Bloomburrow Vision Design Handoff, Part 1

For regular readers of my vision design handoff articles, you'll notice that this write-up is in small ways a bit different than mine. Doug used my documents as a guideline but changed things up where he saw fit. For example, I always lead with a list of members from the design teams and Worldbuilding team, but Doug started with the short overview. All the same content is here, just presented slightly differently to match the tone the lead vision designer was trying to create with the document.

As always, the vision design handoff document lists the people involved in the vision design and worldbuilding that happen at the beginning of the process. Sometimes the teams have a bit of flux, but Bloomburrow did not. The teams were mostly constant throughout. The Vision Design team was the Exploratory Design team, save Dan Musser who joined during vision design.

For every set, we want to understand the resonance center of the set. What is the set doing that the audience will have a connection to? For Bloomburrow, we went into the design knowing the resonant center—animals. Everyone has had some interaction with animals: with pets, at zoos, seeing animals in the wild, etc. Animals were such a familiar thing that we tried something bold with the topic, making what we called a mega-batch. I will get more into that as it's touched upon later in the document.

The tone of the set was also something we understood from the beginning. Some Magic worlds can be a bit harsh, but not Bloomburrow. A lot of its appeal was going to be on its friendlier tone. Yes, there would be conflicts and threats, but the larger overall feel of the set would be one on the lighter end of the spectrum. A lot of this was based on the anthropomorphic animal genre space that inspired us.

First, this was the set where R&D internally started using the word "typal." The typal theme is one of R&D's biggest challenges. It's very popular with the audience but super hard to build in such a way that it doesn't put Limited play on rails. The Bloomburrow Vision Design team spent a lot of time on this topic and even came up with a mechanic called fellowship to solve this problem. Obviously, fellowship didn't make it to print, but this document spends a bunch of time talking about it. When we get there, we'll go into greater detail with what problems fellowship was trying to solve.

The "NOPQ year" was Wilds of Eldraine ("Netball"), The Lost Caverns of Ixalan ("Offroading"), Murders at Karlov Manor ("Polo"), and Outlaws of Thunder Junction ("Quilting"). While Limited has the "on rails" problem, typal Constructed has a different issue—volume. Bloomburrow was about animal creature types. A lot of them haven't shown up on a lot of cards, so there was a need to "seed" them, R&D talk for finding places to put them in sets ahead of the one being released, ones that would coexist with them in Standard. The four worlds of the previous Magic "year" luckily were varied and allowed us to capture most of the animal creature types we needed. Another solution to this was the animal mega-batch, which this document will eventually get to.

The idea of animalfolk and predators mainly came from the genre that inspired us. The idea of scope, that in this world, the stand-in for humans (i.e., the base creature type in Magic) would be mice, and that everything would be scoped accordingly (Bears would be way bigger than 2/2, for instance) was key to building the set and world.

On my blog, I get a lot of questions about the concept of top-down versus bottom-up design. Bloomburrow's structure started with the ten two-color pairs. Yes, they were tied to animals thematically, but the core structure was making the ten two-color pairs interconnect in a way that played well mechanically. That's a very bottom-up structure. We did do a lot to flavor things accordingly such that the set captured the animal resonance we were centering on, so I hope the finished product feels very flavorful. I spent my first preview article going in depth on why we chose these ten animals, so I won't go into it again here. I will stress the ten animal pairs we handed off stayed all the way to print. In vision design, we did try a few other things. The two major changes were black-red Weasels and red-green Badgers.

While not every set needs to do this, some sets need to set power/toughness parameters to capture a certain flavor. This guideline between animalfolk and predators did shrink the set a little on average, as the set was more about the animalfolk than the predators.

One of the tensions with the set was that it had typal themes, which meant we needed to have a certain as-fan of each animal creature type, but the worldbuilding also needed to have one-of creatures to capture the feel we wanted. We didn't want a Skunk archetype, but not having a Skunk in the set would lessen our ability to capture the feel of the genre.

The key answer to this problem was one-of as-fan. The common creatures mostly had to be one of the ten archetype animals, but uncommons and up had more ability to do the cameos.

Because the cameo creatures only had one card to shine, we tended to spend extra effort to make them as top-down as we could. We also realized that they thematically made the most sense for the uncommon build-around designs we like sets to have to give advanced drafters other options.

The contrast in stats and scope was something that most excited us when we first decided to do Bloomburrow (at least the take-one version as I talked about in my first preview article).

All the predators in the set have at least 4 power or 4 toughness. While a couple have variable power/toughness, we didn't end up making any that had base power or toughness 7 or higher.

During set design, the Creative team came up with the concept of Calamity Beasts, which were elemental forces responsible for seasonal change, essentially living weather events. To capture this flavor, all the predators, save one (see below), were given the Elemental creature type.

RTSU is the next Magic "year": Bloomburrow ("Rugby"), Duskmourn: House of Horror ("Swimming"), "Tennis" (i.e., the death-race set), and "Ultimate" (i.e., our return to Tarkir). This is a good example that we sometimes have to think forward for various reasons. Just as we had to seed animal creature types in previous sets to mechanically help this one, we need to seed a story point in this set to set up the larger storyline

What do the animalfolk of the world eat was a question that came up early. Just as the predators weren't sentient, it made sense that some food source had to also just be normal animals. Fish tokens would also become a big part of the gift mechanic.

It's time to start talking about the animal mega-batch. Batching first appeared in Dominaria with historic. It's proven to be popular and useful (party, modified, and outlaws are some examples), so I was interested in taking batches to the next level. A normal batch has between two to five items. Could batching be bigger than that?

We stop at five because it becomes too hard to remember what's in the batch when it gets too big. What if we used a term that was so intuitive that the audience could figure out what was in the batch? That was the idea behind "animal." The players know what an animal is, so asking "is this an animal" seemed straightforward.

The censored item is a link to our internal database. On it, we listed what we, the Vision Design team, had decided counted as an "animal." Here's the text from that page:

"Animal is a giant batching of creature types. It includes any creature type that exists, or has existed, as a real non-human animal on Earth. 

Count as animals (including creature types new to "Rugby"):

Antelope, Ape, Aurochs, Badger, Bat, Bear, Bird, Boar, Camel, Caribou, Cat, Crab, Crocodile, Dinosaur, Dog, Elephant, Elk, Ferret, Fish, Fox, Frog, Goat, Hamster, Hippo, Horse, Hyena, Insect, Jackal, Jellyfish, Leech, Lizard, Mole, Mongoose, Monkey, Mouse, Nautilus, Octopus, Otter, Ox, Oyster, Pangolin, Rabbit, Raccoon, Rat, Rhino, Sable, Salamander, Scorpion, Serpent, Shark, Sheep, Skunk, Slug, Snake, Spider, Sponge, Squid, Squirrel, Starfish, Trilobite, Turtle, Weasel, Whale, Wolf, Wolverine, Wombat, Worm 

Acorn/silver-bordered animals: 

Beaver, Chameleon, Cow, Deer, Donkey, Kangaroo, Lobster, Penguin, Pig 

Do not count as animals: 

• It's a fictional creature that is no part real-world animal. 

Aetherborn, Angel, Archon, Atog, Avatar, Azra, Basilisk, Beeble, Beholder, Blinkmoth, Bringer, Brushwagg, Cockatrice, Cyclops, Dauthi, Demigod, Demon, Devil, Djinn, Dragon, Drake, Dreadnought, Dryad, Dwarf, Efreet, Eldrazi, Elemental, Elf, Faerie, Fractal, Gargoyle, Giant, Gnoll, Gnome, Goblin, Golem, Gorgon, Graveborn, Gremlin, Griffin, Halfling, Harpy, Hellion, Homunculus, Hydra, Illusion, Imp, Incarnation, Inkling, Kavu, Kithkin, Kobold, Kor, Kraken, Lamia, Leviathan, Lhurgoyf, Licid, Merfolk, Metathran, Myr, Nephilim, Nightmare, Nightstalker, Noggle, Nymph, Ogre, Ooze, Orc, Orgg, Ouphe, Pegasus, Pentavite, Phelddagrif, Phoenix, Phyrexian, Saproling, Satyr, Scion, Servo, Shade, Shapeshifter, Siren, Skeleton, Slith, Sliver, Soltari, Spawn, Specter, Sphinx, Spike, Spirit, Surrakar, Survivor, Tetravite, Thalakos, Thrull, Tiefling, Treefolk, Triskelavite, Troll, Vampire, Vedalken, Volver, Weird, Wraith, Wurm, Yeti, Zombie, Zubera

• It's a fictional creature that is part real-world animal.

Camarid, Centaur, Cephalid, Chimera, Hippogriff, Homarid, Kirin, Lammasu, Manticore, Masticore, Minotaur, Moonfolk, Naga, Unicorn, Viashino, Werewolf 

• It's a role or job.

Advisor, Ally, Archer, Army, Artificer, Assassin, Assembly-Worker, Barbarian, Bard, Berserker, Carrier, Citizen, Cleric, Coward, Deserter, Druid, Elder, Flagbearer, God, Hag, Knight, Mercenary, Minion, Monger, Monk, Mystic, Ninja, Noble, Nomad, Peasant, Pilot, Pirate, Praetor, Processor, Ranger, Rebel, Rigger, Rogue, Samurai, Scout, Serf, Shaman, Soldier, Spellshaper, Warlock, Warrior, Wizard 

• It's a real-world thing but not an animal.

 Construct, Drone, Fungus, Germ, Juggernaut, Orb, Pincher, Plant, Prism, Reflection, Sand, Scarecrow, Sculpture, Splinter, Thopter, Wall 

• While related to real-world animals but not a specific animal.

Beast, Egg, Eye, Horror, Human, Mutant, Pest, Tentacle" 

We had to answer a lot of questions. Some of the major ones: 

Is a Human an animal?  

We said no. Filling your animal deck with Humans felt wrong. 

Is a Unicorn an animal? 

We thought fictional animals muddied the waters, so we defined "animal" as something that lives, or had lived, on Earth. The core idea was that if you asked an average person, "Is ________ an animal?" they would say yes. 

Is a Dinosaur an animal?  

It was a real Earth animal, just one that went extinct, so we said yes. Being alive on Earth wasn't key to being classified as an animal. 

Is a Beast an animal?  

We decided the creature type had to be an actual animal and not a grouping that animals could fit in. 

The Vision Design team was open to some of the questions being reevaluated, but we wanted to turn in a definitive list because the rules manager told us it would only work in the rules if there was a hard-and-fast list. 

Fellowship is a mechanic coming up later in the document that I will talk about when we get there.

One of the biggest issues with animal typal is that it isn't as backwards compatible as we hoped. Of the ten animals with an archetype, only two had 100 or more cards prior to Bloomburrow (Birds and Lizards). Two additional animals had 40 or more (Frogs and Rats). Three additional animals had 10 or more (Bats, Rabbits, and Squirrels—and Rabbits just barely). Two last animals had less than 10 (Otters and Raccoons). Our hope was that the animal mega-batch would help tie the set together to allow various animals to play together in the same deck. It also allowed a swath of older cards to have relevance in larger formats. And finally, it just was something that we felt would be received well. We liked the idea of certain Constructed decks being "animal decks."

We did a lot of experimenting with when to use "animal" instead of using "creature." What we found was that it was fine for cards aimed at Limited but problematic for cards aimed at Constructed if being part of an animal theme wasn't core to the card.

It was our hope that had the animal mega-batch stayed in the file that Set Design would have designed more high-rarity cards meant for an animal-themed Constructed deck. We also assumed at least one of the Commander decks would be animal themed.

So, what happened to the animal mega-batch? The biggest strike against it was a big ask. For the rest of the life of the game, the animal list would require upkeep. Whenever a new creature type is introduced, we would have to identify whether it was an animal. This meant we were making work for every set that followed. It was doing something we normally didn't do. Magic sets introduce new mechanical components, but once they are defined, they exist, as is, in the rules. The animal mega-batch was asking for continual upkeep.

The next big strike against it was that there were a lot of arguments about what should and shouldn't be on the list. Yes, 95 percent of it was intuitive, but the last 5 percent wasn't. Is a Germ really not a creature? Magic represents Serpents as sea monsters, but serpents are Earth animals. Should they count? Some animals were listed through larger groupings like Beast. Wouldn't it be confusing if a card that was clearly an Earth animal wasn't in the animal mega-batch?

Finally, there was debate on how charming it was. I found it endlessly charming and thought it would connect with a certain portion of the audience, but there were many other R&D folks who didn't feel that way.

In the end, all these factors led the Set Design team to remove it.