Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #326 - Creature Design

Episode Date: April 29, 2016

Mark talks about the issues related to creature design.

I'm pulling on the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about design, but in particularly designing creatures. So in magic, about half of our cards are creatures, so a lot of what we do is designing creatures. lot of what we do is designing creatures. So today, I'm going to talk about all the little details about designing creatures. How do we design creatures? What do we have to think about when designing creatures? I like the idea of going down deep on something and just sort of talking about a lot of the mechanical things. So today, I'm going to examine how we design creatures. Okay, so to start with, there's a couple of different places where you start with creatures when you're designing.

Usually, it depends. I guess creatures sometimes, sometimes you're designing them from sort of what they do, and sometimes you're designing them to fill sort of a space you need to fill. So let me talk a little bit, let me first talk about the curve, if you will. So one of the things when you design creatures is you want to make sure that your creatures hit a curve. That you want your creatures, like you don't want to design all your creatures to be three drops. That your set needs to have your creatures along different, you know, you want, on some colors, at least a one drop. And some two drops, and some three drops, and some four drops, and some five drops, and maybe a six drop, or a seven drop, you know. You want to have a range of creatures.

So one of the things that happens first is you want to be very conscious when you're designing about what is going on in the range of creatures you have to do. So that means some of the time... So one of the things that's funny is we have a developer on our design teams and one of the roles of the developer is to cost things or to make sure that the numbers are correct. So the funny thing is sometimes I make a creature and I say to them, okay, fill in the casting cost. What does the mana cost?

What does it cost to cast that thing? Other times, I give him the mana cost and I say, okay, how big is this? Depending on where I'm at. Sometimes, for example, I'm trying to fill in the curve and I'm like, okay, I need a three drop. Okay, this is going to be a three drop. It's going to do this effect. Okay, how big do I get? You know, so it's funny that depending on where I start, I have my developer on the team fill in the gaps of whatever number is the thing, you know, I need, like the thing I need to have happened, I put in first and then I

ask, okay, assuming this, what do I get? So creatures, obviously, first off, let's talk about power and toughness. Power and toughness is a quirky thing. On some level, they mean something correlatively, creatively, although it's not the most consistent thing. I think if you sort of pick creatures and combine them and comparatively look at their power and toughness, like, obviously, roughly, the bigger you are, the bigger you are, you know, the harder you are to deal with.

As a general rule of thumb, certain colors have certain combinations of power toughness. So, for example, in white, the idea is, on average, the toughness is a little bit bigger than the power. So white, for example, is the color that will have cards in which the toughness is sometimes significantly more than power. You might see a 1-5 or 1-4, 2-5, you know, 3-6. Those are the kind of things that white could have. Now, white can have square stats, square meaning power toughness are the same. In fact, we try to have a decent amount of square stats just because it's easier for people to grok square stats,

to understand square stats, that seeing a 2-2. Now, the reason we tend to put square stats and stuff also is things that are going to change in which you're going to have to recalculate the power toughness are easier if they're square statted. So if I have a creature that gets a bonus, oftentimes we'll give it square stats to make it easier.

Now, white occasionally will have power greater than toughness, especially at low rarities, because white has smaller creatures. And so white will have the 2-1, sometimes the 3-2 or the 3-1. But you tend to see a lot less of power higher than toughness at higher things. I mean, I'm not saying you'll never see a 4-3 angel or something, but it is usually white on average has higher toughness. The flip side of that is red. Red,

on average, has higher power. We don't often give red toughness higher than power. We do occasionally. I'm not saying there's not the occasional 2-3 in red. There is. But on average, you know, and red's much more likely to have the 4-1, the 5-1, the 5-2, you know. Red's more likely. Now, once upon a time,

we used to give black that a lot. But about, I don't know, two years ago, a little over two years ago, we said we wanted to separate red and black a little more. So what we decided was that we were going to give black a little bit more toughness. So black now is the one that we occasionally give it the 3-1 or the 4-1, but we also occasionally give it the 1-4 or the 1-5 or 2-5. We've been trying to give black a little more toughness to differentiate it from red.

Green, which you kind of said in that area, we shifted with black. So green is the most square-statted of the colors. The most likely to have NN. The reason it makes most sense in green is green has the widest range of size. That green especially at lower rarities. So for example, at common white tends to tap out about three power. So, occasionally you'll see a 3-5 at common, you know, but white usually doesn't have

power four or greater at common. Blue usually, it has a serpent-type thing that's like a 5-5 or something at common. You know, a lot of the sets but other than that usually once again it tops out about 3 at common black tends to occasionally has a 4 almost always has a 3

occasionally has a 4 but usually tops out between 3 and 4 red usually has a 4 occasionally has a 5 but usually tops out between 3 and 4. Red usually has a 4, occasionally has a 5, but usually taps out at 4, sometimes a 3. Green, in common, always has like a 5 power.

Every once in a while, it has a 6 power. On rare occasion, it has a 7 power. So green is just a little bit big on average. So let me finish the status, and I'll talk about other numbers of the colors so green is more even-statted, although green can have a slightly higher toughness, can have a slightly higher power

we let green sort of green is most in the middle these days blue, by the way, is I guess closer to white blue has its toughness a little, I mean it's not quite as severe as white, just because in flying we'll sometimes give blue more often the 3-1 or the 3-2 than we give white. But blue also tends to, especially on the ground, have a bit more toughness. Although the other thing about blue is blue in general is smaller.

Like I just talked about how blue will get the serpent. Other than the serpent, blue really a common... It'll get three power flyers sometimes a common. It doesn't often have three power ground creatures a common. Okay, so let's talk percentages now. So we just recently changed this. Okay, so let's see if I can remember. So this is the current percentages.

Well, let me talk in terms of... So white is the color that has the most creatures. White is more creatures than any other color. And then there's about a 3% range change. So we've recently upped it. So the number of creatures, I'm not sure when you guys see this, but we're always tweaking around the number of creatures.

But as a correlational relationship, white is about 3% over green, which is number two of creatures. But as a correlational relationship, white is about 3% over green, which is number two in creatures. Green is about 3% over black, which is number three in creatures. Black is about 3% over red, which is number four in creatures. And red is about 3% over blue,

which is number five in creatures. So red and blue, because they're fourth and fifth, respectively, of creatures, tend to be the number ones. Blue's number one in spells. Red's number two in spells. Spells just go backwards only because what isn't in your creature space is your spell space. And so blue has the most because it has the least number of creatures. So the idea is that we, for a while, green was the creature color and green had more creatures

than anybody. But we finally realized we needed to differentiate white from green. And so the idea was white is a creature color in the sense that it has more creatures. It relies on smaller creatures. It builds the army. You know, it's the civilization color. So it has lots of creatures, but it has lots of small creatures. Green has the biggest creatures.

It's not that it has the most, but it has the biggest. And so if you look at common, for example, white it has the most, but it has the biggest. And so if you look at common, for example, white has more than green, but they're small. Green has the biggest creatures at common. So white and green both get to be the creature color, but white goes wide and green goes tall. And that allows us to sort of differentiate between it. One of the things you'll notice as I talk about this is I talk about changes we've made. We're always making changes to help differentiate things, to give colors sort of a clean, clear definition,

but make sure that each color also is doing something that is unique. And like creatures are so important in the game, having one creature color is weird. If we can find a way to do two creature colors, that is great. Okay, so now let's talk about sort of evergreen, evergreen keywords. So the idea is that we, so there's a term I use for vanilla, French vanilla, virtual vanilla. Let me explain this real quick. Okay, so a vanilla creature is, we define it as something with no rules text.

Technically, we allow things with reminder text to be considered vanilla because sometimes we include reminder text and sometimes we don't. And I don't like the idea that in some printing, it's vanilla, but in some printing, it's not.

The fact that that's how we define vanilla means there are quirky things that come up. Dried arbor, for example, under that definition is vanilla, even though by other definitions it wouldn't be, clearly has an activated ability. The only reason it's vanilla is its activated ability is part of its land type.

And so the idea that it doesn't say on the card that it has tap add green, but it does, is where the conversation comes in. Note, when I talk about the definition of vanilla, it's not like when I'm making a vanilla cycle, I'm allowed to just put dried arbor in there. There's some common sense. There's linguistic things that come about. The other reason, for example, I make that definition is

legendary is another thing that has rules complications and means something. But we consider Isamaru, you know, it's a white for a tutu, a legendary creature. That's a vanilla creature. So anyway, vanilla means no rules text. This means it has

power, toughness, no rules text. French vanilla means it has a keyword but nothing, or keyword or keywords, but nothing else. So the idea is a flying tutu, that's French vanilla. A hast a flying tutu, that's French vanilla. A haste 3-3, that's French vanilla. A first strike protection from white tutu, that is French vanilla.

Flying first strike, French vanilla. You know, so any combination of keywords. Usually we'll refer to French vanilla. It doesn't have to be evergreen. That if you have an ability, if the set has a creature ability and you, all you have is that ability, we still count that as French Vanilla. So, for example,

like when Prowess was introduced in cons before it became Evergreen, those were still French Vanilla creatures that just, you know, I was a 2-2 with Prowess, that was still French Vanilla. Virtual Vanilla means that there's Virtual Vanilla and Virtual French Vanilla, means that after your first turn in play, starting the turn after,

not counting the first turn in play, you are essentially a Vanilla. And I tend to count haste in Virtual Vanilla because beyond the first turn, haste doesn't tend to matter. I'm not saying it never matters. If you steal it, it matters. It can matter.

But for our definition of French vanilla, it's beyond the first turn. For all regular uses, it doesn't matter. And then virtual, I said I'd be French, I said virtual vanilla. And then virtual French vanilla is the same thing, but you're a French vanilla. So beyond the first turn,

basically you're just a French vanilla. So we use those terms to sort of talk about the idea of making sure we have some simple creatures each set. We want to have some Vanillas, some French Vanillas, some Virtual Vanillas. A very common way,

by the way, you'll see with Virtual Vanillas will be creatures with enter-the-battlefield effects. So, the idea is, when I by the way, you'll see with virtual Vanillas will be creatures with enter the battlefield effects. So the idea is, when I enter the battlefield, I do something. I draw you a card or whatever. I do something. And then from then on, after that turn, after that happens, eh, it's just a Vanilla or French Vanilla creature. Meaning that you

get, it has a little more to it. It's not just a Vanilla creature. But for understanding board complexity, it's like, okay, it does its thing, you play it, it does its thing, and, okay, now it's just a simple creature in play. The idea of French vanilla and virtual vanilla and, you know, the whole thing I'm explaining here is important because one of the things we're trying to do is make sure that the board

doesn't get too complex. If you have too many things in play that do too many different things, it can get a little mind-melty, and we want to be careful. The idea is we try to make sure a common has a certain amount of vanilla and French vanilla and virtual vanilla and virtual French vanilla. And the higher rarities we allow a little bit more. We don't mind magic having some complexity, but we don't want it to overwhelm you, so we sort of push complexity to higher rarities.

So uncommon, for example, for seals, we'll get to do a overwhelm you so we sort of push complexity to higher rarities. So uncommon, for example, for seals, we'll get to do a lot of the things we want. So the idea is, there's some complexity going on, but there's not ten cards that are all like, okay, what does this do? What does this do? What does this do? In constructed, by the way, you pick the card, so obviously the complexity there can be a little bit higher, although also

because of the nature of standard or constructed formats, creatures don't last quite as long, and so usually you don't get as many creatures in play as you do in sealed, or draft, in any kind of limited. Okay, so for keywords, I went through this in my Evergreen Keyword podcast, but really quickly. White, I'm not going to worry about primary, secondary, tertiary.

Well, I'm not going to talk tertiary. Primary and secondary, white gets to have vigilance, white gets to have flying, white gets to have lifelink, white gets to have first strike, and I guess protection is kind of deciduous, but protection is not a very white thing.

Blue has flying, has hexproof, has... Oh, white also has... Sorry, indestructible. Blue has hexproof, flying, prowess, flash. I think that is it. Black has flying, lifelink death touch and haste

red has haste trample first strike double strike oh when I say first strike I also mean double strike white also double strike so haste flying not flying haste first strike trample I'm forgetting

in red, a Menace. Oh, black also has Menace. Black and red both have Menace. And red is Prowess. And then green has Trample, Hexproof, Flash, Vigilance, and...

Forgetting something, Trample, oh, Death Touch. And Death Touch. So all the colors have roughly five abilities. I guess blue is the one that has, I think, four. Blue doesn't need quite as many because it has the least number of creatures. And once again, there are also tertiary abilities.

Green occasionally gets haste, and black occasionally gets first strike. There's abilities that show up infrequently, but the idea is you have to understand basically your abilities. And your primary stuff, you want to make sure that at common shows up at least once at common. Sometimes twice.

Your secondary will often show up at common for variety's sake and, you know, make simple creatures. But the primary, like, green's primary the green's primary is trample. So you're almost always going to see a common trampler. Yeah, you often will see a death toucher or a vigilance creature are common, but you're almost always going to see a trample creature.

Okay. So you have your rough sizes, you have your rough power tuckness combinations, you have your abilities you have access to. Okay, so now you're going to make a creature. So let's talk enter the battlefield effects, which is a large range of things. So one of the things that is really nice about enter the battlefield effects, as I just explained, is that they give a creature some complexity,

they let you do something with it, it has some impact on the game, but it only, it's here and gone. You do it, you do it, and then it just turns into a normal creature. Now, sometimes, I mean, there's a lot of variance in what Enter the Battle of the Great Creatures do. In general, we tend to,

they tend to be virtual Vanillas or French Vanillas. Usually, in Enter the Battlefield effect, especially at low rarities, that's what you do. You do an effect, and, okay, you have some creature. Maybe the creature has an evergreen ability or something. Or not just evergreen, a keyword ability. It could be special to the set.

And usually, when you have an enter the battlefield effect... So, remember that, essentially, when you make an enter the battlefield effect, it functions like a sorcery. Because you can only play creatures normally battlefield effect, it functions like a sorcery. Because you can only play creatures normally when you can play creatures as a sorcery. Flash is something available to creatures. If you have an ability that's going to kind of act like an instant and enter the battlefield effect, you can put flash on it. Flash is available to all the creatures for that purpose.

Blue and green are the ones that get flash on like French vanilla creatures, right? So like you're just a creature with flash. But, you know, white and red and black, if they haven't entered the battlefield, the fact that, like, white sometimes will really want a reactive ability. Like, we just made, in Shadows of Enderstrade, the new Avacyn, which makes everything indestructible for the turn. Well, it's more exciting if you could do it as an instant. It wants to kind of be reactionary. It wants to be a surprise.

Okay, we put Flash on the creature. So it's like, your opponent does something like, Ha ha, Evasin comes to save the day. You Flash her in, she has an effect. We, over the years, have started doing more enter the battlefield effects for a couple reasons. One is, over the years, we've slightly increased the amount of creatures.

That has just been true from the beginning, ever since I've been in Magic. I mean, we've always, little by little, been increasing creature percentages over the years. Creatures just sort of, especially in limited formats, really define things. Plus, there's a lot more design space in creatures as far as simple design space. There are only so many effects you can do, and I mean absolutely repeat effects, but there's not an endless amount of nice, simple effects where there's a lot more simple creatures you can do. One of the things that's interesting, by the way, one of the things that Eric Lauer does, he's the head developer, is he likes to keep track of power-toughness combinations we've done,

vanilla ones. And so he's always looking for, oh, we've never made this power-toughness combination. We should make it. And every once in a while, there's weird ones like, you know, 2.7 or something where for a long time, we'd never made it. It's like, oh, OK, I'm going to finally make the 2.7 or whatever. I just made that top of my head, so I'm sure there's a 2.7 that I forgot. But Eric likes to find those things.

And what he's recently been doing is he's been figuring out in each color where not that every color should have every vanilla creature because certain colors

make more sense for certain combinations but he's been trying to figure out oh well we've done this combination in this color but never done it

in this color and it makes sense in that color. So End of the Battlefield effects I think the reason that they've gone up is A, because we've had a little more creatures, and B, what we realize is they allow you to have some complexity but doesn't apply it to the board state. That I can, okay, I do something, something happens,

and then, okay, it's a much more normal creature. That is important. One of the problems we got into, sort of where New World Order came from in the first place, was the idea of just having too many abilities on the board, too many on the battlefield, too many abilities that were, like, just keeping track of all of them. It's like, hey, I have 15 creatures on the board,

and each one of them can do something. Each one of them cares about certain things. And I have to track what mine does, and then I have to track what yours do. And like, oh, can I understand all the combinations of all these creatures? Now, I know some players are like, that's what I love! I love having to track everything.

And one of the things we realized is that what we don't want to do is we don't want to make the game about there's so much information, can you even keep track of all the information? It's not about strategic strategy. It's not about tactics. It's not about correctly knowing when and where to play things. It's much information can you even keep track of all the information it's not about strategic strategies it's not about tactics it's not about correctly

knowing when and where to play things it's just can you process the information there's a lot of information and what we were finding when we had too much information on the battlefield

I mean A it created lots of complexity but also it made people spend all their mental energy not on doing interesting strategic and tactical things

but just processing it all. And what we found was, Magic was a better game when it's like, it's not that I don't understand what's going on. It's not that I can't monitor it. It's that I now can think about the ramifications of what that means.

And what we found was, when we over, we put too much on the board, people were just losing to on the board, on board tricks. Like, oh, look, I can do this. By thisboard tricks. Like, oh, look, I can do this. By this, this, this, this, this, I can do this. And you're like, I didn't see that.

And I just did something dumb because I didn't see that. And the idea isn't, okay, before I think of anything else, let me just process the board state yet again. So we've been trying to be careful about that. I mean, people always yell at me whenever I'm talking about trying to simplify complexity of like, I'm dumbing down the game. And I keep saying again, magic is not a simple game.

It's a very complex game. And one of the ways to help people process is where you have so much mental energy. Where do you want to spend your mental energy? Do you want to spend your mental energy keeping track of things, most of which won't often matter? Or would you rather think mental energy going, I got it. Okay, how can I use these things? How can I strategically do what I want to do? That's where we want the mental energy at. And it's not that magic isn't a game to make you think. It's not that magic isn't going to, you know, the better player isn't going to beat

the worst player. That's going to happen. Magic has a huge amount of, just the amount of decisions a single person makes over the course of the game is pretty staggering for a game. A lot of decisions to be made. All we're trying to do is make sure the decisions are the most interesting decisions we can make. Anyway, that's one of the reasons we've definitely been doing more enter the battlefield effects. The other thing, by the way, sometimes is there's also some fun combinations when you enter the battlefield effects. It just makes some other effects have some value.

It definitely makes bringing things back or flickering things or unsummoning things, it definitely adds a little value to them. Because, like, for example, I find it kind of neat that blue has unsummoning. Oh, but sometimes one of the problems of unsummoning something is the player gets to repeat the effect they get out of it. So, like, oh, I got to unsummon something. Do I want to unsummon that thing? Because there's some value if they get it back. And maybe I'll unsummon something different. I find that sort of cool interactions.

Okay. Another thing to do with creatures. I'm starting by thinking of common creatures. There are other things. So death triggers. I'm going to talk about death triggers. We don't do death triggers quite as often as we do into the battlefield. Because death triggers are not virtual vanilla.

You have to keep in mind what they are while they're in play. The reason they're a little better than some other stuff is what we found is less experienced players don't tend to... They're like, okay, it does something. When it dies, let me know. And they don't worry quite as much about... I try to use the linticular design. What we find with beginning players is they don't tend to think ahead. So, oh, when this

creature dies, something's going to happen. Okay. Let me know when it dies. And not like, oh, I've got to be careful when or how it dies because I want to time this effect correctly. But the one thing about death triggers that does cause a problem is

we find less experienced players are really worried about their creatures dying. And if the opponent has creatures that when they die, something positive happens, or you have creatures that when they die, something negative happens, can make some players more hesitant to attack.

And so we want to be careful how much we do of that. Oh, the thing I forgot to mention, enter the battlefield effects. One of the things we're very careful of is when you have a conditional enter the battlefield effect, that might make you not play your creature. The classic example is, like, destroy target enchantment. We want to be careful how often we do something like that,

because what will happen is that sometimes you have this card and you need the card. So, what is it, Aven Cloud Chaser, I think it is that sometimes you have this card and you need the card. What is it? Aven Cloudchaser, I think it is. It's a 2-2 flyer that enters the battlefield and destroys an enchantment. What we found watching people is because they so want to get value out of the card, they won't play until there's an enchantment to destroy. But sometimes what they really need is a 2-2 flyer.

And so, I'm not saying we don't do the Aven Cloudchaser, as we do, and in the right world we will, especially in a world where enchantments matter more, so it's more likely that it's going to come up. But we have to be careful with End of the Battlefield effects about how, especially at low rarities, we want things that are more proactive and less reactive. That if I have to wait for you to do something before I can do it,

people tend to keep from playing the card. Okay, another common thing we'll do. So activated abilities, so real quickly, one of the New World Order things. So in New World Order, for those who don't remember, the idea is we want to keep complexity down to common to help keep the overall experience better for less enfranchised players. The idea being the more advanced players, in any sort of constructed format, they'll use whatever cards they have, they own more cards.

A beginning player just has less cards, a higher percentage of the cards are commons. If the commons are simpler, it makes it easier for them to sort of get into the game. As such, we have some rules that are common about what you can and can't do without what we call getting red flagged. So getting red flagged doesn't mean you can't do it at Common, but it means it's only 20% of your Commons

get to be red flagged or be... That's slightly incorrect. 80% of your Commons have to be within New World Order rules, and 20% get to break them. And there's some rules about how to break them. It's not like you can do whatever for the last 20%. But 20% tends to stay outside like just you can do whatever for the last 20%. But 20% tends to stay outside

that realm and can do more complex things. But if you fall in that 20%, you're what's called red flagged. Meaning that if you do

something and you're red flagged, okay, well, you can be in that 20% but you can't exceed the 20%. So it means like, okay, you're a little

bit more complex so we're going to stick you in this special category that means the designers and developers have to look and go, oh, you're a little bit more complex, so we're going to stick you in this special category. That means the designers and developers have to look and go, oh, we're over that percentage, we've got to start cutting back. So one of the things to look at about activated abilities is, the hair we slice is,

if the activated ability affects you, it's fine. That's New World Order friendly. And you, I mean, not you the player, you the creature. So if I have fire breathing, or I have activated flying, or you know, if I do something in which I activate it and I make the creature better, that is very easy to

grok. The idea basically is, oh, that creature can do something. If I'm going to get in a fight with that creature, I might want to look what that creature does. I remind myself what that creature does. But all I have to remember is, that creature can do something. to look what that creature does. I remind myself what that creature does. But all I have to remember is that creature can do something. Okay. Things that affect other things break new world order.

Or, there's a few exceptions, but as a general rule of thumb, if I have an ability and I can affect other things, then I get red flagged. So, for example, I gain flying, or I gain first strike, or I gain fire breathing.

Okay, you can do that. That's fine. I give another creature fire breathing, or I enhance another creature's power, or I give another creature flying, or another creature first strike. Well, actually, flying is a little different. But if I give another creature something

that's going to affect combat in a way where I have to keep track of things, and I have to know that you can do this to know that any one of my creatures might have that bonus, that's a red flag to New World Order. Things that actually grant evasion, like flying, now that I think about it, is fine, because that reduces decisions, not increases decisions. Also, there's things like tappers that are okay, even though they affect other creatures, because they reduce decisions in combat.

So one of the things that we've decided is, when you're looking at activated abilities, do we make it harder to process the board or easier to process the board? I keep saying board, which is slang for battlefield, so if that's throwing anybody, board is, I don't know, is this R&D slang, or Magic Player slang, if you've never heard it before.

We're talking about board complexity and stuff. So, the general rule of thumb is, if I have an activated ability and I make it harder for you to understand, now, the one exception is, if I affect myself, the idea is, if I'm in combat and the creature has an activated ability, I can learn, I can give myself a little thing of saying, okay, I've got to worry about that creature potentially. So I go, oh, it's got an activity ability, I should check out that creature. Oh, it can do something. It can make itself

bigger, it can get first strike. It has something that's relevant to me. I just got to remember that in combat. I'm not going to block that creature without reminding myself what it does. If you do something that doesn't enhance or make combat more complicated for example, grinding flying

oh, well now this creature there's less options like my opponent has to know it but it's like once we get to combat it's like oh, I don't have to think about that same with tappers what we learn with tappers is that if I tap your creature

it's always going to happen before combat or almost always there's no real value to tapping mid-combat anymore. Once upon a time, there was. But we got rid of that rule long, long ago. Yeah, once upon a time, tapped blockers didn't deal damage. And so tapping creatures during combat, like if you had an ice manipulator or a twiddle

or something that could tap creatures, you could surprise your opponent and do things. But excess complication for not enough value, so we took that rule away. Of course, whenever we take that rule away. Of course, whenever we take a rule away, we get complaints

because I like that rule, but once again, we have to pick and choose where we put our complication. That's not where we wanted to put it. So, activated abilities, you've got to be careful,

at least at low rarities, whether or not it's something a new or order-ish thing. We also have attack triggers. So, there's two different types of attack triggers. There's attack triggers that when I attack, something happens, and there's combat damage when I deal damage, usually to an opponent,

usually combat damage to an opponent. So the first is, okay, no matter what, I just have to attack. And the reason that one gets used is I have to put myself in jeopardy. We'll often put that on smaller things that have effects that like, the difference between

attack triggers and combat damage triggers has a lot to do with feel. Attack triggers tend to influence combat. So if I'm going to do something that matters in combat, I do it as an attack trigger. Combat damage tends to generate more spell-like effects or do things

in which it feels like a reward for getting the creature through. So like, what we call curiosity, it's a nickname, is you get to draw a card. Not something we do at common, because for a beautiful card draw, we don't do at common, but it is something where, if I do combat damage to something

and I get to draw a card, you know, draw a card is, it's not going to affect the combat. Something that feels like more of a reward for getting your damage in. So we will do different triggers and such. So at higher rarities, you'll have other triggers, for example.

You'll have, like, a beginning of turn type triggers. We tend not to do that too much at Common. Just repeatable effects of something else that we tend to red flag. Like, if every turn you have to remember to do something, we want some of those effects, but too many just means you forget them.

So what we'd rather do is make them a little bit bigger and put them in higher rarities. But you can have creatures that have abilities that happen every turn. That's very common. You also could have triggered abilities that mean when something happens, then this thing happens. Whenever blah, then blah.

Once again, we tend to put... if we put trigger things at common, they're going to be really simple triggers. Obviously, you've seen things like landfall, or sometimes whenever you play a creature, prowess, you'll see. There's some things. Usually, if we're going to do them at common, it's a theme. It's an evergreen keyword like prowess, or it's a theme like landfall, where the player can know to look out for specific things. If it's just one card that tends to do it, then that's a little bit higher rarity.

If it's a card that says, oh, whenever you do blah, and no other card cares, that's uncommon or higher rarity. So you definitely can give it triggered abilities on things. You also can put static abilities on things. definitely can put triggered abilities on things. You also can put static abilities on things. Static ability says, if something happens, then I get, you know, or I'm sorry, I might be confusing if and when. There's a lot of templating that I'm not particularly good at that tells you when something's a static ability versus a triggered ability. But I do know that when you make creatures, you can make static abilities, that you can

make things that, for example, I just grant an ability that, you know, when I'm in play, I grant an ability. Trigger cares about that something is happening. Static just means I do something. All my creatures get plus one, plus one. So once again, things that do static effects usually if they're not common they're pretty simple higher rarities will do bigger things

you know up at rare and mythic rare will do much more grandiose things things that can affect the board and really

really make you build your deck around it or have huge change that tends to be at higher rarities um so we okay so we did

activated ability once again with activated abilities I didn't really get into it, but there's tap versus non-tap. Tap means you have to use up the creature, meaning if I use this ability, now I have tapped it. I can't attack with it or I can't block with it.

Where activated means that that's not true. If you have an ability that's combat-oriented, especially if it involves you, it's almost always activated and doesn't require a tap because we want you to be able to use it in combat when your creature's tapped.

Usually things with tap are generating spellish type effects or it's affecting other things and we want to limit its use. I mean, obviously, if it has a tap, we're trying to limit its use. The tap symbol is a very...

Be aware when you want to use things, whether you want to use it once or not. Most things will have a tap if we want to use it once. There are a few things that affect combat, like the wall ability, where green has this plus end, plus end, until end of turn, only use once per turn. We'll say only

use once per turn, or only use so many times per turn. Sometimes you'll see fire breathing, for example, that restricts how many times you can fire breathe. We don't use that text a lot, use so many times per turn. Sometimes you'll see fire breathing, for example, that restricts how many times you can fire breathe. We don't use that text a lot, but that's available to you. So anyway, you have activated abilities, you have triggered abilities, you have static abilities. Once again, triggered is when something

happens, this happens. Static is just, I just have an enchantment-like effect that affects things. Also on creatures, you can... I talked about attack triggers. I talked about combat damage. You can also do things

that when you... Technically this is triggered, but you also can do things that when I kill other creatures, your triggered abilities can care about a different kind of things. Technically, combat damage and attack are both triggered abilities. They all fall under the trigger,

but they're very common in any things we use. I pulled them out. Obviously, you can have a mechanic. I talk about having keywords.

Sometimes the mechanic is keyword-oriented. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's an ability word. And you have things like devoid. Sometimes there's things that care about the color you can mess around a little bit with it's more than just a creature, it can be an artifact creature

it can be an enchantment creature in a blue moon it's a land creature, although we don't really do land we do lands that animate into land creatures, we don't tend to do creatures you cast that are land creatures because Dryad Arbor caused all sorts of problems. Almost to work. Anything else to think about?

Oh, creature type. So one of the things that when you design a card, the way it works in R&D is if the creature type matters, we will specify it. Otherwise, we leave it up to the creative team

to figure out what it is. So a lot of times it's like, oh, we made a 2-2 flyer. It's white. is. So a lot of times it's like, oh, we made a tutu flyer, it's white, whatever. We don't care. And then the creator says, oh, it's this, it's that. Sometimes it's like, oh, no, no, we have bird tribal. We want this to be a bird. This is a bird.

We put an exclamation point in the file so that the person doing the concepting goes, oh, R&D wants this. Or not R&D, their R&D. Design or development wants this to be a bird okay i got a concept it is a bird it's important it's a bird um and so uh it's the one area that overlaps kind of between the creative team and the design development teams where like it is kind of the creative team's purview unless it matters and then design development get involved

you unless it matters and then design and development get involved. It's funny because like in in Unsets, in Silver Border World I get to care about all sorts of things and so there's all sorts of ramifications of like it matters whether you have two words in your name or it matters whether you have a certain artist

and things like that that matter. But normal magic the real only overlap in Black Border Magic between the design development side and the creative side, as far as mechanical relevance, is over the creature type. But the creature type is something you have to care about. There's super types, obviously.

Legendary being a big one. The big question on legendary is, like, does your character represent, or does your creature represent a specific character? You know, is there one of them? That's when you get to use legendary. like, does your creature represent a specific character? Is there one of them? That's when you get to use legendary. Obviously, with commander these days,

we're more conscious about when we use legendary, when we don't. Sometimes we will make legendary things out of things so that they serve as good commanders for a certain theme of the set, and then we make sure to work with creators to make sure we make a character out of that. Sometimes, I didn't really get into the top a character out of that. Sometimes, I didn't really get into the

top-downness of creatures. Sometimes you're designing creatures because they're characters you're trying to match or something and you

do the top-down. Any other big parameters on creatures? I think that's a major thing. So, anyway, I'm almost to work.

That is the general nature of how to make a creature. Oh, the last thing is mana cost. I guess I didn't talk about mana cost. To me, mana cost is not something I worry about tons in design. I do worry about making a curve, as I talked about early on. So, I mean, I worry about the mana cost sometimes going, oh, I kind of need a two drop or three drop, and then I get my development representative on the team

to help me balance and make it the right thing. But pretty much, mana cost can matter from a design standpoint. Obviously, Isamaru, which was a 1-mana 2-2, that really mattered. It was a 1-mana creature. If you just made that a 2-mana creature, it becomes not an interesting

creature. Sometimes in design, mana cost can matter, but be aware that design doesn't dictate power level, and so mana cost matters, and then we're trying to curve things out and stuff, but if I make a card, I know that, you know, somebody else is going to

look at it and tweak it if it needs to be tweaked. But it is something, I mean, when you make, when you're playtesting your own card, definitely put mana cost on things. You need to play them. You need to have an actual cost. And we always cost our things. I'm just... It is not often that it matters.

It every once in a while matters. The other place it matters is when you are making mechanics that affect... like, reduce casting cost and stuff. Then it matters. Like, I have to care about, like, it's big enough that it matters

that I'm reducing its cost. Like, you know, if I can, you know, Delve doesn't want to go into two-drop creature. It's not particularly... Ooh, I could save one mana. That's not too exciting. You want to make it a little bit bigger. So, there is some design relevance when you have mechanics that care about mana cost. It can matter a little bit more.

But, anyway, that is the basics of designing creatures. So, I'm curious if you guys like this podcast. I can talk more about

designing other card types and stuff. If this is something you found interesting, I'm trying out new things. But anyway, I'm in my parking space. So,

we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. Instead of making magic, I'm sorry, instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic.

I'll see you guys next time.