Underworld dreaming
June 29th 2010 03:29
If you look at the cards revealed so far for Magic 2011, there are a couple of interesting choices by the designers and creative team.
In past core sets, the space in the set occupied by a creature like Barony Vampire would probably have been a zombie, while Grave Titan might have been a demon or even, ironically, a vampire. The choice of Grave Titan is fairly straightforward: as Aaron Forsythe alluded to yesterday, the five mythic giants in M11 were designed to evoke our cultural knowledge of Greek mythology's Titans or the wizard-kings of Jotunheim in Norse tradition. The choice between Vampires and Zombies, though, requires a little more discussion.
Zombies are a mainstay of fantasy and horror stories, and for many years were the marquee race for black - they appeared only in cards of that color, and carried many of the color's signature mechanics, just as elves do in green and goblins do in red. There was no mechanical problem with this, but rather a creative one: black was thus the only color with a unique race that was non-sentient. Cards with typelines like Zombie Cleric did appear occasionally as needed, but this could be jarring to people, as it runs counter to the general cultural understanding of the creature type. Creative license, "reinvention" of the word and such, is extremely difficult for a creature with such a long history in the collective imagination, especially when they are being presented in trading card form where there is no room to explain why the person depicted in Withered Wretch's art remembers his life and other ones don't.
Vampires, however, are ideal for the race-class model of modern Magic. While there are differences in various cultures' conception of the vampire, there is a consensus that they are both intelligent and sophisticated. In the English-speaking world, they are also often portrayed as cunning, deceptive, and ambitious - perfect for the worldview of the color black in Magic. They give the creative department more space for black creatures, and greater depth to the color's flavor and lore.
You may have read, with some bemusement, certain forum dwellers complaining about the shift from zombies to vampires as black's main race, as though recent interpretations of vampires in TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and movies like Twilight somehow delegitimizes Magic's interpretation. But it is not reasonable to expect that every product is going to present content 100% different from everything else, or that does not draw in any way on anything else - Buffy links to Nosferatu, Nosferatu calls back to Bram Stoker, and Stoker himself drew on ancient Eastern European stories. It is even less reasonable to expect that a product that does not fit well into the cultural tapestry is going to be successful - or enjoyable.
In past core sets, the space in the set occupied by a creature like Barony Vampire would probably have been a zombie, while Grave Titan might have been a demon or even, ironically, a vampire. The choice of Grave Titan is fairly straightforward: as Aaron Forsythe alluded to yesterday, the five mythic giants in M11 were designed to evoke our cultural knowledge of Greek mythology's Titans or the wizard-kings of Jotunheim in Norse tradition. The choice between Vampires and Zombies, though, requires a little more discussion.
Zombies are a mainstay of fantasy and horror stories, and for many years were the marquee race for black - they appeared only in cards of that color, and carried many of the color's signature mechanics, just as elves do in green and goblins do in red. There was no mechanical problem with this, but rather a creative one: black was thus the only color with a unique race that was non-sentient. Cards with typelines like Zombie Cleric did appear occasionally as needed, but this could be jarring to people, as it runs counter to the general cultural understanding of the creature type. Creative license, "reinvention" of the word and such, is extremely difficult for a creature with such a long history in the collective imagination, especially when they are being presented in trading card form where there is no room to explain why the person depicted in Withered Wretch's art remembers his life and other ones don't.
Vampires, however, are ideal for the race-class model of modern Magic. While there are differences in various cultures' conception of the vampire, there is a consensus that they are both intelligent and sophisticated. In the English-speaking world, they are also often portrayed as cunning, deceptive, and ambitious - perfect for the worldview of the color black in Magic. They give the creative department more space for black creatures, and greater depth to the color's flavor and lore.
You may have read, with some bemusement, certain forum dwellers complaining about the shift from zombies to vampires as black's main race, as though recent interpretations of vampires in TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and movies like Twilight somehow delegitimizes Magic's interpretation. But it is not reasonable to expect that every product is going to present content 100% different from everything else, or that does not draw in any way on anything else - Buffy links to Nosferatu, Nosferatu calls back to Bram Stoker, and Stoker himself drew on ancient Eastern European stories. It is even less reasonable to expect that a product that does not fit well into the cultural tapestry is going to be successful - or enjoyable.
You never know when a game is going to throw in a reference to Greek mythology.
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