Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #750: Skaff Elias

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

This week's podcast is an interview with Skaff Elias, one of the original playtesters and a longtime Wizards employee.

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, I have a very special guest today. Someone from Magic's... way back in Magic's past. So I want to introduce Scaf Elias. Hello. Okay, so Scaf, I think this story will help people get... understand sort of your connection to the game.

So, what was your first interaction with magic my first interaction with magic uh my first interaction with magic was richard asking if i wanted to play a new game that he had invented and pulling me aside to an office that i was i believe was the astronomy lounge in DRL at Penn University. We were both in grad school there. And then we played the game. And how long was that before Magic came out? So people understand that.

Oh, about two years before it came out. I believe I was the third person to ever play Magic. Okay. I played with one other person before, Barry Reich. Some people know him as Bit. And then I believe I was the second person he brought in. Okay. I played with one other person before, Barry Reich. Some people know him as Bit, and then I believe I was the second person he brought in. Okay. So the second person,

or the third other than Scaf and Barry. So what was it like being a playtester on a game that wasn't even necessarily, I mean, talk about the early game. What was it like working on the game before it was magic as we know it? Right. right well in the very very very beginning it wasn't that different than a lot of other experiences that richard uh had given people there because he had invented other games as well so i don't even believe magic was the first of his you, made up games that I had played. It was probably, you know, at the

earliest, the third or the fourth. Anyway, and so, you know, that was, it was almost normalized by the time I had played Magic, even though I'd probably only known Richard a month or two. And Magic was definitely the best of the games that we played. Like, it had something special to it. So how early on did you realize, like, how quickly did you figure out that it was a different kind of game? Well, again, that's a tough question. Many of his games were different kinds of games. I mean, when did you realize

that Magic has potential to become Magic? Well, okay, I would say, in all fairness, I don't think anyone realized that until several months after the release of Magic, like fully understood, because I don't think anyone really understood how big it could possibly be. However, when did I think it would be a hit game?

Probably the first day I played it. So that fast? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, easily that fast. I mean, the thing was, it was clearly a very good game. It was clearly super, super interesting. What no one understood at the time was, you know, how big a hit game could be. So I can't really say I knew how big it would be, but like knew that it would be like, oh, this is the sort of game that everyone loves to play.

Absolutely. Right away. First game. So what in that early playtest period, what things did you feel you had to influence on? What your playtesting did what to Magic? How did it influence Magic? Oh, gosh. Well, I don't think I was unique in this regard. I mean, I think everybody that played it had a lot of influence on everything about it. That was part of the coolest thing about being in on the beginning. And Richard was very receptive to ideas. Now, the first game I played would be recognizable by any Magic fan as

Magic. So, you know, how much influence can you have on something that's already done? You're just sort of polishing the edges at best. The stuff though that I did mostly on was, I think, the balance issues. But also, like,

the rules, the, you know, timing issues, how the rules went. Those were probably two of the bigger things I had influence on in the very beginning. Did you design any cards in Alpha? Well, you mean Alpha? What do you mean by Alpha? I meant... There's the Alpha... The released Alpha, the actual, the games people played alpha.

Yes, I'm fairly sure I did, yeah. Do you remember, I'm just curious, do you remember any of the cards you actually made? Is Orcish Artillery an alpha?

Yeah, Orcish Artillery's an alpha. Yeah, that's what I did. Okay. Okay, so let's transition from you're a playtester.

How did you go from being a playtester across the country to becoming an employee at wizards right so that's a good question um what happened initially was they uh needed uh extra people there to essentially help edit the game and And so while we were playtesting for a while, once the game was released, and we were just really helping out Richard as friends, and we had invested a little bit in the company

and they'd given us a little bit of stock, but it was all very small. Once the game was released, they realized they needed a lot more uh help in um in uh dealing with the cards in designing them etc uh and especially in editing other people's versions of the card game what we called development back then and they really just didn't have enough manpower richard was a professor at college. There weren't people there internal to Wizards

who had enough free time to perform that task. So Richard asked people back out on the East Coast, and Peter, who was the president at the time of Wizards of the Coast, he was just paying us an hourly wage to help do editing on cards, basically. By editing, I mean development. Were you in Washington at that point, or were you still back east? I was still back east. So there was a group of four of us that were doing that.

It was Dave Petty, Chris Page, Jim Lynn, and I were actually the first people out there to get paid cash money for doing that and we were just working hourly. So if anyone's ever read my articles the four of you, I often refer to you as the East Coast Playtesters which is what you were called back in the day. Well actually

but there was a lot more people included in East Coast Playtesters, several of whom are still at Wizards now. Sure, I think the four of you that did that I say, well people included in East Coast Playtesters, several of whom are still at Wizards now. Sure. I think that the four of you that did Ice Age... So let's talk about the sets you did. You've designed some sets, right? So what was the very first set you designed?

The very first set I designed would be... Well, sorry. I understand the chronologically... The first set I designed was Ice Age. Yeah, okay. Which was designed before Magic ever came out. And also, I guess, depending upon how you count, a bunch of the cards in Alpha were designed by several of those playtesters.

I mean, I don't know what percent, you know, 10% maybe or something like that, of Alpha was designed by people that weren't Richard. The first set that I designed or helped design, I should say that was released. Well, that was released first. The first good gosh, how,

how, why is this so difficult to say? The set that came out first. Yes. The first release set that I worked on, you know, as an equal share of the design team, as opposed to just helping Richard was antiquities.

And that was the previously mentioned play testers plus Joel Mick. So how did, let's talk about antiquities a little bit. How did antiquities come to be like, that's the first magic set that really had like a mechanical theme to it. Uh, it had a mechanical theme and it was also really the first magic set to have a story theme to it. Yes, yes. A proprietary story theme, anyway.

Yes, it was. And how did that come to be? That came to be because they needed lots and lots and lots of sets of cards. Richard ripped off Arabian Nights between the time, the original release, and before really he had gotten in contact with any play testers a lot of people this gets mentioned from time to time but there's no question that arabian knights was the most uh design set by one person of any set of magic that has ever come out including alpha uh richard took you know a decent amount of input from alpha but arabian knights really just almost none.

He just did that mostly by himself. And he could not keep up with the schedule of cranking out sets as rapidly as they needed them. There were, I don't know how many sets in the first 365 days, probably six or so. Yeah, there were a bunch. And so we said, sure, we six or so. Yeah, they're a bunch. And, uh, and so, um, we said, sure, you know, we would, we would design one. So, uh, it was that group of us, like I said, and, um, it seems almost like I'm missing someone. I don't think I am. No, I think those five are the guys. I mean, that's what I, yeah. And then, and so, um, and, uh, and yeah, so, I mean, we were just asked to do it.

So we, you know, pulled aside the classroom and designed that set. It did not take very long. It was a lot easier to design sets back then because, number one, we didn't know what we were doing. But also, you know, the territory was a lot more open. Why an artifact set? Why the brothers' war? What got you down the path for those? I decided

that I really wanted to work on stuff with a story because, and it's probably with talking, I forget who all we're talking with, maybe Peter, but it seemed like it would be good for Wizards to develop its own story that was a little more consistent. It also seemed fun, I mean, as opposed to, you know, purely for marketing purposes,

which, I mean, was good for that reason, but it just was more fun to work on. So why Antiquities? more fun to work on. So why antiquities? We decided that, um, several things, number one, we wanted to tie it in as much as possible to alpha, even though alpha did not have, um, you know, uh, a plot line, uh, it had, you know, some unique names in it, uh, that people had sort of randomly ripped off, mostly Richard. And I think that that had created them, uh, ripped off mostly richard and i think that that had created them uh ripped off i don't mean stolen i mean like you know jotted out anyway uh so we grabbed we basically made a list of all the uh proprietary names in alpha and um and then urza and mishra showed up and i think both of those were on artifacts yeah we wanted to have a mechanical theme and people loved artifacts there was sort of a shortage of artifacts we also wanted to set down the rules for artifacts where

they should be worse than any color was that the thing it did and um and so that all sort of came together also for the story at the time uh there was not really a good outlet for telling the story. There probably still isn't, to be honest. And so we decided that because people, you have to remember back then, not everyone bought all the cards and there weren't easy access to websites where you could just see everything. So we knew that everyone was going to get just a few cards, just a few pieces. Oh, I'm going to have to a few cards, just a few pieces. Oh, I'm going to have to buy three booster packs, and that's all I'll ever see from antiquities. So we needed the story to be able to be told in fragments, which actually kind of wind up really, really, really nicely with the way archaeologists go ahead and try to piece together stories of the ancient past.

So you don't have a narrative. You have a couple of artifacts that you dig up and they each have a small piece of information that comes with them, whether it's writing on them or, you know, whatever data you have about where they were found or what their purpose might have been. And so, and so that's exactly how the story unfolded. We envisioned and it also sort of fortuitously tied in perfectly with the actual artifact theme. So these were all, most of the things were supposed to be fragments that you found that could, in your imagination, be put together to a linear story, but didn't necessarily have to be that way. And so as you found more and more fragments, there would be a better and better picture that would be created out of these fragments to create the narrative.

So there was a narrative, and then it was sort of parceled out among the artifact fragments. Okay, so that was very cool. So one other thing that came out of the set, the Brothers War story obviously came out of the set. Another thing that came out of the set is the Phyrexians, which have gone on to be one of Magic's major villains.

How did the Phyrexians come about? I definitely thought of the Phyrexians. And I don't know. It just seemed pretty cool. Like you're, you know, whatever. I don't know. Just an idea. I think I can remember almost the flavor text you're, you know, whatever. I don't know. It's just an idea from the,

I think I can remember almost the flavor text of the first thing that mentioned Phyrexia where that guy opens the gate and goes in there and the smell of ruby dust and the oil rain on his face and stuff like that. So yeah, yeah. That was just a, just an idea for the sort of to personalize the artifacts, you know, because it's kind of cool that they can go to hell. They're on special hell. So,

but before we move on, I just want to say, I don't know if you know this, but before I came to wizards, my, my absolute favorite set was antiquities. I loved antiquities. I still like it too.

I actually, I really like the storytelling method in it. Again, given the constraints that we had and I think it worked out pretty well. Okay, so the next set that you did

was, that came out, not in order that you made them, but the order that they got released is Fallen Empires, is that correct?

Next set that I made... Because Ice Age is after Fallen Empires. Yeah, yes. Yeah, I guess it would be

Fallen Empires. I mean, it depends on how you count things like Legends and the Dark. I mean, you developed those, right? And by that time, Joel had not yet come out to Wizards, and Chris Page had also decided to not come out, and he never did. So that was the three of us. That was Jim Lynn, Dave Petty, and I. Did Fallen Empires? Yes. Okay. So real quickly, what was the essence of Fallen Empires?

Do you remember when you were making Fallen Empires? One of the things for Fallen Empires that were important was we made a concerted effort to reduce the power level. So we sort of knew with Fallen Empires, and then this continued on through into Ice Age, we knew that people weren't going to love those sets because the power level had to decrease. Because games were too short, given the alpha cards, like first turn kills and all

that sort of stuff there were a lot of uh a lot of pressure on um rules for constructed play so that was number one number two uh it was supposed to be a set that was fun to play in limited and number three i remember one of the big things in it was magic has always had this um the big things in it was magic has always had this um you know this sort of problem of um land you get too much land at some point now you don't really depending upon the cards you have uh you know especially if you're playing counter spells and stuff like that but in general you can have this overflow of land and uh so there was a lot of activated abilities in fallen empires for that reason we purposely wanted to try to put in tons and lot of activated abilities in Fallen Empires for that reason. We purposely wanted to try to put in tons and tons of activated abilities that cost mana.

So I think if you go back and you look at that set, you'll see there's quite a bit of that in there, and we wanted there to be a lot of play essentially on the table as opposed to from cards in your hand. It's also the first set that really uses tokens and counters in a large way. I mean, they existed before, but really as a theme. Right, again, that's because we wanted to...

The general goal was to make the table more important than the hands for that set. Of course, him and Turok helped that, so you don't have hands. Okay, let's move on. So the next set is Ice Age, which is the first set you made, but the third set of yours to actually come out.

And then real quick, the audience understands this, that the original plan for Magic way, way back when, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Scaf, is Magic the Gathering was going to come out, be around for a while, and then at some point, Magic Ice Age was going to come out.

That was going to be the game. The game was going to change and be a new thing, right? Well, it depends on who you talk to about this question. That is... I don't believe that this was understood at the time, but that was Richard's idea and plan.

But for a lot of people, myself included included the thought was more like and this is probably richard's idea too so the difference here is a little bit subtle but that you could play with just the ice age cards if you wanted to however at least in my mind they were always going to be mixed in some format so by the way the story goes and i'll ask you directly is that you were the one that convinced richard to not change the back in arabian nights is that true or is that uh i never convinced richard so um so here's the story as i knew it there's a change though because i found out more information about uh two years ago okay okay so

what happened is there was this big meeting and everybody was there uh peter and uh and the wizards the coast crew had flown out to philadelphia um there was a uh a convention there in philadelphia that they all attended and then we had this massive meeting in a big lecture hall there um i think there's pictures of it yeah i know the pictures i know and uh and at that time uh this issue of the card backs was brought up and i i was sort of i can remember being a little stunned and i was like no don't change the card back that's crazy and uh because then you can't mix and match the cards easily and rich Richard's point of view was definitely change the card back because people can just

mix the things together, even if they have different card backs. And he had actually played lots of games that way. He would play regular card games where he would mix two decks of different backs, and the fact you could see the back was just kind of interesting or people could ignore it or whatever.

And I'm like, with your crazy super game super game brain maybe that's not the way normal people think and it will be difficult for them to want to mix plus then you know there's cheating concerns and all sorts of stuff like that um and so i was very adamant that uh they not be mixed and i said you know you can you can just label it on the front of the card. You know, in other words, an expansion symbol, essentially, or what turned out to be an expansion symbol. Just label it on the front of the card, not the back of the card. That way people can always sort out and mix just as they want.

They can exclude Ice Age and play just Ice Age or just Magic or mix them both or whatever. And Richard was very against that idea, and I was very passionate in arguing it as you know you might uh have remembered i can be passionate in arguing things i do remember that and i i convinced peter that it really should be uh no change to the card back so that's and and then it turned out that the cards never changed their backs they all went the same peter had agreed in that's, and then it turned out that the cards never changed their backs. They were all at the same. Peter had agreed in that meeting and that was it. And that was the

story I told for many years. What I didn't know was that Richard had called him afterward and said, no, don't do that. And so they were going to go with different card backs. Even though I convinced him in that meeting, Richard called him after and reconvinced him or whatever and obviously you know you're gonna listen to richard not me right so they were on track for different facts then what happened and this is the part i found out later was that the distributors and retailers that he was talking to heard of these plans and said you idiot don't do that keep the same card back and then that swung him back into into keeping the same card backs so I think it like it took me plus all of the distributors and retailers combined or

anyway the ones that were giving feedback together to counterweight Richard I think either one alone would not have done it. I don't, I think if the, if the, if the retailers had said that and Richard and all of us were aligned, they would have had different backs and vice versa. I think if the retailers and distributors hadn't told him that he would have overridden me. Okay. So you, you contributed to that then.

That's good. I contributed to that. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk Ice Age. So Richard comes to you guys and says, okay, this game's coming out, but we want to be prepared in case we need it.

Can you build another, an expansion? So what did he say? What did he say? Maybe you tell me what he said. Well, remember, this was all before the game came out. So this wasn't really him saying oh we need it or we need another expansion or anything like that it was just sort of a recognition that um you could change the game really not even by changing the cards necessarily per se but by

changing the mix of the cards so like you can have an expansion come out that had no i don't know counter spells in it and the game would play completely differently or it would have less creatures in it and that game would play completely differently or the creatures themselves could be either you know uh bigger and faster and stronger and and better mana curve wise or worse mana curve wise which would put the you know end time of the game at a different spot with just the creature track. Again, all that changes the game completely. So,

so yeah, we had thought, you know, different groups there sort of had their own ideas of, because this, by the time Ice Age was going to be created, the game had gone through three major iterations, three or four major iterations.

And so different people liked different aspects of the game and thought that counter spells were terrible or regeneration shouldn't be around or whatever. And so Richard was like, fine, just come up with your own mix of cards and we'll just see how that mix plays. And again, I would say this is sort of pre-commercial like the game hadn't even come out yet i think that that was almost more in the very very beginning of the idea almost more like a test of um of these ideas of what the ideal

card mix should be just go out and create your own and we'll play that for a while uh and and then of course by the time the game releases then it's that it has commercial applications as well okay so what what was the genesis of the creation of ice age what were you guys trying to do uh just make a different mix of cards um did it have a theme to you or yeah i, the idea, again, sort of along the lines of Ice Age itself, you know, oh, it's whatever, cold and life is harder and etc. And so it was supposed to be definitely was supposed to have, you know, I would say worse creatures than the original mix and be more about non-creature things. I don't know if that played out because there were so many changes from that version to the final version, but that was definitely a little part of the idea. And then the idea was, again, as the game was progressing more and more, to have less of the

really, really super powerful things in it. Ice age being like, you know, you sort of think of prehistory and before civilization. And so you don't need things like moxes and lotuses and stuff hanging around. Okay, so you make Ice Age. The last set that that group of people made together was Alliances, correct? Yes. So do you remember the making of alliances yes i do remember making of alliances yeah what was it what was the driving and so the other thing i i believe is you guys when you made alliances weren't trying to make an expansion to ice age correct you're trying to

make its own thing is that right no no we were trying to make an expansion oh you were trying to make expansion i say okay yeah we we wanted, we wanted these sets to have a big set and two little sets. Okay. And so definitely Alliances was supposed to be an expansion to Ice Age that you could play. When the set idea actually came about and you actually see a set like Ice Age uniquely and you can play it by itself, it was fun. But you knew that that card pool was too limited. So the idea was to expand that card pool

to where, in the old days they had this thing called block constructor. You guys don't have that anymore, I'm assuming, right? Block constructor is no longer a thing, yes. So the idea was to have a contained, constructed environment that had a larger card pool than we could put

out in one set that was still pretty interesting to play. So there was supposed to be another Ice Age expansion but we never got around to it and just by this the way the schedule was coming out then and there were so many different groups queued up as to who was doing what in terms of getting to produce their own set. And we were doing so much development. You know, obviously, second Ice Age expansion as worked on by that group and as an expansion to Ice Age never came out. Well, we did eventually make one. I know.

Oh, sorry. Right. We ma know. Oh, sorry, right. We mailed that to you guys, right? You guys found our notes? Yeah, it was in a file cabinet, I believe. Yeah, yeah. So my question, as a designer of magic, what are you most proud of? What is the thing that you're most like,

wow, of all the things I've made, this is the thing that really stood out? I mean, for me, I guess, it's a tough question. Like, if you want to talk about a single card, that's Force of Will. If you want to talk about a set, I don't know, maybe it's,

I say it's just cause the whole idea of doing a new block I think was on its own enough. If you want to talk story, that'd be antiquities. If you want to talk in general, overall contribution to the game itself, I would say the rule system. I mean, I had hated the way the timing system worked for a long time. And so, um, I mean, most people don't realize this. I was the first one to really, um, introduce templating, like demand that, that templating be followed and introduced.

Richard would have different words like this card would be destroy a creature. This card would be kill a creature. This card would be whatever, disintegrate a creature. And they would all be, they all mean the same thing in his mind, but they were worded and i was like that's that's crazy you have to work the things that work the same the same way and so um and six edition rules was really um along with other people but like that was my had been my dream and goal for a long time oh that's good. So we're probably my... Yeah, the rules... Crystallization, I think, was probably my... Personally, my favorite contribution.

Yeah, I don't... It's funny, I don't... For people who aren't behind the scenes, the importance of templating... I mean, obviously, it's become more of a... I mean, we have it nailed down now after so many years. Right. But, like, when the game first started, if you go look at Alpha, it's interesting that, like, even in Alpha, you know, you did a good job of generally connecting things. You know what I'm saying?

But, like, you could see it. We were fighting heavily with the editors. Yeah. So, like, the editors were like, oh, that's just bad editing, you know, to have to word the same thing the same way all the time. They were used to editing novels. Now, eventually they caught on and obviously became critical in helping us do what we wanted to. But, yeah, in the beginning, it was a huge, huge, huge struggle. People see people didn't play hobby games in the 1980s most of the people

around today uh no game had templating i mean it was extremely rare i mean there's just tons of games back then you can look up and two cards that are supposed to do the same thing are just absolutely worded differently that was the norm so well i want to i'm almost to my desk here scaf so i i want to thank you. One of the things that's really interesting, and I love going over all the stuff you've done, is just how much of what you've done has just influenced what came after. Like, you made the first story, and that really inspired a lot of different things with the story. You know, as well as, like, creating things like the Phyrexians, you know, and stuff that have gone on to really become a big part of magic lore, Urza, stuff like that.

And a lot, like just Ice Age really making the template of being the first standalone set. There's a lot of stuff like that. And so I love talking with you about it because it's just so cool. It's easy to be an explorer in a young world. But like I say, if we build... What's the quote about standing

on the shoulders of giants? Yes. If I've seen further than most, it's because I've stood on the shoulders of giants.

Right, right. Isaac Newton, I think, at least that's why. He has a credit for it. I don't know if

he actually said it. Someone else said it. Yeah, as a standard. Yeah. But anyway, I just want to, like I said, one of the reasons

it's so fun talking with you, it's fun, I love hearing, like, you tell stories of things that I just don't know because I said, one of the reasons it's so fun talking with you, it's fun, I love hearing, you tell stories of things that I just don't know because of the early days before I was there. So it's always fun to hear. Yeah.

Well, like I said, I'm learning too. Only two years ago, I learned that thing about the retailer distributor card back thing. Yes. So anyway, I just want to wrap up. I want to thank you so much for being here. But as I've arrived at my desk,

we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So thank you so much, Scab, for joining me. Thank you for having me. I loved it. Okay, and guys, I will see you next time.