Everything old is new again
September 9th 2008 04:36
“Will the past be a shadow that will follow us `round?”
-- Vitamin C, Graduation (Friends Forever)
If brevity is the soul of wit and necessity the mother of invention, then repetitiveness is rapidly becoming the hallmark of Magic: the Gathering, especially where set themes and ideas are concerned. In the wake of the official announcement that Alara is yet another multicolored set, only one year since Ravnica left Standard after what felt like a century, you couldn’t be blamed for wondering what old favorites will be reprocessed next. Are there really so few ideas left in Magic, indeed in the world? It might be worth thinking about as a general question. Don’t forget, though, that Alara is not the clearest recent example of a set obviously inspired by an older one. That distinction lies with Shadowmoor.
Say what? Wasn’t it all about “color matters,” specifically with regards to so-called hybrid cards, which hadn’t been done systematically before?
But Shadowmoor has another theme which has nothing to do with mechanics. This theme is apparent by perusing the set’s art and flavor text, which literally and figuratively paint a picture of a world without light, honor, or hope. This exact flavor theme was done once before, in 1994’s The Dark – the fourth expansion set ever printed.
A penchant for abstract art and pieces done in watercolor and charcoal? Flavor text describing either desperate subsistence or mob-based prejudice? Minor tribal elements that no-one ended up playing with anyway? It’s enough to make you accuse somebody of plagiarism.
Joking aside, there are notable differences. The Dark focused so much on flavor and notably less on card design that many of its cards are breathtakingly effective at continuing the story of Dominaria’s slide into the ice age even as they are nearly useless in almost any kind of gameplay. Shadowmoor was designed to have synergy with Lorwyn, containing many creatures from that set’s major tribes, even in cases where their presence conflicts with its atmosphere. For instance, I always found it hard to take the kithkin seriously, especially in their dark-world incarnation: they tend to feel silly and not threatening enough.
As one of the first flavor-driven sets, The Dark set a high bar for vivid and immersive imagery that has rarely been equaled. If Shadowmoor has copied from its playbook, it was perhaps appropriate in a year when the head of design himself declared that flavor is inseparable from design. Because the fact is, by Mark Rosewater’s own admission, Alara would also not exist if not for The Dark and sets like it. Take another look at the first article linked to above, specifically where he writes
Top-down design, to borrow a phrase coined by Wizards’ writers, has only applied of late to individual cards. Alara is the first instance of top-down block design since the late 1990s, and the last sets designed this way are still remembered fondly by many people who were playing the game back then. Some of them remember the specific decks and cards, but more of them remember settings, art, and characters.
The designers have learned an important lesson from their own past: there are a finite number of game abilities, but an infinite number of settings and concept art galleries, and it is the latter which most define the fans’ memories of a block. It may look like a rehash on paper, but the real Alara will be nothing like Ravnica – in any way.
-- Vitamin C, Graduation (Friends Forever)
If brevity is the soul of wit and necessity the mother of invention, then repetitiveness is rapidly becoming the hallmark of Magic: the Gathering, especially where set themes and ideas are concerned. In the wake of the official announcement that Alara is yet another multicolored set, only one year since Ravnica left Standard after what felt like a century, you couldn’t be blamed for wondering what old favorites will be reprocessed next. Are there really so few ideas left in Magic, indeed in the world? It might be worth thinking about as a general question. Don’t forget, though, that Alara is not the clearest recent example of a set obviously inspired by an older one. That distinction lies with Shadowmoor.
Say what? Wasn’t it all about “color matters,” specifically with regards to so-called hybrid cards, which hadn’t been done systematically before?
But Shadowmoor has another theme which has nothing to do with mechanics. This theme is apparent by perusing the set’s art and flavor text, which literally and figuratively paint a picture of a world without light, honor, or hope. This exact flavor theme was done once before, in 1994’s The Dark – the fourth expansion set ever printed.
A penchant for abstract art and pieces done in watercolor and charcoal? Flavor text describing either desperate subsistence or mob-based prejudice? Minor tribal elements that no-one ended up playing with anyway? It’s enough to make you accuse somebody of plagiarism.
Joking aside, there are notable differences. The Dark focused so much on flavor and notably less on card design that many of its cards are breathtakingly effective at continuing the story of Dominaria’s slide into the ice age even as they are nearly useless in almost any kind of gameplay. Shadowmoor was designed to have synergy with Lorwyn, containing many creatures from that set’s major tribes, even in cases where their presence conflicts with its atmosphere. For instance, I always found it hard to take the kithkin seriously, especially in their dark-world incarnation: they tend to feel silly and not threatening enough.
They’re also one of only two major tribes that don’t directly correspond to anything in the British folklore that both the sets are based on. Coincidence?
As one of the first flavor-driven sets, The Dark set a high bar for vivid and immersive imagery that has rarely been equaled. If Shadowmoor has copied from its playbook, it was perhaps appropriate in a year when the head of design himself declared that flavor is inseparable from design. Because the fact is, by Mark Rosewater’s own admission, Alara would also not exist if not for The Dark and sets like it. Take another look at the first article linked to above, specifically where he writes
Another change was that the creative team did much of their work on concepting the shards before the shard design teams met. The shards were not created to match the designs, but rather the designs were created to match the shards.
Top-down design, to borrow a phrase coined by Wizards’ writers, has only applied of late to individual cards. Alara is the first instance of top-down block design since the late 1990s, and the last sets designed this way are still remembered fondly by many people who were playing the game back then. Some of them remember the specific decks and cards, but more of them remember settings, art, and characters.
The designers have learned an important lesson from their own past: there are a finite number of game abilities, but an infinite number of settings and concept art galleries, and it is the latter which most define the fans’ memories of a block. It may look like a rehash on paper, but the real Alara will be nothing like Ravnica – in any way.
For starters, it’ll have sphinxes and their riddles. Keep your Encyclopedia of Mythology handy.
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