Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #30 - Lessons I Have Learned - Part 1

Episode Date: April 19, 2013

Mark Rosewater starts a two part series about the lessons he's learned from the sets he's lead in design.

Okay, I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, as you all know, I do this a bunch of head. And right now, in my present, but your past, I'm running the Rosewater Rumble. For those who have no idea what that is, I realized that Gatecrash was going to be my 16th, or was my 16th release set. And so I thought it would be fun to do a March Madness style thing where I pitch my 16 sets against each other and let the audience vote. In the middle of doing that, all sorts of fun is happening there. I have an article you've probably read about already that I wrote about. Anyway, so what I realized as I thought about it was one of the important things of doing design is not just the act of doing it, but once you're done, you need to look back and say, what lessons have I learned? What has this experience taught me?

So I thought for today, and maybe more than today, we'll see how long this one goes, um, I want to look at the lessons I've learned from the sets that I have led. And so I dubbed this, this drive to work the lessons I've learned from the sets that I've led and so I dub this this drive to work lessons I have learned so I thought I would go in order from the sets I did and talk about them and as many podcasts as that takes my guess is one or two

I will sort of examine what I've learned from the sets that I've done and be aware that one of the things that I realized is that some of the sets that I realized is that some of the sets that you learn the most from are the sets where you made the most mistakes. So as you will see, many lessons came from many different places. Okay, so we'll start with set number one, which for me was Tempest. And I did a podcast on Tempest. So understand that when I did Tempest, I kind of told them that I thought I was a designer.

And before I came to Wizards, I had done some game design, but I'd never done magic design. And I kind of bit off quite a bit. Like I said, my first time out, I was doing a large set. Like Mike Elliott, who was also on the design team, he had designed a set before he came to Wizards.

Now, it wasn't made, but I mean, he had gone through the motions and made a set. I had never done that. I had made individual cards, but I never made a set. And so the first lesson I learned from Tempest was that I was able to do it. I mean, I had a lot of confidence. I don't have lack of confidence, especially in this area.

But I think the thing about Tempest was I did something, I kind of pushed myself and said, I think I can do this, and then just did it. You know, I had no, I mean, the lesson kind of was that sometimes you have to put yourself out there and take some risks and challenge yourself. Tempest was difficult, but I did it. It was doable. One of the most important things I learned is the idea that sometimes part of being a designer is pushing yourself. One of my attitudes in general, I mean, I'm a pretty

optimistic person. I actually, honest to God, was voted most optimistic in my high school yearbook. In my standard days, I used to say, you know, I knew I'd win. Anyway, I'm an optimistic person. And so I tend to approach things assuming they can be done. That's one of the ways I always approach design is I don't say, can I do it? I'm like, there's a way to do it. I got to find that way. And so Tempest was interesting for me because it was a pretty big project. Now, I learned a couple other things. One was, I don't think I realized until I did my first design how collaborative a process magic design is. I mean, I think temp is shown not just because I did good work, but I had a really strong team. You know, I mean, Richard Garfield obviously knew what he was doing, but he hadn't done magic in a while.

You know, when I got him to be on my team, he hadn't done magic design in a couple years, and obviously I had faith in him, and he had faith in himself, but I mean, he really stepped up and had really cool ideas. Buyback came from him. Mike Elliott was one of the people I tagged who had never, also never done design, but like me, he said he was a designer, and I wanted to give him a chance to prove it, and Mike mega stepped up, you know, I mean, Mike and I went on to be the, the lead designers for a lot of sets following Tempest, um, and like I said, Mike, Mike did slivers, and Mike did licits, and Mike did, um, shadow, I mean, a lot of Tempest mechanics came from Mike. And so I think I learned that, you know, part of being a good designer in Magic is not just your own abilities, but

having a team and relying on the team, you know, and that, like one of the things now that I've learned as a designer, I mean, as someone who's done a lot of these sets is I have to have my entire team invested in what we're doing. It can't just be my set. It can't just be my project. It has to be our set and our project. The entire team needs to be on board, you know. long time is that whenever I can give somebody else credit, whenever somebody else, like one of the tricks is, a lot of people will turn things in, and often you'll get the same cards, as we call parallel design. Very common. Especially when you're shooting in similar

areas. When I say, guys, we're looking for this kind of thing. So what happens all the time is that someone will design something and I will design the exact same thing because it's just in the same area. I will always take their card with their name and put that in the file. Because the reality is although

funny enough, I had the reputation for being super egotistical, I actually care that I want my people invested and that, hey, I've had thousands of cards made. My issue no longer is about individual cards or even about mechanics. I'm much more about trying to create a set and a feel and a block and interblock. And I'm really sort of looking big picture. But I do know it's important for people to have cards and feel connected to the cards.

And so I make sure that everybody involved, when they do stuff, that they can see the stuff that's there. That's why, to me, it's really, really important for all my designers to put names on things and then use those cards with those names so that people have ownership. One thing that's super important is the creative process is a process of ownership.

That if you want to create, if you do not feel you own it, you will not do as good a work. Let me repeat that because I think that's super important. That when you are emotionally invested in what you are working on creatively, you will do a stronger job. Why is that? I think that has to do with how humans function. That if you feel distanced from something, you, for example, I mean, I'm a parent. And there is a bond when you have a kid. I mean, it's chemical, I'm sure. And it's probably psychological.

But I mean, you have this amazingly strong bond. Your baby is born and you're like, bam! That's my baby. And you have this incredibly strong bond. Well, why is and you're like, bam, that's my baby. And you have this incredibly strong bond. Well, why is that? Why does nature do that? Nature does that because nature wants you to take care of the baby. Nature wants to make sure that you do the best for the baby. And part of it to make sure is, look, the more bonded you feel something, the more responsibility you feel, the more you put yourself into it. And creative things are your your baby and that if you don't feel invested if you

don't feel connected you just won't step up as much you know why because the creative process is hard like raising a baby is hard you know and that your nature needs you to stick in there and and really fight for stuff and and be there for your baby and so it bonds you to it. And that's important. And I want all my fellow designers on my team to also feel bonded. I want it to be their baby too. Not just my baby, it's my team's baby. And that's really important. Tempest taught me that. Tempest also taught me the importance of story. So one of the things, one day I'll tell the story, but my friend Mike Ryan and I, Mike was a lead editor,

or not the lead editor, but a editor of Magic. And he and I pitched this idea of a story, the magic of the story, would go on to become the Weatherlight Saga. And Tempest was us working together. I mean, things would go astray later, but Tempest was really,

I mean, if you ever look at Tempest and like Doulas did a thing, it's online, where we showed all the art, to like show you a storyboard of the story, because Tempest had a very tight story. It was all seen in the cards, or most of it was seen in the cards.

But a lot of what we did was, I tried very hard to take the mechanics in the story and mesh them. Now, it wasn't the best way to do it, in the sense that, a lot of what I did is I found mechanical things and then found a way to mechanically tie them into the story. So they were connected, and I like how they were connected, but they weren't as emotionally connected as I later learned. We get to end of Shrine stuff. I'll talk about

how I've learned better how to sort of ingrain them. But it was the importance of having value story. I realized the story meant something. It's the first time I got to play around with that area. The other thing that I learned is before Tempest, the way magic sets worked back then is you had two keywords. They had nothing necessarily to do with each other. You said, what are your phasing, flanking and phasing, or, you know, echo and, what was echo? Echo and cycling. But I had shadow and buyback. And I really realized that I wanted them to mean something to each other. I didn't just want two things. And so I worked really hard in my design to make them push against each other. That one said, you know, if the game goes long enough, I'm very powerful. So if you can control

the game and make it go long, you will win. And the other mechanic said, I'm fast. If you win quickly, I'll win. But you get to the long game, I'm, you know, I'm not going to win for you. I'm a fast mechanic. And I pinned them against each other. So the Tempest had this sort of, you know, one part was trying to be fast, one part was trying to be fast and one part was trying to be slow and I gave each side resources to have that fight. And so Tempest taught me that it was important, you know, to have that,

to make sure the internal elements meant something to each other. Now, I would later go on to get much better at that. That was my first attempt at it. But I was proud that I took what was, at the time, just like, whatever, had two mechanics and said, no, no, no, I want them to mean something to each other. And I thought that was valuable. The other thing that Tempest taught me was

that everything you come up with isn't going to make it in the file. And that, for example, we tried really hard, I tried super hard, to make draw triggers work. What draw triggers are is cards that say when you draw it, something happens. Now, many years later, Brian Tinsman would figure out how to do it with miracles. I didn't figure it out at the time. And I spent a lot of time trying to make it work. It's funny that I kind of got into buyback, which Richard made, as a means to try to fill the void

of this mechanism I couldn't solve. And then buyback ended up working really well. Oh, and the other thing I learned, the other thing I learned from Tempest, I will learn this again in Odyssey, is you need to figure out what you're going to do and don't... You want to overfill a little bit. I say this to my designers, which is, when you hand something over

to development, you want to have 110%, 120%. You want a little above. I say this to my designers, which is, when you hand something over to development, you want to have 110%, 120%. You want a little above what you need, because the act of development is they're going to pull stuff out and things aren't going to work, and that you want to make sure you're a little full, because the act of development will dilute things out, and that they might

need things, and you give them extra choices, you help them. Like, one of the things about doing design is, design is about getting the set to a point where development can do good work. Design is not about finishing the set. The design is about doing the first part of what we need to do so that the second team, which is the development team, can do what they need to do. And that my goal is not to get as far as possible down the line.

My job is to set up development as well as I can set them up. And one of the problems Tempest had was Tempest just had too much in it. I mean, a little bit, you know, 110, 120% is fine. Tempest, like, Cycling and Echo, which were the two mechanics from Urza Saida a year later,

they were both in it. It was just chock-full of stuff. And it's not bad that we as a team came up with it because we were overloaded with ideas especially because Mike and I

had never done design before Richard hadn't designed in three years I mean Charlie I don't know hadn't been on design since Mirage but anyway

there was too much there wasn't enough focus and that I overstuffed a little too much it's a very common early design mistake and I made it

which is not committing to what you're doing, meaning people sort of don't have enough faith in what they're doing, so they do lots of little things going, well, so maybe some of this will work. And what you need to do when you design, especially for magic, is figure out what matters and then commit to those things. You can't commit to a lot of things. If you want to do something right, you got to have a handful of things and then commit to those things, rather than, to those things you don't want to commit to a lot of things a little

you want to commit to a few things a lot especially in a thing like magic where we have to keep making things there's not a lot of value of taking ten mechanics and saying well we'll do a little bit of ten mechanics no no no no do a lot of four mechanics and save the six mechanics for later okay

after Tempest was Unglued, my second set, so unglued taught me, one, to trust my sensibility. I think what happened was, in a lot of ways, Tempest was me doing what I thought a magic set was, and that's not bad, but I was very much trying to be what magic sets were. And Unglued, kind of by the nature of what it was, said, instead of making magic sets, instead of making your aesthetic

match magic sets, try taking a magic set and match your aesthetic. And Unglued is one of my favorite things I've ever done, in that I feel like I really had no constraints, and I tried doing something. Now, remember, the other thing that was interesting about this was,

and I tried to put this in my podcast, I unglued the assignment I was given wasn't what it ended up being. My assignment was much vaguer. It was like, they're silver-bordered, they're not termed illegal, do something. The idea of having humor, of having parody elements, of making things that were funny, that was all me. None of that came in what was asked of me, you know. And the thing that I'm very proud of on Glued was that we really did a lot of things, you know, like full art land, like tokens, like there's a lot of things I did that were sort of like me stretching boundaries

that Magic would go on to embrace as these were perfectly acceptable things. And so the lesson I learned there was that it's very easy when you are doing something that's bigger than you, and magic's way bigger than me, to get lost in the ideal of what you're doing. And that one of the things I say to my designers is, you are special. The reason you are here is you have something to bring that nobody else has to bring to the table. You know, when you do a design, I don't want a design that someone else can do. I want a design that only you can do.

For example, I did an interview with Ted Knutson a while ago about writing for Magic. And one of the things I said is, if I can write an article and you can scratch my name off and put somebody else's name on and nobody recognizes, then what are you doing? As a writer, what are you doing? You know, I want to write something that you read and go, that's Rosewater. I have a voice and I'm saying something. I'm not just saying what anybody else could say. And I feel the same way about design is, you know, that I want my designers that you can tell it's their set.

I'm not saying they should stretch what magic is. They have to stay within the confines of what they're doing. But in the same sense, I want them to be able to take part of them and imbue it on what they're doing. Because I think that's where the best designs come from, you know. I think one of the things I hope, like when I did the Rosewater Rumble is, hey, these are my sets, and if you look at them, you see a lot of themes that come out through them. You know, I wrote an article which came out in your past, but my present, about synergy, where I talked about the importance of synergy, and how that one of my design aesthetics is, I think games are about teaching people something. That games are about you helping people learn skills.

And that you as a designer have some skill that you love that you want to imbue on people. And my skill that I love, that I really love, is creativity. I love teaching people how to be creative. And one of the ways of doing that is in my design I use a lot of synergy. I make cards connect in weird ways. And part of, I think, cracking one of my sets is figuring out what all works together and how you make things happen. And that magic naturally does this really well. So I'm playing the magic strength, but I'm really imbuing with something that is my aesthetic. And that

Unglued taught me it's okay. Embrace your own aesthetic. Don't be somebody else. Be yourself. You know, be what you're doing. Don't, I mean, there is breaking too much. And definitely in magic we've had some of that where people try to make magic too much their own thing. That's a problem. But I do think you want to bring enough of yourself to it. And the other thing, by the way, that I love that Unglued taught me was that designing should be fun.

I should have fun designing. Now, that's not to say I didn't have fun in Tempest. I did, and it was exciting. But I think Unglued sort of said, you know, I think I can bring joy for players if I find the joy in the process myself. And Unglued really taught me that. And Unglued really taught me that. And finally, the last lesson of Unglued was the lesson of it's okay to go to places that you don't understand in the process. My favorite book is a book called Whacking the Side of the Head by Dr. Roger Van Eck.

And he talks about how the importance of stepping stones, which is, the premise of the book is that the reason people aren't creative is that they have their own mental locks that prevent themselves from being creative. And one of the mental locks is, that's ridiculous, that's silly. And the idea is, this idea isn't practical, but one of the things he talks about that I really believe in is the idea of stepping stones, is just because something doesn't work doesn't mean it can't get you to things that do work and that one of the things I loved about uh what Unglued taught me was because kind of I was allowed to do anything I just went to places that I never would have gone that made me a better magic designer

you know now I do believe that restrictions are good and restrictions help you, but I believe also sometimes it's nice to sort of remove restrictions and say, look, assume you can do anything. What do you want to do? And I think that's very freeing and helps you do stuff. Okay, number three set I did was Urza's Destiny. Okay, so Urza's Destiny, I guess the biggest claim to fame Urza's Destiny is it's a solo design, meaning I was the design team. In Magic History, I mean,

maybe you can argue Alpha is the other exception, but Richard had a lot of help. For whatever reason, I decided I was going to do this set by myself. Bill, who was the lead designer at the time, signed up on it, and I literally designed it by myself. Bill, who was the lead designer at the time, signed up on it, and I literally designed it by myself. Now, I learned in Tempest

that magic is a collaborative process. So I'm not saying that I... My lesson versus destiny wasn't, hey, I should do this more, and I never did it again. I'm kind of proud I did it once. But the lesson versus destiny, A, it gave me some faith in myself.

I mean, it is, it is a very, a point of pride for me that I did a magic set all by myself. That is a very hard task. Um, and I'm proud I did it once. Um, I think the biggest thing I learned from Earth's Destiny is that it's not enough to have structure. Um, the audience needs to understand what the structure is. So let me give you an example. One of the themes of Urza Saiga, one of the mechanics, was cycling.

So the tweak I had on cycling was what I refer to as cycling from play. Cycling are cards you have in your hand. You pay two mana, you draw a card. So I made a bunch of cards where you paid two mana and you could sacrifice them from the battlefield to draw a card. And the idea was, oh, they cycle from play. I was very proud of this. But what happened was no, not nobody, but, you know,

0.01% realized it. You know, it became a running joke whenever I would talk about it to somebody. And I'd talk about cycling from play and their eyes would let out. They'd go, oh, yeah, it became a running joke whenever I would talk about it to somebody. And I'd talk about cycling from play and their eyes would look at me and go, oh, yeah, I didn't get that, you know. And I remember time and time again, every time I explained it, nobody got it. And what I learned is, I mean, the point of our society was, part of what you're trying to do in design isn't, I mean, I do believe in aesthetics. I do believe in having good design

subconsciously makes you feel better. So I do believe there's things you do that won't be seen on a conscious level. But my lesson is I wanted that to be seen. That one of the things I learned from Earth's Destiny is, look, you have to be able to, it's not enough to do something that sometimes you need to be visible enough that

people can see it. You know, that when I'm working on a design, I want other people to be able to figure out what I'm doing and to see that thing, you know, and that, I mean, I like burying synergies in, but also I don't need to bury everything. I don't need to hide everything in a set. A little bit is good, but also part of what you're doing is, I mean, and this is the reason that I like writing articles, you know what I'm saying, is that I think part of design is showing off what you're doing so people can see what you're doing and that it's not all supposed to be secret. Yes, you want some secrets. Yes, you want your audience to be

able to search for things and I love doing that. I'm not saying not to do that. But at the same time, it's not supposed to be a mystery. You know, part of doing art is having structure to it and having a structure that people can see. Now, the solution there, I learned, is that I become a much bigger fan of labels, of using keywords and ability words and keyword actions and, like, I became a much bigger idea of, look, label the things you're doing so people can see them. Because that's not a bad thing. People enjoy

making the connections. People enjoy seeing it. And that, on some level, hiding too much is taking some joy away from the players. That, I think the players would have enjoyed the cycling from play if they got it, you know? And I feel like not enough people had that opportunity. And I learned that, look, I have to do that. I have to be able to lay things down, and I have to be able to label them so people can see them. Because one of the things that people have to understand

is that design is not for yourself. Design is not, it's not that I'm doing something all for myself in a thing, alone, I do my thing, and then, well, the world can do, can see it as they see it. I don't think art, I don't think of art in that way. I think the audience

is an integral part of art. And that you, the artist, if you're not thinking about the audience, then on some level, you're being selfish. You know, you as an artist are just being selfish. I mean, if you want to do self-expression and do things and hide in a selfish. You know, you as an artist are just being selfish.

I mean, if you want to do self-expression and do things and hide in a closet, you know, more power to you. You know, you can Emily Dixon set it up. But that, I believe that part of art is the act of it being seen. That is an important part of art. And I do believe, I mean, I know people maybe, you know, I think I'm being highfalutin here, but I think of magic design as art. You know, I'm not saying there's not some science to it. There's a lot of craft to it.

But I do think of it as art. And part of it is that I want the audience to be able to appreciate it, you know. But to do that, to do that, I have to understand that the audience, that them seeing it is part of the art, you know. And that if I want the audience to be able to participate, I have to help them, you know, that I, the artist, have to put some work in. It's not the audience's job to figure everything out, you know.

For example, as a connected thing, I've done a lot of puzzle design. My wife and I love to throw parties, and one of the things I always do at my parties, we have puzzles. I love making puzzles. It's fun. And one of the things I learned as a puzzle designer, which I bring to my magic design, is in puzzle design, the biggest mistake that people make is they think it's them versus the audience, as if they have to trick the audience, or can the audience figure it out? They're going to challenge the audience. And what they miss is puzzle making is a collaborative process with the audience.

The goal isn't to stump the audience. If you stump the audience, you have failed as a puzzle maker. You've made a horrible puzzle. The goal of puzzle making is to work with them to create an experience that is enlightening for the audience, right? For example, one of the things about an awesome puzzle is, you put handholds into the puzzle, you know what I'm saying? As people figure things out,

you give them ways to, you know, to solve more. A great puzzle says, oh, well, here's a few things in the beginning to get ideas, and then as you start solving it, it gives you new clues and so the act of solving it helps you open up

and it's an onion that gets unraveled and different layers come off and then a beautiful puzzle is this interactive process where you and the audience are going back and forth and doing a little dance and then in the end, they're reaching this glorious climax that you've designed for them to find like a puzzle that no one can solve, whatever. I don't know what that is. You're not thinking of the audience, and you're not really making a good puzzle.

And I feel that magic design is the same thing, that I'm trying to make something for the audience to discover, but I have to put the handholds in. I have to help them. That is not like throw them to the wind and whatever they find. No, no, no, no. My job as a designer is to make sure that I'm doing a dance with

my audience and helping them discover things but in a way where I give them the tools to help find it. You know, just like puzzle making. You know, and that, I mean, Earth's Destiny was the first place I really learned that. I really realized that, like, it's not I'm not just doing something and putting it on display and whatever you see, you see.

I'm trying to work with my audience as an audience. Okay, I see the Wizards building. So, I've realized something very important here, which is, this is a lot longer. This is not one or two podcasts, because I managed to get through three sets in one. But I, I like what I did. I like it's good. So this will be as long as it needs to be. I don't know. Maybe next week I'll... Maybe some of my lessons won't be

as long as my first three. I think the early lessons you learn more in the sense that you've let, you know... Well, I guess you learn on everything. But the early lessons are interesting in that you know less. So maybe the early lessons are bigger lessons. I honestly don't know how long this is going to last, but I'm enjoying myself. I hope you guys are.

That's the first three of my 16 sets. So, anyway, I'll pick up next week when I talk more about lessons that I've learned. Anyway, it's time for me to go make the magic.