Tesla: Our Refinery

Hello again, everybody! Last time, we began the task of finding the candidate mechanics for Tesla, using the expectations of Kaladesh to narrow our search. Now our goal is to both refine these mechanics further, and begin generating commons for the mechanics that we can use for playtesting, which will be coming soon!

Without further ado, here's our list of candidate mechanics:

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.

Tesla: The Dish on Kaladesh

Lately, we've been focusing on designing mechanics and finding themes for Tesla, building up a toolbox and refining our vision for when we move from exploratory design to individual card design. This week, I'd like to zoom out from mechanics, and look at an even bigger picture than Tesla's themes - this week, let's look at the setting of Tesla.

Tesla Design Challenge 072715 — Player Progress

Last week, we discussed possible mechanics for Tesla that represented the player's growth, giving you upgrades and improved abilities as the game goes on. While the idea of 'player progress' greatly excited many of you, the mechanics presented were still quite rough. Though plenty of critique was offered, not a lot of alternatives were presented because of this. This week, let's change that! Your challenge is to design a mechanic that represents the player's progress.

Tesla: Self-Improvement

Hello again, everyone! As we've been looking at the mechanics that Tesla can use to represent its themes of progress, one big idea keeps coming up: players themselves progressing and improving over the course of the game. This week, let's reflect on some 'self-improvement' mechanics you all have designed, try to improve them further, and perhaps design some more mechanics capturing the same themes as well.

Tesla: Go Interaction

Hello again, everyone! Last week, I gave everyone the challenge to design progress mechanics that encouraged or facilitated interaction - but, because I like to be tricky, I didn't take any efforts to define exactly what counts as interaction. In your designs, many of you explored different forms of interaction in gameplay - and in the comments, there was some great discussion about what is interaction, and what isn't.

This week, I'm going to try to go over a few of the more frequent forms of interaction, using mechanics submitted or brought up last week as examples.

Tesla: Design Challenge 062915 — Interactive Progress

In last week's discussion about the kinds of progress and anticipation that we might use in Tesla, we talked about certainty. If progress is too certain, Jenesis notes, then Tesla games devolve into "solitaire resource-accumulation". If progress is too uncertain, Lee Owens observes, and "when it works, you aren't happy that your machine finally worked. You are frustrated that it took so long to do something it was built to do". The problem is finding a balance between these.

Jenesis did note one solution: interaction. If your opponent has nothing hidden, outcomes are certain - but if they have an unknown, hidden variable, all your results become uncertain. This changing nature of interaction allows us to find a balance in a fun and natural way. This week, let's explore this further. Your challenge is to design something that uses progress in an interactive way. 

Tesla: Forms the Future Takes

[Editor's Note: Today we're excited to welcome Inanimate to the Goblin Artisans team! We've appreciated his insightful observations in the discussions on the site and look forward to seeing more as he takes the reigns as Lead Designer for Tesla.]

I'm honored to serve as Lead Designer of Tesla after Jules, and I wish him well in his new position! I hope to continue Jules' work on Tesla with the same passion and dedication.

Lately, Tesla has been exploring two themes: anticipation and progress. As we have designed cards to capture these two themes, it's become clear that there are many forms the future takes: different kinds of anticipation and progress, each a different experience... and it has been noted that perhaps Tesla would be best if it focused on a few kinds, rather than using them all. The big questions, then, are these two: what kinds of anticipation and progress are there? And which kinds do we want to focus on in Tesla?

Tesla Horizons: Look to the Future

In all of our time doing exploratory design for Tesla we've left one major area unaddressed. That's my fault because it's a high level consideration that I should have drawn focus to, but simply didn't notice. Thankfully, Inanimate caught my mistake.

Exploring mechanical space to hit our progress theme we've considered a truly staggering number of ways for things to improve, but never mentioned the other half of the emotional response we ought to be producing. Progress isn't just about getting better, it's about the apparently limitless potential that improvement represents. How can we make games of Magic feel like being on the cusp of something great? How can we evoke anticipation?

Tesla Horizons: What's it Gonna' Cost?

As we've continued exploratory design for Tesla we've been looking at each of our options for mechanically representing Tesla's progress theme (as discussed here). Each piece examines what a few of the possible implementations might do to the surrounding set.

The first post looked at cards that improved themselves, tracking progress with the battlefield, and explicitly counting progress counters.

The second post investigated using lands and mana to track how far you've progressed.

The third post considered how we could track progress using the graveyard rather than the battlefield.

Finally, today we'll take a look at the last area we identified for tracking progress: the cost of our cards.

Tesla Horizons: Graveyard Shift

As we continue exploratory design for Tesla we'll be looking at all of our options for mechanically representing Tesla's progress theme (as discussed here). Each piece will examine what a few of the possible implementations might do to the surrounding set.

The first post looked at cards that improved themselves, tracking progress with the battlefield, and explicitly counting progress counters.

The second post investigated using lands and mana to track how far you've progressed.

Today we'll see if we can track progress using the graveyard rather than the battlefield.

Tesla Horizons: Landing Gear

As we continue exploratory design for Tesla we'll be looking at all of our options for mechanically representing Tesla's progress theme (as discussed here). Each piece will examine what a few of the possible implementations might do to the surrounding set.

The first post looked at cards that improved themselves, tracking progress with the battlefield, and explicitly counting progress counters.

Tesla Horizons: Self-Contained, Board Tracking, and Explicit Progress Mechanics

We're moving forward with exploratory design for Tesla, and after looking at different ways to mechanically represent our progress theme last week it's time to examine what some of those implementations might do to the surrounding set.

We looked at too many options to examine in just one post, so for this week we're just going to look at the first couple.

Tesla: Version 2.0

We're intending to give Tesla a theme of progress, and that focus is tied up with the trappings of Steam Punk and artifacts. Thus far we've come up with a multitude of ways to convey progress, and a number more to interact with artifacts, but we haven't addressed their main overlap.

How can we weave in the concept of technological advance?

Tesla: Pick and Choose

Over the past few weeks we’ve done a lot of work to get Tesla rolling. We’ve run a playtest with a bunch of mechanics we designed and in addition to getting the testers’ thoughts we’ve discussed which we liked, and how they could be improved. Now it’s time to decide what we’re going to keep working with and what we should replace. These mechanics will almost undoubtedly change over the course of design (if they make it through at all), so rather than asking you to vote on a particular implementation, I’m asking you to choose space you’d like to continue to play around with. Below are a few examples of how to use that space as well as my own thoughts on how good a fit it is for Tesla. You can vote for any number of mechanics from zero to all of them, everything with at least 33% of the vote will stay in the file in some form, the rest will sit out for now.

Tesla: Put it to the Test

For those of you who might have missed it, throughout the last week we playtested a variety of mechanical elements exploring the theme of progress for Tesla. First of all I want to offer up a big thank you to everyone who participated in the playtesting or contributed designs for it. I compiled as many of those as I could and filled out the rest of the commons to play with. Things went really well and we learned a lot, as can you by reading through the playtesters’ observations.

Tesla: Progress Playtest #1 Observations

We're in the midst of testing progress mechanics for Tesla. This page will serve as a place for playtesters to document their thoughts, experiences, and observations about the mechanics we're testing and the environment in general.

If you'd like to help out, but didn't sign up, there's still time. Just shoot me an email (julesdrobinsATgmailDOTcom) and I'll get you everything you need to join. Find times to playtest via Doodle.

Tesla: Common Cause

Last week I announced that we would be preparing to playtest Tesla. There will be opportunities to play all next week, so if you’re interested make sure to fill in your availability here.

For the time being, let's figure out what we're testing with.

Tesla: Change of Pace

We’ve been discussing how to express progress and change for Tesla in general sense. I’m sure we could debate possible mechanics until the end of time, but at the end of the day that’s not enough. After all, Magic sets need to do more than look good; they need to play well. Thus we need to play with the cards. That leaves us with two things to take care of: scheduling a playtest and deciding on cards to play with.

Tesla: Work in Progress

First off I just wanted to give a big thanks to HavelockV and Jay Treat. Last week life got in the way of me delivering a post, but they both stepped up to the plate with excellent posts to keep Tesla humming along. And now we can get back to laying the groundwork.