Just caught wind of this today otherwise I might of commented some in the original thread discussing it all. Great listen, guys. Just got through the whole thing. I think after your gained some momentum in the first few minutes it was very well done with a good synergy between the two of you. I certainly wasn't bored.
Coming from a game development background myself, I was quite happy that the initial topic was design goals. I studied at SCAD through their game development program and the term we used was game core statements. It really help solidify what you're trying to produce whether your creating an overall game or a set for magic. Focusing on that experience and having a concrete sentence or two explaining what you want players to feel and accomplish is essential to top tier design work, and I make of point of doing it on all the projects I work on.
You talked a great deal about it, it terms of what it means, psychographics, and giving clear examples of its use and success in Magic history but one thing I would of also considered adding are examples of where it didn't work or otherwise wasn't well done in Magic and why. Sure you mentioned that Theros limited and Scar's infect mechanic were divisive, but still applauded them overall. I think the closest that the two of you came was when Kamigama's Arcane mechanic was mentioned as an example of a parasitic mechanic in a negative light. Talking about where design goals didn't show or were followed through on in Magic would of rounded out the topic more and added that contrast.
The critique a card segment was good in talking about false choices, as I feel the come up often when you're trying to explore new grounds in design. I agree with your evaluations. On your scale I would of given the card a D+ as is, and with the suggested fix, a C-. However, I was really anxiously awaiting to hear someone talk more of it in terms of the lack of card advantage it provided. I suppose you did talk about it in the sense that you wouldn't naturally know which card (top or bottom) was better, but it seemed like a great opportunity to work in another one of those design oriented keywords into the mix (card advantage.) Though obviously the advantage here being in quality of the card drawn versus the number.
Overall though I felt there was a lot of good information and discussion covered in your 80 minutes. Just take it from a guy who has also been a teacher and likes to offer constructive criticism. I'd be interested in being a guest sometime given the right topic.
I'm not really feeling the name, mostly because we're not re-making magic so much as we're making magic of our own. I can't really talk though since I don't have a ton of alternatives. My only suggestion is "Design Intervention".
I personally prefer shorter podcasts. This is totally just my opinion, and the discussion of certain topics obviously warrants lots of time, but I also might try to keep things moving. While there was a lot of good material, sometimes it seemed like the back and forth was simply chewing up time before getting to the conclusion.
As I've said in the past, I think this podcast itself needs a clearer design goal. If it's meant for new designers I think it may need to include more in the way of concrete advice or examples. If it's made for more experienced designers then maybe it needs less reiteration. Or maybe the goal is to appeal to a range of people, and perhaps that can be done on an episode by episode basis (topics like this are great for people who are really into game design and set design but not for casual designers who make single cards.) As is, this episode was great for game designers at large but I felt it didn't really speak all that much about custom design. Perhaps what we're really looking for here is a general design podcast that dips into custom design (for instance, a general design podcast could do things like set reviews from a design perspective, talk about articles from WotC, and do lots of other design related things that aren't necessarily about custom cards.)
Episode Comments:
Your analysis of Thoughtgrifter was good, but there are a couple of things I'm surprised didn't come up. For instance, you guys talked a bit about scry, but didn't mention other bottoming effects like Jace, Architect of Thought or Dig Through Time that could enable this card in interesting ways. There's also the fact that this ability allows you to "save" cards on the bottom: Scrying something like a sideboard card to the bottom and keeping it there until you need to draw it is another useful application. The card's major issues are in constructed (where it's not very strong) and limited (where there's very little set up), but it is something I could definitely see being printed in a supplemental set like a Commander precon, where quirky effects that aren't necessarily always useful can thrive. Obviously the effect is still incredibly narrow, but as a Johnny card it felt weird that these specific interactions were being dismissed rather than explored. (Excuse me if you actually did talk about any of these things, I was preoccupied while listening and may have missed some details).
The main body of the cast was excellent. Maybe it beat around the bush in some places a little too much for my taste, but the content itself was on point and very useful. You made great use of examples from real magic, though as IcariiFA pointed out it may have been nice to see some "bad" examples as well. Again, this part of the cast really sounded more like a design overview, which I think is totally fine if that's the direction we want to be headed (and personally I think it is).
The last part of the cast was my favorite part, since it really got into actually designing cards. It seems like it might be cool to have a podcast entirely devoted to this kind of thing, where maybe a team of designers create a set with their discussions being the podcast. That would definitely be an interesting project.
Overall this was a decent first episode, but I think I'm still a little unsure as to what we're trying to do here. There was a lot of good stuff going on but it could benefit from having a little more focus IMO.
It was at that moment that I realized: I'm kinda just making these things up. We can just write the rules the way we want them to work. People will have fun, and people will get it.
I personally prefer shorter podcasts. This is totally just my opinion, and the discussion of certain topics obviously warrants lots of time, but I also might try to keep things moving. While there was a lot of good material, sometimes it seemed like the back and forth was simply chewing up time before getting to the conclusion.
Seconded. I'd vastly prefer something that clocked in at 30 minutes or less.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Goblin Artisans
a Magic: the Gathering design blog
I think after your gained some momentum in the first few minutes it was very well done with a good synergy between the two of you. I certainly wasn't bored.
I'm glad you enjoyed it, look forward to us only getting better as we have more practice talking together.
You talked a great deal about it, it terms of what it means, psychographics, and giving clear examples of its use and success in Magic history but one thing I would of also considered adding are examples of where it didn't work or otherwise wasn't well done in Magic and why. Sure you mentioned that Theros limited and Scar's infect mechanic were divisive, but still applauded them overall. I think the closest that the two of you came was when Kamigama's Arcane mechanic was mentioned as an example of a parasitic mechanic in a negative light. Talking about where design goals didn't show or were followed through on in Magic would of rounded out the topic more and added that contrast.
You'll be happy to know that we have just recorded the bulk of the 2nd episode and we have a section talking about Kamigawa and Oddyssey as examples of failed design goals.
Overall though I felt there was a lot of good information and discussion covered in your 80 minutes. Just take it from a guy who has also been a teacher and likes to offer constructive criticism. I'd be interested in being a guest sometime given the right topic.
We really appreciate the feedback and look forward to applying it to the future.
As for being a guest feel free to contact either of us and it is especially good if you have a design topic in mind that you are passionate and knowledgeable about.
I gave this a listen as a someone with zero experience with custom card design. In very interested the ideas behind game design (and card design in extension). So I would sum myself up as "avid blogatog reader"
I enjoyed the podcast. I listened from beginning to the end without feeling the urge to stop. I would say I'm looking forward to the next episode
The introduction was a bit weird, you introduced yourselves as a "game design podcast with focus on custom magic cards" and a minute later you are throwing terms "fateseal you", essentially assuming the listener has deep MTG knowledge. I would suggest to explain such term before using it, the same goes for individual cards. Later in the podcast you would sometimes explain the card/mechanic and sometimes not. Of course the question of "what is assumed knowledge" rises here, and should be answered and that decision should be adhered to.
Thank you so much for the positive feedback. I'm really interested in how you found it as a non custom card designer. Our goal is to have the podcast be accessible to those who know the basics of magic (eg: maybe played DotP and gone to a prerelease or two) but don't have in depth knowledge of MTG. I know we could of explained things like fateseal better as to not overwhelm listeners who didn't have a much background. We plan to be a lot more careful to explain old mechanics or cards in the future.
One nitpick is that occasionally I could hear breathing in the sound, which was somewhat annoying. There should be some mic cutoff or postprocess filter or something (0 experience with voice recording here).
This is an issue we are aware of and should hopefully be absent from future episodes. Thanks for the heads up.
The discussion about "creating feeling" was terrific and you explained it exactly in the good maro way (btw, Dan does sound a little bit like maro...)
This section here is definitely were we hit our stride. Also I agree that Dan sounds a little like Mark Rosewater.
Maybe he is.... Its a pseudonym to get past the "solicited material" restrictions.
I personally prefer shorter podcasts. This is totally just my opinion, and the discussion of certain topics obviously warrants lots of time, but I also might try to keep things moving. While there was a lot of good material, sometimes it seemed like the back and forth was simply chewing up time before getting to the conclusion.
Its a hard balance to make, we want to go in depth as thats what the podcast format is really good at compared to writing massive articles. We will briefly touch on this hopefully next episode about how their are already a lot of smaller resources on both game design and to a lesser extent custom cards so we want to have the depth that these can't provide.
However we are aware we could be a little more concise in our discussion to get the maximum amount of topic for the time available but we don't want to completely stifle natural discussion as the last part of the podcast about emotional design and Scars of Mirrodin was actually one of the parts we had planned out the least.
The last part of the cast was my favorite part, since it really got into actually designing cards. It seems like it might be cool to have a podcast entirely devoted to this kind of thing, where maybe a team of designers create a set with their discussions being the podcast. That would definitely be an interesting project.
Me and Dan have talked about this as a episode main topic as well. We agree that the "live designing" worked really well and created content that isn't replicated in any similar productions.
Overall this was a decent first episode, but I think I'm still a little unsure as to what we're trying to do here. There was a lot of good stuff going on but it could benefit from having a little more focus IMO.
Thanks for the feedback and we will be discussing some of it in greater detail in the next episode.
There's a bunch of posters of today and yesterday I'd like to hear as guests (in no particular order):
Golgari Spy
Arix
Silverdawn Banisher
Gerrard's Mom
who is the pilot
Moss Elemental
luminum can
Rudyard
MOON-E
Guesswork
Silvercut
guyarney
Eliminator
Scuirimancer
Blinking Spirit
rancored elf
LSK
void nothing
MDenham
There's certainly at least twice as many great designers from MTGS alone, but these names came to mind. (Nevermind great designers from past fantasy forums of MTGNews, TCGPlayer, and MTGDarkness (but it wasn't "darkness" at first, what was it originally?)). I digress, sorry. Yearning for the early years when Magic was just a child. But, alas, at 21 it will be finishing its undergrad degree this year and moving on to grad school.
I've recently been realizing that the community here is in need of more guides, primers and articles dedicated to custom magic card design as I feel like the range of knowledge in the community has this huge gap between the long time designers and those who have fun making and commenting on cards but often find it difficult to find info on things like playtesting, creating commons and set skeletons.
I have the exact same feeling too. While I didn't notice that gap in my long years of lurking, just a few months of active participation on these boards made me quickly realize that. It's mostly doing critiques for the CCL and judging the MCC that made me see that huge gap between experienced custom card designers and those doing it "just for fun". Lately I've been toying with the idea of doing an article or more probably a series of articles on my views about that and my advice for getting better at custom card design specifically from my own point of view, with the same humble approach as Limited Resources that was noted in the preliminary thread: "this is who I am, this is my point of view and in no way the objective absolute truth, hope you can find this helpful". Looking for the best place on the boards where to post such project when I'll finally get it done, I've stumbled across this podcast project, which I think shares a lot of the goals I was thinking about too.
I'm very interested in this project and I think it can potentially be very useful to the community. I'm downloading the first episode right now and I'll listen to it later as soon as I can, then I'll be glad to provide some feedback here. One thing I can already say is I don't like too long podcasts, the ideal time limit for me is something around one hour. MaRo's Drive to Work are perfect for me in their 30 minutes average duration, but you can easily reach one hour if you want to go more in depth in the topics you treat. I bring this up because I listened to some Limited Resources episodes which last two hours or even longer and even while I enjoyed the content a lot, after some time I just had to stop and have a pause, then restart listening from where I left later, and I didn't like that. I'll have more to say after I actually listen to this episode. For now, many congratulations for coming up with the idea and making it real!
EDIT: Writing this right as I listen, point by point.
• In-depth descussion on design goals
From the introduction, I didn't get a good sense if this podcast is about game design in general or MTG design specifically. From my own point of view, the latter is much more interesting than the former (obviously where they don't overlap), but probably that's because while I love MTG, I will never do actual game design for a living. At the contrary, you both are professional game designers, so it's logical you tend to speak from a broader perspective.
• Critique a card: Thoughtgrifter
Very good segment, I like this part of the show a lot.(*) Taking a custom card from these very boards and analyzing it in detail is a very insightful and educating feature. For example, I learned the concept of false choices in game design right now thanks to you talking about it here. Also, while listening to you talking in depth about this card I had the same exact feeling as if I was judging it in the MCC. I like very much that you chose to keep this as a recurring part of the show.
• Discussion on player psychographics
The first part is more generic and in fact, while still very interesting, it was less compelling to me. Then, when you start talking about Timmy, Johnny and Spike in MTG specifically, it felt much more compelling again. But again, that's just because of my own personal bias towards MTG rather than generic game design as a topic.
• Emotional design and Scars of Mirrodin
Very interesting, but this felt much like just relistening to MaRo talking about it.
• Community Spotlight: Goblin Artisans
Very informative at least, as I didn't know that blog even existed. I knew Jay Treat from the GDS, but I didn't know he has his own blog.
• Our current magic projects (Dreamscape & Kolbahan)
The idea of practically following your thought process in real time as the episodes go on is very interesting and I also think we can learn a lot from it as custom card designers. This episode is necessarily just an introduction to your custom sets, but I'm looking forward to see how this will evolve in the next episodes. This is easily my second most favourite part of the show, after the "critique a card" part.
(*) After having listened to the entire episode, I can easily say that this is by far my favourite part of the show. The rest is very interesting too, but this part is the best in my opinion.
Finally, some generic feedback. After just a few minutes of listening, the interaction between you two as host and co-host felt perfect to me.
Technical side: Voice quality was okay. As a non-native speaker I could easily understand both speakers and I could easily distinguish who was speaking. One nitpick is that occasionally I could hear breathing in the sound, which was somewhat annoying. There should be some mic cutoff or postprocess filter or something (0 experience with voice recording here).
I'm a non-native English speaker too (being born and having always lived in Italy) and while I have British origins, English is only my second language and I sometimes have troubles understanding the voice of a person who speaks English to me very fast or with some strong accent. In this podcast, I understand Reuben perfectly and Dan most of the times but not always, but that was mostly due to quality rather than how he speaks. In fact, I also agree that the audio quality is okay but not great, and what I noticed is not much the breathing, which is there but wasn't that annoying to me, but that Dan's connection (if he was speaking via Skype or something like that, as I think) didn't seem very fluid at times.
Overall, a very interesting podcast and I strongly encourage you to go on with this project. Yet, I still feel like you have to face a choice: focusing mostly on generic game design with a little custom game design thrown in it or vice versa. You can always choose to keep a mix of the two, with some generic parts about game design and some specific parts on custom card design, just like you did in this episode, but I feel it's something that should be well defined and known beforehand. The specific parts about custom card design is what I personally liked the most.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
Thanks for the detailed feedback Bravelion83, and glad you enjoyed the podcast. On the topic of whether to focus entirely on custom magic design or to talk about game design in general more - it's going to have to fluctuate for two reasons.
1) Since magic's a game, it's very difficult to talk specifically about magic without establishing the principles of game design first. We simply couldn't have talked about almost any specific examples of magic design being good or bad (in fact, there was discussion in the original interest thread about this podcast as to whether we could even talk about any custom card design at all without it just becoming a "that's my opinion and every opinion is valid" thing) without first establishing the concept of Design Goals. Now we can more objectively about a seemingly subjective and diverse field like custom card design. Similarly, we can't critique a card based on its complexity without explaining how complexity works, when it's bad and how it can harm a game. We need to explain certain general design principles in order to talk about most specifics.
2) We want to add something new to the discussion, and as you've said - Maro has talked about most of the specific magic stuff over and over again. We don't want to just restate things Maro has said before, and he's talked about a huge amount of stuff specific to Magic. You said it yourself, the Scars of Mirrodin section was really helpful but Maro has said things like that before. While we don't mind being compared to Maro, we want to add new things to the discussion. Explaining the broad game design principles and how they apply to magic is a good way to do this. It should also make you a better MTG designer.
Additionally, I expect a lot of people on the custom card forums are going to want the podcast to be weighted entirely towards custom card creation - but we want to make the podcast a bit broader in its audience. A lot of game designers, or people interested in game design, love playing MTG but aren't focused entirely on making custom magic cards. With broader topics fleshing out specific custom card segments, we can give both groups something that applies to them.
At least, that's our current thought process. We're going to be experimenting with much more custom-card-focused ideas going forward. We're currently considering an episode where we design a bunch of custom cards live on the podcast based on prompts like, "Make a card for Wolverine" or, "Make a blue Johnny Rare".
Sounds fair, looking forward to the next episodes!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
I just finished listening to the episode and I'd rate it a solid A, and you wouldn't have to do much to get it to an A+ in my book.
The discussion of design goals was extremely informative and useful. It made me realize that I've been struggling with my custom set, Deadsands, for so long largely because I don't have a clear design goal. I feel that it's in a similar spot to where Dreamscape is- its cards have been designed based on flavor and not to meet clear goals. I expect this understanding will breathe some new life into the project.
You two have great chemistry as hosts. I do think some discussion of the topics beforehand would make the show flow more smoothly. I understand that you want real discussion to occur and I think that's good, but there were several points where Dan tried to prompt Reuben and Reuben didn't seem to know what Dan wanted him to talk about (at least right away). To fix this, Dan, I think you could just make Reuben aware of what prompts and segues you will be using rather that springing them on him during the show.
I also think 80 minutes is a bit long for the podcast. I think around an hour or so might be better. I think pre-discussion of prompts as I just mentioned will help with that. It also might be a good idea to cut one or two of the regular segments from the show. However, I thought they were all useful and enjoyable to listen to, so I'm not quite sure what should be cut, if anything. Or, you might just want to give each segment a fixed time limit, and then cut discussion and move on to the next segment when you get close to that limit. I'll keep thinking about it as I listen to future episodes and let you know.
Overall, this episode was great and I really like how this project is turning out so far! I've downloaded the second episode and I'm looking forward to listening to it very soon!
Thanks Astrolabe, that's great to hear. We'll definitely take your feedback into account, and we're looking forward to hearing your feedback on episode 2.
DIRECT DOWNLOAD
Podcast archive link
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In this episode:
Contact details:
Reuben Covington
Twitter: @reubencovington
Email: reubencovington@gmail.com
MTGsalvation Account: Doombringer
Dan Felder
Email: minimallyexceptional@gmail.com
MTGsalvation Account: Stairc
Card Renders
See this thread for more info:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/creativity/custom-card-creation/581491-interest-in-a-custom-mtg-card-podcast
Are you designing commons? Check out my primer on NWO.
Interested in making a custom set? Check out my Set skeleton and archetype primer.
I also write articles about getting started with custom card creation.
Go and PLAYTEST your designs, you will learn more in a single playtests than a dozen discussions.
My custom sets:
Dreamscape
Coins of Mercalis [COMPLETE]
Exodus of Zendikar - ON HOLD
Coming from a game development background myself, I was quite happy that the initial topic was design goals. I studied at SCAD through their game development program and the term we used was game core statements. It really help solidify what you're trying to produce whether your creating an overall game or a set for magic. Focusing on that experience and having a concrete sentence or two explaining what you want players to feel and accomplish is essential to top tier design work, and I make of point of doing it on all the projects I work on.
You talked a great deal about it, it terms of what it means, psychographics, and giving clear examples of its use and success in Magic history but one thing I would of also considered adding are examples of where it didn't work or otherwise wasn't well done in Magic and why. Sure you mentioned that Theros limited and Scar's infect mechanic were divisive, but still applauded them overall. I think the closest that the two of you came was when Kamigama's Arcane mechanic was mentioned as an example of a parasitic mechanic in a negative light. Talking about where design goals didn't show or were followed through on in Magic would of rounded out the topic more and added that contrast.
The critique a card segment was good in talking about false choices, as I feel the come up often when you're trying to explore new grounds in design. I agree with your evaluations. On your scale I would of given the card a D+ as is, and with the suggested fix, a C-. However, I was really anxiously awaiting to hear someone talk more of it in terms of the lack of card advantage it provided. I suppose you did talk about it in the sense that you wouldn't naturally know which card (top or bottom) was better, but it seemed like a great opportunity to work in another one of those design oriented keywords into the mix (card advantage.) Though obviously the advantage here being in quality of the card drawn versus the number.
Overall though I felt there was a lot of good information and discussion covered in your 80 minutes. Just take it from a guy who has also been a teacher and likes to offer constructive criticism. I'd be interested in being a guest sometime given the right topic.
Goblin Artisans
a Magic: the Gathering design blog
I'm not really feeling the name, mostly because we're not re-making magic so much as we're making magic of our own. I can't really talk though since I don't have a ton of alternatives. My only suggestion is "Design Intervention".
I personally prefer shorter podcasts. This is totally just my opinion, and the discussion of certain topics obviously warrants lots of time, but I also might try to keep things moving. While there was a lot of good material, sometimes it seemed like the back and forth was simply chewing up time before getting to the conclusion.
As I've said in the past, I think this podcast itself needs a clearer design goal. If it's meant for new designers I think it may need to include more in the way of concrete advice or examples. If it's made for more experienced designers then maybe it needs less reiteration. Or maybe the goal is to appeal to a range of people, and perhaps that can be done on an episode by episode basis (topics like this are great for people who are really into game design and set design but not for casual designers who make single cards.) As is, this episode was great for game designers at large but I felt it didn't really speak all that much about custom design. Perhaps what we're really looking for here is a general design podcast that dips into custom design (for instance, a general design podcast could do things like set reviews from a design perspective, talk about articles from WotC, and do lots of other design related things that aren't necessarily about custom cards.)
Episode Comments:
Your analysis of Thoughtgrifter was good, but there are a couple of things I'm surprised didn't come up. For instance, you guys talked a bit about scry, but didn't mention other bottoming effects like Jace, Architect of Thought or Dig Through Time that could enable this card in interesting ways. There's also the fact that this ability allows you to "save" cards on the bottom: Scrying something like a sideboard card to the bottom and keeping it there until you need to draw it is another useful application. The card's major issues are in constructed (where it's not very strong) and limited (where there's very little set up), but it is something I could definitely see being printed in a supplemental set like a Commander precon, where quirky effects that aren't necessarily always useful can thrive. Obviously the effect is still incredibly narrow, but as a Johnny card it felt weird that these specific interactions were being dismissed rather than explored. (Excuse me if you actually did talk about any of these things, I was preoccupied while listening and may have missed some details).
The main body of the cast was excellent. Maybe it beat around the bush in some places a little too much for my taste, but the content itself was on point and very useful. You made great use of examples from real magic, though as IcariiFA pointed out it may have been nice to see some "bad" examples as well. Again, this part of the cast really sounded more like a design overview, which I think is totally fine if that's the direction we want to be headed (and personally I think it is).
The last part of the cast was my favorite part, since it really got into actually designing cards. It seems like it might be cool to have a podcast entirely devoted to this kind of thing, where maybe a team of designers create a set with their discussions being the podcast. That would definitely be an interesting project.
Overall this was a decent first episode, but I think I'm still a little unsure as to what we're trying to do here. There was a lot of good stuff going on but it could benefit from having a little more focus IMO.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
Comic Book Set
Archester: Frontier of Steam (A steampunk set!)
A Good Place to Start Designing
Seconded. I'd vastly prefer something that clocked in at 30 minutes or less.
Goblin Artisans
a Magic: the Gathering design blog
The show will be up on itunes in a few days.
However Libsyn has a rss feed (though I haven't tested it)
http://remakingmagic.libsyn.com/rss
Are you designing commons? Check out my primer on NWO.
Interested in making a custom set? Check out my Set skeleton and archetype primer.
I also write articles about getting started with custom card creation.
Go and PLAYTEST your designs, you will learn more in a single playtests than a dozen discussions.
My custom sets:
Dreamscape
Coins of Mercalis [COMPLETE]
Exodus of Zendikar - ON HOLD
I'm glad you enjoyed it, look forward to us only getting better as we have more practice talking together.
You'll be happy to know that we have just recorded the bulk of the 2nd episode and we have a section talking about Kamigawa and Oddyssey as examples of failed design goals.
We really appreciate the feedback and look forward to applying it to the future.
As for being a guest feel free to contact either of us and it is especially good if you have a design topic in mind that you are passionate and knowledgeable about.
Thank you so much for the positive feedback. I'm really interested in how you found it as a non custom card designer. Our goal is to have the podcast be accessible to those who know the basics of magic (eg: maybe played DotP and gone to a prerelease or two) but don't have in depth knowledge of MTG. I know we could of explained things like fateseal better as to not overwhelm listeners who didn't have a much background. We plan to be a lot more careful to explain old mechanics or cards in the future.
This is an issue we are aware of and should hopefully be absent from future episodes. Thanks for the heads up.
This section here is definitely were we hit our stride. Also I agree that Dan sounds a little like Mark Rosewater.
However we are aware we could be a little more concise in our discussion to get the maximum amount of topic for the time available but we don't want to completely stifle natural discussion as the last part of the podcast about emotional design and Scars of Mirrodin was actually one of the parts we had planned out the least.
Me and Dan have talked about this as a episode main topic as well. We agree that the "live designing" worked really well and created content that isn't replicated in any similar productions.
Thanks for the feedback and we will be discussing some of it in greater detail in the next episode.
Are you designing commons? Check out my primer on NWO.
Interested in making a custom set? Check out my Set skeleton and archetype primer.
I also write articles about getting started with custom card creation.
Go and PLAYTEST your designs, you will learn more in a single playtests than a dozen discussions.
My custom sets:
Dreamscape
Coins of Mercalis [COMPLETE]
Exodus of Zendikar - ON HOLD
I think this is the nicest thing anyone's ever said about me. =)
In reality, I'm just one of Maro's many clones. I got my break answering questions on Blogatog.
Remaking Magic - A Podcast for those that love MTG and Game Design
The Dungeon Master's Guide - A Podcast for those that love RPGs and Game Design
Sig-Heroes of the Plane
Golgari Spy
Arix
Silverdawn Banisher
Gerrard's Mom
who is the pilot
Moss Elemental
luminum can
Rudyard
MOON-E
Guesswork
Silvercut
guyarney
Eliminator
Scuirimancer
Blinking Spirit
rancored elf
LSK
void nothing
MDenham
There's certainly at least twice as many great designers from MTGS alone, but these names came to mind. (Nevermind great designers from past fantasy forums of MTGNews, TCGPlayer, and MTGDarkness (but it wasn't "darkness" at first, what was it originally?)). I digress, sorry. Yearning for the early years when Magic was just a child. But, alas, at 21 it will be finishing its undergrad degree this year and moving on to grad school.
I have the exact same feeling too. While I didn't notice that gap in my long years of lurking, just a few months of active participation on these boards made me quickly realize that. It's mostly doing critiques for the CCL and judging the MCC that made me see that huge gap between experienced custom card designers and those doing it "just for fun". Lately I've been toying with the idea of doing an article or more probably a series of articles on my views about that and my advice for getting better at custom card design specifically from my own point of view, with the same humble approach as Limited Resources that was noted in the preliminary thread: "this is who I am, this is my point of view and in no way the objective absolute truth, hope you can find this helpful". Looking for the best place on the boards where to post such project when I'll finally get it done, I've stumbled across this podcast project, which I think shares a lot of the goals I was thinking about too.
I'm very interested in this project and I think it can potentially be very useful to the community. I'm downloading the first episode right now and I'll listen to it later as soon as I can, then I'll be glad to provide some feedback here. One thing I can already say is I don't like too long podcasts, the ideal time limit for me is something around one hour. MaRo's Drive to Work are perfect for me in their 30 minutes average duration, but you can easily reach one hour if you want to go more in depth in the topics you treat. I bring this up because I listened to some Limited Resources episodes which last two hours or even longer and even while I enjoyed the content a lot, after some time I just had to stop and have a pause, then restart listening from where I left later, and I didn't like that. I'll have more to say after I actually listen to this episode. For now, many congratulations for coming up with the idea and making it real!
EDIT: Writing this right as I listen, point by point.
• In-depth descussion on design goals
From the introduction, I didn't get a good sense if this podcast is about game design in general or MTG design specifically. From my own point of view, the latter is much more interesting than the former (obviously where they don't overlap), but probably that's because while I love MTG, I will never do actual game design for a living. At the contrary, you both are professional game designers, so it's logical you tend to speak from a broader perspective.
• Critique a card: Thoughtgrifter
Very good segment, I like this part of the show a lot.(*) Taking a custom card from these very boards and analyzing it in detail is a very insightful and educating feature. For example, I learned the concept of false choices in game design right now thanks to you talking about it here. Also, while listening to you talking in depth about this card I had the same exact feeling as if I was judging it in the MCC. I like very much that you chose to keep this as a recurring part of the show.
• Discussion on player psychographics
The first part is more generic and in fact, while still very interesting, it was less compelling to me. Then, when you start talking about Timmy, Johnny and Spike in MTG specifically, it felt much more compelling again. But again, that's just because of my own personal bias towards MTG rather than generic game design as a topic.
• Emotional design and Scars of Mirrodin
Very interesting, but this felt much like just relistening to MaRo talking about it.
• Community Spotlight: Goblin Artisans
Very informative at least, as I didn't know that blog even existed. I knew Jay Treat from the GDS, but I didn't know he has his own blog.
• Our current magic projects (Dreamscape & Kolbahan)
The idea of practically following your thought process in real time as the episodes go on is very interesting and I also think we can learn a lot from it as custom card designers. This episode is necessarily just an introduction to your custom sets, but I'm looking forward to see how this will evolve in the next episodes. This is easily my second most favourite part of the show, after the "critique a card" part.
(*) After having listened to the entire episode, I can easily say that this is by far my favourite part of the show. The rest is very interesting too, but this part is the best in my opinion.
Finally, some generic feedback. After just a few minutes of listening, the interaction between you two as host and co-host felt perfect to me.
I'm a non-native English speaker too (being born and having always lived in Italy) and while I have British origins, English is only my second language and I sometimes have troubles understanding the voice of a person who speaks English to me very fast or with some strong accent. In this podcast, I understand Reuben perfectly and Dan most of the times but not always, but that was mostly due to quality rather than how he speaks. In fact, I also agree that the audio quality is okay but not great, and what I noticed is not much the breathing, which is there but wasn't that annoying to me, but that Dan's connection (if he was speaking via Skype or something like that, as I think) didn't seem very fluid at times.
Overall, a very interesting podcast and I strongly encourage you to go on with this project. Yet, I still feel like you have to face a choice: focusing mostly on generic game design with a little custom game design thrown in it or vice versa. You can always choose to keep a mix of the two, with some generic parts about game design and some specific parts on custom card design, just like you did in this episode, but I feel it's something that should be well defined and known beforehand. The specific parts about custom card design is what I personally liked the most.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
1) Since magic's a game, it's very difficult to talk specifically about magic without establishing the principles of game design first. We simply couldn't have talked about almost any specific examples of magic design being good or bad (in fact, there was discussion in the original interest thread about this podcast as to whether we could even talk about any custom card design at all without it just becoming a "that's my opinion and every opinion is valid" thing) without first establishing the concept of Design Goals. Now we can more objectively about a seemingly subjective and diverse field like custom card design. Similarly, we can't critique a card based on its complexity without explaining how complexity works, when it's bad and how it can harm a game. We need to explain certain general design principles in order to talk about most specifics.
2) We want to add something new to the discussion, and as you've said - Maro has talked about most of the specific magic stuff over and over again. We don't want to just restate things Maro has said before, and he's talked about a huge amount of stuff specific to Magic. You said it yourself, the Scars of Mirrodin section was really helpful but Maro has said things like that before. While we don't mind being compared to Maro, we want to add new things to the discussion. Explaining the broad game design principles and how they apply to magic is a good way to do this. It should also make you a better MTG designer.
Additionally, I expect a lot of people on the custom card forums are going to want the podcast to be weighted entirely towards custom card creation - but we want to make the podcast a bit broader in its audience. A lot of game designers, or people interested in game design, love playing MTG but aren't focused entirely on making custom magic cards. With broader topics fleshing out specific custom card segments, we can give both groups something that applies to them.
At least, that's our current thought process. We're going to be experimenting with much more custom-card-focused ideas going forward. We're currently considering an episode where we design a bunch of custom cards live on the podcast based on prompts like, "Make a card for Wolverine" or, "Make a blue Johnny Rare".
Remaking Magic - A Podcast for those that love MTG and Game Design
The Dungeon Master's Guide - A Podcast for those that love RPGs and Game Design
Sig-Heroes of the Plane
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
The discussion of design goals was extremely informative and useful. It made me realize that I've been struggling with my custom set, Deadsands, for so long largely because I don't have a clear design goal. I feel that it's in a similar spot to where Dreamscape is- its cards have been designed based on flavor and not to meet clear goals. I expect this understanding will breathe some new life into the project.
You two have great chemistry as hosts. I do think some discussion of the topics beforehand would make the show flow more smoothly. I understand that you want real discussion to occur and I think that's good, but there were several points where Dan tried to prompt Reuben and Reuben didn't seem to know what Dan wanted him to talk about (at least right away). To fix this, Dan, I think you could just make Reuben aware of what prompts and segues you will be using rather that springing them on him during the show.
I also think 80 minutes is a bit long for the podcast. I think around an hour or so might be better. I think pre-discussion of prompts as I just mentioned will help with that. It also might be a good idea to cut one or two of the regular segments from the show. However, I thought they were all useful and enjoyable to listen to, so I'm not quite sure what should be cut, if anything. Or, you might just want to give each segment a fixed time limit, and then cut discussion and move on to the next segment when you get close to that limit. I'll keep thinking about it as I listen to future episodes and let you know.
Overall, this episode was great and I really like how this project is turning out so far! I've downloaded the second episode and I'm looking forward to listening to it very soon!
Remaking Magic - A Podcast for those that love MTG and Game Design
The Dungeon Master's Guide - A Podcast for those that love RPGs and Game Design
Sig-Heroes of the Plane