I'm pulling away from the curb because I drop my son off at school. We all know what that means.

It's time for their drive to work. Okay, today's going to be a fun one. I'm talking about the design of mood swings.

What is mood swings? Well, back in 1998, I came up with what at the time I called a mass market trading card game.

The basic idea was I was thinking a lot about sort of complexity in games.

We were having discussion in the pit, I think, about complexity in general.

And I really, really like trading card games. For those who ever listen to me,

talk about the Golden Trifecta. Those are the three genius ideas that Richard Garfield came up with

when he first made magic. One was the color pie, which obviously I love if you've ever listened to this

podcast. Second is the mana system, which I've talked a lot about. And the third is the concept of a

trading card game, which actually, I did have a whole podcast on it, but I've talked a lot about. And the third is the concept of a trading card game, which actually, I did have a whole

podcast on it, but I've talked about this one less of the three.

I really like trading cards.

But it dawned on me that magic, while a great game, is on the complex end of the spectrum,

on the complexity spectrum.

And so I started thinking, was there a way

to bring trading card games to people that might not be as invested, you know, that want a slightly

simpler game? And so that was kind of the, you know, the idea that I had that I really thought

was interesting. So the question I asked for myself, and what we're going to talk through today is,

okay, what does that mean?

What does it mean to have a more accessible trading card game?

So the first thing I realized was that deck building, while a lot of fun, is intimidating.

The idea that when you buy the game, you just get pieces of the game, and then you have to build your own game, that's a lot. So I said, okay, what if we made a trading card game that it functioned like a traditional card game? Meaning you get a box, you buy it, there's cards in it to play a game. That's the game. You and your friends can play the game. You have the game.

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