Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #873: Portal Three Kingdoms with Henry Stern

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

I sit down with Designer Henry Stern to talk about the design of Portal Three Kingdoms.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. So I've been using my time at home to interview people from the present and past. Today, from the past. So I have Henry Stern to go way back to talk about Portal 3 Kingdoms. Hey, Henry. Hey, Mark. Hey, Mark. How you doing? Okay, so let's go back to the very beginning which is, what in the world, what is

Portal 3 Kingdoms? What is this? Yeah, so Portal 3 Kingdoms is an odd duck for Magic Sets. This has happened, oh gosh, was it 97, 98? I forget when Bill Rose The set came out in 99, May 99 is when the set

came out. Okay, so I was working on it in 98 then, is when the set came out. Okay, so I was working on it in 98 then, is when the work was happening. Oh, yeah. So, well, how much context do we need for even what Portal is for folks? Well, explain a little bit about Portal and then we'll jump into Portal for games.

Okay, so Portal was basically a beginner's version of Magic that we had put out in like 97 or so, I think, somewhere around there when Portal first came out. And it was, the thought behind it was a good thought that like, hey, you know, magic is pretty hard to understand, especially for new players. Can we make like a easier to understand version of magic

that captures the essence of magic, but doesn't have all the complexities of rules? So in Portal, there's no, there's sorceries, but no instance, no enchantments, no artifacts. You have land, just basic land. You have creatures, and you have sorceries. And that's all you get. That's it.

Even with those restrictions, it's still a pretty fun game. And you can have pretty interesting interactions. Not nearly as complex and interesting as regular Magic gets, but you can still have, like, like you know the colors are still kind of like what you'd expect colors to be you know black is evil it has you know gets rid of creatures directly and red does direct damage and green has the biggest creatures and blue is a little trickier to sort of get the the trickiness of blue across when you don't have uh instance and stuff but still you know you have flying creatures and such um so that's what portal was and it had had some success when we first launched it um and we wanted to make a version of portal that we could introduce uh um for like china and japan and korea basically all of asia um but the thought was instead of using the sort of the portal, you know, high fantasy, the magic is, could we do it with the theming that was maybe make it more, not palatable,

more interesting, or more of interest to people from the Asia region? And the thought was, can we use the Three Kingdoms story and theme a portal set with a Three Kingdoms story and make Portal the Portal Three Kingdoms for Asia? So since probably a lot of people listening may not be super familiar with Three Kingdoms, in a real brief, what is the Three Kingdoms story? What is that? Yeah, so that's a shame because they should know.

Three Kingdoms is actually super important culturally and historically to almost everyone in Asia, but especially China. Think of it as like the King Arthur stories or the Arthurian legends and how important that is to sort of Western culture and Western fantasy. That's basically the equivalent for China, except it's a little bit more historically accurate than the Arthurian legends were. I'm not saying the Arthurian legends are completely. There probably was someone named King Arthur, but, you know, who knows? But it's definitely more historically true. There was this sort of warring kingdoms period in China, which is around from like 100 to 200 a.d or so was when this period of history took place in china um but the three kingdoms sort of uh romance of the three kingdoms story is like one third you know history and one third fantasy and maybe sort of i don't know i don't feel like it is but it's

basically a mixture of like history and fantasy mixed together. So there's like crazy things going on, you know, people flying, people doing magic, people doing stuff. But it also has like there's like real history there, too. And the cultural impact of the stories and the characters and what they did and where they did and why they did it, it's still very relevant today. did it it's still very relevant today it's like when i traveled in china not not for this uh set but um for other trips it's like you hear people say like we're down the river it's like oh hey hey this is where the battle of red cliffs took place and this is where this thing happened in three kingdoms and it's still sort of very relevant to people's um uh lives and for gamers it's hugely influential for for games like I'm sure people are serious gamers, especially if they like

games from Asia, that they've heard of Three Kingdoms, and they know what Three Kingdoms is, because there's been a ton of both strategy and fighting games from Three Kingdoms. Okay, so something I want to explain the audience might be unaware of is, so back in 1998,

Magic R&D wasn't, Magic, I mean, Magic R&D wasn't that big. Right now, what we call Studio X, which is a little more than just R&D, but it's like 200 people. It's a giant number of people. But back in the day, I think there were like five of us

that worked on Magic full-time, and then a handful that occasionally worked on Magic. Yeah, I mean, I'd say'd say yeah there was like five people who were in it up to our noses and then maybe another five people who kind of dipped their dip their toes and their feet in from time to time but yeah um and so this project was pretty much like a solo project you were the person who did this yes and that it's it's yes it was just me. There was an art director, but he wasn't doing the set with me. He was like, I'd give this creature. He was then responsible for finding an artist. And in this set, we had all of our artists came from Asia and China and Japan and Korea to do the art for the set.

His name was Li Ti? Yeah, Li Tian. It might have been Ti. I thought it was Tian, but it might be Ti. Yeah, so this was a solo project. It was also unusual for Magic. Now, it's not like we asked one person to solo design a full large set, you know, with all these brand new mechanics. So it was an easier task than it would be to design even even a small set like to design a full set you

know by yourself um but there was a lot of creative there it was basically the ultimate in top down design exercise instead of doing a top down card it was like do a whole top down set you know or like every you know um every card and every uh creature and everything has to sort of fit into this story somehow, which was an interesting exercise. Yeah, and what? So go ahead. No, I'm saying one of the things about the Portal things is, while a lot of the cards were new in Portal,

like whenever we could, sometimes they re-skinned them, but we would use cards that were existing in Magic. Oh, yeah. Yeah, a lot of them were based on existing cards from Magic, for sure. Okay, so I want to start with one of the most things that comes

up a lot when people talk about Portal 3 Kingdoms. So there, in fact, I think was one keyword in Portal 3 Kingdoms. And it wasn't a brand new keyword, although

it was mimicking something, obviously. So let's talk about how horsemanship came to the Three Kingdoms. Came to exist? Sure. So when we're doing this top-down exercise, it's going to take a little bit more context for all of it. Okay. The Three Kingdoms, there were, in fact, three different kingdoms that were competing to sort of take over China.

It was the Wu, the Wei, and the Shu kingdoms. So like the first exercise was like kind of figuring out, you know, A, what colors would those kingdoms be and how they work. But then, you know, like a lot of the key, one of the key, not the key, but one of the key things in Portal was the evasion. And the only evasion really available was either flying or land walking i

think were the two things that we let uh creatures have in in portal um and while flying is great you know thematically and there were a few creatures that flew in portal three kingdoms it's hard to have like we we knew that we were going to have a ton of the cards were going to be legends and were going to be the various generals and leaders and soldiers and fighters through kingdoms. And it just didn't make sense to have these people up in the air flying like that. That makes no sense. So we needed a mechanic that would like essentially mimic flying,

but be in a way that thematically works for people to do. And that's how we came about horsemanship because lots of these guys were always seen on horseback riding around. And, you know, as you know, it's tough for someone who's not on horseback to block somebody that's on a horse. You know, a cavalry tends to overrun infantry pretty well. And so that's how we settled on horsemanship, is basically the equivalent of flying for the set. Yeah, so by the way, I misspoke earlier. There is landwalk in the set in addition to horsemanship. Yes.

I don't see flying. I'm looking for flying. I don't see flying. Like, I see that the dragon doesn't have flying, so I don't think there is flying in the set. No, no, there's no flying in Portal 3 Kingdoms because we used horsemanship in place of flying. And so, yeah, so horsemanship, creatures with horsemanship can't be blocked

or can only be blocked by other creatures with horsemanship is how horsemanship works. And so, great, so horsemanship, creatures with horsemanship can't be blocked or can only be blocked by other creatures with horsemanship is how horsemanship works. And so, great, you know, that works. And it works thematically great for the set, and it works within the Three Kingdoms world. Now, it makes horsemanship very, very good when you use a horsemanship character in a normal magic set or playing with normal magic cards,

because there aren't many cards that have horsemanship. In fact, I'm pretty sure they all only exist in Portal 3 Kingdoms. Just a little context for the audience. Portal, when we originally made Portal, wasn't playable in sort of normal Magic formats. It's kind of its own thing. So you

couldn't just bring your Portal cards and go to Standard or, I mean, the formats had different names, I think, back then. But you couldn't just use your portal cards at your local store playing in a tournament. And so, I think when you made Horsemanship, it's like, well, you're only going to play it with itself.

And then, years later, we decided, why not let people play portal cards? And we sort of made them legal, and then all of a sudden, Horsemanship's now interacting with other formats and stuff that it never did before. Yeah, it also made certain cards in Three Kingdoms

very, very valuable because they have effects that restricted cards had back in normal Magic. Like Imperial Seal, you know, it's like, not Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor. Imperial Seal, Imperial Seal's the one you're thinking? Imperial Seal, yeah, it's like what Vampiric Tutor was. That's, you That's quite a good card.

Good enough to be restricted. So it shot up in value. And I hear in some wacky formats, like some of the other portal cards have been used that people play just for the horsemanship effect. There is either a spell or a creature, I forget which one, that gives all your other creatures horsemanship for the turn.

And that's essentially making all your creatures unblockable. It's a blue card, right? Yeah. Gosh, what was it? Someone told me about it recently. I'm looking at the blue cards here. Yeah, Sun Quan. Okay, Sun Quan. Oh yeah, Sun Quan, Lord Wu. Yes.

Yeah. Now it's six mana for a 4-4, which is not great, but he makes all of your creatures unblockable, and he's unblockable as well. Still seems, to me, a little expensive for that effect. Like, how much do you pay for all your creatures are unblockable? But sure.

Yeah, it's interesting. One of the quirky things about Portal for Kingdoms is when we released Portal for Kingdoms, I believe it mostly only went to the Asian markets, and there was some English that went to Australia, I believe. Yeah, that's right. So there's not... Most of Portal 3 Kingdoms is not in English,

just a tiny, tiny portion, and even that, I think, was only sold in Australia. So it's not easy to get your hands on Portal 3, let alone English Portal 3 Kingdoms, but it's not easy to get your hands on it., let alone English Portal 3 Kingdoms, but it's not easy to get your hands on it. Okay, so I want to get back into talking a little bit about designing, making the set. Yeah.

Like you said, everything you were making, there are a lot of parameters because, right, you had basic land and sorceries and creatures. Yeah. And you had to make everything sort of work within those constraints. So I want to talk a little bit about doing top-down design in a very

constrained... You did not have every... I've done a lot of top-down designs, but I had artifacts and enchantments and all sorts of things at my disposal. Sure. From a pure design point of view, it was a super fun and interesting exercise.

And I think the top-down stuff tends to work the best, too. At least when it works, it feels the best as you're playing it and as you see it. And it turns out the best and most approachable product. But this was a big top-down design because it's like I have to figure out, you know, where are these three kingdoms going to be? Okay, I have this cast of hundreds of characters okay which characters are you going to use i mean you know which kingdoms those characters belong to but like of those characters how many of them are we going to use um and then like how are we going to get the basics kind of mesh that in with the basis of basics of magic like which

ones are going to fly or have horsemanship in this case which ones won't which are that which are how are creatures going to work you know are there going to be animals or they're are going to fly or have horsemanship in this case, which ones won't, which are the, which are, how are creatures going to work? You know, are there going to be animals or they're not going to be animals? How does direct damage work in this context, et cetera? Well, let's talk big picture first. Cause you structured the set. So let's talk a little bit about how you structured the set. So how did you break up? How'd you break up the set? How'd you.

Yeah. So the main thing was like, Hey, what is going to be, you know, who, which is going to be way and which is going to be shoe. Like what like hey what is going to be you know woo which is going to be way and which is going to be shoe like what are the three kingdoms going to be and it wound up it kind of made sense like the heroes of the story of sorts are from shoe um and so it kind of made sense for them or the most noble characters maybe it's a better way of saying the heroes so it made sense for that to to be for color white. The bad guys, and I hesitate to use that term because they're the ones that wind up winning in this story, are Wei, which is black. And the trickiest kingdom, maybe,

even that sort of a stretch, was Wu. But the main reason I wound up picking those three colors, and it should be obvious, is like... Wu is blue. Because of horsemanship. You made Wu blue. Yes, Wu is blue.'s like blue is blue because of horsemanship you made woo blue yes woo is blue yes woo is blue uh way is black and shoe was white and that kind of makes sense mostly kind of from a a horsemanship point of view like those are the three colors that that have flying so it makes sense or have the most flying really so it makes

sense that those are the colors that have that are the colors of the three kingdoms um but once there it's like okay well what is red going to be you know like red can't just be uh um can't be nothing and what is green going to be um and it wound up being that like red was sort of like um more of uh the the independent uh kingdoms because there's a lot of people and a lot of characters that don't necessarily fit directly into one of those three kingdoms. And then green wound up being more kind of like the natural world. So like the actual creatures like war elephants or a tiger or things like that that actually exist in the story or exist in the real world wound up in green.

Okay, so... And now, were there legendary creatures in this? I don't think they were actually... No, there were. Oh, there were legends. Yeah. Yeah, all the creatures... Not all the creatures.

All of the named characters are legends. And that was done more from just like a... More for flavor than for mechanical reasons necessarily. Like, it didn't make sense that, like like I can have two copies of the same leader and play it at the time in the same way you couldn't have legends and play at the same time back then. But it's mostly just for flavor reasons. There are many creatures that are not legends.

There's many like foot soldiers and stuff or sort of nondescript people that are not legends. But all of the named people are legends. And so the other interesting thing is War of the Spark is what we called an event set

where we were sort of telling a story. You really were. There were events. One of the interesting things about this is the story has things happen. A lot of your cards are people, but some of them are, hey, it's this event. I'm representing this part of the story as a card. Oh, yeah, for sure. Sure, sure.

Yeah, a ton of it. As much as possible, we tried to squeeze in things that made sense from the story to being on a card. A good example is our version of giant growth in portal so the portal giant growth i forget they called it in portal but it's 1g and it's any one creature gains plus four plus four to end of turn sorcery not a not an instant um uh so for uh um for three kingdoms like giant growth doesn't make sense as as a card but what made sense for us is there's like a uh there was a famous uh uh blade that uh guanyu wielding the green dragon is the name of the card yeah that's the name of the card in four of the kingdoms yeah so the green dragon sword is this sort of famous sword that he had uh and so for us the version of quote-unquote

giant growth became you know wielding the green dragon so it meant meaning that like, I'm like giving the green dragon sword to whatever creature it's going on and it's getting plus four, plus four, so on to turn. Now in modern magic, you know, obviously that would be an artifact, right? The green dragon sword would just be an artifact that you could, you know, put on creatures or I suppose an enchantment in the time before artifacts, but we couldn't even do enchantments back in the day. Yeah.

But yeah, so sorry sorry so there's that but like as much as we can like almost every single um uh card and sorcery that you see has some uh uh has some reference to it back in the back in the story and a lot of that wound up on the flavor text but some of it wound up on the just from the artwork as well. You mentioned flavor text. I'm sort of curious. Did you have anything to do with the flavor text? Did you work on the flavor text?

All of it. All of it. As much as possible, some of it we're telling the story, but as much as I could, I wanted to use actual quotes from the actual book because I think it wanted to use actual like quotes from from the actual book because i think it just feels better when you sort of see the actual quotes there and uh a really famous one there's a very famous poem um in three kingdoms and we sort of split up that

giant poem and put them on all the zodiac cards there's like 12 zodiac cards let's talk about the zodiac cards there's not a lot of cycles in this ad, but this is one of the few sort of cycles in this ad. So there are 12 zodiac cards, right? Yeah, I think three red, three green. No, three red, three black, and six green. Okay. There you go. Black has zodiac pig, zodiac rat, and zodiac snake. Red has zodiac pig, zodiac rat, and zodiac snake. Red has zodiac dog, zodiac dragon, zodiac goat.

And green has zodiac horse, zodiac monkey, zodiac ox, zodiac rabbit, zodiac rooster, and zodiac tiger. Yeah, and all of those are horsemanship. Or not horsemanship. All of those are land walking of some kind. Except for the dragon, which was special, obviously. of some kind, except for the dragon, which was special, obviously. And yeah, so that it would kind of like made sense for these creatures. And I'm just a fan of cycles anyways, you know, because it just sort of adds something neat to a set when there's cycles to

discover there. And this made, this seemed like the place to have it make the most sense. And then we tied them all together by putting this sort of famous poem as their, as their flavor text, as you go through those cards i forget what order what the order is you have to actually get them in order to uh to understand it but there it is is there i mean there must be an order to the zodiac i assume right i assume they're in zodiac order yeah yeah i that's right um i but since it's like it goes in a circle it's hard to tell like where's the beginning and end because like you know Because it just loops around and around.

I think it's the one after the dragon is the first one. So if you were to actually look at a real Chinese zodiac, whatever one starts after the dragon, and forgive me that I don't remember that off the top of my head, is the beginning. Yeah, I don't know. But it's funny because there are definitely some things. Like, for example, Creature Dog, I think, shows up for the first time on Zodiac Dog in Portal 3 Kingdoms. And then for years it was Hound, but we finally went back to Dog. But, like, here's Creature Dog sitting in a magic set from 99, so.

Yeah. Actually, Zodiac Snake is the first one. Zodiac Snake, okay, in black. Zodiac Snake. So if you want to, like, read the whole poem, start with Snake, go through the order of the Zodiac Animals, and black Zodiac snake So if you want to like read the whole poem Start with snake go to the order of the Zodiac animals And you can read the whole poem Yeah behind them you can see a little seal behind them So you can look it actually shows the order they go in

Oh okay yeah yeah yeah In the art so But like even like when you look at Like Like I'm looking at a card The burning of Shinye And that was an incident in the book like I'm looking at a card, the Burning of Xinyue. And that was an incident in the book. I forget what it was,

but like a town or a city was destroyed. And we use that, you know, as the name for the card. Can we say what it does? I just want to say what it does as we're talking about it. Yeah, so I forget what the, I think this is the,

it's kind of the equivalent of Joklhopse sort of effect. I forget what it is exactly. I don't know if there's an exact translation of normal magic. Let me just read it so that the audience knows what it is. So it's four red red, so six mana total, sorcery. You destroy four of your lands

and your opponent destroys four of his or her lands, then burning a Xenye? Xenye. Xenye deals four damage to each creature so yeah it's kind of like um

ChocoHopsy yeah kind of um Wildfire right is Wildfire the card oh is that what it was that one

yeah I think it's Wildfire but yeah um but it represented sort of a a moment in the story right

that's sort of cool yes exactly exactly yeah it's it's funny that there's a lot of things But it represented sort of a moment in the story, right? That sort of goal. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it's funny that there's a lot of things that we did later in Magic that have become very staples of how we do Magic that you see like very early things being done here in Portal for Kingdom. So you are a pioneer, Henry.

The proto versions of them. So I also think you had the first chicken, so. Oh, okay. Nice. Yeah, you know, I'm so proud of this set. And it was a fun set to work on. And it was just from a design point of view, it was fun to do. But it was a lot of research for the set to be able to do it and to do it justice.

Because I didn't want to embarrass myself, but I didn't want to embarrass Wizards or our company or make something that was not something that we'd be proud of. And we were very sensitive to making sure that this is a very, it's an important bit of text. It's an important history to people in Asia, and I didn't want it to be something that people would look at and scorn or feel like it wasn't done with care care uh and so like I read the the actual translated book and it's a it's a big

book I forget the something like 1500 pages something like that the actual uh translation the actual book um and there's also a really good series of graphic novels it's like a 10 10 series graphic novel that I read to sort of get a feeling for it, too. As well as watching, there was a few miniseries that had English subtitles that had been done for Three Kingdoms. I'm sure probably more of it's been done by now. Yeah, but you did a lot of research, right? You did a lot of sort of, you know, make sure you really understood the story. Yep.

So what is your favorite card in the set oh um what's your favorite babies i i love the way the artwork looks for for a few cards it's more from the art than from like a particular card per se because the cards are like portal cards and it's like okay yeah portal cards but for me it's more of like marrying the sort of the art and the flavor of what it does um I love Guan Yu and the artwork for Guan Yu uh uh sainted Warrior you guys should look it up it's some of the awesome art um the other art that was really great was for uh Lu Bei who's the other sort of leader of the um uh Shu Kingdom and the oh it's the third guy oh yeah Cheng Fei where where's chang fei let me see where is he what color is he oh it might be with it he's white he's white it might be uh

chang with an x not with a um yeah there he is with a z sorry chang fei um yeah and how that fits that their their uh uh their Yeah, it's definitely for one of the things that's interesting, like one of the things I've been trying to do with this podcast series is just make people aware of things from Magic's past, and Portal 3 Kingdoms is really a weird kind of

product, just lost in time in some ways. I mean, it's obviously people play with individual cards. I mean, it's still people are aware of it, but it definitely is this weird, I don't know, like the fact that one person worked, there's not that many sets that one person worked on. You have your unbalanced,

your unglued sets, right? Oh, I did unglue. I mean, the other thing is Urza, when you were doing this set, I think I was doing Urza's Legacy, which is a set I did by myself. We just didn't have enough people, so I'm like, oh,'s Legacy, which is a set I did by myself. We just didn't have enough people, so I'm like, oh, sure, I'll just

do a small set by myself. But it's very, very funny, just looking at it now that R&D has so many people that, like, you know, back in the day, it's like, we have all these projects. You're the one person to work on this project. We don't do that much anymore. Yeah.

Yeah. So what is something where we have a little bit of time left, what is something that people might not be aware of, like, Portal 3. What is a, is there any sort of subtle nuanced thing that you did that, like, you might not be, if you look through, you know,

the set, you might not realize it's a first glance, but here's some cool thing. What are some cool Easter eggs sitting in the set? Oh, wow. Interesting. Cool Easter eggs. People might not know that the Way Kingdom is the one that actually wins in the end. The victors are black. I don't know how many magic sets we've done that before where the actual victors of the contests are represented by black.

I like, like I said before, the sort of the poem on the Zodiac cards is famous and it's from the book. What other Easter eggs as I'm looking? I'm trying to, you know, it's just like all the history that's there and all the sort of the real history that exists in China. Like you can go to these places, you know, like with the Red Cliffs, there's a famous battle of Red Cliffs and you can go there. And even now it's like it's a place that exists and it's real. And people get not emotional exactly, but they feel like a certain reverence when they actually go to these places and experience it so have you have you been you've been to china i have been to china and i've been to some of the actual places where where the story took place i've been

into the red cliffs it's uh um or i forget what river was on so when this set came out did you have did you interact with anybody like did you go anywhere when this set came out, did you interact with anybody? Did you go anywhere when the set came out to actually see people play with it when it first happened? Yeah, I think there were some events that we had in Asia at the time that I went to. I think I went to the Korean National Championships at the time. And there was some other, maybe it was another pro tour, some other events that we had in China where we were sort of showing off the set and sending it to people and getting people's feedback. And I did solicit some feedback from our Asian distributors and people that were in the know of Magic at the time to sort of get feedback to make sure that we weren't doing anything too terrible. And like I said, our art director gave some feedback as to to make sure that things were OK.

too terrible. And like I said, our art director gave some feedback as to to make sure that things were okay. Yeah, like I was saying, we do a lot more now with sort of dealing with experts and stuff and this is very early in Magic's life, so it's a proto of things to come. Yeah, for sure. Well, anyway, I will say that one of the things that's very fun to me is, back in the day, we used to go around and demo the different portals. And one of the things that was really illuminating to me is, you would think when you take away almost everything that you think, you're just boiling it down to creatures and sorceries and lands, you feel like, oh, maybe the game doesn't hold together but it really

really does like it's amazing how that just the core of the game how fun it is even with a lot of the trappings taken away oh for sure not only that but even like the flavor of the colors can still come through pretty clearly um essentially like we had i think we did have pre-constructed decks too for the uh various kingdoms i think we only had three pre-constructed decks. There was one for each kingdom, but they played, but they played very differently. Like they played the way you would think like a white portal deck would feel lots of small creatures, you know, the things that like,

that buff up all your creatures and white, that's great. And the blue is depending on more of the horsemanship and black is depending on more of like sorceries and destroying creatures to get through, et cetera. So yeah, you can still still even with just the basics you can still have a pretty good color pie that actually feels it feels real that is fun well anyway uh henry i i can see my desk here so that means uh we all know that means it means it's the end of my drive to work so instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic. But I want to thank you, Henry, for being here. Thank you, Mark. It's good talking to you again. Yeah, it's fun. It is fun to go back

and just talk about things that literally, like, 1999, this has been a while since this set saw it today. It has. It has indeed. But thank you, Henry. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Mark. And for all you, I will see all of you next time.

Bye-bye.