Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #964: Concurrency

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

You all learn about new Magic sets one at a time, but that's not how they're made. This podcast will illustrate what it's like to make many products all at once.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive from work. So I tried to do a podcast this morning. So this week I'm only driving in one day. I have to take my daughter to college, my youngest daughter to college. And so I'm only in the office one day. I didn't quite get the podcast I wanted driving. So I'm just more willing to do podcasts on the drive home. It is me driving. Anyway, so here's the topic of my podcast today. I wanted to demonstrate... So when people start at Wizards, when R&D people start at Wizards,

there's a quirky element of R&D that I've never talked about. And I wanted to do a podcast about it. So I thought of an interesting way to do it. So first, let me explain the concept of what I want to talk about, and then I will explain how I'm going to demonstrate it. Okay, so here's the dynamic. Normally, if you're outside of Wizards, you guys, the way you experience sets is one at a time.

Like, oh, Dominar United's coming out. Well, let's tell you all the stories about how Dominaria United got made from the very earliest days of exploratory design to the very latest days of play design. And we tell you the whole story all at once. So when you learn about the Dominaria United story, it's all happening in one moment in time. And the next set, you know, Brothers War,

you're not hearing about that until Brothers War happens. But when you come to work at Wizards, what you don't really realize much about the building is, you know, it takes us two and a half to three years to make a set. So lots of sets are going on concurrently. Lots of things are happening all at once. And so one of the things that's a little disconcerting when you first start working at Wizards is this idea that all these different things are happening. And not are all these different things happening at once, but most people aren't working on every set. So, you know, you have what we call sort of gaps, right? You're working on, maybe you're working on one set, but not on the next set.

And so, you know, you might be very familiar with a particular set but not so much with another set and so there's gaps that you have because we call them black holes because you just didn't work on that thing now one of the natures of how we work here is there's play tests there is rare pulls there's ways for you to get a peek at what's going on in other sets

but it really is it's a different experience than the sort of the cacophony of magic sets when you first start coming working is a lot. So, so, the way I thought I would demonstrate this is I'm going to talk about, in the last, you know, week or so, all the different things I'm working on. Like, right now, at this point in time,

what am I working on? Because I want to give a scope and, right now at this point in time, what am I working on? Because I want to give a scope and a sense of, of how this feels, of how many different things there are all going on at once. Now, given I'm talking about the future, so I'm going to be talking in vague terms. I'm not going to be giving away any hard details in anything. But I do want to sort of walk through. So here's how I'm going to do that. So right now, the next set to come out is Dominaria United. And the codename for Dominaria United was Judo. Now, the way we do codenames, at least for premiere sets, is all the premiere sets have a theme.

Currently it's sports. And we go in alphabetical order. And the reason for that is it's hard to keep track of code names because there's a lot of them. But if you know, oh, it's a sport, then you know it's a premier set. And then you know the order because they're alphabetical. So right now there is judo. I'm going to start with judo and I'm going to walk through my interaction in the last, you know, couple weeks with each of the sets to talk about, well, what's going on and what's my interaction with that set to show you how much is going on and how

much interaction there is. Now, I should note that I and Andrew Brown, who's in charge of play design, have a unique element that's not true for almost anybody else in R&D, which is I have my hands on every Premiere set, as does Andrew. Because I lead vision design, I'm on every single vision design team, at least Premiere sets. And so I see everything.

I have my hands in everything. And so I actually have a lot of understanding of what's going on, because part of my job is big picture stuff. Andrew is on the opposite side. He's on play design. Play design has to touch everything and understand the interconnectivity. So the person at the very, very beginning and the person at the very, very end are the two people that kind of have to look at all of it. So I don't have any black holes, at least for premiere sets. I mean, there's supplemental sets I'm not as familiar with.

But as you'll see, even those, I do have to have some familiarity with. Okay, so we're going to start with Judo, and I'm going to work my way through the alphabet. Okay, so Judo is Dominar United. It is coming out very soon. Okay, so I'm right now, part of my job is I interact with all of you, and I write articles, I do podcasts, I do a lot of social media stuff. So right now, Dominar Unite is coming out. So what does that mean for me?

First up, I always do a teaser. So based on something I used to do back in the Duelist, where I would give limited information about upcoming sets. Enough to tease you. It's a teaser. And enough information that you guys can try to figure out what I'm talking about. So, you know, there's a little puzzle to say, oh, what might this be? And you guys can speculate on things. I purposely make some of my teasers such that maybe you can figure it out. Or maybe you could try to figure it out. And other stuff are more like, oh, that sounds cool, but I have no idea.

You know, it just sounds weird and we can talk about it, but I don't know what that is. Also, I have my column. So I have been writing preview articles. Now, I normally write about four weeks ahead for my column. So right now I'm working on not the preview articles, but like I've been writing my card by card design story articles. And next week I'll be doing my mailbag article. So I'm still writing all about it. I have done my preview columns.

But so basically when a set comes to come out, I have to go back and do research. I have to go read the card file. I have to look at all the finished cards. Part of that is so I can make my teaser. Part of that is so I can write my articles. And part of that is, hey, I got a blog where I'm answering questions every day. Like, I have to refresh my memory about what's going on on the latest set. Because, hey, I handed off, or actually I didn't hand it off.

Ethan Fletcher was the lead, but I was on the team. But anyway, Vision Design handed off the set two years ago, so I haven't worked on that set in a long time. As you will see, I interfaced with it, as I talked about today. But anyway, I kind of have to get familiar.

As is the case with Judo, there were mechanics that were in Vision Design that didn't end up being in the final set. There were mechanics in the final set that weren't in Vision Design. And't end up being in the final set. There were mechanics in the final set that weren't in Vision Design. And even if all the mechanics don't change from Vision Design, lots of cards change, themes change, draft archetypes change. There's a lot of things that change. Even if a set that stays really, really true to the original Vision concept can change in a lot of different ways.

So I have to get back up to speed with judo. Also, part of doing that might be talking with Ethan, who led vision design, talking with Ian or Eric, who co-led set design. So, for example, I did do an interview with Ethan. Not Ethan. Well, I talked briefly with Ethan, and then I actually had a longer talk with Ian. One of the things is vision design I was there for, so I usually have a little better handle on it, but I was not there for set design, so I usually talk to the set designer.

Most often to the person, like sometimes set design will change during set design. Eric Lauer worked on it in the beginning and then handed it off to Ian. I tend to talk to the person who worked on the end a lot of time to understand sort of where things ended up. Anyway, so I do all that. I'm doing all my prep work. I'm getting all ready so we can discuss, you know, hey, Down Under United is coming out. Next up, let me quickly jump away from Premiere sets

just because I'm going in chronological order. The next thing coming out is Infinity. So Infinity, I led the whole thing. I led from exploratory, I led vision design, I led set design, I did the polish, I worked with people for play design. It was my baby from beginning to end. So right now, I'm the acorn rules manager. I'm the rules manager for the weirder unstuff. And so I, for example, today had to have a meeting with Jess and Jess and I had to walk through the rules for how all the various mechanics in the set work

and talking through, you know, we sort of had to be on the same page because I want to make sure that the rulings I'm making for my part of the set aren't contradicting what Jess is doing for his part of the set. And what I have to do is for every acorn card, I have to figure out all the questions that I might have and then get answers for them. And then likewise, if there's things that are eternal, I might mark, like we're making a document that we're going to share and I'm answering the acorn stuff and Jess is answering the eternal stuff. And so we have to go back and forth and make sure that we're addressing things and not

contradicting one another. But anyway, I have to work on that. And also, you know, there is, you know, previews and stuff to work out and there is videos and, you know, there's lots of things that are happening that require prep work. And so we're sort of launching up to the release of it. It's not out yet, but it is something in which, like I said, in this particular case, I have to do the FAQ. There's a bunch of different things happening that we have to set up and prep for. And so all of that has to work.

Okay. Next up is kayaking, which is Brother's War. So kayaking is, we're in sort of during what we call the preview plan, which means that we're figuring out how we're going to preview it. I haven't written my articles yet, but I have to pick out my preview cards. Like I have to figure out what I'm going to write so that I can pick preview cards that probably are appropriate. So for example, like, oh, I want to talk about Mechanic X. Then maybe I take a card that previews Mechanic X. And so right now with kayaking, like kayaking's all done. Nothing's going to change on it. But I do have to work with them

to make sure that we can figure out how we're going to preview it and what we need to do to preview. Okay. After kayaking is lacrosse. Now I am recording this before the announcement on the 18th and I'm not 100% sure what they're saying. So I'm not going to give away any names since I don't 100% know what is going to be told or not. So I'm assuming you know nothing, although you should know something. But lacrosse and marathon and netball and off-roading are all next year. All of those are going to be announced. So I have to prepare.

I'm going to get a bunch of questions about them on my blog. Now, a lot of stuff I can't answer, but I have to become familiar, and I need to become familiar with what is going to get said. And that is something that I'm actually going to do soon so I understand, okay, what's going to be said? What can I say? What shouldn't I say? I need to sort of think ahead to understand,

okay, now that we announced it, and just tell you guys a little bit, what kind of questions are people going to have? What can I say? What can I say? So I want to get a sort of understanding for like lacrosse and marathon. Now, netball is, I actually just went to a meeting last week. So one of the things we do is there are meetings that happen late in set design where we look at like a slideshow. Slideshow used to be everybody, but it's been pared down now. The slideshow are basically people who have some input on maybe, at the slideshow, the cards are mostly done, art is in, we're very, very close to being finished, but we're not completely done. And the whole point of the slideshow is to give notes on things that might need to change. Now, for me, another

important thing is I've not necessarily seen all the cards at this point. So it lets me get refreshed with what's going on and where the set is at. And if there are any things that are deviating from what I know Vision was doing, I can bring things up. Sometimes I can bring up color pie stuff, you know, but it's a chance for me to sort of late in the process, see the cards and that, you know, so I, and I normally there are four or five meetings to get through a card set because we have to take time to go through each one. And so we have to talk through it. So anyway, I have looked at Netball to do that. Off-roading, I did a play test last week for off-roading. Once again, you know, I need to, the way it works is when I'm doing play testing. So off-roading is, you know, Netball is nearing completion. That's why we're

doing slideshow. Off-roading is a little bit earlier than that. But enough in the set design that the playtests are using all the things we expect to be there. And I want to give notes. Once again, every time I play with something, I'm getting familiar with, okay, what's changed since last I saw it? And the interesting thing with playtesting is that it's possible last time I played it, I tried a different strategy. It lets me sort of go in deep on one particular aspect. Sometimes when I'm doing playtesting, if I know there's something brand new that I'm less familiar with, sometimes I'll try to force it if I can to see if I can play the

thing that I know I want to experience so that I have less familiarity with it. But anyway, that is Polo. Next, or not that Polo, that's Off-Roading. Next is Polo. I also had a playtest of Polo last week. So Polo is, so once again, as we go farther back, Polo's in set design, but not quite as far along. It's sort of in the middle of set design. Polo, I co-led Polo's in set design, but not quite as far along. It's sort of in the middle of set design. I co-led Polo with Marc Gottlieb. I did the beginning part and handed it off to Marc Gottlieb.

He stayed on longer than normal, and then he handed it off to Jules, I think. Hopefully I didn't get that wrong. But anyway, once again, Polo Playtest is a chance for me to see a lot more world building has been done. Art is not done yet, but, you know, the names have shaped a little bit. So at least I can get a sense of, they're not final names, but I can get a sense of the direction and the general flavor that they're shooting for. And I can just sort of see where things are at.

Now, after polo is quilting. Quilting I led. So kayaking was led by Ethan Fleischer. I did not lead it. I'm sorry, judo was led by Ethan Fleischer. Kayaking was led by Ari, Ari Nee. And once again, I was on the Vision Design team, but I did not lead it. Lacrosse, I led.

Marathon, I led. Netball, Chris Mooney led. I was on the team, but did not lead. Off-roading, I led. Polo, I co-led with Mark Gottlieb, and then we're up to quilting. Quilting, I led. So this last year, you'll notice I led a lot more. That's more than normal for me.

It was a combination of having some sets that were a little tricky and just the way things broke out some of this had to do with how the pandemic played out. But anyway, I led a little more sets than normal just because I needed to. Part of being head designer is when somebody needs to leave a set and there's trouble, or not even trouble, trouble is the wrong word, if things are a little bit more complex than normal for different reasons. Or sometimes it's more complex, not because the set is more complex, but hey, there's a pandemic which is shaking

things up. Um, sometimes I, I, I jump in and stuff, so. Okay, uh, so quilting, I also did a playtest. Quilting is pretty early into set design. So the playtest, I mean, it was enough into it that they made some changes, and I could see what they're up to. So that was fun. That was fun to have. One of the things to be aware is things are in set design way longer than they are in vision design. So as you will see, there's a lot of sets in set design right now.

Okay, so after quilting is rugby. So rugby just finished up vision design this summer. Rugby was led by Doug Beyer. And as always, I was on the Vision Design team. I think the most recent thing for rugby is they just done the World Push where they bring artists in for three weeks and they sort of build the world. And anyway, I had a chance to sort of look at what they were doing. Really exciting. It's really cool. I just can't wait. It's really cool. I think it's, like, I just can't wait. Like, it's very funny. We see stuff so early. Like, rugby is a year and a half. Rugby is not 2023,

but 2024. So, 2023 is lacrosse, marathon, netball, and off-roading. The following year is polo, quilting, rugby, and swimming. And so we're a ways away from it. But it was fun to see the world building. There's not a lot I contribute to the world building per se, but I like to see what's going on. Obviously, I was very invested

in the vision design portion of it, so I like to see, like, we do vision design and then from that, they then do the world push. So it's fun to see what did our vision design inspire in the world push. And, you know, and while we're doing vision design, there's exploratory world building that works in conjunction with us. And anyway, it's not so much that I have much to say on. I don't give notes or anything on it. It's just kind of fun to see where things are at.

Okay, next we get to swimming. Well, swimming is still in Vision Design. Swimming is being led by Annie, and it is right near the end. So at the end of Vision Design, we have what we call a Vision Summit. And the way a Vision Summit works is Aaron Forsythe, who's my boss, and members of the play design team come and look at the set when it's nearing the end of vision design just to sort of say, hey, are we seeing general problems? Is there any, just sort of getting a sign off before we hand off. And usually it's done a little bit before it hands off. So if there's any changes that need to get made, we have a little bit of time to make some changes before it. Swimming had its play test earlier this month.

We did get a bunch of notes. We did make some changes based on those notes. We came up with something really, really cool that I'm really happy with. That is, it's funny. I can't get into it because it's far away, but anyway, we did have the summit, we did get notes on it, we did make changes based on it, and we are wrapping up the set. It is very soon to be handed off from set design. So next is tennis. So I'm leading tennis. Tennis is in the middle, well, not the middle It's on the second half It's We're going to Our vision summit's coming up

So we're prepping for our vision summit And different vision summits work different ways So like sometimes you draft Sometimes they're pre-constructed decks And so you want to sort of Different sets You want to look at them differently Depending on the nature of how they work.

And so we're figuring that out and setting that up. And right now, we're far enough along in tennis that we kind of know all our major themes. We know our major mechanics. We're just doing a lot of fine tuning. We're talking about deck archetypes. We're doing a lot of the stuff that happens later in the process. Okay, next up after that is Ultimate. So Ultimate is being led by Eric Lauer.

Eric normally leads set designs, but Eric was very intrigued. Like, Eric wanted to learn sort of how vision ticks. And so Eric asked if he could lead the vision design. I said, sure. And so Ultimate is early, pretty early in set design. We had two months of exploratory, and now we're sort of, we had a playtest today. So I think this is the second playtest we've had in vision design. Basically what happens is you get into vision design early on.

You have ideas you got from exploratory. Ultimate Exploratory was very successful, and we came out of exploratory with a lot of mechanics that we had some confidence in. So we were able to get to a playtest pretty early, and then we adjusted, we changed the mechanics, and then we had our second playtest. The second playtest is sort of getting a sense of,

oh, what do we think of these mechanics? And we're talking about the new stuff and talking about how we tweaked old things and just looking at larger themes. It's still early enough. You know, we're still looking at component pieces more so than the whole integrity. But it's, you know, we do,

even in early vision, we start thinking about structure and start thinking about how things might click together. And by the time you get to playtest, you are starting to get a little bit look of synergies and see how things are working. And so, you know, that is that. Next is volleyball.

So volleyball is an exploratory design. We just started it. But we did something we don't normally do for exploratory. We did a one-day hackathon. So I've done podcasts and hackathons in the past. Normally, hackathons are a little bit bigger in scope and it's all week long. But we thought it might be fun.

Like, we like to shake things up and we thought it'd be kind of neat to maybe do a one-day hackathon as a way to explore some ideas for Exploratory. And it really was fun and we did a playtest this week based on we walked out of the hackathon with playable demos that we could play to try different ideas.

And so today, or was it yesterday? Yesterday we playtested, and I had a chance to try some, and not all of them actually. There's more playtests to come. But anyway, you know, volleyball is an exploratory, so it's really, really early. We're just trying to, like, map out general ideas and explore, you know, if we went down this path, what might that mean? And, you know, talk about

early ideas for mechanics. So volleyball is very, very early in just sort of experimentation. Okay, so volleyball, we're now at the end of premier set design um so as for those paying attention uh right now the sets that i have to pay attention to um are judo kayaking lacrosse marathon netball off-roading, polo, quilting, rugby, swimming, ultimate, I'm sorry, tennis, ultimate, and volleyball. Now, I am in meetings to talk about what is W. We're skipping X. What is Y?

What is Z? And then we're going to start over and be ABC with a new theme that's not sports. So, like, we already have had meetings about what V and W and Y and Z are going to be ABC with a new theme that's not sports. So, like, we already have had meetings about what V and W and Y and Z are going to be. We have penciled in for what A and B or ABCD are going to be. And then we've had some talks about EFGH, for example. So,

even though volleyball is the last thing I'm currently working on, I'm, in fact, still having meetings about stuff later on down the road. In fact, I had a meeting today about W just talking about some big picture stuff. But, like, we haven't even started exploratory yet. But we're just having some conversations about, you know, thinking about how we want to position it versus other stuff. And so, you know, we have, so, like, in the course of just the last couple weeks, most of those sets I've had a meeting where something about that set came up or it's something

that I had to do some research on on my own because it's relevant for stuff I had to do. Okay, but we're not even done yet. That is just the premiere sets. I did talk about Infinity, but that's just the premiere sets.

There are other things. So, for example, you know, Lord of the Rings comes out in 2023. Um, I was on the vision design team for that. And it's our first sort of universes beyond that's doing a large set universes beyond. And so I was asked if I could, you know, peek in from time to time and I was on the vision design team and so that team is being run

by Glenn Jones and you know so that's something where I can peek in from time to time and you know once again that's mostly done but it's interesting to see where that is at. There are many other things some of which are not even public yet. You know, there's different supplemental sets we do. There's other Universes Beyond stuff going on. So there also are conversations like, literally, I had a meeting yesterday where it was just going over all the supplemental sets. It was just like, okay, here's all the supplemental sets that are going on, and here's this, and here's this, and here's this, and here's this, and here's this, and here's this.

And, like, just, because, like, for example, the supplemental sets are kind of my black hole in the sense that I don't, I'm not on the vision design team for them. But the reason it's not a complete black hole is I have to at least be knowledgeable enough on what, like, mechanical space all the sets are playing in because I have to be aware of what I'm doing in response to what else is going on around us. So, for example, there are three sets right now in different stages,

some premier, some supplemental, that were doing something that kind of overlapped with each other. And so we had to actually have a meeting saying, okay, how are we doing this? Is this going to be the same mechanic? Is this a different mechanic? Is one a riff on the other? Like, we have to actually think about, hey, it matters that these are together.

Another thing that'll happen is, for example, we have a thing called card crafting where all the designers get together to talk through like really crunchy issues. And for example, one set this week had a meeting saying, Hey, we're introducing something.

Here are new things that we're planning to introduce. Do any people have any, they have an issue with this? You know, um, this is something that we're going to introduce. It's going to be something that other sets could have access to, you know,

and sort of just talking that through. So there's a lot of discussions going on about sort of what components and what pieces and what tools other people are using. And so you have to be aware of all that. So even though I'm not on all the supplemental teams, I've got to be aware of the supplemental teams. Because what the supplemental teams are doing affects the work that I do. I think. And then there's other tangential stuff like Magic 30 is coming up, which is the big celebration in October. I'm doing multiple panels for that.

And so I have to be planning my panels to make sure that I understand what's going on there. And that's another example of just, even once something comes out, like I'm doing an Infinity panel. Infinity will be out by the time Magic 30 happens, but I have to plan the panel and do something because part of making a set is not just the act of making it, but also making people knowledgeable enough and getting people to be interested.

And, you know, there's a lot of work that, and even when the set comes out, our work's not necessarily always done. Because it's a good example where Infinity will be out, and I'll still be doing work trying to get people excited about Infinity and getting them to play Infinity. So, anyway, the major point I wanted to make, and the reason I wanted to do this today,

is just sort of demonstrate that one of the dynamics of one of the dynamics of working on magic is it's not quite so linear as it is to the outside it is not like you don't get exposed to a set one at a time there are a lot of things going on all at once and like one of my jobs one of the reasons i'm on all the sets is to keep everybody informed. Like just this week, we were trying to do new mechanic in one set. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, two sets before you, there's this mechanic that is similar. And if we want to do it, let's be aware of what they're doing in two sets before so that we're not too close to what they're doing. Either get far enough away from them, or sometimes we're like, oh, maybe we want to lean in. Maybe we want to make it synergistic

with what they're doing. Maybe it's the same mechanic or riff on their mechanic. That's the kind of stuff we'll talk about. Anyway, so that, I just wanted to give you guys just a general sense of sort of what it is to live the life of magic as it's being made. And it is not just like one at a time. It is many things all happening at once. And so, you know, one of the jokes is more than once I've come into a meeting, sat down, talked about something and I'm like, that is not this meeting, is it? That is a different team. That is not this team. And so anyway, it's, it's a unique part about it. It keeps my job from getting boring. But it definitely, I don't know if you've ever seen in the

every once in a while, I'll get confused about something like there's a lot to keep on. You know, I'm, I, my memory is good, but you know, I'm... My memory's good, but, you know, I'm getting older, and there's... You know, we have so many sets all at once going on, just keeping track of all the things. It can be a lot. But anyway, hopefully today, just to give you a little insight in sort of my life and my world and all the stuff that I'm working on. So, anyway, guys, I'm now home. So, we all know what that means. It means that's the end of my drive to home.

So instead of talking magic, I'll be not making magic because I'm home, but I'll be having dinner. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed today's talk. And I just tried to do something a little bit different. But anyway, I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.