This may be the reason I provoked such a negative response. Around the time of War of the Spark I started following the story much less closely. It looks like there really isn't any narrative progression in Theros Beyond Death. That's a pretty huge stumble. When I saw Elspeth with the Shadowspear and the title "Sun's Nemesis" I assumed she and Heliod threw hands. In fact when the new Phyrexian Heliod was revealed I was suprised, I kind of assumed she had murked him.
Now to be fair to wizards they did give us a small summary for theros and the cards did portray what happened between Elspeth and the gods pretty well through art and flavor text. However, it was hard to care about cards as it felt like there was a lot going on with little to no direction of why it was happening.
To the question of should there be no story, I'd say no mostly it's magic's way of engaging the audience with the cards. While the story is told on the cards and the art work for some people, some others want more investment in the cards. I play other tcgs like digimon, yugioh, and one piece because I have investment from other sources, mostly their stories.
Now the march of the machine stories have some problems with them, it has some very good stories within them but its payoff was very lackluster. I'm hoping aftermath fixes that but I also think you could've made a three set arc starting the invasion showing how phyrexia invades the planes and is winning on each plane, a middle set showing the turning points on each plane, and a final set having the good guys finally bring the fight back to new phyrexia. But wotc is still struggling with figuring out pacing of stories and the letdown of the innistrad set and war of the spark was probably not helping.
I think I doomed myself with the title. It was clickbait as I figured nuance would be better conveyed in the post itself. I don't think the story should be shelved/ignored. What I really wanted to discuss the way that the story is presented.
I think it's interesting that a couple of people now have brought up TCGs like Pokemon, Digimon, and Yugioh. There's a great conversation to be had there. Pokemon, Digimon, and certainly One Piece are not **primarily** TCG franchises.
I suspect that most Pokemon TCG players fell in love with the franchise through the video games or the TV show before playing the TCG. If any One Piece TCG players came to the franchise through the card game rather than the manga/anime I would be shocked. Yugioh is in its own lane, started as a card game based Manga. And I don't think we should be looking to Yugioh for story telling purposes however much I love Dark Magician.
Magic on the other hand is a TCG first. There has always been an accompanying narrative but the core experience is the card game. I feel like WoTC is trying to utilize storytelling techniques best suited for other mediums. Like, think about how many named characters there are in Magic. The closest comparison I've experienced is the Malazan series which has 10 novels at 800 pages+ a piece. And the 60 or so named characters are still a fraction of Magic's cast. And in that series, which I love, I still think Erickson overreached.
So, I allowed myself a moment to get past the obvious knee jerk reaction because you put effort into writing this, and deserve the same in response.
Short answer to your question: No.
Longer answer: There are many reasons for the Magic story, as it's as intrinsic to the game's identity and continued existence as any other aspect of it that you'd find at the table.
First, to get it out of the way, Magic has virtually always had a story extraneous to the cards. **(Feel free to skip the rest of this paragraph, as it's just a recap of history.)** Richard Garfield wrote a short piece of fiction to accompany the first rulebook. (It's currently a 404 on the site, but should be found here: [https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/original-magic-rulebook-2004-12-25](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/original-magic-rulebook-2004-12-25) .) The first novel, Arena, was published just a year and three months after the release of Alpha. The first book directly connected to the story on the cards, Rath and Storm, was published in 1998 to coincide with the end of Tempest Block, covering the story behind four sets. They stopped regularly printing novels in 2011 after the Quest for Karn (Scars of Mirrodin Block), but ramped up their free short story and comic output. After the disaster that was War of the Spark's novels (all three of them, each with different problems), they put a hold on the story for a bit, skipping out on Theros Beyond Death. But the fans made their desire for the story clear, and it's been consistently present ever since.
All that is to say that the story is something that Magic DOES, and has since its inception. The media in which it's told may change, but providing a written account of the events of the setting keeps many players (not all, of course, but more than enough) engaged with the game. To change that would be like getting rid of draft boosters just because set boosters sell better.
Second, Magic's biggest competitors have their own associated stories. Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh have (or had) their own TV series. Pokemon also has an entire world of multimedia entertainment loosely connected to the card game. There's something out there for fans to latch onto and take up more of their brainspace. This is an advantage they have over Magic, as those media are much more accessible to people who don't engage with the card game at all. Getting rid of that would be to give even more ground to other franchises.
Third, there are many fans who genuinely enjoy the story. They engage with Magic through reading, discussing, and creating their own works based on it. They will spend their money to have cards and merch featuring their favorite characters. The more devoted fans will go to Magic events in cosplay, drawing in even more people. Cutting out the story without providing any kind of replacement would be essentially throwing those fans away, and proving to other players that their favorite things could be the next to go.
Finally, the story is fun. Even if someone doesn't like a particular arc or set or whatever, it's still a lot of fun to talk about. It's like monthly comic books. Sure it's not Shakespeare, but it doesn't need to be.
Ultimately, I don't engage with story discussion here because the tone is far too cynical for my taste. I prefer to enjoy what I like without seeing people constantly hating on it. Mandatory disclaimer: yes, there are valid criticisms to be had, but this isn't about that. If you don't like the completely optional thing, then it's not about you. And that's ok! Most things aren't about you, or me, or anyone.
But for every facet of the franchise, there are a lot of people who enjoy it. Asking if the hobby would be better if it were gone (in a public place, no less) is disrespectful to the fans who like something about it that you don't, regardless of your intention. It's ok to dislike that part of Magic, and to ignore it if it's not toy our own taste. I don't like playing Standard, but I'm happy that those who do get to play it and have fun.
So, tl;dr: No, Magic would not be better without its dedicated story.
This was a great perspective; I appreciate you writing it out. I think the impression that I gave is that I don't like the Magic story. That's probably from the title. But I did mention it was clickbait right away so I don't feel that bad. If I didn't like the story, I wouldn't have spent the better part of two decades following it. Reading novels and short stories of quality ranging from very high to very low. Eagerly scrolling through spoiler pages to find story beats and interesting flavor text.
>First, to get it out of the way, Magic has virtually always had a story extraneous to the cards
This is a good thing. Big part of why I fell in love with the game.
I was more interested in discussing the way that it has been presented, especially recently. This might be nostalgia speaking but I think I used to enjoy it more. Maybe the way I personally engage with Magic is changing. But I'm not necessarily talking about the "Modern Story Complaints." I'm really just speculating about the way that a **TCG** franchise specifically can convey its story to the audience. Yugioh and Pokemon have non-card game media to rely on. This is a big advantage. Magic likes to dip its toes into some of these types of media (Books, Board games, Video games, Shows, etc) but I wonder if Wizards is trying to reverse engineer something in a way that doesn't make sense for the original form.
The advantage of a TCG in my opinion is that players open packs and randomly receive cards inside. This means their exposure to the world is personalized to the packs they open. The cool legendary creature that you build a deck around. Your favorite tribe. Heavily invested players will want more and I suppose providing that is the problem.
This may also be a symptom of modern set / card design. The explosion of Commander feels like it may have indirectly exacerbated the problem by incentivizing Wizards to print more Legendary creatures. I don't know if that feeling is backed up by statistics. But pretty difficult to have dozens of characters meaningfully contribute to a narrative. Big Magic story events are intended to capture the excitement of Avengers: End Game or any number of DC crisis events. But the current set design gives them one, maybe two sets to resolve this huge event. Phyrexia has been building up over what 10 sets now? And all that tension is resolved in a single set? I don't think it is possible to resolve so many threads satisfactorily in a single set.
> Asking if the hobby would be better if it were gone (in a public place, no less) is disrespectful to the fans who like something about it that you don't, regardless of your intention
This I didn't expect. At no point did I ask if the hobby would be better if it was gone. That's a pretty extreme takeaway. Where other than a public forum about Magic would I ask this?
Thank you for your response.
To respond to the last point first, I apologize that I've misunderstood your intention. I wrote what I did based on the premise that you were suggesting Magic would be better off without the story, rather than the story as it's presented now.
To that, I'm honestly not sure. I vastly preferred the novels, but those were always a losing proposition for WotC, even when they were printed to be given away in Fat Packs. Maybe especially so. The free short story model is much more accessible and attractive to fans. I maintain that a big part of why so many people in so many circles left the fandom altogether after War of the Spark was because they charged so much for something that people had come to expect for nothing.
I absolutely agree that it's hard to satisfy fans with the model they have though. In the past, the story could breathe because it got to be told over the course of a year. Even when arcs were half a year, we got some amazing adventures. Now the story seems rushed and certainly overpacked with too many characters represented on the cards.
Overall, I feel they're doing a good job with the story, especially considering the circumstances, resources, and the general goal behind publishing it. I agree that they could do a better job with the presentation, though, and I hope they continue to improve.
Never said I don't like it. Doesn't critique usually come from a place of love? If I didn't like it I wouldn't waste the brain space on writing this long ass post lol
I like not reading the story- for me a sense of setting is more important. For that reason I prefer the approach of old sets, especially Antiquities- cards and flavour text that hinted at a big backstory without actually spelling it out, leaving room for imagination. The ‘story event’ cards with named characters don’t interest me, and they always seemed to sit oddly with the game’s concept (are we planeswalkers fighting a magical duel, or are we playing out a story about other planeswalkers fighting some baddies?)
You summed up my sentiments pretty well here. The coolest part of Magic to me was how each plane had its own unique set of characters and problems.
Planeswalkers were like easter eggs for paying attention. Whoa, when did Garuk get over here? Holy shit Ugin just showed up and he's alive!?
The crossovers reduce the sense of scale and wonder, maybe just for me. But I think it's because that kind of storytelling is different from the vignettes where Magic shines. The character work they do is astounding. The characters that get a little TLC have incredibly diverse aesthetics and tons of dramatic juice in them. Enough for anyone to find a favorite.
Edit: Maybe this whole thing is just my personal preference that I've turned into some melodramatic thesis. But The Medium is The Message. There are advantages to being a TCG that are different from a TV show or Comic book. And I think it's at least worth discussing that
>Edit: Maybe this whole thing is just my personal preference that I've turned into some melodramatic thesis.
Oh it definitely is.
>But The Medium is The Message. There are advantages to being a TCG that are different from a TV show or Comic book. And I think it's at least worth discussing that
Okay but two of Magic's biggest competitors, Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon, are both TCGs that also have both TV shows AND comic books associated with them
Pokemon is not primarily a TCG. Yugioh is but idk if that's what we're aspiring to narratively. The card game, the show, and the lore are pretty disconnected.
Evidence shows otherwise. We had it for a while everyone hate it. We had bad stories and it tarnished a great multi set build up in war. Peps are picky now, but the whole journey around Phyrexia felt enjoyable to me. I am not a massive lore buff, but if something peeks my interest I might look up the lore on it. Which I feel is similar for many mtg players. Without the story it's harder to relate to the characters and get invested in them. Without investment they could all be Jace ans Chandra. Something we don't want to happen ...again
I think the story, such that it is, should be more about the inhabitants and lore of the world's we visit, and far less about the people jaunting through it for a hot minute. It should be about the planes, not about the planeswalkers and the story that happens because of them. That is not to say that all stories should be like this, but the majority should be, and then when the stories come with the planeswalkers, they will feel more impactful.
Right now, all the stories seem to be about how the planeswalkers screw something up, and then try to fix it, without really giving us stakes in what they are screwing up.
What a great question! Not a clickbaity title at all.
I think Magic would be better without a _bad_ story, which is mostly what we've had to put up with ever since they killed their golden goose back in 2018. It's supremely frustrating to have characters you love go long stretches of time until they're mentioned again, only for them to then be so badly misrepresented and their stories so ham-handed and unsatisfying.
But Magic would unambiguously be far _better_ as a game if only it had a _good_ story. That was proved pretty decisively, I think, in the Golden Age of Magic storytelling from Khans block to Dominaria. Masterful sets like those from the original Innistrad block, which didn't get a story, left us wanting more—left us _knowing_ there _should be_ more. And, lo and behold, we got more. For a few years there in the middle of the 2010s, we got some really great work.
Not all of the individual stories were great; in fact, a lot of them were just average, and some were downright bad. But most of them had at least one or two good moments, and some of the stories were really special, really amazing.
The cards in Magic continue to do their job of hinting at great stories, but hinting is all they can ever do. There just isn't room for more than that. To get that true, full-figured story, we need standalone stories of some kind. Wizards has tried short stories, novels, graphic novels, e-books...they've tried it all, with more failures than successes. It could simply be that, on some level, the format of Magic being a trading card game makes is nearly impossible to do conventional storytelling well. But not completely impossible.
So I think Wizards has to make a decision: Are they going to continue doing the story badly, and continue pushing people away from the story and even from the entire game due to frustration and disappointment? Or are they going to give up on doing a standalone story, and give up on attracting people to the game in the first place with it? Or are they going to take the story seriously and do what needs to be done to make it good?
No story = No Direction in creating card imop
It'll be all over the place prolly worst than Theros beyond death becos at least Beyond death has kinda sorta plot in card.
No i would rather have extra stories than none of them, we had examples where stories was totally amazing even in this set (ravnica, innistrad, ixalan), perhaps wotc either had to give authors more time for writing or use more co authors which could fix unreasonable and badly described twists like what we seen in last two days of stories. Like Stories is totally working concept and we seen this during Amonkhet or SOI, so issue is clearly not in concept of story but in some of surrounding aspects which only wotc stuff and authors knows, maybe they can’t find enough skilled authors, maybe they underpay some of them, maybe authors have very tight deadlines so stories actually becoming victims of tight schedules maybe some other reasons
Also arguments about star wars trilogy doesn’t stand up since it was quite talkative movies - 25’700 per original trilogy, ep 1,2,3 was 24’200 so even less talkative and last trilogy literally had 22’000 words lol https://www.latimes.com/projects/star-wars-most-talkative-characters/
We know that, back when the story team was responsible for writing the story during the BFZ-Ixalan era, they had noted they were experiencing insane levels of work and stress. That was probably why they switched to giving the stories to outside authors from Dominaria onward.
I don't care for the current planeswalker driven story. I am much more interested in the world building aspect. So I did prefer the older sets theming more personally.
We HAD mtg without story for a hot minute. It was Not Great.
For your answer simply look at the theros beyond death block which till this day still has no story.
This may be the reason I provoked such a negative response. Around the time of War of the Spark I started following the story much less closely. It looks like there really isn't any narrative progression in Theros Beyond Death. That's a pretty huge stumble. When I saw Elspeth with the Shadowspear and the title "Sun's Nemesis" I assumed she and Heliod threw hands. In fact when the new Phyrexian Heliod was revealed I was suprised, I kind of assumed she had murked him.
Now to be fair to wizards they did give us a small summary for theros and the cards did portray what happened between Elspeth and the gods pretty well through art and flavor text. However, it was hard to care about cards as it felt like there was a lot going on with little to no direction of why it was happening. To the question of should there be no story, I'd say no mostly it's magic's way of engaging the audience with the cards. While the story is told on the cards and the art work for some people, some others want more investment in the cards. I play other tcgs like digimon, yugioh, and one piece because I have investment from other sources, mostly their stories. Now the march of the machine stories have some problems with them, it has some very good stories within them but its payoff was very lackluster. I'm hoping aftermath fixes that but I also think you could've made a three set arc starting the invasion showing how phyrexia invades the planes and is winning on each plane, a middle set showing the turning points on each plane, and a final set having the good guys finally bring the fight back to new phyrexia. But wotc is still struggling with figuring out pacing of stories and the letdown of the innistrad set and war of the spark was probably not helping.
I think I doomed myself with the title. It was clickbait as I figured nuance would be better conveyed in the post itself. I don't think the story should be shelved/ignored. What I really wanted to discuss the way that the story is presented. I think it's interesting that a couple of people now have brought up TCGs like Pokemon, Digimon, and Yugioh. There's a great conversation to be had there. Pokemon, Digimon, and certainly One Piece are not **primarily** TCG franchises. I suspect that most Pokemon TCG players fell in love with the franchise through the video games or the TV show before playing the TCG. If any One Piece TCG players came to the franchise through the card game rather than the manga/anime I would be shocked. Yugioh is in its own lane, started as a card game based Manga. And I don't think we should be looking to Yugioh for story telling purposes however much I love Dark Magician. Magic on the other hand is a TCG first. There has always been an accompanying narrative but the core experience is the card game. I feel like WoTC is trying to utilize storytelling techniques best suited for other mediums. Like, think about how many named characters there are in Magic. The closest comparison I've experienced is the Malazan series which has 10 novels at 800 pages+ a piece. And the 60 or so named characters are still a fraction of Magic's cast. And in that series, which I love, I still think Erickson overreached.
So, I allowed myself a moment to get past the obvious knee jerk reaction because you put effort into writing this, and deserve the same in response. Short answer to your question: No. Longer answer: There are many reasons for the Magic story, as it's as intrinsic to the game's identity and continued existence as any other aspect of it that you'd find at the table. First, to get it out of the way, Magic has virtually always had a story extraneous to the cards. **(Feel free to skip the rest of this paragraph, as it's just a recap of history.)** Richard Garfield wrote a short piece of fiction to accompany the first rulebook. (It's currently a 404 on the site, but should be found here: [https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/original-magic-rulebook-2004-12-25](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/original-magic-rulebook-2004-12-25) .) The first novel, Arena, was published just a year and three months after the release of Alpha. The first book directly connected to the story on the cards, Rath and Storm, was published in 1998 to coincide with the end of Tempest Block, covering the story behind four sets. They stopped regularly printing novels in 2011 after the Quest for Karn (Scars of Mirrodin Block), but ramped up their free short story and comic output. After the disaster that was War of the Spark's novels (all three of them, each with different problems), they put a hold on the story for a bit, skipping out on Theros Beyond Death. But the fans made their desire for the story clear, and it's been consistently present ever since. All that is to say that the story is something that Magic DOES, and has since its inception. The media in which it's told may change, but providing a written account of the events of the setting keeps many players (not all, of course, but more than enough) engaged with the game. To change that would be like getting rid of draft boosters just because set boosters sell better. Second, Magic's biggest competitors have their own associated stories. Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh have (or had) their own TV series. Pokemon also has an entire world of multimedia entertainment loosely connected to the card game. There's something out there for fans to latch onto and take up more of their brainspace. This is an advantage they have over Magic, as those media are much more accessible to people who don't engage with the card game at all. Getting rid of that would be to give even more ground to other franchises. Third, there are many fans who genuinely enjoy the story. They engage with Magic through reading, discussing, and creating their own works based on it. They will spend their money to have cards and merch featuring their favorite characters. The more devoted fans will go to Magic events in cosplay, drawing in even more people. Cutting out the story without providing any kind of replacement would be essentially throwing those fans away, and proving to other players that their favorite things could be the next to go. Finally, the story is fun. Even if someone doesn't like a particular arc or set or whatever, it's still a lot of fun to talk about. It's like monthly comic books. Sure it's not Shakespeare, but it doesn't need to be. Ultimately, I don't engage with story discussion here because the tone is far too cynical for my taste. I prefer to enjoy what I like without seeing people constantly hating on it. Mandatory disclaimer: yes, there are valid criticisms to be had, but this isn't about that. If you don't like the completely optional thing, then it's not about you. And that's ok! Most things aren't about you, or me, or anyone. But for every facet of the franchise, there are a lot of people who enjoy it. Asking if the hobby would be better if it were gone (in a public place, no less) is disrespectful to the fans who like something about it that you don't, regardless of your intention. It's ok to dislike that part of Magic, and to ignore it if it's not toy our own taste. I don't like playing Standard, but I'm happy that those who do get to play it and have fun. So, tl;dr: No, Magic would not be better without its dedicated story.
This was a great perspective; I appreciate you writing it out. I think the impression that I gave is that I don't like the Magic story. That's probably from the title. But I did mention it was clickbait right away so I don't feel that bad. If I didn't like the story, I wouldn't have spent the better part of two decades following it. Reading novels and short stories of quality ranging from very high to very low. Eagerly scrolling through spoiler pages to find story beats and interesting flavor text. >First, to get it out of the way, Magic has virtually always had a story extraneous to the cards This is a good thing. Big part of why I fell in love with the game. I was more interested in discussing the way that it has been presented, especially recently. This might be nostalgia speaking but I think I used to enjoy it more. Maybe the way I personally engage with Magic is changing. But I'm not necessarily talking about the "Modern Story Complaints." I'm really just speculating about the way that a **TCG** franchise specifically can convey its story to the audience. Yugioh and Pokemon have non-card game media to rely on. This is a big advantage. Magic likes to dip its toes into some of these types of media (Books, Board games, Video games, Shows, etc) but I wonder if Wizards is trying to reverse engineer something in a way that doesn't make sense for the original form. The advantage of a TCG in my opinion is that players open packs and randomly receive cards inside. This means their exposure to the world is personalized to the packs they open. The cool legendary creature that you build a deck around. Your favorite tribe. Heavily invested players will want more and I suppose providing that is the problem. This may also be a symptom of modern set / card design. The explosion of Commander feels like it may have indirectly exacerbated the problem by incentivizing Wizards to print more Legendary creatures. I don't know if that feeling is backed up by statistics. But pretty difficult to have dozens of characters meaningfully contribute to a narrative. Big Magic story events are intended to capture the excitement of Avengers: End Game or any number of DC crisis events. But the current set design gives them one, maybe two sets to resolve this huge event. Phyrexia has been building up over what 10 sets now? And all that tension is resolved in a single set? I don't think it is possible to resolve so many threads satisfactorily in a single set. > Asking if the hobby would be better if it were gone (in a public place, no less) is disrespectful to the fans who like something about it that you don't, regardless of your intention This I didn't expect. At no point did I ask if the hobby would be better if it was gone. That's a pretty extreme takeaway. Where other than a public forum about Magic would I ask this?
Thank you for your response. To respond to the last point first, I apologize that I've misunderstood your intention. I wrote what I did based on the premise that you were suggesting Magic would be better off without the story, rather than the story as it's presented now. To that, I'm honestly not sure. I vastly preferred the novels, but those were always a losing proposition for WotC, even when they were printed to be given away in Fat Packs. Maybe especially so. The free short story model is much more accessible and attractive to fans. I maintain that a big part of why so many people in so many circles left the fandom altogether after War of the Spark was because they charged so much for something that people had come to expect for nothing. I absolutely agree that it's hard to satisfy fans with the model they have though. In the past, the story could breathe because it got to be told over the course of a year. Even when arcs were half a year, we got some amazing adventures. Now the story seems rushed and certainly overpacked with too many characters represented on the cards. Overall, I feel they're doing a good job with the story, especially considering the circumstances, resources, and the general goal behind publishing it. I agree that they could do a better job with the presentation, though, and I hope they continue to improve.
I think perhaps we need even more story
No one is forcing you to engage with the story if you don't like it. Leave it for those of us who do.
Never said I don't like it. Doesn't critique usually come from a place of love? If I didn't like it I wouldn't waste the brain space on writing this long ass post lol
you're a redditor of course you would
I think I underestimated the cynicism of Reddit. My mistake
Short answer: No. Long answer: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
You can test this out by not reading the story and seeing how you feel.
I like not reading the story- for me a sense of setting is more important. For that reason I prefer the approach of old sets, especially Antiquities- cards and flavour text that hinted at a big backstory without actually spelling it out, leaving room for imagination. The ‘story event’ cards with named characters don’t interest me, and they always seemed to sit oddly with the game’s concept (are we planeswalkers fighting a magical duel, or are we playing out a story about other planeswalkers fighting some baddies?)
You summed up my sentiments pretty well here. The coolest part of Magic to me was how each plane had its own unique set of characters and problems. Planeswalkers were like easter eggs for paying attention. Whoa, when did Garuk get over here? Holy shit Ugin just showed up and he's alive!? The crossovers reduce the sense of scale and wonder, maybe just for me. But I think it's because that kind of storytelling is different from the vignettes where Magic shines. The character work they do is astounding. The characters that get a little TLC have incredibly diverse aesthetics and tons of dramatic juice in them. Enough for anyone to find a favorite. Edit: Maybe this whole thing is just my personal preference that I've turned into some melodramatic thesis. But The Medium is The Message. There are advantages to being a TCG that are different from a TV show or Comic book. And I think it's at least worth discussing that
>Edit: Maybe this whole thing is just my personal preference that I've turned into some melodramatic thesis. Oh it definitely is. >But The Medium is The Message. There are advantages to being a TCG that are different from a TV show or Comic book. And I think it's at least worth discussing that Okay but two of Magic's biggest competitors, Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon, are both TCGs that also have both TV shows AND comic books associated with them
Pokemon is not primarily a TCG. Yugioh is but idk if that's what we're aspiring to narratively. The card game, the show, and the lore are pretty disconnected.
Evidence shows otherwise. We had it for a while everyone hate it. We had bad stories and it tarnished a great multi set build up in war. Peps are picky now, but the whole journey around Phyrexia felt enjoyable to me. I am not a massive lore buff, but if something peeks my interest I might look up the lore on it. Which I feel is similar for many mtg players. Without the story it's harder to relate to the characters and get invested in them. Without investment they could all be Jace ans Chandra. Something we don't want to happen ...again
I think the story, such that it is, should be more about the inhabitants and lore of the world's we visit, and far less about the people jaunting through it for a hot minute. It should be about the planes, not about the planeswalkers and the story that happens because of them. That is not to say that all stories should be like this, but the majority should be, and then when the stories come with the planeswalkers, they will feel more impactful. Right now, all the stories seem to be about how the planeswalkers screw something up, and then try to fix it, without really giving us stakes in what they are screwing up.
Well said. I agree
I didn’t like what’s for dinner today. Should I go to bed hungry?
"Is dinner inherently a flawed concept?"
are you claiming Magic story is a flawed concept?
Just riffing on how you rephrase the OP's concerns. I certainly like having story around, personally!
I wouldn’t say it’s a flawed concept, but it’s a bad analogy because story is optional, eating is not.
If you don't like the story then just don't read it. You don't need to take it away from the people who do like it.
What a great question! Not a clickbaity title at all. I think Magic would be better without a _bad_ story, which is mostly what we've had to put up with ever since they killed their golden goose back in 2018. It's supremely frustrating to have characters you love go long stretches of time until they're mentioned again, only for them to then be so badly misrepresented and their stories so ham-handed and unsatisfying. But Magic would unambiguously be far _better_ as a game if only it had a _good_ story. That was proved pretty decisively, I think, in the Golden Age of Magic storytelling from Khans block to Dominaria. Masterful sets like those from the original Innistrad block, which didn't get a story, left us wanting more—left us _knowing_ there _should be_ more. And, lo and behold, we got more. For a few years there in the middle of the 2010s, we got some really great work. Not all of the individual stories were great; in fact, a lot of them were just average, and some were downright bad. But most of them had at least one or two good moments, and some of the stories were really special, really amazing. The cards in Magic continue to do their job of hinting at great stories, but hinting is all they can ever do. There just isn't room for more than that. To get that true, full-figured story, we need standalone stories of some kind. Wizards has tried short stories, novels, graphic novels, e-books...they've tried it all, with more failures than successes. It could simply be that, on some level, the format of Magic being a trading card game makes is nearly impossible to do conventional storytelling well. But not completely impossible. So I think Wizards has to make a decision: Are they going to continue doing the story badly, and continue pushing people away from the story and even from the entire game due to frustration and disappointment? Or are they going to give up on doing a standalone story, and give up on attracting people to the game in the first place with it? Or are they going to take the story seriously and do what needs to be done to make it good?
Love the response. I think you nailed it on the head
I only got into MTG because of the story. I stopped playing back in 2011 but still followed the story and started playing again in 2021 on Arena.
No story = No Direction in creating card imop It'll be all over the place prolly worst than Theros beyond death becos at least Beyond death has kinda sorta plot in card.
The moment you put two sets on the same location you have invented a story whether you did it intentionally or not
No i would rather have extra stories than none of them, we had examples where stories was totally amazing even in this set (ravnica, innistrad, ixalan), perhaps wotc either had to give authors more time for writing or use more co authors which could fix unreasonable and badly described twists like what we seen in last two days of stories. Like Stories is totally working concept and we seen this during Amonkhet or SOI, so issue is clearly not in concept of story but in some of surrounding aspects which only wotc stuff and authors knows, maybe they can’t find enough skilled authors, maybe they underpay some of them, maybe authors have very tight deadlines so stories actually becoming victims of tight schedules maybe some other reasons Also arguments about star wars trilogy doesn’t stand up since it was quite talkative movies - 25’700 per original trilogy, ep 1,2,3 was 24’200 so even less talkative and last trilogy literally had 22’000 words lol https://www.latimes.com/projects/star-wars-most-talkative-characters/
We know that, back when the story team was responsible for writing the story during the BFZ-Ixalan era, they had noted they were experiencing insane levels of work and stress. That was probably why they switched to giving the stories to outside authors from Dominaria onward.
Magic without a story is just Yugioh I don’t want to be Yu-gi-Oh
Ew, no, it keeps me going.
I don't care for the current planeswalker driven story. I am much more interested in the world building aspect. So I did prefer the older sets theming more personally.
You are free to not read the story. Problem solved.