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Renaissance Set — Creative Design
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Okay, but I will note that all cards I make outside of the following folder are on artwork that hasn't been used. Otherwise, I had used the artwork first.
This folder being for cards that are re-designs to other people's cards.
Imitation (The Highest of Flattery)
You may assume it hasn't been (as I do most of the time). But it's likely that it has at some point.
The best way to ensure yours hasn't been used is to find prolific artists (ie. Jason Nguyen) and use their new publications immediately, or find super obscure artists that have multiple pieces you've never seen used and hope.
In my CPU "pictures folder" i have 1,042 images I intended to use at one point or other and an additional 330 images on my OneDrive with the same intent. All were saved without knowledge of previous usage here on the site, but many have been used since I found them (some by me of course as I don't always delete them after using them).
@Faiths_Guide
Perhaps ages ago to the point where it's not locate-able. But I'd have to say that I can't count that as I have no ability to determine such.
Most of the art I use are small samples from an artist and obscure sources. Which means it takes longer to gather artwork, but is still worth it.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/muse-of-bliss?list=user
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/muse-of-despair?list=user
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/muse-of-ire?list=user
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/muse-of-love?list=user
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/muse-of-solitude?list=user
My suggestion for a Muse cycle (one per color; dual-coloreds might follow). The images didn't work, so I'm forced to post only the links.
Again, I apologize for the bad image quality.
Note that this is merely a conceptual suggestion.
Artist MTG players rejoice!
Do you have any ideas for the story yet? In my opinion, it is the most important part of the set and the cards are usually built around that.
@Everyone
I also recommend that you read the nuts and bolts series on the MTG website. It has the basics of set design.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/nuts-bolts-evaluation-2017-02-20
If no one wants to write the story I can do it.
1. @Everyone, we need more ideas! Not just life gain. Think about the poor folks in limited, all you do is gain life and rarely deal damage, games will never end! Here are some other archetypes we can use.
a. Artifacts, seriously, it is the age of expansion.
b. Seafaring. Okay, here me through. The Renaissance went from 1300 to 1700, which was around the same time as the age of exploration, 1400 to 1600. Seeing as these time periods overlap, we should include some of both. The age of Exploration was all about seafaring, so, let's have that. BTW, this is my best excuse for including swashbuckling.
c. Gold. Yes, since it was released in Journy into Nyx the gold token has been on my mind. I think the renaissance is the best time period to bring it back.
2. We need to ask of few questions also...
a. What races are we using?
b. What will the story be?
c. Are all the characters new or are some returning (such as Domri Rade, Jace Beleran, Liliana Vess, etc)?
d. Is the set going to be tribal or not?
1) I agree with not having solely life gain, and that's why we've been discussing some other stuff as well.
a. We've touched on science and inventions and as I understood it we'll definitely be adding that, in whatever form it may be.
b. Pirates have been mentioned a few times and I believe @ningyounk was modeling a mechanic called "Discover" in the theme of exploration.
c. I don't think this has been discussed yet, but I know that "Art creatures" were a huge factor in the design of this set.
I agree with the rest. If you haven't read through this whole thread yet, I'd recommend doing so because there are quite a few good ideas and some of your topics were touched on briefly. We should definitely figure out more of an idea for the story, but I think we wanted to nail the theme and sub-themes before that, hence the talk about life gain.
1. Before @Lujikul, @OneBigBlueSky, @obsidianhoax, @modnation675, @ningyounk, and myself opened this thread to the public, we were contemplating an enchantment set.
a. I think that we shouldn't do an artifact-themed set so soon after Kaladesh. For the invention part of Renaissance, we were focusing on art with enchantments.
b. Not only seafaring, but exploration in general. Discover is the most promising mechanic in that sense. But what is swashbuckling? Is it a mechanic, or what?
c. I support bringing back Gold tokens! They are actually one of my favorite tokens
2. We need to answer a few questions also... (XD)
a. For races, I think humans, elves, maybe some dwarves, possibly vendalken, goblins, and avens are a good start.
b. As for the story, I proposed a basic idea a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away... aka @OneBigBlueSky 's original contest), but it is definitely not set in stone:
Our normal, old, mundane society plods along in its version of the feudal system while culture dies out. Then, an explorer returns, after years of traveling. Few even remember he'd left in the first place. He brings word of other lands with new, exciting ideas. However, the monarch/leader knows that change will undermine his power, and does his best to stifle these dangerous ideas. The explorer leads a cultural revolution to rediscover creativity. The set becomes a battle between the old and mundane and the new and creative.
I think that it should take place in an archipelago that is all the people there know of the world (are there more lands beyond the islands, beyond the open sea? We will never know.). Once, the islands prospered in their alliances and artistic ways. But then a war tears through the archipelago and rips apart the islands' trust in each other. It was instrumented by the ancestor of our tyrant, who sought to become emperor of all of the isles. Now they are all separated and suspicious of one another, with their respective rulers striving to keep new ideas out and their people in.
c. Good question; I dunno.
d. Another important question to which I don't have a definite answer.
Maybe we put gold as a thing on one or two cards, but no more than that. Ramp at instant speed for any color is ludicrously powerful. Those who have encountered King Macar in EDH know what I mean.
That's some quite original trope, thanks for the idea! =D
@Tigersol @syntheticreign
Awesome inputs, thank you two =D There are definitely a lot of really interesting tropes that were mentioned.
From what I read I think some design concepts should probably be reminded, so we all go in the same direction
1) About the mechanical focus of the set:
Life-matters is not an archetype like life gain is. It's a mechanical focus for the set, which means all colours get to care a little about it. The easiest way to understand the role of the mechanical focus is to look at existing set. In Amonkhet, the mechanical focus is on the graveyard. All colours care a little about the graveyard, but in a different way, and there's definitely other things in the set than graveyard strategies. Life is the same as the graveyard here, all colours should care a little about life in different ways, but not all the cards are about that and we certainly aren't gonna ask red-black players to care about life gain. So we're not simply building an archetype, is the difference clear for everyone?
Tl;dr: Life-matters is not an archetype like "WB Zombies" would be on Amonkkhet, it's more like "graveyard-matters" on Amonkhet.
2) Is the set going to be tribal or not, what races are we using?
When creating a set, the design team fills in a creature grid where they assign some small, medium, and large creature types to each colour in flying and non-flying version. This is definitely something that would be super fun to do if we have the chance! But this will come in a later part of design. (Also, keep in mind that following the grid might be too much of a restriction to find artworks when the time comes
There are some tribal support in almost every set in small doses (think cats and zombies in Amonkhet). But it's different from doing a Tribal set. Once again, it's the difference between a mechanical focus for the set and an archetype. So far we're not doing a tribal set, but nothing is out of the table ^^
Tl;dr: It's a bit too early to tell, but we'll get to that for sure! (You can already post ideas of course.)
3) What will the story be, are some characters returning?
While it's probably WAYYYYYY too early to talk about characters, starting to think about the general direction of the story could be a good way to spark mechanics and archetype ideas!
Tl;dr: It's a bit too early to tell, but we can start talking about it, just keep in mind that story details don't matter at this point.
I agree that for now we need to get down the basics before talking about things like characters and creature grids. We haven't even decided the mechanical focus of the set yet, though I think that it's between life-matters and enchantment-matters. It also seems like Discover is a likely mechanic to be included, and if we choose enchantments, I think that Virtuoso is perfect.
From the conversation, tell me what you think of this summary so far of what I consider is more advanced concepts than others:
THEME OF THE SET:
Renaissance
Emotions
MECHANICAL FOCUS OF THE SET:
Life-matters
TROPES:
Art
Emotion outbursts
Discovery, inventions
Exploration
Philosophy, religion
MECHANICS:
Virtuoso (Create an all colors N/N Art creature token with haste and "Sacrifice this creature at the beginning of the next end step.")
NAME — If you gained or lost 3 or more life this turn, EFFECT.
STORY:
Art is living
Muses are messing with people emotions
ARCHETYPES: (Those are just examples, we didn't discuss it yet but I put them here because I want to make sure people don't mix archetypes and set themes.)
WU Control Sirens Tribal
UB Combo Gold Trading
BR Turbo Aggro Life Loss
RG Beatdown Aggro Emotions
GW Midrange Life Gain
WB Combo Graveyard Religion
UR Control Non-creature Inventions
BG Beatdown aggro Plague
RW Disruptive Aggro Art Tribal
GU Ramp Exploration
MECHANICS:
We don't have to decide every mechanic before even knowing all the archetypes, we'll know when we need something specific mechanically or because we have an awesome story idea we want to be vocal about ^^ That said, there are two things likely missing from our mechanics (they can be combined or even added to an existing mechanic):
1) The "awe" factor. We need that mechanic that makes the set look different from other set, based on what we can achieve with MTGCardsmith card creator. Think Aftermath, Double-Faced cards, Morph, Monarch, Vehicles, Energy, Meld, etc... Maybe it's just making the Art tokens look extra weird, but we need that "awe" moment when discovering the set ^^
2) Some way to gain life. It doesn't have to be a mechanic about life gain, but if it could gained you life incidentally, that would greatly help the Life-matters theme.
E.g:
Discover (Draw a card, you may exile it. If you do, you gain 1 life then repeat this process unless you exiled three cards this way.)
OTHER STUFF:
1) Keep posting archetypes ideas (once some get locked in, it's like filling a Sudoku xD)
2) Keep posting story ideas
3) Keep posting Renaissance tropes
4) Keep posting everything you can think of, so far it has really been awesome
That summary seems pretty accurate, and the archetype proposals seem like they could be actual decks.
@All, I'm still concerned about Gold tokens. Making them even a theme has the potential to go out of control fast.
Once I have some time to sit down at a computer, I'll write a generic story about the influence of the muses, see if anyone gets inspired by it.
Also, as we neither care about artifacts nor colours, I don't think we need Gold tokens in the set for now, they just don't fill any role we need. I'd rather have a card flow mechanic for instance.
Oh, can I help?
What does a child do? They run, jump, and play. They move actively, like gears in a great machine. But they also cry, and smile, and hurt. They know no bounds, curious for knowledge, eager to see, their minds drifting in each and every direction, filling the cracks and gaps in the unforeseen future, inspiring them, until they one day do great things.
Every child knows this to be true, a secret hidden from society in the deepest, darkest, most hopeful parts of their hearts. So it is not difficult to imagine the surprise that came to the hatmaker's son when the son of the cobbler would hardly leave his room for a week, simply saying, "I wish to be alone."
Everyone knows that adults are boring. They dare not dream, lest they shatter their own hearts. They are sucked dry of any passion, any emotion, hardened by the cruelty of existence. The works of the painters and clayshapers lack emotion, and provoke nothing.
The land is small, a region surrounded by countless volumes of water, and a harsh, unforgiving ocean. Every adult knows there is nothing beyond, while every child dreams that there is something out there, beyond the expanse of waves and storms, through the tides, and past the rains, that there's a beacon of light, of a whole new world.
Every adult is cold, until one day. The clayshaper moulds five faces, struck with an epiphany, a desire to try something new.
The first face had a wide smile, revealing a reservoir of joy and bliss running deeper than the heart itself.
The second face was a twisted scream of agony, frozen in stone, and granted eternal pain.
The third face was a frown of unbound anger, an ire so furious that not even the storms could match it.
The fourth face, a mask of timidity, and a desire to be left alone.
The fifth, a sweet look of love and caring, a warmth only mothers can produce.
The clayshaper knows not why he made these faces, but for the same reasons that the baker's daughter, for no reason but a tickling urge, paints images of inspiration, sparking desire, passion, and a childlike curiosity.
That day, adults set sail, seeking something past the tides. That day, adults yearned to know more, and challenge what they already did. That day, adults crafted silly creations, all for a flight of fancy. That day, adults were children once more.
Welcome, to the plane of Julvenia, where art comes to life, and people dare to dream with reckless abandon.
First I want to say by tribal I meant something like shards, wedges, guilds, etc. Which, to be honest, is my favorite thing to have in a set EVER. But, considering this world and set, I don't think it fits.
Also, I think we should not have everything be life gain. It is so annoying having and opponent that gains life as soon as you take it away. And since gain is less costly than direct damage, having everything be lifegain will cause HUGE problems in draft and sealed. That's why I made a mechanic similar to discover but sightly different.
Explore - (When [card name] enters the battlefield reveal the top card of your library. If it is a land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped, otherwise put it into your hand.)
Finally, if you're complaining about gold, meet Eldrazi Spawn and Scions. Little @#$#%$# that block, THEN get sacrificed for mana. Gnaaawwwwhhhh!!!!!!!!!!