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Renaissance Set — Creative Design
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Discover takes up like half the text box which really hinders some possibilities.
This is the main reason why it has been put aside the first time. That said, your version is longer than needed.
You wrote:
(To discover, look at the top three cards of your library. You may reveal a land card and put it into your hand. Put the rest of the cards on the bottom of your library in any order.) — 183 characters
Though I wrote:
(Reveal the top three cards of your library. You may put a land card from among them in your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.) — 156 characters
While probably longer than the average mechanic, it's basically in the length range of mechanics like Embalm. There have been multiple reminder texts longer than that: Suspend for instance was 238 characters, while Cascade was 327 characters. so I'd say it's not off the grid if we want to use it.
Keep in mind, reminder text is generally only printed on commons and some uncommons of sets.
I love the idea of this to-be-named life. It feels like energy counters in Kaladesh, but with a universal applicability: paying that for mana. I'm not sure how combining it with your standard life would work though. If it was like D&D, as @MagicChess said, you'd be losing Psylian life before regular, which I think would be fine as long as we don't have too many cards with gaining both regular and Psylian life, because then we're doubling on life and that's too much life. If we don't lose Psylian life first, then how would life loss work? Would you get to choose which life you lost? Would you have to lose regular life, and if that was reduced to 0, you'd lose, no matter the Psylian life you have? I really love the idea here, I just think we're going to need some serious mechanical structuring and VERY non-bendable rules to make this work.
For example, I can already imagine a really cool (but absurdly broken) card that (assuming we lose Psylian life before regular) would allow you to switch your regular and Psylian life totals. If we play too much with combining life and such, we could quite easily break the game. With Psylian life, I can actually see a new format, where both players start with 20 regular and 20 Psylian life. When they take damage, they lose regular life. There could be cards that allow you to sacrifice 2 Psylian life for 1 regular life, while still keeping the losing 2 Psylian life for 1 mana. The catch is that if either your regular life OR your Psylian life are reduced to 0, you lose the game, so you have to monitor both life totals. Obviously I don't think we're making a whole new format, but I actually think that could be a really cool idea, and given the mechanical structuring of "life matters" in this set, it wouldn't be horribly difficult to pull off.
In fact, as I'm saying this, I'd LOVE to make this a new format. I'm not saying we should make this set solely for that format, but I think we could develop it alongside the set, so that the set has a new format it could play in.
I'm the definition of unrealistic and ambitious lol.
That's right... do you lose psylian life first, or do you get to choose? If you're only using psylian life for mana, and you can't otherwise lose it, there's no reason to not use it all up. On the reminder card, it says, "Your life total is equal to your regular life + your psylian life," but what does that mean in practicality? Is that only for the purpose of cards that refer to your life total, or what? Do we want it to be that you lose psylian first?
This is a really great idea, but we need to refine it. A lot.
I'm pretty sure you greatly underestimate the importance of reminder text here
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/36651625340/have-you-ever-tried-having-it-so-that-reminder
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/36672046304/i-think-reminder-text-makes-the-card-a-bit-ugly
@brcien @MagicChess @syntheticreign
What I personally like in Psylian life is two-fold:
- The core concept is easy to grasp but super original (it's basically a subtype of your ife total, any player would probably understand the concept just by looking at the reminder card and put a die on each half of the card, at least that's what I'm hoping.)
- It entices you to attack your opponent to remove his/her psylian life. I found this idea by playing with life you coud steal so, yes, in my head you always lose psylian life before regular life so your opponent can attack you to remove it, which lets him/her interact with your combo and try to stop you.
Now my problems with it at the moment:
- How to make sure life gain doesn't make the games too long (which is why I think it's important to encourage player using it instead of storing it with an attached effect.)
- How to make it feel like it could be a fit for every colour. (I think tying it to mana is one way.)
- How to make it relevant while making sure it doesn't break the game (if you can get too much of it, you can pay as much as you want so it can get pretty out of hand pretty quickly, whatever the effect attached to it.) For instance, gaining mana is probably very very strong already.
- How to make it intuitive. What could be the flavour so players grasp the concept quicker?
I like the idea of losing Psylian life first, since it feels as though it's acting like a buffer to your regular health, which just further reinforces the life-matters theme of the set. A few things we also have to consider:
1) How does the life fit in in terms of flavor? Are we creating a plane with a Renaissance theme that happens to have lots of life that comes from art? How are we tying this in?
2) How do we balance this gain of psylian life and what is the actual effect it has? Are we sticking with "Pay 2 psy life, get 1 mana"? Do we want some cards that utilize psy life in a certain way, much like energy in Kaladesh?
3) How do we make this psy life important, but not so prevalent that games last forever? In that same vein, do we have punishments for people losing too much psy life at a time by activating effects? If someone has 20 psy life, that's a possible 10 mana on top of whatever mana you have, which means either psy life needs to be far less common or we need a burn effect that punishes you for using too much. I personally vote on the latter, as it fits flavorfully with life in general; you can sacrifice some, but too much begins to have negative, permanent effects and damage.
In response to some of the problems you noted, that I think many would agree with, I propose the following as at least a starting point:
- We either punish players for using an excess of 6 psy life (or some arbitrary number) in a single turn, or psy life is something that gradually decreases over time if you didn't gain any last turn. Ie, you have 10 psy life, then if next turn you gain none, the following turn you lose 1 psy life, or something to that effect. This encourages players to spend that life but without serious punishment if they store it for a couple of turns.
-Since art is one of the main focuses of the set, perhaps we could tie this life gain to successful artistic creations. Much like the creative effect with art tokens, perhaps certain spells (of any color, as art is fairly subjective) that have a pertinence to art (be it their flavor, name, or anything else) could be the creators of psy life. Were we to create a new format (just throwing it out there again lol), players could start with an emblem that said something along the lines of "Whenever you (maybe any player?) create an art token, gain 2 psy life." This would have the added bonus (assuming we stick with the 2 psy life=1 mana ratio) of the art tokens essentially giving a player 1 mana as well.
-I refer to the first response I gave.
-As I said in the second response, maybe we could tie it in to art. Even if we don't have an emblem, maybe we could make it so that the art tokens give you some psy life, the flavor being that you get more out of life when you create this art, when your beauty is successful.
Obviously there's A LOT to figure out. I know that (as I said in a previous post) I personally will be making this a new format, so even if we don't do that here, I'll be doing that, if anyone wants to work on that a bit with me as well. If we can figure out how this life will work in standard format, it won't be hard at all to implement it into a new format (or "gamemode", whatever it would be considered).
Sorry about the long post, but I love this idea and I feel like it's definitely going to be that "awe" factor we've been looking for if we can refine it down. Simple, effective, flavorful, and awesome.
That's a misinterpretation. In the case I've stated, it isn't viable in the slightest. Therefore the card would needlessly take a hit mechanically and lose uniqueness.
You need to stop taking things at face value and re-consider the way you judge those comments. This has been a consistent issue I'm having as I summarized what you said.
But you're also looking from a visual perspective since you like aesthetics. I however can't let reminder text be too common on uncommon cards for reasons of set dilution, the major reason WotC sets have bad reception on occasion.
Maybe I'm missing something, and that wouldn't be at all surprising, but why are we debating about reminder text on card rarities right now? I understand that those kinds of technicalities are important, but maybe we should save those until we start sussing out the larger ideas and refining mechanics in general? I personally think it makes more logical sense to figure out the big stuff first before we start talking about how many cards should have reminder text on them, since I'd say that's more fitting with card design, and we're not there yet.
Maybe that's just me, idk, I just don't wanna start debating the specifics until we figure out the larger stuff. It feels silly to talk about rarities and the like when we don't even have all the mechanics and overall flavor figured out yet. That's just my opinion, don't wanna start a fight or anything lol.
I brought this up since the mechanics being proposed are leaning towards larger reminder text. Which is one of the things I think can go very badly if following ningyounk's methodology.
What I proposed was trying to fit the mechanics on commons prominently through a card cycle. Then scattered out among some uncommons. Whereas up to one rare for the more elaborate mechanics will help.
That's fair, and I can agree that we're not all thinking very fluidly. However, I would like to say that there's no one way to do anything. Right now, we're in the brainstorming stage imo. That means we're just throwing stuff against a wall until it sticks. While I appreciate that certain methodologies are more effective than others, that doesn't mean that any one method is right.
I think that we will absolutely need to separate into groups and focus on certain things and design them very methodically. And seeing your very structured approach means that at some point we will definitely need to adhere to that. For now, is it safe to say that we're still in pre-alpha stage, and we don't need as much structure currently?
Yes, I agree. It was just following too closely to a really bad design philosophy I saw earlier today from someone else. For that one I know the results and they don't go very far.
As part of a few other casually developing sets, I've noticed that they really stuck to principles and design philosophies, which made the sets either fail or just cycle about in place. Basically meaning that we shouldn't treat things as rules when it comes to philosophies. Our personal motto is that philosophies are fundamentally bad when you aren't the one creating or developing upon them.
Although there are sets that are doing well.
Well I know that I certainly appreciate not failing haha, so thank you for the assistance on that front.
Now, in terms of this idea of Psylian life, where do you personally stand? Keeping in mind that it may not necessarily conform to commonality in terms of Magic design
I'm a bit confused about what just happened, I can see you're unhappy about something but I'm not sure I understand what it is. Are we still talking about the reminder text thing? Would you mind going back and explaining specifically what bothers you? I did not understand half of what you just wrote sorry ^^"
@syntheticreign Well, you successfully summarised the difficulties of having a second type of life ^^ I don't like punishing the player for having too much of something the game asks you to collect, but depending on how strong the mechanic ends up I like having the possibility of balancing it with something like "At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose 1 psylian life" it's a good idea to keep in mind.
Maybe we can do reverse poison counters? If a player has 10 psylian life, he or she wins the game? This way we get to use psylian life more like a marker, as energy, but it can hypothetically do something by itself so it's slightly less parasitic.
Here are other examples:
1)Rather than straight up winning the game, get a huge bonus for having a lot of psylian life:
- Pay 10 psylian life: Create a 5/5 creature token. (Competes with Virtuoso though.)
- Pay 10 psylian life: Cast a spell from your hand without paying it's mana cost.
2)More grindy options like the inverted pyrexian mana:
- Pay 1 psylian life: Target player loses 1 life.
- Pay 1 psylian life: Target creature gains your choice of +1/+0 or +0/+1 until end of turn.
Pay 2 psylian life: Target creature gains your choice of +1/-1 or -1/+1 until end of turn.
- Pay 3 psylian life: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature you control.
Maybe we only have a few cards that grant Psylian life, and rather than it having a universal use, we make those specific cards works like Slivers, where they each offer a unique and useful way to pay the life? That way we can have multiple uses for it, but the life won't mana spiral.
Sorry, I got *completely* lost with that second message XD Do you have a simpler version? x)
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Other example that just crossed my mind to make psy life useful by itself:
- Creatures you control get +1/+1 for each 3 psy life you have.
==> Flavourfully, it kinda ties psy life to inspiration / enlightenment / genius?
I like the idea of an overall use, as long as it's not overpowered.
Lol my bad. The second paragraph was basically saying that we could make art enchantments, much like the art tokens. These enchantments would be the primary way to get psy life, rather than creatures, and the enchantments would be the ones that offer the unique way to spend psy life.
For example, an art enchantment enters the battlefield that gives you 3 psy life, and that enchantment allows you to pay 4 psy life to, say, put a +1/+2 counter on a creature. These enchantments would be art focused, so they'd fit flavorfully, and they'd be the primary (if not the only) way of getting psy life. Then we have the psy life for life-matters, the art enchantments for the art sub-theme and enchantment-matters, and the player gets a unique way to spend their psy life aside from whatever the universal use we decide is.
That's fair, I was just trying to tie them in specifically to one thing, but that's probably not a good idea haha. But I definitely think we should have enchantments that give you specific ways to spend psy life, that way they have a cool purpose and offer unique play styles.
Yeap, enchantements do have design space with this for sure, I'm just not sold on restricting the use of psy life to enchantments only in a non-enchantment-heavy set.
If we don't find any balanced intrinsic use for psy life, we may have to consider having it not doing anything specific other than being life like mentioned above. We could also give up on it, it's funny but it does bring its fair share of complexity and balancing issues, so it needs to be worth it. For now, my favourite additional rule for it is either one of those:
- Pay 3 psy life: Add one mana of any colour to your mana pool.
- Pay 10 psy life: Cast a spell from your hand without paying its mana cost.
It could be complex but if we refine it a bit and balance it, I think it could be that awe factor we've been looking for. If I had to choose from those options, it would be the first. It means that games won't be taking forever because we'll have to give minimal amounts of psy life for balancing purposes. It also gives you the opportunity to get a mana buff at the expense of your life buffer, so I'd have to vote for the first for universality and versatility while still being mostly balanced.