MtG Ponderings

One of the things I like to do with my blog is use it to help educate. I believe a lot of the narrowness of the world comes from people simply not being exposed to a wider range of ideas.

Let me start with one of the most important life lessons I’ve learned being a game designer for over twenty years. The world is not designed solely for one person’s (or one group’s) perspective. For example, I don’t design Magic so that every card is aimed at the same player. There are tons of different Magic players and they each want something different out of the game. If I designed every card for the competitive Standard player, for instance, a lot of players wouldn’t be getting the cards they want.

The art and the creative elements of the game are the same way. What is exciting to one player might be of no interest to another player. The colored hair, which you seem not to like, might be the very thing that makes another player connect to that character.

The goal of art diversity much like the goal of mechanical diversity is to allow as many different players as possible to find things that they connect with. This means that not every card creatively is for every player just as not every card mechanically is for every player.

Part of my job as the person showing you behind the scenes is I explain R&D’s thought process at any one point in time. As such, I have written a lot of articles explaining what and why we are doing something. That is not me promising something, that is me elucidating what we think at the time.

I have written millions of words and talked about all sorts of thoughts, some of which have shifted over time. For example, the “only having unique cards sold in boosters” didn’t change with the buy-a-box promo, but years ago when we started putting original content in Commander decks. (And one could argue previews in Duel Decks technically did it before that.) Then we introduced planeswalker decks which also have original content.

In contrast, the Reserved List was a public announcement,not casually mentioned in one of my articles, but officially posted by Wizards with a stated promise to never take a particular action.

I get how making these two things seem equal creates fun Reddit fodder, but they are not remotely the same. You might as well get mad at me because we don’t make marquee artifacts anymore or we decided fear isn’t worthy of a keyword.

For reasons I am not allowed to give, it can’t be discussed. I understand how frustrating that is. Trust me, if you knew the history behind the scenes, no one is more frustrated than me, but that is the reality of the situation. It’s not something I have the power to change, so further discussing it won’t lead anywhere other than more frustration.

Let me try a metaphor. Chris and Pat are each building a Commander deck. Each week they’re allowed to visit the game store and buy cards. Chris gets to buy ten cards a week and can get any rarity. Pat only gets to buy two cards a week and can only buy commons and uncommons.

In ten weeks, Chris has a deck. It takes Pat fifty weeks. When they play, Chris beats Pat the vast majority of the time because Chris’s deck is just significantly stronger.

Now let’s say we recognize that this is unfair and want to correct it to make the two decks play evenly against one another. We could make a new rule. Both players can buy five cards and two can be a rare or mythic rare.

That’s fair, right? Each now has the same restrictions. It’s “equal”. But it’s not. Chris got a huge advantage for a long time. If the goal is to help Pat’s deck have a chance against Chris’s, you have to give Pat a period where Pat gets access to more and better cards than Chris otherwise Pat will never catch up.

Here’s how we did GDS3. Anyone who legally qualified could enter. The only identifier was their email address. They did all three trials without us knowing anything about them.

I graded the top 94 without knowing anything about them. It wasn’t until the cut to the top 19 that I even read their essays which only told me things they wanted me to know about them, mostly qualifications so very little biographical information.

The cut to the Top 8 was based on their design test and their answers to the essay questions. Even now, I don’t know much about them personally save their names.

When my eldest daughter Rachel was in her sophomore year of high school, it became clear that she was having problems. She was bouncing off the system and it was leading to depression and low grades. Realizing something had to change, Rachel started studying education. She was eager to find out if there were other ways to learn. What she discovered was an entire other world known as “innovative education”.

The idea behind innovative education is rather than endlessly making students memorize and regurgitate information, it’s a project-based system where the students can craft projects of their own interests and then, with the help of teachers, integrate the education into the task at hand. The idea is that kids learn better if they’re more invested in the process and the practicality of what they’re learning is more visible. The system usually involves some number of days of internships where the students learn skills interacting with the real world. (Also, it doesn’t use traditional letter grades, but rather a system of competency reports.)

Rachel realized that this type of education was what she needed, so she tracked down innovative schools in the Seattle area. Her top choice was a school called Highline Big Picture. It was forty-minutes away from our home. It took some convincing, both of my wife and I and of the school itself, to let her transfer mid-year, but it’s hard to stop Rachel when she gets her mind to something and she managed to convince everyone that it would be for the best. (Regular listeners of “Drive to Work” know I spent over a year driving her to school – she now has her own car.) And it was! Rachel has thrived at the school. She’s now a senior and has recently been accepted to five colleges and wait listed at one (with seven more we’re yet to hear from).

So what does this have to do with Magic or my blog? Well, I wanted to find a way to help out her school. Highline Big Picture is amazing, but it’s in a low income school district and has a lot of financial challenges. That’s when I ran across a cool idea. Magic artists are allowed to sell playmats and prints of their illustrations. It turns out by some weird twist of fate that I actually am a Magic artist (and only by the most technical of definitions). In Unglued, we wanted a “child’s drawing” for one of the cards and I stepped up with the bold claim of “I could be that child!”.

I illustrated the card Look at Me, I’m the DCI using a method I believe to be unique to me. I drew eighty different versions and picked my favorite. I am also, to the best of my knowledge, the only artist in Magic to embrace the medium of crayon. (Finally, as I only got paid $1, I think I’m also the only Magic artist whose supplies cost more than they were paid.)

You all now have a chance to be part of this story and purchase a Look at Me, I’m the DCI playmat or print. The playmats are a high definition of my crayon masterpiece and are all individually signed by yours truly (see the photo above). All the profits from the playmat and prints are going directly to Highline Big Picture School. So please, if you’re all inclined to support the crayon arts and innovative education, please go to the following link (https://www.originalmagicart.store/collections/mark-rosewater) and purchase a playmat/print or two (they make great gifts). To everyone who purchases something, thank you so much. You’ll be helping out a whole bunch of great kids and a wonderful school.

HEY DOUG HOW DOES A PIECE OF MAGIC ART GET BORN?

The super-short answer is: someone on the creative team writes an art description, and an artist creates the illustration based on that art description. Boom.

But there are a lot more steps than that. Today I’m going to talk about one of the earliest steps in the process of developing Magic art – a step we call toplining – and then we’re going to try our hand at toplining right here on tumblr.

The art of a Magic card is handcrafted especially for that card. The gameplay mechanics of the card come first, and the art is built around that card to bring it to life. The art becomes a visual expression of that particular game piece in the flavor of the Magic multiverse.

The bridge between the card’s art and its mechanical identity is a flavorful idea that we call the concept. The concept is very closely related to the art description, which is a set of instructions for the artist that gets across the concept in visual language. The act of coming up with concepts for new Magic cards and turning them into art descriptions is a process we call concepting, and the person who writes the concepts is the conceptor.

(Yep, it’s “concept” as a verb. Not “conceptualizing.” Nobody got time for that. “Concepting.”)

An example of a concept might be:

A spell that summons a fountain of lava out of the ground.

And an art desciption based on that idea might be:

SETTING: Ixalan LOCATION: A clearing in the jungle ACTION: Show tendrils of lava gushing up out of cracks in the ground, twisting into crazy red-hot spirals. In the background, we see the Sun Empire shaman who’s casting this spell, maybe guiding the spell with artful arm gestures. FOCUS: The lava tendrils should be the main focus here. MOOD: A showy spectacle of heat and magic

Officially the “concept” is the idea and the “art description” is the expression of the idea, but we often use those terms interchangeably. (“Are you done writing all the concepts for the winter set?” “Almost, just gotta think up two more art descriptions!” Etc.)

Concepting is an extremely exacting skill. It requires a fertile visual imagination, excellent writing and wordcrafting skills, deep knowledge of the worldbuilding and lore of Magic’s settings, and a thorough understanding of Magic gameplay. It requires thinking about what the card does, what visuals from the world guide might match the mechanics, how big or small the power and toughness are, all the visuals you’ve already used in the set or in previous sets, what kinds of motifs or themes or symbols you want to communicate in the setting, what’s possible to illustrate by an artist, how this card relates (or doesn’t) to the story, whether this thing flies, and more.

Concepting a card is weird and fun and deeply hard. And let me tell you, concepting an entire Magic set is VERY weird and VERY fun and VERY DEEPLY HARD. It’s hard enough to come up with a few ideas for an artist to illustrate – the conceptor must come up with up to 250 of them at a time, multiple times per year.

That’s where toplining comes in. Toplining is the process of brainstorming and recording lots of possible visual concepts for each card. Before the set’s conceptor sits down to start writing all the art descriptions, they meet with a team to come up with a list of potential visual ideas for each card, so that the conceptor will be armed with many ideas once they start writing art descriptions for realsies.

That toplining team is different for every set, but it usually consists of (1) the lead conceptor, the person who’ll write all the art descriptions for the set, who is often also the creative lead for that world; (2) the lead art director for the set, who will be in charge of commissioning out the art when the art descriptions are finalized, and who provides useful feedback about the kinds of visual ideas they want to see in the set and on kinds of ideas that will or won’t work; and (3) the lead set designer for the set, who provides useful information about how the card is likely to be used or what audiences it’s meant for.

That toplining team goes through the set card by card. Everybody calls out ideas or looks up possible visuals in the world guide, and the conceptor records the best ideas for future use. Ultimately it’s the conceptor’s responsibility to write excellent art descriptions for all those cards, so it’s on the conceptor to decide what ideas are exciting useful to them and which are just “ehh.” 

When I’m the conceptor, I often ask the team questions to help spur ideas. “Okay, this is a common 2/2 flyer in blue. Does this world have drakes? If it’s a drake, what’s special about this one? Is there a way this critter could be tribally relevant in the set, or is this a weirdo one-off? Would this be better as a flying humanoid of some kind, and if so, how are they flying? What’s the weirdest place we could see it flying through? What kind of mage summons this thing, and for what purpose?” And so on. I try to roll past the first two or three ideas to get into more uncharted territory, even if the quick answer feels like the right one. The room answers my questions, often with ideas building on each other, letting us draw out the hottest ideas. Here’s a pretend transcript for toplining a card:

“Okay, this one is… a green ramp spell. What could this be?” “Hm. Maybe it’s like a wave made out of land?” “Isn’t that just Rampant Growth?” “Or… an elf reaches down and touches the ground.” “Or she’s touching a tree. And the branches light up with magic.” “*typing* Okay. But this lets you get any basic land. How does it represent getting multiple colors?” “The branches create lots of different kinds of fruit?” “Yeah, and each one’s a different color.” “*typing* Let’s try another direction. What if this were a natural phenomenon, what would it look like?” “Maybe it’s a rainstorm, that creates new growth.” “A rainbow!” “A rainbow, and where it touches the ground, new life sprouts up.” “*typing* Cool. Anything else?” “I keep thinking of how spells like this go in decks that want to cast big creatures.” “Yeah?” “So maybe like, it’s whatever happens before big monsters show up. The deep rumble in the ground.” “What’s the visual form of a deep rumble?” “Those ominous ripples in the water. But in a green way. Ripples in the earth!” “*typing* Ooh, that’s cool. Okay, I think we’ve got enough for this card. On to the next one.”

And so on, card by card, for the whole batch of cards. Note that the team doesn’t dwell on the full art descriptions during toplining. There’s no discussion of detailed locations, or compositions, “mood lines” – that’s for later. Toplining is about breadth of ideas rather than depth.

Also note that there’s lots of riffing. It’s a dynamic process, about branching from one idea to another, bouncing around till we find a good fit for the card.

The most usable topline ideas are:

(1) Relevant. The idea should be relevant to, or at least should not contradict, the card mechanic or its color. We always want amazing art, but the idea should make sense with the values of the color(s) of mana in its cost and with how the card is played. Help the conceptor find ideas that will actually match the card.

(2) Visual. The idea should be inherently visual, or lead to a visual. The whole point of these ideas is for an artist to eventually illustrate them. An abstract or narrative concept can be cool, but isn’t super helpful unless it can be expressed visually. What’s your idea LOOK like?

(3) Simple. The idea should be able to be expressed simply, with few visual elements. Massive crowd scenes with tons of figures often look muddy at card size. The best bet is a strong single subject for the artist to focus on, so help the conceptor find ideas that can lead to a strong, tight visual.

Okay, let’s try it! We’re gonna do some toplining right now. I’ll give you a bare-bones card mechanic (note: this is not a real card), and you throw out visual concepts for that card in the comments below. For extra fun, riff on others’ ideas, or ask each other probing questions, like we do in actual toplining meetings. Ready?

4R Sorcery CARDNAME deals 4 damage to target creature and 1 damage to another target creature.

What’s this spell about? What’s it look like? Who’s casting it, or who’s its victim? Is it an actual spell someone’s casting, or more of a natural phenomenon, or an effect of some creature? What plane is this happening on? Where might be an unusual spot for this to take place? And again what does this effect LOOK like?

(or “How Not to Get Disqualified at a Magic Tournament”)

Everyone goes to a Magic tournament to play Magic. It doesn’t matter what kind or size of the event is, be it a weekly draft, an FNM, or a Grand Prix, everyone is there to play Magic and, hopefully, to have fun. The worst way for that experience to end is to be told that you can’t play Magic anymore today. Disqualification sucks. It sucks for the player who’s disqualified, it sucks for the judge who has to deal with the disqualification process, it sucks for the other players in the event because DQs usually slow down the event. It sucks for everyone involved, basically, so let’s talk about to keep it from happening.

What is a Disqualification?

In the simplest possible terms, a disqualification from a Magic event means that you’ve done something that violates the integrity of the tournament to the point where you’re no longer able to participate in it anymore. You’re not in the tournament anymore and, depending on the nature of the infraction and the feelings of judge(s) and store staff, you might be asked to leave the premises as well.

When you’re disqualified, you’ll be given the chance to make a written statement. This statement will be submitted, along with the head judge’s report and other witness statements, to the Player Investigation Committee. The PIC reviews disqualifications and other reports of severe player misconduct decides on what further action, if any, is needed. Many first time offenders will receive a warning letter reaffirming that what they did was not acceptable and that future disqualifications will take this warning into account. For more serious offenders, a suspension of anywhere from six months up to a lifetime suspension is the result. Lifetime suspensions are reserved for cases of serious tournament fraud, violence, and similar. A suspended player cannot participate in a sanctioned Magic event in any way during their suspension, not as a player, not as a judge or scorekeeper, and not as a tournament organizer.

Sidetrack: Player Responsibilities and the Magic Tournament Rules

Many players don’t know that when they sign up for any tournament, they agree to a certain set of responsibilities. These responsibilities are laid out in section 1.10 of the Magic Tournament Rules. These responsibilities include expected things such as behaving in a respectful manner, maintaining a legal game state, and following announced time limits, but it also includes two points that I want to call out specifically: Players are required to be familiar with the rules contained in the Magic Tournament Rules document, which most aren’t; players are also required to bring attention to any rules or policy infraction or any offer of bribery, wagering, and other match manipulation. I highly recommend reading through the MTR if you get the chance, especially if you plan on playing at Competitive REL events, such as PPTQs and GPs.

How to Get Disqualified

Now that we know what a disqualification is, let’s talk about what exactly it is that you can do to get yourself disqualified at a tournament as well as some simple ways to avoid being disqualified for these things.

Gambling (Bribery, Wagering, Improperly Determining a Winner)

Wizards has to draw a hard line against anything that might associate Magic with gambling in the eyes of the law anywhere in the world, because otherwise Magic events might not be allowed in some of those places. Wizards has already had to stop running Grands Prix in Germany or Austria because of falling afoul of their gambling laws, with the last GP there (GP Bochum 2012) having to give out non-cash prizes because of a last minute crackdown by authorities.

Any attempt to bribe a player or tournament official, accepting such a bribe, or failing to report any such bribery offer is cause for immediate disqualification from the event, even if you didn’t know that doing so wasn’t allowed. Offering an incentive in exchange for a match result is the most common example of bribery at Magic tournaments. Even if you think the offer your opponent makes you is a joke, you still need to call a judge or risk being disqualified. (There was a fairly high-profile case of such a thing this past weekend at GP Houston. It was all over reddit.) It’s not your place to determine whether or not an offer was a joke or not. Leave that to the judges.

In a similar vein, placing a wager on the outcome of the event or any portion of the event, such as a player’s final record, or even prop betting on whether or not certain things happen, is not allowed and will lead to disqualification from the event. Not reporting an offer of such a wager to a tournament official is also grounds for disqualification.

Finally, determining the outcome of a game or match using any method other than playing the match or agreeing to an intentional draw or a concession is grounds for disqualification for all players involved. Players are expected to play matches to completion if neither of them concedes and they don’t agree to an intentional draw. Even if a match goes to time and would end in a draw, the players must report the match as a draw unless one of them agrees to concede. Only the information available to the players when the match ends can be used to argue for such a concession. Turning over cards from the library or rolling dice to determine who should concede will lead to both players being disqualified unless the player not making the offer calls a judge immediately.

How to Avoid a Gambling DQ:

Just play Magic. Don’t offer or accept anything for a match result.

Call a judge if your opponent makes an offer.

Call a judge if you overhear such an offer being made in another match.

If you want to offer a prize split, talk to a judge before making the offer to protect yourself.

Don’t wager on the tournament or any part of the tournament.

Call a judge if someone offers you such a wager.

Call a judge if you overhear such a wager being offered, agreed to, or resolved.

Determine the result of each of your matches and games by playing Magic, by one player conceding, or by agreeing to an intentional draw.

Accept that some matches will end in draws. It happens.

Call a judge if your opponent offers to roll dice or otherwise randomly determine the match’s outcome.

Call a judge if you overhear such an offer being made or carried out.

Aggressive Behavior (Threats, and Violence, and Abuse)

Players coming to an event should be able to expect a day of competition, testing their skills, and having fun. When a player threatens another player or acts out violently against others or their property, that player is violating the trust of everyone else in the event and needs to be removed from the event and the venue.

We as judges understand that competitive Magic can be stressful and that losing unexpectedly can ruin someone’s day, but that doesn’t give anyone the right to act out those negative emotions against anyone else or their property. Any player that threatens another player or intentionally damages items belonging to anyone else will be disqualified and ejected from the venue. This also applies to actual violent behaviour against another person, but at that point the police or other relevant local authorities should also get involved.

Additionally, a player that is abusive to someone repeatedly, maliciously, or without remorse cannot be allowed to continue in the event and will be disqualified and removed from the venue.

How to Avoid an Aggressive Behavior DQ:

Don’t be a dick.

Don’t verbally abuse your opponents, or judges, or anyone else. If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

Have a plan for what to do if you’re prone to anger or frustration. Go outside, call someone, have a stress ball, drop from the event and go home. Do anything other than threatening or acting out violently against anyone or anything.

Let a judge or other staff member know if you see a situation that you think will get aggressive.

Don’t attempt to intervene yourself. The safety of everyone involved is more important that the tournament or issuing a penalty.

Theft

Anyone who steals anything from a tournament or its participants is no longer welcome at that event. They are to be disqualified and ejected from the venue. This includes stealing from opponents as well as stealing tournament materials, such as table numbers, prizes, etc.

How to Avoid a Theft DQ:

Don’t steal!

If something doesn’t belong to you, don’t take it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a pen, a life pad, a card, a deck, the number tent for Table 69 (nice.), etc. Don’t do it.

Talk to a judge if you have knowledge of a theft that has occurred at the event.

Return items that end up in your possession by mistake.

Sometimes you’ll wind up with a card from another player’s deck, usually because you took it with something like Hostage Taker or you exiled it with something like Ixalan’s Binding. If you wind up with cards from other players, report them to a judge as soon as you discover them. Noticing and not reporting them or attempting to return them is theft and will lead to your disqualification from the event.

Stalling

While players are allowed to control the pace of their own turns, players are expected to play at a reasonable pace so that a match can finish within the allotted time. Players not playing at an appropriate pace will be encouraged by a judge to increase their pace of play. They can even receive official Warnings for Slow Play at Competitive REL and higher. Stalling isn’t just playing slowly, it’s intentionally doing so to take advantage of the time limit in a round. Players found to be taking advantage of the time limit with intentional slow play this way are disqualified from the event for stalling.

For example, a player might play the first game of a match quickly and win it, then slow their pace of play to a glacial crawl once game two begins in order to ensure that the opponent can’t come back to win the match. This is stalling. Similarly, a player that has been playing at a reasonable pace all match who suddenly slows down when behind in game three so that they can squeak out a draw is also stalling.

Note that players are allowed to play towards drawing a game or match, but they must do so at a reasonable pace. Doing so is not stalling, which is only specifically abusing the clock for your own advantage.

How to Avoid a Stalling DQ:

Play at a reasonable pace at all times. Don’t slow down when you’re ahead.

Call a judge if you think your opponent is playing slowly. Do it early in the match as we can’t do much to address slow play when there’s a minute left on the clock.

If you think your opponent’s slow play is intentional, make the judge aware of those concerns, preferably away from the match.

Cheating

This is the big one that you all knew was coming. A player is cheating if they intentionally or unintentionally break a game rule or violate tournament policy or allow an opponent to the same, and then attempt to gain advantage from the violation while knowing that it’s illegal. It’s also cheating to knowingly lie to a judge or other tournament official.

In short, you have to know you’re doing/allowing something wrong and be trying to gain an advantage from it in order for it to be considered cheating. If one or both of these criteria aren’t met, then you’re not cheating.

Common examples of cheating include drawing extra cards, untapping lands or creatures, changing numbers of counters, not calling attention to sideboard cards left in the deck, lying to a judge during a judge call or investigation, and pretty much anything else you can think of.

How to Avoid a Cheating DQ:

Don’t cheat!

If you intentionally lie to a judge or break the rules to get an advantage, you’re cheating and I can’t help you.

If a mistake happens and you let it slide because it benefits you, you’re also cheating. Don’t let this happen. If something happens that shouldn’t have, call a judge immediately.

If you see someone cheating or suspect that someone is cheating, talk to the judge in private. When investigating for cheating, we need all the information we can get.

If you catch a player in the act of cheating, ask them to stop and call a judge. The judge should make sure that someone watches the match so that nothing changes while you’re talking to them.

Dodging a Bullet

So that’s a general summary of the ways you can be disqualified at a Magic event and how to avoid them. As a player, you’re not likely to ever be disqualified from a tournament as long as you go into it just wanting to play Magic and have a good time. As long as you treat your opponents with respect, steer clear of anything resembling gambling, and play the game as it’s meant to be played without any shenanigans, you’ll be fine. Finally, if you’re ever unsure of anything at an event, ask a judge. We’re here to help.

If you stuck with me until the end here, thank you for reading! I hope you found this article useful and informative. If you have any feedback for me, please PM me or drop it in my inbox.

The first trial for the Great Designer Search required participants to answer ten essay questions with 250-350 words each. Here are the questions and my responses.

In case anyone was interested, I entered the GDS. Since others seem to be posting their essays, I figured I might as well too.

If you made last night’s deadline, good luck!

Today is Appreciate a Dragon Day!

Show your appreciation by letting us know which dragon is your favorite from Magic: The Gathering. There are so many epic ones to choose from!