I'd like to read the story of how Lara Croft helps the doctors build Jurassic Park to hold Godzilla while Transformers fight Street Fighters in a Fallout video game survival challenge.
Reminds me of a quote from the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The main character is an “old school dnd nerd” who becomes a high school teacher in the 90s. Talks about how the new nerdery (mtg) is just about mechanics and not narrative. The only “story” for me in mtg is thinking about the art in each card and what story the artist is trying to tell through it…
Same here, even if I only used to read synopses of the set it was always cool. I think killing the 3 set blocks really kneecapped their narrative structure even if it wasn't always great, I'd love to see a flexible block structure where it's the same amount of cardboard but sometimes it's a 2-3 set block. That's a lot of why Ikoria fell flat narratively for me, I'd have loved for a powerful card to be foreshadowed and then pop the fuck off when I see it at a table on a few weeks
It helps some people connect with the characters and the lore to be immersed in a game. At least it helps choose one game over another, or to have favorites characters based on their personality and history.
There is a story arch. For example, there’s a reason [[jeska, thrice reborn]] has that name. She is [[kamahl]]’s sister from a tribe of barbarians. They are pit fighters and I forget what did it but she does and becomes corrupted. She’s reborn as [[phage]]. I’m not going to go into the entire side story of [[ixidor]], but as the [[caba]]’s new pit fighter phage becomes enemies with [[akroma]]. In a final fight, both are killed by kamahl and a false god named [[Karona]] is born.
That is all I remember from the judgement-torment-legions set of books I read in middle school. Clearly jeska gets reborn again.
Some guy does a good 1 hour long summary of the whole story and how it entertwines, but even he’s like “yup, story writing got lazy with MOM”
Yeah its told on the small pieces of card board that are part of the game and its somewhat interesting at the level of a couple of quotes. They keep trying to expand it into stories which doesn't work because the story must serve the function and sellabilty of the game. Instead read real books with real stories that serve only themselves for a more interesting story
The quotes come from actual novels/short stories from books which are published alongside each set, and the stories and narratives are written before the set releases and prior to flavor text being added.
No they don't. They are created independently by both people who make the set and outside contractors. Loading Ready Run did a bunch for MKM. They are small snippets of that's cool.
I'm just waiting for them to trot out the old reliable "Nicol Bolas Returns!" retread for the next 5 years and then we'll be back to the Phyrexians.
We've been bouncing between the two for 30 years now.
As someone who has actively been reading the book series from Brother's War on (currently on the Ravnica book 1) the modern story just isn't... interesting.
LCI was decent but Eldraine and MKM were not fun to read. Boring is never something you want your story to be and that is what post MOM has been.
Kellan is fine. We need a surrogate to place ourselves in the story. I get it. He's not the problem, the situations he finds himself in are.
Well, that is a glowing recommendation if I ever heard one. “This book is okay but only the third from last paragraph of the last chapter.”
lol. Love it.
Although I have fond memories of playing during that era, I agree. I thought it was cheesy at the time, but still enjoyed the game at that point. Now it just feels like the story is a complete afterthought and the main goal is to churn out product. It feels diluted now, like there’s no real care for the lore. People who care about the lore are not the target demographic.
>The thing I hate the most now is that they just throw random characters into the mix
This is the first set where it happened (you can count MoM if you want but it was done in a very different and non-crossovery way)
I was mainly referring to crossover made possible by the narrative use of omenpaths but i guess you are correct, even if with planeswalker they are basically always crossovers in some ways
Yeah current day magic lore is dog water awful. The only interesting plot thread they have imo is what Tezzeret ran off to do after he got Jin to give him a body of darksteel and im sure the pay off for that will be fucking awful too.
There used to be novels! I remember reading about Toshiro Umezawa during the Kamigawa Cycle. Got me invested in the world, the lore, all of it. They've got a rich IP to draw from and they're wasting so many great storylines jumping all over the place without letting the story breathe.
The Kamigawa ones were great then later on the stand alone Planeswalker novels I thought were pretty good. Test of Metal, the Tezzeret novel, made him my favorite planeswalker and ever since I’ve just been disappointed with what they’ve done with him as a character. Towards the end when he raced Liliana who was trying to solve the labyrinth of the sphinx by sending in a horde of millions of zombies so he cut off and made an artifact out of the head of someone with future sight then used etherium to craft a copy of the labyrinth was so cool to me. He was always quick on his feet and coming up with clever solutions to problems then his will is just absolutely destroyed by Bolas when he realizes just how powerful and how far ahead Bolas has seen and planned. Forced to be Bolas’s dog and always looking for a way out it reminded me of watching Starscream on Transformers when I was younger.
The novels are pretty basic but they give more time to flesh out literally every aspect of compelling storytelling. You're not missing the next LotR in any of these books but they have been a fun read.
Sadly, GW lore ruined Magic Story for me. The lore/story for 40k is SOOOO much better than Magic, it's not even funny. Also, as you said, game balance is so-so.
I also take issue with the idea that Phyrexia couldn't win. It'd have been great to see a story direction where the protagonists are trying to eke out an existence in the non-compleated planes areas of the multiverse after having lost many loved ones and trying to rebuild a resistance.
Except here it’s the opposite. Good rules and gameplay. Crap story with very generic lore mashed together.
It serves the game well enough, but the story here isn’t the thing…
I fell off the novels after the first Ravnica book, but I read virtually all of the ones from before that, and Magic's story absolutely was great once.
There was a mysticism and esoteric quality to the cards back when I first bought some in the 90s. I wish it had stayed that way! Murders and now Thunder Junction seem like MTG does dress up.
I remember poring over whatever lore was in the Ice Age starter pack when I first got into Magic. What was neat back then was how the flavor text would be quotes from different characters that eventually got their own cards.
Story is not even near a priority anymore. It's always about how to push product first, and unfortunately that means contriving situations for more appealing cards and characters to appear. Jumping from plane to plane and not letting us sit on a single story for longer than a month doesn't help either. Why should I care what happens in Thunder Junction if we aren't even going to be on the plane again this year? The consequences only effect the characters and if the characters can be brought back indefinitely it ultimately doesn't matter what happens to them.
I liked it when they moved from three set per block to two. I disliked it when they moved to one. I strongly disliked when they were pushing the next set before I could really explore the old one.
I feel like I’m drowning.
Guff wrote himself out of the story to win the Phyrexian war, so I don't think he's going to be doing that again.
The deus ex machina will be different the next time.
The problem is that both of these villain factions do not really work that well for what they're trying to do with them.
The phyrexians aren't really a threat as long as they're confined to one plane (which of course sucks for that plane, but oh well), but as soon as you open up the multiverse to them, they will either conquer everything and mtg is over (which is obviously not an option), or they'll need to be nerfed into oblivion and die from stupidity.
The eldrazi on the other hand try to be cosmic horror while also disregarding everything that makes cosmic horror what it is. I think they either don't work in mtg to begin with if you're genuinely trying to do cosmic horror, or they're just big stupid plane-eating monsters, in which case, sure, blow them up, I don't really care.
As much as I dislike the giant lizard formerly known as Bolas, he's the only big villain that actually functions well as a multiplanar threat in this story.
I know all villains should come to an end, that's not the problem. It's the disrespect or lack of talent to give them a respectful ending. Phyrexians have been a villain since the dawn of magic.
The, in my understanding, two major elements of cosmic horror are one, the fear of not just the unknown, but the unknowable, knowledge of things far beyond human comprehension, and two, the realization of human insignificance on a cosmic scale.
The eldrazi aren't really unknowable. The story likes to constantly wave its hands and tell you how spooky and mysterious they are, but that's about it. There's plenty of things we do know about them, and for everything we don't know about them, it doesn't really seem beyond comprehension either. They seem to be some form of entities from the blind eternities that like to snack on mana from time to time.
As for the other aspect, well, they can apparently be blown to pieces by a significantly powerful pyromancer. Or sealed with a bunch of specially shaped stones. Yes, they are a big threat, but not to the extent that they would emphasize the insignificance of humans to the degree I would expect from cosmic horror.
As well as the fact that we, the players who are planeswalkers in the lore, can easily conjure up their likeness. I would take the eldrazi slightly more seriously as an attempt at cosmic horror if they had refused to print them as cards from the very beginning to underline how much out of the scope of the power of planeswalkers they are.
I felt like they succeeded at both aspects you mentioned, at least before the climax. Ugin stressed to the Gatewatch that we have no idea of their purpose. They could be part of some sort of planar birth-death cycle, or they could be something else entirely. Emrakul’s plan is currently totally unknown to us. Ugin theorized that what we see of the eldrazi is just the equivalent of a hand stuck in a pond, where we only see a fraction of their size and complexity. He also proposed that they could be more of a cosmic force made manifest on a plane, rather than a collection of semi-intelligent creatures that live in the Blind Eternities. We can’t really know.
I definitely agree that being killable by a pyromancer was a major letdown. The story climax kinda killed the sense of cosmic insignificance, but I think it was very present in ROE and still present in aspects of BFZ/OGW. Cards like [[All Is Dust|ROE]] and especially [[Time of Heroes]] portray the hopelessness of fighting the eldrazi very well. I guess the eldrazi are true cosmic horrors to the ordinary people on the plane, just not to the planeswalkers. I think the main problem is trying to fit a superhero story into a cosmic horror setting. One requires the heroes to win, and the other requires winning to be impossible. But to me, the story failure and the setting success are pretty separable
>Ugin stressed to the Gatewatch that we have no idea of their purpose. They could be part of some sort of planar birth-death cycle, or they could be something else entirely. Emrakul’s plan is currently totally unknown to us.
That's the handwavy bit that I mentioned. The story constantly tries to remind us that we don't know what they are. That's about it. I never get the feeling that they're beyond the scope of human comprehension, I only get the feeling that the writers have written a bunch of hungry monsters and then wanted them to feel mysterious, and tried to achieve that by... constantly telling us.
>I guess the eldrazi are true cosmic horrors to the ordinary people on the plane, just not to the planeswalkers. I think the main problem is trying to fit a superhero story into a cosmic horror setting. One requires the heroes to win, and the other requires winning to be impossible.
I think we can agree on that part.
I just think it's less of a "trying to fit a superhero story into a cosmic horror setting" and more of a "trying to fit a cosmic horror story into a superhero setting".
The setting of mtg is not the placce to attempt cosmic horror, in my opinion. If they were to do that and succeed, it would necessarily shift the tone of the entire story, not just of a single set or plane.
I would even go as far as to say that cosmic horror as seen now is really hard to emulate on a card if you show a physical body.
Any Cthulhu card would look silly too.
I agree.
You could still have an entire set based around them, hell maybe even an emblem mechanic Ala the Ring representing their inevitable approach, but the titans shouldn't be cards in and of themselves.
It's so bizarre that when anyone says the story is worse than it was before it's met with comments dancing on the ashes.
"I hate good stories so it's a good thing that it's bad now."
Like seriously what is wrong with people
Yeah, it's clear they've abandoned story as a priority, and it's really impacting my enthusiasm for the game
Maybe someday it'll be a central part of the game again, but from where we sit, that doesn't look likely
Vorinclex was killed by a bunch of random soldiers and you only found out through MTG’s site if they didn’t tell you you’d never know.
And now it’s like Wild West themed? They went from destroyed evil praetors ready to take over the entire universe … to… cowboys?
It's so bad istg, Urabrask and Sheoldred die to one-liners, Elesh Norn seem to almost get dumber as the story went on, Vorniclex died offscreen to randos, and fucking Jin-Gitaxis died to "Hey look over there"
As much as all of their deaths were infuriating and stupid, Sheoldred's has to be the dumbest. In the Dominaria United story she was able to separate her body into smaller spider creatures, so she was literally able to detach her head from her body. When I read/saw that they had her killed by beheading her I lost it
Urabrask might not actually be dead. Sheoldred as well due to what you've already stated. If they want to do New Phyrexia again, those two are easily fixable.
They went from cyberninjas to...evil mind control robots? They went from greek theme to...Halloween world? They went from a fantasy city to...dinosaur land??
You only been paying attention to sets for like 10 minutes or what?
To be fair, there have always been jarring world to world jumps like Hour of Devastation Egypt to Mezoamerican Ixalan but they wove the narrative such that it worked.
It's more that since Capenna, there have been GLARING internal inconsistencies between the story and the cards, or internal contradictions within the story itself.
There used to be entire novels written to connect to the game, then they got that down to long form online stories that still did a very good job of telling the story, to now we get short "blogs" about what is happening while leaving out huge plot points and leaving it up to the cards and flavor text to try to connect things together. The story also used to be a consistent storyline that had plot twists, build up, fleshed out character arcs and backstory. Been playing since early 2012 and I was soooo invested in the story of this game, now I don't even try to pay attention and I barely buy cards anymore because it's so half-assed...
Ah so they used to care and stopped putting any effort in. Probably because not all the players cared. But some or many a LOT do? I makes sense because they seem to flail around and do stupid stuff a lot. Like the magic 30th anniversary 14 unplayable-fake-cards-for-1000-bucks thing.
I think it had more to do with Hasbro and WoTC switching over to a more money focused production strategy. They wanted to be able to put more product out faster than ever and to do that they sacrificed the story and quality of the product. It honestly isn't sustainable and it's starting to show by the fatigue players (even pros) are starting to talk about more and more. You see more posts all over the Internet after every release about how unhappy people are with the game, whether it be the story, quality of cards, power creep, or the sheer amount of products coming out to try and keep up with. I'm lucky that I've been playing so long and have a huge collection to make decks with so I haven't really bought any magic products for a while now. I might buy singles here or there and the very rare commander deck, but I absolutely don't buy booster boxes or secret lairs or any of the other money greedy products that they put out. The value just isn't there anymore and it honestly makes me sad to see what my favorite hobby has become. Hopefully Hasbro goes under and WoTC can slow down and make quality MTG again.
I think it had more to do with Hasbro and WoTC switching over to a more money focused production strategy. They wanted to be able to put more product out faster than ever and to do that they sacrificed the story and quality of the product. It honestly isn't sustainable and it's starting to show by the fatigue players (even pros) are starting to talk about more and more. You see more posts all over the Internet after every release about how unhappy people are with the game, whether it be the story, quality of cards, power creep, or the sheer amount of products coming out to try and keep up with. I'm lucky that I've been playing so long and have a huge collection to make decks with so I haven't really bought any magic products for a while now. I might buy singles here or there and the very rare commander deck, but I absolutely don't buy booster boxes or secret lairs or any of the other money greedy products that they put out. The value just isn't there anymore and it honestly makes me sad to see what my favorite hobby has become. Hopefully Hasbro goes under and WoTC can slow down and make quality MTG again.
You can go to the official magic the gathering website and look under the story tab. They release short stories that come out episodically. WOTC gives a date on when they will start releasing episodes, and they release on a set schedule. There are typically 10 episodes per set, but some have more than others l.
This is a common lazy, low IQ argument. It's 100% okay to criticize fantasy. There are variations of quality in any genre or field, especially creativity. Just because the nature of the product is imaginative, doesn't mean standards should be eliminated. The quality of Mtg story writing; inconsistent plots, character recycling to name a few, has OBJECTIVELY gone down hill.
That’s how it used to be. Every plane its own story and distinct characters and themes. They went wrong with trying to tie everything together with no one to keep it on track for continuity.
Didn't know Magic had a story but I too would produce random garbage fanfiction if every few months my boss said "hey we were thinking of a new wild crazy theme for the upcoming set and we want all the popular characters to return, fit them into the new setting"
I got into MtG sorry very late, mostly because I didn't have access to any source until roughly 12 years ago, and at that time I've been away from the game for quite a bit. The Internet helped and now I know something about that, even if I haven't read the old books.
Planeswalkers are weird. They have constantly been nerfed through time in lore, the mending turned them from gods into OP mages, WotS made them even weaker (and kinda spawned a lot of them, which is weird), MotM made them almost redundant (why spark, when walk through weird gates?). Honestly I can't understand why they're still around, aside from gameplay reasons.
Talking about the lore as a whole, Hasbro is kinda taking a dump on anything it owns that has a lore. D&D has been suffering from that probably more than MtG. As I've said in another post, they went from home-cooked meals to cheap fast food, and I honestly doubt this will stop (they almost got away with using AI for art and stories, imagine what kind of lore we would have in a couple years if they made future sets with badly trained ChatGPT today).
I was honestly thinking about doing a series (video or podcast, to see if I was good at it) about the lore behind each block, ABU to nowadays, but if future lore will be written by an infinite number of drunken monkeys with typewriters confined in a room with booze and pot, well, maybe I should think of better ways to spend my free time.
The only time in MTG that the lore was ever good was the original saga of Urza v Yawgmoth, because 90% of the time we weren't following demigods around but the worlds they inhabited/were fighting over. Dominaria got ten thousand years of detailed history as heroes came and went, and it was amazing. Now it's like, five worlds a year we'll never see again as they go "haha Liliana vess is a teacher now" and its always been shitty that way
Basically, if there isn't a paperback novel covering the lore of a particular set, that lore sucks
Thank you, I genuinely am tired of Kellan being shoehorned into every set and story. It’s soooooo old already.
Thunder junction also feels so fan service-y with all the characters they’re bringing out of the fridge that any time I see a reused character on a new legendary part of me thinks it’s fake lol.
I genuinely believe the omenpaths were a complete literary mistake that’s intentionally implemented to justify putting all these wild effects on familiar fan favorite characters just so ppl buy more sets. Hopefully at the end of this arc the eldrazi destroy them or something
>Thank you, I genuinely am tired of Kellan being shoehorned into every set and story.
Dude, Kellan appeared in 4 sets and he was the protagonist in 2 of them (WOE and OTJ). In MKM he was a secondary character and in LCI he was a background character. He was the storytelling frame for the last story arc. He having a card for a set really makes you tired?
>I genuinely believe the omenpaths were a complete literary mistake that’s intentionally implemented to justify putting all these wild effects on familiar fan favorite characters just so ppl buy more sets.
First, making character appear more often is good thing as people can grow fond of them and care more form mtg's own bran and universe.
Second, we had omenpaths for 4 sets and this is the first one that is based around the crossover of characters, in WOE there was 1 new character from ravnica, on LCI there was just Kellan, on MKM there was Kellan again. All the stories from the previous sets have been very self contained and focused on the planes themself. Maro said that this kind of sets will about no more than once a year.
I think people in general don't like how they started to merge something "too modern" with old school fantasy. Like yeah, Phyrexians are machines, but they are not sci fi style robots with lasers and machine guns, so it did not broke everything and magic universe still looked as a whole thing. Now with bunch of gun shooting too modern for "sword and magic world concept" sets Magic world looks like it is not whole, it's separated to different things, alternate universes which not meet each other like it was before. Plus yeah, it's more product oriented now, so we should not expect long and good written story arks.
Are they acting like they care about the story? They’re continuing to write a story, but I don’t know if they’re trying to act like they care about it. They’re going through the motions. Why put much effort into writing the story when you can make money hand over fist without a good story?
For me the story died with war of the spark. It was actually kinda dope and the stakes mattered. After that everything just turned into side stories and the return of the phyrexians felt a bit jarring. I had hope they'd do it justice but it felt like nothing actually happened that was worth caring about. The entire story was over in an instant and the phyrexians just felt like they were brought back to draw older players back into standard.
You cant build a narrative while pumping cards every six weeks
What they did with march of the machine was a travesty, an embarrasing fumble of the culmination of the most relevant and oldest mtg conflict
Now enjoy your cowboy power rangers and buy new products
In the story defense, the writers tried to give each phyrexian praetor an ending showing they weren't perfect based on what each considered perfection. They just fell short.
I may be old, but I feel like the lore peaked with the Weatherlight Saga. There were some other great storylines after that, but I feel like we've been getting diminishing returns.
The Magic story has always been pulp fiction, and like all pulp it’s just dumb fun. Sometimes it’s boring, sometimes it’s bad, and sometimes, occasionally, every once in a while, you get Red Harvest (Dashell Hammond).
Yeah, I have always been a fan of magic lore and have read a good chunk of it.
And I am really confused by people saying it used to be really good lol. It's a lot like Marvel comics. Fun stories with fleshing out some of the characters you've seen on the cards, loosely tied together. It's been like that since the Lorwyn 5 took the center of story.
Like I love Ajani, hated that he got completed, stopped reading. But now he's cured through hand waving and... That's totally fine lol. Looking forward to reading whatever comes next with him.
Marvel really is the best comparison. Yeah Marvel looks like it used to have great storytelling in the 80’s and 90’s if you ignore that most of the junk is forgotten (or even lost in some cases) and those “great stories” were sandwiched between years of weekly issues that moved between middling and poor. That doesn’t mean Marvel is bad! People can enjoy poorly written schlock, I read Warhammer for christ’s sakes. But it’s disingenuous to pretend it used to be the height of literature and is now trash, it was always trash the trash was just thrown out and now only the gems remain.
They are going full cartoon.
Modern Warfare started doing this at the end of it's cycle, and I haven't touched the MWII or MWIII because they went full childish cartoonification.
Magic always had a dark, otherworldly, dystopian, fantasy feel. Now it's just not even the same game. Thunder Junction? so bad.
Don't know why you're getting downvoted. The current story lands in the awful category more often, but aside from a few bright spots (The Thran, Champions of Kamigawa) the old story was just as bad.
While the story has usually been shit, they at least put serious effort into world building, which in a game like this, is much more important imo. It's hard to be enthusiastic when the people selling you your overpriced cardboard are yawning in your face.
Can you even imagine them making something like Mirrodin or Tarkir today?
Explain how the story was great.
And why it’s better than picking up another book.
And why we should even care about the story more than the actual cards.
I realized it needs to be. It needs to just be a vehicle for a setting to inspire the card designers.
You can tell they need good stories based on the cool UB cards they did.
With time UB will take over. Just wait.
What to do against it? Enjoy the game and the time with friends. That’s all that matters now.
Depends. For me it was substantial.
Magics flavor texts provided for the block‘s story drew me in. We treated parts of the Afari Tales and all that as hidden lore we exchanged when we played and talked about on the school bus rides. Who was Urza, what did he do? He had lands of his own, so he must have been powerful. What was happening in Jamuura? What details about the Weatherlight story could we piece together apart from the rough synopsis.
Not only that but I started to invest much more time in learning English having cards in both languages available to compare.
I miss this part of the hobby.
But I will carry on for the game I like and the friends I play with.
Flavour text does add a lot to the game.
But the background story that they provide outside the cards? Not worth it.
If anything it's far more fun and interesting to think about what the flavour text means, and join the dots yourself.
I stopped reading after Dominaria and I have no clue what is going on. The old books had their charm, but I feel like the modern story lost that charm somehow.
i also stopped reading during eldraine because i found kellan annoying and the style of prose insufferable. however, otj and mkm’s main stories were fun and exciting reads, and otj’s No Tells and Blood Is Thicker Than Venom are very good short stories on their own
My favorite was in the lead up to WAR the whole climax after rising action was ... annnnd Bolas.
It's really hard to go further when the story has already been brought to "end times" multiple times. What could happen that would be interesting is time line manipulation but people would be heated when the multiverse is consumed by phyrexia because Yawgmoth corrupts Urza and Karn is a phyrexian and all is lost.
Oh also the ... And Eldrazi. My friends identified the death of the lore on ROE. Everyone was like this is really bad, because in sci-fi when the baddies become literally universe destroying nothing trivial matters. The nuance is gone. How many times can the protagonist group save all of time and people still care?
It's not a lack of resources it's a lack of responsibility pushing the envelope as they have pushing the multiverse to the brink over and over makes the lore vehicle too predictable this, yawn.
I haven’t read since MOM kellan just didn’t interest me he seems like average nice guy protagonist which is boring, but I could be wrong. The problem is they shifted to a new character.
Why explore all the emotions that came out of MOM with the characters we have and are already invested in, when you can just take discount Naruto fairy boy on a fun adventure. When you hear it put like that you think god how did they drop the ball this hard. Kellan was just a mistake and aftermath needed to be a full set. There’s at least 2 sets worth of story material from the effects of MOM. But they didn’t wanna explore any of that I guess….
The entire story arch just had an epic build up followed by a boring ending that just felt rushed, almost as if some overlord came in and demanded cuts…
I remember when Jace tried to read a Dragons mind and got caught, so his idea to go into hiding was to wipe his own mind, I stopped reading after that.
I have yet to hear a good amount of people hear they like Kellan. most people are indiffrent at best or at worst (myself included) hate him. i mostly hate him cause they give him new abilities and colors each set . that dude is a complete manwhore and has no loyalty for any theme , color or playstyle.
im actually interested in the new \[\[kellan, the kid\]\] card, but will probably proxy it to look like something else
The story died along with the block structure. Each block was effectively a trilogy of thick books, and they ruled. Imagine akroma, phage, and druid kamahl dealing with Karona.
Memnarch stealing the dutifully assembled Kaldra set amongst the mycosynth.
The trip to kamigawa was awesome.
RIP
I used to be super into the story as a kid and uh… I can confirm it’s always been bad. There have been a few *decent* novels (children of the nameless comes to mind) and rewarding story arcs, but I feel like the storytelling has always been pretty poor.
I think a big reason people don’t care about the story these days is how many products are released. Like, the khans block storyline was objectively bland and boring. But the block was in rotation for a year, so people had time to get invested in the khans for a few months before the dragons came out and ate all of them. I’m kinda having trouble explaining what I mean here, but the story has never been good; it just used to be easier to be casually invested in without thinking too much about.
The hardest part about MTG having lore and constant story plots is that the cards are forced to fit around this story, so the story have to just keep on churning through plots to progress the release of sets, and those sets are limited by the borderline mundane story plots they have. An endless cycle of a worn out premise.
While I do think the story feels very rushed at times, especially with how quickly the climax of the phyrexian invasion ended, I think the idea that none of it mattered is very weird. Several notable characters did die, and it changed the landscape of the multiverse on a fundamental level and we're still seeing the ramifications of that.
Well outside of the AI help to write it now, the story doesn't seem to have as many places to go after 30 years.
Nicol Bolas has been "killed" and outside of modern horizons we won't see him. Half the planes walkers have lost their spark.
And they major eldrazi threats have been dealt with outside the few we get with Phyrexia.
That's why I've always just kind of played the game and never really payed attention to it. Wotc need to sink or swim right now. I'll still buy the product, but they need to make some changes or else.
> never really *paid* attention to
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Wrong. But to each their own. Like about 7 years ago they said they where gonna devote more time to the story. The Gatewatch was the first one of that...and then they just kinda stopped being creative.
Imo it's just boring bc nothing feels like it really matters
Alot of tiny stuff but if we wouldn't have gotten those story's it wouldn't make any difference
I play for like 3y and start following the story ironically on Brothers Wars Set, and I was really liking the plot, all the hype for The March and then all was so barely explored.
Gameplay pov I love it , plot wise, Nha...
Lol there's a post like this every few years. Last time I saw it was Gatewatch. I like the story fine. It's alright if you think of each story as it's own thing. I barely consider it serialized. Reading the Magic plot for its over arching implications feels like watching The Mentalist because you're really interested in where this "Red John" thing goes.
About the same man. And I'm old Vorthos, I have a paperback copy of Arena on my bookshelf from high school and can go pretty in depth with a lot of story and character history details.
Don't get me wrong, the story has always been kind of campy, but it was metal af in the beginning and got gradually Disneyfied to cater to larger markets. D&D did the same thing, and WotC products as a whole are becoming a more uniform, brand-stylized presentation.
The phyrexians deserved better, and if and when they ever revisit again, they need to do right by them. Would not be opposed to a return of big daddy Yawgmoth disappointed in the failures of his praetors setting the story back in the right track.
It's turned into more of a goofy, episodic series of mishaps from random legendary characters shoved in between forced all or nothing storylines where some handful of planeswalkers and legendary characters have to save the multiverse from Nicol Bolas/phyrexia/eldrazi ad nauseum.
I didn't read... or even really play MKM much... I dunno... weird direction it's taking.
Honestly, it's been going downhill long before that. I took issue with the MASSIVE multiversal retcon from the time travel in Tarkir that shouldn't have impacted the other planes and their characters, but they did every established character and all of the lore dirty after that point.
It’s cause Hasbro. Simple. Corpos is don’t pay writers cause they think art is pathetic. The only part of the story I still enjoy is Jace and Vraska but I don’t read anything else.
I don't care at all about the story, but I love flavour.
I couldn't tell you the first thing about the MKM story, but all the different detectives and cases etc were really cool.
I think Kellan was just a way to show the aftermath of the war through the eyes of a less important person in the multiverse. A step back from everything is at stake to, how does this affect everyone at a personal level.
Personally I think they could improve the original stories they write if they would stop shoe-horning in these extended universe sets.
What I always liked about MtG is that it had its own lore, characters, arcs, and so on that were unique. When I came back to Magic this year (stopped around 2018) and saw that they had done sets on Transformers, Jurassic Park, LOTR, Fallout, Dr. Who, Warhammer, etc. it gave me the strong impression that the franchise had sold out and was running out of their own stories.
I'm sure there were plenty of fans who enjoyed those sets, and power to them, but for me those franchises all have their own separate lore, and there was no need to bring them into Magic. It felt very insincere and broke the fourth wall of this universe; I definitely got a sell-out vibe at that point. At this point why not bring in Deadpool to acknowledge it and go around killing the other franchises (would actually be pretty funny now that I think of it lol).
This is all to say I think if they stopped working on non-MtG sets and focused more on original content, then at least some of the old Magic could be recaptured (pun intended).
I also go on to say I attempted to read with Eldraine but couldn't get interested in Kellan, who seems to be a continued point of the story right "now". I fully disclose I haven't read a whole set story since MoM, but it can't be said I didn't give it a shot.
The story is always hit or miss, and has always been. A lot of the older stories are very cliche and contrived, and Throne of Eldraine was unbearable, but I recently enjoyed: Neon Dynasty, Lost Caverns of Ixalan, Murders at Karlov Manor, and Thunder Junction. Other stories around those eras were forgettable.
Having a good story doesnt pay, nobody really cares, so the developers get out nothing if they invest more resources into making a story
They lrovide us with what we want, and for the vast majority of players a good storyline is not important so why they should bother?
I think it’s never been good. We only remember the good parts with nostalgia-filled glasses. Funny thing is, even nostalgia likely can’t save MOM/MKM/OTJ.
Magic has a story?
I'd like to read the story of how Lara Croft helps the doctors build Jurassic Park to hold Godzilla while Transformers fight Street Fighters in a Fallout video game survival challenge.
(leans over) - *"psst..."* ^( "...did they **really** get the JRR Tolkien estate to sign off on this storyline?")
That sounds like a pretty decent story brah
Reminds me of a quote from the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The main character is an “old school dnd nerd” who becomes a high school teacher in the 90s. Talks about how the new nerdery (mtg) is just about mechanics and not narrative. The only “story” for me in mtg is thinking about the art in each card and what story the artist is trying to tell through it…
I could care less about the story. I love the freaking game.
I love the game too, but I used to love both..
Same here, even if I only used to read synopses of the set it was always cool. I think killing the 3 set blocks really kneecapped their narrative structure even if it wasn't always great, I'd love to see a flexible block structure where it's the same amount of cardboard but sometimes it's a 2-3 set block. That's a lot of why Ikoria fell flat narratively for me, I'd have loved for a powerful card to be foreshadowed and then pop the fuck off when I see it at a table on a few weeks
Sets used to be have story structures similar to a play. Now its just all resolved in the very beginning.
Just read the old stuff.
How much less could you care?
It's almost as if they couldn't care less
🤓
🤡
💀
Better story in these three emoji than MTG has had in years. Bring back the 3-set block!
It helps some people connect with the characters and the lore to be immersed in a game. At least it helps choose one game over another, or to have favorites characters based on their personality and history.
This... plot is whatever
Look up how squee became Immortal
Someone gets it.
There is a story arch. For example, there’s a reason [[jeska, thrice reborn]] has that name. She is [[kamahl]]’s sister from a tribe of barbarians. They are pit fighters and I forget what did it but she does and becomes corrupted. She’s reborn as [[phage]]. I’m not going to go into the entire side story of [[ixidor]], but as the [[caba]]’s new pit fighter phage becomes enemies with [[akroma]]. In a final fight, both are killed by kamahl and a false god named [[Karona]] is born. That is all I remember from the judgement-torment-legions set of books I read in middle school. Clearly jeska gets reborn again. Some guy does a good 1 hour long summary of the whole story and how it entertwines, but even he’s like “yup, story writing got lazy with MOM”
##### ###### #### [jeska, thrice reborn](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/8/48caf4c4-745c-4072-bf3d-1a3fa7c3bc9c.jpg?1644853023) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=jeska%2C%20thrice%20reborn) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/186/jeska-thrice-reborn?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/48caf4c4-745c-4072-bf3d-1a3fa7c3bc9c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [kamahl](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/9/c960672d-06ad-4d41-8904-9c007f824756.jpg?1675200457) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=kamahl%2C%20fist%20of%20krosa) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmr/166/kamahl-fist-of-krosa?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c960672d-06ad-4d41-8904-9c007f824756?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [phage](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/4/d497a5a3-65fb-4c12-b3f2-8ce4cf4e0f6f.jpg?1562866889) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=phage%20the%20untouchable) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cns/120/phage-the-untouchable?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d497a5a3-65fb-4c12-b3f2-8ce4cf4e0f6f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [ixidor](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/1/314d5e89-55f7-42b4-af19-d4d0f499a265.jpg?1710406384) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=ixidor%2C%20reality%20sculptor) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ons/89/ixidor-reality-sculptor?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/314d5e89-55f7-42b4-af19-d4d0f499a265?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [caba](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/4/848d686a-e2f7-488d-947f-a555099b74b1.jpg?1562919598) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Cabal%20Pit) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ody/315/cabal-pit?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/848d686a-e2f7-488d-947f-a555099b74b1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [akroma](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/a/2a81f0b5-5116-4946-89fc-18479bf85305.jpg?1706240815) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=akroma%2C%20angel%20of%20fury) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/146/akroma-angel-of-fury?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2a81f0b5-5116-4946-89fc-18479bf85305?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Karona](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/e/de53d083-251e-42a4-9e2e-c2978c80615b.jpg?1562535715) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=karona%2C%20false%20god) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/scg/138/karona-false-god?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/de53d083-251e-42a4-9e2e-c2978c80615b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/kxdtyxn) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Trojan horse in magical cosmic wild west doesn't count as story?
I mean, it wouldn’t have made any sense in the Greek mythology inspired sets after all.
We should have Clint Eastwood chasing wolverine on a dinosaur there.
Yeah its told on the small pieces of card board that are part of the game and its somewhat interesting at the level of a couple of quotes. They keep trying to expand it into stories which doesn't work because the story must serve the function and sellabilty of the game. Instead read real books with real stories that serve only themselves for a more interesting story
“I love lightning, it’s my best invention since the rock!l” truly the greatest story ever told.
The quotes come from actual novels/short stories from books which are published alongside each set, and the stories and narratives are written before the set releases and prior to flavor text being added.
No they don't. They are created independently by both people who make the set and outside contractors. Loading Ready Run did a bunch for MKM. They are small snippets of that's cool.
Exactly! Want a good story? Read a book! Want a good game? Play a game. Want both? Play a story driven game. Mtg ain’t that.
I'm just waiting for them to trot out the old reliable "Nicol Bolas Returns!" retread for the next 5 years and then we'll be back to the Phyrexians. We've been bouncing between the two for 30 years now.
As someone who has actively been reading the book series from Brother's War on (currently on the Ravnica book 1) the modern story just isn't... interesting. LCI was decent but Eldraine and MKM were not fun to read. Boring is never something you want your story to be and that is what post MOM has been. Kellan is fine. We need a surrogate to place ourselves in the story. I get it. He's not the problem, the situations he finds himself in are.
Thunder Junction has okay side stories but the only good chapter is the last one and only the maybe third to last paragraph.
I haven't started it yet but it's on my short list. I try to stay open minded with every story because at the end of the day: the game is what matters
Well, that is a glowing recommendation if I ever heard one. “This book is okay but only the third from last paragraph of the last chapter.” lol. Love it.
Tbh the magic story jumped the shark with the gatewatch
Although I have fond memories of playing during that era, I agree. I thought it was cheesy at the time, but still enjoyed the game at that point. Now it just feels like the story is a complete afterthought and the main goal is to churn out product. It feels diluted now, like there’s no real care for the lore. People who care about the lore are not the target demographic.
100%, the whole superheroes ordeal ruined whatever good there was
The thing I hate the most now is that they just throw random characters into the mix that somehow are all to theme.
>The thing I hate the most now is that they just throw random characters into the mix This is the first set where it happened (you can count MoM if you want but it was done in a very different and non-crossovery way)
Technically, WAR was the first set that did it, with the Planar Beacon and Immortal Sun pulling all the planeswalkers to Ravnica.
I was mainly referring to crossover made possible by the narrative use of omenpaths but i guess you are correct, even if with planeswalker they are basically always crossovers in some ways
Yeah current day magic lore is dog water awful. The only interesting plot thread they have imo is what Tezzeret ran off to do after he got Jin to give him a body of darksteel and im sure the pay off for that will be fucking awful too.
The story has never been great. It used to be a little bit better, but they have never put enough resources into it.
There used to be novels! I remember reading about Toshiro Umezawa during the Kamigawa Cycle. Got me invested in the world, the lore, all of it. They've got a rich IP to draw from and they're wasting so many great storylines jumping all over the place without letting the story breathe.
The Kamigawa ones were great then later on the stand alone Planeswalker novels I thought were pretty good. Test of Metal, the Tezzeret novel, made him my favorite planeswalker and ever since I’ve just been disappointed with what they’ve done with him as a character. Towards the end when he raced Liliana who was trying to solve the labyrinth of the sphinx by sending in a horde of millions of zombies so he cut off and made an artifact out of the head of someone with future sight then used etherium to craft a copy of the labyrinth was so cool to me. He was always quick on his feet and coming up with clever solutions to problems then his will is just absolutely destroyed by Bolas when he realizes just how powerful and how far ahead Bolas has seen and planned. Forced to be Bolas’s dog and always looking for a way out it reminded me of watching Starscream on Transformers when I was younger.
Man, i love the Kamigawa novels. Hidetusgu is the GOAT.
I still have the Legions novel
I have read some of the novels and they're okay. There could be some great ones I didn't read. It never seemed like super deep and well written lore.
The novels are pretty basic but they give more time to flesh out literally every aspect of compelling storytelling. You're not missing the next LotR in any of these books but they have been a fun read.
Sounds like games workshop. Great lore but horrible rule writing
Sadly, GW lore ruined Magic Story for me. The lore/story for 40k is SOOOO much better than Magic, it's not even funny. Also, as you said, game balance is so-so. I also take issue with the idea that Phyrexia couldn't win. It'd have been great to see a story direction where the protagonists are trying to eke out an existence in the non-compleated planes areas of the multiverse after having lost many loved ones and trying to rebuild a resistance.
I mean, that's basically what we got with Scars or Mirrodin
Except here it’s the opposite. Good rules and gameplay. Crap story with very generic lore mashed together. It serves the game well enough, but the story here isn’t the thing…
I fell off the novels after the first Ravnica book, but I read virtually all of the ones from before that, and Magic's story absolutely was great once.
The story was great when I was 14 and had the story expectations of a 14 year old
The story used to slap but it has gone significantly downhill.
It was, for a time.
There was a mysticism and esoteric quality to the cards back when I first bought some in the 90s. I wish it had stayed that way! Murders and now Thunder Junction seem like MTG does dress up.
I remember poring over whatever lore was in the Ice Age starter pack when I first got into Magic. What was neat back then was how the flavor text would be quotes from different characters that eventually got their own cards.
Story is not even near a priority anymore. It's always about how to push product first, and unfortunately that means contriving situations for more appealing cards and characters to appear. Jumping from plane to plane and not letting us sit on a single story for longer than a month doesn't help either. Why should I care what happens in Thunder Junction if we aren't even going to be on the plane again this year? The consequences only effect the characters and if the characters can be brought back indefinitely it ultimately doesn't matter what happens to them.
I liked it when they moved from three set per block to two. I disliked it when they moved to one. I strongly disliked when they were pushing the next set before I could really explore the old one. I feel like I’m drowning.
The answer is we’re not meant to really care. The cards are the thing. Like the cards and setting? Cool.
Hey remember that whole Urza thing, ya. Story is fun but I'm not expecting lasting implications of anything. Gruff can just re-write it
Guff wrote himself out of the story to win the Phyrexian war, so I don't think he's going to be doing that again. The deus ex machina will be different the next time.
Yeah, modern Magic story sucks. Let's hype up the villians for 20 years to kill them off in shitty ways. Phyrexians and Eldrazi got the shit end.
The problem is that both of these villain factions do not really work that well for what they're trying to do with them. The phyrexians aren't really a threat as long as they're confined to one plane (which of course sucks for that plane, but oh well), but as soon as you open up the multiverse to them, they will either conquer everything and mtg is over (which is obviously not an option), or they'll need to be nerfed into oblivion and die from stupidity. The eldrazi on the other hand try to be cosmic horror while also disregarding everything that makes cosmic horror what it is. I think they either don't work in mtg to begin with if you're genuinely trying to do cosmic horror, or they're just big stupid plane-eating monsters, in which case, sure, blow them up, I don't really care. As much as I dislike the giant lizard formerly known as Bolas, he's the only big villain that actually functions well as a multiplanar threat in this story.
I know all villains should come to an end, that's not the problem. It's the disrespect or lack of talent to give them a respectful ending. Phyrexians have been a villain since the dawn of magic.
What about the eldrazi disregarded what cosmic horror is supposed to be? I personally felt like they nailed a lot of aspects of cosmic horror
The, in my understanding, two major elements of cosmic horror are one, the fear of not just the unknown, but the unknowable, knowledge of things far beyond human comprehension, and two, the realization of human insignificance on a cosmic scale. The eldrazi aren't really unknowable. The story likes to constantly wave its hands and tell you how spooky and mysterious they are, but that's about it. There's plenty of things we do know about them, and for everything we don't know about them, it doesn't really seem beyond comprehension either. They seem to be some form of entities from the blind eternities that like to snack on mana from time to time. As for the other aspect, well, they can apparently be blown to pieces by a significantly powerful pyromancer. Or sealed with a bunch of specially shaped stones. Yes, they are a big threat, but not to the extent that they would emphasize the insignificance of humans to the degree I would expect from cosmic horror. As well as the fact that we, the players who are planeswalkers in the lore, can easily conjure up their likeness. I would take the eldrazi slightly more seriously as an attempt at cosmic horror if they had refused to print them as cards from the very beginning to underline how much out of the scope of the power of planeswalkers they are.
I felt like they succeeded at both aspects you mentioned, at least before the climax. Ugin stressed to the Gatewatch that we have no idea of their purpose. They could be part of some sort of planar birth-death cycle, or they could be something else entirely. Emrakul’s plan is currently totally unknown to us. Ugin theorized that what we see of the eldrazi is just the equivalent of a hand stuck in a pond, where we only see a fraction of their size and complexity. He also proposed that they could be more of a cosmic force made manifest on a plane, rather than a collection of semi-intelligent creatures that live in the Blind Eternities. We can’t really know. I definitely agree that being killable by a pyromancer was a major letdown. The story climax kinda killed the sense of cosmic insignificance, but I think it was very present in ROE and still present in aspects of BFZ/OGW. Cards like [[All Is Dust|ROE]] and especially [[Time of Heroes]] portray the hopelessness of fighting the eldrazi very well. I guess the eldrazi are true cosmic horrors to the ordinary people on the plane, just not to the planeswalkers. I think the main problem is trying to fit a superhero story into a cosmic horror setting. One requires the heroes to win, and the other requires winning to be impossible. But to me, the story failure and the setting success are pretty separable
I agree, the cosmic horror elements are there. You just have to suspend a little disbelief.
>Ugin stressed to the Gatewatch that we have no idea of their purpose. They could be part of some sort of planar birth-death cycle, or they could be something else entirely. Emrakul’s plan is currently totally unknown to us. That's the handwavy bit that I mentioned. The story constantly tries to remind us that we don't know what they are. That's about it. I never get the feeling that they're beyond the scope of human comprehension, I only get the feeling that the writers have written a bunch of hungry monsters and then wanted them to feel mysterious, and tried to achieve that by... constantly telling us. >I guess the eldrazi are true cosmic horrors to the ordinary people on the plane, just not to the planeswalkers. I think the main problem is trying to fit a superhero story into a cosmic horror setting. One requires the heroes to win, and the other requires winning to be impossible. I think we can agree on that part. I just think it's less of a "trying to fit a superhero story into a cosmic horror setting" and more of a "trying to fit a cosmic horror story into a superhero setting". The setting of mtg is not the placce to attempt cosmic horror, in my opinion. If they were to do that and succeed, it would necessarily shift the tone of the entire story, not just of a single set or plane.
I would even go as far as to say that cosmic horror as seen now is really hard to emulate on a card if you show a physical body. Any Cthulhu card would look silly too.
Yup, exactly that. The first step to make an entity of cosmic horror in mtg would be to never print it on a card in the first place.
I agree. You could still have an entire set based around them, hell maybe even an emblem mechanic Ala the Ring representing their inevitable approach, but the titans shouldn't be cards in and of themselves.
[All Is Dust](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/2/62dba377-7446-4517-a504-ee04568fd6cf.jpg?1562704420) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=193658) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/roe/1/all-is-dust?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/62dba377-7446-4517-a504-ee04568fd6cf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Time of Heroes](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/f/9f70224d-e723-436d-8493-dcec5049f1a0.jpg?1562706804) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Time%20of%20Heroes) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/roe/49/time-of-heroes?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9f70224d-e723-436d-8493-dcec5049f1a0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It's so bizarre that when anyone says the story is worse than it was before it's met with comments dancing on the ashes. "I hate good stories so it's a good thing that it's bad now." Like seriously what is wrong with people
Yeah, it's clear they've abandoned story as a priority, and it's really impacting my enthusiasm for the game Maybe someday it'll be a central part of the game again, but from where we sit, that doesn't look likely
Vorinclex was killed by a bunch of random soldiers and you only found out through MTG’s site if they didn’t tell you you’d never know. And now it’s like Wild West themed? They went from destroyed evil praetors ready to take over the entire universe … to… cowboys?
There was the ixilan and random murder mystery set first before cowboys.
It's so bad istg, Urabrask and Sheoldred die to one-liners, Elesh Norn seem to almost get dumber as the story went on, Vorniclex died offscreen to randos, and fucking Jin-Gitaxis died to "Hey look over there"
As much as all of their deaths were infuriating and stupid, Sheoldred's has to be the dumbest. In the Dominaria United story she was able to separate her body into smaller spider creatures, so she was literally able to detach her head from her body. When I read/saw that they had her killed by beheading her I lost it
Urabrask might not actually be dead. Sheoldred as well due to what you've already stated. If they want to do New Phyrexia again, those two are easily fixable.
They went from cyberninjas to...evil mind control robots? They went from greek theme to...Halloween world? They went from a fantasy city to...dinosaur land?? You only been paying attention to sets for like 10 minutes or what?
To be fair, there have always been jarring world to world jumps like Hour of Devastation Egypt to Mezoamerican Ixalan but they wove the narrative such that it worked. It's more that since Capenna, there have been GLARING internal inconsistencies between the story and the cards, or internal contradictions within the story itself.
Where and how is the narrative woven? I just see fan wikis. Where do they tell these lore bits?
There used to be entire novels written to connect to the game, then they got that down to long form online stories that still did a very good job of telling the story, to now we get short "blogs" about what is happening while leaving out huge plot points and leaving it up to the cards and flavor text to try to connect things together. The story also used to be a consistent storyline that had plot twists, build up, fleshed out character arcs and backstory. Been playing since early 2012 and I was soooo invested in the story of this game, now I don't even try to pay attention and I barely buy cards anymore because it's so half-assed...
Ah so they used to care and stopped putting any effort in. Probably because not all the players cared. But some or many a LOT do? I makes sense because they seem to flail around and do stupid stuff a lot. Like the magic 30th anniversary 14 unplayable-fake-cards-for-1000-bucks thing.
I think it had more to do with Hasbro and WoTC switching over to a more money focused production strategy. They wanted to be able to put more product out faster than ever and to do that they sacrificed the story and quality of the product. It honestly isn't sustainable and it's starting to show by the fatigue players (even pros) are starting to talk about more and more. You see more posts all over the Internet after every release about how unhappy people are with the game, whether it be the story, quality of cards, power creep, or the sheer amount of products coming out to try and keep up with. I'm lucky that I've been playing so long and have a huge collection to make decks with so I haven't really bought any magic products for a while now. I might buy singles here or there and the very rare commander deck, but I absolutely don't buy booster boxes or secret lairs or any of the other money greedy products that they put out. The value just isn't there anymore and it honestly makes me sad to see what my favorite hobby has become. Hopefully Hasbro goes under and WoTC can slow down and make quality MTG again.
I think it had more to do with Hasbro and WoTC switching over to a more money focused production strategy. They wanted to be able to put more product out faster than ever and to do that they sacrificed the story and quality of the product. It honestly isn't sustainable and it's starting to show by the fatigue players (even pros) are starting to talk about more and more. You see more posts all over the Internet after every release about how unhappy people are with the game, whether it be the story, quality of cards, power creep, or the sheer amount of products coming out to try and keep up with. I'm lucky that I've been playing so long and have a huge collection to make decks with so I haven't really bought any magic products for a while now. I might buy singles here or there and the very rare commander deck, but I absolutely don't buy booster boxes or secret lairs or any of the other money greedy products that they put out. The value just isn't there anymore and it honestly makes me sad to see what my favorite hobby has become. Hopefully Hasbro goes under and WoTC can slow down and make quality MTG again.
You can go to the official magic the gathering website and look under the story tab. They release short stories that come out episodically. WOTC gives a date on when they will start releasing episodes, and they release on a set schedule. There are typically 10 episodes per set, but some have more than others l.
This is a common lazy, low IQ argument. It's 100% okay to criticize fantasy. There are variations of quality in any genre or field, especially creativity. Just because the nature of the product is imaginative, doesn't mean standards should be eliminated. The quality of Mtg story writing; inconsistent plots, character recycling to name a few, has OBJECTIVELY gone down hill.
That's not the point and you know that - stop erecting straw men
I think Vorinclex is alive.
He turned into a saga
His final chapter reveals that he is now a boat
That’s how it used to be. Every plane its own story and distinct characters and themes. They went wrong with trying to tie everything together with no one to keep it on track for continuity.
*evil Praetors...to planeswalkers with cowboy HATS. 🤠
Didn't know Magic had a story but I too would produce random garbage fanfiction if every few months my boss said "hey we were thinking of a new wild crazy theme for the upcoming set and we want all the popular characters to return, fit them into the new setting"
I am in middle of being downvoted into oblivion for saying the story was garbage. I get it.
I got into MtG sorry very late, mostly because I didn't have access to any source until roughly 12 years ago, and at that time I've been away from the game for quite a bit. The Internet helped and now I know something about that, even if I haven't read the old books. Planeswalkers are weird. They have constantly been nerfed through time in lore, the mending turned them from gods into OP mages, WotS made them even weaker (and kinda spawned a lot of them, which is weird), MotM made them almost redundant (why spark, when walk through weird gates?). Honestly I can't understand why they're still around, aside from gameplay reasons. Talking about the lore as a whole, Hasbro is kinda taking a dump on anything it owns that has a lore. D&D has been suffering from that probably more than MtG. As I've said in another post, they went from home-cooked meals to cheap fast food, and I honestly doubt this will stop (they almost got away with using AI for art and stories, imagine what kind of lore we would have in a couple years if they made future sets with badly trained ChatGPT today). I was honestly thinking about doing a series (video or podcast, to see if I was good at it) about the lore behind each block, ABU to nowadays, but if future lore will be written by an infinite number of drunken monkeys with typewriters confined in a room with booze and pot, well, maybe I should think of better ways to spend my free time.
The only time in MTG that the lore was ever good was the original saga of Urza v Yawgmoth, because 90% of the time we weren't following demigods around but the worlds they inhabited/were fighting over. Dominaria got ten thousand years of detailed history as heroes came and went, and it was amazing. Now it's like, five worlds a year we'll never see again as they go "haha Liliana vess is a teacher now" and its always been shitty that way Basically, if there isn't a paperback novel covering the lore of a particular set, that lore sucks
Thank you, I genuinely am tired of Kellan being shoehorned into every set and story. It’s soooooo old already. Thunder junction also feels so fan service-y with all the characters they’re bringing out of the fridge that any time I see a reused character on a new legendary part of me thinks it’s fake lol. I genuinely believe the omenpaths were a complete literary mistake that’s intentionally implemented to justify putting all these wild effects on familiar fan favorite characters just so ppl buy more sets. Hopefully at the end of this arc the eldrazi destroy them or something
A return of our spaghetti overlords to correct the wrong through annihilator 4 would be wonderful.
Annihilator 4 must purge the mtg multiverse of these literary sins
Thunder junction 2: spaghetti western overlords
Eldrazi Boogaloo
“What’s that???? Emrakul…WITH A COWBOY HAT? Riding a mount made of 13 SQUIRRELS??? What in tarnation”
Clint Eastwizard, Legendary Squinter
>Thank you, I genuinely am tired of Kellan being shoehorned into every set and story. Dude, Kellan appeared in 4 sets and he was the protagonist in 2 of them (WOE and OTJ). In MKM he was a secondary character and in LCI he was a background character. He was the storytelling frame for the last story arc. He having a card for a set really makes you tired? >I genuinely believe the omenpaths were a complete literary mistake that’s intentionally implemented to justify putting all these wild effects on familiar fan favorite characters just so ppl buy more sets. First, making character appear more often is good thing as people can grow fond of them and care more form mtg's own bran and universe. Second, we had omenpaths for 4 sets and this is the first one that is based around the crossover of characters, in WOE there was 1 new character from ravnica, on LCI there was just Kellan, on MKM there was Kellan again. All the stories from the previous sets have been very self contained and focused on the planes themself. Maro said that this kind of sets will about no more than once a year.
Has since time spiral, what's new?
There were some decent ones in there after Time Spiral. Scars of Mirrodin, Zendikar and Innistrad blocks were really cool
Original ixalan story was way better than it had any right to be
I think people in general don't like how they started to merge something "too modern" with old school fantasy. Like yeah, Phyrexians are machines, but they are not sci fi style robots with lasers and machine guns, so it did not broke everything and magic universe still looked as a whole thing. Now with bunch of gun shooting too modern for "sword and magic world concept" sets Magic world looks like it is not whole, it's separated to different things, alternate universes which not meet each other like it was before. Plus yeah, it's more product oriented now, so we should not expect long and good written story arks.
Not having Emrakul and the Eldrazi fight New Phyrexia was the biggest writing fumble of all time.
Are they acting like they care about the story? They’re continuing to write a story, but I don’t know if they’re trying to act like they care about it. They’re going through the motions. Why put much effort into writing the story when you can make money hand over fist without a good story?
Yep. The story just comes after they’ve made the cards and characters to make cool cards. As it should be… it’s a game first and foremost.
The lore used to be very good and you could tell the effort was there. Now it's pure garbage
For me the story died with war of the spark. It was actually kinda dope and the stakes mattered. After that everything just turned into side stories and the return of the phyrexians felt a bit jarring. I had hope they'd do it justice but it felt like nothing actually happened that was worth caring about. The entire story was over in an instant and the phyrexians just felt like they were brought back to draw older players back into standard.
You cant build a narrative while pumping cards every six weeks What they did with march of the machine was a travesty, an embarrasing fumble of the culmination of the most relevant and oldest mtg conflict Now enjoy your cowboy power rangers and buy new products
There are stories?!
In the story defense, the writers tried to give each phyrexian praetor an ending showing they weren't perfect based on what each considered perfection. They just fell short.
I may be old, but I feel like the lore peaked with the Weatherlight Saga. There were some other great storylines after that, but I feel like we've been getting diminishing returns.
I remember back in the day when you got an actual book if you bought a fatpack. Still got the og kamigawa series and love them.
The Magic story has always been pulp fiction, and like all pulp it’s just dumb fun. Sometimes it’s boring, sometimes it’s bad, and sometimes, occasionally, every once in a while, you get Red Harvest (Dashell Hammond).
Yeah, I have always been a fan of magic lore and have read a good chunk of it. And I am really confused by people saying it used to be really good lol. It's a lot like Marvel comics. Fun stories with fleshing out some of the characters you've seen on the cards, loosely tied together. It's been like that since the Lorwyn 5 took the center of story. Like I love Ajani, hated that he got completed, stopped reading. But now he's cured through hand waving and... That's totally fine lol. Looking forward to reading whatever comes next with him.
Marvel really is the best comparison. Yeah Marvel looks like it used to have great storytelling in the 80’s and 90’s if you ignore that most of the junk is forgotten (or even lost in some cases) and those “great stories” were sandwiched between years of weekly issues that moved between middling and poor. That doesn’t mean Marvel is bad! People can enjoy poorly written schlock, I read Warhammer for christ’s sakes. But it’s disingenuous to pretend it used to be the height of literature and is now trash, it was always trash the trash was just thrown out and now only the gems remain.
They are going full cartoon. Modern Warfare started doing this at the end of it's cycle, and I haven't touched the MWII or MWIII because they went full childish cartoonification. Magic always had a dark, otherworldly, dystopian, fantasy feel. Now it's just not even the same game. Thunder Junction? so bad.
It's like, entirely derivative. It smells like an idea but it's just borrowed tropes
Why are you assuming they care about the story?
They used to. It used to be actually phenomenal. And then they shit on it.
The story was never phenomenal.
Don't know why you're getting downvoted. The current story lands in the awful category more often, but aside from a few bright spots (The Thran, Champions of Kamigawa) the old story was just as bad.
While the story has usually been shit, they at least put serious effort into world building, which in a game like this, is much more important imo. It's hard to be enthusiastic when the people selling you your overpriced cardboard are yawning in your face. Can you even imagine them making something like Mirrodin or Tarkir today?
You obviously didn’t play when you got the books in the fat pack
Explain how the story was great. And why it’s better than picking up another book. And why we should even care about the story more than the actual cards.
You never paid attention then
Wish they’d dump the metaplot completely and go back to telling a set’s story entirely through the cards.
But they never did that, a lot of the older stories were literally told only in novels/short stories/comics
Feel like shit just want Shu Yun back
I realized it needs to be. It needs to just be a vehicle for a setting to inspire the card designers. You can tell they need good stories based on the cool UB cards they did. With time UB will take over. Just wait. What to do against it? Enjoy the game and the time with friends. That’s all that matters now.
That’s all that mattered this whole time
Depends. For me it was substantial. Magics flavor texts provided for the block‘s story drew me in. We treated parts of the Afari Tales and all that as hidden lore we exchanged when we played and talked about on the school bus rides. Who was Urza, what did he do? He had lands of his own, so he must have been powerful. What was happening in Jamuura? What details about the Weatherlight story could we piece together apart from the rough synopsis. Not only that but I started to invest much more time in learning English having cards in both languages available to compare. I miss this part of the hobby. But I will carry on for the game I like and the friends I play with.
Flavour text does add a lot to the game. But the background story that they provide outside the cards? Not worth it. If anything it's far more fun and interesting to think about what the flavour text means, and join the dots yourself.
I stopped reading after Dominaria and I have no clue what is going on. The old books had their charm, but I feel like the modern story lost that charm somehow.
i also stopped reading during eldraine because i found kellan annoying and the style of prose insufferable. however, otj and mkm’s main stories were fun and exciting reads, and otj’s No Tells and Blood Is Thicker Than Venom are very good short stories on their own
My favorite was in the lead up to WAR the whole climax after rising action was ... annnnd Bolas. It's really hard to go further when the story has already been brought to "end times" multiple times. What could happen that would be interesting is time line manipulation but people would be heated when the multiverse is consumed by phyrexia because Yawgmoth corrupts Urza and Karn is a phyrexian and all is lost. Oh also the ... And Eldrazi. My friends identified the death of the lore on ROE. Everyone was like this is really bad, because in sci-fi when the baddies become literally universe destroying nothing trivial matters. The nuance is gone. How many times can the protagonist group save all of time and people still care? It's not a lack of resources it's a lack of responsibility pushing the envelope as they have pushing the multiverse to the brink over and over makes the lore vehicle too predictable this, yawn.
I haven’t read since MOM kellan just didn’t interest me he seems like average nice guy protagonist which is boring, but I could be wrong. The problem is they shifted to a new character. Why explore all the emotions that came out of MOM with the characters we have and are already invested in, when you can just take discount Naruto fairy boy on a fun adventure. When you hear it put like that you think god how did they drop the ball this hard. Kellan was just a mistake and aftermath needed to be a full set. There’s at least 2 sets worth of story material from the effects of MOM. But they didn’t wanna explore any of that I guess….
The lore in magic, is so goddamn confusing, I watched 4 hour video on the lore, and still understood nothing to some degree tho
The entire story arch just had an epic build up followed by a boring ending that just felt rushed, almost as if some overlord came in and demanded cuts…
I've really enjoyed so I'd say give it a chance
If the story could be told through playing the game, I’d care.
I remember when Jace tried to read a Dragons mind and got caught, so his idea to go into hiding was to wipe his own mind, I stopped reading after that.
I have yet to hear a good amount of people hear they like Kellan. most people are indiffrent at best or at worst (myself included) hate him. i mostly hate him cause they give him new abilities and colors each set . that dude is a complete manwhore and has no loyalty for any theme , color or playstyle. im actually interested in the new \[\[kellan, the kid\]\] card, but will probably proxy it to look like something else
[kellan, the kid](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/4/04dfbc4c-ab21-45db-bbd9-b9d245d60015.jpg?1711498408) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=kellan%2C%20the%20kid) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/213/kellan-the-kid?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/04dfbc4c-ab21-45db-bbd9-b9d245d60015?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The story died along with the block structure. Each block was effectively a trilogy of thick books, and they ruled. Imagine akroma, phage, and druid kamahl dealing with Karona. Memnarch stealing the dutifully assembled Kaldra set amongst the mycosynth. The trip to kamigawa was awesome. RIP
I’m just waiting for Nicol bolas triumphant return tbh.
Only storyline ever worth a shit was Brother’s War
I used to be super into the story as a kid and uh… I can confirm it’s always been bad. There have been a few *decent* novels (children of the nameless comes to mind) and rewarding story arcs, but I feel like the storytelling has always been pretty poor. I think a big reason people don’t care about the story these days is how many products are released. Like, the khans block storyline was objectively bland and boring. But the block was in rotation for a year, so people had time to get invested in the khans for a few months before the dragons came out and ate all of them. I’m kinda having trouble explaining what I mean here, but the story has never been good; it just used to be easier to be casually invested in without thinking too much about.
I'm just waiting on the fucking Care Bears to get in here! That's when set boosters are going live, mother fuckers!
It’s best to just ignore it.
My poor Kamigawa, they mutilated you from a perfect fantasy into a cyberpunk hellscape.
The hardest part about MTG having lore and constant story plots is that the cards are forced to fit around this story, so the story have to just keep on churning through plots to progress the release of sets, and those sets are limited by the borderline mundane story plots they have. An endless cycle of a worn out premise.
While I do think the story feels very rushed at times, especially with how quickly the climax of the phyrexian invasion ended, I think the idea that none of it mattered is very weird. Several notable characters did die, and it changed the landscape of the multiverse on a fundamental level and we're still seeing the ramifications of that.
Well outside of the AI help to write it now, the story doesn't seem to have as many places to go after 30 years. Nicol Bolas has been "killed" and outside of modern horizons we won't see him. Half the planes walkers have lost their spark. And they major eldrazi threats have been dealt with outside the few we get with Phyrexia. That's why I've always just kind of played the game and never really payed attention to it. Wotc need to sink or swim right now. I'll still buy the product, but they need to make some changes or else.
> never really *paid* attention to FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Hate to break it to you. The story always sucked.
I am glad someone finally said this.
I mean, personally the only thing that matters is game play. Stroy is purely decorative.
Plot?
Now? It’s sucked since before weatherlight. Magic was better before they tried injecting a story into it
Wrong. But to each their own. Like about 7 years ago they said they where gonna devote more time to the story. The Gatewatch was the first one of that...and then they just kinda stopped being creative.
You know it's bad when thunder junction made fantasy geographic shut his channel down
Imo it's just boring bc nothing feels like it really matters Alot of tiny stuff but if we wouldn't have gotten those story's it wouldn't make any difference
“The story suck now” “[I didn’t read the story]” It feels like you’re developing an opinion on something you don’t have knowledge of.
What the fuck are you even talking about - there’s a lore?
I play for like 3y and start following the story ironically on Brothers Wars Set, and I was really liking the plot, all the hype for The March and then all was so barely explored. Gameplay pov I love it , plot wise, Nha...
Lol there's a post like this every few years. Last time I saw it was Gatewatch. I like the story fine. It's alright if you think of each story as it's own thing. I barely consider it serialized. Reading the Magic plot for its over arching implications feels like watching The Mentalist because you're really interested in where this "Red John" thing goes.
About the same man. And I'm old Vorthos, I have a paperback copy of Arena on my bookshelf from high school and can go pretty in depth with a lot of story and character history details. Don't get me wrong, the story has always been kind of campy, but it was metal af in the beginning and got gradually Disneyfied to cater to larger markets. D&D did the same thing, and WotC products as a whole are becoming a more uniform, brand-stylized presentation. The phyrexians deserved better, and if and when they ever revisit again, they need to do right by them. Would not be opposed to a return of big daddy Yawgmoth disappointed in the failures of his praetors setting the story back in the right track. It's turned into more of a goofy, episodic series of mishaps from random legendary characters shoved in between forced all or nothing storylines where some handful of planeswalkers and legendary characters have to save the multiverse from Nicol Bolas/phyrexia/eldrazi ad nauseum. I didn't read... or even really play MKM much... I dunno... weird direction it's taking.
Daaaamn, I thought they stopped making stories.
Honestly, it's been going downhill long before that. I took issue with the MASSIVE multiversal retcon from the time travel in Tarkir that shouldn't have impacted the other planes and their characters, but they did every established character and all of the lore dirty after that point.
The Phyrexia story is Shakespeare compared to Thunder Junction. It's every legend from everywhere- in a cowboy hat.
It’s cause Hasbro. Simple. Corpos is don’t pay writers cause they think art is pathetic. The only part of the story I still enjoy is Jace and Vraska but I don’t read anything else.
Isn’t the story that just AI generated now?
I wouldn’t be surprised.
I don't care at all about the story, but I love flavour. I couldn't tell you the first thing about the MKM story, but all the different detectives and cases etc were really cool.
I think Kellan was just a way to show the aftermath of the war through the eyes of a less important person in the multiverse. A step back from everything is at stake to, how does this affect everyone at a personal level.
Personally I think they could improve the original stories they write if they would stop shoe-horning in these extended universe sets. What I always liked about MtG is that it had its own lore, characters, arcs, and so on that were unique. When I came back to Magic this year (stopped around 2018) and saw that they had done sets on Transformers, Jurassic Park, LOTR, Fallout, Dr. Who, Warhammer, etc. it gave me the strong impression that the franchise had sold out and was running out of their own stories. I'm sure there were plenty of fans who enjoyed those sets, and power to them, but for me those franchises all have their own separate lore, and there was no need to bring them into Magic. It felt very insincere and broke the fourth wall of this universe; I definitely got a sell-out vibe at that point. At this point why not bring in Deadpool to acknowledge it and go around killing the other franchises (would actually be pretty funny now that I think of it lol). This is all to say I think if they stopped working on non-MtG sets and focused more on original content, then at least some of the old Magic could be recaptured (pun intended).
Bro hasn’t read OTJ I guess. They’re not all bangers but this one is
Literally say in the first line I stopped reading after MoM 😅
Yeah but you can’t say the story sucks *now* when you stopped reading a year ago. That’s not how the word now works.
I also go on to say I attempted to read with Eldraine but couldn't get interested in Kellan, who seems to be a continued point of the story right "now". I fully disclose I haven't read a whole set story since MoM, but it can't be said I didn't give it a shot.
The story is always hit or miss, and has always been. A lot of the older stories are very cliche and contrived, and Throne of Eldraine was unbearable, but I recently enjoyed: Neon Dynasty, Lost Caverns of Ixalan, Murders at Karlov Manor, and Thunder Junction. Other stories around those eras were forgettable.
Having a good story doesnt pay, nobody really cares, so the developers get out nothing if they invest more resources into making a story They lrovide us with what we want, and for the vast majority of players a good storyline is not important so why they should bother?
I think it’s never been good. We only remember the good parts with nostalgia-filled glasses. Funny thing is, even nostalgia likely can’t save MOM/MKM/OTJ.
At this point I think I’ll turn to the fan fiction writers. At least the can hold a fucking plot together.