Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #172 - Lessons Learned, Part 6

Episode Date: November 7, 2014

Mark Rosewater shares part 6 of his lessons about Magic design.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so many years ago, at the beginning of my podcasting, I started a series called Lessons Learned, where I talked about different sets I designed and what lessons I learned from them. And I did four of them, and then like a year and a half went by, and I hadn't done one. So last time I decided to do another podcast on Lessons Learned. And I didn't even finish one set. So I think the real lesson here is I've learned how to talk more about a single topic than I used to. Or maybe in the early days of my podcasting, I just didn't realize that I needed...

I think I didn't realize early on when I started my podcasting, like, hey, I'm going to do this for a while. I need lots of topics to talk about. I could talk at lengths about the things I want to talk about. So, I think I was quickly getting through stuff. So, I promise today, by the end of today, I'll finish talking about Scars and Mirrors, and maybe I'll get to Innisfrad.

But, I'm continuing today. Today is Part 6. So, you'll get to find part six right next to each other. I thought about doing part six later, and I'm like, but I didn't finish. I don't know. I feel like it was weirder to start on Scars of Mirrodin and not finish Scars of Mirrodin. So you guys get back-to-back lessons learned. Okay, so we're still talking about Scars of Mirrodin.

Interesting, I learned a lot on Scars of Mirrodin. So we're going to talk more about it. Okay, so last time I talked about the fifth age of design, kind of learning how to evoke emotions through design. I talked a little bit about how I try to make the Phyrexians feel very invasive. I made them feel very invasive, to the point where some people felt they were a bit invasive. But there's some more stuff I want to talk about.

Okay, next big thing is, so for those that don't know the story, I mean, I'll recap real quickly. Originally, Scars of Mirrodin was supposed to be called New Phyrexia, and we were going to go to a brand new plane, New Phyrexia, because you'd heard of Old Phyrexia. They were defeated during the Weatherlight Saga. Well, apparently the Phyrexians are back, and they have a new world, a new plane called New Phyrexia. And we were going to spend all, the whole block in New Phyrexia.

And then at the end, kind of like the end of Planet of the Apes, where, I don't want to ruin Planet of the Apes, but there's going to be a big discovery that, oh my goodness, it isn't a new plane! It was Mirrodin! That was the plan. That was the plan, that we'd have somebody, you know, Charlton Heston falling to the beach on his knees going,

not Mirrodin! But what we found was, well, two things. One was it's tricky to, like, the Phyrexians kind of, the most interesting story

about the Phyrexians is the Phyrexians attacking. Because you get to see a world turn into Phyrexia. Once they're already Phyrexianized, I think that's a word, I mean, there's infighting, and we definitely in New Phyrexia showed a little bit, like, what's the world

like? But we're like, oh, how do you do a whole block? Like, okay, you can do, I mean, we felt like we really were having trouble telling the story, and then we're like, we're missing the good story! Like, it's like, at the end, we're like, oh, by the way, this cool thing happened. This plane that you might, you formerly loved

was taken over by the phyrexians they were like what how'd that happen they were like are we just skipping the good story so one of the lessons of scars of mirrodin uh for me was the importance of i mean obviously we figured this out this was a lesson i guess of making it because obviously we figured this out before it got published um but we're trying to, like, don't skip the story. You know, like, we're going to do this cool thing where, like, as an afterthought, we just hinted at this cool story. And, like, what, will we come back someday and tell that story?

Like, you know, and really, the other thing, by the way, about storytelling in general is one of the things they teach you when you take classes in writing is that where your story starts and where your story ends has to be far apart from each other. And pretty much, one of the tricks they tell you is, I had a teacher that said this very bluntly.

They go, okay, do you want to write a good story? Here's what you do. Figure out where your story ends and then get as far away from it as you can and start. And so, for example, when you're talking about character arcs,

so character arcs is a fancy way of saying how the character changes during the course of the story. If at the end of the story, your character learns the importance of kindness, we're talking Christmas Carol here, at the end of the story, Ebenezer Scrooge realizes that

he needs to share and be loving and caring about other people. Well, to make that a good story, you've got to go to the other end. So at the beginning of Christmas Carol, he is a miser, a miserly miser, the miserliest of misers.

You know, he doesn't even want to give his one employee Christmas Day off. He, like, begrudgingly does it because he has to, you know. And, like, he won't pay for heat. And he's, like, they just, I mean, literally, he's, like, how miserly, how misanthropic can we make this guy? How, you know, un, you know, if you're going to make him have this journey,

you want to get to the other end. And so one of the things about storytelling in general is If you're going to make him have this journey, you want to get to the other end. And so one of the things about storytelling in general is that the journey is a lot of the fun of storytelling. That you want to see the character change. You want to see, and in some ways in Scars of Mirrodin, the character was Mirrodin slash New Phyrexia. Like, we were going to take something that people knew and have it change to something really different. Now, the interesting question is, why Mirrodin? So, clearly if you know,

so what happened was, when we made Mirrodin, so, real quickly, for those who don't know their larger magic story, Phyrexia showed up very, very early. In fact, the first real story that was ever told was in Antiquities, and it was the Brothers' War. The Brothers' War is about Urza and his brother Mishra, who were both artificers, who had this mighty war where they, because they're artificers, they made all these machines that attacked each other. Part of that story was that Mishra had been corrupted by the Phyrexians,

which were this series of creatures led by a guy named Yawgmoth that lived in their own plane that were creepy crawly bad guys. Then, during the Weatherlight Saga, the Phyrexians really came to the foreground as being the main villains of the Weatherlight Saga. It turned out that Urza had this master plan to stop the Phyrexians and destroy them once and for all. The end of the Weatherlight Saga. And it turned out that Urza had this master plan to stop the Phyrexians and destroy them once and for all. And the end of the Weatherlight Saga

is the Phyrexians being destroyed. Now, they were awesome villains, and we knew they were awesome villains. So when Mirrodin happened, so Mirrodin, there was Invasion, then there was Odyssey, then there was Onslaught, then there was Mirrodin.

So like three years later. We knew that we wanted the Phyrexians to come back one day, and so Brady Dabbermuth, the creative director at the time, came up with the idea that while he was building Mirrodin, he goes, oh, what if we sort of plant the seeds, and so the idea is Karn

was Karn's a planeswalker, he's also from the Woodlight Saga, he's a planeswalker he's also from the Worldlight Saga he's a golem created by Urza anyway he came up with

this idea of Karn was the one that created Mirrodin I don't know get anything away here and that Karn had been corrupted by the Phyrexians

and the idea that this corruption would slowly take foot and it would be the return of the Phyrexians that the Phyrexians and the idea that this corruption would slowly take foot and it would be the return of the Phyrexians. That the Phyrexians would slowly invade Mirrodin, slowly take it over.

And the seeds of it were planted in Mirrodin. If you go in Mirrodin, you're looking black. There's definitely stuff there where you see the beginnings of what's going on. Now at the time, people attribute other things to it. There's even a scene right at the beginnings of what's going on. Now, at the time, people attribute other things to it. There's even a scene right at the beginning of the Mirrodin book where Memner finds

the black oil and it rubs in and goes into skin and then they don't even talk about it again. But anyway, we had planted it. One of the things that I love when you do long-term storytelling where it's like, hey, seven years ago, we did something that seemed inconsequential, but it wasn't! Here's the consequence

and so the idea was we knew that Mirrodin was going to get turned into new Phyrexia that was a done deal and I think that

when we started we were like okay well that was a done deal you know like we really were in this like oh we have a chance to not visit Phyrexia again but like I said, the lesson

is don't skip the story. Tell the story. What's the cool part of the story? Tell that part. And it took us a while. I mean, we were probably halfway through design before we figured out that we weren't new Phyrexia, but we were, you know, Scars of Mirrodin. And the funny thing is, once we figured that out, once we knew

we were visiting Mirrodin, and the Phyrexians were there, and there was going to be a conflict. And then Bill came up with this awesome idea that the third set, we didn't know the outcome. So they had one of two different names. And once that all clicked together, everything formatted and it worked. But the lesson, I struggled a lot. I mean, Scars of Mirrodin might be the set I struggled the most with. I just was having trouble figuring out the angle,

because I was trying to bring new Phyrexia to life, and I just wasn't sure what I was telling. I mean, I was doing a lot of things to make you feel what the Phyrexians were, but I was missing sort of the essence of what I was trying to do and what the story was and what the conflict was. And in the end, one of the big lessons about Scars of Mirrodin is Scars of Mirrodin,, Scars of Mirrodin on some level might be the best

environmental story we've ever told. And what I mean by environmental story is usually when you tell a story, you're talking about a character story. The character does something. We have characters, obviously. But an environmental story is, sometimes in a story, the environment

is as much a part of the story as the characters. And now, often that is true. Often the environment plays an important role, you know, and that it's not, the story doesn't play anywhere. It takes place here. For example, let's take The Wizard of Oz. It's important that the story takes place in the Wizard of Oz. It is not like the land of Oz does not play pretty big into what is going on. Oz has a weird makeup and there's a weird mix of creatures,

the Yellow Brick Road or just the Poppy Field or Munchkin Land or all these different components that really kind of make up this journey. or munchkin land, or all these different components that really kind of make up this journey. And a lot of what's going on is the idea of Dorothy being, you know, not home, that she's away from home, she's in strange circumstances, and the land really reinforces that. I guess I will argue that the best stories have an environmental component, but not all stories are easily told through their environment. Some stories, the environment itself goes through some series of change,

which helps tell the story. So the reason the Scars of Mirrodin did a good job of that was we come and we see Mirrodin. Well, Mirrodin has a very distinct feel. We established it when we were in Mirrodin the first time. It's metal world. It's a world in which it's an artificial world in which the inhabitants, over time, have all been enmeshed with metal. It's really different.

You haven't seen stuff like Mirrodin in other places. It's a pretty unique world. And we knew with the Phyrexians. So the Phyrexians, their big thing, for those that don't know, is they are a race that believes in perfection and in... It's funny, as I describe this, it makes me feel very blue. They are definitely trying to promote their way and spread their way everywhere. And that they, like I said, they're the plague archetype.

But one of the things they do, which is very Borg-like, I guess, is that they believe that their way is best. But as they take things over, they acquire qualities of what they take over, meaning that they're open to the idea that there's more that they can do to improve themselves and that they're constantly sort of corrupting things, but they try to make use of the things they can. So they don't take over and change them, they adapt them. And the biggest thing about Phyrexians has always been the sense of mix of metal and flesh. And the way I think Brady's described

it is, they add flesh to to metal and they add metal to flesh and so they're very bizarre creatures in that they're like part metal, part flesh well, why were they a nice fit for Mirrodin? Because Mirrodin's a world of part metal, part flesh and so in some ways

Mirrodin had been if you want to think of light and dark the light side and then New Phyrexian was the dark side. So it was a neat transition because it was a world, it wasn't like you were Phyrexianized something that was, I mean, I think the reason Brady Ray liked it was we were introducing a world that kind of seemed really apt. It was kind of the Phyrexians but on the sunny side of the Phyrexians

and then we got to see the darker side. So the transition of the world seemed pretty cool. But anyway, that is why we chose. So any last lessons of Scars of Mirrodin before I move on? The mechanics of Scars of Mirrodin. I talked a lot about Poison already. Or in fact, sorry. What else was the mechanics of Scars of Mirrored, and I talked a lot about Poison already. Or, in fact, sorry. What else was the mechanics of Mirrored?

Oh, so we had Metalcraft. So Metalcraft was interesting in that... So Mark Globus was one of the original Great Design Research finalists. He came in fourth, I believe. And what happened was when we were... So the way the Great Designer Search works, for those who don't know,

it's kind of like a reality show. The Great Designer Search, I did a whole podcast on this, but the short version is I was told by Randy Buehler, my boss, that I could have an internship for a designer. But I didn't know how to find a designer. It's hard to find.

I've been having trouble internally finding a designer. So I said to him, I think at the time I was watching, I don't know, The Apprentice or Project Runway, some of those reality shows, the employment reality show, which is, you are trying to prove you're really good at something, and then you win the right to do that thing. You get a job or something.

And I said to him, I go, could I do something like that? Could I run an employment thing that's kind of like a reality show where I'm just putting people through their paces and seeing what they could do? And Randy said, okay. And so I ran it. The first one was going to originally have 16 finalists.

One dropped out of the last minute, so we had 15 finalists. And then we ran five weeks of challenges. And then after each challenge, I eliminated a couple people. So at the end, there were five people going into the last challenge. And then I eliminated two of them. And the final three got flown out to Washington to have an official interview. The final big challenge was coming

and being interviewed by everybody. We did a live challenge. The last thing is in person you get to meet them and interact with them. We were planning it. At the time we were planning it, we knew there were five. It turned out that it was cheaper

to book the tickets for five a little bit ahead of time than wait and book the tickets for three. So we booked tickets for all five because it's a cheaper way to do it. Well, one of those five was Mark Globus. Mark Globus got knocked out in the last round, so he didn't make it to the final three. But we had bought him a ticket, because it was cheaper to buy a ticket. And at the time, we were doing something called Gleemax. And Gleemax was...

We had this idea of doing a social media site built around games, and the idea was... I don't know, it was sort of, you know, half social media, half games. We called it Gleemax. It was this big idea. It ended up not quite working out.

But anyway, they were looking for people. And Globus was a programmer and had a lot of skills that seemed valuable. And we had literally bought him a ticket. So they're like, what the hell? Have him fly out. We'll do some interviews with him. So he flew out separately. He didn't fly out when the final three flew out, but he flew out at a different time, had an interview, went really well, got a job. And so, for a while he worked on

that, eventually he started doing more Magic stuff, and he then moved over and became the producer for Magic, which is, I mean, he switched some roles with an R&D, but I mean, he's worked on Magic ever since. Anyway, he was really interested in getting better at design. So he was working with Bill Rose, and what Bill Rose had done was he said to him, Okay, Mark, let's have you build a set. Make your own set. And so Mark made a set, and then he just made cards and mechanics. And this was a means by which Bill can give him some feedback and stuff.

So he had made a set. The theme of his set was like angels versus demons, I think. It was kind of light versus dark. And one of the ideas in the set was basically the metalcraft mechanic. Actually, I'm going to tell him the Scars of Mirrodin story here. Anyway, the interesting lesson was,

so when we were making Scars of Mirrodin, I really wanted to do Affinity. Once we decided there was a Mirrodin side and there was a Phyrexian side, I really wanted to do Affinity. And the reason was, I felt like I wanted the Mirrodins to, like, I wanted you to feel like the Mirrods had all the tools at their disposal. They were just as dangerous as last time you saw them,

and still they fell to the Phyrexians. The problem was Affinity caused all sorts of problems, and even though the developers felt they could balance it, we didn't know for sure. There was a percentage chance they'd miss with any mechanic they'd miss. And we felt that the PR of missing on that mechanic that, you know, had caused so many problems before,

PR-wise just was a hit we didn't want to take. So we decided that we needed to get a different mirror mechanic. So the interesting lesson here was that we ended up going to, like, I had seen Mark's set because at one point Mark had me look at it. And Mark was on the Scars Mirrodin team.

And so it was an interesting lesson where one of the things that I definitely learned is over time, when I first started doing design, I was very cognizant of the idea of I want to make sure that I and my design team make everything, you know. And in fact, one of the idea of, I want to make sure that I and my design team make everything. You know?

And in fact, one of the things designers early on always tend to do is, you get a little possessive of your stuff. I mean, design is personal. Creative acts are personal. And you feel, you really, you really fall in love with the stuff you're making. You really want to make sure it gets the print. And so, a very early tendency is, you make things and you just protect them. And the problem is that it's a bad habit because sometimes you

protect things that aren't the best thing for the set because you really, really want to see print. And magic, I always say, magic's a hungry monster. If you have a good idea, it will eventually see print. We're constantly looking for things. It's not like good ideas won't find their way to print a form. But one of the things you have to learn is that, and this was a lesson, this helped reinforce this, is get the ideas wherever you get the ideas. It doesn't matter if you made it.

It doesn't matter if your team made it. You know, that a good idea is a good idea and a good idea that works makes your set work. And at the end, your job as a designer is to make your thing do what it needs to do. And if you're lucky enough to be in a situation where you have other people that are external that can help you, do not turn down that help. I mean, like I said, unfortunately, I'm unable to take unsolicited care from outside the building, but I am able within the building to be able to share stuff.

People can share stuff with me, and if people have neat ideas, they'll share them with me. And this was a good case of a mechanic that really came about, not because of anything the design team had done, but something, you know, I mean, it happened to be a member of the team, I guess, but something they had done beforehand, and that it really ended up being the answer to our problem. And that I think there's an interesting lesson of getting, of learning to get outside yourself,

and that accepting the answer that you find and not worrying about where the answer got generated. Also in the set, oh, proliferate. So here's the lesson of proliferate. So proliferate came about because, like I said, we had this disease theme, and I had made one card, which was, I think, because we had the minus one, minus one counters,

we had the poison counters, and so the card was, at the beginning of each turn, any creature that has a minus one, minus one counter gets a minus one, minus one counter, and any player that has a poison counter gets a poison counter. And it was called, like, you know, Feed the Plague or something. And the idea was, once things are poisoned, you know, this spell hurries along.

And it was playing really fun. And I said, you know what, this is really fun. We should just do more of it. So, I mean, one of the things, I'm not sure this is a lesson of Scars of Merit, but it's a So, I mean, one of the things, I'm not sure this is a lesson of Scars and Merit, but it's a lesson, I guess, which is a lot of the great ideas don't come from you trying to find a great idea. They come from you just making a small idea and then realizing it's bigger than what you've made. Like, one of the big things about playtesting

is you don't know where your ideas are going to come from that sometimes the best ideas come from the smallest of places and that sometimes you're trying to come up with big grandiose mechanics and you do but other times the way you get a great mechanic is there's just one card there's one card that shines. One of the things I talk about when you design cards is that one of the most important skills of being a good Magic Designer is having the ability to recognize a good idea and a good card. When you play TAS, certain cards will just shine with a beaming light. It's just like, a beaming light. You know, a light, like, it's just like, oh, oh, like, when I, I've learned to see that.

When I see a card, I'm like, this card is just firing on all cylinders. And when it does that, you're like, what is this doing? Why? You know, sometimes it's just super synergistic and works with everything. Sometimes it just taps in something that's,

I don't know, primally fun. There's just different things about it. And when you stumble upon that, that is a very important thing from a design standpoint, that you want to figure out when you stumble upon moments of joy, if you will, and figure out what's there, what's the magic. Because one of the things, and I talked about this last time, which is I know, I know, I know that we like to intellectually do things and we're creatures of intellect and, you know, we really like to think about how we think we're doing.

And it's not that you don't think a lot about your design. You do. In fact, you think, on some level, my argument is sometimes you think too much about your design and that a lot of good design is not just cerebrally approaching it, but it is emotionally approaching it. And this is a good example where there's just moments where cards shine, where it's just like, that card is fun.

And you have to stand back and go, that's fun. You know, you can intellectually think about it, and you can try to figure out why it's fun, and that's okay. But on some level, you also have to respect the funness of it. Like, damn, that is a fun card. And when you find that, one of the things I will often do is I will take a card that is fun and make more cards like it just to kind of go, okay, is this magic something I can recreate?

If I try this, is this card a special one of? Or is this something really I can make more out of? And Polyphoray is a really good example of, I just made one card. I was just trying to do one thing. I had one very simple theme. But when I was playing with it, I was like, wow, this is fun. This is fun.

And I'm like, I want to have more fun, you know. So what I did is it was one card. Then it was, I think, a vertical cycle. And then it's like, damn it, I'm just trying to make a mechanic out of this. So my next lesson is when I made proliferate, the original version worked on minus one, minus one counters and poison counters. Because the flavor was, it's fanning the play.

So Globus was on the team and he said to me, is there a reason why you can't increase any counter? And so one of the things, also, like I said, just like you want to make sure that you recognize moments of brilliance in the cards,

you want to recognize moments of brilliance in your people, in the people you're working with. And, like, I felt like a bell went off when he said that. Ding, ding, ding. Like, you are correct. Now, the set also had charge counters because a lot of the things about artifacts is having so many uses or building up to do something. That artifacts like having some sort of counter. And we had used charge counters, which was based on what we had done in Mirrodin.

And I'm like, oh, there's even a reason why you would want to do something else in this set. Forget outside the set, which of course there would be. And so I'm like, okay, well, clearly, clearly, clearly we want charge counters because that would be brilliant. And the other problem I was trying to solve was there were two sides.

When you're in a two-sided conflict and you built mechanics to represent the sides, you want to make sure you have mechanics that link between the sides so that when you're building, you're not forced, you're not too siloed. Now, development ended up chopping out a bunch of stuff I put in to cross the streams, which ended up making the product a little more siloed than I wanted. But, well, in fact, this is one of them. Polyphorate in the original design wasn't common. It showed up a lot more than ended up showing up in the final thing.

So, polyphorate was meant to be something that would make you want to play, because blue had polyphorate, blue with colors that were on the, you know, the mirror inside. Anyway. But, so not only trust the idea, trust your people, you know. And that it doesn't matter who gives you an idea. If the idea is a good idea, embrace the idea. I know there's people who, like, will say, who's giving me the idea?

What do I think of that person? Well, let me judge the idea me the idea? What do I think of that person? Well, let me judge the idea through the prism of which I think of the person. That's a mistake. A good idea is a good idea. It does not matter where it comes from. And I think part of being a good designer is I've learned over time of stop prejudicing. Like a good idea is a good idea. A good car is a good like, a good idea is a good idea, a good card is a good card,

a good mechanic is a good mechanic. The I want to take everything and judge it on the basis of its own thing, of what it is, you know? And if somebody gives me a card idea, like, for example, here's something that's very easy to fall into. Let's say there's somebody

who really wants to make magic cards. This happens all the time. Somebody in the company is like, I love magic. I want to be a designer. And they come to me and go, what can I do? My dream is to be a designer. And I always tell them the same thing. I go, well, we've got to start designing.

A, on your own time, design. But B, Mark Gottlieb does seminars right now. You can go listen to the seminars. I mean, internally. And we also have hole-filling, which anybody can participate in, where from time to time we send out lists of, here are cards we need,

and development sends them out, saying, oh, we have a couple holes that we've generated through development. Hey, if you have any ideas for these cards, please let me know. And so hole-filling is a place where people get to try out their cards. And I've seen people

turn in card after card after card for whole filling and just miss and miss and miss and miss and miss badly. Like, oh, that's no good. That's no good. That's no good. Um, and it's very easy

to write off that person going, well, they've turned in 100 cards. They're all bad. I, you know, maybe I don't need to listen to this person anymore. And the answer is, you know what, if they'll stick with it, I mean, I guess, if someone is missing all the time,

at some point you say, thank you very much for participating. The more accurate point is somebody who hits every once in a while but misses a lot. That is very easy to write that person off because 19 out of 20 times they miss. But if one out of 20 they really hit, hey, maybe you want to pay attention. I think it's important of the ideas are of value and judge the idea, not the person. Not the venue by which you got the idea.

And that's true in design. I mean, I think Scars of Mirrodin, kind of my point today is, there's so many different times, like that design was a very muddled design in that it took a long time for us to figure out what we were doing. Like it took us half the time

to figure out that like it wasn't even dark, no, nephorexia, it was mirrored, you know, Scars of Mirrodin. But once you get something, once it all clicks, I mean, that's another thing about, okay, here's my final lesson. I'm almost to work.

My final lesson in Scars of Mirrodin was I was pretty despondent in the middle of it. Probably one of my darkest days of doing design because I was lost. And this happens creatively. This is something that's important if you're going to do any creative ask that every once in a while you will get lost. You will just, you know, whatever your markers are that help figure out where you're at, you're missing things. You don't see where you're at, and you just get kind of tangled up in the thing you're doing, and you can't find it out.

And you just have no sense of direction, and you try things and try things and try things, and nothing works. And then there's a little bit of despair. There's a little bit of worry. Because I'm an optimistic person and I tend to always approach my designs going, there's an answer, find the answer. And there was a point in your discussion, Mirrodin, where I was like, is there an answer?

A little doubt crept in that I was really having trouble. And I had it. Of all things, my pep talk, what snapped me out of it was a pep talk from Bill. Bill Rhodes, the VP of R&D. Bill actually gave me a... Bill recognized the set was floundering

and he gave me a timeline. He said, look, I'm going to give you six weeks. At the end of six weeks, I don't see this improved. I'm going to put somebody else on it. Which has never happened. It's the only time it, in fact, the only time it's ever happened where someone threatened to take me off a design. And it was very, it was humbling. It was very, you know,

I was definitely, I had never had that much problem with the design and it really was causing me lots of problems. And the big lesson of the set, the big lesson for me was I just needed to take a step back and I had to question things. One of the problems you get into is you assume things and then you try to solve things and you just can't find an answer

when something just isn't working, you are just slandering about, you have to take a step back and you have to say, okay, okay, I've assumed things. Something I've assumed I have to assume is, one of my assumptions can't be true. I've scoped everything I possibly can with all these assumptions. Let me reevaluate all my assumptions. And

that's when I really questioned the idea of new Phyrexia. And I, I really, one of the things that had been happening all along during, um, the design was I and my team kept coming up with, with, aren't we skipping over Mirrodin? Like that kept sort of that underneath all our designs, that was kind of there, that we felt like we were kind of not telling an interesting story. But I'm like, no, we're doing new phyrexia. No, we're doing new phyrexia. And then there's this nice clarifying moment. Oh, I'm like, no, we're doing nephorexia. No, we're doing nephorexia. And then there's this nice clarifying moment. Oh, I'm sorry. So the pep talk Bill gave me, I didn't even finish that story, is Bill said to me, he goes, look, Mark, I believe in you. I believe, you know, I understand that you're having trouble right now,

but I have every faith in you. I'm giving you a deadline to sort of kick your butt. But I believe that at the end of the six weeks, you know, I don't think a deadline to sort of kick your butt. But I believe that the end of the six weeks, you know, I don't think someone else is going to do this set. I think you're going to do this set. I need to give you a deadline to kind of kick your butt in gear. But you know what? I know you can do this. And it was very interesting. I really walked out of there. I'm like, oh, damn it. I can do this. And I took a step back and I said, okay, okay. What am I assuming? You know? And then, okay, okay, what am I assuming?

And then I said, you know what? I really don't want this to be new for X yet. I really feel like we're just skipping over the most interesting part of the whole story. And I said, okay, what if it's not new for X? And I was able to sort of say, what if? And I said, look, I'm in such a wit's end, I'm just going to explore this other possibility. What if it's not nephorexia?

What if it ends in nephorexia? And I went into Bill, and I went back and said, okay, Bill, how about this? How about the story ends in nephorexia and not starts in nephorexia? How about we watch the fall of Mirrodin? And it was that very meeting where, and Bill's like, well, you know,

I talked about how the first set, we visit Mirrodin and you know they're there but it's only the audience knows and even the Mirrodins aren't aware of it yet. In the second set, there's like a war

and the third set is New Phyrexia. And that's when Bill said, oh, what if they don't know the outcome and we have different names? That same meeting

is where Bill came up with that idea that I latched onto really quickly. But anyway, so one of the final big lesson of today, my two part lessons of Scars quickly. But anyway, so one of the final big lesson of today, my two-part lessons

of Scars of Mirrodin, my final and this might be the biggest lesson I had of Scars of Mirrodin, because it was a searching of the soul. Probably of any design. If you're asking me why I did two whole buckets of Scars of Mirrodin, it's because I might have learned more in Scars of Mirrodin

than any other design I've done. I mean, Odyssey's up there too, but it was a dark time of the soul, and I really searched within, and the lesson I learned was you know, sometimes it's important, you have to follow your gut, you have to

question things, sometimes you have to take your givens and say, what if this isn't a given? Because the way I solved it essentially was, I said, okay, okay, okay, it's nephorexia.

Forget that. What if it was a nephorexia? And the second I went down that path, bam, bam, bam, bam, everything came together.

And I'm like, what am I doing? Like, this is, this is an awesome idea. And then it was like, okay, now I have to go convince the powers that be

that this is the right way to go, that this is an awesome idea. And the reason I was able to do that was, now I have to go convince the powers that be that this is the right way to go, that this is an awesome idea and the reason I was able to do that was when I sat down and pitched this to Bill I was like, I mean, one of the things about pitching I'll do a podcast on pitching one day in fact, I'll write an article on pitching one day but one of the things about pitching that's really important is

the enthusiasm in the person pitching that you believe in what you are pitching and I think I walked in and like Bill could see it in my eyes. He's like, okay, now you've found yourself a block. You did not have it before. Bill recognized it. I recognized it. Like, I was found it because I didn't know what I was doing.

And by sort of taking a breather and stepping back and just examining things and re-questioning things and saying, screw it, what do I want to do? What is this that I want to be? You know, and that, I always talk about restrictions for creativity, but sometimes, sometimes,

you just got to go screw that restriction. What if that isn't a restriction? You know, and that you have to be able to question everything, even your restrictions. So that, my friends,

is the final lesson of today. So I will do more lessons learned. I will not, I will probably push off. I did, you get two special back-to-back episodes because I didn't finish Scars of Mirrodin. But hopefully you guys enjoyed this. I hope this was good. It was good for me.

It was cathartic for me. So if nothing else, these two podcasts might show you that really this part of doing a creative process is constantly looking at yourself and learning from it. And I feel that Scars of Mirrodin was a big growth for me. Like I said, it got us into the fifth age of design.

And I think part of that might have been that I had to go through a dark time to get there. And I really had to, you know, sometimes artists have to dig deep to find something new and discover new parts of themselves. And I think Scars of Mirrodin was that for me. So anyway, you probably heard me put my parking brake on a couple minutes ago. I am now parked in my parking spot, or a parking spot at Wizards of the Coast, which means this is the end of my drive to work.

So thanks for listening, guys. Talk to you next time.