Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #773: Adam Prosak

Episode Date: September 11, 2020

In this podcast, I interview Adam Prosak, a Magic designer who most recently led the set design for Core Set 2021.

I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Coronavirus edition. Okay guys, I've been lining up lots of fun interviews and the fun continues today with Adam Prosak. So Adam, welcome. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Okay, so Adam, we're going to start by asking the question I've been asking everybody, which is, how did you get into magic? We're going to start by asking the question I've been asking everybody, which is, how did you get into Magic? Yeah, so I actually have an awesome intro story. So during my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary, my cousins and I were just bored with the festivities or whatever. And one of my cousins was like, hey, I got this new game I want you to try.

And so I actually have the... And there are all sorts of pictures taken at this event. And one of these pictures is me and five of my cousins sitting around in a circle playing a game of Magic. And it was our first game of Magic. It was crazy. Each one of us picked a different color at random, basically. I think I got stuck with red. I don't know. But that's how we thought we played Magic for a long time. And then my early Magic playing was just with that same group of me and four of my family members just sitting around in a circle. And we thought magic had to be played with five players so those that was a lot of my introduction to to magic the green deck was so strong because they had all the big creatures so when was this well like what set roughly what set was this so hard hard for me to say i think most of them were with i I had a lot of revised and 4th edition cards.

Okay. But a lot of my early Magic playing... Like, when I started to get cards of my own, ended up being, like, Ice Age and Homelands. I remember having a lot of fond memories of, like, those early Homeland's cards. So many, many, many years ago. Oh, yeah.

I've been playing Magic for almost two-thirds of my life now. It's funny. Star Magic is how you got introduced to Magic. That's quite funny. Yeah. Okay. So let's walk. So you started playing Magic.

So how did you transition from playing Magic kind of fun with your family members to playing more competitively? How did that happen? Yeah, so before I started at Wizards, I was heavily involved in tournament play. I played all sorts of different sanctioned Magic. I still love playing FNM when we're allowed to. and M1, you know, we're allowed to. And, but yeah, I basically, when I went away to college, I was on an internet relay chat where someone,

that was based around Magic, because, oh, this is a game I like. And somebody from the area, I went to school in Cincinnati, Ohio. Somebody from the area was like, hey, I'm looking for somebody to go to Magic tournaments with. Anybody from the area. And then we became fast friends. And that's how we kind of started. I hadn't really played in too many Magic tournaments before then.

I mean, I spent a lot of my early years playing Magic not even knowing that Magic tournaments existed. So yeah, just seeing this thing as a competitive outlet, because I'm a pretty competitive person, and seeing Magic as that competitive outlet, something I can focus at, you know, work at, get better at. And it was just, like, the best thing at that time for me. So, yeah, I loved the early exploration of Magic tournaments. So what was your best finish? What was your best finish? So I probably played

in around six pro tours. I think six pro tours. Maybe, yeah. And then I had so every once in a while I qualified for a handful more. Probably like my

best finishes were at the Star City Games Invitationals. I made the top eight of three of them, which I'm very happy with. And I won two of the Opens as well. So a lot of my best tournament success came like kind of later in my career. Because like when I started playing tournament magic, like there wasn't anything like that. It was just Percher qualifiers and the Percher and Grand Prix. Okay, so how did you go from, you know, playing magic sort of competitively to getting to Wizards?

What was the transition to Wizards? Yeah, so over the course of my playing career, I met a lot of people in the community. A lot of those people ended up working at Wizards. One of those people is my first manager, Dave Humphries. I actually played another card game where Dave worked at, and I was one of the best players. where Dave worked at. And I was one of the best players in that,

so we had some sort of... He knew who I was when my name came up for coming to work at Wizards. And then also at the time, I had done a variety of writing, streaming in the early days of Twitch, doing some commentary. So I was well-known in a lot of my articles and content was about kind of magic theory

and how magic works instead of just like decklist after decklist or how to solve this particular environment. But thinking about magic as a whole. Yeah, I should, real quickly, I just wanted to say something to people out there who have dreams of one day working at Wizards. What you did, writing articles where you demonstrate

that you understand the game, the competitive articles or the decklist articles, I mean, there's lots of readers for those, those are great, but the thing we always kind of look at is does this person understand the fundamentals of what's going on and so articles that really show us that you get it you understand how it works uh are from from an r&d standpoint are the ones we're most interested in as far as looking for you know new candidates because we it's important to us we can find people

that get it i mean magic is a very complex game lots of moving parts um and one of the things we always look for when looking for external people, you know, for new people, is do they get the fundamentals? Because there's a lot to learn. And so you walking in the door knowing a decent amount of it helps a lot. Yeah, absolutely. And, yeah, I think, yeah, I just think, like, magic has a lot of theory behind it um especially uh you know competitive theory like what are the strongest things um has like certain types of cards are

end up being uh have like natural advantages in terms of um how strong like one one of the things i uh i kind of harp on in a lot of my design meetings is like well we have to be really careful with the cards that don't cost a lot of mana they're so like i often say like four mana is way more than twice as much as two mana. That's an example of how the mana system in Magic works in ways that might not be obvious

to a lot of players. When you were first brought in, what year did you join Wizards? Next month, September is going to be my 7 year anniversary so 7 years ago I started right before the Theros

pre-release so when you were first brought in, one of the things that I know you were known for when we brought you in originally was you were a really good deck builder you know, and that one of the challenges in Magic is we're making brand new cards all the time and we want to figure out like what what what's going to cause problems right because we're trying to balance things and you originally brought in what was it development at

the time yes back when we had development before before play design um and so i know that one of the reasons we brought you in originally was that having the ability to look at new things and break them down quickly is really valuable when we're trying to figure out what might cause us problems. Yeah.

One of the things I still find very jarring is like, you sit down and you build a deck, you play like a game, maybe a game and a half and you're just like okay throw this deck in the trash there's something either it's like not fun things aren't right it's too strong it's not strong enough like the amount i will play after building a deck is just so small when the cards can change rapidly. Whereas, like, if I sit down and build a deck

for, like, Magic Arena, I'll play dozens and dozens of games with that deck because I just, like, find something I enjoy and play it a lot. So it's really jarring, like, the difference between, like, working, deck building while working, and then deck building while, you know, playing and having fun. Yeah, the thing with the audience, it's interesting, is that to the audience, it's static, right? Cards are cards.

If they exist, that is what they are. Right, cool. That's the reality. Yeah. But behind the scenes, like, right, one of the hard parts about working on the game is nothing is permanent you know like everything can change and so right like you you build a deck and all of a sudden it's too strong well cards in it will change and then now the deck doesn't work necessarily or not the same yeah a lot of times like i build a deck put you know play card it's

like okay this doesn't do anything let's you know i to go. I'll even like pull a card out of a deck and just put it on my desk as a note. Just like, I don't need this card for anything else, but I do need the notes. Okay. So you started doing development. So I want to get a little bit, one of the things that I like talking about with people is stuff they led just because it's interesting to get it. Like, um,

obviously the way it works at wizards is you're on a bunch of teams and then you work your way up. And so there was a lot of things along the way. Um, and you've been there for seven years, so you've been on lots and lots of teams, but I want to focus a little bit on stuff that you were more in charge of just cause it's interesting. I like hearing all the decision-making and,

uh, hearing stuff you're in charge of usually gets us the best insight there. So the first thing that I have you leading here, or major thing you're leading, was Eternal Mafters. Is that correct? Yeah. So when I started, I kind of, in addition to the deck building thing you noted,

I think one of my strengths is that I know a lot of magic cards. Like, some people are you know really uh just like trivia buffs like good at magic trivia or like know all the cards know all the thing and um that's that's absolutely one of my strengths um so when it comes to reprint products, like the master sets, I was a good person to go to. So like giving me kind of, I won't say they're easier because they're not easier, but they're like more restrictive. There's fewer possibilities with reprint stuff. So I thought that those were good sets for me to lead. Just to start with, as a way to get your...

One of the things behind the scenes, real quickly, is we have lots of people, and what we want to do is make a trajectory so that the people can learn and get better and train and stuff. And so Magic makes a lot of products. And so one of the things that's really important is, like, the very first thing you lead

is not the hardest thing in the world to do. It's something that has some parameters on it. For example, on my end, if you're leading Vision, I have you lead a return, usually before I have you lead a new set, because a new world has a lot more issues to solve than a world we're going back to because we've already solved some of those issues because we were there before yeah and it's not

just that but like give give people something they'd be good at to start so make sure like for example it would not make a lot of sense for like me to lead a vision set while you lead the master sets that's not a good use of our respective skill sets that is very true um so but master sets are within my skill set so that was a very good like uh oh this is something you know i'm naturally good at doing so yeah one one of the reasons that Master Sets are really interesting, because, like, sometimes the thing about Master Sets is, like, sometimes there's a card you almost want to use. It just has, like, this little weird old rule, like, templating quirk from, you know, sometime in Magic's history. Like, a lot of times where, like, old cards are symmetrical, they affect all players. And that just doesn't work for the limited environment.

It's like, oh no, I would love to just make a new card and do that, but you can't do that with a massive set. So it often ends up being really, really challenging. often ends up being really, really challenging. I mean, the other thing that is important for people to understand is, just like any new set we build with new cards, you still have all the same things you're trying to do. You're trying to build a limited environment. You're trying to build archetypes.

Like, you're trying to build something. So you just have, like, less paint colors to use. Right, right. Yeah. It's like, instead of just, like, a broad canvas, which you can do whatever i have yeah it's like instead of just like a broad you know canvas which you can do whatever you want you get a lot of numbers but you still have to paint by numbers yeah so it's a lot it's very um restrictive and sometimes that's like easy it's like oh that's the best i can do or sometimes it's really frustrating because like i really really need this but it doesn't exist it's like hey time machine can we go back and print this you know

random three drop with this creature type that does you know like uh so so eternal what was the theme of eternal masters do you remember so yeah eternal masters So yeah, Eternal Masters was one of the earlier Master sets. I think it was the third Master set. So Modern Masters, the original one, and then Modern Masters 2015, and then Eternal Masters. And that was the first one that had cards that weren't Modern League on it. So it had Legacy and Vintage cards. So like Force of Will and Wasteland were the like kind of the headline cards at the time. And it was super exciting to, you know, finally reprint those cards after 15 years or whatever it was.

So that was the thing. And then, yeah, just kind of limited themes throughout the set. just kind of limited themes throughout the set. Yeah, like my favorite was like green and white enchantments was really cool. And then go deep and find all these like weird green enchantments that kind of aren't color-fye appropriate, but exist. Okay, so you did Eternal Masters, and then the next big thing you did was Modern Masters 2017. Yeah,

so that was the theme of that one was it was a multicolor thing, because at the time Masters sets were based on kind of blocks that were introduced, and one of the big blocks that

we had access to for the first time for that was return to ravnica so it was like oh let's make this a multi-color set um and for those uh magic historians that was the uh that was the about the time when uh the internet thought we would never reprint damnation so i made sure that damnation was in that in that one too uh oh something you brought up that i don't know the audience is aware of um when we make master sets usually there's some sort of gap between when the sets come out and they show up in a master's. We want to go back and get older stuff and bring back older stuff. And so what you're saying is sometimes we're making a master's like, oh, this set's not available and not even accessed where before we wouldn't have put it in a master's set. Right. Yeah, a lot of time we wanted to kind of like each master's set had a few more uh sets that like either they hadn't come out in

the real world um or we want them to like rotate out of standard before we put them in a master set um now we now our master sets are mostly kind of themes like the recent double masters has an artifact theme um back with Modern Masters 17, it wasn't necessarily based on a, like, overarching theme like most of our main sets are, but, like, mostly based on what we want to put in the set, like what sets we want to draw from. So before we move off Masters,

what is your... What is the thing that people most misunderstand about Masters? Like, what is the thing that's... As a guy who makes lots of Master sets, what is the thing you don't think people know about it? Uh... I guess, um...

the... the different, like, how difficult it is to fit the right themes, like, giving, at least making the Master Sets, actually I find very challenging. Like, yeah, kind of what I explained about the, like, oh, there's not always the card you want to make. Sometimes it's really uh really skewed like one of my big regrets about um masters uh 2017 was that there weren't enough demure cards that were good candidates so i ended up uh using one that i very much regret uh just because the options weren't that great. Like, I regret putting Dinrover Horror in the set. That was really unbalancing.

But, like, the other options were not... they're much, much weaker and didn't do that much. So sometimes you just have to stretch, and sometimes that backfires. Okay, so now let's transition away from sets without new cards. Uh, so the next step we're going to talk about is a combination. It had some reprints, but it had a lot of new cards, modern horizons.

Yeah. Um, so this horizon is so fascinating. Uh, I absolutely, to this day, it remains my favorite um project not just because of like the final product which i absolutely love um but i also just love the

journey that we went on like just as like a whole even a whole company like just like what it started at and what it be you it morphed into over time, how we had to go through each of the different like, okay, what is this? Like what are we doing? Like what are we allowing ourselves to do? What's the goal here? I know you had a lot of work involved in like kind of the genesis of it like you did a like um uh we we call them hackathons yeah yeah the uh basically the story is uh ethan and i each

individually went in and pitched uh a very i mean it was similar enough that uh uh mark lobis who was in charge at the time said why don't you guys just put this together? You seem to basically want the same thing. Right, right. And so, yeah, we had a week to sort of prove ourselves, and then we got picked. And then a year later, it came out, so. Yeah. And then not only, like, the thing that kind of, like, got picked was very different from what we ended up,

but, like, the spiritual like uh like the idea is the same but like oh are we gonna like what are we gonna do with these reprints like what kind of um stuff do we want like how are we going to position this you know like when are we going to release it going to position this? You know, like, when are we going to release it? Well, our original pitch didn't involve modern at all. Correct. We were just like,

let's do another time spiral. Let's do another nostalgia-driven and franchise player but a supplemental set rather than a main and a premiere set. And then it sort of took on this once it became modern like it took on this whole other life once that aspect i still

remember the moment that was there like um bill rose one of our vice presidents was like oh hey like you know like what kind of audience would like this and then eventually came around like well people that really like modern would like this is like okay well and then yeah just like the kind of i don't know the whole like um then from that to that and then like the whole product kind of like picked up a lot of steam, uh, as we kept working on it. Like, um, the more, the more we were able to like internally, the more we were able to spread the word around, like, Hey, come check out this product.

The more people got excited about it just internally. And that's how we knew it was going to be a really big hit. Yeah, it is funny to watch it from skeptical early beginnings to everyone was so excited. Yeah, a lot of things like, will people even want this? And then as we made it, the answer was just so clearly like, yeah, I kind of want this. Okay, so I'm not too far from getting to work here so i want to get on to your your uh entry into a making a premiere set so the first time uh core 2021 was your baby so let's difference between Modern Horizons and Core 2021 was kind of having to fully

integrate with the play design team at the end of the process. So for all our other sets, there's still a set design team, product reviews you still interact there's still you know like creative art directors and card conceptors that you work with but the big difference between a standard legal set is the presence of the play design team

and specifically the the grind that is getting your set through the FFL process. That's a ton of work. We have a ton of talented people on play design. Can you explain FFL real quickly? Adam, can you explain FFL? Oh, yes.

So FFL is our internal play tests. It's called Future Future League. That doesn't really mean too much to us. FFL is our internal playtesting process for standard legal sets. So that you can play ahead, so that you guys are playing the environment of the future so that we can make changes

based on what we learn about that environment. Right, and we try and use a little combination of stuff that's already been released and stuff that's new um so we can kind of see how the new stuff interacts with the old stuff that we have some good data on um but sometimes that yeah like i think when we were working on M21, Throne of Eldraine was just released. So we got the whole Ravnica year plus Throne of Eldraine, but we didn't have any information on Theros or Ikoria.

So we had some stuff that was new and we were playtesting and some stuff that had already been released. Okay, so I want to ask you about a few things in Core 2021. Yeah. Okay, so the thing that I got the most positive buzz on was the dog theme. So how did the dog theme come about? Yeah, so I love, like, my favorite Magic stuff is just, like, the whimsical stuff, I like all the, like, meme cards, um, I like making jokes about cards, I love giving nicknames to cards, um, and so, at some point, like, I just started calling anything that's, like, a hound or anything like, you know, a good doggo. I love dogs.

I have, you know, my Shih Tzu is, you know, my favorite. So I love dogs. And like, yeah, we just kind of got around talking. It's like we're kind of lamenting. It's like, why don't we have, why do we still have these hounds and not these dogs? Dogs are way cooler. And then I was talking with, like, a bunch of people that, like, could actually change this stuff. It's like, okay, I want to change this.

What do I have to do? And then go around talking to people. It's like, okay, nobody has an objection. It's like, oh, why did we do this so much earlier? I know you had some frustration at various points, but, like, I guess the, you know, with the people we have, that, you know,

the kind of, you know, the way magic is going, a little bit more lighthearted than it has historically. Yeah, I think it's just an easy change. It's funny, the behind the scenes is I spent years trying to make this change. I mean, like 15 years.

And then I felt like I resigned. I resigned to like, okay, I guess it's never going to change. And then you're like completely unaware and just get it changed. I'm like, what? But I'm happy to see it happen yeah me too um and that part of it was uh and then the other interesting thing about core 20 working on core 2020 uh core

2021 is yeah is um jumpstart so we had to figure out how these two products, how much they are intertwined. We decided that they wanted to use a lot of themes that overlapped in the sets. There are Planeswalker themes for each of the five Planeswalkers. There are themes for each of the limited archetypes that overlap. Jumpstart uses a lot of core 2021 but like at some point it's its own product it's different it has it had we decided that it needed the flexibility to do what it wanted it couldn't be um

that tight at the hip with the the main. And I think Jumpstart is super cool. Yeah, so... Jumpstart ended up amazing. Something the audience doesn't know, there was a point in time where Core 2021 and Jumpstart were, like, kind of the same thing. Like, it started on the...

And then they sort of drifted apart a little bit as they realized that they were... They could overlap, but they were kind of separate products. But there was definitely a point in time where Core 2021 is penciled as, because Doug had been trying to do Jumpstart forever, and like, okay, this is going to be the place we do it.

We're going to incorporate it into the Core set. And then I know they got extracted over time. They ended up being not the same thing. But yeah, so the lead of Jumpstart, Doug Beyer, and I worked a ton early on in the process. It's like, how are we aligning things? How are we, you know, how are we going to set both of these things up for success?

And even super early on, it was pitched that like, oh, maybe I am in charge of both products. Maybe they're that close together that I can do both of them. But that was quickly, by the time we started design, that was not the case. And Doug was an awesome person. He had worked so much on the initial kind of thing that ended the initial design that became

Jumpstart. Did Yanni do the set design? Doug. Oh, Doug did the set. No, no, I mean, did Doug do the set design as well as the vision? Oh, he did. He did. Okay. Yeah, Yanni was on the team and did a lot of the game balance. Okay, okay. Stuff for it.

But yeah, Doug was the lead on Jumpstart. And yeah, Doug's great because he's, his main job is as a creative person, a card conceptor.

But he's just so talented that he's got some game, you know, he's led a couple of products as well. And Jumpstart was his baby. Jumpstart was his baby Jumpstart was his idea yep absolutely interestingly it was in the same hackathon

the same hackathon that we did Modern Horizons is when we did that yep I remember playing both of them because of printing issues it ended up taking longer like what the audience doesn't always realize is we had to invent new printing processes to be able to even make Jumpstart.

And behind the scenes, it's a very complex product from a production standpoint. And I'm not sure the audience on the end necessarily understands that. But it took us a lot longer to figure out how to make it. I don't mean design it. I mean physically print the product yeah right and a lot of times that that kind of stuff is challenging and sometimes frustrating as game designers it's like we want to do so many things but you know we're limited by like you know our cards have to be like we have pieces of cardboard that have to

be physically made yeah collation yeah there's all sorts of things we have to be physically made. Yeah, or collation. There's all sorts of things we have to work under. So anyway, I am almost at my desk. So anything you want to sum up? Anything that's sort of your time at Wizards that you want to hit upon that we haven't yet? No, working at

Wizards is still, seven years years in still my dream job i love coming into my other room to work every day um and i can't wait to uh i really miss going back in the office and seeing everybody um but yeah working at Wizards is literally a dream come true, and even after all these years. And, yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you, Adam. So guys, looks like I'm at my desk, 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. So Adam, thanks so much for being here today. Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure. And guys, I will see all of you next time. Bye-bye.