How is Magic the Gathering Like Jazz?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ต.ค. 2024
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One of the most requested episode topics I’ve received here at Idea Channel is for Magic. The Card Game, not, like, Mind Freaks. I’ve hesitated because Magic is ... complicated ... and while I used to play a lot, I don’t anymore. So ... I’m out of practice. BUT! After some research, and TONS of help from Patrick-Idea Channel’s consulting producer-we’ve put together an idea about Magic. And it has to do with Jazz. If you’re familiar with EITHER I wanna be clear: we’re painting with a REALLY broad brush-both Magic and jazz are huge subjects difficult to summarize in any amount of time, let alone a fifteen minute video-so go easy on me with the WELL ACTUALLIES. And if you’re familiar with BOTH, you’re probably thinking - OK HERE WE GO MAGIC IS LIKE JAZZ BECAUSE IMPROVISATION and yes… but also we’re gonna get beyond that idea; what we’re gonna try to do is use each to explain the other, in an effort to understand some similarities, and one big difference, in how they work as systems. Let us know what you think in the comments below!
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I don't play Magic, but it seems that, although there is some creativity due to the massive number of cards, deck design is still heavily based on optimization whereas jazz is more about doing what feels good rather than what is musically "optimal".
YESS - This is the comment I was hoping someone would leave so I can respond to it in the comment response when we're back from VidCon! :D I've been thinking about this very point a lot and have some ~~feelings~~ about it, but I'm super curious to hear what other people say before I get mine. PINNED.
TheJcd9876 100%. When you find something that works good in the deck you tend to keep it, it's like a puzzle while completing. That being said with so many mechanics within magic the gathering a cards use isn't singular, thus endless possibilities. What works now and is "optimal" isn't always going to be so. That being said, there is still something to be said about competitive vs non competitive play whereas the latter has this "feel good" aspect to it where, you don't have to win every time necessarily.
TheJcd9876 this can be true! But when building a deck it's important to keep in mind what you expect your opponent to be playing. A deck may seem "solved" but often changing a few things based on what decks other people are playing will give you an advantage when you come back the next week.
The trick there, as I see it, is that in Magic doing what is 'optimal' is not always the most fun thing to do. Whether a player chooses to do what is optimal is based largely on what that player wants to get out of the game. If Player 1's goal is only to win, then optimality is the way to do that usually. Look up a deck that won a tournament, buy those cards, put together that deck and crush your friends. Likewise in music, even jazz, a musician's goal may be financial success rather than pure creativity and expression and they may choose a more marketable (optimal) approach in order to achieve that goal. See on the other hand Player 2 who has an interesting idea for how to put some cards they like together in a way few people will expect but is doubtlessly very fun to pull off. It may be less consistent, but when it hits it feels great. This statement can be similarly extended back toward jazz music where the most interesting jazz to play and listen to is often not the jazz that is the most marketable. And maybe a particularly creative musician doesn't always make you something you enjoy, but when they do (in my experience) it is far more likely to be memorable, unique, and noteworthy because of the musician's willingness to try something different, potential failures be damned.
I would say that competitive magic formats such as standard and modern are less similar to jazz in that sense but formats such as commander or cube are very similar. in commander people often choose to put cards in their deck because they like that card and because that card contributes to an enjoyable game even when they could play an objectively better card. I think the main difference between magic and jazz is that in magic your trying to win and in music you can't really win
This video was badass.
Adam Neely Ooh Hello there, see you next monday
And you literally just brought me here by mentioning it on Rhett Shull's podcast. It's a pretty cool video, thanks for the recommendation.
Magic The Gathering is like Jazz in that at first, it seems silly and maybe even nonsensical, but as you actually learn it, you realize there is a complexity at play that is so deep, it can never truly be mastered.
Tolarian Community College agreed professor
Tolarian Community College After this philosophical look at Magic the Gathering, I think it more so resembles sculpting. The rules of the game are your material, stone or clay. The cards themselves representing each chisel or cut, once refined revealing what your idea what through the process.
Similarly, certain chisels and cuts in specific ways can break your sculpture, which in some case, produces a better product in the end.
Ban Marvel.
Statistical Sprocket You make some really interesting points. I like the comparison. I'm sure you could find strong analogies comparing MTG and almost anything. I'm inspired to write the first "Philosophy and Magic the Gathering" :]
Oh, hey prof. Good to see you here!
Well said, Prof. I would also like to think that we can improve our ability to comprehend what makes a play "good", and what lines of play to take. And as we get better at understanding this, we can come up with more deck building ideas to benefit from what makes our plays good or bad. Also, as we improve, we can help others to improve and show them just how fun MTG can be.
As a guy that plays trumpet in a college jazz band and plays magic on the weekends, this was fuckin great.
Brady Coppinger Can you tell me what the architect joke meant?
gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=136151
some of them assemble contraptions
***** thx I guess. Still don't really understand the joke though. Guessing it was really good or still is broken for it to get a dedicated meme.
That person who gave you the link, while "correct', is not nearly the whole story. The term "contraption" is a subtype of the type "artifact". It has never been used before or since. Why? Because it was from a set called Future Sight, which was about things that might come from Magic in future sets. Some cards and/or mechanics did actually come to pass years later, but the Steamflogger Boss was not one of them. Not the card itself nor its mechanic.
The "joke" is that its a cheeky card. It's the only card of its kind that basically reference itself. The term "contraption" has no rule associated with it in the comprehensive rules, which is what Mike was reading from midway through the video.
Hopefully that clears up the confusion.
Damn, I was 6 minutes late, haha
Tron lands and Apocalypse in the same deck? I don't appreciate you stealing my childhood brews, but I still really want to see that list.
Magic is the Dark Souls of Jazz
Dark Souls is the roguelike of early access survival metroidvanias
Beat me to this joke.
Comparing Magic to Jazz is the Dark Souls of comparative analogies.
Step Back History Nah man, vintage tournament magic is the dark souls of jazz 😆
GREENSP0RE isn't the Dark Souls of Magic a Modern event where someone who isn't you is playing Dredge, and someone else is playing Storm?
Hi, this is my first time commenting on a video, but I've been watching for a few months and I love your channel!
As a longtime Magic Player and a longtime musician, this comparison is very revelatory for me (but not necessarily a new one)! When i wad a kid I used to create my own M:TG cards based on my favorite musicians in a program and I separated each one based on the genre of music that they create into each of 5 colors :).
I see my special interests in both the various genres of music (which i would argue M:TG is more akin to different genres of Music than Jazz in particular) and M:TG as complementary forms that allow me to learn about one when i think about the other. Both can (and should) be studied/practiced deeply to do them justice, and while practice in one genre/color can help you learn another more easily, the new genre/color is something you are starting from square one.
The choices one makes in either have vastly different philosophical implications, either casual or commercial (kitchen table mtg vs competitive or a basement band vs a touring band) and how one approaches the rules of both M:TG and Music dictates what type of deck/genre comes out (for example, the structure of Metal being an obvious comparison to a black deck, where as Jazz might be a blue/green deck)!
I hope my comment isnt too long for you and thank you!
^Best comment
Minerva Sulis have you ever played the Magic Card Or Metal Band game?
Minerva Sulis your username - a reference to the English city Bath?
Mara K - No but I've seen Loading Ready Run play the game on youtube! Rory O'Kane - Yes (it's my name). Mace Dingo - I agree, although i would posit that the colors analogy only works depending on the Artist or song, as many of categories of music cannot be pigeonholed into one emotion, especially Jazz!
I agree. And yes, Thoughtsieze on himself was totes dope af.
Wow this video feels like it's reached peak "Patrick". I'm a small time Magic The gathering TH-cam creator who focusses on Deck building, and a musician who has both sung and played lots of Jazz over the years, so this is RIGHT up my alley.
I remember when I was first learning how to improvise in Jazz and I thought that "oh, I just make stuff up and follow these rules", but later learned the saying in Jazz that "New improvisers make stuff up. Good improvisers steal." The idea here being that Jazz solos get filled with riffs and motifs from other songs, sort of like an Easter egg for other musicians to pick up on and (sometimes) make that face which you were making at 6:18. The same sort of thing is true in Magic with Deckbuilding. There is a term called "Net-decking" which means roughly "to copy a decklist from the internet, rather than create it yourself". Now this is very different, because this is wholesale copying (more on this later), but the main takeaway is that the vast majority of people playing in sanctioned events are people not playing decks they built themselves. Now as for wholesale copying, this was common in Big Band Jazz back in the 40s. When a band premiered a new song (like the famous "Sing, Sing, Sing") It was only really theirs for about a week, since that's how long it would take rival bands to learn it just from attending the performances and listening to it. In this way, Magic has a faster turnaround time now, thanks to the internet.Now, you might think that this comparison would fall apart at the upper most levels of play (competitive Magic and Jazz), but even there, you see a return back to personalization. In Jazz you'll still get references to previous songs, and riffs from other songs, but you'll also get a lot more wholly unique improvisation. In high level competitive Magic, you'll see the same Archetype of a deck (ie "zombie deck"), but there will usually be something unique thrown in (not even counting the full overhaul that the sideboard is likely to have).Lastly, I think there was a big missed opportunity to talk about the biggest difference between Magic and Jazz: who controls the rules. Since Magic is owned by Wizards of the coast, they have the final say in what rules are played by, and what cards get printed, and if recent sets are any record, they're not always the best at addressing player desires. On the other hand, Jazz is amorphous and no one person or group control the rules of "what is Jazz". And yes, there is an ongoing community which creates custom cards and sets, but there will likely never be sanctioned events using them, and Wizards of the Coast employees are actually banned from looking at home-made card designs. What I'm trying to show here is that Jazz doesn't have an owner, but Magic does. This I think is what sets the two the most apart.
Patrick Daly well said
I actually talked about your last point in a reply above before reading this comment; I do believe that who controls the rules is the biggest difference between TCGs and Jazz, and that it radically changes how people approach the two.
Thanks for expressing that far more eloquently than I did!
+
Wynton Marsalis wants to be the Wizards of the Coast of Jazz. Just watch Ken Burns' Jazz.
How you must've felt when you saw the title of the video: i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/012/589/patrickstar.jpg
i think you're onto something. my favorite color was always Kind of Blue
2:15 There is only one card that references "Contraptions" [Steamflogger Boss], and that card doesn't actually make them itself. The mechanic doesn't exist (yet).
5:53 I didn't actually see that (wasn't into Magic yet), but THAT SOUNDS AWESOME!!!!
11:55 Best Card Ever
The framework or rules that magic provides I would consider the "language" that guide both players. As you mentioned, the 2012 pro tour Watanabe V Cifka, both players literally spoke different languages but understood the rules. So, Watanabes great play was understood by, and probably admired by his opponent as I image two musicians that improvise jazz, are bound by the language or rules of their genre. Do jazz musicians admire the innovation of others that adhere to the ruleset?
Trent Gradidge This comment. Top of the page.
One very, very important distinction here are the deck "archetypes" of "control" and "combo". While other kinds of deck are willing to just play the game "fairly", having good cards that work well with each other, Combo and Control are out to try to play the same way every time.
Control is built around the idea that you can use the cards to make what your opponent is doing irrelevant, and eventually just hit them again and again, when they run out of things to do.
Combo is built instead around a few key cards, which the player (or "pilot") wants to get out every game, that work together to win them the game, and build their deck around trying to do that every single game.
They are, or at least trying to be, the opposite of jazz, trying to stamp the jazz out of every game, like some conductor with rowdy musicians.
This goes at the much bigger difference: Jazz is co-operative, where the improvisation is intentional, while Magic is competitive, where improvisation is forced by the other player and the rules of the game
Is that not true of midrange?
What makes control more Jazz?
I tend to see it different. I agree with you that it is competitive and not co-operative, but I think the interesting improvisations happen in the interaction with your opponent. Please let me try to explain:
I play Storm Combo in Legacy quite a while. What it make it so hard to master this deck is that you need to improvise quite a lot to achieve your goal: win the game as fast as possible. Which means most of the time our own turn 2 or 3.
You may argue that it's a rather small set of possible improvisations playing ANT compared to playing Jazz. In the end of the day you "just" need combine a small subset (your hand) of well-known cards (your deck) in such a way that there were enough spells played in one turn (usually 9) and you have the required Mana to play the winning Tendrils of Agony.
But for me the amazing improvisations in playing Storm happen in the interaction with your opponent. For example, when you have to lure them into interact with you, so that their interaction lead to the needed storm count or you suddenly have to find a way how you can still win when they extract important pieces of your combo out of your deck when you're in the middle of it.
So I think the sweet mind-boggling things are based on a strict set of rules in the interaction with others and as such I like the analogy of this video.
Great vid, one of my favorites from the channel lately!
Also, the assembling contraptions joke was perfect, both the timing and delivery.
I would argue in some cases magic can be multiple things to different people. Some people will only play certain formats with rule sets that can limit what cards you can use, and change normal rules of the game. I really enjoyed the video as someone who has played jazz and magic.
i would say "no" just on the basis that any sufficiently complex card game has the same potential for deck building, decision making, and "improvization". Jazz is especially well known because it's one of the only realms of music where improv is expected (as opposed to concerts, orchestras, etc) where you're expecting 95% of the same result each time.
The point was addressed in the video that all collectible card games define themselves by reference to Magic - like how "high fantasy" as a genre was universally based on Tolkien for a few decades, or how DOOM defined the FPS genre in the mid-90s. So, reading "Magic" to mean "Magic and 'Magic clones' ", it does make a valid comparison to Jazz.
I dunno about this, there are some pretty bizarre music genres out there, where the entire genre feels like an improvisation in the first place... this seems reductive at first blush.
I would like to make an argument here of "potential" versus "expectation".
TL;DR: As i see it, potential defines extremes, which comes from people doing things where they are able to do it, and expectation defines the likelyhood and frequence of something being done, which comes from people that are doing something, look to others for inspiration.
I very much see the over-the-top improvisation solo's or duets, that is a defining extreme of jazz, as the least enjoyable part of the genre, though just like when people intentionally make "Magic: the Gathering" decks and cubes out of the cards that stray the furthest from conventional priorities (Strictly worse cube), or tell the most artistic story through the name, art and flavour text (Vorethos deck), or just explore an aspect of the medium usually left untouched (Mechanic gimmicks), the stereotypical experimentation of Jazz is a direct result of its potential, not the expectation. This is in my eyes a unifying feature of the two areas, because they both get it from their long history, though through different aspects of it. The only thing that makes them stand out from other like them is that they have that history, not the others.
While any other card game could have Magic's place if it had sufficiently complex rules, had the fanbase, and had the giant library and backlog of cards to boost diversity, this, i feel, is just as true of Jazz. When musicians playing other genres, if they go too far, people will ususally consider it breaking, or drifting away from, the genre, but not so with Jazz. From what i understand, this has come linearly from the start of the genre, as genius musicians had breakthroughs with continously wilder improvisation. I might be treading deep waters here, but it is my view that this is not inherent to the tonality, progression, or other musically defining features of the genre, indeed what some directly define as the genre, but instead inherent to the acceptance that came from tradition that by chance took root when the genre first showed up. That is, it is not the notes or the rythm, but the association that people have made with those notes and rythm, that makes Jazz what it is today, and that this, if not the specific details, make Jazz alike Magic in many ways.
The distribution of "severity" (for a lack of a better word), of the lesser cases of each extreme, then comes as a result of the "expectation", how likely people are to diverge from the average and go towards the extremes as result of how often it has been done in the past. This is where i agree with you, in that it is far more expected to experiment within Jazz than it is Magic, though i feel that this does not detract from all the other similarities.
Is the comparison a form perfect fit? Certainly not. Nothing ever will be.
Is it close enough to be partially valid? In my humble opinion, yes.
true though i think their is a very strong argument that magic was the first card game to ever acheive that level of complexity.
That's a good point, though that wasn't really the argument I was referring to.
To take a different approach: MTG is quite like the golf, or lacrosse, or hockey of tabletop games. You have to buy all the expensive af pieces of gear (cards), and have to replace it when it gets old (new 'blocks'/generations), but it still takes years of practice to get good at the game. I use the games mentioned as examples because they're often considered to be on the more expensive end of school/club sports.
Similar to these sports, if you can't 'keep up' with buying new equipment, for whatever reason, you can't participate (much; at least, competitively). In this way MTG is better compared to expensive, inherently social activities that make spending large amounts of money on equipment a term or condition of participating in an objectively meaningful way---meaning, most often, playing in competitions.
Soccer is relatively 'free' (cost-less) compared with the aforementioned sports. Spending money is not a condition of participation for these activities. Unsurprisingly these activities often see broader participation by more diverse groups of people due to their accessibility. As such, activities like hockey, golf and lacrosse are much more niche (this is also a reason---but not "THE" reason---that D&D is a much more visible symbol than MTG despite the latter's sales figures).
Participating in MTG requires one to spend exorbitant amounts of money to compete. Now, it used to be the case that one had to go through entire boxes of booster packs to get the best cards for deckbuilding. Since EBay (etc) folks can just go on and buy X copies of each card they need for their decklist(s) and they're ready to go. The fact remains, however, that high cost is a BARRIER TO ENTRY for this game.
I would much like to see a future episode address this issue of cost as barrier to entry and MTG's (and other games') relative similarity to hockey, golf and other expensive, niche games.
I would like to reference the high cost of instruments (and maintenance of said instruments) as a comparison to Magic. My Saxophone cost almost as much as a used car, and repairing it also cost an incredible amount.
There are so many cards and possible combo, unless you are truly competitive you can buy really cheap cards and still made a really good deck. There is still plenty of luck in the game and you can get screwed so easily with bad draws.
I didn't even know goat was a subtype. Care to share the decklist?
Or you could just play limited, which is about $10 for a few hours entertainment for a Draft tournament, and about $20 for a few hours entertainment for a Sealed tournament. Draft is higher skill than constructed anyway, and is considered by many competitive players to be the highest skill form of the game.
Or, on the opposite spectrum, as some casual players do, treat the game as a boxed game with a bunch of expansions and stick with picking up a couple of theme decks (or packaged commander decks) every few months and use them.
Gizensha Fox well, limited literally limits the range of choices, and thus the range of improvisation.
Although, I love drafting, I think this is closest to what Mike said - drafting is the jazz of Magic
As awesome as the actually info/theory of this video was, my favourite part was your ryhme comparisons between Magic and Jazz 😆
My 5 cents:
I remember taking a law class in University and thinking: this is a lot like MtG!
You have the fundamental "law" (mechanics) of the game, but the cards keep introducing exceptions, so you need rulings that interpret the law (jurisprudence) in order to work out every potential scenario, and even then, everybody is trying to work out an exploit, a way of optimizing the game to their advantage (tax evasion style) until something gets changed by the powers-that-be, like banning cards (that would be the legislative branch voting in new laws).
So, yeah, MtG is like Jazz... it's also very much like legal maneuvering.
How fitting is it then that a culture, like America's, fundamentally based in law has so much love for a game that is basically two made up pseudo lawyers arguing about whether a Fireball can still get Forked even if I just player a Counterspell on it... If videogames trained a generation of surgeons (or UAV pilots in my case) then MtG trailed a generation of lawyers.
I never looked at law in that adversarial way before, but I'm inclined to say you're right. Even if Blue and White intentionally have that feeling, you could expand the metaphor to Magic in general. After I get my judge levels maybe I'll try out for law school.
god damn it. i read the thumbnail as "Magic the Jizzering"
Only sometimes...
Man, everytime I read the title fresh I read it as Magic the Jizzering (5 times now) Then a double take takes a second before I read it correctly :(
Then for the love of god do not Google "fnm promo serum visions"
I couldn't click on this video fast enough. It was a drop everything and watch, from the title alone. Three of my favorite things- Jazz, Magic and the last thing is the Idea Channel itself. Excellent!
What I love the most about music and magic is the validity of doing nothing. Taking no action during your turn. That can be just as powerful playing a card, the same way a rest can say more than any note. Granted you're usually not mana screwed when you take that musical rest. There is also the element of randomness in a deck, where there is a lot of predictability in jazz. All in all, very thought provoking.
darkrzane Interestingly, knowing when to play nothing at all is one of the hardest things to learn and represents some of the highest level of strategy in the game. Whenever I watch the Pro Tour and a player elects to do nothing with their turn when they could have advanced their board or whatever, I turn that decision over and over in my head, asking, "Why was that the right call?" And, inevitably, that decision, to play nothing at all, was the decision which won them the game 6 turns later.
Jazz improvisation has always felt for me like going for a walk in my neighborhood. I know the start and end point. I know myriad paths to take between those two points. The path I choose to walk depends on my mood, the time of day, how long I want to be out, etc. Any one walk could have very different scenery. Though the neighborhood is finite, there almost infinitely many ways I can walk through it.
Learning a new chart is a similar process. The more times you play through it, the more scales, chords, substitutions you discover. The structure (verse, chorus, verse, chorus) doesn't change, but the ways you can navigate those changes begin to multiply.
I haven't played magic in years, but I can see how deck building is a similar process. The more familiar you are with the rules, the more you can begin to piece together a deck that will help you navigate through them. How you make those decisions is also informed by playing the deck against new opponents. I suppose this is similar to how you might respond to what another musician is doing while playing jazz.
The two problems I see with this analogy are that when you play Magic with someone the relationship is adversarial, whereas playing music together should be cooperative (maybe this is niggling). Second and most important. Magic only works as a game when everyone agrees on what the rules are. Jazz oftentimes works because not everyone agrees on what the rules are; breakthroughs in Jazz come from defying convention.
I do enjoy watching these thought combinations here. Magic (total nerd identifier) is like jazz (not the same nerd). Which makes me think: "Okay..but how?" I will listen to you for 12 min just to see where you're coming from which, in essence, is something I could not fathom before. Thank you for making me think outside my shell.
I remember listening to Mark Rosewater's (the lead designer of Magic) podcast, Drive to Work, and he said that "restriction breeds creativity" and that has always stuck with me when I am making anything both Magic related or not.
This analysis is so high level that it could apply to literally any activity that involves two people interacting in any form that isn't entirely pre-planned.
Theatre improvisation, folk music improvisation, playing street fighter, playing rugby, having a conversation - they all work by having a set of predetermined rules that can be combined using a pre-agreed syntax to create a wide range of possible forms of expression that the "players" can use to interact with each other.
Fun fact: According to Hasbro (who owns Wizards of the Coast, the publishing company of both D&D and MtG) MtG makes them way more than D&D does.
Not hard to believe: purchase or even download a rulebok of D&D, you're pretty much ready to play without purchasing anything more, unless you want to be baller-nerd. MtG... it's another story.
Makes a lot of sense. Especially considering MTG pretty much keeps some FLGSes in business.
Moreso, people often share rulebooks. And people sometimes will buy books/adventures, etc. for the group. With Magic, it's all you, even if you and your friends gift one another cards.
And then there's the fact that with Magic there's often very much the desire to keep up with the current meta, moreso than with roleplaying games.
Well, don't forget, Magic doesn't have a whole lot of peripherals, and the game is pretty much playable without them. You might grab some card sleeves or a playmat or a fancy life counter from a third party, but at the end of the day, the money you pump into Magic is almost entirely in buying the cards, usually from Hasbro in the form of individual booster packs or larger bundles of booster packs.
In comparison, after buying the D&D books and my DM screen, I've gone to third-parties for, or handmade, just about everything else: dice, minis, battlemats, dungeon tiles etc. At this point in my D&D lifestyle, I've probably spent pretty close to equally on products from Hasbro and products from a variety of third parties.
Very true. DnD players can decide "I liked 3.5 best. We're sticking with it." No magic players say "I like my standard deck from right when Theros came out. I'm just going to keep playing that deck forever."
My proudest moment in magic was when I went up against a guy using a deck that was a terror at tournaments using my slapped together Green/Blue deck with cards I liked. I managed to beat him and counter all of his "superior" cards just by playing carefully.
Specifically it was during Shadowmoor/Eventide, and the guy was using Blue/Black fairy tribal. All it took to take out his Queen was two commons, Snakeform and Shorecrasher Mimic. I also had Fable of Wolf and Owl to kinda keep up with his Bitterblossom.
I just started reading modules for a pathfinder campaign I am running. Pretty much a preset dnd session. I love seeing the player's Working within the cage of rules/setting, and seeing what happens. This must be what it is like letting someone else play your magic deck/ jazz song.
I really like that final nugget at 9:50: "There's a particular pleasure in composing something you get to play in an unexpected way with other people"
This comparison only works if you accept improvisation as the defining feature of jazz. I believe swing is what gives jazz distinction from it's antecedents (blues, ragtime, and march music) and it's descendants (jump blues, r&b, rock, and pretty much all American music in the 20th century).
A pack of Innistrad? You really know how to treat an audience.
A lot of players call that need to improvise "variance." In magic, that's what you draw. In hearthstone, there are even more factors with cards that have random targets, numbers, or pull random cards from outside of the game.
When a card or aspect of the game alters variance, whether by searching for a specific card or manipulating the draw, that's when card game designers have to be wary of the effect it has on the game. Many banned cards in Magic are banned because of this reason, how it has a "degenerate" effect on the game because it preys on variance. In a way, Magic is most balanced when it's most like jazz.
A very keen observation, and a connection i had not thought of.
My band mates and I play magic after our practice sessions so I'm excited to share this video with them. One of the beautiful things about magic is that your experience is heavily influenced by other players. Some decks are only successful against specific strategies, some decks avoid all other players, and some decks are most fun with more people playing. You never know how a deck will actually function until you play it, and decks rarely remain in their first iteration. Interacting with other players, collecting cards and strategies from them, and building your own style is essential to enjoying magic. I'm not a jazz musician but that's how music feels for me. You can learn a lot about someone from the decisions they make in play or in deck building. I see my guitarist's meticulous precision in his combo decks, my singer's mischievous nature in his ally deck, and my drummer's ongoing dedication with his angel deck. It's cool getting to know them both ways.
Also want to add that like jazz, magic has lots of genres (AKA formats) that you can choose from. There are different formats of play that only allow certain expansions, or prohibits different deck sizes. Standard, the format that only uses the most recent expansions, has it's own following of players. They're usually willing to spend more money since expansions can cycle out of standard, and money isn't a thing you can ignore when talking about magic. Another format is legacy, which allows all cards printed with exception of a ban list. Since cards that were never balanced alongside each other are used in legacy the decks can reach atomic levels of destruction. Some players I've experienced refuse to use cards printed after a certain date, and some who play standard to avoid the broken combos of the past. If I was a jazz musician there are absolutely genre's I wouldn't enjoy playing, and that segregates me from those other communities just like the formats of magic.
Getting back to the ideas on idea channel! I like it
I have been playing Jazz and Magic since I was in 6th grade (I am in college now). I would say improvisation is similar to Magic in the sense of freedom of character. Every improve player has their own style that they like to play around with (tempo, scale, accentuation, etc..). Magic players also have certain styles they favor such as preferring fast and precise decks over slow and meticulous ones. These preferences can be seen in any decks or improvisational solos that the players use. For example I like to play very fast and loud solos and likewise enjoy to build Magic decks that have strong beginning game presence.
As an aspiring jazz musician this video was great. One of the main reasons why I decided to learn how to improvise is bc I love the freeing sense of insane off the wall creativity and deep, almost engraved understanding. So comparing jazz and magic I know want to go play some hearthstone.
as someone who played some jazzish music during junior high and magic for 9 years of my life I find that they both work on the same parts of my brain, with both focusing on not mastering something but on understanding why and how it works. The rules of magic exist as a framework that instead of saying "no you can't do that" it makes you as the player ask "how can I do this".
The "assemble contraptions" joke made my day.
Thanks a lot :D
"Skinnerware" is a great concept !
I find a similar thing comes from freeform/indie RPGs like Emily Care Boss's Romance Trilogy, Warrior Poet, or Fate games in the High Trust, High Drama method. There are socially contracted parameters of the game, but the outcome, flavour elements, and artistic influences we draw from are maddeningly diverse. if a group can get a good consensus of expectations (e.g. everyone is clear that we're emulating Tanith Lee in Warrior Poet, and not Lovecraftian Dreamland's stuff), it becomes a unique creative endeavour, not unlike closet theatre
Thank you for the "Assemble Contraptions" joke. I giggled. (It's an in-joke referring to Steamflogger Boss.)
I think games with a shared deck of usually 100+ cards (which also happen to play up to 5-6 players usually), games such as Race for the Galaxy or games by Carl Chadyuk (Impulse, Innovation, etc), etc, are much more similar to Jazz: there is a shared idea of what is possible (jazz standard vs shared deck of cards); improvisation (unique card combos/synergies); interactions (playing off other people's choices, both previous and predicted).
Something that didn't get touched on in the video is the shop and trading culture that came out of the random nature of packs. I can go to a shop and buy the card I need or go online and order it/trade for it. This has created a whole community atmosphere where people of all kinds come together that may not have otherwise had any incentive too.
Jazz also did this in a way by creating a community of people who otherwise may never have gathered but jazz put them all in this central place to enjoy what they all loved. And I would argue that Magic (along with other games such as Dungeons and Dragons) allowed for the gaming community to flourish and be connected before massive social media and the connectivity that comes with widespread internet. Thoughts?
Corky Segal Came to our school and explained that when he improvises he has a set of phrases he uses and just alters them slightly. Each phrases is like a card, depending on when and how you use it will vary the outcome of the solo significantly.
I would say they are very similar. I'm a jazz singer and mtg player. And the ability to take something that already exists and make it work for oneself is at the heart of both jazz and mtg. I sing jazz songs and play the ukulele which is a very simplified version of jazz but I make those songs my own even though they've existed for decades. In much the same way I purchased a prebuilt commander deck and played it how I saw fit and changed out cards to make it my own. While there are more advanced ways to use both mediums I think the idea that both jazz and mtg can be standardized or improved as much as you want show the similarities between the two.
Something that wasn't talked about was the concept of a "decks" in a meta sense. There are a number of "decks" that are built upon a framework of something that is known to work. For example, there is a deck known as "Delver" that focuses on the mechanics of a single card, Delver of Secrets. But there are a number of variations, not just with minor tweaks, but with major changes in the feel and goals. Its somewhat similar to taking a jazz composition and, in the course of improvisational performance, changing a major chord to a minor chord to change the tone of the piece, then a different musician changing it again.
I saw a video in my sub box saying "magic: the gathering".... and then I was surprised when it ended up being Idea channel. This is a great episode.
By the same token Dungeon or Game Mastering in D&D/Pathfinder is like Jazz as well. You compose an adventure, from encounters, and it plays in unexpected ways thanks to the band of players you bring together. Even putting together a character from the standard options that is character classes but then discovering new notes for that character in play as you bounce off the other characters and the DM/GM.
The ephemeral quality of Jazz music only existing for so long as the performance does, translates pretty well to any Tabletop RPG about as well as it translates to a game like Magic the Gathering.
I miss the hell out of my black/artifact deck. I'd piss people off by bringing out Nevinyrrall's Disk half the time since I had a bunch of them at the time.
I've always held that structure and limitations open for creativity. Occasionally, people can create something out of the aether. More often, structures act like air bubbles in supercooled water, they give the creation something to build itself from, which is way easier. And I hold that, as a rule, making creativity easier means more creativity
Thanks for the video, I really enjoyed it!
There is a way to counter the skinnerware problem. It's called the Cube format of magic the gathering. You put together a 360-720 custom set of your favourite magic cards (a cube) and use those cards to draft new decks with 8-16 people.
The beauty of this format is that once you get part the initial cost you get to share your favourite cards with your friends and they don't have to spend a penny to enjoy some good old kitchen table magic. It's a different experience every time, even if you keep the same cards in the cube for a long time. The cube is the informal jam session of MTG!
As a casual Magic player and deck builder I liked this comparison. Building a deck is my favorite part of the game, coming up with an idea and the assembling all the pieces of it.
Then after playing with the deck I go back to the deck building phase because the first iteration it's never the final one and I use the feedback collected during the games to start changing it piece by piece and the cycle continues.
I have played magic for a few years and my process for building a deck is to find a couple of cards or three or four that synergize in some way. It could be really weird or stupid powerful but it would work when I took a couple of hours and built the rest of the deck around it.
I have spent a lot less time with some music making software, knowing almost nothing about music theory or how to play any instrument. My process was the same, that I would find a couple of beats I liked and then make new ones that sounded like they complimented those core beats and I'd spent an hour or two deciding what combination of instruments fit the beats the best and how I should arrange or reconstruct the beats to make a song that sounded weird or stupid but somehow good.
My favorite Magic metaphor to explain how people play is like fishing, and I think it applies here, which is I think is a really important thing to cover. MTG and fishing both have professionals, and amateurs, and a lot of people doing it. And while there are pros, most people just go to the lake with a rod and fish, similar to how most magic players just do it when hanging out with friends. To me jazz is very similar, especially as a dancer of a jazz-derived format (Lindy Hop). All 4 of these things to me share this similarity of proffesional vs. amateur, and improvisational vs. choreographed. There are very broken down ways of doing them, to very built up ways of doing them.
So you're saying, "restrictions breed creativity."
For those not in the loop, This is a saying Magic Head Designer Mark Rosewater uses frequently in talking about game and card design. The premise is that, contrary to intuition, restrictions force you to be *more* creative because you are forced to approach things differently.
For anyone who has played Doomsday in an Eternal format, you know that the possible lines of play are daunting and new ones happen regularly. It's the improviest of improvisation.
I have to say that the "contraption" joke really made me laugh out loud.
A very interesting example of a similar kind of art is american tribal style belly dance. This is a kind of belly dance that instead of taking inspiration from modern raks sharki (glamorous modern Egyptian style belly dance), it takes inspiration from folk dance from different tribal communities. It is called american tribal style because it was born in america, but there is no doubt from the creators or from the dancers regarding the credits and the inspiration. The only original element is that many of the original folk styles that inspire ATS don't have a vocabulary to call their move, meanwhile ATS takes several moves and gives each a name. These moves can be very basic, like a simple hit with the hip, or sequences, like an arms movement followed by a turn, and the idea is that each move has a signal, so everyone knows what step follows after the signal and the dancers can follow whatever the leader marks. The idea is that for a presentation of ATS the dancers must have a part coreographed and a part done through improvisation with the official vocabulary, and even though we don't know what the leader is going to do we all follow her and it seems like we are following a choreography, when we are actually improvising based on our own signals.
The interesting part of this is that we are all improvising together and whenever we manage to do a "combo" in a very smooth way and link one move after another we feel a very special kind of connection because we manage to predict what the next step is going to be. Everyone gets a chance to be a leader, and something that is also interesting is that we end up predicting what each girl likes to do when it's her turn so that another way of doing smooth combos, by knowing each other.
Maybe it's not that interesting from the point of view of a viewer because the idea is that they don't notice that we're improvising, to them it just seems like a cool choreography with sensual moves.
As an avid Magic the Gathering and guitar player, this is a profoundly awesome idea that I can't believe I never thought of before! Extremely accurate, awesome work :D
6:09 I'm not sure anyone else does that face :D
Thanks for cracking me up! :)
As a current player of Magic and a former player of jazz piano, I totally agree. This compositional, improvisational form is the ideal Magic play experience, and is even go so far as to say you know you've reached it when you enter a flow state.
The biggest difference in my experience is how other people react to you being bad at them. I could swing just fine, and get my head around 9b7 chords, but my high school classmates (who were admittedly all jerks) laughed when I admitted I was scared of improvising. In the Magic scene, conversely, there are Friday Night Magic and prerelease events designed specifically for new players to come and explore and get help from more experienced players. The worst experience I had in that regard wasn't a refusal to help, it was deck edits made without explanation, which felt like a loss of autonomy but was easier to interpret as well-intentioned than the aforementioned laughing.
There are many varieties of ways that folks end up piloting their MtG decks - which is much like the many ways that Jazz can be played - but I think the complexity of choices involved in each are different: in Jazz, choices are (not quite) infinite, but each choice isn't dependant on the choices that have come before it. Alternatively, in MtG, we often talk about "choice trees" or "lines of play," which are concepts that refer to how each choice in a game directly affects the number of choices that you can make after it. And the choices of your opponent also directly affects the number of choices that you can make.
So like, while you can make splashy, off the wall choices to great effect in both subjects, there are different kinds of complexity at work to arrive at those places. I imagine the fact that one is driven by the idea of "winning" is probably at work here (there's really no concept of "winning" in Jazz unless you rig up a Jazz-off competition, but like...why?).
Cause when I be playin those mountains, I'm all like skibbity-bap-bap-bap skedaddle-dooooo!!!
I say Magic is the Diskworld of games, although the setting, actions and some of the characters are constantly chaining it's easy to stay/get back into because everything still feels very familiar. Also both are at there best when taken seriously and as a bit of a laugh at the same time and in the absence of people who fail to understand this.
As an avid fan of both Magic and Jazz I would say that they are both remarkably similar. Both are the epicenters for their companion pieces and spawn other similar forms of themselves in the same medium, both require good players to constantly practice with a firm grasp of their rules and conventions but only because they still need the players/musicians to be creative with and mess around with their conventions to ultimately generate something new. Formats can also be equated to genres of magic because they are all distinct variations on a theme.
I had been thinking about a similar question from the perspective of Magic's design team and came up with the metaphor of an architecture firm. Richard Garfield built this building in the beginning of Magic which first and foremost had to function, and as you've mentioned, this framework became the industry standard for future collectable card games. This could be akin to Modernist architecture's emphasis on efficient usage of space and maximizing mobility within the building. Once the engineers ensure that this has been accomplished the design team utilizes visual aesthetics (card art/design) and story (card names, world-building, etc.), to make people want to be in and around that building.
Every set of Magic cards builds onto that existing building, and the design team has to ensure people are continually grabbed by the immersive aesthetic experience, while also making sure the pipes still fit together. This is an enormously difficult task, and I don't think anyone does it better.
If you're not familiar with the "Timmy, Johnny, Spike" design philosophy of magic, this article is worth reading:
magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/timmy-johnny-and-spike-2002-03-08
It describes the three types of players magic designs for, and can also play into this architecture metaphor.
Johnny likes to cast big spells, and therefore just wants a BIG building, a skyscraper perhaps.
Timmy loves weird convoluted combos, so his building might be labyrinthine, but navigable by fellow Timmys.
Spike prefers no-frills brutal effectiveness, and so loves Brutalist architecture whose form is entirely driven by function.
Thank you for this video, it really got me thinking!
Thanks Adam Neely's one million subscribed special/interview with Rhett Schull.
I would say that commander is the jazz of magic because like in jazz you can freestyle and play what you want while synergizing with your commander.
EDIT: Also yugioh is the only ccg that doesn't use a resource system. ( that I know of )
MercySucks Why Commander and not other formats? You might not have a face-of-the-deck legendary creature (actually, you might), but you can express either way. 4-ofs say a lot about a deck, too.
Two of my most favorite things put together.
Magic and jazz are both addictive, competitive vehicles for self-expression and collaboration that encourage innovation and optimization through a combination of standardized, endlessly repeatable forms and robust constraints with a vast possibility space that grows and changes over time. As a trombonist and designer, I think music and games have very similar structures, and playing jazz standards in a small combo is one of the most game-like ways to play music.
I'm all for comparing seemingly disparate things for discussion's sake and to produce fresh insight, but I got a little hung up on this Idea Channel video. It kept reminding me of this brief exchange I had with a former coworker. I'm a music listener/maker, and he frequently traveled to participate in Magic tournaments and was always studying the meta and so forth. I tried talking to him about collaboration and improvisation between musicians one day. In an attempt to convey my enthusiasm in terms I thought he would better understand, I likened the jam session I was telling him about to a game without winners or losers where the focus was exploring what was possible. He said to me, "A game without winners or losers is not any game I want to play." So, I guess I'm troubled that the inherent distinctions between jazz, an almost borderless musical genre (and sometimes-competition, in certain contexts), and Magic, a complex competitive card game (the playing of which may also be considered an art form--though I must plead ignorance of the game and, as a result, what such a consideration might entail), were not more thoroughly explained. To me, jazz performance, even at its most confrontational (domineering soloists or bandleaders, dueling solos, aggressive call and response), seems more collaborative and also permits "rule"-breaking, whereas Magic seems to place primacy on the domination of one opponent by another and requires both parties' cooperation with the game's rules to arrive at such an outcome.
That rule explanation made it sound more like baseball. Jazz, baseball. Can't wait for the Ken Burns doc on Magic
I think it is worth discussing Hearthstone's unique approach to improvisation in the CCG genre. Being a digital game gives it plenty of room to explore unique design spaces, like with the Discover mechanic, which literally lets you make a choice in the middle of the game by allowing you access to new cards outside of your constructed deck. This clever use of its medium allow Hearthstone to do what other physical CCGs cannot; let a third party influence the game, in this case the random number generator.
I'm an improviser in a small city. We do a mix of short form (improv games like Whose Line is it Anyway) and long form improv (improvised plays). With a short form improv show you plan certain games knowing that it will be played within a framework of the rules of that game, but if you have good players it will still be unique and original and fun. When planning the show you know "this game lasts between 1 and 2 minutes, this one lasts 4, etc. but each game also has visual elements like number of people, is it an open ended scene between two people or a guessing game with a set stage picture. You can also throw curveballs into the set structures by "breaking the rules."
Short-form improv is generally looked down on as less arty or good compared to long form but I think the phrase "There is a particular pleasure in composing something you get to play in an unexpected way with other people" might have just helped save it for me.
Thanks.
Appreciated this as an MTG player and musician. Put together fairly well.
Makes sense if you think of the sideboard.
The sideboard is like any musician saying "hey, know that song? Let's take that part from that song an insert here somewhere as a nod to something we currently understand our audience likes" like a jazz musician suddenly inserting a cowboy bebop intro inside a jam during a solo piece because he saw someone with a cowboy bebop tshirt in the audience.
As a loose analogy, I think Magic and Jazz is a great one. Creativity and improvisation are key to both of these things, but you probably don't want to scratch too hard beyond that. I really appreciated the "assemble contraption" joke in the video, as a 20+year Magic player, your presentation and the joke made me laugh out loud.
Magic and Jazz do share similarities in many ways: Both started in more or less a single form, from where multiple different forms where created (and adapted) by different groups of 'fans'. Each form different from the other but still related. Although this is something you could say about a lot of 'things' that get discovered by an increasing number of people.
There has, somehow, never been an Idea Channel episode that has gone over my head as much as this one. YOU DID AN EPISODE ON THE WORLD BEING A SIMULATION!
I'd note that there is an in-house Magic league at Wizards trying to figure out where the game is going based on designs in the pipeline. This allows for a very direct comparison to the composer sitting down with his performers and getting feedback on what they've found in the score to allow for further tweaks before the public sees/hears it.
As both a jazz pianist and a avid magic player, I can agree on this premise. Both in a way produce the same kind of stimulation when playing either a chart or a game.
I play both Magic and Jazz, and may I say the combination is truly wonderful.
I played magic for 20 years before I was forced into retirement from the game. As such I saw the game change and evolve since the early days of Ice Age until the more modern sets. In this span of time there were tons of cards created, but also new play styles that went along with them. In the earliest days, a game lasting fewer than five, maybe six turns was a legend whispered about in basements and comic shops. Strategies were made of many moving parts but often needed a back up plan. Somewhere along the line the cards aloud decks to more or less play them self. Like a stream of consciousness, the deck put together by a good deck builder would crash and wail and do exactly what it was meant to do in the hands of any competent player.
This video got me thinking about that evolution. From a game that was an awkward conversation, to these free wheeling improvisations with extended solos. Bending of the rules of music in jazz is not unlike playing with a rule loop hole in magic. The famous jazz saying "It's the notes they don't play". So too is it the cards not played that can make a strategy work. There is a deck out there that runs on no mana and forcing yourself to discard from your hand. It sounded like a weird art experiment until I saw it played. But also like Jazz, or any music genre these days, Seeing something thoughtful and artistic and separating it out from the bullshit can be difficult. As new tricks are learned by inventive players or musicians, less creative players shove them into places to make their composition feel more artistic or intelligent. There can be a lack of appreciation for unique spin on something that is a very vanilla strategy because it don't have that wow factor gimmick.
And that brings me to the consumption angle, you may have played your best or come up with the best deck your cards could muster, but it is seen as unimportant or inferior because you are held up against every other piece. Often to stay competitive, players fork over truck loads of money for the new hot cards. I don't know much about jazz, but I doubt there is an equivalent of Jazz musicians paying large sums of money just to have a band that plays it's own improvisation for them. In that respect it's more like pop music; tons of money thrown at a pretty face and some auto-tuning of a song written by a commit in a board room.
I would like to point out that formats like draft are probably more akin to Jazz than a constructed format. Using the rules of the game and the set of cards to construct a deck on the fly with packs being passed around a table probably helps the comparison hold up a little bit better. There is something to be said about putting together weird synergies and combinations that you find mid way though picking cards that is just absurdly fun. I just came back from drafting tonight and although I went 1-2 and did really poorly, my deck was something entirely different than what I normally have the pleasure of playing, and although it was hard for it's mechanics to pull off, it was awesome when it worked and just won the game (The deck was a Blue/White Kefnet cycling deck with Approach the Second Sun, for anyone wondering).
Magic and PBS idea channel!
What a lucky day.
I am a longtime M:tG player and Jazz fan. I find this comparison pretty apt, and would say that while Magic does have its central forms used in the big tournaments (Standard constructed, Draft, Sealed, Modern constructed), there's kitchen tables everywhere where different play rules are created and used (Commander and its baby sibling Tiny Leaders being the more popular examples). There's people building "Draft Cubes" for parties where everyone builds their own decks from a shuffled-up giant set of pre-selected cards. There's small groups playing where their decks have an agreed upon theme, like Tribal, aka "all the same creature type." There's group free-for-all games I've been in with 8 other players where I knew I couldn't win but I could determine who did. There's team formats like Two-Headed Giant and Emperor, where players have to adjust their strategies on the fly to compensate for their teammate's decisions. WotC has dabbled in new twists on its own, such as Planechase (where there's a group deck that affects gameplay one card at a time), Archenemy (Where it's 3 v 1 but the 1 has a bonus deck of free bonuses they receive one of each round), and the Vanguard cards (a character card that gives you a different starting life, maximum hand size, and additional game ability). All these versions have their fans and detractors, and that makes a good parallel with the subgenres of jazz such as swing, smooth, acid, big band, showtunes, and whatever category somebody tries to box Miles Davis into.
Commander/EDH is the 4hr Phish concert of games, you don't remember what happened but everyone had a good time except that one guy who had a bad trip and you'll keep coming back for the rest of your life.
2:13 for those of you who don't play magic, the "assemble contraptions" joke is based of a single card from a set that gave us cards which use mechanics from later sets, as if we were seeing a glimpse of magic future. there has yet to be another card that interacts with contraptions and it is not known what it means to assemble them.
Magic player here, never played jazz... What struck me here is the idea of netdecking. When a magic player copies a decklist offline, usually from a pro-tour, does that still match the connection to Jazz? It's true that every game with that copied decklist will be different through randomization, but it's still piloted the exact same way each time. I'm not sure. It seems that for this example to make sense, we'd have to focus more on the homebrew decks. That way, the standard you talk about is still there, but 1000x fold on the customization.
I only play Magic, but that was a fascinating comparison, especially when you consider versions of the game like Commander where there is only one of each* card in a 100 card deck (most formats are 40 or 60 card decks, and you can have up to four of a card). No two games ever play the same there - improvisation cannot be avoided!
[*] each interesting card, ie anything but basic land.
To anyone who hasn't played a "Magic clone" or any other Trading Card Game, it really is as fun as Mike makes it sound. The space for self-expression within a choice of 30 or 40 or 60 manages to be limitless, both in the broad strokes of the colours of your cards to the single card difference that makes a good decklist into a tournament winning one. Additionally, while games like Magic employ the baseball-card-esque booster pack method there are other games, LCGs (or Living Card Games) like Android: Netrunner sell expansions with playsets of the entire expansion in every single box, meaning you always get every single new card as it comes out, if you choose to buy it, which while maybe not much better for the wallet when it comes to making a complete collection do feel a little better morally. But if your concern is completing collections, one important issue that many people do not realise is that many card games have FREE ONLINE PLAYERBASES. If you shop around and ask questions, you'll find people are happy to direct you to a site where you can play the card game you are interested, entirely online, without paying a dime for the complete collection of every single card. These are usually tolerated by the publisher, and form the number 1 way I'd recommend trying a card game.
I like this comparison, and wonder if it could be taken further to address the fans of each thing. I think "jazz snobs" and "Magic the Gathering nerds" maybe share the trait of a close-knit, sometimes exclusive community. I'd propose that the high level of knowledge required to participate in, or fully appreciate, either art form creates a sort of barrier of entry to each respective community of fans. I don't see the same thing happening with pop music or Uno.
Playing Magic since 99. This was an incredibly good video.
this reminds me of Mark Rosewater,'s lead designer at WOTC, design philosophy of "restrictions breed creativity"
One thing that I wish was talked about was the different formats of magic like Commander/EDH. Fans created this new version of the game and WotC started creating cards for the new format.
As a bit of a thought experiment, where do you think judges might fit within this metaphor?
For context, Judges in MTG are "neutral arbiters" that know the rules inside and out and help resolve rules disputes and and questions. They can also assist with running tournaments, events, etc.
Sure, maybe there isn't a parallel. I can't figure out one myself, but I'm curious to see where this might lead others.
Just a thought
Mark Rosewater, the current head of design at magic the gathering is known for his mantra of "restrictions breed creativity" in regards to his design philosophy of games, which, at first appears almost antithetical to the nature of jazz unless you start asking musicians about certain tracks or composing. You'll find many of them apply rules to themselves for certain songs. "I wanted to do a song that used a weird time signature" or "I wanted to work with a certain instrument". Jazz in particular loves these kinda rules, sometimes changing or adding more mid-song.
I'm not sure I have a point to this outside of a line of thought.
You had me at contraptions. Well played.
It would be also interesting to talk about formats. Standard and Modern have around 8 deck formulas that "survive" with minor alterations from player to player so its very much predictable most of the time (See how most sideboard is built on hate to other specific decks and not a color for example). Highlander, EDH and Draft are formats where it becomes more unpredictable and therefore susceptible to more improvisation and crazy results (and in my opinion more fun). GREAT episode!