What Do I Want Of A Toy Maker
Let’s not mince words. When we gather around the table with our friends to play D&D (or any other tabletop RPG), we’re playing with toys. 99% of those toys might be in our imagination — but that isn’t what this post is about.
Wizards of the Coast makes toys. So does Paizo and the rest — but I’m going to focus on D&D and Wizards of the Coast, because they’re the reason most of the rest of them are around — there would be no Pathfinder without 3e D&D.
I’ve read several posts over the years about the money and the industry and why money causes one trend or another — the only reason why I care about any of this at all is if it’s true, and it means that the product that I WANT from WotC stops.
Let’s make this a Dune thing. “The loots must flow.”
I liked 3e D&D. I was upset when it stopped but in retrospect, I’m glad for 4e because my game got better. Not 4e — no, my game got better. I tried new stuff, learned new tricks, and became a better player for my troubles. Good deal.
So I get the need for new things. New product, whatever. It keeps you from getting jaded on whatever you’re playing, and helps you develop as a player.
But it seems like there’s a difference between good product and bad product. What’s good? What’s bad? Well — I imagine that shaking things up with a new edition of the game is a capital-B Bad idea. One that WotC is about to make again. But let’s look at another product of theirs… Magic: the Gathering.
Magic puts out new product all the time — every four months. They have video games and books and other stuff too, but that’s gotta be a distant second place.
Magic has also seen several major rules changes over the years, many of which served as significant milestones in the game’s development, and also as base-breakers. When I’m alone, I sometimes weep over the loss of Mana Burn.
What do they do differently? I’m sure Magic makes a lot more money than D&D, and I don’t know that it has so much to do with the product — CCG or RPG.
With Magic, you know there’s pretty much going to be a new “core set” once a year, plus two or three expansions developing a new plane — I realize this is a fairly recent development in the world of Magic, but it represents what they’ve been doing for the last six years: five editions and fifteen expansions.
So how do you get the slow drip of loots from D&D like you get from Magic?
We all want more of what we already like, but I think people like to like new things too. Especially if it makes them like something they already like more.
I want new toys but I don’t want to throw away my old ones. I don’t want to play with the old toys forever, that’s no way to make new friends.
So what has to change? What do YOU want from a toy maker?
I quite playing magic twice before I quit playing forever after college. The first time I quite was after Mirage, and I came back for Urza. Second time I quit, it was right after Masks came out, and I have no idea what set had just come out when I played again briefly at the behest of some college friends (it was one of the ninja sets, i think). Both times I came back, it played radically different. There were a few annoyances at things like “Shadows” (“What the hell do you mean you have a monster that nothing I own can block?!”), but it was not as bad as it would have been if I picked it up again after Urza’s Destiny instead of the first set in that block, since by that point, they’d gotten rid of summon in favor of “creature” and interrupts were gone, as were LIFO rules. When I started playing in college again, the game was nuts. The cards looked like they were from a different game entirely, mana symbols were different, there were multiple types of instants, creatures could have multiple types, and ridiculous power-gaming was the norm. Every card did something absolutely insane. I can’t even imagine what it would be like playing Magic nowadays, since some 20+ sets have come out since the last time I played.
Though we live in a splatbook world, I think that the best source of new content and new ideas in an RPG comes from a steady stream of modules, wherein new monsters, new spells, new equipment, and new classes can be introduced situationally, rather than in a vacuum.
I’ve quit a few times myself. The last few years I’ve only played in the prerelease tournaments with my brother-in-law, and I think I’ll be quitting for good soon. I just don’t enjoy playing that much anymore.
I started playing Ice Age and collected a lot of the Chronicles reprint set that came out — I loved that set something fierce. Homelands and Alliances sucked something awful, and I didn’t like the Mirage block much so I didn’t buy much against until Tempest (that “Shadow” block).
I skipped most of Urza’s, and all of the Masks, Invasion, and Odyssey blocks before coming back briefly for Onslaught and Legions. I quit again and didn’t collect anything until I found an online retailer that sold huge lots of used cards — that was around the release of Zendikar but I didn’t collect much of that. Most of the used cards were from before… for obvious reasons. ;)
I started playing prerelease tournaments with my brother-in-law at the release of M12 and Innistrad — both of which I loved — but my interest has been cooling since then. I just didn’t care much for the last two blocks and the midnight release is getting too hard to do.
Also, I lose a lot and I’m not a very good sport. I prefer cooperative games, and games that reward planning and communication because I’m better at working with people than playing against them. ;)
I loved Alliances, but more thematically than for being a great set. Same with Fallen Empires; Fallen Empires would’ve been a great set if it had been a game that existed in a vacuum; you’d’ve gotten some great slow-burn chess-like matches, but of course it didn’t exist in a vacuum…
I had a hard time getting into Mirage’s afrabian setting, which was, interestingly enough, almost completely dropped by the time the last set in the block rolled around. I enjoyed the Urza block, if only because it was a throwback, storywise, to about the time I first started playing.
So many of the decks became about pulling off crazy insta-win combos, though, whereas I was more the type to enjoy an earnest slog-fest. I also remember that playing mono-blue was suicide in group games, even if you weren’t playing solid counter, because so many people were annoyed by denial decks that everyone always wanted the guy running mono blue out of the game as soon as possible, even if he was playing small creatures-draw.
When I started, I liked running Red-Green-White, and rotated between different combinations of the three. After Homelands, I ran Blue-Black-Red and got hooked on Blue-Red for a while.
After Tempest, I alternated between Green-Black and Green-Blue, and occasionally played Blue-Black, though not with much success. Through Onslaught/Legions, I played mono-Green.
One of the reasons I kept quitting the game was because I took losses pretty hard. I still kind of do — but I can usually “insulate” myself from the loss by cracking jokes. If I can’t get a laugh out of my opponent — even if I win — I have a hard time keeping my cool.
Nowadays, when I play — it’s mostly self-destructive mono-Black (or mixed with whatever I get in Sealed) with a focus on Evasion and Creature Removal. *shrug* At this point, I don’t know if I can do anything to be less of a “bad sport.” I just don’t like losing. :/
I liked running mono-black, black/white (heavy life sacrifice, necropotence, with some life-gaining to keep myself afloat), and blue-black. Every now and then, I’d run some burn with land-destruction, but everyone hated playing against that deck, so i didn’t use it much. One of my favorite decks was extremely situational, but made for some great wins: i had a creature-free blue deck with over a dozen control-magic spells, a few bounces and a few counters. It’s most rewarding victory was against a mono-green elf deck; the other guy couldn’t believe that I’d use a 4 mana Control Magic on his 1/1 mana-elf. Until I had a Control Magic spell to lay on every subsequent turn for every subsequent elf he tried to play. Any time he killed one of his elves, I’d just bounce back my control enchantment to drop on whatever elf he tried to play next.
From a game design perspective, I HATE Magic. I hate, hate, hate the “sadorandom” probability of mana screw. I hate, hate, HATE basic lands. While I think the game has gotten generally better the last few years, I’ve attempted several “landless” hacks because I hate them so much.
It’s interesting that from what I’ve gathered, Magic is virtually the only CCG that has a land mechanic. I think most other games have “free” cards and then cards that can only be played when certain free cards are already in play.
Though I didn’t understand the Decipher Star Wars CCG when I originally collected it, I think it’s a better game across the board.
You can pretty much fill your deck with cool cards or weird cards or funny cards, and be able to play your deck almost in spite of your own luck or whatever your opponent happens to be playing.
It’s far superior for emergent narrative, given the varied mechanics and card interactions. It almost doesn’t matter who wins in the because the game is practically designed to be awesome no matter what.
Though it hardly seems so — I think one of the game’s greatest weaknesses is the Light/Dark side split. You had to carry around two decks if you wanted to play — but this may have been a “genius moment,” since you had two decks on hand at all times for play…
Lately, I’ve found myself more drawn to fixed deck games rather than CCGs. Gloom and the Back to the Future card game are both a lot of fun. Also, Bohnanza (probably not what you think; it’s a bad German pun in a game full of bad German puns) is pretty great.
I’m playing board games and D&D mostly. While I work up to my next Arkham Horror overhaul, I’m playing pickup games of Elder Sign and teaching everyone I know how to play Lords of Waterdeep.
Oddly enough, the competition in LoW doesn’t bother me in the slightest bit. Maybe because strategy is spread across so many actions, it’s hard for any single move to be a game-changer.
I really appreciate the pacing — most sessions have been one-on-one thus far, but in my first five-player free-for-all, I predicted my loss about three rounds before the end. (Huzzah, intrigue!)
One of the boardgames I’ve been digging lately is Castles of Burgundy. It’s one of those crazy complex as hell eurogames that focuses on province-building, but it’s strangely addictive.
Oh hey, you ran Necropotence — maybe you can explain how it works to me. I swear, I read the card over and over again and it appears virtually unplayable to me. Is there some kind of interaction between the face-up and face-down cards in exile that I’m missing?
You skip your draw step. That’s scary in and of itself, but whatever right? So the turn you play Necropotence (for BBB), you can pay a bunch of life to exile cards which you then take into hand during the next end step, right?
In other words, you pay life to draw one or more cards at the end of your turn instead of the beginning. That would be a great way to accelerate your deck I suppose. And if your deck is full of instants, then you can even play them during your off-turn.
Instead of being limited to — let’s assume a 60-card deck — 60 cards before losing the game to drawing, you instead lose the game when you run out of life after drawing 20 cards. You counter this with life drain, plus your deck is accelerated from Necro.
I still feel like I’m missing something though — is there such a thing as playing Necro “too soon?” I mean, once you start paying life to draw cards, it seems like you’ve lit a short fuse on a game over.
Necropotence has its risks, for sure, which is why it doesn’t help to run it with either Drain Life or in tandem with some white life-gain. Essentially what you do is, instead of drawing cards during your draw phase, you pay life to draw lots of cards at the end of your turn. You get a huge strategic advantage, especially in the early mid-game. Ideally, you want to drop a Necropotence after you’ve emptied your hand. Then you’d Necro for 5 life to draw 5 cards at the end of the turn; next turn, you drop all the creatures you drew, then necro for another 5 to refill your hand. The next turn, you overrun your opponent with the creatures you just dropped and drop everything you drew.
So, yeah, there is such a thing as playing Necropotence too soon. I mean, the last thing you’d want to do is drop a swamp, cast Dark Ritual and play Necropotence on your first turn. It also doesn’t hurt if you’ve included some sort of option to trash it if it starts creating problems.
The only thing I didn’t really like about Necropotence was I couldn’t use it conjunction with Library of Leng, which i’d normally put in any and every deck I ran; it was a 1 mana artifact that removed your hand’s card limit and allowed you to choose cards to discard instead of at random if someone forced you to discard at random. It also has you skip your discard phase, which is, unfortunately, when you get to draw your Necro’ed cards.
The only real effect that setting the cards you Necro aside is that effects that allow you to draw cards or remove cards from the top (there were a lot of phyrexian artifacts and artifact creatures that involved viewing and/or removing the top card of your library for some weird effect) of your deck would not affect the cards you set aside from your Necropotence.
The short version is: Necropotence is a gamble that gives you 4 or 5 turns to get out more cheap creatures than your opponent can handle. OR if you’re running blue/black with sufficient alternate card drawing mechanisms, Necropotence allows you to refill your hand with instants and counterspells at the end of your turn if any given turn emptied your hand.
I mean it DOES help to run life-gain…
Lastly, I think that Necropotence may have allowed you to circumvent the downside of Enduring Renewal; creatures that died went back to your hand instead of your graveyard, but if you drew any new creatures, you had to remove them from the game; I don’t think you were technically “drawing” cards when you put the cards you Necroed into your had during your discard phase.
I swear, a few moments after reading the words “early mid-game” in your reply, I pictured a game of MtG in my mind’s eye as a sort of weird Chess board.
Instead of being in this perpetual state of flux like I usually imagine games of Magic, it was a semi-solid board game built of “probability.”
Good grief. I might need sleep. Or drugs.
In some ways, magic DOES have an ‘Opening Book’ of sorts, where the deck’s strategy is established in a typical fashion, over the course of 4 turns. Blue does nothing but keep land free, Red either establishes its creature game or races to do massive early burn damage, green establishes its mana generation, white establishes its creature game, black establishes its creature game or presses a card advantage with discard spells. The specifics and individual cards might be different, but the pattern of those opening turns is generally consistent. Mid-game would be once one player has made their opening plays to catalyze their deck’s strategy and have sufficient mana to proceed with that strategy going forward. Most decks can function fairly well with four lands, and by the time that later-game strategy cards with higher costs become relevant, there’s sufficient mana in place, so I’d put the mid-game at turn 5.
Also, one characteristic of the early mid-game of a “fast” deck is having next to no cards in your hand other than the one you just drew by turn 5.
1. play a land, play a creature (5cards in hand)
2. play a land, play another creature (or two) (3 or 4 cards in hand.
3. play a land, play 1 or two creatures/spells (1 to 3 cards in hand.
4. play a land, empty rest of hand.
Playing black, with a Necropotence on turn 4 means playing 2-4 cards per turn while a similar deck in the same situation would be playing 1 new card per turn and lack any contingencies should the situation change.