On April 11, 1994, Magic: The Gathering’s Revised Edition was released. The exact day is not yet recorded on Wikipedia nor on the Fandom wiki, however I discovered it while thumbing through The Duelist Supplement about a month ago. It will likely be added to those sites by somebody else after I share this.

With Revised Edition came the “much-demanded player’s handbook” The Magic: The Gathering: Pocket Players’ Guide (Revised Edition). I won’t pretend to be anything other than amused by the rule and card changes, because the real story is the story: Roreca’s Tale by Richard Garfield was the first full Magic story ever published. 

(Note: Garfield had previously written a two-page teaser for Worzel and Thomil, under the uninspired title of Introduction, in the Alpha edition rulebook from 1993. If you’d like to count that as the start of Magic story on technicality, please imagine you are reading this in August of 2023.)

If you choose to read Roreca’s Tale, you won’t be amazed. That legendary weight of being the game’s debut story entry, the first Planeswalker duel ever told to a hungry audience of fantasy fans, evaporates as you enter the point of view of Roreca—a dog-like companion to the Planeswalker Worzel. The battle itself is more or less a direct flavor translation of a game of Magic, with era-iconic spells like Circle of Protection and Lord of the Pit. This isn’t Urza versus Mishra or Nicol Bolas dueling that demonic leviathan; it’s the story of a kinda slow battle with an enemy unable to pay his upkeep cost.

Though, in his narrative effort to frame both the growing phenomenon of Magic and its rules system inside the Multiverse, Garfield did make two unique choices. The first was to create a regular player analogue: These duels and rivalries often resulted in friendships for Worzel! Sure, they may be rivals in lore, but the players Worzel and Thomil could visit the same store enough times for their shared interest to transcend simple tournament pairings. Worzel is surprised in both Introduction and Roreca’s Tale to find that Thomil has added black mana to his arsenal, clearly having enough reps in to recognize his decklist changing. The same Revised Edition guide features three pages of notes by Garfield entitled Dominaria and the Role of Roleplaying, so perhaps it comes as little surprise that his fiction takes this shape. That said, Worzel’s optimistically social attitude was an exception to the rule.

Planeswalkers tend to be individualistic and territorial. While there is some collusion between wizards, and even a political structure of sorts in certain areas of Dominia, these are as unstable as the paths between planes.

Richard Garfield, “Dominia and Its Walkers”

By 1995, the Armada Comics team would hold the story reins and apply this philosophy in their Planeswalker-packed storyline, shaping the characters into the gods that defined the pre-Mending era. These Planeswalkers could have friends and they could have duels casting spells you recognize from the cards, but overlapping the two to reflect a player’s social experience inside the community remained a one-off case.

The second of Garfield’s choices was to fictionalize Magic‘s ante system, both in Thomil’s potentially abandoned leylines after his defeat in Roreca’s Tale and the prior duel mentioned in Introduction where Worzel won her coveted Circle of Protection spells. For those unfamiliar, ante was a rule where the winner of the game would win ownership of all cards in the ante zone—typically the top card of each player’s library at the start of the game. It served as an oddball game mechanic, deckbuilding consideration, and casual gambling.

The Revised Edition guide included ante in its sample game (pg.43), even explaining that if you don’t want to ante as a newer player, you should still “ghost ante” so that the card you would have normally anted is removed from the game. This was softer language than was included in the Alpha rulebook, however it remained unyielding in ante being a core rule of Magic. Later in the guide, game designer James Ernest mercifully acknowledges the looming issue in his section titled Magic: The Gathering Variants:

Many Magic players don’t like the idea of putting a valuable card at risk each time they play, especially if an opponent antes a land. While some players eliminate the ante altogether, others have developed ways to make it a little less intimidating.

James Ernest, “Magic: The Gathering Variants“

Ernest goes on to offer options such as recutting decks, mystery ante, and alternate ante card pools. If these all sound absurd to you, it’s because they are. Ante was early Magic’s one quirk that somehow survived for two whole years off a waning insistence that this really could be a fun way to exchange cards and grow your decks.

These two decisions are not all that there is to Roreca’s Tale, but they are the least appreciated elements of his authorship which are worth highlighting. This is the story as Garfield intended, reflecting the game as he intended. Three decades removed from Revised, Magic‘s gameplay and story have shifted and grown far beyond those original concepts. Still, I hope that Worzel is alive out there in the Blind Eternities, leaving some offering behind with each escape and making friends with old rivals. She can be the lone player in a Multiverse of Planeswalkers.

Happy 30^th to Worzel, Roreca, and Thomil.

Cary