Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #829: Dark Ascension with Tom LaPille

Episode Date: April 30, 2021

I sit down with former Magic designer Tom LaPille to talk about the design of Dark Ascension.

I'm not pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Coronavirus edition. So I've been doing this fun thing where I've been inviting designers, new and old, to come talk about sets we worked on together. So today I have Tom LaPilli. Hey, Tom. Hello. And we're going to talk about Dark Ascension. That's Tom that I led the design, Tom led the development. um that's uh tom that i i led the design tom led the development um but but before we jump into that before we get there's a story your name comes up there's one story where your name comes up more than any of stories that i tell which is the creation of the double-faced cards as in indistrott so i i would love to tell your side of the story what what is your version of how that came to be?

So I know a lot of people hate these things. I think they are... There's a lot of things in Magic where I think they are basically inevitable. No matter how much you do or don't like them, they must happen. I think, Mark, you've described Magic as a shark. It must keep moving or it will die. And all card games eventually will have double-faced cards if they live long enough is my strong opinion okay but how what is what's your

version of the story of how they came to be in the set yeah so um well they came about in dual masters because the japanese marketing team was like hey a thing we could do that would make us look neat is double-faced cards so charlie catino figure out what that means and then make them so it was like very commercially minded decision there and i i had like been involved in making some of those so then we get to innistrad and we're in the design room and you keep talking about transformation and i'm just like well i've like i've worked on things that transform do you want to try this and uh i don't remember exactly what the reaction was from like the entire room but i know you were just kind of like and uh there were definitely

wheels spinning yeah and so it was important to me that I wanted werewolves to shine because prior to Indus Drive, there had been like three werewolves. Like, Magic had done zombies and vampires and spears and stuff. That had been done before. But I felt like if we could put our mark on werewolves, that would really make the set stand out. And right, you pitched double-faced cards as your answer for werewolves. And I was intrigued.

I mean, I'll be honest, I was... I didn't know whether they work or not, but I was like, okay, let's try it. You know. And the way they originally worked is that you had a card in your deck that was a single-sided card, and then you played that card, and it went

and got you the double-sided card. But it turned out we couldn't do collation so they could actually be together. I think they said they could do it, like, 90% of the time, and we're like, well, 90% wasn't good enough, so we had to figure out how to do them without the one-sided card, and we just said, okay, just

use leave, or we made the checklist card, I think is how we did it. This was actually one thing that made me happy. In Duel Masters, you could play something and it was more like learn in some ways. Because you had basically lessons that were the double-faced cards.

But we were like, no, we want you to put this specific double-faced card in your deck. We thought that was just way better. And it turned out quite well. I know there are people who don't like the double-faced cards, but they are crazy popular in our market research.

Okay. So what happened was you were not on Innistrad, right? Or did you work on the development for Innistrad? Yeah, I was on Innistrad development. Okay. So you were on the development team for Innistrad. And was this the first that you led the development for? Do you remember?

I did Magic 2012 before that. Okay. But this was the second one. Okay, so first non-core set that you had led. Yeah. Okay, so what was that like? So, I mean, I led... I normally, by the way, do not lead second sets.

This is one of just a handful of second sets that I led. Yeah. The following year, we were going back to Ravnica, and so I let Ken Nagel lead the first. Normally, I did the fall sets, but I let Ken do it. And so let me do the small. I don't normally do second small sets. It's not something I've done much of.

Yeah, I mean, working with you is incredible. The creativity that you bring to the big sets, I felt like I was really glad I was able to tap into that, working on my first one of these things. I think my biggest lesson was around pushing on the designer to make sure that the thing they're giving me really is the best thing that they have. And I think the origin of Undying

is probably the best story of that for me where it was like the the point of dark ascension was like things get worse and when we were in divine there wasn't really any new mechanic that like made creatures really scary and i was like hey mark like so this is supposed to be about creatures getting more scary can you make something that does that maybe and you were like okay I gotta think about this and then I think the rest of this is your story to tell

right so let me give a little more parameter of what you're saying so what happened was you gave me really good advice and this was the first time you and I had worked together I mean me handing off to you I've been really What happened was, you gave me really good advice. This was the first time you and I had worked together. I mean, me handing off to you. I've been really focused, because in the story, it's kind of like the human's last gasp.

When we start the story, humans are not in a good place, and monsters are everywhere. But as the story progresses, part two of the story is, and it gets even worse. It looks like the end of humanity. It's looking really bad. I was really caught up like the end of humanity, right? It's looking really bad. And I was really caught up in like the end of humanity. And you just said,

hey, the fun part of this is not humans dying. It's you get to be big monster, big scary monsters. Could we please do something that lets you be a big scary monster? And I thought that was really, really, I was very impressed. It was great advice from you. And so the thing I wanted to was really, really, I was very impressed. It was great advice from you. And so the thing I wanted to do is I said, okay, what is the monster trope we could tap into, right? And the trope that I was really fascinated by was in a horror film, you kill the monster, or so you think.

And then the monster comes back. It's not dead. That was a very, like the monster is bigger and badder and scarier, you know. And I said, okay, how can we tap into that? So the story is I'm really having trouble figuring it out, and I'm talking to my wife, Laura. And I say to her, I know I want to do this trope, but I just don't know how to do it. And I go, the worst part is we did it already. We made a mechanic called persist.

And so Laura goes, well, just use persist. And I go, the worst part is, we did it already. We made a mechanic called Persist. And so Laura goes, well, just use Persist. And I go, but I can't use Persist. It uses minus one, minus one counters, and this set doesn't have minus one, minus one counters. It has plus one, plus one counters. And then Laura's like, well, why can't you use plus one, plus one counters? And I'm like, ah, I can, I can! And I said, okay, we'll just make Persist.

I mean, it's better than Persist, because it comes back stronger, but thematically, in the monster set, that seemed cool. And so I came with you and said, okay, we'll just make Persist. I mean, it's better than Persist because it comes back stronger. But thematically, in the monster set, that seemed cool. And so I came with you and said, what do you think of Persist with plus one, plus one counters? So what was your response? Yeah, I was in. I think the warning I had was that it was going to be more challenging to make the cards look naively appealing

because so much more power is on it coming back and like when strangle root geist comes back as a 3-2 like it doesn't say 3-2 on the card anywhere so like you have to think really hard to see everything that's there but like it certainly makes the feeling that you were talking about be what happens so um i mean there's some really weird card designs in there because of the development issues with it like there's some undying stuff that like can't block or is like really hard to cast so or um only has one toughness so that like it's not impossible to deal with in combat but um i think it worked i mean for for a set that size there was enough design space to make those creatures that i think it was cool yeah you bring up a good point which

is interesting to sort of talk about in that sometimes you have mechanics that play fine but they have a what i call an image problem right that that when people look at them for the first time they can't quite understand. I mean, really good players might get it, but the average player can't look at it and see the power that sometimes why something is good you have to play it before you really get it. And we can have some of that

in sets, because I mean, it's fine to have some things that look weaker and actually are better when you play them, but we have to be careful and it's definitely, especially what we wanted was, here's an awesome monster mechanic, it definitely on the surface didn't seem like, the cards didn't

necessarily seem as scary as they really were. Yeah, when you play with them you certainly feel it when the 4-1 Undying Red Vampire comes back as a 5-2, that moment is like oh, hello. I mean, it is funny too that you talk about mechanics with image problems.

Cause like, I think my single biggest regret on dark Ascension is that I let fateful hour go through. Let's talk about fateful hour. Um, this is my doing. I mean, you let it through, but I'm the one that made it. So, um, okay. So let's go back to mana burn for a second. So when Magic premiered back in

Alpha, Richard had created a mechanic called mana burn. It was part of the game. And the idea was if you had extra mana floating in your mana pool, at certain times when it got cleared you'd lose life based on how much mana was sitting there. And the idea was like, for stuff like mana flare, it is possible to get extra mana and not be able to spend it all. And the idea was, like, for stuff like Mana Flare, it is possible to get extra mana

and not be able to spend it all. And there was flavor there, but it was a lot to learn and it, like, never came up. And the story was, we had talked about getting rid of it in 6th edition, and for some reason,

I convinced Bill not to get rid of it. But then many years later, I'm like, do we need this? Like, magic keeps adding stuff. Can we take things away just to keep magic from getting overwhelming? And it was a rule that didn't seem like it mattered that much.

And so my team, I know in design, we said, okay, let's just play with no mana burn. And then 30 days later, we got together and said, okay, how is it like playing no mana burn? And it hadn't come up in any games we had played. And we're like, okay, maybe this doesn't need to be. So mana Burn ended up going away.

But one of the things that happened when Mana Burn went away is I was very fascinated by, okay, well, what can you do now that Mana Burn's not there? And this is, by the way, the danger of, like, I'm explaining how I got here, but it's the danger of being enamored

by, like, untapped space. And I said, oh, well, why would Mana, why would it matter? And I realized that it was hard to make life matter, life totals matter, when Mana Burn existed because you could just Mana Burn yourself. So it wasn't really hard to get there. But now that Mana Burn was away, I was

interested in trying it. And so the premise was, well, how do you show that the humans are in trouble? Well, what if when things are at their worst, they get better? They double down when things are at their worst, they get better? They double down when things are at their worst. That was the idea behind Fateful Hour. So the way it works, by the way, is it has an effect.

And if you're at five or less life, it has a larger effect. You want to talk about mechanics with image problems? Yeah. Be close to losing and then maybe we'll give you something. Okay, go ahead ahead I made this mechanic it was flavorful I agree with you go ahead I didn't love it

it clearly was like okay in some sense you could have done it without an ability word on a couple cards and it would have been fine which is what we should have done by the way it should have existed but not as a keyword and less cards I think I think that was the other lesson about me on like pushing on the designer it's like that's a

spot where like I think in hindsight like this Dark Ascension was the first place that we put sacrifice a human colon do something on like a lot of cards it's like okay we can show that it's bad for humans by like making you want to eat them

and that probably would have been fine but i thought that like with someone as as powerful as mark rosewater is my lead designer i only had so many political points to spend as like the baby lead developer or whatever so um i think i spent my points on the most important thing but maybe i should have gone further i mean the irony is i want the best set if it wasn't the best thing i mean i honestly god if you'd killed it because it wasn't working i would have said okay you know i would help you find something else so sure and i mean who knows if it would have needed anything else really like i think we could have made the set with, like, maybe you put an ability word on sacrifice a human or something.

I don't know. The set had plenty of fun things going on, I think, even without that. Yeah, my gut is we usually had two new things at the time. We probably would have. I mean, even if it was a smaller thing, we probably would have had a second named things, my guess. Sure. So let's talk about a few other themes

in the set. So one of the things that I pushed some, and you pushed some as well, is the idea, when we made Original Innistrad, I put in a tribal component, but it was very low level. Like, it was there, and you could

build around it. Maybe you could draft around it if you got lucky. But it was at a very low level. And so in the second set, I'm like, oh, let's maybe want to up that a little bit. And so we put a little bit more in to sort of unlimited to maybe make you want to play tribal.

There was like the uncommon cycle of monsters, monster lords. I think the lords in hindsight were like so powerful that almost anytime you opened one you were just supposed to take it and i think i would make those rare in hindsight so that like fewer of your drafts were on rails to that degree but like those individual card designs i think were they did really good work i thought yeah i agree i think if they'd been rare they would have done everything we wanted, and, right,

less limited would have been on rails. Yeah, but... Yeah. Second set can't all be perfect, so... Um, okay, let's talk a little bit. So there's mechanics that were in the first set that we did in the second set, so let's talk a little bit about some of those. So let's start with, um,

Transform. So... We had more werewolves. What? We had more werewolves. We did have more werewolves. Let's talk a little bit about some of those. So let's start with Transform. So I know... We had more werewolves. What? We had more werewolves. We did have more werewolves. But we experimented. I mean, like, it was a second set,

so we definitely experimented a little bit with our transforming. Like, I think... Innistrad was all creature, creature, right? I'm pretty sure it was. I'm going to have to look this up. I think it was. I think Innistrad was all creature. So the have to look this up. I think it was.

So the front side was always a creature, the back side was always a creature. Now given over half of them were werewolves, but we did have a vampire turned into a bat and a little girl turned into a demon and stuff. But in Dark Ascension, we started experimenting a little more like, well, why do both sides have to be creatures? The one I always remember is the knife that turns into the demon.

Yeah, that one's cool. I like the control magic. But there's a flying creature that when you hit someone with it, it flips into a control magic. Oh, yeah, that was cool. I mean, I think there's a lot of fun to flips into a control magic. Oh yeah, that was cool. I mean, I think there's a lot of fun to the idea of control magic, but I think there's not a lot of fun to the play of just instantly having it happen and

turning it into a little quest. I thought helped some of that. And it's fun because the audience... One of the things that's an interesting thing to think about in design is what I call mini-games, which is when you're like, everybody's like, okay, there's this little thing that's going to go on and we're all aware of what's happening

and there's this little mini-game with inside the bigger game and the card's sort of like, okay, if you let this hit you, I'm going to steal something, so don't let this hit you. And you have this little game back and forth of trying to, can you optimize and make the card work? Yep, yep. What else? and you have this little game back and forth of trying to can you optimize and make the card work? Yep. What else? Do you have anything on flashback?

I'm trying to think what we did. Flashback is that's one I always I guess the thing to talk about with flashback is Lingering Souls and Faithless Looting probably. Okay. Flashback's another image problem mechanic i think

it wasn't as bad like in the second set of a block where you've just seen it and also it's like even a returning mechanic from before that but like some of the flashback costs you have to make are like so high in comparison and um i think the the two largest numerical errors in the set are the flashback costs of Lingering Souls and Faithful Saluting. Eric told me later that if he had understood what his role was, he would have just came to me and said, I am the Eric Lauer, and this card costs one more to flashback. And I would have said, okay. And then we would not have had to ban it in a stride block constructed or whatever.

And I think the card is kind of adorable. I like that it hit constructed. I don't like that it was so ridiculous. And then I think it's just clear looking back. I don't really enjoy making standard legal cards that completely completely obliterate old formats and weird ways out of nowhere and i think the interaction between faithless looting and lion's eye diamond with dredge cards in particular is one that like i'm not proud of having added to magic like i think faithless looting is really cool i think if it's in, like, Legacy Reanimator decks, I love it. I do not love, like, discard my Golgari Grave Troll

and Stinkweed Imp with LED to flashback Faithless Looting. That is not something I am proud of. I mean, the thing to remember is, Magic is, like, 20,000 plus cards, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's... You make things that are cool in the moment, and, like, look, things are going to interact in weird ways. Like, the audience always says, well, why don't you test everything?

And I'm like, do you know how long it takes to test 20,000 card interactions? Like, it's, you know. The Eric Lauer test that has always stuck with me is, like, someone, I see this happen over and over again when I was at Wizards. He would make a card slightly weaker, someone would come to him

to complain, and he would say, did you cut any of the copies of that card from your deck? And if their answer was no, then they would walk away sadly, and Eric would know that he did the right thing. This is a spot where every standard deck that was cool that had Faithless Looting

would still have played four if I had made the flashback card cost four. As far as I'm concerned, that's just a strict error. No, I mean, sure. It's very easy to 20-20 hindsight with perfect knowledge. It's funny. One of the things I always say

is that on some level, a magic designer, your mistakes have as much history as anything else. The things that tend to be the things you get remembered for. And I mean, like, I have the honor of having more band restricted cards that I made than any other designer. I don't think that's on you, though. Like, I'm the one who is supposed to, like,

put things at responsible rates or whatever, so. Well, I mean, still, what I'm saying, though, is, I mean, even on design levels, I've made plenty of blenders over the years. I mean, the nature of making this is you're doing the best you can, and I don't think we should beat ourselves up because, I mean, yes, could some of you

have costed one more? Sure. But on some level, maybe if you costed one more, it would have been played a little bit in standard and just not played in other formats and wouldn't be the cards that people love now. You know what I'm saying? Like, in some ways, some of the cards that go on to be loved

are cards that, like, for example, I love when people talk to me about Necropotence. Okay, yeah, that's a crazy mistake. I mean, a lot of people love the card because it gets played in places, but it was a crazy, crazy mistake. And not even close to a normal mistake, like way over the line mistake,

which we somehow reprinted in a core set. But, I mean, there's something about it. I mean, a lot of lovable things that people like are things that, okay, well, maybe we could have done it differently, but we didn't. One thing you haven't talked about is that Sacrifice a Human was actually, like, kind of a thing to put in magic sets.

Oh, yeah, let's talk about that. For a while, like, the pentagram on unholy strength wasn't the thing you could do, because, like, demons and whatever. Yeah, so it's interesting. So humans as a creature type did not exist until we did the race class. Like, we decided to do a race class for creature types

where it would be what race, you know, it's a goblin, it's an elf or whatever, and then what does it do? And when we did that, we said, well, okay, because before that, humans would just always be their class. So I'm a soldier, I'm a warrior, whatever. But once we did the race class model for the creature types, we had, and so I think Mirage, not Mirage,

Mirrodin was the introduction of sort of the race class creature typing. Ironically, the set after Onslaught that was all about creature types. And it introduced human. And we were told when we first made human, when Brady and I first pitched it, they're like, okay, we'll do it, but never make it mechanically relevant.

And I said, fine, because we wanted human in the game. So I said, fine, we won't make it mechanically relevant. And then said, fine, because we wanted human in the game. So I said, fine, we won't make him mechanically relevant. And then, when Innishrod came along, I had to have a conversation with Bill Rose, the VP, saying, okay, Bill, many years ago, I promised not to make human

a creature type that matters mechanically. I go, but this set really wants it. I mean, it's one of our five things, and can I do that? You know, and Bill's like, I don't care if you do that. And I go, I don't care if I wants it. I mean, it's one of our five things. And can I do that? And Bill's like, I don't care if you do that. I'm like, well, I don't care if I do it. And so we did it.

So Indusried was the first time, I think, where human tribal was a thing, where it mattered, mechanically mattered. It existed in Mirrodin, but it mattered. And so along comes Dark Ascension. And it's a set all about making creatures matter. And humans are in trouble. And it makes total sense to have sacrificed a human.

And holy moly did that make... the amount of controversy that caused, the amount of meetings we had, and... what is your memory of it? I just felt very strongly like we had to do it. Like, if you want to... I think if you want to show that

humans are in trouble in a way that's fun for the player, make them throw their little human token at their Scourge deck player and kill something. The line, sacrifice a human, transform ravenous demon, is just like, that's good. That's telling you what's going on. It's very flavorful. I mean, obviously it happened. So in the end, we said, okay, it's cool, it's flavorful. But it was, yeah, you're right.

It was, it's kind of funny, behind the scenes, sometimes we do things and the audience doesn't blink twice and like, behind the scenes it was a major, major deal. That's a good example of something. I'd forgotten, I'd forgotten how big a deal that was until you reminded me of something. I'd forgotten how big a deal that was until you reminded me of it. Yeah.

I mean, the thing that makes me happiest about this set when I look back at it, like, I'm fairly proud of it. There's not many things that make me grumpy. But I think my favorite thing are that, like, I wanted to make a really awesome mythic werewolf, and I wanted to make a really awesome mythic vampire. And, like, so we ended up pulling, like, you, Aaron Forsythe,

and I think Gottlieb into a little room, and I'm like, I need cooler mythic monsters. Like, let's make some stuff. And Aaron Forsythe, in, like, a crazy fever dream, dreamed up Huntmaster of the Fells. And it was, like, because I was excited about werewolves that did something when you flipped on either side previously we had only done like

when you flip to the back side so it's like I'll do it both or whatever but and then like that card goes and wins Pro Tour Dark Ascension and people are just kind of like oh yeah like of course there's an awesome powerful werewolf in the Pro Tour deck and I'm like

oh thank god like a year later Pro Tour Gatecrash gets won by Falconereth Aristocrat while he is oh she is happily sacrificing humans to get plus one plus one counters and be indestructible and everyone's like

of course there's a powerful vampire it's just like okay alright that's a relief because that stuff's not a given until you do it the first time so oh no no no and it's one of the other tensions that we have is you kind of there's things you kind of

want to be good but you also don't want the pressure of something to be good to push something that shouldn't be pushed. And so, like, there's a weird of, hey, we want good this or good that, but we don't want to sort of

make a not-fun card that's pushed. And so, part of making a good card is designing something really fun that has good gameplay, and then that encourages

the developers, now the play designers, to sort of, you know, push it a little more. Yeah, and both of those cards also, I think, in important play designers, to sort of push it a little more. Both of those cards also I think in important ways are like the minigame thing that you're talking about.

Like Huntmaster of the Fells has like, are you casting spells or does the opponent get to flip it and make it bigger and deal 2 damage to something or maybe you can't let them flip it back because you can't let them get a token because that would give them another blocker, or

with Falcon Wrath Aristocrat, it's like, okay, while that's out, I can't wrath the board, but I can wrath it, and then next turn in their upkeep, I can shock the Aristocrat or whatever, so there's just a lot going on with both of those cards that I think leads to interesting games.

I mean, I did enjoy, we games. I mean, I did enjoy we talked about this earlier, I did enjoy that Dark Ascension really upped the tribal components of the monster. Like, one of the things that was neat was, I always had wanted Innistrad to have a tribal component, I just I think I was a little burned

by Lorwyn that I didn't want to make the limited two on rails, and so we were trying to do a light touch so one thing that I think is probably underappreciated about Dark Ascension 2 is that like back when we were making that stuff we didn't have a set skeleton like you did the nuts and bolts

article recently that's like this is exactly what this set is like that didn't exist like I thought Innistrad like me as an individual developer i thought in a straw didn't have enough like two mana creatures that could put pressure on people so like one of the reasons you could actually draft a real tribal deck a little better in dark ascension was that like there were some spirits and werewolves and vampires that cost two mana that like could beat down better so like i don't know

i like it when there is some pressure early in the game i think i went slightly overboard like i cut one of the three green two drops that i put in but um i thought that was an important piece to like making someone follow a tribal component actually turn out well so so another thing i just want to bring up just for people, it's interesting. One of the things that designers do is you look back at your old stuff and you're like, oh, I'm much more knowledgeable now.

I would have done this and this. Sometimes I go back, like Tempest was my first set and I look at Tempest and like, in a lot of ways, like, you know, we're making cars and it's like a Model T. Like it's quaint and it's, you know, we're making cars and it's like a model T like, like it, it's quaint and it's,

you know, like one of the stories I always tell is, um, I had the innovation to take the common X spell and add two red mana to it. Like that, that was my innovation in the comics, the common X spell that your drug damage X spell was like, Oh,

well let's make it a little bit harder to splash rather than how about we don't make a common X spell. Yeah, oh, well, let's make it a little bit harder to splash, rather than how about we don't make a common X spell? But... And the creatures were so small then. They were. It was so much... Rolling Thunder is... It's hilarious to me that Rolling Thunder is fine in Battle for Zendikar, and in Tempest, it is

the best thing in the entire universe. Yes. Well, everything's so tiny. All the shadow creatures. Yep. So anyway, I'm almost to my desk. So any last thoughts on Dark Ascension? It was really a treat to work with you on this set. I mean, I think I didn't realize at the time what a historical aberration it was that you made a small set at all and i i don't know i'm

really proud of dark ascension and an enormous piece of that is that like i got a handoff that was really nice and was full of good big ideas so but you should have taken faithful hour out uh that's true. Fateful Hour's on me, by the way. I believe not on you. When I saw the Modern Horizons card that had Fateful Hour,

I was just so depressed. It's like Adam Prozac made this thing and he's like slapping me in the face for like the worst named mechanic I let through

and just, oh God, Adam, why? But anyway. But yeah, so it was, I god, Adam, why? But anyway. But yeah, so it was, I mean, one of the things that's a lot of fun for me and one of the reasons I've been enjoying doing all these talks is one of the neat things about making magic

is it's not a solo activity, that you're working with teams and it's one of the cool things for me, I mean, like I said, I'm now in year 25, is I've had a chance to work with so many different people and it was a lot of fun working with you, Tom. This is really the one handoff you and I did together, like I said, I'm now in year 25, is I've had a chance to work with so many different people. And it was a lot of fun working with you, Tom. This is really the one handoff you and I did together. So I also have fond memories of this.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like I went to the, there's a cathedral in Spain and Barcelona where it's like just very clear that thousands of people have worked on this thing. And there's something really special about that. It's like, I will always treasure the time working on magic knowing that like i put a couple of hammer dents and in that cathedral so yeah well anyway thank you so much for joining us tom yeah you're welcome and guys i'm at my desk so we all know what that means that means is the end of

my drive to work so instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic so thank you so much tom you're welcome and y'all i'll see you next time bye