Saturday, January 18, 2020

Please Stand By ...

So Overgrowth has ... um ... stopped growing.

A couple of things happened. First, I just got too busy in real life and had some other stuff to deal with. I kind of dropped out of designing and even playing Magic (Though I paid attention to the Core 2020 releases and Throne of Eldraine, I really didn't play at all during this time).

Second, I started realizing that Overgrowth was starting to feel too much like Zendikar (particularly pre-Eldrazi), with its emphasis on wild, dangerous nature and civilization represented by scattered outposts rather than big cities.

Third, Magic is going back to Zendikar later this year, but before that to a new plane named Ikoria, a home of massive monsters, which is also kind of the feel I was going for with Guthreham.

Fourth, I was growing unhappy about how all the conflict in the set is very secretive and remote. The story--Xirn just discovering that the plane is pregnant--puts the narrative not in a very good spot to tell a story, unless we were going to present Overgrowth in a block over a couple of expansions.

So I'm doing some serious rethinking and tossing out some concepts and reframing. I'm going to make Guthreham a plane where, actually, everybody knows it's pregnant and everybody has ideas about what it's going to give birth to and wants to prove to it that their particular ethos should guide the entity's behavior.

Stay tuned for a completely new Overgrowth.

Also! I was on the most recent episode of Beacon of Creation talking about "Theros: Beyond Death." Check it out!