FUR: Vision Design, Pt. VIII: Top to Bottom

-

     Welcome to TwistedSpoon Studio! Last week in our series on Festival of Urbestia, the custom Magic set about a beast-folk festival, we established a new direction for the set. This week, we're going to explore evocative tropes to make our creatures feel like the animals that they're based on. We're also going to dig into festival/convention tropes, though they're going to take a back seat this time around.

Vizier of the Menagerie by Victor Adame


    Before we start, keep in mind that every set needs to do something new to stand out. One way to do that is with structure-- look at Ravnica, with its ten-color-pair factions, or Alara with its triad factions; Scars of Mirrodin block plays with asymmetrical factions, with Mirrodin Besieged split 50/50 between the Mirrans and Phyrexians. One of the most common structural features is the association between creature types and colors-- elves are green, goblins are red, merfolk are blue, so on and so forth. Some sets use two-color pairs with creature types, like anything set on Innistrad. What we're doing here today is a little different-- we're going to take five creature types, and apply each of them to each color. This serves two purposes: 1) it promotes the theme of diversity, and 2) it creates a baseline for players to approach the set. Of the five main tribes-- can you recite the list from memory yet?-- three are canids (wolves, dogs, and foxes). This means that even in a wacky world with many, many creature types, players can anchor themselves on those familiar things no matter what color they're in.


Everyone's an Animal

    With that being said, we're going to have to differentiate between them using the tools available to each color. To do that, we'll make these 25 commons using recognizable tropes for each tribe. With all that said, here's the breakdown that I went with:

  • Wolves
    • W: Pack Leader
      • Team pump effect
    • U: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
      • hexproof combat trick with crafting
    • B: Lone Wolf
      • "finisher" removal
    • R: Big Bad Wolf 
      • Menace
    • G: Howl at the Moon
      • P/T buff
  • Foxes
    • W: Laughing Fox
      • lifelink
    • U: Cunning Fox
      • Flash or hexproof
    • B: Sly Fox 
      • Audacious Thief
    • R: Quick Fox (you know, the one that jumps over the lazy brown dog?)
      • Haste
    • G: Wise Fox
      • Cantrip
  • Dogs
    • W: Labrador Retriever
      • Disenchant effect (implied tail-wagging)
    • U: Bloodhound
      • There's no clues in the set, but maybe a pseudo-investigate?
    • B: Bulldog (Black represents endurance and determination)
      • Lifelink or menace
    • R: Chihuahua 
      • Goblin Tunneler
    • G: Russian Mastiff (Bear-hunting dog)
      • +1/+1 counters or fight/bite effect
  • Cats
    • W: Cat-like Reflexes
      • Flicker effect
    • U: Curiosity killed the Cat
      • Curiosity, but it kills the creature
    • B: Nine lives
      • graveyard retrieval
    • R: Wildcat
      • haste or trample
    • G: Big Cat (like, a tiger. Tigers are cool.)
      • Flash on a medium/large body
  • Reptiles
    • W: Tortoise
      • vigilance, high toughness
    • U: Chameleon
      • hexproof/ward
    • B: Shedding Snake
      • death trigger - crafting (maybe it leaves a Pelt token)
    • R: Komodo Dragon (emphasis on "dragon")
      • Firebreathing
    • G: Gecko (green is the color of auto insurance, I guess)
      • Reach and/or Regenerate

    You'll notice that not all of these actually ended up being creatures; much like the signature spells in War of the Spark, just referring to something still invokes it thematically, which is what's important at common. (And yes, the "laughing fox" is a reference to Vine.) 


The Long Con(vention)

    As far as festival and convention tropes, the space is a bit more limited than I might've liked. The thing that both have in common is artifacts-- things you buy from stalls and stands, things you win in games and challenges, things you wear, things that decorate the space-- lots and lots and lots of things. This manifests in the form of Treasure in the set-- a tweaked version of the cycle that we introduced originally, plus a few more for flavor. Food is another big thing-- I almost went with Food over Treasure as the third mechanic, but for synergy reasons, it lost out. There is still one Food artifact in the set at common. Other tropes to play with include merch stands, food trucks/stalls, panels, cosplay-repair stations, tickets for entry, costume competitions, photo-ops (now to figure out how that works in a fantasy setting); convention security, collectors, artist alley, and of course, the afterparty. Not all of these are in the set skeleton, but a lot of spells are still waiting for flavor, and the hihger rarities are still open, so we'll see what makes it and what doesn't.


On the Tropes

    Look, blame Mark Rosewater for the punny subheadings. I learned it from him. Anyway, that's all for this week; how do you feel about this structural theme? Are there any tropes that I missed that you'd like to see? Let me know in the comments, or over on Reddit here.

    Next week's Monday Musing is a breakdown of Crimson Vow, where we'll interrogate the set's structure and mechanics. The next FUR Friday, exploring the new archetypes, will be the second-to-last FUR article in Vision Design. After that, we'll be breaking into a bold new frontier! Until then, if you want to see how far we've come, check out the last first set skeleton here and the last one here.


See you soon!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Monday Musings: The Work Must Flow

-
Image
     Welcome to TwistedSpoon Studio! This is the first article in a series I'm calling Monday Musings, where I ramble about whatever game design topic is on my mind and, hopefully, turn it into practical advice for you. This week, the topic is work flow. When you're approaching a new project, it can be daunting to figure out where to start. Every designer has their own methods, but there are some best practices that apply to any project. Below I'm going to outline my own process, but don't take it as set in stone-- feel free to adjust it for your own needs and the needs of your game. Time Sieve by Franz Vohwinkel Pre-Design     Pre-design is exactly what it sounds like-- it's all the stuff you have to do before you start designing proper. For my money, this process has three broad steps: Exploration, Research, and Planning.     The order of the first two steps will vary depending on whether your project is top-down or bottom-up. For a top-down design (starting with
Read more

[Workshop Wednesday] Call of Gathering: Magic Warfare

-
Image
      Welcome to TwistedSpoon Studio! It's Wednesday my dudes, and that means the Workshop is open. This week, we're getting into the trenches with some top-down military designs featuring the custom Backup mechanic:     Backup is an alternate-cost mechanic that can go on any non-land card type. (Well, technically... no, we're not getting into that again.) If you played Battle for Zendikar, you might recognize this mechanic:     Personally, I think Surge was a great mechanic. It lets you "combine" spells into a one-two punch, and you can even cooperate with your teammate in some formats. (I'm a sucker for Two-Headed Giant sealed deck, so I may be biased there.) Backup is more limited-- it only cares about creatures, and only your own-- but it's meant to allow you to break timing restrictions (like Miracle does) if you get clever with it.     That being said, it's a pretty simple mechanic. I suspect that the feedback wouldn't have been as overwhelmi
Read more

[Monday Musings] The One-Hour Game Jam, ft. Quantum Reflections

-
Image
      Welcome to TwistedSpoon Studio! This week we're back with another Monday Musing, and this one is near and dear to my heart: the One-Hour Game Jam. It's exactly what it says on the tin. That's all for this week!   The Tin     Okay, maybe there's a little more to say about it. The One-Hour Game Jam is not a competition, so much as a game design exercise. You have one hour to make a playable game. Notice that I said "playable." I didn't say "great," "perfect," or "Spiel des Jahres." You're aiming for minimum viable product-- think of whatever you end up making as a rough sketch of a game.     This whole practice is inspired by the podcast Unplaytested . The premise is simple: every week, they make an RPG in an hour, based on a randomly selected theme. It's a master course in building games fast and loose, and it's well worth a listen.     When you have an idea for a game, it's easy to fixate on it. What ar
Read more