Re: Magic 2015 - Duels Of The Planeswalkers Download For Pc In Parts
Keena Wiegert
Welcometo Planeswalker Week! Yeah, yeah, I know the banner says Kithkin Week, but we all know Kithkin Week was two weeks ago, right? Okay, here's what happened. (My theory anyway.) I think I got Punk'd. My theory is that editor Kelly Digges sent out an email with Kithkin Week listed before Planeswalker Week. Then he sent out another email to everyone except me telling them that it's been changed and Kithkin Week will now come after Planeswalker Week. Wouldn't it be a hoot watching me write the wrong column during the wrong week?
I checked my email and somehow Kelly found a way to retroactively change the email to say that Planeswalker Week went first. And he got to all the writers because whenever I corner one of them they just look at me funny and say, "Uh Mark, it didn't change."
Anyway, as far as I'm concerned it's Planeswalker Week so I want to write the column that I've been hinting at for months. How exactly were planeswalkers designed? I'm glad you asked. It's a very interesting story and I get to talk about it right now.
When I think back through the chain of events that led to planeswalkers I believe it all began when I selected my design team for Future Sight. You see, I knew the set was going to be a bit more off the wall than usual so I was interested in filling the team with a number of people that had never designed Magic before. The idea behind this crazy scheme was that people that didn't know the limitations of normal Magic design might not be hindered by them when I asked them to design some cards outside the normal boundaries.
When I had hired Matt I brought up the idea that perhaps one day I'd put him on a design team. He was very eager for the opportunity. So why was putting Matt on the Future Sight design team so important to the creation of planeswalkers? As I explained in my column on creativity (Connect the Dots), I believe creativity is the ability to join together things that others have not yet thought to connect. Matt was about to take an issue from the creative team and merge it with one from the design team.
As such, the creative team has been taking great efforts to help increase the ability for stories about Magic to revolve around those two basic ideas. The color wheel is pretty easy as it is deeply interwoven into just about everything. Wizards fighting with magic, on the other hand, while always there was seldom center stage. This problem was at its worst in the game (not in a meta sense, because obviously big picture the game is two wizards fighting; I'm talking here about the individual cards) because the focus on the cards made the true standouts anything but planeswalkers. Why? Because everything but planeswalkers actually appeared on the cards. Sure planeswalkers appeared in names, flavor text and occasionally art, but they were never allowed to have their own card. As Magic, the trading card game, is fundamentally about cards, it's hard to be the focus when you're excluded from being a card.
Make planeswalkers matter more. Figure out where the game might be headed. This metaphorical peanut butter and milk chocolate was swimming around in Matt's head until the fateful day that they collided. I remember Matt coming up to my desk. "It's so obvious," he said. "We need to make planeswalkers into cards."
Shortly before this happened, I was informed that due to a scheduling snafu I was losing a chunk of time from the design. As Future Sight was a small set (and an extra difficult one at that), this was a significant decrease percentage-wise. I was very focused on getting the design done in time for its handoff to development. As such, I assume here's what I heard: "It's so obvious," says Matt. "Let's do something that at its best would take significantly more time than a small set would have, yet do it for a design that's already extra-complicated and behind schedule."
I said we'd look into it. (By the way, I wasn't blowing Matt off; I really had every intention of checking it out. I just was skeptical we'd get it done for Future Sight.) Matt then brought up the idea to the team. It was received lukewarmly. Once again, not because it wasn't an interesting idea but rather the idea of creating an entire new card type is daunting at best. After a few weeks of no real response, Matt decided it was time to put down his thoughts and write a letter to the team. What follows is the actual letter. I should note that as with many real documents, I am unable to show you the letter in its entirety. While I know it is frustrating not to see everything, feedback from my readers has taught me that people would rather see parts of official documents than never seeing them at all. What I will do is show you all the relevant parts and then paraphrase any section that I am unable to show. I'm also going to jump in to point out things.
Yes, planeswalkers started with only five principles. (Well, according to Matt.) #1, as you know, managed to make it all the way through the process. The big change was letting the creatures attack the planeswalker directly. #2 was talked about and dumped because it just didn't work within the rules. There are just too many cards that target players that made no sense with planeswalkers. It did, though, lead us to the damage redirection aspect of the cards. (I'll talk about this more below.) While the specifics changed a little, the basis of #3 also made it through the process. Four and five, not so much. While we spent some time trying to make #2 work, #4 and #5 were scratched before the first planeswalker design team (which I'll talk about soon) officially met.
What follows is some ideas of Matt's of what planeswalkers could potentially look like. Remember, for all of these, Matt was looking for a card that would basically act on its own thus giving the illusion of independence.
I went back and double checked to make sure I copied this correctly (and I did). I'm not quite sure what Matt meant here. I think he was messing with a condition that he called appear that would define when the planeswalker shows up. Once again, it has no mana cost and thus cannot be played normally. I do believe there is some text missing above as it doesn't make sense as is.
The reason I felt it was important to show you this letter is to get a sense of where planeswalkers started. Also as a Magic historian, I enjoy tracing back things to their earliest written version. The letter you see here is the first time anyone wrote down their ideas about planeswalkers. While a lot changes over the next year, it's interesting how many basic concepts that made it all the way through showed up in Matt's first version.
This letter did a good job of kicking me, the Future Sight design lead and Magic Head Designer, in the tuchus. I realized that Matt was correct. This was the right thing to do. Creating a planeswalker card type was strategically a very important move. It was going to be a creative challenge but an exciting one. I also knew, though, that we would never add a card type to Magic if we didn't do it right. No matter how important the general goal was, R&D is very cautious about the game. Nothing gets added that can't hold its own weight. If we couldn't find a way to do planeswalkers right, there would be no planeswalkers.
Once I realized this I knew what had to be done. The Future Sight design team was not the right place for planeswalker design. No, if we were going to do it right, it needed its very own team. I put together the team as follows. First I added Matt. He was by far the most passionate person about the idea plus he was on the creative team so he could make sure we were fitting with what they needed. Next, I added myself as this was a daunting design challenge and I felt like the Head Designer needed to be directly involved. Third, I added Mark Gottlieb. We were treading into uncharted waters. Having the Rules Manager in the meetings seemed prudent. Finally, I added Brandon Bozzi, another creative team member. Brandon had been on a number of Magic design teams and he seemed like a perfect fit.
While I listed out five things, what I'm talking about above is actually much more than just five. (Who knows, maybe more than nineteen.) Being flavorful and being simple and being elegant are very complex concepts when you actually get down to what they require from a design standpoint. Suffice to say that the team had its work cut out for it.
Because the design space was so wide open, I decided to follow my instincts and set a few limitations. First, I declared that planeswalkers were going to be a permanent type. While instants and sorceries are nice, they've never been as iconic as the cards that sit in play. If we wanted to make planeswalkers matter, I felt strongly that it meant they sat in play. Also, permanents are things. Planeswalkers are things. It just felt right to insist on planeswalkers being permanents.
Second, I stated that we were going to give planeswalkers mana costs. The reason for this was a very practical one. If we were going to do planeswalkers, it meant designing a lot of them over the long haul. Mana costs are a clean and simple way to make sure only the proper color or colors can play the card. If the planeswalkers didn't have a mana cost, we'd have to work in other ways to make sure they stayed "in color." While these other ways exist, they aren't plentiful and thus only mana costs would serve us for the long haul.
PlainsThird, I told the team that we were going to make use of the design of another new card type that never got made. During Ravnica design, Richard Garfield had created a new card type he called structures. To reflect the city feel of the set, Richard had come up with the idea of a card type that had enchantment-y / artifact-y type effects but could only be destroyed if it took enough damage from creatures. To allow this, the card type let creatures attack it. The flavor was that there were mystical buildings in the city that had the power to create magical effects, but unlike an enchantment, the building could be destroyed by creatures who could tear it down. We liked the design but Ravnica was so chock full that we never needed to use it. (Also, while cool, it didn't neatly fit into what the block was doing.)
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