This is an initiative in collaboration with Wizards of the Coast.
If you had asked me a year ago what I thought about writing about something recurring for months, the most likely thing is that I would have told you that it was impossible, that the issues are over and that in the end even something you like a lot ends up burning. With Magic: The Gathering every week I start it with that fear in the body.
However, to my surprise week after week, as soon as I sit down to write – usually blind, others with a more or less clear idea in mind – something ends up sprouting. Inspiration comes without warning and, right off the bat, there is already a thread to pull.
And it is that having the best job in the world – this is like the asses, each one has their own – does not necessarily imply that it is easy to get ahead. Facing the blank page is far from being a bed of roses, so every time those eureka moments magically manifest I can’t help myself. fall in love a little more of this game.
Today’s excuse for the words to start rolling is precisely one of those flashes of joy that you come across when you’re enjoying something. A moment so simple, and at the same time so special, like the share a smile with a friend.
A friendship forged from spades
Last week I was able to sneak one more day on the ElStream set for a new game of Planeswalkers Duel against Raquel, a partner of 3DJuegos. We were able to fiddle with the new cards from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, marvel at the art of cardboard, put our level to the test in that difficult challenge of going from novice to pro in a year and, of course, have a good time.
Thinking back to it, I always find it incredible how easy it would be to have all that scripted. You can force that epic of the games, get there knowing what you are going to say and do during the hour that the program lasts … But in reality it would be impossible to achieve something like this that you have below.
It would be easier for everyone involved, but also much more boring. Something without a soul. I already told you at the beginning of our Magic Chronicles that this was going to go, mainly, letters and friends, and in a way it’s being nice to see a new friendship sprout with Toni and Raquel, whom I only knew almost glancingly.
I love to get nerdy about these things. What can we do. But don’t worry, I’ve already got to where I wanted. I simply intend to highlight the genuineness of those games because, beyond the laughter between Raquel’s piques and my terrible luck with the Earths – seriously, what the hell happened there – there was a moment that was burned into my mind.
At a certain point in the game – sorry for not finding the exact timing – I get a “jobar, is that he is gorgeous”To which Raquel replies by agreeing with a similar phrase. I remembered the phrase, but not the idiotic smile I noticed when I watched the show a few days later with my kids.
It is the face of someone who is having a great time and, well, when you see it, it is easy to abstract yourself and go back to the old thing: it is still work and it should not be that fun or exciting. It is being something very special for everyone and I like to think that, in a sense, it is also being special for those of you who are joining Magic On our side.
How to shape something special
Right there the thread to pull for this text comes into play. Of something as simple as stopping to value that “it shouldn’t be like that“And ask me”what is special about that to happen”.
The easy thing is to put it down to what it is Magic. That they have gotten the hang of it, that the sellout must be for something and that, in essence, what is fun is fun per se. And if you also enjoy it in company, it ends up being even more so.
The simplest way would be to assume that this is the case, period, why give it more thought. But it’s hard to peel off your design freak cape when you come across something like that. Not because it is in itself a simply good idea, but because it is in the queue of a collection of genius that never stops flowing.
More than a hundred expansions later, with thousands of cards behind your back, get your audience excited with a new mechanic and give you a “jobar, is that he is gorgeous”It must be a very difficult challenge and an immense satisfaction. Almost as big as the check that Wizards of the Coast must release Mark Rosewater every month, of course, but seeing how well your head is still working and how you sharpen your creativity, it should be little.
We talked about Rosewater, Magic’s chief designer, in his day precisely to learn about some of the keys that had led him to that position, but today I especially wanted to know more about that design process. How he and his team come together to shape that knowing smile between two friends enjoying a game.
Different paths to reach the same destination
In the first place, we should recognize the work of the rest of the design team of Magic that, beyond the work of Rosewater, brings forward the new mechanics of each expansion. And beyond for obvious reasons, it is necessary to do it because, as the designer himself states, the best way to understand how the design of cards and mechanics is approached is by valuing the plurality behind it.
From the initial brainstorming one usually jumps to a more individual job in which there are different ways of working. To show a button, the work of another of the key designers of Magic.
Mike Elliot focuses on imagining mechanics, and when he has an idea to hold onto, he begins to think about how he can translate that concept to the more cards the better.
The method should not work badly for you considering that it is one of Magic’s most prolific designers when it comes to creating mechanics.
For its part, Rosewater claims to be a designer who moves more step by step. Theirs is to focus on creating a letter and figuring out how it will work individually. From there, see how you can adapt mechanics already created, or if the mechanics imagined for the card can be carried over to others.
If in both cases they find something that can give a lot of play, and become the protagonist of an expansion, that idea can end up becoming a keyword like flight, refute or flash. Especially if when explaining what the mechanics consist of, a text box is longer than Don Quixote.
The four questions on which Magic’s mechanics design is based
But then, do you have an idea and that’s it? Nothing is further from reality. Once the mechanics are conceptualized, either generalized or individualized in specific cards, the next thing that the design team of Magic is to four key questions.
The first of all, of course, is whether the designed mechanics are really fun. Something that actually takes a lot of testing work before deciding whether to skip to the next question. If you are lucky, then try to visualize the number of cards that could be supported by this mechanic.
If you could fit that mechanic into 20 different cards to make them more fun to play without breaking the game, then the door opens to the third question and another considerable round of testing. How can reuse that mechanics in the future?
Be careful, it is not simply being able to recycle it, it is anticipating possible problems that they may generate in a collection that, as we have already said, has thousands of letters behind it. Something like a “How many headaches is this going to give me tomorrow?“.
Finally, a fourth question designed to answer what impact could it have such a mechanic in the set of cards for which it has been thought. If the idea of that set is to move towards a much more agile and aggressive game, introducing a mechanic that breaks with that scheme can be counterproductive. That is precisely why the mechanics are usually created first and then they jump to creating the set that will give them meaning.
From a difficult job to a knowing smile
I don’t even want to imagine the complexity behind shaping something like Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, no longer as an expansion capable of exciting the public -that is already another level-, but basically as something with a face and eyes that works seamlessly.
No updates in MTG Arena to cut the options of a card that has gotten out of hand. Everything must arrive at the stores in perfect condition and tested to the millimeter. There can be no more Black Lotus running around uncontrollably.
Knowing that out of every five mechanics that are created, only one reaches the game, gives a good account of the hours that are invested in playing with cards without images and with a line of text as the only reference.
They are nameless and artless test cards, but not without soul.
Of that they already have more than enough with an idea expressed in pen. Because that soul in the form of mechanics, regardless of whether they are a werewolf, a zombie or a murderous dog, is what really ends up causing smiles like those of my last confrontation in ElStream.