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Episode 20: Boarding the Weatherlight with Sam Tang
106 Plays6 years ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to the Goblin Lore Podcast!
In our twentieth episode, the guys talk with Sam Tang of the Kitchen Table Magic Podcast about how to foster the community of Magic: the Gathering in a healthy and wholesome way, what happens when forces work against that greater good, and how simply listening to each other (without necessarily agreeing) can go a long way to building bridges between our echo chambers.
The lore component we discuss in this episode relates to the original Weatherlight crew – Gerrard, Karn, Sisay, Squee, and so on – as well as other teams in Magic history. There may be "secret vault" audio of discussion on other teams, so stay tuned for how to access that.
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Remember: we've reached 300 followers on Twitter, so we'll do our next giveaway soon! Keep the word of mouth going; another is up at 400!
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You can find the hosts on Twitter: Joe Redemann at @Fyndhorn, Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @AlexanderNewm. Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter or GoblinLorePodcast@gmail.com.
Goblin Lore is proud to be a member of the Geek Therapy Network (on Twitter at @GeekTherapy).
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art courtesy of Greg Staples, design by Joe Redemann.
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Transcript
Introduction to Sam Tang and Community Dynamics
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Goblin Lore. In this episode, we talk to Sam Tang of Kitchen Table Magic about what it means to be part of the Magic community, what it means to talk to a bunch of the people in the Magic community, and how Sam helps foster that community through his investigations into people and how they contribute or how they've detracted from the community.
Compassion in Controversies
00:00:31
Speaker
This episode touches on somewhat controversial personalities and somewhat controversial topics in the community of Magic, but we feel like this is important that these were important discussions to have and that we and Sam handled them as carefully and delicately as possible.
00:00:51
Speaker
Know that all of this discussion does come from a place of compassion for the community of investigation into what is important and what makes us strong and caring and empathetic.
Actionable Advice for Community Improvement
00:01:06
Speaker
As always, at the end of this episode, we do bring things together with some actionable advice at how we can make our community better, how we can help root out some of the darkness within it and how we can be voices for good and educated and aware and compassionate players. So with all that out of the way, let's get to the show.
Sam Tang's Online Presence
00:01:34
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of Goblin Lore. In today's episode, we're talking about teams and magic lore, how each person and those teams have different strengths and roles in their group, and how that relates to the real world magic community as a whole. And we have a special guest with us to help do that. Sam, can you introduce yourself and tell our listeners where to find you on the internet?
00:01:55
Speaker
Hi everyone, I'm Sam Tang, host of Kitchen Table Magic, a podcast that interviews people from the Magic community. You can find me on Twitter, at SamoTango, and you can also find the show at KitchenTableMagic.org. In addition to doing Kitchen Table Magic, I also have a YouTube channel called Play MTG, where I will in the near future be uploading a whole bunch of videos. I've also done collaborative projects with Card Kingdom, as well as Paragon City Games, as well as Vintage Magic. I've done documentaries for them, pre-release videos for them. I've also done coverage for
00:02:24
Speaker
team metagame gurus, and I've also been a host on a couple of live streaming events such as The Gauntlet, which is a charity event that Card Kingdom and Mox Sporting House puts on. And I also was recently the host of Card Kingdom's local game show that was streamed on Twitch. Very happy to have you, Sam. Glad you came to join us. On our cast, we like to start off with a fun question that generally relates to our topic. So if you don't mind going first, which magic characters would you want to start a brand new podcast with?
Ideal Magic Characters as Co-hosts
00:02:51
Speaker
I think this is just a lovely question. So the obvious answers are out. I want nothing to do with Jace or Liliana. They're such drama queens. I'm so over them. So this, I really thought about this one.
00:03:04
Speaker
I really want to have Vraska as a podcast co-host because when you think about it, all right, she's very intelligent. She's very capable. She runs an entire guild. She's also a planeswalker. She's also very powerful. And she's also like a really cool person. She was like a pirate and also a guild master. And she like lurks in the shadows. And she's like also not judgy because she's like, we'll deal with fungus and rotting things and zombies and really gross stuff. Like she's super, she's super inclusive, right?
00:03:32
Speaker
I also think that she has a really wonderful background. She was locked up in prison, wrongly persecuted, tortured, all this stuff. And she also displays such leadership qualities because being the captain of your own pirate ship just seems like a ridiculous management endeavor on its own.
00:03:52
Speaker
And she also seems like she really can kick ass because she knows with how to fire a gun and how to like use a sword and how to just turn people in the stone, kill people and stuff like that. So I think that would be really awesome. So brass is very high on my list of just a super cool person to have.
00:04:06
Speaker
The next person is more of a practical choice, and I think that's to ferry because he can control time. And when you're on a podcast and you need to roll back time, I mean, this is kind of Harry Potter time turner stuff, but being able to have to very be able to be like, OK, I got that and kind of like turn it back. I think that's also very useful.
00:04:23
Speaker
And he's like, you know, survived for a very long periods of time with his time magic. And so I think he's also very insightful and also very patient, also very intelligent. And last, my third co-host, I think it's going to be more controversial. And I think that's going to be Nicol Bolas, because he's such a jerk.
00:04:41
Speaker
But he's also super powerful, hyper intelligent. He's a very careful planner and he's always going to play the devil's advocate. He's always going to be going counter to what you're trying to say. He would probably argue with you a lot. But he would also have very insightful things to talk about. I am HobbsQ. I can be found on Twitter at HobbsQ. I didn't actually have Bolas on my list for this because I just think that him and I would clash too much as very large personalities.
00:05:11
Speaker
I went with kind of an interesting pick for my first co-host would be Tamio. And I think that that's just because, especially the field researcher, I think that Tamio and I would really get along in terms of our interest in psychology, sociology, kind of those different elements of that. I think like her and I could have great intellectual conversations, but also be able to make it fun. And I think that how we make it fun is making sure that we kind of are breaking the concepts down
00:05:39
Speaker
like I hope that Goblin Lore podcast does so that everybody can understand concepts that might be a little bit heavier or a little bit more difficult or bigger. And for that reason, our third co-host would be Squeak because we've got to make sure that he understands what we're talking about. So it would be our good barometer.
00:05:58
Speaker
And actually, similar to what Sam was saying, I have Squee in here because he has been around for a very, very long time, and I don't think we get enough in the story of what Squee has seen. I mean, even when we return to Dominaria, I don't think there was enough focus on, you guys, Squee is still alive. Like, he's not a planeswalker. He hasn't been dead though, and like, really large amounts of time have passed and he's still alive. I think he would be very, very fascinating, but we just might also have to
00:06:28
Speaker
It's kind of like having Jill on this, Kath. Alex and I have to really treat him as our squee.
00:06:36
Speaker
I think I'm gonna take that as a compliment. Just like Squeawood. I'm Joe Redman and I can be found on Twitter at Finhorn, that's F-Y-N-D Horn. And I kind of approached this question like a typical sports broadcast team. That's kind of what I thought about, you know, the classic Monday Night Football team of like Mike Turico and John Gruden where you have the very straight laced, you know,
00:07:02
Speaker
play-by-play collar with Tariko and then you have the total wild card who you don't really know what to expect is gonna come out of his mouth with Jon Gruden. I thought that was always a fun thing. And so I approached this sort of in a similar way. This is how I assembled my team is I wanted a straight-laced person to keep us on track and then a wild card. So I actually went with something kind of on theme for this episode and I put together rascipation
00:07:30
Speaker
and Slimefoot the Stowaway. Raph? Raph is obviously our play-by-play commentator as you know sort of these fresh eyes to the world he's exploring everything and he's just sort of like you know trying to document and and and see it all and and sort of understand the world and and categorize it and Slimefoot we have no idea what he's thinking at any given moment and it's so great
00:07:56
Speaker
It might not be the best duo for an audio medium now that that's coming out of my mouth, but I still want it to happen. Yeah, because I'm not sure Slimefoot can speak. But you know, technology and things, we can work something out. I'm Alex Newman. I'm found on Twitter at Alexander Newem. And my answer actually tells nicely from Joe's. So I was just trying to figure out to start with someone that I think would be fun to have a conversation with. So I actually went with Tiana.
00:08:26
Speaker
from Dominara and the new Weatherlight crew, because she's just got this, like, innocent passion about everything and just really excited about the things that she's doing. And I think that would make a really great podcaster to talk about whatever it is our past would be about. And kind of rolling from there, I think that Sahili Rai from Kaladesh would be a fun addition, because kind of how I'm picturing it
00:08:55
Speaker
Saheli would be talking about some ludicrous technology thing, and Tiana would get really excited. Then Saheli would explain it to Tiana. Then Tiana could dumb it down even more to explain it to me and hopefully our listeners.
Adventures of the Weatherlight Crew
00:09:10
Speaker
Well, with that out of the way, let's move on to the story topic. Talk about some teams in Magic Lore. So I'll just start with the weather light crew, but not
00:09:22
Speaker
the weather light Joe and I were talking about, I think we should go back and start with the original weather light. Yes, the OG weather light, which oddly enough started with the first set weather light back in the mid 90s, ran through the invasion block of apocalypse and was this long storyline that
00:09:44
Speaker
was really the first big storyline that magic told. And it was talking about the crew of this ship, this flying ship called the Weatherlight that collected the legacy on Dominaria and went to some other planes to fight the influence of Phyrexia preparing for the invasion during the invasion block. So this crew really is a hodgepodge. But I think that's one of the reasons that they did so well.
00:10:12
Speaker
I'll start with Gerard. I believe it's Capacian. He was the master of arms, like literally the first card of depicting him was called master of arms. It wasn't a legend, but kind of a Benelish hero. He was also the heir to the legacy, which was this collection of artifacts that Urza collected. Sort of Horger's style is my theory, at least, to fight Phyrexia.
00:10:39
Speaker
There's there's a lot about Ursa and I don't want to go too deep because I think that's going to be an episode of ours. But in summary, Ursa is the worst. He is the worst. But at the same time, he managed to save Naminaria. It's a complex thing. Gerard is described as the commander and he's he's definitely the person who knew how to lead from the front in a fighting situation. But Sisay, Captain Sisay really is the one who was the leader of the group.
00:11:09
Speaker
She's the one who pulled them all together. Her eventual capture is what got Gerard back to the group. He left when his friend Rophalos was, Rophalos? That's probably not how you pronounce it. There you go. Rophalos. His friend Rophalos died. He left along with, along with Mary and Sisay's capture brought him back and they went and got her on wrath. And then it's, it's really her drive.
00:11:36
Speaker
that even put this group of people together in the first place. And we've got Tana, who has a lot of training with artifacts. She trained in, I believe, the Soldevi area. She really helped them to understand and use the legacy because, like I said, it was kind of a collection of junk. I mean, a lot of it was powerful, but it was just the most arbitrary collection of things.
00:12:02
Speaker
Two, she's actually the daughter of Urza's best friend, Baron, the wizard. So speaking of Baron, we have, not Baron, but a wizard from the Tolarian Academy, Ertai, that Baron sent along with because he wasn't able to come himself when they needed the wizard to help work the core. Ertai also has some details to his story. Things didn't go so well for him.
00:12:30
Speaker
he he went along with them for a while and then uh wrath went went poorly for him we got uh an orm orm is she's a semi-tealer um she was the physical healer for the group and she also uh mediated a lot of conflict um she was the one who helped convince tongarth who's
00:12:49
Speaker
is the next character to help to get Gerard and to give Gerard a chance when they were going out to rescue Sisay. And she really was the glue that helped to keep them together. Tungarth is a minotaur, which is a lot of fun. I think one of the only like named minotaur characters in the game until we got to engraft. So it was it was pretty cool. I liked having that
00:13:29
Speaker
rare that you see goblins being cast in the roles of heroes. And so it was a lot of fun to have this goblin show up in the crew. And I kind of describe his abilities or his superpower as being underestimated. It seemed like every villain underestimated Squee's capabilities and then Squee turned around and saved the crew or killed the villain or just somehow saved the day.
00:13:39
Speaker
diversity of characters.
00:13:57
Speaker
Yeah, and that's another thing, too, is Squeeze the only character still alive in the timeline right now, aside from Karn from this original Weatherlight crew. And Karn, as you're saying, Planeswalker, he's been showing up in the story lately. He also was a part of the crew. I really liked his story because he's a big golem. He's a big bruiser, but he was actually a pacifist for most of this, for the storyline because
00:14:24
Speaker
of some fight that he was kind of pushed into. And he discovered that he was maybe too good at fighting and just it kind of traumatized him. And he just decided from now on, I'm not going to hurt another living thing. But he was still a part of their crew. He still helped them. He was integral to them getting the legacy back when they went to Wrath and it was taken by the Voreth, who was the kind of the general for Phyrexia on that planet.
00:14:54
Speaker
So even with being unable to fight in a storyline that's kind of about conflict and invasion.
00:15:01
Speaker
he found places to help. I think that's kind of the crew. Just last but not least, you mentioned Miri, but Miri was one of Gerard's childhood friends. And when Gerard went and trained in Yavamaya under the Maro sorcerer, Moltani, they were hanging out. They became best friends. It was like those two and Raffelos the Elf that were all super close until Raffelos died and et cetera, et cetera. So Miri is like,
00:15:30
Speaker
She's a cat warrior also I should say and again a little more diversity in this group, which is super cool All of the members of the weather light ended up doing something significant somewhere You've got you know, they're even I think in the second book the ship was either just know the ship wasn't destroyed But a bunch of people ended up leaving the ship and but even the people who left the ship ended up in the middle of the battle somewhere
00:15:52
Speaker
I think they were sculpted after sort of traditional Dungeons and Dragons adventuring parties. I mean, if you think about it, you've got the wizard in Ertai, you've got the tank in Tarangarth, you've got the commander in
00:16:10
Speaker
Gerard, you've got the duelist or the fighter in Sisay, you've got a healer in Orem, you've got an engineer or an artificer sort of thing in Karn, you've got Squee who's there for comedic relief because you always need that. But you know, you have this composition of all these different characters who fill complementary roles to each other, and I think that's very intentional that it was similar to some of those adventuring parties type of things.
00:16:37
Speaker
But now we're, like you're saying, we're seeing that complex if I don't think complexifies a word, but we're seeing it complexify with our gatewatch characters evolving and having to face those questions about their identities. Is Gideon really just model white? You know, is Liliana going to take on something other than selfishness at some point? We have already seen Nissa dip her toe into blue. I don't think it'd be beyond the realm of possibility to see these characters spread their, their
00:17:21
Speaker
there's more than a single note to each color in the color pie.
Evolving Identities of Magic Characters
00:17:25
Speaker
And that I know it was a Twitter thing a little while ago where people were showing the five colors and how much the mix of them personally. And it's like most people have a little bit of everything, or at least some. And I think it's the same thing with these characters. Gideon's model white not because he's only white, but because he's like 80% white. But he's got these other elements. And that mixture can change a little bit over time.
00:17:33
Speaker
ideological wings in the near future.
00:17:51
Speaker
I know myself dealing with some of my mental health things. I have social anxiety. It's a thing that I've been working on. My outgoingness, it's a thing that I've always been relatively outgoing. I didn't really get to exercise it much years ago, but I'm seeing myself be more and more outgoing as the years go on. As I change what I do and how I do it, my personality mixture is changing, shifting a little bit.
00:18:19
Speaker
And so I like to see these characters doing the same thing. And you might be able to say too, I mean, if you think about, I think about this a lot with what do I bring to a friend group or what do I bring to a community or what do I bring to a relationship? You know, I think it's nice that there is, or specifically even this podcast, you know, it's nice that there are these balances of personality in these groups that we see in these teams.
00:18:49
Speaker
that you have you have this sort of shifting happening to kind of to accommodate each other's transitions each other's own shifting things so Liliana is becoming a little more kind and opening but Gideon is finally taking that moment now to stop being you know protector dad and start figuring out what's going on with himself you know what i mean
00:19:12
Speaker
you know that same sort of thing where you are you know maybe Alex you're pushing out more into your social world and so that might allow you know other people in your friend group to sort of go okay I don't I don't have to organize all the events all the time I can now take a little bit of time just to like be you know what I mean that's sort of that sort of shifting weight I guess we see that's what that's kind of to me the the composition of what a good team is
00:19:40
Speaker
I've also been very curious about where these characters are on their journey as they come from an origin story that we've learned about recently and how that develops and how that changes them, right? With the set magic origins, we've learned of all these backstories for all of these planeswalkers and how they became, you know, kind of who they are today, especially with even like Keladish block, we went back and found Chandra's parents, you know, things like that. It's, it's,
00:20:09
Speaker
surprising to me because when I first learned of the backstories for these planeswalkers they all started off in a very different place and they weren't where they were now. I mean Jace used to be like a bad guy and it was like not entirely clear if like what Jace's I guess motivations were and like before you're just like oh Lillian is just like some heartless cold calculating person that doesn't care about
00:20:36
Speaker
anyone but themselves. And I think that in the storyline where in the card in bolus's clutches, when you see Liliana's contract defaults and goes to bolus, she, the look on her face and that expression, she feels a tremendous regret. Like she just really screwed up and she doesn't want to tell anyone that she's actually really scared and she's actually really concerned for herself. Uh,
00:20:59
Speaker
And it's just, it's just like, you know, and it's all, and it's also really strange. It's like Nissa, like Nissa burst onto the scene as a new character back in the day. And it's just like, Nissa is like the defender. She's, she's, she's very, I guess rooted, you know, like she's like green. She's very rooted in her beliefs and she very much knows what she needs to do to save Zendikar. And like Zendikar was screwed and Zendikar still sort of is screwed and needs a lot of like, you know, recovery and rebuilding.
00:21:27
Speaker
But then just for Nissa to just like turn around and just like leave the gatewatch, I thought was very surprising. And I kind of at first like didn't understand that. Like she's like, I can't do this and sheds a tear and leaves. It's just like, what? Like, like really just going to bail out now. Like.
00:21:46
Speaker
This other demon is just another demon in this whole grand tapestry of all these RPG things that the crew has to do. You're just like, I'm out. I'm done. I'm pissed off. I'm leaving. And so it's just very odd. And earlier, you guys were talking about how Gideon looks inward and has begun to think about his own life. It's like
00:22:08
Speaker
You know, Gideon had an incredibly tragic childhood, you know, and had like all of his friends murdered because of his own hubris. And it's like he's got some major PTSD there that I'm concerned about that when that comes out. And I would also not be.
00:22:27
Speaker
so surprised if Bolas were to exploit that. You were also talking about how each of the Planeswalkers has these different percentages of different colors, and I would be very interested in seeing a color-shifted version of all of these Planeswalkers, right? Like Liliana started off as a healer and just wanted to save her brother. What if we get a one-white-white version of Liliana where she heals things and makes things pretty awesome and makes things indestructible?
00:22:56
Speaker
And then you get those two. Right. Yeah. Why not? Right. And then I would love it. Oh, God. Yeah. Like this two black black version of Gideon would get in just like really fed up and just wants to kill everything just like Garak does. You know what I mean? And it's like that is what very much kind of makes me wonder is just like, where is the journey? Where is the arc? Where are we right now about these characters developing? And we have, you know, we've had, you know, Gatewatch fatigue in the past.
00:23:25
Speaker
and they're like, okay, too much gate watch fatigue, let's change the storyline. And so I'm not really sure if the story that we're seeing is a byproduct of business and gate watch fatigue and it being like Wizards being super meta about the storyline of magic, or this is actually where the characters are going and we just don't see the arc of the story because they plan out the story, maybe two, three, four, five years into that.
00:23:51
Speaker
So we're talking about teams, we're talking about assembling groups of people of varying strengths and abilities and backgrounds and experiences and so the kind of the idea that you brought to us Alex with this episode and the reason why you're here with us today Sam is you know you
00:24:09
Speaker
do this with your podcast with Kitchen Table.
Sharing Diverse Voices in the Community
00:24:12
Speaker
So could you talk to us a little bit about what you do and why you do it? I mean, why is it so important to build up the community of magic and talk to all these people about their roles in this? It's so important to share different voices from the community. And I think the reason why is because if you just kind of are in the community and you just kind of don't look around and you don't
00:24:37
Speaker
talk to people and you don't kind of see what's out there, the community is skewed. It's only based on what you can observe or what you experience or what you see and hear. And that's not necessarily an accurate representation of the entire community. If you really wanted to go out and look for every single one of those millions of millions of magic players and tell every single one of their stories,
00:24:58
Speaker
you would find an incredibly diverse and varied, uh, you'd have a lot of extremes and then you'd also find that it was absolutely huge. So, um, in this journey of kitchen table magic, the first thing I want to do was just to talk to people. I started the podcast because I felt that I, I started to feel a disconnection with the, with the community. And that kind of scared me a little bit. So I said, well, if I'm having a disconnection, I need to get back into it, but I can't get back into it just by playing more magic or grinding more.
00:25:26
Speaker
That's not really what magic is about, right? Magic often is said as a universal language. As long as you sit down with someone, even though you don't speak the same language, or you have different skill levels, the fact that you can play this game that has the same rules universe and same rules engine with,
00:25:41
Speaker
You can form friendships and that's absolutely true. The fact that we're on this podcast talking right now, we've never met before, but we're connected through the game of magic. You can go to your F and M or go to an upcoming pre-release or go to a GP and play in a side event. And the fact that you're sitting across the table from someone else who's also playing magic, you instantly feel a connection and a camaraderie and a, you're having a shared experience with that person.
00:26:04
Speaker
And so talking with people about magic really brings out what the best parts of magic are. So I've interviewed pros and, you know, we all love people who are very good at what they do. So the pros are very good at this game. So it's, you know, we're very awe inspired, but we also find that in addition to them just being really good at things, they've also sacrificed a lot in their life to get to where they are. And that's one thing that I think is, is something that we don't think about is
00:26:33
Speaker
To be really good at a game, to get a lot of respect, and to get a lot of achievement in something, you have to sacrifice. And so that's an aspect of the pro community that we don't see very often, and we don't talk about very often. And so when you listen to every single one of the episodes of Kitchen Table Magic that has interviewed a pro, you hear a lot of stories of sacrifice. You hear a lot of stories of being like, wow, I lost. And ah, there's a drive, there's a hunger, there's a chase.
00:27:01
Speaker
Brian Brown Dewan at one point when he was grinding his way to becoming world champion, he had all of his possessions just carrying around in like a big plastic garbage bag, right? And he was crashing on people's couches and he was just doing any job he can in Roanoke, SCG, Star City Games, just get by. And he at many times in his life, he was just like, am I going to make it? He just never knew whether or not he was going to make it. Right. Jerry Thompson talked about how
00:27:29
Speaker
He's gone through such a transformation in his early life, being very much like, I have to win. And only winning matters to now when he's like, no, it's not about winning. Like winning is just what happens when you're good at magic, but being a part of the magic community is a journey. And so today he very much cares about philanthropy, donating his winnings and donating his money to certain things. He cares very much about making great content. He cares very much about writing and teaching people.
00:27:54
Speaker
And it's kind of like those things that really make you think that there's a different facet of magic. And then there's also another group of people that I talk to which are pillars of the community, community members, content creators, people who mod or people who like the professor do videos or people who cosplay and everyone in some way or another
00:28:13
Speaker
contributes to Magic the Gathering and contributes to the community. Going back to your question, this is like, what is it about community? Why go talk to people? Why is it important to be thinking about team and teamwork? Why is it important to think about people? Why is it more than just a game, a hobby, a lifestyle? What really is it when it comes to people? If you took all the people out of the Magic community, it would just be tables, chairs,
00:28:40
Speaker
tournament rooms and cardboard. It would not be interesting at all, but it's people's stories about how people help each other, how people have each other's backs, how people drive each other to places and share memories and laugh and have fun and win and lose and whatever. It's those things that make the community worth being a part of and also really worth, for me at least, telling a story about.
00:29:08
Speaker
So Sam, I'm really interested in kind of where you started with this whole thing saying that, you know, you kind of got this impression in some ways that the magic community was losing some of these stories because you kind of described what I think is echo chambers to a degree that you noticed that maybe you were not getting as many of the viewpoints that you used to get or that your world may have been narrowing in some ways in a way that actually
00:29:35
Speaker
meant that you were missing out on entire swaths of our community. Is that kind of what you're describing?
00:29:41
Speaker
Yes.
Interview with Sid Blair: A Complex Story
00:29:42
Speaker
And you know, what was really interesting is season one, towards the end of season one, I interviewed the crack gate guy, Sid Blair. He was the guy who posed with all the cracks and got banned. And it was like a big, big deal. Right. It was a big blow up. You know, I talked to him and I was really interested because I wanted to talk to someone that, you know, the community at large had characterized as a villain. And, you know, what a bully, what a jerk. Right.
00:30:07
Speaker
But really, when you look at those photos, you're like, well, he's also an overweight, neck-bearded guy, and he's also a nerdy guy, and he loves magic. Really, who was he making fun of? Was he just posing for the sake of posing, or was he really trying to be malicious about it? And of course, we have to really separate the issue of PR, business optics,
00:30:33
Speaker
community, you know, bullying and community, you know, like being mean to people. Well, a lot of people were offended. A lot of people were not happy about it. A lot of people were really embarrassed. Right. And that was something that Sid felt horrible about. But from like the business standpoint of like
00:30:47
Speaker
We ban this person because, you know, we don't stand for this as a business. I think that's also a good thing. You want to set a presence. No, we do not stand for people going to public events and like doing these things that create bad optics for the community. He was very shocked that he got banned and he was really bummed out that he got banned. And I and also there's a part of me that also kind of after talking to him, I don't think he plays magic anymore. And I think that that event kind of
00:31:12
Speaker
he just fell off the magic train. I don't know if he plays magic anymore. I don't know if he's part of the community. That saddens me a little bit. Whereas he needed to have that slap on the wrist, like, hey, that's mean, don't do stuff like that. But it wasn't to the point where
00:31:31
Speaker
I think that it needed him to to not play magic anymore. And so I don't know, you know, like I definitely am not the person to hand down that judgment. I am definitely not the person to say what was right and what was wrong. But all I'm saying is I thought it was very interesting from my standpoint to find him to track him down to pitch and say, hey, can I talk to you? Can I interview you and then listen to his story and then be able to tell a story
00:31:59
Speaker
and see the arc and this journey of a person. And that to me was the most fascinating because there were parts of the story. It's very complex again. And Sid also himself was like, I didn't think it was an issue. And then I realized it was really bad. And then I felt horrible. And then I got banned and I was like, and then I came into terms with it and I'm very sorry and that's not who I am. And I love the magic community. And even though he kind of came through that cycle, sadly, the end result is
00:32:29
Speaker
he's not playing magic anymore. So I don't know really whether or not the punishment served its purpose because there has never been another incident of people going to an event to specifically bully or shame or harm or harass people. That hasn't happened in the same analogous context, right? So that was really interesting to me, very eye-opening. And another interview that I had
Interview with Travis Wu: Life Changes and Controversy
00:32:51
Speaker
that really, I guess, speaks to this kind of community issue
00:32:55
Speaker
was my first episode, which I thought was, I was very terrified of. It was very controversial. Season one, episode one, it was Travis Wu. And it was right coming off of his, his band, right? You know, and it was what he, his original statements that he made on his Twitch stream. And, you know, I had followed T Wu back in the day because I was like, wow, he's like the premier brewer. He is the premier streamer. He gets like thousands of people to go on a stream. He's very thoughtful player. He was team channel, fireball, all that stuff.
00:33:24
Speaker
And then he just like said these ridiculous things and people did not like that. I didn't agree with it. I did not like that. I was kind of shocked about that.
00:33:33
Speaker
And when I wanted to talk to him about it, I wanted to talk to him just from the standpoint of like the arc of his life. And he had gone through for himself a pretty traumatic experience because he was like exiled from this community. And that's that's quite like that's a lot of upheaval for someone who's had their identity and their social circles rooted in a very specific community to be like forcibly torn away from it.
00:33:56
Speaker
And he was very afraid to talk to me about it because he was like, Sam, like no offense, but I don't want to drag this all up again. I don't want to have to deal with this again because it was like so many people came after me and I had to apologize to so many people. And he feels terrible about that. And he was like, that's not what I believe.
00:34:14
Speaker
I do not believe what I said. I was asking a question and I was trying to have a discussion based on a book that was written. And of course it did not go well. And of course it is, you know, the Internet and you there are just some things that you just don't want to have a particularly intellectual conversation about. And if you do, you don't necessarily have it on a magic stream. You know, it's just like it's just like one of those things. Right.
00:34:36
Speaker
So he understood what he did. He understood the consequences Travis completely accepted the consequences and he worked through his banning He left magic went and did something else worked on a farm and I got to know Travis a little bit and you know the kind of person that he is is that he's a real quirky intellectual person and he's a really smart person and when you're really smart and kind of quirky and
00:35:01
Speaker
You kind of think about things on an orthogonal level and he just also has no filter. He's like if he has something that is really interesting and he wants to talk about it, he's going to want to talk about it and he's going to ask a lot of
00:35:13
Speaker
Why? He's like, why, why did it happen like that? Why was it like that? Why was history like this? Why did people think this way? Why did other people think this way? Why was this book written the way it was? Like I'm reading it. I have questions about it now. Some things I think, yeah, sure. I guess what they're saying makes sense. Oh, other things are just absolutely absurd. And so he was really asking those questions and he had not formed, I guess, a cohesive and intelligent, um, and robust understanding of it before talking about it. And of course that went sideways. So,
00:35:41
Speaker
But, you know, and like for T Wu, it was like he like hit rock bottom and then bounced, you know, like the bouncing is what kind of surprised me because he came back, started up his Facebook group, started up magic content again, did really well at GP Portland, got back onto the pro tour. People were rooting for him, got back onto a team.
00:35:58
Speaker
And like things were going well. And then like the whole Facebook group thing happened again. And it was like, well, here we go. And so he really is like, wow, like he was upset about it. He definitely is like, I don't agree with that either, but it already happened. And it's just like, that is also really interesting to me because it's like, you messed up. I was just like, you messed up. Now I want to be in this group and say these things and feel like I'm protected by the anonymity of the internet. It's like.
00:36:28
Speaker
Dude, it doesn't work that way. It's 2017. It's 2018. It doesn't work that way. You are one singular human being. What you say and what you do, that's what you believe and that's what you say and that's what you do. And it's like, do you kiss your mother with that same mouth? You know? And it's like, to me, it's just like, for me, it's like you're an adult.
00:36:46
Speaker
I have no, there's not an excuse for that. And you have to be mindful and you have to like, and like, of course a bunch of people in Ti Woo's group got banned and they got really pissed and Ti Woo was like, Oh my God, I got to shut this thing down. And then, then he got banned. It's just like, it's like, yo, there are consequences, right? So again, circling back to like why this whole community thing matters and why I decided to share stories about two very polarizing interviews that I had about people who really screwed up and,
00:37:16
Speaker
You know, and then they were like banned and they didn't necessarily do good things for the community, you know? And it's like, what does that have to do with community? Well, you look at what happened, right? The community at large decided, no, that's not who we want to be. That's not what we stand for. We are not okay with this.
00:37:37
Speaker
Right. And so just like back in 1993, 1994, 1995, you have like Mike long people who are like cheating egregiously and you've got Chris Pacula and company and Brian Weitzman that we're like fighting against it. No, we have to have integrity in the game. And back then there was a huge fight in the community about, Hey, is cheating angle shooting, or is it like basketball where you get a foul or no, we need to play the game very purely. This is about strategy. This isn't about edge.
00:38:04
Speaker
edge cases, angle shooting, cheating and Jedi mind tricks and that kind of gray hat way to win something, right? Because it's a horrible feel bad moment if you're like a little kid and you didn't actually know the comprehensive rules and you got scummed by some like 20 some year old Mike Long and you're like, whoa, that's horrible, right? Watsy doesn't want that because it's like, right. But and then you look at that and it's very analogous to what's going on today. Right. We do not want the community at large does not want a hostile
00:38:34
Speaker
conversation, does not want a hostile group of people to push away and make other people feel unwelcomed based on their identity, based on their livelihood, based on their upbringing, based on who they are as people and who they choose to be. That's
Defining Community Values without a Rulebook
00:38:50
Speaker
just exclusivity. Exclusivity is not good. And I think that's going on everywhere in culture right now. And so the importance of community to be able to talk to each other, learn from each other, listen to each other,
00:39:04
Speaker
Right. And now, to be clear here, I'm not saying we shouldn't judge each other. I'm not saying we shouldn't like say, hey, don't do that. That's wrong. Like, yeah, you still need those aspects of like social norming and policing and moderating. And we as a group of people have to be responsible for what we do and responsible to each other. But with reason, there has to be some amount of we need to listen to other people kind of tell their story a little bit. Now I say.
00:39:31
Speaker
with reason because there are some people in the community that are no longer in the community who speak in a way that's just like, they never, they just talk, talk, talk, and they never want to listen. And listening to that kind of toxicity isn't productive at all. Right. And so that's why it was like, very interesting. It's like, I have not, I've chosen very specifically not to talk to those kinds of people, but I've talked to people like Sid Blair and Ti Woo. And, you know, a lot of people in the community are not even happy that I talked to Ti Woo. They're like,
00:39:54
Speaker
That guy's dead to me. I don't like that guy. That guy's horrible. If I ever see him, I'm gonna punch him in the face and I can't believe you even talked to him and blah, blah, blah. But you know, it's like, it, it's like serves as like a roadmap or like a stake, like a signpost in the ground as to this is where we've been and this is where we are. And this is where the community is headed. And I think it does serve to guide the community as a whole about what our values are and what our commitments are as a group, because
00:40:24
Speaker
there isn't a rule book about what the magic community needs to look like, you know? And we're still working that out. And so it really is like the onus is really on the community members and on the content creators to do that. And in a lot of ways, in a lot of places, that conversation helps us to figure that out. Like you're saying, talking to all those different people can help us define where we want to go and who we want to be.
00:40:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's been very fascinating to, you know, just be part of the magic community and to, uh, have your ear to the ground and really look closely at the values that different groups of people and what the stakeholders in the magic community are because, um, you know, and I've really attempted over my last three seasons to talk to as many different groups of people as possible. When you talk to the pros and you ask them what's important to you, they all talk about, well,
00:41:20
Speaker
We're working so hard to make this game a professional endeavor. We would like to be paid more, right? Like who wouldn't want to be, because if you're devoting, you know, 80, 200 hours a week on a game and you look at your colleague who's doing the same thing on, uh, Overwatch or Hearthstone or, uh, League of Legends or anything else, and they're being paid 10 X what you're being paid.
00:41:43
Speaker
it's not a good feeling. And then you look at, and then you talk to like the 12 year old kid, you talk to the 16 year old kid who is like scraping every single bit of their birthday and bar mitzvah money and like allowance money to buy packs and to buy cards because they want to play standard. They want to play modern, but they're like totally priced out by the 20 and 30 year old and 40 and 50 year olds who have like jobs and mortgages and savings and all this understanding of things. And like those little kids just get,
00:42:13
Speaker
crushed in that sense right and then you look at the group of like content creators who love the game and sacrifice their time and their ability to play magic to make content and then like the whole you know bunch of baggage that goes with the community being like you're a shill you're an idiot or what you're saying is horrible i disagree with you your content sucks it's like that that whole thing and then of course there are streamers who get trolled and of course there's the conversation about women in magic it's just like
00:42:43
Speaker
Uh, women are intelligent and competent, so they don't need to get any of the harassment. Like it's just like, to me, it's like absurd, right? Like to get that kind of that level of harassment. And it's just like ridiculous, right? And then you look at every single one of these groups of people, and of course there are more groups of people, artists as well. There's a lot of different groups within magic. And you just like look at, there's like the push and pull. They all want the same thing, which is they all want to enjoy the game. They all want to pay homage to the game.
00:43:12
Speaker
People who want to play the game want to play the game well and pay respects to playing the game. Artists want to produce art for the game. Content creators want to talk about the game. Little kids just want to be deeper in the game and surround themselves with the game. Pros just want to achieve the highest levels of recognition financially and from a community standpoint, from a merit standpoint in the game. Wizards just wants to sell more of this game and wants more people to play the game.
00:43:42
Speaker
And so really we're all aligned, you know, and that's one thing that I think is very difficult to discern because like you get so wrapped up into certain things that when you pull out, pulling out and like really looking at it from like a 10,000 foot high up, like, you know, a perspective on it really then allows everyone to be like, ah, well, everyone's really on the same side. So when I see some of the videos that are like on YouTube that are like a little tin foil, Hattie, like, you know, magic is dying or whatever.
00:44:12
Speaker
Like that's not them trying to destroy the game. They're super, super concerned. They're, they're like sounding the alarm that this is what they observe and this is how they feel. And they're really scared. And so it's like this really weird, interesting thing that I've just been observing a lot. I've been observing a lot. I've been observing more than I've been like making content. I kind of kicked myself because I was like, wow, I really need to make more content. I mean, I think we run into, so, so a common thing that we talk a lot about on here is perspectives.
Understanding Perspectives in Magic
00:44:42
Speaker
And that's a word that you used actually in talking about that 10,000 foot viewpoint. And we talked about the binocular effect or kind of the microscope, but you know, you can either kind of make things seem very far away or you can make them seem close in, but it's getting a step back and looking at it from those perspectives and trying to understand it. Even realizing at the end of the day, it does not mean that you agree with it. It doesn't have, just because you can understand where somebody is coming from,
00:45:11
Speaker
It does not mean that you think that you're that you're on their side or that you're aligning with them. And I think there's times when we lose sight of that concept. Um, people think that if you understand somebody that you are kind of, well, if you can understand them, then you're agreeing with them versus having the ability to understand somebody's perspective and where they come from, or to understand it is a lot more nuanced than the black or white world that most of us feel comfortable in.
00:45:39
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's just, yeah, you just just the the sheer act of just listening to another member in the community and understanding what what subgroup that they are a part of and just like listening to that and understanding that just just listen, just accept that that is the life that they live. Right. And, you know, not to beat this dead horse, but like think about like a pro, right?
00:46:03
Speaker
From a pro standpoint, if they said, hey, if Wizards could just sell a 4x playset of every single new set that comes out, like MSRP 399.95 at whatever, I would literally just buy that and then play test and then go to the Pro Tour and then collect my prize and trophy and come home. Rinse and repeat, right? But then when you look at Wizards, you're like, wait a second, then every LGS would be screwed.
00:46:27
Speaker
You know, like every LJS would be like, well, so I'm just going to sell this one, literally like this one box and there's no guesswork. There's no collect, like magic would cease to be a collectible trading card game. Right. So a whole bunch of people would be like, wow, that's a great idea. I'd love to do that. Like, you know, I just, I just want to play and be a spike. And then you'd like a little kids and you're like, whoa.
00:46:44
Speaker
I don't have three hundred ninety nine dollars. I've got three dollars and ninety nine cents. And it would be great to open that up and feel like, hey, gee, what am I going to get? Right. And then if you if you just if you go to like, OK, great, we're only going to cater the little kids. And then it's just like, oh, so you mean then there's like this whole secondary market thing. It's just like, you know, every different like that's like a really tiny example of just like all the conflicting perspectives.
00:47:11
Speaker
from all these different subgroups of magic players and the magic community at large and what it is to run a business about magic. But when you really carefully look at both sides of the argument, there's nothing wrong about either side.
00:47:22
Speaker
It is just that's what both sides would like. Just kind of bringing this back to lore and how that relates to the community. This idea that we were talking about before of how the community works as a group to define itself and what it wants to be is something that I really kind of wanted to pick your brain a bit more about Sam. So especially as it relates to kind of what we want out of the game with so many
00:47:48
Speaker
different voices, different backgrounds, different purposes for being a part of this game and a part of this community with different abilities, all of this stuff. How do we define things with the United Voice? How do we say as a group
00:48:04
Speaker
this is the thing that we want to see in magic or you know is it is that even possible to have a united voice and i guess this is a separate question but it's still tied in it's important to me is you know we you talked a bit about those experiences you had with um with some people who've had
00:48:25
Speaker
who've been at odds with the greater part of the community in their tactics of expressing their love for the game. But how do we get those voices that care about the game but are expressing it in those divisive or harmful ways? You know, it's not the
00:48:43
Speaker
It's not what they're saying, but how they're saying it, I guess, is the issue. How do we get those people to unite with the
The Impact of Individual Choices
00:48:52
Speaker
greater good? How do we get them to come into this hole with us?
00:48:57
Speaker
I think that there are two things that people can do and that they have to understand is that if you are in the magic community or if you're kind of really a participant in any community, the first thing is that you have to understand that you matter. As a human being on this earth with the singularity of technology and the internet, it's globalized and it's connected to everyone very seamlessly and very easily through many different kinds of social networks. So the ability for us to communicate with any one of us on the planet
00:49:26
Speaker
is growing at a very fast rate. So first, you have to understand that you matter and that you belong regardless if you believe that or not. So it's also it's often like a lot of times when you look at election cycles, like people get sad and they don't want to vote. It's like, OK, you don't have to vote. But the fact is that you still are a citizen of a country or you live in this country and that you voting can affect the outcome. You not voting also can affect the outcome.
00:49:57
Speaker
Right?
00:49:59
Speaker
when you are in, you know, I don't expect every single Magic player to get onto Twitter and to tweet all their, you know, it's a scary place. Sometimes people just don't even want to talk about certain things. They have opinions, they have thoughts, and if they are in the conversation, they will have a feeling of things, but they don't necessarily want to share them. They don't necessarily want to start a podcast, you know what I mean? So they want to be lurkers. There's nothing wrong with that. But just know that you matter, first of all. And second is that you have a choice.
00:50:29
Speaker
Again, regardless of whether you're going to exercise that choice, you have one by default. Just by existing, you have one by default. You get to choose whether or not you buy that product that Wizards releases or don't buy it because it'll affect their KPI whether you like it or not because it's going to affect it. Also, if someone does something in the community and they go to a GP, they do something horrible, you totally disagree with it and you say nothing,
00:50:55
Speaker
The people that were harmed by that action don't get to hear your support, don't get to hear the consensus of the community that says, no, we don't want that. Right. Or if you are like, yeah, I don't like that person and I think that harmful thing was was right. And then you kind of are like, rah, rah, like F those people or whatever. And you're part of like the dissenting voice. And then again, it's a choice. It's like.
00:51:17
Speaker
Then what you're doing is actively going to harm or alienate or push certain people or cause tensions or, you know, again, it's a choice. So those are the those are the two biggest things. It's like people just feel like they just don't matter. People just feel like they don't belong. People just don't feel like they don't even like their voice isn't important. Their voice isn't heard.
00:51:36
Speaker
It's like it is, you know, like the professor reads every single comment in his videos. So one person, even though they don't even have their YouTube profile photo set or whatever, and it's like, Oh, I really liked that. Like the prof is going to read that and be like, Oh, this person liked it. Or, Oh, you know, like, uh, like for example, on Reddit, like everyone's like, Oh, magic Reddit is such a horrible place or whatever. People have a very strong opinion about it. And even I do, and I've voiced that opinion very strongly. I try to interact on Reddit, right? And then I always click on the new tab and people post stuff and they get like,
00:52:06
Speaker
whole bunch of downvotes or whatever. There was this person who said that I had my deck in my backpack and I was walking home and suddenly there was a massive rainstorm. I get home, I open up my deck box, my entire deck is soaked through ruined. I'm devastated because this is my only deck. What do I do? Do I just quit? Like this is a significant blow to me. And so I saw that and I wrote and I said, you know what you should do? You should let them all dry.
00:52:35
Speaker
Iron them all out, have them be ugly, but have them be flat and not curled, put them in new sleeves and continue to play with them. Yeah, the ink is all messed up. Yeah, the papers are like they're basically severely damaged at this point. But as long as they're flat, they're shuffleable, they are not constituted by a judge as marked cards. I encourage you to continue to play. And if people give you flack about it, explain to them what happened and explain that you love the game and you're going to continue to play the game.
00:53:05
Speaker
That is the kind of support that I would like people to kind of think about. It's like, first of all, the person who that happened to that, they made a choice. They say, I'm going to ask. And then me reading it made a choice. This is that person doesn't matter. No, I said that person does matter. I'm going to tell that person that I want them to stay in the community.
00:53:26
Speaker
And I hope that that person did stay in the community. I hope that that person does continue to play magic. Okay. These are gray hat tactics that everyone should be using because this is just the mechanical process of Reddit and social media, right? So here's another actionable item. You want to speak out, you want to say things, you want to do things, but you just kind of feel like you don't want to use your real name to do it. Make up a fake name. That's what the internet is for. But now that you have this barrier of anonymity,
00:53:54
Speaker
You don't, you still can choose not to be a jerk. You can, you still choose not to be toxic and horrible. You can be exactly the opposite, like an anti-troll. You could be totally anonymous and totally positive and totally awesome and totally supportive of other people. Right? Nothing. I like the idea of anti-troll. That's good. Yeah. Nothing. Yeah. Nothing on Reddit is stopping you from getting onto Reddit, getting some random, you know,
00:54:19
Speaker
you know, random username, I can't think of one right now, just some random username with a bunch of letters in them. Hotq5572, for instance. Yeah, exactly, right? Right, exactly, right? Sayantsguy1415, right? Just get on there and make up a thing, right? Not Morrow or something. And just post on Reddit. And as long as you're within the rules of the form, and as long as you're being constructive, and as long as you're being positive, and as long as you're forwarding the action, no one's gonna ban you.
00:54:46
Speaker
But then you get to counteract a Russian bot. You get to counteract a poop coaster. You get to counteract a troll. You just get to counteract one other person who's downvoting every little kid's post and saying, get good on install, whatever. You get to do your piece. And you don't get to have any harm. You can have a throwaway password. You can have throwaway. These are gray hat tactics. They're kind of not the best, but they're also kind of legal. They kind of work.
00:55:17
Speaker
And you can kind of do that, you know, but it just takes time. I like gray hats for positivity. Oh yeah. Absolutely. It's like Bob Ross angle shooting right there. Yeah. Oh, it's 100%, 100%. Like, and the thing is like that add better trees. Well, and here's the reason why I bring up gray hat tactics is because the,
00:55:38
Speaker
The people who are the most pissed off and the most salty and the most hurt and the most toxic and the most wounded and the one that feels like they got the most taken away from them, they're on a vendetta and they want to dig in and commit a lot of time and effort and energy to messing things up for other people. So they are going to be the ones that feel great about having 14 troll accounts.
00:56:03
Speaker
Right. But the person who's like, I feel totally good and I'm, I'm authentic. I don't need to lie about anything. I don't, I still feel like I have to hide anything. That person's just going to have one account because they're like, I don't, I don't need to prove a point. Right. So you've got, you know, you literally got like the first order with like 14,000, like that star destroyers and you got the rebellion with like three dinky shuttles. That's like running out of fuel. Like you really got to be like, yo, this is the internet. Everything is free. Why are you not stepping up your game and bringing the arsenal? Yeah.
00:56:32
Speaker
Right. So that's, so I've really, I'm doing this call to action for action item number two. If you want the community to be a better place, make 14 unicorn troll accounts, unicorn accounts. We'll just call them. Yeah. Trolls versus unicorns. Make 14 unicorn accounts, peg us as accounts, get on there and just spread the love and be good to each other. And help people.
Engaging and Improving the Community
00:56:55
Speaker
And my third piece of actionable advice is, um, if you like see something, say something, right?
00:57:02
Speaker
Like silence is so damning. There's this whole silence thing is so damning. And it takes a lot of courage, again, to be like, you know what? F that. I totally disagree. That person's a jerk. That's horrible. And offer support. And that's really hard to do. And it's just like it takes cultivation. It takes practice. It doesn't take a lot of practice to be toxic. And that's why there's a lot. That's the easy way out, right?
00:57:32
Speaker
And that's why being a hero and having courage and doing the right thing are often very difficult to do.
00:57:55
Speaker
Sam Tang can be found on Twitter at SamoTango. And his podcast, the Kitchen Table Magic podcast, can be found on Twitter at KTM Podcast. Joe Redman can be found on Twitter at Findhorn. That's F-Y-N-D Horn. Hobbs Q can be found at Hobbs Q. And Alex Newman can be found at Alexander New M.
00:58:20
Speaker
Goblin Lore is a member of the Geek Therapy Network. Geek Therapy celebrates how geek culture can save the world through podcasts, videos, blog posts, community outreach, education, and convention appearances. It's a network of like-minded creators who believe that all different facets of nerd culture are important to understanding how our minds and communities work. Check them out at geektherapy.com or at geektherapy on Twitter.
00:58:49
Speaker
Thank you all for listening, and remember, goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.