Mark Rosewater

Mark Rosewater (born May 25, 1967 in Biloxi, Mississippi, USA) is head Magic: The Gathering designer for Wizards of the Coast and is one of the more influential and renowned card designers and employees at Wizards.

Early life and education
Mark Rosewater was born on May 25, 1967, in Biloxi, Mississippi, USA, to a family of Jewish ancestry. He has a younger sister, Alysse.

Rosewater attended Orange High School in Pepper Pike, OH and, later, Boston University in Boston, MA, whereat he earned a Bachelor of Science in Communication.

Hollywood
Prior to his work at Wizards, Rosewater was a Hollywood "runner" and a writer for the television sitcom Roseanne, having written the episodes "Vegas, Vegas" and "Take My Bike, Please!". After being fired, he ended up working in a game store called The Game Keeper. About the same time that Alpha was making its first big explosion at Gen Con '93, Mark was being introduced to this new "trading card game".

Wizards of the Coast
Before Mark got a full-time job at Wizards of the Coast he still lived in Los Angeles, and made Magic puzzles for The Duelist. At GenCon 94 he played at the World Championships. There he introduced himself to the editor of the Duelist, became a freelance writer first and later the chief editor. Because of this official capacity, he was banned from sanctioned play, and got into judging. At Wizards of the Coast R&D, he first was a developer and later became part of numerous design teams. In December, 2003, he got promoted to Lead Magic Designer. In 2004 the title was changed to Head Magic Designer so as to not confuse the title with the lead designer of each individual expansion.

Designing
• Portal

• Tempest (lead)

• Stronghold

• Portal Second Age

• Exodus

• Unglued (lead)

• Urza's Saga

• Urza's Legacy

• Urza's Destiny (lead)

• Mercadian Masques

• Nemesis

• Prophecy

• Invasion

• Planeshift

• Seventh Edition

• Apocalypse

• Odyssey (lead)

• Torment (Odyssey concepts)

• Judgement

• Onslaught (contributions )

• Eighth Edition

• Mirrodin (lead)

• Darksteel

• Fifth Dawn (lead)

• Champions of Kamigawa

• Ravnica: City of Guilds (lead)

• Dissension

• Coldsnap

• Time Spiral

• Planar Chaos

• Future Sight (lead)

• Lorwyn

• Morningtide

• Shadowmoor (lead)

• Eventide (lead)

• Shards of Alara

• Magic 2010

• Zendikar (lead)

• Worldwake

• Magic 2011

• Scars of Mirrodin (lead)

• New Phyrexia

• Innistrad (lead)

• Dark Ascension (lead)

• Avacyn Restored

• Return to Ravnica

• Gatecrash (co-lead)

• Dragon's Maze

• Theros (lead)

• Born of the Gods

• Journey into Nyx

• Khans of Tarkir (lead)

• Fate Reforged

• Dragons of Tarkir

• Battle for Zendikar (lead)

• Oath of the Gatewatch

• Shadows over Innistrad

• Eldritch Moon

• Kaladesh (co-lead)

• Aether Revolt

• Amonkhet (co-lead)

• Hour of Devastation

• Ixalan (co-lead)

• Unstable (lead)

• Dominaria (lead)

• Guilds of Ravnica (lead)

• Ravnica Allegiance (lead)

• War of the Spark (lead)

• Modern Horizons

• Throne of Eldraine (lead)

• Theros Beyond Death

• Unsanctioned (lead)

• Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths (lead)

• Zendikar Rising (lead)

• Secret Lair Drop Series: The Walking Dead

• Kaldheim

• Strixhaven: School of Mages (lead)

Developing
• Alliances

• Mirage

• Visions

• Fifth Edition

• Portal

• Weatherlight

• Tempest

• Stronghold

• Portal Second Age

• Exodus

• Unglued (lead)

• Urza's Saga

• Sixth Edition

• Urza's Legacy

• Mercadian Masques

• Invasion

• Seventh Edition

• Eighth Edition

• Dissension

• From the Vault: Dragons

• Shards of Alara

• From the Vault: Exiled

• Rise of the Eldrazi

• From the Vault: Relics

• From the Vault: Legends

• Unstable

Non-Magic: The Gathering products

 * Mood Swings (own design, unpublished).
 * Duel Masters (original design team, lead design for two small sets).
 * Star Wars: TCG (original design team, lead design for first release)
 * G.I. Joe TCG (original design team).
 * Neopets TCG (original design team).
 * Dungeons & Dragons TCG (unpublished).
 * Transformers TCG (original design team).
 * What Were You Thinking boardgame (contributions).

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.

Philosophies
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.

Scales
Rosewater is well known for creating several "scales" measuring his personal, unofficial assessment of how likely and frequently various Magic game elements are to return to the game. The Storm Scale ranking game mechanics is most famous, and it in turn led to the Rabiah Scale for planes, the Venser Scale for planeswalkers, the Beeble Scale for creature types, and the Gotcha Scale for silver-bordered card mechanics.

All scales go from 1 meaning evergreen or likely to appear in almost every standard-legal set, to 10 meaning nearly impossible to appear in future standard-legal sets. Each scale is named for a "rank 10" example of the category, so for instance Storm is expected never to return to standard.

These scales originated with Rosewater's Tumblr page "Blogatog", but the Storm Scale now receives regular updates under his "Making Magic" series on Wizards' main site. The Rabiah Scale has been summarized there as well.

Blogatog
Blogatog is a blog run by Rosewater where he answers questions submitted to him. The blog also regularly features a series of Magic related one-panel comics entitled "Tales from the Pit" (also the former name of the blog) as well as links to Rosewater's Making Magic column and a weekly audio podcast he records on his morning commute entitled "Drive to Work". Some of the concepts which Rosewater eventually writes about in his official column originate here, such as the Storm Scale.

Recurring characters
There are some recurring characters featured in some of Rosewaters's less serious posts:
 * Sally, the legendary squirrel
 * Englebert, the planeswalker least likely to return
 * Rosewater's toaster
 * Evil Maro

Weatherlight saga
Rosewater was co-creator of the original Weatherlight Saga and the plane of Mirrodin. In addition, he also was responsible for writing flavor text and overall flavor of sets (most notably during Tempest block).

Rosewater and his friend Michael G. Ryan plotted the original Weatherlight Saga, with additional help from Bob Kruger, Kij Johnson, and Pete Venters. The plot lines were based on universal themes as recognized by the famed scholar Joseph Campbell. Ryan and Rosewater also created all members of the original Weatherlight crew (except for Captain Sisay who was an already existing character).

Ryan and Rosewater were removed as the people in charge of the story during the end of Tempest block (during Exodus) and that event created a schism between R&D and the creative team for a number of years.

Unstable
For Unstable Rosewater provided a storyline article.

Pro Tour
Rosewater was also heavily involved in the creation of the Pro Tour, which he attended regularly until 2003 and made it a point of visiting at least once a year.

Personal life
Rosewater married Lora Montrose in a Jewish ceremony, with whom he has three children; Rachel and twins Adam and Sarah. Lora used to work the night shift at the Game Center of Wizards of the Coast, and that's how they had met.

Miscellaneous

 * The "Un" sets, Unglued and Unhinged, were his idea and mostly his creation, and has a special connection to these silver-bordered sets.   For this reason, he answered the Ask Wizards "Un" set-related questions, and even drew the art of Look at Me, I'm the DCI. He would only accept a check from Wizards for 1 dollar for the artwork, which he has framed on his wall, along with a copy of said card and the original artwork.
 * Because of its succes, Rosewater later also illustrated Maro's Gone Nuts for the Mystery Booster test cards.
 * 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 the rules manager as his arch-nemesis. Mark Gottlieb most notably filled this role.
 * Mark Rosewater came up with the idea for The Great Designer Search.

"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. Fans of Rosewater sometimes claim to belong to the "Cult of MaRo", a play on Mark Gottlieb's "Cult of MaGo".

Literature

 * Magic: The Puzzling