Elemental Questions, Part 1 · 7:36pm Feb 5th, 2018
If you haven't been paying attention to the Magic: the Gathering community, you may be unaware that there's a bit of a reality show going on at Wizards of the Coast right now, namely the Great Designer Search 3. The grand prize is a six-month internship at WotC... for a given definition of "internship," since it actually pays better than my current job.
Naturally, I entered. To my carefully established lack of surprise, I didn't make it past the second round. (To be clear, that was the round where they trimmed over three thousand candidates to ninety-four. There was a multiple-choice test. Getting more than three wrong meant you missed the cutoff. Did I mention it was a seventy-five question test?)
In any case, now that Mark Rosewater has begun divulging what they were looking for in those first two rounds, I thought I'd share my responses for anyone who might care to see them. This week, it'll be the mini-essays. Next time, I'll be able to see just how well I did on that test after all.
1. Introduce yourself and explain why you are a good fit for this internship.
Hi, I’m REDACTED, and I’m a cardoholic.
I’ve been collecting and casually playing Magic for most of my life and playing in sanctioned events for more than half of it. I found my first cards lost or abandoned on the elementary school playground—they were Orcish Captain and Thorn Thallid, so I’m leaning towards abandoned—and I’ve only missed out on a few expansions since, either because of lack of time or lack of other players. These days, I have several reliable playgroups and have been going strong for over a decade.
Beyond that, I have more than a little experience when it comes to making cards, always using the existing ones as a guideline for appropriate power for a given cost, always trying to balance fun, flavor, and actual playability. I’ve read the design, development, and Play Design columns on the Magic site for years, taking the lessons on game design in general and Magic specifically to heart. I pose both bottom-up (“For each Ravnican guild ability, make cards for each nonguild color with that ability that still work in their parts of the color pie”) and top-down (“How would a compleated slith function as a card?”) design challenges for myself. I frequently find myself trying to map fictional characters to the color pie and trying to translate their behavior and abilities to workable card mechanics. And I write a weekly card creation blog that has, without exaggeration, accrued more than five thousand designs from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic alone.
No, really. I devised several mechanics out of that as well.
All told, I love making this game at least as much as I love playing it, and it would be a dream come true if I were to win this internship.
2. An evergreen mechanic is a keyword mechanic that shows up in (almost) every set. If you had to make an existing keyword mechanic evergreen, which one would you choose and why?
Bushido. Evergreen mechanics need to be simple enough that they don’t distract from the set’s mechanical focus, and bushido is already simpler than at least one existing evergreen. An opposing creature with prowess makes for intense mind games so long as the opponent has a card in hand and mana available. With bushido, the creature has two clearly delineated sizes with equally clear conditions on when it gets bigger.
That said, there’s still a lot of room to work with bushido. Beyond its built-in adjustable knob, its addition to the evergreen stable will open up a lot of design space that would require siginficant card text to harness otherwise. Different additional mechanics can radically alter how a bushido creature plays. Adding saboteur abilities can increase the pressure to make unfavorable blocks. Adding lifelink can encourage the controller to hold back and use the creature as a recovery tool. And on its own, bushido can even teach new players a lesson as valuable as it is hard for them to grasp; sometimes the right thing to do is not block an attacking creature. Bushido represents a built-in combat trick that anyone can see coming, and that boost can be the deciding factor that teaches new players that creatures on the board can be more valuable than a little bit of life.
All bushido needs is a flavor adjustment to break it away from Kamigawa and samurai in general. A restyled bushido could fit in just about anywhere. After all, it’s been used at least twice in every color but blue (counting Chub Toad, the original samurai.)
3. If you had to remove evergreen status from a keyword mechanic that is currently evergreen, which one would you remove and why?
Double strike. The evergreen mechanics have been carefully pared down and even more carefully supplemented over the years. All of the really complex ones like regeneration and protection and the feel-bad, unfair ones like fear and intimidate have been phased out (and let’s not even talk about phasing.) Given that, it seems wisest to drop one of the keywords that’s used least often. At the time of writing this, there only eleven cards in all of Standard that have, can have, or can give double strike, and there’s a very good reason for that. Double strike has to be used cautiously given how it makes any power boost on the creature twice as punishing. It’s like infect in that respect, only compatible with conventional damage and with first strike’s extra survivability built in.
Furthermore, there’s the matter of design space and the color pie to consider. The evergreen mechanics provide the staple effects for every set, and for most of them, dropping it would leave a sizable gap in what can be done for simple effects. However, there’s little that double strike can do that can’t be covered by first strike and power boosting, both of which are also under red and white’s umbrellas. Double strike is an incredibly fun ability, but it’s ultimately a nonessential one. It could definitely spring up from time to time as a splashy add-on, much as protection is currently, but its loss would hurt the game the least. As such, if I were forced to render one mechanic deciduous, it would be on the one on the chopping block. And it would probably take two swings to demote.
4. You're going to teach Magic to a stranger. What's your strategy to have the best possible outcome?
First things first, I ask the person how much they already know about the game. I’ll need to get a sense of what they know, or at least think they know, before actually introducing concepts. I’ll ask the person to explain what they know to gauge their knowledge. If they’re laboring under any misapprehensions, that’s the time to clear them up.
If the person is working from a blank slate, I start with the foremost fundamental, the life total and how to win or lose. Next I’ll explain lands, mana, and casting a spell. From there, I move on to the other card types: sorceries, instants, artifacts and enchantments, and finally the most complex type explained in the lesson, creatures. I may mention that planeswalkers exist, but emphasize that they’ll be for another day. No need to muddy the waters with loyalty abilities and alternate attack options during Magic 101.
After that, it’s time for a practice game with decks made for the purpose. If welcome decks are available, that’s what we’ll use. Otherwise, I’ll ask if the student is okay with using more complex decks. If so, we’ll use ones I have lying around. If not, I’ll throw together a pair. Once we begin, I’ll go first, explaining the turn structure as I do. We’ll both play with hands revealed so I can walk the student through spellcasting and combat, especially any keyword abilities that get involved. Once the person thinks they’ve got a grasp on things, we can try it for real.
Of course, that’s if there are absolutely no questions or other hang-ups. I’ll always be ready to stop and address any concerns or clear up any confusion. That’s what a good teacher does, regardless of the subject.
5. What is Magic's greatest strength and why?
Magic’s greatest strength is the sheer creative versatility and potential it has to work with. The setting of the Multiverse means that the game can do practically anything, go practically anywhere, and as long as it remains a sufficiently fantasy tone, it won’t lose its identity. This flexibility and potential for reinvention is what enables the vast design space that the game has been exploring for decades. Beyond a few simple, straightforward rules like “no guns, except that one Portal set we’re going to pretend didn’t happen,” the sky’s the limit. One need only look at Ixalan to see proof of that. What other game could create a world of dinosaur-riding Aztecs versus pulp pirates versus literally bloodsucking conquistadors versus jade-wielding shamanistic Amazonian fish people? Much less have them all competing for the city of El Dorado.
The best part is that the color pie lets virtually any concept, no matter how absurd, get mapped to one to three colors. No matter how bizarre the premise, the game can make it work. There may be mechanical hiccups, there may be switchbacks that lead to already explored design space, there may even be creative roadblocks that just can’t be cleared in the time allotted, but in time, Magic can make almost anything work. That capacity for connecting the game engine into any concept and getting it to run is the solid foundation on which the game is based. As with any game, new and returning are Magic’s lifeblood, but the infinite diversity of the Multiverse is the heart that pumps them.
6. What is Magic's greatest weakness and why?
The inescapable randomness inherent to card games plagues Magic from beginning to end. Whether it’s set designers having to consider the as-fan of the booster packs in a Limited event or a series of unfortunate draws ruining what might otherwise be a close match, chance undermines the strategic aspects of Magic at every turn. Chase rares and Masterpieces driving speculation lead to more disappointment and disillusionment than joy, or at least despondent sighs when looking at one’s bank balance. Every deck, no matter how finely tuned, can still succumb to land flooding or the cruel turning of the mana screw.
The worst part is that this weakness is an inextricable part of the game. A game of Magic without some degree of randomness wouldn’t be Magic anymore. It’d be like chess with cardboard; still fun for a certain crowd, but sacrificing the soul of the game in the process. Randomness is packaged with Magic, even in the literal booster packages. Entire game modes rely on it in order to function. Strategies and metastrategies are built around the fact that there are insurmountable indeterminacies in gameplay and matchups. At the end of the day, chance is a weakness that cannot be fully overcome, only worked around, and that’s what makes it the greatest one. New World Order, evolving the block system, reintroducing core sets, and other adaptations can solve many of Magic’s weak points, but no amount of altering the way cards are made can address an issue built into the game’s very core.
7. What Magic mechanic most deserves a second chance (aka which had the worst first introduction compared to its potential)?
Appropriately on multiple levels, the impact of replicate on the game replicated a replicate spell in a game: A big explosion of similar effects… and then nothing else. The mechanic still has a vast wealth of untapped potential. Its conceptual evolution in overload did do explore some of it, but the finesse and control of replicate opens it to effects that its little brother can’t perform as effectively. While Dragonshift made for a splashy rare, a more “contextual downside” effect like Gift of Tusks that might want to target either end of the board would work much better with replicate.
There’s also some obvious untapped design space in making replicate costs that aren’t equal to the spells’ mana costs, possibly even partially or entirely nonmana costs. The only spells that even come close are “replicate-esque” ones like Comet Storm and Strength of the Tajuru. Plus, the color pie and the suite of evergreen mechanics have evolved since Guildpact, which means there are several effects like rummaging and scrying that are now available even after replicate’s first run covered several stock blue and red effects.
Finally, replicate’s flavor is fairly portable. Using the scientific method to reproduce spell results can take place on any sufficiently advanced plane, whether it’s Kaladeshi aether researchers mechanizing specific flow patterns or Gitaxian vivisectors performing the same procedure on several captive test subjects. Depending on the setting and possible reflavoring, the mechanic can even break out of blue and red: Green and white can employ mystic traditions, while black just accepts greater payment in exchange for bulk orders of whatever insidious magics are being ordered.
All in all, I’d say replicate deserves a second trial.
8. Of all the Magic expansions that you've played with, pick your favorite and then explain the biggest problem with it.
Time Spiral was a delight to play and examine as a long-time fan of the game, one who understood and appreciated most of the nostalgic throwbacks and Easter eggs slipped into each and every card. I mean, there was even a card with rampage in the timeshifted sheet! I doubt half the players who attended the Time Spiral prerelease had ever even heard of rampage before a few people opened Craw Giants.
And that was the problem. For newer players, the set was a confusing, overwhelming nightmare expecting them to expand their Magic vocabularies to an unprecedented degree. It asked them to take in flanking, morph, shadow, echo, suspend, split second, and more all at the same time. I mean, there was even a card with rampage in the timeshifted sheet! This one random, unintuitive keyword that hadn’t been seen in nearly ten years brought back for the sake of pointing out that said keyword still existed in the Magic rules.
As for potential players for whom Time Spiral was their very first set, I wouldn’t be surprised if it scared them away from the game entirely. Walking in the door and getting slapped in the face with a pile of inside jokes and more than twice the game complexity you were expecting isn’t exactly a warm welcome.
Again, I personally loved Time Spiral. I loved that whole block, and every time a set gets fully spoiled, I scour the visual spoiler to see if any more futureshifted cards have found their proper contexts. But I was part of the target audience, and a lot of players weren’t. A Standard-legal set can’t afford to be that niche.
9. Of all the Magic expansions that you've played with, pick your least favorite and then explain the best part about it.
Mirrodin was overloaded with poor design decisions, from artifact lands and affinity in the same set (to say nothing of the inadvisability of affinity in general) to the sheer saturation of colorless cards making for one of the strangest drafting environments ever. But in spite of all of that, it still pioneered a concept that’s going strong to this day: Equipment. And there’s a good reason for that. While Auras have significantly improved over the years, Equipment still represents a fantastic refinement of the basic idea of taking a creature and making it better. The flavor of gear that can be picked up or left behind postmortem flows perfectly with their in-game behavior (ignoring the Wurm in Boots issue, but I’ve always found that more funny than problematic. I always figured the planeswalker tied the laces together and strung them over the wurm’s neck.)
No one can claim that Mirrodin didn’t make the most of the idea. The first twenty Equipment did an excellent job of demonstrating just what the artifact type was capable of, from simple enhancers to Worldslayer, which flat-out said “I dare you to break me.” Future sets expanded upon this base, dialing the power level back some when it became clear just what advantages Equipment provide, but still making them an essential part of the game today.
Mirrodin isn’t the worst part of its block. That honor goes to Darksteel, thanks to Messrs. Ravager and Skullclamp. But it was the set with which I had the least fun. Equipment and their vast design potential were by far the saving grace of the set for me, and arguably for the game as a whole.
10. You have the ability to change any one thing about Magic. What do you change and why?
As I noted in my response to Question 6, randomness is perhaps the greatest enemy of fun in Magic. Good luck makes for incredible stories, but bad luck just makes for sour grapes. Given that, I would adjust the mulligan procedure, either adding the following option or replacing the current system with it, depending how it playtested:
Players would have the option of keeping any number of the cards in their opening hand, putting the rest on the bottom of their library, then drawing until they got back to seven. If the current mulligan was left in the game, players would have the option to perform a full mulligan rather than this partial one as many times as they wished before any partial mulliganing, but after the partial, the player would be locked in with whatever they then had. Post-mulligan scrying would only take place if the player had six or fewer cards in their opening hand.
This system could help players hold on to almost playable hands instead of throwing them back and risking far worse ones. There would still be an element of risk, and greed would have high potential for punishment. Again, this idea would require a great deal of playtesting before anything was finalized. This level of pregame hand micromanagement could be much more dangerous than I realize. But it would be worth taking the time and effort to give players some option beyond the dwindling hope that is throwing back ever-smaller hands in the hopes of something playable, potentially raising the skill ceiling of the game even before the first turn without any corresponding rise in its skill floor.
Dude, and they turned you down ?
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Over three thousand people submitted essays. If you didn't make it into the third round, they didn't even read your entries. It's understandable; otherwise, they'd have people going through these nonstop for weeks if not months.
Interesting. It seems that though we both greatly enjoy Magic, we approach design from hugely different perspectives. I'll post my essays later today.
Man, here I was hoping to see a super-triumphant post when you made it to round 4... At least there'll probably be another one eventually
I feel like you get this card game on a much deeper level that I do. I mostly stick to green or combined with green decks. Have since childhood. You like, actually understand everything about them though, and that's really cool
Or, y'know, wore them as little hats.
static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cute-snakes-wear-hats-101__700.jpg
(Just imagine that the hat is a boot.)
It was cool and interesting reading your essays. Didn't realize that the charlie foxtrot that was Mirrodin block was what gave us equipment as we know it. (I do have a couple examples of pseudo-equipment artifacts from Invasion that would give a creature an effect as long as it stayed tapped, but the current design is better.)
Also interesting to see you'd like to introduce something similar to the Paris Partial Mulligan to standard play. The biggest complaint about that I've seen from Commander players is that it can give an unfair advantage to combo decks, so that may or may not be an issue in 60card formats.
I did something cool in that dumb anime Magic-lite game I've been playing lately and now I want to tell people about it but no one plays it. :C Which is a long-winded way of saying most of this went over my head, even with the card illustrations, but it was well-written and otherwise illuminating. :3
I also didn't make it past the second round. Given the amount of applicants they had to cut down, I suppose a near-perfect score on the test was inevitably required. My issue was that a lot of the questions had multiple correct answers or were phrased in a subjective way (like the one that asked about how to make a card that Play Design would like). Ultimately, it was an interesting challenge, and I would have liked to keep going. But like you, I prepared myself for the idea of failure (even if I held onto a kernel of hope a bit longer than realistic).
A brief rundown of my answers (I'll spare everyone and not post the whole thing);
1: Mentioned I got back into magic recently, mostly play cube and commander. The major emphasis, however, was on the idea that game design requires self-examination and constructive criticism. I even mentioned writing as one of my hobbies that taught that lesson.
2: Evoke. It gives players interesting choices to make and works similarly to modal spells.
3: Hexproof. It's not fun and creates more problems than it solves.
5: Offering players choices. Be it deckbuilding or game decisions or what art one uses, the player always has options.
6: Its ability to attract and teach new players.
7: Suspend: it lets players trade time for mana, which I always found to be elegant design. The mechanic itself just needs clearer wording and more careful balance.
8: Kaladesh. Great flavor, art, and gameplay. But it had plenty of balance problems, from the parasitic nature of energy to the uneven power level (Paradox Engine, Aetherworks Marvel, the Gearhulks...).
9: Unstable. The humor didn't quite do it for me and it was incredibly complicated. At the same time, having to keep track of so many new ideas and triggers and interactions... It was a learning experience, both as a player and an aspiring judge.
10: Offering starter products (that are actually good) for every single format. The Commander Preconstructed decks are the standard to meet here. If wizards offered a product of that quality for Standard (we'll see how the new ones go), Modern, Pauper, heck, even a starter cube... It would be great for players and would also make the monies, an easy win-win that just needs some dedicated playtesters and designers.
I was also looking around Reddit around the time that answers could be made public. It's interesting to see how everyone's tastes and design sensibilities differ. Just like in writing, looking at the opinions of others helps one examine and refine their own ideas.
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I dunno, it's probably a crazy thing to get into but you could look for other opportunities to get into game design. You've clearly got the knack!
I actually got into Magic during the Urza(?) block that the original Time Spiral card was in. I still remember thinking the promo poster for that in my local game store was really cool! And I never stopped playing per se; I just ran out of people I could get to who still played, this being before I had regular independent transportation (and, like, before the turn of the century).
4790284 Partial Paris makes your deck run too smoothly, too often. In Commander, yeah it makes your infinite combo much more likely to go off sooner. But the same applies to any kind of deck. Aggro decks get their perfect curve, burn decks get just enough land and all their lightning bolts, control decks get all their answers and card draw... I definitely agree it made the game too easy and consistent.
One format I've been looking at is battle box: players get a predetermined number of lands that exist outside the hand, and you get to play them one per turn in whatever order you like. Everyone plays from a communal deck and has a smaller hand to compensate, but it's an interesting way to remove mana flood/screw, which is often Magic's biggest impediment to fun.
I tried to apply, but somehow I didn't even get the entry e-mail.
Fairly annoying, since I've also made a bunch of cards (in fact, I recently made a card for Tony Tony Chopper from One Piece, Pre-Timeskip).
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There was a server hiccup early on. Wizards lost the email addresses of everyone who signed up during the first day or so... and never really bothered to announce that save through an editor's note on the GDS3 announcement article. I only realized it on the day before the deadline. I should've said something here just in case. Sorry.
First off,
Second off, [morganfreeman]It was at that moment Phil realized just how very different a Magic player Fan was.[/morganfreeman] Mainly based on double strike, but there's a lot in there that floors me. Not that I think any of it is bad or strange, it's just very different, and I'm amazed. This game means so many different things to so many different people, but it's always interesting to discover yet another viewpoint.
Third off, I never pass up the opportunity to say that I was a new player at the Time Spiral block. And I loved it. (Actually, I was technically a new player on release day of Tenth Edition, but everyone teaching me wanted to play their new cards and so handed me what amounted in the end to a pile of Riftwing Cloudskates and a Heroes Remembered.) My brother-in-law always complains about how coming in during Future Sight ruined me.
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I actually signed up after that. I didn't know it was going on until an article was posted on tips and tricks based on the previous GDS.
I guess I didn't read the sign-up instructions close enough if I didn't notice that I didn't get an e-mail until things were already under way.
As a kid I was a big magic fan and even subscribed to SCRY for a year or two, this was written better than any column I can recall running in that magazine.
You totally deserved to get into the third round
You're the best MTG Guru I've ever met outside of the MTG Team itself.