Magic the Gathering: Colour Pie Discussions

[Carl]

Ok some recent discussion on card brainstorming have definitely left me struggling with the colour pie a fair bit. I'll admit i'm mostly creating this in the hopes of getting a bit more help pinning things down for my project. But if anyone else want to get into MTG world building and wants colour pie help, feel free to add to this, it's for everyone's benefit.


My big feeling so far is that there probably a fair amount of "can't see the forest for the tree's" going on for me, I'm getting so caught up in the subtle details and distinctions of each colour I'm missing the core.

Ok lets go all the way back to basics and ignore the specific cards i posted and start with the underlying lore piece I'm adapting, this is an updated form taking advantage of effort on my part to pin some details down since I first posted this in another non-mtg related thread.:

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The fact that the gods have been such a visible and indeed active part of Elven society for so long and willingly grant power to those who embody qualities they represent or value if they so desire the risk that come with it. Currently since I'm representing just the 3 common elven stereotypes I've only got 3 major gods. They can be broken down to match the three stereotypes. The major goddess maps to the nature side. And the two major gods, (the Mother, Husband and Master respectively), to the remaining two.

Where they fall on traditional human morality is honestly a little hard to define. Elves view almost anything as acceptable though the survival and well being of the community as a whole is extremely important, but how this manifests varies with the god. In general most elves like your average human are a mix of types. And moving between communities is both entirely acceptable and even quite common. Indeed at the lowest rungs of each group the differences are much more cosmetic than actual. They live in a very different kind of building in cities with entirely different layouts and due to the influence of the higher up some significant functional differences. But you could take an Elf from each of the three groups, dress them in neutral clothing and sit them down in a room and you wouldn't be able to tell who came from where. They'd probably still come off a little odd by human standards but you wouldn't be able to tell association easily. As you go up the ladder and individuals increasingly embody one or more aspects of the divine being in question their favour and thus power rises. At the very top each community has a single individual who most directly embodies the overall nature of the Divine being and directly below them a collection of individuals who embody singular aspects best.

It is important to note however that aside from those at the very top who directly embody all aspects, the next level down can also have other aspects of the same or even a different divine being, that's all perfectly acceptable. Also whilst the Divine beings handle the aspects of their divine hierarchies in the mortal Realm the day to day ruling of each realms is left to their highest Elven community member.

One common point you'll see as i cover each divine being is that certain protections exists in the system for all three deities. There's limits on what you can do or on the circumstances under which you can do it or who you can do it to, e.t.c. because whilst the gods want the elves to embody the qualities they value they also want them to thrive and if they're getting killed, crippled or otherwise subject to nastiness above a certain level, (mental or physical), then that isn't going to happen. Think of it like a parent, each has a different view on what makes a great elf, but they all want all elves to thrive regardless.

The Mother is often, (and mistakenly), seen by humans as the elven equivalent of Judaeo-Christian god. The good one who embodies virtues. This isn't strictly accurate in that she's not viewed as any more or less good than the other two by elves. But she does embody many of the same things. She's very much about responsibility and duty as a particularly great ideal. But she also embodies the concept of communities, balance with nature, frugality, fertility, healing, the hunt, and many of the aspects of nature amongst others. The core of her philosophy is the concept that community matters. I'm not talking simple banding together. Rather everyone within her section of elven society works towards the common goal of providing both themselves and the other factions with all the resources they need to survive, food, water, stone, wood, leather, e.t.c. At the same time however they have a strong appreciation and respect for nature. This doesn't mean they think nature is the best at many things, but rather nature is another form of natural community and they don't have the right to destroy that community or harm it anymore than absolutely necessary, they find ways to work alongside nature rather than against it. The same principle is represented in how they approach the members of their community and what is required of them. Elves are as free to come and go from the Mothers section of elvish society as they are from either of the others. And whilst they expect everyone to do enough to cover their "cost" to society, that still amounts to a relatively small amount of individual work. In short they fully embrace the right of the individual to choose how far to go.

At the same time as with all of the sections of elvish society, how strongly you dedicate yourself to the fundamental principles determines exactly how far you can advance, you can't take on a role or a job you haven't been adequately trained for, but equally to reach more than the basic rung of society you have to be willing to give more and more of yourself to the community. The leader of this section of elvish society who is the elf who most embodies the principles of the goddess has no such thing as free time his, (or usually her), time is dedicated utterly to service to the community.



The First of the God's is often viewed as the Elven equivalent of the Devil by Human's. But it would again not be entirely accurate. He embodies The Fight, Slaughter, Rape, Slavery, Murder, Greed, Torture, Drunkenness, Feasts, Revelry, and Hedonism.

It should be noted that not all of the above should be taken literally. There's definitely a lot more obvious of a cultural difference here from human norms than with the Mother, (she's much simpler in some ways, she's the one who sees to the needs of survival which makes her the most relatable to a humans by far). The simplest way to look at him is that he's about expressing your personal desires, about putting yourself and/or your family first, going out and doing whatever it takes to allow you to indulge in your whim's and passions and personal pursuit of pleasure. But as his portfolio shows that covers a fairly wide range of vices and a fair few related concepts. At the same time one thing all of the gods have in common is that they want all elves to be able to be a part of their way of life. That’s rather hard given so much of what he embodies. For him personally it's not an issue ofc, one of the minor elvish goddess is a goddess of slaves and is his permanent slave and a littlie piece of weird divine history means the Mother is pledged to serve a century as his slave every in every 300 years. He's also recently gained another minor god level being, (an archangel to be precise), as a more or less permanent slave too. For the elves however it's not that simple. In the end he's dealt with this by imposing a littlie order and on the whole thing. Any elf can attempt to take another elf as a slave, (I haven't quite figured out all the intricacies), and any elf can ofc volunteer, the minor goddess of slaves does have her own followers however small a number they may be, but an elf can only be enslaved for a certain period of time and is protected from further enslavement thereafter. The exact length of time and protection is mostly related to what they're doing, someone serving as a menial around the household cleaning and cooking might be enslaved for moths to years depending, whilst someone enslaved to act as a flesh puppet for a torturer to practise on is going to be enslaved no more than a few weeks. On the other hand those who most strongly embody some aspect/s of the Master God can petition to take someone on as a permanent slave, (and again anyone can volunteer to remain a slave longer than the protections stipulate), but you have to be pretty high ranking and it's something handled on a case by case basis.

A similar system applies to his more bloodthirsty side, most of that side is handled via various bloodsports and similar that tend to be less than lethal but still satisfy most elves bloodthirsty vices quite well. For outright murder he's created a set of very specific rules that turn them into an odd form of paid assassins, some are freelance but an almost guild like structure has grown up in their case making them one of the most firmly hierarchical elements in his realms.

As with the Mother advancement comes from how dedicated one is to the principles and concepts he embodies but the competition can be a bit more cuthroat and downright Klingon on occasion.


The Third God is in many ways as different to the two existing ones as it's possible to be. He's colloquially titled the Husband, as that’s exactly what he is to the Mother Goddess. Though as should be obvious there's a Blue/Orange/Yellow morality scale going on in general.

He represents Magic, Technology, Experimentation, Inventiveness, Intellect, Civilisation, Bureaucracy, Industry, The Art's, Beauty, and Individualism.

This is the god I have the least worked out on the detail level, it's odd because I'd say I identify most strongly with him personally of all of them in that he embodies more things I tend to consider myself big on personally, then again I'd say there are a couple of aspects that do run completely counter to my own tendencies so eh. (It's also writing out this section that’s kept this post being delayed by as of writing this approx 2 weeks.) Then again maybe that’s the issue, too close to see the wood for the trees. In general however his two biggest points are the creativity and the intellectualism. His faction is the natural home of the absent minded professor. But you'll also find Leonardo Da Vinci, Beethoven, Einstein, Vaarsuvius, and just about everything in between.

Despite noting individualism above it's more of a side thing that’s a result of everything else. The others have pretty clear definitions of what they're looking for, he's a bit more free form. he can and does hand out power and status within his hierarchy on the basis of doing a particular thing, but science, magic, technology, and especially the arts have a hell of a lot of sub-fields and sub-genres. Turtles all the way down and all that, (Discworld FTW:p). So it's also entirely possible to advance just by doing something new, or a new take on some old concept. And on the societal levels there's a lot less structure generally outside of the hierarchy parts, The Mother has it as part of her community focus, The Master has it as part of his protections theme. The Husband doesn't really need something so strong, there can be negatives to some aspects, but generally speaking he has a much loser more "typical nation state" level of rules and their effect on day to day life. As a sort of final point he hands out magical gifts the easiest, the others all require some serious advancement up the hierarchy, where's at least for relatively low power magic almost anyone in his society, though higher power levels are restricted to the upper echelons still. In terms of formal defensive forces I haven't quite got him figured out yet, a typical style militia would feel a bit too structured but they're not so focused on tech that artifact creatures would make sense either.

Ok hopefully that outlines the 3 factions relatively well. I'm going to do a quick breakdown of my original thoughts on my colour pie associations and a recap then of the issues the discussion elsewhere raised.

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My Original Thoughts; The Mother:

The Mother obviously had strong white tendencies, but White doesn't care about nature, it doesn't hate it but it doesn't have a strong positive opinion either. Green does care about nature and is the other strong community focused colour so I assigned that as a second primary colour. However Green/White is notorious for going full on Borg with outright brainwashing to force others to conform as totally as possible and generally demanding 110% effort out of all members. That very much isn’t the case with The Mother and her faction so I assigned Red as a secondary colour as and black are the individual freedom colours but red fits in with the other aspects much better thematically whilst black contradicts them.

The Problem; The Mother:

Simply put I assigned the green solely on the basis that white doesn't really cover the way they interact with nature at all and green is the only colour that does nature in that style. But when discussing the cards I'd created as part of my exploratory efforts one of the things that came up is that greens big thing is seeing natures way as the right way. And that doesn't really apply at all to the Elves. They'd don’t think there's anything wrong with natures way of doing things for nature, what works for the elves won’t work for a pack of wolves or a mother bear or whatever. Each has a solution that works for them, neither should force their system on the other however. So they're way of doing things represents a compromise between the most outright efficient methods and minimising the disruption to nature's way of doing things. It's also fair to say they're the sort who would care about nature generally on an emotional level, but again t's not because they look on nature as allways right or the best at everything. They're just the sort of people who care about everything and everyone regardless of what they think of how they do things.

A couple of good examples of the sort of thing I mean;

The Elves of the Mothers faction maintain large and elaborate guard forces (known as Wardens), to protect their tree cities from wild creature attacks. This is because they're rather push the dangerous animals back just far enough that normal hunting and/or foraging won't bring them into contact with the tree cities and maintain a large guard against the cases that engage in some unusual hunting or forgoing behaviour and thus do come into contact with the cities. Rather than the simpler non-large guard requiring method of wiping out all dangerous life around their cities in a large radius ensuring nothing ever comes close. Forest Dragons are one of the few exceptions to the rule, and that has more to do with the highly unpredictable hunting and foraging patterns of such creatures, the minimum safe distance is thus rather massive.

A second example is how they go about acquiring wood. They could run simple human style logging operations moving from place to place allowing the forest to naturally recover behind them and paying no attention to the wildlife caught in the logging operations. Instead the tree druids with a bit of help from beastcallers, (Elves with magical abilities to influence animals), move all the animals out of the tree they're going to fell and other trees/ground that will be effect by the fall, then fell the tree, and they not only replant they spread their logging out so no area is completely de-tree'd and take care to encourage, protect, and generally be proactive in replacing what they've cut down.

Overall that leaves me seriously doubting my initial colour assignment here. It also creates a potential problem because the other factions are even further away from green on their defining aspects, having a complete lack of green would be an issue.


My Original Thoughts; The Master:

This guy screamed red/black at me so hard it wasn't funny. The kind of hardcore self indulgence and pleasure seeking tends to be very red, but many of the shall we say nastier elements to him and his are very typically black centric, black is the one of the two most likely to engage in deliberate harming to others to satisfy it's goals. At the same time all that built in protective elements are very distinctly not black or red, in fact they're strongly white. As they're more of a sub element I assigned it as a tertiary colour. This dovetailed nicely with what I'd done at the time with the Mother too.

The Problem; The Master:

I'm not entirely certain there is an issue here, I'm asking for him because I'm not sure I'm using the colour pie right. The other problem is if you tell me I actually got it right here but wrong with mother I've got 3 colours to her 2, that’s an issue.

My Original Thoughts; The Husband:

This guy clearly has a strong blue strand, his studious tech focused, magic packing aspects are classic blue. On the other hand his lack of order, his creative aspects, the free wheeling irreverence, and his favouring of the arts as much as technology absolutely evoke red. And thus red/blue became his assigned primary colours. At the same time he needed some secondary colour to remain in line with the others and after some thinking I decided black fitted the best, his lot can occasionally stray into some of the darker aspects of the things he embodies.

The Problem; The Husband:

Aside from the points I made about not being 100% sure I'm using the colours right my other issue is that the black was always a bit dodgy and with my colour worries I'm suspecting it's probably something that does need to go. But again that raises the point that all 3 factions need to cover all 5 colours and need to be consistent.


The Problem; Other:

I wanted to comment on a particular point or two that will probably get raised in commenting for sure.

First why haven’t I made much if any mention of the hierarchy within each faction in terms of the way embodying something gets you promoted as it where by the god?

Firstly it's because it is a universal concept, it's like the trials system in Amonkhet for example, and that means I'm deliberately excluding it from the colour assignment factors to avoid a structural element producing a single colour that is overly dominant. It's a case of an acceptable break in the colour pie's normal routine to keep a common theme from becoming an overly dominant one.

Second, none of the gods use it as a means to create or enforce a structure on the elves, but rather as a means to provide rewards to those who in some faction please them by most strongly adopting one or more aspect of their outlook, it's a method of award for merit first and foremost, it's use as a part of the system of governance is more a side effect of the fact that the very people the gods would trust to run things are naturally going to be the people that most embody their ideal's. That makes it's white credentials much less strong.

In the same vein I haven't included black in the common assignment because whilst elves can and do desire to advance up the hierarchy, no elf that’s seeking advancement for the sake of personal power is going to get far, though do note there's an important and subtle difference between seeking advancement for power so you can more thoroughly / effectively / e.t.c. do something that is in line with the things the god wants the elves to embody and seeking power to pursue non-god related goals.

So what am I asking for in all of that?

Basically I want a sanity check on my colour assignments, and especially, some help figuring out what aspects of each faction an elf would need to focus on to fall into a particular colour assignment. If I'm going to have the elves be mono coloured I need clear delineations and I honestly aren't sure where to even begin, especially given my sudden lack of confidence in my faction assignments. But it's not remotely helped by my tendency to focus on the subtle aspects and details surrounding things, for me thats what defines somthing and those are rarely going to be mono colour.


Hopefully the personal focus of this OP doesn't kill the thread for anyone else.

[Gauntlet]

Mother is definitely Green/White. Prioritising the good of the community above the individual is pretty standard. I don't think your concerns about brainwashing etc are really something to be worried about - it's not present in a large number of G/W factions and colours (example: Innistrad Humans/Sigarda, Bant, Naya, Abzan). It's really pretty much only present on Selesnya and possibly the Dromoka. If anything, brainwashing and forcing people to submit to your rules is more a white thing than a green thing - if these elves live thoroughly in harmony with nature and won't even log a tree without all this nature-supporting stuff, they could easily be monogreen. Green has communities too.

Red/white often has a lot of military connotations, since they are the two colours most likely to proactively go out and try to right things they feel are wrong. I don't think the Mother description is anywhere near aggressive or proactive enough to be red/white.

The master is just black/red. You can be organized without being white - having instructions for how to go about taking slaves still isn't really white. It doesn't sound like slaves are treated in any way reasonably compared to the rights a person has, which makes white pretty unlikely to be included. A lot of black/red factions are lacking in rules, but it's not entirely required. The Kolaghan seem pretty close to what you're going for with the master here, only with war rather than slave-taking.

Husband is Blue, maybe with a bit of red in there - but blue can be creative too, just less impulsively. I'd be tempted to add in white also here, since he seems to be more about granting knowledge to everyone than about hoarding it for himself.

I'd go with:

Mother: G/w
Master: B/R
Husband: U/r/w