Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #316 - Design Space

Episode Date: March 25, 2016

Mark talks about the design space reserved for cards within a particular mechanic.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about a topic that I get asked about quite a bit. Design space. So one of the things people are always very curious is, we need to figure out when we make a mechanic, how big is the mechanic? How many cards can you make out of it? And we refer to that as design space. How much design space is there? How many cards can you make out of it? And we refer to that as design space. How much design space is there?

And it's important when you're designing to understand how big the design space is, just so you know that you're using it correctly and it's going in the right spot. And anyway, I bring up the term design space occasionally on my articles and podcasts and stuff. And people always say, well, how do you know? How do you know how much space a mechanic has? How do you determine design space? Well, that is the topic of today's podcast. Okay, so let me start by explaining a couple things. First off, I want to explain that there's a range of size we're talking about. I'm going to use three terms, which is small, medium, and large. But really, there is a spectrum.

At one end of the spectrum would be, there's one card you can make with it. You know, if the mechanic's so tiny that it could be on one card, it probably wouldn't be a mechanic. But realistically, you know, there's a cycle or something. It's probably the smallest we'd ever make a named mechanic would be a cycle.

And the other end of the spectrum is, you could use this for end of time like flying is a good example you can make a lot of flying cards it's the kind of thing that can be evergreen because you can make a lot of cards with it and so the big question is where on the spectrum does something fall

from the small end of the spectrum to the large end of the spectrum so usually I use a designation of three things. Small means usually we have enough for one set maybe,

or maybe if you're super stingy with it, maybe two sets, but there's not a lot of space there. My example there would be Cypher from Gatecrash. So, we use Cypher on maybe 15 cards between Gatecrash and Dragon's Maze, and that's about it. We used it up. Are we going to do Cypher again? Now given we only use it in black and blue, so I guess there is some space in other colors, but assuming we left it in

black and blue, and I'll get to color in a second, we used it up. Like we, by the end of it, we're like, oh, we can't make any more cards. We've used all the effects. That's a small mechanic. A large mechanic would be something like cycling. Cycling's a mechanic where you can, so Cypher, by the way, for those who don't remember, was a mechanic that you put on

instants and sorceries, and then whenever, usually sorceries, I think, but no, I guess you can go with both instants and sorceries. Whenever you hit your opponent with a creature, you would cast a spell, then attach it to a creature, and then every time that creature would hit your opponent, that spell would go off again. The spell effect would go off again. That was Cypher. Cycling is a mechanic that you can pay some mana when the card's in your hand to discard it, put it in the graveyard, and then draw a card from your library.

Cycling is just very, very broad. You can make a lot of cards with cycling. It's the kind of mechanic that we've used, I don't know, three, four times already, and we'll use more because it's just a super open-ended mechanic. In the middle, when I talk about a medium mechanic, I think Landfall is a good example of a medium mechanic.

We used it originally in Zendikar. We used it in Worldwake. We didn't use it in Rise of Dryzee because we've changed the mechanics over. We came back. We used it in Zendikar. And the reason that you don't see so much of it in Oath of the Gatewatch is, you know, we definitely were using up a lot of space. Not that there's not more space. Not that it couldn't come back again. But it's a mechanic that has some space but but limited not yes you can put it in multiple sets i believe we could you know um another thing we talk about how much space it has has to do with within a set versus within a um total usage i'll get to that in a second um but ladville is a good example of a kind of thing where you can't just use it all the time.

It has some limited use issues, but it's big enough that you definitely could use it in multiple sets. So that's medium in my mind. So there's small, medium, and large. And like I say, remember, it's a gradient. There are things that are probably between small and medium. There are things between medium and large. Even in the large category, there are things that, yeah, I could use it a lot, and wow, I could use it as a major thing a lot. You know, there's even sort of super large, I guess, which

is not only can I use it, but it has a lot of expansiveness of where I use it. Okay, so now let's talk about the implication of design space. So there's really two different issues, which is how much total design space does a mechanic have, and how much design space fits So there's really two different issues, which is how much total design space does a mechanic have and how much design space fits in the set you are working on. And those are distinctly different things. So let me explain.

The reason you want to know the overall design space is when I'm making a mechanic, I'm like, am I using it up here? Like Cypher at this moment, like it became clear pretty quick that we up here? Like Cypher at the small ones, it became clear pretty quick that we probably weren't doing Cypher again. There wasn't enough to sort of revisit it.

So like, now or never. So if you know it's a small mechanic, that means you don't have to hold anything back. You can do everything you can come up with because there's no need to hold back. Now on the flip side, a large mechanic might be, ooh, there's a lot of space to explore here. We're going to do this many times over many sets.

Let me focus a little bit. I don't need to do everything the mechanic can do. Kicker is a good example of a very, very large mechanic. One would argue probably too large. That I wish we had focused a little more when we first did it. We sort of just went everywhere with it and ended up, in some ways, it was such a large mechanic, it was too large. Meaning, I mean, people have heard me talk about Kicker. I feel like we took an area of design space that really was more than one mechanic and named it as one thing.

And now when we take other things that are in similar space, people are like, oh, that's just Kicker. Even though really Kicker is more than a singular, it's almost like a meta type of mechanic, something that has a lot of different kinds of uses. And what you'll see is, as we subdivide a little more, we can make a lot of cool mechanics out of that space. The reason it's important to understand what you're looking at is, the needs of your design space are very different when you're looking with inset to larger magic. With inset, you have a lot of things, like, as a perfect example, we'll take Ravnica.

In Ravnica, when we're looking for mechanics, we're looking for mechanics that fit a guild. So by definition, we're restricting them a little bit. We're saying, okay, only these two colors will have it. That's a different animal than saying, okay, what can this mechanic do everywhere? The other thing when you're looking within a set to figure out the mechanic is

you're looking at the needs of the set what does the set need and the reason I'm trying to differentiate this is when you look at a mechanic you have to both say how much larger space does this mechanic have in all of magic and how much space does it have for the set I'm building and the reason that's important is my job, for example, as the head designer is I'm looking out long term for magic. And part of that is understanding design space.

So if I have a mechanic that's really big and can serve in a lot of different sets, one of the things we want to do is make sure that we're not sort of chewing too much up early on. There's a desire. One of the things I know when people design is, there's this desire to just prove what you can do. And it's very exciting to just find all the different uses you can make for a particular mechanic. Now, the thing is, if a mechanic is big enough that Magic will be able to use it multiple times, you know, you don't necessarily want to explore every facet of it.

You want to sort of find a certain facet. You know, one of the things that's interesting is to say, like if we have a new mechanic and it does something interesting, we don't necessarily need to reinvent the wheel with it. We don't need to innovate it necessarily because when we bring it back, we'll want to innovate. One of the things about bringing back mechanics is when you bring something back, you kind of want to do something with it you didn't do last time. So you've got to keep that in mind. If you have a mechanic that's big enough that you want to make sure that you're not overextending what you use because you know you want to use it again.

The other reason you want to understand the general size versus your set size is if you have a mechanic that's smaller than your needs of your set size, you can get in trouble. If you need to make 20 cards and your mechanic can make 10, that's going to be a problem. Vice versa, if you have a mechanic that you need to make 10 cards out of and it's capable of making 200 cards out of, wow, is that the right place to use it?

You know, sometimes what happens is we have a mechanic, we're like, wow, that's such a big mechanic, we shouldn't be using in this small, tiny space. And so when so when you're mapping out that's the thing we really are looking for which is sort of what is the overall space what is the space for this particular set okay so now now that i got a bigger parameter it's the idea of size and mechanic let's talk about what we actually look for to figure out how much design space something has. Okay, so the first thing you look for is limitations. And what I mean by that is,

is there some subset of things that it has to be used on? For example, let's take flashback. Flashback has a limitation. It only goes on instants and sorceries. Now, it goes on any instant or sorcery, but it doesn't go on permanence. Now, we have other mechanics that are similar, like unearth is kind of a flashback-like mechanic that goes on creatures, but it's a slightly different thing. It works differently.

So first, the limitation. Okay, card type is a big one. Often, if it's a creature ability, it would only go on creatures. Sometimes it's a permanent thing that can go on any permanent type. Sometimes it's a spell ability that can only go on instants and sorceries. Sometimes we subdivide a little bit, you know. Like Constellation, by the definition of the way we designed it, only went on enchantment. So you have to sort of figure out the limitations. First of card type, what card type can make use of this? You definitely want to figure that out. So the second thing you want to figure out is color.

Now, like I said, there's a difference between overall and set. Overall, you know, there's some mechanics that only go in certain colors. That's much more limited. We're much more flexible in sort of allowing colors to stretch a little bit for mechanics. But for set purposes, like, we often do factions. We did them in Ravnica. We did them in Shards of Alara. We did them in Khans of Tarkir.

Khans of Tarkir. And when you do that, when you have a faction, you limit it by color, that limits your mechanic. Because if this, you know, Delve is a fine example. Delve could go in many different places, different colors, but it's in soul tie. So, okay, for that set, it's black, green, and blue. That's where it goes. One of the things also we tend to do, even when there aren't factions involved, we find that magic is better.

We like when one of the purposes of the color wheel, I mean, listen to my podcast on the color wheel, is it's supposed to give definition and make the game have variety and feel different. So our goal is not to have every color play exactly the same. So obviously we have the color wheel, which helps with that. But another thing we tend to do is we don't tend to put all mechanics evenly in every color. So one of the things you can look at is mechanics can be done one of three ways, essentially. Number one is, they're equally in all five colors. Something like cycling, or something like flashback.

We can put them in a set in which all the colors have access to it. Number two is, we can have partial access, and what that means is, we push it for limited for certain colors, so the az fans are really high in certain colors, but we give everybody else some access.

Devotion and Theros is a good example here. Devotion really was pushed in certain colors. I think black, red, green is my memory. But, for example, there were, in higher rarities, other cards like blue. Blue didn't have a lot of Devotion, but it had two really good Mythic Rare Devotion cards, which were enough to have a deck built around it.

So in Constructed, devotion was a blue thing, but in Limited it wasn't. The final thing is we limit, and this isn't just in Faction. Sometimes we're just like, hey, this mechanic, we're going to make it this color thing. Morbid, for example, in Innistrad, I think we put in just black and green.

I think. Some of these sets we did long ago. think we put in just black and green, I think. Some of these sets we did long ago. I know we focused on black and green. It was meant for that for Limited. I don't think we did a lot of Morbid cards. My memory is mostly the black and green thing. So anyway, the first thing you're looking at is limitation, which is, is there a subset of cards that can go on? And like I said, card type and color are the most common thing to look at.

Sometimes, for example, we most common thing to look at. Sometimes, for example, we'll limit things to creature type. You know, we'll do a tribal thing where a certain tribe's the only one that does something. Like in Kamigawa, we had, I'm blanking on the name, the mechanic when you blocked it, a blocking creature got plus one, plus one. I'm sorry, you got plus one, plus one. I'm sorry, you got plus one, plus one. Bushido is what it was called. And that went only on samurai. Only samurai had bushido. So it was limited, had a flavor limitation. Oh, that's

another thing, by the way, to keep in mind, is, well, I'll get to that in a second. There's limitations. There's mechanical limitations. There's flavor limitations. Let me finish mechanical, then I'll get to flavor limitations in a second. So mechanical limitations. There's flavor limitations. Let me finish mechanical, then I'll get to flavor limitations in a second. So mechanical limitations,

you want to figure out where is the subset of what I can do, and that is the first guide of, okay, well, if I can only go on creatures, well, that is a limitation. That's not necessarily a, I mean, all these limitations, you then have to figure out what additional things.

But first off, is there a subset you have to do? That's mechanical. Flavorfully, there's a question of, does this represent something? Does the flavor of this? So a good example of flavor limitations would be on Devoid cards on Battle for Zendikar. The idea of Devoid, Devoid's a pretty flexible mechanic. It really can go on any colored card and make it colorless. The issue is not one of mechanical limitations.

It's, in this case, was a flavor limitation. Well, we wanted it to feel like the Eldrazi. Why was Devoid there? Oh, well, these represented cards that were Eldrazi. So we limited the kind of effects we had because we wanted a certain Eldrazi feel to them. And from time to time, you'll hear me talk about this, where we will come up with mechanical limitations sometimes

that match flavor restrictions. Like, I know when we were, DeVoy is a fine example where we wanted the DeVoy cards to feel evil enough and feel Eldrazi enough and feel like they were sort of definitely, they weren't helping you. They were definitely cards that were more sort of have an offensive quality to them.

But anyway, so you also have to think about what flavor limitations you are because the flavor limitations will also sort of restrict what's possible. Once again, flavor limitations are more a set thing and less an overall thing. This is used to avoid, again, this perfect example, which is

devoid in the set we used it in was representing the Eldrazi. That doesn't mean we couldn't use somewhere else with a different feel to it. And so if we used it somewhere else to do something else, we might have different flavor limitations to because it wouldn't necessarily represent the same thing. Okay, next. You have to think about the time of use of the mechanic. So the idea is, when is this mechanic getting used, and so what ramifications does that have? My example here will be Raid.

So Raid was the Mardu mechanic from Constant Turk here. So Raid was a mechanic that said, hey, if you've attacked this turn, I get a bonus. And it went on both spells and creatures. Creatures usually got an enter the battlefield effect. Sometimes it would trigger. Sometimes it would turn on an activated ability. And it would also go on spells. So, the issue is, you had to cast the spell after you attacked in order to get the bonus.

So you couldn't have effects that you wanted to cast before you attacked. For example, there are a bunch of different spells that enhance your creature to allow their attack to be better or make them evasive or something. So for example, let's say I had effects that target creatures unblockable this turn. Well, that doesn't work very well on a raid card, because how do you upgrade it? It's like, what's the advantage? Why would I cast this on my creature after it had already, like, raid means it's attacked already.

It's an effect that only matters for attack. So it limited, because of the time of use of the mechanic, it limited some means. There are certain kinds of spells we couldn't use because of that. And this is a very common thing when we're talking about looking at flavor space, which is what are the limitations to the thing you're trying to do from a, not from a car type, not from a color, but from the type of effect. And a lot of that has to do about when and where you can use it.

So another example would be, like, we had this issue in Conjuring Tarkir between Raid and Prowess. Which is, Prowess was something in which you wanted to get the bonus before you attacked because it made you bigger. And every once in a while you'd use it to save your creature because someone would bolt it and you'd make it bigger so it doesn't die. But usually you would do it before you attack. Raid always won the reminder after you attack. So there was an interesting little tension there between the two mechanics

in that they wanted different things. And it made it hard to have a prowess creature somehow use a rate effect to help the prowess creature get bigger, but then be able to get the rate effect. It didn't happen very often. And that's another thing sometimes you have to look, by the way, is not just what your mechanic does, but what other mechanics in the set does. What the set, how the set uses. One of the reasons you might limit something, like a mechanic might be limited on time, not because the mechanic inherently needs to be limited on time, but other things in the set, the larger purpose of the set might limit it.

Don't have a great example to help me head for that one. But one thing to keep in mind is that a mechanic has to fit. When you're thinking about why a mechanic makes a particular set, it also has to do with where it fits within that set. For example,

sometimes we take a mechanic that could go on all car types and might restrict it to certain car types because that set has a need. For example, I could imagine taking a mechanic that could fit on any card type, but we need a spell card type for the set because creatures are really filled up.

There's not a lot of space on creatures. And then what we would do is we'd use it in that set more on instants and sorceries, even though it's capable of going on creatures. Okay. Next thing you have to look out for is repetition, which is how often are you using this ability?

Is it an ability that gets used once per turn? Once ever? Once per turn? Multiple times per turn? So landfall, for example, is a good example of a mechanic that can be used every turn. You don't always have a land, so it's not every turn you use it for example, is a good example of a mechanic that can be used every term.

You don't always have a land, so it's not every term you use it. Landfall is a mechanic where I'm not trying where I can to identify the mechanics and tell you what they do. I apologize because I'm talking about so many different mechanics. You might want to open up, if you don't know all these mechanics, check a wiki or something and look at them. I'm trying to tell you what they all do when I come up with them, but there's a lot of mechanics I'm talking about today. So landfall is a mechanic that triggers whenever you play a land. So it's the kind of mechanic that's going to happen, not every turn, but many turns. And that is very different from a mechanic. The fact that you have to do something every turn usually means you have to look for effects

that are something that you're willing to do more often. And the more often you can use it, for example, if it gets used multiple times during a turn, like we have some mechanics that trigger off something happening. And if that thing can happen multiple times a turn, playing a land, I mean, yeah, there's tricks with fetch lands and things,

but most of the time you're not getting more than one trigger per turn on landfall. But there's other effects, like, you know, we had a consolation. It's very possible to play multiple enchantments in one turn. We've definitely had mechanics take care of how many artifacts you play. You know, we have things that it's possible to trigger multiple times per turn. And so one of the things is, depending on what you're doing, is you have to figure out what effect is okay to be

doing that many times. Usually, the more often something is doing, the smaller the effect is. Like, if I am doing a one-time effect, let's say it's life gain, okay, well, maybe I can gain six, seven, eight life. Ten life. Maybe I can gain a whole bunch of life. But if I'm repeatedly doing, I have to gain less life.

You know, and if I'm doing something that I can do a lot of times in return, maybe it can only be one life. You know, that's something you've got to keep in mind as you're looking at the effect is sort of how often something can happen. Another really common restriction that happens is what I will call effects that have a scale, scaling effects. And what that means is sometimes you have an effect that says, hey, how big I am is dependent upon something. We do a lot of tribal things in this space. You're like, okay, do something based on the number of goblins you have, of merfolk you

have, of elves you have. And the problem, or not the problem, but one of the things about these effects is scalable effects are limited to something that you can, like for starter, they have to have a numerical value to them. I have to find a way to say, okay, well, if you only have one, then it does one of something, where if you have six, it does six of something.

Now, there's a bunch of ways to do scalable effects. Usually what you do is you do something that has a number built into it. You're affecting so many targets. You're doing so much damage. You're getting so much life. Or you're boosting something

or making something smaller by so much power, so much toughness. That you're working with a numberness, you know, that you're working with a number allowing you to alter that number. Sometimes on more rare effects, it could be the number of things you can target or the number of copies of the spell. But once again, scalable effects is a very common thing that limits us is you have something that needs to be scalable. And so like devotion is a good example. Devotion is a scalable effect. I have to count something and then I have to have

my effect based upon it. So that meant that devotion is a little bit limited to, okay, what is scalable? What can be this number? And that is an often thing. We do scalable effects so often that we actually know, actually know what the scalable effects are. And we know where the problem spots are. One of the things about doing design for a long time is, like, what color has the most problem with scalable effects? Blue. Just having done that for a long time. Like, blue can mill things.

Blue can impulse for, you know, X cards and get one of them. Blue can do minus X, minus O to creature creatures. Blue can tap X creatures. I mean, tap and freeze X creatures. I mean, there's a small number of things that blue can do. But the problem is, when you don't have a lot of choices, sometimes, like, I might be in a set where, well, milling doesn't quite make sense in that set, or we're trying not to mill a lot. Then milling's off the table, and, you know, once again, if you have something that does scalable effects and you want, like, when you have a mechanic, that just means that you have to be able to do a bunch of

different things. And, like, one of the reasons, for example, the devotion was not high as fan in blue had to do with the limitations of what blue could do with scalable effects. And that's a big thing, by the way. We were talking about where we stick things. One of the things that you might not be aware of is sometimes we limit things. Sometimes it's flavor. Sometimes it's just mechanical space.

Like, oh, well, we're doing a certain kind of effect. That effect's harder to do in this color. Well, maybe what if we don't focus it on in this color? That's a very common thing we'll do. Like, devotion is a good example of a mechanic where we could have flavored any of the colors. And in fact, I know some people wanted more devotion in white because white flavor-wise feels like it'd have a lot of devotion. But it didn't make sense of the set at large that we were doing. And that's something that you're always thinking about is how does what you're doing fit in the set that you're designing?

And like I said, I mentioned this a bunch today, but it's really important. Design space for the set you're working on is a different animal from overall design space, and you've got to care about both things. Okay, next, templating and rules issues. Something that really can limit you is, for example, let's say you have a mechanic that has a long reminder text. Suspend being a fine example here. Suspend, just in order to take it out, you have to put it in the exile zone and put counters on and take the counters off every time. It just took a lot of text. So what that meant was you were limited in what your effects could be

by rules text length. That is something people don't think about. People often say, why didn't you do thing extra thing Y? And sometimes the answer is, it didn't fit on a card. And that is a real problem. One of the reasons in design we often will get the editors to do some rough templating is to see, oh, how limited are we? Because the bigger, like I said, the more reminder text, or more text.

It could be reminder text, it could be normal text. The more text you use for the mechanic itself, the less you have to do on the effect that's going to go with it. One of the reasons when people ask me all the time about why I care so much about evergreen creature abilities, the answer is a lot of times we're doing so much, I have room for one line on the creature. Sometimes that's rules text, sometimes that's complexity,

but I have room for one line, and it's nice to have the creature keywords because I know I can use them on one line. Also, rules. Sometimes there's problems. Now, there's two different areas of the rules. The rules can't handle it, and the rules would cause confusion. The rules can't handle it just might be, okay, look, for example, Awaken. We want to do Awaken on creatures, but the way Awaken got written, it couldn't go on creatures. So if you see in Oath of the Gawatch, we have two cards that for all intents and purposes is Awaken on creatures,

but we had to write it out, and it couldn't have the keyword on it. The second category is not that the game can't handle it, it's that it causes confusion. A good example there was, I know with Raid, we were very careful about Instants, because you didn't want to do something that would, the player using it might think they could use it at a certain time. Like a Giant Growth was a weird raid card

because you would want to make a creature bigger in time for it to do damage. But whether or not it has attacked, the window of when it's attacked, it's confusing. And so we were very careful not to try to do things that cause that confusion. Sometimes we also restrict it. It's not...

I guess the other restriction that will come in some time, so this is connected, is not rules per se, but it is the gameplay. We tend to do certain effects at sorcery speed. For example, levelers, when we did level up. It wasn't that the game couldn't handle instant level up. It wasn't that the game couldn't

handle instant level up. It wasn't that the rules couldn't handle instant level up. We just didn't think it was a better mechanic. We thought it made it more fiddly, made it a lot more sort of it cut down on choices and it made a lot more

it really limited, you sort of would always do it at a certain time because the correct answer was leave your mana open at the end of your opponent's turn right before you untap is when you would do it. And the gameplay there, it also allowed you to react to things and so it made it more complex in gameplay and we thought it cut down on choices. So that's another thing to remember that will impact on your mechanic is, besides templating, besides rules, is also gameplay, how it affects gameplay. Sometimes you restrict yourself

because it's just more fun if it works a certain way. Some of that is rules. Some of that, I mean, the reason this is all tied together is templating and rules and some gameplay stuff are very interconnected. We often work with editing, for example. We work on templating to figure out what uses do we have. Like, it's very common when they're writing the rules and writing the templates for them to come to us and say, Hey, do you ever want to... You're not currently doing Thing X.

Do you ever want to do Thing X? I know, for example, when we wrote Infect, there's a big question of whether or not we wanted Infect to go on spells. And I think what we said is that's not something we wanted to do much of. And so they wrote it such that I don't think it works on spells. You can't write it like you can't have an instant sorceress infect, I believe, is the way they wrote it. And they came to us and talked about it. And that's often something.

Why would we do that? So people also ask, why give up flexibility? Why not always take the choice that down the road gives you more flexibility? And the answer is we are trying to make the most mechanic we can. We want it to play the best. We want it to work the best. We want it to be intuitive. And, you know, the goal is not, I mean, I talk about this a lot in my Choices vs. Options podcast. The goal is not to give the player every option available. We want to make our mechanics have the best choices possible

and the best gameplay. And so sometimes you restrict things because it makes a better game when people can't do everything all the time. Okay, other things. Another big thing that you have to care about is the diversity of use. What I mean by that is how broad is the mechanic?

So I'll give you examples. Cycling is a very not broad mechanic. What I mean by that is it does the same thing every time you do it. You're going to spend mana, you're going to discard a card, you're going to draw a card. I know in Onslaught we messed around a little bit with generating effects. I'm not super happy with that. I feel, I mean, a little bit's okay, but I feel we were starting to push cycling into kicker territory, and that's not, I want cycling to be cycling, kicker be kicker. That's another thing that will restrict you sometimes, by the way, on your usage, is the goal is not to blurb a line between what

mechanics are. I don't want to say, hey, look at me. I can use cycling and make it feel a lot like kicker, or I can use kicker and make it feel a lot like cycling or whatever. That one's harder. That some of the restriction we have sometimes is make sure the mechanic feels like what it is. But when I talk about broadness, it's like what does it do? And so cycling does the same thing every time. Now there's a different spectrum on usefulness of the effect. We'll get to that in a second. This is

broadness of the effect. Sort of the diversity of the effect. The other end of the spectrum would be something like Scry. Oh no, no, Scry's pretty good. Scry does the same thing every time. Flashback's a little more open-ended, which is Flashback says you get to cast the spell again,

but what that spell is, the effect varies from card to card. Is it a discard? Well, it depends if the card that has it is a discard card. And so Flashback has a lot more variety of effects. There's more diversity in the kind of effects. Where cycling is going to be what cycling does. Now, both of them have a lot of use.

They're both very... A lot of cards can be made with them. But one of the things that's interesting is sort of the broadness of the different kind of effects you can have for it. Normally, the more different kind of effects you can pull off with it, the more cards you can make with it.

But, on the cycling side of the spectrum, if you're very broad, but you do a very basic thing. So let's talk about the other spectrum, which is how useful the thing is. And the idea is, cycling is a good example of, when do you not want to trade a card in your hand for a card from the library?

It's a pretty useful ability. Where some mechanics are very niche. Cypher, once again, was okay. It's an instant sorcery, but to get the most out of it, I need to have a creature that's about to get through to deal damage to my opponent. You know, to optimize it.

And so, like, okay, well, I need a certain style deck. For example, we have tribal mechanics that, like, you know, I only work with a particular... Prowl, For example, we have tribal mechanics like, you know, I only work with a particular, Prowl, for example, which was from Mourning Tide, worked on rogues. Well, if you didn't have rogues in your deck, you couldn't even play Prowl. So like,

there's a spectrum of how generally useful the mechanic is versus how narrow it is, what you have to do with it. And you take the two things of how broad the effect is, how the diversity of effect and the usefulness of the effect. So like cycling is something that's not very

diverse, always does the same thing, but very useful. Where flashback is something where it is both very useful, but it has a wide diversity of effect. We don't tend to make not very diverse, not very useful. It's not things

we make up. But what would be an example of something that is very diverse but not very useful? Might be a tribal mechanic that's tied to a tribe where you might have a lot of different uses for it, but hey, I need to have goblins or something in order to make use of it.

And like I said, one of the things you'll notice with today's talk is there's so many different metrics you're looking at when figuring out design space. It is not a matter of merely one thing. It's not just like, you know, if I want to understand how many cards I can make with it, I have to understand so many different factors. Okay, I'm not far from work, so let me check my list, make sure I'm getting all of them. factors. Okay, I'm not far from work, so let me check my list, make sure I'm getting all of them. Oh, another big thing to talk about is how much fun is a mechanic to use multiple times? Meaning,

is this mechanic, can this mechanic be used a lot with itself or not a lot with itself? And there's two basic reasons why. One is that it's just, is it fun or not fun? You know, I want to do this thing. Let's say the mechanic, you know, does this drastic thing. Well, how many times can I do that drastic thing? Epic is a good example. Epic was a mechanic that said, once you cast a spell, you can't cast another spell.

Okay, well, I kind of got to build my deck around an epic spell. I'm not going to play a lot of epic spells. I'm not playing multiple epic spells in the same deck that are different epic spells, most likely. So that is something in which it limits how often you can use it. It was a cycle mechanic.

It had five cards in the mechanic. So you have to sort of be careful of how often you can use something from just a general usefulness and how fun it is to do it a lot. The other thing that can have a big impact on how often you do something is, is it parasitic with itself? So parasitic is a term we use to talk about it needs to,

it's limited with itself to use it. Delve is a good example of a mechanic that has this problem where every delve card you use makes the next delve card weaker. You can't make a deck of nothing but delve cards. Now, you might make a deck that enables delve and be able to play more delve. I have a deck that just spits, you know, I somehow dump my library in my graveyard

and then I make use of a lot of delve spells. But delve has a problem that the first delve spell makes the second delve spell not quite as powerful. And so some mechanics restrict themselves because there's only so many you can make because they fight each other in that the first delve spell makes the second delve spell not quite as powerful. And so some mechanics restrict themselves because there's only so many you can make because they fight each other in that regard. And

I realize now that I use parasitic. Normally we talk about parasitic, we talk about a mechanic in a set that is not useful with things outside of the set. We also use that terminology to talk about a mechanic that kind of wants to use itself. So I'm... They're similar in definition, but they're about a mechanic that kind of wants to use itself. So I'm... They're similar in definition, but they're

slightly different. I don't want to confuse people. But it is a term we use to mean both things. They're at the same root, which is I have to be careful of how self-limiting it is. But I guess you could be parasitic in the SAT without self-parasitic. So I understand why that can be a little confusing.

The other big thing to look about is just general flexibility, which is, this is tied to usefulness, but just the idea of if I put a lot in my deck, does that open up possibilities for me or shut down possibilities for me? And that some mechanics are kind of enable opportunities and some mechanics require other opportunities to happen to make use of them. And so you have to sort of be aware of what volume, like we talk about Aspen all the time,

about how often something shows up in boosters and how big a spaceship mechanic can have. A lot of time comes down to what Aspen do you want? How much space is it supposed to take in the set? From how much do you need it to make it work? Some mechanics you need a lot of time comes down to what as-fan do you want? How much space is it supposed to take in the set? How much do you need it to make it work? Some mechanics you need a lot of. If you want to make slivers, for example, it doesn't really make sense to just make a couple slivers.

You want a decent as-fan to slivers. Otherwise, you need a volume of slivers to make the mechanic work. It's not good if I just have one sliver. One sliver doesn't do anything. On the flip side, something like Delve, which sort of eats off itself, unless I really have some way to enable Delve, which Unlimited, for example, is a little bit harder,

I don't want too many Delve spells, and so I don't want the As fan to be too high, because the last thing I want is lots and lots of mechanic that keeps you from playing a lot of it. So when you think of it, you really got to consider the As fan. Okay. I'm not too far from work, so let's sum this up.

So when you're trying to figure out your design space, you're looking at all these different factors. Like, I'm hoping today, I mean, I've been talking now for almost 40 minutes, which is slightly long. I had some traffic.

And like I said, there's so many facets of things you got to care about. But you've got to really about but you've got to really look about what are the limitations both on mechanical and flavor limitations

what you know what car types colors you know or a flavor implementation what is the overall diversity of your mechanic

what is the usefulness of your mechanic are there templating rules or mechanical limitations what is the time of use and how does Are there templating rules or mechanical limitations? What is the time of use and how does that impact what you can do?

Are there repetition issues? Are there flexibility issues? You know, just looking over all the general usefulness. Like, all these different things come into it.

So the question people have is, wow, that's a lot to think about. There's lots of different things. How can you possibly know this? How can you possibly, you know? And the answer is, you don't always know when you start a mechanic, it's design space.

I think I have a decent sense of it intuitively, just I've done this a long time. I've done this 20 years. I've had a lot of mechanics that I've had to figure this out for, so I'm able to shorthand a lot of stuff. But to people out there working on their own mechanics, working on their own sets,

how do you figure out your design space? And the answer is you have to build cards. You have to design cards. You have to playtest with cards. And what you'll find is natural gameplay will push you. One of the things I say in playtesting is if you playtest and you find you're wanting more, that's just a sign that it's telling you, okay, up your

ass then, make more of it. If you find that you just can't even use all you get, maybe that's a sign that it's too much and you want to pull back a little bit. The other thing you want to think about when you're making your own mechanic is how do you want to use it to make the set work? That a lot of times, a lot of these restrictions I'm talking about are not

overall restrictions from the mechanic, but set restrictions saying, in order to maximize this mechanic and this set, I want to have some restrictions to it, and you want to figure out what those restrictions are. It is very complicated. Design space, I mean, this is, hopefully, just listen to me talk

for 40 minutes, you'll realize that there's so many factors that go into understanding design space. And even then, by the way, I might think something has a certain design space and then when we go back to redo it, like I think it's big enough that we can redo it, and we go back to redo it, and we find some new design space.

We're like, oh, oh, that's interesting. And it might come about because the color pie shifted a little bit. It might come about because there's some new design technology we didn't have before. You know, all of a sudden there's double-faced cards, and oh, this mechanic with double-faced cards does something cool. Or it could just be we found something we just didn't find before. There was some rock to look under we didn't look under.

And, you know, because we started from a different vantage point and a different design, we're just thinking about it slightly differently. Also, when you mix and match mechanics with other mechanics, that's also a place you can get to a lot of neat designs just like well mechanic a is interesting oh but when it's the same set of mechanic b it has a different feel to it and so um that's often a very common thing where you know a mechanic can take on new life and new usefulness when paired with other mechanics but anyway hope you guys enjoyed my link to your podcast today, one of the advantages of

Seattle traffic. But I'm now in my parking space, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic.