Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1131: Magic Stories about My Dad

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

My father, Gene Rosewater, died on April 17. In this podcast, I share stories about him that relate to Magic. Warning: This one's a bit of a tear-jerker.

I'm pulling away for the curb because they dropped off my son at college. We all know what that means It's time for another drive to work Okay today is an emotional one So my dad Gene Rosewater recently died And this is a tribute podcast to him I'm going to share magic related stories with my dad since this is a magic podcast. But a lot of sort of there's a lot of my dad in me and there's a lot of things that got

me to where I was in magic that I owed my dad. So I'm just going to share a bunch of stories today. We'll see if I can do this without getting too emotional. No promises. Okay, so let's go back to the very beginning, which is my dad was a great fan of games. And he introduced me to games at a very young age, and I became a gamer at a very young age. I really loved games. And so probably the first contribution to Magic was just imbuing in me a love of

games. Flash forward, so in the summer of 1993, even before that, at the time I was in Hollywood, I was trying to make it as a writer. I'd had a little bit of success. I wrote a mersenne. But anyway, I was sort of in between things and writing is a very solitary profession. So I decided I decided that I wanted to get a part-time job just to get out and like interact with people. It was more about just getting out of my house and I mean I got paid but it was more about just getting out of my house than anything. I mean I got paid, but it was more about getting out of my house than anything else. I chose to go work at a game store because I love games.

It was at that store that I first heard about Magic. I would later see Magic for the first time at San Diego Comic Con of that year. And then I went to a game convention, I think it was OrcCon, but in Los Angeles. I went to one of the game conventions in August. And that is when I actually was able to purchase Magic for the first time. It was Alpha. I think I purchased a starter and three boosters, I think.

Anyway, that's the first time I ever, that convention is the first time I ever, I had seen the cards, but I'd never played it. That's where I learned how to play. And that's where I purchased my first Magic. That night, I called my dad. So by the way, I did a podcast with my dad, called Meet My Dad, that I linked to when my dad died.

Some of the stories I'm gonna tell today are told on that podcast as well, in a different context than my dad's there. So I'll round up some of the stories, but if you wanna hear it from my dad specifically, there is that podcast. I'm very actually happy that I did a podcast with my dad. That's a very, it means a lot that I have that.

Anyway, so I called my dad and I am beyond excited. Basically, I played Magic for the first time and I just saw the potential in it. One of my strengths, I'm good at seeing potential and I mean, literally, I played the game once or I learned how to play that day, called my dad and I was just gushing. I'm like, dad, I think I said

this is the next Dungeon Dragons. That's what I think I said. I think this is the next big thing in gaming. This is amazing. This is gonna be huge. And I was very, very excited. And I just remember that's the person I wanted to tell, my dad.

Cause it was a game thing. I was super excited about it. And he was the person of my life that was most connected to games. So, it turns out that Alpha disappeared very quickly. When Beta came out, I bought two boxes of starters and two boxes of boosters.

Cause I knew if I was going to play with other people, I would need to provide a product for them because I knew it was going to sell out right away. So anyway, at some point, pretty soon after, I go to visit my dad. My dad at the time lived in Lake Tahoe on the California side of the lake, the lakes in both Nevada and California. My parents had divorced right after I graduated college. So my mom lived back East, but my dad lived in Tahoe. So I could drive up, I was living in Los Angeles,

so I could drive up to see him. So I drove up and I brought magic cards with me, and I gave him a whole bunch of magic cards, and we played magic for the very first time. He and I played Magic for the first time. He was excited to learn. I mean, God was so excited about it. And so we started playing. And so whenever I would, I'd visit him a couple times a year, whenever I would visit him, we would play Magic. And he got, like I said, my dad is a gamer. He got very into Magic pretty quickly. He really enjoyed it. My dad's biggest issue for him was he was up in Reno. There

just weren't a lot of people to play with where he was at. And this is the, this is we're talking the early days of Magic. The problem with Magic back in the very early days was stuff sold out so quickly that like just finding someone who didn't even have cards to play with was quite the challenge. So in the early days he mostly played with me. He would eventually get a friend named Don who lived up in Lake Tahoe and he and Don got really into magic and they would play each other. So Don was kind of his magic playing buddy for a while. Oh, when I visited for

the first time, I just want to clear this. I tell the story in my podcast with my dad. So I bring a whole bunch of cards for him, you know, and, and once again, I just gave them to him. I didn't a lot of my friends. What I would do is if they were interested, I would sell them the cost. I paid them for, but I would sell them to my friends. My dad, I didn't charge. But anyway, my dad opened a couple of cards that I didn't see and my dad realized how excited I was. So he was more than willing to trade with me.

The trade that became the infamous trade, but my dad liked to joke about some stuff, and in a fun way, he held no grudge or anything, was he had opened a Mox Emerald and I'd never seen a Mox before. And I was really confused the time I first saw it. I'm like, why would you just play a forest? Why would you play?

I didn't understand that it upped you on mana, right? It felt like it was like a forest, but it's an artifact. It's a forest that you can shatter, you know? But I didn't have it. And so I decided I would trade it for him because it felt like it was green because it's after green mana. I wanted to trade him a green card.

And I actually traded him what was one of my favorite cards. I had two fungus sores. So fungus sores are creatures that every time you deal damage to it, it gets bigger. I think it was the first magic card to use plus one plus one counters. Anyway, it was one of my favorite cards. I had two of them

So when I traded my dad my fungus or for the mox emerald, I I swear I actually thought I was the nice guy I thought I because I thought fungis are such a cool card and This isn't the early days. No one news nothing I'm saying it wasn't like I had any idea like I had never even seen a Mox before. I had no idea that you know like that you have... later on obviously people start understand what the more powerful cards are. This is long before that happened. Once again this is just me and my dad playing. This is before like deckless ever got released. There was no rarities known. I mean this was very much

super super early days of Magic. Okay so my and I, I'd go up every once in a while and play, so in 1994, I think in the summer, early summer's my guess, my dad and I both go to San Jose, California for the 1994 National Championship. I think that was the first ever national, I believe it was the first ever national championship I believe it was the first ever national championship. And it was in San Jose. And San Jose wasn't far from my dad and I could drive.

It was in California. So both of us met in San Jose to go to it. So it was a very, it was one of the earliest, maybe even the first wizard run event. It was very, very early. Obviously there was a world championship in 94 that would happen in Milwaukee that I would be at. My dad wasn't there, but I would be at. But this Nationals was, I think, the first, it's the first wizard run thing I remember. Maybe it wasn't the first one, but the first one I remember. And they, it was very confusing. So at the time, Arabian Nights and Antiquities were out.

And Revise was out. So Revise, so this is like spring of 94. So they made a call at the beginning of the tournament, not announced ahead of time, right as the tournament's about to begin, they're like, oh, we have an announcement to make. You are not allowed to play any cards that have an expansion symbol on them. Meaning it couldn't have a little

scimitar from Arabian Nights or a little anvil from antiquity. Now the weird thing is Revised was out and Revised had printed some cards from Arabian Nights and antiquities. Those were, or I'm sorry, was it Revice? No, Revice is right, right, Revice is right. So, Revice was third edition. So, you couldn't have those. So I remember my dad had brought all his cards and my dad had a whole bunch of Racks because I think he had built a discard deck. The rack is a card from antiquities that punishes you for not having enough cards in your hand.

Anyway, there's a guy who, a guy named Bo Bell. I don't know whether I knew Bo yet or not. I had later become friends with Bo. I don't know if I was friends with Bo at this point. Bo's from, I think Bo was from Southern California. Anyway, my dad traded Bo four revised racks. Or he traded him some number of, I think it was four, but he traded some number of racks.

My memory was four, but anyway, Bo Bell would go on to win the event with a discard deck with my dad's racks in his deck. My dad and I, neither of us did great. But it was just fun, it was the first time I played, in fact the only really time I played in a major event with my dad is 94, mostly because soon thereafter,

I would start working for wizards. In fact, I think at the time I went to nationals, I was already doing the puzzles for Wizards. But I think when Ice Age came out, or no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no order to do that, they had to send it to me ahead of time. And by doing that, I was not allowed to play in sanctioned events. So, um, obviously I played in 94 Worlds. But after that, after I wasn't allowed to play in events. So maybe it was, anyway, um, so anyway, 94 Nationals was the one big event I ever played with my dad. Okay, the next important thing that happens is, happens in 95, I start freelancing for Wizards.

Like I said, I was doing my puzzles in the Duelist. I went to Gen Con in 94 where Worlds happen, to pitch myself to Catherine Haynes, who was the editor of the Duelist at the time. And I just wanted to write articles for the Duelist. She said, fine. Basically she's like, look, pitch me ideas. I like them. You can write them. And at that at that very time I pitched her an article on Gen Con and I pitched her I covered the 94 World Championships. I covered the finals which was if you ever seen a picture of the

Zach Dolan playing for trying to stand in the finals. I'm at the table taking notes. So anyway, it was fun being part of history. Anyway, that led to me getting a lot of freelance jobs for Wizards. At one point, I think I was working for seven different parts of the company. Basically, I knew magic, I was smart, I was a good writer, and I turned things on time. That's basically all you need to get a lot of work

when they're desperate for work, especially. So at one point I'm up visiting Wizards, they brought me up to Renton every once in a while and I said I'd be willing to move to Seattle. Now when I said that it was a little bit impulsive and Mike Davis who was the head of R&D at the time basically said okay we'll hire you. It actually took a couple months to negotiate and figure all that out. A bunch of different parts of the company actually wanted to hire me once I said I'd worked there.

But the interesting thing was, I actually said I'd be willing to work there a little before I was 100% sure I was willing to move to Seattle. So when they made me the offer, I basically called both my parents. Once again, they were divorced at this point. So I talked to my mom and my mom's take on it is

she knew how much I like writing, she knew how much writing for television was a big passion of mine, and she wasn't sure. She was like, wow, you're really giving up on this dream that you spend a lot of time and energy on, you've had some success, do you wanna give up on that? She wasn't so sure. I called my dad and I say, you've had some success, you know, do you want to give them a raise? She wasn't so sure. I called my dad and I say, Hey, you know, magic wants to give me a job.

You know, I'd be working for R and D and my dad was like, yeah, let's do that. Yes, do that. That sounds great. You should do that. My dad was super supportive. I mean, my mom did get on board. I don't want to say my mom was trying to prevent me, but my mom was ambivalent about it.

And my dad, being a game player, being the one that I played a lot of magic with, just thought it was a really exciting opportunity. And I don't think anybody I didn't know, my dad didn't know, no one really, I don't think any of us really understood the magnitude of the Switch, meaning this was your job for the rest of your life really I don't think any of us really understood that the magnitude of the switch meaning this was your job for the rest of your life I don't think I quite got that at the time and in my

mind was sort of like hey let's go let's see you know this will be something that I do and I don't know how many years it'll last but hey when it's over I can always go back to Hollywood with but but the point that it was it was my dad's support that really got me like I was I was on the fence I wasn't sure and it was my dad's unwavering support they got me to say, okay, I'm doing it. I'm gonna take this job So I come to work in 95 I come to work for Wizards Then the next time so the next big event the one that my dad comes to was in 96 we had started the Pro Tour in early 96 and that Worlds was the first

Worlds that was kind of part of the Pro Tour. At the time Wizards didn't know where to host the site. We ended up hosting it at the Wizards offices. So this is the one that Tom Champagne from Australia won. There was a card associated with it called the 1996 World Championship, a world champion. There was only one card ever made. It was embedded in the trophy.

I designed that card. It was a weird design, but also, the only copy that exists is embedded in a trophy. I was told that actual gameplay wasn't super important. It just had to read fun and exciting. It actually has an ability that you can, as an ability when it's in your library that lets you tutor for it, which is not something we could actually do. But once again, one of card embedded in trophy, not a lot of gameplay with it.

So my dad came to that he came and he came with his friend Don who I talked about earlier. So my dad and Don had really become they spent a lot of time together they both like games and they really got into magic so they played a lot of magic together so my dad and Don came to the event. I was working in the event so I was pretty busy but I from time to time I would see them and it was fun. The important thing from that event just as it impacts my life is that I was talking to my dad and Don at the event and Don had said that they had met a whole bunch of employees. I had introduced them to all these different employees that

I worked with. And Don had said to me that this employees. I had introduced them to all these different employees that I worked with. And Don had said to me, there's one woman I had introduced him to named Laura. And Don goes, you do know that Laura likes you. I go, what do you mean? He goes, Laura, she likes you. I go, no, I think we're just friends. And Don was like, no, no, no, no, no. She is interested in you.

Laura likes you. And that was the first time that I had any idea, you know what I'm saying, like, Laura and I were friends, but I was just kind of clueless. And that it was my dad and Don visiting, and Don's notes that got me actually to try to see if maybe, you know, try to date Laura. And obviously I ended up marrying her,

and we have a family, we're still together 25 plus years later. So that also means something personally to me in that, like my dad not calling me wouldn't have brought Don, none of that would have happened. The next story is my dad had a place in Tahoe. So my dad was a dentist for many, many years. In his 50s, he decided to give up on his dental practice, and he moved to Lake Tahoe, and he became a ski instructor,

which he did for like 24 years. So in the early days, back when RMD was pretty small, we would travel up to see my dad. It was sort of like a vacation destination. So one time, I think the summer of that summer, the winter of 97, maybe early 98, we went and visited, oh, I'm sorry, the winter of 96, 97 that winter. We went and visited my dad and all of R&D came, not all of R&D was like eight people eight people but everybody except for like Jim Lynn

In fact, we were on the plane and we're like, oh, you know this plane goes down We imagine gonna be big big trouble like Jim Lynn was the only one I think that wasn't on the plane but I mean it was me and Richard and Let's see Joel Mick and Bill Rose and Mike Elliott and William Jocush and Henry Stern or Henry might not have been there yet on that trip. Scaffoliace, it was just all the people working on magic at the time. And we went mostly, so what happened was we went to visit my dad and during the day we

would go skiing and at night we would just play magic and we brought an infinite magic product. And I think what happened was all the magic cards we opened we just left for my dad. My dad Don would play with them. Years later by the way, I also tell this story in the podcast, I'm at my dad's, I don't know how many years later, my dad is, there was a point at which my dad, Don had died and my dad just wasn't playing a lot of magic anymore. And he said to me, look, is there any cards you want?

You know, you play Magic all the time. And I went through and the one card that he always joked about is one of the cards was a Black Lotus, a beta Black Lotus, because I gave him a bunch of beta cards. I think it was a beta. Anyway, it either was a beta or it was an unlimited. Anyway, and I said to him, I go, here's the cards I'm going to take. Is it okay? And honestly, he wanted me to have the cards. He even joke about me taking the black lives It just became a running joke. I mean he wanted me to have it, but it became a running joke

So 1997 was the last big event my dad went to that was the 97 World Championships. It was in the University District He came and played it. Once again, I was really busy. The fun little piece of trivia from that event was we were on ESPN2. So one of my jobs at the Pro Tour, back when I worked on the Pro Tour, was I ran all the video production on the final day and everything. And so I was very, very involved in the ESPN2 stuff. And So I was very, very involved in the ESPN2 stuff. And our on-air person, the talent that did the on-air stuff for the ESPN2 show was a very young Jeff Probst of Survivor fame. So that's kind of cool.

I think the next winter, I think, so anyway, at some point, I believe after that, Joel, not Joel, Bill Rose, Mike Elliott and myself went to my dad's to work on Invasion. So when we made Tempest, so Tempest was me, Richard Garfield, Mike Elliott and Charlie Coutinho, we traveled down to Portland and spent the first week at Richard's parents' house working on the set. And kind of inspired by that I think, Bill had really enjoyed the trip to my dad's and he said, Mark you know is it okay to go with my dad? I called my dad, my dad's like

yeah! My dad loved having us up. So we went up there. So the first week of invasion design was done at my dad's house up in Tahoe. And it was super fun. Once again, we would design during the day. I think we took one or two breaks to go skiing. We didn't ski every day because we were working on set, but we took one or two days to go skiing. And then at night we would play, we played Magic. We played a few other games, I think,

but played a lot of Magic. And that, like one of the things that's a lot of fun for me is my dad, my dad was a dentist. The reason he became a dentist was he kind of growing up was like, well, you need to do a profession. Like he, you need to be a doctor or a lawyer or something. So he chose being a dentist because he could work with his hands. He really loved woodworking and metalworking and so being a dentist

especially back in the day he got to craft things and there's a lot of fine work in denture now it most dentists or it does like nowadays there's like 3d printing and stuff but back in the day you had to do molds and a little more anyway my dad enjoyed that part of it, but he was never a great fan of being a dentist. He actually one time entertained the idea of giving up dentistry and opening up a game store ended up not happening. But he looked into and I think that my when I got the job of at Wizards, it was kind of like my dad living through me.

He was so excited. One second. I just, it was, it was something he'd always wanted to do, you know, like it, I think one of the things with your kids is it's really exciting to see your kids do something that you're really proud of. And he was just very excited. He was always very proud of me. If you listen to the podcast, my dad talks about that. One of the quirky things about my job is,

within the realm of magic, I became pretty famous within the magic world. I always joked I was a big fish in a little pond. But it was a lot of fun. My mom enjoys this too. But I'm just seeing people very excited. My dad in the podcast tells the story of, I guess he was traveling in Italy, you know, and he's just trying to find a place to use a computer, you know, and he finds a shop and there's

a magic poster on the wall and it turns out the store owner loves playing magic and now does he love playing magic? He knows who I am because he's really into magic and when he finds he's my dad, he's all excited, he had my dad sign a card, he wouldn't accept his money, and it's just, I don't know, that was really, really impactful for my dad, the idea that I sort of made a mark on the world in a really large way. Last June, I got inducted into the Hall of Fame, and my dad was still alive at the time, but he was suffering from Alzheimer's. And so, um, he couldn't acknowledge what happened. Like, I told him.

My mom didn't come to the event, but... my dad would have been so excited. I really had no bigger share of leaders than my dad. So after that point, basically what happened was my dad, once Don had died, he just didn't have anybody to play with. He then just started playing on Magic Online. So he did play a bunch on Magic Online, although if you listen to the podcast he got frustrated with Magic Online just because my dad at his core is a Johnny. He likes making weird combo decks. I also like that. And the problem is, you know, part of the fun of the combo decks is my dad

didn't mind losing, you know, majority of the time but hey when he when his things went off he wanted to do his thing and people online would say oh okay got it I quit and that was that was not much fun for him. Anyway so basically what happened from then on was when my dad would visit me we would break out whatever the latest magic product is and play it. And so so he was super super familiar with early Magic but he and I would play I mean he knew the rules of Magic so whenever he'd come we usually would play Sealed that's the easiest thing to play. But also it just gave him a chance to see the latest thing that we were doing and every time he would come up we would play Magic. And then I'd introduce him to the latest thing.

It was just a chance for him to see what I was up to. He always kept track. He listened to a lot of my podcasts and he would read my articles. So he kept up with what was going on in Magic through me. But mostly he was just keeping an eye on things. So eventually what happened is he first gets something called aphasia, which has to do with language and also can affect numbers. It just makes it very hard to communicate.

And then I don't know if it's related to the aphasia. It might be he got Alzheimer's. And so just little by little for those that don't have never had a loved one with Alzheimer's, they just kind of slip away a little by little. And like his ability to play games, first there's a period where he could play games that he knew, but he couldn't play games like he couldn't learn a new game. And Magic obviously is constantly changing, so his ability to play Magic got affected. There still were other games I could play with him, so he and I would play games that

we played for many, many years. And then little by little he could not do that. And so that was one of the hard things. But he always was very excited about me. I remember maybe it was a year, year and a half ago, one of their neighbors was a teacher and they'd started a magic club at their school. And so my dad, as always, you know, he was very proud of me.

And so my dad, as always, you know, he was very proud of me. And so I helped, I got them cards so they could play at their club. But up until the very end, even when he couldn't play anymore, he was very excited. Like the fact that I, you know, the fact that I did what he did with something that he was just very proud of. And so basically he, the Alzheimer's progressed. He eventually had to go to memory care last December. I was able to visit him three times in memory care, but little by little, I mean, he just slips away. That's how Alzheimer's works. The last time I visited him he didn't recognize me. He didn't give me a hug. He couldn't speak and he really um...

I think he died. Maybe two or three weeks after I last saw him. He died peacefully in his sleep. The... He died peacefully asleep. But if someone dies, one of the things I like to do, I call it the, it's a wonderful life reflection, which is, what would life, like how would the world be different in this person wasn't there? And just for all you as magic fans I've had pretty big influence on the game I'm sure some of the things I did had if I wasn't there somebody else would have done

but you know, I put a pretty big thumbprint and You know, if not for my dad not even obviously my dad didn't exist somebody else would have done but you know i i put a pretty big thumbprint and you know if not for my dad not even obviously my dad didn't exist i wouldn't be born so uh... but it's not even just him being born but him imbuing me a love of games him being really the person that encouraged me to

take the job of wizards he's been you know one of my biggest cheerleaders and someone who just really, who I can share magic with. I mean, I obviously there's other people I share magic with, but of all my really close relationships it's the person that magic had the strongest bond with. And so, magic, like, I think my influence on magic, and when my dad dies, I mean, there's many other memories I have. This is a magic podcast, so I'm not going into lots of other memories, but I have amazing memories with my dad. We had a wonderful relationship.

I knew how he felt about me. He knew how I felt about him, which is important, by the way, if you have a sick loved one, and you don't know that, that you haven't said what you want to each other, we have, that wasn't a problem, but that's a great thing to do, and just communicate how you feel. But anyway, you know, if not for my dad, I think magic would be, I mean, not for my dad, not for his influence, not for his influence, not for his encouragement, not for all the things he did. He really was one of the people that really empowered me

and really drove me and not for him, I think Magic would be really different. And so I just wanted to do this podcast as a tribute to my dad. Obviously he was really important to me. But I hope this podcast shows in some ways he was important to all of you. Anyway, I am at work.

I wanna thank you. This is a real emotional and personal podcast. But I did another one when Chris Rush died I'm not I'm willing to be personal and you know I I I treat this podcast very seriously and I'm willing to share with this podcast and this is a big loss so I support I do my podcast but it's very hard so thank you guys for listening this was important for me to do because I just wanted to pay tribute to my dad anyway guys but I am I am here I'm at work so this is the end of my drive to work so

instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I promise I'll give myself a moment to collect myself. But anyway guys, thank you for listening. Like I said, this was a little more emotional than most, but it means a lot. And like I said, my dad meant the world to me. So thank you all for listening

and I'll see you next time. Bye bye.