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Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast

#676: Lessons Learned – War of the Spark

Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast

Wizards of the Coast

Games, Duels Of The Planeswalkers, Leisure, Game Design, Mtg, Mark Rosewater, Ccg, Magic The Gathering

4.7802 Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2019

⏱️ 46 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is another podcast in my "Lessons Learned" series where I talk about lessons from sets that I led or co-led the design for. This time, I talk about what I learned leading the design for War of the Spark.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I'm pulling away from the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for other drive to work.

0:06.2

And I drop my daughter off at camp. Okay, so today is another in my lessons learned series.

0:12.7

So this is where I talk about a set that I led or co-led the design for, and I talk about all the lessons I learned from making it.

0:18.6

So we are talking today about War of the Spark.

0:23.2

So that was quite the learning lesson. So I recently did a podcast all about the Bola's arc,

0:33.9

and so I talked a little bit about this, but we'll go a little more in depth on War of the Spark.

0:39.1

So, okay, we started because Doug Beyer had made the outline for the story, and the ending of the story was

0:49.0

a grandiose giant Plainswalk or War, where the Gatewatch and many allies were taking on Nicole Bullis.

0:59.0

And when Doug first pitched this idea,

1:01.8

we first pitched it,

1:03.2

I remember saying to him as a writer,

1:06.2

wow, that's exciting.

1:07.7

That's an exciting ending to the story.

1:09.7

That is a capper. You know, because

1:11.6

it was a three-year story in the making and we wanted a big, glorious ending. And I said, that

1:16.3

really sounds cool. But as a designer, as the guy who has to design this, I don't know how to do it.

1:23.1

I mean, normally in a set, we have, you know, a normal non-core set, we'll have three mythic rare

1:28.8

planeswalkers. And I'm like, I'm not sure how exactly you get planeswalker war when I only

1:35.4

get three planeswalkers. But I said, okay, we'll figure it. We'll figure it out. So when we first

1:43.3

started making it, the thing I really latched on to was we talked about how it was an event set, meaning normally we focus on where we are.

1:53.5

But this set, okay, the previous block, or the previous two sets, we're basically going to be us doing normal Guild Ravnika.

2:03.5

We've done Ravnika as you experienced Ravnika.

...

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