Ian: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Intermillennium Media Project. My name is Ian Porter. And I'm Matthew Porter. And I have taken over once again for a special episode of our wonderful project talking about media from the 20th and 21st centuries. Matthew: Yes, it's another Millennial Strikes Back. I make you watch so many movies and TV shows from when I was a kid. That you turn the tables on me once in a, once in a while. And this is, is one that I'm actually enjoying very much. Ian: Oh, good. Because this time I didn't make you watch a movie. I didn't make you watch a TV show. And most of the ones I've done, you've done before. But this is one of the, one of the pieces of media you hadn't gotten to interact with much. Matthew: Not really, not much. Ian: Because I made you play a game. Matthew: Yes. Ian: And this is a game I play a lot of myself. I enjoy, I'm a fan of. And it is a game that I think has interesting discussion points, and an interesting, interesting things to break down in our format. And that is Magic the Gathering. Ha ha! Matthew: I had literally played this maybe once or twice in the decades since it was released. Ian: Yeah, it's a little hard actually to get a clear idea as to when Magic came out. Like, I think the first released sets to the public market, Were in actually 93. Yeah, the game was in a limited release available in certain areas in 92 And you were understandably busy in 92 and 93. Matthew: Yeah, there was another important release in 92. That's when you came along. Oh yeah. Yeah, that will, wouldn't trade it for anything in the world, but it does eat into one's time for learning new card games and board games. Ian: Yeah, and I'm, I mean, I'm, I'm happy. But for me, it's also interesting because it means magic's kind of always existed. It's always been this pop culture nerd thing. And at the same time, though, I remember and have watched it grow and rise and become what it is now. Matthew: Yep. Ian: Right in line with my awareness of it. Early on, in like elementary school, there was this big deal of the fact that the chess instructor for the chess team started running Magic the Gathering tournaments after the chess season ended. And there were some teachers excited and some teachers mad. And that was a thing I remember, like, Oh, there's this thing called Magic the Gathering. And some people really like it and some don't. Matthew: It seems to me that early on, the people who really got into it were the people who were really into the math. And so I can see a high school chess advisor kind of being interested in this. Ian: Absolutely, because Magic the Gathering was made by Richard Garfield. Richard Garfield, Ph. D. now. Thank you. And it has, at its core, a strong mathematical structure that can then Wibble around and change, and this is not saying that it is a game that has Failed to have missteps or is always consistent Or even that it's a game that is immune to things like power creep Modern cards are way more complex Because they've got to fight with the memory and the power of old cards in that sense. Matthew: And that seems to be one of the issues around creating something as a collectible card game. You need to give people things to collect, and therefore you can't just Release a game, and then people play it for a hundred years. You're always needing to make things that are new and different, and to some extent that's done with the theming and the skins for, for lack of a better term. But to some extent it is done by making the cards more complex, and that makes the game more complex and changes the game overall. It's not like we released Monopoly and people are still playing Monopoly 80 years later. Ian: Exactly. So, as Magic grew, as the idea of just being powerful wizards with spells and such started to shift, more story was introduced. And it has been introduced in numerous ways over the course of Magic's life. There have been numerous books where here's a card of a character. We got a fantasy writer to write an entire novel of what the characters did and what their backstory is. And as that built up, it became grander and grander. And a lot of early stories in magic took place in this one place called Dominaria. And these powerful wizards who could go to other lands and bring back magic. But all the fighting happened here. And eventually, with the additions and the pushes from a variety of developers, including head of Magic Design now, Mark Rosewater who himself used to be like a Hollywood writer. Matthew: Yeah. Ian: Like, he wrote episodes of like, Roseanne, and worked on various other productions and such. Matthew: Hmm. Ian: So he's got that Hollywood influence. The idea of making these sets and these stories. Adventure out to places and grow got more and more prevalent. And the interesting thing is that magic as a tool, not for just gameplay, but as a tool of storytelling increased. And that's part of what I thought was interesting in us getting to talk about. We have discussed a whole lot of how media and pop culture interact. And we have discussed a lot of how different. Shows and movies tell their stories. Matthew: That's true. Talked a lot about about that in the context of Mad Max and your point about it is a series of movies that are stories about storytelling. Ian: Exactly, and that's part of what got me thinking of Magic the Gathering as a system has become more and more of a way to tell a story broken up. Matthew: Mm hmm. Ian: When we played some of the game, you got to see a variety of packs of different stories. Mm hmm. And I wanted to kind of discuss with you the mechanics that let them, let each of those things tell a story and kind of give an idea of the scope of Magic's story as we discuss that. Because I knew Magic's story was too big to actually show to you all at once. So I also wanted to use this as a chance to talk about the bits of it, because I want to be able to reference and pull on those and show them to you, but it's not like I can sit you down and show you this specific story very well. There are some excellent attempts at doing so, I will say. An excellent YouTuber who talks about magic and its story and its narrative content. Components and how those interact with each other. Spice8rack did the entire story of magic in 80 minutes Matthew: And you said the story of magic you're talking about the background and the the lore, right? Ian: I'm talking about the lore It takes him 80 minutes Talking at an accelerated pace with extreme summary Because to put the first part of perspective in one of the packs we opened is called outlaws of Thunder Junction Matthew: Yes Ian: That is the hundredth narrative set Magic the Gathering has released. Matthew: Wow, I thought maybe you would have said the twentieth. No, Ian: that is the hundredth. And that is the hundredth narrative set. So all the, like, introductory Like, here's the starter sets of magic, here's the expansions and bonuses that don't have a story to them, aren't counted there. Matthew: That is wild. Ian: Depending on how you count, that is the hundredth story expansion. So you, that just gives an idea of how big they've done. This is, this is honestly, and the interesting thing is, there's characters from the early Magic the Gathering that still show up now. Things like the Marvel Cinematic Universe are doing something magic's been doing for years. And part of why that all works is that there's the core. mathematical core to the gameplay, but that same thing lets it tell its stories that way. Matthew: And I'm glad that you had a start in the way that you did, because you started by teaching me or reteaching me the game, how to play the game as a game. And by the way, if you're listening to the podcast and you're interested in that, that was a live stream. It's still there on demand on our YouTube channel. So if you want to see Ian teaching me the basics of Magic the Gathering, how to play a game and also opening a bunch of packs, check that out on YouTube. But I'm glad that we started. That was so much fun. It's a fun game. Yeah, it's a good game. And it gave me just enough of kind of, not the details of the lore, but the feel as to how the lore is revealed through playing the game and through the components of the game. Ian: The first thing that runs into is core to how you play the game, but also core to how it tells story, is the five colors of magic. Matthew: Yeah. Ian: Magic is built around this five color system. White, blue, black, red, green. Huh. This is gonna sound, this is a weird tangent, but thanks to some early choices in how to write it down, they gave, they've got blue and black, so they can't summarize it to a single letter. So they went with the second letter , but that still didn't work. So they went with the third. So it's so blue gets represented with a U in magic. The gathering like text a lot. Yeah. So you wind up with WUBRG as a word in magic, the gathering to summarize the, the entirety of the colors. Matthew: I like it. Ian: But yeah, the, the WUBRG cycle here. White, blue, black, red, green. And each of those is. A flavor of the magic of the world, but it's also a lens through which to view the world and the characters. Yeah, because white is, you know, rigidity and order, but it can also be restrictive and, it prevents individualism. Sometimes blue is intelligent and thoughtful, but it can be trickstery and a little cold, a little impersonal. Black is death and decay, , but it's not evil. It is the elements of being, form and acknowledgement, but it, and it can even for things like ghosts and spirits, there can be this element of, emotion and force and willpower. Black has this forceful, like, I'm not gonna die, I've got stuff to do, I'm a skeleton now, hello. That kind of attitude. Red is fire and passion and vigor and energy, and it is the, you know, I will climb this mountain because I can and strength, but it is equally as blind and belligerent and violent in that same way. and green has the the growth and the nature and the and the the care and the tenderness of you the forest but it also has the you know the bear Needs to eat, and the tiger needs to eat, and the bunny might be the thing the tiger eats, and the bear might not be happy that this happened in his land, and he knocks both of them out of the place. There is that, you know, survival of the fittest strength to it. None of them are the bad guy. Matthew: And there's something almost intuitive, or at least traditional seeming, about a system like this, because, Going back to just the the basics of certain philosophical systems. There's the pure duality There's good and bad dark and light, but then there are so many systems that break things down into more more detailed a more nuanced structure and I'm thinking of modern things like the enneagrams or ancient things like Kabbalah and other things that that represent the universe in a way that is a structure among not just Positive and negative, but a variety of characteristics and how they interact. So, they created this for Magic, but it has this almost timeless feel to it. Because it, it echoes some of those other systems, and it also, it still relates to very fundamental things. Like Nature or water or or or fire. Ian: Yeah The fact that the lands of magic where power is drawn from are mechanically important the idea of these five colors It's like oh, hey, you have to make choices when building a deck of cards it changes things but the plains and islands and swamps and mountains and forests of the world Do the world building Matthew: and it feels different using different decks when you're playing a deck where all your lands are islands versus swamps It feels very different Ian: and when it comes into the narrative there those same things come through one of the big bads for one of Magic's storylines Nicol Bolas this big dragon was represented on his cards as blue black red And so he was intelligent and ferocious and determined. And this meant he was this grand manipulator with plans in the background, changing things on worlds and stealing devices to enact a grand, powerful plan of his own. And that fits narratively, and just looking at the card, it's like he's the bad guy. Okay, I know what kind of bad guy he is, but Purely by this. And there have been characters in smaller stories who are bad guys who are white, green, blue. And it's like, you are smart, and you are plan and you are like, organized, with an entire army of, you know, of your your your Your minions beneath you invading and performing your things and imposing your order upon them. It's, it's interesting to see because just the colors there can, can tell you about the bad guys. And they've even done an entire set of bad guys who are colorless cards. Matthew: Ah. Ian: And they have an entire mechanic called Devoid. Where cards with Devoid are not treated as having any color. Hmm. And so them being this creepy things, this was Magix the attempt at doing Lovecraft. Matthew: Yes, there's something outside of our universe. It doesn't fit any of our categories. Ian: And, and that, that thing reaching in. Matthew: And because of this, the way you say it, it contributes to characterization. Yeah, it becomes a shorthand for characterization in the same way that music can be in film. You want to underscore not only that this is a bad guy, but what kind of bad guy this is. The way music is used. help convey that to the audience. The way that lighting is used is going to help convey that. The colors in Magic do a lot of that. They They carry some of that narrative load in a way that you can't do with lots of text. You can't do with lots of dialogue. This is a different medium. It's a game. Doesn't mean it can't have characters and storytelling. It's just going to have different tools with which to convey that. Ian: And in a single story, a single set or Magic the Gathering used to do stories across sets. So a single story used to have a three act structure of like a first set, a second set and a final set. Matthew: Yeah. Ian: And nowadays they have the entire story in a single set of cards, so that they can move through a lot more stories over the course of a year. Matthew: Makes it a little more accessible to people who are getting into it and want to jump into a story and don't have to look forward to, Well, I'm gonna have to buy two more sets if I get into this. Ian: And you don't get people who don't like the theme of a set, who leave for two. And instead, there's always something new, so there's always more people coming in. Matthew: Good point. Ian: But they had they would to they do stories in there. So it's either inside a single set you can have tales of Individual groups and themes I'm gonna use one of my favorite stories of magic the gathering as an example here Mm hmm One of my favorite sets was Shards of Alara, which was one of those three set kind of storylines. Mm-Hmm. . And they showed. A place that had been broken apart into five, and each of them only had three of the colors. And so the entire story involved these, these people who had grown up only with certain parts of that encountering the other two and showing the lack of those other things. As the important part, as this world came back together and they encountered each other for the first time. Matthew: It's like isolated populations and speciation and then they come into contact again. Ian: Oh, if you live on the white, black, blue world. Which is all, like, order and ambition and intelligence, and you live in a society of grand scientists. The first time you see a red green goblin jump out of a tree with a knife, you lose your mind. Matthew: It seems otherworldly. Ian: This doesn't make sense. Exactly. Matthew: Now, I'm gonna guess, this came out, Magic the Gathering had been around for a while before this came out? Ian: Yes. This set is the set that, that I was actually introduced to magic with, because this is the set that was coming out when I was in late high school. Matthew: And the reason I, I guess that, the reason it makes sense to me is that it's the sign of a, a well established and a mature setting and narrative idea when the detail, its own details begin to suggest new stories. New, new stories to tell, new ways to tell them. We've got this idea that a world encompasses these four these five colors. What if a world is broken apart so it, there are smaller worlds that don't comprise all of them? That comes from the game itself. Ian: Yeah, absolutely. And to give the backstory, because we like explaining how we got into this, we described why you weren't in here. I will get to say that I played a lot of Yu Gi Oh! in high school. I was not a Magic the Gathering player. But, there were plenty of people who I knew who played both. And so, towards the end of my junior year there was a party for my French class. And it went really long and really late. And so I just wound up sitting around and learning how to play Magic the Gathering again with one of my buddies from French class. So it's me just sitting there eating crepes and Nutella, learning how to play this game. And I said, Oh, that's pretty cool. And I got myself a deck and immediately actually had it stolen. Matthew: Oh, no, Ian: like a month, like a month later, someone took it out of my bag and left. Tch. So I was like, Oh, no. But when I got back, when I left and went to college, a lot of people didn't play Yu Gi Oh!, but they played Magic. And so I started rebuilding some of , the decks, I, not the decks I owned, but the decks I'd played against when I'd been in high school. That like one month where I played Magic, I played against a variety of other people's decks, and I learned what I could then. And and built from there. And I've enjoyed Magic ever since. I actually don't play Yu Gi Oh! much anymore, but I've got a large collection of Magic the Gathering now, because the mechanics and the systems and the stories became more interesting to me. The stories of Magic the Gathering have been told by the cards, they've been told by books, they're told a lot by online things now. But just playing the game tells story, because each card has these elements, and each world, they don't just tell one story, they tell dozens. Inside , each set. There's a main through line with our heroic characters and such. But they'll have other cards that are a story in and of themselves between its artwork and its little bit of text. And they'll have sets of cards that create other side stories about other people in the world to flesh it out. Kind of like those background elements in some movies that add more to what's going on. Matthew: And I'm really glad that you have emphasized the narrative aspects of Magic, and the way that the cards tell a story, the way that the games tell a story. Because, and this goes back to a little bit of my first exposure to Magic, way back when, and I had a little bit of a negative opinion of it for a long time. Because I was, was for most of my youth very big into tabletop RPGs. Dungeons and Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Champions, Runequest, lots and lots of, of classic tabletop RPGs, homebrew systems. And I, you know, did some freelance writing around that. I was part of an amateur press association for years with, you know, fanzines about it. And in 1992, 93. That world started talking more about these card games. And not necessarily in the TTRPG world, but in the fringes of it. There were people who were kind of pitting them against one another. That this is the better way to play games, and this is going to take over from tabletop RPGs. And it made more sense, and that just was nonsensical to me. Because what, I, I was fascinated by game systems, and, and game rules for RPGs, and the way that they contributed to story, but playing them to me was always, it was improv theater. It was about the storytelling, it was about the characterization, it was about getting into character and having conversations with other people who are in character. And the card games just seemed to completely remove that part. So, the fact that I heard some people saying that this was somehow better and that it was a replacement for TTRPGs, I heard enough of that that I probably started assuming incorrectly that was the prevailing attitude of people who are really into Magic the Gathering. Which I'm sure is not the case. But now I understand better. It's not in any way a replacement. It is not a challenge to any other kind of game. It's a different kind of game, and therefore it's a different kind of storytelling. And I want there to be as many different kinds of storytelling in the world as there can be. So, understanding better how Magic the Gathering is a way of playing a game and of telling stories. It is like it's opened this door, and oh, this is this thing I've kind of, Mostly ignored for the last 30 years. It's got all this cool stuff. Wow. It's got new ways of doing things. This is awesome Ian: Absolutely, and I mean talk about going full circle magic. The Gathering is nowadays owned by Wizards of the Coast owned by Hasbro and Everything else they might do with tabletop RPGs and such aside The funniest thing to me about your description is the early days is that nowadays the new sets of Magic the Gathering? They put out a book for Dungeons and Dragons, so you can play in the world of that. Do you love , the city of Ravnica there has been one of the biggest and most popular planes, worlds of Magic the Gathering ever, with its ten, nine, the tenth one's secret, no one knows about it, but the nine guilds of Ravnica, each paired up with a specific set of colors, running this giant city that covers the entirety of its planet. Do you want to play there? We've got a Dungeons and Dragons book for you. You can join whatever guild you want and tell a story. Matthew: And that makes so much sense to me. You've done this world building. You can tell stories in it in so many ways. So I want the tabletop RPG. I want the magic. I want the audio dramas. I want a movie. Ian: That's the thing. Yeah, there is, there's a lot of talk. There's talk that they're going to make a Magic the Gathering movie or Netflix TV show that's been in the works for years. There are. Dozens of books. My goodness. The books list is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. I'm counting 13 and that's 13 books that are the ones removed from canon. Because later books needed them to not and this is so long. There have been multiple comic book series and I will say that's almost part of Magic's Trouble nowadays. It's like comic books. It's been going for so long. that it's compounded upon itself and had to retcon and dismiss and change. And so where to hop on and what to follow get hard sometimes. Matthew: Some of this it echoes what happened with Dungeons and Dragons through mostly through the 80s in that there were, there were the rules, the various books of rules, but then there were Officially official settings. So there was Greyhawk and there was I think Ravenloft and a bunch of other settings and They became so rich and people became so interested and invested in those that there were series of novels set in these worlds and based on these events and using the world building that had been done for the game to create novels and then of course video games and the one thing that What helped that from getting too out of control with D& D was that the settings could be kept separate. They were separate games, they were the same game, but they were separate campaigns, separate settings. You could play in one and not have anything to do with another. In the same way, you could have a series of books set in the Horror vampire world and another set in the high fantasy fighting world, and they don't have to combine. It seems like magic is trying to keep things as part of the same multiverse or the same universe. Ian: Magic the Gathering innately can't do that because of one of the consistent parts of its storyline. It can't keep them separate. Because of the earliest parts of its story, that is one of the things that goes on to today. And the problem is this, it's what we are. The players of the game. In Magic the Gathering, to get into its actual story, all the players are what are known as Planeswalkers. Weird implications with that, I'm gonna explain in a moment. A Planeswalker, in the story of Magic the Gathering, is a person born with an innate, magic ability called a Spark. And that spark ignites when they go through something grand or traumatic. It does imply that everyone who plays Magic has gone through something, I will say. That is one of the funniest, like, lore to person implications. But it's part of how Magic explains why you, as a player, are seeing all the different things and using cards from different sets at the same time and looking at magic as a whole. And it's because you are one of the planeswalkers. Once your spark ignites, you can, as the name suggests, walk between the planes. All of the different worlds of Magic the Gathering are floating in their own little bubbles of mystical space called the Blind Eternities, which is pure, unfettered power that will rip you apart and drive you mad as it does so if you're not ready. Planeswalkers can just stroll through and land into another world. Usually, they do so instantly upon the traumatic event that ignites their spark as a survival instinct of not being wherever is hurting them. And then they have to find their way back home. But the main characters of the story are all these planeswalkers. So you get these people from all these different realms and all these different narrative stories with these intensely different things. Here is our, streetwise kid from the city. Here is our lady necromancer who lived in our gothic horror world. Here's our brave knight who is from a Greco Roman inspired, he's a fighter in the arena kind of guy. And here's our wildman with his axe living in the woods. And they will travel plane to plane and Each has their own story, but they will influence the next story and they are our audience surrogate characters following them Tale to tale. Matthew: Mm hmm, Ian: and they will even change and grow over this we talked about how the colors represent these different things and they have that kind of theming across Stories when you've got characters moving from story to story they change Hmm Mr Garruk Wildspeaker with his axe started as a character with green mana. As stuff kept happening to him, his later cards became green black. As he started to get, you know, cursed and Blind with ambition and rage and things like that, and he shifted colors and had to be worked back so that he didn't. Characters will shift colors based on what they've gone through, and their personalities and lives will change. But these planeswalkers, because they are this key part of the story, they force each Magic the Gathering world to interact on some level. Because someone from the previous story is going to show up. If you don't like the Gothic horror world, you can decide not to play that set. But you might have trouble understanding why. Our happy go lucky guy from two sets ago is this brooding now once he arrives on like the desert beach of the island world, and that's because he went through stuff in Vampire Town, and he's not over it. And that's where the, it's like comic books where you can start up a new story in a comic series. Oh, there's a new writer. Oh, they've got a new book. You can follow that one. But a lot of the time, the character is history. Matthew: You kind of want those Stan Lee footnotes in the comic books. Yeah. See Spider Man 287, true believer. Ian: The funny thing is, they'll do that sometimes. Matthew: Will they? Ian: Cards have flavor text on there. That's how a lot of cards, when they're not just telling you mechanics of the game, will tell you story and world. And so you might get a card that says Steve couldn't stand the sight of blood after what he saw back on Innistrad. And it's like, I didn't play Innistrad, I didn't like the vampire theme, but Yeah, that sounds like there's something that went on in Vampire Town and he doesn't like that anymore. And so this card tells you that in there, there are these little moments. Here's the other funny thing, you might not get that card. The books and everything else, the online articles, are how magic delivers a narrative story in continuity. But when you pick up a pack of cards, you get fragments. Are they of the main story? Are they of the side story? Are they just explaining how People go fetch water in this world and giving you some of that background world building so Gaining a hand of cards gaining a new set of cards gives you pieces Playing against someone else's in that set and seeing what they have might give you more then you go on to the website and see it or do it in reverse go on to the website and and read the story and get excited, or buy the book and get excited. And then when you open a pack and you see, Oh my goodness, I've got the sword fight between these two people. They made it into a card. That's so cool. What does it do mechanically? Oh, it lets one of my creatures hit another, hit another and do extra damage. That's just like what happened in the story when he caught him off guard and snipped him with his blade. That's the sort of stuff this can do where The cards are just Fragments, it's like gaining Single cells of an animation Matthew: thinking about this kind of fragmented story it to get even more obscure This is reminding me of a book that I love called The Dictionary of the Khazars Ian: Yes, Matthew: it's it's a novel, but it is brief stories or descriptions of people and events and folk tales In alphabetical order as if it's a dictionary and you can read through this And as you read through it, you start to assemble the story in your mind. And I've read through this so many, several times, and it's always different because you always respond to it in different ways. But it's a fascinating way to tell a coherent story, but not in a typical linear way. And not everybody's gonna get the same fragments or respond to the same fragments in the same way. I, I think that's It's, again, a new way to tell stories, and I love new ways to tell stories. Ian: Absolutely. Matthew: And for planeswalkers, I found myself comparing that to the, the ability to write books in Myst, another game we talked about early this year. Now, it's a little different. I get the impression that the ability to write books is something, it's an arcana that people can study and develop a talent for, as opposed to It being something innate that is triggered, but it's still the same. You have some ability to move around a larger universe and And that sets you apart and pulls you into these adventures. Ian: That is a very very clear Similarity it's like the ability to just travel and the fact that the people who have that wind up with this distant at times External perspective to what's going on in the world and it changes how they interact You is a huge part. And in things like magic, characters with planeswalkers sparks will, , go from place to place, carry trauma, they will have things to do, but they're also showing up and introducing a bunch of people who just live in this world. The idea that their world is not alone. Matthew: Yeah, there's a different perspective. Oh, this event is going to change the world to, well, this event is going to change a world. Ian: Exactly. Matthew: I've been through a lot. Ian: Yeah, you get interesting stories sometimes of like, I'm fighting for the vengeance of my family, this wanderer came in, he said he'd help me, he's really strong, and he's telling me things that make my family and why I'm getting vengeance feel tiny now. Matthew: Yes. Ian: Oh. And sometimes those characters go on to be important and stories. Might come back to this land. Like, oh, he got vengeance. His family is avenged, and he is now leading other people, and we come back to this world later on, because the planeswalkers are making their way back or something, and we see the same person as another card. Grander and more important with this new perspective. Sometimes getting vengeance was traumatic. And it ignites the other guy's spark, and so he got warned ahead of time that the worlds are out there, and now he can explore them. And what does he do? I got my vengeance. Or maybe I didn't. And now I gotta figure out how to get back home. To do anything with it, and that's the sort of stories this can tell on a grander sense, but the individual ones, they play with new mechanics, new ideas, and that's the other aspect. I'm going to tangent all over in this episode. That's pretty much the episode itself. Matthew: It's a fragmented episode, like we were saying. Ian: Hey, you're getting it, you're getting it like a pack. In the end of it, it's still a game. Yes. Every single one of these stories means that, oh, we're going to tell a horror story. How do you tell horror in game mechanics? Creatures that do things that are creepy and unnatural. How do we tell stories of grand entities that march into the universe from outside and beyond? Mechanics that remove their interactions with magic the way you'd expect. And numbers that are bigger than anything we ever printed in terms of the strength and attack and defense of these creatures. Because they are that grand and that size. Mm hmm. And Every single story they tell needs to have mechanics to go with it, and every set of mechanics tells you something about how the world works for its story, and those two are always meshed together. There's a lot of discussion about the flavor, and the mechanical flavor of different worlds, and which ones did it right by making them line up, and which ones didn't. And with A hundred different stories they've told. There's a wide variety of discussion about what did and didn't work. And that's where we get into the second story of magic. Matthew: The second story of magic? Ian: Yes, because the magic community story Is as much a story as the magic, the gathering story. Huh. I'm describing the fact that there's all these things that they've put into their writing. But we've also talked about the playing with other people. Sure. Told a story. And you described how that's what people assumed it would be. The story of you know, the, you know, replacing tabletop games. But the gameplay doesn't replace tabletop games, but it does build its own stories. Yeah. Certain people become attached to different characters or different cards. Yeah. Cards and characters that might not even have narrative Inside magic in the same way. Matthew: They develop narrative based upon the people playing them and how they're played Ian: Yeah, I'm known and I'm I love playing saprolings There's some cards that you know, make the little saprolings these little fungus buddies in the stories of magic But they're background elements. They're not things that show up a lot But I fell in love with the mechanics of these early, and so I have stories about the games I've played and the narratives that tells, and when you're dealing with people who are playing this from everything from playing at the kitchen table to grand championship tournaments that Magic the Gathering used to and still sometimes has with major players and Intense strategy a single card single stories can become bigger things I'm citing another youtuber. There's a wonderful youtuber called Rhystic Studiesies Mm hmm who does long form discussions about the history of magic and it's and the narrative of the Community and talking about how the history of the printing of the card lightning bolt is so interesting and how it much it tells you about the game and about the community and the players and how they interact with it. He does video essays purely about the community's interactions and the history of how people approached cards, played cards beloved cards, hated cards, cards that Like, there are certain cards that have been printed that were not great. They were too strong, or they don't make sense. There's a card called One With Nothing, which just says to discard your hand. All it does is get rid of your entire hand. And he made an entire essay. He's got a 10 minute discussion purely about how the interactions and ideas people have had about this card and What that means and how it's flavorful the idea of they get rid of everything and be at zen peace Mechanically works, but how do you make that work in a card game? Matthew: And we will definitely have links to these in the show notes because I'm gonna want to follow those links and watch these video essays Ian: Yes, but the idea that like Even if you don't care about any of the stories of what Magic the Gathering is telling, pick up a set that has a theme, a style, that's interesting to you, and like a director influenced by another movie they've seen, build yourself a deck, find a format, play a game, and you'll wind up creating a narrative all on your own in doing so. It's kind of that tabletop aspect there, but it's, it's more remix culture in that sense. It's building a new song out of samples of a previous song, here's a weird example. I'm talking about these grand creatures of the Eldrazi, these Magic Does Cthulhu. They still have a stat line. They have to be cards on cardboard. Matthew: Because they still have to be part of the game. Ian: . And that means that if you can deal 11 damage, you can remove it from the board. There is a running joke in Magic the Gathering about the fact that, , a card can't do less than one. damage. It has to have at least one power to do damage. Matthew: Yeah. Ian: And the idea of a brave team of 11 squirrels that jump onto the, just like, you know, just, you get 11 1 1, so they've got one power, they deal one damage. 11 1 1 squirrel tokens. That bravely attack and defeat the entirety of Cthulhu by just climbing up of it up him the mechanics of the game Make that story and that's not a scene in any of Magic's official storylines But it's something that happens on the tabletop. It is just delightfully evocative. And if it wasn't for the stories telling us that, you know, there's these grand creatures from the beyond, the Eldrazi reaching in, , we wouldn't have context for what this giant creature is, but the mechanics of the game works builds a completely new one from there. Or, I've got a loyal dog And you can give him a sword, and he runs in and deals the last bit of damage, and suddenly, in the middle of a giant fight, you've got a dog with a knife strapped to its back charging someone. That's narratively fascinating. Matthew: It is. Ian: A lot, a lot more comedy comes from some of these. Matthew: Sure. Ian: But They are implying things because they are fragments of narrative that you can recompile. Matthew: And to me, that's a sign of a good game system, whether it's a video game, a tabletop RPG a collectible card game. From the rules, can emerge these scenarios and , these stories and these events that, Are fully supported by the rules and would never have been anticipated by the people who made the rules. The rules are a structure from which all these things can grow. They don't have to be lined up with what the creators of the rules expected to happen. Ian: Yeah. Matthew: Okay, a nerding out question for a moment. You mentioned that a card has to have one damage. There are cards with zero damage, aren't there? There are cards. I saw one that was called Wall of Runes. It had like, zero strength and five toughness. I realized, what is this? Then I realized, oh, it's a wall. It's for blocking. Ian: It's a wall for blocking. It has to have at least one at least one power to do damage. If a thing with zero power doesn't, it would just . Do nothing squirrel tokens are most token creatures like one one is like a common token. Yeah, so that's where but squirrels are the funniest tokens. 11 squirrels Matthew: versus Cthulhu. I like it. Ian: 11 squirrels 11 squirrels bravely defeat Cthulhu being a tabletop narrative. But yes, things can have No power and just toughness and that itself is like does it mean that it's sentient? If it's a creature. Matthew: Technically it says creature. So yeah, Ian: so that's I guess I know a wall that is aware Matthew: Yeah, Ian: there's some weirdness there. Matthew: I am a wall. I am a good wall. Ian: I'm a good wall. Exactly. And Magic the Gathering hasn't been great at all of its story pieces, like, as I was describing, some of its things, you know, some of its narrative tropes have been problematic, and they've tried to grow from that. This is a thing that started writing its story in the early 90s, and we have grown as people a lot since then, so Magic has changed over the years. But it still has pieces from its old days pulled up throughout, and there's still people that have cards and play cards from the early days. There's some cards Magic is banned outright because of art style and implications and story that, you know, they don't want anymore. Matthew: They're not going to be, in any format of tournament, they're not going to be accepted. Ian: Yeah, they're not allowed at all. And that's important. Magic does grow and change to become better. And that, I say, that's important. I mean, I think that means they're trying to be better. Matthew: Yeah, and you're going to find that in anything that lasts long enough. Be it Disney or Warner Brothers cartoons or movie series or games or even video game series. As you say, , we generally, collectively, we get better. We get more sensitive to things. we gain a better understanding of what things mean to different people. And therefore, we're not necessarily proud of what came before. But, we don't ignore that it, that it happened, we just want to be better from now forward. Ian: Exactly. And that brings me to the last bit I wanted to talk about with the current concepts of magic. But, I think that's going to be part of our ending thing because it ties in so much with our final questions. Matthew: Yeah, so we're getting ready for final questions, I guess. Ian: We're getting ready for final questions. Matthew: And figure out what those final questions are for a game like this. Ian: That's part of it. So, if you want to hear more , from us, go to our website at immproject. com. There we have links to all of our back episodes. We have a contact us page if you want to tell us about your favorite Magic Gathering set, or if you want to suggest other content to watch and to discuss. I know that there's plenty more that my dad has from his childhood, and I've got more from mine. But we'd love to hear what you've got from yours. We also have links to our shop there if you want to pick up mugs or t shirts. My dad's holding up an excellent coffee mug right now. Get yourself some podcast fuel. And of course, you can also find us at our Discord or on Patreon. We thank all of our Patreon patrons. They help us keep this show running and we have exclusive content that is only available on Patreon. As well as all the way up to joining the, the movie club on Patreon, where you can experience what I get to experience which is a brand new, possibly never before seen to you, piece of media sent directly to you. We do that on a semi regular basis for our movie club patrons where they get to experience what I do. Matthew: Yeah, every few months you will receive a DVD for a movie that is going to be the subject of an upcoming episode of the IMMP. So yeah, take a look at the movie club. Ian: Come join the chaos Matthew: and dad, in the meantime, where can they find you online? Well, you can find me at ByMatthewPorter. com. That's where you'll find links to whatever I'm doing like this podcast or like my YouTube channel, which features the Drafthouse Diary with a review of every single visit I make to the Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas. And there are a shocking number of those. And Ian, where can people find you? Ian: I can be found as itemcrafting most places, be that itemcrafting. com or itemcraftinglive on Twitch, where I have actually been streaming the remake of Riven, the sequel to Myst, a couple of times so far. Matthew: And I've got my coffee mug here. The IMMP is still not sponsored by Press Coffee Roasters or the Coffee Aisle at World Market or the Coffee Aisle at Sprouts. But hey. Ian: We'd love to be. Matthew: Give us a call. Ian: Give us a call. Matthew: It fuels most of our podcasts between those. Ian: So, So, Magic the Gathering is changing right now. Matthew: Yeah. Ian: A lot. One of the packs we opened in our livestream is a Magic the Gathering universes beyond. And that is Magic the Gathering working with other intellectual properties owners to create sets, for their stories. Specifically the pack we opened was Lord of the Rings. But over the years recently, Magic's been doing it more and more. Everything from Godzilla cards to an Assassin's Creed set, to Doctor Who decks, to Warhammer 40k cards, and Hatsune Miku, more and more things. There's even, talk about horror stuff, there's Stranger Things, Magic the Gathering cards, and Walking Dead, Magic the Gathering cards from a while back. Matthew: Well, if Stranger Things keeps going, eventually they will get to the release of Magic the Gathering, and we can see the characters play it. Ian: I know, I'm kind of intrigued by if they do that. But, , the exact things that have made it a fascinating storytelling, like, tool of the colors and such have allowed them to expand and make these other stories. But, a lot of those other things, the idea of planeswalkers, no, these other stories are untouched by Magic's story themselves. Matthew: Oh, it's just set in the worlds of Magic. Ian: Yeah it's like, no planeswalkers go there. Nothing from that can come back into our story. It's walled off. It's kept separate so that they don't blend. Matthew: Okay, and that's story wise. You can still play a game that incorporates them but narratively they're separate. Ian: Narratively they're separate. That means that the only place that the stories will ever interact is on your tabletop. And that's interesting. Matthew: Yeah. Dr. Who vs. Godzilla is only going to happen as part of your game. Ian: As of your game. And you're never going to see Jace Balerion, Blue you know, Blue Planeswalker, who shows up in sets for over a decade now. You're not going to see him go and talk with the Ezio from Assassin's Creed now. They're not interacting in that way. But as magic grows This is part of what it's becoming. And so my question, in, in lieu of our standard revive, reboot, or rest in peace is, You're, you are starting to see what the story of Magic the Gathering is in a couple different ways. And I want to get your idea as to whether you find that interesting, or you find it limiting, or, Put another way, do you like that there's these other story pieces? Do you like the mechanics of how Magic tells its story enough that you want to see it tell other stories? Or are you more interested in Magic's own story? Matthew: That's an interesting one. Oh, and just to put it on the record, if our initial question is play or don't play Ian: Oh, play or don't play, yeah. Matthew: Absolutely play. Ian: Oh, yeah, you're right. I completely skipped that one. Matthew: I think that was kind of implied here, but I have to admit, since our stream a week or two ago, when you retaught me how to play Magic pretty much every night been on my iPad in Magic Arena playing Magic the Gathering. Ian: Yes. Matthew: And learning more about the game is fascinating. they have a good tutorials to step through. So if you're interested in learning how to play Magic. The arena app is is not a bad way to go about it If you don't have somebody like oh, yeah, you can teach you expertly. Yay But but yeah, Ian: it also makes it a lot easier to carry your cards Matthew: Yes About your question I like the universe is beyond idea. I like the idea that this is a rich enough framework that you can you can incorporate other parts of other stories I think there are limitations to that to some extent some of the The games where you're taking people from different settings and different stories and and bringing them together in that way It can be a lot of fun. I've really enjoyed some of the games of You What is the game where we had like Robin Hood vs. Alice in Wonderland or Jackie Chan vs. Godzilla? Ian: You're thinking of Unmatched. Matthew: Unmatched, that's the game. Ian: That's a good one. Matthew: It can be fun, but it's kind of gimmicky. And there's a lot of, of crude carpentry, let's say, that has to happen to make some of these characters and settings fit together. But. I think that given those limitations, the way that magic has been doing it makes a lot of sense and it works , fairly well and it seems more natural, so I like that. And I'm interested in the idea of how would you represent things from other backgrounds, other characters, other stories in the format of magic. And, I don't know if I have any great examples off the top of my head, but I could certainly see No end of other settings other stories that you could tell in magic Do you have any that you are looking forward to that? You'd like to see Ian: I'm excited for some of the upcoming ones ooh like external stories. I'd love to see in magic. I mean if you could show me a mist set, that'd be amazing Matthew: Yeah Ian: Artifacts doing transit and such. I, I'm trying to think of some other. A lot of video game stories, I feel, translate well. Magic the Gathering does Portal. Could be fascinating. Matthew: Oh, it could. Ian: What is a world that is so controlled by that science, have, but with its nature overtaking? Matthew: Oxenfree. Ian: Oxenfree would be a, actually, Oxenfree, there's a lot of similarities also with an upcoming set they've got out. They're coming out with a, a modern horror in more of the Ghostbusters or Oxenfree y style coming out. Matthew: Oxenfree has what's probably a permanent spot on my top five video games list. And, again, it's both atmospheric and structurally, sophisticated enough to make for an interesting magic set. That would be fun. Ian: Oh, yeah. Matthew: For that matter, earthbound, if we're going to talk about video games, an earthbound magic set would be awesome. Ian: Yeah. And I mean, that's the hard problem is like, I've, I know enough magic gathering storyline that there are things that sound similar, but I mean, Tekken, give me a fighting game. Matthew: Yeah. Ian: Like, that's interesting people going against each other arena. That's a story. Magic's done, but you could also do it as a set there. Matthew: Sure. Ian: And that's the other thing, like, just like. We're kind of talking about a thing that's as wide as cinema right and asking should it make stories Matthew: That's a good but it's kind of like saying should there be an oxen free movie? Should there be an oxen free Magic the Gathering set? Ian: Yeah, Matthew: the answer is yes to both by the way. Ian: The answer is yes so maybe my question is flawed because I'm here wanting this thing to stay itself Matthew: Yeah, Ian: and other things are growing but the fact that you're being the potentials there is important and wonderful. Matthew: Absolutely You Ian: And I, I love being able to go to a story and say like, Oh, how does the magic five color system fit this? Or how would I see that? But I also, I also love the fact that there's a story out there that can keep going. And there's a game that can. Show me these new interpretations of things. So, I kind of wanted to just take over and play Magic in the end, but Matthew: Well, I'm very glad you did. This was great. I look forward to playing more of it. Ian: This has been an excellent time. And I'm excited for new sets, and I'm excited to talk with you about new sets. And if people want to hear more about thoughts on Magic and such, I'm always happy to talk and ramble on it, so Matthew: Alright. Well, this has been a great deal of fun. Ian: This has been an excellent time, so thank you. Matthew: And we will be back with our next, our next regular podcast episode is going to be our episode 150. Ian: Oh my goodness, that's, how, we've been doing this for a while, haven't we dad? We're gonna have to do something special for that one. Yeah, Matthew: I think, I think we'll figure something out. Ian: I think we'll figure something out. Matthew: But in the meantime, thank you very much everybody for joining us. Ian, thank you for taking over as you did. Ian: Certainly. We'll be back in a couple of weeks with a brand new episode of the Intermillennium Media Project. Matthew: And in the meantime, go find something old to watch. Ha ha! Or find something old to play. Oh, yes!