I don't really have a good place to store this stuff right now but I want to log it here so I can go into more detail later.

Anyway, fun things I've learned chatting with Doug this weekend.

- His first real mark on Magic was flavoring Kamigawa red cards as cold damage and theme.

- Still has some sort of squirrel grudge.

- Thinks it will be more likely that returns to Kamigawa will be explored in Core sets than getting another shot at Standard normally.

- Showed a picture of his desk. It was about 80% censored.

- Just had a meeting earlier this week that roughed out plans through 2023.

Anyway, there is a Q&A panel later today, along with a few others. Leave your Qs and I'll try to get you some As. Try to formulate your questions in a less hostile manner please .

- "Is the name of Innistrad's fourth angel sister Lysene? Sorin mutters that name in his sleep in Teeth of Akoum and it would fit perfectly. Please make it happen." (I've been wanting to e-mail James Wyatt for ages to suggest the idea before it's too late, but I never got around to doing it.)

- "Will we ever get a set that features Tamiyo as the main character?"

- "Vraska seems to have ambitions of becoming the Golgari guild leader, but what happened to Ludmilla, the last of the Sisters of Stone Death?"

- "Why does the Meditation Plane not work like it did in the Legends II trilogy anymore? Did the Mending separate it from Dominaria and turn it into a plane of its own?"

- "Does Creative see the Gatewatch itself as a kind of story arc, meaning they have at least a vague endpoint for them in mind?"

- [Whatever you consider voicing general dissatisfaction with retcons and continuity in a non-hostile manner. It's not like Creative is open to justified criticism either way.]


Boo to that Kamigawa thing!

Edit: I mean the fact that they won't give us a proper return to Kamigawa, not the ice flavoured burn spells. Those were really cool.

Creative process panel notes:

- Ixalan proof of concept art is gorgeous!

- Exploritory world building is about a 7 step process.

- There was a time when energy was going to get cut from Kaladesh. Creative had already really committed to a lot of story and art for energy.

- Wizards flies in concept illustrators for three weeks to work on pre-set concept art.

- Doug loves the "Concept push" (picture to post later)

- Ixalan almost got parrot griffins! (I have pictures)

- There was some stuff on card concepting, but it wasn't really anything new.

I'd like to know if there are any planes in store that aren't just "real world, but fantasy elements", but I wouldn't know how to phrase it in a manner that isn't extremely condescending.
And I assume my window of opportunity is also gone.

Q and A

- Bolas will be in the background for a while. We are slowly approaching a major milestone.

- Still some Tamiyo plans, but maybe farther way.

- Dominaria will be history focused and one set

- Ludmilla is potentially still alive.

- Kaladesh was there to check a Chadra box in Origns but got better when fans liked it.

- Dakon Blackblade has a lot of Wizards internal fans. The a Blackblade is still around.

- Doug's favorite creature type is hellions and his favorite plane is Innistrad.

- Fourth angel sister/ Lysene - TBD, but Doug will take that idea under advisement.

- Graff Mole was a fever idea from the end of concepting.

- Meditation Realm just got massaged to help newer readers.

- Gatewatch is not required for all stories.

The answer to your question Mown is yes, but he can't talk about it.

Lots of really good things. Lets hope he delivers

Tomorrow is a worldbuilding panel where we group build a world.

See if you can slip a truly insane/corner case creature type in there, like Beebles or Ninjas.

My wife wants a world with fairy frogs. I want to re-introduce an old race that we have seen but not in proper context, like the Dauthi.

Viashino! Magic needs more lizard people.

What panel is this? Sounds like a fun time

Agree. Also Amphin and Surrakar.

The sci-fi/fantasy con I go to every year scored Doug as the gaming guest of honor. He's had several panels over the weekend. The worldbuilding panel is about to begin.

The world we ended up making involved frog bards in Hybrid, a flying lizard faction that use cascade, and maybe snakes that used flashback? It was a set steeped in betrayal with swarms of small things to fill in for big things.

Wow, Azure, you actually got to ask our questions! Thanks a lot, you're my man!


To start on a positive note, I'm really happy that you asked them about Lysene. Feels so good to know it's finally out there and might seriously be considered. Did they actually take notes or something, or was it more like "Sure, whatever, we'll talk about it, wink wink"? I guess you mentioned that Sorin drops that name in Teeth then? Like, man, if they end up making that canon one day, I'll instantly come back from whatever Magic hiatus I might be in then and won't criticise anything for an entire year. Maybe I should contact someone in Creative anyway just to be sure... *hype*

Again? Well, I guess they'll go for the Gatewatch solo-adventures first, so that's probably where that comes from. Makes some degree of sense.



That's... a conspiciously direct answer. I'm so hoping that Korlash is going to show up in Dominaria. Or a legendary mythic Blackblade equipment. Or both.


...but they'll make sure to use them in every story forever, just in case.


That's precisely the kind of sloppy, disrespectful, unprofessional attitude that has alienated me from Magic and is probably going to drive me away after Dominaria. If I have to hear "Creative cares a lot about the storyline" one more time...


Weeell, I guess that's exactly what we wanted, but I can't be happy about it right now. I mean, they outright admitted that they don't care to get anything right and just retconned everything about the Meditation Plane out of convenience. Which is a metaphysical feature of Dominaria itself. You know, from its history. And the same people made a history focused Dominaria set? They might as well shoot me right now...

Eeeeh, here we go. It's like they aren't even trying. But I've already said what I had to say about it.

The panels were a pretty homey affair. It was pretty much just Doug in a room talking with ten or fifteen of us about Magic Creative for an hour at a time. The Q&A panel went so well because there was really not much competition for questions and we had a whole hour to kill. As for the Lysene thing, it seemed like he had not really considered that connection up to that point, but was really interested in it and thought it was good food for thought. It spun off into a brief discussion on how Wizards can better make connections from past lore that sort of gets orphaned from time to time.

On the topic of the Meditation Realm, the answer was sort of approached as differing audiences requiring different things and it being really hard to hold slavishly to some, mostly minor, bits of past lore that would usually serve few and confuse many. That Vraska went to the Meditation Realm was important. That Bolas's invite gave her the knowledge to get there was important, as well as the show of security when she arrived. Whether or not she had to make a pit-stop in Dominaria was not important enough to include as really only the few people who read the Legends cycle novels would notice and everyone else would just be confused and pulled away from the story. There's nothing wrong with essentially wanting everything to be lists of 100% truths, but the older stories can't really marry well with newer content without a little massaging because of how Wild West things used to be with authors not affiliated directly with the company often times just making up lore whole cloth with no eye to the future.

Anyway, I promised you guys some pictures, so now it is time to deliver:

Which is what I'd been saying all along about it.


Thanks for everything Azure.

Sorry, I'm missing a bit of context. Where/at which event did this panel take place?

Doug Beyer was the gaming guest of honor at Archon, a sci-fi/fantasy convention in Collinsville, Il. He had a total of four panels over the course of three days.

Friday's panel was mostly just a look at Wizards of the Coast as a company and mostly showed off coworkers and photo toured the building.

The first Saturday panel was a walkthrough of Creative's role from the beginning of Exploritory Design all the way to the final hand-off to CAPS for processing. The second Saturday panel was a Q&A session.

On Sunday we all sat around and built a world together while Doug tossed in the occasional issues he has to face like coworkers axing key mechanics for other ones or Brand not being convinced an idea will sell well. (We, as a group decided that the local Walker for our set would be an Anurid frog bard. That was apparently going to be a tough sell with Brand. We also decided that instead of two factions there would be a third faction that went through preview season completely unspoiled to surprise the audience at launch. Doug thought that was a cool idea, but probably a very uphill battle to fight.