4/19/13 Episode 30: Lessons Learned Part I

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

Okay, I’m pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means! It’s time for another Drive to Work. Okay. As you all know, I do this a bunch ahead, and right now, in my present but your past, I’m running the Rosewater Rumble!

For those who have no idea what that is, I realized that Gatecrash was going to be my sixteenth—or, was my sixteenth released set, and so I thought it’d be fun to do a March Madness-style thing where I pitched my sixteen sets against each other and let the audience vote. I’m in the middle of doing that, all sorts of fun is happening there. I have an article that you’ve probably read about already that I wrote about.

Anyway, so, what I realized as I thought about it was, one of the important things of doing design is not just the act of doing it, but once you’re done, you need to look back and say “What lessons have I learned? What has this experience taught me?”

So I thought for today, and maybe more than today, we’ll see how long this one goes, I want to lok at the lessons I have learned from the sets that I have led. And so I dub this Drive to Work “Lessons I Have Learned.”

So I thought I would go in order from the sets I did, and talk about them. And as many podcasts as that takes, my guess is one or two, I will sort of examine what I’ve learned from the sets that I have done.

And be aware that one of the things that I realize is that some of the sets that you learn the most from are the sets where you made the most mistakes. So as you will see, many lessons came from many different places.

Okay, so we will start with Set #1, which for me was Tempest. And I did a podcast on Tempest. So understand that when I did Tempest, I kind of told them that I thought I was a designer. And before I came to Wizards, I had done some game design, but I had never done Magic design. And I kind of bit off quite a bit.

As I said, my first time out I was doing a large set, you know—like, Mike Elliott, who was also on the design team, he had designed a set before he came to Wizards. And it wasn’t made, but he had gone through the motions and made a set. I had never done that. I had made individual cards, but I had never made a set.

And so the first lesson I learned from Tempest was that I was able to do it. I mean, I had a lot of confidence. I don’t have lack of confidence, especially in this area. And I think the thing about Tempest was, I did something—I kind of pushed myself and said “I think I can do this thing,” and then I just did it. You know, I had no—I mean, the lesson kind of was is that you have to put yourself out there and take some risks and challenge yourself.

And Tempest was—I mean, difficult, but I did it. It was doable. And so I learned—one of the most important things I learned is the idea that, you know, sometimes, part of being a designer is pushing yourself.

And one of my attitudes in general, I mean I’m a pretty optimistic person—I actually, honest to God, was voted “most optimistic” in my high school yearbook. In my (???) days they used to say, you know, I knew I’d win.

Anyway, I’m an optimistic person. And so I tend to approach things assuming they’d be done. That’s one of the ways I always approach design, is—I don’t say “can I do it?” I’m like, “There’s a way to do it. I’ve got to find that way.”

And so Tempest was interesting for me because it was a pretty big project. Now, I learned a couple other things. One was, I don’t think I realized until I did my first design how collaborative a process Magic design is. I mean, I think Tempest shone, not just because I did good work, but I had a really strong team. You know, I mean Richard Garfield obviously knew what he was doing, but he hadn’t done Magic in a while. You know, when I got him to be on my team he hadn’t done Magic design in a couple years.

And obviously I had faith in him, and he had faith in himself. But I mean, he really stepped up and had really cool ideas. Buyback came from him. Mike Elliott is one of the people I tagged who had never—also never done design. But like me, he said he was a designer and I wanted to give him a chance to prove it.

And Mike mega-stepped up. You know, I mean, Mike and I went on to be the lead designers for a lot of sets following Tempest, and like I said, Mike did Slivers and Mike did Licids, and Mike did shadow. I mean, a lot of Tempest mechanics came from Mike.

And so, I think I learned that, you know, part of being a good designer in Magic is not just your own abilities but having a team and relying on the team, you know, and that—like one of the things now that I’ve learned as a designer and as someone who’s done a lot of lead sets is, I have to have my entire team invested in what we’re doing. It can’t just be my set, it can’t just be my project, it has to be our set and our project. The entire team needs to be on board, you know.

And one of the things I’ve learned is, you know, doing this a long time is, that whenever I can give somebody else credit, whenever somebody else—one of the tricks is, a lot of people will turn things in. And often, you’ll get the same card. It’s what we call parallel design. Very common. Especially when you’re shooting in similar areas. When I say, “Guys, we’re looking for this kind of thing.”

So what happens all the time is that someone was onto something and I will design the exact same thing because it’s just in the same area. I will always take their card with their name and put that in the file. Because the reality is, I mean one of the—although I—funny enough, I have the reputation of being super egotistical, I actually care that I want my people invested. And that—I mean, I’ve had thousands of cards made.

You know, my—my issue no longer is about individual cards, or even about mechanics. I’m much more about trying to create a set and a feel and a block and interblock and I’m really sort of looking big picture. But I do know it’s important for people to have cards and feel connected to the cards, and so I make sure that everybody involved, when they do stuff, that they can see the stuff that’s there.

That’s why to me it’s really, really important for all my designers to put names on things and then use those cards with those names so that people have ownership. Like one of the things that’s super-important is, the creative process is a process of ownership. That if you want to create, if you do not feel you own it, you will not do as good of work.

Let me repeat that because I think that’s super-important. That when you are emotionally invested in what you are working on creatively, you will do a stronger job. Why is that? I think that has to do with how humans function. That if you feel distanced from something, you—for example, I’m a parent. And there is a bond when you have a kid. I mean, it’s chemical, I’m sure, and it’s probably psychological.

But I mean, you have this amazingly strong bond. Your baby is born and you’re like “BAM! That’s my baby!” You have this incredibly strong bond. Why is that? Why does nature do that? Nature does that because it wants you to take care of the baby. Nature wants to make sure that you do the best for the baby, and part of it to make sure is, look, the more bonded you feel with something, the more responsibility you feel. The more you put yourself into it.

And creative things are your baby. In that if you don’t feel invested, if you don’t feel connected, you just won’t step up as much. You know why? Because the creative process is hard. Just like raising a baby is hard. You know. And that—nature needs you to stick in there and really fight for stuff and be there for your baby. And so it bonds you to it, and that’s important. And I want all my fellow designers on my team to also feel bonded. I want it to be their baby too. Not just my baby, it’s my team’s baby. And that’s really important. Tempest taught me that.

Tempest also taught me the importance of story. One of the things—one day I’ll tell this story, but my friend Mike Ryan and I—Mike was a lead editor, or not a lead editor, a editor of Magic, and he and I pitched this idea of a  story, that Magic should have a story. What would go on to become the Weatherlight saga. And Tempest was us working together, I mean things would go astray later. But Tempest was really—I mean if you ever look at Tempest and like Duelist did a thing, it’s online, where we showed all the art to like show you a storyboard of the story.

Because Tempest had a very tight story that was all seen on the cards, or most of it’s seen on the cards. But a lot of what we did was, I tried very hard to take the mechanics and the story and mesh them. Now, it wasn’t the best way to do it, in the sense that a lot of what I did was I found mechanical things and then found a way to mechanically tie them into the story, so they were connected.

And I liked how they were connected. But they weren’t as emotionally connected as I’d later learn. When we get to Innistrad and stuff we’ll talk about how I’ve learned better how to sort of ingrain them. But it was the importance of having value, story, I realized the story meant something, it was the first time I got to play around with that area.

The other thing that I learned is before Tempest, the way Magic sets worked back then was you had two keywords. They had nothing necessarily to do with each other, they just said “What are your two keywords?” “Flanking and phasing.” Or you know, echo and… what was echo? Echo and cycling.

But, I had shadow and buyback. And I really realized that I wanted them to mean something to each other. I didn’t just want two things, and so I worked really hard in my design to make them push against each other. That one said, you know, “If the game goes long enough I am very powerful, so if you can control the game and make it go long, you will win.” And the other mechanic said, “I’m fast. If you win quickly, I’ll win. But if you get to the long game, I’ll, you know, I’m not going to win for you. I’m a fast mechanic.”

And I pinned them against each other so that Tempest had this sort of, you know, one part was trying to be fast and one part was trying to be slow. And I gave each side resources to have that fight. And so Tempest taught me that it was important, you know, to have that—to make sure the internal elements meant something to each other. Now I would later to go on to get much better at that. That was my first attempt at it. But I was proud that I took what was at the time just like “Whatever, I have two mechanics” and said “No no no, I want them to mean something to each other.” And I thought that was valuable.

The other thing that Tempest taught me was that everything you come up with isn’t going to make it in the file. And that—for example, we tried really hard. I tried super hard to make draw triggers work. What draw triggers are is, cards that say “When you draw it, something happens.”

Now, many years later Brian Tinsman would figure out how to do it with miracle, but I didn’t figure it out at the time. And I spent a lot of time trying to make it work. It’s funny that I kind of got into buyback, which Richard made, as a means to try to fill the void of this mechanic that I couldn’t solve, and then buyback ended up working really well.

Oh, and the other thing I learned—the other thing I learned in Tempest—I would learn this again in Odyssey—is you need to figure out what you’re going to do and don’t—you want to overfill a little bit. I mean I say this to my designers, which is when you hand something over to development, you want to have 110%. You want 120%.

You want to have a little above what you need, because the act of development is they’re going to pull stuff out. And things aren’t going to work and that, you want to make sure that you’re a little full, because the act of development will loop things out, and they might need things, and you give them extra choices, you help them.

Like one of the things about doing design is, design is about getting the set to a point where development can do good work. Design’s not about finishing the set, the design is about doing the first part of what we need to do so that the second team, which is the development team, can do what they need to do. And my goal is not to get as far as possible down the line, my job is to set up development as well as I can set them up.

And one of the problems Tempest had was, Tempest just had too much in it. I mean, a little bit—110, 120% is fine. Tempest, like, cycling and echo, which were the two mechanics from Urza’s Saga a year later, they were both in it. It was just chock full of stuff. And it’s not bad that we as a team came up with it, because we were overloaded with ideas, especially because Mike and I had never designed before, Richard hadn’t designed for years, I mean Charlie, I don’t know, hadn’t been on a design team since Mirage.

But anyway, there was just too much. There wasn’t enough focus, and that—I overstuffed a little too much. And it’s a very common early design mistake, and I made it, which is not committing to what you’re doing. Meaning people sort of don’t have enough faith in what they’re doing, so they do lots of little things going “Well, maybe some of this will work.”

And what you need to do when you design, especially for Magic, is figure out what matters and then commit to those things. You can’t commit to a lot of things. If you want to do something right, you’ve got to have a handful of things and then commit to those things, rather then—you know, you don’t want to commit to a lot of things a little. You want to commit to a few things a lot.

Especially in a thing like Magic, where, look. We have to keep making things. There is not a lot of value of taking ten mechanics and saying “Well, we’ll do a little bit of ten mechanics.” No no no no no. Do a lot of four mechanics and save the six mechanics for later.

Okay. After Tempest was Unglued, my second set. So Unglued taught me one: to trust my sensibility. I think what happened was, in a lot of ways, Tempest was me doing what I thought a Magic set was. And that’s not bad, but I was very much trying to be what Magic sets were. And Unglued kind of, by the nature of what it was, said “Instead of making Magic sets—instead of—you’re making your aesthetic match Magic sets, try making a Magic set to match your aesthetic.

And Unglued is one of my favorite things I’ve ever done in that I feel like I really had no constraints, and I tried doing something. Now remember, the other thing that’s interesting about this was, and I’ve talked about this in my podcast, Unglued—the assignment I was given wasn’t what it ended up being. My assignment was much vaguer. It was like “They’re silver-bordered, they’re not tournament legal, do something.”

The idea of having humor, of having parody elements, of making things that were funny—that was all me. None of that came in what was asked of me. You know, and the thing that I’m very proud of Unglued was that we really did a lot of things, you know, like full art lands. Like tokens. There’s a lot of things I did that were sort of like me stretching boundaries, that Magic would go on to embrace as these were perfectly acceptable things.

And so the lesson I learned there was that it’s very easy, when you are doing something that’s bigger than you, and Magic’s way bigger than me, to get lost in the ideal of what you’re doing. And that—one of the things that I say to my designers is, “You are special. The reason you are here is you have something to bring that nobody else has to bring to the table. You know, when you do a design, I want—I don’t want a design that someone else can do. I want a design that only you can do.”

For example, I talk about—I did an interview with Ted (???) a while ago about writing for Magic. And one of the things I said is, “If I can write an article and you can scratch my name off and put somebody else’s name on, and nobody recognizes, then what are you doing? As a writer, what are you doing?” You know, I want to write something that you read it and go “That’s Rosewater!” I have a voice and I’m saying something, and I’m not—I’m not just saying what anybody else could say.

And I feel the same way about design is, you know, that I want my designers—that you can tell it’s their set. I’m not saying they should stretch what Magic is—they have to stay within the confines of what they’re doing—but in the same sense, I want them to be able to take part of them and imbue it in what they’re doing. Because I think that’s where the best designs come from.

You know, I think one of the things I hope, like when I did the Rosewater Rumble is, “Hey! These are my sets! And if you look at them, you see a lot of themes that come out through them. You know, I wrote an article which came out in your past, it’s my present, about synergy, where I talked about the importance of synergy. And how that one of my design aesthetics is I think games are about teaching people something. That games are about you helping people learn skills. And that you as a designer have some skill that you love that you want to imbue in people.

And my skill that I love, that I really love, is creativity. I love teaching people how to be creative. And one of the ways of doing that is in my design, I use a lot of synergy. I make cards connect in weird ways, and part of—I think cracking one of my sets is figuring out what all works together and how you make things happen. Magic naturally does this really well, so I’m playing to Magic’s strengths, but I’m really imbuing with something that’s my aesthetic.

And then Unglued taught me—it’s okay. Embrace your own aesthetic. Don’t be somebody else. You know, be what you’re doing, don’t—I mean, there is breaking too much, and in Magic we’ve had some of that where people try to make Magic too much their own thing, and that’s a problem, but I do think you want to bring enough of yourself to it.

And the other thing by the way that I, I love that Unglued taught me, is that designing should be fun. I should have fun designing. Now that’s not to say that I didn’t have fun designing Tempest, because I did, and it was exciting, but I think Unglued sort of said “You know, I think I can bring joy from players if I find the joy in the process myself.” And Unglued really taught me that.

And finally, the last lesson of Unglued was the lesson of “It’s okay to go to places and you don’t understand, you know, in the process.” My favorite book is the book A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger Van Oech, and he talks about how—the importance of stepping stones. Which is—the premise of the book is that the reason people are uncreative is that they have their own mental locks that prevent themselves from being creative.

And one of the mental locks is, “That’s ridiculous. That’s silly.” You know, and the idea is, “Oh, this idea isn’t practical.” But one of the things he talks about that I really believe in is—the idea of stepping stones—is, just because something doesn’t work, doesn’t mean it can’t get you to things that do work. And one of the things I loved about what Unglued taught me was, because kind of—because I was allowed to do anything, I just went to places that I never would have gone that made me a better Magic designer. You know.

Now I do believe that restrictions are good and restrictions help you, but I believe also sometimes that it’s nice to sort of remove restrictions and say “Look, assuming you can do anything, what do you want to do?” And I think that’s very freeing and helps you do stuff.

Okay, number three set I did was Urza’s Destiny. Okay, so Urza’s Destiny—I guess the base claim to fame for Urza’s Destiny is it’s a solo design, meaning I was the design team. In Magic history, I mean maybe you could argue Alpha is the other exception, but Richard had a lot of help. I—for whatever reason, I decided I was going to do this set by myself. Bill, who was the lead designer at the time signed off on it, and I literally designed it by myself.

Now, I’d learned in Tempest that Magic is a collaborative process. So I’m not saying that I—my lesson in Urza’s Destiny wasn’t “Hey I should do this more,” and I never did it again, I’m kind of proud that I did it once, but the lesson of Urza’s Destiny—A, it gave me some faith in myself. I mean it is a very—a point of pride for me that I did a Magic set all by myself. That is a very hard task. And I’m proud I did it once.

I think the biggest thing I learned from Urza’s Destiny is that it’s not enough to have structure. The audience needs to understand what the structure is. So let me give you an example. One of the themes of Urza’s Saga—one of the mechanics was cycling. So the tweak that I had on cycling was what I referred to as “cycling from play.” Cycling are cards you have in your hand, you pay 2 mana, you draw a card.

So I made a bunch of cards where you paid 2 mana and you could sacrifice them from the battlefield to draw a card. And the idea was “Oh, they cycled from play.” I was very proud of this. But what happened was, no—not nobody, but .01% realized it. You know, it became a running joke, whenever I would talk about it with somebody, and I’d talk about cycling from play and their eyes would light up and they’d go “Oh! Yeah, I didn’t get that.” You know, and I remembered time and time again, every time I explained it, nobody got it.

And what I learned is—the point of Urza’s Saga was, part of what you’re trying to do in design isn’t—I mean, I do believe in aesthetics. I do believe in having good design subconsciously makes you feel better, so I do believe there’s synergy there that won’t be seen on a conscious level, but my lesson is, I wanted that to be seen.

That one of the things I learned from Urza’s Destiny is look. You have to be able to—it’s not enough to do something, that sometimes you need it to be visible enough that people can see it. You know, that when I’m working on a design, I want other people to be able to figure out what I’m doing and to see that thing. You know, and that—I mean I like burying synergies in, but also I don’t need to bury everything. I don’t need to hide everything in a set. A little bit is good, but also part of what you’re doing is, I mean—and this is the reason that I—I like writing articles, you know what I’m saying? Is that I think part of design is showing off what you’re doing so that people can see what you’re doing. And that it’s not all supposed to be secret.

Yes you want some secrets, yes you want your audience to be able to search for things, and I love doing that, I’m not saying not to do that. But at the same time, it’s not supposed to be a mystery, you know. Part of doing art is having structure to it, and having the structure that people can see. Now the solution there, I learned, is that I become a—I became a much bigger fan of labels. Of using keywords and ability words and keyword actions, and I became a much bigger idea of “Look, label the things you’re doing so that people can see them.”

Because that’s not a bad thing. People enjoy making the connections. People enjoy seeing it. And that, on some level, hiding too much is takings some joy away from the players. That I think the players would have enjoyed the cycling from play if they got it, you know. And I feel like not enough people had that opportunity. And I learned that “Look, I have to do that. I have to be able to lay things down, and I have to be able to label them so that people can see them.”

Because one of the things that people have to understand is, that design is not for yourself. Design is not—it’s not that “I’m doing something all for myself, in a thing, alone, I do my thing, and then, well, the world can see it as they see it.” I don’t think about it in that way. I think the audience is an integral part of art. And that you, the artist, if you’re not thinking about the audience, then on some level you’re being selfish. You know, you as an artist are just being selfish.

I mean, if you want to do self-expression and do things and hide them in a closet, you know, more power to you. You can Emily Dickinson it up. But I believe that part of art is the act of it being seen. That is an important part of art. And I do believe—I mean, I know people—you know, think I’m being highfalutin here, but I think of Magic design as art. I’m not saying there’s not some science to it, there’s a lot of craft to it, but I do think of it as art. And part of it is that I want the audience to be able to appreciate it, you know.

But to do that—to do that, I have to understand that the audience, the them seeing it is part of the art. You know. And that if I want the audience to be able to participate, I have to help them. You know, that I the artist have to put some work in. It’s not the audience’s job to figure everything out. You know, for example, as a connected thing, I’ve done a lot of puzzle design. My wife and I love to throw parties. And one of the things I always do at my parties is we have puzzles.

I love making puzzles. It’s fun. And one of the things I learned as a puzzle designer, which I bring to my Magic design, is in puzzle design, the biggest mistake that people make is they think it’s them vs. the audience. As if they have to trick the audience or “Can the audience figure it out?” They’re going to challenge the audience. And what they miss is, puzzle making is a collaborative process with the audience.

The goal isn’t to stump the audience. If you stump the audience, you have failed as a puzzle maker. You’ve made a horrible puzzle. The goal of puzzle making is to work with them to create an experience that is enlightening for the audience, right? For example, one of the things about an awesome puzzle is you put handholds in the puzzle. As people figure things out, you give them ways to, you know, to, you know, solve more.

A great puzzle says “Oh. Well here’s a few things in the beginning to get ideas.” And then as you start solving it, it gives you new clues. And so the act of solving it helps you open up, you know. It’s an onion that gets unraveled as different layers come off. And then a beautiful puzzle is this interactive process where you and the audience are going back and forth and doing a little dance. And then in the end, they’re reaching this glorious climax that you’ve designed for them to find. You know, like a puzzle that no one can solve, I don’t know what that is, that’s not—you’re not thinking of the audience—you’re not really making a good puzzle, you know.

And I feel that Magic design is the same thing. That I’m trying to make something for the audience to discover, but I have to put the handholds in. I have to help them. You know, that is not like—throw them to the wind and whatever they find—no no no no. My job as a designer is to make sure that I am doing a dance with my audience and helping them discover things, but in a way where I give them the tools to help find it. You know, just like puzzle making.

You know, and that—I mean, Urza’s Destiny was the first place where I really learned that. Where I really realized that it’s not—I’m not just doing something and putting it on display and whatever you see, you see. I’m trying to work with my audience as an audience.

Okay, I see the Wizards building. So, I have realized something very important here, which is—this is a lot longer—this is not one or two podcasts. Because I managed to get through three sets in one. But I—I like what I did, I think it’s good, so this will be as long as it needs to be. I don’t know, maybe next week I’ll—maybe some of my lessons won’t be as long as my first three. I think the early lessons you learn more in the sense that you—well, I guess you learn on everything, but the early lessons are interesting in that you know less, so maybe the early lessons are bigger lessons.

I honestly don’t know how long this is going to last. I’m enjoying myself, I hope you guys are—that’s the first three of my sixteen sets. So, anyway, I’ll pick up next week when I talk more about lessons that I’ve learned. Anyway, it’s time for me to go make the Magic.