On “knobs” in design: a thread.

#WotCStaff

A "knob" is a way to slightly adjust the gameplay of a card. The more tunable aspects (often numbers, but sometimes words) there are on a card, the knobbier it is. A card like Cancel is not knobby, whereas Woe Strider is extremely knobby.

If we wanted to tweak Woe Strider while keeping the core design the same, it could:

- cost 1BB
- be 3/3
- make a 1/1 Goat
- make two 0/1 Goats
- sac any creature
- Scry 2
- Escape for 3BB
- Escape for four cards
- Escape with one +1/+1 counter

That's a lot of knobs to turn!

Lands are inherently almost knobless, which is why they’re so hard to design. They have no mana cost to adjust. They tap for exactly one mana, unless you’re doing something weird and possibly dangerous.

Entering the battlefield tapped or untapped is a knob, but it’s not useful for fine-tuning. The power gap between a guildgate and an Alpha dual is very large. That’s why dual lands will either enter tapped with upside, or untapped conditionally.

The knobbier a card is, the easier it is to tune it for competitive play. On the other hand, knobby cards are often wordy.

That means that there's some tension between simplicity and balance built into the game.

Personally, I blame the integers for being so far apart.

For example, look at Murder. It’s a simple, elegant card with just three words of rules text.

But it’s slightly too weak for competitive Standard play at three mana, and slightly too strong at two.

So we need to add other knobs to help it hit the sweet spot.

We in Vision Design can help our partners downstream by handing off mechanics with knobs built into them.

Good examples of knobby mechanics include Monstrosity, Kicker, and Adventure. They all have plenty of parameters.

Not every mechanic we hand off needs to be knobby. There are fun, popular mechanics that aren’t. Some of my favorites are Convoke, Exalted, and Proliferate.

Conversely, having knobs does not guarantee that a mechanic is easy to balance. It's just one factor among many.

/thread