Time for creative writers! I want to know the conflict, people, and other background information in our set. If you enter, give your background story a name so I could put in in a poll.
Here is the set so far:
Name- Jace and Chandra save christmas
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"One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic."
Well, seems to me that this one is going to take place on earth. How 'bout this:
Jace and Chandra hear rumors that on a plane called Earth an elf has turned evil and is using black magic to bring the creatures on other planes to Earth and to destroy the holidays. They team up with Santa who is the only known planeswalker on Earth(there is breathing room in this, maybe we could have one for each holiday). Together, they fight against the elf and try to save christmas
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"One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic."
I just noticed this and it looks fun. Since it has a voting element, it may be a legal thing to post in the custom cards and games section, and that subforum gets more regular visitors.
Thoughts and Comments on the Creative
Creatively, I'd strongly recommend staying out of modern day earth. The concept of the set is awesome but I don't really want to see Jace encountering shotguns.
As for the landscape itself, in order to make sure the chirstmas theme comes across, I'd recommend keeping most of the action depicted in snowy environments. The story could technically carry the action all over the plane it visits, including tropical areas, but we don't have the benefit of a strong central narrative to keep players focused on the themes. The set needs to come across on each of its cards, so making sure each one reinforces the themes and setting of a winter wonderland (or a winter horrorshow) would be strong.
For the actual plot - several options come to mind. Either Jace and Chandra could interact with a pre-established holiday special - such as the famous Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer 1964 stop motion special(which is a rather mystical setting) - or the story could take place in a brand new mythos loosely based on the christmas specials (the way Theros is inspired by greek mythology but doesn't mirror it the way Arabian Nights mirrors its source material). The first option provides an established setting that all contributors can understand and the audience might know well. The second option provides more flexibility, which is great to have when trying to make gameplay mechanics that are both enjoyable and flavorful (since flavor is more flexible than mechanics).
Since I'd like the set to be fun to play, not just funny to read, I'd vote for the second option - creating a new setting heavily inspired by an existing setting and then introducing Magic's concepts. Magic is a game about conflict, so that needs to come across here. I like using black, the color of selfishness, as a villain here. That's perfect.
It's worth noting that it could be fun to bring in a villain from the rest of Magic too. What if Nicol Bolas decided to end Christmas for some reason? Or what if the Phyrexians wanted to get involved? Magic meets Christmas Special can be done in a lot of fun ways, as long as the end result still feels like it makes a strange sort of sense.
Story Concept
Writing Goal: To create an iconic, conflict-driven story that captures what people would expect from the title and provides a rich canvas for card designs.
On a wintery plane rich with elemental magics, the goodly planeswalker King Nikolai has long been beloved by his subjects. Rather than hoard the powerful magic of his domain to strengthen his own powers, each year the planeswalker and his elves craft them into tiny wonders and work to distribute them to his own subjects and even other planes with the use of his planeswalking abilities. Jolly, wise and driven by his powerful emotions and love of bringing joy to others King Nikolai exemplifies the colors of the Naya shard though in a way many may not be used to (red rarely gets this kind of emotion in a spokesperson).
However, King Nikolai's sister Tatiana long grew jealous of her younger sibling's glory. Tatiana was a scholar devoted to personal power and thought her brother's foolish dispensation of the plane's magical riches a hideous waste. Finding his foolishness met with adoration from their parents and the kingdom alike, she seethed and plotted her ascension over her brother. The cold calculation and twisted urge for power met with the emotional core of rage... And Tatiana became aligned with the colors of Grixis.
Using her research and access to a portion of the plane's rich mana, Tatiana reached into the dreaming realm corrupted by Shadowmoor and bound the essence of its darkest emotions into an army of her own creation. Dubbing them the Nightmare Legions, Tatiana is determined to wrest control of the kingdom from her brother before he uses up all the plane's power on childrens' trifles.
Ill equipped for war in a peaceful plane, King Nikolai rushed across the planes seeking aid - offering the treasures and knowledge of his personal vault to any he could find. He found two willing to answer his call.
I would like to ask some preliminary questions before attempting to concoct any sort of addition to the story of the set(s). First, is the set based solely on the holiday of Christmas or will it span multiple holidays as what was talked about in the "name" thread? If it is the latter, what holidays should be representative of each color? With what was brought up in the naming thread Christmas as white, Halloween as black, Valentine's as Red and Earth Day/Birthdays/Easter as Green would work fairly well. However, what would blue be representative of? Perhaps individuals who believe all holidays are... silly? Alternatively, if the set is solely based on Christmas what would the main representatives of each color be? Pro-Christmas individuals working out in White would suffice, so would the Villains being in Black and/or Blue(I'd like to see a Kraumpus-like character as at least a minor villain), but what of the others? I suppose Red could be populated by a lot of rowdy "Christmas elves"-turned-goblins, perhaps green would be beings of the winter forests that are allied with Santa?
Similarly, will the set be focused mainly upon mono, dual, or tri color cards?(I ask because this will affect how any stories may be written about certain factions and characters) If they're dual colored I suppose that Christmas could be W/G or W/R depending on whether the set will be mainly ally or enemy based, if it will be dual. For tri color, Christmas being Naya aligned seems like a no-brainer.
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"Pop in, find a dragon, roast a dragon."
-Chandra Nalaar
Lets do dual colored and about multiple holidays. w/u Christmas, b/r Halloween, g/w Easter, r/u is New Years, and if you want to make more combos you can.
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"One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic."
It seems odd, if the set name is "Jace and Chandra Save Christmas" to have Christmas only one of multiple holidays represented. Also, there's no way that W/U is the christmas combination. Santa Claus is a jolly old elf, festive and giving. Red is emotion, and not just negative emotions like anger. Love is very red too. Christmas might be Naya colored, but blue doesn't fit into its philosophy (despite the fact that blue likes ice and snow).
I think there's easily enough creative elements to focus a set around Christmas and those opposed to it. It was easy for Scars of Mirrodin to do 3 sets based around 2 factions after all.
The maze in Dragon's Maze wasn't actually a dragon's maze, he just happened to find it first.
The set may be called J&C Save Christmas, but I don't think that means we necessarily have to limit ourselves to just Christmas. I say this mostly because the other holidays would add a lot more creative space, and I don't think we could make a good working set around only Christmas without spreading things very thin.
That said, I could imagine a world based on Christmas, but it would be much more grounded than I originally expected. By that I mean: A world that's only 1/5th christmas and 4/5ths other holidays can easily hit on all the major holiday tropes. A set that's only about Christmas would require a much more nuanced world with multiple parts; like a fantasy-land "Rudoph" world, an old-timey Europe world like the one in "Jack Frost" or "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town", etc. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I'm not sure it's ideal for this haphazard, scattershot method of design.
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"In the beginning, MTG Salvation switched to a new forum format.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
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.
While I agree that more design space is always tempting, I think there's more than enough within a single conflict over Christmas. Dragon's Maze was the third set in two other blocks in an established world and it WAS all about the maze in question. If it had been about 5 different things, one of which was the maze, that'd be very odd. If Mirrodin Besieged was about 5 different planes being Besieged, only one of which was Mirrodin, that'd be very odd.
Since the set is called "Jace and Chandra Save Christmas" - it seems obvious that the focus should be on Christmas. It also gives the project a more centralized vision. Trying to portray 5 different holidays while also crafting a cohesive gameplay feel, draft archetypes and so on is going to be a significantly scattered challenge. When you've got a ton of different people all trying to work on the same thing, I find that a clear central vision can often be helpful.
However, we still need to fill the design space. You're absolutely right, that if there isn't enough to fill a set we're out of luck. I'm 99% sure there is though. Consider that there would be at least 2 factions in direct conflict, Santa's allies and the enemies of Christmas. This, like in the Scars of Mirrodin block, gives us two sides of a conflict to design. Additionally, we have the winter setting to develop additional elements (might be such as the Island of Misfit Toys, wandering snowbeasts, a tribe of snowman elementals, wildmagic creatures created from the offshoots of magic from Santa's Workshop, polar worms and anything else we can think of - so long as it's appropriate for the version of the setting settled on).
For the story itself, I don't much mind the particulars as long as two aspects are present.
1) The whole thing takes place in a winter setting, in order to give the set a cohesive feel and make sure no random card undermines this accidentally.
2) The story is about a battle (or series of battles) between the pro-christmas and anti-christmas factions. Magic's a game about two planeswalkers fighting each other, and a war between two factions fits this like a glove. It also takes us in a very clear direction going forward, as both factions can be designed to take different portions of the color pie and both can be given different mechanics.
If I have time, I'll draft up a specific implementation of this later - but this seems like a solid foundation. I'd be interested to see if anyone else would like to try crafting a particular story around these two points.
Because it matters for story reasons, I'd also like to support Silver Spelltheief's suggestion that Christmas takes the Naya colors and the enemy factions are either Dimir or Grixis. If Grixis, both factions would split red's space down the middle - with christmas representing red's joyful and loving emotions while anti-christmas represents the anger. Interestingly, both color divisions include Jace (in terms of color) on the enemy side, which could be a nice story element if the enemy tries to turn him at some point.
Yeah. I think we should focus just on Christmas. Stairic's explanation makes a lot of sense. Now that that has been established, please start posting your entries
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"One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic."
What christmas are we even talking about? The one with the Jesus and the manger or the one with the Santa and the Elves? Because if it's the Jesus thing, I'm out.
If we go with the santa and elves thing, here's an idea off the top of my head. There's a plane where its always winter, and the citizens of said plane are generally pretty peaceful and friendly types. Elves and Elementals and Leonin and Bearpeople, say. The plane is basically a lot of white, blue, and green. An Elf artificer accidentally opens a portal to a plane that is basically a mirror universe, bizzaro version of the winter one. It's full of lava and Ainok and Djinn and Goblins. The plane is a lot of red and black, and is ruled over by a tyrannical Planeswalker named Santa who is originally from the winter plane but traveled to the lava plane when his spark ignited. He decided to just stay there and enslave the folks.
Now that the rift between the two worlds is open, Jace & Chandra show up and for some reason want to put things right. Maybe Santa is shown the error of his ways and returns to his home plane to help the elves repair things after him and his lavakin wreck the place.
Snow mechanics for the winter plane seem like a shoe-in. I like the idea of elves and artifacts. Scars of Mirrodin has shown the possibilities of two color-imbalanced factions.
While I agree that more design space is always tempting, I think there's more than enough within a single conflict over Christmas. Dragon's Maze was the third set in two other blocks in an established world and it WAS all about the maze in question. If it had been about 5 different things, one of which was the maze, that'd be very odd. If Mirrodin Besieged was about 5 different planes being Besieged, only one of which was Mirrodin, that'd be very odd.
This is why picking a name first is a bad idea.
Since the set is called "Jace and Chandra Save Christmas" - it seems obvious that the focus should be on Christmas. It also gives the project a more centralized vision. Trying to portray 5 different holidays while also crafting a cohesive gameplay feel, draft archetypes and so on is going to be a significantly scattered challenge. When you've got a ton of different people all trying to work on the same thing, I find that a clear central vision can often be helpful.
The upside of multiple holidays is that it creates factions, which are much easier to design. IMO it's definitely easier to get a group around a bunch of different little parts than trying to design a cohesive whole (by that I mean one that's deep and nuanced. It's very easy to get a group around a cohesive set that's too samey).
However, we still need to fill the design space. You're absolutely right, that if there isn't enough to fill a set we're out of luck. I'm 99% sure there is though. Consider that there would be at least 2 factions in direct conflict, Santa's allies and the enemies of Christmas. This, like in the Scars of Mirrodin block, gives us two sides of a conflict to design. Additionally, we have the winter setting to develop additional elements (might be such as the Island of Misfit Toys, wandering snowbeasts, a tribe of snowman elementals, wildmagic creatures created from the offshoots of magic from Santa's Workshop, polar worms and anything else we can think of - so long as it's appropriate for the version of the setting settled on).
Mostly what I'm saying is that an entire world based on chrismas will end up having a lot of cards that don't look like they have anything to do with christmas, which is fine, just not what I think most people would expect from a set with a silly name like "Jace and Chanda Save Christmas".
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"In the beginning, MTG Salvation switched to a new forum format.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
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.
The upside of multiple holidays is that it creates factions, which are much easier to design.
And I expect to see 2 factions here - the factions for and against Christmas. Just like in Scars of Mirrodin.
Mostly what I'm saying is that an entire world based on chrismas will end up having a lot of cards that don't look like they have anything to do with christmas, which is fine, just not what I think most people would expect from a set with a silly name like "Jace and Chanda Save Christmas".
I'd say that a name "Jace and Chrandra Save Christmas" being about a set involving 5 different holidays would be a lot more confusing than seeing the occasional winter-themed cards in a christmas set that don't specifically reference christmas.
There was also a vote happening on this issue for a while, though the thread creator decided to go for the full-christmas focus early. I don't know when it was ended, but the last time I saw it live, the "focus entirely on christmas" version was leading by 7 votes to 0. I respect your opinion, but since the only major concern here is about a lack of design space - we should first find out if there actually *is* a lack of design space before throwing in the towel.
I respect your opinion, but since the only major concern here is about a lack of design space - we should first find out if there actually *is* a lack of design space before throwing in the towel.
Well there's also the question of overall fun, and personally I think a set about 5 holidays with all sorts of holiday tropes sounds much more fun to me than one based on just Christmas.
Perhaps I'm just too jaded by the history of these projects to think a set actually trying to be legitimate is going to work out, and would rather err on the side of silliness.
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"In the beginning, MTG Salvation switched to a new forum format.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
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.
Okay, my placeholder has now been filled. Including it as a spoiler here too, for people that don't want to scroll all the way back up.
Writing Goal: To create an iconic, conflict-driven story that captures what people would expect from the title and provides a rich canvas for card designs.
On a wintery plane rich with elemental magics, the goodly planeswalker King Nikolai has long been beloved by his subjects. Rather than hoard the powerful magic of his domain to strengthen his own powers, each year the planeswalker and his elves craft them into tiny wonders and work to distribute them to his own subjects and even other planes with the use of his planeswalking abilities. Jolly, wise and driven by his powerful emotions and love of bringing joy to others King Nikolai exemplifies the colors of the Naya shard though in a way many may not be used to (red rarely gets this kind of emotion in a spokesperson).
However, King Nikolai's sister Tatiana long grew jealous of her younger sibling's glory. Tatiana was a scholar devoted to personal power and thought her brother's foolish dispensation of the plane's magical riches a hideous waste. Finding his foolishness met with adoration from their parents and the kingdom alike, she seethed and plotted her ascension over her brother. The cold calculation and twisted urge for power met with the emotional core of rage... And Tatiana became aligned with the colors of Grixis.
Using her research and access to a portion of the plane's rich mana, Tatiana reached into the dreaming realm corrupted by Shadowmoor and bound the essence of its darkest emotions into an army of her own creation. Dubbing her Grixis-aligned army as the Nightmare Legions, Tatiana is determined to wrest control of the kingdom from her brother before he uses up all the plane's power on childrens' trifles.
Ill equipped for war in a peaceful plane, King Nikolai rushed across the planes seeking aid - offering the treasures and knowledge of his personal vault to any he could find. He found two willing to answer his call.
Here is the set so far:
Name- Jace and Chandra save christmas
Well, seems to me that this one is going to take place on earth. How 'bout this:
Jace and Chandra hear rumors that on a plane called Earth an elf has turned evil and is using black magic to bring the creatures on other planes to Earth and to destroy the holidays. They team up with Santa who is the only known planeswalker on Earth(there is breathing room in this, maybe we could have one for each holiday). Together, they fight against the elf and try to save christmas
Anyway, have to sleep now. Holder.
Creatively, I'd strongly recommend staying out of modern day earth. The concept of the set is awesome but I don't really want to see Jace encountering shotguns.
As for the landscape itself, in order to make sure the chirstmas theme comes across, I'd recommend keeping most of the action depicted in snowy environments. The story could technically carry the action all over the plane it visits, including tropical areas, but we don't have the benefit of a strong central narrative to keep players focused on the themes. The set needs to come across on each of its cards, so making sure each one reinforces the themes and setting of a winter wonderland (or a winter horrorshow) would be strong.
For the actual plot - several options come to mind. Either Jace and Chandra could interact with a pre-established holiday special - such as the famous Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer 1964 stop motion special(which is a rather mystical setting) - or the story could take place in a brand new mythos loosely based on the christmas specials (the way Theros is inspired by greek mythology but doesn't mirror it the way Arabian Nights mirrors its source material). The first option provides an established setting that all contributors can understand and the audience might know well. The second option provides more flexibility, which is great to have when trying to make gameplay mechanics that are both enjoyable and flavorful (since flavor is more flexible than mechanics).
Since I'd like the set to be fun to play, not just funny to read, I'd vote for the second option - creating a new setting heavily inspired by an existing setting and then introducing Magic's concepts. Magic is a game about conflict, so that needs to come across here. I like using black, the color of selfishness, as a villain here. That's perfect.
It's worth noting that it could be fun to bring in a villain from the rest of Magic too. What if Nicol Bolas decided to end Christmas for some reason? Or what if the Phyrexians wanted to get involved? Magic meets Christmas Special can be done in a lot of fun ways, as long as the end result still feels like it makes a strange sort of sense.
Story Concept
Writing Goal: To create an iconic, conflict-driven story that captures what people would expect from the title and provides a rich canvas for card designs.
On a wintery plane rich with elemental magics, the goodly planeswalker King Nikolai has long been beloved by his subjects. Rather than hoard the powerful magic of his domain to strengthen his own powers, each year the planeswalker and his elves craft them into tiny wonders and work to distribute them to his own subjects and even other planes with the use of his planeswalking abilities. Jolly, wise and driven by his powerful emotions and love of bringing joy to others King Nikolai exemplifies the colors of the Naya shard though in a way many may not be used to (red rarely gets this kind of emotion in a spokesperson).
However, King Nikolai's sister Tatiana long grew jealous of her younger sibling's glory. Tatiana was a scholar devoted to personal power and thought her brother's foolish dispensation of the plane's magical riches a hideous waste. Finding his foolishness met with adoration from their parents and the kingdom alike, she seethed and plotted her ascension over her brother. The cold calculation and twisted urge for power met with the emotional core of rage... And Tatiana became aligned with the colors of Grixis.
Using her research and access to a portion of the plane's rich mana, Tatiana reached into the dreaming realm corrupted by Shadowmoor and bound the essence of its darkest emotions into an army of her own creation. Dubbing them the Nightmare Legions, Tatiana is determined to wrest control of the kingdom from her brother before he uses up all the plane's power on childrens' trifles.
Ill equipped for war in a peaceful plane, King Nikolai rushed across the planes seeking aid - offering the treasures and knowledge of his personal vault to any he could find. He found two willing to answer his call.
Can Jace and Chandra save Christmas?
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Similarly, will the set be focused mainly upon mono, dual, or tri color cards?(I ask because this will affect how any stories may be written about certain factions and characters) If they're dual colored I suppose that Christmas could be W/G or W/R depending on whether the set will be mainly ally or enemy based, if it will be dual. For tri color, Christmas being Naya aligned seems like a no-brainer.
placeholder
-Chandra Nalaar
I think there's easily enough creative elements to focus a set around Christmas and those opposed to it. It was easy for Scars of Mirrodin to do 3 sets based around 2 factions after all.
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Not sure what this means. Can you clarify?
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The set may be called J&C Save Christmas, but I don't think that means we necessarily have to limit ourselves to just Christmas. I say this mostly because the other holidays would add a lot more creative space, and I don't think we could make a good working set around only Christmas without spreading things very thin.
That said, I could imagine a world based on Christmas, but it would be much more grounded than I originally expected. By that I mean: A world that's only 1/5th christmas and 4/5ths other holidays can easily hit on all the major holiday tropes. A set that's only about Christmas would require a much more nuanced world with multiple parts; like a fantasy-land "Rudoph" world, an old-timey Europe world like the one in "Jack Frost" or "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town", etc. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I'm not sure it's ideal for this haphazard, scattershot method of design.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
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Since the set is called "Jace and Chandra Save Christmas" - it seems obvious that the focus should be on Christmas. It also gives the project a more centralized vision. Trying to portray 5 different holidays while also crafting a cohesive gameplay feel, draft archetypes and so on is going to be a significantly scattered challenge. When you've got a ton of different people all trying to work on the same thing, I find that a clear central vision can often be helpful.
However, we still need to fill the design space. You're absolutely right, that if there isn't enough to fill a set we're out of luck. I'm 99% sure there is though. Consider that there would be at least 2 factions in direct conflict, Santa's allies and the enemies of Christmas. This, like in the Scars of Mirrodin block, gives us two sides of a conflict to design. Additionally, we have the winter setting to develop additional elements (might be such as the Island of Misfit Toys, wandering snowbeasts, a tribe of snowman elementals, wildmagic creatures created from the offshoots of magic from Santa's Workshop, polar worms and anything else we can think of - so long as it's appropriate for the version of the setting settled on).
For the story itself, I don't much mind the particulars as long as two aspects are present.
1) The whole thing takes place in a winter setting, in order to give the set a cohesive feel and make sure no random card undermines this accidentally.
2) The story is about a battle (or series of battles) between the pro-christmas and anti-christmas factions. Magic's a game about two planeswalkers fighting each other, and a war between two factions fits this like a glove. It also takes us in a very clear direction going forward, as both factions can be designed to take different portions of the color pie and both can be given different mechanics.
If I have time, I'll draft up a specific implementation of this later - but this seems like a solid foundation. I'd be interested to see if anyone else would like to try crafting a particular story around these two points.
Because it matters for story reasons, I'd also like to support Silver Spelltheief's suggestion that Christmas takes the Naya colors and the enemy factions are either Dimir or Grixis. If Grixis, both factions would split red's space down the middle - with christmas representing red's joyful and loving emotions while anti-christmas represents the anger. Interestingly, both color divisions include Jace (in terms of color) on the enemy side, which could be a nice story element if the enemy tries to turn him at some point.
Remaking Magic - A Podcast for those that love MTG and Game Design
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Sig-Heroes of the Plane
What christmas are we even talking about? The one with the Jesus and the manger or the one with the Santa and the Elves? Because if it's the Jesus thing, I'm out.
If we go with the santa and elves thing, here's an idea off the top of my head. There's a plane where its always winter, and the citizens of said plane are generally pretty peaceful and friendly types. Elves and Elementals and Leonin and Bearpeople, say. The plane is basically a lot of white, blue, and green. An Elf artificer accidentally opens a portal to a plane that is basically a mirror universe, bizzaro version of the winter one. It's full of lava and Ainok and Djinn and Goblins. The plane is a lot of red and black, and is ruled over by a tyrannical Planeswalker named Santa who is originally from the winter plane but traveled to the lava plane when his spark ignited. He decided to just stay there and enslave the folks.
Now that the rift between the two worlds is open, Jace & Chandra show up and for some reason want to put things right. Maybe Santa is shown the error of his ways and returns to his home plane to help the elves repair things after him and his lavakin wreck the place.
Snow mechanics for the winter plane seem like a shoe-in. I like the idea of elves and artifacts. Scars of Mirrodin has shown the possibilities of two color-imbalanced factions.
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This is why picking a name first is a bad idea.
The upside of multiple holidays is that it creates factions, which are much easier to design. IMO it's definitely easier to get a group around a bunch of different little parts than trying to design a cohesive whole (by that I mean one that's deep and nuanced. It's very easy to get a group around a cohesive set that's too samey).
Mostly what I'm saying is that an entire world based on chrismas will end up having a lot of cards that don't look like they have anything to do with christmas, which is fine, just not what I think most people would expect from a set with a silly name like "Jace and Chanda Save Christmas".
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
Agreed, but it's what was done.
And I expect to see 2 factions here - the factions for and against Christmas. Just like in Scars of Mirrodin.
I'd say that a name "Jace and Chrandra Save Christmas" being about a set involving 5 different holidays would be a lot more confusing than seeing the occasional winter-themed cards in a christmas set that don't specifically reference christmas.
There was also a vote happening on this issue for a while, though the thread creator decided to go for the full-christmas focus early. I don't know when it was ended, but the last time I saw it live, the "focus entirely on christmas" version was leading by 7 votes to 0. I respect your opinion, but since the only major concern here is about a lack of design space - we should first find out if there actually *is* a lack of design space before throwing in the towel.
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Sig-Heroes of the Plane
Well there's also the question of overall fun, and personally I think a set about 5 holidays with all sorts of holiday tropes sounds much more fun to me than one based on just Christmas.
Perhaps I'm just too jaded by the history of these projects to think a set actually trying to be legitimate is going to work out, and would rather err on the side of silliness.
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
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
Writing Goal: To create an iconic, conflict-driven story that captures what people would expect from the title and provides a rich canvas for card designs.
On a wintery plane rich with elemental magics, the goodly planeswalker King Nikolai has long been beloved by his subjects. Rather than hoard the powerful magic of his domain to strengthen his own powers, each year the planeswalker and his elves craft them into tiny wonders and work to distribute them to his own subjects and even other planes with the use of his planeswalking abilities. Jolly, wise and driven by his powerful emotions and love of bringing joy to others King Nikolai exemplifies the colors of the Naya shard though in a way many may not be used to (red rarely gets this kind of emotion in a spokesperson).
However, King Nikolai's sister Tatiana long grew jealous of her younger sibling's glory. Tatiana was a scholar devoted to personal power and thought her brother's foolish dispensation of the plane's magical riches a hideous waste. Finding his foolishness met with adoration from their parents and the kingdom alike, she seethed and plotted her ascension over her brother. The cold calculation and twisted urge for power met with the emotional core of rage... And Tatiana became aligned with the colors of Grixis.
Using her research and access to a portion of the plane's rich mana, Tatiana reached into the dreaming realm corrupted by Shadowmoor and bound the essence of its darkest emotions into an army of her own creation. Dubbing her Grixis-aligned army as the Nightmare Legions, Tatiana is determined to wrest control of the kingdom from her brother before he uses up all the plane's power on childrens' trifles.
Ill equipped for war in a peaceful plane, King Nikolai rushed across the planes seeking aid - offering the treasures and knowledge of his personal vault to any he could find. He found two willing to answer his call.
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