神河当時 - 『神河謀叛』のフレイバーテキスト

Oh. What? You thought I was talking about what the cards do? Do-shmoo, bucko... I’m talking about flavor text!

In my first article on Magic names and flavor text, I introduced the process behind how cards get their names and flavor text via my experience as a Creative Writer for Fifth Dawn. In my second article, I looked at how that process applied to the new and wonderful world of Kamigawa, paying particular attention to some of the stories in the flavor text.

The hard question for me was, what now? The creative process was the same for Betrayers of Kamigawa as it was for Fifth Dawn. The world for Betrayers was the same as in Champions of Kamigawa. In fact, that world hadn’t changed significantly, just spiraled from bad into worse, plunging forward into the Kami War. Unlike, say, the second-sets of Planeshift or Darksteel, there wasn’t a particular event that marked Betrayers as distinct from Champions, or at least one that was communicated to the Creative Writers (ninjas were cool, of course, but they didn’t constitute a story development). In many ways, the experience for me as Creative Writer for Betrayers was a further exploration of Kamigawa, not something wholly new.

As a sidenote, I only now realize a missed opportunity in Betrayers for me as a writer. I see now that the set’s overall flavor was about blurring the well-defined sides of the Kami War established in Champions. In the first set of the Kamigawa block, we are dropped into an epic war between the mortal world and the world of the kami. Betrayers, as the set’s title suggests, allows us to (among other things) peek in on those kami who may be fighting on the mortal’s side and vice-versa. This distinction wasn’t clear to me at the time, though I see its evidence in the sorts of names and flavor text that Brandon Bozzi and Brady Dommermuth selected.

Anyway, in looking back on the response from my Champions of Kamigawa article, it seems people are most interested in the stories behind the cards’ flavor text. As a result, my tactic today is to dive into a few of the cards with my flavor text on them, explaining why I wrote what I wrote.

Keep in mind that several people contributed to the flavor behind Betrayers. In addition to Brady and Brandon, there was Rich Amtower, Doug Beyer, Rei Nakazawa, Brian Tinsman, Alex Smith, Justin Webb, and myself. Today you’ll only get stories from my perspective on cards with my writing on them. No doubt that rich stories exist from all of the Creative Writers, all weaving together into the tapestry of what makes Kamigawa such a flavorful block.

引用元
A FLAVORFUL VIEW OF BETRAYERS Posted in Feature on February 14, 2005
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/flavorful-view-betrayers-2005-02-14

『神河謀叛』にクリエイティブとして関わり、カード名やフレイバーテキストを作成した時のエピソードです。

まず、『神河物語』から大局に変化がないのが、作成する上での困難なポイントだったようです。メカニズム的には忍者が鳴り物入りで登場した一方で、背景世界的には、確かにこれと言ったものは見当たりません。神との戦いは神が圧倒的に優勢だった訳ですから。そもそもの力の差を考えれば当然ではありますが。