Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #802: Kaldheim, Part 1

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

This is part one of a two-part series on the design of Kaldheim.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Coronavirus edition. Okay, guys. It is time to talk Kaldheim. So, I'm going to tell you the story, or at least my part of the story, of Kaldheim's design. Okay, so, we start by going... Let me start by saying that we have been talking about doing a Norse set forever. I mean, I probably the first time, like, I remember discussing doing a Norse set was over 20 years ago. Like, it's been on the short list forever.

I know, for example, when we were doing Kamigawa, and Kamigawa was the first top-down set that we ever did, or I guess I'll be nice was the first top-down set that we ever did, or I guess I'll recognize it as the first top-down, but the first set where we said, okay, we're going to design this top-down more consciously as a block. And I know we wrote down all the worlds we wanted to do. The winner was obviously Japanese mythology. Number two was Egyptian.

I think number three was Norse. Greek and Norse were both up there. But Norse is one of those things that we keep talking about. But we never actually put it on the schedule. It was always one day we're going to make a Norse set. But it never quite got put on the schedule. And then, so nowadays, the way we sort of plan out is we'll get a bunch of people together. It is me. It is Aaron Forsythe, who's my boss. Several members of the creative team. Jenna Helen.

Doug Byer. Jess. Anyway, there's a bunch of people from the creative team and then normally we have like Eric Lauer will be there representing set design, Dave Humphries often is there Anyway, we'll have about, I don't know 8 to 10 people, there's a few other people

that are there, and we sort of pitch ideas of what could we do and normally what'll happen is we'll put a bunch of ideas up on the board of, these are world ideas that we've been talking about. Some of them come about because the creative team has a cool idea for a world. Some come out because I have some mechanical thing I'm interested to explore. And sometimes they're just things people ask for.

And Norse is a very popular – it's something we knew one day we would do. And it's – so every time we'd have one of these meetings, we'd write up like Norse always got written up. But we always ended up picking other things. So one meeting we're there and we put them all up on the board and Aaron says, we always put this on the board but we never do it. How about this time we do it? And so we put

Norse on the schedule. Now originally the Norse set was supposed to be the fall set of 2020. So where Zendikar Rising was North set was supposed to be the Fall set of 2020. So where Zendikar Rising was, was originally going to be, it was going to be the Fall set. And then, I don't even remember what happened. I was supposed to lead, I was supposed to lead Call Time back when it was going to be the Fall set, because I was leading the Fall set. But then the schedule got moved around.

And so instead of it being the fall set, it got moved to be the – I'm using Northern Hemisphere seasons here. It got moved to be in the winter, early in 2021. And I think what happened was we'd already mapped everything out. So I was kind of already locked in to do the fall set. And so anyway, I tapped Ethan. Ethan Fleischer was the lead vision designer for call time. I was on the team.

Normally what happens is even when I'm not leading the vision, I'm on the team. I'm on all the vision design teams. That is the easiest way I've learned for me to sort of keep it. It's easier for me to be in the meetings than it is to hear updates outside of the meetings because it's hard to wrap your brain around what's going on when you're not there. So I'm on all the vision design teams. And so I was there.

So obviously, as I tell you the story, I was there, but I was not the lead. Ethan Flesher was the lead. Now, Ethan has led vision design teams before, but this is the first new world that Ethan has read. New worlds are a little trickier because when you're doing an established world, yeah, you're finding new tweaks and things, but it's already sort of fleshed out. But when you're doing a new world, there is nothing fleshed out yet. So you have to sort of figure it out.

So I did work a lot with Ethan because this was his first New World. But I think he did a really good job, obviously, looking at the set. So let's start by talking about, like, the interesting thing when you're doing a top-down set. This is clearly a top-down set is, okay, we're doing Norse mythology. So one of the things you do very early on in design is you sort of say, okay, well, what would people expect? What does the audience expect? And you just write down things on the board.

Like, you should have frost giants. You should have dwarves. So you're writing down all the different things that you think. You should have vikings. What would people expect from Norse mythology? You have to have gods. And so we made the long list. So one of the things that was made the long list um so one of the things that was very clear early on and one of the things so when you are making a top-down set

a top-down magic set uh the thing that i always want to do early is what is something unique to that world that sort of blends with magic in a way where magic can put its own stamp on it. Right? So one of the ideas early on that we gravitated toward was in Norse mythology, there are nine realms. Earth is Midgard, which is one of the realms. But then there was, you know, there's nine different realms. And one of the mythologies is talking about the gods walking between the realms. Well, nine worlds and there are characters, special characters that can walk between them. Does that sound like anything?

So it's very clear that the idea of different worlds is something magic does very well. And so something we talked about very early on was that Magic really likes multiples of five, right? Because of the color wheel. So early on, they were talking about maybe doing five worlds just because there's a lot of resources. Every world – someone has to make the world and stuff. But I was very adamant that I thought there should be 10, not five. Um, and I think Ethan shared my desire for it to be 10. Um, but he was worried that it was, it was too big of an ask, you know, if, uh, um, so

I, I remember I had a meeting, uh, with Aaron's, my, my boss, um, really sort of saying, look, I know this is extra, like, it'll take extra work, but, um, you know, going from nine realms to five realms just seems like a letdown, right? Like, we lost four realms. Like, going nine realms to ten realms, A, felt closer to Norse mythology, and B, you know, just, I just felt like five realms just felt like not enough. And Aaron got what I was saying, and we got extra resources, and, you know, we were able to make nine realms so the idea that we had very early on with the nine

realms was that we were going to take the color pairs you know the two color pairs and that we would assign each two color pair to a world and then we decided that each world would have an iconic tribe was the idea

and the thought process was that Each world would have an iconic tribe was the idea. And the thought process was that we know the tribal stuff just works very well with players. I mean players really sort of enjoy it. And so what we wanted to do was, okay, well, so there are nine existing realms. I will admit that I don't – well, I know a decent amount of norse mythology or i know some norse mythology um most of my knowledge is a little more filtered through marvel and thor um i don't know all i don't know all of the um the worlds but i do know that we the creative team went and looked at the existing worlds in actual norse mythology and then so nine of the ten realms I think are offshoots. I mean, they're our take on them, but they're

sort of, we were inspired by actual realms from Norse mythology. And then what we did is for each one, we assigned a creature, a creature type. Because one of the things, flashback, when I

talk about on the board, we wrote things on the board like, oh, what would people expect? One of the things I go flashback when I talk about on the board, we wrote things on the board, like, Oh, what, what would people expect? One of the things we realized very early on is one of the things people expect are there's a lot of creature types you expect. Like if you do Norse mythology and don't do elves or dwarves or giants or Vikings, you know, like, like, um, I'll get to, I'll get to Vikings in a second. Um, you know, it, it definitely is something that is like, there are a lot of things that just feel like, well, how do you not do that? How do you not, you know?

And so we like the idea of doing the realms and tying them to colors and tying them to creature types. And we really like the idea, we realized that there needed to be some sort of tribal component. That there's something that the, you kind of wanted to build a deck of elves or a deck of dwarves. You kind of wanted to do that. But what we realized was, is that the, there was more,

there were more, like normally when you do creature types and you do like a, a more traditional tribal set, you, you have a list of how many you could get away with. And that you can, normally when we do a tribal set, you have a list of how many you can get away with. And that you can – normally when we do a tribal set, like we'll – back in the day, we would try a little more.

Like, you know, I think Lorwyn has eight. But the problem when you do something like eight is just there's no room in the set for anything but one of those eight. And so we knew that we wanted to do something tribal, but the tricky part about it was that we're doing a top-down set. There's a lot of one-ofs that you want to do, right? There's a lot of, you know, hey, there's this legendary squirrel. How do you not do a legendary squirrel, right?

You know, I definitely want to do a legendary squirrel. But, like, there's a lot of one-ofs and things that we definitely want to do. And, like, in a top-down set, like, we got to do this or we got to do Legendary Squirrel. But, like, there's a lot of one-offs and things that we definitely want to do. Like, in a top-down set, like, we got to do this, we got to do that. So we wanted to have a tribal component, but we didn't want it to take up too much space. So the other thing we wrote on the board early on was we knew there were some tribal components we wanted. We knew we needed gods. And we knew we wanted some sort of combat. Like, when you're doing Norse, you're also doing a lot of the Viking stuff.

And so, like, we wanted, like, you know you wanted some combat mechanic or something. We knew that would be kind of, had to be somewhat combat-oriented. There's a lot of fighting that goes on. And then also, we wrote up a few other things about Norse mythology. We talked about omens, we talked about runes, you know, there was a bunch of things that we really said, okay, if we want to do this, we have to do that. So,

there's a lot of things we wrote early on that definitely sort of guided where we were going. Okay, so, oh, okay, let me quick aside before I get into talking about tribal stuff. Let me talk a little

bit about Vikings, just cause so one of the things that came up very early on was, should Viking be a creature type? Something we talked about. I'll be honest, I was in the camp of, I wanted Viking to be a creature type.

The tricky thing about it was that Viking, even though I think nowadays that modern people sort of think of Viking like it's some sort of occupation, I think technically it has to do with where you're from. technically it has to do with where you're from and magic has, I mean, one of the things that's always tricky is the balance between, you know, look we have a lot of catch-all creature types that represent

things. When do you want to do a specific new flavorful thing and when do you want to, like, for example if we made Viking a brand new creature type and called it Viking, there's no support anywhere else. If you want to make like, for example, if we made Viking a brand new creature type and called it Viking, there's no support anywhere else. If you want to make a Viking deck, you got this set and only this set to work with.

Whereas, if we made Viking like Warriors and Berserkers and things like that, well, there's years and years of Magic who've made those cards, so there's a lot more backward compatibility. And there's always a tension there because, hey, dinosaurs are cool, dinosaurs are cool

pirates are cool, ninjas are cool we definitely have things where like oh we want to do this cool thing and there's a lot of talk of viking unto itself but we had done a lot of stuff obviously Zendikar Rising the set before cared about warriors in a big way

so like there was a lot of tension there we did talk about it in the end we decided that we would use our normal combat stuff to represent the vikings rather than a viking creature type uh but i just want people to know we did we did discuss it and did talk about it and i i was probably the biggest champion of trying to do it um but it was clear the majority people did not want to do it so So I did not actually talk about this. Here's why you listen to my podcast because I tell you things that I forgot to write about in my article.

OK. So back to the tribal stuff. OK. So we knew we wanted tribal components. We knew we were going to tie each realm to have a – not that they're limited to that race, but they were the main one from that realm. So the thing we came up with was something we called clan.

And clan, interestingly enough, actually came from a mechanic we had done what was the code name? It was salad. So Dominaria Salad. So Dominaria was Soup. So Dominaria was supposed

to have a small set called Salad. Soup and Salad were the name of the block. Because we used to do, for a long time Magic did large, small, small. Or did three set blocks. They weren't always large, small, small. And then we moved to a world where we did two two set blocks every year. And now we're in a world where things can be

as big as they want to be. But a lot of worlds are one set blocks every year. And now we're in a world where things can be as big as they want to be, but a lot of worlds are one set blocks. One set. Just one set. I guess they're not blocks. And where am I going with this? Oh, yeah, sorry. Soup and salad. So Dominaria was the set that kind of shifted. I mean, Guilds of Ravnica and Raven Allegiance were already two large sets.

And so they just sort of split apart. But when small sets went away, well, Soup was a small set, so it went away. In Soup originally, the plan was that it was going to be the attack on the bad guy, Belzenlok, was doing evil things and the good guys had to come and stop him. And so originally the attack on the castle was going to be in Soup Salad. And so the whole set was the big final climax fight.

So sort of everything leading up to it and then the, you know, the dominaria would end on it. Now we must, you know, attack. But anyway, because it was a combat-oriented set, we made a mechanic we called Leader. And the way Leader worked was when a card with Leader enters a battlefield, you choose a leader, and then it grants an ability to the leader. Now, if you play a second card with leader, you have a choice to change

who the leader is, but there's only ever one leader. So if I change the leader, now the first card and the second card both grant something to that creature. Now, I can keep it the same. I don't have to change the leader. So let's say the first card granted the leader flying, and the second card granted the leader first strike. Well, now, whatever

the leader is, which is one creature, has both flying and first strike. Anyway, it was a cool mechanic we never ended up making. Maybe one day we'll make it. But when we were trying to make a tribal thing, we said, well, what if we took that technology and said, okay, so the way clan worked was you picked a tribe.

You picked a creature type. And then it affected that creature type. And the idea was that if you played a second card, well, you had to pick a creature type. Now, you could change the creature type, but it only affected one thing at once. So all your clan cards only affected one thing. The thought process was it in Constructed, well, you know, if you make a deck based on dwarves or whatever, well, just you'll name dwarves.

So, like, for all intents and purposes, it was like, it just was a very flexible mechanic that could apply to whatever creature type you wanted to. And in Constructed, most of the time, you just would name the thing your deck's built around. But in Limited, we thought it'd be kind of fun. You know, like, hmm, based on my board right now, I kind of want dwarves. But maybe the game changed. Like, Limited, we thought it'd be kind of fun. That's something, you know, like, hmm, based on my board right now, I kind of want dwarves, but maybe the game changes, like, ooh, now I want elves and not dwarves.

And so the idea that you could change it, we thought would be cool. And one of the things that's very interesting is when you're playtesting things in vision design, a lot of what goes on is you're not, you're just trying to have fun. You know what I'm saying? you're not, the vision designers are not the pro players, right? we're not the ones who are pulled off the pro tour

not that we're bad at magic or anything but we're, you know, we're trying to just enjoy what we're doing, we're trying to have fun and when things get to play design and set design they're more like optimizing it because they're pro players

it was the kind of mechanic that ended up being a little bit clunky so the reason clan didn't stick around was there wasn't enough decision making to be made and when there was decision making it was making people tank it's slang I don't think R&D invented

the term tank but tanking just means you have to think real long and hard. And so what happened is, oh, let me think about my deck and what might I draw and what's in my hand. And there's all these factors because if you name something, you know, you're stuck with it. And so anyway,

we ended up, so for various reasons, clan ended up being more than necessary and we kept tweaking it, we tried different things, but in the end, there are a few individual cards that let you name a creature type, but there's less of those, and they're not nearly at lower, like, we had

ours set up so that you would, in limited, clan was a real thing. And that you really could build things where you're caring about creature types. And, because you could name what you needed to, you could mix and match them. But anyway, so clan ended up sort of converting over to just a more generic tribal theme,

which is still in the set. And if you notice, all the worlds, the worlds do very much each have their feel. The other thing you'll notice that happened in set design is one of the other tricky things about creature types is or tribal play certain tribes have a certain feel to them like let's take giants as an example

well giants are big creatures that smash they're large and they're good fighters but the problem there is okay so they tend to be bigger it's hard to do tribal giants just because there's no cheap like, it's hard to do tribal tribal giants just because, well, they, there's no cheap giants.

There's no small giants. And so it's kind of hard to tribally build around them. And so, like, for example, what we did in this set is we tied giants to wizards. So, if you're going to make a deck, the few rewards we did reward both giants and wizards

so that you can put giant wizards together so you can kind of curve out your deck. Because wizards tend to be small and tend not to be big. So you can make sort of small into big and then it would work. I think if we look at the worlds, most of the creature types that we chose for the worlds were chosen because they were something that made sense for the flavor. Like I said, a lot of the realms were based on the actual Norse realms.

A lot of the work, you know, like, one of the realms is like the Dark Elves, so we'll do our version of the Dark Elves, you know, because we're doing our take on it. So let's see here if I can... Okay, so there are ten realms. So let me walk through the realms. Okay, so

there was Axegard which is kind of like Asgard. Or no, is Axegard like Asgard or no, is Asgard like Asgard? well anyway, so okay, so Asgard is the red white one and it's focus was on dwarves so we knew when we were doing this that dwarves are super iconic from Norse mythology

and a lot of the dwarves as weapon makers, as craftsmen I think Norse mythology is kind of the biggest place that that started, kind of the origin

of the craftsman dwarf, I think, started in... I mean, it got picked up by Tolkien and stuff, so I mean, you see it in other places, but I believe the origin of the dwarves as craftsmen

thing comes from Norse mythology. So we knew we wanted to do a place that had the dwarves. We made it the red-white world because dwarves are red and white. Yeah, dwarves, when Richard started, by the way, back in Alpha, he had made them red.

I think the reason he made them red was they're from the mountains. They live in the mountains, and red mountain is a thing. And I think for a long time we kept them in red. We try to play up maybe the emotional aspect of dwarves. They are very much impulsive and stuff. But one of the things we realized was, well, a lot of the other things about dwarves was there's attention to detail and they're very dedicated.

And so there's a lot of things that felt very white about them. And so in Kaladesh, we made the decision to start doing dwarves in white. And so now dwarves show up in red and white when we do them. And so in Kaladesh, we made the decision to start doing dwarves in white. And so now dwarves show up in red and white when we do them. And so it made a lot of sense. The other thing was dwarves tend to make equipment. Red and white are the colors that care about equipment.

They're the more combat-oriented colors. So anyway, it just made a lot of sense that the red and white would be where the dwarves in Axegard. Next, Bredegard. Next, Bredegard. So this is the green white world. This is the humans. So this is Midgard was Earth. So in the sorry, let me take a drink here.

Coughing. In Norse mythology, one of the worlds was literally Earth, right? And so we decided that we would have, we wanted to do Vikings, you know, we wanted to have that sort of feel. So when you're doing Norse, not only are you doing Norse mythology,

but also you're tapping into a lot of the historical Viking things as well. And so that was another big part of it. And we knew we wanted to do a world that had that. So, um, Breton Guard, interestingly, while it's the green-white world, we actually made Viking clans for each color. The white is Beskir,

the blue is Omenseekers, the black is the Skel, the red is the Tskeri, and the green is the Kana. Kana. Um, so anyway, this is a, I think we said it's a sprawling

grassland in ancient Forge. So there's a lot of nature here. But it's where it's also the white world. Green and white when you get together are community. So this is kind of where the humans, so the humans this is the human world. So like if the Axegar is the dwarves, this is where the humans are. This is where a lot of the Viking stuff happens.

And so and in a lot of ways, this was the world that was most trying to sort of get sort of a Scandinavian feel sort of to it. OK. Next, Notvald. So Notvald is the red-green world. Trolls is the focus creature. So once again, there's a lot of fantasy borrows from Norse mythology.

A lot of what happened is different mythologies did different things and then something like Tolkien, for example, pulled pieces of a lot of it to sort of put things together. And Tolkien, in a lot of ways, was the model that D&D used and magic borrows a lot from Tolkien.

And so a lot of what people think of modern day fantasy there's a couple different sources tolkien's one of the big ones um but anyway a lot of uh certain things got pulled through there and um one of the things we realized when we wanted to go to norse was there's just so many fantasy creature types that are at home so trolls is a good example of so we put it in red and green. We like the idea that they're sort of trolls are kind of

big nasties and red and green made a lot of sense. And also the idea of sort of a mountainy world with lots of forests. Mountainy forest made a lot of sense for a world. I'm not sure, by the way, I'm not, I don't know

every world, I don't know the original source material on all of these, so, like, I don't know whether we made not-vols or whether that's borrowing of something. Sounds like something that was already a realm, but, uh. Okay, next. Amherstrum, so black and red. So this is where the demons live. It's a land of fire and constant warfare.

I think we knew when we went through that we liked the idea of doing demons. I don't know if the average person is aware, but demons – there were demons in Norse mythology. In fact, I guess if you're if your window into Norse mythology is like Thor in the Marvel movies, we do see... I think we see a demon. I think we see a demon in one of the Marvel movies. Anyway, I know this is

the world of fire is another actual realm, I think, from Norse mythology. But black and red seem cool. Demons and black and red made a lot of sense. It's kind of the hedonistic color combinationons and black-red made a lot of sense. It's kind of the hedonistic color combination and so sticking demons there made a lot of sense. Next is Isfell.

So Isfell is the world of spirits. It's white-blue. It's a mist-shroud realm at the base of the world tree. And then it's where most people go after they die. And so Isfell was basically...

The Norse mythology was very obsessed on the afterworld, and there is a couple different places you go when you die, depending on who you were. I think this is... I don't remember the original Norse name, but there kind of is the place for heroes, the place for bad people, and then kind of

everybody else. This is kind of, I think, the everybody else one. We like, we do spirits quite a bit, and white and blue. We did white-blue spirits here. Later in the year, we'll be going back to Innistrad, and white-blue spirits are one of the races from Innistrad. Once again, see if I can figure out which one we made up. I'm not 100% sure. Next we get to Karfel. Karfel is the blue-black world.

It's where the zombies are. They call them Draugrs in Norse mythology, I believe. But they're creature-type zombie to us. We do call them Draugrs, but they're creature-type zombie. Yeah, zombies are very much part of Norse mythology. The Draugrs are a big part.

Like I said, they get very upset. The Norse mythology really has a lot to do with dying in the underworld and stuff. I don't know if they call it the underworld. That might be Greek. But there's a lot with sort of the worlds of death and things. And part of the Nine Realms definitely played in the space of, oh, well, now you go to this realm, you know, when you die and stuff. And this is, what does it say?

The undead Draugr are the only remnant of an ancient and prosperous civilization, but their fortresses have crumbled into ice-covered ruins. So, oh, I see. This is a world that's all sort of died off and all that's left are the zombies. Next, we have Lothara, I believe it's pronounced. I apologize if I'm mispronouncing these. This is the blue-green world. We put the shapeshifters here.

It's a mysterious realm of lakes and pine forests. It's home to an equally enigmatic race of shapeshifters. So, this came about, I think, because the same reason that, like, Lorwyn ended up having Changeling is why this had Changeling. I'll get to Changeling probably in the next part.

But anyway, we knew we wanted to do a lot of tribal stuff. We wanted a little bit of tribal glue here. Since clan didn't end up working out, having some shapeshifters helped. And so we ended up up the blue-green definitely is the place where it makes the most sense. It's where we do our shapeshifting, and so the blue-green world being the shapeshifting made a lot of sense. It's quite possible that that might be

our world. That's my guess. That's my guess that we didn't base on somebody else and that's our world. I'm not 100% sure, though. Okay, so next is Skimfar. Primary next is Skemphar. Primary color, green. Secondary color, black. Focus tribe, the elves.

So this is the world. So the dark elves are a big thing of – I think – I don't know whether there's two sets of elves in Norse mythology. But anyway, the dark elves are a big thing of, um, I think, I don't know whether there's two sets of elves in Norse mythology, but anyway, the, the dark elves are a big thing. Um, like the second Thor movie, I think the bad guy is the leader of the dark elves. Um, so this is a shadowy, the shadow forest realm. Uh, it's where the elves live and, um, the elves are a pretty popular part of Norse mythology. So we knew we had to do our version of the elves. The elves are a little bit, uh little bit darker and creepier here.

So it's in black-green. Next, Starnheim. Black and white. That's where the angels are. So we wanted to do Valkyries. So Valkyries are winged creatures. Probably one of the most iconic elements in Norse mythology. So we did our version of Valkyries, which are angel creature type.

But we wanted to do Valkyries. And this is the world. Winged battle angels called Valkyries, which are angel creature type. But we want to do Valkyries. And this is the world. Wing battle angels called Valkyries select the worthy dead to spend eternity with them in their feasting hall in this realm. So this is, once again, I said there is like the place where the good guys get to go, the bad guys get to go, and everybody else. This is like where the good guys end up going. I think it's possible that Immerstrom's where the bad guys go when you die if you're not good. You go to Immerstrom.

And then you go to Isfell if you're in the neutral category. And you go to Starnheim if you're one of the worthy. And then our last world was Surtland, which is red and blue. And this was the giants. We knew we wanted to do giants.

Uh, the interesting thing is there are two different giants. I think, uh, there are frost giants and there are fire giants. Uh, and so we put them in blue red so that the blue could be the frost giants and the red could be, uh, the fire giants. Um, but it's, it's a snowy world. It's a realm of constant geological turmoil inhabited by two races of fierce giants locked in a never-ending war

so that allowed us to do both of them but we could unite them in a creature I mean they're both giants, it made sense anyway I think a big part of giving the flavor to the world was kind of locking down these realms and so that was a big part of making the set work.

But guys, I see my desk. So we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work. But this is just part one. So I did not finish. So you can join me next time or next week when I will do part two and I will continue talking about the design

of Call Time. So I guys hope you enjoy this and I will continue talking about the design of, um, call time. So I guys hope you enjoy this and I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.