Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #107 - Design Skeleton

Episode Date: March 21, 2014

Mark talks about an important design tool called the design skeleton.

Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to be talking about something called a design skeleton. So, what a design skeleton is, it's something that is part of the technical side of the job. I talk a lot about making magic, and I know that there's a, I tend to focus a lot on the, the, what's the word, the intuitive, inspirational, oh, I had a dream, and oh my God, bam, I had an idea. And I talk a lot about, there's a lot of thought in the creativity that there's this like moments of pure clarity where you realize things, and there's some of that, and I play that up, and there's a fun thought of, you know, of creativeness, of having this wild sort of, you know, right brain side sort of thing.

But, in reality, a lot of the creative process is hard work and structure, is spending a lot of time carefully crafting and figuring something out. And today, I'm going to talk about a tool that we use to do that. I first started talking about design skeletons in a series I have called Nuts and Bolts that I read in my column, where I do one a year talking sort of about how to make your own set. And in the column, I introduce the concept of a design skeleton. So I'm going to talk about that today.

So my metaphor, I use some metaphors today. I never metaphor I didn't like. So let's start with the metaphor of building a building. So let's say you're an architect. And it's your job to figure out, to get the vision for what your building looks like. Well, you make something called blueprints or architectural plans. And what you're doing is you're saying, hmm, here's my first thoughts on what I think the building is going to look like. Now, it is quite possible that when you go to start building or when the builder starts building,

That when you go to start building, or when the builder starts building, the architect might have had ideas that, while were great on paper, might not actually work due to different limitations. And so the blueprints are our guideline. And that it's something that, when you want to make a set, you have to figure out the core of what you are doing. So to understand this, let me explain a basic tenet, something that we use to make sets, something we call a card file. Now, the idea of a card file is, it

is a list of, let's say I'm making a large set. Large sets currently have 101 commons, 80 uncommons, 53 rares, and 15 mythics. 269 cards. We recently upped from 60 uncommons to 80 uncommons. The reason for this was we were getting pinched at uncommon, that there was too much we needed to do and not enough space, and that by opening up a little bit, uncommon is really the place we can put build-around-me's for draft that really sort of helps make draft have more variety over time. And anyway, we felt like we needed the extra space,

so we added 20 cards. Anyway, so when you're making a set, you have a file. But the thing about the file is you are going to change the cards in the file. That you're going to make cards, sometimes cards, you know, all sorts of things can change about the card. The card could change its rule text, its mana cost, its power, its sorts of things can change about the card. The card could change its rule text, its mana cost, its power, its toughness, its creature type. Lots of things can change. And in fact, the whole card could be tossed out and replaced with a completely different card. So what we do is, our card file has slots, meaning that you have 269 slots, 101 common, 80 uncommon, 53 rare, and 15 mythic. You have slots.

And what we do is we designate each slot. So we have what we call card codes that are used to designate. Now, a card code has three components to it. The first component is rarity. So if it's a common card, it gets a C. Uncommon card gets a U. Rare card gets an R. Mythcommon card gets a U. Rare card gets an R.

Mythic rare card gets an M. Pretty easy. The second signifier originally was about the frame. It is partly about the frame and partly about the color. When we first started making card codes, they were to inform the people producing the cards what the frames were. That's drifted a little bit over time. But in a general sense, it talks about the frame.

So if you are a colored card, W for white, blue is U, because B is black and L is land. So U is blue, black is B, red is R, green is G. Artifacts are A, lands are L. Multicolor cards are Z why Z? I don't know we just needed something

a signifier and we wanted to pick something we felt was just out of the way wouldn't be confused for anything and no one was using Z so we picked Z and the way the card file

normally goes is you have white, blue, black, red, green WUBERG that's the first letters in order pronounced, or blue for, you for blue. And then you have your multi-color cards, and then you have your artifacts, and then you have your lands. That's the order that we put them in the file. So the idea is you have a file.

So what a design skeleton is, is trying to structure the file so that when you approach it, you have some idea of what you need to do. Okay, so the very first thing you do when you design skeleton is literally make a slot for every card in your file. In order to do that, the first thing you have to do is figure out some basics about your set. So for example, I have 101 commons. Oh, let me explain the 101st common that always throws people. So the way, when we print magic cards, essentially we have a sheet. We print a giant sheet. That's the size that the printer prints on. And then what we do is we cut them down to card size. So we print a whole bunch of cards and then

cut them down. And so in order to sort of have the right combinations that we need, there's a certain set size that fit with the card sizes, the sheet sizes. And so that's how we get different set sizes is in order to do the thing we need to do. It's very complicated. I learned long ago, in 18 years, I've avoided every possible meeting where I had to talk about templating or collation. And I worked very hard to avoid those meetings. They are very important, and I'm glad there's people that do them, but they get really mind-numbing. But it is, it's funny, by the way, when I was in school a long time ago, in math class, my teacher said, oh, this is important, learn your math, you'll important. Learn your math.

You will need this later in life. And I was sure I was going to be a writer. I said, I'm going to make my living with words. I'm not going to need numbers. And I took my math classes, but I'm like, I was super doubtful I was going to need it. And now, now that I'm a game designer, holy moly, I use a lot of math.

Like, collation is all math. Like, as fan and all the stuff we have to do to figure out percentages, and there's a lot of math. Like, collation is all math. Like, as fan and all the stuff we have to do to figure out percentages and there's a lot of math. Luckily, I don't have to do collation full time. Somebody else is doing collation. I'm aware enough of it so I can do my job which is figuring out set sizes and things. Anyway,

so you have 101 commons. 101 commons. The 101st by the way is actually kind of not a common. It's kind of not an uncommon. It actually falls in between rarity-wise, that it is half as rare as a common, but twice as common as an uncommon. We call it a common,

just because it has to be called something for... But anyway, the 101st card shows up a little less. But anyway, the 101st card is always an artifact or a land. And then what we do is, at common and uncommon, we always completely balance color. And then at rare and mythic, we get close, but it's not exact. Why do we do that? Well, we've had some experience not balancing color.

In Torment and Judgment, for example, Torment skewed toward black, Judgment skewed toward white-green. Also in Innistrad, I skewed the set a little, not as much as Torment, but a little bit toward black because it's so dark. Development ended up undoing that work. Why? Because it really, really

skews draft. Not having a balanced color really does weird things to draft and makes draft less fun. And so at Common and Uncommon, we balance them completely, meaning there's an equal number of black cards to blue cards, as green cards, as red cards, as white cards, and such. So,

normally what happens is you have to figure out a common are you doing any land cycles, because you have to do them in cycles, are you doing any artifacts, and if you do artifacts other than the 101st one, they have to come in fives. So let's say, for example, you go, okay, I want a cycle of common lands. It fits my theme.

I think I want common artifacts. We'll say five artifacts plus the six will make the 101st card an artifact. Okay, so now I have 11 cards represented. That means I have 90 cards not represented. I need to do an even split. That's 18 cards per color. So what I do is I go to my files,

and remember, common is C, white is W, O1. Oh, I didn't mention, the third signifier is number. So it's color, I'm sorry, rarity, color slash frame, number. So the first in the file is CW01 all the way through CW18. That means there's 18 slots for white. Then you have CU01 through CU18. You do that, then you have your 5 artifact slots, your 5 land slots, or 6 artifact slots, 5 land slots. Now you have your 101 cards. So that's the very first thing you do.

You literally make slots. Then what you do is you figure out whether or not each slot is a creature or a spell. So the way you figure this out is pretty easy. What we have done is we have figured out how many creatures each color is supposed to have and made a default. So right now, white gets the most creatures. Why white? Why not green?

So green used to get the most creatures. Green is thought of as the creature color. And so for a long time, green got both the most creatures and the biggest creatures. But sometimes we realized that we wanted to spread out the creature love. And so what we did is we said, okay, white is the color all about the group coming together, the community, the army. It wants a lot of little creatures. And so we'll make white the color that is the most creatures, but we'll make green the color that is the biggest creatures. And that way we can differentiate them. White and green already have this problem of overlapping a lot.

And so give a little more spread between them. We thought it was good. Now, the numbers I'm giving you are default numbers. They change from set to set. This is kind of where we start. So white, by default, has 55% creatures. So if you look at the file, that's 18, 50% is 9. That means 10, 11 cards want to be creatures.

Oh, and this is important. When we talk about creatures, development has a very distinctive thing of how they count creatures. They care about creatures from an aggressive standpoint. So any thing that makes creatures, for example, if you have an instant in white that makes two 1-1 tokens, that is counted as a creature.

It might be an instant, or sometimes it's a sorcery, but the fact that it makes creatures, it functionally is a creature from a vantage point of counting it as a creature. Meanwhile, defenders, cards that have no ability to attack, don't count against creatures.

There's a little bit of, we say 55% creatures, we're talking about things that matter aggressively against creatures. And so there's a little bit of, we say 55% creatures, we're talking about things that matter aggressively as creatures. Now we do count things that have a tap-activated ability, or even things that have a zero power if they're capable of attacking,

because the game has ways to buff those things up. So anyway, white's default is 55%, and I stress the word default, that as each set rolls along, we match it with what we need to do. And so a set might have a little more, might have a little less, although the cards will always go in the following order. So white is number one to creatures, as far as number of creatures. Green is number two, has about 52%.

Black is number three at about 50%. Red is number four at about 48%. And blue is number five at about 45%. So it goes in order, white, green, black, red is number four at about 48 percent, and blue is number five at about 45 percent. So it goes in order, white, green, black, red, blue. Blue is the most spell-oriented, red is second most spell-oriented, black's in the middle, and then white and green lean toward the creature side.

And like I said, even though we'll change them up, usually they stay in that order, even when sets are a little heavier on creatures or a little lighter on creatures, they still tend to stay in that order. Okay, so once a little heavier on creatures or a little lighter on creatures, they still tend to stay in that order. Okay, so once you do that, the next step is figuring out what size creatures you have. And so what we do at first is we break creatures into three general sizes. A small creature is any creature whose power and toughness adds up to four or less.

An uncommon creature is any creature whose power adds up from five to eight. And a large creature is any creature whose power and toughness add up to 9 or more. And so you go through the file and you figure out for each of your creatures, whether they're small, medium, or large. Once again, we allocate at certain rarities. Like, for example, white tends to have mostly small, a little bit of medium. Traditionally, it doesn't get a large at common. Every once in a blue moon it does, but as a default it does not.

Where, on the flip side, green always has a large creature at common. Every once in a while you have two large creatures at common. You know, different creatures we allocate. So, actually, let me put a little aside here. I spend a lot of time and energy talking in this podcast about how I try to make

each set different. I talk about pushing the pendulum. I talk about how, you know, we keep wanting to make each set be this new thing to explore. But the thing I don't

talk much about, which I will today, and it's very, very much about what the design skeleton is about, is how we try to make every set the same. Because one of the things that's

important to understand is um i talk a lot about how magic is many games and to many people there's many ways to play it but the flip side of that is at its core magic is one game that has one running set of how it works and that when you sit down to play a game of magic we want to make sure that it is a game of magic it is possible to push it too far you know you could come and play a game of magic, we want to make sure that it is a game of magic. It is possible to push it too far. You know, you could come and say, okay, this set, you know, we're not going to have creatures and we're going to, you know, all damage is going to be permanent and we could constantly change things and just change the fundamentals of how it's going to work. But the thing though is our job is to make things comfortable. So one of the things like in Hollywood,

if you're trying to pitch a new product in Hollywood, one of the things that's important is you always want to pitch your product as a combination of two known quantities that will come together to form an unknown quantity. So the idea essentially is, like let's say you have this awesome idea for a movie about a guy who gets taken by aliens and has to fight his way out. Okay? So you want to go pitch this to Hollywood. But, the problem is,

um, that if you just, if, in a vacuum, I might go, oh, that's too weird, you know,

I don't know, I don't know if we're comfortable with that. But no, what you say is, okay, I have an awesome film, it is Die Hard

meets Independence Day. You know, what you've done is said, oh, well, the trappings of the story, it's about a guy who's surrounded by bad guys who have to fight his way out.

Oh, that's Die Hard. Die Hard, it's similar to Die Hard. And they say, oh, well, aliens, well, like, yo, Independence Day, that was super, super popular, and that's all about aliens. And so what you do is you try to take your unknown quality and put it through known prisms. And so it's sort of like,

oh, well, Die Hard was popular. People liked that kind of movie. Oh, Independence Day was popular. People liked that kind of movie. And you go, oh, I see. Hmm. But you were mixing them. No one's ever mixed Die Hard

with Aliens before. That might be interesting. And in some ways, when I pitch a magic set, I mean, essentially, what we do is, it's gothic horror meets magic. It's Greek mythology meets magic. It's the guilds meet magic.

It's adventure world meets magic. That what we do every year is we try to take some known quantity and another known quantity, which is magic, and the fun of it is the interaction. It's like, oh, I know magic. Oh, I know Greek mythology. Oh, how is magic. And the fun of it is the interactions. Like, oh, I know magic. Oh, I know Greek mythology. Oh, how is magic going to do Greek mythology? How are those things going to blend together? You know, and that one of the things that is very important

is that we are always trying to, I mean, I talked about this, obviously, in my communication theory, is that comfort is important. The people have to come and know what they're getting into. And so a lot of what we need to do every year is make sure there's consistency. So, for example, I just talked about the creatures.

Now I get to the spells. So the first thing you'll do in the spells is sometimes you'll break up whether you want enchantments or instants or sorceries. Usually instant sorceries are the same thing for the design skeleton at first. Eventually you might break them up in the beginning. It's just kind of, oh, this is an instant or sorcery. This, instants or sorceries are the same thing for the design skeleton at first. Eventually, you might break them up

at the beginning. It's just kind of, oh, this is an instant or sorcery. This might be an enchantment. Normally, a common enchantment are auras.

The other thing that you will do is you will signify established spells that you need. For example, green at common is going to do

a giant growth effect. It's going to do some sort of land fetching. Odds are it probably will do some kind of life gain. It'll do some kind of naturalized effect. You know, blue's going to do a hard counter spell and a soft counter spell. Hard counter spell means it can counter anything, like counter spell or a spell that just says counter target spell. a spell that just says counter-target spell. A soft counter-spell is a spell that which only affects a narrow band like

counter-target enchantment or counter-target creature or it's conditional meaning, you know, counter-target spell unless your opponent pays two. Well, it's not always going to counter the spell. But anyway, blue will always have a hard counter and a soft counter. It'll have a bounce spell. It'll have card drawing. It'll have card filtering.

Black will have creature kill. Usually there's a straight-up terror effect and then there's the fact that it's a little smaller, you know, a bounce spell. It'll have card drawing. It'll have card filtering. You know, black will have creature kill. Usually there's a straight-up terror effect, and then there's the fact that it's a little smaller, you know. And the idea is there's certain things that we always do that we make sure to put those in early on, that you signify, oh, this is a giant growth. Now, what you do early on is that you tend to default. Like, for example, the giant growth usually is allocated to an instant early on.

Why? Because most of our giant growths are instant. But it's possible, let's say you're doing a set in which there's a strong aura theme. Oh, well, maybe instead of a giant growth, I make a plus two, plus two, or plus two, plus two aura with flash on it. That functions a lot like giant growth. I can surprise you and it's bigger. Oh, but in an aura world, it's permanently bigger

rather than just being a temporary effect. So one of the things you do is you sort of start establishing what you want. And remember, the design skeleton is a living, breathing thing

in that it's constantly evolving. You notice there's a theme in magic that everything's constantly evolving. That's kind of the nature of the game. And so what you're doing is, so I'll use a different metaphor today. I used my blueprint metaphor.

Now I'll use my storyboard metaphor. So in Hollywood, let's say you're going to direct a film. You're going to make a film. So what you do before you ever get to touching a camera is you get an artist or multiple artists and you do what's called a storyboard.

What a storyboard is, is you figure out all the shots you want to do and you draw them. You have an artist actually physically draw them. By the way, guys, I am sitting in traffic as I look at my clock here. So you guys have an extra long podcast today, which is good because there's a lot that goes into design skeletons. So luckily I picked a topic that can handle some traffic. So every once in a while I pick a topic and then I'm like, don't be traffic, don't be traffic. I have like maybe 30 minutes on this. If there's traffic, I'm doomed, doomed.

But luckily today, not doomed. Like I said, I've written a whole bunch on this. So this is lots about design skeleton. Okay, so anyway, the idea is as you create stuff, it will evolve with what you're doing. Oh, storyboards. I'm sorry. So if you're a director and you're making a film, you start doing storyboards, which is you get an artist to draw what you expect to see with the camera. And the reason you use storyboards is so you can map out what's going to happen.

Because when you get to actually filming the film, you want to allow the opportunities to, you want to be able to do things when you see opportunity. For example, let's say I get to the film and there's a gorgeous sunset. I'm like, oh my, like I got to capture the sunset. So you might shift what you're doing. You might change it around a little bit to try to capture that. You know? And remember, the cool thing about doing design is you're not locked into anything. I mean, as you progress, you start committing to things. I mean, I guess with time you get locked into things. But early on in design, you have a lot of freedom. And that just because you set out to do something doesn't mean that when you play test,

if you find it's not working, or you find something even better, that you can't capture that. I mean, I talk about this all the time, that design, or most creative works, is iteration, which means you're going to keep doing, essentially the way you do a magic set is, make a card file, play it, learn from that,

make corrections, play again, continue, lather, rinse, repeat that you're basically constantly changing the file then playing with it and seeing what you've learned from it

then making changes based on what you've learned from your playtest then playtesting again and what the the thing that the skeleton does for you is it gives you

the structure you need so you can understand what it is you are doing because one of the things about building a set is, and this is one of the hardest things, is there's a lot of moving pieces. There's a lot going on. That it's not like when you build a set, there's just one thing to focus on. There's 20 things to focus on.

Maybe there's 100 things to focus on. There's tons of things. A lot of moving pieces are happening. And what you need to do in order to see all those moving pieces is you need to track them so that you can understand what's happening. And the thing that's really, really nice about the design skeleton is sometimes it allows you to see where your problems are. So let me give you a real, like a concrete example.

I think this was from Odyssey. Okay, so I have my design skeleton and I realize that I've not yet done a giant growth effect, but I ran out of non-creature spells. And so what I realized is I said, okay, I know I need to do

a rampant growth and I don't have a spell left. So I said, okay, well what if I made a creature, a cheap creature, that you could sacrifice to go get a basic land? And I'm like, okay, well, that allows me, you know, you can use it as a creature

for as long as you need it, but as soon as you need the land, you can go get the land. And that was, like, the reason I sort of was able to solve that problem was I instantly saw my, you know, I had allocated the things with my design skeleton, so I understood what things were doing. Like, one of the things is it's very easy when you look at a card in a vacuum to not remember what that card's purpose in the whole set is. And the design skeleton helps identify things.

Like, oh, yeah, yes, that's part of this. That's part of this cycle. Oh, that's another thing. Let me talk about cycles real quick. So cycles are one of the most useful tools for a designer. In fact, one of these days I should probably do a whole podcast on cycles. In fact, I will. I've dubbed I will do that.

But anyway, suffice to say, cycles are very important, and when you're doing your when you are doing your design skeleton, then you want to make room and place for the cycles. It also, when you signify the cycles, it's very easy to lose track of cycles. Like what happens, it's very common,

is you'll make a bunch of cards, they'll be a cycle, they'll do something, and later on you're trying to fix some problem, and without thinking about it you change a card, because I get a vacuum, it just seems like a whatever, whatever card. And then later, like, oh, oh, that was part of a cycle. And so it's important that you label things, and you have some understanding of where things are,

so that when you're putting your things together, you can see the moving pieces. Like I said, one of the biggest problems in design is trying to track all the moving pieces. In fact, one of the things I've gotten very, very good at, and like I said, you know, I put in, I'm working on my, I think, 20th lead design right now. One of the things that you just get good at with time, with experience, is that I now have an intuitive sense whether a set's missing something, that I can look at a set and sort of say, oh, here's what's missing. And it's funny because my designers would love to get this ability, so they're always like, how do you see that? And I'm like, it's just experience. You just do it enough that you get a general sense of things. Okay.

So you have the skeleton. And basically, by the way, the way we built that is what we'll do is we'll start by making commons. So why commons? The reason you start at commons is, well, first and foremost, when you open a booster pack of magic, on average, you will have one land, at commons is well first and foremost when you open a booster pack of magic on average you will have one land ten commons three uncommons

one rare which one eighth of the time will be a mythic rare that means that two thirds of your experience of every booster pack is common that's huge 66.6% of all experiences of booster packs,

and that's me counting the lands. Actually, it's Smidgen and I are discounting the land. So anyway, it's a huge part of your experience. And if common doesn't hold your set, if your set doesn't live and breathe a common,

your audience won't know what it is. I have a dictum I say to my designers, which is, if your theme isn't a common, it's not your theme. And what that means is, let's say I do an awesome thing. So, like, the classic example of this mistake was in Champions of Kamigawa, where we wanted to have a legendary theme,

and so we made all our rare creatures legendary. And we made a few uncommon legendary creatures, which is something we never, ever do. The problem was, how many packs did I have to open to understand that? For starters, I only get one rare per pack. If it wasn't a creature, I'd even see a legendary thing in my pack. I mean, maybe I got an uncommon, but I could open a pack and just see nothing. Maybe on my second pack I do get a creature rare, and it is legendary, but there's legendary creatures.

Oh, I got a legendary creature. You know, it's not until I open five or six or something. I have to start getting a preponderance of something to go, oh, this is not normal. And the problem is

not everybody's going to buy six, seven packs of your product or at least not necessarily day one. You know, I don't want someone buying my product and opening up multiple boosters and not knowing what the product's about. That is bad. In fact, I want them opening one booster and knowing

what the product's about. I want the theme to hit you so quickly that it only takes one booster to have a sense of what the set is about. Obviously, there's a wrapper. I mean, there's things to help sell even beyond the cards. But I want, there's a wrapper. I mean, there's things to help sell it even beyond the cards. But I want... Let's assume you're ignoring the booster wrap. I want you to have a sense from the 15 cards you open what the set is about.

That means your set has to live and breathe the commons. So the very first thing we do is try to figure out how to make commons work. So normally what we'll do is we'll do the design skeleton of the commons, we'll build the commons, we playtest the commons. So normally what we'll do is we'll do the design skeleton for the commons, we'll build the commons, we playtest the commons.

And then with time we slowly layer in the uncommons, the rares, the mythics. Those come with time. And the design skeleton, for example, you only need a map or a common before you make a common. You don't necessarily need to have the whole thing done before you start a comment. In my article on nuts and bolts, it's just easier to have you do the whole thing to explain it. But in actual practicality, there's a lot of things that happen concurrently in magic design. I mean, it's not like A, then B, then C.

It's kind of like A and B and C are kind of happening at the same time. So while you're doing A, keep an eye on B and an eye on C, and D might start soon. There's a, I mean, one of the things about doing design, and this is why having the blueprint, having the design skeleton is so important, is design is chaotic. Chaotic. Because you have all these different things

you're trying to understand and figure out, and they're happening in conjunction with each other. So let me give you another important tip. When playtesting, you want to make sure that you're introducing one new thing at a time. Now, I'll admit we break that rule all the time, but I think that's just, we have enough experience that we can watch multiple things and understand what's going on. Sorry, I'm yawning today. I even got to sleep last night. And so one of the things that is very important is because things are going on concurrently, you need to ground yourself to understand what is happening. And when you're playtesting,

it really helps to have one thing to focus on so that you can understand what that one thing is doing. If you have too many new things added in, then you just can't tell when you playtest. Like I said, with experience, I can throw a bunch of things in, and I have enough experience that I can sort of separate what's going on.

But once again, that takes a lot of time. If you're doing this for the first time, add one thing in at a time. You know, and that, it's also,

when you're playtesting, by the way, there's nothing wrong with trying a bunch of versions of something. When we were doing the land set with Azandikar

and we were trying out land mechanics, we would throw a whole bunch of land mechanics in the set at once because we just wanted to experience different things, and it's not so important that

even if you know you're not going to use them all, you're just trying to experience things. That's another important thing of early playtesting, which is the role of early playtesting is experiencing things. It is not having a tight, wound environment yet. Don't worry necessarily about everything interconnects.

Worry about is each individual card taken in isolation something that's fun and enjoyable to play. Let's see how we're doing time-wise. Oh, I should be at work, but I'm not. Because of traffic. Although, it's moving along now, so... I shouldn't be super late today. It is funny, though. My podcast has made me rethink traffic. I now see traffic,

and I'm like, eh, I'll talk a little longer. It lowers my blood pressure while driving. See, you guys are good for my health. I'm trying to think of any other key thing on the design skeleton. The one thing that I will stress to people is detail is fine in making a design skeleton, but be aware there's a difference between what you need and what you want. It is very easy when making a design skeleton to put in things you would like to have rather than things you need. The design skeleton is not about want. The design skeleton is about need.

What do you have to have to structurally make the thing work? Now, it's fine when you're making your set to do things you want to do, but the design skeleton is trying to... The point of the design skeleton is what is necessary, not... I mean, I'm saying this a little incorrect. You can have things in your design skeleton

that are things you want, but you have to be careful that you understand what are the things you need from the things you want. And so in the design skeleton, I like to prioritize things you want.

I'm sorry, things you need. So I often tell my designers when they start making their design skeletons, early on, talk more about what you need. If you really want to put some conditional stuff in there, put in italics or something. Do something that when you look at it, you know it's secondary to what you're trying to do.

Because a lot of what the design skeleton is trying to help you with is figuring out how to prioritize things and how things need to come together. The trick is, because game design or magic design is about so many competing forces all happening at once, that a lot of what you need to understand is prioritizing. That's a big part of making a set, is figuring out what do you need, what does the set need. One of the reasons I talk about tossing up things that are good

but don't fit your set is they're just taking up mind space that you need it elsewhere. That if I have a card that's this awesome card that does neat, wonderful things, but it's fighting the rest of my set, it's just going to cause me problems. And I need to take it out and free up space so that I can do more things that are

helping my set do what my set wants to do. There's always other sets. If you make an awesome card, it will find a home. If it's something that deserves to be printed, it'll eventually get printed. That doesn't mean it goes in the first available place it can be put. That's how bad design happens because you force things in because of your attachment to the thing and not because of the role the thing plays in a larger design that you are doing. The other thing about design skeletons is they're not written in ink. They're written in pencil.

By that I mean you can change them. If you try something and it doesn't work, change it. If you're having some problem, it can change. One of the things I've noticed once I tell people to start using design skeletons is they write it and then they assume it's a locked thing and then they get all in trouble and they don't know how to solve the problem. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. If you run into a problem, a design skeleton is a guideline. Much like, you know, if the architect's building a building and there's some, you know, there's a boulder on the side of the hill that they can't dig out,

like, oh, well, maybe we're changing around the house a little bit to accommodate this thing that we can't change. And design is the same way. Car design is the same way, which is, you know, sometimes you discover, oh, I can't do something. It breaks a rule or it causes some interaction that's problematic, and I can't do that. Well, go back to your design skeleton and say,

okay, what are my non-negotiables? What are the things that I need to have? And how can I work around knowing that I can't have this thing I assumed I was going to have? The other thing to remember about a design skeleton is that the design skeleton is a tool, which means as much as you make use of the tool is how useful the tool will be. Different people make design skeletons of different amounts. I've had designers who are super, super, super detailed,

that they write every possible thing they can think of, that almost when you look at their skeleton, it's almost like they've made the card file. It's so, you know, this has to be an instant, and it costs three mana, and it's green, and it has to be a naturalized effect, and it has to make use of the new keyword. Like, well, you've kind of designed your card right there.

Other people, myself, for example, like, I don of designed your car right there. Other people, myself for example, like I don't even actually even use a design skeleton anymore because I've internalized most of it. I mean, I like to think I do use a design skeleton, but it's in my head, but it's very, very loose and it's super flexible. A lot of what I do is sort of, I've learned to look at a set and get a sense of what it needs and doesn't need, that I've sort of internalized this process. It takes a long time, so I would stress use the design skeleton. I've been doing this for 18 years, so I'm able to take a few shortcuts that I think

most designers would be, I would not advise them taking. So, anyway, I'm almost to work. The real point of today is this. There's a lot of art to what I do. There's a lot of art to card design, but there's also a lot of craft. And that it's fun to talk about the exciting, intuitive, you know, things pop in your head moment, but it's also important to understand that there's a lot of work. There's a lot of elbow grease. That it's not a lot of just sitting around and thinking and going, oh, that's an idea.

A lot of time it's plotting and planning and mapping things out and structuring things. And there's a lot of technical craft that goes into making card sets. And the design skeleton is just a sign that you need to pay attention to that. If you do not pay attention to that, it will come to bite you. Because there's too many things going on and too many things you have to care about that without a real strong sense of a tool to guide you, you will get lost. And you will forget things. And the other thing that happens a lot is

because there's so many things you're trying to fit in, and while 269 cards might seem like a lot, when you're actually trying to do a bunch of complex things, it gets tiny quick. And we talk about getting pinched, where at some part of the file, you have too many things you need and not enough card slots to do them.

And that's a real problem that you run into every single design that you get pinched somewhere and then it's a matter of figuring out can i shift those abilities can i change them in rarity can i change them in color is there a way to overlap two things that don't normally overlap like my example before with um the creature and the rampant growth is there a, you know, have two things that need to coexist but overlap them in slots? You know, that's very important. So anyway,

design is, like I said, today was a little more of a by-the-book sort of podcast where I'm talking about the nitty-gritty of what we do. But the nitty-gritty is important and that, and by the way, the nitty gritty of what we do. But the nitty gritty is important.

And by the way, the nitty gritty is fun. I very much enjoy structuring things. I'm a puzzle. I love puzzles. And I think a lot of design is trying to crack puzzles. And a lot of the puzzle solving

is all the groundwork you do with your skeleton to figure out. A lot of the puzzle solving is all the groundwork you do with your skeleton to figure out. Like, a lot of solving puzzles is figuring out all the parameters. And so, I think the design skeleton is doing a lot of the homework.

There's a way to think of it. That if you want to do design, you've got to do your homework. The design skeleton is your homework. Luckily, it's very fun homework. So anyway, I love talking about magic and technical design. But even more, I love making magic.

So it's time for me to go. I'll talk to you guys next time.