You said Duskmourn started as 70/80s horror, but also said it's a bottom up set. I thought top down/bottom up was the thing that kicked off the initial idea for a set, and I'd think trying to capture the flavor of 70/80s horror would put Duskmourn in the top down camp. Can you explain the distinction and what makes Duskmourn bottom up?

The difference between top down and bottom up is how is the set structured. I’ll use Ravnica and Innistrad as examples. If you took off all the names, art, creature types (replaced with non flavorable words - “Creature Type A”), and flavor text from both sets and showed them to a player. Ravnica would make sense. It’s core structure is mechanical. You might not get all the flavor of the guilds, but you understand how it’s put together.Innistrad, in contrast, will be harder to understand how the component pieces come together. It will feel more random, because the connective tissue to the structure is the flavor.The idea of top-down and bottom-up was much cleaner back in the day, but we’ve gotten so good combing mechanics and flavor, it’s hard to tell.It’s too early to talk about Duskmourn, so I’ll use Bloomburrow as my example. We started with a flavor, anthropomorphic animals, but quickly decided that having ten two-color pairs, each one a different animal was a great core to the set structure. That structure is mechanical, so technically it’s bottom-up.Let me end by stressing that top-down vs. bottom up in a world where we blend mechanics and flavor so much doesn’t have as much meaning as it once did, except if you’re really in to design.

We already combine mechanics and flavor in every set we do. Yes but you usually take one and use it as a base for the other (hence top down or bottom up) whereas this would mean you take both together as a starting point to create something you would never think of starting from only one of them.

Our design process has us going back and forth, with mechanics influencing flavor decisions and flavor influencing mechanic decisions, so what you’re talking about happens basically every set.Top-down vs. bottom-up is just a technical term talking about how the set is structured. They are two different approaches that work differently from each other. You’re asking for us to make a number that’s even and odd. The good news is if we do our job well, you can’t tell where we started from.

Hi Mark, previously you've said that if R&D does their job well, players shouldn't be able to tell if a set was built from top-down or bottom-up. I think I recall a Reddit discussion where most players said they actually can tell. Wanna do a poll here?

I want to ask a few questions, so I’ll do them on the main site.

Does hand size have sufficient design space for a bottom-up set theme?

Saviors of Kamigawa tried it, and it didn’t go well.

What is Bloomburrow’s Bottom-Up theme? Animals matter?

I’ll talk more when we get closer to it.

Is there a reason that in the past few years almost every new plane we’ve seen has been top-down? I think you said at some point that New Capenna was bottom up, but even that still CLEARLY was going for and was inspired by a specific flavor. When I think of that set I see it as just “outside in” not bottom up or top down. In the past decade, the new planes we got full sets for were, in order: Fiora(bottom up), tarkir(I thought bottom up but I saw something recently that said you had initially started with the idea of clans that represent the different traits of a dragon so I guess topdown?), Kaladesh(seems topdown), Amonkhet (topdown), Ixalan (top down), Kylem(I think I remember Gavin saying this was topdown at some point but it seems bottom up to me), Eldraine (topdown), Ikoria (seems bottom up but honestly I’ve got no clue), Kaldheim (topdown), Arcavios (bottom up), Kamigawa (I know it’s technically not a new plane but it’s so radically different from old Kamigawa that I’m counting it. Also this was topdown), and New Capenna (previously mentioned). Seemingly more topdown sets than bottom up ones. And when you look at all the returning planes in those years, it’s the same pattern. Even if the plane’s design originally wasn’t topdown, like dominaria or ravnica, the returns felt as though they were focused on “look at this plane!” As opposed to “look at this design space!”. Even when the return isn’t focused on the plane, like the recent set murders at Karlov manor, it’s still feels more focused on flavor than function. That’s not to say that topdown sets are bad or poorly designed, just that it feels like more and more planes and sets are “how do we mechanically represent this flavor” and fewer and fewer seem to be “how do we flavorfully represent this mechanic”. I don’t really know what my question is, but I just wanted to hear what you have to say about that

Top down vs. bottom up is a design term talking about what part of the design you start with. Every set has flavor and mechanics, and by the time it goes to print, they’re interconnected, so you, the audience, shouldn’t know whether it was top down or bottom up if we’ve done our job well. Which apparently we have as many of the sets you listed as top down were bottom up. : )

Your Lessons Learned on Crimson Vow reminded me of something - what's the last premier set that you would describe as primarily bottom-up? The only one I can think of since before War of the Spark is Strixhaven being themed around instants and sorceries, unless Dominaria United being an Invasion throwback counts.

Phyrexia: All Will Be One was built bottom up. Solving poison was way more a mechanical problem than a flavor one.

Since you moved away from it with the return to Ixalan, when or if on another bottom-up typal set? I feel like every time it has been tried, it has had some trouble.

Typal as the core theme of a set, meaning there are a whole bunch of creatures with typal themes, is one of the hardest things to build around.

Are you able to tell us which of the 2024 sets are top-down and which are bottom-up?

Not yet.

Is there a name for cards that are top down AND bottom up? For example, you knew you wanted to make an elesh norn card in ONE; so that’s topdown. But you knew it had to mechanically match the other praetors, which is bottom up. “Outside in”? “Middle out”?

There’s not really a term, because you start from one end, even if you later adjust for the other end. Elesh Norn started as a bottoms up design.