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Renaissance Set — Design Phase
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As Lujikul mentioned, a "drastic rethinking" of the nature of the conflict should indeed be a priority now that we've started to incorporate more and more details ^^ This is also why I want to know what everyone thinks is the most important, the core of the story, so we build towards those moments and characters.
If the take the latest sets, this was roughly the nature of the conflict:
- Rivals of Ixalan: 4-sided battle
- Ixalan: 4-sided race
- Hour of Devastation: End of the world with big villain
- Amonkhet: Trials
- Aether Revolt: 2-sided battle "Order vs. Freedom"
- Kaladesh: Contest
- Eldritch Moon: End of the world with big villain
- Shadows Over Innistrad: Mystery investigation
- Oath of the Gatewatch: 2-sided battle
- Battle for Zendikar: 2-sided battle
- Tarkir: 5-sided battle
I personally think the general conflict should be something more uplifting than threatening, which doesn't mean that it can't become more dangerous as the story goes. A race for instance is a good example of uplifting conflict, alongside contests, trials and investigation. What kind of race could see explorers, scholars and artists compete with each other at the same time? Maybe the Winter/Spring cycle of the Muses can act as some sort of countdown? Maybe it's some kind of contest? Maybe something happens to the best Genius of each age whatever his/her domain of expertise is?
As ManaChrome mentioned, it could be a common goal? It could be a race against time, the people of this plane have until the end of this Renaissance cycle to achieve something in order to get to some next stage?
@ManaChrome Some more feedback about some details your proposed:
1) Factions really warp sets around them into a faction set which is not really what we're trying to do ^^ As you mentioned, it would require giving them specific mechanics, colour delineation, etc. The decision of which kind of set we want to do is something that happens very early during creative design, we're trying to make a top-down set about Renaissance with a Life-matters mechanical theme, so I'm affraid that boat has already sailed ^^
2) I'm lukewarm about the demi-muse because it lessens the importance of the big ones. How do we differenciate them? How do we decide which emotions are considered secondary compared to the main ones? We already have an ongoing interrogation about whether we can represent little muses that are not specifically tied to an emotion, and I think demi-muses are just one step too close to the Elder Muses which are meant to be unique and exciting ^^
3) I like that concept à la Inside-Out where you realize that messing with the balance of one emotion influence the others, if we find a good "lesson" to teach, it could be really really cool ^^
No idea what it does, I just thought it was funny to look at xD
I also think the subtler the conflict, the more difficult it is to get a sense of it by looking at the cards. When you look at Battle for Zendikar, an extreme example, the war between Zendikar and the eldrazi is very obvious.
It's probably also more difficult to write about personal conflicts, because the reader would expect the different stories to intermingle in a meaningful way and because a bigger-scale conflict might be inherently more exciting. I presume it takes a lot more skills to write about personal conflicts in a compelling way than to describe a huge fight between giants, though I could be very wrong and I believe we could still pull it off with some additional effort in the story department.
Lastly, I know it's not your point, but let's keep in mind that personal goals are not necessarily incompatible with bigger-scale conflicts. We can have small personal conflicts that add up to a bigger-scale ending ^^ But yes, having NO bigger-scale conflict is definitely an interesting and original idea we should think about ^^
Personal conflict requires something of incredible significance to the person, which is difficult if they're experiencing emotion for the first time. They'll have no reason to care about anything before except for the most pragmatic of reasons.
I don't think we should take the Muse story as strictly as "They've never experienced any emotion before" ^^ We just don't have enough space to make a card and mechanic for every emotion. Think Amonkhet: they chose Solidarity, Intelligence, Ambition, Fervor and Strength as qualities, but it doesnt mean that people can't be strong and ambitious if Rhonas or Bontu dies, just as people on Amnonkhet could be fun, rigorous and loyal without the gods of humour, rigor and loyalty ^^ Still, the fact that they chose those those five qualities helped the cards in one colour feel connected and even influenced the mechanical identity of the colour in the set. For instance, it could have been the Green god of Solidarity with a lot of tokens, and the red God of strength with a lot of giants. That's the kind of choice we have to do with the Muse ^^
For the personal conflicts, I think you're misreading their role in a story. We're not talking about neighbourhood conflicts and unreturned carved knives xD It's usually the crunchiest parts in the story: You have a very cool assassin character? Make them fall in love with the person they have to murder! It doesn't have that much of an impact on the rest of the world if the murder happens or not, but at the character level it's a devastating dilemma and it could be just as interesting to read as if the whole plane was in danger. That's more what, I think, brcien meant ^^
Nothing to do with the story, I've recently started to worry about the mechanic Discover because it whiffs a lot, even if we increase the number of cards we reveal. A mechanic that does nothing a significant proportion of the time could really be problematic so I've started to search for alternative mechanics in the same vein. So far, here's the alternate version I like the most:
Discover a THING (Reveal the top card of your library until you reveal five cards or a THING card. Put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.)
Upsides:
- It doesn't whiff. If you can't find what you're searching for, you're just drawing the last card you reveal.
- It still have the same potential to search for qwirky stuff than the previous version.
- It still filters the draws.
- It's still flavourful as a Discovery mechanic for both scholars, researchers, and explorers altogether.
- It looks less like the Hearthstone mechanic.
- It's a new effect, it's not an old effect we're keywording.
- New design space available: It can care about the number of cards you had to reveal to find your stuff.
- It can still care about the qualities of what you discover.
Downsides:
- It's still very wordy, though less than already existing mechanics like Explore.
- We lose the design space that cares about succeeding/failing a discovery since it always succeeds.
Here are three uncommons to sell the idea, what do you guys think?
Couple of things:
This is better than card draw now. Every time. It's losing the ability to seem "fitting" in a lot of colors. It's hard to balance (Zoologist and Student are probably too strong, but Zoologist in particular is giving you a repeatable better then "draw a card" affect as often as you can pay {2}{g}; that's stronger by far, IMO, than Kumena's "tap three: draw" ability).
The wording should probably be clarified - "Put the last card you revealed into your hand." - this is undesirable as it becomes longer, but, it's unclear otherwise IMO.
Unscrupulous Student could just say "...discover any card."
@ningyounk
I don't disagree with your evaluation of our original Discover, but there's a slight issue with the wording of your new proposal. I think it should read "Reveal cards from the top of your library until....." instead of "Reveal the top card of your library until......"
@Tigersol
We're always happy to accept new contributors (or at least I am)!
NOTE: This was me after just reading the front page.
1) Rogues shouldn't be like faeries. I understand, faeries are in my top ten (I'm a tribal Johnny when I play), but we don't need another faerie-like thing after pirates. We could go down the "rogues are unblockable" path, or something else. Of course, this is just speculation.
2) This one's about the story. What if the planeswalkers aren't monocolor. If you get five monocolor, it seems like the Gatewatch. Maybe two color, or even better, three? : )
In my opinion, it is very similar to energy.
1. They serve as an alternate cost.
2. It is a major theme in the set.
3. Can't really be interacted with.
Look what happened with energy.
After a time, we lost the ability to edit the first page, so it's not up to date. ningyounk remade it somewhere earlier in the thread. I don't remember where it is, but maybe you could check on that to get a general idea, and read on from there?
And yes, we definitely need psylian life hate.
Yeah... that sounds good
@Tigersol
You're more than welcome! =D
Currently, we have some strong basis about the world itself (Renaissance-themed, Muses of emotions, Art coming to life) but we're still discussing the nature of the conflict in the story. Is it a story about saving the world? About some problems more personal? Is it about reaching a goal, about preventing something from happening?
@Tigersol @Lujikul
About keeping up to date on the set design, you don't have to read the 24 pages XD Feel free to comment and we'll tell you if something has changed since the introduction. A new thread with an updated introduction is on the shortlist of things to do, but I want us to settle on some basics things before (archetypes, mechanics, basic story and rough common sheet.)
ABOUT THE STORY
@brcien
We don't really have a clear description of the characters since the first made by MagicChess here: http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/comment/82173/#Comment_82173 but it was a at a time where we had a cycle of 5 heroes like the Gatewatch, which we've come to realize is neither the only way, nor the best way to tell a Magic story ^^ They still serve as some kind of basis though, and Ekoma made a huge impression in general
@Tigersol
Yes, as I mentioned above we've come to realize multiple things:
1) It was too close to the gatewatch.
2) We didn't need five main characters to start with since a lower number allows for better personification of each character.
3) They didn't all need to be planeswalkers.
We're pretty sold on having Da Vinci as a planeswalker, here's a try at a Da Vinci card: http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/comment/85950/#Comment_85950. The general idea would be to have all five colours distributed equally on three different planeswalkers, so two bicoloured planeswalkers and one monocoloured. I'm personally pushing for a Mona Lisa planeswalker as well since we have a very good illustration for it:
http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/comment/91987/#Comment_91987 x)
ABOUT PSYLIAN LIFE AND THE ROGUE ARCHETYPE
@Tigersol
About the Rogues, keep in mind we won't be on Ixalan anymore once this set is complete (unless we're incredibly productive all of a sudden xD), so their similitudes with Pirates shouldn't be too much of a concern. That said, we recently emitted the hypothesis to drop the tribal aspect for the UB archetype and just focus on stealing your opponent's cards.
@Tigersol @TezzeretofCarmot21 @MagicChess
About psylian life, it's certainly a major balance hazard that we'll have to keep in check but it shouldn't be more dangerous than treasures. Actually, the fact that it's so interactive is its greatest strength, compared to Energy. It's literally *LIFE*, basically every deck can interact with an opponent's life. Blasts, draining effects and literally every creature in the game are natural psylian-life hate cards, I don't see how you could get more interactive than this >.<
Psylian life is not an alternative cost, it gives you mana to cast any spell.
"You can't gain psylian life" is really extreme, you don't put a card with "you can't cast artifacts" in an artifact set ^^ Now, every strategy needs an answer and we can provide some more specific hate-cards, but really "CARDNAME deals N damage to target player" is already an answer to psylian life ^^"
ABOUT THE ALTERNATE DISCOVER
@MagicChess @Faiths_Guide
On formatting: I believe you're both right, thanks
Discover an OBJECT. (Exile cards from the top of your library until you exile the fifth or an OBJECT card. Put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.)
--> I'm pretty sure "the rest" instead of "all other cards exiled this way" is easy enough to grasp as a reminder text ^^
--> By using "the fifth card", I believe "it" makes enough sense instead of "that card" or "the last card exiled that way"?
@Faiths_Guide
On balancing: It's mostly stronger than drawing but it's not necessarly a problem in itself. We do have to be cautious about not undermining the colour pie, but any colour can have access to cantripping at worst, or anticipating for specific things at best.
Yes, I may have went a little overboard with the zoologist xD ^^ It's supposed to be a sort of Duskwatch Recruiter http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=409961 I don't think it would have been a problem if it just said "Discover a creature" for instance, because of how unlikely it is for the five first cards of your deck to not be creatures, but yes the fact that it will regularly draw you the fifth card may necessitate some blue in there ^^
@Faiths_Guide @TezzeretofCarmot21
On the formatting of Unscrupulous Student: Yes I have no idea how it could be worded so I went with something a little silly XD "Discover any card" doesn't work because you will ALWAYS discover "any card" the first time you reveal a card. Which means you will always draw the first card of your library