Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #161 - Design Space

Episode Date: September 26, 2014

Mark talks about how much design space a mechanic or theme has.

We're pulling out of the parking lot. You know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. So I had to drop my daughter off today at dance camp, but I still got to go to work. So you guys get a podcast. Okay, so today I thought I would talk about the topic. So recently, which was a long time ago probably for you guys, but this last weekend I asked on social media topics you guys would but this last weekend I asked on social media topics you guys would like to hear about. And I made a long list of things you listed, and so today I'm going to do a topic that

was a very common requested topic, which was design space. So I talk a lot about as a head designer that one of my roles is monitoring design space. So what is design space and how do I do that? What is design space and how does one figure out how much there is in a mechanic? So today we're talking about all about that and it's an important, very important concept, especially to my job as head designer, but also to my job as a lead designer in any set I'm doing. So let me first by defining what that means. So when I talk about design space, okay, so let's say you take a mechanic

and you make every card you can. Every card you can come up with, you write down. When I say every card, let me be clear, I don't mean every physical card you can make. What I mean is every card that you think would have value

that would be good. There's lots of bad cards you can make. There's an infinite number of bad cards with a mechanic. The question when I talk about design space, I'm not looking at total cards possible, but total cards probable, meaning I want to make a mechanic, I want the mechanic to be good, what kind of space do I have to make a mechanic good? That's the big question. And so, pretty much when you are working on a mechanic, it's important to kind of figure out the scope of the mechanic. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to divide mechanics into three large buckets for you today.

Bucket number one is design space giant. Like, there's lots of design space. So, for example, cycling is a good example of a card with lots of design space. So, for example, Cycling is a good example of a card with lots of design space. Cycling says, I can take this card, and for two mana, I can trade it for another card. Now, Cycling, so when you're looking at mechanics and talking about design space, the issue is a couple things. One is, how many cards can you put it on? So, Cycling is a good example of something where you can put it on a lot of cards.

it on. So cycling is a good example of something where you can put it on a lot of cards. Now, it shines best on certain kinds of cards that if you have a card that you want to play all the time, they put cycling on. It's not quite as interesting a thing where if you have a card that sometimes you'd want, sometimes you want to cycle. So I mean, there's ways to optimize cycling, but the general gist of it is there's lots and lots of things cycling can go on. Normally, when you're looking at design space, one of the things you have to look at is, what's my limitation? So one of the limitations is car types, right? So what car types can I put this on?

Well, certain things, like let's say it's a creature mechanic. Well, for starters, it can only go on a creature or, you know, an instant or sorcerer that grants it to a creature. Now, something like cycling can literally go on any car type. It can go on lands, it can go on instant sorceries, it can't go on planeswalkers, I guess. But other than planeswalkers, it can go on just about any car type. And even in theory, it can go on planeswalkers, although there's

space issues. Probably wouldn't put it on planeswalkers. So, when looking for it, you want to figure out how many different kinds of things I can put it on. And then, there's also the look of the depth of the kind of things you can do with it. So cycling is an interesting case. This is why I start with the giant bin. Cycling does a couple different things.

One is that it just goes on a lot of different cards. Second is it has one of the other things we look at is what we call knobs. This is something we talk about for development, which is how many things do you have to play around with? How many components do you have the ability to, because the more you can play around with, the more you can do. So for example, cycling, you can change the cost. You can not only draw a card, you can generate an effect in addition to drawing the card. There's a couple different things you can do. So it has a bunch of knobs on it. The knobbier a mechanic is, A, the happier development is usually because it means there's more tools for development to fine tune it. Meaning the more knobbier a mechanic is, the easier it is to develop. Second is, the more

knobs there are, the more potential there is to do things. So a really knobby mechanic also is good for design because it means there's a lot of different possibilities of how you can manipulate things. A big thing to remember when you're doing design is the default for cost is always mana. You assume you're going to spend mana, but there are other kinds of costs you can do. And as you're looking at how to expand a mechanic, that's usually areas we expand into. So that's another big thing to think about is when you're making a mechanic how much

evolution the mechanic has built into it how many things can you do with a mechanic where you can do different things because normally what we try to do is when we first introduce a mechanic we just try to do the least we can do I mean once upon a time we used to think of mechanics as being disposable

so the goal was use it up I don't want to throw away this thing used to think of mechanics as being disposable. So the goal was, use it up. You know, I don't want to throw away this thing and not have used up as much as possible. So, you know, they talk about, like, the Eskimos using every part of the whale. That's usually how we used to deal with it. Like, we'd put it in a block, and then we'd try it before the block was over to try to make use of everything we could think of. But eventually we came to the conclusion that mechanics were a tool, not a disposable resource,

and so our attitude kind of flipped from there. So the attitude now is not how much can we use up, it's how little could we use and get what we need out of it. So my metaphor for this is, it's your little tube of toothpaste. It's like, you're trying to get all the toothpaste out of your tube.

So you're crinkling the bottom and you're slowly rolling it. If you really want to get all the toothpaste out of your tube. So you're crinkling the bottom and you're slowly rolling it. If you really want to get all the toothpaste out of the tube, you're careful from the start. You don't want to be wasteful and then later on go, now how am I getting the toothpaste out? You want to sort of from the beginning try to maximize what you're doing. And a lot of that, a lot of allocation of design resource

is figuring out where things lie. So I'll give a, well, I'll get, I'm starting with the giant thing. So a giant mechanic is a mechanic in which you look at and you're like, okay, there's lots of space here. This is going to be a cornerstone mechanic that we can come back to again and again. Cycling is a very good example. Another example is flashback. Well, flashback can go, now, Flashback's more limited than cycling.

Cycling can go in any car type. Flashback can only go in Instants and Sorceries. But Instants and Sorceries is a pretty big space, you know. And in some ways, I mean, creatures have flexibility in that there's size to them. Meaning, if I come up with a neat creature mechanic, I have different size options. But creatures in some ways are more design-tight than sorceries and instants, only because they're just more uniquely different things

you can do with sorceries and instants. Meaning, if I come with a new creature type, I'm sorry, not creature type, a new creature keyword, I can put it on a 1-1, and technically I can put it on a 1-2, but is a 1-2 much different than the 1-1? In order to make them feel different, you have to start changing the stats and the sizes.

And so it turns out that a creature mechanic has less space in the sense that, I mean, it depends. The evergreen ones obviously have more space, that's why they're evergreen. But usually if you just go on creatures and you just deal in combat, there's more restrictions on how you can be relevant.

Now, obviously, there's ones that have a lot of space. I'm not saying creature mechanics can't have more space than others. But, for example, Flashback can go in instant sorceries. Pretty much it can go in any instant sorcery you want. You can make token cards with it, which is kind of a way to put it on creatures. I mean, tokens have been a little more simplistic, so it doesn't go in all creatures, but you definitely can sort of add it to things that make creatures. I mean, tokens are tokens have been a little more simplistic so it doesn't go in all creatures, but you definitely can sort of add it to things that make creatures.

So anyway, the giant bucket means, okay, you have a lot of space. If I know I have a giant space, a mechanic in the giant bucket, it's like I got some room to breathe. I'm not worried about it. In fact, more what I'm thinking about is long term is how can I consolidate what I have to do. So when you have mechanics in the giant space, you are making sure to use as little as you need to get the job done.

Okay, now I'm going to jump to the other end to talk about the tiny bucket. The tiny bucket says there is just enough mechanics probably for one set. Now, it could be, I say it's tiny. There's actually a range in the tiny bucket. The tiny bucket could be, this could be a small mechanic in a set. You know, a small mechanic

in one set. Or actually, it could be tighter than that. This is a cycle. This mechanic's a cycle. For example, we did Epic. Epic was a mechanic in,

what mechanic was Epic in? Was it in Scourge? It was a mechanic in... what mechanic was epic in? Was it in Scourge? It was a mechanic where you cast it, and then you never got to cast any spells for the rest of the turn. All you could do is cast this mechanic. And, no, the mechanic's slightly bigger than one cycle,

but not that much bigger. You know, wishes were another good example where there's not tons of space beyond the wishes, a's a little bit, you know. But sometimes we do flashy things in which, hey, it's cool. And the reason we do it as a cycle is you're just not getting that much out of it, you know. A tiny cycle means there's a limited amount of space.

Maybe it's a cycle. Cypher is a good example in Gatecrush. In fact, most of the mechanics, not all, but a lot of the mechanics we use in Ravnica blocks, because it's a much more confined space, that we only need like 10-ish cards with mechanic, some of those have smaller mechanics. Cypher is a good example where there's just not a lot of things you can do with Cypher. Cypher is really restrictive. It only goes on instants and sorceries.

In fact, it mostly went on sorceries. And it only went on a certain kind of effect. It was much, much more limited in what you could do. Because it had to be something that would go on a sorcery, for instance, and be a good creature combat when I deal damage to you

in creature combat, that it has an effect. And there's a lot of effects that don't mean anything. Giant growth doesn't mean anything. In fact, it's kind of confusing. So Cypher's a good example of there wasn't a anything. You know, giant growth doesn't mean anything. In fact, it's kind of confusing. So Cypher's a good example of there wasn't a lot. Pretty much that was the set we were blowing it out in. Now, if you figure out that you're tiny, that's when you want to use up what you have.

Now, a lot of times if you're tiny enough, you're stretching to even make it happen. A lot of times when we have a tiny mechanic, it's like we're stretching to get every little nuance we can out of the mechanic. Usually a tiny mechanic is one and done. You're going to use the mechanic, and then you're probably not going to see that mechanic again. You know, maybe, maybe, maybe, if people, if it's a beloved mechanic, maybe you bring it back and redo some cards. And, you know, maybe, you know, what happens is when you come back, magic is constantly evolving. And what I mean is we're constantly coming up with new things that we do.

So if we do a mechanic and completely tap on the mechanic, ten years later we might be able to get a few cards out of it, only because there's a few things we do now or things have shifted color so you could do the same card but in a different color. So if a tiny mechanic that's beloved, maybe it could come back, but it would take a long time before it came back. And then we would mostly do reprints

and then do just a few new ones to give a little bit of flavor of some new things. But usually the new stuff would be, oh, things we couldn't have done last time it existed because of shifts in color pie or in just new effects we've come up with. But in general, you use up tiny stuff and there's a long gap between using it. The giant bucket, I mean, there's a gap between

using any mechanic, but pretty much you can come back. Scry is another good example of a giant, in a giant bucket. Scry just, look, you can add scry to a lot of different things. And so scry and cycling, you'll notice they come back more often. You see them more often. There's just more you can do with them. So the giant bucket, you can revisit a lot. The tiny bucket, you can't. You see it, maybe, maybe, maybe it's a beloved mechanic or it just perfectly fits. Ten years later or something, maybe we could reuse it.

But it's much less likely to be reused. Now, I left this bucket for last because it's the most confusing of the buckets, which is the middle bucket. It's not huge. It's not a giant mechanic. It's not tiny. And what it means is, okay, there's some use to it. It can do some things. But if you want to make use of it, you have to sort of be careful. So I'm going to talk about planeswalkers. So this is a little, I mean, we're talking about design space, I'm mostly today

talking about mechanics, but design space also is true for car types. Like for example, one of my big concerns as a head designer is, so the way I think of it is, my job is to make magic

not just good this year, but make magic as good as many years as possible. The part of my job as head designer is to say, look, we need enough resources to make things good, but no more. Imagine there's a line.

You reach that line, magic's awesome. And you go to that line, still awesome, but you've just wasted resources. And my example is that, let's say I want to excite my kids by taking them to the candy store. There's a certain amount of candy I need to let them have, and they're excited. And that if I give them,

beyond that, if I went to the candy store and I go, pick out any three pieces of candy, they might be really, really excited. If I say pick out eight pieces of candy, they're just as excited. I'm not sure they're any more excited than pick out three pieces of candy,

but I definitely have made coming to the candy store a little less special next time because there's candy that they would have been excited because they never had before, but I let them have, and could they enjoy all eight pieces of candy? Not as much as, you know, if I just gave them three to focus on, they'd probably enjoy it more. My candy metaphor. Yeah, and then one of the jobs is, look, figure out what we need, get it there, let people enjoy it, don't give them too much,. If you sort of flood it, you kind of waste resources. And I do believe that when you come back to mechanic,

that you get a lot of value of doing stuff we've done before, having fun reprinting mechanics, doing simple versions that we hadn't done before but are not changing things. You get a lot of value out of that. But when you bring back mechanics, usually it's something. You've got to do something with them you haven't done before but are not changing things, you get a lot of value out of that. But when you bring back mechanics, usually it's something. You've got to do something with them you haven't done before. It could be minor, it could be major, but every time you bring a mechanic back,

there's a little bit of exploration you want to have. And if you do too much exploration previously, then you just make it harder when you bring back to do more exploration. So one of the things that's definitely true is that when you're bringing back something in the giant category, you've got to be careful because you're like, look, I know cycling is going to come back again. And one of the problems we've

had in the past is that there is this pressure when you do something and you see possibility to do the possibility. I had a podcast on restraint. This is where restraint becomes important. Just because you see an awesome thing doesn't mean you have to do it right away.

And that's part of my long-term view of looking at magic design, which is, if we have awesome, magic's a hungry, hungry monster. We will get to awesome. You know, once upon a time, it was like, we better do it now. It's awesome, we gotta do it now.

Who knows, it'll happen later. And now the attitude is, no, no, no, no, no. Later will come. Magic's successful. I have no doubt magic will be here in 20 years. I believe magic will be here in 50 years. I believe I will die at my funeral, and after my funeral, at the wake, people will play magic. Magic's going to last a long time, as far as I'm concerned, you know. And for what it's worth, if you're at my wake, for sure play magic. Do not feel bad. You can play Magic at my wake. But, I mean, if you could cry a little bit, that'd be fine.

Okay, so, one of the things that's important is when you make stuff, you need to make sure that you figure out what you are saving. Planeswalkers are a real good example. There are a lot of really wacky, cool things we can do with planeswalkers. Here's the problem. It's not that deep. The planeswalker, the car type of planeswalkers, is one of the shallowest car types we have. There's a lot of restraints you want to do on it. There's a lot of limitations. It is just not

something that, you know, and so one of the reasons that we don't do many planeswalkers a year is, A, developmental reasons. There's only so many planeswalkers the environment can take. And two, design reasons. Look, I need to have a slow roll design, as slow as we can. Because planeswalkers have become a major part of magic design.

Every set has to have a planeswalker in it. People expect it, it's exciting. So every set has to have a planeswalker in it. But it's the, of all the mechanics I have, it has the least amount of design space in it. And so that's a dangerous thing. So what I've done is I said, okay, we are crinkling the bottom of this toothpaste. We are getting every little tiny bit of ounce out of it. And what I mean by that is when you show people innovations, the expectation is, okay, awesome. Let me see innovation. I don't want to see old stuff. That's boring. So you have to be careful when

you introduce innovations, that if you upgrade too quickly, you make the old stuff not as exciting. And so you want to make sure you use up the old stuff before you get to the new stuff. Dual lands is another area, for example, that is a limited space, that there's not an infinite amount of clean, elegant dual ends. And so what you'll notice is we've started reusing dual ends a lot more. You know, we said, you know what? We don't need to constantly reinvent dual ends. From time to time we will.

We're not saying that we're done making dual ends, but, you know, dual ends are not something there's just an infinite number of, especially of nice, elegant ones. And so it's a resource we're being more careful about reusing. So let's get to the middle bucket. So there's the giant bucket. There's the tiny bucket. The middle bucket, you've got to be careful. The middle bucket is, look, this mechanic can come back. This mechanic maybe can come back multiple times. But, but, you've got to be careful.

You know, so for example, devotion is a good example of a middle mechanic. It's not tiny, but it's a mechanic. It's what we call a counting mechanic. And what a counting mechanic means is I have to put it on an effect that's countable. And there's a bunch of magic mechanics that care about countable things. Having done magic for a long time, I'm very, very aware of what the countable mechanics are. There's enough mechanics that care. There's certain kind of mechanics that have to go on variables

things that are countable. I know what those are it is not a giant amount of mechanics and in certain colors like blue for example it's tricky. There's definitely stuff I can do at higher rarities but at common what can I do at common? I can mill you, that's the most common, you know, what can I do at common? It's like, I can mill you.

That's the most common one. But okay, what else can I do? I'm like, well, maybe I can impulse for a certain number and keep a card. I mean, there's a couple I can do at common, and then I, and then you kind of run out, you know. And in general, it is a limited space. So when I look at devotion, devotion has to be a countable mechanic. Now, devotion is flexible.

I can put it on spells. I can put it on creatures as an ETB effect or maybe a death trigger. I have a little bit of flexibility where I can put it, but the number of effects I can do with it is not infinite. Now, devotion, we did Chroma and Eventide. I don't think we executed it quite right. We executed it better in Theros. Much beloved.

I mean, very strong. And it's like, okay, I want to do Devotion again. But I've got to be careful. Devotion is, I mean, it's not tiny. I can make more than ten cards with it. It's not giant. I have to go in countable effects. I mean, there's other constraints.

It has to go in certain kinds of environments. It definitely requires some upkeep mechanically I have to worry about. So it's a mechanic that's in the medium bucket. And what that means is I've got to be really careful how I use it. And I've got to be careful on its innovation because each time I use it,

I'm not going to use tons of it. And so if I innovate it, I may going to innovate it once, you know. And that's the thing you've got to be careful with is understanding, with the middle bucket, of how much space that you have, you know. I mean, that is very, very important to sort of keep in mind when you're monitoring your buckets is understanding. So let me talk about this. Let me now talk about the different kinds of things to worry about.

So number one is just how many different cards can I make? Meaning, well, how many effects can I do with it? That's the first one. Which is, okay, I have this thing. So there are different kinds of mechanics. Let me run through that.

So first is, the mechanic is the effect. So example of this would be proliferate or populate, where the mechanic is the effect. So an example of this would be proliferate or populate, where the mechanic is the effect, that's what it is, that the mechanic does this effect. Now, some mechanics, when you're gauging that, it's how much can this effect be done.

So proliferate is interesting, it's pretty generic, it ties to other things, which it says, okay, do I have other things in my environment that use counters or tokens? I'm sorry, counters, not tokens. Populate would be tokens. And so I have to sort of look.

Now, proliferate's a good example of a middle bucket where it's not tiny. I can, you know, I can tack it onto things so there's a lot of different kinds of spells I can make with it, but it's not giant in that it's limited in the kind of space it can be

done. I can't just put proliferate anywhere. I need to put proliferate in the set that cares. So that's a different vector than what I talked about before, which is sometimes the design space isn't just how many cards can I make, but how easy is it to fit in? So if a mechanic can just fit in anywhere, cycling is a great example,

cycling can go anywhere. It doesn't have a lot of flavor tied to it. It can go in a lot of different mechanics. It's very flexible in the kind of mechanics. I can almost take any set and go, I need a mechanic. Yeah, cycling, whatever. I can put cycling anywhere. almost take any set and go, I need a mechanic, ah, cycling, whatever. I can put cycling anywhere.

Polyphorate, no, polyphorate has a, it requires a certain environment to make sense. So if I look at my environment and go, let's put polyphorate in it, I go, well, I don't have enough counters to make that make sense. You know, without enough counters, okay, I can't use polyphorate. So polyphorate's design space is not just a matter of how many cards I can make, that's the first area I talked about. But how often I think I could find a space to make it fit. Now, Polyferate is something in which we use counters a lot. Especially me. I love using counters.

And so, it's not like I can't imagine environments where I have a lot of counter use. It's definitely someplace that I will go to. But there's lots and lots of things I can think of and go, okay, I'm not going to be able to use that. Populate, for example, is a little more restrictive only because there are more different ways to use counters and there are ways to use tokens. More sets have tokens, which is true.

But populate requires... So populate is interesting in that it's much more restrictive in the kind of spell I can make. And here's why. So one of the things when you make mechanics is what we call... I don't have a name for this.

Sometimes you make a mechanic that only can... I guess it's parasitic. Let's say, for example, I made a card that said proliferate, and that's all it did. Okay, well that mechanic has to live in an environment where that means something. And so we do a little of that, but more of what we want to do is say, here's a mechanic

that has proliferate on it that means something with proliferate, but means something more if you have other cards. And populate's the same way where we try not to make too many cards that just populate without themselves generating a token because we want it to have relevance unto itself.

And so, if you look at proliferate, it's a little bit easier to make something that generates a counter and then proliferate than make a token and then proliferate because counters are much, there's a lot more things you can do with them than you can do with tokens. Tokens are like, I'm going to make a token, it's probably going to be a vanilla token,

maybe a flying token, and how big am I going to make? Tokens tend not to be super big, so they're just less popular cards you can make. So it's a little bit smaller. Another thing you've got to keep in mind is, like I said, some mechanics are basically effects.

Some are direct effects like proliferate. Some are effects like cycling, which are alternative effects. Some are direct effects like proliferate. Some are effects like cycling which are alternative uses. And then some things, some mechanics are things that impact how things are done. Like replicate is a good example

of replicate says, okay, I'm going to allow you to do the spell as much as you want. Multi-kicker kind of does this. One can argue replicate is kind of is kind of Multikicker. And Kicker is another thing where I can do a spell and then I can upgrade it with Kicker. I can do a spell, I can buy it back with buyback.

There's mechanics that kind of manipulate around. It affects the kind of spell it is. All spells in this mechanic do this thing. So if you are an effect, you tend to be a little narrower, depending on what the effect is. If your effect is something that is very synergistic, you get to be a little bit bigger, but if it's not, then it gets to be smaller.

If you're something that adds on or affects things, that limits the kind of effects you can do, but it gives you a little broader base on the number of spells you can put it on. So for example, Kicker is a mechanic that's pretty broad because there are a lot of different effects that you could make a larger

effect of, you know. You know, Buy Back, for example, I mean, barring developmental things, but design-wise, look, a lot of spells you could get back. You know, pretty much any instant or sorcery, assuming there's a cost that would make sense, you can get back. You know, pretty much any instant or sorcery,

assuming there's a cost that would make sense, you can get back. And that, so, when you're looking at a mechanic to figure out design space, so you've got to figure out, if it's an effect, it's how many things can use that effect. If it's something that affects the kind of things you do, it's how usable is this, and how many effects can it go on.

And then sometimes a mechanic does something in which the effect gets varied from card to card. You know, that the mechanic says, oh, I do this thing, but... So for example, what's a good example of this? So something like, let me kicker does this, where I have a little bit of flexibility with kicker.

Kicker says, okay, I'm going to do something bigger. You know, I have to thematically tie to the spell, but I have a little bit of flexibility. What's another, kicker's not the best example here. Example where, let me think. Spell shapers is a fine example. Spell shapers just say, look, I'm going to turn a card in your hand into a spell.

I'm going to tap to essentially rewrite a card in your hand and make it a spell. Okay, well, the breadth of there is, for design spaces, how many spells do I have? How many different effects can I use? And when you look at spell effects, like I said earlier,

it's a matter of, does that go on all of them? Does that go on some of them? I mean, a big way of determining a big way of determining design space is just say, and this is a good mental exercise, I want to start making cards. Let me just start making as many cards as I can.

I'm just going to start writing down on a piece of paper as many of the effects that I can make as possible. Do that for 10 minutes. Here's what you will find. At the end of 10 minutes, if you've just been writing nonstop, if you're like, wow, 10 minutes are up already, you got a giant bucket.

You're golden. I mean, understand what it is, but you got a giant bucket. That's it. You are golden. I mean, understand what it is, but you have a giant bucket. If you, at the end of 10 minutes, you've filled up your page, you're like, okay, wow, I don't know I could, you know, the next 10 minutes would be nowhere near as fruitful

as the first 10 minutes. You know, and when I say 10 minutes, maybe it's five minutes, maybe 10 minutes is a little too long, but let's say five minutes. At the end of five minutes, you're like, the next five minutes are going to be harder. The next five minutes are not going to be as easy as the first five minutes. It's probably a middle

bucket. But you know you can do another five minutes. If you do five minutes, you're like, I think I've written everything down I can write. That's a tiny bucket. That's like, I mean, maybe with five more minutes, you can eke out a few things, but five minutes is actually better than ten minutes. So we'll call it the five-minute test, which is

is it easy? Does time go by and you're like, ooh, five minutes flew by? Giant bucket. If you finish, you're like, I could do more, but wow, the next five minutes would not be as easy? That's middle bucket. If you do five minutes and you're like, I've done everything there is to do, that is a tiny bucket. So that, for people that are messing around

with Mechanic, that's a good, like a what do you call it? A little, a mini test you could take. So anyway, let me see if I can give a final I actually got here a smidgen early because I didn't leave my house, but I'm going to give you a full

half hour, so I'm going to finish this up. Okay, the biggest takeaway from, if you want to be designing stuff, the biggest takeaway from design space is that if you are designing something, so I'll use my, uh, I'm a, I'm making whatever I'm making, I'm making a lamp, I'm making, I'm making a house, uh, that, um, you have to figure out what tools you have available to you. Um, and design space is part of your tools that when you're trying to figure out what to do, um, you kind of need to figure out the, the, how you can use your tools, how useful are your tools. Um, and so let's say I was trying to, I don't know, build a house and look, I have my trusty

saw. I've used my saw many, many times. I have my hammer. I've used it many times. I know what those are capable of. Those, those are big bucket things, you know? Um, but how do I figure out whether those are big bucket things? Well, I started using the hammer and I go, oh, I can do this and I can pry nails.

I can pound this and like, oh, that's pretty useful. Um, and when you get a new tool, what you would first want to do is go, what can I do with this tool? You know, I could cut wood with this, or I could hammer nails with this. What can I do with it? And a big idea of design space is part of what you need to do early, before you get too far in your design skeleton, is you want to get some sense of how big you think something will be. Now, that doesn't mean you can't proceed not knowing.

You can start putting cards in. And what I'll say is, you'll get a sense as you start building cards and start playing with it, how much space you have. My little test is to give you a thumbnail idea, but the best way to tell is just start making cards. A lot of times, by the way,

when you write down on paper, you think you've made cards, and when you play them, you're like, this is awful. This is not fun. And what you'll find sometimes is what might seem at first blush to be a big mechanic isn't, because what actually is fun, Cypher was this way, which was, we thought it was a bigger mechanic, but once we realized all the limitations we had and what worked, it just shrunk and shrunk and shrunk, to the point at which we were stretching to try to get enough mechanics to make it work. You know, I didn't think when we made the mechanic, we'd have trouble

filling up stuff in Dragon Maze, but it was pulling teeth in Dragon Maze. Like, we'd filled up Gatecrash, and I said, okay, there's some space left, and well, there really wasn't that much space left. It was much, it was tinier than we thought. And that wasn't from looking at it, that was from playing it. And I say this all the time, which is, thinking about

things is great, but if you really want to make something, if you want to be a game designer, nothing will test your things like playing. You want to figure out what something can do, you've got to actually make cards, you've got to actually play with them, and playtesting will teach you a lot. You want to learn what will and won't work? Try to make it work.

That'll tell you what will and won't work. Anyway, guys, that is a full day, a full drive all about the design space and how to figure out design space and what design space is.

I hope you can apply this and learn it and help it. For those out there that want to understand it better and understand how we make magic, knowing design space is a pretty important concept.

And for those that want to make your own cards, maybe understanding how you can use the design space will help you. But anyway, I am now parked in my parking space, which means this is the end of my drive to work. So I'll talk to you guys next time.