Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #235 - Lessons Learned: Dark Ascension

Episode Date: June 12, 2015

Mark looks back as the lead of Dark Ascension and shares what he learned from it.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to do another lessons learned. Normally I space these out, but I'm talking all about Innistrad and Dark Ascension and very soon Avacyn Restored. And so I figured I would do both these lessons learned near each other. So last time I talked all about Innistrad. Innistrad, like I said, was one of I consider right now, as of all the release sets, my best set.

So Innistrad was me talking about a set that went really well. Dark Ascension, while it didn't go poorly, it had a lot more problems along the way. And so, this is me talking about a set that was a little more problematic. I'm happy with how it ended up, but it was a rough ride getting there. So the interesting question is, Innistrad, I had, you know, very little to start with.

I knew I was doing gothic horror and doing the horror genre, but like, I had a blank piece of paper. Dark Ascension, I knew what I was doing. I was following up something that I'd done with Innistrad. I already knew what I was up to, yet it was a lot harder. So let's explore what was going on and what did I learn from it. Okay, first thing you have to understand is, because this plays into it, which is very important. So many, many years ago, at this point, I don't know, eight years ago, I was told by my then boss, Randy Bueller, that I could hire an

intern. But hiring a design intern is tough. You know, the development team, they go and look at Pro Tour people, and they have a whole place to look to find interns. And I was like, I don't know where to find a design intern. And so I said to Randy, I go, can I find it any way I want? And Randy's like, well, what do you have in mind? And I pitched the idea of the Great Designer Search.

Randy said, okay, I did it. It went very well. Alexis Jansen won. From that, both Alexis Jansen and Ken Nagel and Graham Hopkins and Mark Globus all ended up getting hired by Wizards. All of which are still at Wizards, by the way. by Wizards, all of which are still at Wizards, by the way. And then four years later, which happens to coincide with this story, Dark Ascension, we did a second-grade designer search.

And for those asking, when will the third-grade designer search? It is something that I do think will happen. I think just a matter of time. I can't tell you when it'll happen, but I do believe that it's something that, I believe it's a when and not an if. I do believe it will happen. Okay. But anyway, the reason this is important is during the time that I was doing Dark Ascension, we were doing the Great Designer Search 2.

And here's the problem with the Great Designer Search is we never ever booked time for it. It's always this thing that we're going to do and it's like, oh, you know, we'll just do it when we are able to do it. We never sort of like allocate time and schedules for it. I don't know why. If we do GS3, hopefully we will. But for some reason, we keep doing it without sort of thinking about how much work it'll be.

And then what happens is it's a lot of work and it eats up all the time. So while I was doing the Dark Ascension, Great Designer Search 2 was going on. And it was just eating up all my time. I had no spare time. Because my spare time was, I don't know. Anyway, so I was really, really busy. Way more than normal. I mean, I'm normally busy.

Obviously, I do a podcast in my car because I have no time to do it elsewhere. But I was even more busy than that. And so I think I was very preoccupied. So the thing that happened when I started Dark Ascension was, I was very focused on the plight of the humans. I was very story focused. So in my mind, the story

was, we open up an Innistrad, the humans are in a bad place. Their world is slowly being overrun by monsters, and their bastion of hope, which was Avacyn, has disappeared, and things are just getting worse. And the idea of Dark Ascension was things get even more worse.

You know, we often talk about, get your character in a tree, throw rocks at them, get them out of the tree. Well, this was the throw rocks at them part. So this was, things were supposed to be really bad. And I was really focused on the plight of the humans and how bad things were. And so I made Faithful Hour. I made a lot of mechanics that sort of, you know, we made Macias, the Unhollowed. We did all these things that showed up how bad the humans were.

And I got a, so Tom Lapilla, this was his first lead development. And Tom was the one that really opened my eyes and said, you know, you're really stressing on how bad the humans have it, but part of making a set exciting is playing the positives, not the negatives. Like, come by Dark Ascension. Man, the humans are in trouble. You know, that's not really the way you sell something. He's like,

we need to not just play, you know, play up how bad the humans have it. Let's play up how awesome the monsters have it. You know, Magic's a game all about cool creatures, and the monsters are cool, and one of the things in Innistrad, the reason people liked Innistrad is people had fun playing the zombies

and the vampires and the werewolves and the spirits. You know, that was fun. Playing the monsters was fun. Instead of playing the set as being, oh, no, look at how bad one tribe is doing. How about, hey, look how good all the other tribes are doing. You know, we should really make this a monster, exciting for monsters. Yeah, play out the positive. So that's the first lesson I had is part of making a set or a game is making sure that you are stressing what's to love about it. And I think I was getting very caught up in the story, I think.

You know, the story is all about the plight of the humans. But really, what makes the set exciting is not that the humans are in horrible shape. What makes the set exciting is monsters! Monsters rule! And that I needed to play up the positive. And that's a general good design rule, which is accentuate the positive. What is your game doing that will be fun for your players? Where is the fun? And it's

important. I think I was so caught up in the story moment that I was forgetting where the fun is. And we did a lot of cool things that involved humans in plight. Like, there's an entire new strategy, a black-white strategy, where there were monsters, mostly vampires, I think,

eating humans, sacrificing humans. And it was a fun deck, and it was cool, and you needed humans more for fodder than you needed them, you know, you weren't building up humans, you were kind of using them as a resource. And that was a pretty fun deck. In fact, that deck made it into standard. It was a fun deck. But

I wasn't, you know, there's ways to play the positive in a way that sort of plays things up. And I really, Tom really got me out of this focus in which I was so preoccupied that I was just kind of following along with the pattern and not saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, I have to sell the set. I have, you know, I want people excited by the set. You know, what am I doing that makes it fun to play? Where's the fun? And that's a big lesson.

In fact, in my 10 Things Every Game Needs, one of my things is fun. It's one of the 10 things every game needs. And it's very important when you are making your thing that you're thinking about how is this fun? Where is the fun in my design? So the first lesson I learned from Dark Ascension was I got distracted from the fun. I was focusing on the flavor at the sake of the fun. And like I said, I found ways, once I focused on it, to be flavorful and fun, but I wasn't

being particularly fun, and I needed to be. Another important lesson of Dark Ascension was one of the things that I had done in Innistrad was I knew that I had a tribal component because obviously you could play the monsters but I was trying to be careful that I didn't want one of the things that we had happened during so Onslaught was the very first tribal focus set

and Onslaught's tribal was actually not nearly as high I think people think of it as being really high, but you go back and look. It's not nearly as high as people remember it being. So when we did Lorwyn, which was the next tribal block, we amped it up. We amped it up. And what we ended up doing was

it was too amped up. It was too what we call on rails, which meant that okay, pick a tribe, and once you picked your tribe, that's what you were doing. You didn't have the luxury of bouncing around. You had to stay very focused. And then it's less fun. It's less fun when you make a decision early on in your draft

and then that dictates all your later draft without a lot of flexibility. You want people to make decisions and point them in directions, but then have some flexibility of what to do. And Lorwyn was what we call two on rails. So when I was making Innistrad, my goal was I wanted tribal to be a thing. I wanted players to build casual decks to have fun with them. and Lorwyn was what we call two on rails. So when I was making Innistrad, my goal was, I wanted tribal to be a thing.

I wanted players to build casual decks to have fun with them. I wanted players to even be able to draft and occasionally be able to draft it, but I didn't want to force you to do it. So one of the things that I tried to do in Innistrad was make it a component. There was a little tiny bit of common, but most of us had an uncommon. And the idea was, okay,

if you get one of these uncommons early, you can maybe go into this. So the idea in Dark Ascension was, I'd up it a little bit, because it had been a little bit low in industry. I said, you know what, when Dark Ascension comes from three months, Dark Ascension's in there,

we'll ramp it up a little bit. Not so much like Lorwyn. So we decided to make a cycle of uncommon lords. I think three of them ended up being captains. The idea was the monsters would get one and not the humans. Humans would get something in absent restored when it was a humans set. So I made an incomplete cycle. There was a bunch of incomplete cycles to show the humans in trouble.

And so I made one for each of the monster tribes. The werewolf one ended up being a wolf because it couldn't be a werewolf. And so that wasn't a captain. The other three were captains. But they all had the same, they were all, I think, one CD. They were all one of each color and I think one other.

They were two twos. They gave their whole team plus one, plus one. And they granted an ability that they themselves had. Haze, First Strike, something like that. And then I think they also, well, some of them granted abilities and I think the zombies, like whenever you died, it drained the opponent for one. Each of them

granted plus one plus one in some ability. Some were static abilities, some were trigger abilities, some were keyboard abilities. But anyway, it made your team better in a way that helped your team. And I like the idea that they get a little more focused, a little more pointed. The problem, though, was they were too focused.

They were too good. And if you opened one of them in your first pack, you kind of had a picket, and then you were kind of on rails. And so that was a mistake of Innistrad. I was trying so hard not to repeat some Lorne mistakes. And it was just a cycle of cards. It was four cards.

And the answer is those uncommoncommon should have been rare, looking back. I liked them existing. I wanted them to exist for Casual Constructed. But by putting them in Uncommon, I caused a little bit of a problem in Draft. And Innistrad Draft is really, really fun. People love it.

It's one of the most popular drafts we ever did. And I think Dark Ascension was fun in general, but one of the problems was opening a Captain up in your first pack oh no you didn't did we drop BAA yet when did that start that's interesting

was Dark Ascension the first set to drop BAA I don't remember but anyway that's another thing that the captains probably wanted to be rare the other thing let's see. Fateful Hour. Let's talk about Fateful Hour. Fateful Hour is a good example of what we call a top-down mechanic.

I wanted to show the humans in peril, so I tried to make a mechanic that played off the humans in peril. And so for those that don't remember, Fateful Hour is you have an effect, but if you're below five life, the effect is amped up. And we try to do Faithful Hour as effects that would help you keep from

losing the game so if you're in desperate straits you get extra bonus and that extra bonus hopefully will help you from losing the interesting thing

about this mechanic was it was flavorful it was actually very flavorful it didn't go over very well and the reason is I think

was it's kind of a mechanic that says, like, you have to be losing for it to do something. And most players, so I think on the Internet they refer to it as magic Christmas land. So one of the things we've learned early on is players, when they look at mechanics, are very optimistic. Players assume that the best stuff is going to happen. They assume that whatever they need, that, you know, that when they look at a card, they go, what's the greatest possible thing that can happen? And they tend to judge cards based on the best case scenario. So let's judge. The problem with

this mechanic is, this mechanic is all about the worst case scenario. If you believe, for example, that I'm never going to get before five life, the game's always been going well for me. I'm never losing the game. Well, when you look at this mechanic, it's like this mechanic sucks. I'm not losing the game because when you look at it from an optimistic eye, which is how players look at mechanics, the mechanic just reads sucky because you're like

I'm never going to be in that situation and without the face flower, the cards aren't particularly strong. They're only strong if you're at that situation. And, you know, Manaburn was gone. Although, once again, we couldn't have made the mechanic if Manaburn existed.

People often ask me, by the way, about Manaburn. Was there a design space created when Manaburn went away? And the answer is, things like Faithful Hour is some of that space. Because if you can control your life, you can't use life as a metric.

If you could just make yourself get down below five just by Man and Burning yourself, then the mechanic becomes a lot more powerful and that's something we have to cost for. And then if you naturally

are doing it, it's weak. You have to be sort of manipulating, which is not the point of stuff like Faithful Hour. Anyway, the lesson of Faithful Hour was the lesson of Magical Christmas Land,

of understanding how players look at mechanics, that they are optimistic. It's the same reason why if you have a mechanic that requires you having something, the players go, okay, yeah, I assume I'll have that, and then players will look at conditional things usually in a pretty optimistic way. You know, they, oh, well, for every this,

well, I assume I'll have a lot in play, you know. People love Dfinity for artifacts, because the idea is it's free. It's free. Of course I'll have a lot of artifacts. It's free. Now, ironically, that was kind of true. But, okay, barring broken mechanics, it is interesting how Faithful Hour made me really

understand that you need to be careful when you make mechanics, that how players perceive mechanics has a big impact on the perception. And that's one of the other big things, and it's another big lesson, is try and have a good understanding of, you make things, and then understand how the audience is going to see things. So what we've learned is,

there's a couple different ways that the audience will perceive a mechanic. Number one is the mechanic is perceived weak and in fact turns out to be weak. The mechanic is weak, turns out to be strong. The mechanic is strong, turns out to be weak. The mechanic is strong, turns out to be strong. Okay. Mechanic is strong, turns out to be strong.

Everybody's happy. Looks good. It is good, yay. The mechanic is strong, turns out to be weak, you can have a little of that. It'll create good first impressions, but you want to be careful not to have too much of that, because in the long term, people's first impressions are judged on apparent strength, but in the long term. So you don't want to make too many appears strong, are weak. Then you have are weak, appear weak, are strong. You get some of those. Part of the fun of playing

magic is taking things that you might not realize are good at first blush and finding out they're better than you think. So appear weak, eventually strong, you get some of that, but you have to be careful how much. If you have too much of that, then you're set just appears weak and people are less excited by it. Okay, appears weak is weak. You don't want a lot of that. You sometimes can avoid it. Sometimes there's things that you think will be better than they are. But as a general rule of thumb, you want things that long-term have play value to them.

And so if they look weak and are weak, you don't want too much of that. term have play value to them. And so if they look weak and are weak, you don't want too much of that. But anyway, one of the things to learn about is Faithful Hour is a mechanic that looked weak and ended up being weaker than we meant. I think we meant it to be a little bit stronger

than it was. So it ended up being in a bad place where it was weak on appearance, and then it ended up being a little weaker than we meant. So it really wasn't a mechanic that ended up being able to do much. It wasn't a mechanic that seemed weak, and then with play you go, oh, this is much better than I think it is. It really didn't ever get a chance to reclaim itself.

And so Faithful Hours definitely went down as a mechanic that was flavorful, but not loved. Now on the flip side, let's take a look at Undying. So Undying was Persist, but with plus one, plus one counters. So Persist was a positive received mechanic. It was a strong mechanic. So undying did this interesting thing where people said, oh, it's persist, but better. Now it turns out that we have to account for things. If something is stronger, we have to balance it in the costing. So, but once again, people, people are not as good at judging costing. The players, I mean, the top end players are good at it and it'll trickle down.

Meaning if something's strong or weak, eventually a player who's very good at identifying the strength of something will eventually inform people that are not as good at it. But most magic players are in a vacuum without aid of other people, especially with a new mechanic we've never seen before, it's hard to say oh, is this good or bad? I've been doing this job for 20 years and I will sit and play this sometimes and ask the developers and go, I'm not

sure. Is this good? Because I don't know. And I've been working with the set. I've been playing with the set non-stop and sometimes there's cards that I'm not sure whether they're good or not. So it's hard. It's super hard. it's very hard um and so Undyne did this neat thing where it seemed like just because people don't always associate the cost it just looked like Persist was good and this is even better oh my god this must be a crazy mechanic. No, Undying turned out to be pretty good. It did seem constructed.

It was a pretty good mechanic. So it's interesting that there are two mechanics in the set that went really opposite directions. There was a mechanic that appeared weak that was weak and a mechanic that appeared strong that was strong. Now, the mechanic that appeared strong probably wasn't as strong as it appeared. And the mechanic that appeared weak

probably wasn't as weak as it appeared. But perceptually, the audience really went very different directions. They really loved Undying, and they really didn't like Faithful Hour. Now, interesting, once again, remember the point from earlier on, that I wanted to make sure that I celebrated monsters, and

also I was playing up the plight of humans. Well, it turns out, the thing that celebrated monsters and just an awesome mechanic that made monsters better, people really loved. The mechanics like, oh, well, this only works when humans are in trouble, really failed. And so it's an interesting sort of insight into how you have to be careful

when you're sort of making mechanics that be presented. The next big lesson is following up something that you love. I was in an interesting spot. Dark Ascension was very interesting in that other than Shadowmoor and Eventide, and as I explained last time, I didn't know I was doing Eventide when I was doing Shadowmoor.

So I didn't set myself up quite as much. But during Dark Ascension and Innistrad, I knew I was doing Dark Ascension. I knew I was handing off to myself. So I definitely took things and pushed them back. A lot of times what happens when you're making a set is when you push something off, you don't know for sure that it's going to be in the next set. You give it to the team,

you suggest it's good. I happen to be on most design teams, so I'm at least around to sort of speak up for something. But I don't know for sure that it's going to be there. With Innistrad, because I knew I was doing it, I had a lot more confidence that if I pushed something off, that didn't mean it was going to disappear it just meant I was going to do it the next set

Black Cat is a good example of a card that I really liked and if I had believed that if I had done Innistrad and not done Dark Ascension I would have had a pretty I would have talked very closely with the Dark Ascension lead to say look this is a really good card we push it off for numbers but please please please

get this in your set as is I was lead so I made sure to get it in my set because it's a really good card. We push it off for numbers, but please, please, please get this in your set. As is, I was lead, so I made sure to get it in my set, because it's a really good card. And when I say a good card, I'm not talking power level, although power level's okay. I mean, it's just very flavorful. You know, we were doing Gothic Horror, Black Cat, Unlucky. There's a lot of neat things about it, and I really liked how the card was designed. But anyway, the interesting lesson I had was that knowing that I was going to do the set, I left myself a bunch of stuff. But what I didn't do was I kind of said, hey,

I felt like the Innistrad lead designer wasn't really nice to the Dark Ascension lead designer. Because what the Innistrad lead designer said is, I got cards I really care about. Hey, Dark Ascension guy, I'm going to give you cards, and you really got to put these in. But I wasn't thinking about what Dark Ascension was doing. I just kind of passed things off knowing that I cared. So the Dark Ascension lead kind of got a bunch of stuff it had to include, because the Innistrad lead really cared, and the Dark Ascension lead said, okay, I know the Innistrad lead cares. But I had a bunch of stuff that I had to work around, and so it caused me a little bit of trouble. I wish when I had done Dark Ascension, not only did I think about what Inner Shroud was giving Dark Ascension, but I had spent a little bit of time mapping

it out. Once again, I had mapped out the humans. I did map out the plate of the humans, but that didn't end up being quite what Dark Ascension wanted to be. And so I had done some work, but I hadn't focused enough in sort of how to sell the set. And so what happened was, the logical fact when I wasn't focusing on it was, you get to a point where you're like, oh, I really need, I haven't been paying attention to this. The structure isn't what it needs to be. And so I had to really go back and redo some of the structure. Now one of the things I did like about Dark Ascension was I did a few things that I meant to do during Innistrad

that I had failed to do. So one of the other things about following myself up was I sort of said, you know what, here's some things I didn't do in Innistrad that I really want to do. One of the biggest things was I hadn't given a great identity to spirits. As I explained before, the ghosts really came in as an afterthought. Originally, the plan was three monster tribes. And when I mapped it all out and realized that I was in red, black, black, blue, red, green,

I'm like, oh, I have three allied pairs, and I know that's going to be humans. I'm like, oh, I have three allied pairs, and I know that's going to be humans. I'm like, oh, I'm so close, you know. And I realized, for those who remember the story, is I realized I needed to have one more monster tribe. And so I went to the cereals. So I went to, I was trying to think of what are the most go-to monster tribes. And when I was thinking about it originally, I thought about, there's a team show called the Monster Squad,

and it was Count Dracula and Frankenstein and the Wolfman, and like, okay, you know, zombies and vampires and werewolves, those are the, you know, the Hollywood trio, Hollywood, Halloween trio. But when I realized I needed a fourth,

I started thinking of, where else do you see Halloween tropes? And I thought of the cereals. There's Conchocula, there's Frankenberry, and there's Booberry. There also was Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy, by the way, for those that don't... But Yummy Mummy Mummies is another kind of zombie,

and Fruit Brute was a werewolf. Those are the cereals I didn't quite make. But Booberry's a ghost! I'm like, okay. I guess when you think Halloween, you think of vampires and zombies and werewolves, but you also do think of ghosts. Ghosts are pretty iconic. So that's where I got down the path of doing ghosts. And once I thought about doing ghosts, I'm like, oh, ghosts want to fly. White, blue are the flying colors. It clicked in very nicely in white, blue, and then humans ended up being the white, green. I ended up doing

green for humans. But ghosts had been not the primary, and so I didn't pay as much attention to the ghosts. And one of the things that walking out of Innistrad is I hadn't really given the spirits as much an identity,

and they kind of were a flying deck. They were a little, you know, blue skies kind of deck where, like, you attack with flyers. And most of the ghosts

flew, so that worked, but I really hadn't played up the tropes of the ghosts. And so one of the things I liked that I did in Dark Ascension was that I managed to do that. And so, I mean, the interesting thing for me is, like I said, I hadn't done a lot of small sets. Over the years, I'd done a bunch of third sets. I'd done Future Sight. I'd done Fifth Dawn. I had done, obviously, even tides, but I really hadn't done a second set.

And I learned a lot of the lessons of this is understanding what a second set needs. Now, the funny thing is the two-block paradigm has changed things up. Because one of the things about the second set, back when there was a third set, was the role of the second set was to be as much like the first set as possible without breaking too much new ground to save the new ground for the third set. And the funny thing, by the way, I've learned having now working in the two-block paradigm

is I talk about how the two-block paradigm took away the third set. What I've really learned is it didn't take away the third set. It took away the second set. Because now what we're trying to do in the two-block paradigm is we have a little bit of room to play around. It used to be when you did the second set, you had to hug the first set. You had to be as close as you could be.

Because the idea was we needed to leave room for the third set. Because people were going to grow tired by the end of the year. We really needed to change things up. So the role of the second set was to kind of, at some level, distance yourself from the third set. So what you would do is you would try to make it more like the first set. And the lesson of Dark Ascension was trying to understand how best to do that. And it's funny, like, I think having now done it,

I have a much better idea of how to make a second set, and then we change the world in which we're never making second sets again. So I've learned some skills that I don't know if I'll need to recreate. But the interesting thing is, how do you play up the themes? And one of the things that we did, and Tom helped with this a lot,

was saying, what were the draft strategies played up in the first set? How do we reinforce those? Because the goal wasn't necessarily to reinvent all the draft strategies. It was to make sure that you could connect in some of the stuff you did. It was to make sure that you could connect

in some of the stuff you did. And so we made sure that some of the themes that were there, we made cards of similar themes. Now, we also made some different stuff. One of the fun things about doing a small set is you can shake things up a little bit and you can add some elements in that would make people rethink of how things.

The big thing about shaking up draft, though, is you have to make sure the theme you're playing with was available and there in the first set. Fifth Dawn ran into this trouble where, like, hey, draft a lot of colors and play decks with a lot of colors, but there wasn't support to do that. So we gave you a strategy that wasn't supported.

And so one of the things we've gotten better at is if we want to have new strategies, there have to be new strategies that play up supported things, things that were in the first set that might not be there. Now, Khans of Tarkir was very interesting because Khans of Tarkir, we did exactly this, which is we made a set, Fate Reforged in the middle, where we knew that different facets of it

could be interesting for different drafts. So if you've drafted Khans with Fate and then drafted Dragons with Fate, the Fate cards aren't quite the same. I mean, they're literally the same, but they aren't the same in relationship that the cards that mean something have a little different meaning between the two sets which is kind of part of the fun of doing that draft environment but anyway in dark ascension like i said i i think i got a better idea like oh here's the other big lesson i learned is no matter how long you do your job, there are things you've never done.

Like, you would think, I mean, Dark Ascension was, Gatecrash was my 16th design, so I believe it was my 15th design, 15th lead. So you would think my 15th lead, and we're talking, you know, I don't know, 15, 16 years in, okay, I'd done everything. I'd led 15 sets, but yet I hadn't done a second small set in the winter. And so one of the things that was very humbling is, and something that's important to realize is, I don't know everything. It doesn't matter how much you do the job. It doesn't matter how many times you do something,

that you will always come across things you haven't done yet. No matter how much you think you've done it all, you haven't done it all. And that magic is very complex, and there's lots of moving pieces to it. And you have to realize that no matter how experienced you are, you will find areas where you are inexperienced.

And that if your attitude is one of I know it all, you will run yourself into trouble. And you have to recognize that you have areas of inexperience and you have to learn from that. And there are people who have less experience overall but might have more experience in something. And there are people who have, there are people who have less experience overall but might have more experience in something.

Like, I had people on my team who had led multiple, Ken, for example, had led multiple small winner sets where I had actually never led one before. So I actually went to him and went to other people and asked questions and tried to understand, okay, I hadn't done this exactly before.

And I mean, obviously I'd been on a lot of second sets, I'd watched a lot of sets. I was head designer overlooking second sets. It's not like I was a complete unknown to me, but there's a lot of nitty-gritty that I hadn't faced before that when I was actually facing it, oh, I have to think about this. I've never thought about this before.

But it was very interesting, and humbling in a good way. I mean, one of the things in general is I like to be humbled by sets. I do. I like for such to say to me, you think, you know,

so much. No, you don't. And go, wow, here's a problem I've never faced before. Here's a problem that I have faced before, but the,

the parameters are so different that I got to handle it differently. You know, one of the things I love about my job, like I said, 20 years in is I get caught for a loop a lot, which is a good thing. Like, if everything I did was just like, oh, ho-hum, I know this, I'm just, you know, feeling the blanks that I've done before, I would grow bored of my job. But my job constantly tests me, constantly, constantly tests me, which is, which is amazing. 20 years in to

have a job that keeps me on my toes, 20 years in, like, you know, there's a lot of jobs where 20 years in, you're doing it by rote memory. You're not even thinking, you're not consciously thinking about what you're doing. You're so used to doing it that you kind of do it on autopilot. And my job is not an autopilot job. I'm like, oh, I've never done this before.

You know, I'm working on sets right now where I'm like, oh, I've never done this before, and I've got to figure out how to make it work. And I love that about my job. And one of the things that Dark Ascension taught me is even when you think you're doing something, like I led Innistrad. I was doing the follow-ups that I just led.

Even then, I had a lot to learn. And I made mistakes. That's the interesting thing about it is I made way more mistakes in Dark Ascension than I did in Innistrad. Now part of it was I was super busy, but part of it was I was less experienced. I walked in and going, hey, how hard would this be? This is a small set. I just did the big set. I just did Innistrad. How hard could Dark Ascension be? And it was humbling. It was a very humbling experience because I had a lot more trouble with Dark Ascension. Part of it was I was doing some stuff I hadn't done before. Part of it was I didn't quite set up what I was doing.

Dark Ascension. Part of it was I was doing some stuff I hadn't done before. Part of it was I didn't quite set up what I was doing. Part of it was the mindset I came into was wrong. And so, like I said, it was a very... I learned a lot in Dark Ascension. I probably, in some ways, learned more in Dark Ascension than I learned in Innistrad,

in the sense that I made a lot more mistakes, and as I often talk about, you learn a lot from your mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes. I mean, Tom Lovilli, who was his first lead development, had to take me aside and go, I think you're doing it wrong. And he was right. I was doing it wrong, and I had to fix it. And I did, but the fact that I had gone down a path

and my lead developer had to bop in and say, I think you're doing it wrong. I mean, he didn't even tell me I was doing it wrong because I had been doing it so long. He's like, I think you're doing this wrong. And I said to him, Tom, you're right. I mean, I had to think about it and I came back. Tom, you were right. And I fixed the problem.

But once again, for example, I was very experienced. Tom was very inexperienced. I could have easily just said, Tom, you have no idea what you're talking about. You know, I've been doing this forever. You have no idea what you're talking about. This is my 15th lead.

You know, but instead I said, okay, he is saying something. Let me listen to what he're talking about. This is my 15th lead. But instead, I said, okay, he is saying something. Let me listen to what he's saying. Is what he's saying true? And it was true. And I'm like, okay, you need to listen to everybody. This is true of the people you work with.

This is true of your consumers. No matter what, if I get a piece of information from somebody, I listen to what they're saying. That doesn't mean everybody's correct. It doesn't mean every piece of information is always correct, but I don't go into it assuming they're incorrect. I go, what do they have to say? Let me seriously think about this, and then I act accordingly. I make sure to think about what someone's saying and not write things off. And had I wrote those off, Tom came to me. I could easily, it was Tom's first lead development. It was my 15th lead design. I was head designer. I could have easily, it was Tom's first lead development it was my 15th lead design I was head designer, I could have easily just said

Tom, Tom, Tom leave me be, I know what I'm doing and I would have been in trouble because I had a flawed set and Tom recognized it and I had to listen to him so anyway that was another big lesson of Dark Ascension was it's important to listen to everybody

it's important to look at what you're doing it's important to understand what you're doing you've got to find the fun. You got to accentuate the positive. You know, the dark ascension was definitely, was definitely a set where I stumbled a lot more. Um, and like I said, there's reasons. Yeah, my focus was pulled. Um, but once again, maybe that's another lesson, which is, hey, leading a set takes time and energy. There's no shortcuts. There's no easy version. A small set is not an easy thing.

That's another big thing, which is, I think I've done so many large sets, and when I got on a small set, I'm like, you know, I'm doing large sets. This is a small set. Small sets have their own challenges. Having less cards is not making any less of a challenge. And the other thing, by the way, is a small set has a lot less time. We're in the act of trying to change that. I'm trying to get small sets more time because I think small sets

have a lot more going on than people realize and that in some ways, small sets are harder in that we give you less time to do the small set. And that's something I'm trying to fix. But, you know,

I had to do a lot in four months versus, you know, doing a large set in 12 months, which was just a lot more time. Let's see what else. I'm almost to work here. Now, that said, I don't want to walk away

at Dark Ascension saying, oh, I mean, I was pretty negative today. There's a lot of things Dark Ascension did right. There's a lot of positive things. Innistrad was fun. Dark Ascension followed up on that.

It did a lot of fun things. It made more of it. I feel like the double-faced cards, we did a lot of neat innovations with the made more of it. I feel like the double-faced cards, we did a lot of neat innovations with the double-faced cards. I think we messed around with Morbid, did some neat things. We did some cool stuff with Flashback. There was a cycle of doubling Flashback cards where you did effects and they got

doubled if you Flashback. We managed to innovate some. That's something small sets are supposed to do. We felt like Innistrad and followed up on Innistrad and did Innistrad things, but we managed to put our own touch on them and add some things that were a little bit different. We managed to revamp the tribes a little bit. I gave them more identity to the

spirits. We gave some twists to things. I mean, I am part of Dark Ascension. I think I made mistakes along the way. And like I said, there's things I would do differently if I had to do it again. But I do like the set. It's not, maybe, it's funny sometimes when I really get into the negative things I did wrong, it comes across like there's no redeeming qualities.

There are a lot of redeeming qualities. The other thing that was fun about Dark Ascension was I actually got to work with some people. That's the first, I think, design I ever worked with, Matt Tabak. And it was fun working with him on a design team. I really, really enjoy, by the way, of taking people designer I ever worked with, Matt Tabak. And it was fun working with him on a design team. I really, really enjoy, by the way, of taking people that I work with in some other context and getting them on a design team and working with them on a design team. I had a blast working with Tabak on the design team. Whenever somebody, for the first time, I get to work with them in a design capacity

when it's not how I know them, it is a very neat experience. It is very interesting to see how someone functions as a designer. And Tayback did a really good job. It is one of the other lessons, and this is something that I think I walked away, is part of, it's important to make sure that you are having fun while you're doing your job. One of the things I try really hard to do in my design teams is I want my design teams to be fun. I want us to get the work done.

I want it to be good. I want quality there. But part of making it, part of the quality is you want the members of your team to enjoy the experience. You want them to feel included. You want the team to feel as if the whole team is doing something. This is a good podcast about how to lead the experience. You want them to feel included. You want the team to feel as if the whole team is doing something. This is a good podcast about how to lead a team. I'll probably do this podcast, so I won't get too into it now.

But I learned a lot of stuff about this from Innistrad and Dark Ascension on some team leading. It is much easier to lead a team when everything is going right, and it's a little harder to lead a team when things are, like we realized halfway through we had messed some stuff up. And I, by the way, took responsibility for it. That's another thing that's really important to me, lesson learned and lesson I follow,

which is when you mess up, own up that you mess up. I did not blame my team for this. I did not blame Tom. I said Tom is correct. I made a mistake. I, the guy in charge, made a mistake, and I fixed it. But part of fixing it was owning up to the mistake that I made a mistake. I, the guy in charge, made a mistake. And I fixed it. But part of fixing it was owning up to the mistake that I made.

And I think that's another important thing to learn was that if you want to learn from your mistakes, you have to acknowledge you made the mistake. And you have to acknowledge that you were the one that made it. One of the things, there's an article that comes out maybe once a year talking about magic, how to get good at magic. And basically what the article says is, until you own up that the reason you're bad at magic is you make mistakes, you will never get better at magic.

And the way to get better at magic is acknowledging the fact that the things that go wrong mostly are under your control and you cause them to happen. If every game is mana screw and every game is you drew the wrong, you had a bad card draw or whatever, you're never getting better. And the same is true of anything, design included, that if you make mistakes in design and you don't own up to that, if you don't own up to your

mistakes, you will never improve. And Dark Ascension is a good example where I made a bunch of mistakes, I owned up to my mistakes, I recognized I had them, worked with them, and made a good set because I owned up to the mistakes I made. And even now, after the fact, I think it's mistakes I made that got printed,

that I learned from and tried to be better at the next design I made. I want to constantly be improving, and part of that is acknowledging that I make mistakes and that I can prove for my mistakes. But anyway, I'm now in my parking space. Ooh, we had a little extra traffic today.

So anyway, I'm in my parking space. We all know what that means. It means this is my end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So thanks, guys. I hope you enjoyed this peek at Dark Ascension. Talk to you next time.