Canageek (MtG Focused) @Canageek@wubrg.social

In W40K early on they had a lot on how to define your own legion/chapter/heroes etc. Including rules for how to build your own hero and promote them as they did well in battle.

In later editions this has been dropped more and more in favour of using the named heroes from the lore, even if that causes more and more narrative issues when you have two armies with the same person in them fighting, or have that person fighting a younger version of themselves.

Personally, I think the problem is they are recruiting people with fiction backgrounds. Fiction writers want to tell a story. They don't want YOU to tell a story, they want you to pay attention to THEIR story.

If you look, the original people making the game mostly had roleplaying backgrounds, and the best sets for flavour were based on D&D campaigns.

You can see the same thing happening in W40K as the novels have become more and more integral to the lore.

Now @DialMforMara has an explanation involving Tamiyo's spell scrolls.

I don't like this as
a) We see it used with characters that aren't Tamiyo, though it could be that we are casting a story we heard in Tamiyo's style

b) It makes this the single most common form of magic in the game, which doesn't match the lore, Tamiyo's casting is supposed to be a pretty obscure form

c) If that is the case, they should word them to be clear about this, which they haven't done.

I'm from a roleplaying background, so my view of flavour is "I should be able to roleplay this out" and a lot of modern cards that doesn't make sense for.

Fallen Empires was great about this, the back of the booster back even said you were going to this continent to recruit allies to fight for you from among the local population.

Likewise Trial of Ambition (or any of the trials) makes no sense. How am I forcing my opponent to sacrifice a creature? How did my planeswalker go to Amonket and get this ritual? How is my character casting this during a duel?

The story of magic is that two planeswalkers or wizards are having a duel. If Mara and I are playing, we are those planeswalkers, so every card we play should be something we are using to harm the other.

Fireball makes sense. Grizzly bears make sense.

Emrakul does not make sense, as we know that entity is too powerful for a planeswalker to control, even an oldwalker.

#flavour

Ongoing disagreement between @DialMforMara and I.

She really likes 'modern falvour', which I define as post-weatherlight style story. WotC has a story, and dammit, they are going to tell you it on the cards. See, here is where X did Y. They've been moving towards this since around 6th edition.

I hate this, as it leads to cards that don't have an in-game flavour, just a story related one.

#flavour

OK, simpler wording, please give me feedback:

At the start of the game divide your life by the number of clothing items you are wearing. Whenever your life total lowers to a multiple of the result of that division for the first time, strip?

(This way you don't have to get dressed again, but if you gain more life, then lose it, you don't keep stripping until you reach a new low point)

More formally
Divide your starting life total by the number of items of clothing you are willing to remove to get your Clothing Removal Amount (X).

Your clothing counter (Y) starts equal to the number of items of clothing you are willing to remove.

When your life total equals X*Y, remove an article of clothing and subtract one from your clothing counter.