Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #953: Mechanical Depth

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

When we make a new mechanic, how do we figure out how many cards can be made with the new mechanic? This concept is called mechanical depth, and in this podcast, I explain how we figure it out and the ramifications it has on design.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about a question that I often get from amateur designers that I thought I would spend a whole podcast on. So today I'm going to talk about mechanical depth. And what that means is when you make a brand new mechanic, how can you tell how deep the mechanic is, aka how many cards can you make of it? One of the things that's really important in Magic is when we make a new mechanic, it's a resource. And that new mechanic might be used more than just the set we make it in. If it's a good mechanic, it might come back. So one of the things that's important is to understand, If it's a good mechanic, it might come back.

So one of the things that's important is to understand, hey, how many cards can we make with this mechanic? So I want to talk a little bit about how we do that, about how we... Now, once again, it is not like there's a procedure where we get an exact number. It's just a ballpark. And pretty much when I talk about design depth, I tend to put it into three buckets. Bucket number one is, it's big. It basically is as big as we need it to be. We could bring it back as many times as we want to bring it back.

It is a very robust mechanic. Medium is, hey, there's enough to bring it back. It can be done some number of times, but there is a point in which it'll be hard to bring back. There is a point in which you'll probably at least use up new space. I mean, I guess you could always bring it back and do what you've done before, but as far as branching off and doing things you haven't done before, there's some limitation. And then small is, look, you can fit it in one set. You're really going to struggle to fit it in the second set.

It's a mechanic that has enough space maybe to do once. The other thing when you're looking at mechanics is different sets need different amounts of mechanics. Sometimes, for example, you have a mechanic that's the main mechanic of the set. It's got to fill up a lot of cards. In any one set, it could be like 30 to 50 cards. Sometimes you have sort of a mini mechanic that's something that, okay, it's going to be on,

let's say, 8 to 15 cards. And then you might have a small mechanic that's on a handful of cards, you know, like five cards, a cycle or something. So part of understanding depth, if you want to understand how deep it is, A, so you know, will it fill up this set? And B, how big is it in general?

How big is it at all? Okay, so there's a bunch of questions we have to ask to understand how big a mechanic is. So the first question you have to ask is, what card types can the mechanic go on? Is it a mechanic that only goes on, I mean, can it go on anything? For example, something like Kicker.

Kicker can go on spells. It can go on creatures. It can go on artifacts, enchantments. Planeswalker, I mean, I guess in theory you could do Kicker on Planeswalkers. You just have some space issues on Planeswalkers. But anyway, the idea is what can you do? Now, some mechanics only go on permanents.

Something like hexproof or ward is something that protects permanents. So that it only goes on a permanent. So it can go on creatures and artifacts and enchantments and planeswalkers and land. But it is not going to go on instants and spells. Some mechanics only go on instants and spells. Like Some mechanics only go on Instants and Spells. Like, Flashback only goes on Instants and Sorceries. So, that's the first thing. It's sort of, how many different things can you put it on? Another question is, how many colors can you put it in? Now, we

are willing to stretch a little bit for named mechanics, meaning we will let colors do things in a named mechanic that we don't normally let it do sort of outside that space. For example, flashback, not every color can cast spells out of the graveyard. But we allow, you know, any color can have a spell which flashbacks that can cast that card out of the graveyard. So we do allow a little bit more. So it sort of depends what space you're playing in. Colors matters a little bit more within a set than external. External to a set, we have some freedom to put things in most colors.

Within a set, it might be a faction set or something. So, okay, this is a faction mechanic. Well, definitionally within the set, it can only go in the faction colors which might be two colors or three colors, whatever. Okay, another thing we have to think about is what effect is it generating? Is it one unified effect, meaning is it always doing the same thing, or does it generate different effects? So, for example, take Exalted. Exalted says, whenever I have one creature attack alone, it gets plus one, plus one for every existence of Exalted. But it does the same thing every time.

No matter what has Exalted, that's what Exalted does. But something like Landfall, well, it has a singular trigger, but the effect is different. Every time a land enters the battlefield, each landfall card is doing something different. Each landfall card is going to be isolated by itself. So the more effects you have, the more you can, I mean, well, obviously the more cards you can go on, the more space you have. The more varied the effects, the more space you can have. Now the other question is, even when you have varied effects, is what is the range of the effects you can do? Now I'll give a good example. So Cypher is a classic example of a mechanic that we really

struggled with for space. We barely were able to make a full set worth of Cypher. Cypher. Cypher was in Return to Ravnica, or I think it was in Gatecrash, technically, but it was the Dimir mechanic. And I think we had, I don't know, 10 to 12 in the set, and we barely, barely got to that. Like, we were, we made a card that, like,

used an effect we hadn't used in forever, which was a slight change in color words, just because we were grabbing straws trying to figure out how to do that. So one of the things about the effect is all effects are not the same. So it could be a singular effect. It always does the same thing. Or it could be varied effects,

but those varied effects could be limited. The most common way they're limited is if you tie something to creature combat, like Cypher did, that means the effect is going to happen after a creature deals damage. Well, not every effect is useful at that point. For example, a giant growth is not useful. You know, getting a temporary boost doesn't mean anything after attacking has already happened. So some effects, even though they have a variety of effects, they're limited in what is useful.

So, for example, things that have to care about a creature dealing combat damage have to be something generally useful. Another thing that will affect which effects you use is when they're happening and how they're happening. And so different mechanics will access the different effects. So not only do you have to figure out whether it's a singular effect or a multiple effect, but what kind of multiple effect and how often can that multiple effect be? What kind of abilities does it let you do?

Okay, next up is we have to sort of ask ourselves what we call knobs, meaning how many different things are there for the mechanic. Something like kicker. Okay. There's an alternate cost, right? I can do my normal spell or I can pay this extra mana. And sometimes we list it as pay this extra mana. Sometimes we list an alternate cost.

Instead, pay this mana. It's just different ways to present the same information basically. But the idea there is that that is a knob, right? That is something that allows you to, like if someone, if a play designer is trying to balance it, they have

their mana cost to adjust and they have the extra cost. Like in Kicker's case, the Kicker cost. So if you, one of the things that's always interesting and like we have to think about not just how many cool things can be designed with it but how easy is it for uh the play design team to balance it because if you make a mechanic that has a lot of like you have to look at what's viable to make, not just what can be made, not just what, like, there's a big difference between here are all the things we could make

from a potential, like, well, this card could be made versus what can we make that actually we would make? What would we make a card out of? A good example of this might be, let's say, for example, your effect is modal. I'll use Fabricate. So Fabricate was a mechanic from Kaladesh. Fabricate had a number tied to it. When you cast a spell with Fabricate, you got to choose, and it went on creatures. You could put that many plus one, plus one counters on the creature, or you could make that many one, one tokens.

I think they were artifact servo tokens. Now, the problem there is you have to make a power toughness mana combination along with a fabricate number where the person playing it has an interesting decision. If, you know, almost all the time, 99% of the time, they're just going to choose one thing that's not interesting in the mode. If you're going to have modes, you want people to make decisions. If there's never a decision, then it's not interesting. So,. If you're going to have modes, you want people to make decisions. If there's never a decision, then it's not interesting.

So for example, when you're doing a mode mechanic, there's balance issues, especially if the two modes don't have different costs. Sometimes, like on Kickr, you can have mode A and mode B, but mode B costs more.

Okay, there's knobs to balance that. But on Fabricate, where there's one Fabricate cost and you have two choices and it's always the same mana cost, you can't adjust that, then there becomes balance issues. And that's a big thing. One of the things to think about with new mechanics is

you really have to think about what function you can make, not what you potentially can make. Because it's not about hypotheticals, it's about actual cards you can design. And so you really have to think about things like your knobs, like your balance. Another big thing you have to ask yourself is, is there something triggered? Like, for example, or is it some sort of effect that is either activated or triggered or static? You know, how does your mechanic work? And in what context does it work?

And if it's triggered, how often does that happen? You know, if you have a trigger that's rare enough, well, maybe you just can't make enough cards because, you know, like a big thing you have to ask yourself is, does this mechanic require a lot of support in the set or can it live by itself? Part of that is, is it linear or modular? So linear means the mechanics of a get itself.

For example, slivers. The sliver mechanic says, well, I make slivers better. Well, if I'm going to play slivers, I kind of want more slivers. So certain mechanics are like energy from Kaladesh. Like if I'm going to play energy, well, I'm already investing in getting energy. Hey, it's more powerful if I have more ways to use my energy.

So certain mechanics push you to want more. Now, that doesn't define necessarily how many can be made, but it does define like within one set, how often can you do it? And the more linear it is, the harder it is to sort of fit in the set, the more you have to think about it. And the more linear it is, the harder it is to sort of fit into sets, the more you have to think about it. Now, there are very deep linear mechanics, and there are very deep

modular mechanics. In general, modular mechanics tend to be able to go a little bit deeper because linear mechanics will step on each other some. Here's a good example. I'll use slivers since I just brought them up. Slivers go only on creatures and grant creature abilities. Well, there's some limitation on creature abilities. And you have to look at like, okay, how many, you know,

with any one set, I can only sort of grant trample once. Now, maybe in one set, I can grant trample in green. In another set, I can grant trample in red. You know, I have some, and that's the other big difference between looking within one set or looking at large. Within one set, you don't want to repeat so much.

So one of the things about depth is how many different things, like, what is the variable I get to care about? If it's a creature that's granting creature abilities, I'm locked in a limited ability. I'm locked into sort of what creature abilities I can grant. limited ability. I'm locked into sort of what creature abilities I can grant. And another big thing is you get to make use of the mechanics that are in the set that are unique to the set. So if I'm making slivers, hey, are there keyword mechanics that are unique to the set? If so, I could use them in this set and that's another thing to look for depth is if I play

well with other aspects of the set and you put me in different sets, hey, I will play differently in different sets. If I put a sliver in one set that has one creature mechanic that's unique to that set and then I put it in a different set, oh, well, it can make use of those. But sliver is a good example. A lot of what it's making use of is evergreen. Well, if I use evergreen stuff in one set, the next time I use it, I have a little bit of flexibility in putting in new colors or maybe changing stats on it.

But it's a little bit more limited. One of the big differences within set versus within all of Magic is where's the repetition coming from? Where's the mechanic doing something that I can just do one of? And Sliver is a good example where, hey, I can only use trample once. I can only use flying once. Or, I mean, maybe I can use flying twice if I'm combining something different. But you really have to look at how often do I have to repeat something. And if your resources are limited, that restricts how much stuff you can do. Another big thing you've got to look at when making a new mechanic as far as depth is

what other requirements does it need? Does it need a frame? Does it have other resources it needs? For example, double-faced cards, beyond needing a new frame, there's additional cost because they need their own sheet. So when you're making a mechanic, you've also kind of got to look at how easy is it to put it in a set? And one of the answers about that is what other resources are needed?

The more it needs support around it, the more it needs a frame, the more it needs other resources, the harder it is to put that in the set. So the more restrictive it is. Okay, so the idea is once you have all these components, you can look at something. Okay, so what I'm going to do is take some mechanics and sort of put it through all these filters. And then I'll say, okay, it's a small, medium, or large. Okay, so let's take kicker. Okay, kicker can go in any card type.

It can go in any color. It is variable in effect because each card can sort of determine its own effect. It has a pretty good knob on it. Okay, so I look at all those component pieces and I say, oh, there's a lot there. You know, there's a lot of flexibility to it. There's a lot of things I can do with it. There's a lot of ways to use it. And it's something that play design can make practical cards out of. So that's a large. That large. That can go in a lot of things. Okay, now we take a look at something like Fabricate. Okay.

Fabricate only goes on creatures. It's modal. It has to be balanced. And there's no additional, I mean, there's a knob of the number of Fabricate. But whatever you choose, both modes are the same thing. So that's very restrictive. It doesn't have great knobs. There's balance issues. So Fabricate is a lot narrower.

That's what I would say small to, I mean, it's on the brusque between small and medium. I think we could make one more set out of it maybe. But it would need to be in a place with some support so it felt different than what we did in Kaladesh. That's not an easy mechanic. It's on the cusp of small, but maybe peeking into the low side of medium. Okay, let's take another mechanic. Let's take something like on Earth. On Earth was a mechanic in Shards of Alara. So Unearth went on creatures,

and it allows you to play them out of the graveyard. You temporarily get them for a turn, and then they get exiled. So, for example, it's kind of like the creature version of Flashback. Now, it only goes on creatures, but it's a variety of effects, meaning each creature can do its own thing. You get to put a cost on it for the unearthed, so it gets to have a cost. So there's a knob on it. Okay, so it only goes on one creature type, but it's

one of the most fluid, like 50% of all sets are creatures, so we make a lot of creatures. And there's a lot of ways to make use of it on Earth because it can have an enter the battlefield effect. It could just be a body that's attacking. It could have an attack trigger. It could have a lead play trigger. You know, there's a lot of different things you can do with it.

There's a lot of kinds of effects. So I would say on Earth is high, medium to low, large. You know, it definitely is something that you can use in a bunch of different contexts. Oh, or let's take flashback as a contrast. The flashback only goes in Instants and Sorceries. And because we don't want combat, like we don't want people to have, we don't want to make situations where I walked into a trick that was visible, but because it was sitting in my graveyard, I didn't notice it. So, for example, we don't tend to do combat relevant instance with flashback.

Now, there's a lot of sorceries that we can do. There's a lot of instance that aren't sort of combat relevant. So there's a decent amount of effects we can do. There's a lot of instants that aren't sort of combat relevant. So there's a decent amount of effects we can do. So the effects is pretty high. Obviously has a knob on it because it has a separate cost. And we make a lot of spells and magic. So

I would say flashback is on the low end of large, but it's something we can definitely do a lot of. The other thing that's interesting about something like Flashback is it lends itself well to reprints. That if you do a Flashback set, and this also comes

with mechanics that are sort of I didn't even talk about this. A little bit of what I will call elegance, meaning it does something that's loose and simple enough that you feel like I could just put this in a lot of sets. It's sort of a feel thing. Like, for example, we had a ability called Amassed, which was in, what was Amassed in?

It was in War of the Spark, which represented an army. And it represented specifically the zombie army. Like, it had a lot of things that sort of locked it into the situation where it was at. And so that one's a little bit trickier, even though, I mean, a mask could go on any card type because sorceries and instants or enchantments could amass things. So a mask generates a token, a mask N, it generates a token with N plus one plus one counters on it. Or if there's already an army token, it puts that many plus one plus one counters on it.

But there are certain elements of it that combine to what we were doing. So like another interesting thing, like Bushido was a mechanic where it had a very specific name on it. And it had a very specific flavor. So it wasn't easy just to put another world. I mean, we chose not to bring it back to Kamigawa. So even when we could bring it back, we didn't bring it back. So that had some other issues. That's a fine point. And Bushido is a good example of this. Does it play well in numbers? Does it play well, you know, do you

want a lot in your set? There's some mechanics, and Bushido was a good example where you just don't want a lot. It's not something you want a lot. Even though you in theory could put it on a bunch of cards, it doesn't play well in number. So how many you can make is limited a little bit by how much the set wants. Now, that's more of how big it can be in a set versus how big it can be throughout Magic. But the more limited you are, the more you don't want a lot,

the more that restricts sort of how many cards you can make with it. Okay, let's say something like split cards. So split cards only go in Instants and Sorceries. It can go in any color, and it requires its own frame. So it has additional requirements to it. And now the thing about split cards is each of the split cards, there are two cards on a card. You can cast either card. You could have fused or you can cast both, but that's a separate add-on to split cards. Now, there's a lot of different effects, and you can mix and match them.

And, you know, so split cards, I would say, are kind of on the high medium. If you notice, we don't tend to do a lot of split cards in any one set. It's something we do in small number within the set. So it's not something that's high within the set, but it is high over our... Once again, it's in the high medium. But we tend to use them in small doses, meaning a set that has split cards, I think the most we've ever done in the set is like 10 split cards. So we don't tend to use a lot per.

So that allows us to do it more often because we don't do it in large volume when we do it. Let's see. Another mechanic. How about exalted? So I talked about exalted earlier. So exalted says exalted N. It goes on permanence. And it says if you attack alone with a creature, that creature gets plus N plus N. Actually, sorry. Exalted doesn't have an N. It just says Exalted. We could put Exalted on multiple times, I guess, if we want Exalted more than one.

Anyway, so that only goes on permanents. It has a knob in the sense that you could choose how many times Exalted goes on. Usually Exalted just once. So it's a little bit limited on knobs. And it's very tied to combat. So, it's the kind of thing where it can go on a lot of different things. It's a pretty useful thing. But, it doesn't repeat effects. It's the same effect no matter what you do. So, with any one effect, there's a little bit limit on how many you want to

do within that set. Although, unlike something like Bushido, you can have more. It's just boosting up creatures. And the danger of having too much in one set is just it's hard to defeat. You know, like, you make this monster that's hard to defeat. So you've got to be careful in volume. But you can have more Exalted than you can something like Bushido.

So anyway, that is definitely in the medium category. And that is restricted in a bunch of ways. It doesn't have a variety of effects. It only goes on permanence. but it is something that's pretty useful and that a lot of different things can have it just because it's a rider. The last thing when looking at understanding depth of mechanic is sort of and this is sort of a gut thing and taking all the stuff I've talked about today

that when you make a mechanic, you're like, do I think I want to see this mechanic again? Is this mechanic very specific to what I'm doing? Is it very much playing up some creative aspect or some, you know, is it something that is narrow in scope in what it's representing? Or is it pretty loose and open? Something like Flashback, notice we've never really tied a mechanic like it's it's a very loose open-ended thing and any world that uses it isn't really tied to this very specific you know sort of flavor. And

that's another interesting thing to note. How deep the mechanic is is not just about mechanically what you've done with it, but sort of creatively how you've spun it. A good example for that might be Constellation. So Constellation is a mechanic that cares about when you play enchantments. It's a trigger. Now, Landfall was worded very generically, Landfall. Well, Landfall goes anywhere because there's lands, and what does Landfall mean?

You know what I'm saying? It means discovering lands, I guess. So that's pretty generic. Constellation was named after a Theros thing. Now, that's not to say that we couldn't find a reason why Constellation made sense somewhere else. There is the night sky in Otherworlds. But one of the things to keep in mind

is the whole scope of the mechanic also plays in how often you can do it. That if you take a very open-ended mechanic, but you give it a name that's more restrictive than what it is, or if you make a choice about it, sometimes you make a choice that chooses a color, that chooses a creature type, that for flavor reasons locks some element in,

and when that element gets locked in, it really sort of reinforces a certain component that might not make sense somewhere else. So not only do you have to think about your mechanic in that how mechanically relevant it is, you've got to think about how much it fits and feels somewhere else. Now, early in Magic, we really thought of mechanics as one and done, like they were a resource you used up. So we definitely, some of our naming early on in Magic was very specific. We've recently, not recently, I mean, recent is sort of unfair. Many years ago, we figured out that mechanics were a reusable resource.

So one of the things now, when creative goes to name mechanics, one of the questions they'll come and ask the designers is, okay, how big is this mechanic? Do we expect this mechanic to come back? And the more likely the mechanic is to come back, the more sort of general they'll give the name so that it's open ended. A good example of that was energy. We could have called energy ether, for example, because in the world that it was in, it represented ether in Kaladesh. But not every world necessarily has ether, but by calling it energy, it's like, oh, we

really opened ourselves up. We really broadened what it could be. Oh, it could represent electricity. It could represent magical energy. It could represent lots of different kinds of things, because what it was looking at, like we said, energy is broad as a concept. So nowadays we do try to be more careful about when we name things, that we give things that we think have more flexibility more loose names. Now, another thing that can happen is we will bring things back and rename them. So the classic example was in Eventide, we made

Chroma. And Chroma was this mechanic that went on any card type that counted your, that in any zone could count your mana symbols on cards. So some cards looked at things in play, some things looked at things in your graveyard. I think there were some that maybe looked in your hand. And so it had a very generic name, but it wasn't a compelling name, and it wasn't done in a way that really drew people in. So we ended up bringing it back in Pharos. There, we restricted

it a little more. We called it devotion, which it's somewhat open-ended. It's not like it's not devotion in lots of worlds. And we tied it to permanence, meaning you only counted it could go on non-permanence, but you only counted manned symbols on permanence. So it restricted a little bit what it could

do, but by giving that a little more definition, it went on to be a very beloved mechanic. So there's a lot of moving parts. If you go too broad, you can make a mechanic not as lovable. If you go too narrow, it becomes harder to sort of bring things back. So anyway, there's a lot of moving pieces. But the key is, sorry, getting a little off topic. The key is when you're trying to understand the depth of your mechanic,

a lot of that comes from you understanding the utility, the functionality, like sort of what and how you can make things with it. Another thing that happens sometimes, by the way, is sometimes we involve a number and the first time we do it, we will use that number, but we are aware that we don't have to use that number. Cycling is a classic example of that. So cycling comes with a cost. The first time we did cycling in Urza's Saga block, it was cycling 2.

Every card was cycling 2. Now, we could have just called cycling, and what cycling means is spend 2 mana to discard a card to draw a card. But by the fact that we gave it a number that allowed us later on to come back and do cycling with colored men or cycling one or cycling three, it allowed us to come back and expand upon it. So that's another variable to think about is, is there a variable built into your mechanic that allows you in future uses of it to have some flexibility. And I think that is something important to understand,

is that there is what we call it, we call it future-proofing. And it's not just about the mechanics. It can also be about templating and be about how we put it into the rules. Like one of the things when we template things or we put it into the rules, we ask ourselves, are there ways we might want to do this in the future? And so sometimes we'll future-proof in templating. Sometimes we'll future-proof in rules.

As I just explained, we kind of future-proof sometimes in creative. So part of understanding your depth is, like there's a reason, even though you're only making the cards for this set, the reason understanding your depth is like there's a reason even though you're only making the cards for this set the reason understanding your depth is so important is it impacts how you're going to do other things it impacts how you're going to name it it impacts how you're going to template it it impacts how the rules are going to be formed around it like you want to understand the scope of what

you're doing not just because you want to bring it back later, but it impacts how you design things in the present. And that's why understanding your depth is so important. You do need to get a good sense of when and how are you going to use it, not just now, but in the future. And that is why, like all the stuff I'm talking about today, that's why we're aware of these things. There's a real practical sense to having to be able to understand your depth. And that is why I can talk about it today, because it's something real practical sense to having to be able to understand your depth. And that is why I can talk about it today, because it's something we consciously have to think about. Anyway, guys, I'm now pulling into the parking lot.

So I hope this was an interesting conversation. This is a question I've gotten a lot, and I've been meaning to do this podcast for quite a while. I was happy today. I'm like, oh, I have notes of things that I should, you know, I have a list of things to do. And I saw this one today. I'm like, oh, did I not do this yet? I keep thinking I had done it, but I hadn't. So anyway, I'm glad you guys had a chance to hear me talk about this. It's a fun topic.

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