Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #892: Lessons Learned – Throne of Eldraine

Episode Date: December 4, 2021

I had an in-person playtest at Wizards to attend, so I'm actually driving to work after twenty-plus months (I'm not in the office full time yet, so there'll be a bunch more at-home podcasts). During my drive, I share the lessons I learned from designing Throne of Eldraine.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. No, I'm actually pulling out of my driveway. So we all know what this means. It's another episode of Drive to Work. Okay, so today is the first day that I'm going back in the office. Now, I'm not regularly back in the office yet. I'm just going in for a play test. The office did open a couple weeks ago, but sort of we're slowly transitioning back. Some people are going to the office every day. Some people aren't. I've been not going to the office every day. But there's a playtest today, so I am in fact going to the office for the very first time. So I thought I could do an actual drive to work

in which I'm driving to work. I know it's kind of a novel idea. So for today, I've actually been saving something. Like one of the things I was trying to do with my time at home, and I should stress, by the way, today's that actual drive to work. I will have future drive to works that are still at home just because I'm mostly at home.

But while I have the opportunity, I'm doing an actual driving to work drive to work. So I did some things at home that were hard to do in the car, like interviews and stuff. But there's a few things that I think work really well in the car that I didn't do during the pandemic,

my ones at home. One of those is Lessons Learned. So Lessons Learned is a series where I look at a set that I worked on and I talk about all the things I learned from working on that set. So usually it's a set that I led or co-led. So last time we had done a Lessons Learned, I talk about War of the Spark. So that means I'm now up to Throne of Eldraine. So Throne of Eldraine is a very interesting set in that I had the idea

for a fairy tale set long, long ago. In fact, after we did Lorwyn, I realized that, like, Lorwyn kind of, like, dipped its toe into a fairy tale set. It was built around a Celtic mythology, but there was just, like, a little bit, you know, like, fairies and giants, and there's just a little bit of, and the softer sort of feel of Lorwyn had a little bit of a storybook feel. It wasn't really top-down fairy tales, because it wasn't, but it was the kind of set that sort of showed what we could do. And Innistrad had been so successful that I really was a big fan of genre top-down stuff.

And after horror, the next genre that made a lot of sense to me was fairy tales. And the reason for that was fairy tales are, I mean, based in fantasy, right? You have princes and princesses and kings and queens, and you have dragons and fairies and magic, and it is really squarely in the fantasy genre. And so one of the things that magic does best is things that are very adjacent to fantasy. Obviously, you know, we're stretching and stuff, but fantasy genres

are the easiest for us to do. And like I said, fairy tales are squarely there. So I got the idea during the lore win that for us to do. And like I said, fairy tales were squarely there. So I got the idea during Lorwyn that I wanted to do a fairy tale set. But it took a long time. In fact, Lorwyn happened, and I got the idea of fairy tales, and then Innistrad happened, and I really realized the power of top-down.

Like, we had done, obviously, like, Arabian Nights was top-down, although it wasn't us inventing our own world. Kamigawa, Champions of Kamigawa was top down but it had a lot of issues and Innistrad was the first time we'd really done a top down that I think had been sort of, that was our own thing that was kind of a

a slam dunk success and it was the first time we'd really done genres as a top down you know, so anyway I was very excited. I guess you could argue that Arabian Nights Made was the genre, but anyway. Um, I was very excited for the idea, uh, but it was not something that I could, I could convince anybody else they wanted.

So, the first lesson, which was interesting, is the way that I ended up getting fairy tales into magic was actually not through the green light of a fairy tale set. The way it actually happened was they greenlit a Camelot set and then I saw the opportunity. Basically, what happened was they greenlit Camelot and then I go to Aaron Forsythe, my boss,

and I sort of say to Aaron, I go, Aaron, I don't think there's enough stuff in Camelot.ot. I don't think Camelot can fill out a whole set. But you know what's adjacent to Camelot? Camelot in a lot of ways is just English fairy tales. And in fact, if you read some of the Camelot stuff, there are even crossovers with Jack and the Giant. In some ways, a lot of the Camelot stuff is sort of the English version of fairy tales, their version of fairy tales. And I'm like, like, Jack and the Giant. Like, there are... In some ways, a lot of the Camelot stuff is sort of the English version of fairy tales, their version of fairy

tales. And I'm like, look, the overlap, like, in order for fairy tales to work, we need kingdoms and kings and queens. You know, we need the things that show up in Camelot. It makes sense. So, the way I originally got the fairy tales into

it was sort of, like, sneaking it on, not sneaking it, but combining with something else. And there was a very important lesson there, which is one of the things when you want to do something from a design standpoint, if at first you don't succeed, really the idea is don't keep trying the same thing approach it from different ways so the idea there was okay I tried to get a fairy tale set made I was unsuccessful

multiple times but when I saw an opportunity to say okay well what if I can combine it with something that people are happier with and that was a really important lesson is that

if you want people to do something that they're not at first blush, they're not excited by, what you want to do is find something they are excited by and join it with that. Because if the core idea is not something you sort of can get traction on,

you need to do something else to sort of get traction. And that was to do something else to sort of get traction. And that was, the real important lesson there was using something, like, the big lesson, I think, for me was that I really was successful when I didn't approach it from a place that was something that had no traction. I approached it from a place that was something that had no traction.

I approached it from a place that had traction. It's like, you like this. Hey, let me explain how the thing I want to do enhances the thing you want to do. And that was a really important lesson of understanding of, you know, I think sometimes you get an idea that you really want,

but it doesn't, people really aren't getting it. It's just not connecting to them. And so it's important, and this is a really good skill in life, but a good skill in magic design, is sort of figuring out when you can take things that people do have excitement for and maybe combine it with some stuff that you have excitement for. Okay, the second big lesson of Throne of Eldraine, interestingly, was about the Camelot part. So when we made the set, the original idea was half was going to be Camelot and half was going to be fairy tales.

That was the idea. But as we started working on fairy tales, not fairy tales, sorry, on the Camelot part, I ran into a couple problems. So first is that Camelot just isn't that well-known. For example, there's a character in Camelot called the Green Knight. In fact, there's a movie that either, I'm not sure whether the movie's come out yet or is coming out soon, but they're making a movie out of the Green Knight.

The Green Knight is a pretty big character. If you know the story of Camelot, the Green Knight's a decently, I mean, it's a pretty, I mean, I don't know how major, but it's a well-known character from that. So we had made a character of the Green Knight and we showed it around and nobody got it

because very few people knew the story of the Green Knight. And what we found was, as we did more sort of research at Wizards, is that you need to sort of understand what your audience does and doesn't know. So let me talk a little bit about resonance. This is an important thing. When you're doing top-down, the reason that top-down kind of works is the audience has some knowledge of the thing you're doing. Now, it's not that you can't do top down to something people don't know, but you're sort of, you have to, you have to treat it

like it's a brand new thing, even though it's existing on something. But when you're trying to do sort of more resonant stuff, you're trying, like a lot of what top down is, is top down is saying, I want to tap in to the emotional excitement that the audience already has for something else. That is kind of the secret sauce of resonance, right? Is you see something and the audience walks into it with expectations already because it's something that they have experience with. So when you're doing top down design, you want to make sure that your audience has some understanding of what it is. Now, I will stress this again. It is possible to do design of things people don't know,

but then you're not really doing top-down design. You're sort of doing design that, I mean, you have to treat a non-resonant top-down design kind of not like a top-down design. When you do a top-down design, you get to lean into things. You get to not say things. You get to connect things that normally don't make sense because the flavor ties them together. But when the thing isn't resonant, you don't get that. And so you have to treat it like a non-resonant card, like a non-top-down card.

you have to treat it like a non-resident card, like a non-top-down card. And what I found with Camelot was there was a lot in Camelot that... Hold a second. Let me take a sip of water. When you're doing top-down, you've got to figure out what the audience does and doesn't know. With Camelot, there was a lot they didn't know. I mean, there was some

stuff, like, for example, there are two different swords in Camelot. There's the sword and the stone. It's what Arthur pulls out of the stone to prove that he's king of Arthur. And then there's Excalibur, which was given to Arthur. I think a lot of people think the sword and the stone

is Excalibur, but it's not. From a storytelling standpoint, it's not. From a storytelling standpoint, it should be. Like, the fact that Arthur has two different swords in his life that are important is weird, but it is how the story is told. But what we found was, like, the audience, like, it was weird to make two swords when the audience thought thought there was one sword. Things like that. A lot of top-down design is figuring out how to create something that you couldn't create without that knowledge. So that is the biggest difference between a top-down design and sort of a normal bottom-up

design. Normally when you make a design that's not top-down, all the component pieces have to hold together by themselves. I mean, in a vacuum, they have to make sense. Someone has to look at the card and go, I see why these things are together. When you do top-down, one of the things that you get to do is you get to say thing A and thing B that don't normally make any sense together make sense together

because the flavor ties them together. And so when you're making top-down, you get to lean into that. And one of the cool things about top-down is you can make cards that you kind of can't make in a vacuum, cards that wouldn't sort of hold together, that wouldn't be aesthetic.

Because if you make a card with thing A and thing B and thing A and thing B have nothing to do with each other the artist goes, why is thing A with thing B? Now, we have a very good creative team a lot of time the creative team does such a good job of concepting the card that they find the proper flavor to make them connect but normally when you're making a card and you're not making a top-down card you try hard not to make the disconnects

we occasionally have to do it for mechanical reasons like the card needs to have two functions and they don't make a lot of sense together but that is the minority we don't do that very often normally when you're making cards you want to make them cohesive together so when you're doing top-down one of the freedoms of top-down

is that you get to do things that normally you couldn't make one of the things as head-down is that you get to do things that normally you couldn't make. One of the things as head designer I always have to think about is, look, I want to make sure that we're maximizing card design. And so whenever we can do something in a set that we couldn't do in another set, I would rather do those things there first. Because if any set can do a card, well, let's wait until it makes sense in the right set. But if only this set can do a card,

let's do it in this set. Let's make use of that. So anyway, one of the big lessons of Camelot, well, there are a couple lessons. Number one is it wasn't as resonant as I thought. You know, and once again, when you do top down, there's two types of things.

There is direct, like we're referencing an actual story or referencing an actual character. And then there is sort of general, like, oh, we're referencing knights in general. And then you can play maybe into little historical things or you can play into pop culture tropes or whatever. But we struggled a bit with Camelot.

It was not... One of the reasons, for example, that we tied all the monocolor structure into Camelot, the reason that the quartz and adamant and all the sort of monocolor play was tied was, it was like the most compelling thing about Camelot was that we could use the quartz, that they had a bridging system to tie things together that would make sense for some bottom-up design like oh it's a court all the courts have a similar element to them we can mirror the courts we can cycle the courts we can do things that use the courts as a bridging system to make what's more traditional top or sorry bottom-up design so a lot of Camelot was done

bottom-up not top-down there was some top-down There was Excalibur, our version of Excalibur. There was the Lady and the Lake. I mean, we did some of that. But it was not nearly as deep. And so one of the interesting things is you need to do research when you're doing sets, not just so you understand the source material, which is important, but also that you understand how the audience knows the source material. Because how you treat the source material has a lot to do with whether or not it's resident or not. It's not that you can't use non-resident material. You tend to use it at higher rarities, and you tend to build the cards as if they weren't top-down. Or you have to lean, I mean, sometimes you can do what we call deep cuts.

I mean, top-down, that is a little more narrow. And what you do with it is you make the audience, you kind of make it self-explanatory. A hundred-handed one is a good example from Theros. It's called the hundred-handed one, and it can block up to 99 creatures, I think, or up to 100 creatures, 90 other creatures. And the thing is, if you don't know what a hundred-handed one is, well, the name says it has 100 hands.

Okay, well, it can block 100 things. Like, that, in a vacuum, makes sense. If you actually know Greek mythology, the hundred-handed is something. But it's sort of like, we made it such that it's a deep cut that exists for the audience that knows it. But there's enough surface material that you, okay, you kind of understand, even though you don't know the source material, it makes sense. So when you're doing non-resonant things, you either have to design them as they're completely non-top-down, or you have to make the top-down self-explanatory enough that people who don't know it get it,

if you will. And that is tricky. That's not easy to do. The other thing we learned by doing the Camelot part is one of the challenges of doing something that in some level we've leaned on so much already. For example, the idea of knights and chivalry, all the stuff that Camelot sort of entered into the pop culture lexicon, if you will, magic's tapped into a lot.

You know, Dominaria uses a lot of that tropes. Alara uses a lot of that tropes. You know, we've gone to worlds that have said, you know what? We're already pretty influenced by Camelot. So one of the problems when we started doing Camelot stuff is it kind of melted into the background because the audience was already familiar with it as kind of general magic noise, if you will. So one of the classic stories I always tell is we did a playtest, and I always talk to the people after a playtest to get notes to see what they—

And so I talked to somebody who hadn't seen the set before. It's the first time they'd ever seen the set for this playtest to get notes to see what they... And so I talked to somebody who hadn't seen the set before. It's the first time they'd ever seen the set for this playtest. And they had a Knight Tribal deck. They had drafted a Knight Tribal deck. And so I said to them, what do you think of the set? And they go, oh, it's so fun.

I love all the fairy tales. It's great. And I said to him, what do you think of the Camelot part of the set? And he's like, well, what are you talking about? Well, the Camelot part. What do you think of the set? And he's like, well, what are you talking about? Well, the Camelot part, what do you think of that part? He goes, I have no idea what you're talking about. And he was playing a knight tribal deck. Like, he was playing as squarely in the Camelot theme as was possible, but the problem was the idea of knights and quests

and all the trappings of sort of the Knights of the Round Cape, if you will, magic has tapped in so much that it just, it didn't read as new or different. It just read as magic as normal. And so that was another important lesson is, like, really when we first started in it, I actually thought it was going to be 50-50 all the way, that the set was going to be half this, half that. And what I, I mean, not that the set wasn't half-half, I guess, but what I found was that the Camelot half, so have you ever heard me talk about the cake and the icing? The idea is that your sets need cake and your sets need icing.

Cake is the kind of thing that is the cohesive structure of it, and icing is the exciting part that, you know, gets you focused. So when you look at a cake, look, a lot of the cake is cake. That's what holds the cake together is the cake. But the icing and the decorating is what gives it its pizzazz. I realized early on that Camelot really couldn't be icing. I mean, maybe a few key cards, maybe Excalibur or whatever, you know, Amber Cleave. But very little of it could be icing. Most of Camelot was going to have to be cake. I mean, maybe a few key cards, maybe Excalibur or whatever, you know, Amber Cleave, but very

little of it could be icing. Most of Camelot was going to have to be cake. What I found with fairy tales is some could be cake and some could be icing. So let me, let me, I'll get to that in a second. That was not the big lesson. But anyway, the big lesson of Camelot to me is understanding sort of how to use resonance, how to do top-down, and that you have to research not just the source material, but the audience's familiarity with the source material. Okay, next, let me get to my big lesson from understanding fairy tales. So when I went into

fairy tales, I thought I was going to treat it a lot like I treat Innistrad. Or, or, um, or, uh, the way we treated, um, Theros. Was, okay, there's a lot of stories people know, we know people are familiar with them, we'll do a lot of tropes that hit all that top-down story stuff. Um, and so my first thought

was like, oh, well let's just write down the stories, let's write down all the things that do magic cards, and we'll make some of them into magic cards. That's actually how we did the early design, was we said, okay, we're doing Cinderella. What are all the things that are in Cinderella that could be a card? You know, it could be glass slipper.

It could be mean step sifter. It could mean stroke of midnight. It could mean it fits. You know, like, there's a lot. What are every possible thing that we can do? And one of the things about the fairy tale stories that we found, kind of the opposite we had an interesting

the Camelot stories what I discovered was they were far less known than I thought they were and the fairy tales what I found is they were even more familiar than I thought they were and I thought they were pretty familiar what we found is

there's just beats that go to the story. And I did this stat before, but it's an important stat that really cemented my head. If you are an American, I know I'm not an American listener, but the stat's based on Americans. For Americans, when they die, they will have

seen, on average, ten movies with the plot of Cinderella. Ten movies in which it's Cinderella. And there's actually a site you can look up that just lists every Cinderella movie. And I've seen 14, so I'm above average.

And I'm sure I'll see some more before. Having kids, by the way, way ups your Cinderella movies. But anyway, one of the things I realized was how familiar it was. There's so, like, in a lot of ways, for example, when we do Greek mythology,

you know, let's say we're doing the story of Icarus, for example. Mostly what people know is he put on wings, melted in the sun, fell to his death. Like, that's about all they know. They don't know, most people don't know the little details of the story fell to his death. That's about all they know. Most people don't know the little details of the story of Icarus. They know the highlights

of it. But when you get to fairy tales, people actually know, like you can do Stroke of Midnight as a card and people get that. People understand Stroke of Midnight. That is a fine point of the story, but it is something people know and there's a higher percentage of people knowing that stuff. The thing I didn't realize until I started

working with it is one of the things about fairy tales, when we sort of study fairy tales, is that a lot of fairy tales are taking the same component pieces and just telling a slightly different story. So there is a lot of, in fairy tales, for example, there's a lot of borrowing from other stories. The classic example I'll give is the glass coffin, which people associate with Snow White because it was in the movie.

Walt Disney put it in Snow White's seven dwarves. It's actually its own fairy tale. There's a fairy tale about the glass coffin. But what happened was, and this is a common thing, you know, Walt Disney's making the Snow White's Seven Dwarfs. It's actually its own fairy tale. There's a fairy tale about the glass coffin. But what happened was, and this is a common thing, Walt Disney's making the Snow White story and he sees this component from another fairy tale and goes, that's a cool component. I'm going to put that in my story.

So there's a lot of cross-pollination between stories. And one of the things we realized as we started working with it is that there's a lot of archetypes in fairy tales. For example, take the big bad wolf. Well, the big bad wolf shows up in more than one story, you know. The big bad wolf is the one that chases Little Red Riding Hood. But the big bad wolf is also the one that chases the three little pigs. That the idea of a wolf as being this evil thing carries carries a cross. And so it shows up in multiple stories. And

so what we realized was the idea of a prince charming, the idea of a fairy godmother, you know, that things that you take as, when you first blush, you're like, oh, well, fairy godmother, that's clearly Cinderella. But then you get into Pinocchio and like a fairy shows up and grants a, like, how different is the blue fairy in Pinocchio from the fairy godmother in Cinderella? Not, not that different. And so what you realize is there's a lot of these tropes that get repeated. And so one of the things as I was building the set is I started to realize that there was a mix and match quality to it.

That one of the fun, so a combination of the audience knowing all the beats really well and a cross-pollination of sort of archetypes and tropes meant that one of the real fun things to do with fairy tales was to mix and match. Was to say, oh, it's really fun that I'm taking this thing and putting it in this place. Both because I could take my Big Bad Wolf and play it with my Little Red Riding Hood card, which I think was Rowan in that set, or I could play it with my Little Pigs card, the little green card that made pigs.

Like, either way, if that was in the deck together, I made this connection. Or, I could say, you know what's real fun? in the deck together, I made this connection. Or, I could say, you know what's real fun? What if the little, the big bad wolf is the one riding in the pumpkin carriage, right? That you could do something where you could connect

things in a slightly different way. And there's something really compelling and fun about that, that was you know, that really like, one of the things that, one of the jobs when you're making a set is, you want to do what I call find the fun, right? You want to figure out where can people have joy in playing.

So what I found with Eldraine, especially on the fairytale part, is A, just recognition, top-down recognition. Oh, it's Goldilocks, but she hunts bears. That's awesome. That's magic stake on Goldilocks. The second thing is, oh, you know, I have my big bad wolf and I'm going to put it with the pigs. So the three pigs are with the big bad wolf. There's that connectivity of known connectivity. And then there was a connectivity of mix and match where I'm putting things together that aren't supposed to be together. You know, my Pinocchio can carry Excalibur. You can mix and match where I'm putting things together that aren't supposed to be together. You know, my Pinocchio can carry Excalibur. You can mix and match things. And there's a lot of fun there. And so a lot of

what made Throne of Eldraine shine from a set was realizing that the space we were playing in, the familiarity that came with it, and the way we could build it let us build a very modular system that is not, like, one of the things that's very interesting is when I say, oh, we're making a top-down set, I think people think, like, oh, well, making Innistrad is the same as making Theros, which is the same as making Amonkhet, which is the same as making Throne of Eldraine. Those are all top-down sets, and the answer is no. How you build your top-down set is completely based on the kind of

top-down you're using. For example, Amonkhet, we were doing Egyptian. But most people don't know Egyptian mythology, the stories. In Theros, we could lean on the stories because the people knew of Icarus. But it was harder to do that. And so, for example, Amiket had to lean more on some historical stuff and visuals and leaned more into sort of pop culture tropes of that

than we could on the actual historical mythology stories where the Greek mythology stories were just better known. And the fairy tales were even better known than that. Like, fairy tales allowed us a freedom and a modularity that is harder to do with Greek mythology. And so, a big lesson of Theros for me was really realizing how the higher resonance you have, the more resonant the material you're working with, on some level, the higher resonance you have, the more resonant the material you're working with,

on some level, the more freedom you have in your structure and the more the modularity of it becomes a big selling point of what you're doing. And that was a really important point of Thorne Eldraine is understanding that, like, the... I think that the... When you first think of top-downs, like I said, there's that three levels. The first level

is the directness. This is that thing. And while we got that, and that's there, and it's fun, it wasn't all that the top-down had to offer. And that we got to interconnect between, you know, archetypes, and we got to do mix and match,'t all that the top ten had to offer. And that we got to interconnect between, you know, archetypes, and we got to do mix and match.

And all that came together in a way that really gave Throne of Eldraine a slightly different feel. And I will note, it's not, for example, like, it's not like you can't do some of that and say Innistrad. I think, by the way, the more genres,

the more it's based on genres, meaning the more it's based on pop culture awareness, the easier it is to do mix and match. And the more it's based upon sort of history and historical awareness, meaning kind of like, did you learn it in school? The harder it is to do that. And the less crossover that you have. And the good example there is, just like with mythology, which is people knew Greek mythology more than they knew Egyptian mythology.

But even Greek mythology, there were more limits than there was with sort of pop culture. Pop culture has the farthest reach. That when you talk about classic movies, that has more reach, believe it or not, than sort of classic tales even mythology now the funny thing is some mythologies one of the reasons that

mythologies get broad awareness is through their trope use in movies so fairy tales by the nature of how they work just it's much easier to make movies out of fairy tales than it is out of Greek mythology for example and so there's just a lot more movies that use that structure so the audience has a better understanding of that structure the tropes are more familiar and so the more pop culture you are the higher the awareness and easier it is to use the resonance and

as I get into my lessons, when I get to Strixhaven, there's a corollary that's talking about real life, but that wasn't thrown in Eldraine's lesson. So I promise you, when we get to Strixhaven's lessons learned, I will talk a little bit about real-world resonance, which is another big lesson that we've gotten into recently.

So anyway, the other things... Actually, I'm almost to work. But really, normally I say I'm almost to work, and I have to joke that I can see my desk. But now Actually, I'm almost to work. But really, normally I say I'm almost to work and I have to joke that I can see my desk. But now, I'm actually almost to work. I will say, by the way, that actually driving to work and doing my podcast in a car while driving

is... I miss it. It is something that I got quite used to doing. And one of the weird things with the pandemic is there's things that you just like... You haven't done for a while. You're sort of out of the habit. But it's like riding a bicycle. You get back in. So hopefully this flows cleanly. But anyway, let me wrap up here. So the biggest lessons I learned from Throne of Eldraine like I said, had to do with understanding how to get it made.

And one other important lesson. Okay, so one of the things that I figured out going in is, I shared the story about the Night Tribal and the playtester couldn't see the Camelot. One of the things that's really important is, once I understood that lesson, once I understood that the icing of the set was going to lie on the fairy tales that the camelot was was cake and it made the structure work and and i should stress it's not that people couldn't enjoy the camelot part it's not that people didn't enjoy the camelot part it's not that we didn't spend a lot of time and energy on it we did uh it just wasn't the thing that

pulled people's eyes and one of the things you have to do when you are doing design, vision design especially, is understand what's going to make your set sell? What's going to make your set play? There's two big pieces. Part one is you want to excite your audience and make them want to play the set. And then you want, when they do play the

set, that it's fun for them. Um, and I'd realized through making it, like I understood where the fun was, the modularity and how to use the camo and stuff. And you're like, how do you use the courts? I mean, another big thing was we use the courts to be the bridge, to be the connective tissue. So it's cause, um, one of the things that Magic does really well is you want to figure out how to put your colors into your environment. And the courts were the perfect marrying of the Magic color wheel, the color pie, and the essence of what we wanted the environment to be. So Camelot did a very good job of being the foundation, of being something we could cycle through, of being how we meshed with the colors. So the Camelot

was a very, very important part of the set, but it was a foundational structural part of the set. It was not sort of the eye catching part of the set. So an important part after I made the set was I really learned, hey, part of what makes the set what it is, is I wanted to make sure that the people who were selling the set, the people that were marketing the set, sort of understood it. And not just that, everybody downstream of me understood sort of, talked with the creative team,

talked with set design, play design, sort of understood of what the set was and where the focus was going to be and that um people were going to get their eyes drawn to the fairy tale stuff because it was not magic hadn't really done that it was it was the new thing that magic was doing and the camelot part could be the foundational part that was fun and resonant that people could build around you know people did make night decks people did have a lot of fun with the Camelot part of the set. But it was because it was the foundational part

and we could build that in. And we did a lot to build themes. Like if you enjoyed the Camelot part and wanted to build decks around it, we wove those themes in. We recognized that there'd be people that really did enjoy that aspect and wanted to sort of dive in and have fun with that.

So we built the structure there. Just how we built the structure for the Camelot part was different from how we built the structure for the Fairytale part. And then, another important thing was weaving the two components into each other. Like, just like we built the modularity system for the Fairytales, when possible, we wanted the at least high-resin components of the Camelot stuff to interconnect as well. It was fun when Pinocchio had Excalibur. That was fun. And so we wanted to make sure those things interconnected.

But there was a big lesson, basically, of that set, is that my job as vision designer is not just make the thing. It is making sure that everybody downstream of me understands the strengths and weaknesses of what we're making. And, you know, in general one of the things about marketing is you market the strengths, right? You market what's strongest about the set. Sets will have strengths and weaknesses, and weaknesses don't exist. It's the nature of whatever you do. But you don't market to your weakness, you market to your strength. You say, this is why this set is cool.

This is why you want this set. And so a big part of doing Throne of Eldritch is really realizing more so than I had, I mean, I always had done that, but it made me realize even more so how important that was. And I had a really long talk with the marketing people about that. And like,

hey, the trailer that sold the set played into the fairy tales. The key marketing played into the fairy tales. And once again, it wasn't that we didn't show the Camelot stuff, but it was more that it was something... It was something secondary in the marketing and not primary. That it was there, and when we showed off the set,

it was there so people could have fun with that aspect of the set. But it wasn't... It was sort of the second tier, not the first tier from a parking standpoint. Anyway, guys, I have pulled into the parking lot!

Just real quickly as I'm parking here. During the pandemic, I did come in a couple times to pick something up, pick up some working stuff in there. But usually, it was not something that I, I don't know. I felt like at the time that I just didn't want to do drive to work when work wasn't open.

Even if I was driving in, it just felt sort of weird. And I don't know. But anyway, I felt like today is the first time I'm driving to work. There's people here. So I want to do an old, old fashioned drive to work. I will stress again, I'm not completely at work yet. There will still be some drive at works that were from home a bunch more. Oh, another question for the audience, just something I'm curious to get feedback on is I've enjoyed doing the interviews. It is almost impossible to do or it's very hard to do interviews in my car. Every once in a while, I used to have

a guest star. But my big question for the audience is, are you enjoying the interviews? Is that something from time to time I should do, even if I'm not driving to work? Is that okay? Or once I can drive to work, I should be driving to work and just doing drive to work. I'm trying to figure that out. But anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed Lessons Learned of Jordan Veldrain. It was a fun set to work on, and hopefully it was a fun set to hear me talk about. Anyway, guys, I'm actually at work. So we all know that means instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.

Bye-bye.