FUR: Vision Design, Pt II: Set Skeleton

     Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! We're back to FUR, the custom Magic set about anthropomorphic beast folk celebrating art and culture. Last time, we laid out the basic set structure. This week, we're going to debut the first set skeleton!

   [TwistedSpoon Studio: FUR]

    I always like to think positive, but it would be disingenuous not to cover  the mistakes I made here. There's nothing wrong with making mistakes-- it's how you learn, after all-- but they need to be addressed if they are to be valuable.

    Right off the bat, you'll probably notice a couple of things. First off, there are two set skeletons. What I realized was that putting the tribes into four colors actually made the colors feel very same-y; except for a few cards, they all basically have just a slew of the Big Five. Secondly, the tribes are all over the place mechanically, with different colors associating different mechanics with different tribes. Thirdly, there's no real sense of structure. In today's article, I'm going to talk about what I tried to do, why it didn't work, and how we're going to fix it.

    The four-color thing was short lived. After trying it in the first skeleton, it didn't feel right. Instead of increasing diversity, it just made noise. Players aren't going to feel the difference between one wolf in red versus two in black, or whatever, especially with so many other creatures clamoring for attention. While there is probably a world where you could use this approach-- maybe with "class" creature types like warrior or cleric-- this isn't it. The second skeleton addresses this by tightening up the colors on each tribe. This improved the issue, and had some impact on the next as well.

    The next problem being the lack of cohesion in each tribe. Despite their creative backgrounds, I haven't done enough research to really make them shine. The general overall structure of  the set's main mechanics also meant that sometimes a card would have to squeeze an ability onto a creature that doesn't quite fit. Some types, like wolves and foxes, worked out; others, like cats and dogs, had a harder time. Crafting, for example, wants to be a RW mechanic, but dogs in this set are rowdy graffiti bois. In order to help flesh out the tribes, we need to go back to our archetypes-- are we looking at ten color pairs, or five color triads? Triads bring an amount of overlap that could easily become confusing with the three canid tribes, so I'm leaning more towards pairs right now. On top of that, we'll brainstorm archetypes for the pairs, figure out how much support each archetype needs, and base our next skeleton off of that.

    The third issue ties into the second as well; the lack of overall structure is answered by using the tribes for structural support. Right now, the mechanics are loosey-goosey; this is a great proof of concept that each of the three mechanics for the set can support a multitude of designs, but it's not exactly coherent. As stated above, having our archetypes figured out will help a lot. Since I don't have more to say to this point, let's take a look at the mechanics before diving into our archetypes:

    Vibrant-- Vibrant cares about casting spells with three or more colors of mana. Green has the best access to other colors, making it the focal color of the mechanic. Red can sometimes produce mana of other colors, particularly through treasure. Blue and black tend to play into slower archetypes that could use card draw to find color fixing or lands of a third color. White has the least mechanical resonance with Vibrant, but that also plays into white's desire for conformity, so it's fair that it gets the fewest Vibrant cards, if any.
    
    Tradition-- Tradition abilities trigger when an effect instructs you to enact a tradition. At common, this means creatures will typically trigger traditions when they enter the battlefield, and every creature with a tradition will have a way to trigger it. White and blue tend to like creatures with ETB effects the most, because they can easily recur them for value with blink/bounce effects. Green and black can also recur them, albeit more slowly, by retrieving them from the graveyard. Red has the least flavorful and mechanical connection to Tradition, so it won't get any (outside of filling cycles as necessary).

    Crafting-- Crafting allows a creature to create one of two token equipment-- Combat Claws, which grants +1/+1, or Protective Pelt, which grants +0/+2, each with Equip (2)-- and attaches it to the creature. White loves both tokens and equipment, so Crafting is right at home there. Red shares the love of equipment, and blue, the love of artifacts. Black is tertiary in caring about artifacts, usually as sacrifice fodder, which these could work well for. Green despises artifice as a basic premise, so Crafting won't appear there.

    A quick outline:

• White: Tradition (primary), Crafting (primary)
• Blue: Tradition (primary), Crafting (secondary), Vibrant (secondary)
• Black: Tradition (secondary), Vibrant (secondary), Crafting (tertiary)
• Red: Vibrant (primary), Crafting (primary)
• Green: Vibrant (primary), Tradition (Secondary)

    Don't worry too much about the disparities in the mechanics above; subthemes can fill in any gaps that we see as we move forward. We'll discuss the archetypes in the next Vision Design article, which may or may not have a new design skeleton as well.

    That's all for this week. Next week, we're going to take another pass at FUR's creative elements to adjust for the changes above. Until then, check out Squid Game on Netflix or something. I can only plug Nuts & Bolts so many times, alright?

See you soon!