TwistedSpoon Studio

    Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! This week in our series on Festival of Urbestia, the custom Magic set about a world of beast folk, our story-boarding is coming to an end. Or is this only the beginning? The Circle of Life     In the first article of this creative push, we hinted at a darker secret behind the world of Urbestia-- a mystery for our heroes to unravel. That secret (surprise!) is a fourth Eldrazi titan. But why is there a four-dimensional horror from beyond the stars at our cheery little Festival?     I have a fan-theory about the Eldrazi. Back in Battle for Zendikar block, Ugin warned the Gatewatch against destroying the titans Ulamog and Kozilek. His reasoning was that they are colorless just like he is-- well, okay, maybe not. He was afraid that their deaths would somehow disrupt whatever meta-planar ecosystem begot the titans in the first place.     So my theory is this-- the Eldrazi don't just eat  planes, they recycle...

      Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! Festival of Urbestia, the custom Magic set about a world of beast folk, is currently  going through playtesting .  While that's going on, we're continuing our series with a creative push.       Last week we covered the overarching plot-- something fell to Urbestia long ago that accelerated the evolution of beasts; a Festival is held every year to celebrate that event, and the Story Circle is here to learn more. There's mystery, ancient secrets, and an eldritch force lurking just beyond sight.     But today, we're looking at the small stuff. We need something grounded and down-to-earth for players to identify with and to set the tone, so that the big plot twist hits that much harder. To that end, the set has a cycle of uncommon Legendary creatures that act as B-plot protagonists.  Meet the Band     Originally, I wanted these characters to represent the Big Five tribes, but ran...

      Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! Last week in our series on Festival of Urbestia , the custom Magic set dedicated to anthropomorphic beast folk, we finished Vision Design with the Vision Handoff document . While we take the time to playtest the set , we're going to step back from design and put on our Creative hat. A while back, I promised that we would get into the story once we hit the Integration stage. Well, here we are!     Magic's stories tend to revolve around planeswalkers. And if we're talking about planeswalkers in a world of beast folk, then of course it's got to be the lion man himself: Ajani Goldmane.     Of course, he can't be the only one up on the stage, right? Thankfully, he's got some friends who might be willing to come with him to the Festival-- The Story Circle!  Okay, maybe Tamiyo's book club hasn't gotten as much press as certain other planeswalker team-ups, but that makes this casual group of story-swapping travel...

      Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studios! Last week in our series on Festival of Urbestia, the custom Magic set celebrating the cultures of beast folk , we released the new card file and covered some card-by-card designs. This week, we're going to focus on the creative side by looking at the tribes and their connections to one another. By the end of this, we'll have a map of the setting!     Festival of Urbestia takes place on the eponymous plane of Urbestia, a world of humanoid animals that are as diverse and colorful as nature itself. We have ten major tribes: Wolf, Fox, Dog, Cat, Scale, Bird, Bear, Elk, Sea, and Wall (small animal) Folk. We established in the last  worldbuilding article  that the story takes place on an island split into five territories (the tundra, desert, forest, grassland, and coast) surrounding a central city. Let's talk about each biome, the folk that live there, and their relationships with each other and the other tribes. ...

     Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! We've taken a few weeks off of worldbuilding in our series about FUR, the custom Magic set about the Festival of Beast Folk , but that ends today. Last week, we created a set skeleton to guide our mechanical path; today, we'll be doing something similar with the Creative. We're going to create the proper nouns-- people, places, and things-- that will appear in card names and flavor text.      A little bit of Creative goes a long way.  If you see a card named "Red Dragon," you get that it's big and it's red and it flies. But if you see a card named " Shivan  Dragon," suddenly it feels more real-- it's from a place called Shiv, which apparently has dragons. It's rooted in the world. If you see a card that returns a land card from your graveyard to your hand, you think "Hm, situational utility. Whatever." But if that card's flavor text is a poem comparing the people of Zendikar rising t...

 Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! Last week, we looked at the first set skeleton and card file for FUR, the furry custom Magic set . This week, we're taking another pass at the creative elements.     The last time we discussed FUR's world, we created a world based on the different cultures of Earth circa 600 AD, with some fantasy flair.   If 600 AD seems arbitrary, it might pay off to look at the last worldbuilding article here. Long story short, that century overlooks the Tang Dynasty of China, the early Medieval period of Europe, the end of the Greek classical age, and the fall of Rome as an empire, among other things. It was a time when the cultures represented in the set could feasibly have interacted (though not at the scale that they will in FUR).  The tribes that we have so far are the Wolf, Fox, Dog, Cat, and Scale folk; they were the Big Five, because they're the most popular fursona species (according to  FurScience.com ). This time, we'...

      For the last two weeks, we've been brainstorming mechanics for the custom Magic set FUR, set in a world of anthropomorphic beast folk. This week, we're going to take our first look at what that world looks like.  In exploratory design, we decided that art, community, and crafting matter. We also established that this world is full of diverse beast folk, with five main tribes-- Wolf, Dog, Fox, Cat, and Scale Folk-- taking center stage. Where do diverse groups of people celebrate community and culture?     A convention!     Or, in more fantasy terms, a festival! Leaning into the source material, the set could take pace in a central where folk of all kinds live together in harmony, surrounded by the territories of the five tribes. Once a year, they gather in the City to celebrate their individual and collective cultures. That gives us the "where" and "when;" the details of "who" will come later in the process.     Let's take a look a...