Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #2 - Zendikar

Episode Date: October 8, 2012

Maro explains how his idea for a "land set" turned into one of the best selling sets of all time.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Time to Drive. So I'm leaving my garage, so that means it's time to start another show. This week I thought I would talk about Zendikar. Originally I was thinking maybe I would go in chronological order, and then it dawned on me it's more fun to hop around. So today I'm going to talk about one of my favorite sets. Although I have a lot of favorite sets. So Zendikar, where do I start? So I've talked about this a little bit, about how I had this idea for a block.

Basically what I wanted to do was I wanted to make use of some mechanics that I thought, well, let me back up a little bit. So every, I don't know, five, six, seven years, I'm asked to make what's called a five-year plan. And the idea of a five-year plan is I'm supposed to map out where we're going and what we're doing. Now note that the first time I made a six-year plan and the seventh time I made a seven-year plan, so I've actually never made a five-year plan, but the idea is the same. And so what I'm trying to do is explain to whoever the director of R&D is, currently Aaron, formerly Randy, what my vision is, where am I going?

Because once upon a time, if we go back to Odyssey, I had this awesome idea of, oh, why don't we change things up and not use the normal creature types and just make things a little different to give a little breathing space and try out some creature types that don't normally get a chance to see the light. And then the next set was Onslaught, but we hadn't planned out that Onslaught was a tribal slot. So by the time we got to the set all about tribes, you looked at the previous set and like, oh, none of the tribes you want are there.

And that's when we realized, okay, we've got to plan ahead. We've got to think about where we're going and avoid that sort of problem where the set before isn't properly setting up the set after it. So the idea of the five-year plan is for us to know where we're going in the future. So the idea is essentially, when I plot this out, that each year has a role, has a purpose. So some years are about re-exploring something that we know players like, but every once in a while, it's important to do what I call an experimental year, which means, look, part of magic is we're always exploring new things.

And it's fun to go back to the known. And obviously, people like certain themes and certain, you know, block elements to them. But if that's all we ever do is we just repeat ourselves, we never find new and exciting space. So every once in a while, I want to block where I'm like, look, I'm just doing something new. You know, it's untested, it's unknown, but hey, magic has to do that. And what happened was, I knew I had a lot of reservoir of land mechanics. I mean, or, to be fair, I knew that land was an area that we hadn't explored enough, and that I was very sure there was a design area

that we could explore. And so, I pitched this, I believe this was to Randy, maybe it was to Randy, maybe it was to Aaron, but anyway, when I originally pitched Zendikar, the entire pitch of it was, oh, this is going to be an experimental year. I have some ideas, I want to experiment. Now, whenever I told people what I wanted to do,

which is lands matter, I always got the same response. It was like, oh, really? So what else you got? Everyone was not interested. No one, literally, really? So what else you got? You know, like everyone was like not interested. No one, literally, I don't think there's a single person when I pitched the idea of Lands Matter who said, oh, that sounds awesome. Everyone was sort of like, oh, well, what would that mean?

You know, everyone didn't understand quite where I was going or what I wanted to do with it. So there just wasn't a lot of enthusiasm. Although, let me stress, by the way, I always tell the story of like, I have this great idea and no one wants to do it and I have to fight my way, you know, and I think I skip over the equally important part, which is, they let me do it, you know, it's not like I said I have a landsmatter that no one liked it, and so, end of story, you

know, it's like, I have this idea, they're like, well, okay, we trust you, Rosewater, come up, show us what you can do, and And so what happened with Zendikar was, basically, I was told, okay, we will give you three or four months. Prove your concept. Prove that. Show us what you're going to do. Don't just tell us.

Show us. And that's it. By the way, that's a huge thing about design. A good design lesson in general is you have to show, not tell. That there's only so much you can do explaining things to people. Because if people don't understand what you're talking about, and it's hard for them to show, not tell. That there's only so much you can do explaining things to people. Because if people don't understand what you're talking about,

and it's hard for them to understand. I mean, part of doing design is seeing things other people don't see. And so it's very hard to explain something they've never seen before. But if you make the cards, if you have them play with it, you're not just talking about it, you're having them experience it. You're getting them to see what the player would see. And then it all clicks together. You know, I know, for example, when I was trying to get Morph done,

you know, the rules team came up with Morph back during Onslaught, and I was one of the people selling R&D and doing it. I had to make cards and play with them. That's how I convinced them that, you know, that it was a viable mechanic. You know, we'll get to that in Onslaught week. Okay, so I had an idea for land. And when we started... Let me talk about my team, I guess, before I jump in on what we did.

Last time I talked about Tempest and the Tempest design team and how I kind of just picked people I wanted to work with. Well, that's early magic. We've evolved a little more since then. So now there's a much tighter structure to how we build a design team. So first and foremost, I was on the team. I was the lead. We tend to like to include the lead on the team. Second was that the set that comes after the current set,

we like to have the lead designer of that set on it because we want to make sure that they are well-inversed in the world so when it's their turn to lead, they understand what's going on. Because if they're not connected, it would be a lot more time to get them up to snuff. It's a lot easier to just have them there. So, Worldwake, which was a set to follow Zendikar, was going to be led by Ken Nagel.

And in fact, it was Ken Nagel's first lead, I think, at least of an expert expansion. So I needed Ken on the team so I could make sure he understood Zendikar. Also, we always have a developer on the team. Now, currently, modern day, we always have a core designer on the development team and a core developer on the design team.

Now, the designer on the development team is a relatively new thing, but having the core developer goes way back, and Zendikar had one. So my core developer was Matt Place, one of my favorite developers of all time. Matt and I both have a very holistic sort of view. I mean, I'm a designer, he's a developer, but both of us tend to look at the game in its entirety and look at all the little pieces and see how they click together. So Matt and I both have a very holistic sort of view. I mean, I'm a designer, he's a developer, but both of us tend to look at the game in its entirety

and look at all the little pieces and see how they click together. So Matt and I work really well together. The reason you want a developer on a set, by the way, is that, look, I'm a designer. I do not have a developer eye. I do not have the ability to say, oh, that's just not going to work or that's going to break in such and such a way.

And just having some of that viewpoint sit on the team is just really valuable. Also, the core developer is the person who does all the costing. So every time before we do a play test, they do a pass on the file and just a standard check that we're in the ballpark. I mean, one of the things we do in design is we want a flat power level in design. So the idea is I want every car to get played. The goal of design is not to have a final environment. It's to test and get a sense of what things are

and what things are fun. And so to do that, you want every card kind of playable. So we then do a very flat power line in design. And then once you get development, they figure out what they like and dislike, and then they start curving it such that there's powerful and less powerful cards. But in design, we want things very flat.

And the dev on the team, the developer who's the core developer, their job is to sort of just help keep that even keel so we can see everything, and that no one card overwhelms other cards. So there's nothing broken, but also every card has some chance to see play.

Anyway, we also usually have on the team someone from the creative team. That's not always true, although it's become more and more true more recently as residence has become more and more important for us. I really did want someone on this team because I was pitching this experimental thing.

I had no idea where we were going. I had nothing telling us what our world was. And so I really wanted someone because I knew that it would be key to figure out, to making this world work, what the creative was. And as you will see, Doug Beyer, who was the person who was from the creative team, was instrumental in sort of making that all happen, so I'm very glad to have Doug. Doug, by the way, also is an awesome designer.

He obviously would go on to lead the design for Magic 2013 design. And he was a great person on the team, plus he had very strong creative skills, which helped us. Finally, we always have what we call the fifth member of design team. Traditionally, most design teams have five people. Now, the fifth member is open. It is not defined like the other ones are defined. And we use it in a couple different ways. Sometimes, we will use people that have never had a chance to be on a team.

Because the other four people are supporting what was going on the fifth person, if they're not doing as much the team can survive fine so we're more willing to be experimental on the fifth person now sometimes it's just using someone who's never had a chance to be a designer A, to see how they would do and B, we like to get everybody through the experience it's very valuable to have different vantage points

and it's neat to just use people that might not have been on design teams before. Sometimes, though, in this case, I will just use a designer that I wanted to use but haven't had a chance to use for a while. I have a list of what I call my sort of go-to design guys, people who are just heavy hitters. Like, I know that they can deliver,

and I want to make sure that this group of people keep their foot in the pool, if you will, to make sure that they're designing. And so I like to make sure that every year I try to use these people so that they're not out of the picture too long, because Magic Design's ever evolving, and I like to keep them active. So anyway, Graham

Hopkins was, I would say he came in third in first grade design research. He didn't get one of the designer internships, which went to Alexis and Ken. But he did get an internship in R&D at the time, a little broader. But what happened was he ended up not working in R&D. He ended up working, he's a programmer in our digital department. But he's around and we have access to him.

I love Graham. So it's great to use him. So that was my team. I had a very strong team. So here's how we started. I said, okay, guys, for the first month, two months, we're just going to make mechanics dealing with land. You make me any mechanic that had anything to do with land,

I'll look at it. So now here's the funny thing. I had some sense where I thought we were going when we started and we ended up not going at all where I thought we were going, which is a neat part of design. So let me talk about where I thought we were going. So we had messed around quite a bit with the ideas of lands, or sorry, spells that could be lands, if not spells. The idea essentially is, I'm a spell, but if you need me, I'm a land. Now, Tinsman had done this a little bit with land cycling. So we dipped our toe here.

And so we had talked about a bunch of things. We talked about maybe having spells and you could discard them for a land token. Or search your deck. We don't like that much shuffling and land tokens seem to be a little clunky. Plus, we had already done land cycling, so I felt we'd done that.

So then we came up with the idea of reversing it. What if we had a land that had a spell attached to it? And so the way they played is, the land would come and play tap, tap for a color, let's say blue, and then you could spend one U when you played it, and if you didn't, you would draw a card. By the way, I used one U

because I think that was their design when we made the design. Turns out they had to be 2U or 3U when development actually got their hands on it. Design sometimes undervalues things like card drawing. So anyway, imagine the idea is I have a land, I can play this and play tapped, tapped for blue, and then I spend

some amount of mana, and design it with 1U, and if I do so, I get to draw a card. But I don't have to. I can just play the land if I need the land. So here's the problem with that. I like the design a lot. I actually, when I first made them, I get to draw a card. But I don't have to. I can just play the land if I need the land. So here's the problem with that. I like the design a lot. I actually, when I first made them, I said, oh, this is it. This is going to be the thing. Well, this is why you playtest.

So we sometimes have people play it outside of R&D. There's other people in the company that play Magic. Usually they're a little more casual, because R&D is pretty hardcore. I mean, we play Magic every single day, and a lot of us have played for a long time. And a good chunk of R&D comes from the Pro Tour. So when I had casual people play, what I found was they just wouldn't play the land unless they could get the bonus.

Maybe you can see where this is going. So they would have a land in their hand, and they would need land, but they wouldn't play it. They were waiting to get more land so they could get the effect out of the land. So you can see how this first snowball, so it's like, I need land, and I have land, and I counted it as land, but I'm not willing to play my land early game when I need it.

And thus I'm waiting for other land, which is less likely, because I don't have, you know, like, if my land isn't being used as land, then I just, I basically, you know, like, if my land isn't being used as land, then I just, I basically, you man-discrete yourself. And what we were finding was, you know, we were, this mechanic was causing pet gameplay, because the players just didn't understand, oh, well, if you need the land, it's okay to give up the spell, you know, that's okay.

And people wouldn't do that. Much the same way, by the way, with Kicker. One of the things we learned with Kicker, which I think is very true, is whenever you give players the ability to upgrade, that certain players, especially less experienced players, feel like they have to do that, and they're very reticent to not do that. You know, not catch the card with buyback, not kick the card.

And that's okay. I mean, we make mechanics like that, but we have to be careful. We have to assume what happens if the gameplay is they act like that. What if they only will play the spell when kicked? Well, how would that gameplay? Now, sometimes it's fine, but sometimes it causes problems, and here it causes problems.

So the other big thing that we were looking at in land mechanics was, what if we could use the land drop as a resource? As a costing? So, for example, imagine I had a spell that was like, it costs one land drop and a green mana to get a 3-3. Kind of rogue elephant-y,

if you will. And the problem there was that people would do this and then they would get behind on land. And so like, okay, I give up my land drop. I can't play turn one because I need to play my forest. Then turn two, I don't play

my land and I tap my green and I play my 3-3 and then you bolted or something. And then now I'm just down on land and you're up on land and I just kind of just lose. I mean, it was hard to make right, and then also, it led to gameplay that wasn't particularly fun, you know, that, like, I mean, I guess experienced players would understand the value of the land drop, and understand not to waste it early when they needed it,

but to use it later. But once again, when we tested it, that's not how they played it, and just, they were burning themselves left and right in the early development period where they really needed the land, and so, anyway, it was just not fun. So, I feel like every set I do, every time I do a design, I learn something, and the

Zendikar lesson was, which really hammered home to me, is you can make players do anything. Really, you can make players do anything. Really. You can encourage players. You can, whatever behavior you want, you can encourage it.

If you push power in that direction, you'll make people do things. But if you encourage people to do things that they don't want to do, then you're not going to make them have fun, at least most of them. I mean, some spikes enjoy that, but it's just,

don't force players to do something they don't want to do, and then expect them to have fun doing it. And what we found with Zendikar is, well, let's look at what they want to do. Can you reward them for doing the thing they want to do? Because that's a great feeling. You know, so instead of saying, hey, we'll reward you for not playing a land, we flipped it on its ear. We said, what if we reward you for playing a land? And what we found was that was a lot of fun. Because what happens is playing a land actually is a resource, you know,

but it is something that's much subtler, you know. And that for the beginning player, so they just kept playing land, whatever. The experience player starts going, oh, well, maybe I want to be careful with my land drops. Maybe I don't want to play my fifth land right away. Or, you know, maybe I want to think about when I play my land. So there's something I call lenticular design. It's a big concept I've been working on the last couple of years. The idea behind lenticular design is that if you can take something and have the strategy hidden

so the beginning player doesn't see it, they don't understand there's this advanced strategy, so they don't do the wrong thing, they don't even know to think about it, but the advanced player can figure out that's there. It's great, because it allows you to take complexity and advanced strategy and put it in the game such that it's visible by the advanced player, but invisible by the beginning player. It's called lenticular, because the ticker of the card is where you turn, and one way the guy's eyes are closed and one way his eyes are open.

So anyway, that's something that's very important. And what we found was Landfall had that. Landfall actually was very nice in its lenticular design, that it had a lot of value if you understood what it meant and how to play it and what cards to combo with. And obviously in the set, we gave you, you know, the fetch lands were there as a clear example, but we gave you some means of how to interact with it.

But if you didn't see that, whatever, just play your land and you'll be happy. The beginning player playing Landfall was plenty happy. It happened. You know, they weren't maximizing it, but it worked. So anyway, we stumbled upon Landfall. Landfall was... It was crystal clear to me, once we had Landfall, that we had it. This was it.

And once we had Landfall, I realized that, okay, we're encouraging people to play more lands, essentially. That if we said to you, hey, lands are good, and lands don't hurt you as much. I mean, the moment I knew Landfall, by the way, was the perfect thing. There's always a moment where something happens, and I just go, oh, okay, this is good. This is the defining moment of how people will experience the set. I was playing with Landfall, and it was late game, and I'm like, oh, I want to draw a land. That is a very interesting feeling. Normally, I don't want to draw a land. Now, I want to draw a

land, and I'm like, that is a very interesting experience. Like, every set, we want you to have something that's like, wow, this is not normal magic, and that was that moment. I knew people would love that. It's like, oh, normally, I worry about this. I don't have to worry. I draw a land. I'm happy. I draw a spell. I'm still happy. It creates this nice moment. Contrast. Anyway, we looked for those kind of moments. We had that. So I knew we wanted landfall.

I knew landfall was working. And I knew it kind of encouraged people to play more lands. So I said, okay, well if you play more lands, is there anything that plays into that? What kind of mechanic wants you to play more lands? And that's when we stumbled into the idea of Kicker. Of, you know, it might be nice to have stuff where if you happen to have extra mana lying around, it's useful. And so I got the idea of putting Kicker in. Okay, so now I have

land, fall, life, kicker. I go, I show everybody, okay, here's the land set, here's what's going on. I also had the lands, the ones I was talking about before, we had a spell effect. We ended up making just a cycle of them, and they did a free effect, so it didn't have the problem we were talking about. But we had those,

and we had a bunch of different things that played into land, and landfall being the biggest thing. And people played, they go, oh, this is fun. Oh, okay. I didn't quite get where you were going, but this is fun. And I got, like, a green light to continue. So at that point, the big question was, well, where are we? What kind of world is this?

Now, the funny thing is, I had an idea. I knew where I wanted to go, which was, I knew that we were going to show a lot of lands. And so in my head, I'm like, okay, well, how do we make dynamic lands? And there's a world that I've always wanted to do. Creators have never been created in this world, but I love the idea of storm world. We're like, just take every possible storm you can imagine. It's the world in utter storm. You know, parts of the world, just typhoons and tornadoes and hurricanes and earthquakes and just every natural disaster you can think of.

And my thought was, oh, well, you know, the islands would show a tidal wave, and maybe the plains show a blizzard, and the mountains show a volcano, you know. And the idea was to be very active, and then it would give you some movement. But they weren't real fond of that. But Doug Byer said, oh, if we're dealing with land, he liked the idea of, well, what if it's a world in which you're trying to explore it? That literally the people of the world want to explore the land of the world. And the reason we showed you more land was it had a strong exploration theme.

And then Doug came up with the idea of, well, what if we, I think originally we were talking about Raiders of the Lost Ark world. You know, what if, like, people are going on adventures, and the land itself is this dangerous place, and then it slowly evolves into more of what we call an adventure world. It definitely had sort of a little bit of a D&D feel, still had kind of a Raiders feel to it. In fact, it's funny, because a lot of times you latch onto something, and then you will design things to match it. And I know when we had the Raiders feel, we were making bull whips and giant boulders. It is funny, though, how you have an inspiration.

One of the things that I always say is if you want to help your design, you need to have an inspiration. You're not going to hit the bullseye if you don't know where the target is. And I think a big part of design is providing the target. So Doug had this idea of Adventure World, and so I said, okay, let's embrace Adventure World. So I purposely left open a bunch of design space because what I knew was I wanted to sort of figure out the place we knew we were in, use that to define sort of mechanical space,

allow creative to then come in and figure out what made sense in that world, and then use the rest of the mechanics to fill out the world. So once we had Adventure World, we ended up making what we called Maps, Traps, and Chaps. So Maps ended up what we called Quests in the finished projects, but the idea was you had a map, and a map showed you things you needed. And it's funny, we experimented. We went a little, like, we had a sub-team, and I was in charge of the map sub-team.

And for a while, we were playing around with this idea of, like, you had a list of things you had to find, and we've got this list of things in play, then you sort of, you know, you would, each of the lists had a story element to it, essentially. And then you put it all together, and like, aha, you've done it.

You know, like, like, for example, you needed to find, uh, a dead body, and a necromancer, and, uh, a graveyard, or something like that, you know, and that, if you had all these things together, or, no, it's not, it's a shovel, so you needed, like, uh, you needed, uh, a creature from a grave, you needed a cleric in play, you needed equipment dripping like a shovel. You put all this together and you made a zombie, essentially. Your necromancer could raise you undead. But it turned out that it was more complex than we needed, and the quest sort of evolved

from the idea of, well, let's just say to them, hey, there's a reward, do this thing. And the quest was more like, well, here's the thing you need to do, and if you do this enough times, then you will get your reward. Because doing multiple different things got wordy and complex to write out, but saying, well, just do this one thing, do it multiple times, worked easier.

Traps? Traps? It's funny, because Traps just came from the Raiders of the Lost Ark thing, I think, like, I think we all were thinking of the opening scene, like, okay, what happens when this happens? And the traps, the idea of the traps were, originally,

I think they sat in play face down, or they sat in play face down, maybe they weren't in play, maybe they were face down in the exile zone, I don't remember exactly. Originally, your opponent knew there was a trap, but they didn't know what the trap was. The idea there was, you know,

ha-ha, you know I have a trap, but what's going to happen with my trap? And then eventually we decided that it was easier to move it into the hand. So, like, it was more of a... You just didn't know it was coming. I mean, maybe you read your opponent, but you didn't...

It wasn't as obvious as the version we had. We were like, look, a trap in play. Um, and then Chaps, which ended up becoming Allies, um, we knew we wanted adventurers, and we made a couple different versions of them. The version the designer originally handed in was different,

and Henry Stern, who was the lead developer, uh, for the beginning part of the development the development, didn't like them, and then Matt Place and I went back out and kind of completely redesigned them. The current version is what Matt and I made, but that was done during development. So what happens sometimes, by the way, in development is, if development needs issues or has design problems, they'll come back to design, and then they'll say to designers, okay, can you do this? Because design doesn't end when design hands off the file to development.

I mean, the design process ends, but not design as a whole. The design team has a responsibility to stick around, essentially, and if there's needs that come out of development, that the designers understand the set better than anybody else and clearly can design the easiest for it. The developers will do some designing, especially on things that are more clear-cut. Like sometimes we'll make a mechanic

and they need to change it around a little bit. Well, they understand the gist of the mechanic. It's like, well, we need a different black effect. That's easy for them to do. But stuff like this where allies weren't working, we came back in and we really sort of gave them an identity. I was actually very happy with how Allies turned out. There's a lot of doubt, because I like slivers.

I mean, Allies were very much in the mindset of, people like slivers, is there a way to have a sliver-like mechanic that isn't quite slivers? And I liked the idea that landfall was, like, sort of things entering the battlefield meant something, and so I thought it was a plus. I mean, one of the things I'm always big on is I like when you can get thematic things and tie them together in your set

where like multiple things care about something, and so I really liked the idea of, well, landfall cares about lands coming into play, but what if allies care about allies coming into play? And so it created this nice parallelism. I know back in the day, we used to sort of just grab two mechanics and throw them

in a set, but I... Even then, as I talked about Tempest last time, I found a relationship between my mechanics even then. I really believe that you're not just throwing random mechanics in, you're hand-picking mechanics that make a cohesive whole. So you really want to think of the relationship

between your mechanics to understand the feel of what they have. But anyway, so we did individual designs, we made maps, we made traps, we made chaps, and we got them all on the set.

We helped, you know, get Kicker fleshed out. We later decided to play up lands a little bit. I know development decided they really... We know we wanted sexy lands. Development decided they wanted to bring back the fetch lands. It felt like a really good fit because the set would have a land theme,

so bring back powerful land. Or not bring back, but making the other lands we hadn't made yet felt like it would... You know, we delivered on something people had always wanted. It fit really well. Plus, the fetch lands worked with landfalls, it just fit perfectly.

And then Brady Domoreth, the creative director, had the idea of using full-out lands. I had done them, obviously, in the unsets, in unglued and unhinged, and, I mean, Brady said, you know, we've never had them in Black Border, we knew players liked them. Well, what if this was one of the things of Zendikar?

And I liked it because I really, as much as, I mean, clearly it was Adventure World. Clearly, you know, all that flavor and resonance was important and we played it up. But in my heart of hearts, I still felt like, look, this set is Lands Matters. It is a set that's really going to play up lands. And I liked having a bunch of things sort of pointed in that direction. I thought that was important. And so anyway, once the pieces came together, I was very happy. I mean, one of the things that I think is very hard, the thing that I think most intimidates people about design is the idea of the blank piece of paper.

I think people are scared to death of the blank piece of paper. Which is funny, because I love the blank piece of paper. You know what I'm saying? I love the idea of diving in and, like, the great unknown. You know? I mean, it's funny because a lot of people talk about magic and, like, the metagame of magic. And to me, I've mentioned this, I think, in my article a couple times.

I love the game of magic that I play, which is crafting the environment of magic. Now, it's not a game most people play. One of the reasons, by the way, I think cubes are becoming very popular is cube is really the only way that I know of that average person out in the world is doing the game I'm talking about, which is the crafting the world game. And it's fun. One of the reasons I think people really enjoy cubes is that cubes is doing that. It's like, I'm

making my own world. I'm making choices. Now, in cubes, you know, you don't get to make up your own cards, so it's a little different. But you do get the chance to define things, and what you will find, I think if you want to get a good sense of being a designer, building a cube is a wonderful way to do that, because you will learn a lot of very important lessons in your cube building to understanding how designing a set or a block works. For example, what you don't put in is super important. In fact, your set is defined a lot of times not by what you put in it, but what you don't put

in it, you know, or, you know, what things you value. I mean, pretty much you have themes and you have things that certain things care about other things. And as you put that all together, you know, you define your set by what things matter and what things are absent. And the combination of those two defines your world. So anyway, I had put together, I had all the land stuff. We'd figured out all the land matters. We had put in the adventure world stuff. You know, it blended pretty well together. You know, using the land as the idea of searching.

Oh, the last thing we did do is we did a lot of one-of-resin things. Or like the bullwhip and the shovel, and all the things we made that said, oh, I'm an adventurer. And one of the things we did, by the way, is our rule was, all of your equipment had to be something an adventurer would use. It could

double as a weapon, but it had to be something that had a functional use, like you know, oh, well, I could, you know, this was a pickaxe, it's a weapon, but it's a pickaxe, I could dig with it and break things and explore with it, you know, or I could funny thing, I don't even think we put a

pickaxe in, it was in for a while, but the idea of the shovel, the idea of the bullwhip, you know, that Indiana Jones uses it to climb and swing, but hey, it's also a weapon. That's the kind of stuff we look for. Anyway, I see Wizards of the Coast. I'm now here at work.

So I think that's going to have to wrap up for today. I really enjoyed making Zendikar. Like I said, my team was awesome. And the thing that's great is it is fun to have an idea. And in some ways, it's fun to have an idea that people don't quite understand, and get to the point where people understand it,

and then get to the point where people love what you've done, and Zendikar went over really well. I was very happy, you know, and that I think I take great pride in Zendikar because, you know, I can remember the point where nobody understood it, nobody had any faith in it, you know, and kind of to go from there, to the point of nobody getting it, nobody had any faith in it, you know, and kind of to go from there to the point of nobody getting it

to the point of it being, you know, one of the top song sets of all time, it's very, I don't know, it's very rewarding to me as a designer that I was able to sort of have this vision that was obviously uniquely my vision and, you know, bring it to fruition. And with obviously the help of an immense number of people,

I mean, my design team was not only great, the development team did tons of work. The creative team did amazing amounts of work. I mean, none of this is done alone. This is a huge, you know, this is not an art by an individual. It's an art by a group. But I am happy with how Zendikar turned out.

I was very excited by it, and I'm happy to share it with you guys. It was fun talking with you today, but I think it's time to go make some magic. I'll talk to you guys next time.