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Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-07-07 23:18:33)
| Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-07-07 23:18:33)
Doh. I totally forgot about produce in that context.
I guess "~ produces
" could work, right? Eh, idk if that's much shorter or more helpful.
testing...
> "
: Elvish Mystic produces 
."
: Add 
to your mana pool."
> "
Yeah, seems about the same length :/
How about something like "generate
"?
It causes issues because A) the word is already in use. (E.g. Zendikar Resurgent), Myr Superion, Mana Reflection.) and B) you can't have a permanent/ability do the same thing as a player, game terms are segregated in that way.
What do you guys think about
> "Produce
."
> "Produce mana of any color."
instead of
> "Add
to your mana pool."
> "Add one mana of any color to your mana pool."
?
Is currently used in "Hus Werny 火山" set.
Sorry, my point was "evergreen or set mechanic?" wasn't a useful question. It would have to be a set mechanic. It could be an interesting one, sort of like some of the Amonkhet cards actually.
If there's a cap on the number of mechanics in a set, then giving a name to any act that puts one of more -1/-1 counters on a creature sounds like it eats up unnecessary space. Combined with the fact that -1/-1 counters show up much more infrequently than +1/+1 counters (7 years between Amonkhet block and Scars of Mirrodin block?), it's unlikely to be seen that often. Since the -1/-1 counters are likely represented physically, and strain would only care about them being generated, I don't think there's much benefit to introducing a word when -1/-1 counters already provide enough set-up (Destroy target creature that has a -1/-1 counter on it vs. Destroy target strained creature).
I think it's the problem of Devoid, adding a name to something that didn't need a name.
Sets usually have to decide between using either +1/+1 or -1/-1 counters, so that they don't get mixed up, with + counters being generally the easier to design for.
However, I don't really see how that's particularly relevant to whether or not to give "withering" its own keyword action term. IMO it feels like it could be ambiguous enough (like scry) that it would be usable for most cards regardless of their flavor.
Most sets aren't allowed -1/-1 counters, so that's not even a question.
This post on reddit made me consider using "strain" as an action word for putting -1/-1 counters.
Rough examples:
> "Strain ~: Draw a card, then discard a card. (To strain a creature, put a -1/-1 counter on it.)"
> "~ enters the battlefield strained three times. (A strained creature has a -1/-1 counter on it.)"
> "Strain target creature two times. (Put two -1/-1 counters on it.)"
Now, I'm not sure whether this would be only a set's mechanic/theme (more along the lines of support/exhaust in that it would be more specific) or an "evergreen" wording.
CMOS prohibits aetherborn. That's the old argument I mentioned. Plus, that's even worse, since CMOS didn't make singular they against the rules until 1998, so it chose to regress.
Agree with 'they/their'. That said, I'm happy Wizards hasn't tried to cut 'he or she' down to just 'she', like some authors do. I'm listening to a Great Courses lecture right now on novel writing, and the lecturer insists on it. I'm all for doing it once or twice to maybe make a point. But constantly using 'she' as a pronoun to represent an audience is incredibly jarring. It's loading a sentence with an argument about gender inequality every time you use a pronoun.
@Sorrow, @Dude, actually, the last time I saw the point brought they invoked following the Chicago Manual of Style (which I found especially poor an excuse, to be honest).
Translators ALREADY have to deal with a bunch of card names that require gendering anyway, pronouns would BARELY be an issue.
Something I stumbled upon right now:
I want a game rule that says, if you ever look through your library, shuffle it afterwards and stop putting the text on cards.
I've shifted to singular they/their in design since I became of aware of the push for singular gender-neutral pronouns in English.
I think I remember seeing someone bring up the question years ago on Blogatog, but I think MaRo's response was something about translation confusion.
Well, following that line of thought would digress from the topic of this thread, so I just pre-emptively suggest to take it to a new card - we left the realm of game design and rules. There is nothing there preventing it.
I've explicitly called out their inclusivity argument before, and the viewpoint is that it's more important to be inclusive to women than non-binary people. Inclusivity to one group requires excluding another. My previous argument for why wizards doesn't use "they" was invalidated by the aetherborn, so my stance is that wizards is explicitly trans exclusionary.
I hope so. I've been very pleased by wizards efforts to become more inclusive. I agree why it would make sense for them to change the templating.
But I'm not completely sure: magic is still fighting against a stereotype of "you might like it if you're male, you won't if you're female", and removing 'she' might go against that. And there's still lots of people who will just think singular they is wrong, when it doesn't come with an explanation why it's written that way.
Honestly, it seems like a matter of time until Wizards adopts that wording officially. With gender-aware inclusive characters (both transgender and gender-neutral) in short succession they show that they care - and if they can have a race of gender-neutral beings they are bound to consider the language they use on their cards as well.
I personally used the gender-neutral pronoun in my files to save five keystrokes during my most tired design crunch sessions and reverted to the "official" wording for publicized material, but then I realized that "official" wording has become something I tampered with more regularly and used the short inclusive form.
Lots of people informally use "their" instead of "his or her". I don't know if that would be better or not.
Huh. I'm not sure if I'm repeating someone else's idea (possibly in this thread. Something got me on it while reading the posts, and I can't figure out what.) But I'm not sure why Wizards hasn't simplified "Then shuffle your library" to just "Shuffle." If it's assumed that whenever a player shuffles, they always shuffle their library, then we can cut three words.
For example:
Rampant Growth
Sorcery
Search your library for a basic land and put it on the battlefield tapped. Shuffle.
Hmm. It sounded much better in my head. Maybe you still need the word 'Then'. But yeah... 'Then shuffle' should suffice. And if people think they're supposed to do a dance move -- all the better.
"the point of new terminology like dies is to make the game more flavorful"
I'm not actually sure; I agree that's a bonus, but I think it might be a side effect of making the game clearer
"Why would add "from their hand" to discard spells when you could use bury instead which has the additional usage for noncreature permanents as "when this is buried"?"
Well, I'm not sure that's a good way to go, but (a.) if you explicitly say 'from your hand' it means beginners don't think it means from the battlefield (b.) with this terminology, cards in the battlefield could say "when this is discarded" or "when this is discarded from the battlefield" (c.) if you use discard for 'put into graveyard from anywhere' you can absorb the existing use of discard from hand, and not need two separate words to learn.
@Jack_V: Okay, but you did kinda counter your own proposal. Why would add "from their hand" to discard spells when you could use bury instead which has the additional usage for noncreature permanents as "when this is buried"?
@SecretInfiltrator: Yeah, that's pretty much what I said about "tutor."
About the "shuffle your library afterwards" as "reminder" text:
Okay, so I was wrong about "not having the time right now." I went through those 517 cards with shuffle in them and I would say around 98 % just clearly state "then shuffle your library" or something similar at the very end of the card effect/text.
Cards that tutor on top of library need to stated a bit differently (ala Treefolk Harbinger - also similar change to Lost Legacy):
> ... you may search your library for a card, reveal it, then put that card on top of your library after shuffling it. (Whenever a library is searched, its owner’s shuffles it afterwards.)
There are couple of cards (exactly 3 if I'm correct), where the designers kinda were being (a bit too) clever, that actually might need to have their functionally changed in a very minor ways: Signal the Clans, Grim Reminder, and Phyrexian Portal. If "put on top/bottom, then shuffle" would ever differ in some way from "shuffle into your library". Or maybe they could be somehow stated as "shuffle those cards into your library when you shuffle your library" or something like that.
> SecretInfiltrator:
> My personal philosophy is to minimize the use of tutoring effects in the first place since they create a loading screen of shuffling (whether it is part of the rules text or reminder text).
This is something I would incline towards with the addition of "shuffle afterwords reminder" text. Ie. Celestial Horizon.
Research: So green would now "research a land card"? Eh. How about "call", "summon"? ... I've to think about this.
Discard and sacrifice are already hard to tell apart for new players, as in they forget if discard means from hand or battlefield. However, the point of new terminology like dies is to make the game more flavorful; discard is as mechanical as you get.
re: tutor
The issue with "tutor" is that you use it in Magic slang as "I tutor for something" but it actually means "teach, instruct" in plain english, so the spells are actually your teachers/lessons. The verb to search for a card should have a plain english meaning of "learn", "discover" or "research".
The last two fit more naturally into existing templating:
"Research" is probably better since it already includes "search" and as such etymologically related - an intuitive step for most, I imagine.
Good question about Draconic Roar, but I think the problem is more with finding a concise syntax for specifying optional extra costs on sorceries, than finding a syntax for "if you control". (You could allow conditional in costs, "If you control blah,
: do foo" )
Hm. I think this would be too confusing, but one could repurpose "discard" to mean "put into the graveyard from anywhere", not just hand. Some people already find that more natural. You'd have to add "from your/their hand" to existing uses of discard. But you could have "discard the top three cards of your library" and "whenever a permanent is discarded from play". Even "discard zone" instead of graveyard.
I'm certain that I would replace "milling" with something, but I was juggling with either the "bury" or "destroy" (or something else)
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/creativity/custom-card-creation/769591-mill-destroy
However the Call of the Wild example showing what bury used to mean does solidly put me back in the "bury" camp since returning a retired keyword that way is just too handy (and cool). It now even makes the old cards have more sense in a way to new players.
I also though the flavor of "buries the top X cards" is a bit iffy, but "flavored after the destination rather than the origin" explanation does make sense...
Also related to milling somewhat, can we just start using "they" instead of "he or she" - ie.
> "Target player buries the top five cards of their library."
Is there really any reason not to?
for comparison
> "Target player puts the top five cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard."
As for "spot", I would have to be more convinced as in how of a much benefit it provides vs the hurdle of introducing new terminology. Like, for Draconic Roar idk if "spot" does convey that you have to reveal the card rather than just "acknowledge" it. I would mentally connect the idea of "spotting" to scouting/spying and that would indicate that you would specifically not reveal the spotted cards to your opponents but rather just look at them.
I personally don't care that much about the minor inconvenience of "return." Adding a bunch of terms that all basically mean the same thing (so nothing in a sense) seems very inane solution.
Replacing "search your library for a type card, then shuffle" is okay I guess, but the main problem is finding the proper intuitive term for it. "Tutor" is too much of a magic slang term while "prope"... Idk, I mean, Gitaxian Probe doesn't tutor for anything and you usually would "probe" for yourself so... yeah, no, I'm not feeling it.
Eh; "Cannot be regenerated" stopped mattering a long while ago now. I don't like the idea of one-upping indestructible; it just begs "unburiable" to come into being.
I do kinda like the idea of using it for mill, though.
I just thought of an odd one that I recall from one of the Lord of the Rings CCGs: spot. Spotting something means to just point out that it exists e. g. an activated ability with metalcraft could be written as:
>
, Spot three artifacts you control: Tap target creature.
It seems inane, but I'm currently thinking about ways to shorten the text of cards like Draconic Roar...
I feel like I'm not there yet, but I want this. ^^
@Vitenka: "Bury is old old terminology. If you need to change "destroy" to something else; why not use "dies" again? "Target creature dies.""
Because I wouldn't use it for destruction effects. I wouldn't use the wording to circumvent indestructible, but for any card that "is put into the graveyard from anywhere" or from a zone other than the battlefield.
Typical uses:
Note that those of you who only remember the way "bury" was errata'd on most cards forget that bury could also mean something different: Call of the Wild.
It's literally been functional errata to change the meaning of bury to what you know today; I'm literally using the original definition of the phrase over this changed version.
@jmgariepy: I could some phrases be replaced, and resurrect/raise or undo/unmake/rescind are often number one candidates, but if you still have to name the target zone separately (e. g. "Unmake target creature to its owner's hand.") you lose a lot of the appeal of creatiing a keyword action and also get really ugly sounding sentences.
Yes, my intent was that commons and uncommons (also rares where it fitted nicely) would have the reminder text.
You guys keep mentioning these weird hypothetical corner cases where you would search two times at one effect or whatever, but do they actually exist? I don't currently have the time, but I think this gatherer search includes most of the affected cards.
(copy the whole url as it contains those characters that break the syntax of this site)
Edit: Link fixed by Alex.