3/8/13 Episode 24: The Mana System

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

I’m pulling out of my driveway! You know what that means! It’s time for another Drive to Work.

Okay. Two weeks ago, I talked about—I started my Golden Trifecta series of podcasts, where I talked about the three things that I believe Richard Garfield did when he created Magic. The three awesome things he put together to make the genius that is the game Magic.

So one is the concept of the trading card game. I talked about that two weeks ago. Second was the idea of a color pie, I talked about that last week. Today I’m talking about the mana system. I’m excited for this podcast, because everybody understands the genius of the trading card game. Everybody gets the genius of the color pie. But the mana system? Not as much beloved. So we’re going to talk about that today, because I feel that I want you all to have as much respect for the mana system as I do, because it is awesome. And I think that it is much maligned.

Okay, so for starters, here’s my first issue with it is, I think people, when they look at the mana system, try to—their viewpoint is from the negative. So for example, let’s imagine I was going to try to pitch you on cars. And I said, “Okay. Well cars—for starters, they create pollution, they’re expensive, you need insurance to use them, you know, your chance of dying goes way up, lots of accidents happen in cars, and there’s drunk driving, and oh my God it causes deaths every year and accidents every year, and…” You know.

And when you look at cars from that vantage point, they sound horrible! They sound horrible! They just pollute the air and cause accidents, and—but, but, but, think about society without cars. I mean for starters, there’s no Drive to Work. Right away. But seriously, I mean, you know, I live half an hour away from where I work. That could never happen. You know. And if everybody had to be right where they worked, that would make things a lot harder. You know. Or imagine just the fact that, you know, there’s no trucks, or you know, the life we know it is very dependent upon cars.

And it’s very easy to look at the negative of cars and go “Well, that seems pretty bad,” you know, and I think that’s what people do with the mana system. Like they look at the negatives. Like is mana screw a great thing? No, it’s not completely bad, I’ll get to that in a second. But I mean that’s—that’s not the selling point, you know, the selling point of mana is not mana at its worst, you know, it’s mana at its best.

Let’s talk about the mana system. What exactly does it do? Now I’ve mentioned this a little bit in the last couple weeks but let me really nail it down. So number one. Is the game needs to have what we call flow. Right? Meaning that I want to have things I need to do, but we need the game to sort of evolve as it goes along. Now, there are a lot of other games that don’t have a mana cost system, and one of the problems that they have is, well if I can play any card, you know, A. it’s hard to have different cards have value.

Like the mana system for starters says “Look, lower—cheaper cards have value. Now, they have value at a certain time in the game, but they have value. You know, in your opening hand, a one-drop is amazing. You’re happy to have a one-drop. In fact, you put them in your deck because you’re hoping on the first turn you get them. You know.

And in the same sense, later in the game, a six-, seven- or eight-drop, those are amazing, but they’re horrible in the opening game. So for starters, the mana system, you know, makes cards have different values at different times. And that’s very important for a trading card game. A. it’s just a way to make more cards have value, but B. you want things to change over the course of the game.

 Getting a little bit into game design here, a game has—if you’re trying to create a game, what you want to do is the game needs to go through stages. Well why is that? Well actually, let me (???) a little parameter to that. Unless your game is really short. A really short game doesn’t necessarily need this. By really short I mean like a five-minute game. Maybe you can get away with it. But if a game is longer than that, essentially, people’s attention span is not that long. It just isn’t. And that the way you keep their attention is you keep changing things up. You know.

If you watch a TV show for example, well the parameters are what’s happening. Things change in the story, right? That, you know, things are—incrementally get worse, usually, is how they tend to work, until you resolve the problem. You know. Where things get bad, it’s like “Well, things can’t get worse,” and then bam, the next thing comes along. You know. And they way they design TV, as someone who does—or, did TV, you, every commercial, like you up the ante. So they’ll come back after the commercial break. You know. That “Oh, things are bad—oh wait, things are worse! How are they getting out of this one?” You know.

And games have a similar quality in that you don’t want the game to just be doing the same thing. You want the game to grow as the game evolves in some way. Meaning the players have to shift and change as the game moves along. Part of that is to keep interest in the game, part of that is it adds a lot of strategic depth, right? You know. If Thing A is always good, you know, that’s not as good as “Well, Thing A is good at a certain time, and you have to know when and where to use A.” Later on, maybe A’s not so good, you know, and that adds a lot of strategic depth.

So the mana system also does this beautiful thing where it creates change in the game. The second thing it does it creates inconsistency. Which means—let me explain this. Is—so one of these days I’ll talk about communication theory. One of the things that communication theory says humans love is surprise. And what that means is, you kind of—you like not knowing things. And one of the things that the mana system does for Magic is, you don’t know how the game’s going to play out. It does a very good job of creating variety in gameplay.

Because for example, if I draw exactly what I need early on, you know, well, do I have the mana that I need? Now, given, drawing off the deck also creates variety, which is very important, and that’s another big part of the game. But the fact that I don’t know when I’ll be able to cast my spells and my—the rate my mana grows.

I mean, I have a little more certainty of my one, two, and three spells, you know, I can mulligan, I mean I—I can pretty much guarantee that I—if I have the one drop, I should be able to do it on turn one. But once you start getting to three and more mana cost, you don’t quite know when that’s going to happen. You know. And the fact that some games, your third drop happens on turn three, and some games it happens on turn 6, is important. In a couple ways.

One is variety of play. That’s very important. The second is that part of what makes a good strategic gameplay is the ability to adapt on the fly. So here—let me explain that for a second, which is if you have a game that has a static skillset, which means “I just need to know how to do Thing X.” The games tend not to play out as interestingly because if I can do the thing then I can do it.

Now, sometimes there’s some variance. So let’s take tiddlywinks as a… so tiddlywinks is a game, for those that don’t know it, it’s a kids game, where you have a little round piece of plastic, and you have another little piece of plastic, and you’re using pressure to pop it into the air to try to get it into a cup.

Now that’s a skill-based game, okay. Now, the idea on a skill-based game is “Well, there’s some variance, maybe I mess up,” you know, but the problem is, it’s a skill that you can practice and get pretty consistent at. And the problem eventually is, at one point like you can just do it. Well there’s not a lot of surprise when you can just do it. You know.

But what happens is, by adding a little variance in, imagine for example all of a sudden the cup moves, you know, the cup is on a moving, rotating basis, and how it moves is not always the same, well your skill at flicking is still important, but now there’s actually more skills. I’ve got to gauge where I think it’s going. You know, if it’s going in a certain direction I’ve got to aim in that direction. All of a sudden it makes a more dynamic game. And so in a—in a game, when the person who’s doing it has the right skill set, having to adapt their skill set to the situation is very skill-testing and adds a lot of strategic complexity to a game.

Now once again,  real quickly, I—there’s three kinds of complexity we talk about: comprehension complexity, which is “When I read the card, can I understand it?” Do I know what it does? There’s board complexity, which is “Can I understand looking at the board, what is capable of happening?” And then there’s strategic complexity. “Do I understand the big picture, what is going on?” Not what can happen, but what strategically matters.

The first two complexities are something we have to be very careful about. I know I’ll do a New World Order podcast one of these days. But the third one, strategic complexity, beginners can’t see it, so it’s something that we like to have. Your game having a lot of strategic complexity makes your experienced players happy. And the mana system adds a lot of strategic complexity. That’s another important part of it. Because you don’t quite know what you’re doing, you have to adapt on the fly.

You know, if I always knew—so for example, one of the ways to look at games without a mana system, or without Magic’s mana system, is to look at other games. Now I’m not going to name games by name, but you guys can fill in the blanks. So for example, imagine a game where I know I have my… my… turn…  I always have my mana. I know—turn one I’ll have one, turn two I’ll have two, turn three I’ll have three. Actually, I’ll name a name, because it’s a Wizards game. Duel Masters does this. Which is the game we made for the Japanese market.

And, we, like many others, fell into the trap of going “Oh, well mana—Magic’s system, maybe that’s the problem.” You know, you get mana screwed. So Duel Masters uses—you can turn any card into a land. Is the idea. So essentially think of it like any red card can become a mountain. Think of it that way. And what we learned was—what I learned was, when you know your turn three drop is always on turn three, that takes a lot of the dynamic element of the game. Your strategic complexity goes down. Because I just know. I know turn three I’m going my three-drop, okay? And so that’s a very different animal than “Well, I know sometimes I have it turn three, but it might be as late as turn 6. Or 7. You know. And I think a lot of fun Magic games are not where everything goes perfectly, it’s the one where things go a little awry.

Which is funny, by the way. I like to compare games to entertainment. The best stories are ones where things don’t right. You know, for example, there’s not a lot of heist films where, like, “Everything just goes perfectly. Nothing goes wrong.” No no no. The best heist films are like “They have it carefully plotted. Oh, but then, such and such breaks. Or someone doesn’t show. Or some person who’s not supposed to be there is there.” You know.

And a game is the same way. I think if you think back to the most awesome games you ever played of Magic, they were not games in which everything went perfectly. Like it’s not like “Oh, I made my turn one drop, then I made my turn two drop, then I made my turn three drop, and I just beat him.” That’s not the most memorable games. The most memorable game is, “I got my first drop, then I didn’t get my second drop. Or I got my second drop on turn three but then I didn’t get my third drop until turn seven! I had to last for seven turns with two mana!” “So did you lose?” “No, I won!” Those are the amazing games. You know. Or the games where like “You’re at one, and they’re at twenty, and you win!” You know.

And the mana system’s important because you need things to go wrong. You need things, you know, I know people look at mana screw as always being a bad thing, but you know the times in which it doesn’t quite work out but you have to scramble to make it work. That’s—there’s a lot of fun in the scrambling.

I mean one of the stories I tell, I think I told this in my column but I don’t think I’ve told it in my podcast is, when I was in college, I—I think my sophomore year, I was in a dorm—Miles Standish, for my BU alums, and we—there was a homecoming where you built a float. And our—the money that, you know, internally your dorm spends a certain amount of money and they just decided it wasn’t important. So we got very little money to build the float with for our dorm.

And so those of us—I was on the student council, or whatever, and so I was volunteered to be there, but there was like… I don’t know, six of us? Like a lot of floats had like, you know, fifty people. We had like six people. We had no—you know, we had no money, they gave us a little tiny bit of money. We had the—the least amount of supplies you can imagine, and like “Okay, we’ve got to make a float.” And I had a blast! I mean, we did it! We did it, we stayed up all night. We stayed up all night making the float. And like, we were like borrowing supplies, and stealing supplies, and like we were doing everything we could to make it work. And we came up with what I thought was a very clever float, you know, given our constraints, which were a lot of constraints.

Okay, flash forward a year. The next year, we teamed up with another dorm. And so we both put a lot of money into it so we’d have an awesome thing. So that year we had tons of people, and tons of money, and lots of supplies, and it just wasn’t—I mean, I was there, I did it, it just wasn’t—the year before was so much more fun. And I think a lot of it is the sense of there is great joy in making it work. In, you know, and as someone who likes the challenge, I mean one of the reasons you play games is you enjoy the challenge, you know, games are all about mental challenge, is, you know, it is fun from time to time to have things not quite go your way. And I think the mana system does a lot of that. (coughs) Hold on a second, I will take a sip of water. My podcast. Because… as I cough here. Okay. See, no editing to my podcast.

So, the other thing that’s important about the mana system is—I think people love to rail on mana screw. But there is a few things that are good. So one of the things, I know Richard Garfield talked about this, is that you want a game to do the following, where players can blame their losses on luck and their wins on skill. And let me explain why that’s important. Humans—the human psyche is fragile. Humans—when you get down to the core, have problems admitting that they made a mistake. Humans are not good at it. Now, it’s an important skill, by the way, and if you want to get better at Magic, recognizing that you losing is your own fault is very important. Little side thing.

But anyway, players—their egos need a little protecting. And so the problem with a game that has no variance built in and no luck built into it is—like when you play someone in chess and they beat you, you just lost. You didn’t lose because you got unlucky, there’s not a lot of luck in chess. Well, there’s a little bit—I won’t get into that. I wrote a little subarticle on that one and it caused all sorts of stuff.

Anyway, I mean, you lost, right? You lost. They were better than you, you lost. And that’s hard. Because if you want people to play your game, the vast majority of people playing your game aren’t going to be good. You know. And no matter what, somebody’s going to be better, and the better players are going to win, and the worse players are going to lose. So if you make a game in which the better players always win, that’s a problem, because you’re not going to get new players.

That’s another very common thing that happens when people go “I’m going to make a better game! I’m getting rid of the mana system!” What they find is, “Oh, well you don’t have mana screw, but then the best players always win.” And that might be great for the best players, and maybe that small subset’s really happy, but you are—as a game designer, you have to make the game not just for your winners but for everybody who plays. If losing your game is not fun, you are in trouble. Because people will stop playing. And then the people who like to win don’t have anybody to play, and then your game fails. Okay? You need—it is important that everybody have a chance to win.

Now, it’s fine that the better players win more, you know, and also as I was explaining, is not only should your bad players win some of the time, but when your bad players lose, they need to have some sort of ego cushioning if you will. And the nice thing about the mana system is the mana system is an awesome scapegoat. It’s a wonderful—it’s a great scapegoat. In fact, one of its best devices, best roles that it serves, is if you want to blame your game on your mana, you can.

Even if it has nothing to do with your mana. I love watching people, like I used to be the head judge of the feature match area. And I would watch matches, and then from time to time, someone would come up to a player after they’re done and go “How’d it go?” And I’d hear the player explain what happened. And so much of the time they would just say “Oh, you know,  I got a bad manas or bad draws,” and the other play would go “Okay,” and they’d walk away.

But I watched the match. They didn’t have bad mana or they didn’t have bad draws. They just lost. They made bad decisions or whatever. But it’s a nice excuse that anybody can give. And that is important. You know. You want ego cushioning built into your game. Because you want players to feel like when they’re not ready to admit—players have to—you have to learn to admit your mistakes.

That’s something that comes with—comes with more experience in the game. Of learning that I’m responsible for what I do, but until they get there, your game needs to give a little bit of ego cushioning. So that if the player wants something to blame, they can. Because if they blame the game for their losses, it makes them not want to play the game. And as they mature, they’ll learn, like “Okay, hey, I’m responsible for my losses, not the game,” but it is important.

And also, I sort of jumped in the middle of explaining that one, it is important that your bad players, your beginning players, whatever, can win, you know. I mean, for example, if I’m going to play against the best chess player in the world. I don’t know who that is. I’m going to say Bobby Fischer—I’m pretty sure he’s dead or very very old, so I know he’s not the current best, but I saw a movie. And they mentioned him. So if I’m going to play Bobby Fischer, I have no—I know I’m not going to lose. It’s just—“Ooh, I get to lose to Bobby Fischer.” You know. I mean—I can’t win. I can’t beat Bobby Fischer. “Oh, I—I’m going to play Bobby Fischer.” Maybe I’m excited to lose to Bobby Fischer, but I know I’m not going to beat him.

But let’s say I sit down against Jon Finkel. Odds are—odds are—I’m losing to Jon Finkel. But I can dream. I can dream that I, lowly player, that I can beat Jon Finkel. Because maybe he gets really mana screwed and I get a perfect draw, and maybe—maybe there’s a chance. And that’s important. Hope is a very important tool. You know. Your game has to have hope. Players have to have a dream. You know. And so that is why variance and that is why having stuff built into your game where the beginning player has hope is very important.

Another thing the mana system does is it creates drama. Because—I talked about how the best games have to do with coming from behind. But another thing that’s neat is, I talked about—two weeks ago, I think, the difference between suspense and surprise. It’s an Alfred Hitchcock thing. Where surprise is “bomb under the table, bam, it blows up,” suspense is “you see the bomb, and then you watch the people talking, and you like don’t quite know when’s the bomb going to blow up.”

And a lot of the mana system has that, which is—there’s this focus in the game. Like you look at your hand, and you’re like “Okay, well if I—if I—what’s going to happen?” Well, if I get my mana, I’m doing this. If I don’t get my mana, I guess I’ll do this.” You know, you’re planning either way. But it creates this great suspense in the game because, you know, the land creates this very, like, “I need this thing. Is it this thing?” You know.

And what you want to have happen in a game is, you want clear moments where your players want things and they understand what they want. Because a lot of the ways suspense gets created is you go “I understand what I need.” You know. And the problem with some of the more advanced games is, the beginner player doesn’t know what he needs. Maybe the advanced player knows “Oh, you need this right here,” but the game player doesn’t know that.

And land is crystal clear. “I need to cast my three-drop. I have two land. You know what I need? Another land.” And so it’s very clear, it creates a very clear suspense. That people get. Everyone understands. And that, you know, you want to have moments—and Magic’s obviously a card—a card-playing game, you want moments in a game, if you’re having a card game, where the draw has drama to it. You know.

And, the other thing that’s fun is, that, another great moment is, when your opponent draws something, and they don’t—and they’re thinking, another great—I think another very interesting point in Magic is the people-reading. It’s like they draw and I’m like “Ooh, did they draw it? Is that what they need?” You know. And there’s a neat moment where they’re kind of thinking through what they’re doing, where you’re trying to figure out “Did they get what they wanted or didn’t they?”

And, like I said, as you get more advanced in the game, a lot of the giving away information or not becomes really important. Because reading your opponent becomes important. But like I said, that’s another thing, a little sense there, like I mean, I mean I—really when you cut down to it, part of what I’m trying to explain today is there’s all these facets of a game that a game needs. You know.

That your game wants drama and your game wants suspense and your game wants a cushion—ego-cushioning. And your game wants to let beginners win, and your game wants to have tempo, and all this stuff your game wants, and all of it—all of it is done by the mana system! You know. The mana system creates this, like, very nice clear thing.

And another thing the mana system does by the way, I talk about the color pie, but part of this really is the mana system is, the fact that each color has its own kind of mana is actually the core of what separates colors. I mean, the color pie defines what they do, but just the idea that like one color’s easier to play than two colors, that’s the mana system. And that’s really important. You know. That—I mean, the mana system is the thing that divides up its colors and says “Hey,” you know, “You can only play so many colors.” And the greedier you get, you know, the more risk there is associated with it. You know. I think that’s a very interesting part of the game, that you have to consider how risky you want to be with your mana base. You know.

And, by the way, another thing the mana system does is, while it gives beginners a chance to win, interestingly, it gives them hope, at the same time it gives a leg up to advanced players. Because what happens is, as you get better, you understand more the value of—of land and of land as a resource, and you build toward it. That’s another way that lets good players beat bad players is, they better understand the mana system.

So think about this. The same thing that gives hope to beginners also allows the more experienced players to win more. Okay. That’s interesting. How many things can do that? That’s a very impressive feat. That it helps both ends of the spectrum. It helps the raw beginners and it helps the experienced—you know, veterans of the game.

So anyway, like I said. There’s all these things it does. All—I’m saying, it helps balance the game, it separates colors, it helps make cards have values beginning and end—middle and end of game, you know, like I said it’s the ego cushioning, it does drama, it helps with tempo—like I said. All this stuff. It’s just dripping with things it does. You know.

And like I said. I--I think what happens—that’s—here’s why—let me talk about why I think it’s maligned. Richard built the system as a means to cushion the ego, to let people be able to blame their losses on luck. And he did it almost too well. It is too easy to blame your losses on luck. Like I was saying earlier, I think it’s—it’s hard for players to come to the realization that they lose because of their own actions. Because the game makes it so easy to blame the game that it really takes a lot to own up and go “No no no, this is all me. This is not the game, this is me.” And I think what happens is, that’s why people, I think, blame—when they go “What’s bad about Magic?” they want to blame the mana system.

Now, that said. Is it fun? Is it a good game when I just draw no mana and my opponent runs over me? No. Of course. Of course it’s not good. But—go back to my car example. Is it good that cars pollute the environment? No. No it’s not! And, hey, over time, we’re trying to find ways to make the cars less pollute the environment. You know.

And with the mana system, we’ve spent a lot of time trying to fine-tune how to give you enough mana to make sure that your mana issues can be addressed if you’re aware of them. You know, we also do a lot of smoothing mechanics and things in the game that like if you’re aware, we help you with mana. You know, we’ve improved mulligans over the years, and we’ve done things to help you with mana. Our goal is not to create that moment.

But that moment has to exist in order for the other cool stuff to happen. You know what I’m saying? There are going  to be car crashes. There are going to be some smog. There’s going to be, you know, insurance. I mean, the negative of the system is going to exist. You know. The system is not all positive, and we work on some of it.

Now some of it—like I said. Some of a bit of mana screw is good. You know. I do think it’s important that you don’t always get what you want. That you have to adapt on your feet. That sometimes a good player loses to the bad player just because they get unlucky. All that is good work and does good stuff.

But this focus on kind of the negative aspect, I think really makes people think of “Oh, well I associate unfun with this thing, oh this must be the flaw in the game.” And so really unfairly, the mana system has become—I mean, it was made to be the scapegoat, and because of that it now becomes—you know, it becomes a thing people want to blame with what’s wrong with the game. And the funny thing is, it is one of the things that’s great about the game. It is one of the true defenders of the game.

And today’s podcast was me trying to say “Look. This thing you want to—besmirch, like is one of the things that’s really giving you—that Magic is, in my mind—now, I’m biased, but greatest game ever made. Awesome game. My favorite game. Okay? And look. One of the reasons that Magic does all the awesome things it does, a lot of that actually rests on the mana system. This thing that you probably have besmirched your whole—your whole gameplaying—well, some of you have.

And I’m trying to say right now, one of the reasons Magic’s as fun as it is, is this thing that you love to dis, it is awesome, and it is making the game fun for you. Even if you don’t understand it. That’s how awesome—that’s how awesome the mana system is, is it’s going to suck it up and let you pick on it, and let you make it the scapegoat, when it is doing the yeoman’s work of making the game fun.

So that’s why I, today, have defended it. Now I just parked, so—it’s all I get today to try to defend the awesome mana system. But anyway, I hope the last three weeks have done a little bit to make you think a little more about all the stuff that Magic has going on. It is—I mean, hopefully you know it’s an awesome game. That I think you know. But why? Why is it an awesome game? There’s many other reasons, I’ll have some other podcasts talking about other reasons why it’s an awesome game.

But the golden trifecta—so, you know, the trading card game aspect, the color wheel, the mana system, all of them. Richard Garfield is a genius. Each of those by itself, by the way, genius. But he put them all together to make Magic. Which is—I might be using the word awesome too much. I probably do. But this time I’m using it correctly. Magic is awesome.

 Okay. Well, it is time for me to go to work, so I guess I will say goodbye. It’s time to make the Magic.