Introduction: FUR

    Welcome to TwistedSpoon Studios! My name is notKingCole, and I'll be talking about game design projects that I'm currently working on, plan to work on soon, or have worked on. To kick things off, this week I'll be introducing my first custom Magic: the Gathering set, FUR.

 

    If you're not familiar with Magic, what are you doing with your life Magic: the Gathering is the world's premier trading card game. Created by Richard Garfield and first published in 1993, Magic has defined the genre of card games for over 20 years. And Mark Rosewater, the lead designer of MtG, is a truly generous soul when it comes to sharing the design process. (Seriously, the man is so passionate about what he does that he makes a podcast about it on his drive to work. It's called Mark Rosewater's Drive to Work.) He also writes articles for the Magic website, including an annual series on the nitty-gritty of design called Nuts & Bolts. Back in 2012, Nuts & Bolts covered the way that R&D essentially creates a rough draft of a set: the set skeleton. Earlier this year, he revisited the set skeleton, throwing in for good measure the same template that they give to new designers at Wizards of the Coast. It's just a baseline, and the set skeleton alone won't enable you to rob Hazbro of all their cardboard crack money, but it's a great place to start.

    With this technology and an avid love for the game, I decided to give it a shot. Magic revolves around a Multiverse of nearly infinite planes, and the heroes and villains that walk between them. Each set focuses on a particular plane, with its own unique personality and features. Innistrad is a gothic-horror-inspired world where vampires, zombies, and werewolves prey on humans while angels soar overhead and demons cackle down below. Ravnica is a vibrant Eastern European city operated by ten guilds that are locked in constant conflict. Theros is a world based on Greek mythology, where the realms of gods and mortals are connected by dreams.

    My world's gimmick?

    Furry.

    Wait! Wait, come back! It's not weird, I promise.

    In general, furries get a bad rap. But even if you're not part of the fandom, you've probably enjoyed some works that fall into the genre. Maybe you read the Redwall Abbey series by Brian Jacques, or the Warrior Cats series by Erin Hunter and Dan Jolley. Maybe you saw Disney's Zootopia. Maybe you watched Studio Trigger's Brand New Animal (BNA). Maybe you just like Pokemon. Whatever the case may be, you can enjoy a story or world with anthropomorphic characters, regardless of whether you dress up as one. That being said, the furry fandom is also an incredible group of people. It's wildly diverse and inclusive, especially for the LGBTQ and autistic communities. It's full of passionate artists of every kind, writers and musicians, and masters of cosplay and craftmanship. Many furries are also avid fans of sci-fi, fantasy, and gaming. In other words, an audience that's perfect for Magic.

    In terms of fantasy, this plane would be a world of beast folk. Magic already has several races of anthropomorphic animals: Leonin, cat folk; Loxodon and Rhox, elephant and rhino folk respectively; Aven, bird folk; the list is surprisingly long. There are jackal folk, rat folk, fox folk, insect folk, even salamander folk. While WotC tends to shy away from worlds without humans, an "animal people" world would be right at home in Magic's multiverse. (There's already a world made of metal, for crying out loud.) 

    While furry works may or may not have humans in them, I've deliberately set out to create a set without humans for two reasons. First, furry works with both anthropomorphic and human characters tend to focus on the conflicts between them; Magic has already done "human versus other" in Innistrad and Ikoria, so I'm not interested in exploring that theme. Second, part of the furry experience is expressing yourself through your connection to an animal, or animals in general; humans would dilute the theme of the set.

    Another common furry theme is "predator versus prey." While this is resonant and easy to latch onto for those outside of the fandom, it's fairly tired for those of us who've seen it done over and over. Instead, I'd like to put diversity front and center. Not only are the members of the furry fandom diverse, but so are the ways that they represent themselves. One of the most common and fundamental acts of the fandom is creating a fursona, an anthropomorphic alter-ego. Fursonas run the gamut-- if you can name an animal, odds are that someone has anthropomorphized it. This can be a fun and evocative element of world-building that lets players choose how to express themselves and customize their deck.

How do you feel about the theme of the set? What are your favorite stories about anthropomorphic characters? Let me know in the comments down below!

If you want to follow along or catch up, check out the index page here or the FUR link under "labels" to the left. Next time, I'll talk about the first step to designing a set: Vision Design. Until then, check out Mark Rosewater's Nuts & Bolts articles (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive), or watch Zootopia if you haven't. Seriously, it's good.

See you again soon!