[markrosewater]

Have you heard the criticism that formats are less exciting when wizards directly designs for them? E.g. Commander was more fun before dedicated commander sets?

I think players focus on the few broken cards that get made and ignore all the structural work that gets done. Having the designers focused on fixing issues with a format leads to a more fun format. What had a bigger impact on Commander, Golos Tireless Pilgrim or us making white and red stronger?

[markrosewater]

I've heard speculation that wotc is "spreading developers thin" to make so many sets. Is there any truth to that? Like are teams smaller/people are on more teams than they used to be? Or has wotc hired more designers to make the higher quantity of card designs per year?

It’s not true. As we started making more sets, we hired more designers. Sets have the same amount of time and people on the design team as we always have.

[markrosewater]

Hi Mark! Often when you talk about some players' estrangement from Universes Beyond, you compare it to your "Dark Night of the Soul" when Commander became so dominant. Please say some words to the following disanalogy: I used to love playing Standard and other constructed formats on Arena. But, I can't do this anymore since I need to play (against) UB cards which I really don't want. Do you see how you being unhappy with a rising format isn't the same as formats I play changing fundamentally?

Part of empathy is trying to demonstrate that you have similar emotions that someone else has shared. If someone lost their mother, I can share about how I felt when my father died. Their losing their mother and me losing my father are different things. They have different implications on each of our lives. I'm not trying to say my loss is the same. I'm trying to sympathize with their loss.

My dark night of the soul is different than your dark night of the soul. Magic constantly evolves and sometimes it changes in ways that move away from how you see the game. How that happens and what implications it has will be different person to person. I wasn't talking about what the exact change was (because it's going to vary), but that I understood the feelings that you were experiencing, because I had similar feelings, but yes, in a different context. That's the core of an analogy.

[jacebeleren]

With the reality fracture story starting soon, I have to ask: what’s the best case and worst case scenarios that could come from this story, in your opinion?

best case scenario: Jace finds SOME way to live his happy peaceful rest of his life with Vraska and their family. as long as it doesn't include any of the below cases 👇

worst case scenario: i told roy graham i'm gonna kill myself if he breaks up jace and vraska

stupidest case scenario: jace dies or gets all his memories erased AGAIN

[reallybigsquid2]

You know it's gonna end with him letting Tam erase his memories to protect everyone. I don't want it to end like that. But you and I both know it's gonna be that

[jacebeleren]

I'M CALLING ROY >:((((

[jacebeleren]

what is your opinion on the reality fracture arc so far? i liked it in the beginning but i feel jace went through a big change in duskmourn and avishkar that i can theoretically make sense of/explain but really would've liked to see directly....i can certainly see why he went from being protective of loot to um. child abuse. but what the reader sees is SUCH a sudden transition, and i especially find it hard to make sense of because in the thunder junction epilogues jace proposes settling down and vraska is the one who urges him to keep making change...i don't disbelieve the reversal per se (macbeth moment), but i really hope we get more details on it and without it so far it just makes me sad because. i was going to say something about jace's character being flattened but tbh it just makes me sad we have spend such a long amount of real time (like. seven years) building toward, if not a happy ending for jace and vraska, them being a united couple with a united goal, and it feels really frustrating and sad for that to fall apart so quickly right at the end in a way we don't even see.

when the ONE story was published, i criticized his characterization in ONE because i just do not believe Jace would ever agree to sacrifice the Mirrans to destroy Phyrexia. the Eldrazi arc showed that Jace is not willing to sacrifice the people of even one world to save the entire Multiverse. it's still hard for me to square that with how Jace was written in ONE. i don't know. maybe Jace thought he'd figure out some miraculous new solution when he got to New Phyrexia, like he did on Zendikar.

anyway though. i typed out a bunch of shit and then deleted it because i could feel this response spiraling out of control. to keep things brief, here's what i think:

like i wrote in my post from a few days ago, Jace doesn't want to lose himself, but every traumatic event he suffers loosens his grip. Jace completely lost himself in ONE. it was just the final straw.

Jace gave up on acting ethically because acting ethically didn't stop all those bad things from happening. wanting to be a hero --in the way he did before-- was just damage control. he's tired of temporary peace. he wants permanent peace. and he'll do whatever he has to do to achieve it.

Jace's character being flattened is something that he is doing to himself. Jace is actively choosing to ignore all the character development he's experienced.

Ranna takes her hand. "I'll tell you what I could never tell my son," Jace hears, unseen in the other room, "The old you is dead. You can never be that person ever again." Jace's breath catches in his chest. "You are your son's mother," Vraska says gently. "Thank you, Ranna." Vraska sounds comforted by that; Jace is anything but. The old him is dead, his mother is right. The Living Guildpact, the oathtaker, the pirate, the sphinx's weapon of war. That person died when Phyrexia stole his body to kill his countrymen. He is someone else. Bring the End, Part 2 - Alison Lührs (2024)

yes, Jace did suggest settling down and having children, but he felt that he could not do that unless he lived in a perfect multiverse. otherwise, he would just be subjecting his family / future children to whatever evils may later arise. he could not tolerate the idea of them living in such a cruel world.

as for Vraska's part in this... i'm not sure they were ever fully on the same page in this multiverse reset plan. she helped create the plan and agreed to it, but i do not think she realized how crazy Jace was / how far he was willing to go to see this plan through to the end. not until it was too late. generally, the ONLY line Jace is not willing to cross is that he does not kill people outright. he'll do everything short of killing a person, but as long as they're left with a pulse, Jace can still feel good about himself.

and i don't think Jace "went from being protective of Loot to child abuse". i think this was always the plan. Jace does not conceptualize his mistreatment of Loot as child abuse (it is, to be clear) because Jace believes he is protecting Loot. he's fixing the multiverse! that's the ultimate protection!

really, Jace has done this type of shit before. Jace is no stranger to "the ends justify the means". Jace is treating Loot --treating everyone-- the way he treated Kallist. i love you. i can't live without you. i'm only hurting you because i'm doing everything i can to keep you safe. i'm going to save you, whether you like it or not.

Kallist would never forgive him; he knew that before he even started. But he would be alive, and Jace owed him that—even if it wasn’t what Kallist thought he wanted. Agents of Artifice - Ari Marmell (2009)

Jace Beleren holds his loved ones so close he smothers them.

[cthonicurcheon]

"Jace's character being flattened is something that he is doing to himself. Jace is actively choosing to ignore all the character development he's experienced."

wow, what an awesome line! thank you for the very thoughtful response! i still really wish we had gotten to see something between duskmourn and avishkar, because i felt it was a very sharp tonal transition given we saw so little of actual vraska or loot on duskmourn (like i agree jace doesn't think and never thought it's child abuse, but loot clearly doesn't like it and vraska notices, so i wish we could've seen his lack of reaction thrown into relief---not his decision to do these things so much as the first time he did them past loot's resistance), so we got very little direct insight into the changing dynamics---but pulling that ranna quote from the epilogues helps me conceptualize it better (especially because at the time i struggled to make sense of why it was such a big deal to jace, rereading it it really is a clear "i don't have to take the burden of heroism on me anymore").

probably why this arc is really throwing me is that one of the things i like about fiction is that people change more easily, or at least faster and with less backsliding (or forwardsliding if the character development is evilstyle. which i guess is what jace is doing and i have no right to complain), so it's almost shocking to see someone just like. actively get worse extremely quickly and not only go back on all the positive changes they've slowly been making but be worse than ever before, even though that happens in real life all the time. it's like the depressing (and more interesting) version of an entire story article devoted to how different planeswalkers file their taxes. it's also so strange because it's taken such a long time---like I remember reading the ixalan story right after i started my new middle school and having so much less time for magic, and i'm about (knock on wood) to graduate college.

writing my tags i just realized the only other character i can think of whose arc does this is rose lalonde, which makes the addiction comparison i was also turning over pretty clear---especially because she is also addicted to her innate power. it's just very sad too to think of where jace goes from here. if you cut out the problematic substance in addiction, what does that mean for jace? it reminds me of the debates around "curing" a lot of neurotypes, especially with kelly digges talking about how absent minds was inspired by his own neurodiversity (i'm sure tuck haunting the background is going to play into something absent minds/jace's sparking related). there is something very Dark Autism about going wow wouldn't the world be so perfect and awesome if i was in charge and wouldn't everyone thank me for it eventually. the way jace's social struggles connect to it i find very interesting---struggling to connect with others because you are so different and having to constantly resist the urge to give up and isolate yourself (or just read their minds) in this direct struggle against your brain... the neediness and inability to ever trust that others actually like you because that verbal signal means so much less to you (because you can just read their minds).

[jacebeleren]

yessss totally. Jace is very Dark Autism Control Freak and i've said before wrt Jace's backsliding: Jace's character arc has arced so far it became a circle.

Jace was like. "if i have to go through any more character development, my character is going to develop into a villain-"

which is fair honestly because like. no one is like "i hope more bad things happen to everyone so we can all learn from the experience." that's insane. most people would be like "i do not want bad things to happen to me or other people." which is like. a reasonable way to think. and that's how Jace thinks.

if you had a magic button that could change the world so nothing bad ever happens again... for at least a second, pressing it would sound like a pretty good idea.

and think of it from Jace's perspective: he feels that, if he does not press the button, he is allowing everyone else to suffer needlessly. he cares :/

[femmchantress]

I love thematic supercycles

[markrosewater]

Hi Mark,

I'm super excited for Nauctis next year because it's THE set I've been waiting for. I studied marine biology and scientific diving in college and love all things nautical and oceany.

My favorite animal is a nautilus and there's only 4 in all of MTG. Is there a good chance that we will get a few more in the set?

I can’t talk specifics yet, but there will be a lot of underwater creatures. : )

[jacebeleren]

what is your opinion on the reality fracture arc so far? i liked it in the beginning but i feel jace went through a big change in duskmourn and avishkar that i can theoretically make sense of/explain but really would've liked to see directly....i can certainly see why he went from being protective of loot to um. child abuse. but what the reader sees is SUCH a sudden transition, and i especially find it hard to make sense of because in the thunder junction epilogues jace proposes settling down and vraska is the one who urges him to keep making change...i don't disbelieve the reversal per se (macbeth moment), but i really hope we get more details on it and without it so far it just makes me sad because. i was going to say something about jace's character being flattened but tbh it just makes me sad we have spend such a long amount of real time (like. seven years) building toward, if not a happy ending for jace and vraska, them being a united couple with a united goal, and it feels really frustrating and sad for that to fall apart so quickly right at the end in a way we don't even see.

when the ONE story was published, i criticized his characterization in ONE because i just do not believe Jace would ever agree to sacrifice the Mirrans to destroy Phyrexia. the Eldrazi arc showed that Jace is not willing to sacrifice the people of even one world to save the entire Multiverse. it's still hard for me to square that with how Jace was written in ONE. i don't know. maybe Jace thought he'd figure out some miraculous new solution when he got to New Phyrexia, like he did on Zendikar.

anyway though. i typed out a bunch of shit and then deleted it because i could feel this response spiraling out of control. to keep things brief, here's what i think:

like i wrote in my post from a few days ago, Jace doesn't want to lose himself, but every traumatic event he suffers loosens his grip. Jace completely lost himself in ONE. it was just the final straw.

Jace gave up on acting ethically because acting ethically didn't stop all those bad things from happening. wanting to be a hero --in the way he did before-- was just damage control. he's tired of temporary peace. he wants permanent peace. and he'll do whatever he has to do to achieve it.

Jace's character being flattened is something that he is doing to himself. Jace is actively choosing to ignore all the character development he's experienced.

Ranna takes her hand. "I'll tell you what I could never tell my son," Jace hears, unseen in the other room, "The old you is dead. You can never be that person ever again." Jace's breath catches in his chest. "You are your son's mother," Vraska says gently. "Thank you, Ranna." Vraska sounds comforted by that; Jace is anything but. The old him is dead, his mother is right. The Living Guildpact, the oathtaker, the pirate, the sphinx's weapon of war. That person died when Phyrexia stole his body to kill his countrymen. He is someone else. Bring the End, Part 2 - Alison Lührs (2024)

yes, Jace did suggest settling down and having children, but he felt that he could not do that unless he lived in a perfect multiverse. otherwise, he would just be subjecting his family / future children to whatever evils may later arise. he could not tolerate the idea of them living in such a cruel world.

as for Vraska's part in this... i'm not sure they were ever fully on the same page in this multiverse reset plan. she helped create the plan and agreed to it, but i do not think she realized how crazy Jace was / how far he was willing to go to see this plan through to the end. not until it was too late. generally, the ONLY line Jace is not willing to cross is that he does not kill people outright. he'll do everything short of killing a person, but as long as they're left with a pulse, Jace can still feel good about himself.

and i don't think Jace "went from being protective of Loot to child abuse". i think this was always the plan. Jace does not conceptualize his mistreatment of Loot as child abuse (it is, to be clear) because Jace believes he is protecting Loot. he's fixing the multiverse! that's the ultimate protection!

really, Jace has done this type of shit before. Jace is no stranger to "the ends justify the means". Jace is treating Loot --treating everyone-- the way he treated Kallist. i love you. i can't live without you. i'm only hurting you because i'm doing everything i can to keep you safe. i'm going to save you, whether you like it or not.

Kallist would never forgive him; he knew that before he even started. But he would be alive, and Jace owed him that—even if it wasn’t what Kallist thought he wanted. Agents of Artifice - Ari Marmell (2009)

Jace Beleren holds his loved ones so close he smothers them.

[sadshiba]

[markrosewater]

Black Lotus has a similar effect to Dark Ritual. Does this imply the existence of a Blue Lotus that's a free ancestral recall?

You speak of the lost Lotuses. : )

[card-designers-without-borders]

[markrosewater]

In recent years, I've noticed an uptick in colorless cards that aren't artifacts or eldrazi (such as Cryptic Trilobite, Rooftop Percher, or various UB cards (like Super State)). This has made me wonder - with cards like those in mind, what sorts of effects do you consider to be in colorless' mechanical identity?

Colorless doesn’t really have much of a mechanical identity.

[sphinxwalker-when]

I've actually written about this before, and I actually would disagree. Colorless, especially non-artifact colorlessness, tends to have an identity around exchange or trade offs. Sort of a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none approach. They tend to be able to do anything but need to offset that flexibility with a greater cost of some kind, whether that's mana, narrow application, or additional hoops to jump through compared to spells or creatures of other colors

[markrosewater]

Hey Mark, I want to say I'm a big fan of Rulebreaker; I see it as far superior to just printing five-colour cards to do the same thing so for me it's an A++ please high five the team.

Secondly I just wanted to say I was bummed we didn't get a Leshrac card, so I have to ask; if or when we get a Leshrac card?

High fives to come.

I assume Leshrac will get a card one day.

[markrosewater]

When choosing the three-letter code for a set nowadays, would there be any thought put into whether it clashes with potential, currently-unplanned UB crossovers?

For example, Dominaria United Commander used DMC, which could become confusing if there's ever a Devil May Cry set.

We choose the best three-letter code at the time. We don’t save codes for potential future sets.

[markrosewater]

Did BRO have the same problem as time spiral- popular with enfranchised players but not as much with average players? Or was it not all that popular with enfranchised players either?

It didn’t do great across the board, so not like Time Spiral.

[vorthosjay]

This might be one of my deepest disappointments in Magic, cause man that set rocked. Would have loved to get more "early Magic set re-dos" in that vein.

[cardboard-crack]

[xantchaslegacy]