MTG.com's article by Richard Garfield

[LotusHead]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/rg1

Not exciting, but still written by Richard Garfield.  You might have heard of him...

[The Atog Lord]

That was a great article. Well written, in a style that flowed well. While of course it had nothing to do with Magic, I found it very interesting.

[Auracon]

The article was a bit short, and was not magic related  , but on the upside it was written well, and was interesting...

Not exciting, but still written by Richard Garfield.  You might have heard of him...

...now I just have to figure out who this Richard Garfield fellow is.  I remember a cat by that name  .

[dicemanx]

I remember that one of the major selling points of magic to me was the fact that it was so simple and elegant - no elaborate set up required and very little "busy work" as Garfield puts it. Combined with the fact that there is an almost irresistable urge to collect, along with the idea that the game of magic keeps morphing and taking on new directions every time a new set comes out, it made things a rather easy sell to me.

[Machinus]

I was surprised by the brevity but also by the topic and author! I'd like it if he wrote more about what he works on these days.

[freakish777]

Heh, I get the feeling the conversation went like:

Garfield: "Hey Wizards, you guys get 10,000 people a day at your Magic website, right?"

WotC: "Yeah..."

Garfield: "Well I have an article I've written and I want more people to read it."

WotC: "What's the article about?"

Garfield: "It's me complaining about MMORPGs and I'm pretty sure someone that helps make them will read it due to the cross-over of geekdom and take up the complaint at the next development meeting for their product."

WotC:  "....."

Garfield:  "You guys are in business because of me right?"

WotC: "Alright Richard, sounds good.  Come see us anytime."




Just to be clear, I enjoyed reading the article, and it's a style of writing I'm very familiar/comfortable with.  I just think it's funny that it seems like the reason it's on the Magic site is because Garfield wanted a larger audience to read it.

[Royal Ass.]

It was interesting, but the least he could have done was tied it into Magic directly.  I don't think that segue would have been difficult.

[Hi-Val]

He gets a million bonus points for mentioning Progress Quest.

Didn't we have a game of PQ going on in IRC for a long time? I think Anusien was winning last time I checked.

[Jacob Orlove]

His old articles in The Duelist were great, and almost never had anything to do with Magic directly. This is basically just another one of those, so it makes sense that they'd publish it.

[zeus-online]

I think he's got a point.....i quit playing warhammer due to two things...first of all i was annoyed that the game is SO much about luck, if the dices rolls wrong, you are doomed no matter what you do....and the other thing was "busywork" spending like 30 minuttes setting the game up is really annoying.

/Zeus

[freakish777]

I think he's got a point.....i quit playing warhammer due to two things...first of all i was annoyed that the game is SO much about luck, if the dices rolls wrong, you are doomed no matter what you do....and the other thing was "busywork" spending like 30 minuttes setting the game up is really annoying.

/Zeus

Doesn't Warhammer also involve painting miniatures as well?  I mean I know that there's a lot of people out there that really enjoy DIYing their own stuff, but for the large part of the audience, I'd have to think they'd rather just get stuff pre-packaged.

[zeus-online]

Yeah it does....but i bought a painted army from one of the local's cause that was the FIRST barrier..
That game just requires you to waste waaay too much time.

/Zeus

[President Skroob]

It's a big timesink, but Warhammer is also a pretty encompassing and satisfying hobby. Painting the miniatures can be fun, and even if you're not very artistically inclined (like me!) it's still a feeling of satisfaction to have an army that looks decent that you painted yourself.

Though I certainly agree on the setup (what a pain), I'm not sure I am with you on luck being an insurmountable barrier. Sure, there's luck, and luck can bring about some of the most entertaining moments in the game. Some of my friends are STILL talking about some of the unfathomably lucky breaks they got in that game to this day, though we haven't played in years. I still maintain there's a lot of strategy in the game as well. If it were all luck, I would have won some games...   I'm not saying that luck is inconsequential, but overall generally superior strategy will beat all but the most lopsided luck of the dice.

My friends were better strategists than I in Warhammer by a lot, but it was still good times all around.

[zeus-online]

Yeah, well i generally speaking roll 1-3 each time i have to roll to hit....So i basicly have to plan ahead on how i'm gonna miss with all my shots  (I played warhammer 40k)
I agree that there is a strategic factor aswell, but all the strategy in the world won't save you if your army can't hit anything.

/Zeus

[Anusien]

He gets a million bonus points for mentioning Progress Quest.

Didn't we have a game of PQ going on in IRC for a long time? I think Anusien was winning last time I checked.

I was playing, but I doubt I was winning, and #idlerpg is pretty poor on a laptop, so I gave that up.

[freakish777]

I will say that there's a pile of table top games that simply play better on a computer due to the book keeping being retardedly too involved.  Battletech in particular, do I want to know one of my mechs took a critical hit to a hand actuator?  Of course.  Do I want to have to be the one to keep track of it (write it down and record all the damage).  Hell no.

I get the feeling a bunch of other table top games are like this with the exception of being a little less complex (it's easier when you've got only hit points on units to keep track of instead of hit points on parts of units).

[Polynomial P]

I really do think the article has alot to do with magic and is relevent to the inital creation of magic. If garfield dislikes busywork he may have initially created cards that break the "one land per turn" rule in order to speed up the game through the first few turns instead of going "land, go". This would be analagous to the moving a pawn 2 spaces instead of 1. There *may* have been some repercussions to breaking the one land per turn rule as the game evolved, which underscores the importance of how busywork is removed. Overall, i liked the article.

[zeus-online]

Just too bad that it would seem that he hates the onslaught fetch-lands  :lol:

/Zeus