[Custom Rules] What would be the implications of abolishing Type-specific subtypes?

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Post by caulkwrangler » 3 years ago

If "Enchantment - Goblin" or "Instant - Jace" or "Legendary Planeswalker - Elder Dragon Bolas" for example were theorized possible, what rules would they break, what rules would need clarity, and what new definitions might be required? Or any other thoughts you might have in this regards.

* I am aware of Tribal.

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Post by spacemonaut » 3 years ago

The rules obstacle is that most non-creature subtypes have significant rules and gameplay baggage:
  • Some subtypes have unique behaviour defined by the CR: Aura, Equipment, Fortification, Saga. If a card has one of these subtypes, it needs to behave like this subtype.
  • Some subtypes exist so that card designs can make assumptions about the cards that can have them. Aeronaut Admiral, Giant Ox and Veteran Motorist can safely assume that Vehicles are artifacts that get crewed and become creatures. Bitterheart Witch and Curse of Misfortunes can safely assume Curses are auras that get attached to players. Sideswipe and "Splice onto Arcane" can assume that any Arcane card is an instant or sorcery and interact with them accordingly.
  • Some are just good communication: Gold and Treasure always have their associated mana abilities and Food always has its associated lifegain ability, so if players see those types they know they can expect those abilities.
Creature subtypes can be used purely for flavor, but the reasons they stopped doing that for all the types were the reasons they stopped using tribal. There's a number of issues there for long-term support and reprintability, but there's also big impact within the set itself: most cards that care about you getting a new Goblin do that by saying "Whenever a Goblin enters the battlefield", but to account for Goblin Instants you have to instead pick triggers of "Whenever you cast a Goblin spell", and then tokens and resurrection and etc get left out in the cold.

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Post by caulkwrangler » 3 years ago

spacemonaut wrote:
3 years ago
The rules obstacle is that most non-creature subtypes have significant rules and gameplay baggage:
  • Some subtypes have unique behaviour defined by the CR: Aura, Equipment, Fortification, Saga. If a card has one of these subtypes, it needs to behave like this subtype.
  • Some subtypes exist so that card designs can make assumptions about the cards that can have them. Aeronaut Admiral, Giant Ox and Veteran Motorist can safely assume that Vehicles are artifacts that get crewed and become creatures. Bitterheart Witch and Curse of Misfortunes can safely assume Curses are auras that get attached to players. Sideswipe and "Splice onto Arcane" can assume that any Arcane card is an instant or sorcery and interact with them accordingly.
  • Some are just good communication: Gold and Treasure always have their associated mana abilities and Food always has its associated lifegain ability, so if players see those types they know they can expect those abilities.
Creature subtypes can be used purely for flavor, but the reasons they stopped doing that for all the types were the reasons they stopped using tribal. There's a number of issues there for long-term support and reprintability, but there's also big impact within the set itself: most cards that care about you getting a new Goblin do that by saying "Whenever a Goblin enters the battlefield", but to account for Goblin Instants you have to instead pick triggers of "Whenever you cast a Goblin spell", and then tokens and resurrection and etc get left out in the cold.
So what are ways to get around this?

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Post by spacemonaut » 3 years ago

For what it's worth I think those constraints I wrote in bullet points are good constraints. They're a strength of the type system and they are a net positive for card design and gameplay. I would not try to get around them at all.

I think you could use flavorful creature types for permanents (Planeswalker — Elder Dragon Bolas, Enchantment – Goblin) much more easily since those enter the battlefield, but it does increase the power of those cards. One of the most frequently asked questions about Karn is "why isn't he an Artifact?" and the answer is it'd make his card way too powerful so I am not sure what the impact of giving a planeswalker creature types would be. You could get the same effect for Bolas though with an ability like Gideon Blackblade's while changing nothing about the game's framework.

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Post by caulkwrangler » 3 years ago

spacemonaut wrote:
3 years ago
For what it's worth I think those constraints I wrote in bullet points are good constraints. They're a strength of the type system and they are a net positive for card design and gameplay. I would not try to get around them at all.

I think you could use flavorful creature types for permanents (Planeswalker — Elder Dragon Bolas, Enchantment – Goblin) much more easily since those enter the battlefield, but it does increase the power of those cards. One of the most frequently asked questions about Karn is "why isn't he an Artifact?" and the answer is it'd make his card way too powerful so I am not sure what the impact of giving a planeswalker creature types would be. You could get the same effect for Bolas though with an ability like Gideon Blackblade's while changing nothing about the game's framework.
Ok, thank you for participating in this thought experiment, a pity it went nowhere.

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Post by spacemonaut » 3 years ago

Other people might have different takes. I'm just me. : )

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Post by caulkwrangler » 3 years ago

spacemonaut wrote:
3 years ago
Other people might have different takes. I'm just me. : )
No, I understand and i am very grateful for your responses as they gave me different angles to approach this concept. I think Tribal was a good idea with a clumsy execution and I believe subtypes are very underutilized when it comes to nonpermanents, and I'd like to explore these themes in the custom environment I'm developing. Once again, thank you very much.

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Post by spacemonaut » 3 years ago

You're welcome! I have some additional thoughts to share that might be helpful and/or reassuring.
caulkwrangler wrote:
3 years ago
I think Tribal was a good idea with a clumsy execution and I believe subtypes are very underutilized when it comes to nonpermanents, and I'd like to explore these themes in the custom environment I'm developing.
I've read this come up a few times on Blogatog, and while I couldn't dig it up now (I tried; searching and tumblr do not go well together) I can loosely summarise what I recall: R&D internally has a rule that they can use creature types for flavor, but they only use subtypes for other kinds of cards when it's mechanically significant. It's largely this way because of history: that's the way the game's been for 27 years and it's a bit late to change it. There's no reason that the game couldn't have flavorful subtypes like, say, Fire and Ice for instants/sorceries, and if the game were to start over it could use those, but introducing it now would be a ton of errata they'd rather not do and things work fine as-is.

(Ok, end recollections from blogatog. The rest is my thoughts.)

So, we can divide this into two groups: flavor types and mechanical types. Generally, flavor types are the creature subtypes, mechanical types are everything else.

When I mentioned those bullet points were a strength of the type system, that applies to the mechanical types. Like, think about it: if I say "creature", you can make a ton of assumptions about how the card works. It has power/toughness, can attack and block, can die to damage, is a permanent and thus can be sacrificed or bounced or tapped, etc. I can design tons of cards like Enlarge and Black Sun's Zenith and just assume it'll reliably do certain things because all creatures obey these patterns. But if "creature" doesn't mean anything mechanically and can just be slapped on any card, including cards that don't do those things, that kind of breaks down and I don't know as much about what these cards will do when I design them, or the design space they might apply to. Also, as a player, I can't learn the game by saying "ah, yes, creature! I know what those do"—I'd have to learn each how each creature behaves individually, maybe.

You're talking about subtypes, of course, but I think this is still important to consider as a thought experiment, since it shows the advantage of mechanical typing.

For all those reasons and more, we make sure "creature" always means specific things. The same is true for the other card types (I.e. land, artifact, enchantment, planeswalker, etc) and supertypes, all of which are mechanical types. It's also true for lots of subtypes. I can just assume that Vehicles are artifacts, get crewed, become creatures and get turned sideways, and write cards interacting with all those assumptions based on one word—"Vehicle". That's amazing! Same principles for all the other types I listed in those bullet points. Part of this is probably why subtypes are locked to certain supertypes.

So while I would not for a moment abolish making mechanical subtypes type-specific (it's part of what makes them work), there's probably not much wrong with using flavor types more heavily where they're not currently used. This could mean Instant — Fire; Artifact — Axe Equipment; Enchantment — Brilliant Aura; etc. Sprinkling in creature subtypes is an available option here too but it's not the only one.

One thing to think about is to what extent your cards are parasitic within the set. If you have 10 cards that tutor up Axes but zero that tutor up Equipment, for example, nobody can tutor up equipment from outside that one set. That might be fine! But it might be useful to do things like: "Search your library for an Equipment card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. If it's an Axe ..." which still encourages using the set's cards but makes using cards outside the set an available option still.

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