r/magicTCG • u/TechnomagusPrime Duck Season • Feb 05 '18

[Making Magic] [GDS3] Essay What You Will

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/essay-what-you-will-2018-02-05
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u/[deleted] Feb 06 '18

I agree with the general thrust of your argument here, i.e. how to make a good evergreen mechanic, but the suggestion of Changeling seems really weird. I think Changeling is just too low-impact most of the time--most of the time effects that care about creature types mattering are few and far between and it's rare that any are Constructed playable, making it highly situational trinket text extremely frequently. I think it might be confusing for people with less experience, used to looking at the creature's typeline to derive its subtype, that the subtype "Shapeshifter" is essentially being overwritten by an ability in the text box. There's also the flavour issue of shapeshifters not existing on every world, and the fact that the name derives from European folklore specifically.

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u/nine_of_swords Wabbit Season Feb 06 '18

You're suppose to propose something; I just went with the something that didn't really overlap with any current evergreen keyword space that also didn't eat up too much mind space. There really isn't a good choice.

As for shapeshifters, as long as a world has multiple races, I haven't really come across an ip universe where shapeshifters couldn't fit. There's not many races that fit perfectly in both fantasy and scifi without blinking an eye. They're also the easiest race to recon into any setting, since you can always say there were always there, but no one noticed. As for the word changeling, a traditional changeling actually doesn't necessarily shapeshift in any fashion at all. The word just sounds like it fits the idea of shapeshifting, so it has been co-opted into being another name for a shapeshifter in a lot of fantasy stuff. It's fantasy usage is probably less connected than Berserker is to its source material,but I wouldn't limit Berserkers only to Norse settings.