Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #3 - Planeswalkers

Episode Date: October 15, 2012

Maro carpools with Matt Cavotta as the two talk about how the planeswalker card type came to be.

Hello and welcome to Drive to Work. I'm pulling out of my driveway, which means it's time to start our podcast. Okay, so today, be aware that I'm kind of doing this whole thing by the seat of my pants. Today I'm trying two different things at once. One is, I'm going to talk about something that's not a set today, although it's a design element. And I have a guest. So it turns out that I live in the same neighborhood as Matt Cavata, who's a good friend of mine. And so I'm taking him to work today.

So I picked a topic that Matt was involved in so that he could join us for today's podcast. Now, I've never done this before. Technically, we're using my phone. So hopefully, you guys will be able to hear him, and this will go across well. So I'm driving to go get Matt. Let me give you a quick update on Matt so you guys know the context. So Matt Cavada has worked for Wizards two different times. The first time I hired him and he worked in the creative team in charge of names and flavor text. And then he left for a while and he came back and now he's in charge of overseeing the look and feel of Magic. He works in what we call CAPS.

And if you like, for example, the packaging for Magic 2013, he was very involved in that, the black and silver. So anyway, today we're going to talk about the design of Planeswalkers. Matt actually was very involved in this, and so I thought it'd be fun to have him involved. I've never tried this with back and forth with two people, so we are going to try this today. I'm going to be picking up momentarily. Matt lives in the, I live in what's called the Isco Highlands, so Matt lives very near to me, so he'll be here for the vast, vast majority of the podcast today.

And I am quite excited to see how this turns out. And I am quite excited to see how this turns out. So if you remember, for those that do not know, the Planeswalkers were originally going to be designed for Future Sight. So when Matt gets in the car, we'll pick up the story there. And they didn't actually get made to Lorwyn, so all that will get explained. But as you'll find out, Matt was actually the person who came up with the idea of making Planeswalker cards. So we are going to talk to him, and he is going to fill us in. Now, I've known Matt for quite a while.

So interestingly, Matt and I went to the same high school, Orange High School in Pepper Pike, Ohio. But he and I didn't know each other. I think I was a senior when he was in eighth grade at Orange High School. The eighth graders were in the high school. And I didn't know him when we both went to the same school. But since then, I obviously met him, and we've become good friends.

I knew him from the days when he was just an artist. And as you will see, we'll tell the story of how he got hired, because that actually is a pretty good story. Anyway, I see Matt. He is waiting for us. So let's let Matt in the car. Hey, Matt. Hello. Hey.

Okay. So I explained to you, Matt, that we were doing a podcast. So this is something new. I've never ever had a guest on my podcast before. I'm honored to be the first. So I assume you have to speak up just because this is what we're recording on. So anyway, here's where I was setting up before we got here. I was going to talk about hiring you and how you led us to creating Planeswalkers.

Well, that could be at least partially true. There were a number of characters in the play. There were, but let's start, for example, with you getting hired. So you originally were just an illustrator for Magic. Correct. How did that happen? It happened when I first played Magic cards and decided this was the coolest thing. And the fact that I was already an artist meant it was high time to put the chocolate and the peanut butter together

and make the greatest candy there ever was. It took a number of years to weasel my way in. number of years to weasel my way in. But once I got my foot in the door, it was good times had by all. So your first set, I believe, was McCabe and Masks? Yes, yes. So how'd you get your first piece of art? How'd that happen? I had been sending illustrations in to the former art director for a year or so, and was just getting to the point where he thought that I was ready.

And I called him to find out what he thought of my most recent batch of work, only to learn that he had just been fired. So I was despondent. But the art director that took over for him was given the heap of portfolios that were on the previous art director's desk, and mine was on top. And he thought he would exercise his new power and hire a new guy. And I was that first

new guy. It was awesome. Okay, so let's cut forward a little bit. So I, for a while, was in charge of the creative team when I didn't have enough on my plate. And so I had a position I had to fill. And so I did something a little different. So this is what I made people do for the job, was I said, okay, I want you to prove you're creative. You have an eight and a half piece of paper, one side only. Do whatever you want. Prove to me you're creative.

And you did a pretty awesome audition. Tell me what you did. I sort of, I don't want to say spoofed, but I took aware of it. But I twisted it around and turned it into a sort of audition for the job, where I faked up cards of my own to represent the experiences that I've had or the jobs that I wanted to do for Wizards. And I cooked it all up into a snappy little article with lots of pictures and plays on words

and other random little flavorful tidbits. You did it as a draft article, as if you were drafting. I'm glad you remember this. It's a little foggy in my mind. No, I was impressed. So what happened was Matt would talk about his first pick was his wife, I believe. Oh, no, his first pick might have been his being an artist, and the second pick was his wife, and he picked his kids.

I'm sure my first pick was my wife. Actually, I don't remember. But anyway, Matt, all the cards Matt had done and they represented elements of his life. And it was just really well done. I mean, I had known Matt at the time because I'd seen him at shows.

I think we'd both gone to the World at Sydney. We had spent some time talking. I mentioned before I got you guys in the car that we've gone to high school even though we didn't know each other in high school. Small world. And his wife actually taught at my high school, though obviously not way after I was there.

But she and I were talking a lot about the school, and so I got to know Matt, and then he submitted this awesome audition, and I think the next thing is we gave you a test, right? Because the person who was going to do this was in charge of names and flavor text. Right.

So we gave them a names and flavor text test, which you did very well on. It was okay. I would like to retake that test. I learned quite a bit in the time since then. Well, anyway, so he had the best, the creativity test, I thought he had the best one. Of the tests for the names and flavor text, you were near the top. I don't remember if you were at the top, but you were competitive at least. So we hired Matt.

So like I explained for you guys in the car, Matt worked here two different times. So the first time, Matt worked under me as the guy in charge of the flavor text on the creative team. Essentially the Doug Byer position of modern day. So let's talk about how, because you came to me with the idea of a Planeswalker card. You were the first person to utter the words Planeswalker card. So why don't you explain to me how that came about? This was somewhere in the middle of the time spiral block. And we knew that there was a big reset happening with what the core essence of a planeswalker was to be.

At that time, planeswalkers were not great storytelling vehicles because they were pretty much godlike status. They could do anything. They could think worlds into being. And that just generally doesn't lead to a compelling conflict. If I can think my way out of any situation, that's just, it's kind of boring. So knowing that these new kinds of planeswalkers were coming around, and that the creative team had been looking, just desperately looking for any sort of through line that we could create between one world and another, of through line that we could create between one world and another, and in essence build some heroes that could last. It seemed like putting A and B together was the right thing

to do, but a new card type had not been created since forever, and it seemed like, it's just impossible, we can't even do it, but because FutureSight was the next order of business where anything was supposedly possible, it seemed like the right time to take a stab. So let me add some context to this. So Matt, by the way, was on the design team for FutureSight. Was that your first design team? First and only. First and only design team.

Yeah. And so what happened was, this is my memory of it, so obviously, I remember Matt coming up, because they were going to revamp the Planeswalkers and sort of depower them, because from a storytelling standpoint... I would like to say not depower, but humanize, like give them something that we can relate to. Well, but I mean, we also were depowering them. Yeah, but that's...

Or is it like... That's glass half empty. So we were going to revamp them a little bit. I agree. Revamp. I like that word. And so,

the quote I remember from Matt, because Matt came up to me, we were working on FutureSight. FutureSight was kind of a crazy set. We were coming up with all sorts of weird things. And Matt said to me,

he goes, if we're ever going to make people care about planeswalkers, they have to be cards. Because we had this shtick for a long time where we'd refer to them on cards, and you'd see them pictured on cards. But Matt's big argument, and I think it was a very compelling one, was,

look, players won't care until they are cards. And I was very drawn by that, and Future Sight was doing all sorts of crazy things. So the idea was, we'd do it in Future Sight was doing all sorts of crazy things. So the idea was, we do it in Future Sight. If it turns out to be a failure, then we go, That's way in the future.

Crazy future you'll never see. And so I said, okay, why not? Let's try to do this. And so the original plan was, we were going to make three planeswalkers. I believe it was going to be a blue, a black, and a green planeswalker. Yes. And we were going to put them in the set. Oh, a quick little snippet for people who

like their history. They were in the set for a while, and then they got removed because, as you'll see in a second, we decided they needed more work. But the card that got removed when we put the green planeswalker into the set was...

I'm blanking on now. The Lurgoyf. Oh, Tarmogoyf. So Tarmogoyf got taken out of the set so we could put in the Green Planeswalker. And then when they came out, it went back in the set. And when I made the card, it was a star star. And when Mike Turian, who was the lead developer, put it back in, he assumed it was star star plus one because Lurgoyf was star star plus one. So he changed it. and when Mike Turian, who was the lead developer, put it back in,

he assumed it was star, star, plus one because Lurgoif was star, star, plus one. So he changed it. Not meaning to change it, just that's what he thought the card was because he did it from memory. Right. He also got the, I did it at 2G, he did it at 1G. So the Green Planeswalker in some way made Lurgoif the card he is. Yes, yes.

Anyway, okay, so you suggested let's make Planeswalkers. I said, okay, let's make Planeswalkers. Do you remember what happened next? Um. I'm testing Matt's memory here. Yeah, my memory is fuzzy in this area because a lot was going on for me at the time. Um, and the ultimate development of Planeswalkers actually happened outside of my view. Well, let me walk people through them.

You were involved in the first part. So the first thing we did is I let the FutureSight team see what we could do. And so the first thing we did, one of the most immediate things we did, which I had done, The first thing we did, one of the most immediate things we did, which I had done, was during Ravnica, Richard Garfield had invented, he called them structures. And the idea was they represented buildings because we were in a city world. And the idea of structures was they had kind of a toughness to them so you could attack them to destroy them. But they weren't creatures other than they had a toughness that could be destroyed. Right.

And so they, they were kind of like enchantments, they were to sit and play, and the only way to get rid of them was to attack them as creatures. Um, I loved the design, but Ravnica was so, like, filled to the gills with stuff. Yes, yes. Um, I mean, I took on Hybrid at the time, because I thought Ravnica had too much in it, and we ended up, development ended up putting it back in. Um, but, so anyway up putting it back in. But, so anyway, I liked the structure.

So I said to Tim, okay, I like this idea of, I mean, we, I think we knew the following. We knew the Planeswalkers, the flavor of Planeswalkers was, hey, Jace, come help me. We need, that you were getting the Planeswalker to you. And I think early on, we had the idea of loyalty in the sense that this wasn't like a creature that you just blinked into existence.

Right. You had to get them to voluntarily help you. Well, I remember early on, and this might have even been pre-Future Sight design team, when Brady and Brandon and I were sort of vetting the idea at its core, the concept we were trying to hit on was how do we make this card seem like another player? Like it's another player at the table, it's another one of us, sort of doing its own thing. So that led to actually our first design, a good segue there. So the original, we always kind of knew they were going to do

three things. More than one at least. Or more than one. I think three was our go-to. And so the original cards, the very first design, what happened was it would come into play, turn one it did number one, turn two it did number two, and turn three it did number

three. So you, the idea was you didn't even control it, it just did its thing. And I remember the green one, because the green one would later become Garak, they said made up names at the time. Right. I forget, I have the playtest cards. So I think what happened was the first one like it would make a creature, a token on your first turn.

Didn't it double tokens? The second turn, it doubled the tokens. And then the third turn, it overran. That's awesome. But here's what happened was, let's say for example turn one, you would make a token. And then your opponent would bolt the token. And then turn two, you didn't do anything.

Right. And so what happened was we playtested them, and then I think Mons Johnson was the leader of, like, these guys are idiots. I want our playtester not to be idiots. And that's when we had the idea of, okay, well, let's give you, the player, a little bit more control.

So here's what happened. Look at the time frame, right? So we tried those versions of them, what we call the robo versions. And they played interestingly, but they had a lot of dumb moments where, right, they would do things that didn't make any sense because they were assuming something that didn't always happen because your opponent would obviously mess with you. And I think at that moment, what they had done was they were cool enough that everybody realized

there was something really interesting but they weren't good enough that we wanted to do them. Like I think we had proven they were something awesome we should do and so

We just hadn't found the answer yet. Right, so I guess the time Randy was still the director of Magic and I think Randy said

look, these are cool. Let's take our time. Let's not rush them. This is something neat. I mean, I think what happened was everybody kind of got on board in your vision of, look, if we don't have planeswalker cards,

we can't make people care about planeswalkers. And so everybody sort of said, okay, these are interesting. Everyone realized we were on the cusp of something, but we hadn't quite figured it out yet. And so what we said was, okay, these don't have to be in Future Sight. Let's just spend the time and get it right. That was the right move.

Right. By the way, for the record, I think Planeswalkers, you talked about making a new car type. We had never made a new car type. I mean, if you want to be antsy, we had made equipment, which was a pretty substantial sub-type. We had made, at one point, they had turned Dark Ritual into a mana source. But once again,

it wasn't really making something new. It was just relabeling something that the game already had. This was the first time we'd like, hey, new card type. And I think everybody sort of bought into, okay, if we're going to add something, Planeswalkers made sense. Oh, let me explain this. It's another, a lot of things

going on at once. So we, for a long time, have been trying to go to Hollywood and say, hey, let's make a magic movie. And one of the props we always would get from them is, well, who's your Mickey Mouse? Who is your most identifiable character? And they're

like, I don't know, Sarah Angel? Who was it? It was these characters that would come and go, and there wasn't a constant. And we realized, oh, we need our Mickey Mouse. We need our group of characters. And so I think the reason that Brady and the creative team wanted to do this revamp during Time Spiral was, look, we needed to have characters we could make into something we could tell stories with. And when we came up with the idea of a card, we were like, well, this all comes together.

Let's bring this to magic. And so obviously, Randy said, okay, take your time. So we took them out of Future Sight. Tarmogoy went back in. A little change for the better, I guess, or the worse, depending on how you want to see it. Okay, so what happened then was I made a design team. I had a sub-design team, but I don't think you were on the sub-design team.

No, I had already left. And that team was mostly designers. Bad times. I think Aaron might have been on that team. I think, was Ken Nagel there yet? I don't think so. No, no, Ken was not there yet. So there was a bunch of designers that I think aren might have been on that team. I think, was Ken Nagel there yet? No, no, Ken was not there yet. So there was a bunch of designers that I think aren't there anymore.

And we sat down, and I think that's when we came up with the idea of loyalty as a cost. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, it's all coming back. So what happened was we went through a version where they came with a certain amount of loyalty. And then as you did effects, they gained or lost loyalty. But it wasn't a cost. And then somebody, Aaron, somebody said, well, what if loyalty was the cost for doing things? So certain abilities would cost you things and certain would leave.

things. So certain abilities would cost you things and certain would leave. So in some way, the Garret card that I had made, make a token, double the tokens, overrun the tokens, or overrun the creatures, had been, there's something about it I liked that it felt like progression. It felt like your Planeswalker was smart and he was planning something. And so I think what we did is we said, okay, we'll give you, the player, a little more control, but we still want a story. We still want the Planeswalker to feel like they're trying to do something. And then that's when we came up with the idea of

what we now call the ultimate, is, well, what if they build towards something? It's not that you, the... We wanted the cards to feel like there was a progression, that the Planeswalker was moving towards something, but we gave you, the player, a little bit more control, so he didn't do dumb things. It just didn't make sense.

You serviced the Planeswalker's proxy brain. Right. And I think the idea of loyalty was, look, you can suggest things for him. If he likes what you're suggesting, well, he gets a little more loyalty. That's right. If he doesn't, well, you test his loyalty a little bit.

And the flavor of loyalty, by the way, which I like a lot, is the police worker doesn't die or anything. Just at some point, he's like, I'm out of here.

Enough. You know? And that, you know, the more you're making him do things he doesn't want to do, the more it's like, you know,

I'm out of here. You keep letting those goblins hit me. I'm out of here. And by the way, the structure element of it, the fact that they had a toughen so you could attack them,

that stayed the whole way through. I realized it was pretty cool once other people saw it. That is also part of the Planeswalker as a player thing. We were dead set on finding a solution for being able to hit that guy with direct damage and other things that could affect players. Right. For a while, by the way, the rules were anything that could target a player could target a planeswalker.

The problem was... Planeswalkers can't draw cards. Right, there's too many effects that didn't make any sense for a planeswalker. So we ended up doing the redirect thing, which I admit is, of all the designs, the clunkiest element of the design. It's flavorful, though. If Magic, for example, had started with Planeswalkers,

I think we just would have said stuff like, you know, deal three damage to target creature, player, or Planeswalker. Right. And that would just be part of the vernacular of the game. But since they came in, you know, many years into the run, we sort of had... That is the clunky part of it. We did talk about target player meaning it could hit Planeswalkers,

but right, target player draws two cards. What does that mean, the Planeswalker draws a card? It didn't make any sense. Okay, go ahead. I was going to say another cool thing about Planeswalker cards that I like quite a bit is the way that their name is part of their type, so you can't play two of the same planeswalker at the same time. Right, that was built in pretty early.

Yes, very cool. And the reason was, we knew, because these were going to be the Mickey Mouses of our game, we knew we were going to keep them. It wasn't like, they weren't disposable. Like, one of the problems with our creatures as being, is, yeah, we had the core set, I guess, but like, you didn't want your most iconic thing only to show up in the core set, and the extra expansions changed every year, so there was no way to keep this ongoing character Yeah, we had the core set, I guess, but you didn't want your most iconic thing only to show up in the core set. And the extra expansions changed every year, so there was no way to keep this ongoing character easily.

That's why the creatures didn't make a lot of sense. But Planeswalkers, we'll have a small number of them, and we'll keep seeing them again. So we knew we were going to do multiple cards of them. There was one other thing that I thought was really cool, but ultimately turned out to be too much burden on the developers, is early on we had the thought that Planeswalker cards would be legal in any format, meaning this Planeswalker might be from the Zendikar set, but because he can go anywhere, he's legal in Ravnica Block or whatever.

And I thought that was really cool, but unrealistic. What we found was Planeswalkers... So another thing that was important to us is once we decided to make Planeswalker cards and we knew the importance they had in the whole game, the idea was, look, we couldn't make these suck. Right. Like, we couldn't make a brand new card type, and then, like, for example, when we make

rares or mythics, you know, I mean, we make a lot of them as good as we can. I mean, definitely try to make mythics extra splashy, but, look, every card can't be good. And so, you're going to have some bad rare cards, for example, that you just can't avoid it. And so, but we decided that we didn't want the Planeswalkers being bad. We didn't mind them being narrow, meaning they're really, really good in a certain deck. But we just didn't want to make them bad, so there was a lot of challenge. One of the things for development was, we called them knobs,

that a card has so many things that you can change to try to balance it. And the more elements you have, the more knobs a card has. And so planeswalkers are nice in that they're knobby. They have lots and lots of knobs on them. But they are also very hard to balance. And what ended up, I mean, now what happens is design will kind of take a first shot at it, and the development will spend a lot of time redoing it because there's so many moving parts to making a planeswalker work.

But anyway, what happened was Randy said, take your time. It turns out we figured it out pretty quick. We put together a team, and we came up with a version we liked. I mean, not that much later. I mean, too late for Future Sight. But clearly in time for the next set, which was Lorwyn. And the interesting thing about Lorwyn, by the way, if you notice, they have nothing to do with Lorwyn. Nothing. Like, they literally are like, and by the way, here's my planeswalkers.

We knew, by the way, we wanted to do five because we said, okay, this is a brand new thing. We knew we weren't always going to introduce them like, we always use them like this, but we wanted them to be something everyone had access to. So the very first five were done to be, like, purposely monocolor and, like, super, super that color. Yes.

That makes sense. Right, and then Brady set about making what he thought was going to be the five basic planeswalkers, and they spent a lot of time working on that,

of coming up with, like, sort of who these guys were. And so we ended up putting them in Lorwyn, and the original plan, by the way, was they weren't going to be in every set.

Like, if you notice, for example, they were in Lorwyn, and then the next ones didn't show up until... Shadowmourne didn't even have them, did it? It didn't show up until the following year, right? Charge of Alara. So, we were planning to have them be every once in a while, we'll do some. And they were so popular, like, so popular that we ended up realizing that, yeah, they're part of magic. Every set needs to have a Planeswalker.

And we dialed back a bit because I've talked about this in my column, but there's a limited amount of design resources for Planeswalker. Of every card, there's the least amount of design space. And development found out that in order to make them good, to make them powerful,

you just couldn't have that mini, because they were so powerful. So we kind of decided that we wanted the core set to have some, we wanted every expansion to have one, so we ended up coming up with a number of about ten, that we could have ten in any one year, some of which might be repeats in the core set. And then we got to a place where we'd have enough that they mattered,

but there was a balance, so that it didn't... We didn't want to make this we'd have enough that they mattered, but there was a balance so that it didn't, you know, like we didn't want to make this card type have to be too good and we have to nerf it because it's too good. Yeah, that would be bad. Saying that these are your poster boys and have them outshined by random common goblin, that would be bad news. So what happened was we put them in Laura Wind, huge success.

And then we figured out, I guess during the Laura block, we're like, what are we doing? We should have these every set. And I think Conflux was like we really kind of sold the set on, hey, Nicole Bolas is in the set, right? In fact, explain this. It's going to be a surprise. Were you around for this or did you leave before? I was not around for this. Oh, so what happened was, it was supposed to be a big surprise

that Nicole Bolas was in Shards of Alara. In fact, we'd done this very clever thing where we four of the shards all had a planeswalker that was related, and then there was one that was missing, and there was, like, clues in the card set.

Like, there was a card that has flavor text. And you can see Bolas' image or a reflection or something. We had all this subtle stuff to like, can you figure out that Bolas is coming? And then the names of the cards leaked because someone got the card list ahead of time. Not even what they did. Just like the list of the names of cards. And all you need is Nicole Bolasolas, like, gives that away. And so it kind of got spoiled.

Worse than that is it says Nicol Bolas Planeswalker. Oh, Planeswalker, right. In case you didn't know, Ken. And then, anyway, so it worked out really well. They ended up becoming kind of the key staple. And, like, yeah, it was kind of a runaway success in the sense that, I mean, I was really worried. We came up with a new card type.

I mean, I was bold, but, you know, it is a dangerous thing to add a new card type to the game. I mean, the game is so well-structured, and then, like, whenever you sort of add a new element, you know, there's always this danger of just toppling the apple cart. Right. Plus, the other thing, by the way, is once the dust settled, they're complicated.

You know, I mean, we made two big decisions, by the way. One was we decided they would be the rarest they could be. In lore, when they meant rare, once mythics came along, we said, okay, they're mythics and they're special. Like, the flavor, by the way, I don't know if people understand this. In any one world, you go to a plane, how many people have the spark in that world? Like, maybe one, two? I mean, it's a really rare thing.

Potentially zero. Yeah, maybe zero. The idea of the spark was it's a super, super rare thing. It's not something that people are even aware of. It's a pretty secretive thing. And so they wanted to be mythic rare and not too many of them also to try to represent, hey, there's not that many planeswalkers. It's not like there's 8,000 planeswalkers in the multiverse.

And the other thing is we... Oh, I've got two things. I lost my train of thought. We made them mythic rare. We put them in every set. Remember the exact thing we did? We cheered at their success we did cheer at their success I don't remember

well so we uh oh the other thing I hear what you're talking about is we decided that the default was going to be three things but in the back of our head we knew we might do differently because when we made the original frames to test them we actually asked them to test a four

a plane spoke that had four abilities so that was like we kind of knew ahead of time made the original frames to test them we actually asked them to test a fourth right a four um a plane's work that had four abilities so that was like we kind of knew ahead of time we would do that uh and then in world wake we're like well let's start with jace because he jace was our mickey mouse essentially well explain a little why is jace why do we think his character was considered to be the closest analog to the magic player. If you took the sort of person who plays magic, who spends his time on intellectual challenges, applying his creativity and his wits, and may also not be generally, I don't know, gregarious or political. political, all the things that that seems to embody the

cloaked one, the behind the scenes, the And also, there's no, we know the established player drags toward blue Yeah. You know, I think we knew that Jace was kind of just in the right spot Yeah. Anyway, by the way, I see the Wizard of the Coast sign.

We are at work, which means it's time for us to wrap up. So thank you very much for joining us for our first ever. Thanks for having me and for the ride to work. You're welcome. Okay, I guess it's time to make the cards. Bye-bye, everybody.