What I don't like is the "multiple millennia" thing. We can't even start to imagine what an awfully long time that is. Dracula doesn't even come close.
Dracula doesn't, but Imhotep sure does, as does Vandal Savage, and there are plenty of other examples. They're not vampires, but they're not completely unrelatable god-beings either. Vampire: the Masquerade postulates vampires older than Egypt and Babylon, and while those are monstrous and inhuman, the ones who lived in Egypt and Babylon aren't much different than those from just 200 years ago (more recently than that it's supposedly been the End Times and thus things have been changing faster and faster).
True, the current crop of Innistrad citizens are much to busy fighting their hardships to develop properly, but these circumstances couldn't have lasted for even one millennium. Either Avacyn was strong enough to give them some shelter or the monsters would have quickly gotten the better of them.
There's every reason to think Avacyn was enforcing stasis on the populace, refusing to allow them to develop. After all, progress is blue, and blue is halfway to black; evolution is green, and green is halfway to red. White is the color of unilateralism, purity and dogma. Why would an ultra-powerful White-aligned angel, who has a huge politically powerful church keeping the populace's obedience through terror of the monsters which only the church can keep at bay, permit any real development? She probably wants every generation of Innistradians to live functionally identical lives, honoring their ancestors and nurturing their children to follow their footsteps, identifying all but the most trivial degree of individualism and change as being the tools of evil and chaos trying to destroy her ideal society. She's not quite to the point of wanting to freeze the whole planet in a block of ice to keep it perpetually unchanging (hey, someone did mention Tevesh Szat), but the planet is like an ant farm to her, she wants the citizens to stay behind the glass and keep shuffling around in the same little tunnels forever, so she can sit back and watch the hypnotic patterns of their tiny, pleasant-as-long-as-completely-contained lives. If she saw the ants building up a hill of dirt that might eventually let them wedge open the lid of the tank and start crawling out into her nice, neat room, she'd certainly intervene to keep them where she thinks they belong, and she'd consider it an act of benevolence because she figures the cage is the ideal environment to keep them perfectly happy forever.
That article is meant to point out several things that might go wrong, but it hardly guarantees they will; after all, with magic powers and an entire society of fellow immortals, most of these issues wouldn't imply. (Also I think one of the 5 reasons was "you keep aging" and the vampires clearly don't have that problem, nor did planeswalkers when they were immortal.)
As far as the benefit of the rest of Magic is concerned, gold cards in Legends were executed perfectly. They got all the excitement a designer could hope out of a splashy new mechanic without using up any of the valuable design space. Truly amazing. --Aaron Forsythe's Random Card Comment on Kei Takahashi
Magic being at odds with technology is a classic trope which reminds me of this fine game: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcanum:_Of_Steamw... Unfortunately it's a scenario which can't be entirely used for MTG unless the Tech faction won't appear on any cards (i.e. spells).
And about guns, don't forget Weatherlight whose crew was firing cannons all around.
It's not really about magic and technology being antagonistic. It's about the seeming inability for Magic's cultures to substitute magic for technology. Really, The Flinstones seem more socially advanced than Magic's usual settings, what with the elephant sink and bird telephone and such. All we've really had that even looks to be past 1850 or so is that subplane where everyone is made out mercury or aluminum or something (and I guess that silly mech-thing Urza was driving around for awhile).
Even Ron Weasley had a flying car.
"Yeah, I get it, guys. Another plane full of goblins/zombies/whatever. Oh! We've stepped up to werevolves and vampires huh? Way to totally expand the multivers, guys!"
but we couldn't bear the thought that our Savor the Flavor fans might have missed it
Oh sure. That's the reason.
We've seen that Beyer has been slipping for months, but only recently did we find out why - he's lead designer on M13. That is more than a little exciting and I consider it a very adequate excuse for his recent poor performance as a flavor columnist
Really, we just need a plane that isn't presented as "Yet another Crapsack World".
Agreed. Alara was 3/5 paradise (by varying definitions) and only 2/5 crapsack at first, but that didn't last long, and otherwise Lorwyn was the last reasonably pleasant place we visited. I would like to see the high-fantasy and super-weird worlds hinted at by such Future Sight cards as Second Wind , Arcanum Wings , the thing with Lady Farisa in the flavor text, Lucent Liminid , and on the weird side Yixlid Jailer and Lumithread Field . Lots of amazing potential going to waste because Wizards refuses to mine this already mapped-out space, instead making up new planes that were never even hinted at before (although it's possible that Street Wraith , Grave Scrabbler , and perhaps even Lady Farisa were intended to represent Innistrad, since we know it was in the works at the time - Zendikar showed no such previews however, and Alara only the vaguest hint in the one Nacatl card, which in no way hinted at anything less or more than a full-on Aztec World).
As far as the benefit of the rest of Magic is concerned, gold cards in Legends were executed perfectly. They got all the excitement a designer could hope out of a splashy new mechanic without using up any of the valuable design space. Truly amazing. --Aaron Forsythe's Random Card Comment on Kei Takahashi
After all, Fantasy is a form of escapism, and it's harder to escape from day to day life when it's staring you in the face.
This in no way prevents urban fantasy genres such as World of Darkness and Unknown Armies, or for that matter the Marvel and DC superhero universes, from presenting a fantastic world which is called "21st Century Earth, Deluxe Edition" and providing many opportunities for escapism that are all the richer because we can recognize the reality in them. IMO this is what made Ravnica far and away the best setting Magic has ever had - it was a highly urbanized, overpopulated, economically imbalanced environment that had a lot of the same problems as reality, but added a shiny fantasy veneer that didn't actually change that reality much except to exagerrate it - the rich were even more powerful because they were also wizards, the poor were even more oppressed to the point that murder was legal as long as the victim wasn't Guild-affiliated - it really was a dystopian vision of life in a megacity akin to NYC or Tokyo gone to extremes, and I loved it for that. We could use another take on a similar concept one of these days - and while I don't know if I'd want to go quite that far, the sadly-deceased webcomic "Nascent" offered to explore the idea of what would happen if the real world (well, a version of the real world in which MTG didn't exist, as the author wanted to avoid any "Lovecraft meets Cthulhu" nonsense) gained access to the five colors of magic - you had a black-aligned corrupt corporate executive, a white medic in the Middle East, a red-aligned punk in Communist China who condemned his culture as "not worth saving" right as he gained the ability to breathe fire...it was fascinating stuff and I wish it had gone somewhere.
Technology advances to fulfill a need. When a mage can just concentrate on some lands she's visited and do mostly the same things we can do with all of our modern technology, then the residents of that world don't have much drive to advance beyond the most rudimentary tech. Not everyone has access to magic, granted, but it only takes a few mages to fulfill the roles a society needs.
True up to a point, but if a small elite controls all of the vital functions, they wield disproportionate power and their enemies are going to start scheming ways to get along without them. In order to justify the level of non-progress in most magic worlds, you have to do more than assume that wizards are substituting for technology - you have to assume that they're actively sabotaging it. Not necessarily consciously - just the fact that magic is used might be enough to make science functionally impossible to rely on, because science is about measuring results and finding them consistent, and nearby magic users could unintentionally generate so many X-factors (cast a fireball and disturb wind currents for a mile around because you broke the laws of thermodynamics, that kind of thing) that scientists would find it impossible to draw any sensible conclusions from their experiments and would just give up. Or at least would spew so much aether/phlogiston/imbalanced humors/spontaneous generation nonsense that they'd set science back as fast as it could advance, producing a perennial dark age in which everything you learn at 20 has been contradicted by the time you reach 40 (assuming you don't die of old age sooner than that).
but not so much as on Zendikar, where no magic really suppressed anything except other magic, and in this case, technology prospered in one area (equipment, gear, etc.) but not in others.
I figure that the reason Zendikar didn't advance was damn obvious - the ground kept getting up and walking away, or turning itself inside out, or floating off into the sky and sending you tumbling to your death, or just exploding. It was not a safe plane; it's a wonder anyone managed to live there at all. I figure that the land seemed to actively oppose efforts to explore it, presumably out of a subconscious effort to prevent anyone from figuring out how to wake the Eldrazi by exploring their ruins, but even far away from the ruins we saw that civilization could barely get off the ground. My assumption is that if you tried to build a big university and do serious research, the land would actively target that area and destroy it specifically to stop humans from growing too effective at taming Nature. Granted I may be attributing more volition to the land than it possessed even with dudes like Omnath involved, and attributing a green ethos even to the blue and black aligned parts of the land, but this did seem to be the best explanation - Zendikar will allow you to survive, just barely, but if you start getting uppity it will smack you down fast and hard, the way you or I would scratch an itch if it became too persistent to ignore.
As humans, inventiveness and a desire to make our lives easier would have produced machines to help at the harvets, process textiles, produce printed works and thus expand knowlege
Such accomplishments are probably invented over and over throughout the Multiverse, but lost just as quickly due to the struggles of nearby wizards, the marauding of monsters, and other such disruptions. Like I said before, progress would falter as fast as it advanced; you can't build a pyramid when the stones of the base are being hauled away under you so fast that you can barely keep from falling to your death.
increasing the ease of daily life, expanding daily hours for personal time
Keep in mind that throughout the Dark Ages people were taught that luxury and sloth were deadly sins, that it was spiritually necessary to spend your whole life on toil and duty and prayer, that idle hands did the devil's work. All that was without actual angels showing up and telling you these things, and actual demons showing up to avail themselves of any desires toward corrupt, self-indulgent behavior. I see no reason why the average Dominian citizen would not view the idea of easy living and personal recreation as follies at best, quite possibly dangers to the health of the soul. Being surrounded by crazy wizards and monsters would not tend to make people more sane and less superstitious. I don't think the people of Magic's multiverse can be given as much credit for intelligence and stability as us clever monkeys; we've had the run of our planet to an extent that villagers like Hans and Saffi can't even imagine because they're too busy running from lhurgoyfs and revenants.
As far as the benefit of the rest of Magic is concerned, gold cards in Legends were executed perfectly. They got all the excitement a designer could hope out of a splashy new mechanic without using up any of the valuable design space. Truly amazing. --Aaron Forsythe's Random Card Comment on Kei Takahashi
Agreed. Alara was 3/5 paradise (by varying definitions) and only 2/5 crapsack at first, but that didn't last long, and otherwise Lorwyn was the last reasonably pleasant place we visited. I would like to see the high-fantasy and super-weird worlds hinted at by such Future Sight cards as Second Wind , Arcanum Wings , the thing with Lady Farisa in the flavor text, Lucent Liminid , and on the weird side Yixlid Jailer and Lumithread Field . Lots of amazing potential going to waste because Wizards refuses to mine this already mapped-out space, instead making up new planes that were never even hinted at before (although it's possible that Street Wraith , Grave Scrabbler , and perhaps even Lady Farisa were intended to represent Innistrad, since we know it was in the works at the time - Zendikar showed no such previews however, and Alara only the vaguest hint in the one Nacatl card, which in no way hinted at anything less or more than a full-on Aztec World).
You're thinking of Patrician's Scorn . I fully agree with this sentiment. I want to see something like the liquid plane of Iquatana (Narcomeoba ). Screw the fact that water is Blue, since metal was colorless up to Mirrodin. I'm sure that their can be different liquid or gaseous (the world above) representations of the color pie. There have been so many planes hinted at but never visited! Look at the planes from Planechase: Valla (Immersturm ), Kaldheim (Skybreen ), Ir (Turri Island ), Moag (Fields of Summer ), Wildfire (Naar Isle ). F*cking Arkhos (Lethe Lake ) where "day and night intermingle, creating a twilight in which one never knows what is dream and what is reality." As much as I loved New Phyrexia, I feel that it'll set a bad precedent for returning to planes and we'll bounce between the same six or seven planes for years to come.
I agree with the idea that Avacyn is suppressing her supplicants, but the fact that magic or some other force impedes technological progress should not mean that we'll never visit a plane technologically advanced. Also, I don't think magic has changed much in millenia either. It shouldn't be that hard to create magical connections between two objects that sound or light can travel through (telephone, radio, television) or put an oracle or intelligence spirit in a box and make it solve problems written in runes or something (computational machine).
... I see no reason why the average Dominian citizen would not view the idea of easy living and personal recreation as follies at best, quite possibly dangers to the health of the soul. Being surrounded by crazy wizards and monsters would not tend to make people more sane and less superstitious...
You have to remember that it's never the average citizen that creates progress. People like Newton and Tesla were one-of-kind semi-outcasts during their times. Plus, crazy wizards are more likely to create technology, and technological advancement would be more important to survival. Technology rises to fill a need and, in Magic, that need is survival. Plus, it's weird that everyone has made Ornithopter s in EVERY SINGLE CENTURY but nothing has advanced past Da Vinci era technology. Where are the Innistrad Ornithopters then??
but we couldn't bear the thought that our Savor the Flavor fans might have missed it
Oh sure. That's the reason.
We've seen that Beyer has been slipping for months, but only recently did we find out why - he's lead designer on M13. That is more than a little exciting and I consider it a very adequate excuse for his recent poor performance as a flavor columnist
Yeah, I get it. I'm fine with that. I just wish they'd actually tell us that instead of feeding us a line.
You chose some interesting examples there. A lot of them seem to have enchantment-related gimmicks, implying that they may be preprints from the same plane/block. A plane where enchantments are as commonplace as artifacts were on Mirrodin.
or for that matter the Marvel and DC superhero universes
Now that you mention it, if they can do an entire plane based on where horror overlaps with fantasy, it could potentially be pretty great to see them do the same thing for the superhero genre.
I don't know... Bridge from Below sounds Innistrad-y, Witch's Mist has a gelatinous Overmother (o_o) with weird flavor, and Flowstone Embrace is definitely from Dominaria/Rath. Could mean a return to Dominaria/Rath, which means we get one less new, unique plane.
I would like to see the high-fantasy and super-weird worlds hinted at by such Future Sight cards as Second Wind , Arcanum Wings , the thing with Lady Farisa in the flavor text, Lucent Liminid , and on the weird side Yixlid Jailer and Lumithread Field . Lots of amazing potential going to waste because Wizards refuses to mine this already mapped-out space, instead making up new planes that were never even hinted at before.
You're thinking of Patrician's Scorn . I fully agree with this sentiment. I want to see something like the liquid plane of Iquatana (Narcomeoba ). Screw the fact that water is Blue, since metal was colorless up to Mirrodin. I'm sure that their can be different liquid or gaseous (the world above) representations of the color pie. There have been so many planes hinted at but never visited! Look at the planes from Planechase: Valla (Immersturm ), Kaldheim (Skybreen ), Ir (Turri Island ), Moag (Fields of Summer ), Wildfire (Naar Isle ). F*cking Arkhos (Lethe Lake ) where "day and night intermingle, creating a twilight in which one never knows what is dream and what is reality." As much as I loved New Phyrexia, I feel that it'll set a bad precedent for returning to planes and we'll bounce between the same six or seven planes for years to come.
Hear hear! I'd love to see another high fantasy or idyllic world. I enjoyed Lorwyn for the setting, and also Esper (although it was the only one of the five shards that was remotely interesting or innovative at all as far as I could tell). I'd love to see the worlds of almost all the cards quoted above (a generic wildfire plane I can probably live without).
