Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #908: Gods

Episode Date: February 19, 2022

I walk through the history of the God creature type and share stories about how we designed the different incarnations of them.

I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for Other Drive-Thru Work, Coronavirus Edition. Okay, guys. Today, I'm going to talk about the creature-type gods. So, the interesting thing is, Magic in the past definitely had characters that were god-like. But it wasn't until Theros, the original Theros, that we decided we were going to give, we were going to make God a creature type. And basically what happened was, when we were making Theros, one of the things we said is, okay, how do we take, you know, we wanted to have a Greek mythology-inspired world, but how do we take Greek mythology and blend it with magic in a way that made it feel very magic?

And the answer to that was, well, what if we had a pantheon of gods that were seen through the color wheel? You know, like one of the things that's really cool when we make a world is you want to figure out how the magic color pie fits into the world, that it's the most iconic thing of magic, that if you want a world to feel like magic, you have to figure out how the color pie applies to it.

And the idea that the pantheon of gods was seen through the color pie felt really cool. And we actually had a discussion, like, should they actually be gods? Should we actually call them gods? Like I said, prior to Theros, we had had cards, I mean, like, for example, you know, in the original Kamigawa,

we had characters that you could have called gods, and we had in in Shadowmoor, we had a cycle of things that you could have called god, but we didn't. It wasn't until Theros was saying, but you know, we said, okay, we're doing Greek mythology,

you know, we're doing, and gods are such a key part of it that we said, okay, we're doing Greek mythology, you know, we're doing, and gods are such a key part of it that we said, okay, let's just do gods. So the big question was, like, once we had the idea that we're going to do gods and we were going to see the pantheon through the color pie, the next big question was, well, how do you feel like a god? Like, that was a, okay, how do I make a card that says, this feels like a god? And so, for Theros, one that you'll see in today's

podcast is, we've done gods a couple different times, and each time we've done them, we've approached it a little bit differently. I'm starting with the Theros gods. We'll eventually get to the Amonkhet gods, to the Kaldheim gods, Adventures of a Forgotten Realm have a few gods. We'll eventually get to the Amonkhet gods, to the Kaldheim gods. Adventures of a Forgotten Realm have a few gods, so we'll get to all those.

First, we'll start with Theros. So, the first thing we said is, okay, there's a couple things that are true about gods. One is that they're hard to kill, you know, that they're impressive. But also, that gods a lot of the time are sort of up away. That, yeah, they do, like, even in Greek mythology, the gods did eventually come down to Earth from time to time, but it wasn't often. They were off, you know, up in, you know,

they were in their own, you know, land in the sky and not walking on Earth most of the time. So how do you create something that sort of has a sense of the feel of the gods being there, but also that the gods could show up and physically actually be there? How do you capture that? And in the same sense, we also wanted gods to be hard to get rid of. So early on, we made the decision that we wanted the set to be an enchantment matter set. And so the idea that we came up with early on that stuck all the way through was that enchantments represented the feel of the gods.

Sort of the touch of the gods. And once we knew that, we knew that we wanted the gods themselves to be enchantments. In order to make enchantments work in the set, we needed to have enchantment creatures. So the set had enchantment creatures. And all of them were sort of creations of the gods. Well, if they were creations of the

gods, shouldn't the gods themselves be enchantments? And once we decided we wanted them to be legendary enchantment creatures, it is good that we decided to go with god because nothing else fit. So we didn't have a lot of space. Okay, so the idea we came up with, and we actually built this first for the five monocolor gods. So, in Theros, Heliod, Thassa, Erebus, Perforos, and Nylea, which are the five, the

sort of major gods, if you will, the multicolor, more the minor gods. We made them the monocolor gods, and Heliod was, like, loosely after Zeus, and Thassa was after Poseidon, and Erebus was after Hades, and Perphoros was after Vulcan,

or that's, Vulcan's not the Greek name, but I'm blanking on his name, but Vulcan was the Roman name of it, and then Kylia was, like, kind of Athena, goddess of the hunt. So, I mean, once again, the mono colors had a little more direct influences. The multicolors, sometimes we'd join things together. Okay, so the first idea we had is, okay, Chan and Creature.

And then we liked the idea that they were indestructible, so they were hard to deal with. And then the set had Devotion, right? And Devotion was a mechanic that counted the number of pips of a certain color you had and said, okay, well, what if you had to have a certain devotion for them to show up? Like enough people had to believe in them for them to come down. And so what we did is we gave them three abilities, basically, or four abilities. One, they were indestructible. So all five of them, and as I get

into the other ten, they follow this pattern. They're all indestructible. They had a devotion, so they said, hey, if I meet a certain devotion, and the devotion was five for the monocolors, then it had an enchantment ability, so the idea is, even if it's not a creature

yet, this ability still works. And then it had a second activated ability that allowed you to do something. And so the idea, that's how all five of them work. They're instructable. If you have a devotion of five, they become a creature. They have a static ability. They have an activated ability. And usually there is some synergy between them.

You know, Heliod makes two one1 enchantment creature tokens, and then its static ability, it gives Vigilant. So there's synergy. So the static ability and the activated ability would have some synergy between them. Okay, so that is how we built the basic gods of the Monochrome gods.

But then, we decided that we wanted in each of the next two sets, so it was a block. So in Theros, we had the monocolor gods. In Born of the Gods, we had the ally color gods. And then in Journey to Nyx, we had the enemy color gods. So we decided we wanted to design the ten multicolor gods the same. So like the monocolor gods, they were all indestructible, and they're all legendary

enchantment creatures, and they all had a devotion. Now, because the devotion was for two colors rather than one color, all of the two-color ones had a devotion of seven to become a creature, just because it's easier to turn them on, uh, than it was the monocolor ones. Now, true, if you play a monocolor deck, it's easier to turn on the monocolor ones. But the idea was, because it counted two different colors, we made them seven. And then there was one sort of enchantment-like ability. On the ones we did, on the monocolor ones, we did a very simple static ability and an activate ability. But what we did on the multicolor ones, we just did one more elaborate static ability that would tie into them. And so,

the allied color ones were Pharah, and Kemetra, and Mogis, and Phoenix, and Xenagos. Xenagos, by the way, had been a planeswalker in the first set, and became a god in the second set. We had never

had a planeswalker become a creature, become a god. But that was even worse. And then in the third set, the enemies were Athreos, Eros, Karonos, Kruphix, and Farika. And all of these, by the way, we really sort of

the creative team looked at all the sort of what are people gods of, and so we did different versions, and we did our take on it, harvest and war, and the people who, you know, Atheros leads you when you die. You know, we looked and said,

where can we do it? And some of the times, we sort of combined things. Some of the times, we sort of went our own direction. You know, so like, there were definitely gods of different kinds of things, but it was very much inspired by Greek mythology

and the kinds of things that made sense. And we purposely just chose to make not all the gods even humanoid. Like, Mogis is, like, a minotaur. Obviously, Xenagos is a satyr. Eros is a centaur. So, we definitelyagos is a satyr. Eros is a centaur.

So we definitely mixed it up a little bit, although there was no room on the cards to say anything other than gods. So even though they had other, you know, even though, you know, Mogus is a minotaur, it doesn't say minotaur god on it. And we decided, I mean, because they were enchantment creatures, there just wasn't space, so they were gods. So we made those ten gods. Okay, so the interesting thing is now we come along to Amonkhet.

And we're like, okay, we made a Greek mythology-inspired set. We made gods. They were very popular. Okay, now we're in the Egyptian-inspired. Okay, well, okay, we have to have gods, right? Like, it's Egyptian mythology-inspired. Okay, well, okay, we have to have gods, right? Like, is Egyptian mythology inspired? Like, you know, the gods were a big part of Egyptian mythology. So, like, okay. So, we sort of said, okay, let's, like,

one of the things when you do something for the first time is you're definitely setting some expectations. But the second time you do it, you're even more so, like, two lines draw a line, two dots draw a line. So, like, we wanted to say, well, what was inherent to being a god and what was... Well, these were the Greek gods, but, you know,

the Egyptian gods could be different. So the first thing we did was we decided that we were going to make them indestructible. I think our thought at the time was, oh, maybe that's part of the sense of the gods, they're indestructible.

As you will see, we move off that eventually. But early on in Amakir, like, okay, well, they're gods, they're indestructible. And so what we said is, okay, we're not going to make them enchantment gods. Enchantment gods and devotion, that was a, that's a Greek mythology thing, you know.

We decided we're going to make them a little bit more real, like, in the story, the gods walk among the people, like, they are there all the time. You know, it is, they're less of sort of this myth that maybe you run into, but you hear about, and more of, like, they're tangibly there.

We did a big part of the story. So when we built Amonkhet, we blended sort of Egyptian with this feeling of Bolas, because Bolas had warped the plane. And so what we had done was, the first set has five monocolors, so it's kind of set up like we did Amonkhet. We, once again, divided the pantheon

through colors, and the colors represented something. In Amonkhet, there was a series of tests, and so the, um, they represented these five tests that happened, um, and the idea was if you made it through the tests, then you were killed in a glorious way, but secretly

Bolas was just trying to build a zombie army, so it turned out to be not so good. I will stress, by the way, the gods, the five monocular gods had no idea, I mean they knew Bolas existed, but they didn't understand the larger scoop of what was going on. So

what we did with these gods is all of them are indestructible, plus they have another keyword. So Al Ketra has Double Strike, Kefnis has Flying, Bantu has Menace, Hazoret has Haste, and Ronas has Death Touch.

So, we give them each an ability, plus indestructible, so two abilities, you've got indestructible. And then, we gave them a, they can't attack or block unless a certain condition is met. So it was kind of like saying, like, oh, kind of like the gods that we did in Theros, they're creatures, and they're a little cheaper for creatures than normal,

but you can't always attack or block. You have to sort of have the right conditions. Now, the difference between Theros and Amonkhet is, in Theros, it's devotion. Now, yes, you can lose creatures, yes, you can gain and lose devotion, but pretty much, once you turn them on, most of the time they stayed on. With the Amonkhet ones,

you had to meet a certain condition that was not necessarily as easy to keep or go. Like, Oketra said, you have to control three other creatures. Kefnet, yes, you had to have seven more cards in hand. Bantu was, a creature had to die under other creatures. Kefnet, yes, you had to have seven more cards in hand. Bantu was a creature that had to die under your control. Hazoret was you have one or fewer cards in hand.

And Ronas was you have to have a power creature four or greater. These were things that you could get, but were a little bit easier to change. Devotion in general, I mean, you can kill creatures with lower devotion, but it's a little harder, especially when, like, you need a devotion of five for the Monocaller. Like, hey, it's not that hard to get up to ten or twenty, you know, to get higher numbers later in the game.

And so it's a lot harder to turn them off when that happens. Finally, we also gave them each an activated ability that you could use even if they couldn't attack yet. So similar to the Therosian ones, there definitely is this idea of they come to play, they're a little cheaper for what they are, they're indestructible, but there's a condition by which you can attack with them. But even when that isn't met,

they have this kind of global effect that you can use. So even if they're not attacking or blocking yet, you still can use their ability. And once again, the ability you're using, like Oketra lets you make creature tokens. Well, you can't attack unless you have three or more creature tokens. So, the idea was the ability of the creature would

build up and help you to get there. I will stress, by the way, in retrospect, the fact that we gave Indestructible when four of the five would be killed. Sorry, spoiler alert. Four of the five get killed. I'm going to talk about their zombies in a second, so hopefully that will become apparent. Every bit of it has

actually got killed in the story by the gods I'm going to talk about in a second. So the fact that indestructible is a little bit quirky, I mean, you can sacrifice them, I guess, but it is a little quirky that indestructible when in the story they die, so in retrospect. Okay, next up was the Locust God, the Scarab God, and the Scorping God.

So what happens is Bolas brings back these three old gods who end up destroying everything and killing four of the five gods and lots of the people. And so we needed to represent that. Because they were Bolas, because it was Bolas doing, we ended up taking the three Bolas color combinations. So Bolas is blue, black, and red. So blue, red, blue, black, and black, red to represent them. Once again, oh, the one thing we also did do, by the way, with the original ones is we flavored them as all having animals,

like being animal heads, because that was really big in mythology for Egyptian mythology. But anyway, we ended up playing these gods a little bit different. One of the things, at some point, I believe PlayDesign came to us and said, we stop it with the indestructible,

it's really hard to balance indestructible cards. Even when you have restrictions to when they're creatures and when they're not, it's still hard to balance them. So the Locust God, the Scarab God, and the Scorping God, we changed it so instead of being indestructible, they can be killed if you kill them, they go back to your hand

at the beginning of the next end step so if you kill them you do get them back, so you can replay them again so it's not that they they have a sort of, it's not that they you... It's hard to get rid of them, but not quite as hard as indestructible versions.

So the way this one worked is it wasn't quite as clean a parallel between these three. They were all multicolored, obviously. Like, the Locust God had flying, but the other two didn't have a creature ability. All three of them had an activated ability, and Locust God had flying, but the other two didn't have a creature ability.

All three of them had an activated ability. And all of them had a triggered ability. The Scarab God had two triggered abilities. And the Scorping God had a static ability. And the Locust God had a static ability. So, I guess all three of them had three abilities. One is activated, one is triggered. and the first one could be triggered, could be static.

And the other big thing about the three gods from the multicolored gods is they were destructive, and all their abilities are very destructive and are harming things. Although the Locust God, I guess,

is more making locusts than cause issues. But anyway, so those were the sort of the other gods from Amonkhet. Okay, so now we get to War of the Spark. So remember I mentioned that three of the four got, I'm sorry, four of the five got killed? Well, it was part of Bolas's master plan to make a almost cycle,

we'll get to that in a second, of zombie gods. So now, for the first time, gods have another creature type. Before that, they had not. They were always enchantment creature god or legendary creature. They were all legendary gods, but they had no other creature type. Well, for the first time, we now meet

gods that have no other creature type. It's the zombie gods. So, Oketra and Kefnet and Bantu and Ronas become god eternal. So, what we do with these is we give them all a keyword. We give them a triggered ability. And then we give them two... I guess we give them two triggered abilities. Yeah, they're all two triggered. So they have two triggered

abilities. One of which is their main effect when they do in play and the other says, when I die you put it third from the top. So the idea is if you kill these, okay, they're hard to kill gods, but they're not indestructible like the early gods. They're not back to your hand to end a turn.

It's like, oh, they're going to be away for three turns before you can cast them again. So you're starting to see that we're starting to make it a little easier to get rid of gods. The gods have proved to be a little problematic. So the one tricky thing is, we didn't, the red god didn't die. So in this set, we made

Ilharg, the raised boar. So in the mythology, there was this boar god that I think the gruel prayed to I think but anyway we brought him back and then we made him function just like the other gods so he has a static ability a creature ability

sorry he has a creature ability and then he has two triggered abilities and so he works so he's designed to be just like the other gods as far as working the same mechanically. He's a boar god and not a zombie god, so he's slightly different flavor-wise, but it's sort of part of that cycle.

Okay, next up, we return to Theros. So we went back to Theros, like, okay, well, we're back in Theros. So we had a lot of talk of, like, we had moved away from kind of how gods functioned when we had went to other worlds. So we're like, okay, well, do we want to learn that?

Like, well, we've seen these gods before. They worked a certain way. And so we decided that we were going to retreat back to the way they worked. So, for example, once again, it's the same five monocards. Heliod, Thassa, Erebos, Purphoros, and Nylea.

Oh, one thing, by the way, I did mention real quickly that we did do that was kind of fun in the original Theros is we made equipment for each of the five major gods, and those equipment appeared as their own cycle as legendary as legendary artifact

enchantments, which is the first time I think we've done artifact enchantments. And they're legendary to boot. So anyway, something cool we've done I forgot to mention. Okay, anyway, so we come back, we're like, okay, they're going to be legendary enchantment creatures again because that's what the Theros, legendary enchantment creature god. We made them indestructible.

We did have a lot of discussion of whether they're supposed to be indestructible or not. Just cause from play design, indestructible things are not that fun. But, okay, we gave them the same devotion. So you have to have a devotion of five to your color to become a creature. And then we gave them all a triggered ability, and then we gave them an activated ability. So it's pretty

similar. Well, I guess the first time they came, they were all static abilities. Well, they weren't all static. I guess some were static and some were triggered. But this time when we went back, we made them all, I think they're all triggered. No, no, they're not. Porphos isn't triggered.

So okay, it's a combination and neither is Nylea. So once again, it's a combination of some are triggered, some are static abilities. But they have an ability that's much like an enchantment. And they have an activated ability. And so the idea is, you can use your activated ability to do your thing and usually an activated ability. And so the idea is, you can use your activated ability to do your thing.

And usually the activated ability and the static ability had synergy between them. For example, Heliad says, when you gain life, you put a possible counter on target creature or enchantment you control. And its activated ability gives them a lifelink. So it enables you to gain life so that you can do the other ability. And the cards all have that synergy between them. That's designed by how we made them. So, and once again, we had a big conversation about what gods we wanted to include in Return to Theros.

And we finally decided, like, there was talk of should we bring back all 15. The problem was there was just too much to fit in one set. And so what we decided was we wouldn't do that. And so what we did is we brought back two, well, I should say we brought back one god and then introduced a brand new god. So Athreos, a major part of the story is about,

or the main story is about Elisabeth breaking out of the underworld, right? And so in order to do that, we're like, okay, Atherios played a big role. Like, okay, Atherios should be in the set. So we had Atherios in the set. The other one, Clothius, is when Xenagos had taken over,

we needed there to be a vacancy so that he could take over. But we had talked about the former red-green god. And so when you go to the underworld, you meet the red-green god and Clothius is sort of our we had wanted to do something that was kind of inspired by Aphrodite I think this is our Aphrodite-inspired one

or actually I take that back it ended up being God of Destiny for a while it was more Aphrodite but we did change that but anyway, so we did make Clothius and Aphrodite okay, so the next time weothis and Athreos. Okay, so the next time we do gods, it is Norse mythology.

So you can see our mythology influence sets are the ones that make the gods most of the time. Okay, so this time we wanted to do something different. We really knew that we didn't want to do indestructible, but we had a tool at our disposal that ended up being pretty cool,

which is we had modal double-faced cards. And early on, we got across this idea of what if our variant of Thor had a hammer? So, like, one side would be

our Thor variant, and one side, the other side would be his hammer. And so we really got into this idea of, what if we use the MDFCs to be the mechanic for our gods? So, in Kaldheim, other than there's four dual lands that's finishing a cycle from Zendikar Rising, other than those dual lands, every mortal double-faced card in the set is a god. And they are a god on one side, and they are something else on the other side.

And we really had fun saying, you know, what kind of cool things could we do? The first one we came up with the idea of what Toralf was our Thor stand-in, and he had a hammer. That made a lot of sense. The next one we came up with was Alrond, which is our Odin-like character, would have a raven, because Odin had ravens,

and we thought it was kind of cool. And once again, we thought it was neat to change it up. So, like, Toralf has equipment on the backside. Alr Toralf has equipment on the backside. Alrund has a creature on the backside. The next one we came up with was Valky. So, Valky, God of Lies, which is kind of like our Loki. The back of it is Tybalt,

because it turns out that Tybalt's pretending to be the God of Lies. It was a very Loki moment, or ironically, he's pretending to be the God of Lies. But there's a lot of trickery there, and we thought that it was a very low key moment ironically he's pretending to be the god of lies but there's a lot of trickery there and we thought that it was fun and Tybalt was one of our main bad guy so anyway we thought that was fun so those are the first three we came up with

and then we came up with some others so Esrica oh no sorry not Esrica who has the, oh, uh, let's see, Halvar, Halvar had a sword, so, um,

Halvar got a battle, he was another one we gave an equipment to, so he had a, the Masterful Sword he played. Raydain had the Protector's Shield, so that, uh, we did, like, in white, we did a bunch of warrior stuff, there with a lot of warrior things. Kazmina,

God of the Voyage, got a ship. So we had a vehicle. We thought it was cool to have some vehicles. Egon, God of Death, oh,

had his throne on the back. Tegred, God of Fright, had a lantern. Bergi, God of Storytelling, had a horn. Esrika, was one of the fun ones, had the prismatic bridge.

So that is our Heimdall stand-in. And so the idea is there's a rainbow bridge in Norse mythology. So the idea that we do a prismatic bridge, we made a five-color. So that was pretty fun. Jorn, on the back side, has his staff. And Kolvari has the crest. So mostly what we did is we kind of thought what were cool and innovative things

that made a lot of sense as things it could be. So some are objects, some are creatures, one's a planeswalker. We had a lot of fun of sort of finding things. And the idea that's neat is, if you play the god, and then later on draw a second copy, with a legendary,

so now you can play the flip side, and you can play the other thing, and they're made to be synergistic. So if you played Thor, and then draw it again and play his hammer, Thor is good with his hammer. It works well together. That was the idea there.

Okay, so next up, the next time God showed up was in Modern Horizons 2 on Selvin of Sea and Sky. I'm trying to remember. This is why I'm losing my lower. This is a character that was from an existing world,

but I don't remember what world. What does it say? It's from Merfolk. So this was a Merfolk god that we had talked about previously in another story, and I thought it was fun. Like, now that we had a bunch of gods under our belt, and up to this point, all the gods had been gods

from mythological-inspired worlds. But finally, Sevelin was a god we'd invented for another world that, you know, a lot of times we'll invent gods, but it was kind of fun to finally sort of make a god and show it. So that was cool to do that. It was literally a god from another story we had done. Finally, the last two gods are Asmodeus the Archfiend and Tiamat. So these were both in the Dungeon Dragon set, Adventures of the Forgotten Realm. These are both characters from Dungeon Dragons that are gods in Dungeon Dragon set, Adventures of the Forgotten Realm, these are both characters from Dungeon Dragons

that are gods in Dungeon Dragons. And so it allowed us to use the creature type. Now, the one thing about Sylvan and Asmodeus and Tiamat is they aren't part of a cycle. They're just, we sort of just made them to be what the story was of that god. And so we were able to do that. So these were

just top-downs. It didn't, All the previous gods had been cycles, because they had been part of pantheons of different worlds. And these were just one-offs. So we got to do cool things just one-offs. But I think what happened was we had done enough gods under our belt that, like, oh, these things are in the stories

gods. Okay, we can call them gods. And we started making more one-off gods, which we hadn't done really prior to these last three. But it was kind of fun. And, like, Tiamat was... It let us do some splashy things. And, like, one of the things that's really interesting is

early magic, we made gods, but we didn't call them gods. It wasn't a creature-type god. But once we started cementing gods and we, you know, once we sort of got our... We had made gods, something that was established, you know, once we sort of got our we had made gods something that was established, you know, between Theros and Amonkhet and Kaldheim, like, okay gods are a thing we do, that we started

letting us individually start to make gods and I think now that we sort of have gotten a little bit more comfortable with god as a creature type, you will see us using it in places where it makes sense, sort of I mean, kind of what this last year has taught us between Modern Horizons and Adventures of the Forgotten Realms

is, hey, if something in story is a god, hey, we have that tool in our toolbox and we can make it a god. We've also sort of said, hey, we can be, you know, gods can be a little more like,

we definitely want the feeling of a god and we want gods in a similar world in a pantheon to feel similar to one another, but, like, gods don't have to be indestructible.

Gods don't have to, like, you know, but gods don't have to be indestructible. Gods don't have to... We have some flexibility in how we can do it, and I think over time we found a bunch of really fun ways to do it, and that's one of the neat things about the god creature type has been we've really experimented, and in each of them, I think the Theros

gods and the Amonkink gods and the Kaldheim gods all really felt like gods. They were a pantheon. They did their own thing. But they each did their thing differently and felt like gods in their own way. And I think that was a lot of fun. And one of the reasons I wanted to talk about gods today is it really has

been an interesting exploration as we played with it, figuring out how we can do and what we can do with it. And really with time, I think we started being really tight in what it had to be, and we've expanded with time. So, I do think the future of gods is much more open, and I do think as we find

places to do them, we're going to be more willing to use the god creature type. But anyway, guys, I am at my desk, so I've made it to work. So we all know what 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. I had fun talking gods today, but it is time for me to go.

So I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.