I'd say, as with a lot of design, it's a matter of discretion for each individual case. Certain cards will have the same text space, but as a result of a simpler and more common effect, one is clearly less 'dense' than the other. These redflagging rules are, like most design rules, flexible and able to be broken when properly justified.
Some things I would consider to count for less than their text space:
Ability words, search and shuffle effects (shuffle is pretty much assumed by most players), modal effects, direct damage (slightly), Threaten effects, Frost Breath effects (slightly), Fight effects, Thoughtseize effects (slightly), unnamed but common mechanics (like the dragon tribal cards in DTK).
Most of these are reasoned of players being used to seeing that effect, so they can read through it faster. Even beginning players do this quite a bit, Humans are good at seeing patterns (even if they don't actually exist ).
We are talking about comprehension, not complexity in general. I was arguing that different cards have a different comprehension complexity, so the text-space redflag is somewhat variable. Lines of rules text brings no innate complexity in other ways.
Most of these are reasoned of players being used to seeing that effect, so they can read through it faster. Even beginning players do this quite a bit, Humans are good at seeing patterns (even if they don't actually exist ).
Given that redflagging complexity is aimed in no small part to help ease new players into the game, this sounds like a misguided argument to me.
Lines of rules text brings no innate complexity in other ways.
Yes it does. New players (Especially young players, as remember MtG is still a kids game) are turned off by large blocks of text, especially if their reading skills are not stellar. Its a huge barrier of entry if suddenly all your cards look like Skybind or Channel Harm.
EDIT: editing the primer to have all custom cards in spoilers (So I can link it to MaRo in my email to him)
Made mores pelling fixes as well as clarified the sections on triggered abilities, ability word counting towards line count and the Emeria Faithful example.
Most of these are reasoned of players being used to seeing that effect, so they can read through it faster. Even beginning players do this quite a bit, Humans are good at seeing patterns (even if they don't actually exist ).
Given that redflagging complexity is aimed in no small part to help ease new players into the game, this sounds like a misguided argument to me.
It's not misguided. An ability word dramatically simplifies the process of learning new material via the mental process known as "chunking". Once you learn how "flying" works and read the text once, every card with flying is instantly easier to understand (even within the same first-deck-ever the new player buys). Abilities like Batallion are other good examples. The moment you see the Batallion effect on a card your brain can shorthand it to "oh, it's an effect that triggers when it and 2 other creatures are attacking". That gives you an immediate sense of what the card is doing and added confidence while reading.
This is how wizards got away with including three super-complex mechanics in the same block. Individually, Morph, Manifest and Megamorph are highly complicated. However, each works very similarly to the others, so their total complexity within the same block is a lot smaller than the sum of their individual parts. Megamorph is even more complex than morph on its own, but learning megamorph once you've learned morph a few months ago is very simple. The process is just, "Oh, it's morph but you put a +1/+1 counter on it". Manifest also involves facedown cards serving as 2/2 creatures that might just flip face-up later, which are concepts people become familiar with through learning Morph in Khans of Tarkir.
So yes, these are great ways to reduce Comprehension Complexity for the player. Even for new players, not EVERY card is the first card they've ever read. If you can use mechanics that make many different cards work similarly to take advantage of chunking, you can make the second card they read easier to understand than the first.
I've recently done a fairly substantial update on Ability Words. A subject of much confusion when it comes to word count and NWO issue.
I discovered that some of this was due to bad wording in my original version that could be interpreted in different ways than intended.
I've also added a few additional NWO test cards to train your knowledge on and cleaned up a few spelling and formatting errors.
I'm glad that this guide has been really helpful to people and I'm open to suggestions on areas that need improvement or clarification.
The details of the red flags has been repeated on both his blog and on multiple episodes of his podcast. I could understand a single mistake but do you believe that mistake being repeated 3-4 or more times than your just missing a design decision?
All of these rules are not arbitrary, they are backed up with solid design reasoning and 6 years of highly successful NWO mostly compliant sets. You are free to ignore any of these guidelines but know that they come at a very real cost. Magic is one of the most complex games ever, there is zero reason to try and make it even less so.
My personal count for BFZ was 22, being very much in line with nearly all NWO sets which range from 19-22. This wasn't including processing as a mechanic which it easily could of been. Reducing the count to 19.
This does kinda bring up something that hasn't been necessarily addressed which is "unnamed mechanics" such as Eldrazi scions and Processors in BFZ. Just like ability words they have identical wording. They are like ability words which they didn't add the italicized text to. Often they consider that a mistake in hindsight such as with Processors.
My count for Theros was also 22 (through wording only) though I note that you have repeated text on all bestow cards which if taken into account reduce the 4 line rule breakers to only 15 but has a few NWO slots taken by cards like Crackling Triton.
EDIT: My count for KTK (considered one of the most complex recent sets) was 14-16 depending on how generous you where concerning raid. That bloats out to 24-26 if you include the Blossoming Sands gainland cycle, however its quite possible that didn't end up being included due to being such a large cycle.
As we can clearly see, recent sets have systematically broken the 4+ lines rule. They would all have overblown their redflag budget, without even taking into consideration the other criteria for redflagging. Clearly, something is going on here. The most logical explanation is Maro mispoke.
There's also the possibility that policy has changed and what Maro said no longer matches what the practices are at R&D.
I haven't done the math, but I have long suspected two things:
- The 20% figure is too low for current sets.
- The red-flag count is done at design and is disregarded going into development.
Either of those factors could reasonably be either something Maro's talks are outdated on or something he simply neglected to mention.
@Willows
Or... the current sets are stretching the limits, but not as part of a larger trend, MaRo has said that Tarkir block and BFZ block are both unusually complex. That's probably it.
Your right that the Wordyness Red Flag is by far the most nuanced and least clear cut of the Red Flags. Where exactly do we draw the line on certain things? What gets included exactly in certain ability words? These are all questions that are all very interesting and mostlikelyhave a fairly large amount of wriggle room. If anyone has any particular cards to discuss I'd love to hear them.
However we should get a few misconceptions out of the way, and I've made a few minor edits to the Primer to help address these.
My personal count for BFZ was 22, being very much in line with nearly all NWO sets which range from 19-22. This wasn't including processing as a mechanic which it easily could of been. Reducing the count to 19.
20 cards with 4+ lines in a set of 101 is not ok, because we still haven't considered all the other redflagging criteria. If a set already has 20 cards being redflagged from wordiness, you literally can't have any other red flag.
Why is this an issue? I even mention in my primer that the Wordy redflag is by far the most common but also the most acceptable. Having 15+ wordy cards is far better than having 15+ On-board tricks.
The other red flags are extremely rare in most WOTC sets, cards like Viashino Fangtail are redflagged but they wouldn't ever be allowed to stay at common except in the most extreme of circumstances.
Besides these unnamed mechanics generally have lower as-fan than ability words (otherwise they would just be keyworded, duh!), so you can't count on new players seeing enough of the cards to form the mental shortcut if they only open a few boosters.
This actually isn't true.
Processors have an As-Fan of 0.62 while Eldrazi Scions have an As-Fan of 0.89. This is comparable or even higher than a substantial number of mechanics from other sets:
THS devotion: 0.60
THS Monstrosity: 054
KTK Clan Mechanics (Delve, Raid etc...): 0.57 - 0.57
ORI Spell Mastery: 0.96
etc etc...
You can calculate your own As-Fans and double check my figures HERE
Quote from "Willows" »
- The red-flag count is done at design and is disregarded going into development.
Actually the opposite is true. Development is the one that keeps track of word count and other statistics, this has been mentioned in some of the Drive to Work stories about certain sets when they come up against word count barriers. Sam Stoddard has also mentioned it in his Latest Developments articles.
It would also make nearly zero sense to have the development team disregard Red Flagging as if the end product that the player is receiving isn't following the NWO principles to reduce complexity then why are they there? Remember what the end goal of NWO is, to make the game more accessible by reducing complexity.
I want to make a small comment on the "wordyness" redflag issue. If you're using standard MSE (and I think that speaks for most designers), you are technically working with slightly less words than WOTC is to fit under 4 lines of text. For example the card Joint Assault fits in under four lines of text, but if you put it in MSE it comes out to 4.
Also the more flavor text you have can influence the size of the words in the text box, allowing you to fit more rules text if there's more flavor text (a boon to us vorthos' I guess).
So this leads me to believe there mustn't be a line rule, but maybe there is an average number of words rule?
Also the more flavor text you have can influence the size of the words in the text box, allowing you to fit more rules text if there's more flavor text (a boon to us vorthos' I guess).
I think this actually goes against the spirit of the rule. Besides comprehension complexity, one problem of wordiness is the "wall of text" phenomenon, where people feel intimidated by large amounts of text and/or with a tiny font. This isn't only a problem for younger audiences; adults too dislike the wall of text. When you add more flavor text to decrease the font's size, you're just shuffling the wordiness around. Sure, you can go from four lines to three, but now you have a smaller font that's more intimidating. So you're not really fixing anything.
Ok, based on your metric would you redflag Joint Assault for wordiness? Based on Wizards criteria it wouldn't be redflagged for that (Less than four lines). However if you plug the rules text into MSE you come out to four lines of text, with the "end of turn." part spilling over onto the fourth line. I don't think that formatting the rules text to fit within three lines, especially for that "end of turn" clause is really being that disingenuous to the spirit of the redflag rule.
Some things I would consider to count for less than their text space:
Ability words, search and shuffle effects (shuffle is pretty much assumed by most players), modal effects, direct damage (slightly), Threaten effects, Frost Breath effects (slightly), Fight effects, Thoughtseize effects (slightly), unnamed but common mechanics (like the dragon tribal cards in DTK).
Most of these are reasoned of players being used to seeing that effect, so they can read through it faster. Even beginning players do this quite a bit, Humans are good at seeing patterns (even if they don't actually exist
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Given that redflagging complexity is aimed in no small part to help ease new players into the game, this sounds like a misguided argument to me.
Yes it does. New players (Especially young players, as remember MtG is still a kids game) are turned off by large blocks of text, especially if their reading skills are not stellar. Its a huge barrier of entry if suddenly all your cards look like Skybind or Channel Harm.
EDIT: editing the primer to have all custom cards in spoilers (So I can link it to MaRo in my email to him)
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
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
It's not misguided. An ability word dramatically simplifies the process of learning new material via the mental process known as "chunking". Once you learn how "flying" works and read the text once, every card with flying is instantly easier to understand (even within the same first-deck-ever the new player buys). Abilities like Batallion are other good examples. The moment you see the Batallion effect on a card your brain can shorthand it to "oh, it's an effect that triggers when it and 2 other creatures are attacking". That gives you an immediate sense of what the card is doing and added confidence while reading.
This is how wizards got away with including three super-complex mechanics in the same block. Individually, Morph, Manifest and Megamorph are highly complicated. However, each works very similarly to the others, so their total complexity within the same block is a lot smaller than the sum of their individual parts. Megamorph is even more complex than morph on its own, but learning megamorph once you've learned morph a few months ago is very simple. The process is just, "Oh, it's morph but you put a +1/+1 counter on it". Manifest also involves facedown cards serving as 2/2 creatures that might just flip face-up later, which are concepts people become familiar with through learning Morph in Khans of Tarkir.
So yes, these are great ways to reduce Comprehension Complexity for the player. Even for new players, not EVERY card is the first card they've ever read. If you can use mechanics that make many different cards work similarly to take advantage of chunking, you can make the second card they read easier to understand than the first.
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
I discovered that some of this was due to bad wording in my original version that could be interpreted in different ways than intended.
I've also added a few additional NWO test cards to train your knowledge on and cleaned up a few spelling and formatting errors.
I'm glad that this guide has been really helpful to people and I'm open to suggestions on areas that need improvement or clarification.
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
The details of the red flags has been repeated on both his blog and on multiple episodes of his podcast. I could understand a single mistake but do you believe that mistake being repeated 3-4 or more times than your just missing a design decision?
All of these rules are not arbitrary, they are backed up with solid design reasoning and 6 years of highly successful NWO mostly compliant sets. You are free to ignore any of these guidelines but know that they come at a very real cost. Magic is one of the most complex games ever, there is zero reason to try and make it even less so.
My personal count for BFZ was 22, being very much in line with nearly all NWO sets which range from 19-22. This wasn't including processing as a mechanic which it easily could of been. Reducing the count to 19.
This does kinda bring up something that hasn't been necessarily addressed which is "unnamed mechanics" such as Eldrazi scions and Processors in BFZ. Just like ability words they have identical wording. They are like ability words which they didn't add the italicized text to. Often they consider that a mistake in hindsight such as with Processors.
My count for Theros was also 22 (through wording only) though I note that you have repeated text on all bestow cards which if taken into account reduce the 4 line rule breakers to only 15 but has a few NWO slots taken by cards like Crackling Triton.
EDIT: My count for KTK (considered one of the most complex recent sets) was 14-16 depending on how generous you where concerning raid. That bloats out to 24-26 if you include the Blossoming Sands gainland cycle, however its quite possible that didn't end up being included due to being such a large cycle.
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 haven't done the math, but I have long suspected two things:
- The 20% figure is too low for current sets.
- The red-flag count is done at design and is disregarded going into development.
Either of those factors could reasonably be either something Maro's talks are outdated on or something he simply neglected to mention.
Or... the current sets are stretching the limits, but not as part of a larger trend, MaRo has said that Tarkir block and BFZ block are both unusually complex. That's probably it.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
However we should get a few misconceptions out of the way, and I've made a few minor edits to the Primer to help address these.
Why is this an issue? I even mention in my primer that the Wordy redflag is by far the most common but also the most acceptable. Having 15+ wordy cards is far better than having 15+ On-board tricks.
The other red flags are extremely rare in most WOTC sets, cards like Viashino Fangtail are redflagged but they wouldn't ever be allowed to stay at common except in the most extreme of circumstances.
This actually isn't true.
Processors have an As-Fan of 0.62 while Eldrazi Scions have an As-Fan of 0.89. This is comparable or even higher than a substantial number of mechanics from other sets:
THS devotion: 0.60
THS Monstrosity: 054
KTK Clan Mechanics (Delve, Raid etc...): 0.57 - 0.57
ORI Spell Mastery: 0.96
etc etc...
You can calculate your own As-Fans and double check my figures HERE
Actually the opposite is true. Development is the one that keeps track of word count and other statistics, this has been mentioned in some of the Drive to Work stories about certain sets when they come up against word count barriers. Sam Stoddard has also mentioned it in his Latest Developments articles.
It would also make nearly zero sense to have the development team disregard Red Flagging as if the end product that the player is receiving isn't following the NWO principles to reduce complexity then why are they there? Remember what the end goal of NWO is, to make the game more accessible by reducing complexity.
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
Also the more flavor text you have can influence the size of the words in the text box, allowing you to fit more rules text if there's more flavor text (a boon to us vorthos' I guess).
So this leads me to believe there mustn't be a line rule, but maybe there is an average number of words rule?
Ok, based on your metric would you redflag Joint Assault for wordiness? Based on Wizards criteria it wouldn't be redflagged for that (Less than four lines). However if you plug the rules text into MSE you come out to four lines of text, with the "end of turn." part spilling over onto the fourth line. I don't think that formatting the rules text to fit within three lines, especially for that "end of turn" clause is really being that disingenuous to the spirit of the redflag rule.
...but that's why I'm asking here!