Mark Rosewater

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Mark Rosewater is Head Magic Designer for Wizards of the Coast and one of the most influential people working on Magic: The Gathering.

Contents

[edit] Career

[edit] Sets designed

He's been on numerous design teams and has led design teams for sets such as Ravnica: City of Guilds, Unglued and Mirrodin.

[edit] "Making Magic"

Rosewater is known for his weekly column "Making Magic," published every Monday on magicthegathering.com. In "Making Magic" he gives Magic players insight in the design process of Magic cards and sets. His column discusses many controversial topics, such as the Color Pie and the sacking of Merfolk.

In his article Topical Blend #2 he parodied the MiseTings forum, which gave him that title and is home to many of his most critical fans.

He has explained in detail the Timmy, Johnny, and Spike profiles. He also coined the psychological profile "Melvin" and explained the differences between Melvin and Vorthos.

He has also written about the philosophies of each of the five colors. During Ravnica block, he wrote about each of the ten color pairs.

[edit] Philosophical insights

In "Topical Blend #1 - To Err is Human", Rosewater related mistakes with women to mistakes in card design. The lessons were:

  • Don't Be Blinded By The Ideal
  • Learn When To Quit
  • You Have To Understand Why You're Doing Something
  • Don't Ignore The Obvious
  • Desire Isn't Enough
  • Think Out Your Problems Far Enough To See Where Decisions Lead
  • Avoiding What You Want Causes Problems
  • Harnessing the Past Can Be Dangerous
  • Idealism Is Great, But At Some Point Realism Needs To Poke Its Head In
  • Not Every Mistake Is Actually A Mistake

In "Life Lessons, Part I" and "Part II", he shared further life lessons and related them to Magic design. These lessons were:

  • Judge yourself (and your ideas) by the people that care about you. Don't give that power to people who are not invested in your well being.
  • Things happen for a reason; Even disappointments can be opportunities.
  • You seldom regret failing. You always regret not trying.
  • It's not my job to look out for the welfare of others at the expense of myself.
  • If you want things to happen you have to take the initiative to make it happen.
  • You can't be inflexible with your future.
  • The little stuff matters.
  • “I Can Do Better” is the path to ruin.
  • There are things that happen that you simply have to accept and move on.
  • Having priorities doesn't mean anything if you don't actually prioritize them.

[edit] Biography

Rosewater attended Boston University and has a background in comedy writing, including most famously his role as a writer for the sitcom Roseanne. His wife's name is Lora and he has three children, Rachel and twins Adam and Sarah[1].

[edit] Miscellaneous

  • Rosewater is sometimes referred to as "$%^# insane" ("batshit") because of his witty and chaotic writing style. He also judged the Unglued set prerelease tournament wearing a chicken suit and he made an ass of himself when he judged the Unhinged set pre-release tournament wearing a donkey suit. The "Un" sets, Unglued and Unhinged, are his idea and mostly his creation, hence his special connection to these silver-bordered sets. For such reason, he answers the Ask Wizards related questions, and even drew the "art" of Look at Me, I'm the DCI.
  • Mark Rosewater has admitted to visiting rumor sites, such as MTG Salvation, because he loves reading rumors and theories that people come up with; however, he has a distinct hate for unofficial spoilers.
  • Rosewater jokingly refers to Mark Gottlieb as his arch-nemesis.
  • Fans of Rosewater sometimes claim to belong to the Cult of MaRo, a play on Mark Gottlieb's the Cult of MaGo.
  • Mark Rosewater came up with the idea for the Great Designer Search.

[edit] MaRo

One of his nicknames is "MaRo", an abbreviation of his name, and was originally used by his co-workers at Wizards. Maro was included in the Mirage expansion as a tribute to him and using a piece of artwork he had purchased himself. Today, creatures with power and toughness equal to the number of cards in the controller's hand are commonly referred to as Maros.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ↑ "The Rosewaters design a new split card", by "Magic Arcana", MTG.com, Thursday, January 22, 2004.
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