Koloss17 Posted March 13, 2023 Report Share Posted March 13, 2023 Alright folks! I have taken up an undertaking. I'm making a full Magic set (around 250 cards) based solely on Mistborn: The Final Empire. I have been going at this for a few weeks now, and have made enough progress and am dedicated enough to post. Thus far, I have close to 100 card ideas, and am shifting things into playtest mode. I don't want to make an idea for a full set and then realize there's a major design flaw, so I'm sticking to a bit over a third of the planned cards, playtesting a bit with those, and then carrying on. I don't have a lot of cards that are presentable just yet, but I do have the base 9 Allomancers in playtest-ready forms. Here's what I got so far! Lurcher/Coinshot Spoiler Tineye/Pewterarm Spoiler Rioter/Soother Spoiler Smoker/Seeker Spoiler And Augur Spoiler I will soon be showing archetypes, but for now, feel free to stay updated and suggest here! https://www.mtgnexus.com/customcards/3905-mistborn-the-fin/ Additionally, feel free to make card or set suggestions on this post! let me know what you think! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Treamayne Posted March 13, 2023 Report Share Posted March 13, 2023 (edited) 10 hours ago, Koloss17 said: I will soon be showing archetypes, but for now, feel free to stay updated and suggest here! https://www.mtgnexus.com/customcards/3905-mistborn-the-fin/ Additionally, feel free to make card or set suggestions on this post! let me know what you think! I'll go more in-depth when I have some more time (need to leave for work), but to start I would like to ask: if you have read the Nuts and Bolts columns and Player Psychographic Profiles Columns? What is you're reasoning behind the "once per turn" restriction? Why are you using a modified Judgement set icon? Are these paired for convenience - or because they are meant to be MDFCs? Have you identified reprints and functional reprints (e.g. Dark Ritual with art showing Inquisitors in the Hemalurgy Experimentation Lab of Serin, or Droning Bureaucrats renamed Investigating Obligator with appropriate art) Edited March 13, 2023 by Treamayne 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koloss17 Posted March 13, 2023 Author Report Share Posted March 13, 2023 •I tried to read some nuts and bolts, but half of the links are broken (thanks Wizards) •I certainly don’t want to have it be activated multiple times a turn, and I want to have folks be able to use the abilities more than once per round. •I’ll be setting up the atium symbol as the set icon-it’s just a placeholder. •Just convenience. When pasting the images over, they came out really big, so I had to pair them somehow. •I have! I’ll show ya some once I find the art for some of them. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Treamayne Posted March 14, 2023 Report Share Posted March 14, 2023 (edited) On 3/12/2023 at 9:05 PM, Koloss17 said: Alright folks! I have taken up an undertaking. I'm making a full Magic set (around 250 cards) based solely on Mistborn: The Final Empire. I have been going at this for a few weeks now, and have made enough progress and am dedicated enough to post. Thus far, I have close to 100 card ideas, and am shifting things into playtest mode. I don't want to make an idea for a full set and then realize there's a major design flaw, so I'm sticking to a bit over a third of the planned cards, playtesting a bit with those, and then carrying on. I don't have a lot of cards that are presentable just yet, but I do have the base 9 Allomancers in playtest-ready forms. https://www.mtgnexus.com/customcards/3905-mistborn-the-fin/ Additionally, feel free to make card or set suggestions on this post! let me know what you think! Overall: Using the "Misting" ability word is probably a mistake (more below) Also, the ability word is not standardized across all examples I'm guessing you aren't wanting SPAG feedback, so I'll skip that other than to say that your templates, capitalization and formatting need some cleaning up. Query: Are these final cardnames or placeholders? If they are final cardnames, I would recommend changing that. Pigeon-holing the various misting abilities to a single color seems off on flavor and set-deisgn. Better would be something like "House Tekiel Lurcher" (to show this is how that House trains its Lurchers - then you could riff on the ability for a different house's Lurcher in a different color - showing different aspects of each misting that way) Did you consider a "Metal Vial" version of the Blood token? You could then use that to power the abilities and that would also naturally limit how often some abilities can be used per combat/phase/turn/cycle. Lurcher: How does a Lurcher remove abilities? This should either prevent activating abilities and/or possibly be limited to non-creature artifacts. Repeatable theft (even if limited to once/turn) is a recipe for disaster (e.g. Memnarch) this should be an EoT ability - or possibly only one thing at a time (losing control of previously taken items when a new one is taken) and should probably also be non-creature. Maybe its not specific enough - something like "Gain control of target equipment until EoT. Attach that equipment to Lurcher" might be a better representation of "taking your weapon and beating you with it." Coinshot: Direct damage in White should be toward an attacking or blocking creature (even if it is very overcosted) This could easily be "XW: Deal X damage to target creature blocking or blocked by Coinshot. X can't be greater than Coinshot's power." Tineye: These abilities are underwhelming - especially for the cost. Unblockable (evading detection by "sensing blockers") might fit as well - or at higher rarities making a creature "blocked" would allow the Tineye to "sense" an attacker so that it becomes blocked ven when it would normally be unblockable (e.g. Dazzling Beauty and Choking Vines) Pewterarm: The Giant Growth seems fine, but I would probably reduce the second ability to +2/+2 for adding a keyword. Also, giving trample is traditionally green - maybe Doublestrike would fit better (also implies the speed increase - matches red's color pie better and increases the effect for the cost). Rioter: Goad is interesting here. Very nice. Haste is more "utility-meh" but not really out-of-flavor. A rare version could probably riot fear for a Maze of Ith type effect or other interesting flavor adaptations. Soother: I'm not sure about the connection between Vigilance and Soothing, but the tapping seems in-flavor. Consider Phyrexian Splicer - soothing might be a good place to "Target creature loses haste" (or trample, first strike, whatever). Smoker: Seems like Hexproof would be more on-point. Splitting the Mistings by house (or some other demarcation) would let you use both and show different uses of Smoking. Template should follow Ouphe Vandals (activated ability from a <type> source). Also, why have "opponent controls?" Is there a case where the owner wants to counter their own activated ability? Seeker: You can't reveal only one card type from an opponent's hand - you have to reveal the hand, then do something to/about a card type that was revealed. Revealing cards from an opponent's hand forcibly is not in the G Color Pie. The only examples where G can reveal card in another player's hand is a "voluntary cost" (e. g. Kahmal's Summons) Auger: This is way too powerful for a common. Also, you cannot manipulate items in a hidden zone when any card characteristics must match (compare Demonic Tutor and Enlightened tutor) - you must either reveal the cards or exile them, manipulate them, then return them to the library (e.g. Cascade, Kinship, etc.). At common, this should probably only "swap" one specific card type - but since it is a repeatable Regrowth effect (even with the Random clause) it should probably cost more (otherwise expect many infinite E-Wit loops). 22 hours ago, Koloss17 said: •I tried to read some nuts and bolts, but half of the links are broken (thanks Wizards) Did you try my links above? Those are the articles retained for the site downgrade (purge of broken promises). You can also find most old links through Way Back Machine. Quote •I certainly don’t want to have it be activated multiple times a turn, and I want to have folks be able to use the abilities more than once per round. No, but you can find other limitations. Consider "once per Main Phase," "once per combat," "before combat," etc. as different timing restrictions, then apply them only to the abilities that need them. More to the point - not all abilities deserve this limitation, or you are sacrificing more than half of the flavor of Allomancy as a dynamic art. By placing the restriction on an Ability word you have hamstrung design from any future innovation. An Era 1 Misting =/= and Era 2 Misting. If you use "Misting" in this sense for that type of restriction you've ensured it can't be used in any other way at any future time for what is, essentially, a flavor fail. Quote •I’ll be setting up the atium symbol as the set icon-it’s just a placeholder. Why the Atium Symbol? Especially with as contentious as Era 1 Atium as become. Wouldn't something like the Scadrian System Iconography be more appropriate? Spoiler Quote •I have! I’ll show ya some once I find the art for some of them. Art is far down the list of tasks - just an artless card mock-up is necessary for planning. I'll look at the list if you want, but I was more concerned with making sure you had already considered this and have a plan. There are two primary ways to handle reprints (and usually should use both) - whether they are strict, function or SB/SW: Consider what "holes" can be filled by a reprint of some type before workin on the rest (so you know you don't, for example, necessarily need to find a W targeted removal for Limited and set balance if it was already in the reprint list - or - you do need to make one because it was not covered in the reprint list). Get to an 80% solution on the Card Skeleton, identify the missing parts, then search for any reprints that can fill the holes. Generally speaking you would want to do the first for strict reprints find things that are already on-theme/flavor for the set (such as Blazing Torch in Innistrad - which fit so well some designers were surprised to realize MaRo added it to the card file as a reprint*). Then once at 80% on the card skeleton you do another pass for possible cards to fill hoes as a functional reprint - where the card works well with the desin to that point, but the flavor can be "fixed" to better fit the set. Spoiler IIRC, the story was that the designer recommended changing it to include Werewolves in the text - to which MaRo replied "we can't it's a reprint" - they were stunned because it had been so on-flavor for the set. I'm sure I missed some feedback, but I am too tired right now to finish. I'll look again later though. I'm also on Nexus, if you need to contact me there (mostly in the Commander forums - same user name). Also, I cannot find any thread for your set on Nexus, in either the Custom Card, nor Custom Set section. Edited March 14, 2023 by Treamayne 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koloss17 Posted March 14, 2023 Author Report Share Posted March 14, 2023 Alright, @Treamayne. I’ll let you in on the deeper stuff. So first things first, this is obviously my first attempt at building a set. I’m trying to make these cards authentic to Magic as a whole, but I am also thinking of things off of a closed environment-I’m not really planning on mixing these cards with other sets, and my plan is to, in the end, use this for draft among a small group of Magic playing, Mistborn loving friends. I’m working with a small group of people, with one that’s actively helping design cards, and the other that’s giving suggestions on balance and magic-speak. It’s not a very large group, and all of us are stumbling our way through this. We’re all experienced Magic players, so we get how the game works-it’s the set building that is a complex mystery. My main thoughts when creating a top-down set was that I wanted to establish Allomancers first and foremost, and archetypes next. Allomancers are quite integral to the world, and I wanted every archetype to have access to them. I shied away from adding them to black, as I felt that not only are no Allomancers a really good fit for them, they could also easily be the color of inquisitors and Hemalurgy as a whole. So I went with a 2/2/3/3 system, with Allomancers focused in blue and green. While I could definitely shift the colors up, they definitely need to be relatively present across the four colors. For abilities, this is when I had the least idea on what I wanted to do with the set, so it is incredibly likely that they will change for a number of reasons. I wanted them to be relatively simple in their costs, and I also wanted to create a sort of uniformity to them. I settled on activated abilities using mana as the representation of using metals, as I thought that doing something like creating pewter or tin tokens would be a bit too tedious and messy. I wanted to have two abilities, one for burning and one for flaring. This would allow for interesting design space, as well as a flavorful representation of the difference flaring and burning can make. Keep in mind, the exact way that I express these ideas are not only subject to change, but also quite an easy change. But even with the changes, I plan on keeping the framework the same. After I had made rough ideas for Allomancers (as you see here), I moved on to archetypes. Since this is my first set, I decided to roll with a five archetype structure rather than a ten archetype structure, as that meant half as many mechanics and interactions to worry about. I ended up settling on enemy color pairings representing the four main factions in TFE (Skaa, Nobles, Obligators, and the Rebellion) as well as allomancy tribal in U/R, as I needed something to fill the slot and that seemed to be the best fit. There’s a whole other tangent I can go on about the specifics of the archetypes and my thought processes behind each of them, but to save time, I’ll gloss over that. Once I had the archetypes established, I jumped right into ideas for card design, to give me rough guides, and to just flesh out what I want to do with each archetype. While I could create a design skeleton for the entire set, I felt that it required a) way more thought into the mechanics and archetypes and b ) seemed to have a standard set design in mind, which this certainly was not. At this point I realized that by picking my first set based around a world with about 3 total races (four if you are counting the differentiation between Skaa and Nobles), very few beasts, sparingly little return from the dead type magic, and only one type of flying entity, I was diving into the deep end. This is certainly going to be a non-standard set, and with very little experience, it’s going to be a rough journey. However, it’s been fun! I am learning a lot as I go, and am really excited to bring my favorite fantasy world to life in my favorite fantasy game. I do not expect the set to be perfect, and I do not expect to get it to WOTC set standards, but I plan on doing my best. I’m sure this will go through a ton of iterations, and while I do not want to fully backpedal from what I have thus far constructed, I have prepared for that eventuality. I appreciate your suggestions, some of which I’ve already fixed, others I am working on, and others still which I had only a vague knowledge of. Some of your suggestions seem to be suggestions in restructuring the design of the set (which you don’t know much about the details of), and while I will definitely take them into account, I won’t immediately act upon them, as they would require some major backpedaling. I can share my thoughts on what I had in mind for the specific card decisions that I made, and I am more than happy to receive suggestions on how I can get what I want but in a much more streamlined and simple way. I’m quite new to this, and need all the help I can get. I would love to know your approach to building your set(s), and what you did similarly or differently than I did when you were in the early phases of set design. I’d love to hear from someone that has already gone through a similar process that could give me some insight. Sorry for the strongly worded response, I just want to fill you in on what exactly to expect and what I’m looking for. I realize now that my initial post was a bit lackluster in regards to the information it gave, and acted in a very secretive fashion. Hopefully opening the doors to my thought processes and steps that I have taken helps, and I’m glad that you gave me some detailed feedback. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Treamayne Posted March 14, 2023 Report Share Posted March 14, 2023 34 minutes ago, Koloss17 said: Alright, @Treamayne. I’ll let you in on the deeper stuff. So first things first, this is obviously my first attempt at building a set. I’m trying to make these cards authentic to Magic as a whole, but I am also thinking of things off of a closed environment-I’m not really planning on mixing these cards with other sets, and my plan is to, in the end, use this for draft among a small group of Magic playing, Mistborn loving friends. I’m working with a small group of people, with one that’s actively helping design cards, and the other that’s giving suggestions on balance and magic-speak. It’s not a very large group, and all of us are stumbling our way through this. We’re all experienced Magic players, so we get how the game works-it’s the set building that is a complex mystery. Understood - I'm just trying to point out things that may break Limited (if your plan is to Draft your final set with friends) and being up things you may want to research to help build a foundation from which to build. I'm also just throuwing out ideas in the name of brainstorming, not so you'll adopt the ideas themselves, but so you have other avenues to think and consider. Quote I shied away from adding them to black, as I felt that not only are no Allomancers a really good fit for them Depends on how you view Black. Many people get lost in the "Black is Evil" trope - but that is not its definition in the color pie. For example, in TFE I would say that both Kliss and Shan Elariel are Black - since, by definition, Black is about selfish motivations: Spoiler Black's philosophy is very simple: There's no one better suited to look after your own interests than you. Sure Inquisitirs will be, at least partly, Black. But they will also be Red and Blue as evidenced by how hard it is for them to control their emotions and how they investigate Skaa Mistings and use emtional Allomancy to influence things. You could even make a case for White (and WB) since they are so heavily organized in the Steel Ministry Cantons. Green is probably the only one that does have a ready corollary to Inquisitors (at least off the top of my head). Quote I wanted them to be relatively simple in their costs, and I also wanted to create a sort of uniformity to them. I settled on activated abilities using mana as the representation of using metals, as I thought that doing something like creating pewter or tin tokens would be a bit too tedious and messy. I wanted to have two abilities, one for burning and one for flaring. This would allow for interesting design space, as well as a flavorful representation of the difference flaring and burning can make. Nothing wrong with that, I could see the pattern you were going for (along the lines of the Rav Guildmage cycles) - I just wanted to point out that having just "<misting>" as a card name really limits your possibilties and could cause cascading issues down the road. If you look at the history of MtG - it has survived so long because they realized fairly early that generic cards oppose game longevity. For example, you don't just have "Archer" you have "Archers of Qarsi." Early sets had things as generic as Black and White Knight - but by Ice Age they realized the mistake started using things like "Knights of Thorn" and "Order of the White Shield." Specificity breeds variation. I'm not saying "you should use the House structure I proposed," I'm saying "you should consider more specific demarcations so you open up the available card pool." Find a division that works with the set structure and story you want to tell and test it out (maybe by Dominance, or faction, etc.). Maybe even consider do a round of commons each in a different structure to see which feels better. I will say that your "burn and flare" ability structure would probably be better as an Uncommon cycle rather than a Common cycle. Also, consider a Kicker or Overload type of mechanic to represent Flaring (or one faction's version of Flaring). Quote After I had made rough ideas for Allomancers (as you see here), I moved on to archetypes. Since this is my first set, I decided to roll with a five archetype structure rather than a ten archetype structure, as that meant half as many mechanics and interactions to worry about. I ended up settling on enemy color pairings representing the four main factions in TFE (Skaa, Nobles, Obligators, and the Rebellion) as well as allomancy tribal in U/R, as I needed something to fill the slot and that seemed to be the best fit. You may want to consider a 4 archtype structure (like the Torment card set) - where you assign Allomancy a color (e. g. White) then your archtypes would be WU, WB, WR, WG with each focusing on how a faction uses the magic (ref: Tainted Field, Isle, etc.). Quote At this point I realized that by picking my first set based around a world with about 3 total races (four if you are counting the differentiation between Skaa and Nobles), very few beasts, sparingly little return from the dead type magic, and only one type of flying entity, I was diving into the deep end. This is certainly going to be a non-standard set, and with very little experience, it’s going to be a rough journey. When you say this, do you mean races as pertains to factions and archtypes for the set? Or are you thinking that pretty much every creature in the set needs to be Human, Kandra, or Inquisitor (assuming those are the three races you meant)? If the latter, please remember that you still have access to many earth-like animals that can fill common creature slots. Just in the TFE scene where Kelsier shows Vin the Mistwraith (a fourth race already) we have confirmation on skeletons identied from pigs, dogs, cats, deer, horses, buffalo. . . (TFE Ch 8) Spoiler Vin nodded, calling upon a burst of extra Allomantic power. Everything immediately became lighter, the mists becoming even less of an obstruction. What she saw caused her to shiver—fascinated, revolted, and more than a little disturbed. The creature had smoky, translucent skin, and Vin could see its bones. It had dozens upon dozens of limbs, and each one looked as if it had come from a different animal. There were human hands, bovine hooves, canine haunches, and others she couldn’t identify. The mismatched limbs let the creature walk—though it was more of a shamble. It crawled along slowly, moving like an awkward centipede. Many of the limbs, in fact, didn’t even look functional—they jutted from the creature’s flesh in a twisted, unnatural fashion. Its body was bulbous and elongated. It wasn’t just a blob, though…there was a strange logic to its form. It had a distinct skeletal structure, and—squinting through tin-enhanced eyes—she thought she could make out translucent muscles and sinew wrapping the bones. The creature flexed odd jumbles of muscles as it moved, and appeared to have a dozen different ribcages. Along the main body, arms and legs hung at unnerving angles. And heads—she counted six. Despite the translucent skin, she could make out a horse head sitting beside that of a deer. Another head turned toward her, and she could see its human skull. The head sat atop a long spinal cord attached to some kind of animal torso, which was in turn attached to a jumble of strange bones. Vin nearly retched. “What…? How…?” So you can use that resource to fill out common card slots (especially Vanilla and French Vanilla common creatures) Quote I would love to know your approach to building your set(s), and what you did similarly or differently than I did when you were in the early phases of set design. I’d love to hear from someone that has already gone through a similar process that could give me some insight. Really, it starts with those Nuts and Bolts articles. When I was developing my set post-GDS 2* I started with a rough card count and laid out the ratio percentages for: common, uncommon, rare, mythic; colors, muti-color, colorless; and within each color identity the ratios for each card type (not stictly to the WotC ratios - but still along the same process - white and green have the most creatures, blue has the least creatures, etc.). In the end, I had probably designed close to 400 possible cards to get a 230ish "card set." Realize you may rough out many cards that never make the final cut. This way I had a reference that, while not set-in-stone, gave me a rough idea of what kinds of cards I should be developing and I could assign archtypes, keywords and flavor to fill the roles I needed. Spoiler Note: During GDS 2, I was helping a couple contestents on thier set design; but I could not enter myself since I was still enlisted and would not have been able to "win." After that was when I started reading and researching and building my own set, so if the opportunity arose after I was out I would already have experience making cards and sets. Quote Sorry for the strongly worded response, I just want to fill you in on what exactly to expect and what I’m looking for. I realize now that my initial post was a bit lackluster in regards to the information it gave, and acted in a very secretive fashion. Hopefully opening the doors to my thought processes and steps that I have taken helps, and I’m glad that you gave me some detailed feedback. No worries. As I said, you can PM me here or on Nexus if you have questions or just want a sounding board. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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