FlowerSunRain
Contributor
I have some thoughts about basic cube design that isn't really anything we don't already know, but I wanted to put it into words anyway because I think it is one of the best takeaways one can get when figuring out how to put together of box of magic cards with the intention of sharing it with friends.
If there are two things you should know about cube design that are really important yet have absolutely nothing to do with the cards or mechanics of Magic, it is the following two related statements:
1) As the designer, you are solely responsible for the product. No one else. No excuses. Just you.
2) The players absolutely do not care about anything other then how the cube plays.
If you are creating your cube purely as a thought experiment or just to show off how cool/rich you are to other cube designers on the internet, feel free to ignore this advice. I am defining cube as a game design activity, with the sole purpose of the activity to create a quality gameplay.
Point 1 should be self-evident, but people often make excuses for their design limitations or flaws, blaming them on outside factors which in reality are completely under there control. The mostly common source of blame I see is a strange one: blame placed on an arbitrary limitation. In these cases, the cube designer often recognizes a fault and even recognizes the solution, but continues to develop the inferior product because they "can't" implement the solution as it breaks a "rule" of the cube. "Singleton", "Only Real Cards", "Peasant", "Modern Frame", "Use Complete Cycles", whatever. Cube designers often point to these things, these limits, these design constraints that guide their design and immutable and beyond their control, but we know that's a lie. The designer is the one who created these rules in the first place. They are an excuse. They are an apology. They are a safety blanket and a crutch. They are a self-serving challenge. They are at best a guideline, but once you've recognized their limitation, you are doing your cube a disservice by keeping them, particularly if you've already recognized the flaw and the solution. There is no slippery slope argument that works here, if continuing to "break" the rules keeps improving the quality of the gameplay of your cube, then sliding down that slope is what you want to be doing, not trying to avoid.
And the players? Point 2. They really don't care about any of those things. If the games are better, the players are happier.
The second biggest source of blame is on first party design and development, which we'll call "WotC" for simplicity. People blame the pool as cards as printed for flaws in their design, forgetting the most important thing: they pick which ones they put in. My favorite example of this is the great wave of "Black Sucks in cube" complaints, to which my immediate and confused reaction was, "well, you put the cards in, whose fault is that?" You pick the cards that go in, if something isn't working, its on you. If the solution you want isn't around, its because you haven't solved it. WotC designs a broad pool of cards for their own purposes, not for your cube. Its up to you to repurpose them or, if your goal is specific enough that cards don't exist, to design your own.
And the players? They really don't care.
But what if Point 2 is wrong? What if you meet that guy that says "I'd play this cube, but it has 2 Duress and therefore I object to it on a design level and refuse to have fun?"
Clearly this guy isn't seriously interested in playing, he's a designer that likes to show off his ability to stick to arbitrary guidelines and complete thought experiments, so he has more fun reading cube your lists and asserting his elite opinions of them then he would actually playing them. We know these guys exist, but they aren't players so there is no reason to worry about them. Players really don't care. Seriously cube with someone who never heard of cube, there is an approximately 0% chance that they will have a negative comment on their being 2 rakdos cacklers in the pool, the three rares in a otherwise common only cube or the enchantresses presence in the modern cube, but its very likely they'll have lots to say about the actual quality of the games they play, the interest or frustrations of the gamestates that arise and the general level of enjoyment of the games they played (as well as which cards played a part in the positive and negative aspects of those things). Comments on the non-gameplay part of the cube are purely from a design related pace, but our goal as a designer is not to impress other designers, its to make cubes that play great Magic. If they happen to impress other designers, it should be because of that, not because the list sticks to some arbitrary standard.
If there are two things you should know about cube design that are really important yet have absolutely nothing to do with the cards or mechanics of Magic, it is the following two related statements:
1) As the designer, you are solely responsible for the product. No one else. No excuses. Just you.
2) The players absolutely do not care about anything other then how the cube plays.
If you are creating your cube purely as a thought experiment or just to show off how cool/rich you are to other cube designers on the internet, feel free to ignore this advice. I am defining cube as a game design activity, with the sole purpose of the activity to create a quality gameplay.
Point 1 should be self-evident, but people often make excuses for their design limitations or flaws, blaming them on outside factors which in reality are completely under there control. The mostly common source of blame I see is a strange one: blame placed on an arbitrary limitation. In these cases, the cube designer often recognizes a fault and even recognizes the solution, but continues to develop the inferior product because they "can't" implement the solution as it breaks a "rule" of the cube. "Singleton", "Only Real Cards", "Peasant", "Modern Frame", "Use Complete Cycles", whatever. Cube designers often point to these things, these limits, these design constraints that guide their design and immutable and beyond their control, but we know that's a lie. The designer is the one who created these rules in the first place. They are an excuse. They are an apology. They are a safety blanket and a crutch. They are a self-serving challenge. They are at best a guideline, but once you've recognized their limitation, you are doing your cube a disservice by keeping them, particularly if you've already recognized the flaw and the solution. There is no slippery slope argument that works here, if continuing to "break" the rules keeps improving the quality of the gameplay of your cube, then sliding down that slope is what you want to be doing, not trying to avoid.
And the players? Point 2. They really don't care about any of those things. If the games are better, the players are happier.
The second biggest source of blame is on first party design and development, which we'll call "WotC" for simplicity. People blame the pool as cards as printed for flaws in their design, forgetting the most important thing: they pick which ones they put in. My favorite example of this is the great wave of "Black Sucks in cube" complaints, to which my immediate and confused reaction was, "well, you put the cards in, whose fault is that?" You pick the cards that go in, if something isn't working, its on you. If the solution you want isn't around, its because you haven't solved it. WotC designs a broad pool of cards for their own purposes, not for your cube. Its up to you to repurpose them or, if your goal is specific enough that cards don't exist, to design your own.
And the players? They really don't care.
But what if Point 2 is wrong? What if you meet that guy that says "I'd play this cube, but it has 2 Duress and therefore I object to it on a design level and refuse to have fun?"
Clearly this guy isn't seriously interested in playing, he's a designer that likes to show off his ability to stick to arbitrary guidelines and complete thought experiments, so he has more fun reading cube your lists and asserting his elite opinions of them then he would actually playing them. We know these guys exist, but they aren't players so there is no reason to worry about them. Players really don't care. Seriously cube with someone who never heard of cube, there is an approximately 0% chance that they will have a negative comment on their being 2 rakdos cacklers in the pool, the three rares in a otherwise common only cube or the enchantresses presence in the modern cube, but its very likely they'll have lots to say about the actual quality of the games they play, the interest or frustrations of the gamestates that arise and the general level of enjoyment of the games they played (as well as which cards played a part in the positive and negative aspects of those things). Comments on the non-gameplay part of the cube are purely from a design related pace, but our goal as a designer is not to impress other designers, its to make cubes that play great Magic. If they happen to impress other designers, it should be because of that, not because the list sticks to some arbitrary standard.
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