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It's very hard to do an open alternative to MTG. MTG's ecosystem is very closely tied to the economics of the physical cards driving the development and communi

It's very hard to do an open alternative to MTG. MTG's ecosystem is very closely tied to the economics of the physical cards driving the development and community (ie card shops.) Tools for playing magic without cards of course exist, but the vitality of the community depends on the constant refreshing of the environment tied to carefully balanced development.

riskycodes 4y ago
I think this was true in the past, but communities like Premodern, cEDH and, of course, Old School, have managed to sidestep this issue: in the case of Premodern and Old School by sidestepping new releases, and for cEDH by being lenient on proxies. I don't think Magic will ever _die_, but if it did, these communities could well go on for a lifetime longer.
- logical_proof 4y ago
  Let me introduce you to the Star Wars Customizable Card Game by Decipher. It lasted from 1995 until 2001 when Lucasfilm sold toy rights to… Hasbro. Hasbro made a terrible card game to replace it for Episode 2 that has fallen into obscurity. The original game still lives on with a Players Committee and new virtual sets. Compared to Magic the game was a niche of a niche and still exists. If magic ever ‘dies’ I am sure there will be a huge community that steps up to keep it alive.
j_4 4y ago
Of note here is Null Signal Games - https://nullsignal.games/ https://nullsignal.games/ Android: Netrunner was a great cyberpunk-themed, asymmetrical card game which ran 2012-2018, and ended because of a licensing disagreement between FFG and WotC. Null Signal Games is a donation and volunteer-driven organization which has been shepherding the game - designing new sets, commissioning artists, providing prize kits, and organizing big events to let the game continue. For the most part, they've been knocking it out of the park. New cards are freely available as print-and-play files. Proxying is allowed and encouraged. Just to not give a purely rosy picture, I'll note that they foster a very combative social justice element which drove some heavy-handed choices and sour community interactions, but on the whole it's been a laudable effort, and continues to do great work.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > Just to not give a purely rosy picture, I'll note that they foster a very combative social justice element which drove some heavy-handed choices This is also true of WotC.
  - j_4 4y ago
    As far as I know, it's a whole different scale of issue. WotC did some fashionable corporate virtue signaling. Some of it sounded reasonable enough to me, some of it was a bit eyerolly but nothing I'm aware of seemed too egregious. To give one example - Netrunner has (had, I guess) a mechanic called Brain Damage, tied to effects which in lore terms did just that to the runner (hacker) character: heavily damaged by nasty corp tech while jacked into the cyberspace, and having to operate with less capacity/limited resources from that point on. Pretty standard cyberpunk stuff. Null Signal decided one day that the term is grossly insensitive and now purged from the game, and while they might've told you to print cards containing it up until yesterday, reading it off your cards is now considered literal violence and will get you booted off tournaments. If you're not immediately 100% on board with this decision, you are a morally deficient person and not welcome in the community.
    - angus-prune 4y ago
      Null Signal's blog post[0] about the topic seems to entirely contradict your narrative about how this change is being approached. Have there been further developments since this was first announced? "You will not be banned for referring to brain damage. We prefer that you switch to core damage, and will remind you, but it’s not an enumerated infraction. However, if a fellow player is harmed by any aspect of your behavior (including using the old term instead of the new term) and politely requests that you stop, you are expected to do so. We have always asked players to be polite and make easy accommodations when asked, as is clarified by our Code of Conduct. This is not a change in policy." [0] https://nullsignal.games/blog/core-damage/ https://nullsignal.games/blog/core-damage/
      - j_4 4y ago
YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
I don't think it's that hard. I gave that a bit of thought when I finished my degree. At the time, I had written an M:tG expert system, for my end-of-year project, that included a rules engine and an ability text parser [1]. The parser was written in Prolog with Definite Clause Grammars so it could generate new ability text as easy as it could recognise it [2]. I realised that all it would take to make a community version of Magic would be to change all the parts of ability text that are IP in my grammar [3]. For example "tapping", "kavu", "merfolk" and "phyrexian mana" would be out. But other than that, about 60% of the game could be basically replicated. That's 60% because it was just a degree project and so incomplete (e.g. Planeswalkers had just come out and they weren't implemented). Alternatively the entire engine and its language could be re-written from scratch, though that would take a lot more work. As to having actual cards to play with, I thought it would be a great idea to let the players make their own cards, just like many casual players make their own proxies of published cards. That would add a creative element to the hobby, similar to modelling in Warhammer games, that I thought would make it into something entirely new. Suffice it to say, after my degree I never had the time to actively pursue this. But I still think it's perfectly possible. Edit: just to be clear, the reason why it's interesting to have a generator for rules text is that you can generate, and validate, new cards automagickally. Then you can let the players script their own cards and validate them against the parser. So the entire game is completely decentralised with the only authority being the parser (and its maintenance team). Game balance is a problem but that, too, can be dealt with by tweaking the parser so it won't generate or accept imba cards. _______________ [1] M:tG Arena uses the same idea today, but that was back in 2011. To clarify, the idea is that the ability text on cards is parsed and interpreted just like a scripting language. The interpreter, then, is the rules engine. The alternative is to code each individual card separately, which was done by earlier systems but is complete madness given the thousands of M:tG cards that have to be treated this way. [2] Prolog programs can be "run backwards" under some conditions, so a parser is also a generator. [3] Again this was in Prolog so the grammar was the parser. Definite Clause Grammars are syntactic sugar for Prolog so they're executable as any Prolog program. So you write a grammar, you have a parser, and it's also a generator.
- EamonnMR 4y ago
  All very cool stuff (awesome to see serious work done in Prolog!) but... Actually cloning the rules isn't the issue. Convincing the community to use your off-brand version is the issue, and trying to keep the community together in the absence of the trusted central authority of the company producing the game. That can't be easily replicated. Consider Wargaming: Every tabletop wargamer I know eventually designs their own rule system. Yet none of them can displace Warhammer 40k, despite 40k's rules not even being very good in the first place and GW frequently alienating fans.

riskycodes 4y ago

I think this was true in the past, but communities like Premodern, cEDH and, of course, Old School, have managed to sidestep this issue: in the case of Premodern and Old School by sidestepping new releases, and for cEDH by being lenient on proxies. I don't think Magic will ever _die_, but if it did, these communities could well go on for a lifetime longer.

logical_proof 4y ago
Let me introduce you to the Star Wars Customizable Card Game by Decipher. It lasted from 1995 until 2001 when Lucasfilm sold toy rights to… Hasbro. Hasbro made a terrible card game to replace it for Episode 2 that has fallen into obscurity. The original game still lives on with a Players Committee and new virtual sets. Compared to Magic the game was a niche of a niche and still exists. If magic ever ‘dies’ I am sure there will be a huge community that steps up to keep it alive.

j_4 4y ago

Of note here is Null Signal Games - https://nullsignal.games/ https://nullsignal.games/ Android: Netrunner was a great cyberpunk-themed, asymmetrical card game which ran 2012-2018, and ended because of a licensing disagreement between FFG and WotC. Null Signal Games is a donation and volunteer-driven organization which has been shepherding the game - designing new sets, commissioning artists, providing prize kits, and organizing big events to let the game continue. For the most part, they've been knocking it out of the park. New cards are freely available as print-and-play files. Proxying is allowed and encouraged. Just to not give a purely rosy picture, I'll note that they foster a very combative social justice element which drove some heavy-handed choices and sour community interactions, but on the whole it's been a laudable effort, and continues to do great work.

thaumasiotes 4y ago
> Just to not give a purely rosy picture, I'll note that they foster a very combative social justice element which drove some heavy-handed choices This is also true of WotC.
- j_4 4y ago
  As far as I know, it's a whole different scale of issue. WotC did some fashionable corporate virtue signaling. Some of it sounded reasonable enough to me, some of it was a bit eyerolly but nothing I'm aware of seemed too egregious. To give one example - Netrunner has (had, I guess) a mechanic called Brain Damage, tied to effects which in lore terms did just that to the runner (hacker) character: heavily damaged by nasty corp tech while jacked into the cyberspace, and having to operate with less capacity/limited resources from that point on. Pretty standard cyberpunk stuff. Null Signal decided one day that the term is grossly insensitive and now purged from the game, and while they might've told you to print cards containing it up until yesterday, reading it off your cards is now considered literal violence and will get you booted off tournaments. If you're not immediately 100% on board with this decision, you are a morally deficient person and not welcome in the community.
  - angus-prune 4y ago
    Null Signal's blog post[0] about the topic seems to entirely contradict your narrative about how this change is being approached. Have there been further developments since this was first announced? "You will not be banned for referring to brain damage. We prefer that you switch to core damage, and will remind you, but it’s not an enumerated infraction. However, if a fellow player is harmed by any aspect of your behavior (including using the old term instead of the new term) and politely requests that you stop, you are expected to do so. We have always asked players to be polite and make easy accommodations when asked, as is clarified by our Code of Conduct. This is not a change in policy." [0] https://nullsignal.games/blog/core-damage/ https://nullsignal.games/blog/core-damage/
    - j_4 4y ago

YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago

I don't think it's that hard. I gave that a bit of thought when I finished my degree. At the time, I had written an M:tG expert system, for my end-of-year project, that included a rules engine and an ability text parser [1]. The parser was written in Prolog with Definite Clause Grammars so it could generate new ability text as easy as it could recognise it [2]. I realised that all it would take to make a community version of Magic would be to change all the parts of ability text that are IP in my grammar [3]. For example "tapping", "kavu", "merfolk" and "phyrexian mana" would be out. But other than that, about 60% of the game could be basically replicated. That's 60% because it was just a degree project and so incomplete (e.g. Planeswalkers had just come out and they weren't implemented). Alternatively the entire engine and its language could be re-written from scratch, though that would take a lot more work. As to having actual cards to play with, I thought it would be a great idea to let the players make their own cards, just like many casual players make their own proxies of published cards. That would add a creative element to the hobby, similar to modelling in Warhammer games, that I thought would make it into something entirely new. Suffice it to say, after my degree I never had the time to actively pursue this. But I still think it's perfectly possible. Edit: just to be clear, the reason why it's interesting to have a generator for rules text is that you can generate, and validate, new cards automagickally. Then you can let the players script their own cards and validate them against the parser. So the entire game is completely decentralised with the only authority being the parser (and its maintenance team). Game balance is a problem but that, too, can be dealt with by tweaking the parser so it won't generate or accept imba cards. _______________ [1] M:tG Arena uses the same idea today, but that was back in 2011. To clarify, the idea is that the ability text on cards is parsed and interpreted just like a scripting language. The interpreter, then, is the rules engine. The alternative is to code each individual card separately, which was done by earlier systems but is complete madness given the thousands of M:tG cards that have to be treated this way. [2] Prolog programs can be "run backwards" under some conditions, so a parser is also a generator. [3] Again this was in Prolog so the grammar was the parser. Definite Clause Grammars are syntactic sugar for Prolog so they're executable as any Prolog program. So you write a grammar, you have a parser, and it's also a generator.

EamonnMR 4y ago
All very cool stuff (awesome to see serious work done in Prolog!) but... Actually cloning the rules isn't the issue. Convincing the community to use your off-brand version is the issue, and trying to keep the community together in the absence of the trusted central authority of the company producing the game. That can't be easily replicated. Consider Wargaming: Every tabletop wargamer I know eventually designs their own rule system. Yet none of them can displace Warhammer 40k, despite 40k's rules not even being very good in the first place and GW frequently alienating fans.