Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #369 - Lessons Learned - Khans of Tarkir

Episode Date: September 23, 2016

Mark talks about what he learned from designing Khans of Tarkir.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is another in my series, Lessons Learned. So what this is about is I look at sets I've led, and I talk about what I learned from them. So we are up to Khans of Tarkir. So this set had a very interesting history.

Let me talk through sort of the history, and I learned a lot from it, so this should a very interesting history. Let me talk through sort of the history, and I learned a lot from it. So this should be an interesting podcast. Okay, first and foremost, let's talk about where we started from. So what happened was we knew we were going to, at the time, this is back when we still did three sets in a block. at the time, this is back when we still did three sets in a block. And what we did is every other year, the second set was a large set. Now we've shifted to a whole system where there's two large sets a year. But at the time, what we did is the fall set was always large. The winter set was almost always small. And then the spring set vacillated between being large and being small.

And so this year, it was going to be a large. And the Kansa Tarkir year, it was going to be a large. So we're going to have a large set, a small set, and a large set. And I wanted to try something a little different. So I was intrigued by the idea of having the little set, the small set, drafted with both the large sets.

Traditionally, the way we've done it in the past was we would do a large set in the fall. All this is obviously Northern Hemisphere. We would do a set in the fall. Then we would do a small set in the winter, and we would draft them together. And then if we did a large set in the spring, we tended to draft it by itself and usually it'd be a mechanical reboot. So I knew I wanted to do a mechanical reboot, meaning I knew that the large set in the spring would be functionally different from the large set in the fall.

But I love the idea of the middle set anchoring and that you drafted the middle set with the first large set, but then you drafted it with the second large set. And the idea is that the middle set would change in context as you did that. And the idea at the time was, that's where I started. And in fact, in some ways, Khans of Tarkir was the first use of exploratory design.

We would go back and make use of it and sort of go back to fill some stuff in for Theros, but we actually, the very first exploratory design we ever did was for Constantine Archer. We had just hired Ethan Fleischer and Sean Main, and I really wanted to put them through the paces of the ability to sort of build worlds. And so I gave them the challenge of, okay, large, small, large, what does that mean?

And they came back with all sorts of ideas. We ended up going with a time travel theme, which is my first lesson here. I love time travel. I was very excited. The problem at the time was I only got sign-off from the person in charge of the creative team, and I didn't really spend time and energy getting the rest of the creative team on board. And what happened was that the person who I sort of got the okay from

ended up leaving Wizards and so I was in a weird situation where the only person who had signed off on it left and everybody else really hadn't signed off on it. It wasn't something they had agreed to do. And that lack of buy-in really caused problems down the road because what happened was, is I got, I got okay. I started making, I started making a set.

And by the time it was time for them to do their work, I was, you know, for those who don't know the process, although, to be fair, this is a process at the time. We've since changed the process because of this. But at the time, the way it worked was, I would do a lot of work on the set. I would get some preliminary okays from creative, and then I would do a lot of work before creative sort of started doing their work. I would do a lot of work before creative sort of started doing their work.

And in some ways, content-centric here is the thing that made us completely revamp our process. So this is a big lesson. So what happened was I said, okay, I want to do a time travel story. I got okay from the person in charge. But I didn't really get, I mean, I didn't really sell it to anybody but him. And then once he left, I had a lot of people that were like, eh, we didn't really sell it to anybody but him. And then once he left, I had a lot of people that were like, eh, we're not really crazy about this. Could we change it? And the problem was that at that point, I'd so ingrained what I was doing that there wasn't an easy way to change it. One of the things I always try to describe to

people is design is super flexible early and very inflexible late. What that means is I have to make decisions. I have to do things. Early on, I can make lots of decisions. There's lots of different ways for me to do something. So people give me input early on. I can be super adaptive. But once I start making things, once I start making decisions and then working around those decisions, because a lot of the way design works is you figure out the core of what you're doing and you start building around it. So, for example, I decided that once I had the time travel theme, it was very important to me to show mechanically.

So the idea of a time travel theme was we came to a world, end up being Sarkin's home world, and there were no dragons. Sarkin goes back in time, changes the thing he needs to change, comes back to his dragons. That was the basic outline. And we were playing into a science fiction trope, if you will, the idea of a time-travel

story where someone is dissatisfied with the present, goes back to the past, makes a change for what they think will be the better, but they come back to find the world's for the worse. We did a little tweak on it because Sarkhan actually was happy with what happened, but the world was worse for the dragons. Like, the dragons living was not good

for everybody really other than dragons and people who loved dragons. It was worse for the humans and most inhabitants of the world. Dragons make vicious warlords, apparently. So what happened was that I had made this commitment

to wanting to demonstrate the three stages that, okay, things are as you know them, it's the past, and then it's the alternate future. Or alternate present, I guess, technically. And so I decided that Morph was going to be my center stone to show those differences. But what happened is as we evolved, really the, I started building around that and what I found was later on there was dissatisfaction for the direction that we had chosen,

but I had already chosen it, and I started building around it. And so, like, Morph was the kind of thing that when all was said and done, like, the thing to remember is when I started making Kanzatarkira, there were no, it wasn't a wedge set. I didn't start with a wedge set. I eventually got to it being a wedge set, but I didn't start there there and so I was a lot more focused on the time travel story on the world as things change in fact I knew there were going to be factions

but originally I had made four factions not five factions and then the creative team came to me and they had an idea for a fifth faction they really wanted to do. And once they gave me a fifth faction, then I knew, I mean, I know the number five. There's no way to do five of something in Magic and not tie it to the color wheel. It just, it would seem unnatural. So once I had five things, then I'm like, okay, let me start looking at the color wheel because five is going to tie into it.

And that's when I realized that we had never done wedge, and players had asked a lot for wedge. And that's when I realized that we were pretty close to having wedge, that it was not too far apart, and then we ended up, that's what got us to the wedge. But the interesting thing is once we got to wedge and the factions, and the creative team really got excited into the factions, that's where their energy went, into the factions.

And so the larger sort of theme wasn't as exciting to them, but I had already built the set around it. So one of the big lessons I learned from this is the kind of integration I needed, because there was a real, there was a little bit of a disconnect going on between kind of what the design wanted to do and where the creative was going. And I feel like the set could have been better if we hadn't been more aligned early on. That what I needed is, I needed to have everybody going, okay, this is what I'm doing. This is how I'm conveying this.

doing, this is how I'm conveying this. And the set had this duality to it where on one level there was the factioning and the clans and the other there was sort of this larger meta story, the time travel story. And what happened was, had we been more ingrained early on we could have intertwined them better but they ended up sort of schisming and going in different directions. And so it gave the design had a little bit of dual nature to it that I wasn't intended because there were two different themes sort of playing for space. And those two themes weren't as entwined as they need to be. Okay, so the first big lesson is what we realize is,

and this is what led us, by the way, to doing, well, Concept Tech here was the first time I ever did exploratory design. I'll get to that in a second.

But we basically learned from this the importance of not just doing exploratory design, but starting to do exploratory world building. That I needed a buy-off of certain concepts creatively before I connected

to them mechanically. And the problem in the old world was I would sort of make guesses if we were going, but then I'd get far enough along that by the time the creatives started making decisions what they wanted to do, I already made a commitment that was hard to turn off of mechanically.

Once again, like I said, the earlier I know, the easier I can make changes. So the change we made, and this said, the earlier I know, the easier I can make changes. So the change we made, and this really was the big lesson that pushed us in this direction, took us a while to sort of figure out how best to do it, and we're still fine-tuning the system.

But now what I want to do is, I want early on to understand the essence of what the set's about. What's the, I call it the ethos of the set, but like, what's the, inherently, what's the lesson that's trying to be learned? What's the story that's being told?

You know, what kind of world is it? That a lot of what I want to do in my design is, I want you, the player, to play, as a player, I want your goals and how you play the set to align with the goals of the main characters. You know, whatever the world's about, I want you, the player, to sort of have that same

sensibility to it. And sometimes, by the way, the sensibility, I mean, there's a bunch of different ways we can do it, but I want to understand what the world is about. And so one of the big lessons is realizing the trouble of getting into, of committing to something that there's not buy-off on, and then there's just tension. And you'll notice, by the way, the way the block played out, the time travel portion of it kind of petered out a little bit.

A lot of the problems with Megamorph we would later have in Dragon's Dark here stemmed from the fact that the focus just wasn't there, that we ended up being more about the factions and less about the time travel stuff. And so we had built a lot of energy starting up and we started strong with Morph and I thought Manifest worked real well, but there wasn't the energy or... And I wasn't running the third set.

So this thing that was really strong to me kind of petered out a little bit. And that's one of the problems of Megamorph that led to the schisming of where we went put the energy in a different place and what you want in your design by the way is you want to make sure that all the components in your design are going in the same direction um that one of the things that's really important one of the things i found like the number one goal of of a lead designer of a set is to understand what's the bullseye where

are you going what and you want all your pieces moving in the same direction if they fight each other then what happens is something trumps something else and you end up not having the cohesion you wanted and there was a little of that and that nothing wasn't proud of cons I think cons actually turned out pretty well but there was a little bit of a fight it and it didn't play out in cons. I think cons managed the balance decently. But during the rest of the block, you started to see the schism happen. Because I didn't line

them up clean enough. And what ended up happening was, I sort of adjusted for it within the set that I was leading. But I wasn't leading the next two sets. And so, that schism kind of separated. And it never quite came together. and there's a little bit of a disconnect in the block because of that that's that's on me for um not i mean

the lesson of it is you have to understand early on what is going on get all the components of including the creative components and figure out where you are going and have one clean sort of messaging that happens through. And then if you schism your messaging, the sets are schisming, and then you end up having something that's either not supported or things that are working at odds with each other, which is a problem. Okay, another big lesson, exploratory design. In fact, this is probably the biggest lesson.

I'm not sure. These lessons aren't always in order of importance. It's more in order of how I remember them. One of the side effects of driving while podcasting is you get a lot of free train of thought. Okay, so I just hired Ethan and Sean. I really wanted to put them through the paces, get a sense of world building.

The big difference between The Great Designer Search 1 and The Great Designer Search 2 was the Great Designer Search 1 was looking for people that were good at making cars and mechanics. It really put people through paces to say, how good are you at the craftsmanship of making magic components? Great Designer Search 2, I was interested in finding more people that could help me build worlds, that could do larger holistic design, because that's something we needed more of. And so I was very interested in working with them and trying to sort of test them. And the idea is, the reason we started a year early was, I knew I had something that I needed to figure out. By letting them do a year early, it's like, well, if they never figured

out, hey, I'd be where I'd be when I started. But I said, you know, I have the time. Let me just give them a year early. I know it's a problem we have to solve, you know, I have the time. Let me just give them this a year early. I know it's a problem we have to solve and let's see if they can solve it. And my idea was, I was going to give them all the tools, but I was going to let them solve the problem. I wasn't going to solve the problem. But the way it worked out was what we did is they would do so. I would give them notes of what I was looking for. They would, like, for example, my first note was the structure. Okay. We've got to match the structure. They would come back with things, and then I would say, okay, well, here's the kind of

things I need to see, and then they would mock up things, and we'd play tests and try things out. But anyway, we tried the system out, and the funny thing was, I had done it originally solely as a teaching tool, but it ended up being really useful. Um, because what happened was normally when I started to set, it's like, okay, let's dive in. And the thing I hadn't realized until I had done this was that one of the things, um, I use my analogy here of, uh, uh, so a normal swimming pool, uh, you know, you step into it, maybe three feet deep, go to 10 feet deep, let's say, and that's your pool. But there's a kind of thing called the zero entry pool,

which is a lot kind of like how a beach works, where it's a flat incline, and that when you walk in, like when you first walk in, the water is, you know, inches deep, because it's, you know, it's an incline. And then you slowly walk in and you get to sort of walk in at the acclimation that you want. And what I realized was that we kind of were doing design like, okay, jump in the pool. And yeah, we jumped in the three foot part before we got to the 10 foot part. But still, we were jumping in.

And that one of the things that sort of having time to work with Sean and Ethan and think about it was, I realized that there's a neat process of having time to think about what the set has to do without being responsible for making the set. That when it's design time, you're on the hook to make a set. You're on the hook to make cards and make the set. And one of the things that was really liberating, and like I said, I didn't do it for me, I did it for them, but I got so much out of it. Because what I found was, as we were trying to solve problems,

I started to realize what the problems were. So if you ever heard me talk about exploratory design, exploratory design isn't so much about solving problems as it is about understanding what the problems are. Sometimes you solve them and you try to solve them, but the reality is vision in the end has vision design. So basically in design, we do vision and then we do refinement and then we do, I'm sorry,

we do vision, integration, and then refinement. So the first part is the vision design. And usually during that section was when I would have to figure out what was going on. But I still have to make the cards. I still have to figure out how to do that. And so what was happening was I was both trying to figure out what the set needed at the same time that I was trying to generate a card set. And when I did exploratory design, what I realized was that I didn't have the constraint yet of having to make the cards. I could just think

about the set as a set. I could just think about it. And that was pretty neat. And it let me do some stuff that I'd never done before, where I could just sort of explore issues and problems. And then when I had Sean and Ethan work on things, I could say, okay, guys, I'm interested in this. Can you try this? And I would send them down paths to figure out what would go on. And it was super illuminating. It was definitely, um, it was the kind of thing where, um, I hadn't realized that I needed it until I had it. And then once I had it, I'm like, how have I not always done magic design like this? You know, like I was essentially what was happening was I was combining two things at once that I was both prepping and preparing.

That I hadn't realized it till I separated it out, but there's two different parts about doing the early part of vision. And one of them is sort of mapping out what is going to happen. And part of it, you know, like, it's sort of like I was both, you know, making the blueprints for the house and starting to lay the foundation for the house at the same time. And it's like, oh, what I really want to do

is before I actually have wooden hand and I'm starting to build the frame of the house, I want to think about the house. I want to plot out what the house is going to look like before I get to the point where I have to actually start building the walls. And under the old system I was doing them at the same time. And I mean it worked. I made sense. But wow it was so much cleaner if I could think about what I was building before I had to start building it. And so that's another big lesson of content art here

is the value of exploratory design. In fact, of all the lessons I learned, it blows everything else out of the water. Kind of funny I didn't say it first, but it's revolutionized how we do design. It's completely changed how we do design. It's changed how I think about design. It's changed how design functions.

That I now have a whole process where I'm not, I'm not worrying about components. I'm just working, worrying about the set as a whole and what it wants and what it needs. And that is such a fundamental different process. In fact, it's funny.

I keep talking on my blog about, I know at some point the sixth age of design started, and now I'm realizing that it's concentration here, that that's where the sixth age of design started. I literally just figured this out. So for those that read my blog, I just figured this out while driving. Because the fundamental change has been how we come up with stuff. And what has happened is, and this is a huge change in design, I now think about the set as a whole before I ever touch a piece of it. You know, I think in the past, right, I was building houses,

and I'm struck by, like, okay, I'll put up this wall. Okay, where should the next wall go? And now I'm like, okay, before I put up any wall, how should the whole thing look? What should the essence of the house be, to use my metaphor? And that is a fundamental shift in how we design things. Fundamental shift. So, six stages of design. Have I done a podcast on the different ages of design? I might have. I believe we've entered a new age. We're going to call it the sixth age. And actually, as I talk about lessons learned, here we go, right here. The lesson is I completely learned how to do design differently that has revolutionized

how this. So as lessons learned go, this is a big one. But anyway, exploratory design was a huge process change. It really had a lot to do. Okay, let's move on That's the biggest I will say, by the way, exploratory world building And the dynamic between how we do that Is also huge

Not quite as revolutionary But close Very close In fact, it's on par The change to do exploratory world building and how we interact and how I integrate into the creative is a giant leap forward.

So I guess in some ways, Concepts for a Creator changed a lot. It changed how I interact with design. It changed how I interact with creative. Also, in some levels, it changed how I interact with creative. Also, in some levels, changed how I interact with development. We'll get there. Okay. Another big thing that I learned is another problem that you get into is what I call the overstuffed problem, where I committed to doing morph as a center of the set. And note, I committed to morph before I committed to doing Morph as a center of the set. And note, I committed to Morph before I committed to Factions. And so what happened was I sort of committed to Morph.

I had this time travel story I was telling, this theme I had, and Morph was carrying the weight of that. And then what happened was as Wedge would get more and more influence, it pulled attention from what i was doing and what i needed to do is i needed to either figure out earlier that pull was going to happen because really in the end what happened was i delivered too many mechanics the set had six mechanics the contract here did six mechanics and not just six mechanics one of them was morph one of the most complex mechanics we've ever of them was morph one of the most complex

mechanics we've ever done so i did one of the most complex mechanics we've ever done and five other mechanics along with wedge support right faction support beyond just the mechanics there's other things you support when you do a faction so i had um i mean i i think the thing you'll see i keep coming back to when I talk about concert art here was I was designing two different sets that I had woven together. And I think that when I was in charge of the set,

when I was actively doing it, I was able to weave them together pretty cleanly. But once I was not actively the lead, once I was just the head designer, it started drifting. And I think part of the problem, once I was just the head designer, it started drifting. And I think part of the problem later on in the block was I hadn't tied them close enough together. And the side effect of that was because I couldn't pull them apart, because I built around the wrong

piece, the set ended up getting overstocked. Really, Morph wanted to come out of that set. If I could have pulled Morph design, I would have. And multiple people asked me to pull Morph design just because there was so much going on, and Morph was the most complex piece of it, and the factions had become the focus. The problem was, by the time people were asking that of me, I had really built the entire design around Morph. Um, and, and sort of, so as a metaphor to sort of explain, um, that it's kind of like you're building your card, your, your tower of cards. And then people are like, you know, could you just take the bottom row out of your, your house of cards? And you're like, I really can't. I really can't do that.

I had really committed to one style of doing things and I'd gotten deep enough in that I then couldn't change the direction.

And so, one of the things I also learned from this is to A, make sure you have more commitment of all the moving pieces.

Make sure you have more commitment with what the creative's doing. Make sure you have more commitment with what the creator is doing. Make sure you understand where the heart of what you're doing is. And then, one of the things that I regret looking back at Constantine's work here is there was just too much going on. All the stuff was cool. I liked what I did with Morph.

I liked all the factions. I liked the faction mechanics. I feel like I did a good and honest job of making cool things, but there's too much. Um, and that's one of the things that I, a big takeaway lesson for design, um, is less is more. That this idea that if I just cram more and more things in my set, or on a cart, this is a very common early designer thing, a novice designer thing, is this idea that the more you have, the better.

That I just want to show off all I can do, and look, I'll put every mechanic I can in. I did this when I was a novice designer. If you go back and look at Tempest, which was my first design, I so over-designed it that the two mechanics from the next year were also in it. Echo and Cycling were in Tempest design.

So, like, not only did Tempest design have the mechanics from its block, it had the major mechanics from the next block. In fact, there was so much stuff in Tempest that for about five years, there were cards in files that had at one point been in Tempest design. It was just way, way over-designed. I was so excited.

I got to do a set. Here's 20 awesome ideas. I'll put them all in. But guess what? Your role as a designer is not to have as many awesome ideas as possible all in the same set. You want the right number. Quantity is not what you're shooting for. Quality is what you're shooting for.

So the key is you want to make sure that what you have fits what you need and no more. I talk about writing all the time. It's like the idea of, I've made a five-hour movie. There's so many awesome scenes. Every awesome scene I could come up with, I put in the movie. Okay, does that make a great movie, a five-hour movie. There's so many awesome scenes. Every awesome scene I could come up with, I put in the movie. Okay, does that make a great movie, a five-hour movie?

No, it doesn't. Because what makes a great movie is economy, is every scene has a purpose and a worth and carries it forward. And Kinds of Dark Hero had some of that problem where, and like I said, I think the key part of it, when I go back and I look with a really serious eye, is there were two completely different components

that I had intertwined, but at their heart had not been intertwined enough, that they were too separate. And because of that, there's just a lot of spiral down the road, that the set sort of gives them a little bit. They didn't have the... I mean, they were overstuffed for starters. And they were... Anyway.

Here's the funny thing, as I should say this. When I'm trying to do these, I'm being hypercritical. The funny thing is, did I like Kinds of Ticker? I did. I think Kinds of Ticker actually was a really good set. I liked the design. I think it was really fun. Eric did an amazing job.

Eric and his development team did an amazing job in Limited. I think it's really fun to play in Limited. And there's a lot of fun stuff going on. I think sometimes when I'm critiquing things, people feel like I'm sort of taking an ax to my work. Like I'm, you know... And the reality is, one of the ways to get better like I've been doing this job a long time and I like to think that I'm a lot better now than I used to be that I want I want

to believe that each year I'm better than I was the year before and the reason for that is that I want to do my work I want to do it serious I want to do it well and then I need to analyze and figure out where I went right and where I went wrong. And if you want to grow as an artist, you have to be willing to understand what you did wrong. And you have to also understand what you did right. But you have to be willing to say, okay, what did I do? How did I do it? Where did I make mistakes? Where did I err on things? Because that's how you improve. That's how you get better you know and once again i could still make mistakes and it'd be a fine piece of art a fine design um like i think concert is a very good design it has issues there's ways to make it better um and i feel like part of

this process and part of just the feedback process is figuring out what I can learn so that I can apply it. I mean, the funny thing is I look back at Constant Archer and I'm like, wow, magic has shifted so significantly since Constant Archer. But why? Well, a big part of it was Constant Archer. Like we did some things. We didn't do them right. And like, okay, that's wrong. How do I do it better?

And we improved how design works. We got exploratory design. We got exploratory world building. We get a better sense of how to interconnect with creative. Like a lot of things that came out of it, a lot of fundamental shifts in how we make magic and how we design it came from the fact that I was able to look and say,

okay, this wasn't perfect. What did I do wrong? And a lot of people I know get, like when they like something that I'm able to look and say, okay, this wasn't perfect. What did I do wrong? And a lot of people I know get, like, when they like something that I'm being critical of, get really down on me. They're like, how dare you pick on the thing that I love? I love it too. I also love Kanda Tarkir.

I am proud of Kanda Tarkir. I did a lot of things correct about Kanda Tarkir. You know, for example, I believe the factioning with the wedges was done really, really well. And there was a really big challenge to try to make the block work. Now, there's some larger expectation issues,

and this is, like, the block had a very clean structure that I like. It set out to do large, small, large in a way that I thought was cool. I like the fact the small set had an identity. It meant something. The reason you drafted with each set meant something. I felt the gameplay reinforced the larger story at hand.

And I think there are a lot of just really good mechanics. And I think we did a good job of getting the factions to have a really strong identity. In fact, the reason I think players were kind of sad is we did such a good job of giving the identity to the factions have a really strong identity. In fact, the reason I think players were kind of sad is, we did such a good job at giving the identity to the factions that the dragon factions just didn't quite live up to it.

On some level, I was very successful in making something matter so much so that people were sad when it had to go away. Even though we kind of knew it had to go away, it still we kind of knew it had to go away, it still made them sad. And I still don't know. That's the problem I don't know how to solve,

which is people love the clans more than they love the dragons. And I'm like, oh, okay. And the people are like, well, maybe you should have started with the dragons and then went to the clans. I'm like, oh, but the problem is dragons were a more known entity. Like, for example, anyway, in retrospect, yes. Could we have started with the dragons and gone to the clans?

I mean, it doesn't make any story sense because that would change the story. It's hard. It's hard to say because dragons are really popular with players and but Dragon Stark here was not as popular as Conjuring Stark here. Very clearly.

Look at all the market research and I just even, you don't even need the research just talking with players it was very clear. And I think what happened there is we made something that they really, really liked. So obviously Conjuring Stark did something really well. It really made speakable and clean and flavorful

clans. And one of the things that I set out to do that I really wanted to do is not only did I want to make five clans, I wanted to make them feel like warlords, and I wanted to center the game in the combat. That the mechanics were about, mostly about fighting.

Ironically, the one that was least about fighting was the Sultari, who were the least about fighting. There's a lot of layering like that that I enjoyed quite a bit. And that, how they attacked and what they did and what their strategies were, and the idea of giving each

the dragon attributes so that each one started to feel. I love how that all came together. I really, I'm super, super proud of that. And I even like the stuff we did with Morph, and I like a lot of, like, a lot of this was development, but design pitched in a little bit of just figuring out how to do Morph correctly. We've done Morph a couple different times,

and Morph's a really neat mechanic, but it is a hard mechanic to do. And I feel like we really figured out how to finally do Morph and do Morph correctly. I mean, we borrowed a little bit from Brian Schneider's execution in Time Spyro. I think Brian made some huge leaps forward, and we added onto that, worked onto that. And a lot of what I'm talking about was Eric's brainchild. I mean, I worked hard with him to make sure that our design sort of reinforced that. I also wanted to make sure that each of our morphs matched each of the factions

so that each faction used morph in a different way. I was really happy with how that played out. So like I said, there was a lot of decisions I made that I really liked. And I do think that the set was a very good set. But, and this is the important but,

everything can be better. There's always room for improvement. And so a lot of the reasons I do the lessons learned is me going, okay, why exactly? What exactly about it? What exactly, where was there room for improvement? And that's when I realized that I had schism things, that I had made two different themes that I hadn't tied quite close enough.

And a lot of that was some disconnect with the creative team, that I needed to be better in not just communicating with one person on the creative team, but the creative team as a whole. I believe that a side effect of that was also

because I was supporting two different things, I ended up overstuffing, which I don't like to do. And while all the different component pieces were awesome, I don't, like, one of the things that's when you look at overstuffing is it doesn't mean that any one piece was not a cool piece. There were a lot of cool pieces. It just meant that the conglomeration of all the pieces,

that the, you know, when you put it all together, it just was too much. the conglomeration of all the pieces. When you put it all together, it just was too much. And we did get some feedback that there were definitely players that just had overwhelmed them. There was too much going on. I've talked a lot about trying to figure out lenticular design where I want design where

I hide some of the complexity from the less experienced player. And I feel the set had it in their face too much. I mean, it just had six mechanics for starters. It just had... And then morph, which is... I don't mind having morph in the set, but really, when morph is your... That eats up your complexity,

so you have to surround it with a lot more simple things. And I tried to make all the clan mechanics as simple as I could because I knew I had morph. I mean, this is one of those things where I'm looking back and I'm like, I did a lot right. I do think for... If I was going to have morph in the set and have five-factor mechanics,

I did do it the correct way. But I got to look back and sort of say to myself, okay, so I did that, but did I do that correctly? Not did I execute on what was given to me. It's not an execution. I actually feel the following to be true. Given the parameters of the things I decided to do, I believe I executed pretty well.

So it wasn't an execution issue, at least in the first set. The problem was I asked myself to do something that in the end I shouldn't have asked myself to do. Once I figured out the role factors were going to play, I needed to relook. I needed the time I figured out the role factions were going to play, I needed to re-look... I needed the time travel story and the factions

to be more interconnected. And they were somewhat connected, but I could have... I mean, the thing I did like a lot, by the way, which is part of the set design I was happiest with, is the idea that

the clans carry all the way through. That you see the clan, you know, Jeskai or whatever, in the first set, Jeskai's my example. You see Jeskai, then you see proto-Jeskai, then you see alternate version of Jeskai. Now alternate version of Jeskai doesn't have three colors, but it's really neat.

I like that dynamic. So I do, I wonder if I could have leaned heavier on that and pulled out the morph component. I don't know. I had too much. If I had to do it again, I guess I wouldn't do the morph,

but I would have had to build it differently from the beginning because it was not built... Morph was the lowest layer of the card castle. I made up playing cards. So, anyway, those are the major lists. Like I said, Khans was a hugely instrumental set. In fact, I might argue that the only set that might rival Khans

as far as the amount of material I learned and the importance of what I learned might be Odyssey. And Khan's Dark Hero was a much better set as it was received by the audience than Odyssey was, meaning Odyssey was loved by the spikes, but everybody else didn't really like it. And

while I learned a lot from that, I think I made a worse set in the process of learning, where Khan's is a little overstuffed. There's a lot going on. I do think the complexity is a little higher than I like, but I think it made a worse set in the process of learning, where cons, it was a little overstuffed. There was a lot going on. I do think the complexity was a little higher than I like, but I think it's a pretty solid set. I think it was a very fun set.

And so I feel like I managed to learn just as much as Odyssey, yet I ended up with a better set. But anyway, this is like my therapy. I feel like I can get in my car, and I sort of just talk all about how I felt my set went, and then I go, oh, I learned this and this, and I've grown as a designer. So anyway, you can hear my little sessions

about me talking about my sets. Moments to work. Any other big lessons? I have a lot of little lessons. I mean, there's so many big lessons from the set that I didn't really get to the little lessons. I was happy, like, prowess... Here, I'll tell the prowess lesson.

So, the lesson from prowess, which both Eric and I kind of got to together, was we made prowess to answer a concern in the set. And along the way, we realized it answered a larger issue we had in magic. That we really wanted an evergreen mechanic that was red-blue based. We wanted some combat-related stuff, especially for blue, that had more interaction to it, that wasn't just evasion. And anyway, we made prowess

and realized we had something special on our hands and then took it and applied it to, we made it evergreen and applied it to normal magic. We didn't set up, in the past, we had tried to make evergreen things and kind of stuck them in sets as a shot at evergreen. And we finally said, you know what we need to do? Look, just make things, have them in sets.

And then as we make the set, it will shine or not shine, and we'll learn about it. This idea of you make things for Evergreen is a little incorrect. You know what we want to do? Make things that fit your set. Make them that fit your set, and then keep an eye on it. Maybe, you know, Skulk was a similar thing, where Skulk originally got made because it's something we needed within the set,

but we then realized there's potential. Now, that one ended up not working out, but I like the new process, and this was a big lesson of the way you get to evergreen stuff is not trying to make evergreen stuff. The way you get to evergreen stuff is just make awesome stuff for your set,

and then recognize when you make something that has evergreen usability, the things that might help you with evergreen stuff. And Prowess in the set is a perfect example where Prowess was made to be usability, things that might help you with evergreen stuff. And prowess in the set is a perfect example where prowess was made to be as Jeskai as Jeskai could be. It was a mechanic made to be very Jeskai feeling.

And only after the fact did we realize that we had done something that had larger applications. But that it wasn't important at the time that kind of like prowess got to be prowess because it did what it needed to do. And as it did it, as we put it through those paces for the set, we were able to see what it was capable of doing. So, but anyway, another interesting lesson about how we can find evergreen stuff is sort of to stop looking for evergreen stuff.

And just more, be more willing to look at things as we're working at them and put them through their paces in a normal design development that we then can figure out when we find something special. And I think we're moving closer in how we're doing things to be able to find stuff like that. So that was a big change as well. So anyway, I've got to wrap up here. I just pulled in the parking lot. So as lessons learned go, this was a huge one. Like I said, it's one or two as far as the most lessons I've ever learned from a set design. I got exploratory design, which completely introduced the sixth age of magic. It changed the magic design.

It's that big. It changed how magic design was done. It introduced exploratory world building, or at least it made us realize the need for that that got us down the path to get there. It didn't quite introduce it yet, but it definitely the lack of it really caused problems, caused the schism

I was talking about, and that made us realize that we had to change how we did that. That we really had, it was the set that made me realize I have to completely restructure how I function with the creative, and how I work with story and art so that we can make a magic design that reinforces the story and reinforces

the art, and make something that's larger together. And I feel like we had done some of that. It's not like we had done zero of it before that point, but it really played up some weaknesses and we got better there. And I really believe from then to now, it's been, once again, another radical change that has really changed how I've done stuff.

In some ways, 6-H picks up some of that. Although that's not the major focus of 6-H, of design. We figured out sort of just a lot of different things. There's some good lessons of how to do factioning. There's some good lessons about sort of how to find new evergreen things. I learned some stuff about overstuffing. And anyway, it was a super, super valuable set. So concept art here was a college course in magic design.

I learned a lot. So it was very valuable. But anyway, 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. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.