GDS Reflections: How Custom Magic Cards Helped Me Publish a Book

By Scott Wilson

Hey there, I'm Scott Wilson from the top four of last year's Great Designer Search 3. You might remember my lukewarm Samurai cards, lukewarm Ancestry mechanic, and lukewarm Innistrad designs.

But hey, at least I'll always have Circus Peanuts.

Lenses for Friends: Making Mechanics Interesting

Last time in Lenses for Friends, we introduced the lenses of gameplay and experience. Today, we're introducing the lens of interest, and sharing a story about helping a friend with it. I've seen more designers struggle with this lens than any other.

Also: check out Episodes 59 and 60 of the Beacon of Creation custom Magic design podcast, to see these lenses used in action. I made a guest appearance helping Bradley Rose, Adam Victor Klesh, and Juliet Louis with their community set, Castmire!

Lenses for Friends: Making Mechanics Play Well and Tell Stories

As some may know, I recently had the pleasure of being a guest on the Beacon of Creation custom Magic design podcast, discussing their community designed set Castmire with Bradley Rose and Adam Victor Klesh. On that podcast, I mentioned something I called "mechanical lenses", which I use to evaluate the mechanics of game designs, especially for custom Magic design. Today, I'd like to begin a series where I formally introduce these mechanical lenses, by telling some stories about how I've used them to help fellow designers with their design troubles. In this part, we'll introduce two lenses which most designers think they're very familiar with already...

Weekend Design Challenge 021519 - Out-of-Guild Ravnica Keywords II

Hey Artisans. Click through to see the requirements for this weekend's design challenge, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, so once you've got your great idea down, give some thoughtful critique to some of your peers. Revise your submission any number of times, and, time permitting, I'll review the most recent submission from each designer.

CCDD 021419 - Some More More Interesting Slivers (Part 2)

Yesterday I showed off some more off-beat sliver designs for white, blue and black. Today I'll cover red and green, and maybe talk about some more color interactions.

For those looking for Valentines Day content, rest assured that Slivers are very near and dear to my heart.

CCDD 021319 - Some More Interesting Slivers (Part 1)

Last week I gave myself the challenge of making a cycle of slivers that incorporated the five clan mechanics from Khans of Tarkir into their designs. I had fairly strict design parameters for myself - the mechanics had to be the Khans ones, not the Fate Reforged or Dragons of Tarkir ones. I wanted to get the execution as clean as I could, and not gunk up the individual slivers with additional rules beyond the core of the clan mechanic. Unfortunately, as Nich Grayson rightfully pointed out, this resulted in some relatively unexciting Sliver designs.

The 8 Kinds of Fun

Understanding our audience is one of the holiest grails of game design. Mark Rosewater's psychographics are famous in this community, but he's not the only one thinking about this. A couple years ago, BGG users will remember Quantic Foundry's motivation profile going around. There's the Bartle taxonomy of players types. And I recently encountered another older analysis called The 8 Kinds of Fun.

Here's the oldest post I've found about it, the firstest, and the bestest.