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Rezatta — VISION DESIGN PHASE
Hello everyone! =D
This is the next part of the Renaissance Set design, where you get to experience the creation of a standard set from scratch like you were working for R&D at Wizards Of the Coast!
Here are the previous discussions: - Renaissance Italy Themed Set Design
- Renaissance Set — Creative Design
- Renaissance Set — Design Phase
+ Link to all previous designs
Don't worry, you do NOT need to read all of that to jump in x) I have compiled a little summary of what we have accomplished so far right below. I'm going to present the state of this design through the different stages of set building, which look roughly like that:
We're currently in Vision Design, you don't have to read after the big blue bar stating "YOU ARE HERE", it's just going to be plans for the future but we're not there yet.
PART ONE — CREATIVE DESIGN
The point of creative design is to define the world and story for the set. What are the elements that the audience is expecting in a world with this specific flavour? It's all about finding tropes.
Rezatta (concept name) is new plane based on Renaissance.
The plane of Rezatta lives at the pace of a perpetual cycle. At times it's cloaked in a dull winter and nothing really happens. But when the muses return, they bring a surge of emotions that rushes through the plane itself and wake everything up in an ecstatic spring. Everyone is suddendly inspired by the presence of the muses. Artists create wonderful masterpieces that spontaneously come to life, explorers unravel territories never heard of before, and geniuses make breakthrough discoveries all around the plane.
Among other creative details, we discussed having nice nonblack faeries (likely white/blue), sirens since they are naturally gifted singers and gorgons since they are naturally gifted sculptors because — well, you know — they kind of turn people into statues.
The main plot remains to be defined. There has been a lof of ideas about it, to simplify the lore aspect we've created a specific thread that you can find here: Renaissance Set — Creative Team
We do know about two characters that will play a major role in the story:
- A Da Vinci planeswalker, whose genius mostly comes from finding inspiration by visiting other planes from time to time.
- A mute girl that manages to "speak" through music.
Think of creative design as a parallel process to designing the cards. We'll incorporate elements of the story slowly through the building of the set, from legendary creatures, to story spotlight cards, to names, creature types grid, flavour texts, etc.
PART TWO — EXPLORATORY DESIGN
The point of exploratory design is to explore mechanical and flavour themes so we can foresee the main difficulties and start with some mechanics to try out. (The nostalgic will remember the ability counters you had to write on, Do-It-Yourself tokens, and rainbow creatures we discussed before ending to this point.)
A - THEMES
- The main theme is Renaissance, which makes the set a top-down design.
- The secondary theme of the set is emotions, which are brought to the plane by muses.
- Art is one of the main tropes to give that Renaissance feel. On Rezatta, art is so vibrant that it spontaneously comes to life!
- People on Rezatta also make major breakthrough in science and warfare.
- Another important theme is exploration.
- Many other themes from Renaissance can be used: humanism, religion, royalty, etc.
B - MECHANICS
Rezatta is a "Life-Matters set" just like Dominaria is a "Legendary-matters set".
We're planning four mechanics so far for the set:
1) FLASHY MECHANIC SUPPORTING THE LIFE-MATTERS THEME:
Psylian life (Psylian life is part of your life total. You always lose psylian life before regular life. Pay 2 psylian life: Add one mana of any color.)
2) MECHANIC SCREAMING "RENAISSANCE!!" TO YOUR FACE:
Rebirth {cost} ({cost}, Exile this nonreborn creature: Return it to the battlefield reborn with two +1/+1 counters on it. Rebirth only as a sorcery.)
N.B: It has been under discussion to replace "reborn" with "legendary".
3) MECHANIC DEPICTING ART COMING TO LIFE:
Compose N (Create a colorless N/N Art creature token with haste. Sacrifice it at the beginning of the next end step.)
4) MECHANIC DEPICTING SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES AND EXPLORATION
Discover an OBJECT card. (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.)
N.B: An earlier version read: "Reveal the top three cards of your library. You may put a THING card from among them in your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order."
5) THE LIFE-MATTERS THEME ITSELF
This one is not really a mechanic per se, though they were discussions about ways to signal it to players in a more obvious way. While the whole set cares about life in a vaccum, each colour cares about life changes in a specific way that makes it distinct from the others. All the colours/trigger combination are then tied flavourfully to an emotion:
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
This is the stage we are at right now. The main goal of this stage is to create a design skeleton and fill it rarity by rarity, starting from the commons, then do the first playtests so you can iterate until you are confident enough about your themes to go to the next stage. Vision design ends when you've designed a full set of commons and uncommons plus enough rares/mythics to play your first draft.
We are at the beginning of this stage, so right now we need to make the design skeleton for commons and fill it to have the first all-commons playtest.
A) MAKING THE DESIGN SKELETON OF THE COMMONS
We're building a large "standard" set of 269 cards. For the commons, I already have a set skeleton that we can use, but I'd like to know first if anyone wants to build one together from scratch, just because they are interested specifically in set design and would like to have a try at it for the fun of the exercise?
We need 19 commons for each colour (roughly 10 of which will be creatures), 3 common artifacts and 3 common lands. After re-reading all the Nuts & Bolts articles, I realized that it was probably a good idea to take a step back from directional design and let the mechanics show us where they naturally want to go, at least for the first playtest. So, for now, you don't have to care about what are the synergies of each colour, just assume every colour has access to every mechanic and that you are designing card in a vaccum while respecting the mechanics and themes of the set. What cards are you expecting to see at common? That's what we need to design to make the set go forward from this point.
___________________
WE ARE HERE.
BELOW ARE THE FUTURE STAGES.
YOU CAN SKIP TO THE CONCLUSION
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C) FIRST ALL-COMMON PLAYTEST
The first playtest will happen as soon as we have 101 commons in the design skeleton. It should happen on Cockatrice most likely, and always as Sealed for now. It has some special quirks you should be aware of:
- All-commons limited plays weird. It's a bit less fun than normal Magic, don't judge the set on that.
- We're focusing on which individual cards are fun or not. You can have 99% of cards with a specific mechanic be horrible and the mechanic still be viable.
- We're going to take notes about cards we played with/against. The point is to gather information on what works or not.
D) ARCHETYPES
Based on the feedback we get from the playtests, we'll be able to iterate on the design skeleton and start to shape the identity of each mechanic and colour.
Example of how each mechanic could ultimately be distributed between colours:
a. Psylian life: Primary in White/Black/Green because they are the life gain colour, secondary in Red/Blue because it's the flashy mechanic of the set and probably deserves a little colour pie bend for this set.
b. Discover: Primary in Blue/Green because Blue represents progress in science while Green represents exploration of the new world.
c. Compose: Primary in Blue/Black/Red because Blue/Red can make the best out of the disruptive aggro aspect while Black can use the sacrifice aspect
d. Rebirth: Primary in White/Red for colour balancing reasons, which makes them care about going tall, an uncommon Boros theme found with the Lorwyn giants for instance.
Example of two-coloured strategies grid:
Based on those archetypes, we're going to create the glue of the set, the commons that tie different synergies together.
E) REPEAT WITH THE UNCOMMONS
Nuts & Bolts are very specific about this advice: there's no reason in caring about uncommons as long as you're not 100% satisfied with your commons. They're the core of the set, we have to make sure the mechanical heart of the set is showing at commons.
Then, repeat everything you did for the commons but with the uncommons. Be aware that this is the rarity where we'll likely be mising the most room.
F) MAKE ENOUGH RARES/MYTHICS FOR A DRAFT
Vision designs stops when you have a full set of commons, uncommons, and enough rares and/or mythic rares for a draft. At this point, well, you're ready for your first draft.
PART FOUR — SET DESIGN
The set design stage is made to find the pace of each theme and mechanic, we know where we're going, we need to find the best way to arrive there. At the end of this stage, the set should basically be playable and fun.
PART FIVE — PLAY DESIGN
The play design stage is made to question every aspect of every card. It's about making sure that each archetype is balanced and has the tools it needs in Limited. That's when you get to care if a specific creature should be a 2/2 or a 2/3, if it should cost 2W or 1WW, etc.
That was a lot of text. Sorry x) Luckily, you don't even have to read all the summary to participate. You want to help? Welcome in the team! =D
Tell me what kind of designer you are. What aspects of the set do you want to help with?
If you identify with the following:
- You have entered some contests on MTGCardsmith before.
- You want to be involved in a cool project without commiting to anything too complex.
- You are ingenious and have a lot of cool ideas for new cards.
Then you can help designing exciting cards in a vaccum for the set. All you really need to know is that it's a set about Renaissance, and you need to read PART 2 - B : MECHANICS of the introduction above.
Now here's a list of things we really need in a vaccum:
- New tropes about Renaissance. It's a very difficult theme to tackle. What's the first thing that comes to your mind when I say "Renaissance"? Well we need cards out of that!
- Top-down designs on iconic characters from Renaissance like Da Vinci.
- Top-down designs on iconic masterpieces from Renaissance like the Sistine Chapel.
- Top-down designs on our main themes like art, exploration, science, humanism, etc.
- Bottom-up designs for the life-matters theme. What are the craziest things you can think of that involves life points in MTG?
- Any cool ideas of Renaissance planeswakers?
- Any idea for our exciting Mythic cycle, the five Grand Muses of Bliss, Fears, Sorrow, Ire and Love? They must be really splashy and really flavourful, like Gods or Elder Dinosaurs, but feel unique.
- Once we start having specific needs for specific slots in the design skeleton, we'll likely throw a few contests to fill them. Those will be on separate threads explaining the constraints so you don't have to read everything on this conversation if you're interested in participating
If you identify with the following:
- You have read all ten Nuts & Bolts articles from Mark Rosewater. (Here)
- You have designed plenty of cards, but you're really here to design a set as a whole.
- You are methodic and are not afraid of designing a bunch of commons if needs be.
Then you can help advancing the set from its current point. You're going to need to read the whole introduction so you know what we're talking about.
Now here's what we're doing right now for Vision Design:
- We're making a set skeleton for the commons. My main inspiration is the set skeleton of Amonkhet since it's the most "vanilla" of recent sets from a set skeleton point of view (no colorless eldrazi taking slots, or DFC, or artifacts, or tricoloured tribal, etc.) but Dominaria will likely give us a really good second point of view where we could start fresh.
- We also need to fill the set skeleton with commons. The very first thing we need is to test the mechanics (incuding the life-matters theme). Try to design common cards that could give us information on what works and what doesn't with each mechanic. I'll post some examples below within a few days. Also, a cool cycle of common enchantment auras like the Cartouches of Amonkhet could be of huge help.
If you identify with the following:
- You have read many official Magic Stories before and identify as a Vorthos.
- You want to shape a new world and its stories.
- You are creative and have an artistic vision for the set.
Then you can help with the creative aspect of the set. You're going to need to read a bit about Renaissance to know the source material.
Now here's the link to the creative discussion: here As a quick summary, here are the main topics right now:
- We're still discussing the nature of the main conflict. Is it a war? A race? A fish-out-of-water story? Are we dealing with a world-ending threat? Is it more intimate?
- Who are the main characters? Finding compelling characters will help shape the story. Also, we have two remaining planeswalkers slots to fill.
- The creature grid: What kind of creatures inhabits this world, how are they distributed between each colour on the cards in small/medium/large and flying/nonflying categories?
Alright! I'm slowly starting to put everything in motion again, I should kick back the Creative Team thread as well within a few days if you're interested
@TigerFang8
That's perfectly fine, note that if you find good Renaissance-themed art to inspire you we're also very interested in seeing it! It's a challenge by itself just to find enough on-theme illustrations to fill a complete set ^^
Also have like cards that help u to understand the set as the Renaissance was a movement to help better culture the world which made it into toddays culture...ultimately I think it was inevitable...
Are we focusing on the Italian Renaissance or can we do hw Northern Renaissance also?
While this set was initially inspired by Italy, the Renaissance spread all throughout Europe and beyond, so feel free to take inspiration from anywhere!
For cards, I am an artifact obsessed Johnny. I find I lean toward naya in my design and lean toward izzet in my play (yes I am in love with the new Jhoira). I have found trouble looking Renaissance art. That is my biggest huddle for this. I want to try making a piece for this set, since I adore Rezatta.
Macroconcepts of our gameplay, the mechanics are very value based. Extra life, extra mana, extra cards, tempo tokens. With that in mind, think pretty aggressive vanillas and decent common aggro is going to be extra important. I think we could double the multicolor count of normal sets and be fine because of all the extra value. Cardsmiths love making multicolored.
Storywise, I want a white gorgon (or a red one if the aven mentioned previously is still a plan and would be blue white) if we are letting them sculptors. I think from art history, The most be interesting story of the renaissance was one of the following: the feud of Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, the Medicis of Florence funding dozens of artists like a league of artists, or the personal endeavors of the ninja turtle artists. My personal favorite is the first. Caravaggio would also be a great character in any case. I would prefer people more oriented to story to also bounce out ideas.
Other tropes are interest in philisophy, the belief that music was the most divine art, artists working for nobles or wealthy guilds, folklore and myth callbacks,Magnum Opuses, the dangerous journey to study in Rome, dissection, fancy doors, domes, art contests, and heraldry.
@Arceus8523 Everyone is welcome to come and go as they want! =D
@icyyou Same, welcome aboard! And we'll make sure to notify you once the first all-commons play test happen, which should be as soon as we get a full sheet of commons.
@Lujikul There are two immediate priorities, which are interconnected:
1) Creating a common set skeleton
2) Filling the common sheet with designs that will help us test the mechanics and themes
I'll make some examples below
@shadow123 That sounds good! You can either participate in the making of the common sheets (though it can be a little less exciting than other designs, it is very important) or help create flashy cards that are going to matter further down the road, like resonant legends or original ways to use life points ^^
@brcien There are a lot of amazing ideas in there! =D You did an amazing job at bringing out a lot of very useful tropes, this is a lot of potential cards and references to help the main theme be louder ^^ There are some references I didn't know about and would be curious to know if other people know about them:
- Brunelleschi and Ghiberti
- Caravaggio
- Dangerous journey to study in Rome
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About making the set skeleton:
How about we go step by step on this so we can discuss the choices? Let's start simple:
1) For printing reasons, a set always have 101 commons. Now, we don't *have* to respect that since we're not printing anything, but the idea is to pretend we're doing an actual set so let's stick to that (also it makes it easier to compare to existing sets.)
2) I suggest we make 19 commons of each colour which is pretty standard for a set with nothing weird going on like a strong colorless or multicoloured theme, Amonkhet for instance has 19 commons of each colour.
3) This leaves us 6 slots for lands and artifacts. We could push one direction or the other (Amonkhet, for instance, had 4 lands 2 artifacts because of the Desert theme) but since we don't lean towards one or the other, I suggest just making 3 artifacts and 3 lands for now.
I'll continue tomorrow with the next steps to let people jump in if they're interested
About filling the commons sheet:
The idea is to test the potential of the mechanics, and make sure they work at common. I'm going to start with cards I'd like to have in the file to test the mechanic Compose:
Compose N (Create a colorless N/N Art creature token with haste. Sacrifice it at the beginning of the next end step.)
1) The mechanics will have to be predominant in some colours more than others, but that's a choice we'll make later. For now, I'm going to design Compose cards in any colour I need to make sure I get an idea of what works or not. One important thing to remember: if you design 20 cards with Compose and 19 turn out horribly unfun but one plays amazing, it doesn't meant that Compose is bad, we just need to push in the direction that worked
2) With this mechanic, I'm unsure how big the Art token needs to be to matter (I don't know how often people will block the Art token but I already suspect an ephemeral 1/1 is often not going to matter enough). So I'm going to design a cycle of very simple cards that allow me to test Compose 1 through Compose 5:
3) Then, I want to explore different ways of using an ephemeral token. These are just a few ideas of doing so, with the according cards:
- I can make it evasive to be agressive.
- I can use it as a sacrifice fodder.
- I can count the number of creatures I own.
We do that for each mechanic and themes, then we try to fit the best ideas into the design skeletons that we design in parallel
P.S: Don't take too much time thinking about the names and art, and don't bother with flavour text ^^ In real life they use blank cards with explicit names like "Hasty Guy" or "This Is Gonna Hurt", I just think it's easier to remember the card if you put a random illustration on it, but you don't have to, you can leave it blank ^^
Stellar Stuff!
@ningyounk If I am to make cards, is there somewhere I should drop it ? if we keep all cards he, it might get crowded and harder to read.
Well, the things that come in mind for me when I think "Renaissance" include the plague, churches, and naked people. Good luck with that!
- Top-down designs on iconic characters from Renaissance like Da Vinci.
What about a female DaVinci? I'm just having trouble with the name.
Leonedra, Font of Inspiration
2UR
Legendary Planeswalker - Leonedra
(3 loyalty counters)
+2: Exile the top card of your library. You may cast that card. If you do, compose 2.
-2: You get an emblem with "You can't sacrifice Art tokens."
-8: Exile the top ten cards of your library. An opponent separates those cards into two piles. You may cast any number of cards in a pile without paying any of their mana costs.
- Top-down designs on iconic masterpieces from Renaissance like the Sistine Chapel.
Here are some ideas:
Lagazzara, Frescoed Chapel
Legendary Land
T: Add C
3, T: Compose 2. Activate this ability only if you have cast a spell this turn.
Ogolio, Personification of Perfection
4
Legendary Artifact
T: Add C.
Whenever you compose, ~ becomes a 5/5 creature until end of turn. Untap it.
- Bottom-up designs for the life-matters theme. What are the craziest things you can think of that involves life points in MTG?
Here are some ideas:
Vitam Agere
4WW
Enchantment
When Vitam Agere enters the battlefield, each player creates a white Avatar creature token with hexproof, indestructable, and "This creature's power and toughness are each equal to your life total."
Whenever an Avatar is dealt damage, its owner loses half that much life.
Psylian Fanatic
BBB
Creature - Human
Whenever you would be dealt damage, you take twice that much damage, then you gain 2 psylian life.
4/2
Wondersmith
2U
Creature - Human
Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, if you spent only psylian life to cast it, copy it. You may choose new targets for the copy
1/3
Supreme Balance
3WB
Enchantment
WW: Target player gains 1 psylian life.
BB: Target player loses 1 life.
At the end of each turn, if your regular life total is equal to your psylian life total, you win the game.
Hopeful Recruit
1WW
Creature - Human Soldier
Hopeful Recruit's power and toughness are each equal to your life total minus fifteen.
*/*
Grove of the Soulshrubs
Legendary Land
T: You gain 1 psylian life.
- Any cool ideas of Renaissance planeswakers?
See above.
- Any idea for our exciting Mythic cycle, the five Grand Muses of Bliss, Fears, Sorrow, Ire and Love? They must be really splashy and really flavourful, like Gods or Elder Dinosaurs, but feel unique.
If the Grand Muses are fickle and leave often, what about an ability that makes then cycle through player's battlefields. Like this?
Grand Muse of Ire
2RR
Legendary Creature - Elder Muse
5/5
At the end of your turn, if you didn't cast a red spell this turn, target opponent chosen at random gains control of Grand Muse of Ire.
Whenever another source you control would deal damage, it deals that much damage plus 1 instead.
Hope this helped!
You're making a relevant point on the way to store all the designs ^^ Currently, I add them to a public Google Drive but it's really clunky to read so only temporary. The best solution would probably be to pay for a premium MTGCardsmith account but I'm not ready to pay actual money for this yet. I'll consider all options, for now you can just post them directly on the thread ^^
@Gelectrode
Wow, that's a lot of cool ideas! All of this will be kept somewhere so we can access to it, a few notes on some specific ideas:
- We did talk about the plague at the beginning of creative design and kind of forgot the idea because we tried to push in more optimistic directions, but that's still something resonant so I really think we should explore and see how it really feels.
- How about Naked People tribal? ;p
- I like the twist of a female Da Vinci though it sounds really hard to pull off for two reasons: First, she would still need to be immediatly recognizable as Da Vinci by someone to whom you show the card and has no idea what it's about, which being a woman makes much more difficult. 2) We would need to find the right art, which I expect to be a challenge ^^
- I like the Sistine Chapel as an utility land but didn't get what Ogolio was refering to?
- I like a lot of ideas in the life-matters craziness you proposed, in particular a Life Avatar is definitely something we should do (it could be a creature directly) and I'm really fond of Supreme Balance's alt-win condition!
- I've seen a couple of other people coming up with a similar concept as Wondersmith but you don't pay psylian life to cast spells. You pay psylian life to add mana then you pay mana to cast spells and the game doesn't really know where the mana is coming from so it would be hard to pull this off, though possible. The result may end up messier than it is worth though >.<
- A really original take on the Muse's cycle aspect! I like the concept of it, it may be worth exploring this very unique design space though they are the exciting Mythic cycle so they have to be tweaked so they don't make you feel bad for playing them!
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About making the set skeleton:
Since there's no objection on yesterday's steps, let's push further:
4) A set should have around 50% creatures to create some tension in deck building, but not all colours have the same proportion of creatures (white and green are more creatures-friendly colours, while blue and red are more "spells"-friendly.) So I give a number of creatures to each colour accordingly:
WHITE — 12 creatures / 19 commons
GREEN — 11 creatures / 19 commons
BLACK — 11 creatures / 19 commons
RED — 10 creatures / 19 commons
RED — 10 creatures / 19 commons
5) I give 2 enchantment slots to each colour. We are at common so they'll all be auras. I want a cycle of regular boosting auras (like the cartouche of Amonkhet) and the remaining aura should be soft removal (pacifism, claustrophobia, etc.) or maybe a land enchantment for green. The rest is instant or sorceries (note that white is more instant-friendly, black more sorcery-friendly.)
It looks like this now:
And I stop now for today so people who want to comment on this can ^^
You're a visionary lead. I'm repeatedly impressed.
Ogolio was referring to the many sculptures and statues created to represent the pinnacle of perfection in mankind, e.g. David.
What about this text for Wondersmith?
Wondersmith
2U
Creature - Human
Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, if you spent only mana generated with psylian life to cast it, copy it. You may choose new targets for the copy
1Ghiberti and Brunelleschi were rival sculturas in Florence in the early renaissance. They entered a contest seeking the world's best sculptor to make a cathedral door. After ten years and the topic "The sacrifice of Isaac," they submitted their work. Ghiberti won unanimously because of his dramatic foreshortening. In his bitterness that he was not the best sculptor, Brunelleschi quit sculpture and became an architect. He quickly became the best in the world, designing many of the stand out buildings in Florence, but he always hated Ghiberti after the contest. Perhaps a parallel to the brother's war in our plane or a rivalry to be the numero uno?
2Carravaggio was a rough dude. He gambled, hung out in bars, was arrested for getting into fights and burglary. The thing about him was that he was one of the best representative painters the world has ever known. So, the church would buy him out of trouble and patroned him. Bit duplicite huh? He could be a fun character to write.
3The trip to Rome was an art tradition before photography existed. Since Rome and Greece are seen as the beginning point of intelligent western art, it was a custom for artists of all disciplines to make their way to Rome. Mind you, this was before many modern era changes so you couldn't just fly there. You had to boat down a treacherous sea and weave your way to Athens or Rome through bandit filled roads. This could serve as a bigger story should that be a struggle to find. The artists seeking the touch of the muses could have to go on a similar perilous struggle.
((Probably gonna be too locked down to post again before next Wednesday))
Thanks XD I feel really embarassed now x)
@Gelectrode
There are plenty of cards that give mana that you can only spend on specific stuff but I wasn't sure if the opposite was possible. Still, after some research I found this:
So yeah, that's definitely something we can try!
@kandra127
How do they look like?
@DoctorFro
Yes, I could see an argument for putting that effect at uncommon. Depending on the sets, you can also have Bone Splinters or Innocent Blood at commons so it ebbs and flows. In general, don't be afraid to design your concept cards a bit agressively at the beginning, you want them to be played and be liked, we'll adjust them later ^^
@LittleDemon
That's perfectly fine! You can design whatever you're inspired to design or there are some guidelines in the introduction if you need a place to start
@brcien
That's definitely the kind of stories that will improve the feel of the set with clever details! ^^
@TezzeretofCarmot21
Alright! Would you be interested in trying to pursue the making of the design skeleton for instance? That's definitely an important thing to pratice if you like to make sets ^^ I'll let you have a pass, from where I left it if you're interested. What would be your next step?
Thoughts?