推 mouse8899:推一個 並且跪求翻譯XD 12/11 01:10
推 lcp411:很有趣的好文啊! 12/11 01:48
推 tinyfan:總之就是工程師趕不出作品，跟老闆轉移焦點的故事XD 12/11 15:33
※ 引述《EEK (水紋上的雙子舞)》之銘言：
: 這個故事是有寓意的, 它告訴我們wotc自己常常也不知道自己設計出了什麼東西.
好吧我記錯結局了... 以下附上原文
其實看完上面那些討論老實說我很猶豫要不要貼, 因為一些不一而足的原因...
但想想還是貼好了, 這種事情不應該跟一些討論板上面的風風雨雨扯上關係.
PS:文章有點長且全英文, 早年有人翻譯但已經遺失了
如果有興趣的人可以自己翻...
-
Several months ago, somewhere near Seattle, WA
It's 3 a.m. and you're still at work. You know you should have gone home
hours ago but deadlines are approaching. The designs for the new set are
due to the playtesters several days before the release, and you keep coming
up with Green cards that make mono-Green tourney viable--so the head of the
design team has rejected all of them. You're at wits end, staring at a
blank sheet of paper for a couple hours now.
You sigh, frustrated, and get up to get a cup of coffee. You get to the
coffee room and pour yourself a cup, and in walks your boss, head of the
design team. What's he doing here this late? You're cornered. He speaks:
"So, how's it going? Come up with anything good for me?"
Oh no. Another totally unproductive day, and now the pressure's on. Your
mind races. There has to be a way out. Nothing. Your answer is taking
too long, you can feel it. You have to generate some kind of diversion.
In desperation, you say the first thing that comes to mind:
"I bet I can come up with a worse card than you."
What? Where'd that come from?
Your boss laughs. "Oh, really? Of course you know I designed both the
Laces. Oh, and Jump. And Cooperation. And snow-covered land. And.."
You feel sweat on your palms as he drones on--there's nothing you can do,
you've offered the challenge. You feel your cushy job flash before your
eyes. "Yes, uhh, I can design a worse card than you."
Your boss laughs again. "OK, you're on. How's this: If you win, we print
the card in the next set--as a rare."
This is too good! A rare! This isn't a stand-alone expansion, so there
aren't that many rares in the set. Think of what you could do to sealed
deck players! A rare, and still the last card passed around in a booster
draft! You're enticed. "Sounds great," you hear yourself say, trying to
contain your excitement.
"I thought you might like that. Now, what happens if you lose..."
You cringe. What's the worst, most thankless job in the company? You
can't imagine.
"I know!" your boss booms. "We'll give you Tom Wylie's job. You'll have
to try to make the rules both consistent and comprehensible, as well as
keeping up with all the new rules introduced with new expansion."
NOOOO!!! The impossible job! One small slip and thousands of Magic
players all over the world will flood you with irate email about some
obscure ruling you made about Time Vault, or some other card nobody
actually plays. The stakes, wow, the stakes are huge. You MUST win this
bet!
"Uhh, OK, I guess," you say, too tired to try to fight for a less horrible
fate.
"Great bet!" your boss beams. "OK, then, in one week, you bring me your
card design, and I'll bring mine. We'll need a judge, though, of the
cards."
Again, your mind races. Who? Who would make a good judge? Who can
separate the truly bad from the merely mediocre? They have to know the
game, and understand something about how it works. Well, that rules out
all the other members of the design team, and all the playtesters. Who
could do it? A name prods into your consciousness. "Bethmo," you blurt
out.
"Ahh, interesting choice," your boss responds. "Bethmo it is. See you in
a week, chump!"
Well, you're off the hook for seven days. But what card to make? It has
to be bad, really bad. You decide to go home and sleep on it.
You spend the next several days trying to figure out what makes a card
truly bad. You come up with nothing truly awful--the buyback blue -1/+1 on
creatures you control and the Plainswalking Sliver just aren't quite bad
enough.
It's judgment day, and you're really sweating. What, what really makes a
card bad? Combos, you decide. The card has to have literally zero value
on its own--something that could only be used in a combo. It should, you
decide, also be an artifact. After all, that way it can't be used with a
pitch spell.
OK, so an artifact that only works in combination. But with what? A
specific card that's not in print? No, that wouldn't work, that'd be too
obvious--has to be a class of cards. Other artifacts? No, Type 2 players
use artifacts all the time--too bad they printed Cursed Scroll and Winter
Orb. OK, something that combos with an enchantment. No, that won't work,
either, with all those Propaganda and COP:Red players out there. And it
can't be creatures, either, since we've actually printed some decent
creatures of late.
Hmm. OK, well, what is it that makes combos bad? Well, first, they're
fragile--so it can't be anything that actually protects whatever it's
combined with. That's pretty good. What else makes combos difficult?
Ahh, let's see, you have to have both cards around at the same time, which
makes it harder to draw them. But even still, if you have four of each
piece of a two-card combo in your deck, the chance of drawing at least one
of each on seven cards in a 60-card deck is still more than 10%. Hmm.
So it has to be a combo with something that you wouldn't put 4 of in a
deck. Preferably something most people wouldn't even play at all, because
of prohibitive casting cost or uselessness. Some really big creature,
since creatures are pretty kill-able. Hmm, something expensive, usually
not very useful, that people wouldn't put more than one or two of in a
deck. That's it--Legends! Something that combines with Legends.
You're on a roll now, you can't be stopped. Something only useful in
combination with a legend. But how to be sure it isn't useful? If there
were some way to make sure people wouldn't put more than one or two of
these in the deck, too, well, it'd be almost impossible to draw both. A
brainstorm--make it a legend, too! A Legendary Artifact!
This has to be the most useless card you've ever come up with. Think of
all the flak you got for Taniwha! They haven't seen anything yet. OK,
now, a legendary artifact that combines with a legend. That alone is
pretty much entirely a waste of space. It has to do something minor.
Can't grant the Legend any special abilities, those can be useful. We
wouldn't want to make the legend any harder to kill with targeted removal
spells like Terror. Oh, and it has to be a "tap" ability so it isn't
always in effect and gets shut down by Null Rod. Oh, and it should target
the legend, too, since that won't always work, either. Let's see, tap to
give target legend... Well, it can't be anything TOO big, but these are
Legends. OK, Legendary Artifact, Tap to give target legend +2/+2. And
hey, there are legends in this set--I bet we can even work it in to the
backstory!
You walk in to the room on the moment of truth confident, but still
slightly afraid. After all, you are up against the master here--the man
who brought us cards in the last set like Excavator and Mogg Cannon and
thought they were too good to be commons. What would he think was bad?
Bethmo looks depressed--she doesn't want to be here any more than you do.
Finally, your boss walks in, grinning from ear to ear. Your heart sinks.
"Let's see what you've got!" he booms.
You hand the piece of paper to Bethmo. "Are you serious?" You look
confused. She can't actually think this is good, can she? "This is
terrible! Good lord, it's even Legendary itself! That's horrendous."
Whew!
Your boss looks displeased, and hands a piece of paper to Bethmo. She
ponders it for a moment... "Uhh, you're kidding, right? This is a 3/3 for
2, and it's red!"
Your boss's smile drops. "Well, yes, but look at the drawback!"
She reads: "'Can only attack or block when other creatures you control are
attacking or blocking.' So?"
"You need other creatures! Without them, it's worse than a Wall!"
"Well, sure," she says "but think of Sligh. If Ironclaw Orcs are 2/2 for 2
and people play those, what do you think will happen here?"
"Sligh?" your boss asks. "What's that?"
"You don't know what Sligh is? Ugh, never mind. Look, I'm sorry, but this
Legendary Artifact thing is just SO bad..." You've won! You're saved!
Your boss is incensed. "Let me see that card of his. Hmm, target Legend
gets +2/+2. I don't see what's so bad about that--I think mine is much
worse than this." You're astonished, but he really doesn't seem to be
kidding.
Bethmo does not falter. "Well, you asked for my opinion. I think that
'Sword of the Chosen' is horrible."
Your boss grumbles. "Well, OK, we'll print it as a rare, then, just like I
promised. But we're printing my card, too, but I guess since you don't
think it's so bad, we'll just make it an uncommon."
It's over. You got your rare, and you got your boss off your back at least
until Exodus.
As you're walking back to your office, you can hear your boss mumbling to
himself. "Gonna have to get even with that Bethmo. Hmm, maybe I could
give *her* Tom's job..."
-
多年之後出了神河這個block...
--
如果不想mark這篇文章, 可以只把這段原文收起來
poster header統統砍掉我沒有任何意見
能在網路上找到純粹有點運氣 (還好以前跑的討論板夠多...XD)
以後要是有人想看找不到, 能不能再找到也很難說了.
--
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
- Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher, 428 BC-348 BC)
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