Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #921: Non-tournament Design

Episode Date: April 9, 2022

When Unglued was first concepted, the idea behind it was that we could design cards for non-tournament play. What exactly does that mean, and what does it entail? In this podcast, I explore the parameters of non-tournament design.

I'm not pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work at home edition. So I'm having some technical problems with audio, so I'm going to do this today at home. I will solve it and then be back in my car soon. Okay, so earlier last year when I introduced Unfin not, we do a thing we call the pre-beat, where we talk a little bit about and show you a few cards. This was back in like November. I talked a little bit about tournament design versus non-tournament design. So if you remember, when Unglued first got made, the idea behind Unglued

was that we would introduce silver borders. And silver borders meant non-tournament design. And I explained in that article that early on, non-tournament design meant, well, not for high-end

constructed play, but it was intended for casual formats. And I talked about how there was a lot of design space there, and we wanted to make use of that. And so today, I want to sort of talk about what is that non-tournament design space? What does that mean? I want to really make clarifications and talk about what exactly is sort of, what is this

viable, interesting design space that I think the unsets get to do that a lot of the rest of Magic doesn't get to do. And I'm going to clarify today, and for those that really enjoy getting into the nitty-gritty of design, this is very nitty-gritty. Okay, so basically, when Richard Garfield first made Magic, the idea was it was a much more casual game. But it soon – it became clear pretty soon that as Magic got a lot bigger and became something that we introduced the idea of sanctioned tournaments or just tournaments in general. And once tournaments became a thing, it started adding a bunch of rules to how we made magic. So I want to sort of walk through those rules, explain what those rules are, and talk about, um, where, where it opened up space for interesting design that we don't do in normal sets.

Okay, so the first area I want to talk about is what I'll call working within the rules. the first area I want to talk about is what I'll call working within the rules. So in order to make Magic a high-level competitive tournament game, there needs to be a very crisp and clear rule system. The way I like to describe it is think of the rule system as a computer, that there has to be an answer to everything, that no matter what you do, no matter what input you give into it, there needs to be a clear output. That you can't solve the problems 99.9% of the time. The rule system needs to solve them 100% of the time. Okay, so there's a couple issues when this comes up. So the first thing is what I'll call corner cases,

which is when playing with the card, the average player will have no problem. The things that would normally come up, you know, are all hand... They're all things that, in practical play, can be handled. But, because the tournament system needs the 100%, needs to be exact, there are weird corner cases that might even be just hypothetical. Might never actually come up in gameplay, or very rarely in gameplay, but the system still needs to answer it. And because of that, there are things that you cannot do. So my example here is staying power. So staying power is an enchantment in Unhinged.

And basically it says things that would last until end of turn, I think it replaces until end of turn or at end of turn, and it says those things don't end. So the idea essentially is anything that would be a temporary effect, like say a giant growth, it becomes a permanent fact. So instead of your creature getting plus three plus three just for the turn, it would permanently get plus three plus three plus three for the rest of the game. Now from a practical standpoint, I mean there's some memory issues there, but from a practical understanding the rules, applying it, people can play that. There's no problem.

The reason that we couldn't make that card in non-Silver Border Acorn was that there are things the rules can't handle. That there are a lot of times in the rules, the rules say, well, when this happens, here's how you resolve it. in the rules, the rules say, well, when this happens, here's how you resolve it. And when you make a card that says, well, this rule doesn't work that way, then there's no answer for the system. And there's some things that just can't easily be answered. So it's a good example of the reason we made staying power unhinged is it's a very fun card. It's enjoyable. I try to make it in a non-unset, but for this sort of corner case rules issue, it couldn't be done, but it's a non-unset but for this sort of corner case rules issue it couldn't be done but it's a fun card people can play with it people can enjoy it people don't even necessarily have any problem playing with it but it doesn't work in the rule system so it becomes non-tournament design

another area is um what i will call it's not that the game system can't adapt to it, but it might not be worth it. The example here is Last Strike or Triple Strike. Last Strike requires a rewriting of the tournament rules, or not, I'm sorry, of the combat rules. And the combat rules are really designed to do what they do, and it's not set up to sort of add in new sort of sections of combat or new parts of damage. So it requires

completely rewriting it. So the reason that when we came... I think Last Strike was created by Mark Gottlieb during Future Sight, and the reason it got struck down by Mark Gottlieb who then, as a rules manager, had to strike it down, was it requires so much work it's just not worth doing.

We're not making enough cards that it's worth that work. So that's another place where non-terminate design is like, oh, well, it's something that people can understand, it's something that's fun, but it's just not worth the work it would require to the rules to add it. So another thing is what I'll call sort of the quirkiness, where there's something weird that you have to put in. Often it involves some sort of ambiguity.

Like, so one of the things that humans handle well, humans handle ambiguity really well. Computers or systems do not. My example here is a card called Yet Another Aether Vortex, which is in Unhinged. And basically it says the top card on your library, if it's a permanent, is both on the battlefield and on top of your library. Now, it requires you understanding a certain system. There's a certain mindset you have to understand. But once you understand it, all the rulings that come off it are very consistent. Now, it creates an ambiguity that a computer can't handle, that the rule system can't handle, but that humans can handle.

And so that's another example of where we can go with non-terminate design is in each of these cases, the corner cases, the change issue, the quirkiness, ambiguity issue. It's not that humans can't handle all of that. It's the system can't handle it. So the first big category is things in which they're fun designs, they're usable designs, they're comprehensible designs, but the larger system can't handle them. So we can't make them within the tournament setting that requires that, but they are fun cards that we can design. Okay, the next area that gets us in trouble is what I'll call the consistency area.

So one of the ways that the tournament system needs to work is it needs a consistency across all the cards that are the same. So in order for tournaments to function, there's a rule that says every card that shares the same English name, so every card, you know, we are many languages, but so every card that's called Grizzly Bear, you know, no matter the language, but in English it's called Grizzly Bear, all of those have to be consistent. Every printing has to be consistent. They all have to work the same.

But what that means is there are qualities of cards that will vary between printings. Anything that's not consistent between printings, it can't be applied to. The system can't handle that. So for example, rules tax is consistent. Power toughness is consistent. Mana cost is consistent. So those are things that you can look at. But as far as if it has a watermark, who the artist is, there's things that vary from version to version. The expansion symbol, the watermarks, the art, for example. And so none of those things are viable.

So for example, like watermarks, there's a lot of cool things. If we could use watermarks in care mechanically, there's a lot of neat space that we could use there. There's a lot of ways, like sometimes I want to have a subset of cards in a set, and right now I need to have a word on the type line to be able to do that, or a keyword in the rules text. But without that, I keyword in the rules text. But without that, I can't group them together.

And so there's some batching. There's some tricks that we can do. But I can't just sort of say these five cards, I just want to be a batch or these 20 cards or 50 cards. So the consistency thing keeps us from doing that. So for example, in Unstable, we had watermarks matter. For example, I had five factions, and I could do some neat stuff like, hey, all the agents of Sneak, that was our spy

faction, have this watermark. So I could make a card that says, hey, look at the top of your library. Does it have that watermark? And if so, there's a bonus for doing that. But I can only do that because I could care about watermarks. But the system doesn't let me care about things like watermarks. So that is non-term design space. The other problem is

because of the way the language works, because we are printed in different languages and that certain words do not show up consistently between languages, we are allowed to care about the name as a whole entity. So we can say, look for a card named such and such. But we can't care about elements of the name. For example, there's a card called Urza's Hot Tub in Unhinged where you can discard a card to go tutor for a card that has a word in common with the card you're discarding. So if I discard a card with Urza in the name,

I can go get a different card with Urza in the name. Or if I discard a card that said Giant, I can discard my Hill Giant to go get a Giant growth. Because of the consistency thing, that is not viable. So there are a lot of fun cards where you can care about those qualities. And one of the things you'll notice in a lot of unsets is we've cared about collector number.

Name something we can care about. Oh, and the other thing that we can care about, like, stuff like how many lines of rules text are there. Because in different printings, maybe it's three lines in one printing, but four lines in another. And we can care about, like, qualities of names, what letter it starts with.

There's all these neat things that are fun and viable. And once again, not hard to understand, easy to play with, comprehensible. But the system doesn't allow us to do that. Okay, the next problem we run into is variance. One of the things when you are making a tournament viable, when you care about a tournament viable, when you care about high-end competitive play, it's very important that you have consistency.

You are trying to reward skill. So if somebody plays the same deck, you want the games to play out similarly because the lower the variance, the more likely the same thing will happen, which helps the person who is of higher skill. The problem is high variance is fun. For example, let's take the commander format, which is a very casual format. Why is commander not a 60-card format with four ofs? Because 100 singleton is more random it's higher variance the chance

you having the same gameplay from game to game is much higher that variance is very much on purpose in casual play you want higher variance so one of the things we do uh in the unsets is we make cards of higher variance you'll notice in sort of premiere sets if we make cards of higher variance. You'll notice in sort of premier sets, if we make a coin flipping card or a die rolling card like we did in Adventures of the Forgotten Realms, we really have to lower, we have to squish the variance. We have to make it so either

the card in general is not strong enough that we'd ever see tournament play, or just really reduce the amount of variance. But let's take a card like Elevation Personator, which wasn't unglued. It costs three and a green, and you roll two dice. The first die is the power, and the second die is the toughness.

That's a really fun card. But the variance is very high. It can be everything from a 1-1 up to a 6-6. There's 36 different outcomes. And that's really neat and very fun, but it's the tournament, like, making things viable for tournaments makes us squish the variants. But there's a lot of fun in variants. So that's another place that we can

play in non-tournament design. We can make higher variance things. And you'll notice not only do we make higher variance cards, we make higher variance mechanics. For example, look at Unstable. Both Contraptions and Host Augment are very high variance. For example, Contraptions has a randomized deck. Every time I build my Contraption from game to game, it's very unlikely that I'm building exactly the same Contraption because I'm getting things in different order and I might place them in different places because of the turn order that I get them. And so the contraptions you build are really different. It's seldom on a game-to-game that you're building the exact same contraption. Likewise, host and augment are, there's a left side and a right side. And, you know, each left side is different.

Each right side is different. So when you combine them, you're making a very different thing. So even if you're playing with the same host and augments, in this game, maybe I have, you know, I'm combining the squirrel on the left with the shark on the right. You know, and so that from game to game, you can understand and figure out how you can build things so that they are different. So not only do we make high variance cards, we get to make high variance mechanics. Next, so time. So another big thing when you're playing in high-level sanction play

is you have to think about how the tournament is playing out. And time is a big factor. You got to make sure the game ends. So for example, sub-games are, the very first sub-game was made by Richard Garfield in Arabian Nights called Scheherazade. Um, and the idea is you stop the game you're in and you play a sub game. Well, we stopped doing those in sort of normal magic and now we do them in unsets. So for example, we had a card called the countdown is one in unstable where you go to play a sub game and you're at, you start at one, right? So you start at one light. So it's a shorter sub game.

But the idea is sub games are fun. It's not like players don't understand them. It's just a time issue is we can't play things that slow down things because in a tournament, you have 50 minutes to an hour and you have to get three games in. So we have to be very careful when we design not to make things that will take too long. Not that those things aren't fun, not that the casual play formats don't

play a lot longer. Commander, for example, has a much longer playing time. But anyway, so that gets squeezed out because of tournament concerns. Another big issue is cheating concerns. That if we make something that's meant for tournament play, it has to be something monitorable by judges, that judges have to make sure that

everything is above board. So for example, in Unstable, we had something called outside assistance. So outside assistance says, hey, I'm a variable mechanic, but instead of rolling a die or flipping a coin, I'm going outside and talking to a person. It was a very successful group of mechanics. And the reason is it's fun interacting with people. Like the whole point is, look, we need variance. And you know it's high variance? People are high variance.

And there's all sorts of great stories we got of just people interacting with their friends or with strangers or whoever. of great stories we got of just people interacting with their friends or with strangers or whoever. But the problem is in a tournament setting, there's no way to know that you didn't plan ahead of time that that person would give you the answer you needed, right? There's no way to know if there's shenanigans going on. Now, in a casual setting, you know, there's an answer to cheating. If you get caught cheating in a casual setting, we kick you out of our play group. We don't play with you. That there's something built in, but in

a tournament setting, that's not viable. And so, if we make things that aren't easy to monitor, we sort of can't do that. So once again, these are things that get pulled off into the non-tournament design area. Fun stuff and interesting things, but sometimes there's things that can't be easily

monitored, so we can't do it there. interesting things, but sometimes there's things that can't be easily monitored, so we can't do it there. Other things, for example, we have to care about is... There are other factors in tournaments. For example, we tend to... There's other things that we could test. For example, we could test dexterity. There's a card called Slaying Mantis that is in Unstable where you have to flip it and it fights

the creature it lands on but for example early magic had a card called chaos orb it was in alpha um and it was causing all these problems in tournaments because tournaments tend to not have a lot of space and in order to play in an environment where chaos orb is around you want to spread your cards far apart so that you know the chaos orb can only hit one card because you flip it and every card it hits, it destroys. And that was causing all sorts of tournament problems. You can't kind of make things that mess with space. And we didn't want dexterity being a thing

within the context of tournaments for Magic. So there's a lot of fun dexterity cards and a lot of fun cards that interact in fun, neat ways, but that's not something we can do for high-level competitive play, so that becomes off-limits. That becomes something that you need to do in non-tournament design space. Another thing is there's exterior factors. For example, there's a card in Unhinged called Ass Whoopin', and a card in Unstable called Sidequest. Both those cards affect other games.

Now, those other games have to also be playing with silver-bordered acorn cards. The idea being... For example, I can't have a card that interacts with a tournament game in process, and so those things, they're fun, and they're casual

and they lend to a much more jovial experience, but you have to keep them separated because they cause problems when you're talking about a tournament where there's something on the line. You can't sort of... There's a lot of things that have novelty to them but cause problems in that system, so you can't have them. Another area that we have to be extra cautious about

is extra components, like contraptions. Contraptions has a whole extra deck. Well, space matters in tournaments, and so that extra deck and monitoring that deck, it becomes a lot harder to do in a competitive environment. So that's something that we can do easily, and it becomes a lot harder to do in a competitive environment. So, that's something that we can do easily and it's a lot of fun, and that we can do in places like

unsets that become harder to do in, like, a premier set. Another big thing is one of the things that we tend to do in unsets is we push into new space. We test new ground. But it is kind of hard.

It's something we have to be extra cautious in, in sort of a more, where there's, whenever we sort of experiment, the nice things about doing it in the non-terminate space is we don't, like, whenever we make something, we have to talk about, is it, you know, can digital programming, can organized play deal with the ramifications of it? And there are just things that are fun that, you know, like, I enjoy how we can push boundaries.

And the funny thing is sometimes boundaries we push in sort of the non-tournament design, we can find it works out and slowly move it to the tournament design space. tournament design, we can find it works out and slowly move it to the tournament design space. So there are different things that we want, like, for example, Full Art Lands once was considered kind of out there. We put them in unsets and they gravitated. Like

the idea of BFM, where two cards made one card. We later, that would become meld in sort of normal magic. There was a card with Superhaste in Unhinged that became the Pax later on. So there's a lot of things that we are able to look into and investigate that we have to be cautious when we make them,

but later there's space that we can move. Another good example is the split cards. The split cards were originally made actually for Unglue 2, now Unglue 2 never came out but it was something in which we were pushing in weird space and had I not been

trying to make an unset, I don't know I ever would have thought to put two cards on one card I mean, it was just me doing the opposite of BFM instead of one card that's two cards it's two cards that one card the non mean, it was just me doing the opposite of BFM, right? Instead of one card that's two cards, it's two cards that one card. And so, you know, the non- tournament space lets us push in stuff that you know, it gives us

wider breadth to try things. So, the reason I bring this up, the reason I'm walking through all these different categories is, I think sometimes there's this idea that sort of you know, black-bordered, eternal legal magic is the boundaries of magic.

That is what magic is. And I know there's people that look at silver-bordered acorn cards and their attitude is, well, that's something outside of magic. That is not normal magic. That is not magic. And the thing that's important to understand

is, look, magic is a game that stretches boundaries. Magic is a game that really allows people to play. And the interesting thing is most formats are not played in a high-level

tournament play. You know, there is Booster Draft. There is Standard. There is Pioneer. There is Modern. And that really is the format that you're seeing in, like, high-level competitive play. There's lots and lots of other formats. There is Commander.

There is Pauper. There's just infinite formats that people play that are much more casual in nature. And one of the things, for example, basically that happened is the Commander format, the people that really sort of pushed and made it popular

just happened to be judges. That just happened to be the people who did that. And the judges came from a circumstance where the system of magic they knew and understood, the system of magic they grew up in, that they learned magic in, that they experienced the game in, was tournament play.

So they sort of adopted tournament play as the default. Now it's funny, somebody else could have made the definitive casual play, and they might have not made that decision if they were not sort of raised in that environment. And so one of the things that's really important to understand is that, like, I as a designer, what I want to do is I want to make cards

so that every player can play the way they want to play. Now, there's definitely cards we can make for Commander that doesn't cause problems in high-level tournament play. But my point is, and the reason I'm sort of talking today is, there are a lot of really interesting cards. Sting Power, Last Strike, you know, sub-games. Like, there's lots of fun spaces. And interestingly, now, as with anything, no matter what we do, whatever boundary we do,

there is always something that crosses people's boundaries. And my question, my sort of point here is, look, dexterity cards exist in Black Border. There's Chaos Orb sub-games exist in Black Border, the Scheherazade you know, a lot of the stuff that I'm making a lot of the stuff that exists in the

non-terminate design space is very viable, fun, like it's literally made for casual magic play and I, one of the things I feel sad about is sort of watching people who, like, won't play with things that you are the target audience it was made for. You are the people that would most enjoy it, and somehow feeling like you're not allowed to play it.

In fact, one of my sort of contentions is, if you go back and look at early magic, look at Alpha, or maybe Knights, like super early magic what Richard Garfield initially intended magic to be was a much more casual aspect of magic that I

think the unsets are a lot more what he, I mean like I said Chaos Sword made by Richard, Scheherazade made by Richard. In fact, Richard's favorite card he ever designed was Scheherazade. That's his favorite magic card. And another important point is early magic, for example,

the rule set was very fuzzy. That was a feature to Richard, not a bug, that one of his favorite things about playing Cosmic Encounter, which was probably the game that had the most influence on the creation of Magic, was when weird things came up, it was fun for Richard to discuss with the other players what they think happened. The reason early Magic rules weren't sort of nailed down was because the system that Richard imagined was one that was more informal.

Now, once we realize kind of the level of organized play and the tournament structure and that needed to exist and that Magic was big enough that it would want that, hey, we made 6th edition rules. We started doing things to do that. And in the process of doing that,

we started sort of making this hard line of what is tournament Magic. But the point of today is what magic. But the sort of point of today is, what I'm trying to illustrate is that just because one aspect of magic needs to make boundaries doesn't mean

those boundaries have to be applied to all other magic. Just because tournaments do a certain thing, if you're not playing in tournaments, if you're not doing high-level competitive play, like, high variance is super fun. Because high-level tournaments don't want

high variance, you shouldn't have access to high variance. Because, like, high-level tournament play, you know, has to carry about variance or time or cheating concerns or has to carry about 100% rule compliancy doesn't mean that all this fun stuff that you would enjoy needs to be off limits and so really the point of today is but besides sort of explaining i wanted to spend today giving you

an idea of what is all this space there is just tons of very fertile, fun, really entertaining design space. It saddens me that people who are like, oh, I really like the host augment cards. I hope one day you make them so I can play them. And I'm like, you can play them now. So one of the things, for example, in Commander is the rule zero where talk to your play group. One of the things that I really think that is not taken advantage enough in Commander,

especially in playgroups that aren't... I know there's competitive Commander. I know there's people that want to play Commander in which they want it to be as competitive as possible. And I'm not saying those groups necessarily need to play with some of these cards, but most Commander groups are playing a much more free-ended casual play.

And things like Host Augment contraptions or dice rolling, there's lots of things that would be really fun for your group. It was literally designed, like, that's the part that's hard for me as a designer. I recognize players that would enjoy something. I design things specifically for those players. And some of those feel they're not allowed to play it even though it is for you

and it would enhance your gameplay and you would enjoy it. And once again, the other thing, by the way, is you can pick and choose. One of the fun things about Magic is for example, Armageddon is blackboarded. It's completely legal. But that doesn't mean your playgroup plays Armageddon. That part of any playgroup

is saying, what are we comfortable and not comfortable with? And there are things that are completely blackboarded that your group goes, you know what? That's not fun. We don't want to play that. Well, I'm saying the opposite with the silver board and the acorn stuff. There's stuff that, okay, technically is not allowed, but you and your playgroup would have

fun with it. You and your playgroup would have an enjoyable experience with it. Part of today is a plea to you that are playing casual formats, that are playing fun, that I really don't want you thinking like somehow all this non-tournament design space, A, is not for you, or B, is somehow not magic.

It is completely magic. In fact, it is more what Richard Garfield imagined magic to be. It is closer to that vision of what Richard made when he first made the game of magic. And there are so many fun things, and there's so much cool stuff that I just don't want people

sort of artificially keeping things off limits just because they feel they have to. And so that's my plea today. The reason I'm sort of spending the energy walking through what non-tournament design is, is to say to you, there's so much really cool, neat stuff there. Why limit yourself to something because it's not 100% compliant in the rule system, or it causes time problems at tournaments, or it can't be judged for cheating issues.

There's all these things that have nothing to do with the game you're playing if you're playing casual play, that have nothing to do with it, but yet those weird things are keeping access from stuff you would enjoy. So part of today is sort of walking through all the spaces and saying, hey,

if you're not currently playing with this stuff, it's something that I think you and your group should look at, that it is made for a lot of the people I'm talking to, it is literally made to make your playing experience more fun. And that doesn't mean you need to play everything. That doesn't mean everything will be what you enjoy. Hey, maybe you would love to play staying power, but don't want to flip a card in the air.

I'm not saying that accepting part of it is accepting all of it, but I'm saying, for you casual players who are listening, non-tournament design, you are literally the audience it's designed for. And it's just, I don't want, because the most popular

casual format happened to be made by judges, of this is off limits to you guys. So I do want you to consider that. Use rule zero. Take a look at that stuff. There's a lot of really fun, interesting, cool design space there. And so please, it doesn't have to be off limits. And that, by the way, is why we are changing on Infinity to try to make more stuff eternal.

that, by the way, is why we are changing Infinity to try to make more stuff eternal. I wish in Unstable that I could have made contraptions in Host Augment and die rolling eternal then. It's sad to me that people want to play Host Augment and feel they can't. Even though there's nothing about the rules that prevent you,

there's nothing about it that keeps you from understanding it or enjoying it or playing fine, you know what I'm saying? Anyway, that's my appeal today. So I hope you guys enjoyed understanding, hearing sort of what the dividing space is for tournaments versus non-tournament design, why it's that way. And hopefully I've inspired some of you to say, you know what?

Maybe this is for me. But anyway, I can see my desk. So we all know what that means. It means this is my end of the drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make it magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.