Tesla: Value of Expectation

This article is WotC safe.

Last week, we introduced everyone to the plane of Tesla, Kaladesh, a new plane which debuted in Magic Origins. We also discussed the topic of expectations and the roles they fill in designing a set, and began brainstorming what Kaladesh brings to mind.

This week, we're going to discuss what these expectations of Kaladesh can do for us, and how we can use them to our advantage to give us a guideline for the set's structure and mechanics.

The big things you all expected from Kaladesh in a set were the following: filigreed artifice, secret natural mages, free-spirited outlaw artificers, and an oppressive consul conspiracy. These five expectations of Kaladesh are valuable because they line up with the expectations outlined in Pick and Choose. This is good! Before, we just had vague expectations, big nebulous 'themes' with lots of possibilities and contenders, but no real guidelines beyond that. Now, with Kaladesh in the picture, we have a real 'metric' to measure them by, in terms of how well the mechanics match up to the expectations of Kaladesh - so let's do that! Let's go over the themes, and what Kaladesh offers in terms of a metric for each one.

Art by Daniel Ljunggren

The first expectation of Kaladesh I'd like to discuss is of filigreed artifice, such as thopters and automatons, airships, and the factories and metropolises of Kaladesh. In all of these, we see the theme of Progress well represented. When people think 'progress' in steampunk, they think, factories robots, flying machines, and so on - and Kaladesh delivers on every one of those expectations. What Kaladesh does that is incredibly helpful is give us an aesthetic for progress. Progress is embodied by filigreed constructs, which are beautiful and omnipresent. This not only means we want our progress mechanic to interact with thopters or constructs in some way - it also means we want our progress mechanic to be vital to Kaladesh's identity and appeal, to feel beautiful and omnipresent. (Again, reaffirming how important Progress is to Tesla.) Much like how Awaken is a lynchpin for many synergies in Battle for Zendikar, perhaps we can capture the importance of progress to Kaladesh by playing the progress mechanic in a similar role.  We've discussed progress a lot, so I think the goal now is to use this rubric to identify the progress mechanic that best fits our goals.

Art by Victor Adame

Next, we have another vital idea - free-spirited outlaw artificers, which are the exemplars of the Innovation theme.  The Industrial Revolution was driven towards progress, but it was driven by innovation. Creativity, ingenuity, and discovery are what drive science and improvement, and so it's important that we capture these themes with Tesla.

Kaladash adds an interesting twist to innovation, however: on Kaladesh, progress and innovation sometimes stand opposed to each other. The consul drives Kaladesh towards progress, but Kaladesh is truly driven by its inventors. Kaladesh's approach is very nice, and portrays a dramatic relationship between progress and innovation. This means we want our innovation mechanic to feel radical and heterodox (AHEM CONTRAPTIONS AHEM), to feature the free-spirited artificers of Kaladesh, and to perhaps interact with progress in a profound manner. This isn't trivial, though - we've talked about innovation, the feeling of 'building something new', many times, but always faced some difficulties in trying to make mechanics that capture the feeling of 'combining' or 'creating'. (See: Integrated Circuit, Momma Didn't Raise No Rube, File Sharing, 5 Ways to Position the Mecha Mechanic, etc...)

Art by Daarken

Lastly, we have the expectations of secret natural mages and an oppressive consul conspiracy. These are two expectations that fit with the expectation of Exploitation and Dominance. Kaladesh is a world build around this theme, as Fire Logic shows, so naturally it gives us a rich vein of material in this theme for us to mine. We'll probably want a mechanic for each side of this conflict - one for the secret natural mages, one for the oppressive consuls and their machinations. (The free-spirited artificers are also being oppressed, but their conflict is represented elsewhere.) For the secret mages, we know they can achieve magic without artifice, which is a great hint - a mechanic that doesn't interact with artifacts and feels very 'magical'. For the consuls, their mechanic should represent their methods - so we want a mechanic that represents surveillance, political control, or conspiracy. Lastly, the 'resource exploitation' theme can be represented with an 'aether canister' mechanic, giving us a much-needed singular 'resource' we'll be theming our mechanic around, rather than the nebulous concept of resources which we were previously attempting.

Art by Johann Bodin

Beyond these three "big" themes, Tesla already had a lot of expectations just from being 'the steampunk set'. The ones you guys noted last week that felt particularly important were ideas like vehicles and robots, no colored artifacts, artifacts as tools and manmade creations, a powerful energy source with a price, and so on. Again, many of these are represented well in Kaladesh, which you would expect - Wizards of the Coast works hard to deliver on player expectations for sets. It's how Kaladesh represented these expectations, and the additional things they brought to the table, that we can use to our advantage.

Where once we had broad strokes, now we have specific targets. Kaladesh gives us a sort of checklist, a rubric to measure up our mechanics and proposals by. For example, instead of just asking 'does this mechanic feel like dominance?', we can now ask, 'does this mechanic feel like the consul's dominance?' This is an important part of the design process - we need to progressively narrow our sights if we're hoping to eventually hit a bulls-eye.

This week's discussion topic is simple - I'd like for you all to propose 'candidate mechanics' to represent Tesla's themes, while keeping Kaladesh's expectations in mind. In other words, suggest keywords or ability words which mechanically fit Tesla's themes, listed below in bold, and which simultaneously are a flavor-fit for the expectations of Kaladesh, listed underneath their relevant theme.

These candidate mechanics can be ones we've talked about in the past, or brand new - whatever you think fits Tesla and Kaladesh's expectations best! They don't need to be fully fleshed out - they can be something along the lines of "I think representing aether canisters as tokens that produce mana would be great."

• Progress
• Filigreed beauty
• Thopters
• Automatons
• Vehicles (such as trains, airships, steamboats, mecha, etc.)
• Factories
• Metropolises
• Innovation
• Free-spirited outlaw artificers
• Mad scientists
• Voice of reason, ignored
• Exploitation and Dominance
• Oppressive consul conspiracy
• Secret natural mages
• Aether canisters with a terrible price
• Ruling class with a lot of power
• Exploited underclass who live in polluted slums

We'll be discussing the candidate mechanics you guys propose in more detail next week. The goal in the future is to pare down the list of mechanics generated to a reasonable number. Then, after we've selected a good starting 'palette' of mechanics to 'paint' our set with, we can move onto designing commons to begin playtesting in earnest!

I can't wait to see what you all suggest. Until next time, have a great week!