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| Typhoid Rats by Kev Walker |
I Choose You
Doing a Pokemon Magic: The Gathering set has been attempted before by other enthusiasts, for sure, but just as with many others who
do fan art or fan fiction of, say, Pokemon; this doesn’t stop those artists
from doing yet another awesome illustration of a Gyarados or a slash romance
between trainers Red and Blue. This set is just something I need to get out of
my system. It’s an expression of my love for the franchise (Well, the first
generation of Pokemon mostly) through the medium that I love to work with: game
design.
Originally, I was messing around with working on a
Pokemon Magic: The Gathering set back in college. I knew less of what I was
doing in Magic set design then than I do now (not that I am as competent and
polished as an actual Magic R&D card designer at the moment), so I thought
I’d take another crack at it. It also helps that I just got a shiny new laptop
bringing in all sorts of increased productivity and possibilities.
Now, before working on the skeleton of the Pokemon
set’s design, I have to find my themes in both flavor and mechanics. Since I’m using
an IP that is already fully-fleshed out, I need to leverage that into whatever
mechanical themes I’d be focusing on. So what is the flavor of Pokemon?
What? It's Evolving!
Obviously, the most important part of Pokemon is the
monsters themselves. So this means this Magic: The Gathering set would be heavily
creature-focused. How focused on creatures? Math time: the average Magic set
usually has about 50% of its cards as creature cards. The normal number of
cards in a set that isn’t basic land is 229. How many Pokemon are there? Over
600. Holy crap. …The good thing is that the number of Pocket Monsters initially
capped at 151 in the Pokemon Red & Blue games (Generation I). Also, the
first generation is the only generation I truly love, so I’m partial to this
decision on a personal level. Anyway, since 50% of 229 cards is 115, and that
151 Pokemon (let alone any non-Pokemon creatuers like Gym Leaders) is well over
115, that means this set will definitely be creature-oriented.
Now, there’s a lot more to Pokemon than just that
fact that there’s a bunch of monsters. There are the 15 different types of
monsters (17 in the second generation of Pokemon onwards) and the strength
& weaknesses among them, Pokemon battling, catching Pokemon, and evolving
Pokemon. This last trait is something that is inherent to the very nature of
Pokemon and is something that most Pokemon do. When Pokemon gain enough
experience and level up, they evolve into a different Pokemon, usually into a
larger, more-developed version of their previous self.
Thus, I believe evolving – an important aspect of
Pokemon – needs to be represented mechanically. Now, I haven’t figured out what
the evolution mechanic would be, yet, but I did think about something important
related to evolving: Not all Pokemon evolve the same way. Usually, a Pokemon
evolves by leveling up enough to a certain level. However, in other cases, some
Pokemon evolve through exposure to some kind of elemental Stone or by being
traded.
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| Evolution Charm by John Avon |
The various methods of evolving a monster is a
great design in the Pokemon games. Your first experiences of evolution might
have been with your starter Pokemon or with the evolves-very-early-in-levels
Caterpie or Weedle. Then, as the game goes on, you find out that there is more
than one way to evolve a Pokemon, which keeps the evolution mechanic exciting.
The pinnacle of the evolution of evolution (hehe) was that Eevee not only
evolves through an elemental Stone, but evolves into one of three (now, like,
seven or something as more Pokemon games are released) different Pokemon
depending on which one of three elemental Stones you chose to use on it.
Exciting!
When designing a Magic: The Gathering set, when
you introduce a new game mechanic (evolving a Pokemon creature card), you start
with the simplest form of that mechanic, so players can learn the new mechanic
in its least complex form. Then you further develop that mechanic with new
twists when the mechanic appears again in a subsequently-released Magic set
that continues the same theme as the first set (the Pokemon theme).
I can’t just throw in all 151 Pokemon into the
first set of what would be a Pokemon block (sets in the same world that are
released within a few months of each other are called a “block”) because some of
those monsters have the more-complex version of the evolution mechanic. Well, I
could always just ignore any twists in the evolution mechanic found in the games
and settle for one set with all Pokemon creature cards evolving the same way.
However, I believe that doing this would be a disservice to the flavor of
Pokemon.
O.K., better plan: Use the second generation of
Pokemon (a hundred more of them exists in Generation II to bring the total to
251 Pokemon) and include only Pokemon that have the basic evolution in the
first set. The more-complex evolutions would only be in the second set.
Ignoring for now the reworking of the number of monsters for figuring out how creature-saturated
these two sets would turn out to be, there’s a wrench thrown into the design:
Pikachu.
I Choose You, Too: Electric Boogaloo
Pikachu is a Pokemon that has become the mascot of
the whole franchise. In the anime, the main character persisting throughout the
series is Ash, a Pokemon trainer who owns a Pikachu that has been with him since
episode one. Since there’s a limit of six Pokemon that a Pokemon trainer can
carry at one time, all other captured Pokemon exceeding six must be put into a
special storage (Don’t worry – Professor Oak cares for them. Somehow).
So, whenever a new season starts where Ash would catch new Pokemon, Ash makes
sure to empty his roster of six Pokemon. …except for Pikachu – because Pikachu
is SO important. Pikachu even has its own Game Boy game version – Pokemon Yellow.
And even various incarnations of Pikachu that are not Pikachu are released in later generations!
But why is Pikachu a problem for the Pokemon Magic:
The Gathering set design? It’s Pikachu’s evolution. Pikachu evolves not through
the basic form of evolution but by Thunder Stone, one of the elemental Stones.
O.K., so I can just have the Pikachu card in the second set, right? No way.
What kind of Pokemon set would be without a Pikachu card in it? The first set
would be without Pikachu. Pikachu represents Pokemon. I believe that the
theoretical players that would open up the theoretical booster packs of the
first Pokemon set should be able to find a Pikachu card among the first few
opened quite easily. So, Pikachu will need to be in the first set, but the
evolution mechanic execution needs to accommodate for this problem.
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| Isamaru, Hound of Konda by Christopher Moeller |
On an aside, while I can include a legendary
creature named Red’s Pikachu (Red is the name of the trainer in the Pokemon games Ash is based on), and this particular Pokemon would never evolve just like
in the games and anime series: 1) I believe that Red’s Pikachu needs to be at
least be a rare card, if it existed, which means it’s going to, well, rarely
show up in booster packs; and 2) Red’s Pikachu at the common rarity is too
weird with that name (most, if not all, other Pokemon creature cards would have
just the name of themselves with no possessive noun affixed to it) and would mean
putting the “legendary” supertype at common, which has never been the convention
for legendary creatures (and for good reason). If the “legendary” supertype is
ever put on common cards, this set is not the set to explore such an avenue in
Magic: The Gathering design.
So, Pikachu will be a common card (the most prevalent
card rarity) named simply Pikachu. I’m not getting into what to do about the
color or colors Pikachu would be or whether its Lightning Pokemon type will be
represented – What’s most important, currently, is how the execution of the
evolution mechanic will impact this special corner case.
What I could do is have the evolve mechanic appear
on the evolved forms of Pokemon only and then put it on a Raichu (the evolution
of Pikachu) card which would appear in the second set. However, would this work
with whatever the evolution mechanic would eventually end up actually doing?
Additionally, I need to look out for the “baby
Pokemon” that was introduced in Generation II, which introduced a pre-evolution
of Pikachu named Pichu. A baby wrench in the design, too. So, using the convention
of putting evolution on evolved Pokemon, Pikachu would need “Evolves from Pichu
(Reminder text.)” (Or however the mechanic would be templated). Though, these baby
Pokemon evolved through Happiness Level in the games (Oh, boy. How complex).
Gotta Catch 'Em All
Here are the next steps in the set: Find out what
other themes in Pokemon can be represented mechanically and figure out how the
evolution mechanic will work exactly. From there, I can then make sure to
figure out an execution of evolution that would still accommodate Pikachu’s
problem.
