Festival of Urbestia: Vision Design Handoff Document
Festival of Urbestia
Vision Design Handoff Document
Design Team
- notKingcole
Over the years, anthropomorphic characters have become mainstream in fantasy media. Skyrim has khajit; World of Warcraft has Pandarin; Dungeons & Dragons has Tabaxi, Aaracokra, Kenku, Tortles, and more; and Magic: the Gathering has its own plethora of beast folk-- at least 21 races, by my count. But why are these kinds of characters so popular?
There seems to be something about applying human characteristics to animals and vice versa that is inherent to human nature. Whether it's a spirit animal, or a family totem, or the heraldry of a kingdom's flag, people across the world and throughout history have identified themselves with animals. Let's be honest-- who wouldn't want the wings of a bird, or the claws of a wolf, or the fangs of a snake?
Festival of Urbestia explores these themes, allowing players to express themselves with a myriad of beast folk and even customize them to create something that they identify with. More than that, it gives them the chance to show off their unique creations in a colorful celebration of diversity.
The Vision Design Handoff Document serves two purposes: To establish the "big picture" idea of what the set is, and to lay out the blueprints for how that will be achieved. Now that we've done the former, let's tackle the latter.
The Tribes
There are five main tribes of beast folk that appear or are referred to in every color. According to research, these are the most popular anthropomorphic races; together, they serve as a baseline for the setting's populace. They are:
- Wolf Folk
- Fox Folk
- Dog Folk
- Cat Folk
- Reptile Folk
Key Notes
Festival of Urbestia relies on three core pillars:
- Self-Expression:
- Providing choices that allow players to build a deck they identify with.
- Community:
- Evoking a sense of diversity, inclusion, and celebration.
- Art:
- Presenting a vibrant aesthetic full of color and energy.
Set Mechanics
- Vibrant: Spells with Vibrant have an improved effect when you spend three or more colors of mana to cast them.
- Suit Up (Formerly crafting): When a creature suits up, its controller creates one of two equipment tokens and attaches it to that creature.
- Claw: +1/+1, Equip 2
- Pelt: +0/+2, Equip 2
- Treasure: Treasure is a returning mechanic. Treasures are artifacts that can be sacrificed to add one mana of any color.
Vibrant
Vibrant-- If three or more colors of mana were spent to cast this, [effect].
Vibrant is focused in white and green as the "community" mechanic, celebrating diversity and inclusion. Creatures that feature the mechanic will have very colorful, fantastical art. Non-vibrant creatures will have more realistic coloration. Non-creature cards with Vibrant should thematically represent celebration.
In order to give players a challenge, color fixing in FUR is either temporary or destructible, coming in the form of artifacts or creatures rather than lands. This prevents Vibrant from being enabled too easily.
Suit Up
[This/target] creature suits up. (Create your choice of Claws or Pelt and attach it to [this/that] creature.)
Suit Up (formerly crafting) is a keyword action focused in red and blue that allows players to customize their creatures. At common, creatures suit up when they enter the battlefield, allowing their controller to choose one of two stat lines. (E.g. When a 1/1 suits up, it can become a 2/2 or a 1/3.) Claw tokens are flavored as clawed gauntlets, while Pelts are more like cloaks or costumes. Ideally, these tokens would have 5 different arts each-- one for each of the main tribes. For example, a player could adorn their creature with tiger-striped Claws or a lizard-scale Pelt. This kind of mixing and matching is integral to the sense of self-expression that Suit Up is designed to convey.
In order to offer counterplay, there will be more Shatter/Disenchant effects at common than the average set. Each color should have at least one answer to equipment, and the most proficient colors at artifact removal should have more.
Treasure
T, Sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any color.
Treasures are usually tokens that are produced as a rider to a spell; to conserve token slots for Suit Up, Treasures in this set are instead artifact cards with spell-like effects. In terms of flavor, Treasures represent the trappings of a festival/convention-- trinkets, souvenirs, prizes, merchandise, etc. Treasures support Vibrant by fixing mana and Suit Up by filling out an artifacts-matter theme. Treasures in FUR are focused in black.
Because treasures are the primary form of color fixing, it will be easier than normal to splash multiple colors. To protect the integrity of the color pie, cards with a single color pip should be vanilla/french vanilla creatures and basic spells. There will be more two-pip cards than normal. (For example, black removal spell is more likely to cost 1BB than 2B.)
Relicfall (minor mechanic)
Relicfall is a minor mechanic that is not keyworded in the set, but could be if the set needs it. Currently only in blue, Relicfall marks cards in the set skeleton that trigger when an artifact enters the battlefield. This mechanic is purely structural and serves to support the artifacts-matter theme, but could be used to represent commerce or collection. Because the artifacts-matter theme in blue is associated with blue/black and blue/red, these effects should affect the board to provide disruption and/or tempo.
Cycles of Urbestia
- Common Treasure Cycle
- While Treasures are focused in black, every color gets one at common serving as the "mana rock"/mana fixing cycle.
- To compensate for card disadvantage, they have "When this artifact enters the battlefield, scry 2." ("Draw a card" was considered, but avoided to prevent degenerate artifact decks like Fruity Pebbles from emerging.)
- Because treasures can produce any color of mana, special attention should be paid to the number of pips in colored mana costs to protect the color pie.
- Common Vibrant Cycle
- While Vibrant is focused in white and green, every color gets a 3-mana Vibrant creature with color-relevant abilities to show off the mechanic.
- Each color uses a different member of the five main tribes in this cycle.
- Common Set-piece Cycle
- Each color gets a common Wall artifact creature representing a stand, stall, booth, etc. that one might encounter at a festival.
- This cycle supports both the flavor of the setting and the artifacts matter theme.
- Common Suit Up Semi-Cycle
- While Suit Up is focused in red and blue, every color gets at least one card with that suits up, causes a creature to suit up, or produces one of the equipment tokens to showcase the mechanic.
- Common "Redwall" Cycle ("Paw" Cycle)
- Every color has a one-mana 1/1 that cares about creatures with base power 1 or less.
- This cycle stands as a flavor reference to Redwall (a fantasy series about talking mice, badgers, rats, etc.)
- Mechanically, this cycle interacts with many Suit Up creatures due to their low base stats, as well as the set-piece cycle.
- Uncommon Legend cycle
- To help give players something to associate with in a set without humans, FUR will feature a cycle of named characters at uncommon. They will be referred to in flavor text at common.
- These cards will feature build-around designs to give them a distinct sense of personality and increase the sense of customization/building the deck that you want to build.
- Uncommon Vibrant Cycle
- Each color gets a Vibrant spell at uncommon that costs less than three mana, with an option to pay an additional cost as a way to enable Vibrant.
- Rare Planeswalker Cycle
- Each color will get a monocolor planeswalker at rare. These cards will be designed as build-arounds to prevent play issues in Limited and Constructed.
- This cycle serves the same purpose as the Uncommon Legend cycle.
- This cycle could also go to Legendary if testing finds rare planeswalkers to be problematic.
- Rare Iconic Hybrid-Species Cycle
- Each color gets a rare creature with one of the five main tribes plus its color's Iconic (i.e. Fox Angel, Lizard Dragon, etc.)
- Rare Mythical Folk Cycle
- Common and uncommon have only real animals as creature types.
- At rare, each color can have a mythical/fantasy creature (Griffin Folk, Dragon Folk, Unicorn Folk, etc)
- Mythological creatures that are already anthropomorphic in nature should be excluded to avoid confusion (e.g. Naga are off the table because they're indistinguishable from Snake Folk)
- Mythic Rare Tricolor Megacycle
- Like Ikoria, FUR is not a tricolor set, but it does have a tricolor theme. To accentuate this, 10 mythic slots will be dedicated to tricolor spells of every shard and wedge.
Draft Themes
- White/Blue: Voltron Flyers
- Use equipment to buff evasive creatures
- Use blink/bounce to reuse enters-the-battlefield effects
- Blue/Black: Artifact Control
- Use blue relicfall and black artifact retrieval to exploit artifact synergies
- Black/Red: Artifact Sacrifice
- Use red sacrifice outlets and black artifact retrieval to grind out value
- Red/Green: Stompy
- Use efficient creatures to overpower opponents early
- May receive a "power 4 or greater" subtheme to synergize with equipment.
- Green/White: Vibrant Aggro
- Casting spells with three or more colors matters
- Use Vibrant synergies to go wide and overrun opponents
- White/Black: Vibrant Midrange
- Grind out incremental advantage by consistently triggering Vibrant effects
- Blue/Red: Suit Up Tempo
- Use efficient creatures and temp spells to go over and around defenses
- Load equipment onto evasive creatures
- Black/Green: 5C Ramp
- Use black removal and treasures with green ramp and bulky creatures
- Splash high-cost cards of every color
- Red/White: Equipment Aggro
- Use cheap creatures paired with removal to push damage through
- White has equipment-matters effects to support this theme
- Green/Blue:
- Use blue spells to stall and recur large green creatures with powerful vibrant ETB effects
Top-Down designs
Each of the five colors has a take on each of the five main tribes (Wolf, fox, dog, cat, reptile). The individual cards can be changed, but each of these tribes/tropes needs to appear in each color.
Other top-down commons:
Extra Content
FUR adds "Folk" to the lexicon of creature types. Folk is equivalent to Citizen as a "class" creature type that appears on otherwise class-less creatures. The "[Animal] Folk" naming convention is standard in many fantasy properties to refer to anthropomorphic characters, so FUR codifies it for resonance. This can also help distinguish anthropomorphic creatures from their feral counterparts on other worlds.
Suit Up incentivizes players to build high-power creatures. To give them a reason to pick Pelt tokens, Red suit-up creatures tend towards low toughness, and U/X wants a toughness-matters subtheme (especially in U/B).
Due to constraints on token space, FUR will have fewer creature tokens than the average set. Currently the card file has 1/1 white Rabbit Folk creature tokens. Green will have 2/2 Bear Folk tokens, and blue can have a small flying token if need be.
FUR is more lighthearted than most sets. The flavor of removal, damage, and other "violent" effects should be massaged into more appropriate forms for the tone and setting.
Conclusion
Festival of Urbestia is about being yourself and celebrating who you are with others who are doing the same. In the coming months, I hope to bring that Vision to life and create something worth celebrating. Thank you to all of you who are on this journey with me, whether you're new to Urbestia or you've been here from the start.
I hope this has made clear what the set is going to be; If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments, in the Contact Us widget below, or over on Reddit at r/TwistedSpoonStudio. If you're interested in playtesting, you can use those same channels or message me directly on reddit at u/DefyKnowing.
This is the end of Vision Design. We're going to take a break from designing for a month or so, instead turning to the creative side and working at the worldbuilding.
Comments
Post a Comment