Welcome to Goblin Lore! In the spirit of the namesake card, each column of Goblin Lore will focus on a particular design question, and offer four (approximately) possible answers to address that question. Unlike the card, you get to choose which ideas to keep and which to discard! The recent Great Designer Search 2 directed competitors to write several essays on Magic design, one of which was, “Choose a mechanic to move from its current color to a new one.” A number of the contestants, including finalist Shawn Main, suggested that “looting” be moved from Blue, a color with many supporting mechanics, to Red, a color with relatively few. Looting, which originated with Antiquities' Jalum Tome, moved into Blue with Weatherlight’s Merfolk Traders, and is now present on many Blue cards including the iconic Merfolk Looter, is the act of drawing a card and then discarding one. Unlike other Blue card draw abilities, looting does not provide card advantage, but the ability to filter through unwanted cards does improve card quality. Magic R&D has responded that they are indeed considering the shift from Blue to Red. The question, then, is how should looting function in Red? Here are four possible approaches.
Cool Card Design of the Day
Time travel is a dangerous business. There I was, cruising through the streets of Walla Walla circa 1993 in my DeLorean, when some guy walked into the road right in front of me. Okay, not just some guy. A math professor from Whitman College. Richard Garfield. I tried to swerve, but he just came out of nowhere, you know?
One of the concepts that came up a lot while I was designing a (mock) Magic set during the Great Designer Search 2 was "parasitism." The designers working on the project were very worried about parasitic mechanics, but there was some disagreement about what parasitism actually is.
2/21/2011 - Every day, I design a new card and discuss it briefly. Sometimes I will examine new possibilities for colors or mechanics, sometimes I'll re-examine existing executions and sometimes I'll just design something I think is neat.What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.I've been designing a dungeon crawler board game for a few months now. If you're not familiar, this genre was popularized by HeroQuest and is essentially a tactical RPG without the roleplaying. It comes down to exploring a dungeon, fighting monsters, finding treasure and leveling up. This particular crawler was prompted by one of the latest to hit the market: Castle Ravenloft. I say "prompted" rather than "inspired" because playing Castle Ravenloft pushed to me to make this game, but most of the ideas that form its core existed before Wizards started developing Fourth Edition D&D, much less Castle Ravenloft. I had forgotten that was the case, but while I was dredging years of old Magic card ideas for the Great Designer Search 2, I also stumbled upon board game ideas and found the core concepts of this new dungeon crawler spread amongst them. I'll write about stolen / simultaneous ideas another day.What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.What follows is a CCDD that was created before the feature transitioned from the Wizards Wiki to Goblin Artisans. It has been formatted to fit your screen.
