The game originated in the early 1990s in the mind of Richard Garfield, at the time a graduate student working towards a PhD in combinatorial mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. A life-long tabletop gamer, he had approached a publisher to pitch an idea for a game about programming robots, only to be told that the company needed something more portable and cheaper to produce.
Magic was Garfield's response, and it involved one major innovation that set it apart from any game previously released.
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Magic's latest set marks a turning point for the game. Magic Origins focuses on five of the game's most popular recurring characters – a move that provides a jumping-on point for new players intimidated by over two decades' worth of accumulated storylines.
I played D&D, Gamma World, Traveller, and many RPG's avidly into college, but when I first saw Magic and its $20 price for a single card I discovered there were lines I would not cross. As an adult I have a civil engineering friend whom I've watched over the last decade and a half disappear and then emerge, going cold turkey, only to re-submerge for another year. For those who took up Magic, why did you take it up and do you still play?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by archfeld on Sunday July 12 2015, @07:02PM
2nd rate rpg'ers who couldn't manage to play a game involving just their imaginations got suckerered into purchasing a remedial rpg game with 'trading cards' to help their retarded imaginations. A company discovered they could manipulate these people who really wanted to play but somehow couldn't or wouldn't support their own ideas and game worlds and hooked them on repeated purchases of so-called special cards and lo and behold a walled in game playable only by those willing to purchase 'authorized' pieces from a specific vendor is born for the remedial gamer.
Marketing GENIUS.....Thanks Pokémon
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 1) by DutchUncle on Monday July 13 2015, @07:48PM
Harsh. How about, People who couldn't find the time (or no longer had the time with a real job), or couldn't find a congenial group, to RPG found a lighter substitute that could be played in pick-up fashion with strangers, without dealing with munchkins who claimed to be 100th level dual-class with a +27 Worldcleaver . . . until the cards got sort of ridiculous. As I mentioned, "Dominion" solves the money-wins problem by creating a common pool of cards from which all players draw.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Monday July 13 2015, @11:26PM
Okay so it was a little harsh, I am in the lucky position of having a full time, long term gaming group available, so I don't have to suffer the thirst. Not sure how I'd deal without being able to social game in some form or another. In person is far superior to online but you do with what you have....
BTW if anyone knows of any thriving online actual rpg's please let me know or drop a link...email link in my profile.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 1) by DutchUncle on Thursday July 23 2015, @07:49PM
No argument there; in person is superior to online in most human interactions. :-)