Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #927: Worldbuilding with Emily Teng

Episode Date: April 30, 2022

I sit down with Creative Team Member Emily Teng to talk about worldbuilding and the making of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work at Home Edition. Okay, so using my time at home to do lots of fun interviews, today I have Emily Tang from the creative team. Hello, Emily. So, one of the things I've been doing in these interviews is I want the audience to get a sense of other aspects of making magic. So, we're going to talk about world building with you today, and we're going to use Neon Dynasty as our example. Okay. So let's first explain, what do you do for magic?

Explain to the audience, what is your responsibility? I mean, the jokey answer is I make up lies for other people to believe. But more seriously. So the world building team, basically the responsibility is make up the flavors and the worlds that we stick on cards. You get this whole complete set and it feels like this one immersive, big immersive world. And that ties into the mechanics and sort of expresses it through the art and the world building and flavor text. Yeah, just to... Okay, so one of the things... So, for example, you and I work closely together because when I'm designing a set, we want to make sure the mechanics of the set and the flavor of the set are blending well. Right.

So I led Neon Dynasty, the vision design for Neon Dynasty, and you were in charge of the world building for Neon Dynasty. So I want to sort of, let's walk us through the making of Neon Dynasty so we can demonstrate sort of how this process works. Yeah, I mean, so I think vision for world building and game design started around the same time so vision was just like you know big picture stuff um uh on the world building side it meant going through like okay what is this world about what's the broad strokes like uh we knew it was going to be like a futuristic japanese inspired world so then it was like iterating in that space and like um throwing up having these big brainstorming things and coming up with ideas like early on we were even considering like oh what if there's

something to do with uh the seasons it has something to do with the seasons um cycling around or like how much um how much futuristic versus like um more traditional stuff we want so it's like hammering out like the really big structural issues of the world so i want to remind the audience, when we started, it was not Kamigawa. When we started, it was a futuristic Japanese-inspired world that may or may not be Kamigawa. We'll figure that out later. Which we actually figured out kind of late, I think. But it worked out because I remember game design was like exploring all the different mechanics of like, okay, what does it feel like? And then on the world building side, we were trying to figure out like, okay, what exactly does futuristic Japanese inspired world feel like?

And then both of us kind of simultaneously arrived at the answer is like, this could be Kamigawa, like from both a flavor and a mechanical standpoint. This could be Kamigawa, like, from both a flavor and a mechanical standpoint. Okay, so when you, so, for example, the impetus to start this set was looking at the idea of a futuristic-inspired, you know, Japanese-inspired world. What's the first thing you do? Like, when you say, okay, we have a germ of an idea, walk me through, like, the very first thing world building will do um one of oh i think one of the first things we did was just like get everyone in a room but this was back when we were still all completely in the office and then we just filled whiteboards with uh words like all right futuristic what do people associate with that um everyone just tossed out ideas wrote them all down and then we did the same for like all right japanese inspired world what do people associate with that um everyone just tossed out ideas wrote them all down and

then we did the same for like all right japanese inspired world what do people think of for that fill that whole board out and then from that we started like filtering it down to um which ones seem the most workable and or like the most appealing how early in the process are artists involved? Oh, gosh. I mean, the art director is involved from the beginning. And then we, in-house concept artists, we got them in pretty early too, just so, you know, they could start getting a feel early on. But I don't think like most artists weren't involved until we got to the concept push.

Well, let's talk about the concept artists. I don't think the players know a lot about what concept artists... Let's talk a little bit about what do concept artists do? How are they used in this process? You mean like the people we bring in from outside? No, inside. Not the world push yet, just the internal. Talk a little bit about,

we have internal people that do imagery and, you know, sketches and that at the very early part of world building, there's a little part where we're trying to get a visual sense roughly of where we are. Yeah, I mean, so they, I mean, they'll eventually help out on the concept push, So they, I mean, they'll eventually help out on the one who came up with the idea of, like, Boseju rising above the city of Tawashi. And then he gave us a preliminary sketch of what that looked like, so we could see. And that's something that stuck from, like, really early on after we decided it was Kamigawa. That's something that stuck all the way through uh to the final to the final product yeah one of the things that just so the audience

understands one of the things that happens very early on is um we'll have a couple sketches that just give a general sense so that everybody can sort of have a a sense of a very loose tone. I know, for example, in my articles talking about like Streets of New Capenna, you know, Mark Gottlieb was really inspired by this one image that they had made on the very early versions of what Capenna might be. So there's a lot of imagery done, or not a lot, there's a little bit of imagery done very early that helps everybody sort of get a general agreement maybe on the tone that we're looking for. Yeah, I mean, for Neon Dynasty, we had something similar. It was, we had some, there was like some uncertainty inside the building of like people about like, oh, I don't know if we should be doing a return to Kamigawa, especially if such a huge jump into the future.

return to Kanegawa, especially if such a huge jump into the future. But then we did get one of those tome plates, and it was like Ninja Rooftop Battle Over Neon Skyscrapers, and that was a tome plate we showed internally, and then after people saw that,

they were all like, oh yes, this looks awesome, I'm all on board now. Yeah, one of the things that was very interesting on Neon Dynasty is, I think a lot of the key players wanted this to be Kamigawa. I know I wanted to be Kamigawa. I know Jess was very interested in Kamigawa. Daniel was very interested in Kamigawa.

And I think worldbuilding was, in your heart of hearts, kind of wanted it to be Kamigawa, right? Yeah, it was really interesting everyone the general tone in world building um was like we would love to do a return to kamigawa but at the same time we are very scared of doing a return to kamigawa and messing it up so what is there go ahead Oh no, go ahead. Okay, so we're very early in design. We're doing early vision and exploratory.

You're doing early world building. So we came up with this idea in conjunction, I mean, working with you, this idea of modernity versus tradition. So let's talk a little bit from the world building side. How did you guys approach that idea? So this was something that we really were able to like tactically work on after once we decided it was Kamigawa because like there's the whole like 1200 years jump. So then we had this huge bridge of like the present and then the past so um it was really like these two disparate times that we somehow had to mesh together and we approach it two different ways like there's um like the more modern part of it drew really heavily from like futuristic sci-fi um and those were like

that's where like the world was a bit more new and we could explore a bit more so we had a bigger brainstorming meetings trying um with the group just to generate a bunch of ideas and then on the other side we were trying to figure out what parts of original kamigawa we wanted to bring forward and those we had smaller groups of just like um i think me and zach stella the art director and then i think daniel holt and ethan fleischer because they're both like huge um magic magic original kamigawa yeah yeah magic history so then it was just like pulling all our all our collective knowledge of original kamigawa and yeah Magic in Japan so then it was just like pulling all our all our collective knowledge of original Kamigawa and the novels and the characters and figuring out which elements uh carried over well or people would want to see uh easter eggs or mentions of and um

and then a lot of the work for world building was just like knitting the two together in a way that felt, that made sense and felt like a natural continuation. Another important factor that played here is something we did very early on once we decided we were going to have the conflict is we sort of loaded colors,

like the conflict at its core is kind of blue versus green. And so we made this, we sort of said, okay, well, blue's more going to be on this side and then red and then black's in the middle, then white, then green. So one of the things that happens in mechanics that has an influence on the world building side is we start picking out where certain things mechanically need to be so that the worldbuilding has to say, oh, okay, well, we know more cards are going to be illustrated in this color of this thing.

Do you want to talk a little bit about how you guys adjust to that? Yeah, I mean, so I actually don't remember who, which side did that come from? I mean, the, like, blue on one end and green on the other it came from mechanics first okay yeah um i mean so if we started out we started out with blue on one side and green on the other and that just felt really natural because blue is usually the one that's uh really future looking and um so that makes sense that they're really aligned with modernity and technology whereas green is really in touch with the land.

And that just and I mean, they have a lot of artifact hate and that puts them at a natural, naturally at odds with blue. And then we did a lot of talking to figure out where the other three colors fell within that. colors fell within that. And that was a mix of just like trying to match the general color philosophy and what the color had been historically in Kamigawa. White, for example, is really aligned with Lord Konda, Michiko Konda, um the imperials and so well so we brought that forward into the imperials who'd be like oh we have this um you know where we've been the uh government i guess the ruling body of this world so that felt more traditional like they they want to keep um they want to keep their rule they want to keep things a bit more how they have been um and red has always been a bit more you know uh anarchist um so that fell on the other side the divide and then black is just like

i'll do whatever i need to take or i'll i'll use whatever i can to achieve my means so um it sort of it made sense to us that they wouldn't try and like reject either help from Kami or any new technological innovations. If the tool fits the job, they're going to use it. Okay, so you and I, I mean, at the exact same time, vision design is going along, world building is going along, we're trading information back and forth and talking about, you know, okay, we like this idea. Here's the combat.

You know, here's the theme we're talking about. So let's talk about once we finish that process, let's talk about the world push. And what does a world push entail? So the concept push is where we get a bunch of external artists in. Up until now, Zach and I would have been working on figuring out what art needs we need. concept pushes as the artist to draw a bunch of plates of like costuming and environments and creatures and anything else so that we can put it all together we have this world guide and then whenever we're actually illustrating cards we can ask the card art artists to look at those look at the style guide so that we can keep a

really consistent visual feel for the world so let me just for the audience to explain a style guide basically a style guide is what is everything we think the artist might need so that includes locations backgrounds costuming weapons maybe objects that we expect them you know what are all the things visually includes locations, backgrounds, costuming, weapons, maybe objects that we expect them, you know, what are all the things visually that the artist might need so that when you guys concept, you can say, hey, go look at page 43. The thing I'm talking about is there

so that you have a visual sort of guidebook for them, right? Yep. And I mean, for neon dynasty we yeah it was really interesting because we were like make these make these new factions but then some of them have like references to uh or were or were like completely built off of um original kamigawa. So then it was this fun little puzzle of like, maybe take the visuals of one specific card

and then iterate on it and blow it out so that it can support an entire faction. Can you give an example of why we did that? Oh, yeah, living historians. So they were, our idea was that they were founded by Azusa and Reiki after the Kami War. So one of the visuals we had for them was Reiki's tattoos. He had those ink tattoos all over his body. idea that it was like that's something all the living historians do now they um they inscribe the history of kanagawa on their bodies and then they can use magic to bring it to life uh in dance song performance arts um and what so uh what we ended up with was the living historians have these glowing tattoos that look like you, these really bright neon lights that just flow off their body and turn into images and people and recreations of the past.

Yeah, that was, one of the things that I really enjoy about this set is how many, I'm not sure they're Easter eggs, but like how much of new ideas were formed out of taking old things. Like how much of new ideas were formed out of taking old things? Yeah, that was a lot of Daniel Holt, because Daniel Holt is like the biggest Kamigawa fan in the building. So every time we were like, hmm, I have an idea for what this could be,

he could jump in and be like, oh, actually, there's something in original Kamigawa that wouldn't fit perfectly, or we could tweak this a little, and it could be a callback to this character or this event. So Daniel Holt was really, really pivotal in helping us connect the past and the present together. Real quick, Daniel Holt, by the way, he did a podcast with me on this.

So if you're interested in hearing more from Daniel himself, I did a whole podcast talking with Daniel about sort of his involvement in it. Daniel normally is in charge of doing frames and graphical components, but he loves, loves, loves Kamigawa, so he was super involved in this whole block.

Okay, so the world team comes together. How long is a normal concept push? Three weeks, and it's like five or six artists, I think. So walk me through what happens in the three weeks. What does a concept push entail exactly? What do they do? So at the start of the concept push, we have a kickoff meeting where we run through an overview of the world and basically just turn the artists loose.

First week is usually just like people throwing ideas out at the on the wall um about every few days there's going to be a wall review and it's the art director the and the world building lead and then other members of the world building team they just look at look through all the images give any any feedback or like, um, or thoughts like, like we'll say like, if, oh, this image is really, is really hitting the vibe we're going for, or like this one feels a bit off for the world, you know, maybe it's not hitting the right tone or things like that. Um, the art director takes all that feedback, uh, gives it back to the artist and they'll continue iterating on it. So it's like,

so it's constant refinement from week to week until we get to the last week. And then that's where we get like a lot of the finalized art that we use in the world guide. So that, so that's the artist and they're getting the visual look and the style guide has lots of visual references. But there's a whole other component, which you're very much responsible for, which is there are a lot of words. So let's talk a little bit about what the artists are making the visual look. What are you and your team doing on the sort of the word side of building this document?

on the word side of building this document? So once the concept push is done, the world building lead, which would be me for Neon Dynasty, writes all the text for the world guide, which is like coming up with descriptions, writing down all the descriptions of locations and factions and any important world building details that That will be helpful for like concepters who are writing the art descriptions or

And then that eventually goes to creative it eventually helps with creative text also So filling filling is stuff with just like, you know, here's an overview of so filling filling his stuff with just like you know here's an overview of what this faction is they show up in they're more likely to show up in these colors uh use these words to refer to them things like that and about how much text like for neon dynasty roughly how many words did you have have to produce to do that oh gosh um i did ballpark ballpark yeah like i think 8 000. okay now in addition to the visuals and to the world building you're doing there's another important component which is story so how is story woven into this so for neon dynasty we we didn't really start thinking of the story until after the world was until once we really were writing the world guide which i mean so earlier than that, we had like a really vague idea of what we wanted to happen.

Like we need certain story. We want these certain elements that are going to be set up, that are going to, that are going to set up for like, you know, an overarching story plan or whatever. Um, but we didn't start like digging into the details of how that was going to happen until you know after the concept push the world is a bit more finalized we can actually like anchor those moments to specific uh world building elements um so give it can you give an example from the story uh Uh, Tamio gets Frexionized. Well, I think, I mean, we knew very early on that somebody was getting Frexionized because it was just

part of the bigger story, right? Right. Do you remember when we decided it was Tamio? I think... No, I don't remember, but, like... I mean, it had to have been after we decided this was Kamigawa. And then probably sometime around that, it was just like, oh, if we're Phyrexianizing someone here, who makes sense?

And a few, I think a few names were floated. Cameos. What other names were floated. Um, cameos. What, what, what other names were floated? Who else did we think about? Oh, well,

I think we talked about Frextonizing the Wanderer. Yeah. Who was the main character of the story? Yeah. But I mean, Tamiyo really had so much, like we knew so much more about Tamiyo and we really

wanted it to be this big emotional impact and the wanderer is still really mysterious and everything so it's like oh yeah cool they could get Phyrexianized but you know Tamiyo has a family uh people like Tamiyo um it's just that much more of a gut punch when it happens to a character that you know and love. Right. I mean, this was a really important point because it was sort of putting a stake in the ground of, uh-oh, the Phyrexians, this might really be a problem. And right, choosing the right character. I think one of the other problems with The Wanderer was The Wanderer had a big reveal in this story already like we already had a giant reveal for the wanderer oh that's a fine question when do we know it was the wanderer that was the emperor how did that come about

that was there was actually a lot of discussion for that because we wanted a third planeswalker i we were i think we were still discussing how Planeswalkers should show up in this set. And, oops. Right, the set ended up having four Planeswalkers, although normally we have three. So we actually added one. And so I know Tezzeret was playing a role in this story. So Tezzeret was here. The Wanderer played a big role in the story.

Wanderer was here. Tammy obviously ended up playing a pretty big role. And we really wanted to, one of the things we'd wanted to do was introduce a new character that was a ninja, a ninja planeswalker. Do you want to talk a little bit about how that came to be? Oh, gosh, yeah.

I mean, that one was, I mean, that was really like like design wanted a ninja planeswalker so then we just took that idea and ran with it and i mean we started from the color pair the color pairs that um the color pair that a ninja would typically be in you know blue black and then we talked a lot we iterated a lot on you know what what's a sort of blue black personality um what sort of motivations would he have what and then once the world was a bit was really fleshed out all the factions in the world it's like what factions has he been involved in and how and um and just building up his character and his backstory from there and actually i think that ties into the wanderer too because we were also kind of looking for like this another planeswalker in the set at that point and then the wanderer was this great um

counter um contrast to the the planeser that ended up in kaito and when you one of the cool things you guys did you figured out a way to weave their backstories together right yep that was grace fong a lot actually um like for for uh grace took over a lot. Grace actually did most of the, took care of most of the story for Neon Dynasty. So she was the one who really like wove their backstories together and gave them that cute childhood friendship and all that. Right, and another thing that I wanted to stress here

that we often talk about the creative team as like a singular entity, but as we're sort of exploring today, there's people responsible for the look and the art. And there's people responsible for the cosmology in the background. There's people responsible for the story. And those aren't, while the people work together, those are different people doing different elements of that job. Yeah, there's a lot of, I mean, obviously we talk to each other a lot.

We communicate each's a lot of, I mean, obviously we talk to each other a lot. We communicate each other a lot. But yeah, it's a lot of writing, a lot of different threads to have to, a lot of different threads I have to handle. So like story being one person and world building being another person really helps out with the workload. So were you responsible for doing card concepting? Was that you or was that somebody else? Grace handled that. I was out at that point. Okay. Okay.

So card concepting, real quickly for the audience, card concepting is, you know, the designers design cards, but then we have to figure out like, well, what does it represent? What is it? What's the art going to look like? What's the name? Like what does the card represent flavorfully? And we work very closely with the creative team,

we being set design, this past one I'm involved, but set design will work with them to go, okay, and sit down and sort of walk through what happens. So that wasn't you, that was Grace, but that is something that the creative team does in this whole process. So we are, I'm almost to my desk here.

So any final thoughts on Nian Dynasty looking back as far as all the stuff you did on it? What are you proudest of from Nian Dynasty? Oh gosh. I think I'm proudest of the Living Historians, actually, because I think that faction is the greatest, the best example of how we tied in original Kamigawa and brought forward elements of original Kamigawa

into Neon Dynasty. That was a nice crossing between the streams, you're saying? Yep. Yeah, one of the things that I really appreciate is how you guys brought together a world that was so robust and so cool and so new, but yet it had so many... It both felt like Kamigawa, but yet felt like something new in a really fun and interesting way. I mean, I think it actually benefited from having the whole 1,200-year gap

because then we could populate it with little bits of history and everything and make it feel like there's been this huge passage of time with it. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Magic doesn't really get to do passage of time all that often. I mean, I guess we had Conjurter Kier where we messed around with time and stuff. But normally we don't get to see a lot of passage of time. So it was very interesting to go back to a world that was chronologically so long ago.

Yeah, I think it was a really unique opportunity. And I think, like like world building and set design both lean really hard into it like you with the sagas and everything telling the history telling all of Kamigawa's history over those 1200 years so anyway I just want to say before we wrap up for today

I want to thank you I'm really excited with how Neon Dynasty turned out. It was a set that I... I went into this... I've talked to this on this podcast before. I really, really wanted to figure out how to make Kamigawa

work just because I knew there was an audience that just really wanted it. And I'm so happy with the work that your team did, just how awesome it looked, how awesome it felt, just the story, the embodiment of the world. You guys just, it was a home run on your end. So I just want to say I really admired

all the stuff you guys did. It was definitely a work of love for our team. So anyway, I want to thank you for being with us, Emily. But guys, I'm at my desk. So we all know what that means. I mean, this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So thank you, Emily. Thanks for being here.

Yeah, thanks, Mark. And for all you, I will see you next time. Bye-bye.