Doug Beyer Describes His Job

Doug Beyer is a writer behind the worlds of the Magic the Gathering card game. He (like me) sometimes has trouble answering the question, "What do you do for a living?" This is an excerpt from a longer, interesting article here.

Here he is thinking "Can a Griffin be a Soldier?" (and driving).

...So I've tried other ways of describing what I do. The best way is to get out actual Magic cards, show them the art, and talk about how there are fantasy worlds behind the game that I help create. But even then, it's hard to get across the day-to-day details of what I do at work. I conjure up what I think sound like office anecdotes, but I can tell by the looks on people's faces—their jobs are not like mine.

I exit off the highway, heading for home. The Soldier subtype question is game play–relevant. The word "Soldier" appears in the text box of at least one Magic 2010 card, so it matters for Limited whether a Griffin can be a Soldier. A developer has asked, and as a creative team representative, I'm mulling the question.

It's an easy one, when it comes down to it. Soldier is a class type. Class types belong to races that can have jobs, that can claim some degree of sentience. I'm having the whole discussion in my head as I rumble up one of Seattle's steep hills to my street:

Doug: No Griffin Soldiers. Only sentient beings can be Soldiers.

Devil's Advocate: But the phrase makes some sense. Say it out loud. It conjures up an image of a griffin who has been recruited by an army—it's actually pretty cool, and not that different from other concepts we've done.

Doug: But just being part of an army doesn't make you a Soldier. Enlisted Wurm is the exact same concept, and it isn't a Soldier. It's a wild animal, even if it's in the employ of an army. Even if it was perfectly domesticated, like a watchdog or a warhorse, it still wouldn't be the kind of thing that could have a career. No class type.

Devil's Advocate: But it would be tribally relevant ....

Doug: We wouldn't gain enough from that mechanical interaction to justify contradicting dozens of other similar cards or unnecessarily overloading clean type lines. Besides, the art's already in, and it's clearly a wild animal, not even close to the concept of a Griffin Soldier.

Devil's Advocate: Turn here.

Doug: Oh yeah. Thanks.

(Bolding; and artwork sketch is mine) :D