Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #7 - Alliances

Episode Date: November 12, 2012

Mark Rosewater talks about the Alliances set.

Okay, pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for a drive to work. Okay, so today I thought I would try a set that I actually was not on the design team for. It's actually a set I was on the development team for. In fact, it was the very first team I ever worked on. Alliances. I ever worked on, alliances.

So let me sort of set up the situation because there's a lot of context to understand some of the stories today. Okay, so personally, I had just been hired. As I explained, what happened essentially was I got involved with Wizards through the Duelist. I first did my puzzle, and then I started writing articles through the Duelist. I first did my puzzle, and then I started writing articles for the Duelist. And then through that, I started doing freelance work

for other sections of the company. In fact, I did work for, I don't know, seven-some sections of the company by the time before I got hired. And what happened was, I was a good writer, and I turned my stuff in on time. And, you know, Magic was exploding, and Wizards was exploding.

And so there's a lot of opportunities for work. So one day, I'm up at the offices, because they used to fly me up to do some stuff. And I happened to say that I'd be willing to move to Seattle, to which the reply was, when could you start? I actually had a job interview. But essentially, it's like, okay, we're interested in you. I actually had a job interview, but essentially it's like, okay, we're interested in you. And I had said to Mike Davis, the guy who hired me at the time, the VP of R&D,

that I really thought I was a designer, not a developer. But he said, you know, they have Richard Garfield, they didn't need designers, they needed developers. So I'm like, okay. And my long-term plan was always to get into design, but I figured I would do what they needed, get my foot in the door. So anyway, when I get there, the very first thing they put me on is alliances. Now, let me stress, this was a very interesting development team. It had 13 members. Every person remotely related in R&D who had anything to do with magic was on the team.

So why? Why did we have 13? So to understand this, let me give you a history of magic. So for many years, from the very beginning of magic, the way magic functioned was they would just print as many cards as they could. So when alpha was printed, they printed what they thought was a six-month supply. They sold it in like three weeks. So they print beta, what they printed what they thought was a six-month supply. They sold it in like three weeks. So they print Beta, what they think is going to be a six-month supply.

Sold it almost instantaneously. So for the first year and a half to two years of Magic, it was this game of, let's completely weigh up our print run and then we still not meet demand because Magic was growing faster than they could sort of increase the print runs. Remember the time, you know, Wizards was not a big company and that, you know, they didn't

have the capital necessarily to invest in large amounts of printing, not knowing the success of the product. And then it started becoming a problem of printing, like how much printing time could you get? Eventually, obviously, we got a very strong relationship, and now we are mini printers printing constantly. But back then, it was something where we had to make the deals. And so what happened is

each set would have more cards than the set before, but it was never enough. And so all of the people who would order started to learn, oh, well, they're only going to actually give us some portion of our allocation. So what we've got to do is we've got to ask for a lot. Otherwise, to get what we really got to do is we've got to ask for a lot. You know, otherwise, to get what we really want, we have to way over ask.

And so eventually, fallen empires came around. And by fallen empires, wizards had said, okay, we think we have it down. We think we can print to what we need. Okay, guys, seriously, seriously, what do you need? And the problem was nobody believed them, you know. And so everybody ordered the crazy orders that they always ordered and Wizards were like, guys, guys, we're printing what you say, you know, and, yeah,

Fallen Empires was way, way, way, way overprinted, you know, and Fallen Empires had some other problems, what I call rarity problems, where a lot of the good cards, you know, like most of the things you wanted were common and you kind of wanted to spread them about, I mean, you want some exciting common cards, but know, like most of the things you wanted were common and you kind of want to spread them about. I mean, you want some exciting common cards, but you want exciting rare cards

as well. And it was kind of all clumped at common. Anyway, Fallen Empires was kind of a big problem for the company because, you know, it sort of flooded the market and it definitely did some bad things. So luckily, the next set to come out was Ice Age. And Ice Age kind of settled the waters. People were like, okay, whoo, whoo, you know, things are good. But the set after Ice Age was Homelands. Now, I've often talked about Homelands. I've dubbed it the worst designed set in Magic's history. It did not go over well. It was not a very popular set. And then there were no magic sets for seven months. Okay? So we had

the Fallen Empire's fiasco, then Ice Age, which like I said, was the one calm in the storm, then Homelands, and then seven months of no magic sets. And so what happened was, there was a lot riding on alliances. That there was a lot um...

It was important. I mean, if ever there was a lot um it was important, I mean if ever there was a point where Magic could have died you know, it was sort of, if alliances just taint, it really would start bringing to question Magic's overall health um, and I would just come on, you know and I was gung-ho but the thing was, the company understood

okay, we can't mess this up this has to be good, so literally, if you were in R&D and you had anything to do with magic, you were on the development team. It was this giant team. Now, I've talked before, I mean, in my column, about design teams.

And normally, a design team, we tend to have four, maybe to six people. I've had a few smaller design teams. But if you get too big, it's a problem. And development's the same way. If you have too many people, it just gets so hard that everybody has a voice, and it takes long to come to conclusions on things. It's just a little unwieldy. And so it's funny that my baptism by fire, as they say, my first real set was a very crazy

chaotic set. And let me explain some of the chaos, even above, obviously, we were trying real hard to make sure it was a good set. So, first off, the design team was what I refer to as the East Coast Playtefters. Scaffolias, Jim Lynn, Dave Petty, and Chris Page. Now, what happened was,

I believe that Jim Lynn and Scaffolias met each other and became friends when they both went to Princeton. And then they went to do graduate work at University of Penn, Pennsylvania, where they met Richard Garfield. And then they also, I think at UPenn, met Dave and Chris. I'm not 100% sure how they all got together, but they were friends. And so when Richard needed some more sets made, the four of them were put to designing sets. The first set they actually were assigned was Ice Age.

Now it turns out they later went and did Antiquities, which actually came out before Ice Age came out. So the East Coast Players Association did Antiquities, did Fallen Empires, did Ice Age, and did Alliances. And by the way, they're a very talented team. You don't need to look at Alliances. Alliances is like brimming with cool ideas.

Like, it is one of those sets where if you kind of go and look, I joke sometimes, it's almost a future sight set, in that so many ideas that we would later really flesh out, you can see you have one of cards in alliances. They were a very talented team. But they were definitely a very passionate team. Now, at the time, Jim and Scaf and Dave were all in R&D. So they were all involved with the development team because they were

there. And I think over the years, there's become sort of rapport between how design development works together. And like, as a designer, I understand the role of development and they're going to change things. But back then, development was a little fresher. The design team was kind of like, this is what we made. This is what we want. How dare you change anything? And so every time the development team would try to change something, there'd be a fight between the design team and the development team. And a lot of the designers were on the development team.

And so there's a lot of chaos to it. Now, let me walk through the design team members a little bit. Scaf Elias, Scaf is quite a character. Scaf's probably best known as being the creator of the Pro Tour. I know Scaf hates being called that, but I believe he is. Scaf, for a long time, Scaf was kind of in R&D and just did different things that, you know, he thought would help Magic. I mean, for a while, he was actually Magic brand manager. He was in charge of OP for a bit. I mean, he definitely oversaw a lot of different aspects. And he,

along with Richard, did a lot of sort of big picture thinking about the game and where the game wanted to be. Scaf was the one that realized that we needed an organized play structure to make magic succeed at the level it could. And that part of that was there had to be some top-level thing for people to want to get to. That the entire system worked on, oh, well, there's this

goal that you want to work toward. Now, Scaf was a very interesting kind of kid. He's still around, he's not a wizard. The thing I remember of Scaf is he had a sleeping bag, and he would sleep under his desk. And so there were, like, weeks, I think. I don't even know if he went home. He would just, like, when he was tired, he'd crash under his desk.

And, you know, back in the early days when I first started, I mean, not that there aren't clearly hardworking people today. There are. But the mentality at the time was we barely left the office. I mean, we would go out to eat, maybe see a movie, you know. Every once in a while, I'd go to Richard's to play games or something.

But I mean, I was at the office almost every waking moment I wasn't eating out or sleeping. And we would be there late. Like, for example, my mom drove up with me from California. I was living in Los Angeles. When I moved up here,

just have someone to drive with me. And we get into town at like 11 o'clock and I'm like, oh, do you want to see where I work? And she's like, well, it's not going to be open. It's 11 o'clock. I go, oh, no, no. They'll be there. And like we go in and everybody's there. You know, my mom's like, it's 11 o'clock. What's going on? I'm like, well.

Yeah, one of the things that's also funny in the early days is, I mean, this is pretty much my family, obviously, is I worked insane hours. I remember once Peter Atkinson was the president of the company. He met my mom for the first time. This is later, not the first day we were there. And he said how much he liked having me around because I was like having two employees. Anyway, that's Scaf.

Scaf is definitely a creative genius, but he is wild and random. Another image I always have of Scaf is he loved to wear shorts, and he would wear shorts in any weather you could imagine. And I remember walking to the first Pro Tour in New York where we had a blizzard that shut down the airport. The Pro Tour was delayed because a blizzard shut down the airport and Scaf is walking through the blizzard in his shorts. So Jim Lynn also worked for a long time in R&D.

In fact, for a while, he was in charge of non-magic game design for a while. Then he was the VP of R&D, the position Bill has now. And then for a while, he actually was a position above that. Wizards for a while had like executive VPs and certain VPs reported to them. And so Jim got pretty high up in the organization. So Jim is, Jim is funny because Jim definitely has a lot of, he's super logical, you know, that he, he was very good at sort of piecing things together, but he was, you know, he had sort of a Vulcan mind sort of going, and he really liked to sort of plot and plan together, where Scaf was much more emotional in kind of how he made decisions.

And the two of them, by the way, legendary, the Scaf-Jim fights. The one I remember is Scaf and Jim were fighting for I have no idea how long but they were fighting and finally I'm like okay I'm tired I can't watch them fighting more

I have to go home I'm so tired so I go home go to bed sleep for some amount of time get up come back

they're still fighting same fight they've been having the argument for who knows how long before I left through my entire sleeping, and I get back to the office and they're continuing.

I remember there were a couple teams in which they were both on the development team, as they were with alliances, by the way, and those two could fight like you would not believe. The funny thing is they're really good friends, but they loved to argue with each other. Next is Dave Petty. I don't know a lot about Dave. We only overlapped by a couple months.

He was working there when I first got there, and he left within the year that I got there, and maybe even less than that. Dave was real nice. He was really smart. I mean, all these guys were really smart. He was a little more quiet. I don't have a lot to say about Dave. I mean, he was thoughtful, but he was, I mean,

Scaf and Jim were much more in-your-face and loud, and Dave was a very quiet shy, I mean, comparatively, to Scaf and Jim. Chris Page never worked at Wizards. I've interacted with Chris a couple times. I saw him at some events, and Chris will always, whenever I write about the group, Chris reads my articles. He always will send me in little details. And, you know, my correspondence with him is usually I say something. In fact, he'll probably listen

to this and send me an email going, here's the things you got right and here's the things you got wrong. So I have a little rapport with Chris. And my favorite story with Chris is I got flown to the Ice Age pre-release. Um, and the first time I saw Zero and Orb, I'm like, because I love Dark Heart of the Wood. Uh, from, uh, I talk about gold cards from, from, uh, the Dark. Um, and so I'm like, oh my god, you can sacrifice land and get life and three life. That seems really good because it was way, it cost zero. It's way better than Dark Heart of the Wood, which I thought was a decent card.

And I remember saying to Chris, I go, you guys printed this? And I'm not a power guy, right? I've never been good, but even I was like, wow, this seems kind of crazy. And I remember Chris going, oh no, you're completely wrong. The card's absolutely fine. So, it was just funny. Because Chris is a smart guy. It's that very typical. That's my one memory of Chris

is one time I actually challenged him something and I was like, well, I actually correctly identified the powerful card, which is not something I'm usually good at. So anyway, there was a team of 13 developers to make the set. So I want to talk a little bit about what I did in the set. So my first three cards I ever designed actually are in alliances. So what happened is when they would have holes, the development team would just create cards. My first three cards I ever designed actually are in alliances. So what happened is when they would have holes, the development team would just create cards.

And I was trying to prove that I could design. So whenever there was a hole, I was designing cards like nobody's business. And by the way, that's another big thing. We just hired Dan Evans. This is delayed a little bit because my things are delayed. But a month ago or so, we hired Dan Evans. And he's a perfect example of a guy who got in, got into customer service, came to us right away, and we knew him from the Great Designer Search, too, because he had helped a lot of people, and he's like, I want to be in R&D.

I want to design magic. What can I do? And I'm like, well, design holes, and he did that like nobody's business, so much so that we started putting him on teams, and then, bam, you know, I mean, a year, year and a half later, he's actually on, he's now a full-time designer. Okay, the three cards that I designed, the first three cards ever,

designed by me to appear in a magic set for future trivia. Number one was Library of Latinum. So that was the card that said, okay, opponent, you get to choose. Do I get an Ancestral Recall, or do I get a demonic tutor? I'm not sure where...

I know... I think what happened was the art was already in, so we knew it had to be a sorcerer instant, and there was people standing around in a library or something. And I loved the idea of I have an awesome thing,

two awesome things, but you decide which of the awesome things I get. Would you rather I have the advantage of cards, or would you rather I get the specific of what I need, which scares you more? Second card was Soldier of Fortune. That's a creature that you can tap to make Tiger Player shuffle in the library. Which is funny, by the way, that one of the first cards I made

is a card that we don't make anymore. We are very... I mean, not that shuffling doesn't happen, but the current stance on shuffling is we shuffle when you have to shuffle, and there's no other choice. Shuffling takes time. It slows down the game.

And so our attitude now is kind of like, well, we shuffle when we have to, but we try to avoid shuffling whenever we can. So a card that does nothing but shuffle is definitely right out. I think I actually named that card, by the way. There's another famous card I'll get to in a second that I did name. Okay, the third card I designed was Goose Deceptor.

All I remember is when I got there, I believe this is correct, I had friends from L.A., one of which was Henry Stern, that I set up to be playtesters. And I believe that they were the team that figured out that the original Goose Deceptor was broken, and we had to design a new card. And so I had this idea in my mind. It was a real narrow card,

because you can use it to put a card in your hand, to exile a card in your hand to exile a card in your hand so that it's no longer in your hand but you can then get back later and the funny thing

is I always knew like in the right deck it could be really good and then at Pro Tour Rome many years later Brian Hacker played this crazy deck

where it's like turn one Goose Deceptor and turn two you're dead turn one Goose Deceptor done turn two you're dead. Turn one, Goose Deceptor, done. Turn two, you're dead.

And I always laugh because it was fine until the exact kind of deck came along that broke it. And while Brian didn't actually make top eight, a lot of people believed he had the best deck, that he got unlucky and that his deck was the best deck of the tournament. And that's the most powerful, probably

standard tournament ever in the history of mankind. Or the saga standard. So, those are the three cards I designed. Like I said, none of them were standouts. I mean, I think I had some cards that would come later that were a little more defining cards. I mean,

the very next set, Mirage has Morrow in it, for example, which I consider much more of a classic card for me. Now, the one other thing I talked about is naming. So there was a creative team. They were called Continuity at the time. And they weren't doing as much world building as they were doing. I mean, they did a little bit of world building.

I guess they did the card concept, so I guess they did the world building. But it wasn't as a big thing as now. concept, so I guess they did the world building. But it wasn't as a big thing as now. And so, they, I knew that Force of Will was going to be the card of the set.

In fact, that card would cause a bunch of problems, which we'll get to in a second. And they had a name for it that was really lackluster. And I'm like, so I went to them and I go, guys, guys, this is the card. This is the man. This is the one that people are going to point to. This has to have an awesome name. And they're like, look, we got a lot to do. I said, it needs a better name. They're like, look, if you give us a better name, fine,

but we got a lot of other stuff to do. So I said, okay, okay. So I set out to make a better name, and I don't know how many names I looked through, but I spent a lot of time trying to find the right name for this card. And finally, I stumbled upon Force of Will, and I'm like, that's it, Force of Will. That is awesome. And I went to them, and I remember the response was,

eh, I'm like, no, no, it's a really good name. It's a really good name. And I'm like, okay. And then it got changed to Force of Will. So my big contribution to alliances is that those three designs, and I got Force of Will changed to be to Force of Will. So my big contribution to Alliances is that those three designs, and I got Force of Will changed to be called Force of Will. Now, other things that went on during the set. One of the things that was funny is the design team thought it would be funny

to put the word gorilla in every car title. And so, like, I think Force of Will's original name was like was like, Gorilla, Gorilla, Gorilla, Gorilla, Gorilla, Gorilla, stop that. And anyway, that's why there actually are gorillas in alliances. I mean, if you ever look at the there's gorilla cards and that was kind of a nod to the gorilla joke of the

names. I don't really know why gorillas have anything to do with anything, but they thought it was funny. So anyway, Forza World's a good lead-in to the, actually the big story of Alliances. So there's a lot of pressure wizards. There's a lot of belief that like

the marbles all rode in this set. And so they, you know, the brand team and Peter Atkinson was the president, the CEO, and they came to us and they said, okay, guys, is this set good? We're like, yeah, this set is good. This set is good.

This isn't another homeland. No, no, Peter, this is a good set. Meanwhile, customer service is the people who, if you have a problem, you can call and answer the phones. The Carta Ultimate Nightmare Wizard's Coast customer service was referenced in this group. And so one of the things that they're very good about is they interface with the customers.

And at the time, R&D didn't interface much with customers. I mean, now, obviously, I make a lot of effort to do it as well as other people in R&D and social media makes it a lot easier than it once was. But at the time, the experts in sort of dealing with the public was customer service. And they thought alliances was horrible. In particular, they felt that the pitch cards,

like Forza World was a pitch card where instead of spending mana, you could pitch a card of the same color to play it. And they thought that was abomination. They're like, it just broke a rule that should not be broken in Magic. And in general, they just weren't, they just felt like it wasn't clicking. And so Peter started getting really nervous.

The brand team started getting nervous. And we were like, guys, guys, guys, don't worry. We swear it's really good. And then they decided to cut the print run in half. And R&D's freaking out. We're like, oh, come on. We need to double down on this set. This set is the good set.

We should push this set. So R&D got together, and we made the following deal. So I think Scaf went to Peter with his deal. He said, okay, here's what R&D is willing to do. We will put up our own money to print the other half of the printing that we were going to print. R&D will pay for it, and then, here's what we'll do.

We'll split with you 50-50 any profits. So, if things go bad, if the set is bad, you have no risk. But if the set is good, then hey, you share the profits with us because we're willing to take this risk. And that made Peter realize that profits to us because we're willing to take this risk. And that made Peter realize that R&D, we're no

dummies. And Peter's like, okay. And we were willing to put our money where our mouth was. And it made Peter realize that, okay. He put the order back up and said, okay, I have faith in R&D. Which is funny because I always said, if they had a little less faith, I'd have a lot more money right now.

But anyway, so luckily, we convinced the powers that be. The set did go on to obviously be very successful. And so, I mean, it's funny, because like I said, it's weird how when you see a set from where it's at. Like, I have a lot of sets that went on to be giant sets. But at the time, you don't know. Like, I actually, I have a review from, uh, uh, Randy, uh, Randy Buehler

was my boss at the time. Uh, uh, the year that I designed Ravnica. Uh, and the review was Mark is very confident in this set, but I'm not sure. We'll have to see when the set comes out. And he gave me, like, an average grade at the time,

because, like, he wasn't willing to give me credit for the set yet, because only I had to state that it was going to be really good. And that's a lot. I mean, one of the things that's hard is my job is to look ahead and see, you know, what's coming. And, like I said, we had a lot of faith in alliances, but, you know, it was breaking a bunch of rules.

I think pitch cards were breaking a major rule, you know. And here's an interesting thing. Let me talk about this real quick, because this is a dynamic that happens again and again. I mean, double-faced cards have the exact same... The same people who were trying to stop double-faced cards used the same argument that people were trying to stop pitch cards were, which is, here's a game. There's certain givens in the game.

I've played the game, and I've learned certain rules. And all of a sudden, you're taking something that to me is fundamentally just what the game is and changing it. And that makes me feel uncomfortable. You are making the game something other than the game that I know and love. You can't do that. And that happens a lot because people are very passionate about the game. And every once in a while, you break a rule.

Usually it's a pretty splashy thing, but you're breaking some rules that seems like, oh, we're not supposed to break that. Split cards were there. I know hybrid was there a little bit. Like, every time you're kind of doing something that's fundamentally different, people are like, oh, I don't know about that. And it's my job to kind of say, look, there's things you shouldn't

do. Like, you shouldn't do things just to do them, but if there's a point to it, you know, the game is bigger than any function of the game. And that, you know, it might seem like, oh, well, magic's all about knowing that your opponent can't do anything if they're tapped out. But it's sort of like,

but is it? Is that fundamental to the game? Is that the core of what the game is? And whenever you challenge something, you have to sort of say, is this a bearing wall of the game, to use a term from architecture. So a bearing wall in architecture means this is something that is holding up the building. You can't knock down this wall. If you knock down this wall, the building collapses. And so one of the things in design is you knock down this wall, the building collapses. And so,

one of the things in design is you have to understand what your bearing walls are. You know, and like, when I hand over a set to development, I have to know my bearing walls. I have to know what about my set is really important. So if they knock down something that isn't a bearing wall, I go, oh, okay, you know, that's not gonna the second survive without that. But if they take something that I know is a bearing wall, I'm like, guys,

guys, you can't, the set needs that, you can't take that out. The set rides on that thing. And so whenever we try to change something about Magic, you gotta say, is this a bearing wall of the game? And the answer is, there's a lot less bearing walls than you think. It might seem like, oh, well, it's important to know that my opponent's tapped out, that he can't do anything,

but the reality is, eh, not as important as you think. At the time, it seems very important, because that my opponent's tapped out, that he can't do anything, but the reality is, eh, not as important as you think. At the time, it seems very important, because that's what you know. And that's the other thing, by the way, which is part of doing design is going into the unknown, and people can only judge by the known. You can't judge by things you don't know.

You have to compare it to things. In fact, the funny thing is, whenever you have a new mechanic or a new card, what everybody does is they go, well, what's card of magic that's the closest to this so I can get some idea of how to think about it? You know, because if you get something truly out there, it's like, I don't know what to do. There's nothing like this card. I don't know how to think about it. And as magic gets older and older, it's harder and harder to do that. So, you know, it's not like it happens all the time.

But it is something that, I mean, we have to be conscious of. So let's see. Any other fun Alliances stories? I don't know. Oh, here's an interesting thing. One last thing. Is, so, people think Alliances is being the follow-up

to Ice Age. And the reality was that was more on our end than it was on the designers' end. They really did not make the set to be a follow-up to Ice Age. They more made another set. Because at the time, remember, sets weren't tied together. The idea of a block didn't exist. And so kind of Ice Age and alliances was our proto getting the idea of having a block. And so what happens is, if you actually look at Alliances,

there's very little carried over from Ice Age. I mean, a surprising little. Like, I remember, I mean, I think there was zero snow-covered things. There's only a couple in the set. I mean, I remember putting on the gorilla. There's a giant gorilla that, like, he gets trampled if you have snow cover or something. I mean, a minor thing, you know, and that

really, when the set was designed, it wasn't designed to be so much a follow-up in the way that later blocks would have a follow-up.

You know, it really had its own things to it going on and that some of it got carried on. I think they took one or two things, but it's funny in that,

you know, nowadays, like, when you have a follow-up, it integrates and there's all the mechanics and back then, like, that was such a, I mean,

alliances was really the first time we even experimented with the idea of any continuity, you know, I mean, Dominaria,

I guess, had a little bit of continuity, but the first time was extra expansion, here's a small set that's kind of meant to go with it. And the other interesting thing

was the idea that you would draft, or not even draft, but drafting wasn't really big at the time, but seal play. You played seal play with Ice Age and Alliances and they went together. I mean, I think that was a pretty new thing in the day.

And it's funny because, I mean, Ice Age and Alliances, by modern techniques, was not the greatest limited environment. But in the day, it was an advancement. And that's the hardest thing to remember is looking at things not in modern context, but in the context of where they were at the time.

Because Alliances, in my mind, was one of the really revolutionary sets of its time. And I'm proud to have worked on it. I didn't have a lot to do with it. There was 13 people, you know. Like I said, I designed three cards, and I need force of will, you know. But hey, I was excited to be part of that set, because it was

a very cool set. So, I've just parked my car here at Wizards, which means it's time to end today's episode. I enjoy talking about alliances, and I'll see you next time, because it's time to make the magic cards.