All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

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, a special treat today, guys. So my father is in town, and he needs my car. So he's going to drive me to work today, or I'm driving him to work. So he can have the car. Which means--special guest star! My dad. Say hi. 

Gene Rosewater  

Hi there. 

Mark Rosewater  

So there's my dad, Gene Rosewater. And so I want to talk about a couple of things. First off is, I'm a gamer specifically because my dad is a gamer. And I think one of the neat things about Magic turning 20 right now is that we're hitting a neat generational shift, where the people that started playing Magic now have kids that are old enough that they're teaching them to play Magic. And I have people writing to me all the time talking about how, you know, how can they teach their kids to play. So I thought it'd be neat to sort of explore how I got into gaming by looking at my dad. So talk a little bit about how you got into gaming.

Gene Rosewater  

Gaming for me, it was a natural thing. It was something that I did when I was a kid, it was something that I did in my family. And it would never have occurred to me not to be a gamer. I love gaming, it's just part of my life. And always has been even as a young child, maybe going back to the days of flu, probably eight years old.

Mark Rosewater  

So one of the things that was very interesting was, we got a computer very, very early. So let's talk about that. When did--what was your first computer?

Gene Rosewater  

I got an Apple II in 1978. That was back when the Apple didn't have a hard drive. As a matter of fact-

Mark Rosewater  

Didn't have disks yet, right?

Gene Rosewater  

Didn't even have a disk, we would save stuff on a cassette tape, and loaded back in from the cassette tape. No memory at all to speak of. 

Mark Rosewater  

Right, so for the young uns out there. So basically, when we wanted to play a game on the computer, we got a cassette tape. I don't even know if you know what a cassette tape is. But it's what you used to listen to music on. And you would put it in a player and you would play it and then for like three or four minutes, even it would go (static noise) and make this noise, and then at the end of it, you could play a tiny text game. 

Gene Rosewater  

Yeah, and most of the time, you had to do it two or three times because it would get fouled up somewhere along the line. 

Mark Rosewater  

And remember when you first bought your first computer, to get an extra--was it 64kB? 

Gene Rosewater  

Initially I think I had 16K. And I sort of waited because at that point to get the next 16k was $500. 

Mark Rosewater  

So by the way, once again, we're talking kB. Not mB, not gig, not terabytes. kB. That's 1000 for you out there who might not know. So anyway, growing up, we--so we had a computer early, earlier than all my friends, like, everybody thought it was this weird thing, they'd come over and see our computer. We also had the very first--or one of the very, very earliest gaming systems for our TV. Called the Odyssey, remember this? 

Gene Rosewater  

Sure. 

Mark Rosewater  

Okay, explain--do you remember how the Odyssey works? 

Gene Rosewater

Yeah, the Odyssey was made by Motorola I believe. [Looks like it's Magnavox. -LTH] And basically, it was one game, it played Pong. And when it played Pong, what we did was we had a plastic overlay, we put it over the screen. And then there would be simply a dot and two paddles, and we would play, that would be on the screen. But nothing else was there, whatever we wanted to have to play on, what playing field we had, was the overlay,

Mark Rosewater  

Right. So you would take a piece of plastic, and you would tape it on top of the TV. And there are other games--because pretty much you had a carat, a little square you can move around. And so they had games in which everything was taped to the screen and then you would move little, you know, squares around the screen. So anyway, I got in--one of the things was my dad got me into gaming like very young, and a lot of things that would go on to be very sort of established things, we got in on the ground floor. I also remember--something else I remember with my dad is he and I would go to the to the arcade to play video games. Because at the time--when I was young, back in the in the 80s, that arcade--if you wanted to play video games, you went to the arcade. I mean, like I said, I think we had--we had the Atari 2600 for a while which was a little a little better than the Odyssey, but it was one of the most simplest early versions of at-home consoles, but they were very, very simplistic. And that if you want anything more advanced, you had to go to the arcade. And I remember--do you remember your favorite game--I remember your favorite. What was your favorite game?

Gene Rosewater  

My favorite clearly was Battlezone.

Mark Rosewater  

Yes. 

Gene Rosewater  

And I actually got pretty good at it, although I probably wasn't that good. But I thought I was.

Mark Rosewater  

So Battlezone, for some of my younger audience, was a first person shooter. You were in a tank I think? 

Gene Rosewater  

It was in a tank. There were two handles that I would hold onto. And each one would would activate the wheels or treads on each side so they can go forward, they can go back. And then you could make one go forward one go back to turn around, and we'd be shooting at things and they'd be shooting at me. No color.

Mark Rosewater  

Right.

Gene Rosewater  

It was all green.

Mark Rosewater  

Everything was outlined. So every object, it was just a geometric shape, essentially, that was outlined in green. And so, you know, the planes or the--whatever other things were attacking you, there was no real detail to them. But it was a fun game. It was a really fun game. 

Gene Rosewater  

I liked it.

Mark Rosewater  

Okay, so one of the things that--so growing up, my dad introduced me to a lot of different games, and--in fact, one of my favorite games that my dad introduced me to was Diplomacy. Do you remember teaching me Diplomacy? 

Gene Rosewater  

Yeah. Well, Diplomacy was something that actually I learned from my then brother-in-law. And it was a game of--how do you explain this--it was sort of a unique game. It was a game of territory, and you could invade territory, and everybody would set up their turn, and then everybody would sort of tell what their turn was going to be at the same time. And we would have to figure out how everything would interact. So the idea of the game was, of course, was to capture the world. And it was on a European map, right?

Mark Rosewater  

I think it was between World War One and World War Two. And the idea of the game, it's very simple is, there's seven countries, each country is played by a person. And on your turn, you make moves. But that's not the beauty of the game. The beauty of the game is, what you do is very dependent upon other people. So in between each turn, you go around, and you talk to everybody, and you try to convince everybody that you're their friend, basically. It's a game of diplomacy. And the game is--whenever I played with people, in fact in college is a great story where--my dad taught this to me, I love the game. But the game is all about, at some point you have to betray somebody and stab them in the back to win this game. Because the game is all about making, you know, seeming very friendly until you betray people to win. And so I say to my friends, I said, okay, this is what the game is. But it's just a game that someone betrays you. It's not personal. You know, the game is all about, you know, having alliances in this, so please don't take it personal. And like I was playing with my friends, got a bunch of friends in college, we used to play games, and I stab my friend in the back to win the game. He didn't talk to me for five weeks! (laughs) But anyway, a wonderful game that has remakes, by the way, if you want to go play Diplomacy, it's fun. So let's get to Magic since this is a Magic show.

Mark Rosewater  

(???) When I learned the game from my brother in law at the time, he did leave out one rule, which was, you're allowed to lie. So the first game we played, he was telling everybody lies and everything. And we of course were believing him because he was teaching us the game. So obviously, he won. But after the first game, I understood a little bit more about diplomacy.

Mark Rosewater  

The game does teach you about the act of diplomacy, I think. Okay, so let's get to Magic. Since this is a Magic podcast. So I have told the story of me discovering Magic, from my viewpoint multiple times. But I would like to tell the story of me getting into Magic from your viewpoint. As my dad, what is your memory of how I got into Magic?

Gene Rosewater  

Well, of course, I knew that you went to a game show, you saw Magic, I probably talked to you within maybe the same day or the next day. And you were just euphoric. About this new game that you'd seen, you'd sent to me, this is the game of the future. I really have to get involved in this game. And so because you thought it was so great, I believed it. As a matter of fact, at that point probably you were more involved in games than I was. And so you were becoming my game mentor at that point.

Mark Rosewater  

So what happened was, I went home to visit my dad. And so, to refresh his memory, I bought some--I went to a convention, Alpha was out. I bought I think a starter and two boosters or three boosters. And then I realized I liked the game. So when Beta came out, I knew that if I wanted my friends to play, I had to get it for them. Because I knew Beta was going to sell out in a day. So I bought a whole bunch. I bought like two boxes of boosters and two boxes of starters. Starters, by the way, for those who have no idea what I'm talking about, when Magic first began, you could buy 60 cards in a box. That's how you were supposed to start the game. And then they had boosters that you bought additionally. We don't do starters anymore, but at the time they did. And so I bought a whole bunch, and then I went to visit my dad and I brought him some Magic packs. So what do you remember of me bringing you Magic?

Gene Rosewater  

I don't remember how much it was, it was (???) enough for me to make a deck or a couple of decks. And I started learning Magic. But of course, the main thing that I learned is before Mark left and went back home, he said he wanted to trade with me. So he picked out all the cards he wanted. And then of course, I knew was gonna play Magic a lot more than me. So I didn't have any problem with that. And it wasn't for a long time until I realized that he took my Emerald Mox, he took--

Mark Rosewater  

(laughs) So here's what happened is, my dad opened up a Mox Emerald. I had never seen a Mox Emerald. And at the time, I didn't understand it, because I'm like, isn't this a Forest? Why wouldn't I just play a Forest? I didn't--it took me a while to understand why it was good. But I hadn't ever seen it. I didn't own it. And at the time, I had two Fungusaurs. And so I traded my dad a Fungusaur for the Mox Emerald. And I swear to God, I thought I was being nice. I thought I was doing--because Fungusaur was awesome. Every time it would do damage, it got bigger. That I understood was really good. And so I made this trade and it wasn't--I wasn't trying to like rip off my dad. I honest thought to God thought I was making a very fair trade. In fact, I thought it was in his benefit. Because I didn't get why Mox Emerald was good. And I knew that Fungusaur was awesome. So...

Gene Rosewater  

And what did you trade me for the Black Lotus?

Mark Rosewater  

Now the Black Lotus--so what happened is, I got my dad into Magic. And many years later, I don't know, four or five years later, my dad is not playing much because he didn't live in a place where he had a lot of people to play with. And so I'm visiting one day and my dad says to me, he goes, Look, if you want to take any cards, feel free to take cards. So I looked at his collection and he's got a Black Lotus. I'm like are you sure? He goes, yeah, yeah, whatever you want to take. So I took his Black Lotus. (laughs)

Gene Rosewater  

Okay.

Mark Rosewater  

He's a good dad. So. Okay, so, okay. Now what is your memory of me starting to work for Wizards?

Gene Rosewater  

You pretty much know the story. I know that it started with your--just wanting to get involved. And I know you talked to people. And my memory was that you talked to people at Wizards. And there were four or five different people who said, sure, I want you to come work for me. It all started when you started doing the puzzles. Puzzles in the Duelist.

Mark Rosewater  

Yeah. 

Gene Rosewater  

And everybody was really--loved them, the people at Wizards loved them, but also the people who were reading Duelist loved them, it became the premier piece in Duelist. And I think that was your your inroads into getting a job at Wizards is the fact that you could do that, you could create it. And you convinced him that it was good and it was. 

Mark Rosewater  

So here's my memory is,--so my plan, my--when I graduated college was, I was gonna go to Los Angeles and write for television. That was my plan. And like  I said, obviously people know I did a little of that. But this opportunity came up where I could work for Wizards, where I was freelancing for them. I said to them one day, when I was up in Seattle, I'd be willing to move to Seattle. Or I thought I'd be willing to move Seattle. And they're like, well, if you want to move here, we'll give you a job. And so I was very torn about, do I pursue what I had planned to do? Or do I make this deviation and do this different job that I thought I would enjoy. But it really was a giant change for what I thought my life was going to be. 

Mark Rosewater  

So I called up my parents, my parents were separated so I called them individually. And I asked each of them about what they think I should do. And so I called up my mom, and my mom was not sure. She's like, oh, I don't know, you spent a lot of time and energy trying to do what you're doing. You know, you've had some success. Maybe you want to stick to it. Maybe this isn't the right play. And I call my dad and I say, you know, I'm thinking of going to become a game--you know, work at a game company. And you said, that's awesome, you should do that. So that--my parents had--I mean, my mom eventually got on board. But I mean, she was much more skeptical. Where you were--the second I proposed the idea, you thought it was an awesome idea. So do you remember that? 

Gene Rosewater  

I really don't, actually, I don't remember saying that. But I could understand myself feeling that way. Absolutely. 

Mark Rosewater  

So let's go a little bit--so now. I mean, you play--I know you play Magic on and off because you kind of live somewhere where you don't have a lot to play. I know you've played on Magic Online a little bit

Gene Rosewater  

I got real involved in Magic Online for a while. And then after a while, it lost some of its luster because of the dynamics of what happens online. And I still have a lot of cards, a lot of virtual cards online, but I don't play that often anymore. 

Mark Rosewater  

Oh, but here's an interesting story. My nephew. I have one sister who is a year younger than me named Alysse. And Alysse has a younger--has a son named Josh. And he's my nephew. And Josh recently about I don't know, six months ago, nine months ago, got really, really into Magic. And I know you had a chance to play with Josh.

Gene Rosewater  

And what happened was, he had some older friends who gave him a deck, which was really a killer deck. 

Mark Rosewater  

Yeah. (laughs)

Gene Rosewater  

So most of my cardboard cards were old. I went all the way into virtual. And so I had the old decks and I wanted to play with Josh. And he just beat me up, because he had some really good--he had one good current deck. And--but we played, and he got started and he's going gangbusters now. He really understands the game.

Mark Rosewater  

Yeah, because I talked about--when we started, about the generational shift. I mean Josh in my mind is, that's the next generation. Like my kids I've introduced to the game, none of them have really sort of taken it up. I mean, they all know how to play and I played with all of them. But none of them--like Josh is definitely, you know, got the bug. And he's very excited. He's playing at FNMs  And, in fact, my sister just called, like, he wants to learn about what PTQs are, and like where Grands Prix are. So it's fun. He's really getting into it. So let me ask you this, which is, do you have any good stories of--I know my mom has some of these stories, of people finding out that you're my dad? Interacting with Magic people?

Gene Rosewater  

Well, that's--the one that comes to mind first is, oh, 6-8 years ago, took a trip to Italy. And we were in Italy, and we wanted to get out of line to do some email. And we went into a little store and I turned around, and there's a Magic poster on the wall. And so I'm looking up for this to go on the internet. And I'm talking to the guy that runs the store. And he is a Magic enthusiast. As a matter of fact, he is jumping off the wall when I tell him that Mark is my son because he knows. As a matter of fact, he gave me a card and he wanted me to autograph the card as Mark's father. And so it was like overseas notoriety. And this guy refused to take any money for the internet. He was like, I was a celebrity in his store. Because Mark was my son.

Mark Rosewater  

You know, so when one of the stories that's funny--I don't have my mom on the show, so I'll tell my story for my mom. So one of the things my mom enjoys is, she has no end of--she loves when she meets Magic players, telling them that she's my mother. Because they always get really excited. And she loves to do it--I know you don't do that as much but my mom gets a real kick out of it. And I figure, she's my mom, so we'll give her that, that she gets to be proud of me. So--but it is fun. Like I said, I get to be a big fish in a little pond. So in that little tiny world, they get to be celebrities. So I think my mom enjoys that quite a bit. Okay, so, what is your favorite Magic set? 

Gene Rosewater  

Well... 

Mark Rosewater  

I know you're old-time. So...

Gene Rosewater  

Yeah. Probably most of the cards or most of the decks that I was really talking about right now are so old that people don't even remember where they came from. 

Mark Rosewater  

Well, I mean, I've done shows on, you know, I just did a show on Mirage. So I go back there. So what set really speaks to you? Which set--

Gene Rosewater 

Actually, when you say Mirage, I thought Mirage (???) was a great, great expansion. Probably one of my favorite. That was a deck--that was an expansion that I really enjoyed. But, you know, I played back in the days of Ice Age and Tempest and even before--my first cards were Mark's first cards, so it was Unlimited.

Mark Rosewater  

Yeah, no, they were Beta. Your first cards were Beta.

Gene Rosewater  

Beta. (???) Beta, you know, and, and certainly Aladdin [He means Arabian Nights--LTH] and Legends. Some of the early, early stuff. But I lived in an area that was--there weren't a whole lot of Magic players around. I had a good friend who I did introduce to Magic. And we would actually play a lot with each other, and we'd actually go to conventions once in a while. So I really don't--couldn't even tell you exactly what I was playing with back then. I ended up with a lot of cards because I live up in Lake Tahoe, a nice place to visit.

Mark Rosewater  

Yep, it is. (laughs)

Gene Rosewater  

On three or four occasions, Mark would bring the entire R&D team up to my house. And they would come up and it was wintertime, they would ski but they would spend a week, and they would sequester themselves and they would be working on a new expansions, and they'd bring thousands of cards with them. And when they would leave, they'd just leave them all there. So I generated a lot of cards back in the day when they were coming to my house, and that happened three or four times.

Mark Rosewater  

So what my dad is talking about, the big one is Invasion, I would say that the core of Invasion design was done at my dad's house. And then one time, by the way, we had a trip where so many people went to visit my dad from R&D that we realized if the plane crashed, it would have decimated Magic. (laughs) Like everybody you can imagine was on the plane. I think Jim Lin was the only person that wasn't on that plane. Like, Magic would have been in the hands of one person if something had happened. So here's something people might find interesting. So in the player--I have a thing called player psychographics, right? Talking about the kind of players people are, and you are what's known as a Johnny. Do you know what a Johnny is?

Gene Rosewater  

Absolutely. I'm a Johnny. 

Mark Rosewater  

So my dad loves fiddling with decks. So explain what you enjoy when you play.

Gene Rosewater  

I like to do a deck that sets up with a combination of cards, and to get it to set up so that once it's there, I'm pretty much in control of the deck--of the game. It probably happens one out of four times, maybe one out of five times. So I lose a lot. And that's okay, except if I'm playing that online. What happens is, as soon as I get my deck set up, the person on the other end usually quits. So I never get a chance to see it go to the end. And that was a frustration for me playing online. If I'm playing with somebody across the table, at least they have the courtesy or whatever you want to call it of waiting until I I see my deck do what it can do.

Mark Rosewater  

Yeah, so it's fun. One of the things that I always enjoy with my dad is, sometimes I'll talk to him about combos, and I'll say, have you ever seen this combo? And he goes, oh, that's pretty good. And I remember one time I told you about--what was it, did you play with Mirrodin? Did you play?

Gene Rosewater  

Oh yeah, I always liked Mirrodin.

Mark Rosewater  

So I think I told you about the Isochron Scepter/Final Fortune combo. Is that one you built a deck around? Oh, with--right, with the angel? I think you did this? Where the Platinum Angel keeps you from losing the game. And Final Fortune lets you get an extra turn. But you lose next turn. So what you do is you put a Final Fortune on Isochron Scepter. And then you get an angel out and then you just take infinite turns. I think you built that deck. (laughs). I remember that. I remember that deck.

Gene Rosewater  

Mark Rosewater  

The story I remember you telling me is how you were playing somebody, and they out an Isochron Scepter. And then you clone it, you copy it. And then they quit the game because you had an Isochron Scepter. But you just copied their Scepter.

Gene Rosewater  

Of course. 

Mark Rosewater  

So, we're getting close to work. Is there anything--I'm going to give you a chance to sort of--any story about me and Magic that you might think is a fun story to tell people that we haven't talked about? Do you have any good...

Gene Rosewater  

We've touched on an awful lot of stuff. You know, nothing is really coming up for me as like, oh, a fun Mark story. I mean, I do have--by the way, you know, he said that his mother likes to say, oh, my son, his Mark Rosewater. I like doing that. I don't get a lot of opportunity to do that. And usually, if I just meet someone who plays Magic, I don't jump in there. But if they're--if I find that they're really, you know, really dyed in the wool core Magic people, I will throw out Mark's name. Because usually they know him. And that's like, that's cool. You know, that's my son.

Mark Rosewater  

Yeah, no, that's--like I said, because people always ask me that about my mom. Does it bug me that my mom does that. I'm like, no, she raised me. She earned it. She earned it, and any "that's my son's thing" She wants to do is fair game. Same with you. So. And like I said, one of the things that I really--I took that as that--I do think my love of gaming directly tied--because something else about my dad is, you're very playful. And that even even outside the context of games specifically, my dad was somebody who always would sort of take things and turn them into games. You know? Like I remember on Halloween, you know, we'd come home with our bag of candy and my dad would blindfold us and he'd cut up candy and try to make us guess, you know which candy was which thing. Now I later learned that was your way to eat my candy but I did have fun doing this. (laughs)

Gene Rosewater  

Once I had the blindfold on, I could do whatever I wanted. Right.

Mark Rosewater  

But one of the things that growing up that I always loved was that you always found ways to you know, to turn things into games--oh, also something else that you taught me is the idea that just because the game has rules doesn't mean that you can't change the rules. That if you don't like the game, you know, change the rules. Make the game what you want the game to be.

Gene Rosewater  

I think I have enhanced many games, just by tweaking the rules. I don't know about changing them, but tweaking them, make a little bit of a change. And as long as everybody knows the rules, it works better. You know, most of the games I play have been tweaked. Yeah. And I have a wonderful partner who loves to play, and the two of us--she is a great gamer. And we are always looking at how to change the games.

Mark Rosewater  

Yeah, and one of the things that is neat--I mean, philosophically, one of the things that steered me toward game design in general is, I love having the mindset that games aren't this locked thing. That the games--that you the game player have some say in how you play the game. And that one of the things--I mean one of the reasons I love Magic is, Magic is on some level, it's a series of tools and a series of rules to allow you to play. But Magic is super, super flexible, that if you want to play you have a lot of means and ways to affect how you're playing. You know. And that that's something that you, the game player have control of, and that's something that Magic does really well. Because I meet a lot of Magic players, but many, many of them are playing very different games, you know. In that playing draft or playing Commander or playing, you know, Emperor or playing--I mean, there's 101 ways to play Magic or 1001 ways to play Magic. And I think that that entire mindset of games being this flexible thing, rather than being a locked thing, I got from you. And that, you know--I definitely remember growing up, you were like, yeah, that's a dumb rule. Let's change that rule.

Gene Rosewater  

And something else. And I think that I had--I think I had some influence here, actually, both you and Alysse, but my philosophy sort of of life, at least about where you would go in life was simply this, find something you love to do, and get someone to pay you to do it. So here you were, you were a game player, you love playing games, and you went out and you found a way to get someone to pay you to play games, exactly what I espouse to.

Mark Rosewater  

And that's--when I called, I'd say, yeah, the reason I think you were so excited, I was like, here's what I want to do, I want to go make games for a living. You're like, that sounds awesome. You should do that. 

Gene Rosewater  

Right.

Mark Rosewater  

Yeah, I think--I wrote--I did a speech at Rachel's career day about finding your dream job. And then I wrote an article about it. Maybe one day I'll do a podcast on that. But in it I talked about the three things--you it upon two of them. The three things of a dream job is, it has to be something you're good at, something you enjoy, and something someone will pay you for. (laughs) And game design, luckily, I hit all three of those, so... but like I said, I owe a lot of gratitude for you. I'm very thankful for all you did to encourage me to play games, that encouraged me to get into games as a career. And it's fun, because whenever my dad comes to town, we always play games, we usually play some Magic, but we also played lots of other games. And it is neat. Like people always ask me how much Magic I play outside of work. And the answer is, not a lot. Mostly because I have my family, and I just don't have a lot of spare time. But when my dad visits they're the one time I actually get to play Magic. And it's fun, because we'll always play whatever the latest thing is, and my dad is not as caught up as I am. So I always get a fresh set of eyes to sort of see what he thinks of the latest set. So later this week, he has not played Return to Ravnica or any of the block yet so he'll get a chance to--although you played original Ravnica, didn't you?

Gene Rosewater  

The original, yeah. I played that online.

Mark Rosewater  

So we're--we've returned this year, and so we'll get a chance to--oh, (???) gonna park my car, I don't need to park my car because my dad's taking my car. Anyway, so we are here at Wizards. So it was fun talking with you. Obviously I get to spend the whole week with you. But it was fun having you on the show. And like I said, I try to make this podcast--I tried to mix things up. And when I realized I had the chance to interview my dad, I thought that was awesome. So I hope you guys all enjoyed what I'll call "Meet My Dad." But anyway, it was a lot of fun. Thank you for being on the show. 

Gene Rosewater  

Thank you for having me on. 

Mark Rosewater  

But now it's time to go make the Magic

I'm not pulling out of my driveway, we all know what that means! It's time for another Drive to Work: At Home Edition. Okay, so today's podcast is based on something I wrote on my blog. And I just wanted to go into more detail. It's a really interesting topic. So something I talked about in R&D philosophy is what we call inclusion over exclusion. And so the point of today's podcast is to explain what that means, and just go in greater depth of understanding sort of the philosophy behind it from a game design standpoint. 

Okay, so my first question is, what do demons and merfolk and walls all have in common? And the answer is, they were all something part of Magic. In fact, I believe all of them were in Alpha, and all of them for a period of time got removed from the game. So demons, in early Magic, there was a worry that it was upsetting, you know, there's a certain audience that was upset that demons were in the game, and we were--Wizards was sort of anticipating something. So there's a period of time where we removed demons from the game, or, at least we removed the word demon from the game. I guess we just called them something else. We called them beasts or horrors or something, but we didn't really refer to them as demons specifically. 

And merfolk, there was a period of time where the creative team, I think it was led by Brady Dommermuth at the time, just like felt that like, water-based fights are weird, when we're summoning things to have a land-based conflict and felt like, you know, merfolk, and other water-based, things were just kind of in a weird state. And it's weird to sort of pluck this merfolk from the sea and have it fight on land. So there's a period of time around like Odyssey where we stopped doing merfolk. Where we stopped--the creature type merfolk, we didn't do anymore. 

I mean, there are like living walls, or maybe even like plant-based walls that make some sense as maybe being a creature if you're very loose on what a creature is. And anyway, there's a period in time where we stopped making walls as creatures. That we just stopped--like, walls used to have defender baked into them. That if you if you were a wall in your creature type, it was in the rules, just being a wall meant you had defender. We later made the defender mechanic, and then all walls had defender, but we also made other defenders that weren't walls. Each of these things, we at some point, we thought, like, it didn't make sense, or it was, you know, it was pulling away from what Magic was. And in each of these cases, we brought it back. And in each of these cases, you know, there's a reason that they returned. 

And so what I want to talk about today is, one of the basic elements that we have to come to grips with is--so Magic is what's known as a modular game. Meaning that, you know, most games when you take it out of the box, hey, you use most of the pieces. You know, if I'm playing the game of Monopoly, well, I have the Monopoly board and the Monopoly cards. And, you know, the hotels--I have all of the component pieces that I'm playing with. And from game to game, I'm mostly using all the pieces in any one game, you know, I might not use every piece, but all the pieces are available every game. And so when you play a game, you the player aren't really deciding what pieces you're using. 

But there are some games, Magic being one of them, where you the player of the game have some choice. Like in role playing, Dungeon and Dragons, for example, you have some choice. You know, a lot more exists than you personally have to use. And games like this, when I talked to them as being sort of modular, it means you have choices about what you want to play with. You have choices about what to include. 

So Magic right now, you're building a deck. You know, depending on the format, a 60 card deck or a 100 card deck or a 40 card deck, whatever. Different formats, you're building a deck and the size can vary on the format. But you have choices to make and you can choose what to put in. 

Sometimes, you know, if you're playing something like Limited, okay, you have choices, but a good chunk of your cards have to be used. Other times, if you're playing like a Legacy format, you have 25,000 cards to choose from. And, you know, your portion of what you have to choose is a tiny of what exists [sic] . 

And so, one of the things that's interesting from an R&D standpoint is, we are trying to make sure that each person gets to make the game they want to make. Like, if you make a game, you know, like Monopoly, you know, when it's a very fixed experience like--well, you're choosing what they experience, and you're choosing the component pieces of it. And everybody's mostly going to experience those things. 

The difference in a game that has an element where you're choosing pieces, is, you are making sort of a customizable set of objects that the player can choose from. And when you do that, what you're trying to do is saying, okay, I want to add some customizability. I want to say to the player, look, we are making more than you need. And we are giving you the freedom to figure out what you want to do. 

Now built into that is, there is both a mechanical component and a creative component. And what I mean by that is, our cards do different things mechanically. And you the player might make choices about mechanically what you want to do. Oh, well, I like this mechanical theme. I want to build a deck around this mechanical theme. I like the graveyard, I want to get things out of the graveyard. So I'm going to focus on mechanical aspect. Or there is a creative choice. I like this world, I like this theme. You know, I'm going to build my deck so it brings out, you know, some flavor that I enjoy. 

And there's intersection between those two, creature types being the biggest one, like, well, the reason I like goblins is A. I like the flavor of goblins. But also they have a mechanical identity, I enjoy that mechanical identity, or I like elves or merfolk, or whatever. So the players are sort of--what we want to do is we want to craft something so the players can sort of make choices about the world they make. 

And the the the tricky thing about it, and this is one of the things where this whole idea of inclusion or exclusion comes from, is different people want different things. Like one of the most important lessons when you do game design or come to work for Magic, for example, one of the first big lessons that you have to learn is that when you play Magic, Magic means something to you personally. That there's some expression to how you play. Maybe there's more than one expression. But hey, you like playing a certain Constructed format or a certain Limited format, or, you know, there's just a mix of things that makes Magic what Magic is to you. And again, part of that might be mechanical based, part of that might be flavor based. But there's something that sort of makes Magic what Magic is to you. 

And so one of the first things you have to learn as a game designer when making Magic is what that entails, what that is, varies greatly between players. And on many different levels. Like part of it is just the way you play, for example, the format. There's lots of ways to play Magic, one of the strengths of Magic is there's many different executions of it. And, you know, if you sit and play Commander versus Draft, you know, it's the same game, the same card--you know, the same rule set, the same game pieces, but those are very different experiences, you know, how competitive it is, how social it is, you know, there's lots of different factors that go into it. 

So one of the things when you first get to Wizards is--and this is something that is normal human, you know, experience, which is that you tend to frame something by your experiences, how you experience it. And one of the things that it takes time to realize is, oh, well, how I experienced it is shaped by me. By how I see it, how I use it, what I do, and that one of the things--I mean, this is true of all life, I'm just talking Magic. 

But you know, when you first start designing Magic cards, you tend to design cards that reinforce the game that you see it being. You design cards to say, well, this is what Magic is to me. So I'm gonna make cards that make that version of Magic, what Magic is to me, that's the first thing you design. You tend to design cards that are what you want to see in the game. 

But the next level you have to get to as a game designer is going, oh, there are other people that experience the game differently than I do. And some experience it radically different than you do. For example, one of the big vectors is enfranchised versus not enfranchised. An enfranchised player, meaning I'm someone who Magic's a big part of my life, I'm part of the Magic community. Like every day I am interacting with Magic in a way where Magic is part of my identity. 

That it's what we call lifestyle game. That it's more than just a thing I do, it's a thing I define myself as being, I'm a Magic player. That is how I define myself. That if I meet somebody else that plays Magic, we have a bond because I'm a Magic player. 

But there are a lot of people in which they interact with Magic in a way that it's a thing they do, but it's not definitional. It is not a way they define themselves. It's sort of like--you know, the way I describe it is, there are chess players in which chess like defines who they are, that it's a part of their identity. And then there are people that play chess, you know, and that a chess player and a player of chess are two very different things. Magic has that same--you know, there are people in which the the essence and identity of Magic is just very different. 

And, just like I said, there are lots of different formats. There's lots of different expressions. The other thing we realized, and this is one of the reasons that Magic--the reason we sort of adopted the multiverse premise in the first place. Why when Richard started, the idea of this multiverse existed, was that we want to tap into what different people enjoy. 

So this is where we get to the concept of resonance, right? That when you play, when you choose what to do with your own free time, you want to do things that really speak to you. And that each individual person--much like Magic might speak to you or not speak to you, different elements of life speak to you. 

For example, let's talk genres. In storytelling, there's a lot of different kinds of storytelling. There are stories that lead in different directions to tell different kinds of stories. Some people love the horror genre, you know, some people don't. Like my example is, I'm personally not that much into horror. Like if I have to go watch a film, I don't tend--I mean, I'm not saying there's not horror things I've watched, there's definitely you know, there, there are horror films I've seen, but I don't go out of my way to watch horror films. And if something is a horror film, something about it has to like--I have to be lured in to see that. Where other people are like, oh, my goodness, I love horror films, you know, the more horror film it feels, the more they want to see it. 

And so the idea of genres is, different people feel comfortable interacting with different genres, only because it reinforces different aspects of who they are or plays into their identity and different people like different things. And the idea of resonance is that you want people to--like, there's a term I use called piggybacking. And what piggybacking means is that you take things that people already know, and use that as a means to reinforce something. 

And so I'll just use Innistrad as an example, since we're talking horror. If I want to make a zombie deck in Innistrad, well, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm gonna say, well, let me tap into people's experience with zombies in movies, in TV shows in books--like, in pop culture. Zombies means something. The reason that zombies resonate, the reason that zombies are popular, is there something about zombies that speak to the human experience, that resonate with people. 

So if I'm going to make a set with zombies, especially one that's leaning into, like, sort of what zombies are, I want to make sure that I'm doing something that feels like zombies. But from a game design standpoint, I have the freedom that zombies mean something to people, and that when I'm building, I'm not building from scratch, I'm not making a brand new thing you've never seen before. I'm leaning into something, you know. 

And that is the power of genres. And that is the power of the multiverse, which is, there's a reason that Magic keeps bouncing around. The reason that we don't go to Eldraine and stay in Eldraine for five years, right, we--one of the things that we realize is that there's such a wide spread of audience that really keys into different things that--I call it pushing the pendulum, right, that we want to keep making Magic different things. And that the idea behind that, the reason that we have a Greek world and you know, an Egyptian world and a city world and a Gothic horror world and a fairytale world, like the reason we have all these different places is, different things are going to speak to different people. Different people are gonna go, oh, wow, that. You know. 

And the cool thing about it is, no matter what we do, no matter where we go, you know, pick any Magic set. There's somebody who, like, that is at the core of what they are, of what they believe, of what they want, and it speaks to them. 

And likewise, look, every set is not going to squarely hit every person. But the philosophy behind it--this is how I get you to inclusion versus exclusion--is that we we want to give everybody the opportunity to find the thing that speaks to them so that they can choose that.

That one of the powerful things about Magic is that the customizability of it, the ability to craft it, means that you the player can say, hey, I want a game that satisfies certain qualities. And this particular game gives me so much freedom to craft it that I can make it resonate with who I am as a person. I can make it something that really speaks to me as a game player. 

One of the most powerful things about Magic is that it's customizability, its modularity lets the player make it what they want it to be. Do you want it to be a game where you sit around with your friends and goof off for hours on end? Do you want it to be highly competitive, where you're testing who you are and what you're capable of doing? Do you want it to be something that's just really expressing who you are in a way that other people can see? Like, a lot of like the psychographics and, you know, a lot of the stuff that we define is just sort of saying like, hey, how are you using the game? 

Okay. Now, the key to it is--what we found is, the more flexibility we give, the more options we give, the happier the audience seems to be as a whole. This is how I got to my buffet metaphor. For those that don't know. I spent a long time trying to understand like, what's the quality of designing Magic. And any metaphor, I mean, if you push too--you know, like, metaphors work up to a point. 

But the buffet metaphor I've really enjoyed for Magic is, we are trying to make an awesome buffet. And the neat thing about a buffet and the reason I like this metaphor is, the goal of a buffet is to give each eater their perfect meal. We want you, the person who's going to eat the food, to go, wow. This was a meal made for me. And the whole philosophy behind the buffet is, well, if I just give a lot of food and give you a lot of options, then you the eater can choose what it is you want. And hopefully, if we have well-crafted food, that's the kind of food you want, you have great experience. 

Now here is the challenge. And this is where we get to inclusion over exclusion, is anything that one person might love, another person might hate. So for example, we do a horror set, you know, we do Innistrad, let's say, some people, it speaks to their core. This is the essence, this is the genre they love. This is the thing that just, you know, makes them all excited. Other people are like, well, that's not really my thing. You know, I'm not really--it's not, it doesn't speak to me. And so you know, I'm, I'm less excited by that

Or maybe I hate horror. It's like, it's the thing I--you know, like I run away from horror. If there's a horror film, I don't want to see it. I don't want to see the commercials, the commercials freak me out. You know, that no matter what we do, there are people that are going to respond to it, and people that are not going to respond to it. 

So one of the common requests that I get is, we do something, and we do infinite things, but we do something and somebody out there goes, wow. Wow. I don't like that. I don't like that. And I don't want that in my game. Because once again, everybody experiences Magic through their lens of what it is for them. This is my game. 

And like I said. The genius of the system built by Richard Garfield was that each person had so much ability to craft what they wanted, that you really could feel like this was mine. Because it hits on all the points that I wanted to hit on. You know, it pushes all the buttons that I need pushed. That it lets me craft the game to be the game that I most want it to be. 

So what happens is, people are like, wow. I love you know, all these aspects. Ooh, but there's one thing that I don't like. And wow, when I have to play--now, obviously I won't put it in my deck. Or maybe I have to put my deck if I have if my mechanical--like maybe it has a mechanical reference that I need because I want to win the game, but I don't like the creative reference of something. Or vice versa. Maybe I love the creative but the mechanics I don't like.

But the idea is, look, when I play Magic, Magic is, you know--I have to play with somebody. And while I control what I play with, I don't necessarily control what they play with. And so when I'm playing the game, there might be things that I don't like, and wow. I don't want to interact with that thing. My game is better if that thing isn't there. That that thing being there. knocks down the game for me, makes my game less of what my game is. 

So the challenge is, we have the tools to be additive. We have the tools to be inclusive. And what I mean by that is, we can make a lot of different things. we can make a lot of different settings, we can make a lot of different mechanics, we can, you know--with Universes Beyond do other IPs, like there's a lot of things we can do. We can dip in a lot of different places. 

So Magic as a game is structured to go wide. It is easy for us to add something. And this is sort of my buffet metaphor, which is if we learn that there's a food that we haven't served before, that people would like, it is easy for us to add a food. It is easy for us to go oh, oh, you guys want seafood? We've never had seafood, but you want seafood? Yeah, we can add seafood. 

What is much harder for us is that... to remove something is not just to remove it for you the player that want it removed, it's to remove it for all players. So if we don't do something, it sort of shuts--like if we make something that you want, okay, you can play it. Like, let's say, for example, you love fairy tales, and we make Eldraine. Now you the fairy tale lover have access to it and you can build it. Somebody who doesn't like fairy tales doesn't have to put the stuff in their deck. 

But if we exclude--let's say we say okay, we're never going to do this thing. You know, we're going to try to keep it out of the game, well, then I'm preventing everybody to have access to that. That inclusion means everybody has access, but exclusion means no one has access. And Magic as a customizable game, as a modular game, isn't well suited for that. So when someone to me says, hey, could you not do thing X, or what's more common is, I don't like thing X. Could you do less of thing X? That is a lot harder for us. 

Now, I'm not saying there aren't things we avoid. For example, there are some things, especially mechanically, where we have feedback that the vast majority of players, it really makes the game less for them. Like efficient direct damage, or highly efficient card denial or counterspells. Like, they're definitely things where early in Magic we did something, and like, wow, it made for a not fun game. 

And there are other things like harmful stereotypes. I mean, there's things that actually being in the game hurts people in a way that goes beyond sort of just I don't like it, you know. And so it's not that we don't exclude anything, there's definitely things that we have to be careful about. But the general point is that the game sort of thrives if we say, you know what, we're going to try to give something for everybody. And then say, look, we're, we're going to put it in the game, you the game players then figure out how you want to use it. 

And the challenge is, and this is something that's--I mean, it keeps coming up. You know, I mean, probably the latest cause of it is Universes Beyond, but it's a tale as old as time. Whenever we introduce something new to the game, whatever it is, whenever we go to a new world, or have a new genre, or like--whenever we introduce something new, there are people who are like, well, that's not what the game means to me, I don't want that thing. 

And the message I have to kind of give is, well, there are other people other than you who do enjoy this, and we are trying to make the game inclusive for them. We're trying to offer the thing they love. 

And so what that means is that kind of the--R&D is much more empowered to add things than we are to remove things. And so--because a lot of people are sort of like, well, I--this is what Magic means to me. There's this component I don't like of Magic. Hey, people that make the game, hey, this is how I feel, could you please remove that? 

And the answer I have to kind of give is, look. There are tools for removing things, you can make a format where only certain things are allowed. You could have a play group where you choose to play with certain things. You know. Or you could maybe choose a format where only things are allowed--I mean, you have the ability on the player end to have some control. Not total control. 

And one of the things also of being a social game is, look, part of playing with other people is--as I point out, Magic to each individual is slightly different game. And part of playing Magic with other people is seeing their experience of Magic. 

Like--here's the way I like to think of it is, when I make a deck, I'm making--I'm optimizing what Magic is to me. Like I'm making something that's really speaks to me, that is how I want to play. When I meet somebody else, and I play against them, I get a glimpse into what Magic is for them. I get a glimpse into their version of Magic. 

And my argument sort of is that no person's Magic is exactly the same. There might be people that are aligned, but each person has a slightly--that's one of the genius of the game is that you really can make it your own. And part of playing other people is experiencing what they enjoy. That when I play against somebody else, I get to see what aspect of the game that means to them. 

And so when I play against somebody else, and they do something that I don't enjoy, but they enjoy, kind of my message is, well, embrace the fact that part of playing with somebody else is they're bringing what they love into the game. And maybe what they love into the game isn't the thing that you love about the game. But part of the human experience, part of interacting with people is realizing that each person has their own things. 

And so, you know, if I play with another player, and they have an aspect that is not something I would want to include, but it really brings joy to them, our hope is that players can come to realize that like, the game is better served--that we're giving each person the tools to optimize the game to make what they bring to the game what they most want. 

The downside--and I don't even think it's a downside. But what comes with that is that you enable other people to bring what they want to the game. And so since Magic--I mean, we've made some solitaire variants, but assume you're not playing solitaire because very few people do. Although Mana Maze Solitaire, if you go back and read the Duelist, it's very cool. 

Part of the play experience is interacting other people and seeing what they enjoy. And that we think that Magic is better suited if we, the makers of the game, try to go broad, try to include as much as we can, that let each individual person maximize their ability to make the game what they want. And in doing that, there's a cost. And the cost is, other people have to interact and absorb what other people enjoy. 

And like I said, there might be parts of Magic you just really dislike. And if other people are tapping into that, and you just don't enjoy the experience, that is where you have to sort of look at your playgroup, or look at how you play or what you play or where you play, you know, we're kind of putting that in the hands of the players, because R&D isn't good at exclusion. We're not. Like, the only way to exclude something is to exclude it for everybody. And we believe that Magic is a better game if we include things. If we let people have more choices and more options and more ability to craft Magic to be what they want. But the cost it comes at is the lack of exclusion. The lack of saying, well, we're just not going to do the thing you don't like. 

And once again, the caveat I have is, if enough people dislike something--there are things that are universally disliked, that we're not doing. It's not like we're doing everything. There are things we aren't doing. But as a general rule of thumb, if there are things that we can do, that there's a decent sized audience, that it really speaks to them, that it really enhances Magic for them, we're going to do that. 

And that is the core concept of inclusion over exclusion is, we think that Magic is a better game if each person has something that speaks to their soul, that is something that really excites them, that makes Magic a joy. And that if that means that I have to play with other people, and I have to experience their joy, even if their joy is not my joy, that that overall is a better game than us excluding things so that people can't make the game as much of their own as they want to.

And so that is why, when people write to me, and they say, can you just please take thing X out of the game, the answer--and I'm not, I don't mean to be glib or anything, is it really boils down to that thing that you don't like, there is someone who not only likes it, there's someone who that is their favorite thing. That is the thing that makes them shine the most. And that I'm not going to take that thing away from them. And that you as a player have to sort of--and once again, there's a lot of tools that you as a player have of when and how and where to use your cards, but that I'm not going to take joy away from another player so you don't have to interact with an aspect you don't like. 

That is the core of inclusion versus exclusion is, we'd rather empower people to have what they want. At the cost of you having to experience other people's joy and what other people love. And that's the core. That's the core of it. 

Like, the reason I--this all came from me sharing my wall story. I got rid of walls, because I thought walls were dumb. I thought walls were just stupid. I'm a writer at my core, and it just didn't make any flavor sense, and I care about flavor. And I'm like, this is just dumb. Why are we doing this? And so I took walls out of the game, I mean I and other people took walls out of the game. 

But I kept getting people writing in to me saying, wow, you know, the same thing that I hated about walls, that they made no sense, other people were like, hey, that's charming to me. I like that. You know. And the reason that we brought walls back--and I originally sort of fought against us bringing walls back. But what I came to realize was that, like, the walls brought happiness to other people. Even if they pissed me off, even if it's just, there's something about them that made the game less for me. 

And then what I had to come to realize, and the reason that, you know, I support walls now is not that I'm a great fan of walls. It's not that I think walls add something to the game for me. But I recognize they add something for other people. And that part of a game of community, part of in which, you know, that I want Magic to have things that make Magic a better game for everybody. And even if those things don't make Magic a better game for me, even if the things make--you know, that other people getting what they want, the game being better for other people. the joy to other people, is a benefit to me. 

That Magic and the Magic community, that the more that each person can sort of make Magic the thing that makes them the happiest, that that is a boon to me as a Magic player. Especially someone who's part of the Magic community, who's part of the environment of Magic, that us allowing each player to bring their joy to the game, you know, that--other people's joy is to my benefit, not to my detriment. The fact that the game is not 100% crafted to what I want makes Magic a better overall game for everybody. 

And just like being a designer--like that lesson in game design, that I have to make Magic cards that aren't for me, that I have to make Magic cards that, you know--I have to learn what other people like so I can make something, not that enhances Magic for me, but for other people. That part of being a Magic player, I think there's a realization of understanding that Magic as a game is better if people have access to the thing they love, even if access to the thing they love might be something I'm not that crazy about from time to time. Might be something that I even dislike. 

But that Magic as a whole is a better game for people to have access to that. That is inclusion over exclusion, that is the philosophy we're talking about. That, you know, you might not care for "fill in the blank", "fill in the blank" might even be something that you actively dislike. But if there are people out there that really truly love that thing, if that thing is what makes Magic shine for them, the game having it just makes more people happy. And, you know--anyway. So that is my topic for today, of just sort of talking about why we are doing something that you personally don't like, but that other people really, really do. And that is why.

And that--I know it is a hard sort of lesson to say, you know, that--it's great if the world is always optimized for what you want. Of like, well, this is what I enjoy. So I wish everybody around me would optimize to what I want. But the reality is, your life will be better if you recognize that other people just want other things. And that other people having those things and having their own sense of happiness and having their own sense of belonging is in general an additive to you. That the Magic community gets better the game gets better if more people feel included, if more people feel like the game speaks to them. And that way more is added to the game than is taken away from you. And that is the inherent lesson of inclusion versus exclusion. 

Anyway guys, I hope--this is me going a little more introspective today, but I hope you guys enjoyed it. But I can see my desk. So we all know that means, means instead of talking Magic, it's time for me be making Magic. So I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast, and I'll see you next time. Bye bye.

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

Mark Rosewater: 

I'm not pulling out of my driveway! We all know what that means! It's time for another Drive to Work, At Home Edition. So today I want to talk about a concept that's very important to Magic. That's a little on the complex side. Card advantage. So what I've done is I got an expert, Brian Weissman, longtime pro player, creator of The Deck, one would argue the first ever recorded deck that took advantage of card advantage, to come talk about what is card advantage. So hey Brian.

Brian Weissman: 

How's it going, Mark, thanks for having me on.

Mark Rosewater: 

Okay, so this is going to be like a wading pool, what they call a zero entry pool, where we're going to start very shallow. And then as we go along, we'll get to the deep end. So we're not going to start at the deep end, but we will get there. Okay, so Brian.

Brian Weissman: 

Yes.

Mark Rosewater: 

In simplest terms, what is card advantage?

Brian Weissman: 

In simplest terms, Mark, card advantage is simply the idea that the easiest, almost deterministic route to winning a game of Magic is to dominate your opponent in resources, specifically in the resources of cards, either by destroying more of their cards for fewer of yours, or more simply, by drawing more cards than your opponent. And the essential idea that if you accomplish that, winning the game becomes inevitable, regardless of their strategy and generally, regardless of your strategy. Okay,

Mark Rosewater: 

Okay, so let's just walk through some simple examples.

Brian Weissman: 

Okay.

Mark Rosewater: 

 Okay, so let's take Divination.
Okay, so Divination, you spend mana, you draw two cards. So you've spent one card, but you've drawn two cards,

Brian Weissman: 

Precisely.

Mark Rosewater: 

And I mean, drawing cards is kind of the most simplest version of card advantage, right? I spent one card, I got more than one card.

Brian Weissman: 

Precisely. And I think on this on the surface, on face value, it's a very relatively easy concept to understand. Mainly because I think if you... if you pay attention to what people value the most about a given turn in Magic, one of the behaviors that I observe a lot when people are learning the game, and something that was totally endemic to all of the players that I first started playing Magic with back in early 1994, was that everybody really, really wanted to draw a card more than anything else. As soon as their turn began, often at the expense of the untap step, and sometimes even the upkeep step, people would reach over to their deck and grab another card. It was clearly obvious to people that they understood that drawing a card was fundamentally important, not only for entrenching their strategy, but also for just enjoying the game more. More cards means more options, more mana to do the things you want, and eventually gets you to whatever the theme of your deck is. And so I think that early on, most players recognize that drawing cards feels good, and it's powerful in some way that they may not necessarily understand. But in terms of really getting into the nitty gritty of what made that so important, it took a little bit of time for that to be understood in the community.

Mark Rosewater: 

Brian Weissman: 

Yes, exactly. And I think that getting back to one of the things that I really like to explain to new players and one of the things that is a really good indicator whether or not something matters a lot is how people feel about it emotionally. And anybody that's ever been forced to discard cards kind of has that that icky feeling in the middle of their chest that kind of feels uncomfortable to be made to discard. And when I think back to Magic's early days, there was there was one incredibly powerful discard spell called Mind Twist that was considerably more powerful than Mind Rot. Basically imagine Mind Rot, but it scales. You can cast--spend as much mana as you want on it. And the discard is a random discard rather than a choice discard, which feels a lot worse. 

But it wasn't until the Fallen Empires expansion was printed in I think mid to late 1994 that a lot of people were playing with discard because a two black mana discard spell called Hymn to Tourach was printed. And everybody was playing with it because it was a common card and it was in just hundreds of decks. And it created a really kind of uncomfortable game experience for a lot of players. People began to realize I think around the time when Hymn to Tourach came out, that making your opponent discard was a strategy unto itself, and begin to understand why that was a thing. Because it felt bad to discard. You weren't really sure, you threw cards in the graveyard, was that the same as the cards being milled off the top of your library by Millstone?
kind of seems the same, but it isn't really the same. And it certainly felt a lot worse. 

And I think gradually, people came to understand that if you could make your opponent lose additional resources for fewer cards than you were expending to do that, that it got you further ahead and it made the situation, you began to feel more powerful in the context of the game. And they began to feel weaker. And I think that was a clue that there was something really important going on there. That it wasn't just necessarily I'm drawing more cards than you. It was, it was the idea that I'm losing options. I'm losing my foothold in this game. Something important is happening here. And it seems like it's kind of leading to the guy doing--causing all the discard to win a disproportionate number of games.

Mark Rosewater: 

Okay, so the next example is, I cast a spell. I'll use Fireball, I guess. I cast a spell in which I have one spell, but I'm able to destroy two creatures with it. So the idea is I've cast one spell... now, note, these aren't cards in their hand. These are creatures on the battle. So the next thing to understand is when we say cards, we don't just mean cards in hand. Both discard and drawing are talking about cards in hand. But now we're starting to talk about, I went up in cards because they lost two cards on the table, and I lost one card in my hand. So let's talk about the idea that it's not just cards in hand, but just cards you have.

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah, precisely. I mean, it elicits that same feeling. You overextend on the board, your opponent casts a Wrath of God--an early creature removal spell from alpha that everybody was playing with. It was a rare, so you didn't see it a ton and it cost double white. But still, the card showed up a lot. Certainly Earthquake was around, Fireball was around.

In Legends, they printed the card Pyrotechnics, which could deal--kill a bunch of creatures. Anytime that happened, you would feel like, ugh, I feel kind of gutted as a result of that. I lost my three guys off the battlefield,  that felt bad, but I kind of just feel like I'm really falling behind now. I just feel like I have far fewer options, a lot less going on. And my opponent just feels like they're getting a dominant position. 

And so again, it became really apparent that you didn't just need to mess around and interact with cards in hand, drawing more cards, making them discard. But if you could get two for one or three for one or four for one, on the battlefield, from cards that had already been played, it was kind of the same sense of getting much further ahead in the game right away from something that was clearly impactful.

Mark Rosewater: 

Okay, so the next example, I'm gonna use Giant Growth  to talk about going both directions. How you can lose card advantage with--Giant Growth can gain card advantage or lose you card advantage. As example for gaining card advantage is, I'm attacking with a two two creature, and my opponent has--what's a good example--three one--

Brian Weissman: 

A pair of 1/1s.

Mark Rosewater: 

A pair of 1/1s. Okay. A pair of 1/1s is good. I'm attacking with a 2/2, they have two 1/1s. Or it even can be--the thing about 1/1s is, they were going to trade both their 1/1s for your 2/2.

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah, maybe a 1/1 and a 1/2.

Mark Rosewater: 

Yeah, a 1/1 and a 1/2, the idea being that I wasn't going to destroy both  of their creatures. I was going to destroy one of their creatures, but not both of their creatures. And then you cast Giant Growth. Now it's a 5/5, and instead of them losing one creature, they lost both creatures,

Brian Weissman: 

Exactly. To a single spell that cost only one mana, and a very similar situation that happened a lot was the card Lightning Bolt, one red mana instant, deal three damage, and so you'd have that exact scenario. I attack with a 3/3, my opponent puts two 2/2s in front of it thinking that they're going to trade a 2/2 for a 3/3, I Bolt away one of the other guys, now a 2/2 hits a 3/3 and I kill two creatures for one red mana. incredibly potent effect that also just feels backbreaking when it happens to you.

Mark Rosewater: 

And the other important thing with this example is, it's not that a Giant Growth is inherently card advantage. It doesn't--a lot of times I can attack with the creature and Giant Growth it, hit you... I haven't gained any card advantage. So it's not that Giant Growth is inherently card advantage. But it can be. And that's the thing to understand is that, like--a Divination is always card advantage, I'm always going up in cards, but a Giant Growth--situationally I could go up in cards. But let's use the other example. Here's where it can cost you card advantage, which is I'm attacking with a 2/2 creature, I use Giant Growth on it, and then like the Lightning Bolt you're talking about, in response to my Giant Growth, you would Lightning Bolt my creature. Now, I lose my creature, and my Giant Growth essentially went for nothing. I--it doesn't do anything because there's no--the creature isn't there anymore. So now I've lost card advantage by casting Giant Growth.

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah. And you go through that experience, having a creature Bolted or in--more commonly Swords to Plowshared back in the era. One white mana, exile a creature and the person gains life from the--equal to the power of the creature that was exiled. But the same exact thing, I try to pump up my guy somehow, enhance my guy as a combat trick, and then my guy gets blown away from underneath me. And I lose two cards for one and feel quite awful. And so totally interchangeable, right? All the cards, whether it's the situation we described at the very beginning, simply drawing more cards, making your opponent discard more cards, getting two for one, getting three for one on the battlefield with some kind of a sweeper, or even a combat trick. Giant Growthing during, you know, a multi block or something like that. Or killing a bander when your opponent tried to block with a banding creature and you kill the other thing, any one of those things gets you further into the game, and makes it considerably harder for your opponent to recover their position. And if it happens a couple of times, you'll often engineer the ideal situation where you have three or four cards in your hand, and parity on the battlefield or even a lead, and your opponent has nothing in their hand and is reduced to drawing a single card per turn off the top.

Mark Rosewater: 

Okay, so all of these examples so far are super practical, right? That you can look--you can look back at what happened, you can count the number of cards, and you can see, oh, one player at the end of it ended up has more cards in relation to the other player.

Brian Weissman: 

Exactly, yes.

Mark Rosewater: 

Okay, so now the next step is the idea that I can play a card that costs you cards, but not immediately. So for example, let's say I play a card. We were talking old school today, so I'll use an old school card. I play a Circle of Protection.

Brian Weissman: 

Yes,

Mark Rosewater: 

So Circle of Protection is an enchantment that you can spend one generic mana to prevent any source of that color. So I play--let's say you're playing red, and I play Circle of Protection: Red, how's this card advantage? Nothing got lost. So why is this card advantage?

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah, in fact, actually, it feels initially the opposite, right? I play a Circle of Protection: Red, and it doesn't immediately impact the board, you still have all your red spells in hand, you still have your red creatures in play, it feels like I've actually spent two mana and a card that I've drawn to accomplish nothing. But the problem is that the Circle of Protection: Red, provided that you have mana to fuel it, not only neutralizes most of the red spells in your opponent's hand, but more importantly, it is a future negation. Every red card that they draw. Now, particularly if they're drawing a deck that's based around dealing damage directly to the player every single time they now draw Chain Lightning or Lightning Bolt, Pyrotechnics or Fireball or whatever, they're unable to do any damage. So it's almost as if their draw step didn't matter at all. And we talked before about how you're gleeful and happy to draw your card every turn. That's the really fun part of the game. Well, when your opponent has a Circle of Protection: Red in play, you're not looking forward to drawing off the top of your deck, unless it's maybe the one or two cards in your deck that might interact with that Circle of Protection: Red. You might not even have any way to deal with it at all. And in fact, it wasn't until I think the card Anarchy was printed in Ice Age, or maybe it was... was Anarchy in Alliances? It's around then.

Mark Rosewater: 

Anarchy is from Ice Age, I believe. [Yes. -LTH]

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah. And it destroys all white permanents in play. A red sorcery. And it wasn't until anarchy--

Mark Rosewater: 

A color break by the way, that card shouldn't have been printed.

Brian Weissman: 

You learned some lessons, I think. I think you've done a few videos about that sort of thing. But anyway, it wasn't until anarchy was printed that red actually had a direct way of dealing with enchantments. And so if you put a Circle of Protection: Red in play. for a single spell, you could often nullify 30 cards in their deck. In play in hand, whatever, it was one of the most powerful card advantage cards in the world. So people think, oh, Circle of Protection: Red is unsportsmanlike, it's so powerful, it's strong. But what it really is, is it's just the ultimate card advantage card when it's employed against a deck that's very narrow, like a mon-red burn deck or something,

Mark Rosewater: 

Right, and so that's the next thing to understand on card advantage is, it's not necessarily that I'm trying to get more cards in the immediate present, right now. But it could be that I'm--over the course of the game, I'm going to make cards, I'm going to go up on cards. And so--now here's the next thing for us to explain. The difference between card advantage and virtual card advantage. So--

Brian Weissman: 

I see, yeah.

Mark Rosewater: 

So card advantage means that we actually count the cards, you know, I'm up in cards. I have more cards than you. If you count all my cards in play and cards in my hand, you know, there's--I have more cards than you do.

Brian Weissman: 

Right.

Mark Rosewater: 

Virtual card advantage, and this is kind of what the Circle of Protection: Red was getting at is, it's not that that card necessarily made them discard cards or destroyed cards, but it made cards they have kind of not be useful anymore.

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah, (???)

Mark Rosewater: 

And so you went up cards, but you went up virtual cards. And that, that card--yeah, they still have it. It's still in their hand. You can count it, but it's not advancing them toward winning.

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah, the best example I can think of in that regard was a situation that happened a lot back in the day. An enchantment that was printed in Legends, one of the most powerful enchantments ever made. And oddly enough, not an Enchant World--even though I don't believe there are any Enchant Worlds in white [There are just a few -LTH]--is the card Moat.

Mark Rosewater: 

Yeah.

Brian Weissman: 

Costs two generic, two white mana. And simply, while it's on the battlefield, it says non flying creatures cannot attack, hard stop. And back when Moat was around, and people were still learning the game, I'd have people walk up to games that I was playing, and I'd have a Moat in place, sort of just, you know, surreptitiously sitting on the side of the battlefield, and they'd have 11 creatures in play, and the person would walk up and their initial assumption would be, look how many creatures are in play on one side of battlefield. That guy must be winning. And then they notice that over in the right corner, I have this singular enchantment holding all of those creatures at bay. And my hand has several ways to stop any attempt that they might make to get rid of the Moat. Consequently, all 11 of those creatures are effectively dead, rendered totally irrelevant, as well as any additional creatures they might draw from their deck. So the Moat in that situation is more powerful than Mind Twist. 

More powerful than Brain Geyser, a card drawing spell that allows you to draw X cards in addition to the blue, initial casting cost of it. So you think oh, Brain Geyser for eight is really powerful. Well, a Moat that destroys 10 creatures in play and 13 more creatures in their deck is way better than Brain Geyser. And understanding that that's a real thing is kind of a big lightbulb moment for people when they're learning how to play the game better.

Mark Rosewater: 

Okay, now here--as we continue to delve deeper here.

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah.

Mark Rosewater: 

The next thing that interesting is, cards are--situationally create advantage. Like virtual advantage means, well, I play a card, and it means something. Now, in the case of Moat, you might have things in play. So like, you could right away invalidate things.

Brian Weissman: 

Right.

Mark Rosewater: 

But sometimes what happens is, by watching you play your deck, I'm figuring out what I believe is in your deck. And then I play a card. And sometimes there are cards where you get to name something, you can use knowledge that you have, but I play something that's going to cause you problems, not because you--not that I've seen it yet, but I can anticipate. And so I'm--the card advantage is like future virtual card advantage. Which is a very odd concept. But the idea that I'm going to do something, because I've read you and I understand what you're doing, and that I'm causing you problems in the future. So let's talk a little bit about sort of future--future virtual card advantage.

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah, I mean, I think that--I think to understand the value of of what you're describing, future card advantage, I think that you have to kind of make a mental leap as a player where you develop from the idea of dealing with the here and now and starting to develop your strategy so that you incorporate some planning. You begin to think about, what could I draw? What could the opponent draw? And as soon as you start to consider those things, not just what is the creature in play that I have to block or remove, but more of what could the person have down the road, and you start to formulate a strategy. Cards, like the ones you're describing, which sort of preemptively deal with things become increasingly attractive. And you can start to actually sculpt and plan a strategy where you are not even necessarily dealing with the stuff that's in play, but you're sculpting a situation where everything that they draw from that point onward is nullified. And those lead to some of the most powerful and advanced decks that have ever been played in constructed magic.

Mark Rosewater: 

And the other thing to remember is, the thing where it starts getting very complicated is, sometimes I can do something--like the example Circle of Protection is one for one, meaning I play Circle of Protection and red cards now can't be played. I play Moat and non-flyers can't attack--non-flyers, non-islandwalkers can't attack.

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah.

Mark Rosewater: 

But sometimes I can do something where it's--it's not on destroying a particular card, is I'm making certain strategies harder. Could we talk a little bit about that?

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah, I think so. I would say that probably the class of cards that's in that case, I'm very glad that you brought that up, actually, because I--in an article I wrote many years ago, I think probably almost 30 years ago, where I talked about this idea, I think the best example of that are cards that are directly involved in resource denial, specifically cards like Winter Orb, and Armageddon.

Mark Rosewater: 

Here's what I like to think about it, which is imagine when you cast that spell, it splits. Now there's two timelines, one of which you cast the spell and one which you didn't cast the spell.

Brian Weissman: 

Ah, that's great.

Mark Rosewater: 

Like a lot of what you're talking about is well, they actually discard the card, but I'm like--it's not even that. In one timeline where I did do it, they play some number of cards. In the timeline where I didn't do it, they play a different number of cards. If in another timeline they played more cards, every card they played that wasn't played in the timeline where you did play it is card advantage. (???), for example, like I play and they can only play three cards for the rest of the game. Where if I didn't, and they played eight cards, I netted this sort of virtual five cards.

Brian Weissman: 

Yes--I know, I love that analogy, that makes a ton of sense. And that's a really--it's an excellent way of looking at it, this sort of split timeline. And you'll often--and people recognize this instinctively, too, because when the game is over, in the game that you cast the Armageddon, you cast Winter Orb, the person says, "Oh, I would have done this. And I would have done this. And I had this card and I had this, and I would have done this," and you're like, "Well, you couldn't do any of those things. Because I had a Winter Orb in play, you were limited to doing one thing, every four turns."

Okay, so the next level--as we go deeper?

Sure.

Mark Rosewater: 

So sometimes, because you can read what your opponent wants to do, you can take steps that makes it so they have trouble doing that.

Brian Weissman: 

Of course.

Mark Rosewater: 

For example, let's just use Giant Growth, because that's a great example. If you read them as having Giant Growth, you can act in such a way that a Giant Growth isn't going to cause card advantage--card disadvantage for you.

Brian Weissman: 

Right.

Mark Rosewater: 

So what that means is, sometimes card advantage is a matter of understanding the situation where you might suffer card disadvantage, and not allowing those opportunities. Could we talk a little about that?

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah, I think that--that comes down to of course, understanding specific interactions and playing around a range of effects in a situation where you might be vulnerable. So another example would be, let's say I've got a creature enchantment in my hand. And it's a creature enchantment that draws a card, whenever the creature deals damage. I could just play it on my guy and try to attack and try to get a card out of it right away. But he's got three mana sitting there untapped, you know, two red and white or something. And I can't just play it, because if he has any range of red and white removal spells, I might lose card advantage. I might lose the creature and the enchantment. But if I wait until he's tapped out, then I know that I can safely invest in the creature, get through for an attack, at least have the enchantment replace itself.

Mark Rosewater: 

Let me say real quickly, just to--so the audience understands, if I have an enchantment that says "when this enters the battlefield draw a card," if the creature I'm putting it on is not there, meaning it fizzles, then the effect doesn't happen.

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah, I'm just thinking more along the lines of it of a card like Curiosity, for example.

Mark Rosewater: 

Oh, sure, when it does damage. Sure.

Brian Weissman: 

Right, the idea that when the creature attacks and deals combat damage, you get to draw a card from it. So it's the idea that I really want to play this. But I recognize that if my opponent has three untapped, and he's playing red and white, there's a high probability--or black, he might be able to kill my creature at instant speed and I lose two for one. So by understanding that and waiting until he's tapped out, so that I guarantee that I at least get through for an attack, that at least nullifies the the aspect of that interaction that would result in me getting two for one.

Mark Rosewater: 

And the important point here for card advantage is, early on--like we go back to our first example, with the Divination, that has kind of card advantage separated from gameplay, right? If I cast the Divination, I am going up in card--I mean, barring some very weird cases, but I'm gonna go up in cards, and my opponent isn't interacting with that. I'm just gaining card advantage.

Brian Weissman: 

Exactly.

Mark Rosewater: 

But as we look at the stuff we're getting to now, it's like, there's a lot of card advantage that has to--from understanding the game and playing correctly and reading what your opponent's doing, that a lot of card advantage is putting myself in situations where I'm increasing card advantage or decreasing disadvantage, you know.

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah.

Can I give a fairly technical explanation of that idea?

Mark Rosewater: 

Sure.

Brian Weissman: 

I used to tell people that every time I tapped my Jayemdae Tome, you may die to a Serra Angel later, but every time that Jayemdae Tome taps you're taking four damage. And if I tap it five times over the course of the game, you've already lost. It may take a little while for my angel to eventually finish you, or the Mirror Universe or a Fireball, but you've lost to the Jayemdae Tome already. It's actually the win condition. 

So because the card is so critical to your victory, protecting it is critical as well. And that may lead you, in the case of using counter magic, which is the other tool that control decks use to control the board state, is the prioritizing of Counterspell to protect Jayemdae Tome above all else.

 So I might let you kill two or three things in play with a Counterspell in my hand, because I recognize that my route to victory is actually casting a Jayemdae Tome three turns from now with enough mana to protect it. So when you try to kill the Jayemdae Tome, I Counterspell that. Now you can't kill it. And now the Jayemdae Tome starts dealing four damage a turn until the game's over. And that's a high sort of high mastery behavior that takes a lot of time to figure out, and back to what you were saying--it means that you need to understand intrinsically as a player, where the sources of card advantage are as the context of the game evolves.

Mark Rosewater: 

Okay, the next thing I want to explain is, we use the term card advantage just because that's the term we've used forever.

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah.

Mark Rosewater: 

"Card" is a little--can be a little misleading. So I also want to say that there are other resources. Tokens probably being the most famous example. Meaning when we're talking about cards, what we mean is things that you can use. So for example, there are strategies in which I'm going to keep making tokens, and my tokens are my card advantage. That I'm going to beat you because you're not stopping me from making the tokens, and that tokens eventually will overwhelm you. And so, once again, I just want to explain that we use the term card advantage, but that doesn't even mean it has to be cards. As you said earlier, really, it's about resources.

Brian Weissman: 

Right.

Mark Rosewater: 

Cards are the simplest resources, but whatever the resource is, I'm doing something in which I'm going up on you. And token creatures are nice, because it's easy to understand. That, you know, if you have a token card to represent your token creature, and think of those as cards. You know, that's the other thing to understand is that there's many different facets for how you can do that. Okay, so--

Brian Weissman: 

(???)

Mark Rosewater: 

 Go ahead. Go ahead.

Brian Weissman: 

Oh no, it's fine. Go ahead.

Mark Rosewater: 

So now I want to explain where people get a little lost. Let's talk about looting. So looting is an effect where you draw a card and discard a card. So let's talk about, how is looting card advantage when you are not going up cards?

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah, it's quite enigmatic I think to a lot of players. It's--I liken it a little bit to--I'm sorry to introduce another concept, but I talked about the idea of milling too. And there are a lot of people that when you initially start playing, they think that having their library milled by a card--like Millstone for example just mills two cards when it's used--is card advantage. They're thinking, oh, look, I'm putting cards in your graveyard. I'm getting ahead. This feels important. It feels powerful. And it certainly elicits bad feelings. But they're obviously very distinctly different. Looting, which involves drawing one card and then discarding a card, versus milling cards from the top of your opponent's library are not the same thing. And the real reason why looting can actually be quasi-card advantage is because there is an aspect to card advantage, particularly as it pertains to the idea of resources. That is, has to do with context. It's contextual. Cards can be very powerful at some point. At other times, they can be utterly redundant. Lands in particular, right? If you--if your deck runs off three or four mana, once you get to three or four mana and you're not interested in doing two or three things in a turn, every additional land you draw after that is useless. It's basically like a dead draw. It's just like drawing a creature when your opponent has Moat in play. And so if you have the ability to loot, you can exchange a totally dead or useless situational card for something that might be more powerful at that moment. And so that card selection can inevitably lead to victory in the same way that just simply drawing more cards can too.

Mark Rosewater: 

And the way to think of it is, when we're talking about card advantage, one of the ideas we introduce is the idea that you can make dead cards. You can make cards that even though they have them in their hand or on the battlefield, they've lost their potency to win the game. To have any function. And so the reason that, you know, looting and things like it become very important for card advantage is, you need the ability to take sort of dead cards and turn them into live cards. And that is why looting--and there's a lot of other types of things. But anything in which I can trade, I can do a trade of a dead card for a live card--and when I say card, it could be a token, but you know, I'm taking a dead resource and turning into a usable resource. That is going up in card advantage from a virtual stand--I mean, that's why this gets very complicated, because...

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah, no, it does. I think you can't overstate the point of context and timing in a game of Magic. And I think a really good example would be the cards Brainstorm and the card Ancestral Recall. So Ancestral Recall, arguably the most powerful Magic card ever printed, one blue mana, instant, target player draws three. So it's one blue mana draw three at instant speed, plus two hand size, tons more resources and options, just a bonkers card. And not in print since Unlimited Edition a million years ago. 

Contrast it with Brainstorm, which was printed in Ice Age and then reprinted a bunch of times, a Commander staple, draw three cards, then take two cards from your hand and put them back on top of your library. And so to a relatively inexperienced player, they might see those two cards side by side and think, huh. They both draw you three cards for one blue mana at instant speed. They must be roughly the same. But the brainstorm is effectively a double looting. effect, whereas the Ancestral is an actual card drawing effect. So they're not mechanically the same at all in terms of how they increase your hand size. But in a lot of games, casting Brainstorm wins you the game just as fast as casting Ancestral Recall does, because it contextually draws three cards in your hand right away, gives you more resources and options in that moment, even if you have to put cards from your hand back on top of your library. And so you can kind of understand, even though we're not doing the same thing here, the impact on the game is the same. And it was actually so apparent. After a while in I guess it was Vintage, or maybe Type I format, that Brainstorm eventually had to be restricted. In Type I, right alongside Ancestral Recall. The cards were almost functionally the same in most situations, which is kind of a really amazing thing to consider. That draw once, loot twice is most of the time the same as draw, draw, draw.

Mark Rosewater: 

One last thing before we have to wrap up soon here. So the one other concept I want to throw in here is, you can turn things that aren't resources into resources. So for example, let's say I--what's a good... Yawgmoth's Will, I guess. I guess since we're going old school today. Yawgmoth's Will is a spell that lets you--when you cast it, you now can cast things out of your graveyard.

Brian Weissman: 

And play lands too.

Mark Rosewater: 

And play lands. But the idea there is, the sort of card advantage of it is, I took cards that were dead cards, cards in my graveyard, and I turned them at least even temporarily. And once again, we didn't even get into, like, card advantage can be temporary. I mean, there's a lot of nuance here. But by turning my graveyard into--I mean, it's kinda like I put them in my hand for the turn. I mean, at the end of turn, I have to discard them. So I don't get to keep them. But I get them for a turn. And that that is--Yawgmoth's Will is a very, very powerful card for that ability to just temporarily--

Brian Weissman: 

(???)

Mark Rosewater: 

Right, allow you to do something. Sort of give like temporary card advantage.

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah, I mean, imagine if Yawgmoth's Will read "one black, two generic, sorcery, draw your graveyard?"

Mark Rosewater: 

Yeah.

Brian Weissman: 

I mean, that's essentially what it is almost, right? But discard those cards at the end of the turn. It's almost exactly what that is. Three mana, draw your graveyard. That's pretty insane.

Mark Rosewater: 

And so what that also means is that part of card advantage could be turning things into a usable card that previously weren't a usable card. And so for example, there's a card called Intuition, where you get four cards out of your library, and then your opponent chooses two of them, they go in your hand, and the two other ones go to your graveyard. And the way that card gets used that's very efficient is, I don't care what you pick, the cards being in my graveyard is just as useful to me as the cards being in my hand. So for all intents and purposes, I've drawn four cards. I've gone up four cards.

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah, and in some--in many cases, actually, because of the effects like flashback and so on, you might actually be up even more than that, right? Because the two cards that go to the graveyard, you might be able to play them anyway. So you're drawing four cards at instant speed for three mana.

Mark Rosewater: 

So anyway, hopefully today--today was kind of an intro to card advantage--is, it's a very interesting thing, in that--like I said, Brian, when did you make The Deck? So it was like '94?

Brian Weissman: 

Built in--first version was probably early April of 1994.

Mark Rosewater: 

Okay, so The Deck is kind of known as being the first sort of named deck, you know. The internet wasn't quite what it is now. So it wasn't as easy to share information.

Brian Weissman: 

[Laughs] Not at all.

Mark Rosewater: 

But the idea that card advantage, which was like the--you know, it was the engine that ran The Deck, until modern day, like card advantage is still a very important part of just Magic theory. I mean, that's kind of why I wanted to walk them through today, is that part of getting better at Magic is understanding, how do I win? Why do I win? What makes me win? And there are other concepts, card advantage isn't the only thing that matters, but it is a very potent idea that was true, you know, almost 30 years ago and it's true today.

Brian Weissman: 

Yeah, I actually--I kind of--I wanted to talk very briefly to a card that's probably familiar to a lot of listeners, and that's the card Rhystic Study. From--which--I don't remember when it was printed...

Mark Rosewater: 

Prophecy, I believe is when it was.

Brian Weissman: 

In Prophecy, yeah. Incredibly powerful card that's all over the place in Commander, particularly because it's a very problematic mechanic when there's three other...

Mark Rosewater: 

(overlapping) Why don't you tell people what it does?

Brian Weissman: 

I'm sorry, yeah, one blue, two generic mana enchantment, it says whenever any opponent would cast a spell, any spell. If they do not pay an additional generic mana during the spell's resolution, actually on the casting of the spell. The Rhystic Study triggers and the controller of Rhystic Study draws a card. And once it's in play, all of the players have to monitor it if they're accountable to this. And what you'll notice is that the behavior of players around Rhystic Study is very demonstrative of their relative skill levels, and their understanding of the game in general. The savvy players, the people with experience understand that paying for Rhystic Study is very important. You can't just feed cards indiscriminately to the opponent. The less experienced players, the less sophisticated players who are more new to the game, will often just play stuff and not even pay the extra mana even when they can do it. And not out of some idea of collusion, it just doesn't occur to them that that's a thing that's quite deleterious to their ability to win the game. They just don't even notice. And so there's definitely a--there's kind of an evolution that goes on among players, where they go from being the person that happily just gleefully casts their spells into Rhystic Study, to being a person like me, who it causes me physical pain to allow players to draw cards, and I will bend over backwards to prevent you from ever drawing even one card from Rhystic Study, even if that means that it's constraining my development for you know, half the game, and you have to treat it that way. And when players really begin to recognize that--you can kind of do a gut check. Whenever you start to get that feeling that my opponent is drawing extra cards, and it's making me uncomfortable, you're kind of starting to understand what's going on and why it's so important.

Mark Rosewater: 

And the one thing I will say, for people that this is a new concept for them, the next time you play, it's kind of fun just to sort of notice--that's the first step I say when you're beginning, just try to notice when card advantage happens. Just be thinking about like, oh, I cast this one spell and they lost two spells. And once again, it could be on the battlefield, in their hand, just I spent one spell, and they lost two spells. You know, And the spells can be permanents, I mean, they can be, you know, tokens and stuff. But that's the first step, I think, to understanding card advantage, is just noticing it happening in the game.

Brian Weissman: 

Absolutely. And there was the--opportunities to make that observation are everywhere in the game of Magic. I mean, in a game of Commander, for example, you're often engaged in card advantage effects, literally from turn one. And every single decision you make from that point onward is predicated on, how do I get--how do I establish card advantage in this game? How do I draw more cards? How do I make my opponent discard more cards? How do I nullify key things that give them card advantage, or protect the things that give me card advantage and so on. And once you begin to understand that and you recognize that, you can sculpt an entire sort of meta strategy around that idea, and it's very effective.

Mark Rosewater: 

So I'm gonna leave everybody with one--here's the most important lesson I remember learning early in the early days, which comes out of card advantage isth e following, is--the thing that keeps you from getting better at Magic, is you. Like, you are making decisions that with more knowledge and more understanding, that you will--you know, like--absolutely anybody can get better. It's just a matter of saying, oh, I am doing things that if I learned not to do them, or I learned to do things a little differently, I will become a better Magic player. And that's a really important first step to be getting better at Magic is understanding that you are in control of whether you are better or not.

Brian Weissman: 

Yes, precisely, exactly. Just be self analytical, be self critical. Pay attention to what lets you win, and pay attention to what causes you to lose. And if you monitor that closely, you will inevitably improve. That's how we learned how to play this game in the first place. When I started playing in 1994, we had this little inscrutable manual, that we could barely even understand the rules in it much less the strategy. And it was just a systematic way of paying attention to what worked and what didn't work and really honing in on the key components, the key mechanics of Magic, and at the heart of it, at least in 1994 and even to this day, is card advantage. It informs everything. It's sort of the unified theory of everything in Magic, it kind of does come down to that.

Mark Rosewater: 

Okay, well, I want to thank you for being with us, Brian.

Brian Weissman: 

You're very welcome, Mark. Thanks for having me.

Mark Rosewater: 

I knew when we talked to this topic there was no better authority than you on card advantage. So I'm glad to have you with us.

Brian Weissman: 

Very, very glad to be on, Mark. Thank you.

Mark Rosewater: 

But anyway, guys, I can see my desk. So we all know what this means. This means instead of talking Magic, it's time for me to be making Magic. So I'll see you all next time. And once again, thanks, Brian.

Brian Weissman: 

Take care, Mark.

Mark Rosewater: 

Bye bye, everybody.

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater, transcript by https://otter.ai, editing by Lucas Harrington

I'm pulling out of my driveway! We all know what that means! It's time for another Drive to Work. And I still have that cold but I'm persevering. 

Okay, so today is another in my series, 20 Years, 20 Podcasts. We are up to lesson #19. Almost done. So the lesson #19 is, your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them. 

So the interesting thing about this lesson was, every other lesson that I gave during my speech I had hit upon some time in my writing or my podcasts. You know, I had hit upon them. If you actually were a regular listener of me, a reader of me, when you saw my 20 Years 20 Lessons, most lessons you'd have heard me talk about somewhere else before. This was the one lesson that I had not mentioned before. 

It's a very specific one, very technical one. I was doing a technical talk. So this is not something that had come up before. And some people I know, were a little taken aback. What do you mean, the audience doesn't know what they're saying. And so let me explain a little bit what I mean by that. 

 One of my jobs is I am a spokesperson for Magic. I've done a whole bunch of different podcasts about it. But the short version here is, I am on multiple social media. I have a Twitter account that has like, I don't know, 75,000+ followers, I have a Tumblr account where my blog is that I answer questions every day. And that has like 25,000 followers on it. I have a Google Plus account, I have an Instagram account. 

And on--so basically, I do a comic a daily comic called Tales from the Pit that I--every weekday that I put on all those channels. I have a poll that I do on my Twitter thing, obviously answer questions on my blog, on Tumblr, and I write an article every Monday on the website called Making Magic and I link to that through my various online media stuff. 

And then on Fridays, I have a podcast, I'm assuming you guys know that since you're listening to it. And then on Fridays, that gets posted, two episodes per week. And then on the following Monday with my column, it gets linked again. 

Now beyond just that, beyond the social media stuff, I do a lot of video work. I record a lot of stuff. I also travel some, I do a live thing called Blogatog Live. I do it every year at San Diego Comic Con, usually one other event, I've done it at PAX, I've done it at HasCon, this summer, I'll be doing it at Grand Prix Las Vegas, because we're doing a big 25 year celebration that I'll be at. 

And that's where I answer questions live, where I'm not--it's not filtered at all. Because when I answer them online, I can pick and choose what I want to answer. Live, I have to answer what gets asked to me. And I do a lot of interviews, I am being interviewed all the time. Some of which are audio, some are video. 

But anyway, I interact with the fans a lot. I do a lot of outreach. And it's not just a matter of me talking to the public, it's me getting to places where the public can talk to me. The public can ask me questions or tell me things. Like one of the things that happens on my blog all the time, is people don't even post questions. They're just like, "I have something I want you to know. And I will tell you." 

And so I get a lot of feedback. And for the regular listeners, know that I consider that feedback to be like a really, really important part of my job, a tool of my job. Because, you know, fundamentally, my job is to make sure that we are making things that you all want. Well, how do I do that? How do I know that? A big part of that is just listening to you and having you tell me what you want. A lot of this lesson talks about the--that the audience themselves is a tool, a valuable tool. 

So the metaphor I use for this for this lesson was going to the doctor. So you go visit the doctor, what is the first thing the doctor does? The doctor says to you, "How are you feeling? Tell me about you." Now, obviously the doctor will check you out, the doctor will listen to your heart and look at your ears and he'll check you out. But he doesn't stop at just checking you out. The first thing he does is inquire from you how you're feeling. 

And the reason is, a doctor understands the following thing. You are the expert on you. You know how you are feeling better than anybody else. If you have a problem or are in pain, or if there's any issues that you have, you're the one that's going to know best. So the doctor comes to you, as you are the expert of you. But once the problems are described, he doesn't ask you how to solve the problems. He solved the problems. Why does he solve the problems? Well, he's the one that's trained in medicine and you're not.

So, part of what I'm trying to say with this lesson is a couple things. One is, there's some training that goes into it. That one of the things I've learned--like, before I was a game designer, I was a television writer. And what I discovered is, when you work in some sort of creative thing, that's entertainment-based, and your audience, you know, you are entertainment to your audience. 

Meaning that they absorb a lot of it, and that you're something they enjoy. When they spend a lot of time with that, there becomes this belief that, well, they could do it. That oh, I could write a television show, oh, I can make a game. And usually my response to that is, well, if you think you can, try making one. 

Because what you will find is, there's a lot of craft that goes into it. a TV show, you might watch--you're like, for example, my example here is, I've been driving a car now for 34 years. I'm familiar with the car, I have a general sense of cars, I have some idea how cars work. Could I fix the car? No. You know, I mean, other than really minor issues, I can't solve the problems with my car. 

It's not that I'm not used to cars, it's not that I don't interact with cars, I literally am in a car, about an hour a day, every day. I mean, I drive a lot, I know my car. That doesn't mean I can fix my car, because the act of making a car is very different than using a car. 

And that is true for games and other creative endeavors, that somebody can play your game and enjoy your game. But that doesn't necessarily [mean] they understand the underpinnings of the game. 

And there's a bunch of reasons for that. One is, there's a craft that goes into it that they might not know. Now, I personally, one of my goals has been to share the craft of Magic design with the audience. 

You know, if you want to design your own Magic stuff, and you want to understand the craft of Magic design, I am not exaggerating, I've written millions of words on this topic. Between, you know, between my podcast and my column and my blog, and I generated millions of words. Millions of words on the topic. So if you want to know how Magic is made, there is a lot of education you could do. 

And one of the things that's really interesting, like doing something like the Great Designer Search, is seeing people who really have studied it. Who really have said, I want to understand the craft of Magic. And the key, by the way to understanding the craft is not just reading about it, but actively doing it. 

So there are a lot of educated--in fact, there are probably more educated Magic players than there are a lot of other things, because I've spent a lot of time and energy educating the Magic public. 

But, I don't educate them on everything. And there's a couple reasons for that. One is, there's a lot that goes into making Magic. I did a whole podcast once about all the different people that you have to deal with when you're making a design. 

That there's developmental issues, there's art issues, there's story issues, there's templating issues and editing issues. There's rules issues, there's digital implementation issues, there's tournament implementation issues, there's brand issues, there's marketing issues, there's sales issues, there are printing issues. There's endless number of issues. You know. 

That when you make a Magic set, there's so many different people you have to interact with. And I've shared with you as much as I can, sort of the stuff I do. But that's not all the stuff that gets done on Magic. 

So here's a good example of something where this didn't come up until it came up. Like it's something that I knew. But until there was a moment to explain it, I never had a reason to explain it. 

So they were middle of Theros, I believe. And there are gods, there's a whole bunch of gods. In the first set there were five mono-colored gods, kind of the major--there are like major gods and minor gods. 

So the five major gods each had an artifact. You know, a hammer, a bow, a whip, you know. And these were powerful, you know, god-created artifacts. So because in Theros, the gods were all enchantments, in addition to other things, that these were enchantment artifacts. 

And a lot of players complained that we didn't make them equipment. Because it was a hammer. Why can't I give the hammer to my my goblin? And what the answer was, is it didn't fit on the card typeline. And they came back and they said, oh, well, that would be so many letters. But wait, here's a card--you put in this card, and this has that many letters. So why can't you do it? 

And then I had to explain typography. When you print stuff, letters have a width. All letters are not equidistant. They're not the same width. For example, an L is skinny, an M is wide. You in fact can have three L's or you could have one M. 

And so the point I made is, the other thing that we were able to print just had skinnier letters. Yes, it had the same number of letters, but the issue in typography isn't the number of letters, it's the total width. Because you're fitting it into a space.

Now my point there is, that's something that we as a business have to care about. I don't really think about that until it matters, like, until the editing team comes to me and says, hey, it just won't fit. We need to adjust this. You know, then we adjust it. 

It's the kind of thing that until somebody asked me about, like--when I'm explaining how I do my job, that is a relevant thing that will have an impact every once in a while on what I do. But yeah, I never mentioned it before, because it never came up in the context. 

So A, there's things that I'm willing to explain, but just haven't, some of it has to do with areas outside of expertise. Some of that has to do with just, hey, I never got there, it's a narrow situation that doesn't come up much, and I never happened to get there in any of my writing. 

And now the other thing is, there's proprietary information. Like there's things we do, like I talk a lot about collation. I mention the concept of collation, but I don't mention the details of collation. That's proprietary. You know, we don't want people to know how we collate. So I'll give you the gist of what we do, but not the details of what we do. 

But that matters. So for example, when I'm making a set, collation will directly impact what I can do. How I can get the cards in the pack, or how we can lay them out matters on how the set is built, like--even how many cards are in the set has to do with how we collate it. So like, there's information that's super important. But it's not something the audience knows. 

Then another big category would be the future. We're designing cards not in a vacuum, or sets not in a vacuum, but in an environment. And you guys might know what precedes it, but you don't know what comes after it. 

The classic example of this would be, we had made a set called Shadows over Innistrad that had a strong graveyard component. The set that followed it was Kaladesh. Traditionally, what we do is we give answers in the following block to the block before it. 

But we didn't, we didn't really give a lot of graveyard answers to Kaladesh. And the reason we didn't was, the set after Kaladesh, Amonkhet, again, had some graveyard elements that we were trying--we were trying this experiment where blocks two apart from each other repeated themes. It didn't work out great. 

But anyway, because of that, we didn't want to sort of undermine an upcoming set. So when the audience was yelling at us, how can you not do Thing X? It was because, well, because of reasons why that you don't know. 

So that's another big thing is, that, you know, the audience does not have all the information. One of the reasons the audience can't always give answers that are crisp, and clean, clean and clear, is they don't know all the factors that are going into it. 

Now, here's another one, which is what I call player bias. Or it's really audience bias. It's true of any, probably, art, but I'll talk about in terms of game design. And what I mean by that is, Magic has many components. That if you just take a Magic card, for example, and chop it up into all its components, I don't know, there's like 20 components on a Magic card or something. There's a lot of elements to a Magic card. 

Not every person cares about every facet of the card. For example, there are some people who the art--it's not that they dislike the art. It's not that they don't, you know, if you took the pictures away, they might be unhappy there's no pictures, you know. 

But the art is just like--it's a thing that helps me recognize the card. The artist, I don't know who the artist is, I don't learn who the artist is. It doesn't matter to me, you know, I just want the picture so I visually can remember what the card is. But the artist isn't a thing to me. 

Meanwhile, there's other people who the art is the thing that really, really matters to them. And knowing who the artist is, is super important. And whether--let's say we have a card that's like a reference to an old card, the fact that we reuse the old artist is a big deal to them. And if we don't, it would be something they would complain about, and it would lessen the card for them. So, like, here's an example of something in which, for one person, it's a giant deal. For others it's almost invisible, because it's not something they care about. 

So in general, one of the problems that--not problem, but one of the issues the audience has is, you have your own bias for how you see the game. And as far as you're concerned, that is what the game is. If you like playing a certain format or a certain way, or care about a certain kind of card, that's what a game means to you. 

So when there's a problem, A, you are more likely to identify problems in your area of expertise. And when you go to solve them, you prioritize what you care about. So a lot of times the way people will solve it is, I care about Thing A, B or C? Well, there's an easy solution. But that easy solution assumes that that is the number one priority. 

You know, and I mean it makes sense that people will prioritize their priorities, that's why they're priorities. But it also, when we are making a Magic set, we have a lot of priorities that we have to deal with. There's a lot of players we have to deal with. And I can't just make one kind of player happy, I need to make all the players happy. 

And what that means is on any one card, I have figured out who that card is for and maximize it for that person. But on another card, I'm maximizing for a different person. So when someone looks at a set, what they're normally thinking--I mean, I've done a lot of education, some players get this now, but I'm not making every card for the same player. So if you look at every card and go, this card could be better for me, yes it could, There are things we could do that make that card better for you. 

So here's a classic problem we run into all the time. So there's a format called Commander. Commander has one character, a commander, that sort of the deck is focused through. And to pick a commander, you have to pick a legendary creature. So whether or not I make a creature legendary determines whether or not that creature can be a commander. 

Okay, so let's say I make what we call a lord. Which is a card that makes a race better. Makes a tribal race better. Race or class. So you know, I make goblins better. I make birds better. I make merfolk better. You know. That they, they enhance in some way. 

So whenever we make a tribal lord of some kind, there's pressure. Because if you want to make a deck about that tribe, and you have something that can enhance them, and that thing stacks, let's say it's +1/+1, well, I want to be able to get multiples in play. Like let's say all my goblins get +1/+1. Well, I want to get four of those in play, and now all my goblins get +4/+4. 

But if I'm a Commander player, and I love goblins, and I want a commander for my goblins, hey, I want a legendary goblin that helps goblins. So right off the bat, here's the card that, if I make it legendary, I make one group happy and make another group unhappy. But if I make it not legendary, I make the the other group happy. but the first group not happy. I can't make everybody happy. That there's decisions you make in the game that will go one way or the other. 

So one of the things as the game designer, you have to realize is, it is your job to prioritize everything. That you have to look at all the players and all the things you're doing, and make those larger priorities. Your player base does not do that. Partly they don't do that because they don't know everything. Partly they don't do that, because that's not their priorities. And so one of the things when the audience is giving you feedback, they are not taking into account your priority. 

So here's another big one, for example. One of the things that most game designers have to worry about is the business side of it. For example, in Magic, one of my jobs, in fact, a pretty important job of mine is selling booster packs. If we don't sell enough booster packs, and don't make enough money, you know, we have to lay off staff, we have to--you know, part of what we do is we're a business. 

And now, one of my goals as someone who makes Magic is, the reason I want Magic to sell so well is it's so much fun that people want to buy it. You know, a big part of my goal to sell Magic is just make it so awesome that you want it. But there are other concerns that come up. There are other business decisions that get made. There are other things we do where we are prioritizing things. 

Like for example, I'll give a good example of this, is maximizing resources. So for example, let's say I'm making a set. And I feel I've gotten the set to the point where it makes everybody happy. I have to be careful not to overstuff that set. Why? Because I have to make everybody happy on all sets. And if I have a lot of really cool things, if I put too much cool things in one set, that just makes the next set harder to make cool. 

So like one of the things that I'm constantly doing is I'm making sure that I'm managing our resources. Now given, I want to cross the threshold of making everyone ecstatic for the set I'm doing. I just don't need to go--like once I'm above the line, I don't need to keep adding on top of that.

Another good example is, like with planeswalkers. There's a lot of design space in planeswalkers that is yet untapped. But that's on purpose, because it is one of our most popular and important card types. Like it is by far the most popular card type from just a player excitement level. We don't make a lot of them, and the design space is tight. 

So I've been really holding back, and there's a lot of things we could do. But I'm trying to mine the space. Like here we have something that's a really important resource. And I want to make sure that we're not burning through equity too fast. So I've been holding us back saying, let's carefully advance. Let's make small advancements. Because I want to preserve the design space. 

Now, when other people are designing their own sets, do they worry about that? No. No, they don't. You know what I'm saying? That is something that is very business-oriented, in that the long term health of the game is something that really, really is important. 

Now, given if people understand some of these, I'm not saying that designers wouldn't follow that. But it's a complex thing. And it's something that I briefly touch upon. But it's much, much more important to me than it is to the average person, because it's my job to make sure that, you know, I have years and years and years and years of Magic sets to make that need to be awesome. And I can't do that if I just put all the awesome in one set. And the other sets are like not that good. I have to spread it around. 

So when I say that the audience is not great at solving problems, I'm not dissing the audience. I know when I first said that some, people were like, why are you dissing the--I'm not saying the audience isn't capable of understanding the game. I'm saying--I mean, it basically it comes down to three things. 

One is, there's some training they don't have. Second is, there's information they don't know. And third is, there's biases that they have, that there's no reason for them to lose them. I mean, once you're going to make Magic, I mean, if you're trying to make Magic for fun, and you want to really, really make Magic, like we make Magic, yes, at some point, you have to understand your biases, and move beyond them. 

But if you're just playing Magic for fun, you don't need to--play the part you like. There's no requirement that you play all the cardsin any one set. Find the cards you like, build the decks you like, play those things. You know, we create so much content so that people can handpick what they do. The average person can do the things they enjoy, they don't have to do the things they don't enjoy. 

So a lot of these things of why the audience sort of gives answers that aren't the perfect answer is not a bad thing about the audience. It's just, hey, this is their entertainment. This is something they do for fun. 

When it's a job, you know, you have different--like, I spent a lot, and my colleagues, and we spend a lot of time worrying about the minutiae of minutiae. Tiny, tiny things, like the width of letters, you know, things that you guys really don't need to worry about. But that we do. And because of that, when decisions need to be made, when we're trying to solve problems, a lot of times the audience is just not going to understand that or not know that. 

Okay, so let's get to the other piece. So there's another big piece. I've been talking a lot about the audience response. Let me talk a little bit about what this lesson is saying for you, the game designer. The real big lesson to me is, one of the most important things when you're a creative of any kind, or actually--making things of any kind--is, you need to understand your tools, because a craftsman is only as good as the tools they have access to. 

And one of the things that I'm trying to sort of illuminate with this lesson is, your audience is a valuable, valuable tool. Much like my doctor metaphor. If you want to know if they enjoy your game--no one's going to know whether the game is enjoyable more than the audience playing the game. 

Now, you might say, but wait, I play the game. But you have--on some level, there's so many things you have to care about. Because you're so removed, and you're caring about all the minutiae, it is hard for you to sort of drop that information. You know, it's hard for you to have the first impression, it's hard for you--that you on some level, because you've gained information to understand some technical stuff, it becomes harder for you to not see--you know, it's harder to not see the forest for the trees, you know. 

That you're so holistic in what you're doing, that sometimes it's--you know, one of the things I love about playtests is, some of them just go, hey, this makes no sense. And you're like, yeah, that doesn't. How did I not see that? Because I was just looking at things from a different vantage point.

The example I give is, I used to direct. I used to be a playwright, and I would direct. And one of the things that was really illuminating is, having actors, because your actor is all about one character. And they're so focused on that one character, and how that one character interacts with everybody else, that they ask questions of you that are awesome that you never thought of, because you even as a playwright, don't have the luxury to sort of isolate yourself in each character for as much as the actor does, because the actor has only one character they have to care about. And they get to a depth that you don't normally get to. And they ask questions that you might not think about. And it's really interesting. 

And one of the collaborative elements of theater is that the actors really, you know, I love when the actors say, I want to understand--and sometimes, it's not even that you didn't think of it, but it reminds you that--like during the creation, you did think of it, but you sort of forgot that you thought about it, and it pulls things back out. 

So I want you to think of the audience as a valuable tool in your toolbox. They know things that you need to know. Like, your job in making a game is making something enjoyable for them. How do you know if it's enjoyable? you gotta ask them. 

Now, I talk a lot about playtesting. Playtesting is super valuable. You know, if you are making something, you need to see the audience experience it as they're supposed to experience it. If you're making a movie, you have to show it to them as a movie. If you're writing a book, they have to read it as a book. If you're making a game, they gotta play it as a game. That is super important. 

And that part of this lesson is, that if you have an audience who plays your game--I understand if you're making a brand new game, you might not have this luxury just yet. But if you at all are making a game in which there's an active audience, you know, that you can still make decisions while the audience can see things.

Now, in video games, there's a lot of--they get to change things on the fly, right? We don't get to do that in tabletop. But the idea is, oh, this sword is too powerful, they can nerf the sword, they can make the sword worse. Or they can make it something better, you know, they can change things, as the game evolves to sort of help balance. They can balance things after the fact. 

So one of the things that's super important is, you know, understanding that your audience is available, and then understanding what it is they're good and bad at. Your audience is going to have opinions. 

Now, be clear. I'm not saying not to listen to your audience's opinions, like your audience will suggest things. I'm not saying you're supposed to ignore their suggestions. Mostly, what I'm saying is, their hit rate tends to be very low. For the reasons I explained. You know, they do not have all the information. And they do not necessarily understand the craft. And they don't know lots of things. 

And there's minutiae that they--you know, there's inherent biases. There's all sorts of reasons why their answers usually aren't the perfect answer. That doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to their answers. Sometimes they do have a good answer. But what I'm trying to say is, in general, having done this a long time, and listened to a lot of players, usually the players don't provide the--I won't say they don't provide a solution, they don't tend to provide the best solution, given the larger issues at hand. 

And so one of the things that I'm trying to say to you, the game designer, is--there is a reason, especially in the age of social media, now. You need to be familiar with your audience. You need to have a relationship with your audience. Make no mistake, the reason I'm so active on social media--I mean, A, I'm inherently a communicator with my background. But more so than that, I understand the great value. 

Like one of the things, for example, at work is, I'm known for being really in touch with the players. Now that's not like some inherent quality of me, it's not like I just intuitively know what the players want. I know what the players want because I spend hours upon hours upon hours talking with them and listening to them and answering the questions. 

You know, the reason I know players are upset about something is--a couple things. One is, I've made myself available for them to talk to. So it's not just a matter of listening, it's also a matter of creating a relationship with them, where they feel comfortable to talk to you.

You know, I've spent years and years becoming this person that they know they can talk to. So that they do talk to. And, you know--I mean, be aware, by the way, there's--I mean, the one side effect of being the face, if you will, is you will get all the feedback. The good feedback and the bad feedback. If they love something even that has nothing to do with you, you will get credit for. If they hate something even though it's nothing to do with you, you will get blamed for it. Because you are who they know. So you get the credit and you get the blame. 

By the way, my my my tip to you as someone who does this is, share the credit. Meaning when they give you--when they say wonderful things, try to share with them who deserves the credit, meaning share the credit, and suck up the blame. Just take the blame. Do not--if something is wrong, I'm sorry, it was wrong. You know. 

In general, what I've found is, explaining that you didn't make the decision doesn't really--it just comes across as you not wanting to own up that something went wrong. Accept the blame. Share the credit, take the blame. That is the harsh reality of being the face of game. 

Get out there. Interact with your player base. And, what we in communication call  two way addressability. Talk with them, meaning, share information with them, get information from them and have a back and forth. 

Like one of the things I like to do on my blog is, I often will--someone will ask me something, I'll talk about it, and then that spurs other people to ask and then I will purposely, like--I like creating themes for the day where there's some topic that we get on, that people get interested in. 

And I purposely sort of help promote that, like, that's the theme of the day. You know, I like sort of--oh, we're talking about this thing? Well, let's really dig in deep on this thing. Because sometimes I'm like, oh, this is a cool topic. I want to go deeper on it. 

Like one of the reasons I started my poll, my Head to Head poll, is, I want people to give opinions of, what do you think on this thing? And I found the polls definitely generate conversation. You know, some days I'm like, what do you like better, A or B, and like people are like, oh, and they really get into and talk about it. 

And, you know, we've made decisions. For example, there's a set coming out called Dominaria. In it, there's wizard tribal, we care about wizards. And that directly came about from, I had done Head to Head on creature types. And wizards did way better than we would. We're like, wow, people really like wizards. And you know what? We haven't done that much wizard tribal. We've done some. But you know what, it makes sense in this world, people have shown they really are interested in it. Let's do it. And so, you know, while I'm trying to create entertainment, I'm also always looking for opportunity to gather information. To find ways to learn more things about my players. And then, I apply it. 

So go out there. How much information you share about your game is up to you. I absolutely am in the far end camp, I share a lot about my game. Like I said, I've shared millions and millions of words about my game. I think there's a lot of benefit that comes with your audience understanding your processes and why you did things. 

The big gain to me is that they have a much better appreciation of what you do, that when you explain all the nuances, they get to see and recognize things that sometimes they don't. One of the things that happens all the time when I explain stuff, is them going, oh, I never noticed that. But now that you point it out, that's really cool. So one of the things about talking about what you do is there's some--it increases the appreciation your audience has for the the game you're making.

Now, that said, you don't want to give away all your secrets. I talk a lot about the importance of discovery. I'm not saying you want to share everything, You know, we make a big deal to not tell you what the good cards are, let you find decks or find combos, you know, we try not to sort of spoil the fun of you discovering things. 

But I do like to talk about sort of how things get put together, things that you would never necessarily learn on your own. Those are good things to share, where, you know, you're going to learn what the good cards are, or what the best decks are, you're going to learn that. But how we put this mechanic together, you're never going to learn without me telling you. So that's good things to share. 

And in general, the other thing I find is, the more you share with the audience, the more they share with you. For example, what I found on my blog is, the more questions I answer, the more questions I get. And I mean,  on a day to day basis. Like let's say I have a really busy day, and I only get to answer like 10 questions. Okay. I don't--I mean, I get some, because I always answer questions, I get questions. But I just get less questions that day. 

Meanwhile, let's say I'm out and about, or I'm somewhere where I have a lot of waiting time because my kids are doing something and I'm just sitting around. And so I have opportunities to answer a lot of questions. I'll just generate a lot more questions that day. Because they'll see I'm answering it, and you know, when you see I'm answering, you're more likely--or even I prompt you, I answer a question that prompts you to ask a question. Just the more I answer, the more people ask. 

So what I would say is, you want to get out there, you want to share some stuff, internal processes that make sense for you. You want to sort of answer questions where you can, and you want to create a means by which your audience--you have a conduit by which your audience can explain what they want. 

And the point of this rule today is, the most valuable part of that is them defining the problems. The audience is really, really good at saying where they're happy and saying where they're upset. And when they're saying where they're upset, they're really good at pinpointing why they're upset. 

Now sometimes, by the way--actually I should dial back a little bit. Sometimes they're really good at saying what upsets them. And with a little bit of digging, you can find out why it upsets them. They don't always tell you up front why it upsets them. I get that a lot actually because I just, I've created a strong rapport with them. Meaning I get more whys than I think the average person because of the relationship I've created with my audience. 

Usually they'll tell you what they're unhappy with first. I don't like this thing. This thing in the game I don't like. You then need to work with them a little bit to understand why. They don't always tell you why they don't like something. But with rapport you can get there. 

I have a pretty good rapport with my audience, and I've actually gotten to the point now where I've educated them that I want the why. That--don't just tell me you dislike something, tell me why you dislike it. Because the why on some level is even more important than the what. Because yeah, yeah, you can change the what, but if you don't understand the why, you might just recreate the problem. 

Understanding the why is understanding the source of the problem, not the result of the problem. And yeah, yeah, you can fix the result. But treating symptoms is not, you know, you want to figure out what its cause is--I said that wrong. You don't--a doctor isn't just like, oh, you have splotches, what's causing those splotches. They want to get to the root of the problem. And the same, what you want to do. 

So when you get out there, get a voice, get a rapport with your audience, find out what they dislike, then find out why they dislike it. They will also offer up solutions. I'm just saying take that with a grain of salt. For all the reasons I explained today, that is not the most valuable piece of information you'll get from them. The most valuable information you'll get is what and why--and how sometimes. You know, how it is working wrong for them. Understanding all the components of where their satisfaction comes from will allow you, the person with the craft and with the the full information to understand how to fix it. Because you have all the information, where they don't.

So anyway, I'm (???) at work. Anyway, a lot of what I'm trying to say today is that you as a game designer have a responsibility to go outside the bubble of your game. That the audience is there, I'm assuming the audience is. Your new game, that's not true. But if the audience is there, ignoring your audience is not doing the full work of a game designer. That, you know, if you are trying to make your audience happy, you gotta go to your audience to understand if they're happy and why they're happy and what makes them happy. And what makes them unhappy. 

You know, you need to go out--that this is a--not just a valuable resource, I would say a fundamental resource. That if you have an audience and you are not tapping into them, if you're not using them to understand what isn't working about your game, you are not maximizing. You are not doing the best job you can as a game designer. 

And that really is the point of today's thing, is, you know, a lot of people want to focus on the aspect where the audience is good at this one thing. They're awesome at this other thing. They're amazing at this other thing. They are better than anybody else at this one component. 

And yes, yes, this other component, they're not as strong at for many reasons I've explained, but the first thing they're amazing at. So if you are a game designer, you need to be tapping into that. 

And, part of what I want to say today is, that is not something that instantaneously is just there. You don't just *poof* have rapport with your audience. You don't even have a conduit to your audience necessarily. You need to foster those, to find them, to foster them, to build them. 

That--I mean, if you don't have a community, to help build communities is really important. I mean, Magic has a lot of built in communities. But you need to make sure your game has a community. And you want it--like, part of building your game is building the conduits into it so that the audience has a means to get to you. Because that information, connecting their information with you, is what is going to take your game from good to great. 

Okay, so anyway, I am now parked, so we all know that means. This is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking Magic, it's time for me to be making Magic. I'll see you guys next time.

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

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

Okay, so today is another in my series, 20 Lessons 20 Podcasts, based on my GDC talk in 2016. So I'm up to Lesson Number 18. Restrictions breed creativity.

So a quick caveat. This is probably the lesson I'm most associated with. And as such, it is definitely a topic that I broach quite a number of times on my podcast. So for regular listeners, I'm going to talk about some stuff that I know I've talked about before. But a lot—this series is gets a lot of listening from game designers that aren't necessarily magic players. So I'm going to talk about some stuff. So just a heads up that I know I hit some of these themes before, because I'm talking about something that means a lot to me, and I’ve talked a lot about.

Okay, so restrictions breed creativity. So, let me start, as I always do on the things, with an example from Magic. So I write a column called Making Magic every Monday, since 2002. I've been writing this column, I think I'm up to my like 850th column.

And so one of the things when we started writing the column, we had this thing where—things have changed a little bit since then. But when we first started, the way it worked was, every other week was a theme week. And then every other week from that was not a theme week. So on theme weeks, I would always write to the theme, and the non-theme weeks, I could write whatever I wanted. So the question was, which was harder? Writing for the theme weeks, or writing for the non-theme weeks? And the answer was, the non-theme weeks were significantly harder, significantly harder.

And it gets to the crux of what this whole topic today is about, which is, there's this myth about creativity, that being open, having choices makes you more creative. That what a creative mind wants is infinite possibilities. And the funny thing is, that's not really how the brain works. That is not—like when I had my theme week, when I knew what my theme week was like, okay, and I had to figure out what I was doing. But I would work within the theme week. And when I didn’t have my theme weeks, when I could do anything, that was infinitely harder. You know what I’m saying? In fact, a lot of times I would sort of try to find something—I would give myself some limitations to help myself.

So let me talk a little bit about creativity and about—and once again, I did an entire podcast on creativity, I wrote an article online called Connect the Dots, where I talked about what I believe creativity is. And my whole idea on creativity is it's the ability to connect things that other people don't see as connected. That's what I believe creativity is. And I believe it's a skill that—it’s a muscle that you get better with use. But we'll get to that in a second.

So let's talk a little bit about brain chemistry. Because this will explain a lot about what's going on here. Okay, so why is it easier if you have something than if you don't have something? And let me talk about that. So okay, so the way the brain works is the brain is a really smart organ. That it really is the smartest organ. So what happens is, whenever your brain sees a problem, meets a problem, it goes in its data banks, it goes, “Wait wait wait. Have I dealt with this problem before? Let me look it up.” And if it has, then it uses the things that used last time.

Now most of the time, this is really, really good. That if I want to solve a problem, and I solve it, next time I go to solve the problem, if I've already solved it, I don't want my brain to start from scratch again, I want my brain to use the knowledge I've learned before. So if I don't know how to do something, and I learn how to do it, the next time I'm trying to face that thing, my brain goes, “Whoa whoa whoa, I got this, I know how to do this.”

Now most of the time that's really good. The brain functioning that way is really helpful. There's no reason why you should relearn something you already know. But, and this is a problem for creativity is, because of this technique of your brain, to sort of make things easier by reusing pathways, what happens is, if you approach a problem that you've already approached before, your brain, its natural thing to do is approach it from the exact same way, literally with the same neural pathways. Now the problem there is, it gets you to the same answer.

Now normally, that's a good thing. If I want to know how to do something, if I'm trying to figure out how to cook something or whatever I'm trying to do. If I'm trying to learn how to do it, I want to come to the same conclusion. I want to go, oh, this is the way to do it.

With creative thought though, it's the one place where it's a problem. If I'm trying to come up with something different and my brain keeps wanting to come up someplace that's the same, well, that causes a problem. And so one of the things that often happens when you're trying to do game design is, if you approach your problems from the same vantage point, you get the same answers.

And, it is--the thing that's even I guess, about this, that’s subtler is, it's not that you're even aware necessarily that using the same neural pathways. When I explain it, when I say, “Well, here's how the brain works,” you sit back and you go, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense.” But when you think about how, like, one of the things that's very interesting, is figuring out when what you do, which makes sense in most places doesn't make sense somewhere.

So for example, yeah yeah yeah, most of the time when I want to learn how to do something I want to build on experience from before. But what happens in creative thought is, it just means that I keep coming up with the same answers. And when your goal is to come up with new answers, that can be very frustrating.

So the way the—really what this means is that if you want to be creative, you have to understand the limitations of your brain. Or not even the limitations as much as the nature of your brain. So the trick here is, if you want to be creative, what that means is, you have to get in the habit of learning to give your brain different stimuli. So let me use Magic as my example.

I right now am working on—it’s codenamed Cricket. I’m sorry—yeah, I'm working on Cricket, and I’m matter of fact doing exploratory design on Diving. And a lot of what's going on is—and I—you know, this is my 25th set? 30^th set? I don’t know, I've led a lot of sets. You know, I think I've led about 20, 25ish sets.

So how is it my 25 sets are different from one another? Well, there's a couple of factors. The biggest is one of the things I do whenever I'm making a new set, is I try to figure out something to do that I haven't done before, I try to give myself a goal that's a unique goal for that set.

So for example, when I do a top-down set, meaning influenced by some flavor, well, if I've never done that before, if this is the first time I've ever tried to make Greek mythology, or Gothic horror, or you know, whatever down theme I'm doing, right off the bat, I'm like, okay, you know that the first thing I do on top down sets is I make a list of all the things that that thing would want. So right off the bat, well, I haven't done that before.

Now, sometimes I'm doing what we call bottom-up, which is a mechanical-based thing, not a flavor-based. And then it's like, okay, like, for example, Ravnica came about, because we were doing our second ever block dedicated to multicolor. So I literally said, “Well, what does the last block make you do?” And the answer was, “Play lots of colors.” So I was like, “Okay, let's do the opposite. Let's play as few colors as possible while still being multicolor,” which meant two-color. You know, that I sort of found that space by pushing against where I'd been before. So whenever I start a set, one of the things that I always try to do is, I try to make sure that I'm just—I just have a different goal in mind. I'm just trying to do something different.

Another big thing I do is we have design teams. I try hard not to have the same design teams. That I want different stimuli coming in. That, for example, that just having different people means I'm going to get different questions. I'm going to get different input. I'm going to get different designs. That part of the way that I make sets different is just having different people getting involved in it.

Another common thing I will do is that I try to push in certain directions, I like to give a bullseye. So one of the big things I believe about leading a design is that you, the person in charge of the design, are trying to give direction to your designers. You are trying to make a bullseye to aim for.

Now be aware that just because you aim at one thing at one point doesn't mean that's always where you're aiming. But it's good that the people on your design team, your designers have a direction. That they know what they're trying to accomplish. And a lot of what I'm talking about today is, I want to make sure that my goal is a unique goal. And then I have a unique set of people that I'm doing that with so that I'm trying to do something I haven't done before.

And the big thing about sort of understanding this is that I think people falsely believe that the limitations themselves will inhibit creativity. That, you know, if I have neat creative ideas, that having outside limitations would somehow hamper it. Like the idea essentially is, I within me have this, you know, they used to talk about when they do sculpture, I think Michelangelo believed that the thing he was sculpting was already in the marble, he was just freeing it from the marble. I think there's people that believe that, like, you have these great ideas, and just you have to find the great ideas.

And the reality is an actual sort of--I think there's this false belief sometimes that the idea already exists, and all you are doing is discovering it. And that any limitations you do might pull you away from finding this beautiful piece of art trapped in, you know, in limbo. And the reality is, that it is these restrictions and is these ideas that you tend to build off of.

So I'm gonna compare the making of an idea to an oyster. So the way an oyster gets made, for those that don't know is, a clam will get a piece of sand or something in it. And the irritants will it—it will form, it'll make a little whatever the pearl stuff is, but it starts forming around it. And then actually, a pearl is something that sort of, there was an irritation, and it was dealing with the irritation, and slowly sort of creates this thing.

And essentially, the funny thing is, I don't think the role of the clam was to make pearls per se. It's not like I hope clams—oysters. Oysters make pearls? So oysters make pearls, not clams, oysters. [LTH--Apparently they both can.] That the goal of pearls wasn't necessarily, like—the oyster didn't exist to make the pearl per se, that the pearl was a byproduct of it trying to do something. And that a lot of great ideas are a lot like that little grain of sand to make the pearl, which is you get something in your craw, and you try to sort of work around it. And that thing inspires things.

Like a lot of great inspirations for me have come about when I was trying to sort of solve a problem. And it was—like elegant solutions, I call them, are a lot of where the great—like a lot of the thunderbolt moments are not that I had this idea out of nowhere, it is I found—I had a problem I was trying to solve, and the elegant solution came to me.

And I think a lot of creativity is in fact elegant problem solving. It's, I need to do something, I need to find a solution to this, I can't find an obvious solution, and then I find a non-obvious solution, but something that makes me realize, oh, if I think of it in this way, it opens it up. And it gives me some new possibilities. And like I said earlier, I believe creativity is the connecting of things that don't normally connect. So a lot of cool sort of creative moments is, oh, here's something else I've learned in a completely different field that you wouldn't think has anything to do with this. But it does. And if you think of it this way, but you know—a lot of great insights are applying things you learned elsewhere to a field that you haven't applied it to.

There's a great book that I'm completely blanking on the name right now, that talks a lot about how a lot of great scientific discoveries were, in fact, people from one field bringing their expertise to a different field. And saying, “Oh, well, here's something we know is true in this field. If we bring it to this field,” you know… and the idea is, you know, “Oh, because this is true in one area, is there some truth to it in another area?”

From a writing standpoint, I've talked a lot about that one of the things that's very common is for writers to have a theme, and that theme carries through their work. And a lot of what makes different works is them taking their theme and applying it in different ways. And this idea of sort of—you having ideas for criss crossing, you know, hybriding the ideas is where I think a lot of things come from. But it is not this idea that I have nothing, that ideas come from nothing, that I just spontaneously make an idea out of whole cloth. That isn't really how the brain works. It's not how ideas work. Usually what happens is, it's me forming around something to try to figure that out.

So let me get to some practical advice today. So what am I trying to say with this lesson? Creativity—restrictions breed creativity. What does that mean? Okay, number one. It means you want to bring restrictions into your work, that restrictions are not a negative, but a positive. And what I mean by that is, when you're building something, understand that you having things that speak to you, you having ideas to work around are a good idea that one of the—to me the creative process is, there's a part early on, where you're sifting through ideas, and then find something that speaks to you.

And it's not important that you understand why it speaks to you. That's not even important, necessarily. It's just that something about it really makes you keep coming back to it. That there's something about the concept that says, this interests me. And then what I say is, bring those things into your work, things that just sort of gnaw at your consciousness that sort of like just go, oh, there's something about this, that really—even if you don't understand why, really intrigues you. Because a lot of creativity is building off of something. And so if you start with a thing that just really interest you, it will build toward interesting things.

The second thing is that I want you to understand this dynamic, because often in game design, or any creative endeavor, you'll get stuck. That you're trying to do something, then you get in what I call the loop. Where you sort of keep doing the same thing and getting the same answer. And it just gets frustrating, because you just can't seem to break out of it.

So what I say there is, another great way to use this is a very good trick, which is, sometimes when you're stuck, take a restriction that's not necessary, but put it in anyway. So for example, sometimes I'm trying to design cards, and just I keep designing the same thing. So I'm going to add a restriction, I'll just add a restriction. And sometimes what I'll do is I'll add a crazy restriction, not even a nonsensical restriction. So like I'm designing cards and like, okay, okay, I'm going to be inspired by donuts. I'm going to design a card that reminds me of a donut, or I'm going to design a card that reminds me of lacrosse, or I’m going to design a card that reminds me of I Love Lucy. I just picked something that is non—that has nothing to do with what I'm doing.

Because what it forces me, is it forces my brain to do the thing I'm talking about. I'm now thinking about my problem in a different context than I've ever thought before. And then what happens is, I can latch onto new things. I can latch on to something different. So this concept allows you when you get stuck, as a tool to help you.

I mean a lot of what—if you listen to a lot of my lessons and stuff, a lot of them is really about human nature. Some of them is about understanding human natures of your player base. But some of them are understanding the human nature of you, the person making the game. You the game designer. That you are human too, and you have the same foibles and you will fall into the same traps, because there's certain nature—humans work a certain way. And I'm trying to make you understand that when you get to creativity, when you get to sort of artistic thought, that there are traps to fall into that are just human nature traps.

The brain is a wondrous thing, the brain will do amazing things. But any tool is only as good as the knowledge of the tool user. And so one of the things about—if you're going to be in a field where you're using your brain, where your brain is your tool, you need to spend time understanding it. Like for example, if you're a dancer and your body is your tool, you have to get much better at understanding your body. I know a lot of dancing classes is about sort of, or even acting classes is about sort of getting you in touch with connecting to your body and how you feel and when your body's telling you things, to listen to and understand what it needs.

And I believe your brain is similar, in that I don't think a lot of people who spend time thinking, spend time understanding their own brain. And that I believe that if you're going to sort of—if your brain is your tool, understand your brain. And a lot of today is saying, look, there's things we know about the brain, there's ways the brain works. You know, there's things that the brain wants to do and you—that,  interestingly, being creative is not—from a species standpoint. You know, from a biological standpoint, your brain’s job is to keep you alive. That's your brain’s number one job. And being creative is actually antithetical to a lot of things built into your brain.

For example, one of the things that you want to do to survive from a survival standpoint is you want to avoid risk. Risk is bad. Risk kills you. That if you're going out and picking berries, you don't want to eat berries you've never eaten before. You want to eat the berries you've eaten before and didn't die from and that your brain really has a lot of things built into it for survival. You know.

Now we as a species have kind of got, you know, survival isn't our day to day thing anymore. We don't wake up every day going, where am I getting my food. [LTH—Not accurate for everyone.] I got my food, it’s in the fridge. Like you know, that we've evolved past that. But your brain, that's where it came from. And you have to understand that your brain is not hardwired necessarily to want to be creative.

Now there is reasons to problem solve, and problem solving is built into your brain. So the tool is—it’s not as if the brain can't problem solve, because there are times and places you need to problem solve. What I'm saying is that your brain sort of at its core, wants to do some things that sometimes fight your desire when being a creative person. And that you have to understand that. You have to get that. You have to realize that like, your brain is going to say, “Hey, you know how to do something? Yeah, we know how to do that. We've done it before. Let's do it that way.”

It's kind of funny, one of the big concepts I have in my job is, I'm the Head Designer. So there's someone called the Rules Manager, there's been many people that have had the job. And the goal of the Rules Manager is to make things consistent. That if we want to do something, their job is to hunt for the template we've already used, and try to find a way to do that.

But one of the problems is, my goal as Head Designer is, sometimes I'm trying to find novelty. I'm trying to do things we haven't done. And the last thing I want to do is take something that is exciting and new and make it feel less exciting and less new. But the Rules Manager’s job is to do that. And that one of the things I've come to realize is, you know—early on, I used to butt heads a little more with the Rules Manager. And what I've come to understand is, look, the Rules Managers are doing their job. And that if I can use the Rules Manager and understand what they want and what they do, they’re a tool for me. The Rules Manager is not my foil. I mean, I made fun of it, like in the comics, but really the Rules Manager is a tool for me. But I got to understand the tool. And I have to understand the motivations of the tool.

In some way, by the way, this is just how to deal with people in general. People have a goal in mind, they have things they prioritize. And if you do not understand their priorities, you will not understand their interactions. That if you want to interact with people, this is I guess true of designers (???) design team, you want to understand what motivates them.

And a lot of what I'm saying is a good designer is, is understanding sort of—making your team get what you want out of your design, so that that's what they are doing, rather than some default that you're not putting.

So let me let me give you a different example of the same lesson today, but in a in a different context. So my wife and I, Lora’s my wife, we love throwing parties. I like making games, Lora loves cooking. We love doing planning and stuff. We really enjoy parties, we do a couple of big parties every year.

So there was a period of time where all our friends were having babies, and we were showing baby showers. And what we learned really quickly was, if we wanted to throw a good baby shower, what we needed to do was ask the couple for a theme. Because if we didn't give a theme, what ended up happening was, generic baby shower. And they would just all be the same. Because when you say baby shower, what would you expect? You keep getting the same thing.

And what we found was, what we wanted to do was not just give a baby shower, but do something specialized to the couple that was having the baby. And so what we said is give us a theme. And one, you know, one of our friends said a carnival. One of our friends said baseball. You know, one of our friends said a picnic. You know, each people gave us different things. And from that we ended up making—like the crux of it baby shower, I mean, the things you do at baby showers aren't that different. You know what I'm saying? People are bringing gifts for the baby, you're gonna play some games that are baby themed, you know, the things you're doing aren't that different. But all it took was people giving us a theme. And all of a sudden, it just inspired all sorts of things.

And not only that, not only did it just give decorations to the parties, it even impacted the activities itself. That we got to play baby-themed things, but through the filter of whatever the theme was. And what I found was, I was just making more interesting games. You know what I’m saying? Like I was just—I was being inspired by the theme itself. And I was, as the person making the games, was making just more interesting games. That when I was sort of like “baby shower, generic baby shower,” I was just making the normal baby games.

But as soon as I had this, like, “Oh, but I'm trying to incorporate a carnival,” you know, or “How do we make carnival games that are baby games?” All of a sudden we're making physical games that we've never done before. You know, when we had the baseball theme, I said okay, how can I make something that combines baseball with, with babies? And I came up with a really interesting game where, you know, it's a trivia game, that was a baseball game. And, you know, it allowed me to sort of do some fun stuff where I made things that I would never make.

And that is a lot of what I'm trying to say today is, your brain is capable of making all sorts of really cool things. But it requires you the user of the brain to understand the inputs to get the outputs you want. And that if you put the same inputs, you're just getting the same output. That's just what's going to happen.

So the idea of using restrictions, like—my takeaway from today is not even that restrictions have to exist—restrictions should exist. You the designer should bring restrictions into your design. That you should sort of force yourself to go to places you haven't gone, because that very act of doing that will lead to better design. it'll lead to richer design, more unique design, it'll lead you to doing things.

And I’m almost to work but I'll leave one last example, which to me is a perfect example, which is double-faced cards. So that's something that we do in Magic, normally Magic, there is a front to the card, the face, and there's the back to the card. And for many, many years, every card had a front and a back.

So we were working in Innistrad, a set that was a Gothic horror set, and we were trying to figure out how to do werewolves. And so what I said to my team is, I laid down parameters. I go, “I want to do werewolves.” And I said, “Look,” you know, “There's two states to a werewolf, gotta reflect that, you know, the moon's going to come out and the human’s gonna turn into the werewolf.” And, you know, I wanted two states, and I sort of laid out the things I needed.

And one of my team members came back with the idea of having a double-faced card. We had done it in another game we make, a game called Duel Masters that we've done, and it was kind of exciting there. And I said, “Oh, they do in the other game, we could do it here.”

And at first—I mean the story goes, I've done podcasts. I was reluctant, but eventually I tried it. Because always you want to try things, even things you think won't work you want to try because you never know. And what I found was it turned out to be a wonderful solution and did really neat things. And the audience adored it. Not all the audience but the vast majority adored it. Any new idea that's a little out of the box, there's always people that go, “I hate it,” but most people actually really liked it.

But the point is, that the reason we got to double-faced cards, wasn't us saying, “What haven't we done before?” No. What got us to double-faced cards is me saying, “Here is a very tight parameter I'm trying to solve.” You know. And I made sure my audience--sorry, my design team understood the problem that we were solving, you know. And I laid out a lot of parameters, a lot of restrictions. We are doing werewolves. There are gonna be two states. There's gonna be a human. There's gonna be a werewolf.  Something's gonna change them. You know, like, the moon is gonna come out, like—here’s all the things we have to represent.

And I said, I don't want to just do an okay werewolf, I want to do the knock-your-socks-off werewolf. Like, it was something that magic hadn't done very much, that I knew if we could capture would really put this set on the map. And Innistrad went on to be a hugely popular set, double-faced cards was hugely popular.

But it stemmed from--it's not like I said, do anything and we got there. I said, do something specific, which is how we got there. And that the best design is when you're looking for very specific answers, and then be willing to be creative in those answers.

So when you are designing your set, when you're making your game, when you're, you know, when you're doing that, restrictions breed creativity. It is me telling you that your brain is a tool that can help you greatly, but you have to understand your tool and use it properly. Because if you use your brain properly, you will get dividends, many, many dividends. Your brain is capable of all sorts of wonderful ideas. But in order to get at those wonderful ideas, you have to understand how it works and put the right input, so you get the right output.

So anyway, I'm now at work. So I hope that was fun for you today. Like I said, I've been saying this forever. I really—I’m a big believer in creativity. I'm a big believer in understanding the brain and the brain psychology and how your neurons fire and all that. Because if you're using your brain, if that's the tool you use, understand your brain. Understand the tool. And so today is just one—I mean, I would recommend even reading books on the brain and understanding. I took a class in college that was all about like how the brain perceives things, that was a really amazing class. Perceptions is important.

But anyway. That, my friends, is all I have to say today on “restrictions breed creativity”. So anyway, thank you for joining me, but I'm now at work. So we all know that means, it means it’s the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking Magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys all next time. Bye bye.