Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work.

Okay, so today's topic is something that I've talked a lot about in my column, what we call top-down design.

Okay, so let me start by answering the question I get a lot, which is, why is top-down

design called top-down design? Oh, real quickly, let me define what it means. So top-down

design is when we start with the flavor, and it's the jumping-off point for the set,

starts from a flavor bent. Theros and Indistrarian examples of recent top-down designs.

Like, oh, we're going to do a Gothic horror world.

Oh, we're going to do a world inspired by Greek mythology.

A bottom-up design is when you start from a mechanical place.

So, for example, Zendikar started as the land set.

Ravnikov started a set where we're going to represent the two colors, make people play

two-color gold.

Now, no matter which direction we go, we intermingle flavor and mechanics.

So if our job is done well, Zendikar feels very flavorful.

Ravenica feels very flavorful.

But what I'm talking about is,

technically, when you're building the design,

which direction did you come from?

So anyway, people always ask me,

where in the world do the term top-down design come from?

Now, at first, well, sorry.

Sorry, I've traffic car coming right at me.

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