The beginning
November 15th 2009 00:31
“In the beginning, Magic design was very much about the individual card. That is, attention was paid to make each card as rich as possible. The cards were flavorful, evocative, and created a sense of awe . . . The downside of this type of design is that it sacrificed larger connectivity. The color pie, the rules, templating, etc. all suffered from the problem of each issue being decided card by card.”
-- Mark Rosewater, State of Design 2005 article
“Our core sets are typically the best way to teach and show off the world of Magic: The Gathering to the uninitiated, and to that end I believe they need to be as resonant and flavorful as they can be first and foremost. The core set should play into most people's preconceived notions of fantastic creatures and spells, and those notions should guide them to understand the goals and mechanics of the game.”
-- Aaron Forsythe, ’Recapturing the Magic with Magic 2010’
It must be hard to write anything now that it stays on the internet nearly forever and any stupid blogger can pull up two contradictory quotes from four years apart and juxtapose them. (By the way, I’m well aware of the irony of making such a comment myself and so basically inviting you to comb my extensive archives. But it’s always different when it’s yourself. And as soon as I figure out how, I’ll let you all know.)
I have to admit that some of the Magic 2010 changes that Aaron was talking about were jarring. Like many other fans, I was used to about four years of Magic cards being designed with Magic as their main point of reference. That is: “card X does Y because it’s a black card and black cards are able to do Y.” Unlike some other fans, I was around in the old days, so for me it was only a question of adjusting back.
And many years of trying (and often failing) to find a fantasy novel that didn’t make me hate the author’s entire family have convinced me of one thing: resonant concepts are resonant for a good reason. You may as well just put the characters from the Viking Christmas mythos straight into the set, because you are going to be drawing on that anyway, and this way you don’t confuse and annoy people with names that start with an X and end with a Q (are you listening, R. Scott Bakker?).
Sometimes this can absolutely be a problem from a game design point of view. Lightning Bolt is awesome but still overpowered in any format that lets you play four of it, and even after fifteen years I still barely know how to pay for Fireball. But I’d like, if I may, to rehash a quote of mine that isn’t contradictory: If the game is not a game, but a work of art, does it really matter how powerful – or weak – any of the cards are?
-- Mark Rosewater, State of Design 2005 article
“Our core sets are typically the best way to teach and show off the world of Magic: The Gathering to the uninitiated, and to that end I believe they need to be as resonant and flavorful as they can be first and foremost. The core set should play into most people's preconceived notions of fantastic creatures and spells, and those notions should guide them to understand the goals and mechanics of the game.”
-- Aaron Forsythe, ’Recapturing the Magic with Magic 2010’
It must be hard to write anything now that it stays on the internet nearly forever and any stupid blogger can pull up two contradictory quotes from four years apart and juxtapose them. (By the way, I’m well aware of the irony of making such a comment myself and so basically inviting you to comb my extensive archives. But it’s always different when it’s yourself. And as soon as I figure out how, I’ll let you all know.)
I have to admit that some of the Magic 2010 changes that Aaron was talking about were jarring. Like many other fans, I was used to about four years of Magic cards being designed with Magic as their main point of reference. That is: “card X does Y because it’s a black card and black cards are able to do Y.” Unlike some other fans, I was around in the old days, so for me it was only a question of adjusting back.
And many years of trying (and often failing) to find a fantasy novel that didn’t make me hate the author’s entire family have convinced me of one thing: resonant concepts are resonant for a good reason. You may as well just put the characters from the Viking Christmas mythos straight into the set, because you are going to be drawing on that anyway, and this way you don’t confuse and annoy people with names that start with an X and end with a Q (are you listening, R. Scott Bakker?).
Sometimes this can absolutely be a problem from a game design point of view. Lightning Bolt is awesome but still overpowered in any format that lets you play four of it, and even after fifteen years I still barely know how to pay for Fireball. But I’d like, if I may, to rehash a quote of mine that isn’t contradictory: If the game is not a game, but a work of art, does it really matter how powerful – or weak – any of the cards are?
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