So keeping with the Arthurian theme, I'm wondering how deep they will go with the mythology and stories. It would be great to have a Green Knight equivalent in the game. I bet we will see an extension of Knight tribal as a as a return of Faeries!
I have some disappointing news for you. First Maro has said that the dive into Arthurian is fairly shallow because the populace doesn't actually know that much. He specifically calls out the Green Knight as something probably not done because no one would recognize it.
That's disappointing. If Adventure Time has enough respect for their audience to throw out a Green Knight reference, I feel that Magic should be able to.
So keeping with the Arthurian theme, I'm wondering how deep they will go with the mythology and stories. It would be great to have a Green Knight equivalent in the game. I bet we will see an extension of Knight tribal as a as a return of Faeries!
I have some disappointing news for you. First Maro has said that the dive into Arthurian is fairly shallow because the populace doesn't actually know that much. He specifically calls out the Green Knight as something probably not done because no one would recognize it.
Well, that's certainly concerning. It sounds like they're only making references to real world mythology for Eldraine if they're making direct references to the most well-known aspects rather than trying to weave many elements in even if the references are to more obscure elements. Again, the real proof is in the final product but that feels really lazy to me.
I'm actually wondering why they bothered including Arthurian elements at all, since it feels like an odd fit with most of the fairy tale tropes. When I look at what I presume is supposed to be Camelot, I don't think fairy tale world with Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, Hansel and Gretal, and Jack and the Beanstalk. I see something Bant-esque. Yeah, there are the fairy tale princesses to help bridge the gap, but still.
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
I'm actually wondering why they bothered including Arthurian elements at all, since it feels like an odd fit with most of the fairy tale tropes. When I look at what I presume is supposed to be Camelot, I don't think fairy tale world with Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, Hansel and Gretal, and Jack and the Beanstalk. I see something Bant-esque. Yeah, there are the fairy tale princesses to help bridge the gap, but still.
Well people have been mixing fairy tales with Arthur for years for a start its not a novel thing. Next Maro mention one reason to mix them was to have a high fantasy world but with a twist since magic done high fantasy a bunch and this helps Eldraine stand up on its own. Finally a fairy tale plane with its charming princes, evil queens, knights saving princesses, ect would have a court system and if you do fantasy medieval court your that would already touch Arthur tropes.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Eugh... Being unwilling to make obscure references because they are obscure is not a good sign. Sure, you have to make sure to resonate with your larger audience, but part of the point of delving into something like European fairytales is just that: delving. You get into some weird interesting stuff pretty fast, and that's what's cool about it.
You've got to hit some familiar spots when you're doing something like this: part of the appeal is that these stories are part of a shared cultural inheritance, and in fact some have numerous global parallels. But if they're just doing Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and such, Disney actually did do it better. (All cynicism aside, there's never been and never will be another movie like Snow White. It's stunning.)
Hopefully they had more chutzpah with the fairytales than with Arthurian stuff. There's more to do with fairtales anyway. Arthur stuff is fine and all, but fairytales just smack you in the face with how weird they are.
Eugh... Being unwilling to make obscure references because they are obscure is not a good sign. Sure, you have to make sure to resonate with your larger audience, but part of the point of delving into something like European fairytales is just that: delving. You get into some weird interesting stuff pretty fast, and that's what's cool about it.
No, it isn't - or at least it shouldn't be. They always used recognizability as a metric to choose which tropes they include in their final product and yet we got an Argus-reference on Theros which they didn't consider all that recognizable. Why? Because cool concepts are going to make it into the final product on their own merit as well. And if it happens to be a reference to an obscure piece of lore, they aren't obliged to remove the reference. And they will always throw some bones to those who like to delve deeper into the material just because that's actually a part of player engagement and good design doesn't ignore it. All they tell us here, is that they focus on the well-known tropes.
If anything the Green Knight might still be in there, both because MaRo got to name drop it of the top of his head, and Maro literally is a Green Knight (i. e. the illustration - MaRo's favorite piece of art in the game - is a pretty obvious reference to depictions of the Green Knight seen in architecture).
I'm actually wondering why they bothered including Arthurian elements at all, since it feels like an odd fit with most of the fairy tale tropes.
You got it backwards. They decided on an Arthurian world and decided to blend Fairy Tales into it. And why is that not an obvious combination to you? You've got Princesses and Knights and medieval settings with transformative journeys and magic items and Disney animation to reference. The blending is so seamless that I wouldn't even consider the long-haired damsel necessarily a Rapunzel reference as much as a typical trope of tales of chivalry.
Basically tales of chivalry concern the upper class and courts, while fairy tales get to be about the lower class (or upper class and lower class meeting e. g. princess Snow White moving in with some miners), so the two actually can complement each other as well.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
Eugh... Being unwilling to make obscure references because they are obscure is not a good sign. Sure, you have to make sure to resonate with your larger audience, but part of the point of delving into something like European fairytales is just that: delving. You get into some weird interesting stuff pretty fast, and that's what's cool about it.
No, it isn't - or at least it shouldn't be. They always used recognizability as a metric to choose which tropes they include in their final product and yet we got an Argus-reference on Theros which they didn't consider all that recognizable. Why? Because cool concepts are going to make it into the final product on their own merit as well. And if it happens to be a reference to an obscure piece of lore, they aren't obliged to remove the reference. And they will always throw some bones to those who like to delve deeper into the material just because that's actually a part of player engagement and good design doesn't ignore it. All they tell us here, is that they focus on the well-known tropes.
If anything the Green Knight might still be in there, both because MaRo got to name drop it of the top of his head, and Maro literally is a Green Knight (i. e. the illustration - MaRo's favorite piece of art in the game - is a pretty obvious reference to depictions of the Green Knight seen in architecture).
I think we're getting into the subjective area of taste here, but I do not like when they lean heavily on easily recognized tropes executed at a very shallow level. It feels lazy and base to me and even if I can understand where their motivations come from (recognizable tropes create resonance which in turn can help build player interest in a setting and therefore a set), it concerns me when they put the focus on expies with little depth. I don't mind expies when used sparingly (I think they help sell a setting without requiring a lot of exposition or explanation) and when they're utilized to help establish the tone/rules/story/etc of the setting and provide a lens, particularly if the major focus of the flavor is on the less recognizable elements of the inspiration and/or the unique elements created without direct reference.
Basically, I find the settings where they directly lift elements from the source material without much twist or depth to be derivative. My favorite settings have been the ones with largely unrecognizable inspirations or really great balance between recognizable and unrecognizable elements. Innistrad, I think, got that balance bang on. Ravnica is another example. Eldraine, though clearly still mostly unknown to us, does not seem to be heading in that direction based on our limited information. Introducing the setting with "Come see our versions of classic fairy tales presented with about as much as variation from the source text as Shrek managed in 1999 meshed with elements of Arthurian legend (but only the famous parts because research showed most people didn't recognize secondary aspects of those tales so we stuck with shallow depictions)!" is not inspiring confidence in me. It feels like a lazy grab at dark Disney nostalgia if I'm being frank and I'm viewing the setting through that lens.
That said, I'd like to be proven wrong. They do almost always lead previews with the most recognizable elements of a setting (be it favorites from a past set if revisiting a setting, or recognizable elements from the source material for new settings) and maybe this will be more like Innistrad to me when we see the finished product.
You got it backwards. They decided on an Arthurian world and decided to blend Fairy Tales into it. And why is that not an obvious combination to you? You've got Princesses and Knights and medieval settings with transformative journeys and magic items and Disney animation to reference. The blending is so seamless that I wouldn't even consider the long-haired damsel necessarily a Rapunzel reference as much as a typical trope of tales of chivalry.
Basically tales of chivalry concern the upper class and courts, while fairy tales get to be about the lower class (or upper class and lower class meeting e. g. princess Snow White moving in with some miners), so the two actually can complement each other as well.
Fairy tales like Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel, sure. As I said, the Princesses help bridge the gap between the two themes. But Goldilocks? Red Riding Hood? The Gingerbread Man?
For me, it's a matter of the sliding scale of high fantasy and low fantasy. Arthurian myth has a more "epic" feel to it than one-shot fairy tale aesops. There's a sense of continuity, a set of recurring characters with stories that develop, a war. The story isn't just about Arthur and a handful of characters with whom he interacts, there's an entire developed setting with numerous character relationships.
The difference is like that between a Disney movie and a Disney cartoon. Disney movies feel epic and sweeping in their scope, while Disney cartoons starring Mickey Mouse and friends are low-key wacky comedy stunts.
You could mix fairy tale princess tropes with Arthurian myth just fine. The common themes of royalty and medieval fantasy makes that work. But when you mix in more surreal fairy tales like the Three Little Pigs and Jack and the Beanstalk, it starts to clash with the epic medieval fantasy feel. It's like throwing Smurfs into Lord of the Rings.
I would rather the Arthurian aspect have been fleshed out with a setting using dedicated medieval fantasy tropes. Most of the Grimms Fairy Tales don't feel medieval, their distinct elements aren't tied to medieval tropes in specific.
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MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
Maro didn't say they wouldn't more use obscure Arthur stuff just it wasn't super deep to a wider audience since most don't even know the the somewhat known green knight, let alone the really obscure stuff like Arthur Conquering Rome or The Reign of Uther. As SilverWolf_27 somewhat pointed out they do obscure stuff just not as often and normally at higher rarities such as the serpopard in Amonkhet and hecatoncheires in Theros.
Also how is Innistrad any better when it literally made cards based on the fly, invisible man, dracula, ect?
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Also considering that the mythological creature, the Serpopard, is also in Arthurian myth. Which is also something that is quiet obscure and was included in Amonkhet.
I hadn't realized this until this thread. How many people here are familiar with the Series Fate? As in Fate Stay Night, Fate Zero, Fate Apocrypha, or Fate Go? Because of this franchise, I have exclusively thought of King Arthur as Female for over a decade and would be sorely disappointed if MTG's King Arthur is male. I realize this is a minority thought pattern but this thread has lowered my hopes of getting a good King Arthur.
I actually was thinking about this too. But also, clearly we need to instead have a Planeswalker version of Andersen because this is more of a fairy-tale plane than an Arthurian plane.
We got a freaking serpopard in Amonkhet and some deeper Arthurian references are too obscure now?
Eh.
AKH/HOU literally only did Egypt (the Ten Plagues still count!), so it had more space where it needed more of the weird stuff like serpopards and Sobek (okay, seriously, think back to before Sobek was a meme, before Amonkhet came out... did you really know about Sobek, or did you just assume he was a thing because a croc-headed god totally makes sense for ancient Egypt? Okay fine, I'm blowing this one out of proportion a little) and khopeshes and Ammit.
Eldraine already has more going on than that, with its Brothers Grimm inspirations and the Arthurian stuff, with the Arthurian themes taking a backseat. I feel this is less unreasonable than people are saying. Also see a couple other posts in this thread pointing out that MaRo didn't rule out the obscure entirely.
I feel like I've seen a lot of people who know more about Arthurian legend than the average person (and let's be real here, I'm pretty sure the average person knows **** and all about Arthurian legend, relatively speaking; Arthur, Excalibur, the Lady of the Lake, sure, maybe a couple of Knights of the Round Table, but that's about it) getting very salty about this. Folks, in this case, you need to make sure you don't get blinded by the fact that you're probably a bigger nerd than an "average" person here. Your perspective is inherently distorted unless you know what is actually in other people's brains. I appreciate the disappointment! But I think that, in the end, the themes being easy to grok for the layperson will help the setting more than the more-knowledgeable not being able to smile at as many deep cuts will hurt it. (Also, focusing too much on obscura may make it hard for the setting to truly develop an identity of its own.)
I would rather the Arthurian aspect have been fleshed out with a setting using dedicated medieval fantasy tropes. Most of the Grimms Fairy Tales don't feel medieval, their distinct elements aren't tied to medieval tropes in specific.
That's probably because the Brothers Grimm wrote in the 19th century, so even any attempt to produce something in that time period would be kind of inauthentic.
You know, I actually kind of agree... this combination might be kind of shaky. But also we are basing this off of relatively few things and MaRo saying that a lot of people are overshooting how deep of a dive into Arthurian legend Eldraine will be.
You know i'm italian and i don't know what you are talking about.
I'm not an expert of medieval literature but i can arrogantly say that i know more than the average person. Here in Italy we study Dante, Petrarca, Ariosto, Boccaccio and Tasso as medieval literature. No one of them wrote about King Arthur.
I bet it's the same for France, Spain, Germany and other european country. They all had their different lore. I'm sure King Arthur and his knights were really important for England, but french writers surely preferred Charle Magne and his paladins.
So yeah the thing non-british (or american) people know about Camelot are majorly from pop culture.
Now i don't mind at all knowing more, actually i would be happy to know more (seriously, tell me about this conquest of Rome!), but sadly the average person isn't so open to things they don't know about, see Kamigawa.
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How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
Also how is Innistrad any better when it literally made cards based on the fly, invisible man, dracula, ect?
The tropes referred to were inherently broad to begin with and not just direct expies (such as the references to the number 13, references to broad horror tropes like fear of the dark, claustrophobia, alchemy, cannibalism, angry townsfolk with pitchforks and torches etc). Or the tropes referenced have themselves been replicated multiple times in different works over the past few centuries so the references are to a thread of referential works (Delver of Secrets, for example, is not a reference only to The Fly but also the earlier The Metamorphosis). That means when there is a direct one-to-one reference, such as the references to Frankenstein, it feels earned more than derivative because it's supported by a suite of references that aren't as specific.
This feels balanced and not lazy because there are many layers of reference so even the occasional Captain Ersatz doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. Innistrad was a setting made up almost entirely of references, but because so many of them have no single, specific reference point (and instead refer to very general concepts) the overall setting doesn't at all feel derivative. It's that balance I was referring to earlier. I hope Eldraine has that balance (or has some other way to make the Captain Ersatz conga line we've been shown so far make sense).
Also how is Innistrad any better when it literally made cards based on the fly, invisible man, dracula, ect?
The tropes referred to were inherently broad to begin with and not just direct expies (such as the references to the number 13, references to broad horror tropes like fear of the dark, claustrophobia, alchemy, cannibalism, angry townsfolk with pitchforks and torches etc). Or the tropes referenced have themselves been replicated multiple times in different works over the past few centuries so the references are to a thread of referential works (Delver of Secrets, for example, is not a reference only to The Fly but also the earlier The Metamorphosis). That means when there is a direct one-to-one reference, such as the references to Frankenstein, it feels earned more than derivative because it's supported by a suite of references that aren't as specific.
I could argue we already have a number of that in the art already. I see True loves kiss, Evil step mother enslaving a stepdaughter, witch cooking kids in pies and living in the woods, magical swords and twins/brother/sister lost in the woods are all found on many stories. The hag offering an apple referring Snow white which in term is often thought of linked with other stories of temptation of women with fruit such as Eve and Persephone who are then curse after eating the offered treat.
This feels balanced and not lazy because there are many layers of reference so even the occasional Captain Ersatz doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. Innistrad was a setting made up almost entirely of references, but because so many of them have no single, specific reference point (and instead refer to very general concepts) the overall setting doesn't at all feel derivative. It's that balance I was referring to earlier. I hope Eldraine has that balance (or has some other way to make the Captain Ersatz conga line we've been shown so far make sense).
I think its simply Inninstrad just lesser know with the source material as a story and the themes where more known as it being a genre instead of a mythology. And a number of thing you talking about horror tropes being broad and not having a single source are also true for many fairy tales tropes I listed above. As I said above a number of stuff we have seen has gone with way with Eldraine.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
I could argue we already have a number of that in the art already. I see True loves kiss, Evil step mother enslaving a stepdaughter, witch cooking kids in pies and living in the woods, magical swords and twins/brother/sister lost in the woods are all found on many stories. The hag offering an apple referring Snow white which in term is often thought of linked with other stories of temptation of women with fruit such as Eve and Persephone who are then curse after eating the offered treat.
I think its simply Inninstrad just lesser know with the source material as a story and the themes where more known as it being a genre instead of a mythology. And a number of thing you talking about horror tropes being broad and not having a single source are also true for many fairy tales tropes I listed above. As I said above a number of stuff we have seen has gone with way with Eldraine.
That's a valid point, thank you for it. What we've seen of Eldraine still reads as lazy to me (and in fairness, I'm "meh" on the setting on a conceptual level because I see it as played out and I don't think MtG has the capacity to make it feel fresh), but your post gives me more reason to hope they'll pull off what they're going for.
I think its simply Inninstrad just lesser know with the source material as a story and the themes where more known as it being a genre instead of a mythology. And a number of thing you talking about horror tropes being broad and not having a single source are also true for many fairy tales tropes I listed above. As I said above a number of stuff we have seen has gone with way with Eldraine.
I think one of the reasons why Innistrad does not feel like a parody is because they didn't make mtg equivalents of well known characters. For example, Invisible Stalker is not a legendary creature, implying there are many other invisible rogues running around Nephalia. Also a invisible man does not feel so out of place in mtg anyway, so it ends being not too much on the nose.
If we look at the cast of legendary characters of both Innistrad blocks I think not a single one is meant to be the equivalent of anything (I could be wrong). Theros blocks however have stuff like King Macar, the Gold-Cursed and Triad of Fates.
There are also the case of the many cards that should be legendary by their uniqueness and design like Colossus of Akros and Underworld Cerberus but simply didn't got the subtype because Theros already had too many legendary cards. Those also feel too much on the nose.
If we look at the cast of legendary characters of both Innistrad blocks I think not a single one is meant to be the equivalent of anything (I could be wrong).
Olivia Voldaren's design name was literally Dracula, Grimgrin, Corpse-Born is a pretty close approximation of Frankenstien's monster and Geralf his Frankenstien.
I think one of the reasons why Innistrad does not feel like a parody is because they didn't make mtg equivalents of well known characters. For example, Invisible Stalker is not a legendary creature, implying there are many other invisible rogues running around Nephalia. Also a invisible man does not feel so out of place in mtg anyway, so it ends being not too much on the nose.
If we look at the cast of legendary characters of both Innistrad blocks I think not a single one is meant to be the equivalent of anything (I could be wrong). Theros blocks however have stuff like King Macar, the Gold-Cursed and Triad of Fates.
This may sound rude and misguided but from what you're saying here and others have said before it really sounds like your saying "The more stuff I recognize the less I like it." Which due to years of scientific studies we know is the opposite of what people actually feel meaning this is probably more accurately "The less I understand the cooler I think it makes me to like it." I'm not going to look that deeply into Theros and Innistrad and count the number of "direct" translations vs "indirect" but I assume its a lot closer than anyone here realizes.
I could argue we already have a number of that in the art already. I see True loves kiss, Evil step mother enslaving a stepdaughter, witch cooking kids in pies and living in the woods, magical swords and twins/brother/sister lost in the woods are all found on many stories. The hag offering an apple referring Snow white which in term is often thought of linked with other stories of temptation of women with fruit such as Eve and Persephone who are then curse after eating the offered treat.
I think its simply Inninstrad just lesser know with the source material as a story and the themes where more known as it being a genre instead of a mythology. And a number of thing you talking about horror tropes being broad and not having a single source are also true for many fairy tales tropes I listed above. As I said above a number of stuff we have seen has gone with way with Eldraine.
That's a valid point, thank you for it. What we've seen of Eldraine still reads as lazy to me (and in fairness, I'm "meh" on the setting on a conceptual level because I see it as played out and I don't think MtG has the capacity to make it feel fresh), but your post gives me more reason to hope they'll pull off what they're going for.
I think what you're experiencing is another acute case of Lorwynitis. It's one thing for a setting to be derivative if the content that's derived is rich or has some kind of artistic merit that warrants revisiting and re-exploring in a new medium. Old horror tropes fit the bill here because horror never stops being relevant to the human condition regardless of time or place. Fairy tales also have timeless themes in them but they mostly resonate with children, especially if they are interpreted heavily in the Disneyesque context. If they had tipped the scales of the balance towards more Arthurian themes with a smattering of little fairy tale stuff added, instead of the other way around, most likely it would have felt more substantive. But you're right that WotC can still execute the hell out of this concept.
This may have been answered, but is MTGsalvation going to be doing spoiler season for ELD? People are still active here, yet all the articles on the main page say the site is taken over by another company. Is it business as usual for us? MTGnexus is essentially the same just not as active right now.
This may have been answered, but is MTGsalvation going to be doing spoiler season for ELD? People are still active here, yet all the articles on the main page say the site is taken over by another company. Is it business as usual for us? MTGnexus is essentially the same just not as active right now.
MTGsalvation is safe for now. Mods have alread started MTGnexus tho, but MTGsalvation is not gonna go down for now, covering eldraine release most probably.
This may have been answered, but is MTGsalvation going to be doing spoiler season for ELD? People are still active here, yet all the articles on the main page say the site is taken over by another company. Is it business as usual for us? MTGnexus is essentially the same just not as active right now.
MTGsalvation is safe for now. Mods have alread started MTGnexus tho, but MTGsalvation is not gonna go down for now, covering eldraine release most probably.
I'm sure reveals will be covered here. If no one else starts the standard Name and Number crunch for Throne (or Commander 2019 for that matter) on here I will take it on. Monitoring the same thread on two sites isn't that difficult.
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This may sound rude and misguided but from what you're saying here and others have said before it really sounds like your saying "The more stuff I recognize the less I like it." Which due to years of scientific studies we know is the opposite of what people actually feel meaning this is probably more accurately "The less I understand the cooler I think it makes me to like it."
Well, at least you were aware you sounded rude and misguided.
Mere-exposure/familiarity theory does show that familiarity/exposure to something does increase positive feelings and loyalty towards that something and tropes are tropes because they establish familiar patterns that audiences recognize, but there are diminishing returns and familiarity can only take you so far. A popular song can get overplayed, a genre or style of film can wear on audiences over time, and nostalgia can be overdone to the point of feeling derivative. The trouble with adapting a setting/genre/mythology is that while it will resonate easier with audiences and its familiarity to them will make it more likely they'll respond positively, one can also overplay their hand. And the more familiar the work you're adapting is, the more work is needed to make it feel fresh.
I like familiar things, and I think MtG can and has adapted real world concepts with a degree of success (I'd argue that their more original settings tend to work for me better than their settings that rely heavily on real world inspiration, but that's more a matter of taste), but I also think they can be lazy and derivative. And the more familiar we are with a set of tropes, the more we're able to see when they're adapted well and when they're adapted lazily. And Eldraine is playing in a sandbox a wide swath of the audience is highly familiar with, which means some aspects can feel too familiar, or lazily executed, or like a gimme. I think a setting like that is workable, but if some parts are a little too on the nose or if the adaptation isn't as seamless as it should be, it will be noticed. So for me, it's more "The greater amount of stuff I recognize as lazily-adapted, the less sold I am on the setting".
That's a valid point, thank you for it. What we've seen of Eldraine still reads as lazy to me (and in fairness, I'm "meh" on the setting on a conceptual level because I see it as played out and I don't think MtG has the capacity to make it feel fresh), but your post gives me more reason to hope they'll pull off what they're going for.
I think what you're experiencing is another acute case of Lorwynitis. It's one thing for a setting to be derivative if the content that's derived is rich or has some kind of artistic merit that warrants revisiting and re-exploring in a new medium. Old horror tropes fit the bill here because horror never stops being relevant to the human condition regardless of time or place. Fairy tales also have timeless themes in them but they mostly resonate with children, especially if they are interpreted heavily in the Disneyesque context. If they had tipped the scales of the balance towards more Arthurian themes with a smattering of little fairy tale stuff added, instead of the other way around, most likely it would have felt more substantive. But you're right that WotC can still execute the hell out of this concept.
I mean, we'll see if they can. One of the bigger criticisms of the Gatewatch (aside from the "shoved down our throats" argument) was that it felt like an obvious ripoff of The Avengers with a clunky execution so I think the standard for a smooth execution is higher when adapting things audiences have a lot of exposure to. I doubt I'm the only one out there tired of Disney adaptations (which I now this technically isn't, but given the ubiquity of the Disney versions of fairy tales, it's where much of the audience's familiarity will come from), so I think WotC has their work cut out for them.
So how should they execute this set's story, then?
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
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That's disappointing. If Adventure Time has enough respect for their audience to throw out a Green Knight reference, I feel that Magic should be able to.
Well, that's certainly concerning. It sounds like they're only making references to real world mythology for Eldraine if they're making direct references to the most well-known aspects rather than trying to weave many elements in even if the references are to more obscure elements. Again, the real proof is in the final product but that feels really lazy to me.
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Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Well people have been mixing fairy tales with Arthur for years for a start its not a novel thing. Next Maro mention one reason to mix them was to have a high fantasy world but with a twist since magic done high fantasy a bunch and this helps Eldraine stand up on its own. Finally a fairy tale plane with its charming princes, evil queens, knights saving princesses, ect would have a court system and if you do fantasy medieval court your that would already touch Arthur tropes.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
You've got to hit some familiar spots when you're doing something like this: part of the appeal is that these stories are part of a shared cultural inheritance, and in fact some have numerous global parallels. But if they're just doing Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and such, Disney actually did do it better. (All cynicism aside, there's never been and never will be another movie like Snow White. It's stunning.)
Hopefully they had more chutzpah with the fairytales than with Arthurian stuff. There's more to do with fairtales anyway. Arthur stuff is fine and all, but fairytales just smack you in the face with how weird they are.
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No, it isn't - or at least it shouldn't be. They always used recognizability as a metric to choose which tropes they include in their final product and yet we got an Argus-reference on Theros which they didn't consider all that recognizable. Why? Because cool concepts are going to make it into the final product on their own merit as well. And if it happens to be a reference to an obscure piece of lore, they aren't obliged to remove the reference. And they will always throw some bones to those who like to delve deeper into the material just because that's actually a part of player engagement and good design doesn't ignore it. All they tell us here, is that they focus on the well-known tropes.
If anything the Green Knight might still be in there, both because MaRo got to name drop it of the top of his head, and Maro literally is a Green Knight (i. e. the illustration - MaRo's favorite piece of art in the game - is a pretty obvious reference to depictions of the Green Knight seen in architecture).
You got it backwards. They decided on an Arthurian world and decided to blend Fairy Tales into it. And why is that not an obvious combination to you? You've got Princesses and Knights and medieval settings with transformative journeys and magic items and Disney animation to reference. The blending is so seamless that I wouldn't even consider the long-haired damsel necessarily a Rapunzel reference as much as a typical trope of tales of chivalry.
Basically tales of chivalry concern the upper class and courts, while fairy tales get to be about the lower class (or upper class and lower class meeting e. g. princess Snow White moving in with some miners), so the two actually can complement each other as well.
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I think we're getting into the subjective area of taste here, but I do not like when they lean heavily on easily recognized tropes executed at a very shallow level. It feels lazy and base to me and even if I can understand where their motivations come from (recognizable tropes create resonance which in turn can help build player interest in a setting and therefore a set), it concerns me when they put the focus on expies with little depth. I don't mind expies when used sparingly (I think they help sell a setting without requiring a lot of exposition or explanation) and when they're utilized to help establish the tone/rules/story/etc of the setting and provide a lens, particularly if the major focus of the flavor is on the less recognizable elements of the inspiration and/or the unique elements created without direct reference.
Basically, I find the settings where they directly lift elements from the source material without much twist or depth to be derivative. My favorite settings have been the ones with largely unrecognizable inspirations or really great balance between recognizable and unrecognizable elements. Innistrad, I think, got that balance bang on. Ravnica is another example. Eldraine, though clearly still mostly unknown to us, does not seem to be heading in that direction based on our limited information. Introducing the setting with "Come see our versions of classic fairy tales presented with about as much as variation from the source text as Shrek managed in 1999 meshed with elements of Arthurian legend (but only the famous parts because research showed most people didn't recognize secondary aspects of those tales so we stuck with shallow depictions)!" is not inspiring confidence in me. It feels like a lazy grab at dark Disney nostalgia if I'm being frank and I'm viewing the setting through that lens.
That said, I'd like to be proven wrong. They do almost always lead previews with the most recognizable elements of a setting (be it favorites from a past set if revisiting a setting, or recognizable elements from the source material for new settings) and maybe this will be more like Innistrad to me when we see the finished product.
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Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
Fairy tales like Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel, sure. As I said, the Princesses help bridge the gap between the two themes. But Goldilocks? Red Riding Hood? The Gingerbread Man?
For me, it's a matter of the sliding scale of high fantasy and low fantasy. Arthurian myth has a more "epic" feel to it than one-shot fairy tale aesops. There's a sense of continuity, a set of recurring characters with stories that develop, a war. The story isn't just about Arthur and a handful of characters with whom he interacts, there's an entire developed setting with numerous character relationships.
The difference is like that between a Disney movie and a Disney cartoon. Disney movies feel epic and sweeping in their scope, while Disney cartoons starring Mickey Mouse and friends are low-key wacky comedy stunts.
You could mix fairy tale princess tropes with Arthurian myth just fine. The common themes of royalty and medieval fantasy makes that work. But when you mix in more surreal fairy tales like the Three Little Pigs and Jack and the Beanstalk, it starts to clash with the epic medieval fantasy feel. It's like throwing Smurfs into Lord of the Rings.
I would rather the Arthurian aspect have been fleshed out with a setting using dedicated medieval fantasy tropes. Most of the Grimms Fairy Tales don't feel medieval, their distinct elements aren't tied to medieval tropes in specific.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Also how is Innistrad any better when it literally made cards based on the fly, invisible man, dracula, ect?
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Eh.
AKH/HOU literally only did Egypt (the Ten Plagues still count!), so it had more space where it needed more of the weird stuff like serpopards and Sobek (okay, seriously, think back to before Sobek was a meme, before Amonkhet came out... did you really know about Sobek, or did you just assume he was a thing because a croc-headed god totally makes sense for ancient Egypt? Okay fine, I'm blowing this one out of proportion a little) and khopeshes and Ammit.
Eldraine already has more going on than that, with its Brothers Grimm inspirations and the Arthurian stuff, with the Arthurian themes taking a backseat. I feel this is less unreasonable than people are saying. Also see a couple other posts in this thread pointing out that MaRo didn't rule out the obscure entirely.
I feel like I've seen a lot of people who know more about Arthurian legend than the average person (and let's be real here, I'm pretty sure the average person knows **** and all about Arthurian legend, relatively speaking; Arthur, Excalibur, the Lady of the Lake, sure, maybe a couple of Knights of the Round Table, but that's about it) getting very salty about this. Folks, in this case, you need to make sure you don't get blinded by the fact that you're probably a bigger nerd than an "average" person here. Your perspective is inherently distorted unless you know what is actually in other people's brains. I appreciate the disappointment! But I think that, in the end, the themes being easy to grok for the layperson will help the setting more than the more-knowledgeable not being able to smile at as many deep cuts will hurt it. (Also, focusing too much on obscura may make it hard for the setting to truly develop an identity of its own.)
But that's just, like, my opinion, man.
That's probably because the Brothers Grimm wrote in the 19th century, so even any attempt to produce something in that time period would be kind of inauthentic.
You know, I actually kind of agree... this combination might be kind of shaky. But also we are basing this off of relatively few things and MaRo saying that a lot of people are overshooting how deep of a dive into Arthurian legend Eldraine will be.
You know i'm italian and i don't know what you are talking about.
I'm not an expert of medieval literature but i can arrogantly say that i know more than the average person. Here in Italy we study Dante, Petrarca, Ariosto, Boccaccio and Tasso as medieval literature. No one of them wrote about King Arthur.
I bet it's the same for France, Spain, Germany and other european country. They all had their different lore. I'm sure King Arthur and his knights were really important for England, but french writers surely preferred Charle Magne and his paladins.
So yeah the thing non-british (or american) people know about Camelot are majorly from pop culture.
Now i don't mind at all knowing more, actually i would be happy to know more (seriously, tell me about this conquest of Rome!), but sadly the average person isn't so open to things they don't know about, see Kamigawa.
The tropes referred to were inherently broad to begin with and not just direct expies (such as the references to the number 13, references to broad horror tropes like fear of the dark, claustrophobia, alchemy, cannibalism, angry townsfolk with pitchforks and torches etc). Or the tropes referenced have themselves been replicated multiple times in different works over the past few centuries so the references are to a thread of referential works (Delver of Secrets, for example, is not a reference only to The Fly but also the earlier The Metamorphosis). That means when there is a direct one-to-one reference, such as the references to Frankenstein, it feels earned more than derivative because it's supported by a suite of references that aren't as specific.
This feels balanced and not lazy because there are many layers of reference so even the occasional Captain Ersatz doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. Innistrad was a setting made up almost entirely of references, but because so many of them have no single, specific reference point (and instead refer to very general concepts) the overall setting doesn't at all feel derivative. It's that balance I was referring to earlier. I hope Eldraine has that balance (or has some other way to make the Captain Ersatz conga line we've been shown so far make sense).
Archatmos
Excellion
Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
Just reference the ask Maro got that is the much needed obscure lore everyone here is I guess upset won't be referenced.
I could argue we already have a number of that in the art already. I see True loves kiss, Evil step mother enslaving a stepdaughter, witch cooking kids in pies and living in the woods, magical swords and twins/brother/sister lost in the woods are all found on many stories. The hag offering an apple referring Snow white which in term is often thought of linked with other stories of temptation of women with fruit such as Eve and Persephone who are then curse after eating the offered treat.
I think its simply Inninstrad just lesser know with the source material as a story and the themes where more known as it being a genre instead of a mythology. And a number of thing you talking about horror tropes being broad and not having a single source are also true for many fairy tales tropes I listed above. As I said above a number of stuff we have seen has gone with way with Eldraine.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
That's a valid point, thank you for it. What we've seen of Eldraine still reads as lazy to me (and in fairness, I'm "meh" on the setting on a conceptual level because I see it as played out and I don't think MtG has the capacity to make it feel fresh), but your post gives me more reason to hope they'll pull off what they're going for.
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Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
I think one of the reasons why Innistrad does not feel like a parody is because they didn't make mtg equivalents of well known characters. For example, Invisible Stalker is not a legendary creature, implying there are many other invisible rogues running around Nephalia. Also a invisible man does not feel so out of place in mtg anyway, so it ends being not too much on the nose.
If we look at the cast of legendary characters of both Innistrad blocks I think not a single one is meant to be the equivalent of anything (I could be wrong). Theros blocks however have stuff like King Macar, the Gold-Cursed and Triad of Fates.
There are also the case of the many cards that should be legendary by their uniqueness and design like Colossus of Akros and Underworld Cerberus but simply didn't got the subtype because Theros already had too many legendary cards. Those also feel too much on the nose.
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Olivia Voldaren's design name was literally Dracula, Grimgrin, Corpse-Born is a pretty close approximation of Frankenstien's monster and Geralf his Frankenstien.
I think what you're experiencing is another acute case of Lorwynitis. It's one thing for a setting to be derivative if the content that's derived is rich or has some kind of artistic merit that warrants revisiting and re-exploring in a new medium. Old horror tropes fit the bill here because horror never stops being relevant to the human condition regardless of time or place. Fairy tales also have timeless themes in them but they mostly resonate with children, especially if they are interpreted heavily in the Disneyesque context. If they had tipped the scales of the balance towards more Arthurian themes with a smattering of little fairy tale stuff added, instead of the other way around, most likely it would have felt more substantive. But you're right that WotC can still execute the hell out of this concept.
MTGsalvation is safe for now. Mods have alread started MTGnexus tho, but MTGsalvation is not gonna go down for now, covering eldraine release most probably.
I'm sure reveals will be covered here. If no one else starts the standard Name and Number crunch for Throne (or Commander 2019 for that matter) on here I will take it on. Monitoring the same thread on two sites isn't that difficult.
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Well, at least you were aware you sounded rude and misguided.
Mere-exposure/familiarity theory does show that familiarity/exposure to something does increase positive feelings and loyalty towards that something and tropes are tropes because they establish familiar patterns that audiences recognize, but there are diminishing returns and familiarity can only take you so far. A popular song can get overplayed, a genre or style of film can wear on audiences over time, and nostalgia can be overdone to the point of feeling derivative. The trouble with adapting a setting/genre/mythology is that while it will resonate easier with audiences and its familiarity to them will make it more likely they'll respond positively, one can also overplay their hand. And the more familiar the work you're adapting is, the more work is needed to make it feel fresh.
I like familiar things, and I think MtG can and has adapted real world concepts with a degree of success (I'd argue that their more original settings tend to work for me better than their settings that rely heavily on real world inspiration, but that's more a matter of taste), but I also think they can be lazy and derivative. And the more familiar we are with a set of tropes, the more we're able to see when they're adapted well and when they're adapted lazily. And Eldraine is playing in a sandbox a wide swath of the audience is highly familiar with, which means some aspects can feel too familiar, or lazily executed, or like a gimme. I think a setting like that is workable, but if some parts are a little too on the nose or if the adaptation isn't as seamless as it should be, it will be noticed. So for me, it's more "The greater amount of stuff I recognize as lazily-adapted, the less sold I am on the setting".
I mean, we'll see if they can. One of the bigger criticisms of the Gatewatch (aside from the "shoved down our throats" argument) was that it felt like an obvious ripoff of The Avengers with a clunky execution so I think the standard for a smooth execution is higher when adapting things audiences have a lot of exposure to. I doubt I'm the only one out there tired of Disney adaptations (which I now this technically isn't, but given the ubiquity of the Disney versions of fairy tales, it's where much of the audience's familiarity will come from), so I think WotC has their work cut out for them.
Archatmos
Excellion
Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.