The Lord of Atlantis Dilemma

In the very first Magic set you’ll find this card:

Which doesn’t seem that odd…until you realize that, in that first Magic set there’s exactly one other “Merfolk.” It's this one:

That’s right. There’s a not very good card that takes a bad card and turns it into an ok card. In fact there’s several of these:

Almost 2% of the original Magic set was dedicated to these nigh unplayable cards. Why?

Because they’re the stuff dreams are made of.

You see, even though none of these cards were really supported they showed the player a space of possibility. They said “you want to make a cool tribal deck? The mechanics allow that. Stick with us and that’s something you’ll be able to do.”

And, even though the promise wasn’t realized in the initial set, it was important the promise was there…because it was the promise of what Magic could be.

So how does this relate to Cyberpunk Legends?

Well…with set one, we’re deep in the Lord of Atlantis dilemma. 

We hope to support Cyberpunk Legends for years. We can only do that with your indulgence, so we wanted to come out of the gate swinging. 

This means the first set is chocked full of variety. We’ve got puzzles, dialog choices, combat, expiration, dungeon crawling, heck there’s even a mystery in there. Honestly, if you’re not surprised by at least one thing we found a way to do in each scenario I’ll go buy a hat to eat.

But the Lord of Atlantis dilemma is this: If you’re going to show off a lot of stuff, that means you won’t be able to explore everything fully. So how much do you trade showing off the coolness of what the game is capable of for a well-supported present?

We’re lucky, because we’re an adventure card game rather than a PvP game, so we get a little free wiggle room. Our Lord of Atlantis moments, rather than being useless (or worse still, a trap), are cool one-offs. Still, this means that there’s almost certainly going to be things you wish we did more of. 

For me, it’s dialog choices. I think we erred in the right direction here. I personally love dialog choices. I have thoughts on how to do a whole scenario that’s just one conversation (but still retains the core mechanic of overcoming obstacles…simply less traditional ones). But doing that clearly isn’t right for the core box (most people want to explore more of Night City than just talking in a bar). So there aren’t many, and the consequences behind them are limited in the first few scenarios. Like the Lord of Atlantis, they’re to get you to imagine what’s to come.

I’m sure there will be something like that in there for all of you. Something you want more of. And if that’s true, that’s a good thing. It means we’re doing our job right. But every time I look at the set, I have to keep myself from wanting to add another hundred cards to it to put in more of everything we just touch on. 

So if you do find yourself saying, “Oh man, that one thing they did was so cool, why didn’t they do more of it,” all I can say is: “We will.”

Be patient with us as we get more scenarios out and put out new campaigns. I want to make sure that most of the scenarios have something for everyone in your gaming group, but, with time, I’m excited to delve deeper and deeper into all the things we reveal in these first four runs.

—JP