Wizards of the Coast is making a "conscious effort" to put flavor text on more Magic: The Gathering cards, at least that's what a post by head designer Mark Rosewater suggests. On his Blogatog blog on August 6 he wrote: "We are making a conscious effort to prioritize having more cards with flavor text." See? I told you.
This post was in response to a fan lamenting a "decline of the worldbuilding and story" that came from card flavor text. If you don't read the story or worldbuilding articles on the Magic: The Gathering website, then flavor text is the main way the TCG's story is communicated.
It's long been observed that Magic: The Gathering cards are getting wordier. As designers seek out new design space they inevitably produce more complex mechanics, and this - many fans assume - squeezes out space that was previously occupied by flavor text.
A couple of years ago, a fan ran the calculations and showed that the percentage of cards with flavor text had indeed fallen over time, though perhaps not as drastically as many believed. The decline begins around War of the Spark, or perhaps Kaldheim.
I've made my own graph to show the percentages for the MTG sets since March of the Machine. It seems the slump has continued very gradually. Between War of the Spark and March of the Machine there was flavor text on an average of 62% of all Magic cards (down from the low 70s of the previous era). Taking the mean of Standard-legal sets released since then, you get 59%
Insights from the data show that while Lord of the Rings had an unusual amount of flavor text, that's not seen with other UB sets (I guess it's more literary than Assassin's Creed). The company also clearly used the lower complexity level of MTG Foundations to cram in as much flavor text as it could. That said, Foundations would've had a completely average amount of lore just 10 years ago.
But now the decline of flavor text could be about to reverse, if MaRo is to be believed. It's the second statement by Wizards in recent months that has me feeling optimistic about the future of Magic's worldbuilding (if I can stomach all the Marvel sets to reach it).
The first was just before Edge of Eternities prerelease, when Wizards revealed it was cutting down the number of allusions to specific stories when it dabbles in genre.
That's why the space set doesn't feature laser swords, a spice equivalent, or a bounce spell called 'Beam Up'. The designers couldn't resist an Among Us joke, but that's about as far as it goes.
It's pleasing to see that, as much as Hasbro is squeezing all the money it can out of Magic, the people responsible for making the game's original IP still have their heads on straight.
What do you reckon? Can Wizards turn this ship around, or is the requirement for more rules text going to inevitably keep things bland and flavorless? Join the Discord and let me know your thoughts.
You should also check out our great Magic guides, like this one about the MTG release schedule, and our list of the best MTG Arena decks post rotation.