Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #781: Ken Nagle

Episode Date: October 9, 2020

In this podcast, I interview Ken Nagle, runner-up of the first Great Designer Search and longtime R&D member.

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 one of the things I've done while at home is doing interviews with lots of people who work on Magic, and or community people on Magic. But today I have someone who's worked on Magic for quite a while now, Ken Nagel. So, Ken, welcome. Thanks for having me, Mark, in this Not Drive to Work podcast. Yes, on the drive to my den.

Okay, so I'm going to start with the question I've been asking everybody. How did you get into magic? Well, I was 14 or so. This is right in the time between middle school and high school. And the summer classes offered were driver's ed and PE. And so for driver's ed, we kind of sat around on the floor watching videos. some people were playing cards on the floor. And when I took a closer look, they weren't, you know, jacks and kings. They were angels and demons, things like that. And I'm pretty sure the first card I ever picked up was a phallid from Fallen Empires. So I looked and said, this isn't a jack of hearts.

What is this crazy thing? And every single card was something else equally crazy. So from there, we passed the time in the super boring driver's ed class by playing with someone else's magic cards. And this is a time when every deck was just all the forests and all the green cards. That's a deck. All the red cards and all the green cards that's a deck all the red cards and all

the mountains that's a different deck uh so for to give people some sense what set was out what round win was this fallen empires i'm pretty sure was the latest set and it was before uh ice age okay so okay so we're talking 90 the The first booster pack I ever purchased was a high-stage booster pack. Right, this is 94. Yeah, I think it's 94. Okay. Okay, so how did you go from learning in your driver's ed class to... What's the gap between that and the first great designer search?

So that was from 94 to 2007 2006 ish so that was a pretty deep rabbit hole to pick up that salad and look at it right and then to be making you know more green cards and more salads because the game needs more and more uh That was high school plus college plus grad school plus a programming job for the Navy, a different programming job for the Army. And then the Great Designer Search happened in 2006 and concluded around December 2006. My first day at Wizards was January 15, 2007.

So what got you to try the very first great designer search? Why did you even enter it? Well, my friends were playing cards, like, just for funsies, right? Because we had our normal day jobs and played at night. And I said, hey, here's a job thing on the internet. Mark Rosewater is going to run something like the apprentice an online interview uh and i had played enough of the game through osmosis to potentially learn how to design new magic cards uh i wasn't like most of the people in the great designer search where i had like sets and sets of

stuff that i'd come up with you know i had an entire like 20 cards i'd come up with or something so uh i did the work to get past the first few questions while my friends did not it's crazy how if you make them write 500 words about the color pie, they're like, I don't know. And then they stop. But through all the hurdles, I answered the questions and did all the exercises and was barely hanging on up until the final three. So here's a story that I don't know if the audience knows, but it's one of my favorite behind the scenes stories of you. So here's a story that I don't know if the audience knows, but it's one of my favorite behind-the-scenes stories of you.

So first you do the essays, then you take the multiple-choice test, and the third test is a card design test where we give you constraints and you have to design some number of cards so we can test your card design skills. And so I send everybody who had passed the multiple-choice test, I send out the car design test, and then I said, you have to turn it in

during this 24-hour window, starting at midnight to midnight. You have 24 hours to turn this in. And you turned it in at 12.01 a.m. The first minute you could turn it in, you turned it in. And everybody else took time, because

they wanted to get extra time for the designs or whatever. But you turned it in uh and everybody else like took time because you know uh like they wanted to get extra time for the designs or whatever but you turned it in immediately uh and i always remember that that you were the like you turned in like 1201 and the next person turned it in 12 hours later or something it was uh right so my thinking there was hey here's the test uh i probably i'm not gonna pass anyway but uh what i can be is the fastest person to turn it in that's for sure and the test was bizarre because you sort of needed six cards that were five colors and like in all the card types it just didn't match up so i turned in a bunch of cards that actually became real cards like dryad arbor became a real card yeah uh the align the hedrons hedron alignment is a card i submitted back then that

became a real card so uh it was more or less i used three or so cards from the 20 it already made and then just filled in the rest of the blanks to fill the colors, card types, and converted mana costs that were missing. And then just hit send because I could sit there and mull it over or I could be the first one and make an impression that way. It was funny because I was a little frustrated

when I saw that you turned in. I'm like, oh, come on. He didn't even maximize his time. And then I looked at him and I go, that is pretty good. So anyway, so you obviously did well at the Great Designer Search, coming in second, basically. But you got offered an internship. So coming in second, you still got an internship.

So what was that like, being an intern at Wizard? What was that experience? It's a lot of work. Most people think that making games, designing games, playing games, testing games, producing them, it's all fun. There's no drama. There's no busy work. There's no grinding. But definitely it's a company with cubicles and paperwork and all that jazz.

It's a company with cubicles and paperwork and all that jazz. But I definitely wanted to learn as much as I could because I'm operating under the assumption that I'm not going to get far in this creative design research. I'm still operating on the assumption I'm not going to get very far in this internship either. either right so uh i had assumed i would eventually have to move back but uh i had a dual internship with both magic and dual masters and i've led three dual master sets uh between that internship and now so i had to do multiple games, multiple resource systems, and just try to keep up to speed. Because once you hit inside the doors, it's not like there's a set. It's three months working on that. Like the real world, it's no. There's like six sets all in flight of various completionists right so you have to absorb everything

uh and everything's moving as far as what the cards are mechanics are themes are artwork swaps and everything so it's definitely a gigantic bigger puzzle of a different ilk when you're inside trying to make a game than when you're outside just trying to play the game learn the game okay so you obviously your uh was it a six month internship i think it was a six month internship yeah six and then it got extended to around uh eight so it was around august i had a uh offer letter that i still have upstairs so anyway uh it turns into a full-time job. So over the years, you've had the chance to work on a lot of different magic stuff.

I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the stuff that you led. So we're going to start with the very first set that you led, which was Worldwake. So let's talk a little bit about leading your very first set. Right. So I remember that being brought into the office, and you were there, and they're saying, Ken, we're going to have you lead this set. Right. So I remember that being brought into the office and you were there and they're saying, Ken, we're going to have you leave this set. It's a small set. It's a little early for you to leave this set, but here you go. Right. Cause I play test. I'd been on Zendikar and I actually play tested the early version of Zendikar when it was called a Landa Palooza. Yeah. Right.

the early version of Zendikar when it was called Landapalooza. Yeah. Right? So I had a grasp on that. And so Worldwake was my first lead. I got to make a bunch of cards that I have always wanted to make. Emulet of Vigor is one. Terastadon is another.

So I had a lot of – I've been given reigns of stuff I wasn't used to having the rains for. And I specifically remember early design playtests of Worldwake. The lands mattered like way too much, right? We had landfall mattering. We had when you play a forest, that would matter. To where it would matter most on your sixth or seventh turn, you actually just wanted to draw more basic lands off the top of your deck and all the spells were way worse than just playing another land uh that's what we call over theming right so uh world weight continues to be my favorite set

um that i've ever done it has a very special place in my heart it was your first set you always remember your first set is it's world wake yeah my first set was tempest and i have a warm spot for tempest that was my first set um okay so we make world wake so the next thing you did was actually not a uh a premiere set but was a um a supplemental set arch enemy let's talk a little bit about making arch enemy yeah so arch enemy is the sort of mini versus one multiplayer format i had at some point in rnd i had the most multiplayer experience of anyone that had been there because most people were hired off of having pro tour experience but i've only had one literal one pro tour I've been to.

And I played tons of multiplayer during those college years. So we had the notion that could a different kind of multiplayer be where one person is the big bad and something like two, three or four other people can sort of gang up on them. something like two, three, or four other people can sort of gang up on them. So you have to sort of power up the arch enemy to where they can handle it. So arch enemy is the many versus one multiplayer format. And I like doing stuff like that because you get to make lots of griefy things happen, right?

It's fun to feel very overpowered. For those that don't know, real quick, Ken is the griefer of R&D. Griefer meaning you enjoy sort of the pain of other players. Right. We could be playing the game, but it's more fun if I play the game and then you sort of like suffer watching me play the game.

But it's taken me a long time to come to terms to admit that by the way i agree for uh to me yeah so i mean our chain me was was very interesting in that like one of the things i like about um uh so this is one of our innovative products innovation skew which is just here's a different way to play Magic. Here's something that's different from the norm. And I love the flavor of Arch Enemy, just the giant cards that the Arch Enemy used, and that

they really had this crazy supervillain sort of feel to them. Yeah, the balance is the most difficult thing, which is not my strong suit, right? I can get maybe 75 percent of the way there but getting the archenemy to be balanced and we did slightly different stuff in archenemy nickel ball that's right some of the schemes they actually like level up and stuff later in the game

so uh it's fun different format but again the the balance is difficult to get under control. Okay, next up was New Phyrexia, which was definitely... I guess Worldwide was a small set. I'll call New Phyrexia a medium set. Right, so I was specifically asked by VP

Bill Rose to make New Phyrexia feel not like a third set right because it was uh the third in a line scars of mirrodin mirrodin deceased new phyrexia wanted to feel like oh this is sort of one step away from being a third set so definitely wanted it to feel like the bad guys have won the phyrexians are taking their victory lap, and evil abounds. So some of that griefer tendency is leaked in there. There's lots of bleedy things, lots of stuff to make opponents lose life, lots of color pie bendy things that make all the colors feel evil.

things that make all the colors feel evil. So that's probably the most evil feeling I can make something feel in a magic set. That's New Phyrexia. For the audience that might not have played during that time, we did this thing where we went back to Mirrodin, which we had visited before, and then you learned that, oh my God, the Phyrexians were there. And then in the second set, there was a war in which, like, the Phyrexians were like 10% of the first set.

And then they were at 50% of the second set. And we told the audience, depending on the outcome of the war, the third set would either be New Phyrexia or Mirrodin Pure. And we didn't let them know the name of the set until, like, right before the set released. Right, so I definitely wanted to feel 90% Phyrexia instead of 1, right?

10% Mirrored and stuff. So I think the players mostly figured that out, but... The smart ones figured it out. I don't think they got what they wanted. There was a lot of debate, but the smart ones... The people that sort of kind of understand our systems figured it out, because we made it so that when the block was done, half the cards were Phyrexian and half the cards were Mirren,

and if you crunched the numbers, you could figure that out, but... Okay, so let's go so then your next big project was another um innovate innovation skew commander decks there's this format that's kind of popular uh so we made decks for it yeah commander grassroots format was getting a bunch of play by rnd uh internally as well and i made a bunch of decks godo bandit warlord was my favorite one but i had a handful of others so uh at the time it wasn't commander it was just an innovation multiplayer skew so think of something like you could play it two-headed giant you could play it free for all something like that which uh actually became different uh products later about a whole bond right conspiracy yeah but eventually it was settled on hey if we take this format we call it

commander we make specific parts for it and maybe clean up the rules and stuff like that. We could make a product specifically geared towards it. And so that became five Commander decks with lots of new cards and new three-color Commanders. These are wedges because they had the least amount of support. You could play like Vorosh the Hunter or something, but we gave you the mimeoplasm right so uh that's why we chose the wedges they needed the most love and we made a bunch of multiplayer skewing uh new cards and that product was so popular it became a yearly staple yeah it almost became annual it was too slow to get annualized in the beginning so we had

a commander's arsenal to fill the interim and then it became like commander 2012 13 14 15 right and we've actually expanded it to be uh you know try to give people commander wherever they can including our normal sets too right so? So the format's that popular. Okay, so the next set you did, we're back to a premiere set, is you did Return to Ravnica. What was that like? Right, so that was pretty cool because we knew that Ravnica was beloved.

It was actually my favorite set leading up to being inside R&D. So the thing about original ravnica there were three there was four guilds three guilds three guilds and that was a three set model right this time we did it different there were five and then five right and dragon's maze was the last set with all of them so we needed to fit five guilds in one set and five in the other so we had to do a little puzzle of maybe some fast ones maybe some slow ones right you want your speed to be there uh balance between both sets and so we had to come up with new mechanics for the five guilds that were similar but not the same, right?

Golgari needed a graveyard mechanic, right? Azorius kind of wanted a slow, controlly mechanic. So what was the first Azorius mechanic we did? That's where you reveal it on your upkeep? No, no, no. I don't mean the one we did originally.

I mean, in design for Return to Ravnica, we started with a different mechanic that we later printed in a different set. What mechanic first was here, but we took it out, and then it ended up showing up in a later set? Well, we printed Detain. I know we tried

a couple things that we cut because they were too lame. Which ones are you specifically thinking of? Constellation was first for Azorius.

Oh. But it didn't, it wasn't, the problem was it's hard to do things that are very synergistic, very, like, themed to something because the things around it don't... The problem was it's hard to do things that are very synergistic, very, like, themed to something because the things around it don't have that theme.

And so it's hard to care about things sometimes like that. Yeah, we cut that pretty quick. Like, card type stuff is a hard sell in a set with guilds and you're trying to wiggle people around in draft. Yeah. But we tried a lot of stuff for all the guilds to end up where we ended up.

Overload is a mechanic that I had actually in my Great Designer search again, my original submission. You can kind of tell. If it doesn't get printed once, it's a secret of being an R&D, you can keep trying it until it sticks. You're telling if it doesn't get printed once, it's a secret of being an R&D. You can keep trying it until it sticks.

You're telling me I'm the master of that. Yeah. Just be persistent and keep trying. Eventually, the overload will stick. Heater and alignment will stick.

So. Okay. So after Return to Ravnica, the next set you led was a middle set, Born of the Gods. Right, so Born of the Gods had a bunch of structure to it, being a middle set. So we knew what the first set had. It had Theros with gods, heroes, and monsters.

And then we knew that we needed some more gods, some more heroes, some more monsters. So the gods for sets two and three journey into next one of the guys we did the multi-color ones right so we had some of those to fill we did a different monster mechanic and tribute uh and then we had a we had a story thing trying to make uh creatures, creatures feeling inspired. At least when we were play testing it, uh, we called it like dreaming, uh,

because the storyline is if you have enough followers thinking about you, worshiping you, believing in you, uh, in your God, then you actually become real. Right. So that was the inspiration for,

uh, the inspiring mechanic throughout one of the gods. Yeah, there was, uh, you actually become real, right? So that was the inspiration for the Inspired Mechanic throughout Born of the Gods. Yeah, there was a... Behind the scenes, a lot of the story shifted a bit as we were making it. And, like, originally,

there was going to be a big war in the third set between the mortals and the creatures made by the gods, and none of that actually ended up happening. Right. We were trying to build up some kind of, you know, bigger sale conflict to, you know, choose a side, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, Board of the Gods is interesting, and it definitely, we kind of knew where we wanted to start, and we kind of knew where we wanted to end, because we wanted to save some stuff for the third set, because third sets are kind of knew where we wanted to start, and we kind of knew where we wanted to end, because we wanted to save some stuff for the third set, because third sets are kind of hard. But Borm was kind of straddling between the two things,

and it definitely was a tricky set. Right. Yeah, we wanted to save all the Constellation that you mentioned earlier, Linears, for the third set, because usually the problem is the third set has the difficulty, which is the thought that New Phyrexia was having

when I was told by the VP to try to be bigger slash more main-setty. But I think we stopped three-set models for a little while after that. Yeah, we did. Okay, so your next set was another middle set. Fate Reforged. Talking about a set living in between two other sets. Right, so Fate Reforged

is the middle small set between two large sets, right? Yep. It's a time travel story. So the Khans of Tarkir have won the day in the first set. And in the third set, the dragons of Tarkir have won the day.

But in Fate Reforged, it's a thousand years in the past. And Sarkhan Val is the POV character. And so both dragons and Khans can win the day. So it's up in the air. Yeah, the way we drafted the set was you drafted the Khans came out, and then when Fate Reforged, you drafted them together. And then when Dragons came out, you just drafted just dragons and Fate. You didn't draft Khans because because they represent the two different versions

of the timeline, basically. Right, they were supposed to not coexist, right? Yeah. Time travel trope, right? Two things, they were mutually exclusive. So there's a bunch of gimmicks in Fate Reforged trying to hint that, hey, you know, this inventor created a vial in this timeline

and a bow in that timeline because you've got to shoot dragons in one timeline or blow up humans in the other. So it had a bunch of gimmicks, I'll say. It was hard. It was easy to do the things pointing at Khans of Tarkir and way harder to do the ones pointing at Dragons of Tarkir, because that set was still being made, being in flux.

Yeah, and the fact that you had... It had to work with both sets. I mean, I know when I stuck you on, and when I pitched you to be the lead of it, I knew it was a very complicated set, so I had faith for you to try to figure that all out. Yeah, that's why there's a bunch of hybrid

mythics, like Tassigur and those rares that have one color hybrid mana of the other two. So you could play them in your cons deck that's wedge colors, or you could play it in your Dragons of Tarkir deck that's only two colors.

So we had to straddle a bunch of lines like that. Okay, so let's jump to the next set. I'm trying to get through all your sets here. So the next set you did was Eldritch Moon. Ooh, very creepy. So Eldritch Moon is the cosmic horror. Only hinted at, right? Yeah.

In Shepard's Renistrad. But now full-blown Eldrazi-fied werewolves, Eldrazi-fied humans going crazy everywhere. So more transform cards. This time they become Colossal Drazi. That's a thing we did on the backsides of a lot of the cards. This time they become Colossal Drazi. That's a thing we did on the backsides of a lot of the cards. And we tried to play

up a sense of dread, right? So the werewolves actually flip in a different way, and that's that there's some anticipation to it. Your creatures could spring forth from other ones, right so we we tried to get the evolve theme uh big and loud and the top that all off but i had a pretty crazy powerpoint slide

uh that got a lot of wows that would show uh the two angels that would form Drizella, right? They would... Bruna and Drizella could flip over and meld into Drizella, right? The voice of Nightmare. So I had it animated on a slide. It wasn't real yet. But... Here's a behind-the-scenes thing

for the audience. You had been trying to figure out how to make some sort of mechanic where things came together, like a new Phyrexia that was one of your mechanics that ended up getting cut. But it was, it was a passion of yours to try to figure out. And then you realized that double-faced cards could get you there.

Right. Yeah. Just something fun that cards could do in general is you could, you know, smash them together and get something bigger and better so tried it multiple times and needed the transform the back side of two different transform cards to get there uh for the you know three meld pairs in hildric moon okay so uh that was bfm inspired right yes the first time that was done. Yeah, BFM and Unglued was our first smashing cards together. Okay, so the last premiere set that you led was Ixalan, which you and I actually

co-led together. Right. Ixalan, the exploring plane where it's a new plane, so we had to fill it in with all the denizens, right? So we had a couple sort of explorers. They were the pirates. They were the vampires. And then a couple sort of people that were already there. So we got merfolk, right?

They're defending the temple. There's a secret, right, to defend. they're defending the temple. There's a secret, right, to defend. So we tried to put a bunch... There's the explore mechanic in general that's supposed to get a feeling of going on an adventure, right? And we started with a bunch of crazy grids for how the colors would work.

I specifically remember dinosaurs being blue green uh because you could have big stompy monsters on the battlefield but some i guess plesiosaurs in the ocean right yeah a mosasaurus or two however after playing with iterations that were like that we decided hey um we need more. I think people are going to want more dinosaurs than this. So we swapped them to Naya and sort of decided, hey, maybe the big plant eaters and maybe the pterosaurs would be white, right?

Yeah, the problem we had when they were blue-green was they were just one archetype. And so many people wanted to draft dinosaurs that everyone was they were blue-green was they were just one archetype, and so many people wanted to draft dinosaurs that everyone was fighting over blue-green, and we're like, oh, dinosaurs are cool. Let's put them in more colors so more people can draft them. Right. So eventually, wiggling things around, we decided that people would like the pirates and the dinosaurs the most so they

got three different colors and then the smaller tribes got to be vampires and merfolk so and we we gave them as fresh color right merfolk get green and vampires get white so i mean we try to be fresh all around because that's what a new play needs to be needs to have you know self-identity something that hasn't been done before. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't that we thought people wouldn't like vampires or merfolk, just we had done a lot of merfolk and vampires in Magic's history,

and dinosaurs and pirates were mostly new. I mean, we had touched on them a little bit, but mostly were new tribes that you could build. Yeah, so we felt that there was a bunch of stuff or you know pent up rage or pent up emotion or pent up wants to actually give ramirez de petro right the true calling uh and to not accidentally make dinosaurs like allosaurus reyer uh right to do him justice so Ken, I am almost at my desk here. So I'm just curious, looking back, I mean, you've been at Wizards how many years now?

Since January 15, 2007, so that's 13 years plus coronavirus, right? So what, so sort of a sum up, sort of your time working on Magic. If you had to give a parting thought on it. What I like to say is Magic's a big game, but it's only getting bigger. And it's a very voracious and hungry beast. And it will always want new cards.

And that's what I'm here for. Well, anyway, it's been, it's always a pleasure. Ken and I have been in many, many, many teams together. In fact, we're on a team now doing cool stuff in the future that you guys can't know about yet. But it's always fun working with you, Ken.

But, go ahead. Yeah, thanks, everyone. Enjoy the interview. And hopefully we'll have a longer drive to work. But anyway, guys, I now see 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 thanks, Ken, for joining us. Thank you, Mark. And you guys, I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.