Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #29 - Creatures

Episode Date: April 15, 2013

Mark Rosewater hits the road and talks about creatures in this episode.

Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway. So we all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, a while ago, I decided to start a meta-series about card types, and I started with Artifact. Then, numerous people informed me that, no, no, I didn't start with Artifact. I actually started with Planeswalker many weeks before that. Matt Cavato, I gave him a ride to work, and we talked about Planeswalkers and Planewalker design. So, oh, I've now realized I've done two of them. Time for the third. So for today, I thought I would talk about creatures. There's no real order, but for those who think there's some order, other than alphabetical if you ignore Planeswalker. No, there's not really any order to this. I just, I don't know, I'm just picking the one I want to talk about of the day.

So creatures, I think you said to me the following. You said, we're going to do the game over. Okay, there's going to be lands because we need the mana system. But other than that, there can only be one card type. One card type. Which card type do you choose? And hands down, I don't even have to think about it. Creatures is what I choose.

Why would I choose creatures? For a couple things. One is, I believe creatures are the core of the game. I know I get a lot of email from people who like, you know, a lot actually, maybe a little overstated, but I get email from people who are like, I love creatureless decks. I love the game of Magic. It doesn't have to play with creatures. And hey, I think that's cool as an occasional thing, but I believe that creatures are pretty core to what makes Magic magic.

Why do I believe that? A couple reasons. core to what makes magic magic. Why do I believe that? A couple reasons. One is that there's some permanence to creatures, and that they have an interesting give and take built into them. So pretty much, if you look at what you want in game design, a couple things. I mean, jumping in real quick. One is you want interactivity, meaning you want the two players to have some relationship to one another that causes them to have to deal with each other, because if there's too much isolation, then it's just a game of solitaire, a dual game of solitaire. And creatures are nice because creatures, by their nature, force interaction. I'm going to attack you

with a creature. Well, you need to do something about that. And you having a creature allows you to interact with my creatures. And if I have creatures in the game, my creatures are attacking you, and the metagame says, look, there's creatures attacking. Well, now there's impetus for you to have some creatures so that you have some give and take. Now, that said, I believe creatures have a lot of roles. I mean, one of the reasons, for example, that I could replace everything with creatures is I can pretty much mock most other abilities with creatures. You know, if you put ETB creatures, you know, enter the battlefield effects on creatures, you know, you're making things that feel a lot like sorceries.

If you put them on flash creatures, they're like instants. You know, you put global effects, you can make them feel like artifacts or enchantments. Okay, making them feel like planeswalkers is a little hard, but the game could survive without planeswalkers. I think they're fun, but it's the least essential, probably. Although, it serves an important role. So, creatures, A, get interaction. They make you interact with the opponent. B, creatures, A, get interaction. They make you interact with the opponent. B, I also talk about how games need inertia, right?

That you want the game to end. And creatures do a good job of that. They make a threat. That if I have creatures, if you don't do something about it... So one of the things in general about magic is you want to make sure that somebody always is winning. That's another important thing. And that you want to make sure that somebody always is winning. That's another important thing. And that,

you want to make sure that there's means to break your stalemates in your game. That your game gets in a situation where there's means by which you can make sure it ends. And that's, for example, why evasion is so important. That's why having little Tims or, you know, creatures that have to deal damage

or, you know, anything that sort of says, hey, if left unchecked, I will make sure the game ends. Those cards are important because otherwise you can get a game in a state where it doesn't end, and that's pretty bad. You want to make sure that your game is always moving toward a conclusion. In general, by the way, I've been trying to give little game design tips where I can.

One of the things that I think is something for game designers to always keep in mind is that the players will do what they're incentivized to do. That doesn't mean they'll do what is fun. Players, I mean, players do like having fun, and they will push toward fun, but if the game incentivizes them to do something that isn't fun, they will do that, and then they will hate the game for it. You know what I'm saying? That if the game says, in order

to win, you have to do this, they'll go, okay, that's what the game's saying, and they'll follow the lead of the game, but then what happens is they don't have fun, and they blame the game. You know? They don't blame themselves. They're like, oh, there was a pass for fun and a pass for not fun. I chose the not fun. I guess it's my fault. No, no, that's not how it works. The game has to give the right pass to the player. And part of that, I think, is why, in general,

we're very aggressive with our creatures, I mean, more so. So one of the things that comes up all the time, and this is a little bit developed me, but I'll jump in here, is people have this idea that, wow, creatures are just out of control, and when are spells going to be as powerful as creatures? And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. This is a perception issue. When the game started, the spells were bonkers.

Bonkers, okay? You could draw three cards for a mana. Bonkers. The creatures were not bonkers. In fact, if you go to Alpha, you look at all the creatures in Alpha, barring, you know, complexity issues, barring it just was too complicated,

there's nothing we can't reprint today from a card power, you know what I'm saying? But if you look at the powerhouses of early Alpha, you know, birds or hypnotic specter, there are things we can do, and they're all, you know, like I remember when we brought hypnotic specter back, people were worried. I'm like, you know what? It wasn't hypnotic specter that was the problem.

It was dark ritual, a spell. So anyway, the game began. Spells were bonkers. Creatures were not remotely bonkers. What's happened in the last 20 years is we've slowly ramped up the creatures, so the creatures matter now, whereas they used to not matter. years is we've slowly ramped up the creatures so the creatures matter now, whereas they used to not matter. Like, for example, when I was playing during the Legends era, for example, I played a little blue-green weenie deck. Why did I play that? Because nobody

was playing creatures. Like, it was a period of time in which you were an idiot to be playing creatures. You know, I'm a rebel, so I was. Or maybe an idiot, I don't know. But the idea was that it was an environment where it was just dumb to play creatures. There were so many good ways to kill creatures that it just was silly. And so what happened was, we said,

okay, look, creatures are fun. You know, the path, the path we're talking about. Creatures are the fun path. Creatures lead to you doing fun things. And so, we decided to make the game make you care more about creatures because we believe it is a more fun game when creatures matter.

Now, once again, I'm not trying to say creatures have to always matter. I'm not saying creature destruction never exists. I'm not saying that you can't make powerful spells because we do make powerful spells. Just because we make powerful creatures doesn't mean we no longer make powerful spells. You know, spells have come down in power since the beginning.

Because, as I said, they were bonkers. Now they're merely good. And creatures are good, you know. This idea that spells are just, you know, I mean, they're only bad comparatively to where spells used to be. You still play spells in your deck. They are still good, you know. still play spells in your deck. They are still good, you know. The last year, the Pro Tour, we've had

two different decks that didn't have a card with the creature type on it in the deck. It's not like people aren't playing decks that are just loaded with creatures. That's all they ever play. No, there's other decks that get played. But, creatures lead to fun gameplay. Creatures make interaction.

Creatures allow interesting decisions. The creatures stay on the board. And so they create... One of the things that's important when you're designing a game is you want to make sure that you have interesting

decisions and that there's a lot going on in addition to inertia and stuff. And creatures are nice because you put them and they create interesting board states and you have to make decisions about them. You know, for example,

so one of the things is, way back, we used to do a promotion. There's a thing in Seattle called Bumbershoot, which is, it's like a get-together with lots of bands

and kind of an indie cred thing, you know. And Magic used to go there. And at the time, we were selling a product called Portal, for those who don't remember this. And Portal was Magic Light. Portal was, we're just going to give you creatures and sorceries and land. Done.

No instance, no artifacts, no enchantments. Obviously, no planeswalkers. So the idea is we just boiled down to three basic card types. And so what happened was I did a lot of teaching. I was at Bumbershoot teaching people how to play. And I remember, interesting, so at one point there was a lull. So I was playing another magic player, someone else who was teaching. And all we had was these decks.

So once again, they were creatures with basic, basic abilities, okay? Nothing complex. I mean, pretty much mostly, mostly French vanilla, maybe one or two little tiny effects, but I mean, super simple. The sorceries, super simple. And not even a lot of sorceries, mostly creatures. So we were playing a game between each other, which was, I would say, 80% creatures,

20% spells. And the spells weren't back-breaking spells. They were common-uncommon kind of spells. And the creatures were all simple, mostly French vanilla or vanilla creatures. So we were playing a game with as stripped out as you could. And what I found interesting was, and we were both magic players, we had an interesting game. We had a very interesting game. I think people get caught up sometimes that they forget that the bare basics of creature combat is

actually very interesting and there's a lot of neat decisions to make. If I have some creatures and you have some creatures, I've got to figure out, A, if I attack, how would you block? And depending on how you block, am I happy with that? You know, is there a means in which you do something I'm not happy with? You know, or, I mean, we were playing with sorcerers and creatures, I couldn't even bluff. If I attacked, he knew I wasn't doing anything. You know, normal

magic has instants, and even there you're bluffing, so take bluffing out of it. And just the idea of what is he going to do, let me think through what his things are. Now, I might not know what other creatures he has in his hand they might supplement with, but the idea was it was a very enriching, cool game. And that creatures, like I said, just the act of playing with creatures is a good game unto itself.

Makes magic, I mean, it is fun. I'm not saying the other stuff later on top is not also good, but the core basics of creature play, of creature combat, is unto itself a very good game. Okay. Taking a little drink. Okay, so

creatures have this nice element to the game that they have some permanents, they have done correctly, they help make the game end. I mean, one of the big dangers, by the way, is stalemates, and that's why, if you notice, we tend to err a little,

having a little more power than toughness, although in other environments, that's not always true. We tend to make sure there's plenty of evasion, you know. And also, the other thing we do, so let me talk a little bit about virtual vanilla. So, New World Order came along,

and the idea of New World Order, for those that don't know, at some point I'll do a podcast on New World Order, the short version is, we need to make the game, the barrier to entry, lower, so that new players can learn to play, because the barrier kept getting higher as we added complication, was keeping people from being able to join the game and the game will die if there's not new people that can join it um okay so part of doing that was just making the board complexity simpler uh and so one of the big tools of that was being more careful with your creatures and so a side effect was we ended up doing more creatures,

well, we started doing what we call virtual vanilla, which is a term I came up with. And the idea is when I have a creature on the board, the simplest creature is a vanilla creature. Vanilla creature is defined as, has no rules text. A grizzly bear, a hill giant. Notice I'm naming old school magic cards. So the idea is, it's a 2-2, that's it.

It's a 3-3, that's it. It doesn't do anything else. So one of the things we learned is, some of the ways to get some interesting things in the game is to make what we call virtual vanilla. So virtual vanilla is, after the first turn it's in play, it is essentially virtual vanilla. So virtual vanilla is, after the first turn it's in play, it is essentially a vanilla. By the way, I got in trouble on this.

I defined virtual vanilla on the first test for the second grade designer search. And by our definition of virtual vanilla, a vanilla counts because a vanilla, it's true that after the first turn, a vanilla acts as a vanilla creature. But a lot of people were confused because virtual vanilla implies, well, it's virtually vanilla, it's true that after the first turn a vanilla acts as a vanilla creature, but a lot of people were confused because virtual vanilla implies, well, it's virtually

vanilla, not really vanilla, but anyway. I'm a stake in the question. So the idea of virtual vanilla is after the first turn, it is, for all intents and purposes, a vanilla. And so what that means is it's nice because it allows you to have a card that matters and does something,

but then after that, look, it's just a vanilla creature. And we know that matching with vanilla creatures, like I said, from my experience with Portal, it's good gameplay. And that, you know, you can have a few creatures that are a little more complicated, and that's why we have higher rarities, but that are common, you know, it's nice if there's not too much going on

in common. Now, we do also do what we call French Vanilla Common, which is creatures with a single ability. And those are things that are not too hard to track. You know, a flying creature, a first-ranked creature, and a lot of that stuff

is where we get evasion from to help things break through. But anyway, part of making virtual Vanillas was how do we make cards that, after the turn they come into play, are Vanilla creatures.

So one of the big ones is what we call enter the battlefield effects, ETB effects, meaning that I have a creature, it comes into play, it does something, and then after that, it's just a creature. And the reason the ETB creatures have been so awesome for New World Order is that the beginning player, the inexperienced player,

doesn't... I talk a lot about what I call lenticular design, meaning that cards in which the more experienced player sees more strategy in them. And Enter the Battlefield creatures do this really well. Here's why. So let's say I have a card that does something like

gets me mana or gains me life or does something, not destroying the opponent's creatures. Those are little, anything that destroys, players feel so obligated to use them, they hold them back, and those can cause problems, meaning we have to be careful with those. But just the thing that does something, you know, has some small effect. A lot of times, understanding when to use that for the experienced player, you know, like let's say, for example, I draw a creature that gains me life, and I'm low enough on life that my

opponent might be making decisions based upon how much life I have left. So he's doing math. Now, I have a creature in my hand that changes the math. Now, a beginning player just goes, can I play it? Plays it. Oh, look, I gained some amount of life. Yay. And they're happy. Now, an experienced player might say, oh, you know, is my being lower in life changing their strategy? Do I might want to hold this back a little bit and let them not know that I have more life? So they might, you know, because maybe they're going to make some sacrifices thinking they're closer to beating me. And then if I hold this back, they might make some bad decisions because they don't have full information.

And what's awesome there is that card, for the experienced player, there's actually some interesting decision that could be made, but for the inexperienced player, whatever, they play it, they don't think ahead. In general, by the way, one of the ways to tell inexperienced players from experienced players, I mean, there's multiple ways, but one of the interesting ways is how many turns ahead do they look? You know, I feel like a beginning player looks zero turns ahead. A beginning player just is like, what am I doing right now?

What can I do on this turn? What spells can I cast right now? An experienced player, like I believe something like, you know, John Fickle's my go-to. You know, one thing that makes John Fickle such an awesome player is he looks so far ahead. He'll do something you don't understand and then 12 turns later it pays off. You're like, oh, he was looking 12 turns ahead. And that's the sign of a really experienced player

is that they walk through the charts of figuring out what you need to do so they go, oh, I need to make the decision now because this is going to matter or could matter in 12 turns. because this is going to matter, or could matter, in 12 turns. The other thing in creatures in general is, so, like I said, the ETB effects,

and also there's death triggers, but those aren't as simple. Death triggers mean when it dies, something happens. The reason that it's nice is, when you front load a creature with an ETB effect, essentially you're putting a spell on it, meaning that some value of the creature is based on the spell so the remnant of the body is worth less, you know.

And so that's a neat way to make some smaller creatures sometimes. Or sometimes you can make a bigger creature with a bigger effect and just cost more. But like I said, that's another interesting way to imbue creatures with extra flavor. I mean, one of the tricky things about creatures is people understand the basics better than spells. Like, for example, if I make a spell, especially if I'm messing around some territory that we haven't done a lot, you don't know what

it costs. I mean, like, I, for example, one of the things that happens is when I make a card, I tend to go to development. I say, okay, guys, cost this card. Because I want the card to be, you know, in the ballpark. And I like sort of, I always predict what I think is going to happen and I ask the developers so I can get a cost. If I'm doing a creature, I'm just not that far off. There's too many creatures to compare against, you know. It is very, it's much, much easier to gauge the power level of creatures because of there's so many of them and because they have power and toughness and that means something that structure

is pretty well beat. Like, you give me any creature, I can compare it to some other creatures that are similar and I'm in the ballpark. Where spells you know, I sometimes watch development and I can be off by huge amounts of mana because, oh, I'm just underestimating how powerful that spell is. Whereas with the creature I can't underestimate it too much. Oh, it's a 4 or 5 base because, oh, I'm just underestimating how powerful that spell is. Whereas with the creature, I can't underestimate it too much. Oh, it's a

4 or 5 base creature? Well, for starters, I know it means blah, you know. So creatures, the like I said, they add a lot to the play of the game. They add a lot to having interconnected between the players, that there's a lot of

thought that goes into them. I think creatures have a lot of having interconnected between the players, that there's a lot of thought that goes into them. I think creatures have a lot of lenticular-ness to them, and that understanding, like, just for example, understanding when to attack, like when's the right time to attack, that requires a lot of experience if the board is more complicated. You know, fine, if there's two creatures in play, I take it back. Even two creatures in play, beginners will have problems with. But let's say there's, you know, three or four creatures on each side.

Or hell, you know, six creatures or seven creatures. The more experienced players has a much better idea of when to trade and what's valuable. And like, one of the things, so here's a classic story.

I've told this in my column, but I've never told it, never told it on the podcast. So every once in a while you have a moment where you do something, you make a big magic discovery. So, this was during Invasion, we were playtesting, and I used to work in the Future Future League.

I used to play in it. I don't have time anymore. But I didn't do a lot of deck building, because deck building is not my forte. I mean, I'm a good Johnny deck builder, but actual competitive deck's not my thing. So Randy Buehler built me a deck with a card called Kabu Titan. For those who don't know, Kabu Titan is 1G for a 2-2, and then you can, for 3-2G, make it a 5-5. But Randy, we'd run out of Kabu Titans, so Randy put in Grizzly Bears. Now, it was Randy's intent that the Grizzly Bears were Kabu Titans, but he didn't tell me that. So I played them as Grizzly Bears, and I went 4-0 that week. I swept. And then at the end of the week, Randy realized

my mistake and says, oh, Mark, Mark, Mark, those aren't Grizzly Bears, that's Kabu Titan. But next week, I go 2-2. And the lesson there, which is a very important lesson, is that I was underestimating the importance of the 2-2. That having a 2-2 on turn two can win a lot of games, you know, even if you're giving up your five, five on turn five, you know, and that, it, it, it really taught me the lesson of that different cards have value at different times, and that's especially true with creatures, you know, that part of creatures and understanding creatures is understanding when they're valuable and what they do, what they do for you, you know, and that part of designing creatures is making sure that they give you interesting decisions in different ways, you know.

And like I said, no matter what, no matter what, when the creature gets in play, that's always an interesting decision. Creature combat is an interesting decision, and there's a lot of neat things that go on there. And just knowing when to push or knowing when to, you know, try to sort of get advantage or knowing when to trade, all that is just something that requires knowledge, but it's kind of a nice core thing in the game. Now, one of the things we've learned,

so one of the things that we do, we do things called focus tests, where we get people, we get behind a two-way mirror, and we watch them play. And there's all sorts of reasons you do it. Sometimes to see if they understand how to play, do they get your instructions? But sometimes we teach them how to play and then step back and just watch them do what they do.

Meaning the goal isn't comprehension. It's more of, okay, now that we've explained the basics, you're a beginning player, what do you do? And one of the interesting things of watching creature combat with beginners is they just will refuse to attack. I mean, if you have no creatures in play and I have creatures in play and I can't attack you, they will attack.

But the second I could block and that creature could kill my creature, not all, but the majority of beginning players become much more hesitant to attack. And the funny thing is, as you get better, one of the things you realize is whenever two creatures trade,

it's usually to somebody's advantage. I mean, not 100% of the time, but most of the time, it is better for one player than the other player for the creatures to trade. And the thing you have to learn is, if you're the attacker, if it's better to trade for you, the attacker, you should attack. If it's better to trade

for the defender, then you shouldn't attack. But you have to understand when the trade is in your favor and when it is not. And that to me, by the way, as someone who's played this game for a long time, learning that, and I'm still learning that, wasn't it fascinating? I mean, like I,

for a long time, one of the things that I tend to do is, to help me as a growth as a player, is I figure out some part of the game that I know I'm not good at. You know, for example, one time I was some part of the game that I know I'm not good at. You know, for example, one time I was like, you know what, I suck at mulliganing. I gotta just be more aggressive with learning how to mulligan.

You know, and I spent more time and energy when I was mulliganing, asking good players and saying, do I want to mulligan this, or do I want, and, you know, I spent some time thinking about mulliganing, and even then, I still could be better, but, you know. So one of the things I spent some time with is trying to figure out attacking. After the whole incident with the Kabukite, I'm like be better, but, you know. So one of the things I spent some time with is trying to figure out attacking. After the whole incident with the Kabukite, I'm like, okay, why, you know, how am I, where do I want to be and what am I doing?

And that, what I learned was, like a lot of players early on, that I was just, I was being timid. I wasn't pressing where I could, you know. And a lot of times, by the way, if you keep losing games with your opponent at low life totals, sometimes the answer is you just weren't aggressive enough in attacking. Now, there's dumb attacks, too, and you have to learn about that. But the thing I love about creatures is this conversation I'm having right here. There's so much to learn. There's so many interesting decisions about when to attack and not to attack

that it has a lot of strategic elements to the game. Now, another important thing about creatures is they're just awesome. I mean, creatively, they're awesome. You know, that, for example, we always have packaging on, you know, things. And now, nowadays, we're more likely to put planeswalkers. But before planeswalkers exist, what did we put on packaging? Creatures. Why not artifacts? Why not spells? Why not, why always creatures? And the reality is, creatures are just one of the most compelling things creatively we got, you know. I mean, people love the zoo. I mean, it's, it's, creatures are just dynamic, and they, I mean, one of the things is that creatures lend themselves to action. They lend themselves to

being. I think that magic is a visual medium because art is so important to us. I think we can just make creatures look awesome. I think that it's a lot easier to make creatures look awesome than look... You can make beautiful landscapes, but at some point without something really dynamic to the environment, hey, a forest

is a forest. It's a pretty forest, but at some point, it's just a pretty forest. Whereas a creature you've never seen before or something in forest, but at some point it's just a pretty forest. Whereas a creature you've never seen before or something in action, I don't know, creatures really have this strong appeal.

And the other reason if I had to pick one creature, one card type, I'd pick creatures, is players love creatures. You know what I'm saying? It's no mistake that we've been pushing

on creatures. I think they do a wonderful thing for the game. I think they add a lot of value in strategic complexity, both helping the beginner learn, but also making the more experienced player

have something to bite into and to get better at. And on top of all that, they're just beloved. People love creatures. They are cool. They're creatively, you know,

it's just a very cool thing, you know, and like I said very cool thing, you know. And, like I said, they're very dynamic in the game because, you know, when you have a creature in play, like, look, the game is going to mostly end, you know, if one creature has a creature advantage, and that makes the other person have to do something. Like, another thing, by the way, is the idea of a clock.

It's a term in game terms, which means, well, how many turns before I die? I look at the board, whoever has the advantage, how much damage are they doing? Well, how many turns before that amount of damage will win the game?

So one of the things that creatures do is they provide a clock, which I think is very valuable. I think a game's much more dynamic when you're like, okay, okay,

in three turns I'm going to lose the game unless I change something. Because one of the things about game design is you want to push the game unless I change something. Because one of the things about game design is you want to push your game player toward action. That's another big gameplay thing.

You want to encourage your game players into action. Action makes games fun. Doing things makes games fun. Not doing things, not particularly fun. One of the reasons that we've been shying away from making Counterspells so good, or at least, I don't mind having Counterspells be there as a tool,

but the reason we're not making a deck full of Counterspells is that's a deck of inaction. Inaction is not particularly fun for the guy playing against it. I mean, maybe the guy playing is having a blast, but we like Magic to be about action, not inaction. Because we like games. Games should be about action, not inaction. Anyway, I've now parked.

I'm at Wizards. I'm just excited we're talking about creatures. But let me just wrap up. So, mostly what I want to say today is creatures are awesome. They do a lot for the game. They do a lot for, like I said, all these different elements of game design. They just make the game fun and exciting and dynamic. And, you know, there's a learning curve to understand how to use them.

But they also, you know, you can make... dynamic and there's a learning curve to understand how to use them. But they also, you know, you can make if the board is nothing but simple creatures, that is not overwhelming but definitely still has depth to it in gameplay. Anyway, creatures do so much awesome things. So that was my message today. My message in my 30 minute drive is creatures are awesome. So anyway, hopefully you got that message. Anyway, I gotta go. So it was fun talking about creatures and I'll be back at some point to talk about the

other card types. So it's time to go make the magic.