MTG Fan Set

[mtgfanset]

Is this project still alive? There haven't been updates in a while.

It’s definitely in a rough spot right now. I (magicarasa) went on vacation for a bit and work has been picking up on top of other stuff. This is always in the back of my mind, but the free time isn’t really there for me at the moment.

We also reached a point where we really need play testing to move forward and make decisions about what’s fun and what plays well and how to make it more fun and play better. And that never really happened.

I don’t think it’s dead. Just unplanned hibernating.

[markrosewater]

If we ever get a pirate set will we see the Parrrley mechanic return or ships?

A good question. What would you all most expect in a Pirate set?

[markrosewater]

If we ever get a pirate set will we see the Parrrley mechanic return or ships?

A good question. What would you all most expect in a Pirate set?

[markrosewater]

Any chance of you doing an updated Design Skeleton article? (Or any of the old Nuts & Bolts?) White doesn't divide its commons 8 creature / 2 noncreature any more. In fact, the creature/non divide is pretty much even across colours these days - it makes the articles hard to learn from, as a designer.

Here are the updated creature percentages:

62% - White

50% - Blue

56% - Black

53% - Red

59% - Green

And here’s how many creatures per color (assuming ten cards per color):

White - 6

Blue - 5

Black - 6

Red - 5

Green - 6

And if there are five artifacts, I’d make two creatures. That gets us to thirty creatures.

[incrediblefrown]

@mtgfanset

[markrosewater]

Any chance of you doing an updated Design Skeleton article? (Or any of the old Nuts & Bolts?) White doesn't divide its commons 8 creature / 2 noncreature any more. In fact, the creature/non divide is pretty much even across colours these days - it makes the articles hard to learn from, as a designer.

Here are the updated creature percentages:

62% - White

50% - Blue

56% - Black

53% - Red

59% - Green

And here’s how many creatures per color (assuming ten cards per color):

White - 6

Blue - 5

Black - 6

Red - 5

Green - 6

And if there are five artifacts, I’d make two creatures. That gets us to thirty creatures.

[mtgfanset]

Story crafting - Master the Sea

The story follows a small group of islanders who discover their island is dying. They tell the tribe leaders, who brush it off and say they'll survive as they always have (how Green of them). So the protagonists leave the island in search for new land. On the way, they meet treacherous sea monsters, villainous pirates (and perhaps a friendly one that joins them on their quest), and dangerous weather that makes their journey difficult. When the protagonists finally find a new land, they discover that that land is dying too, and there may be no hope but to simply live at sea and create their own perfect society. They end their story by creating a society of good, that fights evil pirates and monsters and works to grow and welcome any islandfolk or good pirates to their new world. [This is just a starting point, please critique like crazy]

[mtgfanset]

More Direction

Everyone, submit any pitches you have for a plot/further worldbuilding.

[mtgfanset]

Pirate Scratch work -- Menace / Renown / Lords

2B Creature -- Human Pirate (C) Renown 1 As long as ~ is renowned, it has Menace. 3/2 _____ 2BB Creature -- Human Pirate (U) Menace Renown 2 3/2 ____ 3BB Creature -- Human Pirate (R) Pirates you control have Menace. 3/3 ____ Renowned creatures you control have Menace. Pirates you control have renown 1.

[mtgfanset]

Custom Magic Discord

Follow this link

The channels are all in alphabetical order. Since we don’t have a set name yet, our channel is #tumblr-fan-set

[ashe-cloud-phoenix]

I dropped the zip file for the MSE2 file I made out of the commons file here a couple of days ago.

[mtgfanset]

Play Testing “Schedule” Survey

Follow this link. Select all options that would work for you. Choose times that are most likely to work for you from week to week if they were regular, even if you wouldn’t be able to make them every single week.

This time zone converter can help you with times. Just set the first box to whatever place you are (it defaults to “local time” which should be your real time) and set the second box to New York.

Then this Google sheet can be used and referenced to get a get a less formal thing going. Just go in there and edit yourself into it. Probably using your Tumblr blog name so we can all easily contact each other to arrange something.

Let’s see what works best and get things going.

[mtgfanset]

Custom Magic Discord

Follow this link

The channels are all in alphabetical order. Since we don’t have a set name yet, our channel is #tumblr-fan-set

[ashe-cloud-phoenix]

I dropped the zip file for the MSE2 file I made out of the commons file here a couple of days ago.

[mtgfanset]

Play Testing “Schedule” Survey

Follow this link. Select all options that would work for you. Choose times that are most likely to work for you from week to week if they were regular, even if you wouldn’t be able to make them every single week.

This time zone converter can help you with times. Just set the first box to whatever place you are (it defaults to “local time” which should be your real time) and set the second box to New York.

Then this Google sheet can be used and referenced to get a get a less formal thing going. Just go in there and edit yourself into it. Probably using your Tumblr blog name so we can all easily contact each other to arrange something.

Let’s see what works best and get things going.

[mtgfanset]

Play Testing “Schedule” Survey

Follow this link. Select all options that would work for you. Choose times that are most likely to work for you from week to week if they were regular, even if you wouldn’t be able to make them every single week.

This time zone converter can help you with times. Just set the first box to whatever place you are (it defaults to “local time” which should be your real time) and set the second box to New York.

Then this Google sheet can be used and referenced to get a get a less formal thing going. Just go in there and edit yourself into it. Probably using your Tumblr blog name so we can all easily contact each other to arrange something.

Let’s see what works best and get things going.

[mtgfanset]

Don't know if we're going to have a mill / graveyard salvaging archetype (Treasure Hunters/Undead Pirates/Sea Monsters are all candidates). But I thought I'd share this to keep it in everyone's mind as an option.

Losses at sea occur. This is a way to depict them.

[mtgfanset]

Custom Magic Discord

Follow this link

The channels are all in alphabetical order. Since we don’t have a set name yet, our channel is #tumblr-fan-set

[mtgfanset]

Outline

Probably should have posted this before the exploratory design post but here we go. This is a project started by @magicarasa in an attempt to work with the setup of the disparate and virtually autonomous people here of the custom Magic card community in order to collaborate on a fan set with the objective of “publishing” it by the end of 2017.

This is incredibly open to the Magic community in general, even if you’ve never designed a custom Magic card in your life. Throw in your two cents, tell everyone else what you’d want to see, submit a one-off design in the hopes it makes it in later. OR write paragraphs long flora and fauna concepts, draw fan art, design a mechanic and a handful of cards to showcase it. This is very much a group effort and my goal is only to arbitrate and move it along to completion and hopefully what will be a fun set that’s both well-designed and well-developed.

Below the cut I’ve got a rough outline of how I expect the process to go (it could change quite a bit–I’ve never done anything like this before) and some links to potentially helpful websites.

Keep reading

[mtgfanset]

Just wanted to remind everyone about the process. Exploratory design is already under way in a huge manner. The feedback and input has been phenomenal so far! Thanks everybody for your interest and contributions!

I also wanted to take an opportunity to talk about the decision making process; mainly that I’m not yet 100% certain on the best way to determine how we move forward. There are a ton of factors that go into this, enough so that I’m not sure a flat out vote is the best way to make such a huge decision like the nature of the set we as a community will focus on for the next year.

But I also don’t want to unilaterally make such a call (even if my intent is to best match what I perceive as the community opinion) and potentially disaffect a number of people whose ideas are put aside. The nature of this is that most ideas we’ve had presented so far won’t get to be the focus of this blog and our combined efforts. That’s just a reality we have to deal with. A big part of design is making difficult decisions.

The question is how best to make this first major decision. I think there are essentially two ways of doing this though I’m open to alternatives I haven’t considered:

Open vote, majority wins

Council decision

I imagine an open vote wouldn’t be just one vote, but perhaps two or three. The first with all suggestions for world theme, the second a run off of the top three or so (unless that first vote has a very clear winner). The same for mechanical focus (and I’m thinking the mechanical focus should be made with the general world aesthetic already known, though mechanical focus could inform world aesthetic, it seems to me that we are mostly looking to design some sort of top-down world).

The council decision would mean myself and a handful of others discussing the available ideas and choosing one. But then how do we choose the other members of such a council? I have no good answer for that right now. I am fairly certain that at some point I will want to bring on more curators for this blog. I think it’s a bit early for that at the moment.

I suppose looking at it like this causes me to lean toward a vote anyway. I’m kind of thinking out loud here so feel free to chime in. I want this to be the community’s set in every sense of the word and at every step of the way–each post here is an invitation to speak up and have your opinion be heard!

[imakethecard]

I vote for totalitarianism.

I’ve participated in many projects like this one, and the key thing that separates the successful ones from the failed ones is the will to continue. Generally speaking, that comes from a single person. That person, who drives the group forward and doesn’t give up on or forget about the project, almost invariably ends up in charge whether they like it or not.

Best to embrace it, I think. Let the buck stop with you.

You can and should listen to other people, but whatever you do, don’t let the project reach a state where other people doing nothing can cause it to collapse.

[ashe-cloud-phoenix]

@mtgfanset

I still think our forum format is inadequate. I have no idea how much conversation is going on that I never see. I’m constantly torn between wanting to repeat myself for visibility to more parties, but don’t want to spam anyone who’s already seen my input. We need somewhere for concerted discussion to happen, so we’re not all individually shouting into the void. —– Playtesting specific:

I think if we want playtesting to go on in a real way, we need to task someone with making a Cockatrice card file so we can all share some tables. I also think that a couple of ‘starter decks’ or 'duel decks’ or whatever the term is should be built out of the current common draft file, to lower the barrier to entry of playtesting.

Basic scenario: -> We schedule a weekend time slot that a decent number of people think they can make (eg 12pm-3pm Saturday, or something) -> I can either message someone I want to play with ahead of time and go “hey you want to build an [mechanic A] deck? I want to try playing [mechanic B]. What do you say to some matches during this weekend’s playtesting window? -> Or I can show up at some point during that playtesting window and go "hey what’s the generic Pirates build atm?” And get a decklist file linked to me so I can just pick it up and play. At this point, as a satellite member of this community, I need a place and time I can just show up and participate in a tangible way. I don’t have people on my “speed-dial” I can just call up and do pick-up playtesting with. We need a 'clubhouse’ to bring people together. Can we use the Tavern Hall discord for this? @bizarre-trader

EDIT: The formatting screwed up when this got posted from mobile, so I’m fixing it on desktop.

[mtgfanset]

As far as I’m aware all the conversation is occurring here on reblogs and replies. We set leads have been messaging each other on Facebook but the results of those talks have all made their way to the blog.

I’ve requested a channel on the Discord server @trockenmatt recommended. I personally have been hesitant to move the talks of the set from Tumblr but I do agree that the current format doesn’t meet our needs. Once that channel is up I’ll make a post for it and we’ll see how active people get on that.

With regard to play testing, that might also be easier to organize through the Discord chat. I mean they even have a channel called #playtesting. Probably need a poll to figure out schedules for potential play testing. Providing a window to shoot for is definitely something we can facilitate. Perhaps we could also establish some good times for individuals as a sort of master post that anyone could then reference and contact a person who seems to be open and see if they’d be willing to play. But that sort of things likely needs to be updated quite a bit. Perhaps a Google doc that anyone can edit their times on?

I know we need to do more to facilitate play testing online. All mine has been with a friend with paper print outs, but I’ve had trouble just establishing the base line of what to expect from play testing with him and what our goal is so that’s been less fruitful than I’d hoped.

[ashe-cloud-phoenix]

Attempting to translate the Fanset file onto MSE2 and then Cockatrice

@magicarasa @mtgfanset I’ve just read Reuben Covington’s tutorial on exporting set files to Cockatrice and Webdrafter here: http://thegraymerchants.com/?p=836 I’m about to start translating the preliminary set file here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gh1Gg1Qi56N0WRPHTjguyGl0SW2pzBYysX5mhxsF4ho/edit#gid=0 Into MSE2. If I get through that alright, I’ll see about following the tutorials to get the thing onto a central platform. I at least want a Cockatrice file for now. I don’t think we’re ready for Webdrafter or Planesculptors. I see you’ve hosted Dreamscape on Planesculptors, so I hope this is a good line to follow.

[mtgfanset]

Awesome! My concern is how easy/difficult it might be to edit that but basically if we can have a set of cards as stand ins we can keep the actual rules text on file outside to reference. I think that’s a function of play testing during all points of design that we really need to be able to edit easily.

Actually it could be as “simple” as assigning a list of actual Magic cards to correlate to our designs. Not sure how easy that would be for people to look at and play, but we could at least get the mana cost and card type to correlate. No actual messing around with the card files and then that could be done later once the set is finalized. Just a thought.