MTGNexus

I'm relatively new to Magic and I felt a lot of the underlying ideas (Liliana turning on Bolas, Gideon dying to save her life, Niv-Mizzet, Bolas's ultimate fate) we're fine on paper. It seems though that a lot of people didn't like the book. So the question I ask is how do you make War a good story while keeping the basic outline

Hire an actual novelist to write it, release the damn "prequels" on time (a company like Hasbro should have been able to foresee the legal difficulties) so people know what is going on, and find a better form of exposition that isn't a character who can do literally everything and knows literally everyone.

I pretty much enjoyed the storytelling during the WAR spoiler season. Gideon riding Rakdos after his mount was shot down by Oketra.. it's like a scene froma movie. I feel nothing needs to be fixed in the story.. but of course, that's just my opinion. I know some people did not not like it.

The biggest thing that would have "fixed" War of the Spark would have been continuing to release the story in serialized weekly columns on their website. The novel didn't make a lick of sense because it was the middle third of the story, and we didn't get the first third until considerably later and we're still waiting on the final bits more than six months later.

Also the treatment of Dack Fayden was atrocious. If you're a player with a normal level of investment - you buy the cards and you read the Mothership articles - you have no idea who Dack Fayden is, what he's done, or even that he's involved at all in this story, and now he's dead for good. He was introduced in a series of comics that never got widespread coverage, his only set appearance was Conspiracy 1 where he has no real ties to the story of the set, and then everything he does in WAR is done off "screen" in the novel and the trailer. Total and complete waste of a fairly interesting character. This would be like if the trailers for Avengers: Endgame showed Alex Wilder from Runaways (which has only aired on Hulu) dying, it never happens in the actual movie, but then the MCU still treats this as a thing that actually happened and is cannon.

wildfire393 wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Also the treatment of Dack Fayden was atrocious. If you're a player with a normal level of investment - you buy the cards and you read the Mothership articles - you have no idea who Dack Fayden is, what he's done, or even that he's involved at all in this story, and now he's dead for good. He was introduced in a series of comics that never got widespread coverage, his only set appearance was Conspiracy 1 where he has no real ties to the story of the set, and then everything he does in WAR is done off "screen" in the novel and the trailer. Total and complete waste of a fairly interesting character. This would be like if the trailers for Avengers: Endgame showed Alex Wilder from Runaways (which has only aired on Hulu) dying, it never happens in the actual movie, but then the MCU still treats this as a thing that actually happened and is cannon.

How does a pov character do things off stage? And your Endgame metaphor lost me since in the book Dack dies and that is canon.

5colorsrainbow wrote: ↑

4 years ago

wildfire393 wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Also the treatment of Dack Fayden was atrocious. If you're a player with a normal level of investment - you buy the cards and you read the Mothership articles - you have no idea who Dack Fayden is, what he's done, or even that he's involved at all in this story, and now he's dead for good. He was introduced in a series of comics that never got widespread coverage, his only set appearance was Conspiracy 1 where he has no real ties to the story of the set, and then everything he does in WAR is done off "screen" in the novel and the trailer. Total and complete waste of a fairly interesting character. This would be like if the trailers for Avengers: Endgame showed Alex Wilder from Runaways (which has only aired on Hulu) dying, it never happens in the actual movie, but then the MCU still treats this as a thing that actually happened and is cannon.

How does a pov character do things off stage? And your Endgame metaphor lost me since in the book Dack dies and that is canon.

But that's the thing: The book isn't Endgame in this scenario. War of the Spark, the set, was Endgame. The book was supplemental material that was gated off from the majority of the playerbase by being suddenly shifted from a free and open online column to a paper book. If I'm a player who primarily plays the card game and maybe reads the Mothership columns occasionally, I have no idea that Dack Fayden is dead. I have no idea that Dack Fayden was even IN War of the Spark, besides someone who looks kind of like him dying in the trailer.

wildfire393 wrote: ↑

4 years ago

5colorsrainbow wrote: ↑

4 years ago

wildfire393 wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Also the treatment of Dack Fayden was atrocious. If you're a player with a normal level of investment - you buy the cards and you read the Mothership articles - you have no idea who Dack Fayden is, what he's done, or even that he's involved at all in this story, and now he's dead for good. He was introduced in a series of comics that never got widespread coverage, his only set appearance was Conspiracy 1 where he has no real ties to the story of the set, and then everything he does in WAR is done off "screen" in the novel and the trailer. Total and complete waste of a fairly interesting character. This would be like if the trailers for Avengers: Endgame showed Alex Wilder from Runaways (which has only aired on Hulu) dying, it never happens in the actual movie, but then the MCU still treats this as a thing that actually happened and is cannon.

How does a pov character do things off stage? And your Endgame metaphor lost me since in the book Dack dies and that is canon.

But that's the thing: The book isn't Endgame in this scenario. War of the Spark, the set, was Endgame. The book was supplemental material that was gated off from the majority of the playerbase by being suddenly shifted from a free and open online column to a paper book. If I'm a player who primarily plays the card game and maybe reads the Mothership columns occasionally, I have no idea that Dack Fayden is dead. I have no idea that Dack Fayden was even IN War of the Spark, besides someone who looks kind of like him dying in the trailer.

We have characters and events that doesn't show up in the cards all the time, even a time when you had to buy novels to get that vorthos info. By your logic Elspeth isn't dead. You can say the set and story content didn't line up but the idea of stuff isn't canon is really silly.

Wait Dack died? Not even trolling

yeah, he died. It was talked about a bit during spoiler season in mtgs.

he sort of died "off-screen" because it was not depicted in a card..

5colorsrainbow wrote: ↑

4 years ago

wildfire393 wrote: ↑

4 years ago

5colorsrainbow wrote: ↑

4 years ago

How does a pov character do things off stage? And your Endgame metaphor lost me since in the book Dack dies and that is canon.

But that's the thing: The book isn't Endgame in this scenario. War of the Spark, the set, was Endgame. The book was supplemental material that was gated off from the majority of the playerbase by being suddenly shifted from a free and open online column to a paper book. If I'm a player who primarily plays the card game and maybe reads the Mothership columns occasionally, I have no idea that Dack Fayden is dead. I have no idea that Dack Fayden was even IN War of the Spark, besides someone who looks kind of like him dying in the trailer.

We have characters and events that doesn't show up in the cards all the time, even a time when you had to buy novels to get that vorthos info. By your logic Elspeth isn't dead. You can say the set and story content didn't line up but the idea of stuff isn't canon is really silly.

I'm not saying it isn't cannon. I'm saying it IS cannon, but in a really stupid way. Elspeth died off-screen, but that was in an era where they were worse about the story integration. For most of the past five years, they've been really good about the story. The primary story beats were in the cards, and the story itself was on the website. Then, suddenly, at the culmination of their biggest ongoing storyline in a decade, they pull out the rug. The apex of the story ends up in a novel, gated off from most Magic players, and significant portions of the story have no in-game reference at all. We might as well be back in Apocalypse where the ultimate fate of most of the main cast is entirely unknown to the majority of the playerbase.

I agree, typically we would see big story events on cards and they would use a planeswalker watermark, or sometimes have "story card 1/5" or something like that. With a story as big as War of the Spark they couldnt do that in the set, but to not have dack in at all is just so strange. It doesnt matter enough to WotC to put him in the set but he was made into a main character in the book? It should be consistent. In this case, if he isnt in the set, take him out of the book too, not every PW had to be on Ravnica.

clariwench wrote: ↑

4 years ago

release the damn "prequels" on time (a company like Hasbro should have been able to foresee the legal difficulties)

I thought it was strange we didnt get much story during the two prequel sets, but I am not sure what the backstory is on the legal difficulties. Can you expand on that?

BeneTleilax wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Wait Dack died? Not even trolling

2 months late. But here's a follow up image.

owned