/lit/ - Literature

>>12224223
>Q: Do I have to know anything about the Innistrad setting to enjoy this story?
>A: No. The story was written to be a standalone, and though it uses a MTG setting, everything you need to know about that setting is presented in the story itself. Just like you don’t need to know Roshar before picking up The Way of Kings, you don’t need to know Innistrad before picking up Children of the Nameless. (And as an aside, if you’re unfamiliar with Magic, you should at least check out some of the art books they’ve done for their settings. The creative team over at Wizards includes some of the best worldbuilders in fantasy, and their settings are incredible.)

>Q: What about the game itself? Do I need to know anything about Magic to enjoy the story?
>A: Again, no. Going into the story, I was a little worried about how I’d balance the card game mechanics with a story—but the creative team quickly put me at ease. They explained that they find stories in their worlds work better without the author trying to present game mechanics. The explanation I got was something along the lines of: Imagine that the card game is trying to represent things happening in a fantasy story—rather than the fantasy story trying to represent things happening in a card game.

>If you are a fan of Innistrad and MTG, you might be able to catch some nods I made to cards, but many of my alpha readers had never played a game of Magic before in their lives—and they loved the story. In fact, most didn’t realize this story was a tie-in piece until I explained it to them. Note that I’m not trying to say that Wizards doesn’t care about continuity. In fact, they provided a large number of lore resources to me, and sent my story through numerous continuity fact-checks. They worked with me from the get-go to make sure that I didn’t break lore or continuity, and were quick to offer suggestions of things I could change to make sure the story worked in their setting.

>The end result is a story that’s in line with their overarching lore, and doesn’t break the fundamental magic system rules of their universe. At the same time, it’s a story that’s very much a Sanderson piece.

Though I haven't read it yet personally.

>>12224233
It is a collectible card game that is a quarter century old. The players "take on" the roles of powerful wizards that can travel between different worlds, (planes, so they are called planeswalkers). They harness the magics of these worlds and the creatures and stuff on those worlds to summon them into battle as minions. So you might cast lightning bolts and summon goblin and human soldiers to fight against another player who likes to use necromancy and elder dragons for example. As there are 25 years of cards with several worlds visited every year the worldbuilding is immense. There have been books set in Mtg before, but they haven't broken any ground, as the worldbuilding is only done well in the card art and flavour text so far.