Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1127: Same But Different

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

In this podcast, I talk about a concept I learned from my days in Hollywood and how I apply it to Magic design.

I'm pulling away from the curb because I dropped my son off to college. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today's topic comes from my Hollywood days. It is a something I learned about when I worked in Hollywood that I think is applicable to magic. It's a concept called same but different. So I'm gonna explain what that is

and then I will explain how it applies to magic. Okay, so when I worked at Hollywood, I was a writer. So one of the things that writers need to do is what's called a pitch. Basically, you get in a room with somebody, usually an executive, a studio executive, a network executive, somebody that can green light your project, meaning somebody that can go,

yes, we're gonna make this, and give you the thumbs up. There is a tool when you are pitching that is quite popular. It is called the three beat. So here's what a three beat is. What you do is you say, popular thing number one, popular movie or TV show number one, meets popular movie or TV show number two.

So for example, let's say I'm pitching a brand new TV show and I get in there and go, okay, my project is The Office Meets Jurassic World. It's an office comedy, but the people work at a biology lab cloning dinosaurs. The idea of a three beat is, look, my idea is like these two different ideas. So, hey, there's a chance of success because the things I am like have been successful. But I'm combining them in a way that makes something new and fresh and different, something that people haven't seen before. It is same but different. Now in Hollywood, one of the big things is whenever somebody greenlights something, they're on the hook for it.

If that thing goes on to be a giant hit, they get a lot of praise for it and good things happen. If that thing goes badly, well, they have to explain why it went badly. And so one of the reasons same but different is so popular in Hollywood is that You know You you want to sort of have some sense of security when you're doing something making something that's unlike anything We've ever made is risky and scary now that the Hollywood never does that occasionally do although to be honest studios Do a lot less than than smaller studios that are independent

studios. And so there's this idea in Hollywood of, hey, I don't want to be so different that the audience isn't able to connect with it, but I don't want it to be exactly, I don't want to be a copy of what's done before. I want it to be a little bit different because I want to have some novelty to it. Okay, so what does same but different have to do with magic? Well, I would argue that our magic sets are basically the embodiment of same but different. And here's what I mean by that. When

you make a magic set, it is possible with the rules of magic to make something that deviates quite a bit from what's been done before. But it's important to us that when you play a magic set that it feels like a magic set, that there's certain qualities to it. In addition, there's a lot of learning that we have and as long as we stay somewhat close to what we've done before, we can apply those. That there's a lot of balance.

Like a lot of our job, not necessarily my team, but like the play design team, is to make a very safe environment that's balanced. Or not safe, but a balanced environment. And that the more you're playing in space and you have some knowledge of, the easier it is to do that. And the more you deviate, the harder it is. So here's the general rule. If you think of the idea that there's a default,

like I talk about the set skeleton, right? When we make a set, there's a default we started. There's a way we're magic-stricken. Now we are allowed to move away from the default. Not every set is exactly the default, but I would say that about 80% of the set needs to be at the default. Meaning 80% of the set should be, if you look to the default, it would match the default. Now, what that 80% is can change.

The 20% that varies can change set to set. So any two sets could be as much as 40% different. Because if you change a different 20% two different sets even though they're both 80% of the default you know only 20% away could be up to 40% away from each other in theory. So the way I want to walk through this today as I'm going to use Outlaws of Thunder Junction as our latest set to sort of walk through the concept that I'm talking about. How do we make things same but different? What is that strategy? What are the tools we do? Oh, the one thing I do

want to explain is just because there's an example that exists, that actually exists, there's a set where I think we went more than 20% away And that is rise of the Eldrazi. So rise of the Eldrazi. We were in the Zendikar block It was the third set in the block. We originally were planning We wanted to do a large set in the third set that had completely different mechanics We originally were going to set it on a completely different world But the creative team at the time which was a lot smaller than now I think like four people said look we just don't have the resources to make two worlds in one year.

So why don't we just make a giant event on the world that changes things so much that it justifies changing mechanics. And that was the escape of the audrazi, the rise of the audrazi. They were trapped inside Zendikar, they got out. And then they had such a presence that it was okay that the set was more about them them The audrazi are these giant

Alien creatures that are unfathomable So Brian Tinsman who's the lead designer for that set really wanted to play into what he called battle cruiser magic the idea being Magic you get to a point where everybody is giant Christians and giant creatures are smashing into each other now in order to make that happen Brian did a lot to really sort of keep the normal early game from being relevant. So that it sort of forced you into the late game. The problem was that a lot of what he did undermined sort of the core essence of, there's a lot of what he did undermined sort of the core essence of like, there's a lot of

basic experience to magic. Let's say for example, I'm going to draft and I don't know the new set. I haven't learned the card. I'm just going to draft and I just want to have a base level. I'm just going to play magic. Normally what you do is say, okay, well I'll pick two colors. I'll take creatures of those colors. I'll take some, you know, removal spells, maybe some card draw and a card today.. And in a normal magic environment that will work. I'm not saying it's the best deck,

I'm not saying you'll win all your matches, but you will win enough. You know that that basic strategy works, except it didn't work. It did not work in Rise of the Eldrazi, it was a trap. So the interesting thing about Rise of the Eld Drazi is it is much beloved by the hardcore and franchise drafting community because it was so different. But the set sold horribly and the problem was it just wasn't enough like normal magic. It deviated too much. And so, there's a good example where we pushed beyond the 20% and really, and once again, sometimes it's hard.

Our job as the people make the set is we have to look at the whole audience. One tiny portion of the audience falling in love with it, but everybody else not liking it and not buying it is not ideal. We can make sets for the enfranchised players or even the core enfranchised rafters love without necessarily making everybody else not like it. But that's a good example of we push past the 20% and it causes us problems. Okay, so let's get to outlaws of Thunder Junction.

Okay, so the first thing, the easiest thing to do to make something same but different is the creative. The mechanics, like I said, when I talk about 20% change, I'm talking mechanics, that I said, when I talk about 20% change, I'm talking mechanics. That the set can only change about 20% in how it plays. But the creative, that can be in many different places. We really can stretch the creative. And the idea is, it is actually the thing that most big sets feel different from one

another. One set is in a Gothic horror world. One's a city world, one's a Greek mythology inspired world. You know, there's lots of different sets we've done and they really are different in that the tone and feel of the sets. We do build mechanical identity to worlds, I'll get to that in a second, but the core idea is that if I show you something and this time it just has a different vantage

point to it, that can feel very different. Like one of the things we want is if I show you a card, you have some chance of guessing the expansion. And a big part is the creative. So for example, in Outlaws of Thunder Junction, we have two different things. One is there's the theme and one is there's the setting. Now the setting and the theme are usually interconnected, but they're not the same thing.

The setting for all of Thunder Junction is a Western genre inspired world, a frontier world. The theme was villainy or outlaws. I've learned on my blog that when I say villain, I have a very comic book upbringing. I mean villains, criminals, outlaws, troublemakers, people who don't follow the rules that are, and don't follow the rules to the point to which

the society says, hey, you cause trouble. point in which you know that society says hey you cause trouble. And so the idea is we used the Western genre the frontier setting as a setting and that allowed us to make a lot of cards like individual cards. Now the setting can impact mechanics. The theme is usually tied. So for example, the idea of the theme of villainy is very tied to the west. The west has a sense of lawlessness to it, you know what I'm saying? And that a lot of when you think of sort of the stories of the west, there are heroes,

there's the sheriff and stuff, but there are also a lot of bad guys. In fact, usually the sheriff's a bit outnumbered by the bad guys. And we've been wanting to make a western set for a long time. There's a lot of challenges with doing that. And it was a very good fit for the villain theme. OK, so number one, there's a creative. We can dress things up. And the thing about the creative is the creative also sometimes can inspire designs that there's a lot of top-down

qualities the Western genre is tropes built into it so there are a lot of things that we can work with a setting usually you want some amount of resonance so that you can lean into that. Oh, and one of the recurring themes of today will be looking for things that are uniquely this set. We have to make a lot of magic sets, magic is a hungry monsters, I like to say. One of my jobs, and also the job of the creative team, is hey, we have to make a lot of cards

that are gonna be somewhat similar. How do we make them different from each other? And part of that is flavor. So one of the things we like to do is if there are cards inspired by top-down tropes of the other setting, hey, we want to do those. You know, there's opportunities to do that. We want to do that. And so one of the things we're always looking out for is are there cards we can make in this set that we can't make in other sets? My classic example here is there's a card called Shoot the Sheriff.

So Shoot the Sheriff says destroy target creature, or sorry, destroy target non-outlaw creature. So honestly it's playing into a theme. You know, shooting the sheriff, I mean, I shot the sheriff's famous song. There definitely is playing into a theme here, but it's making something that we can't make all the time. Um, it is tying into a theme, which I'll get to in a sec, you know, part, one of the themes, a mechanical theme. But the core idea is, that's not a card that we can make every set.

And so one of the things we're always looking for is what, what can we do that is unique to this set that another set couldn't make? I want to make as many of those cards as possible. Just because there's only so many magic cards to make. You know, if I make a generic magic card, maybe it fits in the set and not... There are some generic magic cards in sets, but normally when we're tight for space, the first thing we pull out are the generic cards because, hey, another set could do that. Only this set could do this card.

We try to prioritize that. Okay, now we get into the theme. The theme is the thing that also will set the apart because your theme just pushes you in different direction. Now, I should stress that theme and mechanical sort of, there is mechanical theming. Usually your theme is a little bit bigger than that and the mechanic plays into that.

So for example, in Outlaws of Thunder Junction, villainy was the theme. So we wanted to have a lot of mechanics that felt like you were getting to be a villain or a criminal or an outlaw. So for example, we came up with the idea of, okay, oh, and normally in a set, you mechanically get to make the audience care about one thing

they don't normally care about. And ideally the thing you make them care about, it's often best if that thing naturally exists. So in this set, it was crimes, committing crimes. We wanted committing crimes as a very villainous thing. We wanted crimes to be there, but we are also trying to be backward compatible, especially in nowadays with the popularity of larger formats

like Commander and Modern. We wanna make themes that you can use your old cards to play into the themes. And the idea was usually there's things that you normally learned to care about in Magic and we want most of those to be true. There's a lot, so when you play Magic there's a lot of short hands that, there's a lot of ways of where you say, okay, here is like the base level of things. And you sort of learn all these shortcuts so that you can just play magic faster, that you can figure out things faster. You know, there's certain metrics for when and how to attack and when to cast spells and like, there's certain rules you learn that are generally true. Now, one of the fun things of magic is, hey, we change things up.

Every set, things that might be true every set aren't always true. But and this is the important thing, we want to make sure that we're not changing too many things. For example, as I said earlier, I can make a technical magic set that is only using magic mechanics, but it breaks so many rules, it deviates so much from the norm that it wouldn't feel like a magic set, even though it uses all the components of the magic set. The trick we have learned is, and this is getting into the same but different, I want

to introduce something new, I want you to mechanically care about something that you normally don't, because there's novelty's novelty that oh now I'm caring about this thing. In Outlaws of Thunder Junction it's crimes. Oh targeting your opponent or their things now means something. Giant growth as a perfect example. Giant growth normally is used to make your creature bigger. In a normal setting I have a metric for when and how I'm going to use giant growth.

Using giant growth on the opponent's creature is very seldomly done. I'm not saying never, I'm sure you can come up with ways, but it's not something you normally do. You don't normally take positive effects that are meant for you and put them on your opponent's creatures. But with crimes, all of a sudden, you now might have an impetus to do something you normally don't. That is fun in small doses.

That is fun where you control how much you get to do it, right? It's fun when it's sort of like, okay, I have, here's something I can care about. And a similar thing might be landfall from the original Zendikar, or in the Zendikars. Landfall says, hey, when I play a land, it's relevant. Now, one of the things in general you want, and I'll use landfall and crimes to explain this, is that you don't want the change to punish people that don't adapt to the change.

And what I mean by that is, remember with Raizo de Odrazi, like, hey, don't be you know try to fill up with small creatures that just won't work. Normally in magic you can draft small creatures it will work. But the idea is like for example Outlaws of Thunder Junction is look there's some amount of targeting of your opponent's stuff you're going to do. You're going to have kill spells like a lot of magic if I have to deal with my opponent. So I naturally will have some number of crimes in my deck, even if I'm not trying to have crimes in my

deck. Likewise with landfall, look, I'm going to play land. I will have land in my deck. Now the better strategy for committing crimes or for landfall, you know, if you're really a better player, a more strategic player, you start thinking, oh, maybe I'm gonna use effects I wouldn't normally use on my opponent's creatures on them. Or maybe I'm gonna play land, I wanna save my land. And not often, normally when you play land, you just play it as soon as you can, most of the time.

But the idea is from a low level player that it's not quite adapted yet, that it takes time to learn. Look, they still get rewards from crimes because they're going to commit crimes. They still get rewards from landfall because they're going to play lands. That there still is a base level experience that will make the game fun for them. But as they learn more, as they play more, they can optimize and make it better for themselves. But it's important that the baseline of the change is something that even if they don't do a lot, even if they sort of just play normally, they still get the benefit of it.

That is important that one of the reasons same but different is so important is I want you to play the game of magic and enjoy the game of magic. And let's say you haven't played for a while or it's a brand new set that even if you just sort of go into default magic mode hey it'll be a fun experience for you yeah you're probably not optimizing it you know each environment cares about different things so the the better more strategic players will be able to care about those things but it has what I call a lenticular quality to it which is the mechanics fun, they lend you toward doing things that you wanna do, and they reward you for that, or they make you think about what you're going to do,

maybe they change your behavior, but how much they change it can vary, the beginner doesn't have to change it much, and the more, and franchise players, you know, the more strategic players can change it a lot. The idea is there's a lot there to do, and there's a lot, like, and there's a lot like having a new environment that's same but different. That 20%, understanding that 20% is how you get

good at that environment. Understanding the changes, knowing where it changes, what are the things you normally do that aren't as true here. The other thing that we try to do is a lot of times what we like we like to do what we call tweaks Which is we take something, you know, and we change it a little bit the classic example in Outlaw's Thunder Junction is Spree Spree is a lot like a kicker kicker is a mechanic one of the most used mechanics We have kicker says I can pay extra mana if I do my spell gets better. Now Spree is a little bit different in the sense that you have more options available here. So Spree is I pay a base cost, I then must pick one of the modes and pay for it, but

I can get as many modes as I pay for. Now Spree isn't exactly kicker in the sense that we couldn't get it on the card. Like Spree the way we write it out, if we had to write it out as Kicker, the template wouldn't fit. And we couldn't do things like have two different costs. Like right now with Spree, two different effects could be plus one generic mana. We couldn't do that if it was Kicker. But the idea is that Spree, it's a new mechanic, but it's a lot like an old mechanic. People played a lot of Kicker. So it's not like it's introducing something totally new to you, but it is a little bit

different. Picking modes, the idea that this spell will change over time as you have more access to mana just makes you think really differently about it. Normally with Kicker for example the default in Kicker is hey you know play the bass bow unless I'm close to being able to kick it or able to kick it then I kick it. In Spree it's like usually you can in fact you have to do something you're forced to do one mode so it once again it's same it's kind of like Kicker it's similar to Kicker you have a lot of experience with that, but it's different And that's a lot of things we like to do that we get one thing. That's just radically different right committing crimes That's not a thing you you normally have to care about. That's a brand new thing

But something like spree or even something like plot plot is asking you to do something new in the sense that I'm Casting my spells now, but not casting my spells till later. We've done some, and there's definitely been suspense for a while. There's been some stuff that plays in that space. It's not like you see plot and you've never seen anything like that. What exactly to do with plot, there's a lot of strategy to it, but that's a lot like screen plot or similar in that I'm introducing something to you that's a tweak. It's not something you've never seen, but it's used

slightly differently and the way you use it is differently. We also do stuff like Outlaws Thunder Junction has a batch, the Outlaw batch, right? So, rogues and assassins and warlocks and mercenaries and pirates are outlaws and it can't... Now, it's not that you've never cared, we've done stuff with the rogues in the past, but it's just sort of once again, these are all creature types that exist, they're all things you're familiar with, it's just asking to think about them in a slightly different way. And that's, that's how we get a lot of the same but different is most of what

we're doing is taking the same components you have and mixing and matching them in a different way and making you care about different elements of things and that that play experience I mean I think what I say 80% the first plus might mean wow that that's not much no no no 20% can be a lot changing 20% that is a significant amount of change that is not insignificant and the reason playing magic that there's a lot to learn is 20% is one-fifth that that is I mean it might sound like not a lot when I say it I guess but it is There's a saying I often talk about that you don't have to change you know you you only can change a little to change a lot and

That when a lot of Magic play is you have a lot of defaults built in. Like one of the fun things about Magic is the idea that all Magic sets share the same rule set and components means I can learn very quick. I often talk about that are kind of like other games, except there are other games where you kind of know the rules already or most of the rules.

So each time you play a Magic set, okay, there's some new rules and new mechanics. You got to learn those, mostly written on the card. Okay, you got to learn the new things, but so much of the old things gets reused. And kind of the fun of magic is we get to play around with what that 20% is. We get to really sort of focus on different things. Now, I mean, one of the things that is important is, and this is key to the same but different,

there are only so many truly innovative things in magic. And in the early days, it was a lot more, it was easier to be innovative. Legends could go, hey, here's multicolor and legendary permanence like I will introduce both those things as you move along it's not that there's not I mean there is space again we did battles last year a brand new car type I mean there is places we can go but as you move along you know 31 years in we've done a lot of stuff and so a lot of the nuance of the

20% isn't reinventing the wheel it's a lot of sort of subtly understanding what is working what hasn't worked and where to push and where to find new space and part of building in your theme in your setting is what does this allow me to do what can I do here than I didn't do before? How do I make this experience? Like a lot of, and the important part is the way the pendulum works is you're moving in different directions. So if I change, in the 20% I change this set, next time I just change a different 20%, like for the constant player, someone who's playing all the time, hey, the pendulum swings feel a little bit bigger because the difference between sets could be more than 20%.

But from the default magic that you know, we can stay sort of well-tuned. The other thing that is crucial when making a set is trying to figure out how to give the set an identity in a way that there is that focus. Now one of the challenges is not every theme exists in the amount you need. So for example, I want to care about lands. Look I'm going to play lands my deck. There'll be 40% lands most likely. Let's say I want to care about artifacts or enchantments or instance and sorceries or the great yard. I mean I want to care

about a certain zone or certain card type. One of the things we also have to think about when we're building the stats is what we call the Asfan. I've talked about this all the time. Asfan talks about how many cards in a certain thing when you open it up. It's talking about the level of something. So in a limited game, let's say I'm playing 40 cards. Normally the default is 17 are lands, 16 are creatures, 7 are spells. So if I want to care about something that's not a creature, that doesn't go on creatures, I get very restricted to what I can do.

In fact, most themes won't work unless you somehow integrate creatures. If you're doing artifacts and enchantments, maybe you're making artifact creatures or enchantment creatures. Maybe you're making a creature that makes a token, you know, make an artifact token, make an enchantment token. Maybe, like with instance and sorcery, sometimes we will make instance and sorcerers that make tokens so that you can have instance sorceries. Oftentimes the other thing to do is sometimes cards fetch other cards like lesson learn in a strict saving where well it's not an instance sorcery but it fetches an instance sorcery so that one card does provide for you an instant or sorcery. And different things care in different ways, like tokens are permanent so you can do things like be enchantments or artifacts. It's hard to make a token into an instant or sorcery.

Not impossible. But so the idea is that whatever you're doing, whatever your theme is, whatever your 20% where you're moving, you also have to think about how to make sure the aft fan of what you're doing matches that. Now, Outlaws of Thunder Junction, like the thing we cared about was targeting. We did have to up the aft fan of things that target your opponent.

A couple things. One is, normally for example, effects that affect you, we normally say they only affect you. A lot of times the way we template something like a giant girl it says target creature you control. It just makes it easier for digital you're not miss clicking and stuff. But in this set we open ended the targeting. The targeting is open ended. And we made sure there were more effects on creatures that could target the opponent or their stuff. There are more attack triggers and you know, our dual land cycle did damage to the opponent

because that would trigger crimes. So whatever the thing is that you care about, whatever that sort of one new thing to care about, you have to make sure that the aspen of that thing is high enough that people can care about that. And even something like crimes where crimes do exist, a lot of crimes are natural, you have to think about that. Not everything is landfall. Lands are unique in that the percentage of lands are kind of locked in mostly in the way you play.

Creatures to a certain extent, but other than creatures and lands, and even creatures aren't locked in, you really have to think about your theme and how to blend it in. And you wanna think about where are we deviating? And then the other important thing is understand the space you're playing in, understand where you're pushing and being different, and then in the other places, don't do that.

A lot of times what you want to do is saying, okay, we are spending our complexity here, so that means this over there, we're not doing that. We're making it the simplest version we can because we want part of allowing people to learn the 20% is making sure the 80% is as straightforward as possible and not only do you have to sort of bend and get your ass fan right but the things that aren't part of that you want to be simpler than normal but anyway um that is same but different that we want every magic set to feel like a magic set, to feel like something you recognize, same.

But we also want every magic set to be a unique experience, something that you haven't experienced before, something that makes you feel like magic is ever-changing, and that is different. So much like the pictures in Hollywood, I left Hollywood, I thought I got away from same but different, but I did not and so it is time anyway that is my talk on same or different but I am now at work so we all know what that means means

the end of my drive to work so instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic hope you enjoyed today's talk and I will see you next time bye bye