As part of handing off a set from Vision Design to Set Design, the vision design lead creates a vision design handoff document outlining the larger goals, themes, mechanics, and structure of the set to help the set design lead better understand Vision Design's work. Today, I'll begin looking over the handoff document for Reality Fracture.

I've published a bunch of handoff documents over the years. These have proven pretty popular. Here are the ones I've previously done:

As with all my vision design handoff articles, most of what I'm showing you is the actual document (in this case, written by me). My notes, giving explanation and context, are in the boxes below the text. This document was long enough that I've broken it into three parts.

"Ziplining" Vision Design Handoff

Exploratory Design and Vision Design Teams

  • Mark Rosewater (Lead, Exploratory and Vision)
  • Jeremy Geist (Strong Second, Exploratory and Vision)
  • Dan Musser (Vision)
  • Eli Rice (Exploratory and Vision)
  • Ethan Fleischer (Vision)
  • Graeme Hopkins (Exploratory and Vision)
  • Jacob Mooney (Exploratory)
  • Yoni Skolnik (Vision)

Worldbuilding Team

  • Doug Beyer (Worldbuilding Vision Lead)
  • Emily Teng (Worldbuilding Design)
  • Meris Mullaley (Worldbuilding Design)
  • Roy Graham (Story Lead)
  • Zack Stella (Lead Art Director)

I begin as I always do by giving credit to all the people who had worked on the set so far, the Exploratory Design, Vision Design, and Worldbuilding teams.

"Ziplining" is the completion of the multi-year "Multiverse Jace" storyline, much like War of the Spark was the completion of the Nicol Bolas storyline and March of the Machine was the completion of the Phyrexian War storyline. In the story, Jace, following the events of being Phyrexianized, decides he needs to do something drastic to protect the Multiverse. He creates a second multiverse free of what he feels are the errors of the original and takes steps to overwrite it. A host of heroes from the original come to alternative Strixhaven, known as Hexhaven, to stop him. (Note: all the new names in this document are placeholders.) Here are the goals of the set:

0106_MTGFRA_MainUP: Hexhaven Invigorator 0330_MTGFRA_BknMrrr: Hexhaven Invigorator

Usually, the terms we use tend to change between the vision design handoff and print, so I'm always tickled when the handoff document has the names we ended up using. In this case, the final name of Jace's academy was Hexhaven.

1. Deliver on the Theme of What-If

Planar Chaos dipped its toe into a what-if theme, imagining different lives for characters. For years, we've talked about using what-if as a major theme for a set, but we hadn't found the right place to maximize it. "Ziplining" proved to be the right set as it literally has alternative versions of everything. The big issue, which was raised early on, is figuring out how to do a what-if theme that's approachable for a larger audience that might not know key characters or world details. Pop culture is rife with what-if themes (alternate universes, evil twins, clones, and more), so we knew there was a lot of trope space to explore, but we needed to do it in a way that was inclusive. The Vision Design team had to solve this issue.

I find it interesting that I mentioned Planar Chaos was "dipping its toe" into what-if. What I probably should have said is that Planar Chaos focused most of its what-if themes on the game of Magic itself (including the color pie) and far less on its creative elements. Reality Fracture was focused on the latter and none of the former.

Conveying a what-if theme to a less-enfranchised audience was brought up as an issue before exploratory design even started, and we spent a lot of time making sure Reality Fracture could be a set all Magic players could enjoy, not just dedicated Vorthoses.

2. Make an Exciting Capstone-Event Set

War of the Spark introduced a new type of Magic set, one built top down from the story. These sets depict an event large in scale and importance that puts the finishing touch on a multi-year storyline. They swing for the fences, doing something that makes even the player least invested in story sit up and take notice. The big challenge of "Ziplining" involved making an epic story that didn't necessarily require an increase in scope. War of the Spark was a giant war between Nicol Bolas and most of the Planeswalkers. March of the Machine was an invasion of almost every world we'd ever visited. Could we create a capstone-event set that was exciting and had a fulfilling payoff that didn't require us to go even bigger?

0445_MTGFRA_SLBunFRA: Overwrite the Multiverse

The big lesson of March of the Machine was that if the story gets too big in scope, it's hard for players to follow what's happening. The threat could be large in scale, but the story should be more personal. At its core, Reality Fracture's story is about one character, Jace, dealing with trauma, and we wanted to make sure we stayed focused so the set matched this key element of the story.

3. Create a World That Reinforces Our Theme Without Making a Set About That World

Our what-if theme wanted a what-if setting. To stay within the scope requests of the second goal, we chose to keep the focus on one plane. Because of the first goal, we wanted to do something loud and obvious, something that wouldn't require extensive knowledge of our worlds. We ended up choosing Hexhaven, a what-if version of Strixhaven made up of ally-color schools, all with a military feel. Because the set right before "Ziplining" will take place at Strixhaven, we know players would be familiar with it. Changing from enemy colors to ally colors was simple and loud, giving us our approachable what-if tweak. A lot of time went into having Hexhaven feel integral to the set without feeling like a repeat of the set before it.

Hinting at Strixhaven without just being another Strixhaven set was the tightrope we had to walk.

4. Lean Into the Fun of the Theme

This last goal is about finding a balance between the serious needs of the story and the lightheartedness that what-if themes push toward. It's fun to see alternate takes on characters and worlds you love, and we wanted to make sure the set provided opportunities to play in this space in a fanciful way without undercutting the stakes of the larger story being told.

How do we accomplish all these tasks? We started with what we thought was the most daunting of the tasks. How do we tell a what-if story in a way that was approachable by all Magic players? Our go-to example was a blue Chandra with ice powers. If you opened that in a booster, how would you know that it's an alternative version of Chandra? Obviously, if you already knew who Chandra was, the contrast would be obvious. But we have a lot of Magic characters, and the audience as a whole can't possibly know them all. What could we do to ensure that they understand the blue Chandra is a what-if version of the original?

Yeah, we could use a frame, watermark, or some signifier that it was different, but we didn't think that was enough. We wanted to be bolder than that. The solution we came up with was this: What if the red Chandra and blue Chandra showed up together in the same booster? What if every booster had the same character appear on two different cards, in two different colors, right next to each other? That way, you would know the blue Chandra was a what-if card because the red Chandra was right next to her.

0309_MTGFRA_BdlsDipt: Chandra, Torch of Defiance 0297_MTGFRA_BdlsDipt: Chandra, Chill of Compliance

Capstone event sets tend to take wilder swings than most sets. This is the big finale of a multi-year storyline, so we were interested in doing something pretty bold. The echoed pairs cards seemed like the perfect marriage of making our theme clear and doing something that was bombastic and fun.

Executing on the Paired Sheet

Once we realized that the paired characters were the strongest means to communicate our what-if theme, we decided to build the set around it. First, it required understanding what exactly it took to make the paired sheet work.

Our printers don't have the ability to pair unique cards from different sheets, so that meant our solution had to print the paired characters right next to each other on the same sheet. Even then, most of our printers can't guarantee with nearly 100% certainty that two consecutive cards on a sheet will appear together in a booster.

To guarantee this, we had to go old school. We needed to drop in three cards from the sheet of paired cards. Imagine we start the sheet with Character A (from the Magic Multiverse) and "Character A" (from "Multiverse J," which is what we internally call Jace's newly created multiverse), then Character B and "Character B." If we drop three cards from the sheet in each booster, you will get either A/"A"/B or "A"/B/"B." Each booster has a paired set of characters in it. If we only dropped two cards, you would occasionally get "A"/B, leaving out a pair.

0291_MTGFRA_BdlsDipt: Ajani Resolute 0308_MTGFRA_BdlsDipt: Ajani Unrelenting

The name Echoverse wasn't created until after we handed the set off, so we always just called it "Multiverse J."

We then worked with Eric and Chris to work out the collation to make this work. Here's how that ended up:

  • 5 Pairs of common cards (10 total cards): Each pair is two monocolor cards that form an ally-color pair. The common cards have a mechanical element to offset the legend rule. (In the handoff, one cycle has landcycling and the other has a channel-like discard ability.)
  • 20 Pairs of uncommon cards (40 total cards): Each two-color pair, ally and enemy, is represented on two different pairs. Currently, all cards are monocolor.
  • 2 Pairs of rare cards (10 cards total): There is a pair for each of the Lorwyn Five (Ajani, Jace, Liliana, Chandra, and Garruk) with a monocolor version of them in their original Lorwyn color and a monocolor "Multiverse J" version in an enemy color. (Jace is paired with "Petra" rather than a "Multiverse J" version.) I go into more detail on this cycle below. The other cycle consists of monocolor cards paired with an ally-color card.
0276_MTGFRA_MainPair: Tam, the Possibility 0317_MTGFRA_BdlsDipt: Tam, the Possibility

"Petra" was the early name for Tam. While the paired sheet stayed, this mix of rarities did not. Here's what we ended up with in the printed set:

0 Common cards

The Set Design team found the common cards watered down the experience. You just got the same cards far too much of the time, and it was making the whole paired element less cool. By pushing these cards up to uncommon, it allowed us to have a larger number of echoed pairs cards (86 from 60) and created a lot more variety in what you opened.

66 Uncommon cards (33 pairs)

These were all mostly monocolor cards with a mix of ally and enemy pairings. There is a cycle of enemy-color signposts (as they couldn't be represented by the schools) paired with a monocolor card. The Set Design team discovered they needed some noncreature echoed pairs cards, so they created a cycle of ten enchantments that contrasted the different versions of the Lorwyn Five (with Tam mirroring with Jace as he doesn't have a doppelgänger). These cards allowed the echoed pairs sheet to interact with the empower Jace mechanic.

14 Rare cards (7 pairs)

These consist of Jace and Tam, Liliana, Vraska, Lyra, Karn, Samut, and Gideon. Jace has a second mythic rare planeswalker card that isn't part of the echoed pairs.

6 Mythic rare cards (3 pairs)

Mythic rare has the three Lorwyn Five echoed pairs that were both planeswalkers: Ajani, Chandra, and Garruk.

The current execution uses monocolor cards, but the structure would allow some of the cards to be multicolor at higher rarity. The only ask is that they're different color combinations, although it would be fine to have them overlap on one of their colors. Here are what's required of each pair:

  • They are legendary creatures: The Set Design team can explore having some that aren't legendary, but we feel that named characters hit the doppelgänger tropes the best.
  • They are different colors: We're trying to be pretty blunt in communicating the doppelgängers are different, so they should always be a different color (or different color combination if we do multicolor). The card from the Magic Multiverse should be in the color players most strongly associate the character.
  • There is a strong flavor contrast: Again, we don't want to be too subtle. This one's tiny, that one's huge. This one's an Angel, that one's a Demon.
  • There is some mechanical contrast: The cards should have a contrasting mechanical element other than just being in a different color. One is cheap, and one is expensive. One is aggressive, and one is defensive. One wants a lot of creatures, and one wants to be alone.
  • There is some mechanical connection: Despite all the contrasts, we want the characters to feel connected in some way. Unlike the boldness of the flavor, the mechanical connection can be a bit subtler. There should be something that overlaps between the two cards that helps you understand that they're the same character. It's fine if these are top-down designs playing into the contrast between the two versions. Yes, some mechanical reflections can happen, but it doesn't need to be that blunt on most of the cards.
  • The two cards ideally want to be in different decks: Because players are going to be opening the pairs in every booster, we want to minimize any sadness that they can't draft both cards in the pair. We want to accomplish this by having the two cards go in different decks.
0292_MTGFRA_BdlsDipt: Gideon's Memorial 0304_MTGFRA_BdlsDipt: Gideon the Oathless

While some elements changed, the core philosophy of the echoed pairs didn't change. All six of these items are still true for the printed cards. The Set Design team did make a few small exceptions where warranted (such as Gideon's Memorial and the Echoverse version of Gideon) but stayed true to the key goals.

Tinybones, Little Bandit
1B
Legendary Creature — Skeleton Rogue
2/1
Menace
3B, Discard this card: Target opponent discards two cards. Activate only as a sorcery.
///
Megabones, Towering Plunderer
4R
Legendary Creature — Skeleton Berserker
5/5
Trample
Ward — Pay 3 life.
Mountaincycling 2

0237_MTGFRA_MainPair: Tinybones, Pocket Nuisance 0266_MTGFRA_MainPair: Titanbones, Towering Heart

This echoed pair made it to print with several changes. The biggest changes were moving the cards from common to uncommon, with the Echoverse version of Tinybones being green rather than red. In the handoff, the five common pairs had one card where you could discard the card for an effect and one had landcycling, so extra copies didn't end up being dead cards. My biggest regret is that we lost the name "Megabones." (Yes, Titanbones is clever, but he'll always be "Megabones" to me.)

Light-Paws, Imperial Regent
1W
Legendary Creature — Fox Advisor
2/2
1, T: Target creature you control gets +2/+0 and becomes legendary until end of turn. Activate only as a sorcery.
///
Light-Paws, Speaker of the Kami
4G
Legendary Creature — Fox Monk
4/3
At the beginning of your end step, if you gained life this turn, return target permanent card from your graveyard to your hand.

Light-Paws is a character from Kamigawa. In the Magic Multiverse, she's a champion of the court. What if in the Echoverse, she was a champion of the spirits? As is always the case, the vision design handoff is more a proof of concept, so we made a lot of paired character cards to show what they would feel like. The Set Design team worked with the Creative team to figure out what all the characters needed to be. While some, like Tinybones, made it through, others, like Light-Paws, did not. I believe about half of what Vision Design turned in stayed.

Chandra, Fire of Defiance
2RR
Legendary Planeswalker — Chandra
Loyalty — 3
Whenever you cast a red spell, put a loyalty counter on this planeswalker.
-2: This planeswalker deals 3 damage to target creature. Excess damage is dealt to that creature's controller instead.
-8: Return all red instant and sorcery cards from your graveyard to your hand. Add R for each card returned this way.
///
Chandra, Ice of Compliance
2UU
Legendary Planeswalker — Chandra
Loyalty — 3
Whenever you cast a blue spell, put a loyalty counter on this planeswalker.
-0: Tap target creature, then put a stun counter on it.
-8: Return all blue instant and sorcery cards from your graveyard to your hand. You have no maximum hand size for the rest of the game.

0244_MTGFRA_MainPair: Chandra, Torch of Defiance 0212_MTGFRA_MainPair: Chandra, Chill of Compliance

The red, fiery Chandra and the blue, icy Chandra was literally the example we used at the very beginning when talking about paired characters. The cards changed quite a bit (Vision Design made a new card for Chandra, Set Design decided to use a reprint), but the name of the blue Chandra stayed somewhat the same.

To fit these cards into the set, we had to reduce the number of cards on the main sheets equal to the number of cards on the paired sheets. For example, there are ten common paired cards, so the unpaired common sheet has 70 cards rather than the normal 80 cards. Because, at common and uncommon, all the paired cards are creatures, we lowered the percentage of creatures on the unpaired sheets.

The finished set kept a lower number of common cards (71 as opposed to the normal 80) to allow the set to raise the number of uncommon cards (from the normal 100 to 109).

That's all the time we have for today. I'm interested in any feedback you have on today's column, Reality Fracture, or any of the elements I talked about today. You can send me your feedback through email or social media (Bluesky, Tumblr, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter).

Join me next week for part two.

Until then, may you imagine what your Echoverse version would be.