Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1060: Gen Con 2023
Episode Date: August 11, 2023In this podcast, I talk about one of my last trips of the summer to Gen Con 2023. ...
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I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work at Home Edition.
Okay, so this summer I did a lot of traveling. In fact, the last month I did a lot of traveling.
So today I want to talk about my final trip, which was to Indianapolis for Gen Con.
So it turns out, 30 years ago, I think it was August 5th, 1993, Magic premiered at Gen Con. And so on August 5th,
2023, we were having a 30th anniversary panel and we decided to do something quite out of the box.
So I'm going to talk about my trip there and talk about the panel. So just so people have listened to my previous podcast,
so I had three weeks in a row.
I was at San Diego Comic-Con where I did a panel.
I then was at Magic-Con in Barcelona where I did three panels.
And then I was finally at Gen-Con where I had this panel.
And this panel, I'll get into how it came about.
It was quite the panel.
Anyway, so let me real quickly just talk a little bit about Gen Con, and then we'll get into the making of the panel.
So Gen Con was originally created by TSR, the company that originally put out Dungeons & Dragons.
I believe it originally was held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
That's where I actually – when I attended Gen Con, it had been in Milwaukee.
Twenty-some years ago-ish, it moved to Indianapolis from Milwaukee.
In fact, Gen Con is now owned by Peter Atkinson, or he's a major shareholder of Gen Con.
Peter Atkinson, for those who don't know, was the first CEO of Wizards and one of the founders of Wizards.
Anyway, I realized – so I'd been to Gen Con a couple times in the early days.
In fact, how I got my start into magic
was I was doing the puzzle column
and I wanted to do more than just the puzzle column.
So I flew myself to Gen Con in 1994
so that I could meet Catherine Haynes,
who is the editor of The Duelist.
And it was at that event,
I played in the very first World Championship.
I ended up meeting with Catherine and pitched ideas,
one of which was an article about the World Championship.
So I was actually, if you've ever seen the picture of me in the finals,
I'm there taking notes, very young me, with an underdog shirt.
Anyway, so in 94, I was at Gen Con.
And in some of the early years of Magic, when I first started working at Wizards, I was at Gen Con and, uh, in some of the early years, uh, of magic,
when I first started working wizards, I was at Gen Con.
Um, I believe my last Gen Con before this one was in 1998 when the sole pre-release
for Unglued, uh, there are multiple flights, but it was all at Gen Con.
If you wanted to do a pre-release of Unglued, you had to go to Gen Con.
Uh, and that's the event where I dressed up like a chicken.
I had dressed as a chicken.
I've done a whole podcast on that if you want more details.
But anyway, so that was the last time I'd been to Gen Con.
Gen Con, oh, for those who don't, Gen Con is, like I said, it was started by TSR.
And it's just one of the biggest gaming conventions.
And so I was excited to go back.
I hadn't been back, you know, I sort of cut back on my travel,
so I haven't done a lot of traveling,
and there haven't been a lot of magic things at Gen Con for a while,
so I hadn't been at Gen Con.
But basically what happened was the 30th anniversary came up,
and Blake Rasmussen, I think it was Blake's idea,
came up with the idea of this mega panel where we'd be revealing things we've never revealed before, as you'll see in a second.
And so he really wanted me to be there.
In the original, I was like, oh, I'm doing all this traveling, but he's like, please.
And I'm like, okay.
So I flew down on Friday, and I flew back on Sunday.
So I was really just there for the one day for the Saturday event.
But it was such an exciting, I could not do it.
It was, so for those that don't know,
the idea was it's our 30th anniversary.
We are going to talk about the future
and go farther than we ever have before.
In fact, in this panel, we talked about everything.
We went so far that we were talking about things
that I'm
currently working on in vision design. The reason we couldn't go any before is I hadn't started the
next, although I'm starting it soon, but I hadn't started the next product yet. And so we literally
talked about everything. Anyway, so the idea was we would do this. That sounded kind of amazing to
me. And like, okay, I got to be part of this. And it was just being the 30th anniversary,
like literally the 30th anniversary was really cool.
And so it seemed like a kind of thing
I wanted to be involved in.
So the idea was, the way it worked is
we started working on this panel months ahead of time.
Normally, by the way, when we do panels,
there's a lot that goes into the panels.
It depends how the panels work. Like my solo panels is more me doing it. But panels, there's a lot that goes into the panels. It depends how the panels work.
Like my solo panels is more me doing it.
But usually when there's a bunch of people, we have meetings.
We have to do run-throughs.
We have to get all the graphics and everything.
There's a lot that goes into making a presentation.
And so this one was many weeks in the making.
many weeks in the making.
And so what happened was, the way it worked
was
Jesslyn Zillow was the host.
She
used to run the creative team.
Still at Wizards, but
she was our host.
And then Chris
Kerrits and then Ian
and so Chris did the
we re-recorded it for online and then there was a live thing that wasn't recorded.
So Chris did the arena portion ahead of time and Ian did the portion live.
And then Athena did the Universes Beyond version and then she did them both live and recorded.
So what happened was we did a bunch of run-throughs.
Then in between my trip to San Diego Comic-Con, my trip to Barcelona, that Monday, in between
the two trips, we recorded and we spent most of the day, I think we did three takes of
it, and they edited it together.
And so we sort of ran through and talked about everything and sort of, there was also a chance
for us to sort of make notes about slides.
And we sort of were able to fix a bunch of things.
Anyway.
So we did all the run through.
And then we did live at the event.
So the actual panel.
I think the room held 180 people.
And it was completely filled.
But wait, wait.
Sorry.
I'm jumping ahead of myself here.
So I get in Friday.
Friday night we actually had a wizard's outinging where we went to a Brazilian steakhouse.
I'd been to a Brazilian steakhouse once before in my life
with my wife, although at the time, my fiancee, Laura,
in Brazil when we were in Rio for the Invitational way back when.
But anyway, we had a great time.
I sampled all the meat.
I'm a big fan of meat.
And we really had a fun time. I sampled all the meat. I'm a big fan of meat. And we really had a fun time.
Saturday, I got to walk the hall.
So there's a giant exhibition hall.
And there's lots and lots.
So this is all about tabletop gaming.
GemCon's all about tabletop gaming.
So just imagine all sorts of booths about people and then all sorts of like paraphernalia for gaming.
Then there's a whole separate section that was for gameplay, Magic Headle area.
And you could go play whatever game you wanted to play in.
Every game was being played and you could – there were demos to learn.
And anyway, it just was exciting and there's just lots and lots of people.
One of the fun things when I walk around a show like that is I just get to run into people that I know.
Even though I've only ever worked at Wizards, a lot of people have worked at Wizards.
And a lot of them have gone into other game companies.
So one of the fun things of walking the floor is I get to see some people that I haven't seen for a while.
So I definitely did some reminiscing and catching up and talking to people.
So that was a lot of fun.
Then we did a run through.
Then we did a run-through.
So we went and walked through and made sure.
They had updated slides since we did the recording,
so I got a chance to see all the slides and understand what everything was.
And we had done the run-through a bunch of times, so I knew the general order of what we needed to say.
So anyway, at 3 o'clock on Saturday was our panel.
The tickets had sold out pretty fast.
So there are a bunch of people that were there that had tickets and a bunch more people that are hoping to get in.
I don't know how many people got in that didn't have tickets.
Maybe none.
I don't know because I wasn't working the door.
But anyway, the room was full.
I mean, there were people standing in the back.
It was full.
And, okay, so basically the way it worked is we introduced –
so there were three different sections that we interspersed.
I talked about basically anything that was tabletop magic that wasn't Universes Beyond.
So all the main premiere sets and supplemental sets and such.
Athena talked about all the Universes Beyond products
and any Universes Beyond connected things.
And then Chris or Ian,
depending on whether you heard it online or saw it live,
talked about the arena implications
and what arena was doing and stuff.
So the general idea of this whole talk was
we wanted to scope up the next three-ish years of magic.
And so we talked philosophy.
My part was much more concrete
because we have actual sets.
Tabletop magic works, well,
it's not that Universe is Beyond
doesn't work far ahead too,
but we can only announce so much
based on our partners and stuff.
So I had the part that was the farthest ahead that we could talk about.
Arena doesn't work
as far ahead as Tabletop does.
So a lot
of what happened is the Arena portion was
talking about things that are coming to Arena
and then talked about some philosophy of things
they're thinking about that they'd like to do.
Athena
walked through all the universes beyond
stuff, all the stuff that we announced that's public
so none of those today
I was going to talk about my portion
my portion I know, their portion they did
so I don't want to talk about their portion because that's not
not the stuff that I learned
but I'm going to tell you about my portion of the talk
which is quite cool
so we started in 2023 But I'm going to tell you about my portion of the talk, which is quite cool.
And, okay.
So we started in 2023.
There's two non-Universe Beyond sets coming.
There's Wilds of Eldraine and there's Lost Caverns of Ixalan.
So Wilds of Eldraine, I explained that, you know, we saw the Phyrexian War, and, you know, a lot of people felt like it went over so quick and the war was over.
But the ramifications of what happened are huge.
Many, many planes fought the Phyrexians, as we'll see in a second in Eldraine.
And that has ramifications on the worlds.
The Omen Pass are open.
That will have ramifications.
Planeswalkers got to spark.
That has ramifications.
So let's take Eldraine as an example, okay?
So the King and Queen are dead.
Rhone and Will are de-sparked.
In order to stop the Phyrexians,
they cast a spell
called the Wicked Slumber,
kind of a sleeping beauty
inspired spell
that put the Phyrexians
and a bunch of natives
of the world to sleep. And the Phyrexians and a bunch of natives of the world to sleep.
And the Phyrexians have been defeated,
but a lot of people are still asleep,
and they have to figure out how to wake them up.
So Will and Rowan have to sort of solve this problem.
There's a mysterious new character named Kellan that gets involved.
That'll be important.
But a lot of what we talked about is
you're going to see a lot of ramifications.
Like, the story we told impacts things and will affect things.
And the Phyrexian War is going to have huge impacts on the multiverse.
And you will see leading out.
We had at the previous panel, which I talked about in my podcast on Barcelona,
Magikon talked a bit about Wilds of Eldraine and about Lost Caverns.
And so, you know,
I didn't go too much into it.
It's coming back with adventures
and food and it has
a little more reliance on enchantments.
Because the...
all the...
the...
castles and parts...
the courts took the brunt
of the attack.
And so this focus is a little more focused in the wilds.
It's called the Wilds of Eldraine.
And the original Throne Eldraine was more Arthurian legend inspired than fairy tales inspired,
even though the fairy tales sort of grabbed the attention.
This one leans a little bit more toward fairy tales.
There's still plenty of Arthurian legend stuff, but it's not as much.
The fairy tales take a little larger more towards fairy tales. There's still plenty of Arthurian legend stuff, but it's not as much. The fairy tales take a little larger share
this time.
Lost Caverns Ixalan,
mostly what I talked about
for Lost Caverns Ixalan
is there's a term
I've been using
called a backdrop set.
What that means is
we have a lot
of amazing worlds.
Traditionally,
when we go back to a world,
we go back to
the mechanical identity
of that world.
But for the, not the first time, I go back to the mechanical identity of that world. But for the
not the first time, I guess War of the Spark was a backdrop
set, but we're trying
something like Ixalan, when we got the
market research,
players enjoyed the world
way more than they enjoyed the mechanics
of the world. And so we decided
that when we made Lost Caverns Ixalan
it was an underground set. Originally
it wasn't even set on Ixalan.
It was just going to be a brand new world.
And as we were working on it, we realized how well
it fit with Ixalan. So we
decided to make it Ixalan.
And there'll be dinosaurs
and vampires and pirates
and merfolk. But it's
not a typo faction set.
That's not what it is. It is not
returned Ixalan. It's a brand new
mechanical suite of things that
clearly takes place in the place of Ixalan. Although, once
again, it's underground.
It's the same world, but pushing in a
different direction. Anyway,
so I explained that, the concept of a backdrop set,
and the other thing
I talked about was we're introducing something called
Special Guests. And the idea
is they're highly desirable reprints that we're skinning in the world. That, you know, we're introducing something called Special Guests. And the idea is they're highly desirable reprints
that we're skinning in the world.
So, in
Ixalan, they'll feel as if
they take place in Ixalan.
And they'll be incorporated
into the list and to the collector boosters.
I think the default
is going to be 10 per set. It's a new
thing we're doing, but for the first set, there's
18. So Ixalan is 18, not 10 per set. It's a new thing we're doing, but for the first set, there's 18. So Ixalan is 18, not 10.
Okay. Then we
got into 2024.
So the first thing,
which is a supplemental set, we're doing
Ravnica Remastered.
So we've done Remastered sets before. We did
Dominari Remastered. Basically, the idea of a
Remastered set is we go and take
any card that took place there.
So, for example, it could be any of the Ravnica sets.
It could be any other set, but where the art
and creative is from Ravnica. All that
is fair game. We then take whatever cards
we want to build a really fun limited environment
that plays up the themes
of Ravnica, which obviously is guild
and multicolored. And so
if you enjoy Ravnica and the Ravnica
sets, this is sort of, you know, an ode, a love letter to the Ravnica sets. And so, if you enjoy Ravnica and the Ravnica sets, this is sort of,
you know,
an ode,
a love letter to the Ravnica sets.
And so,
also it'll have,
you know,
reprints from those sets
people want
and stuff like that.
Okay,
next up is
Murders of Karlov Manor.
So,
I talked about a backdrop set.
We actually have
two back-to-back backdrop sets.
So,
this is a top-down
murder mystery set
in which we are playing
to the genres of murder mystery.
But instead of making a brand new world, and interestingly, once again, we thought originally about making a brand new world,
but realized that we had a perfect world to hold it on, which was Ravnica.
So this is a Ravnica set in the sense that it takes place on Ravnica,
but it's not a Ravnica set in the sense that it's gilded and multicolored.
That exists in Ravnica Remastered, so literally if younica set in the sense that it's guild and multicolored. That exists
in Ravnica Remastered, so literally
if you want that, right before this comes out, you can do that.
This is a top
down genre
set based on mystery, murder mysteries.
Now the cool thing is, in the
story, they're solving a mystery,
and you, the players,
are going to get to solve a mystery. We have a bunch of puzzles
that we've woven into the set.
And I was on the team that did this, and it was really cool,
and there's a whole bunch of puzzles,
and it's a chance for you, the players, to solve your own mystery.
So it's going to be very cool.
Okay.
Next up for my stuff is Outlaws of Thunder Junction.
Oh, so by the way, just for codename purposes,
Netball was Wilds of Eldraine. Offroading was Lost Caverns of Ixalan. Polo was Murders at Carlove Manor. So now we're up to quilting,
which by the way, quilting's not a sport. I wanted to do quoits, which is kind of darts,
but I got overruled and I've told to change it. So yeah, quilting's not a sport. But anyway,
So, yeah, quilting's not a sport.
Anyway, quilting is Outlaws of Thunder Junction.
So when the Frexing War happened and March of the Machine,
I said that it was going to allow us to do some things we couldn't do before.
Here's the first example.
So we wanted to do a villain's theme.
In fact, Magic Origins, before it became Magic Origins,
was originally themed with a villain theme. We liked the idea of a villain theme, but the problem with doing a villain's theme. In fact, Magic Origins, before it became Magic Origins, was originally themed with a villain theme.
We liked the idea of a villain theme.
But the problem with doing a villain theme in general was,
well, let's say I do a villain theme.
Well, wherever I set it, well, then I can get the villains from that world,
but, like, I'm limited to that world.
But the Omen paths have opened things up.
The Omen paths are one of the side effects of the Phyrexian War.
And now Omen paths are unstable.
They can appear and disappear.
So just because you go through one doesn't mean you can come back.
They're not easy to find, necessarily.
But it does allow non-Planeswalkers
to travel between worlds.
And so it allowed us to get more villains to this place.
And so we have a villain theme.
And then we decided to have
a brand new world. This is our first brand new world since
New Capenna.
The perfect setting for it was a top
down, a set that was top down of
the western genre. It's something people have been
asking for. We're calling
it sort of frontier fantasy is our term.
But anyway, we thought that
this made a really good fit
for
it was a really good fit for the
villains theme, and so we were playing around
with a lot of some top-down stuff there
I will say we had
cultural consultants, I know the western genre
has
there's things definitely we wanted to make sure
we were careful with, and we were
we brought people in to help with that
but anyway it is oh, and we were, and we had, we brought people in to help with that.
But anyway,
it is,
oh, and so starting with Wiles of Eldraine through
Outlaws of Thunder Junction, we're telling
a new three-year story,
which Metronome is our,
it doesn't mean anything, it's just our name
for the three-year story arc, our internal
code name.
So each year has a named arc.
So the first year was called the Omen Path arc.
And so it ends with Outlaws of Thunder Junction.
Okay, so after Outlaws of Thunder Junction
is Modern Horizons 3.
So you get the general gist.
It's like Modern Horizons 1 and 2.
Modern Horizons sets, the idea behind them
is supplemental sets that can do more advanced gameplay,
that can have more complexity, and they have access to all the mechanics that Magic has used in the past.
Well, not all the mechanics.
Up until now, Modern Horizons 1 and 2 only had single-faced cards.
And there's some mechanics that you need double-faced cards to do,
such as the legendary creature that turns into a planeswalker
or a modal double-faced card, stuff like that.
And so this set is going to allow us access to double-faced technology
so we can do some things that no modern horizon set before has done.
Okay, after that is Bloomboro.
So at Comic-Con, I shared eight images of upcoming sets.
And the one that seemed to grab everyone's attention,
there's a little mouse,
he had a sword and a little leaf cape,
and he was fighting this giant wolf.
So Bloomboro is us.
That's the new set.
It's a new world.
It's sort of an anthropomorphic animal world.
So the idea is it's a scaled world,
which means a mouse is the size of a mouse and a rabbit's the size of a rabbit. But a
mouse is our one-one. So the whole world's scoped around a mouse being a one-one. And
this world has, you know, rabbits and raccoons and squirrels. And, you know, it's just, it is us doing,
it's probably the most charming set we've ever made.
It is really, really cute.
And it has,
it definitely is tapping to the vibe of like,
you know, there's a bunch of pop culture
where instead of having humans, they're animals.
And it's playing into that vibe.
And it's a really cool set.
We purposely didn't do talking animals
in Eldraine, so that one day
we could do a place where there were talking animals. Well,
here's the place for talking animals.
And it's adorable.
Okay, so one after
Bloomboro, the last set of 2024,
is Dusk Mourn, House of Horror.
So, if cute is not your
thing, well, guess what? The next set has
your back. The idea of Dusk Mourn,more House of Horrors is it's a modern horror set.
A set, top-down, a lot of top-down sets in a row here.
Playing into modern horror.
So the idea, think of like movies in the 70s and 80s, sort of, you know, like Innistrad is gothic horror, right?
This is a little more modern day.
And the whole...
Again, it's a new world.
And the whole set takes place inside of a giant creepy mansion.
I mean, a giant creepy mansion.
And it's just playing in lots of fun trope space.
And there's all sorts of creepy things.
And I don't know if there's ever been a greater tonal shift
from the cuteness of Bloomboro to the creepiness of Dusk Morn.
But that is 2024.
Okay, then we get into 2025 and 26.
Oh, the one thing that we said a lot is,
because we're going so far ahead,
like we've never before gone more than a year ahead.
And in fact, so I did the recording for Throne Eldren. That's the first time we ever talked so far ahead. Like, we've never before gone more than a year ahead. And in fact, so I did the recording for Thorn Eldrin.
That's the first time we ever talked a year ahead.
And it was controversial at the time.
Like, I think it took us a couple years to even
agree to do that.
So this was going even further, and one of the things we explained
is, look, the farther ahead we get,
the less we know. Things will change.
You know?
I don't think major themes of sets will change,
but the execution, you know, things could change, and we just want to sort of the caveat of, you know. I don't think major themes of sets will change, but the execution,
things could change, and we just want to
sort of the caveat of, you know,
we're being so far ahead
that, you know, things will
happen, and so this might not be
exactly how everything ends up.
So that caveat. Okay, so
2.25 and 2.26.
Innistrad Remastered.
So I talked about Ravnig Remastered.
Same thing, just with Innistrad.
All the sets set in Innistrad.
You know, playing into the themes of Innistrad,
the monster typo, the graveyard themes and stuff like that.
Okay, so next up.
So now we've got the codenames now.
Now we're at the point where the sets don't even have real names yet.
So in 2024, all the sets had names.
And if you watch the video on YouTube, we showed pictures from all of them.
When we started getting to this next batch, we're starting to show, like, concept art.
And then the last batch, there wasn't even, we didn't even have art to show you.
We hadn't got to the point where there's art generated yet.
Okay, so the next set is codenamed Tennis.
So Tennis is another example of a set that we couldn't do.
We couldn't do without the change in the cosmology.
So we've been talking forever of doing a death race set
where different people are racing in different cars and stuff
across a world.
But once the Omen Pass came up,
we realized that we could do a race across multiple worlds.
So the way tennis works, it's got a race theme.
There's three different worlds we're racing through,
two of which are worlds that we've been in premiere sets,
that have been the setting of premiere sets
that we've never returned to, that we're going to return to.
And one of them is a world that we've seen on
individual cards, but it's never been
the main setting of a
premier set before.
And so we're going to flesh it out and
build up the world some.
We did pick three places we thought would be fun to race
through. But anyway,
that is Tennis, and it's a pretty cool set.
Next is Ultimate.
So Ultimate is a return.
So we ask the players, or we pay attention to the players
about what they want to see again.
And so this is a return to a world that we know players
have been asking for quite a while,
which is Return to Tarkir.
The way I described it in the meeting at the panel was,
and this is kind of how we've been talking about it internally,
it's the best of both worlds,
meaning we want to take what people love most
about Khans of Tarkir
and what people love most about dragons of Tarkir
and sort of combine them together in an awesome set.
So this is, now, unlike some of the backdrop sets,
this is a return to Tarkir.
We're doing Tarkir things.
This is not just a completely different mechanics on Tarkir.
This is a return to Tarkir, doing things you would expect
to see in Tarkir.
Okay, next up is volleyball.
So one of the things we learned from the success
of Kamigawa Nian Dynasty
is that people kind of like us pushing a little bit into
science fiction space. So we are
going, um, we are exploring
a space we have not explored before.
Actual space!
We are going to outer space.
This is a space opera.
And so we are doing a lot of cool stuff.
I can't get too much so far ahead.
But anyway, we're going to space.
And I think in the...
I did mention that we'll finally get to use...
Infinity, obviously, was the first thing said in space.
But it introduced stuff like the alien creature type.
And so we're going to be able to make use of stuff like the alien creature type
okay
next up
the last three sets were so far ahead
that we literally didn't have art for them
tennis and ultimate and volleyball
we had some concept arts we showed at the thing
if you go online
you can hear me do
the thing I'm doing today you can hear me do it with
more other people jumping in and hearing about stuff that I didn't talk about.
Okay, so wrestling.
On my blog, the number one request for returns for a long time was Kamigawa.
Well, then we went back to Kamigawa.
So the new number one was Lorwyn.
And so we, in fact, are going back to Lorwyn. And so we, in fact, are going back to Lorwyn. So, wrestling, and the way I described
it is, we're taking a lot of the philosophy
of Kamigawa Neon Dynasty of
we want to find the sweet spot
between
making something that people
who are reminiscent of the world find
and love about the world, but also sort of
taking a take on it.
One of the things about Lorwyn and Kamigawa
is both, they weren't sets that did
well originally when they came out, but there was
a lot of sort of fan desire for them, and so
part of what we learned with Kamigawa is
you know, let's take a world
that struggled the first time
and see if we can, you know, keep the elements
that people like about it, but find a new way
to do it. So that's what we're doing with wrestling.
Okay, Yachting is another
return. We're going back to
Strixhaven on the
world of Archavios. This is
another more strict
return, meaning it is what
you would expect from, you know, we're going back
to Strixhaven. You get your colleges
with your, you know, Envy Colors and
Instant Sorcery's
Matter and sort of stuff. So, I mean, it is
Strixhaven is a very, very popular set,
and so we're going back, and we don't
really need to reinvent the wheel. People like Strixhaven.
We're mostly giving you more Strixhaven.
I mean, there'll be a few twists, obviously, when we go back, but...
And finally, we get to
ziplining. Oh, the thing I didn't mention
is... Sorry, I forgot to mention this.
So,
the set that starts with Bloomboro. So,
Bloomboro, Dusk Morn, Tennis, and Ultimate
are the second year.
And that is known as the...
What's that called?
The Dragonstorm arc.
Starting with volleyball through ziplining,
that's the final year.
And I called it the Censored arc
because I'm not allowed to tell you
what the name of the arc is.
But anyway, this is... So zipl tell you what the name of the arc is. But anyway, this is, so, ziplining
is what I call the capstone event.
It's what
War of the Spark was. It's what March of the Machine
was. It's like the big, giant conclusion
of it. And
as I explained, like, it's so far
ahead that I, you guys don't even know the story yet.
The story's just starting. So, I
can't tell you the theme of the set, although it's a really cool theme.
I can't tell you the villain of the set, although it's a really cool theme. I can't tell you the villain of the set, although it's a really cool villain. I can't
tell you the setting of the set, although it's a really cool setting. I can't tell you anything
about it because I don't want to give away all the coolness. And we want you to be excited when
you get there. The one thing I did say in the panel, though, is as head designer, one of the
perks of being head designer is I get to pick the sets I want to work on. I want to lead.
And I was really excited. It's a theme that I've been wanting to do for a long time.
And so I'm very excited for ziplining. So I
can't really tell you what it is, other
than say, I'm super
pumped that we're doing it.
It literally is in vision.
It just started its second
month of vision design. So
I'm very excited at what we're up to
so far. And we're playing in some really cool spaces.
But it's not even
and then
let me explain something
real quickly
I often talk
like people say
what's the hardest part
about making magic
and the hardest part
for me is
I pour my heart and soul
into something
with my team
and we make something amazing
and then I have to wait
like three years
to talk about it
so the fact that I
even in this
where I can't talk a lot
but even that
I just
a little tiny bit
just like say
oh we're going back
to Lorwyn or something.
It's really cool.
So anyway, so that was all my content.
Like I said, it's on, if you want to listen to the full thing,
at least the one we recorded, it is on YouTube.
And you also can hear about Arena and hear about the Universes Beyond.
All that stuff will be on there.
But anyway, that's mostly what I did at the event.
I went, I did the panel.
I went home the next day.
I did get to see some friends and I did, it was, it was like, it was really fun.
I met magic players and stuff.
But the panel was really cool.
It's something I will always remember.
It probably will be the event that I, I don't know if they'll ever let me talk that far
in the future again.
We'll see.
But it was fun.
It was fun to do it once.
I was very giddy at the event because it was so much fun.
Anyway, that, my friends, is Gen Con 2023 and the Magic Panel.
So anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed hearing about that.
But I can see my desk.
So we all know that means instead of talking about magic, it's time for me to be making magic.
I'll see you all next time.
Bye-bye.