Dear Mr. Rosewater,

This is regarding your recent online article"The Write Stuff" - first of all, nice article. All praise aside, though, I feel that I need to level some fairly harsh criticism at it.

Frankly, the original Magic design teams had it right. Cheap, broad"humor" and the casual tone of modern flavor text is killing the once wonderful tone of Magic: the Gathering... And is killing it.

For example, let's take this quote regarding your"new" flavor text for the card Drudge Skeletons:

"This flavor text reflects my belief that the undead have great comedy potential."

This is, without a doubt, the single most useful quote for illustrating everything that's wrong with Magic flavor text today.

Let's look at the Skeletons' original flavor text:

"Bones scattered around us joined to form misshapen bodies, We struck at them repeatedly - they fell, but soon formed again, with the same mocking look on their faceless skulls."

Now, your replacement:

"'The dead make good soldiers. They can't disobey orders, they never surrender, and they don't stop fighting when a random body part falls off.' - Nevinyrral, Necromancer's Handbook"

The comparison is pathetic. Just pathetic. An unstoppable hoard of the walking dead intent on your inevitable ghastly demise has been transformed into a gag that could have come from a fourth grader's school talent show routine.

Funny undead? Did you really think Magic needed an even less funny pseudo-Jerry Seinfeld?

8th Edition Drudge Skeletons flavor text:"What is the deal with those Drudge Skeletons? I mean really! What is up with that?"

Even if the lack of a serious tone could be forgiven, the fact that the"funny" that replaced it just isn't funny can't. I'm very sorry to tell you this, as I understand that you formerly worked as a comedy writer. However... Well, there's no diplomatic way to point out that there might be a good reason that gig apparently didn't work out, is there?

Another example (which might very well not be yours, but illustrates my point further). Let's take a look at 1993's Phantom Monster:

" 'While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh - but smile no more.'
- Edgar Allen Poe, 'The Haunted Palace'"

Now compare that with 2001's Fear:

"Booga booga booga!"

And Dwarven Berserker? A little part of me died when I saw the word"butt" on a Magic card...

It doesn't work. I'm sorry, but it just doesn't. Did Alpha have anything that forehead-slapping awful? Did Arabian Nights? Antiquities? Legends? The Dark?

Honestly, we hate it. I hate to have to be the one to tell you this, but we hate your storylines and flavor text. Maybe your time in the ivory tower of Magic R&D has isolated you from this... But most of us do not share your punny sense of humor or your love for your pet expansion hog characters. We hate the storyline and we hate the jokes. Check the websites, check the newsgroups and message boards - ask the players face-to-face. We've hated every storyline since Mirage/Visions with a passion. We'd rather have Jar Jar Binks in Magic then Gerrard or Kamahl. These annoying characters make the flavor text impersonal and monotonous. They take the focus off the players and thrust it onto a bunch of unlikable, one-dimensional characters and situations that seem like they were all drawn from some sixteen year-old pothead's half-baked D&D campaign. Magic used to be about putting yourself in the game - our imaginations, not yours. It used to be about the dueling mages. Us!

Now it's about shoddy wankers with names like"Chainer?" We are not amused.

Mostly, more than anything, we're just tired of it. So tired.

Face it, Mr. Rosewater: Somewhere along the line, probably right around the time Alliances gave way to Mirage, Magic's flavor text just started down an unfortunate path - and it's only become worse over time. Magic needs its majesty and dignity. Every little joke like this, every little extra bit of focus on a pet character, weakens the once-great atmosphere more and more. And let's face it, without the great atmosphere Magic was created with, it's just a bunch of cardboard. Magic started out so great that it has a long way to fall indeed, but you are still driving it downward at a steady pace, and even Magic will hit rock-bottom eventually.

Please stop killing our game like this!

Bring back the serious tone. Bring back the literary quotes in expansions. Ditch the puns, slang, and cheap gags. For Heaven's sake, quit quoting these boring characters on every other card. Classical quotes and the floating third person"detached historian" point of view are the way to go most of the time, like in Alpha, Antiquities, etc.

In his own recent flavor text/ice-cream-themed article"31 Flavors and Then Some," Anthony Alongi defined four general categories of Magic flavor text:

Rocky Joke Road (RJR): Bad jokes and puns.
Storyline Swirl (SS): Text that establishes the roles and exploits of various gratuitous pet characters.
Plain Ol' Description (POD): Good, solid, third person description. Imparts the flavor of Magic without distancing the players from the action. The original standard in Magic for a good reason.
Literature Sorbet (LS): Literary quotes. Elegant, powerful, classy.

Right now, I'd say that the flavor text in current sets tends to work out roughly like so:

RJR: 20%
SS: 65%
POD: 15%
LS: 0%

This, obviously, is all wrong. This is the problem. Instead, simply apply these ratios:

RJR: 0%
SS: 15%
POD: 65%
LS: 20%

Would this really be so hard? I think not.

Basically, what we want is for Wizards to just make Magic cool again. Like it was before. Bring us back to the forefront.

As Boomerang once put it:

"'O! Call back yesterday, bid time return.' - William Shakespeare, King Richard the Second"

Please.

 

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