Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #395 - R&D Vocabulary, Part 2

Episode Date: December 23, 2016

Mark goes over some slang used by R&D in part 2 of this 3 part series.

I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. So last time I talked about different terminology used by R&D. So I'm going to continue talking about all the different slang that R&D uses. So when we last left off we were on E, so now we're up to F. Fire breathing. Okay, so fire breathing is basically when you spend some amount of mana to give a creature plus one, plus zero until end of turn. Usually it's one, a single red mana. Fire Breathing was first seen in Shiven Dragon in Alpha.

Also, Dragon Whelp, I guess, had Fire Breathing, although it had limited Fire Breathing. People ask us all the time why we don't actually keyword fire breathing, and the answer is it's a little bit awkward. It's a little weird to have an activated ability that has a name, and usually the flavor seems to come through for people. So fire breathing traditionally is done in red. I guess there's a few other times where we, like, black sometimes gets to pump power and toughness.

And green, well, I talked about the root wall ability last time, which is pumping power and toughness. But red usually is the one that pumps power. I mean, I think black and white have both done it. And blue sometimes does the plus one, minus one. But anyway, usually, traditionally, fire breathing is just plus one minus one so but anyway usually traditionally fire breathing is just plus one plus oh okay next flicker so flicker actually there's two different words sometimes it's called flickering sometimes it's called blinking um so that is when you exile a permanent and then you bring it back and then you can flicker things you can bring it

back right away which arnie usually calls instant flick, or you can bring them back at end of turn, which is just usually flickering, which usually means end of turn, and instant flicker means bring them back right away. So flicker, the terminology came from a card in Urza's Destiny, which was the first card to basically do this, which is to remove it, exile it,

and then bring it back. The reason it's valuable is that you can use it to trigger things, trigger ETB effects, enter the battlefield effects. If you listened last time, you know what ETB stands for. But anyway, we use it quite a bit. It's in white and blue, and we use it most sets, and that's what we call it.

Next, the free table. Okay, so this tradition started in the old building in the kitchen by R&D, which was there was a counter where it was dubbed the free table, and the idea was if you wanted, you could leave something on the free table, and then people could come and take it. It is possible the free table started in the old, old building. I know for sure the old building had it.

But anyway, the idea was you could leave whatever you wanted, and then people are free to take it. And the free table has been home to all sorts of weird things. Like, what happens basically is people go, oh, I have stuff, I don't need it. Hey, I'll just bring it to the free table. So I've seen, like, bar stools. I've seen record collections. I've seen all sorts of stuff. And the idea is, if you take things from the free table, it encourages you to bring things to the free

table. So I have done my share of both leaving things at the free table and getting things from the free table. When we moved to the new building, all the kitchens ended up sort of making a free table. So now we're a free table in every kitchen. Once upon a time, I think there was a singular kitchen in the old one. I had to take it back. There's probably a kitchen per building. We had a bunch of buildings. But anyway, the free table used to be just be an R&D thing. It's now spread to the whole company. So there's the kitchen on the second, third, and fourth floor. So each kitchen has its own free table. Okay, next. French vanilla. Okay, so last time I talked about vanilla. So what a vanilla creature is, is a creature that has no rules text. It can have flavor text

or reminder text, but it has no rules text. Okay, so French vanilla was a terminology that I came up with to describe a creature that has, the only rules text it has is creature keywords. So the idea is a creature with first strike, but nothing else, that's a French vanilla. A creature with haste, nothing else, that's French vanilla. But a creature, if you have more than one keyword, you're still French vanilla. So a creature that has flying and lifelink, French vanilla. If the creature keywords are block mechanics, we still refer to it as a French vanilla

so where does this terminology come from? the idea is, the reason vanillas are important to us is we want to make sure that when you're playing the game that there's a limited amount of information you have to process that if every creature in play does something and interconnects with the board, it just gets overwhelming and so we want to make sure that some things the board, it just gets overwhelming. And so we want to make sure that some things, hey, they just do what they are.

They're just a creature. So vanilla meant, okay, they're literally just power and toughness. French vanilla means, okay, you know, we have a bunch of keywords we use that are common enough that people are familiar enough that it's easy for you to sort of understand because, okay, if you played Magic for some amount of time, okay, you know what a lifelinker does or what a First Striker does. And so French vanilla is not as simple as vanilla, but it's something that, you know, we want to make sure that we have different layers of simplicity. And one of them, French vanilla is just a lot simpler than other things we could do.

Not as simple as a vanilla. But so the idea was it was kind of a vanilla, but a little fancier than a vanilla. So that's why it was a French vanilla because French vanilla ice cream is a little fancier than vanilla ice cream. Next, Grand Central Station. So this is another one of those traditions. What happened was, in the old building, across the street before we moved to the new building. So for those that don't know, just real quickly. When Peter Atkinson first founded the company of Wizards of the Coast,

there wasn't really an office per se. It was run out of his basement. Then when we officially got big enough, we had a building, which was the first building I ever worked at. But shortly after I got there, we moved to the building that's now across the street from our current building, where we were for 10 years. And then we moved across the street, and now we're in our current building, which we've been for, like, 11 years. No, that can't be right. Less than that. So, because I've only been here 21 years.

So maybe we've been here, like, well, no, no, no. I guess I was in the first building for, like, a month, and then 10 years, then 11 years. I guess that makes about sense. So, anyway, we, what happened was people named rooms in the old building. The policy has always been that the department

whose area it is got to name the meeting rooms in their area. And usually we tended to name things with geeky names. We're a geeky company.

And anyway, this, there was a room near Caps. Caps was in charge of actually printing the cards. The idea, essentially, is R&D makes the cards in the abstract. What are the cards do? And we make the art. Do we make the rules text? But Caps actually physically makes the cards.

They do the graphic design, the layout. They also figure out how to get the film to the printer, although it's digital files now, but they get it to the printer. And so Caps is, they take it from, you know, we have cards kind of on paper, you know, to actually physically making the cards. Anyway, the largest meeting room near Caps in the old building was called Grand Central Station, like the train station from New York. And so when we moved to the new building and they got to name the large meeting room near them, they call it Grand Central Station. The reason R&D uses Grand Central Station is on each floor there's two really big meeting rooms that can hold a lot of people.

One is Lost Tower, Lost people. One is Lost Tower, Lost Temple, one is Lost Temple, but we'll get to that in a second, and the other is Grand Central Station. So Grand Central Station is used a lot whenever we have a meeting that's like, you need a big meeting and the other one is taken. Okay, next, Grey Ogre. So Grey Ogre, in Alpha, Grey Ogre was two and a red, 3 mana for a 2-2. So Grey Ogre is slang for a 3 mana 2-2. A lot of times we'll talk about it as that's the body and then we'll add things to it like, oh, it's a Grey Ogre with blah-de-blah. But as I talked about last time how we use bear to mean 2 mana 2-2, we use Grey Ogre to mean 3 mana

2-2. It's just sort of slang to shortcut. we make a lot of tutu so we have slang for them grok so grok is actually a term from a stranger in a strange land by Robert Heinlein so a a classic science fiction book by a classic science fiction book author. And in that, grok means it's something the aliens can do. There's aliens in the book. And it talks about sort of absorbing an idea at its whole, that they can learn something in absolute. We tend to use it in R&D, design uses it the most,

to talk about is this something that people will quickly be able to wrap their minds around. When we're talking about new ideas, like what we found is some ideas are easy, you know, easy to sort of think about and some ideas are hard. And so a lot of time we talk about grok or grokability. Grok is G-R-O-K for those who want to spell it. So grokability, the idea is just talking about for those who want to spell it so grokability the idea is just talking about

oh, do I think this is a concept that people will have an easy time understanding or no, this is going to be hard to wrap the brain around and we try to lean toward things that are more grokable than not but that concept has become something important because it's a thing that

it's hard to sometimes think about without having a word for it, which is, oh, if I showed this to a new player, how quickly will they get the essence of what this does? And a lot of times what will happen is we'll be willing to do mechanics that are slightly more complicated if we believe the general idea is something that people can get their hands on. Next, hard counter. So a hard counter is a counter spell that just says counter target spell. It has no condition. Well, it could have riders on it. But the idea is if I want to counter your spell and I have a hard counter, I can counter any spell.

There's no restrictions to it. It doesn't, you know, it can just, I mean, it might also do other things, but it just plainly, this is counter target spell with no rider. Your opponent can't do anything to stop it. You know, there aren't restrictions to it. It just means I can counter anything. And often, like blue common, for example, we like to have two counter spells, one of which is a hard counter.

I'll get to soft counter when we get down to S's. But anyway, so we talk about hard and soft counters. which is a hard counter. I'll get to soft counter when we get down to S's, but anyway, so we talk about hard and soft counters. This is a hard counter. Hate card. So a hate card is what we refer to as something that's designed to purposely hose or hurt something else. A hate card means, oh, we have a problem with something, or there's a strategy that either the last set did, or maybe even the current set did, something that we're worried about that we want to make sure there's an answer for. So a hate card is designed to work against another card. Sometimes hate cards can be targeted against a subset, but the idea is the card is made to specifically hurt another card or subset or strategy. Hell of a Vault.

That's another meeting. I talked about how we have meeting rooms that are named after places people were trapped. Well, we have the Hell of a Vault. This is the closest room to the creative team. It's got pictures of Avacyn and Gristlebrand in the room. It's a very tiny room. It's actually one of the smaller meeting rooms. It's gone through a whole bunch of names.

I think it was an office for a little while. Then for a while, it was the Bat Cave because we had two meeting rooms that were right next to each other, which was Wayne Manor and the Bat Cave. But then somebody came along and made the Bat Cave into an office, and so there was no Bat Cave.

So we ended up calling that room the Bat Cave for a while. But anyway, in the end, it got a magic name. Now it's the Hellcave for a while. But anyway, in the end, it got a magic name. Now it's the Hell Vault. High Flying. So High Flying is a mechanic. It goes on flyers that can only block other flyers. So it's a restriction that only goes on flyers.

So the idea is, I'm a flyer, but I can't block ground creatures, meaning it's a negative ability that allows me to be a little bit cheaper. And the flavor we always get high flying is it's flying so high that it just can't get down to the ground. Okay, H. So last time I talked about how we use C to represent one of any color. H is used to represent one of any hybrid. So let's say I was going to, like, I'm designing Shadowmore, which we have a lot of hybrid in, or you're a Ravnik or something, which there's a cycle of hybrid. So let's say I was going to, like, I'm designing Shadowmoor, which we have a lot of hybrid in, or Ravnica or something, which there's a cycle of hybrid. And the idea is there's some

unified cost to it. Let's say, for example, you know, Guildmages in original Ravnica, each of them cost two hybrid mana. Well, how would we talk about that? How do we talk about the cycle? We go, oh, they cost HH. So H represents hybrid mana that's yet undefined. Once we know what it is, we'll write the hybrid mana. But H is our code to mean hybrid mana that later has to be figured out. Okay, iconic. So iconic, I talked about characteristic last time. Iconic is the end of the spectrum toward rare. Iconic is the big, splashy creature that's representative of the color. So white, we have angels. Blue, we have sphinxes.

Black, we have demons. Red, we have dragons. And green, we have hydras. Now, we got angels and demons and dragons go back to early magic, although we stopped doing demons for a little while. But both hydras and sphinxes took a while for us to find. The idea is we just like nice, big, splashy rares that we can do that sort of hit something that's endemic to the color. And so those are the Iconics that we've chosen.

We don't put Iconics in every world, although we try to make sure a certain number of Iconics... Although all five aren't in every world, we try to make sure at least some are in every world. Impulsive Draw. So that's the nickname for the new red ability, where you exile some number of cards, and then you can cast the cards you've exiled until end of turn. Every once in a while, we give you two turns until your next turn, but usually it's still end of turn.

But anyway, we were trying, I had a lot of discussions on my blog, people asking what they wanted and they're like, is there some way to give Red card, you know, some way to let Red draw cards? And I was like, well, it's a problem because red's

card advantage really isn't supposed to be a red thing. And then we were talking about something else and I talked about how you know, there's a certain thing red does. I think we were talking about stealing. I'm like, oh, you know, there are certain things red does, but it does temporarily. And then I latched on the idea of

what if red did more things temporarily that other colors could do? And from there, I remembered there was a card called Elkin Bottle that allowed red to get cards, but only for the turn. And I'm like, you know what, that's a way to give red some card drawing that feels very red in that you have to use it in the moment. It's not like I'm getting long-term card advantage. I'm kind of getting short-term if I can use it. And we ended up calling that impulsive drawing. The idea that, you know, if I can't use it right now, I'm being impulsive.

I can't use it right now, I won't be able to make use of it. Next, Ivory Tower. So, Ivory Tower is another meeting room in R&D. It is one of the bigger meeting rooms. It's not quite as big as Lost Temple or Grand Central Station, but it is probably the next biggest. And it's definitely... A lot of meetings will happen there.

It also is a room that gets used a lot when they do world pushes, where the artists come in to build worlds. So a lot of times it's off-limits because of that. It also is the coldest meeting room. I don't know why. We always joke the ivory tower is, you know, it's cold in the ivory tower. But it actually literally is cold

in the ivory tower. Next, lenticular. So lenticular is a term that I made to represent a concept that I was trying to understand, which is one of the challenges is making things that both are simple enough for newer players to learn but complex enough for older players to enjoy. And the question is how do you mix those things? So lenticular is an idea that says what if you can hide the complexity? So lenticular cards, have you ever seen the cards where there's kind of ridges on them? And if you hold it one way, you see one picture. If you hold it a slightly different way, you see another picture.

Those are lenticular cards. So the idea behind design is, can you make something that appears simpler to a beginner player, but there's more depth to it for the advanced player? That the card hides its depth. That it does something so the beginning player understands what it does, and they think they know what they're doing with it, but there's layers that the more advanced player can come

to understand. That's lenticular. Linear. Ooh, the fancy words I'm getting here. Linear. So linear and modular go together. I'll get to modular when I get to M. Linear means that there's something about the card that sort of encourages you to play a certain subset of cards.

An example of a linear card might be Goblin King, which says, all your goblins, or all goblins, get plus one, plus one. Okay, well, if I want to maximize this card, that means I've got to play a lot of goblins. What a linear card does is it tells you to play other cards of a certain kind. The card that is... It's not always that the card itself is part of that linearity,

although it often is. But the idea is, and the reason we talk about linear cards or linear themes is, a lot of players really like being sort of directed somewhere. They want to go, okay, you know, they want to say, ooh, this is neat,

now I have an idea what to build. And so we tend to build in a lot of linear themes into sets sometimes we do linear mechanics we do linear themes that oh you know hey i like such and such um energy is a good example of a linear theme in in kaladesh because oh well i mean not that you energy is built so you don't have to have a deck full of energy but it definitely has synergy so when you see your first energy card you you go, oh, let me look at the energy cards. Okay, Lost Temple, I mentioned this.

Lost Temple is the other big room. It's the one closer to R&D on the third floor. So we meet there a lot, especially when we have the whole, you know, a lot of R&D meeting. When all of R&D meets, we go down to the first floor. I call it the Rainier Room. But anyway, Lost Temple. The funny thing about Lost Temple is there's art put up on the walls. And so somebody took this old map.

But a lot of the art in our meeting rooms are cut into pieces to be, I don't know, more stylistic. But there's this map of like China. But the person who hung it didn't realize the order. And so the map is out of order. And it's not something you notice right away, but once you notice it, every time I'm in that room, I go, oh, it's out of order. Lost Temple, I think, by the way, was a reference

to Warcraft, maybe? A video game of some kind. I think... Or, actually, it also could be a D&D thing. I don't know. I'm not sure quite where the Lost Temple name came from. M and N.

So I talked last time about how we use C to mean colorless, but we used to mean it that if I was making a cycle, like this cycle will be three, we used to say three C, which meant, oh, the white one will be three in the white and the blue one three be 3 in the white, and the blue one 3 in the blue. So we now use M rather than that. So M, if I say something is 2M, it's 2M22. That means the white one's 2 white, the blue one's 2 in the blue.

So we use M where we used to. And then we use N as a secondary. It used to be CD. Now we use MN. Once again, I really haven't got development on this new terminology, but design uses it all the time now. Mana smoothing. So mana smoothing is, we always want to make sure that when you're playing, the magic's land, I did a whole podcast on land.

Magic's land can be troubling at times. And it's an important system. You know, you want a certain amount of variance on how quickly you get your land, when you get your colors and stuff. But we want to make sure that we make some tools for the advanced player to aid them to help with their land. A mana smoothing mechanic usually means it either helps you draw extra cards to get to the land or it allows you to do something with extra mana late in the game, allowing you to play more land in your deck to guarantee that you get the land you

need. Most sets we try to make sure has a mana smoothing mechanic. Meditation Realm. So Meditation Realm is a meeting room on the fourth floor. It's pretty big. It's probably the biggest meeting room on the fourth floor. It's pretty big. It's probably the biggest meeting room on the fourth floor other than the bridge. And it used to be called the Matrix. But we went through this kick. I mean, we're on this thing right now where we're trying to rename

a lot of our meeting rooms to be wizard-centric IP stuff. So it went from the Matrix to the meditation realm, like Bolas's meditation realm. And on one wall, there's a giant mural of Bolas's meditation realm. The funny thing is, as we're changing over, I'm trying to learn the new names, and sometimes I'll get invited to somewhere, and I'm like, what's that? Oh, oh, oh, like meditation realm.

Oh, it's Matrix. Mel. So Mel, which originally was Melvin, but now it's been shortened to Mel, to make it unisex, or is unisex the right word, to make it for both genders. Mel is aesthetic profile. There's two of them.

Mel is the one who, what they appreciate about the game is the inner working of the mechanics. what they appreciate about the game is the inner working of the mechanics. They really appreciate how all the careful design and design choices, and they're really fascinated in the intricacy of design decisions, that it's about mechanical expression of the game for them. And they really love the color pie and the rules and templating, or, I mean, can can love any aspect of this. They get really into something that's very dive deep into sort of something that structurally defines how things work. Next, mill.

So mill is a slang. I use it in my podcast all the time. It means to take the top card or top cards of a player's library and put them into their graveyard. So if I mill you for two, I have you take the top two cards of your library and put them in your graveyard. The term comes from millstone, which was the first card in antiquities, the first card to ever do this ability. It's a popular thing. Most sets now we have some mill abilities. Blue does the primary, black does the secondary. Artifacts will do it also. Most sets have some milling in it.

Some sets have milling as a theme. Sometimes you actually in limited can mill out your opponent. We do that on a regular basis. Anyway, people always ask, why don't we keyword this ability? And the answer I give is we don't really use it enough. The other problem is we've actually explored with keyboarding it. It is very hard to get a word that flavorfully conveys that you are taking cards from your library and putting them in your graveyard that doesn't also convey you're discarding a card from your hand.

Like, we've tried stuff like forget. Like, target player forgets two cards. Oh, well, do I discard two cards or do I take two cards from my library and put them into my... So, anyway, a combination of... I mean, the other big thing about it is I think we... I mean, we do use it enough.

I mean, it's the kind of thing we've found the perfect word and maybe we'd keyword it because we use it a decent amount. But, I don't know, we've never found the word. So, one day maybe. because we use it a decent amount. But I don't know. We've never found the word. So one day maybe.

Next is Mishra's Workshop. So Mishra's Workshop is a tiny meeting room. So the idea is the meeting rooms have a scale. Like some meeting rooms can hold maybe 30 people. Some can hold like four. So Mishra's Workshop I think holds four, although although occasionally pull in the fifth chair for a design meeting i've had a lot of design meetings in misha's workshop for a long time it actually had a misha's workshop up on the wall but then it became like an office for somebody for like i don't know like a month and they took it down and then that person ended

up um leaving so they went back to being a meeting room. But we no longer have the Mises Workshop on the wall. Next, modular. So modular is connected to linear. What modular says is, linear talks about how it dictates a certain subset of cards. Modular doesn't do that. A modular card just doesn't think, doesn't really encourage you to do anything else. So look, a modular card might be naturalized. I might want to destroy artifacts or enchantment. Does that tell me anything else about my deck? Not really. Now, once again, there is a scale. Linear to modular is a scale, meaning there

are things, for example, giant Growth is a fine example. Giant Growth is mostly a modular card. It can go in any deck that can hold it. But, well, it only works on creatures, so... It does say open play Giant Growth, I had it on creatures, but creatures is such a giant part of

the game that, well, it's not that much of a stretch to assume you'll have creatures. So, um, so that's not completely modular in that it requires something. But it's not like all goblins get plus one plus one, where, wow, I really need goblins specifically. But modular is the other end of the scale. Interestingly, modular, the mechanic, is linear. So that's caused much debate online. Okay, New World Order.

So New World Order is a much misunderstood thing. So here's what New World Order is. New World Order was around the time of Lorwyn and Morning Tide. Well, actually, we'll go back a little further. During Future Sight, during Time Spiral, Planar Chaos Future Sight, Time Spiral block, we realized that magic was getting a little bit

too complicated. Meaning that people were not understanding how, like, we have what we refer to as comprehension complexity, where people just weren't understanding what cards did. Like, we had made a mechanic called Suspend that just, a lot of people didn't quite get it.

I mean, it required you taking a card and putting it in the exile and putting counters on and every turn removing counters and then when you remove the last counter, then you can cast the card free. And you know, it just, there's a lot going on, a lot of moving pieces. And so we decided we needed to be careful about comprehension complexity. So in Lorwyn, we did that. We made the cards easy to read. People could read the card and they'd know what the card did.

But the cards interact in such a way that, especially when you got Mourning Tide into it, Lorwyn Mourning Tide was so complex in its board, what we call the board of complexity, what's on the battlefield and its interconnection, that we decided that we needed to do something about it. So what we did is we formed something called New World Order. So with New World Order, the problem we were trying to solve was, and I have a whole podcast on this, so if it's interesting to you, you can hear the larger version.

Basically what it boils down to is we wanted to find a way to make it easier for beginners that didn't take away the complexity for higher invested players. Obviously lenticular design was part of that. But a bigger part was what we call new world order, which is towing a line of complexity to common. What we did is we said, here's what's acceptable. We pulled down what was acceptable for complexity to common. And then any card that crossed that line is what we call red flagged. Now the idea is 80% of the commons need to toe the complexity line, and

20% are allowed to be a little bit above it. Not too much, but a little bit above it. But usually that 20% is concentrated. Like in Zendikar, it's like, oh, we have landfall. You now have to care about when the land is played. You don't normally have to care, but okay, that's the thing you have to focus on. In Kaladesh, okay, energy is a resource you don't normally have to care about when the land is played. You don't normally have to care, but okay, that's the thing you have to focus on. In Kaladesh, okay, energy is a resource you don't normally have to do.

Okay, but that's where we're going to put our focus, is on energy. You have to track energy. And so New World Order is about complexity of common. It's about towing the line. Now, it has some ramifications beyond common. Uncommon gets a little bit more complicated because it's kind of carrying some of the weight common carried once upon a time.

But that is what New World Order is talking about. I think what happens is people... R&D has done a lot of things over time. People assume some of the other switches we made over time, they have wanted to use New World Order to mean all the changes R&D has made for whatever X amount of time they want to cover. It's not how we use the terminology, and it's not what it means when I talk about New World Order.

But sometimes people will use it and like, oh, I don't like how New World Order did blah-de-blah. I'm like, well, that's not what New World Order is. But it does get you sometimes, it's as sling sometimes outside of rnd to be much broader and much larger um it's problematic because that's not how rnd uses it so when people talk about it i tend to correct them on my blog only because i don't want people using rnd sling means something different than rnd means only because it just creates confusion when I actually talk about New World Order and you talk about something else

and then there's confusion about what I'm saying. Okay, so our last word of the day, because I'm not too far from racial school, is going to be parasitic. So this, by the way, is what inspired this entire column is there's been a lot of debate online about what parasitic means. And so I want to put that to rest so parasitic is another thing where the actual meat the rnd meaning is a little bit

narrower than i think people understand so here's what parasitic means i talked earlier last podcast about a phrase called backward compatible so what backward compatible talks about is how how much something um if we put something in the set, how easy is it to put it in your old deck and have it work? You know, are there things that predate the mechanic that the card works with? So the idea is, I'll use Champs Kamigawa because it was a good example of a pretty parasitic set. So, for example, we'll use Champions of Kamigawa because it was a good example of a pretty parasitic set. So, for example,

we had Splice onto Arcane. So it said, ah, I'm a Splice card, and you can Splice me onto any Arcane card. The problem was, that was a spell subtype that went on Instants of Sorceries. There didn't exist. Arcane only existed in Champions of Kamigawa block. So the idea was,

it was hard for me to take my Splice Into Arcane cards and just throw them in the deck, because really to maximize them, I need Arcane spells, which didn't exist before this. Similarly, like, one of the creature types was Samurai, but we'd never made Samurai before. So there were a bunch of cards that rewarded you for playing Samurai. Oh, but the only samurai I could get were in this deck. So what parasitic means is it's something that's self-referential. So the term comes from the idea of I'm a parasite. I live off my host. So a parasitic mechanic or a parasitic card lives off the host, which is the set it's in. That if you want to play

with that thing, you need to play with that set. That's where you need to get things. Parasitic is problematic in that it just, if I have my deck and I buy the new set and I want to just mix some cards in with my deck, it's hard to mix in parasitic cards. Now, there's a couple caveats about parasiticism. One is that a parasitic thing stops becoming parasitic if we keep doing it example, slivers in Tempest so slivers were creatures that say all slivers get blah and the new version of slivers say all your slivers get blah

so the idea was we make slivers well, slivers really want you to play other slivers if my slivers enhance all slivers, get them flying well, I kind of want other slivers because that's what makes this sliver work. So we made it, and we then, it was popular, so we then later, years later in Onslaught, brought it back and made more slivers. And then in Time Spiral, made more slivers. And then in one of the core sets, made more slivers.

Well, now when we make slivers, it's not parasitic. There's years and years of slivers that already coexist. If I make some new slivers, well, you might have a sliver deck you want to play. So the more we do a parasitic thing, the less parasitic it gets. Now note, you know, so one of the things people often get confused is the difference between linear and parasitic. Linear just says, hey, I'm telling you to do something. Parasitic says, I'm telling you to do something, but only from this block. So a lot of parasitic things are linear,

although I'll give you an example where they're not in a second. But not all linear things are even parasitic. All goblins get plus one plus one, very linear, not parasitic. Let's say we made a viking set. All vikings get plus one, very parasitic and very linear. Okay, now here's how you can get something that is parasitic but not linear. Let's say, for example, we make cards to deal with the environment. Let's say, for example, I'll just use Vikings.

Let's say we have Vikings and Vikings are all problematic. Oh my God, Vikings are so strong. I worry about Vikings. Let's say we made a card that's like, destroy all Vikings. Well, that card is parasitic. That card has no role outside a set that cares about this. But it's not linear because it doesn't say to you to do anything. It's a sideboard card that you might bring in

if the environment is dominating. Oh, maybe you need an anti-Viking card. So it's parasitic. It only matters if the metagame cares about the current set. But it's not linear. It doesn't get you to play anything. So you can be parasitic without being linear. Although, to be fair, the majority of parasitic things tend to be linear.

And once again, you can be linear without being parasitic. So why do we do parasitic things? A couple answers. One is they're fun. Like slivers were fun. I don't want to not do parasitic things because, you know, I don't want to not do fun things because they're limiting. We have to be careful how parasitic we are,

meaning if you do one parasitic thing, that kind of says, okay, the other thing shouldn't be parasitic. One of the champions of Kamigawa's problem is so many things were parasitic. It's okay if a certain portion of the set doesn't play well with other things, old things, but all of it can't be. Another thing sometimes is when we talk about parasitic

in R&D, we'll talk about the range of how parasitic is the set. How much is it feeding on itself and that's important um like i said there are fun and neat things you can do with parasitic mechanics and parasitic cards and if you do them enough once again they don't need to stay parasitic for long i mean if we say hey this is cool and want to start doing it, the more we do it, the quicker it becomes non-parasitic. But it's important to have terminology so that we can explain and understand when we're doing something that causes problems. In fact, like I said, I'm almost a racial school,

but the reason, I mean, the reason that a lot of this terminology that we're talking about today, that a lot of this terminology that we're talking about today, linear, modular, parasitic, lenticular, vanilla, French vanilla, these are all terminologies that I came up with. And the reason that I came up with them was I'm a word guy. And what I learned long ago is it's hard to discuss concepts that there aren't words to. If you study, I mean, any sort of minority or any sort of, you know, gender relations, like a lot of issues with languages, sometimes there are concepts that are hard to understand because there aren't words to understand them. And so I spent a lot of time building a vocabulary for R&D. Not all the vocabulary is mine, but I've been the most, because I not only write about and not only talk about it

and use it I also then write about it so that I build a vocabulary not just within R&D but within the Magic Playing public and in fact some of our terminology has spread to game design

you actually if you look up some of the terminology I talk about you will see people discuss it not just in the context of Magic but in the context of game design which I'm very proud of being able to actually enter vocabulary that helps not just magic,

but games as a whole. So I'm very proud of that. But anyway, hopefully that explains parasitic. I know a lot of times it gets used to mean a lot of other things, but the actual specific mean talks about how much it makes you play within itself.

So hopefully that ends some of the parasitic debates going online. Anyway, I'm not quite done, obviously. I'm only up to pee. So, on the next podcast, I will hopefully finish. But, I'm now at Rachel's school. 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. So, I'll see you guys next time for more R&D vocabulary.