

Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I enjoyed. But anyway, guys, I'm at my den, so we all know 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. So thank you, Bill. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.