That Gathering and the Elegance

Magic: the Gathering is arguably one of the most influential and popular 'geek' foundations of my generation. It is, in many ways, in the same area of the "Geek Venn Diagram" that RPG's do--a fine combination of war-game, storytelling, and gambling. Ok, a bit heavier on the gambling. At least they got rid of the "bid a card" garbage from my days in high school. Also, I'm old.

Magic cards are one of those things that I hold up as a masterpiece of design. In one card (obtained from random from Wizards of the Coast website--obviously not mine, all rights reserved, etc.), you get:

• A spell or a monster, 
• Art ranging from "good" to "Dude....Dude!!" that inspires you and brings the game to life.
• What faction it belongs to (and hence, at least a rough idea of how it's going to work)
• The cost to activate it
• How dangerous it is in both attack and defense
• Any special rules that this monster has, and how to use said special rules,
• Nine times out of ten a bit of world-building that makes you go "man, I'd like to know more about this world!" 

All of that in a 2x3 notecard--rules, cost, story. There's a reason the tabletop industry has bemoaned WotC not releasing an RPG. They've been building worlds and giving us story seeds for way too long. A good magic card is a character template.

They are, to me at least, a major motivator for me to design as cleanly as possible while still including elements that fill in the game world and inspire more ideas or excitement. It's very easy to get 'wordy' in RPG's (at least when I'm writing them...), so remembering to keep it simple is always a plus. The concept of "here's all this in a itty bitty card" is my specific foundation I'm using for the NPC and "monster" components.

My philosophy is this--the players should have plenty of knobs and tricks and toys because they're there to play specific characters. When I'm playing, the character is the only thing I really get to play with in the sandbox--so it better have enough fun involved so I don't feel jealous. As a GM, though, the last thing I need is fiddly toys. If I'm running a fight scene with a dozen NPC's, I have to handle both the players AND the NPC's. Now, we're in a golden age of gaming in some ways, and I know these are a bit out-of-date (see Fate and its bargaining, Dungeon World, and a few other indies), but in general it's always been a problem--the GM has to run an entire world.

So the basic theory for every monster in the book is to boil it down to a magic card. Mind you, not a REAL card--as I do not own a printing company, that's a bit outside of my abilities right now. But instead, I should be able to flip to a page or click to a link under, say "Orcs", and have a variety of terrible green horde-monsters I can sick on you. That should include at least some flavor text--again, Magic Cards, not a Spreadsheet--something you can get into and get the creative juices flowing. This also means that players should be able to quickly figure out how many baddies they just whomped, and the GM should know what options the monsters have on their turn. Since this is an RPG, we'll probably also need to figure out a good system for time and initiative (stupid initiative!!). And using these as playing blocks, I as the GM can either "build a deck" for my players to fight off, or just roll some dice/throw some darts at the book and come up with a quick game to play.

If you can't tell, I've decided to start pondering the mechanical aspects. I'm hoping to create a 0th Edition, and basically something I can get int people's hands to start playing and getting feedback. Of course, I have a family, a job, and studying for certifications, so this might arrive in early 2020, but again--this is for fun.

Today, I'm having fun.