General Next Design Contest Ideas

[Grillo_Parlante]

Since no one has posted, list off your ideas!

I thought it might be fun to have:

1. A challenge to design a fair storm card that is still good; or
2. A top-down design contest. Something where you select a line of poetry or prose, for flavor text, and than have to design a card that flavorfully fits the text.

What else would people be interested in seeing?

 

[Aoret]

1 is interesting to me but feels a little bit like being jammed into a corner.
2 sounds fun

 

[genericco]

I was kind of joking, but mostly not, when I suggested we design one of the cards supposedly cut from the Unhinged set.

 

[ColonelSanders]

How about a card that makes you want to play a non aggro red deck? (and isn't just a damage based sweeper)

 

[Dom Harvey]

the winner is whoever sends the thread on the best tangent

 

[Aoret]

the winner is whoever sends the thread on the best tangent

shhh Dom did you forget the first and second rule of RipetideLab?

 

[ColonelSanders]

shhh Dom did you forget the first and second rule of RipetideLab?

That tempo is but an illusion?

 

[psly4mne]

I was kind of joking, but mostly not, when I suggested we design one of the cards supposedly cut from the Unhinged set.

I approve of this.

 

[Meltyman]

I was thinking of designing a card that fits a slot that was missing in your cube.

For instance mine would be white 1 drops, blue 1 drops, black 1 drops, green non-creatures, anything for boros, reanimator targets that are good but not oppressive... the list goes on and on...

But how to mold that idea so that it isn't to broad?

Vote for 3 slots that needs filling and after that people will make a card for each slot or just pick 1 from those 3 to make?

 

[safra]

I was kind of joking, but mostly not, when I suggested we design one of the cards supposedly cut from the Unhinged set.

I was gonna propose this if you didn't! also feels v. shareable

 

[Kirblinx]

This thread feels like a mild nudge to Jason to wrap up the current contest, even though we already know who the winner is.

Bouncing off of other peoples ideas so far:
Grillo: Fair Storm Card - This seems a little too narrow for a design contest. Sure it is only one restriction, but storm is a VERY big restriction since the mechanic is pretty much broken. Although having a design restriction based on old mechanics would be cool.

Top Down Design - I feel for this we would need to be given the topic to design around, otherwise it would be too hard to judge. Could do something silly like 'Design a card that embodies one of the muppets', as that would allow for a swath of ideas. Or go with something generic like 'Card that feels like you are on a tropical holiday'. Top-down design is really interesting and could be a great idea for the next contest, just that the topic would have to be well thought out.

Genericco: Unhinged Card - I wouldn't mind doing something whacky like this, but I feel the criteria it would be judged on would need to be written out in the contest beforehand, such as;
Does it feel like it could be in Unhinged? Originality of idea? Playability?
Or do we just go with resonance like we did with this contest (which entry resonates with you the most, regardless of criteria).

Meltyman: Slot Filler - This is the kind of thing I was first thinking about when thinking of a new design contest idea. Some custom cube users have trouble for some certain spots in the curve, so why not make everyone contribute? Having the restirctions be something like:
Aggressive Blue Creature, CMC 1-2. That should be enough to get a swath of different ideas.

These seem like all great ideas already and I would be keen to give any of them a try.
I think the main thing I am hoping for is a couple of design restrictions that allow the cards to be comparable to each other but are open-ended enough that all entries are unique in their own way.

Some various design restrictions that could be used for the next contest:

• Use two old keywords that have never been together before
• Use this new mechanic we made up (Unholy tribute, sturdy, etc.) on a card
• An interesting RG card that doesn't cost 4.
• A conspiracy-esque draft matters card.
• A card that is more deserving of this art

To be honest I think the best would be to ask the custom cube regulars on what holes they've had trouble filling and just base the restrictions on that.

 

[Aoret]

I feel the criteria it would be judged on would need to be written out in the contest beforehand

This is the single biggest pain point I have with our contests. Folks often end up feeling left out in the cold because they don't have a good sense of their goal. Should they pander to RiptideLab sensibilities, or to Jason's in particular? What does pandering to those sensibilities even look like? How much content should they put out?

I definitely suffered from this quite a bit with the Cube Redesign contest. I could've written out a lot more to explain my choices, but I wasn't sure whether it would get read. In the end, Wadds was left scratching his head at some choices that I could've given pretty compelling arguments for. Except pridemate. That shit sucked and he was right to look at it sideways

 

[Jason Waddell]

I will say one of the best things about the last contest was the diversity of submissions, so whatever we use should enable similar diversity of contributions.

If someone wants to write a "rule set" I'd be happy to use / ammend it.

The top-down thing seems like it has potential. I'd also be up for a "from the cutting room floor", design a card that was "cut" from a previous set. Lets you pick some flavor, have some keywords to work with if you want.

 

[Suicufnoc]

"top-down thing" with a poll to pick that thing first

 

[Aoret]

I will say one of the best things about the last contest was the diversity of submissions, so whatever we use should enable similar diversity of contributions.

If someone wants to write a "rule set" I'd be happy to use / ammend it.

The top-down thing seems like it has potential. I'd also be up for a "from the cutting room floor", design a card that was "cut" from a previous set. Lets you pick some flavor, have some keywords to work with if you want.

Cutting room floor is a solid idea. I'd be down for either that or the top-down. Some spitballing on some rule stuff, based on categories I heard discussed in the video, you could score cards on:

1. Fits the theme of the challenge
2. Balance (necessitates a common point of reference e.g. Penny Pincher or Jason's cube or something)
3. Riptideness (is good but is better in synergistic decks)
4. Elegance (X2 scores high)
5. Grokkability (X2 scores low)
6. Art choice
7. Templating (the text itself)
8. Render (aesthetic elements including layout of the text, how close to a real card does this look)

These are just the elements of a card that came to mind for me. It seemed like there was some disagreement between Jason and CT during the discussion about whether 6-8 mattered, so we should get that straight right away. Some of us are better than others at a few of these, so we end up with a little bit of a tricky situation. This is not unlike the problem faced by tabletop wargaming tournaments; do we grade based on all aspects of the hobby, or just the "game rules" portion? Artist-players will want to take a holistic view, while pure gamers will say that artistic aspects are optional fluff pieces whose role is simply to dress up the game. AFAIC it doesn't actually matter what we settle on rules wise, but it will help immensely for folks to know going in. This prevents a situation where somebody's finalist design gets trashed by CT for having a stupid looking set symbol, or somebody's flavor packed, custom rendered card with original art trashed by Jason for being the wrong power level, just as a couple of totally contrived examples

tl;dr if people know what the parameters are we avoid anybody being butt hurt about putting in tons of work to an element of the design that doesn't get graded.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Cutting room floor is a solid idea. I'd be down for either that or the top-down. Some spitballing on some rule stuff, based on categories I heard discussed in the video, you could score cards on:

1. Fits the theme of the challenge
2. Balance (necessitates a common point of reference e.g. Penny Pincher or Jason's cube or something)
3. Riptideness (is good but is better in synergistic decks)
4. Elegance (X2 scores high)
5. Grokkability (X2 scores low)
6. Art choice
7. Templating (the text itself)
8. Render (aesthetic elements including layout of the text, how close to a real card does this look)

These are just the elements of a card that came to mind for me. It seemed like there was some disagreement between Jason and CT during the discussion about whether 6-8 mattered, so we should get that straight right away. Some of us are better than others at a few of these, so we end up with a little bit of a tricky situation. This is not unlike the problem faced by tabletop wargaming tournaments; do we grade based on all aspects of the hobby, or just the "game rules" portion? Artist-players will want to take a holistic view, while pure gamers will say that artistic aspects are optional fluff pieces whose role is simply to dress up the game. AFAIC it doesn't actually matter what we settle on rules wise, but it will help immensely for folks to know going in. This prevents a situation where somebody's finalist design gets trashed by CT for having a stupid looking set symbol, or somebody's flavor packed, custom rendered card with original art trashed by Jason for being the wrong power level, just as a couple of totally contrived examples


tl;dr if people know what the parameters are we avoid anybody being butt hurt about putting in tons of work to an element of the design that doesn't get graded.

So long as I don't need to give concrete scores on each of those axis for every card. We'd be streaming for days!

 

[Aoret]

So long as I don't need to give concrete scores on each of those axis for every card. We'd be streaming for days!

lol yeah that sounds horrible. My thought was we pick a couple of them that we agree on.

Offhand I see the balance/power level one as being totally optional, but in practice both the judges and audience may have difficulty separating themselves emotionally from their own power level of interest. I'll also betray our kind and say that all of the aesthetic stuff is optional, including having "correct" rules templating. We can address all of those concerns and dress up the winner a bit after the fact.

That leaves Theme, Riptideness, Elegance, Grokkability. A lot more of a tractable problem IMO.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Given that we all work at mostly different powerlevels anyways, I think actually rating a card on power level is probably a dead end, but I'd be interested to see people submit what power level the design is intended for and we could judge weather or not they hit the mark.

Like if priest of the cursed flame is supposed to be competing with jitte, I wouldn't have said nerf it, but if it's appearing in the pack next to words of waste I'd have a very different opinion.

 

[Tzenmoroth]

Cutting room floor is a solid idea. I'd be down for either that or the top-down. Some spitballing on some rule stuff, based on categories I heard discussed in the video, you could score cards on:

1. Fits the theme of the challenge
2. Balance (necessitates a common point of reference e.g. Penny Pincher or Jason's cube or something)
3. Riptideness (is good but is better in synergistic decks)
4. Elegance (X2 scores high)
5. Grokkability (X2 scores low)
6. Art choice
7. Templating (the text itself)
8. Render (aesthetic elements including layout of the text, how close to a real card does this look)

These are just the elements of a card that came to mind for me. It seemed like there was some disagreement between Jason and CT during the discussion about whether 6-8 mattered, so we should get that straight right away. Some of us are better than others at a few of these, so we end up with a little bit of a tricky situation. This is not unlike the problem faced by tabletop wargaming tournaments; do we grade based on all aspects of the hobby, or just the "game rules" portion? Artist-players will want to take a holistic view, while pure gamers will say that artistic aspects are optional fluff pieces whose role is simply to dress up the game. AFAIC it doesn't actually matter what we settle on rules wise, but it will help immensely for folks to know going in. This prevents a situation where somebody's finalist design gets trashed by CT for having a stupid looking set symbol, or somebody's flavor packed, custom rendered card with original art trashed by Jason for being the wrong power level, just as a couple of totally contrived examples

tl;dr if people know what the parameters are we avoid anybody being butt hurt about putting in tons of work to an element of the design that doesn't get graded.

I think for balance, we could all just go by our own cube power levels. Sure, we might come up with different scores for that category, but when you average out our scores, the result will be a very good indicator of how well the card fits into Riptide cubes as a whole based on power level. Its also easier for us to judge based on cubes we're most familiar with, so its easy for us all and it still averages out to a meaningful value.

Riptideness could be like Johnny appeal. 6-8 could be bundled into a Vorthos category, they're all minor enough things to count as one area collectively. While I'm at it, power is Spike and Elegance is Melvin.

 

[Aoret]

and here I tried so hard to avoid going there...

 

[Tzenmoroth]

Oh and grokabiltiy is Timmy, whose favorite cards are easy to understand. :3

 

[anotak]

grokability is not exclusively timmy at all, the desire is universal

 

[Tzenmoroth]

That one was the biggest stretch. I had to try.

 

[psly4mne]

I don't really consider correct templating optional, especially if the card does anything non-obvious (for example). I personally choose to not care much at all about grokability as long as the card is correctly templated and hopefully not too wordy.

Of course, correct templating doesn't necessarily mean the same thing for Unhinged, but even Unhinged didn't use incorrect wording without a reason.

 

[Aoret]

^ This is precisely why this discussion is really important for us to have. My own ethos for customs is pretty incompatible with this type of card. I've run a complex card like this before which was really high on elegance in terms of how the mechanics worked, had correct Magic-ese in terms of templating, but was a grokkability nightmare and never saw play