MTG Bloomburrow Worldbuilding Lead once worried the smash-hit adorable set was “too cute”

MTG’s Bloomburrow set has been a real marvel, attracting positive attention ever since its first reveal and bringing scores of new players into the world’s oldest TCG.

While Bloomburrow’s mechanical design is a definite highlight of the set, with engaging and endearing abilities like Offspring and Gift at the forefront, a large part of what has made Bloomburrow such a success is its incredible style and world.

Magic: The Gathering has ventured further into experiments with other genres in recent years, including the Cyberpunk trappings of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty and the Old West of Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Bloomburrow is a notable exception to this, bringing Magic squarely back into Fantasy territory and giving its writers space to develop this plane in exciting directions.

We had a chance to speak with Neale LaPlante Johnson, Bloomburrow’s Worldbuilding Lead and author of the Planeswalker’s Guide to Bloomburrow.

LaPlante Johnson discussed taking the reigns on Magic’s triumphant return to Fantasy, finding inspiration in FromSoftware games, and one-time fears that the team had gone too far in making Bloomburrow and its inhabitants cute and cuddly.

Note that this interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

Discussing Bloomburrow with Worldbuilding Lead Neale LaPlante Johnson

Dexerto: Bloomburrow is very much a return to Fantasy. Magic’s had a lot of experiments with different genres recently, we’ve had Westerns, we’ve had Murder Mysteries, we’ve had Cyberpunk, but Bloomburrow feels very much a back to basics in that way.

Was it an intentional plan to get back to Magic’s roots, or did the initial idea for Bloomburrow come up organically without any of those kinds of discussions?

Neale LaPlante Johnson: Yeah, so the idea of Bloomburrow itself, as an anthropomorphic setting, isn’t necessarily something we came up with just to juxtapose against other sets like OTJ or the upcoming Duskmourn.

But the way it was placed in the schedule and the surrounding sets, it was the idea of ‘Let’s make sure that we have kind of a palette cleanser.’ Like ‘Hey, this is high fantasy, this is something you’re comfortable with.’ You can tell from the way that people are responding to it that this is something that people feel makes sense in the Magic multiverse.

It’s nice to see a Fantasy plane that isn’t just a case of ‘back to Dominaria, back to Fantasy and the things that Magic knows.’ It’s a comfortable genre, but it’s very much a new style of world, and I think that’s really resonating with a lot of people.

Yeah, I would say one of the cool things about working in Fantasy is that because it’s so comfortable for our players, we get to take, in the case of Bloomburrow, we get to take a swing in terms of the visuals. Like the anthropomorphic animals, we get to take a swing in terms of the scale, just making things massive. So when you’re in fantasy, you get to take these wider swings, which is really cool.

WotC

When you’re in the genre space, a lot of times it’s kind of, you need to make sure that people understand the references that you’re going for. With Fantasy, we just get to go, ‘Hey, this is our bread and butter, let’s make it the coolest bread and butter.’ As cool as bread and butter can be, maybe some jam.

More than any other set in Magic I’ve beeen seeing a reaction of, ‘Wow, this is cute’, but also ‘I think this might be where I give this game a try properly.’ It’s hit both of those pillars. It’s satisfying for players new and old in a way that is quite hard to build.

Yeah, I would say it’s a lot more difficult than it seems to make something that just feels effortless. It takes a lot of consideration. When Zack (Stella, Bloomburrow’s Art Director) and I were planning out the card set and how we were going to visualize it on a card-by-card basis, we had pretty strict rules that we had to follow.

One of them was that it still needs to feel like a Magic set. If you were to imagine Lightning Bolt getting reprinted on Bloomburrow, that should be possible, right?

WotC/Mitsuhiro Arita

You’re not going to have a plane that is just totally against whatever Magic has done before. It might be a little bit more furry and fuzzy than you expected, but ultimately you should still feel comfortable as a Magic player and as a Fantasy fan coming in.

The other element of that is just balancing that with how much cute pastoral vibe we’re trying to get across. I think we hit the nail on the head, but ultimately that’s up for fans to decide.

That’s what I’m really interested to see. Two months down the line are people going to be as responsive, are they going to be like, oh, you know, this was a little bit too cute or actually it could have been way cuter?

I think one of the first things that drew me in about the set was that you do have that pastoral, Cottagecore style, but also it includes the other end of the spectrum of what’s become a lot more popular in Fantasy.

One of the first things that came to mind with a lot of the Bloomburrow reveals was Dark Souls-style boss titles, like ‘Glarb, Augur of Calamity.’ Was there any inspiration there in FromSoftware names?

Yeah, I feel like I’m being got in some sense because I’m a huge fan of FromSoft. It’s probably my favorite modern Fantasy game series for sure. Worldbuilding-wise, I spoke to our Creative Text Coordinator who works with the freelancers we have who help make all these names up.

I said I want – especially the Calamity Beasts – to feel like Dark Souls bosses. Eluge the Shoreless Sea to me, it’s just a perfect, perfect FromSoft name epithet.

WotC

Even in terms of like worldbuilding, there were certain rules that we had where we weren’t gonna show animal violence, we weren’t gonna hurt these animals on cards.

That’s just something that I don’t think would have made the set appealing to the crowd that we’re hoping to bring to the table with this set. But the level of darkness of Fantasy, of these triumphant moments in the face of adversity when you’re playing a FromSoft game, that’s how you feel the whole time.

So yeah, it’s in its DNA in kind of a weird way. It’s our cutest set ever, but also if somebody says it’s our most Dark Souls set ever, I wouldn’t be upset.

Were you or the rest of the Magic team expecting the overwhelmingly positive fan reaction to the set? 

When you’re in the moment, especially when we were in the phase known as concepting – which is when we’re starting to get art in for the set – obviously the set looks gorgeous but I remember I went to Zack’s desk, and was like ‘I really don’t know if this is gonna work.’

We were getting cute pieces of art in and you know there is a risk when you’re doing something that, genre-wise as we’ve discussed is within our wheelhouse, but aesthetically we are leaning cuter.

Everything from Gift and Offspring mechanically to the visuals of the card set itself, it’s cuter than the average Magic set and I think Zack and I both felt kind of like ‘Oh maybe this isn’t what Magic fans want.’ What they want is a more action movie kind of core Fantasy than this pastoral Fantasy that we’re giving.

So, there’s always that kind of doubt. When Zack and I were talking, it felt like ‘I don’t know if people are gonna vibe with this.’ But we got stuff that we thought was great. We previewed Repel Calamity’s art super early on and that was actually the first piece of art we got back, months before we even started getting more art from the set.

WotC

We commissioned a couple of pieces and that was just one of those pieces of art we got back and were like, okay, this is what we want the set to feel like for the most part.

And then every piece of art you’re getting you’re kind of pushing and pulling and saying ‘Okay this is a little cute so let’s correct here and make sure this is a little bit more serious and more actiony.’ But yeah, in the moment you have no clue if you’re doing it right.

Is there a part of Bloomburrow’s worldbuilding that you’re particularly proud of?

Ultimately I think what I’m most proud of is structurally we were able to make a set that had 10 factions that were not diametrically opposed and hell-bent on killing each other.

There’s interpersonal tension but there’s no massive community versus community tension in Bloomburrow, and I think when you’re dealing with what a lot of people might frame as ‘Cozy Fantasy’ there’s kind of this sleepiness to it. There are no real elements of tension that are driving your story forward.

We were able to put Calamity Beasts in there, then focus on each community’s ideas on how they deal with them. Each community has its own way of dealing with Calamity Beasts and how they cooperate with one another.

I’m really proud of that because I think it would have been very easy to make a set that didn’t really feel like it had any internal tension, and I think it would have been easy to make a set that had a lot of fighting within factions that wouldn’t have fit the vibe of Bloomburrow whatsoever.

So that’s what I’m most proud of on an individual level, though also Otters have boats and they link together to form communities. And Otters in real life hold hands as they’re swimming, so I do like that idea, that’s very cute as well.