Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #187 - Mailbag with Matt 2

Episode Date: December 12, 2014

Mark does another mailbag column with his special carpool guest, Matt Cavotta.

Okay, we're pulling away from Matt's house. You know what that means? Two things. One, it's time for drive to work. And second, Matt Cabana is here. So Matt moved a little farther away. He used to live like three blocks from me and now he lives in the same town but a little farther away. But Matt needed a ride to work and a lot of people have been saying, where's Matt? So we get Matt for another podcast. So I thought we would use this podcast to do a follow-up and do the second Mailbag with Matt. Sweet.

So I asked you guys for questions, and Matt, in his hands, has a list of questions, which he will get to pick which one he wants to ask. And then he or I will answer appropriately. I'm going to lob you a softball. Okay, that's good. To give me an opportunity to read the you a softball. Okay. That's good. Give me an opportunity to read the rest of the questions. Okay. Okay. This is the first question on the list. Okay. From Lars Hoglow. That's a pretty sweet name. What's the biggest challenge you have when designing

an unset? Okay. The biggest challenge of designing an unset, so there's one cardinal rule of an unset, and the cardinal rule is we can't make cards that we're allowed to make in black border, and the idea being that if we can make them in black border, save them for black border. The tricky part is what exactly we can do in black border versus silver border is a very, very fuzzy line. And so one of the hardest things of doing an unset is trying to make sure you don't cross that line. And that line keeps moving. Like, there's things we did for the first unset, for unglued,

that by the time we did the second unset on hinge, we're doable. We're now a black border. So that's the trickiest part about doing an unset, is trying to make things that we can't just do in a normal set. The cheese stands alone? Perfect example. The cheese stands alone became Baron Glory. I actually believe the biggest challenge with designing an unset is getting to design an unset.

Well, that's true. That's true. Yes. In fact, the biggest challenge is not making the cards. It's getting people to say, it's okay, you can make cards. Yes. Here's a good one.

This is a universal question, not so particular to magic. Okay. What is the thing you look forward to in your work day the most? And then the follow-up is, what about the least? Okay, what do I like the most and the least? That's a tricky question. Well, I've taught, people keep asking my least favorite part of my job, and I have an answer there.

My least favorite part of my job is that I spend a lot of time and energy coming up, you know, with me and the team, coming up with really, really cool things and making them and then not being able to talk about them for years. Like, I just have to sort of put it inside and like, I'm going to the next thing. And then, like, people always ask me why I'm so excited when stuff comes out because, like, I've been waiting for years to talk about this. So that's the hardest part for me. So what's your hardest part? Actually, the thing that I like the most and the thing that I like the least

are very related. And this might sound like hogwash, but the thing that I like the most about working at Wizards has nothing to do with magic. And it has everything to do with the cool people that work with us. I think it's pretty unique how universally passionate and intelligent the people we work with are.

And the thing that I like the most is when you're pressing forward with common purpose with those awesome people. when you're pressing forward with common purpose with those awesome people. And the thing I like the least is when any of those people is against me. Then you have an equally passionate and formidable adversary, and that can be a real pain in the ass. One of the things that's very interesting about R&D, I used to describe, is that R&D is basically a room full of people who all were the smartest kid in the room. And growing up, no one ever argued with them

because they could argue anybody. And now you stick them in the pit where everybody has that same ability. And it's very interesting. I agree with you. I really, really like working with just very smart passionate excited people um and here's the other thing i guess that i love about the job is i honestly honestly believe magic is a force for good i believe that it does good things it brings happiness to people's lives it brings people together um and i really really

enjoy doing something where i like I just feel that the net result of what we do brings good to the world. That makes me feel very happy. And this is just a personal thing for me, but I also really appreciate how somehow the the personality traits that lead people to a job at Wizards also happen to include an equal ability to discuss philosophy

like high-minded philosophy and also enjoy a fart joke. That's really important to me is that people are really smart but also have the ability to cut loose and enjoy themselves at the same time I agree, the people

you've given me a good answer to the people are a big plus, it is fun it is a fun fun job, in fact today I mean when you guys hear this it won't be true but when we record it we're recording this right now on October 30th which is my 19th anniversary working for Wizards.

Wow. Congrats. That's big. Yep. Next year's my big 20. This is an interesting question. It's directed at me, but it's about Mark. Matt, how clean is Mark's vehicle?

I believe that Mark pre-read these questions and did a once-over on his car. Because it's looking pretty good. My car's never that bad. For the listeners out there, I think that they would be happy to know that you keep a ship, a shape ship or whatever you call it. So the interesting thing about this car is, I bought this car when my eldest daughter Rachel was born, and she is now 14. So this car is 14 years old. That's an achievement unto itself. Yeah. I've never owned a car that long. Yeah, this car, my car, it's a good car, so. Okay, what's the next question?

Okay. How much, this question comes from Gabriel Gutierrez. Okay. How much top-down design went into making the first Planeswalkers? Okay, that's a good question, because Matt was involved in making the first planeswalkers the answer is the idea of planeswalkers were involved

but we were not designing to particular planeswalkers in fact we gave them silly names when we were first because it's like blah blah

you know we just made up names I do think we were trying really really hard to match the flavor of what it meant for someone to be a planeswalker. But we were not, when we were making the original planeswalker, it wasn't like, oh, this is Jace. We hadn't done that yet.

I think that there are two ways to interpret this question. One is, did top-down design go into designing the first five planeswalker cards? go into designing the first five Planeswalker cards, meaning a Johnny, Garrick, and so on and so forth. And the other way is to say how much top-down design went into designing Planeswalkers, which it was all of it. Like, Planeswalker cards in themselves were absolutely top-down design. Oh, for sure. I mean, the interesting thing is when we...

So what happened is, for those who didn't hear the podcast Matt and I did on the Planeswalkers, Matt was working... We were on FutureSight. Matt was on the team. I was leading the team. And Matt came to me and said,

you know, Magic really should have Planeswalker cards that if we want people to care about Planeswalkers, one of the problems is it doesn't have cards to represent it. They're not in the game. You know, the players were playing them, but they weren't in the game. And I said, that is a fine point. We should make Planeswalker cards. So we tried to make them for Future Sight.

We ended up not getting to a point where we were happy enough, so we pushed it off, and then they ended up coming out in Lorewin. But I will say, when we designed the first five, we were designing to colors, meaning we wanted, like, the most typical red Planeswalker, and green Planeswalker, and blue Planeswalker. And meanwhile,

Creative was doing the same thing with the characters. So, we had a similar... We started from a similar place, which is, we were mechanically trying to make the most iconic colored Planeswalkers, mechanically, and the creative was trying to make the most iconic Planeswalkers from a flavor standpoint. Were you there when they, like, when J-Saw were made?

Um, no. No, I was not there when any of the Planeswalker card type designs got cooked down into actual cards. I meant the creating of the characters. Was that after your time? That was after my time. Okay. Yes. Yeah, Brady Donovan, who was the former creative director, really spearheaded the making of the original five, the Little One Fives, who obviously came out quite good. And also, who's the artist?

The artist did an amazing job, too. Alexi. Alexi, who did all the card concepting and how they looked. So the two of them did... Really, if you ask the first five, where they came from, it was the two of them

were the main images. Okay. What card... This is an interesting one. Okay, what card? Interesting in the guy's name. Okay. It's Squee Meets World.

Okay. Clearly these are Twitter... The questions I asked were on Twitter, so these are people's either questions I asked were on Twitter, so these are people's, either real names or Twitter names. I'm hoping that's a Twitter name. That's not a real name. What card is closest to your heart,

this is directed at me, sorry. Okay. Similar to how Morrow is closest to yours. Yes. In order for me to answer this question, I need to know how Morrow is close to your heart. Well, Morrow was a card that both I designed and was named after me. Right.

And I wrote the flavor text. I did everything. I didn't do the illustration. Stuart Griffin did an amazing illustration. I did everything. Everything on the card but the illustration was either named after me or I designed it and I wrote the flavor text. So it's just become identified with me. So I mean, the thing that,

back when the Invitational was happening, the reason when I came up with the prize for the Invitational, one was I didn't have any money, but the second was that I thought that one of the neatest prizes you could award somebody is having them become part of the game that they love. And so Mario, for me, it's kind of like, I mean, my picture's not on it, one of the neatest prizes you could award somebody is having them become part of the game that they love. And so Mario, for me, it's kind of like,

I mean, my picture's not on it, but it represents kind of me. So it's like kind of me being in the game. So that's why it means a lot to me. Well, I don't think that I have a comparison like that. There are cards that I have designed and written flavor text for. There are cards that I have designed and written flavor text for. There are cards that I've designed and done the art for,

but nothing is named after me. Well, how about this? Pick your favorite card. Pick your favorite card. I'll start calling you that. I don't know that I have one that is How about art wise? Do you have an art that is emotionally art wise? I think I have an answer for you

I have put my brother and my sister and one of my buddies into magic cards I haven't put myself in there I don't know what was your idea? Okay so you'll remember this.

So you made a piece of art that has this little figure in it, that you love, the little figure, and you came to me and go, please, please, please, can we make a card of this little figure? And I kept trying to find a spot for it, but I never did. It was a blue card. Inspiration. Inspiration.

He had a name, right? He had a name. He had a name. For a while, if you look back to the i think it was like the fifth edition inspiration um it's an illustration of a corny looking wizard and a little blue i don't even know it's like a monkey man or something is familiar that little blue guy his name was bub and he became for for I think six or seven years, the host of my website. And after a few years of him doing that, I ended up putting him on another illustration with the same wizard and the same wizard familiar.

another illustration with the same wizard and the same wizard's familiar, and that was some tier 5 crappy counter spell. I can't remember what it is. Flash counter, is that a card? Flash counter is a card. Maybe it's that. It's funny because I do podcasts all the time and I can't remember things, and so it's nice that somebody else can't remember something. It's like a running theme

of listening to my podcast. There's almost 15,000 cards, I think. I used to, by the point in time where I knew every card. You could name the magic card. I would tell you the cost of the card. I would tell you the rules text. I could describe the art to you. Half the time I knew the artist. Yes, I agree. I used to be

a much more thorough encyclopedia. But now, bleh. The other problem I have is when we make cards, because whenever we're designing cards, those aren't the real names. And so when I work with a set, so like 90% of my time interacting with a different card doesn't have the name that it actually has at the end. So I don't remember the real names.

I always remember the goofy playtest names. Right, and even the stats and the wording and things. Right, that changes, yeah. That's one of my downsides is when I play with real cards sometimes, I'll play them as I think they're played because that's how they were played, but development changed them and I wasn't aware of it. That happens a lot.

Here's a question from Burt Miller. I like this one. Can we get more emotions in red cards than just anger? Grief or overwhelming joy perhaps? That's definitely

interesting. Commander 2014, we just previewed it. Obviously it's out by the time you guys hear this. There's a card in it named Felden. It was a very poignant card. The design, We just previewed it. Obviously, it's out by the time you guys hear this. But there's a card in it named Felden, which actually had a... It was a very poignant card. And the design...

Like, it's Felden missing his wife, who had died. And he was building replicas of her, because he's an artificer, I guess. And that he was building, like, to try to sort of fill the void of losing his wife, he would build these creatures, these artifacts, but they would always,

like, they only lasted for a short period of time and then he would just destroy them because, like, they never really

filled the void, but it's him trying to do something. And the mechanic of the card represents that. You get to create an artifact for a turn

and the flavor text really, I don't know, I think the reason this question came up is people really like that card and it is just so hard in a game about people fighting.

It's hard to get to other emotions. We try. And the color of red is about all emotions, not just about anger. Well, it's about those emotions that in, like in excess. Well, yeah, impulsive emotions. Things that drive you to do things um

I yeah love absolutely red oh love's very red passion's very red there's not a lot like you said

there's not a lot of places to put that on a card um that's about combat or right

ironically the second most often thing we do after anger is panic. You know, we use the idea of, how do I keep you from blocking me? Because that's one of Red's abilities is, I panic you. I make you have this emotional response, which is more fear-based.

Well, there's also, you had mentioned impulse. Thoughtless action of any kind is extremely rare. Right. I mean, we try, whenever we make you do something that you don't mean to do, a lot of times the flavor is we magically make you sort of impulsively do something. Right. It is funny, by the way, the name impulse is a blue spell when impulse is not blue as it comes.

Right. name impulse is a blue spell when impulse is not blue as it comes. Right, right. Here's a short one. When will we go back to wrath? Oh, okay, well, do you want me to tell them the bad news or should I tell them the bad news? You tell them the bad news. Okay, so in the story, when the invasion happened, back during invasion, the way the invasion happened is the plane of

wrath was overlaid on the plane of Dominaria. So, wrath no longer exists. I mean, wrath and Dominaria get overlaid on each other. So, there's no going back to wrath. We could go back to Dominaria, which is a very popular class. And I do believe, guys, one day we will go back to Dominaria.

I mean, I do hear you, and it's something that we always talk about. But there's no going back to Wrath. Wrath doesn't exist. Similar to that would be if someone said, when will we go back to Mirrodin? Technically, you can't, because

it's another place now. Yes. Yes. Although people keep writing, like, we need to go back and show that Mirrodin's overtaking the Phy. Yes. Although people keep writing, like, we need to go back and show the Mirrens overtaking the Pixians. And I'm like, guys, I don't know that's going to happen anytime soon. So. All right. Here's a question that could end up forcing you off the road.

Okay. If you were told you had to make a card set with only four colors, which color would get the ax? So here's the interesting thing.

So I've been doing my blog now for about three, three and a half years. I've answered like 40,000 questions. It is hard for someone to ask me a question

where I go, I've never heard that question before. And this is not one of them because people have asked me this all the time. So I actually haven't answered this question. I've actually spent

a lot of time thinking about it, because it's an interesting thought question. So really what it boils down to, I mean, obviously I would never actually take, the five colors are so ingrained and so important part of magic. My caveat is I would never actually do it. But okay, thought experiment will answer the question. You have to say

what color can be folded into the other colors the easiest? Like, what do you lose least from the game by folding it in? So there are two color pairs that are mechanically close to each other. One is white and green, and the other is black and red.

So it's not blue. Blue is far away from everybody else, so it's hard to fold blue in, so it's not blue. When you start looking at what things represent, especially in fantasy, it's really hard to take black away. Black is so... there's probably nothing more iconic than black as far as just strong, strong fantasy imagery. And a lot of what fantasy is about is the contrast between things. And the black-white conflict is probably the strongest conflict with a fantasy sort of base to it. So it's hard to remove white. It's hard to remove black.

Then when you look at red or green, red offers more unique things than green offers. And the answer is I could probably take what green does mechanically, chop it up between white and red, you know, and maybe stick a little bit in blue or green. I can mechanically cover it the easiest so the answer is green is what I would do only because I think we can maneuver things to cover the absence of it. Not that we wouldn't miss things I mean I'm not actually would ever want to

take green out but green is the color I would take out So it's interesting that you approached that question from the standpoint of the designer of the mechanics of the cards but when I read that question from the standpoint of the designer of the mechanics of the cards. But when I read that question, I was thinking about it from the standpoint of the philosophy of what does each of the colors offer in terms of the impulse or the brain space or the emotion or what have you. Okay. What would you take out?

And I think that I would take out red. Okay. For a similar reason, that it has things in common with the other colors. And we had touched on something earlier that red is like if you take any particular feeling and you amp it up to an extreme, it's probably going to be red. Yeah. But if you reduce that back down to normal, a normal amount of love, maybe you call that

brotherhood, that's white. Sure. Um, a normal amount of, uh, interest in doing things. I don't know. Maybe that's, um, know, maybe that's ambition. Maybe that's black. If you just dial down everything about red other than fire, you could probably tuck that into other colors.

The other thing I believe is, I believe as far as conflicts that tend to get the most attention, white-black is number one. But number two, in my mind, is blue-red. So that's another reason I would keep red. I think the green conflicts are actually a little more complicated for people to understand. That blue-green, and especially green-black,

are definitely the trickiest of the conflicts. I have a hard time getting rid of green because, well, let's take the idea of lightning, for example. Lightning is red. Fire is red. But really, those are natural. What you would do if you got rid of red is most of it would touch in green or black

is what would happen. A little bit would go in white or blue, obviously. The only thing to me is, I guess, there's more things in green that me is, I guess there's just a more iconic thing. There's more things in green that I go, oh, there's somebody already doing that. I mean, green has a few things that are unique to green.

Green's biggest contribution is access to mana, right? So somebody else would have to be the mana color. But that seems like a thing that we had chosen, I don't want to say arbitrarily. No, I mean, it makes a lot of sense with what green is. I mean, you know.

I mean, the actual real big answer is you would, taking any one color away, the beautiful thing about the color wheel, which I'm the biggest fan of the color wheel, is the balance between all the colors and how they relate to each other and who the allies are

and who the enemies are, all that gets destroyed if you take a color away. So the reason you don't take a color away is in some level you're just destroying the color wheel to take one away, but I mean,

the thought experiment is fine. Okay, next question. This one is related in a way. What philosophical challenges do four-colored legends create? Well, here's the problem, which is when you make a one-color card, okay, it embodies that color. When you make a two-color card, it's like, okay, it's the combination of these two colors, and how do they mix? When you make a three-color card, okay, it's this color

with that color, you know, it starts getting harder. That's a little much. By the time you get to four-color, it's like, really what a four color card is is not the fifth color. Yeah. It's not even what the four are, and so it is really, really hard to design.

Because like, how do you design not blue or not green? That's a, and mechanically, in a way to go, this isn't just a three color card, or this isn't a five color card,

this is a four, it is a razor's edge. It's really, really hard. And I know philosophically what it means. It's not the fifth color, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. Some of the Legends packs from Legends seem to me to be a, oh, we need a green and white guy.

Let's just make a green and white guy who's a 4-6. Yeah. Just an arbitrary collection of numbers or whatever. And then... I mean, in... That's what four-colored guys would seem like to me. Right. In Ravnica, we made the Nephilim, which were the only four-colored creatures we've made thus far. And they were...

We had exactly this problem. They were hard to design. They were hard to flavor. They just ended up being these sort of, you know... Very disappointing. Yeah, and they didn't go over particularly well. One of the things that we had hoped is that

having them be four colors would be hard to pull off, and therefore, we could make them stronger than a four or five mana cost thing would normally be. And that turned out to not be true, given all the mana fixing, so they had to be nerfed until they sucked.

So you know what I wanted them to be? I got voted down on this. I wanted them to be different guilds teaming up. Because I said, oh, if Boros and the Simic got together, okay, I can make a card that's the Boros and the Simic got together, okay, I can make a card that's the Boros and the Simic. But these were designed to be something... They were designed to be, what if people don't like the guild? Let's make a few things for people that aren't into the guild.

Terrible idea! I know, I know. They always have these people like, what if they don't like the thing? I go, well, that's what we're doing! These things don't like it. That's terrible. Okay, next.

Okay. Let's see. How do you randomize cards during sealed playtests, and how much do they resemble actual boosters? Okay, so in real boosters, we have what we call collation,

which has to do with how the cards are laid on the sheet that they're printed on. We do not try to actually recreate collation because Dan is the guy who, he's sort of the, I'm going to just call him the, he's the guy that just does stuff in R&D and one of his responsibilities is making playtest cards.

And Dan is awesome, by the way. Dan makes sure that we represent rarity correctly, but it's just not worth our time or energy to recreate coalition. And some of the things you would need to do coalition we don't even know yet,

especially during design. Because coalition, one of the big things is about power level because development will figure out how powerful cards are, and you want to have a mix so that every pack has a power level that's not exactly equal, but keep it from having too much variance.

So we don't really, in playtesting, worry about actual coalition. We do make sure we have the right percentage of commons, uncommons, and rares, so we get the right mix to it but also remember at least in design playtest there's a lot of things we're not doing yet, it's all flat we cost everything flat in design

so that all the cards can be played so we can figure out what we like, so that development can figure out what to push what does that mean, you cost them flat? ok, so in Magic, we can't cost every card so that it's playable, because you would get a power creep over time. And so what happens is,

some cards are costed more aggressively and some less aggressively. And it's good for Limited to have, people have to figure out what the good cards are and what combination. But in design, the goal in design, if we cost the things like we did normally, it just meant some cards would get played and some cards wouldn't get played. Well, that doesn't do us any good in design.

The goal in design is to figure out what the good things are, so we price the cards so that every single card can be played. It's not something we can do in the real world, and also, it's not as much fun. Actually, the game plays more fun when there's a variance. But for purposes of testing, which is why we play test, we need to have a flat thing, a flat power level, just so we can try every card.

So what does the design of Chimney Imp give it for a mana cost, like initially? It is just costed so that in limited you might play the card. So it would have been like three? I don't know. I mean, what if you give me the Staff of Chimney Imp?

It's a... One, two, flyer for five or something terrible. I know you discard a card to do something that you don't want to do or something, but... I mean, they're just costed so that you would consider playing them. I mean, not that, to be fair, no matter what we do, some cards are better than other cards. It's not like playtesting. But we cost them so that... See, one of the things in playtesting, to be fair, no matter what we do, some cards are better than other cards. It's not like playtesting. But we cost them so that... See, one of the things in playtesting, by the way, the goal in design playtesting isn't to build the best deck.

The goal in design playtest is play something you haven't played before so you can experience it. And so when you're building in design, it's like, what haven't I played yet? Oh, maybe I should play that. I mean, sometimes if you're playing sealed or draft, whatever, you know, something attracts your attention and you go in that direction, but you do try to do different things.

It is not useful for us in design to have our designers just play the same thing every time they play. That doesn't teach us much. All right. Good. Okay.

What do you guys do when you're stuck with some part of your job um one of my tricks when I so let's say I'm trying

to come up with a card and I just I'm having trouble uh one of the things I do and this ties into my whole restrictions read creativity thing is I will give myself

an absolutely arbitrary restriction like I will say okay an absolutely arbitrary restriction. Like, I will say, okay, design a card, and this card, I'm going to be inspired by a member of the Avengers. Okay, the Wasp! Draw a card inspired by the Wasp.

Just giving myself some completely arbitrary thing just makes my brain think in a different space, and it helps sort of get my brain going and then I just, it gives me something to do. So that's my trick when I just get stuck. What's your trick? What I usually do is introduce the problem to someone whose job has nothing to do with solving this problem. Like if I'm trying to figure out what to put in a particular piece of marketing art

I might ask the guy whose job is shipping because they're going to have first of all, no care whatsoever for the actual challenges of the project and they're going to think completely outside of the box. And a lot of times what I end up getting is not the answer, but a smidgen of the answer or a pathway to the answer.

And it gets me talking to more folks. And like I said earlier, I like the people. That's good. Okay, so we have time for one last question. Make it good. Yes, we do. Because I've got to find a perfect spot. We've gotten to most of these.

Okay. So, I'll be someone that's, instead of ending on the question, why don't we end on saying that I miss all these podcasts with you. Yes. This was a good time.

You know, we can do the drive back home podcast later today. Ooh, that's a possibility. Okay, anyway,

we are, I've now parked my car, which means that it's the end of my drive to work. So, Matt and I want to bid you adieu adieu and it's time for us

to be making magic talk to you next time guys