Edge of Eternities Design: Allusions vs. Tropes

When I was offered the opportunity to lead the Vision Design team for Edge of Eternities, I jumped at the chance. More than once, I had pitched the idea of using the space opera subgenre of science fiction as the basis for a Magic set, placing the set in a solar system with five planets, one for each of Magic's colors.

Normally, when I start a project like this, I do a bunch of research to better acquaint myself with the topic of the set. In the case of Edge of Eternities, this was unnecessary. I had already done plenty of digging into the history of space opera over the years, purely for my own enjoyment. I went all the way back to the birth of the genre in the novels of E. E. "Doc" Smith, which were the first science-fiction stories to feature interstellar travel.

Each of Smith's novel in a series reveals that the staggeringly huge events of the previous novel were, in fact, merely a minor skirmish in a much larger conflict. The heroes grapple with the increased scope of their problems and must find new solutions and develop new powers to meet these bigger and bigger challenges. Some of these solutions involve a race to invent new weapons in a technological arms race. Others require mental expansion, which could be the simple realization of the nature of reality, but often involved unlocking telepathic powers with the aid of alien artifacts. Smith's books were practically required reading for science-fiction fans in the mid-20th century but have since faded into relative obscurity.

This mind-blowing feeling of excitement caused by scale is essential to the space opera genre. In literary criticism circles it's known as "sense of wonder." Communicating that feeling of immense scale was perhaps the highest priority of the Vision Design team, which inspired our exploration of oversized Magic cards. Check out Mark Rosewater's articles for more information on that topic!

While the best examples of our genre-inspired sets evoke the core emotional reaction that we want the audience to experience, we also use a variety of tactics to make individually charming cards. In many ways, genres are defined by their tropes, which are their recurring thematic elements. By making cards that express those tropes, we can ground a set in its intended genre.

For a Gothic horror set, we made a bat that is revealed to be a transformed vampire.

For a set based on Greek mythology, we made a card representing a character descending into the realm of the dead to retrieve a loved one.

For a set inspired by Japanese popular media, we made a robot mech suit that is controlled by a human pilot.

Sometimes, these trope-inspired, top-down designs aren't really about tropes at all but allusions to a specific story.

There's no recurring theme in Greek mythology of kings touching things and turning them to gold. There's just one King Midas described in Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Likewise, armies of hoplites aren't often transformed into pigs in ancient myths. This is a specific allusion to an event in Homer's Odyssey.

Only one person has a ring that periodically produces eight copies of itself: Odin in the Prose Edda.

At their best, these types of allusions act as a fun Easter egg as players experience a frisson of recognition when they decode the allusion. At their worst, they break players' immersion in the fictional world of Magic: The Gathering. And the line between a clever reference and a violation of the setting is entirely subjective; different members of the audience will experience these cards in different ways.

For years, the Magic design team had treated tropes and allusions as generally interchangeable concepts. For us, the process of designing a card that expresses a trope was about the same as the process of designing a card that alludes to a specific story. And to be fair, the line between a trope and an allusion can be a fuzzy one.

The introduction and rapid expansion of our Universes Beyond product line forced me to confront the distinction between tropes and allusions as I led the Edge of Eternities Vision Design team. Universes Beyond sets don't merely allude to other stories, they adapt them directly into another medium. There are no coy disguises here. We design a card to represent a concept, and then we write the name of that concept on the top of the card.

If we had made Edge of Eternities when I first pitched it over a decade ago, we would have fallen over ourselves in our eagerness to make cards with names like Farm Boy with a Heroic Destiny, Teleportation Pad, and Terror is the Mind Slayer. These types of cards more properly belong in Universes Beyond sets with their proper names, whether or not we're currently planning to adapt a particular property.

This realization meant that we had to identify the actual tropes of the space opera genre: travel between planets at inconceivable speed, fleets of gigantic spaceships, weird aliens with weirder customs, wild astronomical phenomena, powerful energies unleashed by powerful technologies. And, above all, a sense of tremendous scale!

So, we made a rule for ourselves: no allusions to popular space opera media. And I believe that Edge of Eternities is all the better for it! The Worldbuilding team absolutely knocked it out of the park, creating a setting that feels exciting and new while belonging in Magic: The Gathering alongside our previous sets. By throwing away the crutch of allusions to popular space opera media, we allowed the Edge to walk on its own.

But, of course, it couldn't hurt to make a few allusions to an unpopular series, right? Perhaps a reference to something foundational but since largely forgotten? Just a little reference to my favorite space opera books: an alien bracelet to unlock your massive telepathic potential, enabling you to control your enemy's every action.

As Doc Smith would say, "Prepare your mind for contact."

And, as I would say, "Enjoy the Prerelease!"