Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #1256 - Right For This Set

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

In this podcast, I talk about how it's not enough for a mechanic to be good in a vacuum. ...

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to let their drive to work. Okay, so today's episode is called write for this set. So I'm going to talk about one of the biggest challenges of making mechanics. And I think that one of the thought processes, like what we do is we just go in our meetings and do our exploratory design and vision design. And we just find the absolute best mechanics and put them in
Starting point is 00:00:28 the set, and then we're done. And that actually is not what we do. So a lot of trying to find new mechanics. I mean, clearly during the exploratory portion of design, we're just testing ground and finding new areas. And normally, there is something, there is some mechanic that you are centering the set in. And that mechanic usually can do whatever it wants,
Starting point is 00:00:54 because it's the most important. It's the grounded center mechanic. It's the heart of the set. And whatever you put into the set first, you know, gets to be, um, gets to sort of have the space it needs. So there is one mechanic that goes in every set that we just wanted to be the best that can be in a vacuum, because it is trying to capture the set. But even then, that first mechanic we pick is chosen not because it's a great mechanic in a vacuum but
Starting point is 00:01:25 because it fits what we're trying to do. The key to design and this is sort of the essence of today's show. Our job is not to design the best set sort of in a vacuum. It's to design the best set given the parameters that we're doing and that what like magic for example this is the 30 year we're doing. And that what, like magic, for example, this is the 30, 30 year, 32nd year, 32nd year of magic, right? And we make a lot of sets. And the answer is each set wants of its own identity. That it's not like we're trying to make any one set better than the other.
Starting point is 00:02:00 We're just trying to make each set the best of its own thing, what it can be. And our job as designers is to say, okay, what is this that trying to make each set the best of its own thing what it can be and our job as designers is to say Okay, what is this that trying to do and we want to make sure we come up with a cool idea You know, um arc planning spends a lot of time trying to come up with You know world concepts and just general ideas that are just exciting and then in design We need to capture that we need to figure out what it is what the essence of it is, and that a lot of the job of the design team
Starting point is 00:02:33 is then capturing that essence. So let me talk about another big misconception. When you talk to people about creative work, there is this misconception among the average person that the most important thing is the idea. That the idea is this amazing thing and if you have the amazing idea then everything comes forth and really the the genius, the genius is the idea. And the reality is it's not that a good idea isn't valuable, it is, but an idea is just as good as the execution it takes to make it.
Starting point is 00:03:10 Uh, the idea that an idea is so like, this idea is so great that it just explains how to make it is just not the way it works that a lot of what we do in design is we have good ideas, but it's the execution. Uh, and so I, I call today's episode right for the set because the job is not to make a to make mechanics that just are universally good it's to make mechanics that fit and do what the set is doing. That ideas are great but ideas inherently by themselves are kind of worthless. It's the execution of the idea that matters.
Starting point is 00:03:48 That is great to come up with, oh, here's a really cool idea for a set. Great. But you have to make the set. And that a lot of what, to me, the genius of magic design is not coming up with a cool idea, it is figuring out how to execute the cool idea. A good example, I remember Doug when he was working on the story for the Bolas arc, had this giant finale that he loved. And it was Nicole Bolas and his army of eternal zombies are fighting almost every planeswalker known in a giant battle in Ravnica for the
Starting point is 00:04:26 fate of the multibirds. And that idea was a cool idea, right? That's not that it wasn't a cool story concept. But that idea unto itself did not make War of the Spark. It gave us a purpose, a drive, something to try to achieve, but how, you know, figuring out how to do that, figuring out how to make a war of planeswalkers and make that into something that was a magic set took a lot in time and energy. And my point there is I think the true excitement to see War of the Spark was not the idea of a planeswalker war, was the execution of a planeswalker war.
Starting point is 00:05:09 The idea was cool, but figuring out how to make it happen was actually the real hard work. And that's a lot of magic design. A lot of magic design is, look, we have a lot of talented people and we come up with a lot of cool general ideas. I mean, I'm on the art planning team. The idea is we want to come up with something that just inherently
Starting point is 00:05:26 sounds like a fun world and a fun idea, but that is that is just the starting point. And a lot of what I'm talking about today is that the majority of our job in designing mechanics is making the right mechanic for the right set. So let's talk a little bit about exploratory design. So in exploratory design we go wide not deep. The idea is we really want to sort of farm out and figure out what are all the possibilities? What could we do with this theme? And like I said, we have our three buckets, what I call the good, the bad, and the ugly. Good means this is a good mechanic. Vision design could look at this.
Starting point is 00:06:05 Bad means we think it's a bad mechanic, vision design, save your time, we've saved you some energy, you don't need to look at this, we've looked at it, it's not good. And then the ugly means there's something here, there's something that has potential, but it's not there yet. This isn't the version. So that's the thing sometimes we go back to an exploratory design or sometimes vision design will take a crack at it. But essentially the idea is usually when I leave exploratory design, not always, but normally when I leave exploratory design what I want is after all this exploration of what the space is, is me to figure out what is the essence of
Starting point is 00:06:44 what we're doing. For example, I'll give a good example. So when we were doing Dominaria, so early Magic, Dominaria was the home of, for the first ten years of Magic, with a few exceptions, most of the vast majority of the sets were set on Dominaria. And we would move around continents rather, like it took us a while to realize that kind of we wanted each plane to have its own identity So Dominaria sort of had this continent has this feel that continent has that feel and so there was just a lot of huge variety that that
Starting point is 00:07:16 Early magic where we later on would just go to a new plane. We just went to a new part of Dominaria So, okay We really spent a lot of time and energy later like figuring out how best to do planes. That planes shine when they have a strong identity. Oh, this is the Gothic horror plane. This is the Greek mythology plane. You know, where planes really had something that made them stand apart and have their own identity. But we wanted to go back to Dominaria. Dominaria was the home of magic. It is where it all started. And the challenge is we wanted to turn Dominaria into sort of a modern plane, meaning a plane
Starting point is 00:07:50 that had a unified feel. But the problem was, oh, it was the home of Ice Age. It was the home of Mirage. It was the home of Onslaught. It was like, there's just infinite worlds, the home of Odyssey. There's all these worlds that All took place in the one place How do we how do we figure out what that is and we spend a lot of time in exploratory trying to figure out?
Starting point is 00:08:13 How do you do that? And it wasn't till like the tail end of exploratory that we came up with the the flavor of history the idea that this is a world whose future is defined by its past. And the cool thing about it was not only did this world live through a lot of things, the player base had lived through them too. There was the Brothers War. Well, you played the set, you know, where that had happened. And you saw the revocations of that. You were there for the Frexian invasion. Like, there's big earth-shattering, plane-shattering events. But you, the player, were there. You were there when it happened. You got a chance to see it.
Starting point is 00:08:52 And so when we talk about these global events, it's not just us making up some random thing that happened. It's a thing that we had, that itself had history. It had history in the game as well as history in the world. That itself had history. It had history in the game as well as history in the world And the idea that a lot of early magic took place there history was a really fun thing And a lot of trying to figure out was figuring out. Okay, how do we make how do we make history come alive? Right. That is a lot of the challenge history was a great theme But okay, how do you? mechanically bring forth history?
Starting point is 00:09:33 And a lot of that, you know, and the other thing to keep in mind is not only are we designing a magic set, we're designing a magic set in conjunction with sets around it. Like Dom and I was a good example where one of the low-hanging fruit for history would be the graveyard. There were sets right around it that really were messing in the graveyard and so we didn't want to be messing in the graveyard. So sometimes for example the answer that's the obvious answer isn't available to you because you are working in conjunction with other sets. There's an ebb and flow to magic and so what comes before it what comes after it can affect it. So the idea is you need to come up with some unifying vision. For Dominaria, we really latched onto the concept of historic. The
Starting point is 00:10:14 idea of what are things that represent history? There are objects that represent history. There are people that represent history. There are stories that represent history. There is, you know, there are stories that represent history. And so artifacts, legendary cards, and sagas, it tied it all together. It made history into something that made it historical. And that is the key is you want to figure out what is the essence of what you're doing and then you want to build around it. Now the other thing that's important is we come up with a lot of mechanics. We make lots and lots of mechanics. It is not the reason the majority mechanics don't end up in the set we make them for is not that they're not good mechanics. A. we only have so much space. But B. and then this is once
Starting point is 00:11:00 again today's theme, a lot of mechanics end up being not the best fit for the set they're in. I'll give another classic example. So when I made original Mirrodin, I love the design of original Mirrodin, I when we turned in the set for design it was jam-packed. So much so that Bill Rose who was the head designer at the time said Mark there's just too much in here you got to pull something out. And so I looked at the set and I figured out, the stuff in the set, what was the least kind of interconnected to the other things?
Starting point is 00:11:30 And the answer was energy. Energy was the theme, there was an artifact theme, obviously in Ridge from Meriden, and the idea that the different artifacts, especially non-contracted artifacts are using energy was cool. It was a smaller theme, and one of the reasons I pulled it out was not only wasn't it as synergistic as other elements of the set, but I'm like it really deserved to have more space. Like it kind of was crowded and didn't get enough space. So I go, you know what, let's pull it out. Let's wait. Let's wait to find the right set for it. And I believe it took 13 years. Now, that's not that we didn't look. It was actually in a couple of different designs at different points,
Starting point is 00:12:07 because we knew fundamentally it was a fun mechanic. You know, just having a different resource that multiple parts can share was a very cool idea. And it wasn't until we asked Kaladesh. So Kaladesh originally started as the idea of a steampunk set that had a more optimistic vibe that we sort of called Inventor World, was sort of our shorthand for it. And the idea of can I tie all these things together, like it ended up being the perfect place for energy. And energy was such a good fit that the creative ended up building a lot of the story around it. That one of the reasons that it is a
Starting point is 00:12:41 planet of invention is because of the aether that's natural on the planet. And so, you know, we did eventually find a home. And so the idea here is, you wanna figure out what your set's about, and then you wanna figure out your primary mechanic. That in any one set, there's one mechanic that is going to, I call it the mechanical heart. What it means is, it's kind
Starting point is 00:13:06 of the center of what goes on. And the other thing to remember that's really important is, when you first get a set, you have an empty set when you first start. You have, and I've talked to like, you have to design skeleton, like there's, we have a file, every cart in the file is a whole, and we got to fill it. And then the whole idea is in vision design, we are making a set as proof of concept for the structure we are building. When they actually build the set, some of the cards will stay,
Starting point is 00:13:32 but they will redo a lot of the set to get exactly what they need. We're more building a set because it's a lot easier to play a set and see a set and understand it to give the concept. And normally the structure we give them tends to stay, some of the cards will stay, but a lot of the cards will change usually.
Starting point is 00:13:48 But that first thing you put in the set, it doesn't have, it has the freedom of being whatever it wants to be. There is no, whatever space it needs to take, it can take. And so, usually the thing that tends to be the mechanical heart does two things. One, is it something that sort of addresses the core essence of whatever we're trying to do. And second,
Starting point is 00:14:13 usually it's the bolder, it's the thing that we're trying that's a little more, you know, every magic set we want to be bold. And normally main mechanic that the heart is the bold thing of the set Not always there's exceptions But like energy is a fine example is energy is a really cool concept, but it's a bold idea It really requires a lot of work There's a lot of infrastructure that has to go into doing that and so whatever the set may be We find the thing that we really think is the heart. You know, it mutates in Icoria, or spells matter in Strixhaven.
Starting point is 00:14:52 You know, you figure out the thing that really matters, and then you really want to build around it. And what that is and how you build around it, usually there's some emotional center. Original Indistrad really wanted to play up the idea of leaning into the genre of Gothic Horror and making you feel afraid as you play. Ferris was leaning into Greek mythology and really like the sense of gods, heroes, and monsters and wanted this sense of adventure that you build things over time, that you accomplish something. So each set has its own goals, its own feel that we want. And the idea is we start by picking the thing
Starting point is 00:15:30 that is the most central to what we're doing. In Indistrad, one of the things that's really key to us was this idea of dark transformation. So the double-faced cards were the thing we started with. They're big, they're splashy, they're thematic. In Theroseros for example we really want this idea of enchantments, it was the touch of the god. And so very early on we had to figure out how to make enchantments work, which led to stuff like Visto because you have to fit the
Starting point is 00:16:01 space. So anyway, the first set, the first mechanic you put in has free range It can do whatever it wants Now and even the first mechanic will sometimes influence the very nature of the set structure For example, I'll just use Theros we wanted the idea that the gods that the feel of the gods is represented through enchantments That the gods themselves were enchantments. That the gods themselves were enchantments, the creations of the gods were enchantments. A lot of that stemmed from the idea that how do we make enchantments matter in a big way?
Starting point is 00:16:33 And one of the lessons is, I'm gonna use limited to explain this, but it applies to constructors as well. In limited, you tend to have a 40-card deck, about 16-in-a-cards are creatures, about seven-in-a-cards are non-creatures. That's not a lot. That if you're making-a-cards are creatures, about 7-in-a-cards are non-creatures. That's not a lot.
Starting point is 00:16:46 That if you're making something that doesn't live in creatures, it only lives in those 7 cards, it is hard to make that matter in a vacuum. And so what you need to do is you need to figure out how to spread that footprint. In Theros, the idea was, okay, we want enchantments to matter. Well, for starters, some of our creatures could be enchantments In Shrix haven where there was an incident sorcery matters who said, okay Is there a way to have creatures? generate Instance and sorceries that's where lesson learned came from the idea that well, I'm a creature
Starting point is 00:17:18 I go and I fetch us in center of sorcery. So you I think the most of our sources But the creature that card sort of came with the sorcery. So you, I think the most of the sorcerers, but the creature, that card sort of came with the sorcery. And there's a bunch of different ways to do that. But the first mechanic really is kind of finding its space. And like I said, it might redefine things. You can restructure like the set structure, I talk about the set skeleton is, it's just a default beginning point. You change it as the set of balls So okay, so the very first thing comes in it defines what the set is it gives us a flavor Sometimes it's flash, but it is it really
Starting point is 00:17:54 It takes over what it needs to take over and the idea the reason you start with that is you always want to start with the thing That is the most complicated and the most greedy of its structure. Like I said, energy for example, there's a lot energy asks of you. Whatever it is, pick whatever the core theme we're doing. You want the thing that's greediest to be the thing that's most endemic of what the set is. But okay, you stick it in. So non-mechanic one is in the set. You've figured out places to put it,
Starting point is 00:18:30 you've made the cards for it, it's in the set. Next thing you do is you look at the other stuff that you've done in exploratory or in early vision. And it might not even be new things, maybe it's a repeat mechanic you want and you say okay do I have something else that's really in damage to what I want to do that fits and Maybe it cleanly fits in that's nice when that happens sometimes like well It's not a need fit But if we if we think of it this way or you know, like you can adjust things a little bit But normally you you after after you do your main mechanic,
Starting point is 00:19:07 you have maybe one other thing that you probably can find something that naturally fits, or close to naturally fits. But the key is, once again, every time you stick something in the set and you make cards for it, you are filling up parts of the set, which means that there are places
Starting point is 00:19:24 you can't stick new things or it's full but you also leave holes so this set does these things but doesn't do those things and that whenever you make a set there's just things that every magic set needs you need card flow you need mana spouts you know you need combat or something that cares about combat. Like there's things that you need that just card flow means that you need a means by which to get through cards. Um, you want a man, an engine, meaning you want something that you can spend extra
Starting point is 00:19:56 man on, especially in the late game. Uh, combat means look, comments, very, very core to part. You want things to interact with combat in some way to make combat interesting. You know, you want this component pieces that every magic set has to have. And so what happens is you put the first thing in, it fills whatever needs to fill. Then normally you put the second thing in and what you choose to put in, A, have to fit the nature of the set, but B, has to also fit in the parameters. And that's how we're getting into the core today is
Starting point is 00:20:34 really a lot of design work is not just making something, it is making something to fit the needs that you have. So you have to find the first mechanic which is endemic of your theme, then your second mechanic usually is something that naturally fits in the file and reinforces what you're doing. Usually after that, after you have your first two mechanics, and maybe after your first mechanic, what comes next usually is, okay, now we have to make things that fit in the space we have. Sometimes, sometimes you can find a third thing that fits, but usually what happens, and there's a point in vision where you figure out your main thing,
Starting point is 00:21:08 maybe get your secondary thing, and then it's like, okay. And the key to that point of the design is you start to say, what am I missing? Do I need ways to spend mana? Do I need card flow? Do I need combat? You know, are my mechanics living on permanents and I need spell mechanics? Are my mechanics living on spell and I need permanent mechanics? What is the set doing and what is the set not doing? What the set is not doing will very much guide where you go. And that a good chunk of design is
Starting point is 00:21:44 trying to fill the gaps, is understanding what it is your set needs and then finding it. And that can, there's many different ways that can happen. One of my favorite stories, which is I will say the easiest way, so we were on Kaladesh and we had a meeting where, uh, what's a very normal meeting is where you get in a meeting, you get, get at your whiteboard and you say, okay, here's what we're missing. Here are the gaps in the files. We need another mechanic and here is what we need structurally. So for example, uh, we got energy very early on. We got, um, vehicles were very early on. We got vehicles pretty early on.
Starting point is 00:22:27 And really, we were looking for one smaller mechanic. And we wanted to be something that I think we were open where it could go. Because energy fit well on spells, I think we were looking for something that went on permanence. So anyway, I'm on the board, and I'm writing. I go, OK, we want something that goes on spells. I think we were looking for something that went on permanents. So anyway, I'm on the board and I'm writing. Okay, we want something that goes on creatures. The set has the theme of caring about plus and plus encounters. It also has a theme of caring about token creatures. So if we
Starting point is 00:22:57 get a mechanic that goes on creatures and either could care about plus and plus encounters or care about tokens, that would be really valuable and Then while I'm writing this on the board. I literally have a moment where I said or if it could care about plus and plus encounters and Tokens that'd be great and then I had this epiphany where I literally made fabricate I was walking through what we needed so fabricate for those who don't know is a mechanic goes on creatures And it says okay fabricate and it's a number you can choose to either put that many plus one plus one counters on the creature Or make that in a one one artifact servo
Starting point is 00:23:37 artifact creature tokens And it literally was just me defining what we needed and realizing as they laid it all out But that itself spoke to me and was a mechanic. Now it doesn't always cut. It's not every set where as I'm describing the problem I solve it while describing it that happened once. And so that is a lot of what design is. Is you have to find the thing that fits the role that you need. Not that it's a good mechanic.
Starting point is 00:24:09 We make a lot of good mechanics. Oh, and as the essence of energy, the story of energy was, is if we make a good mechanic, and I like to say, magic is a hungry monster. We have a lot of magic sets to make. If you make a good mechanic, I guarantee you we will find space for it. No, not always, you know, and some mechanics, so for example, here's a mechanic story. So many years ago, we made a Star Wars trading card game.
Starting point is 00:24:37 The main structure of the set was designed by Richard Garfield, I was on the team with him, and then I led the first set. And so Richard's inspiration for the Star Wars trading card game was he wanted to make a trading card game that kind of functioned like a mini-shirt game. And so there was a lot of die rolling and the real short, I won't go too deep in this, but there were three areas of battle. There was the ground, there was space, and there was personal. Because if you watch Star Wars movies, there tend to be three battles that go on at one time.
Starting point is 00:25:08 Those are the three battles. Anyway, some of the things were really large, because Star Wars, as a science fiction thing, had some very large items. And so we came up with a way... you had so many sort of game units, you could use each turn to do things and some of the ships were so big that you couldn't build them in one turn. So we had a mechanic that let you, you could sort of exile it and you could put counters on it and then when you put enough things on it, it paid it off and then you got it. So we actually made a mechanic inspired by
Starting point is 00:25:39 that called layaway. And the way layaway works was you put a card from your hand face down, outside, and then for every one mana you paid for it, you could put a plus one plus one counter on it. And then at any time, you could cast that card from exile, assuming you paid for all the mana that wasn't accounted for, meaning every counter on it made it one generic mana cheaper. So you always had to pay for the colored mana. And it might be nothing but the colored mana, or maybe there's still more to pay off, but the idea is you could pay it off over time. So we were working on Call Time, and there was a theme in Norse mythology about omens,
Starting point is 00:26:21 about sort of the future, reading the future. And so we were talking about that and so I then brought up the layaway. So like one of my big jobs as a head designer is we come up with a lot of mechanics and there's really no great system to record the mechanics. Not that they're not written down but you know let's say we had a master book we wrote down every mechanic we thought was good that maybe one day we'd use. It just released this giant volume and it wouldn't be something that would be easy to process.
Starting point is 00:26:49 So a lot of my job as the guy who's just been around forever is when we hit an area that's close to something we've done. Much like when we were working on early Lord of the Ring, we needed something. I'm like, hey, here's a mechanic that we were going to put in the second Dominaria that never happened because of Hidden Core Set called Leader. And Leader sort of evolved into what ended up becoming The Ring Corrupts You, much like Layaway kind of evolved into Fortel. Sometimes the mechanics and energy come back whole cloth. Sometimes they inspire and get changed. But the idea essentially is their ideas don't get lost, ideas get saved.
Starting point is 00:27:34 And so a lot of mid to late design, or at least as far as the structural part of the design, is figuring out what you're missing, figuring out what the gameplay needs. Because the other thing I've talked a lot about is magic from game to game, there's a lot of overlap. That you don't have to change much in magic to make it feel very differently. Even just caring about one thing, like I always use landfall. Landfall just says I care about when I play my land. Hey, I play land every game It's land's pretty useful
Starting point is 00:28:09 But you know if you have set with landfall all of a sudden when and how I play my land just takes on a slightly different A different thing or morbid of the kind of the made in original Innistrad where you care about when things die So all of a sudden maybe I'm attacked with features that I would never normally attack with But my opponent doesn't know my bluffing or do I want it to die because I have more of it? Like it becomes, it is adds an extra layer. But the reality is you don't need to add much to add that extra layer to make it interesting. So I would say 80-85% of magic from set to set is identical. That there's a core aspect of what we do. So a lot of what we're doing in normal magic design is just making a magic set that plays like a magic set that does Magic set things. Yes, there's always some difference and that difference matters and we lean into that difference
Starting point is 00:28:55 That's what dictates kind of what the first mechanic is But we Really are trying to make sure that we deliver on the magic experience. So a lot of magic design is saying, I need to do the things I always do, but I need to be synergistic with my set, and I need to be in the holes of the set. I need to make my next mechanic that fits where the set needs it. And that's kind of the big point of today is that I think more magic, more magic design is about meeting criteria than it is about blue sky design.
Starting point is 00:29:37 So blue sky design is what we prefer to make something. Maybe you have an impetus, maybe like here's the theme, but you really don't have a lot of restrictions. And that is fun and exploratory gets to do blue sky design and I do enjoy blue sky design. But most of magic is not blue sky design. Most of magic is we know what we're doing. In fact, we have some of it done already and we got to figure out what else fits. What works here? What is right for this set. And that there's a lot of skills required for that. One is just having a good understanding of magic mechanic basics, right?
Starting point is 00:30:15 Of understanding what makes for good magic play. There's a reason we want card flow, there's a reason we want, you know, outputs for your mana, there's a reason we want combat oriented things. The reason we want to space out spells between permanent and non-permanent. Like all these things I'm talking about, like we've made enough magic sets that we understand the nature of what we're trying to do. And the fun part about it, like I'm saying, this is my 30th year making magic and I'm not bored yet.
Starting point is 00:30:43 And the reason I'm not is every magic set is its own puzzle. It is not as if, like magic sets are not take the best mechanic we have and put it in the set and call it an A. It is, and this is kind of why I was interested in talking about this topic, that one of the true skills of becoming a great magic designer is learning how to make a great magic set. And the key to making a great magic set is not the three best mechanics you can think of in a vacuum. That will not lead to a great set. That what makes magic sets shine is the synergy, is the connectiveness, is the idea that mechanic A and mechanic B both are doing something but they work together or they care about each other or the decisions you make with one would influence decisions you make with the other. That a lot of the dynamics of what makes a really cool magic set is that the component pieces speak to each other. For example, another big thing we have to worry about is we want to make draft environments. In order to make draft environments, you need to make sure that colors speak to multiple themes. That if I make one card
Starting point is 00:31:54 and only one archetype wants that one card, that archetype will get that card every game, and that means that their play experience will be very repetitive. If every time I play theme X, I always play card Y, well then it's just going to play out a lot the same. And so what we need to do is all our themes have to appeal to different archetypes in what we're doing. Okay, here's a red card. Well at least two archetypes need to want this card. It's great if three do. It awesome if four do and so a lot of what you're trying to do when making a set is
Starting point is 00:32:28 blend things together is make those synergies is make things such that the the set talks to itself and The other thing that's really interesting is you know You guys get to see the finished magic sets So one of the things that's really informative, it's something that the average Magic player doesn't get to experience is, I have played a lot of Magic Sets that aren't, that don't have synergy.
Starting point is 00:32:55 I've played a lot of Magic Sets that were trying things that didn't work. And one of the things that really makes Magic Magic, one of the special sauce of Magic is that there is a feel that magic sets have like one of the things that's really interesting is that You can kind of tell when a magic heart is a magic heart right that there is a certain Je ne sais quoi there's there's a certain essence to how magic cards work
Starting point is 00:33:24 There's a certain rhythm to them. There's a certain just a how magic cards work. There's a certain rhythm to them. There's a certain, just a general function. And that comes from us learning over time how to make magic cards and what kind of magic cards really shine. And that, I guess, is, I've gotten to work here, so I'm going to wrap up today. That is kind of the point of today. And that, you know, the number one thing, and that the number one thing about design, the number one lesson about design,
Starting point is 00:33:49 that takes time to learn, by the way. When you first get to Wizards and you are on a team and you make something, and it is amazing, it is awesome, it just plays great and it's great, you wanna get that into a magic set as soon as humanly possible. I made a great thing. Let's put this great thing into a set.
Starting point is 00:34:07 And one of the hard parts is, look, maybe you did make a great thing, but that great thing might not be a great fit for now. And the idea that this great thing has to wait until we can find a place for it. Now be aware, like I said, it took 13 years to find energy, right? It sometimes takes time
Starting point is 00:34:24 to find the right place for something and When you're new you want it now, right? You came up with let's put it in the set and the idea that well That's cool, but it doesn't quite fit what we need right now That that takes a little while getting used to and that You know, I've talked about this a lot in my writing You know the there's the same basic premise in writing, which is every single thing you do has to serve the story you're in. Every scene has to serve the story, every line of dialogue has to serve the story.
Starting point is 00:34:58 It's not just about making something cool that doesn't necessarily have an organic feel. And that I think is true in any creative endeavor. This is not unique to magic. It's not magic is the one thing that needs to do that. Everything needs to do that. That's the essence of a creative vision is understanding the larger scope of what you're doing and then needing that larger vision. That's what we're doing.
Starting point is 00:35:20 That's sort of the essence of what we need to do in magic. And that is why we don't just design the best card, we design the right card. We design the right mechanic. We design the mechanic that is right for this set. So anyway guys, I hope you enjoyed my sort of peek into magic design today. Sometimes I get a little more esoteric. Today was a little more esoteric. But hopefully it gives you a little insight into the way we think and what
Starting point is 00:35:47 we have to care about. But anyway guys I'm now at work so we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye bye.

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