I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work.

Okay, so today's topic is inertia. But I used to, I did a series from when I went to talk to my

daughter's class when she was in fifth grade. I did a series called 10 games, 10 things every

game needs. And then I did a separate podcast in each, 10 things every game needs.

And then I did a separate podcast in each of those 10 qualities.

One of which was inertia, but there I was talking about within a game, the need for the game to end, that every step that everything you're making your player do has to push toward

the game ending.

So today is about inertia, but a different style of inertia.

So while there is a podcast previously on inertia, not quite the same thing.

When I'm talking about today is why things that we think maybe should change don't change.

And that is the topic of today.

So I'm talking about inertia of the game as it applies

to design at all. So this is not inertia within the game making the game end. That's the other

podcast. It is about how inertia, meaning working on a game that's 33 years old, how that affects

decisions we make.

Okay, so to start with, I'm going to talk about Manacosts.

So, on a magic card, so interestingly, when Richard Garfield first in alpha, or pre-Alpha,

in Alpha playtesting, the way Manic costs work is not the way they currently work.

The way it works, have you ever seen like an alpha playtest card?

So let's say a card is supposed to cost two generic and one blue mana.

The way it would be written on a playtest card is it would say three and then blue.

And what that meant was, you're going to pay three total

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