Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #202 - If Magic Started Over

Episode Date: February 20, 2015

Mark explores a little more in depth the changes he would make if he could start over.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today's a topic. I don't know, several months back I asked people to give me topics, and one of the topics they gave me I liked so much that I actually made an article about it in Making Magic. And I thought that it would be a good job to now talk about this on the podcast. So the topic is, what would I do differently if I had magic to start all over again? And so, like I said, I wrote a little article that you guys have already read, assuming you read my articles, during time travel week. But I wrote that kind of in the form of a story. So I can get a little more than, the reason I think it's a good podcast is, while I mention stuff, I can get a little more to the nitty gritty here.

So, okay. So my first caveat, which the article also explains is if I could go back and change anything, I would change nothing. Because magic is a huge success. Something that I think might not matter might have been very important in the early days. You know, having broken cards. I mean, there's a lot of things that measured it early on that, look, it worked. Whatever the recipe was, it worked. And that, you know, we slowly evolved it over time to where we are now.

I wouldn't actually change anything. But theoretically, let's say that without any harm to magic's present, I could go back and mess around with things. That's the theoretical question. What would I do different now, knowing what we know almost 22 years later? What would I do different? Okay, so this falls into two major camps. Camp number one is just changes

that we've made along the way that I think the game probably should have just started with if we knew better. The second is things that we want to change, but we feel we've missed the opportunity, that there's too much inertia, the game has gone too far, that we can't introduce it now. That's the more controversial list. So let me real quickly start with the first list. And this is not an exhaustive list. This is just me sort of talking about things that I would do differently. So, for starters, Magic has had a lot of change. What most people don't realize is, unless you're really a big

historian of the game like myself, I don't know if people realize how many things have changed. I guess if you've been playing since 1993, maybe you know. But if you're, you know, relatively new, there are things that are just part of Magic that I think a lot of people don't even realize didn't start with the game for example, when magic started what was the deck restriction limit? 40, not 60 40

what was the restriction on the number of cards you could have on a deck? none, there were none you could have as many as you wanted and the reason, let me explain this, it's very important it's not that Richard didn't think things through. Richard made an assumption that proved to be false. Richard assumed that Magic would, he thought it would function like a normal game.

So what he assumed is, people would spend on Magic what they normally spend on an average game. And an average game, you know, he thought that people would buy a starter, and back when Magic first started, it wasn't just sold in boosters, it was sold also in starters, which were 60 card decks that you could just

play right out of the deck. I mean, it was a mix of all five colors and stuff, but it was called a starter deck. And it had a mix of land and spells, and you could just play it out of the deck, was the idea. Anyway, it had a... Richard thought you'd buy, like, a starter deck, and I don't know, four to six boosters maybe. The person that over the course of time,

that people were not going to buy nearly as much as they did. And so under that assumption, a lot of the cards that were powerful, Richard thought something like Ancestral Recall, in your whole play group, maybe one person has one Ancestral Recall. Well, that card's not horribly broken if it's just one in the environment, you know? If you can play multiples in your deck and everybody has access to them,

and you've accessed all the other, you know, power stuff, okay, it starts becoming problematic. But if, like, your one really good card is Interceptor Recall, and it's mixed in a deck where you have nothing else that's nearly that power level, oh, okay, one Interceptor Recall, when in the whole play group, that's it, you know? Fine, that's nearly that power level. Oh, okay, one interest recall. In the whole playgroup, that's it. Fine, that's your good card.

And Richard knew that if Magic became very popular, that some things would break. But Richard's like, well, that's a fine problem to have. If we get to the point where people are buying so many cards that it becomes unbalanced, we'll deal with it later. And they did. So if I had to start all over

again, I would start with a 60 card limit. I would start with a 60-card limit. I would start with a four-card restriction per deck. Anti was something that the game started with where when you played, you would draw your hand to seven and then your eighth card went, I think it was face up,

out of, you know, in the exile zone. It wasn't called the exile zone at the time. I'll get to that in a second. And whoever lost the game lost their card. It was kind of like marbles was Richard's thing. And the reason Richard had put Antti into the game was because he thought that people would have a smaller collection of cards, it would do a lot of the work of changing what was happening.

That if you and your friends were playing and cards were changing possession, that would warp the local metagame. It's not that people would keep buying more cards. It's that the card flow that your group had, that would warp the local metagame. You know, it's not that people keep buying more cards. It's that the card flow that your group had, it would change among it. And that maybe you had the Inception Recall, but oh, you lose it one day, now your friend has Inception Recall.

You know, and that Ante was part of the process of how to take these smaller environment of cards and keep it fresh. It turns out Ante did not work at all. People did not like it. People were like, this is my cards. Every time I play, I don't want to risk losing cards. And so anti quickly went by the wayside.

I just take anti out of the game. I wouldn't have anti if we're starting all over. Also, there's a bunch of terminology changes we made. The in-play we now call the battlefield. Remove from games called exile. Local enchantments are called auras. I would change all that. I would use all the modern terminology. I think having things of flavor is good. I think Rick should have figured that out, that the

deck was a library and the discard was a graveyard. I think if he had just thought about it, he would have made a name. The way the templating worked early on, they didn't talk about in-play as much, and they just said in-play. But another big thing is there are words I might find a different word for counter, so that either call the beads, either

call countersets and token encounters or counters in counterspell, have one of those words be different so it doesn't overlap. Finding ways to have the word play not mean multiple things. Having the battlefield helps not having to have in-play. I would make sure not to duplicate

a lot of the words. Also, technically this is in group two, but while we're talking words, I also would have the phrase discard from your hand or discard from your library. And that milling is just, it's a form, when I make you discard, I make you discard from your hand or discard from your library. And that milling is just, it's a form, when I make you discard, I make you discard from a place.

It could be your hand, it could be your library, but that way, built into the game, would be something that's very clear what I'm doing. If I say discard three cards from your library, it's clear what that is. And the problem now is when we're trying to come up with a new word for mill, it always gets confused with, do you mean mill or do you mean discard? Because flavor-wise, they overlap a lot.

So if you just had the same word and reference where you're discarding from, I think that would work. Also, race class, something we started in Mirrodin, where the creature types have both a race and a class that they're humanoid. I would start that from the beginning of the game. I would have humans... Like, beginning of the game, we didn't reference humans for a while, so if it started with race class, I would start with humans.

I would just have race class built in from the beginning. I think it does a lot of good work, and I think it'd be valuable just to Magic to have it. In general, by the way, if I had things to start all over, I would definitely spend some time organizing creature types. I feel the creature types are a little inconsistent in how they're put together. And that it's weird that some classes of animals are, the whole class is one word,

while others go specific. I would figure out what we want to do and spend some time cleaning that up. I really feel like that the creature types, it kind of happened over time, and I think things got messy, and that if you just sort of thought about it up front, the kind of idea of where you were going, I think we could make a much cleaner thing. Also Phyrexian, which I would make Phyrexian a creature type. I feel like the Phyrexians are a big enemy, and it's hard for us to make cards that care about the Phyrexian, which I would make Phyrexian a creature type. I feel like the Phyrexians are a big enemy, and it's hard for us to make cards that care about the Phyrexians because there's nothing about them that ties them together, and that I probably would... The Phyrexians are enough of a quality that I think I would make it a creature type.

We'll get to super types. Well, whatever. I'm going to jump, I guess, I'm going to jump around when I have things that are similar, I guess. Separating completely in the two lists. I'll just note when there's second lists versus first lists. So this is something that's second lists.

We never did it, but something I wanted to do and love to do, but we've kind of passed the window where we can do it. Let me explain what I mean when we pass the window. What happens is

magic does something for quite a while. There comes a point where changing it over has more, it's harder to do because once you make a change, any old card that doesn't have that change now becomes not usable. And so what you do is you cut off a whole swath of older cards. When you make a a change it changes how they're done so for example one of the things that i would love to do if i'm starting all over again is have some super types to talk about types of magic um and i don't mean colors obviously but i mean imagine if fire magic and water magic and nature maybe i i haven't completely thought through the categories but

i love the idea for example of fire magic of that you could have fireball and fire elemental and things that are made of fire have the fire super type so that we can make cards that say, okay, this guy affects your fire cards. I think there's some fun stuff we could do there. But the problem now is fireball is clearly made of fire. It doesn't have that thing. You know, if we change this, we can't reprint fireball. and then if you play with Fireball, it gets confusing. You know, there's just things that... Because people are like, isn't the game going to last a long, long time? Shouldn't you just make the changes now?

And the answer is, some things we do and we can, but some things are so incongruous with what we've done before, and it cuts off access to old cards, it makes old cards hard to play with, that it's just like we kind of missed our opportunity. I think supertypes and spells is one of those. That doesn't mean we couldn't do a set with a subtype that those subtype have a supertype,

but it couldn't be something that's backward compatible because those old cards wouldn't have it. So we can't quite do something like fire, which is a little more general. Okay, also, let's see. And by the way, as I'm walking through different types of things that we're doing, be aware that, like, this list is probably, if I really, really had to do it all over again, I'd spend a lot more time sitting down and thinking this through.

This is me spending a little bit of time talking about it. Okay, oh, something else I would do is legendary. I'm talking about creature types Okay. Oh, something else I would do is legendary. I'm talking about creature types or super types. Legendary, A, which started as a super type, now it's a creature type, which is what it did.

And I would not... There were certain creature types, specifically wall and legends, that had baggage built into them, and we later extracted that from them. I would make sure when the game started, you know,

wall didn't have rules types built into it. All walls in the beginning of the game had, you know, wall didn't have rules types built into it. All walls in the beginning of the game had defender, and I wouldn't do that. I would do what we do now, which is walls happen to all have defender, but being a wall doesn't grant you defender.

If I turn something into a wall, it doesn't grant defender. Having that baggage, which is the creature types, causes some problems, and so I like having them disconnected. Legendary, by the way, I think the correct way to do Legendary, and this is going to sound weird 22 years into this,

and we can't change it, which is why this sounds weird, but I would have Legendary not have any mechanical tie in the rules. I would have cards that refer to it, and mostly it'd be a positive thing. Mostly being a legend would be a good thing. The problem right now is legendaries carry all this sort of emotional weight. People love the legends, but essentially they have a drawback on them,

and it causes all sorts of problems. It is not good when the thing you want people to be excited by inherently has a drawback. And one of the inherent problems, for example, we really toil over whether something should be legendary or not. Because when you make something legendary, if people don't care about the flavor of it, if you don't play Commander, aren't, you know, Vorthos, it really gets into the flavor. We're just making the card weaker for you. You now just can't play four copies of that card.

Now, yeah, we got to offset it a little bit with power, but not enough that it really matters. And so, like, the problem of making something legendary right now is it's making the card worse for other players, and I'd rather take that away. I want legendary cards to be awesome, and I don't want them to have to, like, we have to tie negative baggage to them. I know there's some flavor hits to this.

I know if you're used to playing the way we are that it seems weird. We've used legendary mechanically, developmentally, to sort of cards we don't want to have two in play. Maybe there would be a mechanic that would say you can't have two of these in play. Maybe that would exist on some cards. But anyway, I would rip it off Legendary. Another thing the game did that I would change is when the game started, creatures weren't called creature cards. They were summon. And enchantments said enchant blank.

And artifacts was like poly artifact and mono artifact. I would get rid of all that. I would go up to modern day so that it was just creatures are creatures. Enchantments are enchantments. And I would start the game with planeswalkers being what they are now, which is not gods like they were when the game with planeswalkers being what they are now,

which is not gods like they were when the game began, but creatures that have the ability to walk between planes, but they're mortal, and, you know, we can tell good stories about them. They're not, you know, they're not crazy, powerful gods that were just very hard to tell stories about. And I think that planeswalkers and probably enchantments, not enchantments, equipment and a few other things, cantrips there's some things the game didn't start with

that we've since realized are important I don't think I would start the game with them but I would, in the first three years probably of Magic, I would figure out where the best place to put some of this, just like multicolor the game didn't start with multicolor, I like that but very quickly into it, Legends introduced multicolor. I would take

a lot of the splashy things and figure out where to put them. Like, Antiquities might have introduced equipment, you know, that I would have them much earlier in the process. Okay. Mana cost. Mana cost. So I would have the card frame look different. I would have the card frame look a lot like

the future shifted cards from Future Sight. I'd have the card frame look different. I would have the card frame look a lot like the future shifted cards from Future Sight. I'd have the mana cost running down the left side, except instead of the way they did in Future Sight, I'd have the colored mana come first. So it'd be colored mana, then colorless mana. And what I would do is, instead of having a colored with a number in it, every single colorless mana, I would have a separate mana symbol. There'd be a mana symbol that just represents colorless.

And then they would start with a color to go to colorless, and then the name would be at top. There would be an indicator of the card type, upper left-hand corner, like on the future shifted cards. And I would have different card frames for different types of permanents, or different types of cards, so that when you look at the card, whether it's a permanent versus a spell, or even

the type of permanent, that the frame helps you have a little clue of what you're having. And I would have the little marker with the symbol, or even the type of permanent, that the frame helps you have a little clue of what you're having. And I would have the little marker with the symbol, the card type symbol in it, like on the future shift of cards. Okay. So let's talk about a few things that I would do

that was different than how magic... Realizing as I'm driving, this is going quick. Okay. Number one, I would make instant a super type and not a card type. Meaning, oh, and something else, real quickly. I would make the rules fit modern rules. I would use the stack.

I would have collector numbers. I would have rarity indicators. I would have premium, parallel premium cards. All that stuff that we introduced, I think Magic would start with that. Okay. parallel premium cards, all that stuff that we introduced, I think magic would start with that.

Okay. So the idea of instant as a supertype is that I think that if instead of, if all modern day non-permanents were sorceries, and then the ones that you wanted to be able to cast any time were instant sorceries, and instead of having flash, there'd be instant creatures and instant artifacts and instant enchantments.

And the idea was that timing element would be part of a super type. And so if you wanted to refer to, right now it's weird if it's an instant and sorceries, you just sorceries. Sorceries are everything that's a non-permanent spell type. Interrupts, by the way, would never exist in this version. Because we have the stack and we don't even need them.

This is another thing where it's just we can't retrofit it. It causes too many problems. Under the new version, when you say sorcery, you mean something different. Sorceries would now mean instant sorceries. So you have a lot of cards that say sorcery, but what you mean is non-instant sorceries, or it would just get confusing. There's a lot of old cards that would say something

that legitimately would mean something, but wouldn't actually mean what they do. And I think that would cause lots of confusion. That's why it's a hard thing to go back and change. Another thing I would do is the game started with artifact creatures that just were things that made sense as artifacts. I think what I would do is take some stuff like illusions, I don't know, maybe elementals,

I'm not sure, but things that are clearly made of magic, things that are not, you know, things that have a magical origin to them. I would make enchantments as a creature type. So illusions would be enchantment creatures, much like a golem is an artifact creature. And by introducing that as a flavor-based thing, I think we could just have enchantment creatures as vanillas be something that's part of magic, that's tied to flavor. And then that would make it much easier for us down the road to do stuff

like an enchantment-heavy set, the way people kind of want us to do it. But in order to do that, we need to have enchantments as vanillas that sort of make sense. And I think if the game started with enchantments as a flavor component, I think that would make makes sense. And I think if the game started with enchantments as a flavor component, I think that would make that possible.

Other things that I would do is I would, let's see. Oh, I'd have a better definition between artifacts and enchantments. So one of the problems in the game is artifacts and enchantments are just so close to each other. Really, when we get right down to it, there's very, very little that separates them. And even then, we've messed around, like even the things that separate them, every once in a while

we goof around that space. So like, they're just so, so close. One of the things that came up during Mirrodin Design that Tyler Bielman and I, the two people that did the original work on some of the world building, something that we had come up with was a way to separate them. And it ended up being too radical and I couldn't get R&D on board. But the idea was, what if enchantments represent a change?

So any global effect, that's what enchantments are. You put an enchantment out, it affects everything. You can still have auras that affect a creature. So if you have an aura, it affects the thing it's on. But global enchantments just affect everything. You can still have auras that affect a creature. So if you have an aura, it affects the thing it's on. But global enchantments just affect everything. I mean, maybe just affect you, maybe affect you and your opponent, but they're global effects.

Artifacts, on the flip side, aren't global effects. They are things you use. They are objects. And so those things you have to activate to use or tap to use, that they're items that there's some use to them. And so the idea is something like Howling Mine, which is draw an additional card each turn, that's an enchantment, that's not an artifact. Artifacts don't grant global effects. And you shy away from enchantments doing sort of one-turn use things.

That's artifact shit. We definitely have some enchantments now that allow you to do things, and we would make a harder divide between artifacts and enchantments. And the idea being there that I think the game would be better if they're

just carved out a little more. Now, one other thing about making changes or suggesting changes is this is the kind of change where if I retroactively try to do it, I'd be, there'd be cards that are famous, wonderful magic cards,

and you go, how could you ever make that change? What do you mean, a world without blah-de-da-blah-de-blah? But I think if we just started that way, if just, Howling Mine had never been an artifact, if it had just been a blue enchantment,

that, you know, it just, that's the way it would have been. And that, you know, I think, I think whatever, the stuff I'm proposing, magic would be a little bit different, but I believe it would have been. And that, you know, I think whatever, the stuff I'm proposing, Magic would be a little bit different, but I believe it would be a cleaner game.

Now, I know there's people like, I like my messy Magic, and I like when things do stuff and colors, you know, mix up more. Just as a game, I believe, and this is pure, the game designer purist in me, I like to have a game where things are crisper and clearer and I feel that having good definition is important. I feel as you muddy things up it just makes things less clear

and I don't, we're a game that breaks its rules I'm not saying you can't ever have things that break them a little bit, but I do believe that I would like the game to have staunch defaults rather than fuzzy defaults. I don't think fuzzy defaults do us a lot of good.

Okay, another thing I would change is there's some little stuff that are just irritants behind the scenes. For example, the rule that says that when you fizzle something, it stops the spell. So I target a creatureizzle something, it stops the spell. So I target a creature and do something else, and if you remove the creature, it fizzles the spell.

That causes lots of problems. And the way you would do it is, the way you fix it, it's not just something you change in the rules. You have to make cards that don't take advantage of that rule existing. There's a bunch of things where, because rules exist, people make cards that bend around them. And then when you try to remove them, there's a lot of things where because rules exist, people make cards that bend around them and then when you try to remove them, there's a lot of cards

that don't make sense without it. I don't think the fizzle rule works a lot. It works well. It confuses people. Another thing that I would try to fix, by the way,

this actually wasn't in my article, I forgot this one, is I would like to, from the game's origin, figure out a way to close the I do something at the

end of turn in the window. I do an effect that's supposed to end at the end of turn, but I do it in the window at the end of turn so it lasts for the next turn. It's wonky. Everyone thinks that, it's one of those things that when you do it to a new player, they think you're cheating, you know, just because it so seems like it's not supposed to work. And I would, the problem with closing that loophole is, it's just the way the rules are set up, it's hard to do. And if you started with that goal, I think you could just make it such that you could avoid the cards that are causing us problems.

That's a lot of what you need to do to change things, is say, the game's going to start with this rule, and once you know it and build around it, then you don't have the problem of breaking it. That's how you keep from breaking it. Let's see. Anything else? I'm almost at work. Anything else I would change?

Oh, Magic when it started had no formats. When you first started playing Magic, Magic was just Magic. And then we introduced Standard. I think if I was going to start the game over, I would have Standard just start,

like when the game first began, that is how it was played. Standard is a thing, you know, Standard is a thing, and Vintage is a thing. That,

probably when the game starts, Standard and Vintage would be the two things. Just that people, when they begin, they understand the nature of it when it first started.

The other thing I would do that Magic didn't do, but just is, I would make Limited a larger part. Like, Limited was not really built into design until around Mirage is the first step that seriously is thinking about in development.

Issues having to do with Limited. I would make sure we build that earlier in the game, and I would have Limited be from out of the gate something that was important, that was built into the design. So one of the things about my article is I made a long, extensive list, and then now as I'm talking about it,

I'm thinking of one or two things that, oh, I didn't remember in my article, so extra bonus content that you didn't get in my article. There's also some stuff that, there's a bunch of rules and things that we set up that I would do. We have a bunch of rules and things that we set up that I would do. We have a bunch of art rules in place.

So like flyers is the biggest one that, if you don't fly, you don't look like you fly. If you do fly, you look like you fly. Some early magic suffers from a lot of that. Oh, the other thing early magic did that, here's one that goes to my heart, is there was a lot of, the color pie took a little while to get understood.

And there's a lot of early magic that if you, there's a lot of... The color pie took a little while to get understood, and there's a lot of early magic that if you... There's a lot of powerful early magic cards that just do stuff the colors are not supposed to do and really warp the vintage game in some ways that I... If I had to start over, I would be a little crisper on what the color pie does. Or not even crisper.

Modern-day color pie does what needs to be done. I just would sort of try to apply the standards. If you notice, we've been refining the ColorPie over time. It's something that's sort of a living, breathing thing. I'm not saying that I would start the game and not have any flow, but it was very, very messy early on, and I would clean a little bit of that up. For example, Richard had this idea early on

that if you're a color and you're facing your enemy, you are allowed to use the powers of your enemy to fight them. And so red could counter blue spells, and green could kill black things, and all these things in which that's not what that color is supposed to do.

That's not, that's so out of color. But I don't know, Richard thought that was a cool idea. And I think it just muddied up things. In general, people don't tend to get, oh, this is just an exception. They just go, oh, this color can do that. And so I've been very careful about using, if they don't do it, I don't want to show them doing it.

I don't want to show them doing it weak. I just don't show it. How do you know they don't do it? Because don't want to show them doing it. I don't want to show them doing it a week. I just don't show it. How do you know they don't do it? Because you can't do it. That's how you demonstrate something. Let's see. Anything else? Oh, probably I would start with the mythic rarity.

I think that's something that is done good. The idea that you're something that's rarer than every pack, I think is something... I mean, we didn't do it, and then all these other trading card games came out, and they did, and we realized that they actually were correct. It's kind of nice to have something

that you don't know you're getting every pack, and so every once in a while you get it, and it's exciting when you get it. I think that Early Magic... Oh, the other thing early Magic did, I mean, this talks about rarity indicators and stuff, is early Magic imagined there to be the suspense that you have no idea what's in the game,

and you wouldn't know the cards, and so they didn't tell you rarities, and they tried to make it really hard for you to know what existed or how. And right on the cuff after Magic came out, the internet really started into its own, and hiding information just wasn't something that you could do, and so a lot of energy was done to hide things, which were easily, I mean, were not easily figured out,

but were figured out, and it just caused a lot of confusion early on. You know, people would make lists of rarity that were mostly right but occasionally wrong, and people would make trades based on rarity that wasn't quite right. So I would start with Mythic Rarity, and I would start with Much Clear. I'd publish lists.

I wouldn't do a lot of the stuff they did in early Magic, where they were kind of hiding the contents of what Magic was doing. The other thing I would do is, during the beginning of turn phase, right now there's Untap, upkeep, draw. I think probably we can get away with two steps instead of three. I don't know if I would... I might change names around. I think that there's...

I think we could do in such a way where... I mean, this is another technical rulesy thing, so I'm not 100% sure how to execute it, but I believe we don't need three steps there. I think I could cut us down to two. I would have a very serious thought, by the way, about whether Max Hanside should be there or not. I'm not sure I would take it out.

It's definitely one of those things I have to think about, but if I was going to start all over again, I'd have some real serious consideration about it. It's another thing I didn't mention in the article, but it's something that I know carries a lot of weight, and maybe I'd keep it. Oh, the one last thing. I just got to work.

The one last thing that I would also change is there's some stuff on the card backs. Take off Deckmaster, because that was an experiment that didn't quite pan out. Change the logo to yellow from blue, because it looks better in yellow and pops on shelves and stuff. There's a little pen mark in the back of the car. It probably takes the pen mark off. An accidental pen mark. But anyway, for those who are wondering, if I had magic to start all over again, those are a lot of the things I do and why I would do

them. Like I said, I wouldn't actually change anything, because I've watched enough time travel movies not to mess with the past. But in the thought experiment, there's a bunch of things that I would do a little differently if I had magic do all over again. So, but anyway,

I hope you guys enjoyed the little peek into the world that might be and some explanations that maybe I didn't get a chance to talk about in the article.

So anyway, I'm now in my parking space or a parking space. So we all know what that means. It means at the end of my drive to work. So instead of me

talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Talk to you guys next time.