General Functions, Functionlocks, and Plans

[Lady Lynn]

Alright so I came up with something of a mental framework for analyzing cards that I think helps a lot with understanding things like parasitism and synergy!

I will first lay out the three functions, which are the ways in which a card or mechanic can be useful to a player. Afterwards, I will describe function locks, and thirdly I will lay out some terms for plans.

Functions
Plan function:

A plan function is one that directly advances your plan of victory. For example, the power stat on a creature, dealing direct damage to your opponent, or just straight up winning the game.

Interference function:

An interference function is one that interferes with your opponents plans or functions. Removal and counterspells are obvious examples, but other examples include:
Lifegain, which is a fairly narrow interference function that serves to delay victory plans based on damage.
A creature being able to engage in combat, which causes it to interfere with the functions of your opponent's creatures
Evasion, which interfere with the "blocking" interference function of your opponent's creatures.
Combat tricks, which can interfere with the "kill your creature" interference function of your opponent's cards, as well as potentially kill opposing creatures in turn.

Synergy function:

A synergy function is a card or mechanic that may not do anything itself, but exists to "unlock" the functions of other cards. Examples of synergy functions include card types, creature types, mana, card draw, tutors, scry, mill, and so on.

Functionlocks
Functionlock:

A functionlock means a function is gated behind some kind of condition before it becomes applicable, typically behind a synergy function. Examples include reanimates, mana costs, Metalcraft, Madness, tribe-based effects, heck, even having to draw the card in the first place is a functionlock. Examples of non-synergetic functionlocks are far fewer, but many interference functions like removal and counterspells are gated behind having something to target. Divine Arrow is also an example of an additional non-synergetic functionlock.

Progressive functionlock:

A progressive functionlock is a particular variation of a functionlock that is not in a binary state of "on" or "off", but instead gradually unlocks more functionality the more you satisfy the condition. Examples include tribal lords, boardwide pumps in general, Storm, Undergrowth, and many more.

Plan terms
Endplan:
The generally more strategic, broad plan that the player has to achieve a goal at the furthest their foresight reaches, which is generally winning the game. For example, "attack and burn the opponent to 0 hit points" or "establish an overwhelming boardstate and use it to win" or "draw the win combo" or "grind my opponents resources to nothing and win from there".

Checkpoint plan:
A more immediate plan that the player seeks to achieve on their way to their endplan, which can either be mechanically spelled out(Bloodghast's haste condition, Spectacle) or it can be something the player simply makes up, generally as a mental aid("i should start with just playing this card and figure out the rest of my turn from there" or "if i want to win this i should first kill that big creature they've got")

Plan diversity: When a player has variety in the plans they can choose to try and execute. For example, a midrange deck might go on the aggressive in one game and try to outvalue the opponent in the other.

Plan flexibility: When a player has a flexibility in what approach they take to try and execute a plan. This is more moment-to-moment decisions, with choices like "do i want to play this creature or remove their blocker".

Analyzing a card through this framework

Archway Angel has plan and interference functionality in the same way most creatures do, being a 3/4 body that can both advance your plan by being an offensive presence and being able to interfere by engaging opposing creatures in combat.

It has additional interference functionality in Flying, which interferes with the "blocking" interference functionality of your opponent's creatures.

It also has interference functionality in its lifegain, which is locked behind a progressive functionlock of controlling Gates.

Also, like most cards, it is functionlocked behind needing to draw it, as well as behind having to spend mana to cast it.

Finally, any cards that are functionlocked behind things like lifegain(like Ajani's Pridemate) or Flying or Angels or Creatures or whatever else will turn those aspects of the card into synergy functions.

Some takeaways
1. Creatures are kind of an awesome card type, inherently carrying plan function for victory progress and interference function for opposing creatures. They also are stuffed full of things that can be, and have been turned into synergy functions, such as creature types, keywords, even mana costs and power/toughness have been turned into synergy functions.

2. Its important to keep in mind that the in the end everything revolves around the endplan, and the plan functions you need to achieve it. You can juggle synergy functions all day, but if they don't lead to you having the plan functions you need to actually win, then you aren't really doing anything.

3. I reckon that a lot of blue's "indirect" feeling as a color comes from it being very heavily focused on synergy and interference functions, frequently taking more roundabout paths to obtain plan functions.

4. Aggro decks with just a bazillion 1 drops that rely on killing the opponent before they run out of tempo are a good example of a deck that is extremely lacking in plan diversity and flexibility. You get this super railsy deck that tends to flop over and die if your opponent has the right interference function like a boardwipe or something. Designing aggro decks to have more plan diversity/flexibility is a good approach to making them less sink or swim, and more fun.

An approach I like for giving aggro decks more plan diversity is to tone down the power/reliability of the rush, and give them better fallback plans. Fallback plans can include things like "Try and topdeck enough Lightning Bolts to wipe your opponent's remaining life points", "build up enough of a board so that a boardwide pump can end the game with a big swing", or "survive long enough for your opponent to die to Sanctum of Stone Fangs".

5. Plan diversity/flexibility is frequently irrelevant if the opponent doesn't have enough interference functionality, because then you're not actually forced to adapt. On the other hand, if interference functionality exceeds your ability to adapt too much, then it can be very frustrating and feel like you can't actually do anything, plus it'll often be a very slow loss. Tuning interference functionality is highly important for creating fun gameplay.

6. I think what tends to get people returning to a format a lot is either a lot of unexplored ways in which functionality can be obtained(you are rewarded for continued experimentation, experiences stay novel through deck variety, emergent gameplay), or having high amounts of plan diversity/flexibility(you are rewarded for becoming more skilled, and and experiences stay novel through gameplay variety even within similar or even identical decks)

I think a lot of the people here at Riptide are people who just delight at seeing novel ways to unlock functionality. Like "ooh did you really put those two things together, I've never seen that before".

7. Adding interference functions are often a key part of adding plan flexibility to decks. In particular, being able to interfere with your opponents attempts to interfere with you can make your deck a great deal less prone to just flopping over when your opponent has the right answer.

8. Interference functions are also notable because decisionmaking around them often involves a great deal more hidden information, that can vary enormously from game to game. Do you use your removal spell on the biggest creature they have now, or do you save it for when they play a bigger creature? What is the right choice is incredibly context dependent, and involves a lot of abstract thinking that makes it almost impossible to simply "solve" with an objectively correct answer.

 

[landofMordor]

Sweet post, Lynn! And congrats on your first forum post I was going to reply earlier but had a hectic week haha.

I love the framing of "interference" as anything from blockers and lifegain to what we typically think of as "interaction" like kill spells. That's definitely one of my favorite parts of Magic, that need to adapt to an opponent's plan that's only been partially revealed. I love how creatures achieve a lot of that goal since they switch-hit between plan-advancing and interference.

I also like how this framework explicates how many of the synergies we Riptiders so enjoy are merely a subset of the "plan" function that involves winning the game. It's easy for me to get caught up wringing my hands like "what's the best equipment-matters signal" when all along, Equipment exist to buff creatures to advance the gameplan of killing the opponent through combat damage. So I don't really need to go out of my way to make it synergize because it already serves a function that's closely aligned with my plan. In fact, the more a card's synergy function is aligned with the plan function of the rest of my deck, the less I as a cube designer need to incentivize that synergy. Which is really quite a nice design tool.

If I had a critique of this framework, it's that it maps pretty well onto existing Magic terms, which makes me wonder whether the jargon is worth the effort it takes to introduce it. "Interference" is really just broadening the definition of "interaction." Synergy functions and functionlocks are just other words for "goodstuff, enablers, and payoffs." And even the "function" is really just saying "here's how cards increase a player's win percentage." And of course I recognize that new jargon can be a way to reframe terms which have gotten trite or stale, but it's not as if "interaction" or "enablers" have ever had a rigid canonical definition, and for me that's tantamount to an invitation to make those terms your own. (Then again, knowing Magic players' penchant for meaningless semantic arguments, maybe it's better to avoid them... I can see the appeals of either approach tbh!) And the clincher for me is that your excellent observations at the end might be derived through this new framework, but I actually think they're better explained once they've been transformed back to normal Magic vocab.

Point 5, for example, was one of my favorite observations of yours, but could be rephrased: "A reactive deck looks exactly like a linear deck if the opponent doesn't have any interaction, which is no fun. But if they play too much interaction, whether blockers or kill spells, then Magic becomes frustrating..." etc. This has the rhetorical benefit of meeting your readers halfway if they didn't quite understand the framework itself, such that they'll still be able to get some actionable design tips.

Don't let this get you down, though. I'm pointing out a minor rhetorical improvement on what was already a well-articulated core of solid reasoning and meaningful conclusions. I'm just hoping to spark a conversation and provide you with some meaningful feedback, since your post certainly deserves it!

 

[landofMordor]

Oh, one more random thought: I love your choice of the word "functionality", since that can be used in the conventional English sense without any loss of meaning. Your point 6 is a great example of that -- I could read 0 other words of the post and still get a super meaningful conclusion that I can immediately apply to Cube. And I guess that's another reason I don't think that formal definitions of regular words like "functionality" are necessary, because it adds opportunity for confusion where it wasn't necessary -- you can convey that same meaning by combining a non-jargoned "functionality" in the context of the existing Magic jargon "synergy" without any loss of rigor.

 

[Lady Lynn]

If I had a critique of this framework, it's that it maps pretty well onto existing Magic terms, which makes me wonder whether the jargon is worth the effort it takes to introduce it. "Interference" is really just broadening the definition of "interaction." Synergy functions and functionlocks are just other words for "goodstuff, enablers, and payoffs." And even the "function" is really just saying "here's how cards increase a player's win percentage." And of course I recognize that new jargon can be a way to reframe terms which have gotten trite or stale, but it's not as if "interaction" or "enablers" have ever had a rigid canonical definition, and for me that's tantamount to an invitation to make those terms your own. (Then again, knowing Magic players' penchant for meaningless semantic arguments, maybe it's better to avoid them... I can see the appeals of either approach tbh!) And the clincher for me is that your excellent observations at the end might be derived through this new framework, but I actually think they're better explained once they've been transformed back to normal Magic vocab.

Point 5, for example, was one of my favorite observations of yours, but could be rephrased: "A reactive deck looks exactly like a linear deck if the opponent doesn't have any interaction, which is no fun. But if they play too much interaction, whether blockers or kill spells, then Magic becomes frustrating..." etc. This has the rhetorical benefit of meeting your readers halfway if they didn't quite understand the framework itself, such that they'll still be able to get some actionable design tips.

Don't let this get you down, though. I'm pointing out a minor rhetorical improvement on what was already a well-articulated core of solid reasoning and meaningful conclusions. I'm just hoping to spark a conversation and provide you with some meaningful feedback, since your post certainly deserves it!

Thank you for the reply!

I appreciate both the uh, appreciation, as well as the critique.

I think you raise a very good point about the the jargon mapping pretty well onto existing Magic terms - I honestly hadn't even thought of those terms, so there's definitely a bit of "reinventing the wheel" going on there. Reinventing the wheel in this case was probably valuable because I think a lot of people don't really have a clear idea of what exactly they mean when they actually say those terms, only having a vague feeling of "yeah this is goodstuff" or "yeah this is a payoff", but I think making use of those existing terms probably could help in making these concepts more approachable.

I also really like the term "functionality", so maybe instead of "plan function", "interference function", and "synergy function", we could have "goodstuff function", "interaction function", and "enabler function"? And instead of functionlocks and progressive functionlocks, we could just say payoffs and progressive payoffs?

I do think there's something about the term "functionlock" though that reframes as a restriction rather than a reward as "payoff" does, which I think there's some merit to. I certainly feel like thinking of it as a restriction gives me a better, more true insight into how the card operates. What do you think?

EDIT:

Okay, thinking some more on each of the terms, and whether they could be renamed:

Plan function: This term does feel... clunky, to me? It sounds distinctly like jargon and not like language. I'd like to change its name to something that feels more immediately understandable just by reading the name, but I dont think "goodstuff" is it after all. "Goodstuff" is what I think people say when they mean "something you can reliably expect to be good, regardless of context", which isnt quite the same as plan functionality. Many goodstuffy cards are indeed high in plan functionality, but very broad interference functions like kill spells and very broad synergy functions like card draw might also be sometimes categorized as "goodstuff".

Interference function: Maybe it's just me, but I think this term works fine as is because you can pretty easily understand it just by reading it. Interference... interferes with things. I don't think replacing it with "interaction function" would really make it more approachable, and I think calling it interference makes certain things more obvious like how it encompasses things like lifegain. "interaction" might also be read as encompassing cards like Fact or Fiction, which I think can confuse things.

Synergy Function: I think renaming this "enabler function" is a good idea. I think its actually closer to what I'm trying to get at with the term than synergy function was, and it uses familiar terminology in a familiar way.

Functionlock: I think that this shouldn't be replaced by the term "payoff", but rather be explained in the context of payoffs. I think "functionlocks" are a good way to explain how payoffs really work when you get to the nitty gritty of them, but "payoff" is a term that is frankly just way more satisfying. Who is going to say "I'm looking for Human functionlocks" instead of "I'm looking for Human payoffs"? Maybe some people here because we're huge game design nerds but honestly even I'd just say "payoffs" in that context.

I think "payoff" and "functionlock" are terms that can exist in harmony and support each other, rather than come into conflict.

EDIT2:

Or alternatively, maybe I could say the term "payoff function"? Like "the interference function portion of this card is a payoff function".

 

[landofMordor]

Reinventing the wheel in this case was probably valuable because I think a lot of people don't really have a clear idea of what exactly they mean when they actually say those terms, only having a vague feeling of "yeah this is goodstuff" or "yeah this is a payoff", but I think making use of those existing terms probably could help in making these concepts more approachable.

For sure! Most people have a very vague definition of goodstuff and payoff. But then again, giving a concrete definition to a term like "functionlock" either makes it uselessly specific, or just as fuzzy as the original term. Because Magic is a highly complex physics-like system, a word like "synergy" is used like most people say "momentum" -- there's a loose connection to the rigorous physical quantity that's conserved at all times and ensures that the world doesn't fall apart (literally), but it still conveys enough meaning to be useful even without all of that background rigor. Contrast this to quasi-authoritatively defined Magic jargon (Baneslayer/Mulldrifter/aggro deck/mana value) or physics/math jargon (orthogonality, eigenvalue) where if you play around with the definitions of those you'll get angry pedants and semantic arguments. I think the loose terms are what we're shooting for for maximum clarity.

I also really like the term "functionality", so maybe instead of "plan function", "interference function", and "synergy function", we could have "goodstuff function", "interaction function", and "enabler function"?

I don't think I can overstate the benefit of the terms being useful to readers who skimmed or didn't quite understand the rigorous definitions. Hopefully just take these as extra thoughts or suggestions rather than pushback, because I'm sure you'll eventually converge to an ideal set of terms even without my "interference function"

Like you mention in your edit, "Plan" has the merit of explicitly tying the functionality to something which is rewarded by Magic's game engine. I agree it's clunky, and that "goodstuff" doesn't quite capture that same nuance... Maybe "engine functionality" or "victory functionality" or "win condition". Actually, I really like "wincon functionality" or "gameplan functionality", again because it harnesses existing vocab that's loose enough to appropriate.

To your edit r.e. interference functionality, I disagree that "interaction" connotes Fact or Fiction except when your readers are so disenfranchised that they won't be on RTL, but I do see what you mean about that existing jargon not typically including lifegain or blockers. "Interaction" is too tightly defined for what you want to say. Maybe "friction functionality" or "roadblock functionality" is an alternative to "interference" that scans better in plain English ("interference" doesn't make it clear who's getting interfered with, IMO, which is why I suggested interaction initially). Any of these probably work, since we really can't rely completely on existing jargon here. But others should chime in if they have a strong preference.

Love "enabler functionality".

And instead of functionlocks and progressive functionlocks, we could just say payoffs and progressive payoffs?

I do think there's something about the term "functionlock" though that reframes as a restriction rather than a reward as "payoff" does, which I think there's some merit to. I certainly feel like thinking of it as a restriction gives me a better, more true insight into how the card operates. What do you think?

I think R&D uses "scaling payoff" and "threshold/non-scaling payoff", but yeah. And I do take your point about the "lock" aspect of your term -- maybe "restricted functionality" is a plain-English way of saying the same thing? Which has the additional benefit of being a vanilla adjective that you can graft on other types of functionality, e.g. "restricted interaction functionality", which I really like. I agree with your edit that payoff and the "lock"-esque term can harmonize.

Last thought:
The "ity" of "functionalITY" might be important. Vs. plain "function", "functionalITY" collapses the many ways in which Archway Angel interferes, enables, and pays off (which my mathy brain conceptualizes as many discrete functions) into a a few bundles of functions, ie "functionalities". And functionalITY also implies a bigger degree of abstraction that I think is necessary here. "Functions" make me imagine a set of commands that I give inputs to for defined outputs, like calculator buttons, but that's too static an image for how Magic game pieces interact. "Functionality" invites the reader to imagine cards having many possible uses all at once, depending on their deck and piloting decisions (which is true! Angel enables lifegain if and only if the pilot and deckbuilder exploit that functionality and accommodate the restrictions of Angel and the rest of the deck). Plus, I think it makes your intended meaning mesh better with the grammar of reading your sentences.

Hope that helps. This is kinda like deriving Newton's Third Law from a momentum perspective instead OR a forces perspective. I think the functionality framework is a formal synonym for other really powerful thought technology like "baneslayer mulldrifter", where you can re-derive the terms through different means. Which is really cool. I want to encourage you to keep at it, because I think you're on the verge of something really cool.

 

[landofMordor]

Ok I lied, real last thought:

An important step for real-world physical models is showing their derivation and their predictive power. Similarly, I think two things that could improve the rhetoric of this model are 1) starting with a commonly accepted premise, derive the framework, and 2) use the framework to re-derive an expected result. (This is really a suggestion for much later, because it's getting ahead of where the discussion currently is and jumps to a higher-level concern r.e. writing the post.)

The original post just launches into definition, and the Archway Angel discussion is descriptive, not predictive. I think it'd be a more compelling story if you started by considering the different ways that Magic cards are useful, kinda from scratch. "What is an exhaustive list of the ways we use game pieces in this system?" kinda thing, and then show that many of those collapse into the functionalities. And for the predictive thing, can you use the model to illustrate why a Constructed deck coalesced around Cat/Oven, or why Stoneforge is so good in Modern, or the BSA/Mulldrifter distinction?

Again, I'm getting ahead of you because I'm excited about this framework -- I think you're rightly focusing on the nitty-gritty of definitions and semantics right now -- so just take this as food for thought.