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Renaissance Set — Design Phase
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I'm not sure how that would work, since we just have a bunch of commons and a couple other random ideas. What I've been doing is looking through @ningyounk's list and comparing power level to similar, already existing cards. I don't know if we can use custom cards in Untap.in or Tappedout...?
Everybody:
There's a very important topic that we need to discuss: the Muses. We've had several conversations about the cycle in the past, but we haven't come to a conclusion. Let's brainstorm some ideas.
As for me, I'd like to propose that all the Muses have something to do with Psylian life. For example, "CARDNAME's power and toughness are each equal to your Psylian life total." Or "Whenever you gain psylian life, [effect]. Whenever you lose Psylian life, [different effect]"
Yes that's excellent thinking! ^^ I have not as much time as I would like to really tie this up at a more exciting pace, but here's the basic plan I had:
1) Putting every of those cards on Planesculptor so we can play test them more easily.
2) Based on first playtests, remove the cards that really break the game and make a list of interogations we need to answer. For instance: What is the right psylian life/mana ratio, how deep is the design space of Discover, how many cards should Discover reveal, what is the minimum N for Compose N to actually matter in a game, what effects can work at common for the most challenging archetyoes etc.
3) Start a new thread with that first draft of the commons design file to get new people in.
4) Answer the interrogations with a mix mini-teams (We want to know what's the right ratio for psylian life/mana? Let's have a mini-team try 2 psylian life for any colour, 3 psylian life for any colour, and 2 psylian life for colorless at the same time to see what works best), and challenges on the forum (we want to know how much design space Discover have? Let's see what other Cardsmiths can do with it.)
5) Advance towards the next goal which is a full file of commons, a full file of uncommons, and enough rares and mythic rares for a draft (24).
@MagicChess
3) Yes, we need to find a way to make this intuitive for everyone ^^ I thought having cards making you pay nonpsylian life would do that (it indirectly tells you that you would usually pays psylian life first), but I feel it actually had the opposite effect sadly xD
5) We basically have 3 new keywords plus psylian life which is more of a game concept like Energy, so we did left room during creative for one more mechanic if needs be. I think we can afford it spacewise, and it definitely be a very useful tool to tie the flavour together. The question is really about complexity: Is this helping at pointing out the life theme that hides under multiple aspects, or is this more confusing than helping as a nonconsistent ability word? I'm not sure how to test this, we'd need people to do a little experiment x)
For the Muses, I'm skeptical about making them a B card in an A/B system about psylian life. This means I would be ok with them producing psylian life, but making them all care about psylian life makes them parasitic, which means they are only useful in a psylian life deck. That's not really where the splashy (Mythic) Rare of a set wants to be. If you look at the past few sets: Rivals of Ixalan's cycle of Elder Dinosaurs, Amonkhet's cycle of Gods, or Kaladesh's cycle of Gearhulks, they all are cards that are useful in most decks of that colour, and they don't push you all towards a specific mechanic. So having the Muses care about gaining/losing pslian life would, a priori, but I could be wrong, be a bit cringy, like if all Gearhulks had an Energy activation, All Amonkhet Gods said "Whenever you cycle a card", and all Elder Dinosaurs said "Whenever you explore." I think they need to be cool in a vaccum, and do something different than the rest of the set, so I would actually start by saying they can't use any set mechanic personally x) You can design some psylian life Muse though if you want to, we can always playtest and see how they feel if you still think it would be cool ^^
@brcien
It's not really ready yet, but I think the easiest way to playtest would be to use the Draft/Sealed rooms on Planesculptors (playtest cards are not on there yet, I'm working on it) then head to Cockatrice to test the cards. Skype or more likely Discord would probably be involved at some point too ^^
I have two propositions if you guys agree that something different would be better. One could be that they have busted Rebirth triggers. This would help make the mechanic memorable, make them playable in reanimator or mill decks, and fit the flavor of them. The second is that they be either good enablers or abusers of life changes and they have a nonkeyword ability shared that relates to them.
- Muses aren't Gods, that's something we settled on at the beginning, so they need their own pattern which shouldn't be "materialization"
- Flavourfully, it does makes sense that they are tied to the life swings. They are the Muses of emotions and we're representing the different emotions in the set by life swings ^^ Also, as mentioned by MagicChess, the idea of having the Muses' stats linked somehow to your life total has been mentioned multiple times.
- They have to do something splashy and exciting.
As an example, here's an old cycle I did at the beginning that already had some of those ideas implemnted. The concept was that they created an indestructible enchantment that boosted all your creatures but not themselves. So it didn't matter if you removed them, the enchantment was going to be a resilient annoyance. They also had a second ability that synergized with the indestructible enchantment. Finally, they had 0-power which made the decision about whether you should take care of them more difficult (the enchantment is already there and isn't going anywhere, they are defenseless creatures, do I really have to spend ressources to take care of that second ability on an otherwise harmless creature?)
http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/comment/83877/#Comment_83877
They cycle is not perfect, but there are some things I like about it. The 0-power creature feels right to me, it gives me an alien vibe. There may be a way to tie their stat to your life total though? I like the concept of the enchantment as well, though it may be too strong of a mechanic. I like most of the enchantment effects except the second part of the black one. I dislike the second abilities except the White and Blue ones though. Maybe they could make room for a mechanic that cares about life swing?
I've always liked the indestructible enchantment idea, as well as the 0 power. What if their toughnesses are equal to 1 or 2 plus the amount of life you gained or lost this turn? Some might have to do with that of an opponent...?
Also, I'd like to bring back the conversation about focusing on more "optimistic" emotions. I'm not sure about blue, but I think that red could be Passion and black Desire (or something along those lines). Remember that the story we have so far revolves around someone (probably Avinzi?) and their followers trying to ascend and become Muses themselves, the leader channeling the power of Desire. So unless we want to change the story, a Muse of Desire is probably a must.
- I asked myself what were the most important emotions that I really didn't want to miss in the cycle. So I started with the 7 primary emotions hapiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger, disgust and contempt.
- There were two problems: we only had 5 cards for 7 emotions, and only one of them were positive.
- So I fused them: anger, disgust and contempt were all about not liking something so it became hate.
- Surprise was removed, it could be represented by fear if needs be.
- I added a second positive emotion: Love.
Note that I tried to have an all-positive cycle of emotions but they all felt super similar and you could reaaaaaaally felt how the negative emotions were missing. Things like sadness and anger are super important stuff, it's no wonder 6 of our 7 primary emotions are negative I guess ^^
To compensate, I also tried a cycle of "Muse of POSITIVE and NEGATIVE emotion" so the balance is right and we hit every important emotion, but they felt super messy, and the Muse with a single emotion just felt more appealing.
Finally, one of the reasons that made me settled on this joy/fear/sadness/hate/love cycle is that I independantly worked on a short trigger that allows each colour to care about life swings (if you gained life, lost life, didn't lose life, if an opponent lost life, if two players gained/lost life) and there was a reasonable flavour overlap between the triggers and those five emotions ^^
______________________________
In the bit of story we talked about, I believed we actually had the people become Muses being a complete plot-twist, not something that drives the story. It was something like that if I recall correctly:
- A group of thieves want to harness the poser of the Muses.
- They find an elder Muse, and corrupt it while trying to capture it.
- Somewhere around that moment, someone touches a Muse and sparks, though we never really defined how that was going to tie into the bigger story.
- The heroes vanquish the corrupted Muse with the help of artefacts brought by Avinzi from other planes.
- One of the heroes sacrfice him/herself to replace the Muse.
Obviously nothing is set in stone ^^ But I don't think the absence of Muse of Desire would mess up with the set or even the story in any meaningful way, though it could be part of the 5-elder muse cycle if you find some way to make a 5-muses cycle that's compelling with Desire in it! Making the Corrupted Muse the Muse of Desire could also be an option, eveything is still possible.
In addition, I know that the current focus is on commons, but I've made a conceptual uncommon that has a slightly more negative flavor, just to keep things grounded in this optimistic world, to show that not everything is sunshine and rainbows.
That's a lot of counters that may be mistaken with other types of counters, I'm a little scared about that, especially with Rebirth creatures that use the two +1/+1 counters as a reminder that they are Reborn
At the beginning of you upkeep, put a String counter on CARDNAME.
Whenever a creatures dies, its controller loses life equal to the number of String counter on CARDNAME.
The story we had before was something more along these lines:
- There is a sort of cult, possibly led by Avinzi (who in this scenario would be a sort of darker representation of Da Vinci, and is a Desire savant) that seeks to harness the power of the Muses. Avinzi is leading his followers astray, however. He plans to become the Muse of Desire. Decades before, during the last time the Muses influence peaked, he was the one who "touched" a Muse (Desire, in his case) and gained a Planeswalker's spark. He found his way back to his home plane of Rezzata, seeking yet more power, and brought with him either a hedron from Zendikar, or part of Innistrad's Helvault or silver moon. He planned to use this artifact to capture the essence of Desire.
- Meanwhile, our heroes, a painter, a lute player, a poet, a sculptor, and another guy who has the power to steal inspiration from others, become inspired by the Muses. The guy who can steal inspiration joins Avinzi's cult with a plan to steal Avinzi's inspiration at the last moment and take his place as the wielder of the power of one or more Muses. The sculptor, who is a friend of Avinzi, finds out about Avinzi's scheme and decides to try and put a stop to it, with the help of her friend, one of the other heroes. Anyway, somehow they all get dragged into it, including the guy who steals inspiration, who now has to juggle with his conflicting loyalties.
- The heroes confront Avinzi's cult to try and stop his plan. I forget how it goes down, but the heroes end up as the Muses.
One Muses and emotions: Really my point is that I think we need a Muse of Desire. I think it fits black better than Sadness.
Sharpshooting N (N, T: This creature deals N damage to target creature or player.)
Is this mechanic good enough?
I like the idea of a nonblack villain as well for a change. We could also have fun with a nonvillain black character by the way ^^
Kaladesh had white/blue villains as the Consulate, to avoid the comparison, why don't we find a green, red, or green/red villain maybe? If anyone has a good illustration for that character, it could be a good basis ^^ Here's some of the stuff I have:
@TezzeretofCarmot21
If you want to make a Wild West set, you should check Lorado if you haven't already! http://www.planesculptors.net/set/lorado
Sharpshooting is very strong, it basically allow your creatures to attack other creatures, on top of giving you a lot of reach to close out the game. I'd be very careful with that, it is really oppressive (and have a very limited design space, I can't picture direct damage anywhere else than in Red) ^^
@everyone
I think it's a good opportunity to lock in some stuff storywise. Namely, I'd like to know your preferences on:
-The emotions of our Muses. They will affect gameplay all the way back to commons so it's especially important.
- What's the main plot. No detail, just "bad guy is trying to steal a Muse", or "good guy is trying to save a Muse", or "Muses are trying to destroy the world",... It will impact a few story cards though it's more a flavour thing. We don't need it immediatly, but it could be important for the tone of the set in general.
- What are the main characters, no second roles, who is important enough that we MUST give them a card at some point?
- Cool moments we really want in the story? Once again, just the stuff that's important enough that we would HAVE to make a card to show it.
My personal favourite stuff:
A) Emotions of the Muse: Joy, Fear, Sadness, Anger, Love. I like it because I believe it hits all the most important stuff (I like Anger better than Hate because I think I would always name Anger before Hate if I had to do a list of emotions from the top of my head, even if Hate is broader, and I don't like the symmetry with Love as they were part of their own specific cycle with Hate.) Additionally, those five click with the mechanical triggers about life swings.
C) Characters: 1) Da Vinci is "THE Renaissance man" in my opinion. 2) The mute girl that speaks with music made a strong impression on me. 3) I really liked that Mona Lisa illustration I found earlier and think it would be a shame to not use it: http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/comment/91987/#Comment_91987
D) Cool moments: 1) A hero touches an Elder Muse (which no one thought of before) and sparks. 2) An Elder Muse becomes corrupted. 3) To deal with the issue at hand on Rezatta, a planeswalker brings something that the player immediatly recognizes as an iconic artifact from another plane, like a Zendikari hedron. 4) As the Muses return, winter is swept away by spring, annoucing the Renaissance of the plane.
We should really focus on the illustrations available to make the important choices. Do we have characters that appear on multiple illustrations to be our main protagonists? Do we have any really cool Art that could be used to represent a key moment of the story?
@MagicChess
WARNING — LONG ANSWER COMING AGAIN, I'M SORRY XD
I had completely forgotten this version of the story to be honest O_O I did track back an old comment talking about it though I couldn't find the rest of the discussion so I don't know what I already said on the matter: http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/comment/83938/#Comment_83938
For the bits of story you mentioned:
- I like that it's more a personal quest than a huge faction fight at the beginning.
- I like the nonblack antagonist.
- I like the "artifacts from other planes" plan, though we'll have to find the right art.
- I like the spark from touching the Muse, though we'll have to find the right art.
- I like the Muse transformation at the end, though we'll have to find the right art.
- I didn't like Avinzi as the main antagonist because he's a likeable character in real life. I could see him neutral but not evil.
- I didn't like that some of the better plot-twists (spark from touching muses and artifact from other planes) were filler details of the story rather than plot-twists. As-in touching the Muse happened way before the events that interest us, and the otherwordly artefact is just a step in the plan rather than the resolution of a problem nobody knew how to solve.
- I didn't like how many characters were undefined but treated as important. It felt like we were trying to force too many characters in the story before we even needed them, just to fill some pattern (I'm guessing it's an old rest from the beginning where we had a sort of colour-balanced Gatewatch.) Overall, it felt like we are following the story of the bad guy which is interesting but a little weird considering the tone of the set (I'm not opposed to it though.)
- I didn't like the part where there's a character that changes side multiple times because it was complicated. Considering the story is told through cards, I'd rather keep it simple on who is nice/evil ^^
About the Muse of Desire:
- I like that it gives Black an original identity, less dramatic than Sadness.
- I don't like that it removes Sadness from the cycle because Sadness sounds like a more important emotion than Desire.
- I don't like that it doesn't fit the mechanical trigger "If you lost life this turn" as well. Maybe it could work with "If two players gained and/or lost life this turn" thanks to life stealing, though the flavour is less obvious at first glance and the whole cycle would have to be reconsidered.
- I don't like that some part of Love has a similar flavour to Desire which creates friction, though we could find a way to keep Love's flavour in the "generosity" area.
I think most of the griefs I have with the Muse of Desire could be dealt with if we can find the appropriate Emotion cycle to put it where it would feel like it's hitting the most important emotions without overlapping too much and fit the mechanical triggers well enough. I personally think the weakest emotion flavourwise in my cycle above is Fear so far, if that helps you achieve a good cycle with Desire in it ^^
On Sadness, could you elaborate on how why you don't like it? I think Joy and Sadness are the first two emotions that would come the my mind if I had to list emotions, so Sadness sounds like it deserves a Grand Muse in my opinion. Out of the five colours, I just felt it clicked with Black in an interesting way. It's a colour about sad stuff like death, loss, disease but it's also often pictured as the colour of ruthlessness and absence of remorse. So I thought bringing the Sadness out of Black actually gave it a softer face, and showed something new.
Too Eldrazi as colorless?
https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/000/209/159/large/daniel-kamarudin-bbt2.jpg?1410961228
Although, due to its proportions, it might be better as a planeswalker.
@ningyounk
Considering the proposed corrupted muse art, that looks like a story moment card that should be a very powerful sorcery, seeing as it portrays a large outpouring of energy, likely the moment of corrupting. And I just had an inspiration moment so I'm gonna switch over to my computer and share the idea I just had.
Or heck, maybe it is a sixth muse, (which, as a heads up, would throw off the cycle) and is the cause for the plane's optimism. It's withholding the negative ones, either to build up its own power, or because it literally cannot release it.
For the first idea, it'd probably be a card that absolutely rewrites a creature, though its conditions would be incredibly niche and a disappointing story spotlight.
Definitely too Eldrazi.
The story:
- Avinzi: okay, I see your point. Perhaps he supplies the cult with the extraplanar artifact? Actually, looking at the comment you posted the link to, I realized that I confused Vicine and Avinzi in my head (the names are kind of similar). The original plan actually was for Vicine to be the villain and lead the cult, and for Avinzi to have some other sort of relation to the plan.
- Anticlimactic plot twists: You're right about the artifacts; there should be a more dramatic way to incorporate them. However, while Avinzi "touching" a Muse did happen before the story, we had also planned for it to happen to one or more main characters at the climax.
- Vague characters: I was trying to keep things succinct in my earlier comment, so I didn't say who the characters were. You may remember back in the Creative Design thread, I posted a two-comment long story (page nineteen) that went into deep detail about each character. We had tentatively planned on a Gatewatch-like team of five heroes, with a couple twists: one of them is a traitor; the whole team is kind of impromptu, and one of them "touches" a Muse and sparks during the climax, leaving the rest behind.
- Complex betrayals: I guess that is a little too complicated. Perhaps we could simplify it? Keep the fact that he's part of the cult, though with his own deviant plan to seize the power for himself, but never have him help the others?
Emotions:
I agree that we need to rework our cycle of emotions if we want to include Desire. I think that we definitely need...
- Joy
- Anger/Hate/Spite (I still think Ire should be included because it incorporates elements of all three)
- Sadness
- Greed/Desire
The final slot could be filled, in my opinion, either by Fear or Love.
@Lujikul
My one main problem with your proposals is that they make the Muses sound too much like concrete beings. One of our goals with this set has been to keep the Muses as abstract as possible. That's why I've been a little uncomfortable with the Muses as creatures, but I think we're doing a good job of keeping them from being too godlike with ningyounk's legendary enchantments. Which brings me to...
Everybody:
Talk about a corrupted Muse has resurfaced lately. I've got nothing against it, but could someone outline a story concept that revolves around it?
Really beautiful art, though it does give me a major blue vibe more than green/red personally. He seems posed, manipulative, and very intelligent because of the way his hands are drawn. I tried him as a planeswalker, the antennae he has on his head could become a problem, I'm not sure what to do with them because of how long they are xD
On the Corrupted Muse, yes I think if it's corrupted it means that it was one of the Elder Muse before, I was really picturing it as one of the five that became corrupted actually, more than a sixth independant Muse à la Scarab/Locust/Scorpion God. I like the idea of a sorcery showing the corruption rather than showing the Corrupted muse instead, it's interesting and avoid having the same Muse have two cards in the same set (one in a normal and corrupted state.) Though I think the exciting factor of a Corrupted Muse would be to build on the Elder Muse pattern and twist it on its head.
The idea of corruping a Muse with a different emotion could be promising, especially if we find a combination of two emotions that give you a third emotion, it would be really cool. I can't find a good one though.
@Faiths_Guide
Haha yes Xenagos is a good Red/Green example of a villain, I forgot about him actually ^^ We also got Tibalt as just one example of a monoRed villain, but I don't know if we ever had a monoGreen bad guy before? The the Consulate were White/Blue in Kaladesh, but Baral was monoBlue so a monoWhite villain could also be an interesting thing to see ^^
@MagicChess
Corrupted Muse Art:
Yes, everyone seems to agree that art is too much on the eldrazi side ^^
Story:
1) Yes, ironically one of the first things I said after that comment seems to be that Vicine's name is too close to Da Vinci's xD I think we can say that was a good call from myself 6 months ago xD
2) On sparking by touching an Elder Muse, I think it lessens the wow factor to have it happen multiple times, which is also why we discussed having all the characters doing it at the same time being too much at the beginning. I'd consider it a plot-twist rather than a story mechanic, basically the rules of the world would not be "when you touch a Muse, you spark, but few people know that" but rather "Muses are the embodiment of an emotion, nobody ever even wondered what would happen if you *TOUCHED* the embodiment of Fear with your little pointy fingers, that would be crazy just to think about it but you would probably die in a horrible way if I had to guess". For this to work, the story must not hint that it's possible to do that, but rather emphasize the more-than-material nature of the Muses. The best reaction we could get is "Wow, did that character just hug Love itself?! That's really cool. And really stupid. What's going to happen? Oh, the surge of emotion made him spark!? I didn't expect that, but it's really cool whey you say it out loud."
3) On the characters, most of them where brought on the "Main Character List" because we initially wanted to fill a five-colour cycle. In retrospective, it was a two-fold mistake I believe: it was more main characters that the story needed or could even handle (we weren't introduce to the gatewach character in Oath of the gatewatch, all five of them were returning characters), and it's incredibly predictable from a MTG perspective. I think the story would be better if we started with what we really need to tell a compelling story, then created the characters based on that. We want a character to spark by touching a Muse? Ok, what kind of character would be cool for that? And once again, do we have a character appearing on multiple illustrations so we can tell a story about him/her?
4) Yes, having the character be defined as a bad character makes it much easier to despict him I believe ^^ Its signature move could be a betrayal (and there's probably a good design space here for a card) but at least we can get who he is from the cards ^^
Cycle of Emotions:
Ok, so the two cycles aren't too far from each other ^^ Basically we have Joy/Sadness/Ire in common, the last two slots are either Fear, Love or Desire. Putting asides my doubts about Desire feeling like a watered down Love, could you specifiy how you would make them click with the five colours and the mechanical triggers (you can change the triggers, just remember their efficacy always prevail on the rest, so they have to stay simple, having the flavour not fitting perfectly a good trigger will be better than having a 30 words trigger that perfectly describe what that emotion is about.)
Corrupted Muse:
It's more an exciting story moment than a story mechanic I believe ^^ It would just be cool to have a corrupted muse card though we may end up somewhere else. But I guess we can imagine a number of stroryline concept from this:
- As Lujikul mentioned, the Muse could get tainted by other emotions, which bring an emotional fever on the plane.
- It could be the starting point of the story: One of the muses is becoming corrupted, we must find a cure before it goes out of control (people start to lose their mind for instance, or that emotion is slowly disappearring from people.)
- The corrupted Muse has not come back for this Renaissance cycle which disturbs the Art magic, we must find it and cure it for the Renaissance to be truly complete.
- A character touches the Muse and sparks, but it corrupts the Muse and they must stop it before it destroys everything.
-Etc...
What do you think of as really important storywise at the moment? Namely characters and specific moments?
Story:
2) That's a good point. The one thing I want to note is that I was using "touch" figuratively, like we discussed earlier. I believe @Lujikul mentioned trying to use a different word in place of this one, but I was too lazy
3) Yes, we talked a while ago about changing the Gatewatch similarity. One of the things we discussed (actually, I think you proposed it) and tentatively settled on was having only one of them spark. Five is a lot, I guess, but the greater problem in my opinion is the cliche monocolored cycle. We tried to assign them ally or enemy color pairs, but it didn't work out too well.
Cycle of Emotions:
I'll get back on this one when I have a moment later; I'm in a bit of a hurry.
Corrupted Muse:
I like the idea that one emotion is fading from people. Since we decided on an optimistic set anyway, perhaps it's a more negative emotion that is corrupted, which leads to an imbalance that accounts for the optimistic feel of the plane? I think that could be cool because while the set would be focused on the "glass half full," so to speak, there would be this cool underlying dissonance with players because the optimism is the result of a warping in the fabric of the world: an emotion is missing from people!!!
Most important characters + moments:
The most important characters are, in my opinion...
- Avinzi, because he brings the artifacts
- Vicine (name tentative), because he/she leads the cult
- Kedrah, because he helps the cult but turns against them, so we have clashing antagonists, and also because he's super cool
- Ekoma, because she's super cool
I'd also want to include Maren because I like how he uses his art magic for nature-y stuff (in the little story I wrote he was writing a poem and used the magic to heal a tree struck by lightning), but he doesn't have to be a main character.
I think the most important moments are...
- Kedrah betrays his friends
- Kedrah betrays the cult
- Somebody sparks
- Avinzi brings extraplanar artifacts
(Not in that order)
That's cool, we're mostly in sync, except a few details ^^
Namely, I like the idea of a character defined as a traitor because I think it could make a cool card, but I'd rather take a step back and clarifiy the very basis of the story before deciding who he is going to betray, so it makes the best impact.
For the basis of the story, I mean what the story really is about. Is it a war against a religious cult? A personal quest to find something? To cure someone? A battle between two sides? More sides? Does someone want to become a Muse? Or harness its power? Or steal it? Or just meet it? Etc. I'd like to take a step back and try to find a basis that's exciting and that we potentially have good illustration for. If we do decide for sure to have a cult in the story for instance, I'd be more comfortable if we found a twist on them that would make them more unique.
So here's the thing I'd like to reconsider before talking again about other story details:
- What's the disruptive element of the story?
- What is the goal to achieve?
- What are the stakes for reaching that goal/not reaching it?
- How does the story end?
I haven't really found anything in my illustration collection so far, but if someone has a good picture that could represent someone becoming a Muse or a Muse dying or something like that, it could be a considerable step towards defining what the story will be about.
On Ekoma, there's this artist called Wang Ling (wlop) https://wlop.deviantart.com/ that painted multiple times different female characters in the style of Final Fantasy. I have not played all Final Fantasy but I believe (and hope) that artist invented some of those characters which we may use to represent Ekoma? More specifically, this silver-haired princess appears on multiple artwork, how do you like Ekoma being a silent princess?
One of the upsides of using his illustrations would be those two pieces that could potentially represent important moments of the story:
#1: Touching a Muse
#2: Shoving something through the heart of the Corrupted Muse to destroy it
What are your thoughts on a potential Ravnica/Tarkir-like conflict? These blocks were very popular since they weren't very one-sided with the "good guys" and the "bad guys". But instead, you were allowed to pick a clan/guild to represent yourself, and the terms "good" and "evil" were never really used as they were all usually competing with each other.
This could be something like Kaladesh/Ixalan where the goal wouldn't be to wipe out the "evil force" but instead to compete against each for a common goal (the touch of a muse).
I also liked the idea of "demi-muses" that represented less major emotions and how some of them are wandering about with the people (I remember someone saying this, but If I remembered wrong,
Also, Inside Out, the movie, could be a great place to start for the "you can't have happiness without sadness" concept for the story/theme.
I know that the muses are a major thing you want to include, but I'm just hoping you'd consider these concepts.
This should do the trick!
Brief guide to uploading linked pictures/images in comments! (W/ Visual Aid)
I personally don't see how we make a Ravnica\Tarkir idea fit. This would require factions and a battle for dominace of some kind. While this could be possible, it'd require a drastic rethinking of the current story as is (which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world) and it'd also mean that we have to assign specific mechanics to said factions while also maintaining a color balance.
The competition towards a common goal has a couple issues for me.
- To me, at least, art on an optimistic plane means that it's simply expression or a way to positively better oneself, not to prove oneself as better than another.
- Touching a muse wouldn't be a common goal in this case because it's unprecedented, only happened once before.
- Also, it makes me imagine the following dialogue.
"So, it's like Kaladesh?"
"No, nothing like Kaladesh."
"But it's a competition with artistic presentation."
"No, no. It's like Kaladesh, but with magic instead."
"So... Kaladesh."
But that's just my two cents.