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| Mechanics | Skeleton | Common Breakdown Ref | All commons for playtesting |
Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2025-12-21 00:34:15)
This, like Marble Palisade, could take the form of either a land or a fortification. I'm not sure which we want to represent architecture.
Either way, I'm picturing a theme of sacrificing slaves to build things.
I was inspired during my boring classes today, and I'll shortly be posting several ideas shortly, with themes involving slavery and architecture.
Sorry, I don't know anything about that. :(
If anyone can point me at the format specifications for MSE, OCTGN and/or Wizard's Familiar, I'll write Multiverse export options for those formats. It'd be great to be able to export to MSE.
From what I know, they test the commons by themselves. That's what they did for the GDS2, at least. So, if I'm going to make an OCTGN set for playtesting, should I just pop all of our blue and white commons in there, then put all of the blue commons in one deck and all of the white in another?
By the way, what I do with OCTGN is put all of the cards into Magic Set Editor, then export it with the OCTGN export template and make it into an OCTGN set file. You then have the option to make decks or play sealed games, like other free Magic programs, I think. I just use OCTGN because I like the way it looks. But I have no problem trying Wizard's Familiar.
Oooh, yeah. I really like the theme in red at the moment with the devils and the yetis... can we not change that? I think black is doing find without adding a true underworld vibe. I mean, it can feel dark and evil without that.
I agree with Link that I'd rather not have humans anywhere but Aer. So making the slavedriver sacrifice a human is a bit dubious, because in their normal existence in their monoblack faction, they won't have any humans around.
I do like the idea of Gorgons enslaving other races, though. Perhaps the slaves are ratmen, minotaurs, imps, that kind of thing. Driving them to build monuments is a nice touch.
Also also: I like the idea of the Gladiator subtype, but it's probably true. While the Greeks had gladiators, it's the Romans that were well known for them. That's a shame, really.
An underworld theme may run a little counter to red, if we keep the concept of Devils running around in caves. But, I don't think that is clearly established anyways, and can be bumped off of red in favor of some sort of snow devils.
I don't think the 'Greek architecture in a swamp' is too impractical. Especially, if we include in the backstory that this continent wasn't always run by gorgons, but was an enlightened human settlement. Once the Gorgons took over, though, they had no respect for the land, demolished a number of aqueducts, let dams go into disrepair, and what was once well structured Floodplain, has devolved into a swamp that is sucking all the beautiful architecture into it. The gorgons probably don't see this as a problem, either. Better to spend money on yourself, and let nature do what nature will do.
I like the slavery theme, but we need to be careful not to walk on green's turf. Right now, green is turning other creatures into plants, then doing things with them. I think "and then gain control of them" will probably appear on only one card at this point, so there probably isn't a mechanical overlap.
Oh, also, can we make thes Gorgon Slavedriver up there say "Sacrifice a Human" instead of "Sacrifice a creature"? That solves two goals at the same time. It helps give black its linear mechanic, and helps establish black's identity as terrible people. Nobody complains when you do terrible things to a goblins or thrulls, but the idea of monsters treating humans like this... it feels very evil to me.
Playtesting is... interesting. I'm not a fan of virtual Magic, and, I don't even have the right technology to participate. I own a CR-48... Google's computer. I love the thing, but it only has a web browser... that's the point. It's insanely fast, but it has limited functionality.
That being said, I do have a very open-minded group that gets together at my local game store on Thursday. They get together to play very casual formats, and often look to me to add some weirdness to their play experiences. I'm quite sure I could cut out and proxy some of these cards and report on play experience. Unfortunately, that play experience will all be filtered by me back on this site, as opposed to two designers working together. Unless someone on this thread lives in Southern New Hampshire and has Thursday afternoons off.
I don't know if this 'solves' our organization issues, but early playtesting is a good first step. I suppose the next question is, "While we are looking to playtest the current blue/white submissions, what is our plan going forward for Green, Black and Red? Is asking people to make a skeleton the best idea? Is working on the skeleton together a better plan? Do we hand the skeleton to one person and say 'get 'er done'? Should we take a more hollistic approach, make some cards, accept feedback, then make more cards? And if we think that may be a best approach, should we wait to see what happens with the U/W playtesting before moving forward?"
On a separate side note, Link and Rourke, I know you may look at your posts and feel like you didn't say anything, but really, that whole lot of nothing is very useful. It tells us, for one thing, people are reading, and are trying to be helpful.. they just don't know how yet. It also helps move the conversation forward. Good writing requires continuous writing. It needs to build off of something.
I only mean we wanted to stay away from the idea of black being related to undead. Those themes just run really close together in my head.
I like the slavedriver quite a bit, actually. We could have something like this, too:
Apthora Enslaver
Creature- Gorgon
At the beginning of your upkeep, gain control of target creature you don't control.
At the beginning of your end step, sacrifice a creature. Creatures you control but don't own get -1/-1.
3/3
Also, a reprint of Enslave would be quite nice.
I must have missed the part on the underworld. Also, I really like that idea. Maybe this:
:Add BB to your mana pool.
Gorgon Slavedriver
Creature-Gorgon
Sacrifice a creature,
2/2
You're right, fight doesn't work with black, and you're probably also right that gladiators are more Roman... oops.
I'm fine with Black having a sort of underworld vibe, though we did say we wanted to stay away from that since it's so typical.
We also don't need to have black have a straight-up Greek-Roman feel. That culture is probably deep enough to be explored in its own set. We can just have some creative influences, like the creature types, to help drive our idea. Personally, I like the idea of the Gorgons holding the other creatures of the plane in thrall (though I'd rather not have humans anywhere but Aer). Does anyone else think that driving other creatures to make monuments to you is pretty black? Especially if you drive them to death?
Aren't gladiators Roman? And fight works with the flavor, but not with black. Flavorfuly, I also can't see a giant building built in a swamp. In fact, other than gorgons, most stuff that screams "Greek" to me also screams white, red or blue. Wait-what if we focus on the underworld?
My favourite name for a multiheaded dog: "Mastiff of the great divide"
No other real thoughts I'm afraid - Greek myth seems big on heroes and gods, and fairly low on "Evil nasty thingy" - most of the monsters aren't very black. There's room for a black hydra, though.
If you haven't seen DrJones's custom set Orobis, you should take a look. It combined themes of ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, and MC Escher. So labyrinths, patterns, creatures attacking walking on the walls (via the mechanic "sidewalk", which may be the best custom mechanic I've encountered), scarabs, minotaurs, and so on.
Greeks are known for gladiators, but I'm not sure the Greek mythological creatures are known for gladiators. But it could work. It's certainly fine to issue a small number of creature type errata as part of a set's release, to support newly introduced creature types. (Though the difference between a gladiator and a warrior is pretty small.)
So with the white and blue commons, what is the state precisely? Is it that we have a bunch of designs, more than we can fit, and we're waiting to somehow sort them out?
In which case I suggest some playtesting probably is what we need. There are a few ways to do this that I can think of:
You can print out some cards from the Visual Spoiler or a details page (use the "Printable" link at the top-right of each details page), then cut out the printouts and slip them into card sleeves in an existing sleeved deck.
You can export the set to plain text then import it into http://toothycat.net/wiki/wiki.pl?ChrisHowlett/PyDraft, and then play over IM using PyDraft's shuffler to manage your deck.
It should also be possible to import the set to Wizard's Familiar, like the M13 guys are doing; Jay wrote a blog post about that here.
It looks like OCTGN might also be suitable. I have no idea what that would involve or be like.
Either way, I think the thing that WotC R&D would do at around this stage would be to do some very early playtests of these cards, to see which themes and cards seem to look like they'll be fun. (It's possible we might need a few more cards - pretty much "guesses" for what some uncommons and rares for the themes might look like - for the playtests to be interesting.)
All of these playtesting options are pretty high overhead, which is part of why I haven't done my Clockwork Wings draft yet. So we may benefit from discussing commons and assembling commons for the other colours so that we can have more colours available for initial playtesting.
A bit of an off-track comment: When we get to playtesting (I'm being optimistic and saying when), can someone tell me how, exactly, that's done? I'm sorry to say that I don't really know. I have the ability to put the set into OCTGN,though, if that will help things. Then we can do sealed games and such, and possibly even play with each other.
I was just going down a list of creatures and putting down ones that COULD work, not necessarily those I felt NEEDED to work. For minotaur and hydra, for example, we could probably just have one of each at a high rarity, if at all.
As for a mechanic... how about this?
Pederasty (Whenever a creature with power lower than this creature's ETBs, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature.)
Kidding, kidding. I don't really know. What are Greeks known for? Philosophy, logic, myth, storytelling, democracy, gladiators, mathematics, architecture. There's more, I know, but there's a start.
I think I'm most intrigued by gladiators and architecture. Architecture could be fun to try. We could use fortifications. Or, since I don't think every color should have keywords, what if there were creatures that made land tokens when they ETBs? Like a minotaur that comes with a maze, or something. These could be few in number, but maybe tie into a (bizarre) theme of black caring about lands.
If the gorgons are enslaving everything, maybe a lot of their slaves are gladiators. I'm sure there's a mechanic that can represent this, even if it's just the Cyclops Gladiator ability. Are we allowed to make Gladiator a creature type, and make those cards that should be that type be it retroactively?
To be honest, despite what jmgariepy said about us doing a lot of the submitting right now, I've felt that I haven't contributed a lot because I have so much homework and other things going on right now. That being said, I noticed that the activity on the set has slowed down, and I've been actively trying to find time to work on it...
I think our main issue is that, unlike M13, we're practically directionless. At least we know that we should start with commons, not like the community set on tappedout.net. One possible thing we should do is to each design commons for the colors, not necessarily trying to fit exactly into a skeleton. I mean, sure, we can have ideas about things that need to be in the commons, but I think designing for a skeleton is very restricting, especially in a block, where a lot of the cards need to be top-down. This view is supported here, which is an interesting thing to read in its own right. Once we design the commons, though, I'm sure we'll have a difficult time deciding which ones fit the set better...
Honestly, I wouldn't mind having someone be sort of "in charge," as long as that person wasn't a dictator. It could just be someone who says "Okay, design black cards next," or whatever.
Of course, that still leaves the problem of deciding whose submissions end up in the set. The white and blue commons, for example, are in a sort of limbo right now. I don't think that should be left up to one person, though. It's too bad we can't sit down together and decide, because discussing in person would be so much easier. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure we're rather far apart from each other...
Anyway, sorry for rambling. I didn't really present a solution, did I?
I think it is a problem - or at least, it'd be nice if we could have the community involvement that we had a month ago. I've dropped out of involvement mainly because I wanted to take the time to create my view of the blue commons skeleton, and never got round to it; and perhaps because I didn't quite follow what was going on and which tasks were open. I hadn't actually realised that we were in the stage of filling slots in a skeleton; I think I'd be more able to participate in that.
I think what's part of the problem is that we don't have one specific person coordinating and exhorting people. It's interesting to watch the M13 project, where Jay is the lead designer and has delegated five people to head up the current stage with each colour. Jay is still the one reminding people what the current stage is, what their deadlines are, and what needs doing next. I don't think a Multiverse Community Set should be structured quite the same as the Goblin Artisans M13 project, but there's something there which we haven't got.
For the moment, I'd be up for doing some design, analysis, common-slotting or whatever needs doing, but I don't feel I've quite followed what's going on and what needs doing. So perhaps people could make a post with one or two key sentences in bold emphasising what current tasks we're inviting people to join in with?
I have a few ideas, myself, but I don't want to extrapolate too much on them. I'm the one presenting the problem to the group, and it seems in bad taste to find a problem, then present a solution without getting outside ideas first. That way, the problem can be recognized and potentially solved without debating the problem and the solution at the same time.
Of course, that is, assuming there is a problem in the first place ;)
Hum... I agree with what you said, I just can't think of how to go about it. We could make a card for each card slot, and have people link to the cards that could fill the slot. Then we would just need to agree on slots.
First, I apologize about this pedantic post. I go a little over in word count sometimes.
It seems we simmered down on this set since the crazy amount of activity in mid-late August. That level of activity couldn't last forever, but I'm a bit afeared that we might be running in the other direction, with Link and I making all the cards. Not that Link hasn't done an excellent job, mind you, but this thread was originally envisioned as a place for the community to make a set, not as a place for two designers to make a set, with occasional comments by passerbys.
The purpose of this post is not to guilt people. Trust me, I know that my job affords me more time to work on odd projects like this. I'm just trying to curb what could become a bad trend. I also, don't think it's laziness that slowed us down. I think a good chunk is before we were spitballing ideas, and that was something that everybody could be a part of. Now we're slotting commons onto a skeleton, and that requires a bit more dedication.
Even if the only communication on the set was just Link and I (which it definitely is not... I'm mentioning this for contrast), we would be having problems right now. That's because without a third party, we'd have a hard time agreeing on which cards should be in the skeleton and which cards shouldn't. I'm quite sure we could figure this out on our own... but we seem to be in this odd holding pattern where we can't argue it out directly, because there are other people involved, but we aren't getting many opinions from other people, so we can't move forward.
What I'm wondering is "can we design this set in a way that encourages more people to put in their two cents?" I don't think a rally speech for people to put in more time is a great idea. People put in the time that they have based upon their needs and their interests. Is there a way to either make the set design process easier, so that occasional contributors can make occasional contributions again? Or is there a way to somehow make the contribution process more fun?
There's a lot of creatures that we can make work, but I'm not sure if we want to be trying that hard. Players see Minotaurs as red, and Hydras as green. If we made those creatures black, people's reaction would be "Okay. They're taking all the greek monsters and making them black. That's the theme for black in this block." But, I don't think that should be the mechanic, or even the flavor for black in this set.
But Harpies seem fine. Lamias are a little odd, because they were a Greek monster that you could find in Africa... but they're still Greek, so that should work. Cyclops seems fine. And, despite what I said about Minotaurs and Hydras, I don't think sirens scream blue to most Magic players. I'm not sure about 'cereberuses'. Cerberuses kind of bug me, since I have a hard time thinking of Cerberus of being anything but the multi-headed guardian of Hell that he is. But, I could dig a race of hounds that have three heads, that aren't called 'Cerberus'.
Though, this list is rather interesting. It's odd how many Greek monsters are female... It makes me want to make the entire line-up of monsters as females, even the cyclopses. Maybe with male human slaves for the purpose of reproduction? That sounds like a pretty awesome style guide to me.
I do find this funny, though, that for all the good work that's been going on in Black, we have still yet to find the mechanic...
A list of possible creature types: Gorgon (most prominent), minotaur (I think we can make them work), harpy, lamia?, cerberus, siren (can these work in black?), cyclops (giants), and hydras.