Okay, everyone. Today I would like to talk about the storytelling in MtG in general.
I do not doubt that in terms of mechanics, MtG is a fantastic (albeit imperfect) game. However, even to this day, MtG seems to struggle to produce decent stories: I used to read the weekly stories, but not anymore because the writings are, as many have pointed out, less than ideal. I have lately heard about the War of the Spark novel. WoS's trailer was very well-liked on Youtube, but the novel ends up... less than stellar. The review scores were at best mediocre. Based on the above, my impression is that WotC is trying to make good MtG stories. This is certainly a laudable sentiment, but they seem to struggle in achieving this goal. In fact, MtG's storytelling seems unusually bad compared to most other major gaming franchise. This led me to ponder over the question: why are MtG stories not good? As someone who has dabbled in creative writing, here are some problems I notice with MtG's storytelling in general:
1. Mismatch between story and mechanic - a game's story needs to align with its gameplay mechanics. E.g., a shooter video game will most likely have a story based around war or other armed conflicts, in order to create the rationale of "why these people are shooting at each other". However, there seems to be a mismatch between MtG stories and its mechanics: MtG stories tend to resemble Harry Potter - with the characters mainly using spells against their enemies. On the contrary, when actually playing a game of MtG, we player are primary sending some sort of (often magical) creatures to fight our opponents, which brings to mind a story about large-scale war or political conflict, a la Game of Thrones - in actual MtG gameplay, we players rely primarily on creatures, not spells. This likely creates a mismatch between MtG's story and its gameplay. I think WoTC should seriously consider changing the kind of stories they tell with MtG.
2. No sense of scale - MtG's writers seem to have very little sense of scale, both in terms of time and space. In the Tarkir block, for instance, Sarkhan went back in time 1,200 years... and there was little changes in clothing styles, languages, and architecture between Khans and Fate Reforged. Anyone who has studied the least bit of history would know how implausible this is. This isn't an isolated case, either: similar things happened with the other planes, somehow, things remained mostly unchanged on Ravnica for 10,000 years; there was surprisingly little technological advancement in Dominaria across millennia, etc..
On the space side, I don't think it sounds very realistic to conquer a planet-sized world within a matter of years (as happened in Scars of Mirrodin, Amonkhet, and Ravnica), e.g., now, how logistically realistic is this, a city-sized place (Amonkhet) producing an army large enough to conquer a planet-sized world (Ravnica) within just a few decades? The entirely of Scars of Mirrodin seemed to happen over a few months (Elspeth barely aged). For your reference, the Mongol Empire, the largest empire in human history, took several decades to build, and it barely covered most of Eurasia, let alone the whole planet. IMO, good stories do not up their scales endlessly, e.g., Game of Thrones took place in a continent-sized setting, Harry Potter took place in a country-sized one. A good writer chooses a scale that fits the needs of their story, while endless upping the scale to the point of implausibility sounds more like 13-year-olds who are desperately trying to sound cool.
3. Overly simplistic philosophy - while their attempt at a color wheel philosophy is laudable, I don't think it does a very good job of capturing human behaviors. I am doing a PhD in behavioral science, and when I read the stuffs in color wheel philosophy, I find myself repeatedly screaming "mind and behaviors don't work like that". E.g., red is supposedly the "empathy color", but it is also supposedly associated with sensation seeking. In reality, these two don't go well together. If anything, people who are highly sensation-seeking tends to be so *because* they lack emotions, they don't feel fear or anxiety, making them unusually bold. In fact, they are often mildly sociopathic; Meanwhile, ivory tower academics and sly merchants are both supposed to be the domain of blue, but it is obvious that the two are less than compatible.
I think the problem here is that they are trying to cram too many things into just 5 boxes, resulting in each boxes containing things that have at best symbolic associations with each other. Human mind and behavior have much more variations than what just 5 boxes can encompass. It is also jarring to see how all red characters seem to behave in a particular way, all black characters seem to behave in certain other ways, etc. I would say that there are many different reasons a person may become a pyromancer: maybe they are sensation-seeker borderline pyromaniac, maybe they actually a cold personality but born with fire power, etc. The simplistic way MtG's color-wheel views human mind and behaviors, I strongly suspect, might have contributed to many of MtG's characters being unrelatable.
This likely stems partly from the fact that MtG's staff consists mainly of mathematicians rather than psychologists.
Conclusion:
These are some of my thoughts. I am not a professional writer, so I might be wrong. What are your thoughts? Why does MtG fail to produce good stories? Please discuss.
I do not doubt that in terms of mechanics, MtG is a fantastic (albeit imperfect) game. However, even to this day, MtG seems to struggle to produce decent stories: I used to read the weekly stories, but not anymore because the writings are, as many have pointed out, less than ideal. I have lately heard about the War of the Spark novel. WoS's trailer was very well-liked on Youtube, but the novel ends up... less than stellar. The review scores were at best mediocre. Based on the above, my impression is that WotC is trying to make good MtG stories. This is certainly a laudable sentiment, but they seem to struggle in achieving this goal. In fact, MtG's storytelling seems unusually bad compared to most other major gaming franchise. This led me to ponder over the question: why are MtG stories not good? As someone who has dabbled in creative writing, here are some problems I notice with MtG's storytelling in general:
1. Mismatch between story and mechanic - a game's story needs to align with its gameplay mechanics. E.g., a shooter video game will most likely have a story based around war or other armed conflicts, in order to create the rationale of "why these people are shooting at each other". However, there seems to be a mismatch between MtG stories and its mechanics: MtG stories tend to resemble Harry Potter - with the characters mainly using spells against their enemies. On the contrary, when actually playing a game of MtG, we player are primary sending some sort of (often magical) creatures to fight our opponents, which brings to mind a story about large-scale war or political conflict, a la Game of Thrones - in actual MtG gameplay, we players rely primarily on creatures, not spells. This likely creates a mismatch between MtG's story and its gameplay. I think WoTC should seriously consider changing the kind of stories they tell with MtG.
2. No sense of scale - MtG's writers seem to have very little sense of scale, both in terms of time and space. In the Tarkir block, for instance, Sarkhan went back in time 1,200 years... and there was little changes in clothing styles, languages, and architecture between Khans and Fate Reforged. Anyone who has studied the least bit of history would know how implausible this is. This isn't an isolated case, either: similar things happened with the other planes, somehow, things remained mostly unchanged on Ravnica for 10,000 years; there was surprisingly little technological advancement in Dominaria across millennia, etc..
On the space side, I don't think it sounds very realistic to conquer a planet-sized world within a matter of years (as happened in Scars of Mirrodin, Amonkhet, and Ravnica), e.g., now, how logistically realistic is this, a city-sized place (Amonkhet) producing an army large enough to conquer a planet-sized world (Ravnica) within just a few decades? The entirely of Scars of Mirrodin seemed to happen over a few months (Elspeth barely aged). For your reference, the Mongol Empire, the largest empire in human history, took several decades to build, and it barely covered most of Eurasia, let alone the whole planet. IMO, good stories do not up their scales endlessly, e.g., Game of Thrones took place in a continent-sized setting, Harry Potter took place in a country-sized one. A good writer chooses a scale that fits the needs of their story, while endless upping the scale to the point of implausibility sounds more like 13-year-olds who are desperately trying to sound cool.
3. Overly simplistic philosophy - while their attempt at a color wheel philosophy is laudable, I don't think it does a very good job of capturing human behaviors. I am doing a PhD in behavioral science, and when I read the stuffs in color wheel philosophy, I find myself repeatedly screaming "mind and behaviors don't work like that". E.g., red is supposedly the "empathy color", but it is also supposedly associated with sensation seeking. In reality, these two don't go well together. If anything, people who are highly sensation-seeking tends to be so *because* they lack emotions, they don't feel fear or anxiety, making them unusually bold. In fact, they are often mildly sociopathic; Meanwhile, ivory tower academics and sly merchants are both supposed to be the domain of blue, but it is obvious that the two are less than compatible.
I think the problem here is that they are trying to cram too many things into just 5 boxes, resulting in each boxes containing things that have at best symbolic associations with each other. Human mind and behavior have much more variations than what just 5 boxes can encompass. It is also jarring to see how all red characters seem to behave in a particular way, all black characters seem to behave in certain other ways, etc. I would say that there are many different reasons a person may become a pyromancer: maybe they are sensation-seeker borderline pyromaniac, maybe they actually a cold personality but born with fire power, etc. The simplistic way MtG's color-wheel views human mind and behaviors, I strongly suspect, might have contributed to many of MtG's characters being unrelatable.
This likely stems partly from the fact that MtG's staff consists mainly of mathematicians rather than psychologists.
Conclusion:
These are some of my thoughts. I am not a professional writer, so I might be wrong. What are your thoughts? Why does MtG fail to produce good stories? Please discuss.