Interview with Doug Beyer - Author and Designer for Magic: The Gathering

Earlier this week, on February 26th to be more precise, Wizards of the Coast released a new novella for their wildly popular card game - Magic: The Gathering. This new release is actually the second in a series entitled The Secretist. This new installment takes place in the Gatecrash series, whereas the first novella took place in the Return to Ravnica series. I was given access to interview Doug Beyers, the author of the 3-part Magic: The Gathering novella, The Secretist, and key member of the Wizards of the Coast creative team.

Sims: For those who are not familiar with The Secretist series, could you give us a little background?

Beyer: Love to. The Secretist is a three-part e-book series that tells the story of the Planeswalker Jace Beleren investigating an ancient mystery on the plane of Ravnica. Ravnica is a world covered by a vast city and controlled by the ten powerful, cutthroat guilds. Jace finds that his penchant for solving puzzles and his trademark ability to read minds have led him into trouble, as he discovers one of Ravnica's long-buried secrets and lands in the middle of deadly inter-guild intrigue.

Sims: Can you give us a little background on Doug Beyer?

Beyer: I work as a writer and designer on the Magic: The Gathering Creative Team, which is part of the Magic R&D department. I've helped craft Magic's settings, card names, flavor text, storylines, and other flavorful bits of Magic lore since 2006. They haven't hurled me bodily onto the streets of Seattle yet – so far so good, I guess. Before the Creative Team, I worked as a web developer, writing code for the MagicTheGathering.com web site while writing flavor text for Magic cards in my spare time. I've written other stories for Magic, including the novel Alara Unbroken.

Sims: Does being a member of the Magic: The Gathering Creative Team allow you freedom to tailor your story?

Beyer: I had a lot of freedom to create the story, yes – but since the story needed to intersect with the card sets and with Magic's ongoing storyline, I had to make sure to play nice with Magic continuity. There's a lot of backstory built up from Magic's 20 years of existence, and we have plans for the storyline that extend several years into the future. It was fun to figure out a way to tell the story I wanted to tell while making sure all the details fit with Magic as a whole.

In the case of The Secretist, a lot of the main plot points were hammered out among us on the Creative Team, and then expanded on by me in the actual writing of the story. We knew Jace was going to be the main protagonist; we knew that there was going to be something up with the Izzet guild and their dragon guildmaster Niv-Mizzet; and we knew there would be some kind of secret embedded in Ravnica's history. Beyond that, the details of how it would all play out was mine to create.

Sims: Obviously the cards have been printed and are in circulation before the story, but what came first the story in your head or the card creation?

Beyer: I think you'll see that the story and the cards are pretty intertwined. I was madly writing away even as my colleagues in R&D were playtesting the Return to Ravnica set, for example, and I got to see how the guild identities were taking shape in the card mechanics. And since I work right there on the Creative Team, I was involved with creating Ravnica's world guide, the creative "bible" that guides the look and feel of Ravnica.

At the same time, I was able to work with the card developers to influence some of the card mechanics and make them more consistent with the story. For example, we worked to create a card for Emmara, an elf of the Selesnya guild and an important friend to Jace. So it was somewhat of a tangle – a lot of collaboration to make it all come together. My hope is that the resulting story appeals to any fantasy reader or casual Magic fan, but also has satisfying correspondences to cards for readers who're also actively involved with the game.

Sims: After the three stories are released as novellas, will they be combined into one book? Will that book be released in print?

Beyer: I'm not sure about whether the three parts of the e-book will be combined – I think it's up to the publisher whether to collect them together into one "click." I do know that there aren't currently any plans to release the book in paper form. The Secretist is being released as an e-book only as a kind of experiment, to measure the response for e-book only stories. If it doesn't get printed in paper, Wizards can keep production costs low, which allows us to have an e-book with a lower price point than a traditional paperback or hardcover book. Readers can use free apps to read e-books on their smartphones or tablets or PCs, so it doesn't even require a Kindle or Nook or other e-reader. It's up to the readers, ultimately, to determine how the experiment goes.

Sims: Who is your hero Jace Beleren? Where did his concept originate?

Beyer: Jace Beleren first appeared in the Lorwyn set, as one of the original five characters when planeswalker cards premiered in Magic. He's the creation of Brady Dommermuth (in terms of the initial concept and Jace's general identity) and artist Aleksi Briclot under the art direction of Jeremy Jarvis (in terms of Jace's visual design).

Jace is a mind mage: he's capable of reading minds, creating perceptual illusions, and even altering memories deep in people's subconscious. So he's well-suited to delve into the secrets of Ravnica's guilds. But he's also obsessively curious, and he can't resist poking around in some secrets that powerful people don't want to come to light. Jace has the perfect set of talents to get himself in trouble, and to be tempted to do some truly awful, brain-altering things–all of which is fantastic news for a storyteller. Jace is a great character to write, full of depth and potential for both good and not-so-good.

Sims: Can you give us an idea of what to expect in the third installment?

Beyer: I can't give out too many details this early. But the guild tensions are growing, and something has to break. Shadowy agents are actively encouraging the guilds to take arms against each other, for some secret purpose. Meanwhile Jace struggles to learn the truth behind the encoded secrets that he's tried hard to escape. Ultimately, Jace will have to decide how much he wants to involve himself with this tangle of conspiracies of this city-world. He's a Planeswalker, which means he has the unique ability to escape–he could simply exit the plane and let Ravnica devolve into chaos without him, and he has to decide what's most important to him. His Planeswalker nature will turn out to be key, at the end.

Sims: What else are you working on?

Beyer: I'm contributing to future Magic worlds and card sets – none of which I can really elaborate on, without spoiling a series of carefully-crafted surprises. We're in the midst of putting finishing touches on the card text of the CENSORED set, we're commissioning some amazing art for the CENSORED set, working on world-building details for the upcoming CENSORED, and crafting out story plans that connect out as far as CENSORED. Fun stuff! But secret stuff, for now.

Sims: What do you do in your free time?

Beyer: I read, I cook, I write other stories, I play the drums, and I consume internet content via a continuous, eyelidless, Clockwork-Orange-esque ingestion process.

Sims: What are you playing currently? (Video game, Card Game, Board Game, RPG?)

Beyer: I dabble in iPhone games, board games, PC games, social games, and pen & paper RPGs... But seriously, if you were to cut me open lobe by lobe, you'd see that a lot of my brain tissue is taken up with Magic. In order to learn new facts about anything, I have to decommission sets of neurons that were formerly used to think about Magic.

Sims: Anything else?

Beyer: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about The Secretist! Here's hoping that you enjoy Part Two, but that it leaves you with a deep, gnawing anger – the kind of furious soul-scream that can only be ended by the release of Dragon's Maze: The Secretist Part Three.