Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #18 - Artifacts

Episode Date: January 25, 2013

Mark Rosewater talks about artifacts. ...

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Starting point is 00:00:01 Okay, pulling out of my driveway. So we all know that means it's time for another drive to work. Okay, so for today, I've been trying to figure out different ways to mix up this podcast. And so I decided that I'm going to talk today about a card type, something I haven't done yet. So today we're going to talk about artifacts. And I thought I'd talk a little bit about where artifacts came from, and kind of some of the challenges of designing artifacts, and I don't know, just some of the lessons that we've learned along the way. Okay, so let's start at the beginning, because as the singing nun says, that's the best place
Starting point is 00:00:41 to start. Why did Richard Garfield make artifacts? And I think the answer is if you look at Alpha, a lot of what Richard did is he took the concept of a magical duel and then just extrapolated. He said, okay, well,
Starting point is 00:00:58 I'm fighting with magic. What would I expect to see? What are the tropes of fantasy that I would expect? And one of the big ones is the idea of powerful objects. Something that's, I mean, very much tied into, you know, go read any fantasy story, you know, and, you know, Lord of the Rings, there's the ring, it's in the title, you know, the Harry Potter have their wands and all sorts of things. So the thing is, there is the idea of having totems and objects and things of power,
Starting point is 00:01:33 very endemic and core to the idea of fantasy. So Richard was like, okay, you know, if I'm going to do this, well, I should have objects. And what happened was, the idea was, well, magic is tied to a certain style of magic. If I want to throw fireballs, well, I have to commit to a red style of magic. But what if I just want to have an object? Well, why can't any mage have an object? And that's where Richard came up with the idea of colorless.
Starting point is 00:01:58 The idea being, any deck can play this. It doesn't have a color requirement. Now, the interesting question is, which came first? The concept of artifacts or the concept of colorlessness? Now, I've not asked Richard this question, so I don't definitively know, but I am pretty sure that he started with the concepts of artifacts as a thing,
Starting point is 00:02:16 and that led him down the path to the idea of colorlessness. I don't know. Next time I see Richard, I actually will ask him. If I had thought about that, I could have called him up before the show, but my advanced planning on this podcast is not exactly top-notch. Okay, so Richard made Artifacts, Alpha came out, and so here's an interesting thing that people don't realize necessarily is, so when Alpha came out, what were the hot cards in Alpha? Like, what were the cards
Starting point is 00:02:45 that people said, oh my God, I need this card. Now, there were two cards when I was, for those who don't know, I started playing the game in August of 1993. Game came out in July.
Starting point is 00:02:58 And I went to a convention in Los Angeles. I think it was OrkCon. And anyway, they had Magic for Sale. I bought a starter and three boosters, because that was about $27. I'm like, well, that's what you spend on a game.
Starting point is 00:03:10 And then as soon as I got home and figured out what the game was like, I should have bought more! I remember people buying boxes. And I was like, wow, why would you buy so many boxes? But anyway, so for Alpha, I got a starter and three boosters. My opening rares was Dark Pact and Stasis.
Starting point is 00:03:26 Anyway. Okay, so I opened this up. And then, so my question here is, there were two cards that I knew that I had to open in a pack if I wanted. What happened, by the way, is when Beta came out, Alpha was gone, obviously, I waited for Beta,
Starting point is 00:03:43 and I bought two boxes of starters and two boxes of boosters. Is that right? I know for sure I bought two boxes of boosters. Anyway, the idea was, I think I bought two boxes of starters, too, because my friends, I knew there wasn't any people to play, I needed to get product for them, and you just couldn't find it. It would sell out the day it came in. So I bought a whole bunch. But anyway, I was ripping open boosters. I set a limit to myself that I could only open one a day, just to make it last. And this was before a limit or anything where I didn't have to use for them, I mean, before I opened them. And so what I learned was there were two cards that as they started, you know, meeting other Magic players,
Starting point is 00:04:19 I quickly picked up there were two cards that I had to open. I had to open because no one was going to trade me for it. No one was going to trade me. What were were two cards that I had to open. I had to open, because no one was going to trade me for it. No one was going to trade me. What were those two cards? Okay, the first was Clockwork Beast. Clockwork Beast! What is Clockwork Beast? I think it costs seven? And
Starting point is 00:04:35 I can't remember. I think what happens is, it's a six? It's a zero-zero creature that comes in with a certain number of plus-one, plus-one counters. And whenever it attacks or blocks, it winds down. And then I think you can pay to wind it back up. But anyway, Clock
Starting point is 00:04:52 Rupees. Oh, crazy artifact creature. And the other one was the Hive. So the Hive is, I don't remember the cost of the Hive, 4 or 5. And it's 4 and tap make a 1-1 flying token. Hive token. So that, by the way, was the first token card
Starting point is 00:05:08 in Magic. And anyway, those were the... You could not... You had to open... You wanted to get a hive or a Clockwork Beast, you had to open it in a pack. Not moxes, not a black lotus, not things that would go on to be crazy, but in the early, early
Starting point is 00:05:24 days, like the sought-after cards, the ones that people talked in hush to be crazy, but in the early, early days, like the sought-after cards, the ones that people talked in hushed whispers, was Clockwork Beast and The Hive. So, what does that say? Well, I think what it says is, one of the things about early days of Magic is, the internet was very in infancy, there wasn't a lot of shared information, you get a real sense of kind of, when everybody, to me in Alpha, everybody was a beginning player.
Starting point is 00:05:48 And so what it says is it's a very interesting look at what the beginning player values. And one of the things that I find is artifacts are super super sexy. For two reasons. One, creatively they're just very sexy. The idea of an item of great magical power is
Starting point is 00:06:03 very compelling. and that's why in stories, it's a thing you lust after, you know what I'm saying? And when you tell stories, I think the thing about them is, magical spells are cool, but something about an object that has this sort of extra feel to it,
Starting point is 00:06:20 I mean, if you go into video games, video games are very big on making sure that you get things and they're physical things. So I think the fact that they represent something very physical psychologically is important. And the other thing is I think the colorlessness really helps make them extra sexy
Starting point is 00:06:37 because you're like, if I like it, no matter what, I can go in any deck. Any deck can play this. I can play in any deck. Which brings us to an interesting question, by the way. As all my podcasts, I'm just going to jump around. One of the big debates we have when making artifacts is, how colorless is it supposed to be? Now, I'm not talking about colored mana costs. I'll get to that in a little bit. I'm talking more about the fact that most artifacts are like, well, any deck could play this. So is it wrong to make an artifact that really any deck can't play?
Starting point is 00:07:08 For example, what if I made an artifact that had a colored activation that said, well, anybody can put this in your deck, but to use it, you have to have a certain color. And one of the philosophies we have followed in artifact design is the idea that we like to create the illusion that most artifacts could be played by anybody, meaning we tend to avoid, and we've made a few exceptions here, we tend to avoid putting too much colored mana into the artifacts. And the big exception there is when we delve into artifact blocks where we have a lot of artifacts, we're more willing to weave in color into them. But even then, you'll notice what we tend to do is having color optimizes.
Starting point is 00:07:51 It's not the only thing. With a few exceptions, normally anybody can use an artifact. Maybe a certain color can use it better, but anybody can use it. And that's a big thing we try to keep through in artifacts. So that's a big role of them. And if you look, I mean, Mirrodin's a good example, or like, Scar's Mirrodin, an artifact block,
Starting point is 00:08:09 where what we tend to do is we tend to say, oh, well, there's always a use for this, but there's an added use in the red color, and stronger than the red color. Now, every once in a while, for example, we'll make something like Gauntlets of Might, to use an alpha example. So Gauntlets of Might, to use an alpha example.
Starting point is 00:08:26 So Gauntlets of Might made all your mountains tap for an extra red and, or actually made all mountains tap for an extra red, and made all red creatures plus one plus one. Now, because it's alpha it affected everybody, and the idea was, I'm just good for red things. Well, why would you play this in a deck
Starting point is 00:08:42 that didn't have red? You wouldn't. And so, even from alpha there clearly was a deck that didn't have red? You wouldn't. And so even from Alpha, there clearly was a little bit of, well, I'm good for this color. But nowadays, we're a little more careful, and we do a little bit of that. But we definitely try to skew them so that there's some value,
Starting point is 00:08:57 that if you needed to play them in your deck, you could. The other big thing about Artifact, so here's the other thing about Artifacts. When Richard made the game, he tried to make logical things that would exist. Well, two things he made. One was Artifacts.
Starting point is 00:09:12 Another thing he made was Enchantments. And the idea of Enchantments was, well, I'm going to cast magic. I'm going to alter the state of things. I'm going to make a magic that has permanence to it and change it to something. Well, that's where Enchantments came from. And the problem was, that has permanence to it and changes something. Well, that's where enchantments came from. You know?
Starting point is 00:09:28 And the problem was global enchantments and artifacts really, from a game design standpoint, are really, really close to being the exact same thing. In fact, whenever someone writes in to me, I get this question all the time, like, you have to kill one card type of magic. What do you kill?
Starting point is 00:09:44 And one of the things that always ends up happening is you get down to enchantments versus artifacts because mechanically they represent the same thing from a game design version. They're very, very similar. And obviously, the colored mana cost is obviously something we can change, we have. So I tend to say, okay, I guess we lose enchantments
Starting point is 00:10:03 because artifacts are sexier as a thing, and then just have artifacts pick up the slack when enchantments do. That's my answer to what you get rid of. Not that I want to get rid of enchantments. When you have to answer the questions where they give you a decision you would never do, but you have to answer it. So, but here's the interesting thing.
Starting point is 00:10:19 So what is the difference between artifact and enchantment? That's really important, because when you're defining artifacts, you're supposed to keep them away from each other. So, one of the defining things of enchantments is color, and we have broken that a couple times. I'll get to that in a second. The other big definitive
Starting point is 00:10:36 thing that we do is that artifacts can tap, and we do not have enchantments tap. We will allow enchantments to occasionally, and not that much, have activated abilities at least once per turn. We tend to do that very limitedly. I think I
Starting point is 00:10:52 made a board there. Because of artifacts. And one of the things we try hard. So the other big thing is because mechanically they're pretty close, we actually try really hard creatively to separate them. So what is the difference between artifact and enchantment? And early magic blurs this like nobody's business.
Starting point is 00:11:09 But we've been better recently. And the difference is, an artifact is a thing. A physical thing. I pick up, it's a thing. I mean, it might be a real large thing. A building, maybe. But it's a thing. It's a physical thing.
Starting point is 00:11:21 A red mage can destroy it, because it's a thing. They can blow it up. It has substance. If I throw a lightning can destroy it, because it's a thing. They can blow it up. It has substance. If I throw a lightning bolt at it, it should break. I mean, not within the game terms, obviously, since they can't hurt me. But, you know, I can shatter it, if you will. The idea of enchantments is it's something made from magic.
Starting point is 00:11:37 So, if it has physical form, it has to be made of magic. So, in the early days, you'll notice some auras had a lot of the flavor of like, you know, I'm making this magical object. And we had to be careful because artifacts are magical objects. So now if you notice, if an enchantment ever makes something, it's clearly like made of energy.
Starting point is 00:11:59 Like it's not even, it's not like you're using enchantment and it makes a thing that looks like a sword or a knife or a dagger or something. It's like it's a dagger made of magic, so it has a very non-realistic quality to it. Because to separate them, enchantments are magical things that are literally made of magic, where artifacts are concrete objects. So, to answer the question, if the color definition is so important, why did we break it? And to answer that,
Starting point is 00:12:31 what happens is, I mean, this is true of anything, but in magic, we tend to have rules, and then when we feel it's the right place to break a rule because we're doing something we think is important and core to what's going on,
Starting point is 00:12:45 that's when we break it. And so during Shards of Alara, we were trying to get Esper and figure Esper out. And the flavor of Esper. So Esper was the world based in blue that had white and black, was void of red and green. And the idea we liked a lot, the creative team, the world they built, was this idea of blue, the conflict of blue-green is this nature-nurture conflict, where the idea that blue believes that everything is born as a blank slate.
Starting point is 00:13:12 Blue believes that knowledge is power and that you can make anything into anything. Green says no, believes in destiny. You are what you are. You were born with all the things you have. Your genetics and your genes and whatever, whatever you're born with, that is who you are. Where Blue's like, no. I could take anybody, if I give them the proper training and build the proper tools, anybody could become anything.
Starting point is 00:13:35 And so the idea in Esper was that these people were constantly trying to improve themselves, and so they were going beyond sort of the norm, and they were replacing pieces of themselves with magic. And so the thing we had there was it kind of had this interesting cross between they were kind of magically changing themselves but there was permanence to what they were doing.
Starting point is 00:13:56 They in fact had arms and legs and Ethereum was the name of the object but they actually had things. And so we're like, well, wow, this is an interesting gap. It's like, it's made of magic, so it has an enchantment sort of quality, but they're concrete things, you know? And so the other thing was, we were trying to give Esper an identity, and so we're like, okay, well, blue loves artifacts.
Starting point is 00:14:19 It's the number one color that cares about artifacts. And that has to do with the blue-green conflict, that when you believe you can become anything you want, well, you embrace all tools. You embrace technology. And artifacts in our game represent technology. And so blue is king of technology. So blue has the affinity for artifacts. And like, okay, in a blue-dominant world,
Starting point is 00:14:40 if they're making themselves better, it seems like they move toward artifacts. They're blending themselves. Well, at some point, you know, I mean, essentially they were the equivalent, you know, the fantasy equivalent of cyborgs. And so we said, okay, well, this seems like a place where enchantments and artifacts are crossing. Okay, we're going to bite the bullet. We're going to make some artifacts that are colored. And the interesting thing, by the way, a little tidbit is, in Future Sight, notice there was a card, Sarcomyte Mirror.
Starting point is 00:15:02 is in Future Sight, notice there was a card, Sarcomyte Mirror. So what happened was, when we made Future Sight, the creative team knew that we were going back to New Phyrexia. As I talked about in my article, which I recently wrote,
Starting point is 00:15:16 but for you guys, it was many weeks ago, I talked about in the six-year plan about how we knew we were going back to New Phyrexia. We didn't know we were going to go back to Mirrodin. We thought that it would be a big reveal that New Phyrexian was Mirrodin, but we were going back to New Phyrexia. So, that
Starting point is 00:15:32 was the thought process. We were going to New Phyrexia. And so, Circumite Mirror was designed by Creative to be a card to go into that block, into what at the time was New Phyrexian block, later it becomes Scar's Mirrodin block. But, before we got there, we were in the middle that block into what at the time was New Frexy Block, later it becomes Scarves of Mirrored and Black. But before we got there, we were in the middle of doing Shards of Alara, which was
Starting point is 00:15:50 a couple years before that. And sometimes when you're doing design, you look for the easy answer. And so the sub-team that did Esper was myself, Mark Gottlieb, and Mark Globus. What I call the Mark sub-team. And we were talking about how do you represent this concept of them rebuilding themselves.
Starting point is 00:16:09 And Gottlieb was like, well, aren't they just all artifacts? Why don't we just make everything artifacts? Because I was talking about the cyborg idea, kind of their cyborg. And as soon as Mark said it, I'm like, man, that's perfect. It's just simple. It's clean. And one of the things you look for in design is having nice, clean things. So anyway, we ended up biting the bullet and using it there. And the problem is Sarcomite Mirror didn't make sense there,
Starting point is 00:16:34 so we couldn't use Sarcomite Mirror. And by the time I got to New Phyrexia, we weren't doing the colored mana quite the same way. So we were trying to mirror the creative mechanics, and they ended up getting separated, so we couldn't reprint the card either place, even though the card kind of both hinted at colored artifacts, which is something we knew we were going to do, and hinted at, returned a mirror to which we knew we were going to do. Anyway, you look at Future Sight, by the way, there are a lot of clues, and a lot of clues
Starting point is 00:17:00 is stuff we haven't done yet, by the way, so we're not quite done. Future Sight's going to keep showing up from time to time. In surprising places, I think, too. Okay, so artifacts have to be concrete. They have to have permanence. We want them to have colorless mana except for special occasions. So what goes into designing artifacts? So one of the interesting things is people often ask me, do artifacts have a color pie? And I'm like, well, yes and no. No in that there's no philosophy for artifacts. They don't have, it's not like artifacts represent something.
Starting point is 00:17:36 No, in fact, they're the antithesis of artifacts. They don't have philosophy. Like if I have a powerful ring that does something, I mean a ring invisibility, well, there's no philosophy. Put it on, you're invisible. You know, it kind of transcends philosophy. So in that regard, they don't. But mechanically, if you talk about the colorblind mechanically, then they do. And what I mean by that is there are certain things that artifacts do and do enough of that we think of as being artifact things. What are those things? Well, the two biggest, or the biggest, is mana fixing.
Starting point is 00:18:09 And the idea that we don't want artifacts to be, in the default world, artifacts are supposed to be something kind of special. You know, that if you go read fantasy stories, you know, it's not like Lord of the Rings. There's a ring! I mean, there actually are rings, but there's not tons of rings, there's just a few rings. And they're special. When you find a special magical item, it's special. You're not falling all over magical things.
Starting point is 00:18:36 And so, you know, I believe in Alpha, for example, artifacts were uncommon at the lowest. There were no common artifacts. And so, the only common artifacts we do now tend to be ones that have an important function. The most important function is mana fixing. Either mana smoothing or color fixing with mana. And so at common we tend to put that in. We tend
Starting point is 00:18:56 to put in, usually, so the way it works is in a large set there are 101 commons. 101? What? The way it works out, and the way that I don't want to get into collation too much, because we don't talk about collation, but the way it works out is, there is this extra
Starting point is 00:19:11 card. Basically, you have 100 commons, and there's a card that shows up, a kind of a rarity in between common and uncommon. The 104th card. We call it common, but it shows up a slightly lesser rarity. So whenever you're doing commons, the colors... At common, we tend to color balance, meaning there's the same number of red cards,
Starting point is 00:19:31 there's green cards, there's black cards, there's white cards, there's blue cards. So if you want to do artifacts, either you have the 101st to do one artifact, or you have to do five. And if you do five, those could be lands or artifacts. So there's cycled lands that eats up five slots. So you could do colorless land, or you can do artifacts. Some worlds call for that. Sometimes there's enough flavor.
Starting point is 00:19:54 Usually common artifacts are mana fixing. They use the 101st slot most of the time. Sometimes we have a world that's just flavorful. Like in Innistrad, you're like, oh, well, there's certain concepts we want to get across. And so sometimes what we'll do is we'll put artifacts in common in worlds where we just need it for flavor purposes. The other big difference, obviously, is in a world about artifacts. And then lots of common artifacts because, hey, the world's about that thing. Well, like I like to say, if it's not a common, it's not your theme.
Starting point is 00:20:25 If you're going to do an artifact set, well, that's the place where artifacts have to be common. That's where you can do a lot more artifacts. The other thing, so the lowest rarity, they tend to be mana fixing
Starting point is 00:20:34 and they tend to be flavorful. Equipment is often, when we're going to do commons, and the reason is equipment's very flavorful and it's the kind of thing where, oh, there's a special object or something. Usually things that the...
Starting point is 00:20:50 an artifact that you... there would be an ongoing thing that the planeswalker will use. Like I have this object I will keep using. We tend not to do those at common. We tend to use those at uncommon and rare. And even at uncommon, we like to keep things kind of simple so that the things you're doing are basic things. Anything that tends to be
Starting point is 00:21:09 weird tends to go up to rare. If we're doing something that's kind of a little out of the normal path, we do it at rare. Now, the exception is, in artifact blocks, we tend to rotate down rarity of what artifacts do. So things that normally see at uncommon, we tend to do at common. And that's because we have to get the numbers up. There's
Starting point is 00:21:27 no way to do enough common artifacts, which an artifact block needs, without expanding what artifacts can do. So normally in an artifact block, common gets to do what uncommon does, uncommon gets to do what some of rare does, and then rare does the top end of rare. So what other effects do we tend to push toward artifacts? Well, we like tomes, so we like the idea of card drawing. I think milling has very much become a synonymous... I mean, milling is a blue thing, but in some ways, if it's primary and blue, it's kind of secondary in artifacts. You know, most sets have some milling artifact.
Starting point is 00:22:01 I mean, we tend to have an artifact that helps you deal with creatures. Oh, here's a good thing. So one of the other limitations of artifacts is the color pie in the sense of not what artifacts can do, but what they can't. And one of the ways we look at that is, if you want to have a color have a deficiency, you have to be careful. And that if you don't, artifacts will fill in the deficiency. Classic example is alpha. So one of blue's weaknesses is it's very bad at board removal. It doesn't get rid of things. It can counter things, it can steal things,
Starting point is 00:22:36 it can bound things, but it doesn't have destruction. It can't destroy things. And so in alpha, what happened was, there was a card called Neverall's Disc, which, by the way, is Larry Niven spelled backwards because Richard was making an homage to an article in a Larry Niven book, Discworld, I believe, or one of the Discworld books. Anyway, and so it turned out that Neverall's Disc was very cheap, very easy to use, and was really good at destroying permanents, which was Blue's weakness. So, one of the reasons
Starting point is 00:23:08 that I think Blue was so dominant in the early game, A, it had crazy blue cards, but on top of that is, its one weakness was really efficiently filled in by artifacts. And so that's something we're very careful about now, and that if we want things to have weaknesses, we have to be careful how we do it. Now,
Starting point is 00:23:23 some weaknesses were like, okay, if it's have weaknesses, we have to be careful how we do it. Now, some weaknesses, we're like, okay, if it's expensive enough, we're willing to let that happen. And some of them, it's like, well, we defined by the colors in complete absence to be able to do that. Those we're more careful of. Like, we're very wary to put, like,
Starting point is 00:23:36 enchantment removal in artifacts. Another thing, by the way, is the... We want the artifacts to sort of complement and give you some tools, but sort of not circumvent the color pie. In fact, interesting side story, when I first made Mirrodin,
Starting point is 00:23:55 my original design had a lot of color in it. I had a lot more you know, this is optimized if you use certain colors. And at the time, Bill felt like I was not making a pure artifact set because there's so much color in it. And I really, really wanted color, but I couldn't, I didn't know why. Like, one of my problems is I'm a very intuitive designer, meaning I do things and I understand I want them,
Starting point is 00:24:20 but, like, now I'm the head designer, so I don't have to explain myself quite as much. I mean, still some, obviously, but not as much. Where back then, now I'm the head designer, so I don't have to explain myself quite as much. I mean, still some, obviously, but not as much. Where back then, I wasn't the head designer, and, like, I had an idea, and the head designer was like, I don't think this is the right call. Why are you doing this? And I couldn't explain why. And it's funny, I would later go on to figure out why.
Starting point is 00:24:38 In fact, all magic would later go on to figure out why. But I didn't understand why. And what I realized was, is the thing about artifacts that is very dangerous is that the color pie is a fundamental, important safety tool of magic. It is the ultimate safety net.
Starting point is 00:24:57 Because if I do something crazy, well, it's limited to one color. And so what that means is any one color can't do everything. And so by having things colors can't do, we build in weaknesses. So if I'm limited to colors, I have weaknesses. And then you, my opponent, could play into what my weaknesses are. So I have an amazing red spell.
Starting point is 00:25:17 Well, maybe you have an enchantment that deals with me, and I have trouble dealing with the enchantment. All of a sudden, oh, there's an answer to what I'm doing. Artifacts, though, fill in things and allow you to not have holes. And the biggest problem, like when we went to stop Mirrodin Block and we were trying to ban cards,
Starting point is 00:25:32 what we found was we couldn't just ban one card because they had so much adaptability, they could pick and choose and grab, and we called it the blob at the time. The problem was, well, you had to nick off a piece of the blob and the rest of the blob keeps coming. That requires banning a lot of cards to deal with that. And I think the core of that
Starting point is 00:25:49 has to do with respecting just a valuable element of the game, which is the color pie. In fact, one of these days, I will do a podcast on the color pie and just talk about the philosophy of the color pie. The color pie, in my mind, is the most important thing of Magic. It is the, like, at the core of everything.
Starting point is 00:26:06 Like, the best thing Richard did. Anyway, I'll have a podcast on that because it's an awesome topic. But anyway, that is the deadly element of artifacts. You have to make sure that your artifacts do not upset the core of what you're doing and do not upset the color pie because the color pie is there for a very important reason and it does a lot of good. And bad things come when you circumvent it. Now that says
Starting point is 00:26:30 I think artifacts serve a great role. I think that they can be a lot of fun. I think artifacts there's a the other thing that artifacts do, we learned this when we were doing Mirrodin, actually it's interesting, that artifacts have this quality of a little bit of a weirdness to them. I think that there's a lot of Johnny
Starting point is 00:26:47 that we tend to put through artifacts, and I think part of that comes from that there's this mystique of magical artifacts, like, I find this orb, what does it do? It does strange things, you know, and that you kind of, an orb can do anything, you know, that a lemmy bolt, well, it's kind of got to do damage to something, you know. and that you kind of, an orb can do anything, you know. That a Lamy Bolt, well, it's kind of got to do damage or something, you know. A lot of spells, like, they're very narrow in what they can do flavor-wise, because, well, I'm throwing bolts of energy. Well, what could a
Starting point is 00:27:13 bolt of energy do? Damage? Maybe blow something up? Like, there's only so many things it can do, you know. But I have a glowing orb, what could it do? It could do anything. It could be anything, you know. And I think that's another important part of what artifacts do, is that they let us, design-wise, kind of
Starting point is 00:27:30 go to strange places that wouldn't normally make sense. Like, there's a lot of artifacts that if I went and looked at and took out of artifacts, you're like, what is this? But if I say, oh, it's a glowing orb, you're like, oh, okay, glowing orb. Now, that said, I think there's a lot of top-down. We've done a lot of top-down artifacts as well.
Starting point is 00:27:45 I mean, artifacts are neat in that you can take cool ideas and encapsulate them, but you also can say, hey, I got a jar of eyeballs. What does a jar of eyeballs do? You know,
Starting point is 00:27:53 and you can come up with that. And I think there's a lot of fun top-downness. I mean, that's another thing that artifacts, from a design standpoint, is they both fill in gaps
Starting point is 00:28:00 of what you need, but at the same time, they can lead you down very nice, resonant paths. But anyway, I'm at work, so I will have to talk artifacts another day. It's clear. Sometimes I get here, I'm like, whew, I made it. And other times I'm like, I got a lot more to say. So I'm sure I will do another artifact podcast. Hopefully today I give you a little bit of insight.
Starting point is 00:28:24 So one thing today, I'm trying to take do another Artified Podcast. Hopefully today I give you a little bit of insight. So, one thing today, I'm trying to take feedback from the audience and my tagline when I leave every day is I always say I'm going to go make the magic cards. Which I think, by the way, anyone knows the old Dunkin' Donut commercials where the guy would wake up early in the morning and go
Starting point is 00:28:39 time to make the donuts. And at the end of the day, time to start making the donuts. Somehow I had that in my mind and so I used to joke when I went to work, I'd go time to make the donuts. And then at the end of the day, time to start making the donuts. Somehow I had that in my mind. And so I used to joke when I went to work, I go, time to make the magic cards. But someone pointed out, or multiple people pointed out, that my article is called Making Magic,
Starting point is 00:28:54 that's my column, and that what I do is not just related to the cards, although I do make cards, but bigger, that I'm not just making magic cards, I'm making magic. Because a lot of what I do is block design, set design, and a much bigger scope. do is block design, set design, and
Starting point is 00:29:05 a much bigger scope. So I've decided, taking feedback from my audience, I'm going to change my outgoing tagline, just slightly. So anyway, now that I'm at work, I have to go, because it's time to make the magic. I'll see you guys all next week.

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