Aliens, serial killers, demon clowns. Orphans who stand out in the wheat fields at night. Magic: The Gathering is covering a lot of ground with this new set. Duskmourn: House of Horror is jam-packed with references and homages to practically every horror genre, from slashers and creature features to psychological and cosmic horror, each reimagined through the lens of Magic: The Gathering’s unique style.
At the center of it all is a demonic entity called Valgavoth, a moth-like creature who used its eldritch powers to turn an entire plane into a living nightmare. Duskmourn’s creators were interested in using the set to explore horror in a way Magic never has before, which sometimes meant channeling their own anxieties and fears into the cards.
“The moths come from a personal story,” Ovidio Cartagena, senior art director at Wizards of the Coast tells me. “When I was a kid I saw a big moth that prophesied a death, literally.” Cartagena says he thinks that was a coincidence now, but as a child it made a big impact on him. “The superstition was there, the moth was there, and the tragedy was there. That was in my mind. I’m not sure I would have come up with moths if that hadn’t happened when I was young and sensitive.”
Duskmourn differs from Magic’s other scary setting, Innistrad, by focusing on modern horror of the ‘80s to today, rather than gothic horror.
I spoke with Cartagena and Emily Teng, worldbuilding design lead at Wizards of the Coast, ahead of the Duskmourn’s launch, to learn about how their team approached bringing modern horror to Magic. Teng says that while a lot of the creative process involved digging into their own fears and nightmares, a lot of it also comes from being horror fans themselves and understanding what resonates with people.
“We have a pretty good idea of what will be scary based on the horror genre as a whole,” Teng explains. “Personally, I don’t find slashers scary. It’s just a guy with a chainsaw, no big deal. He cuts you, you die. Death is not the worst thing that can happen. But for other people, that is terrifying. They’re frightened of the idea of being chased, of being hurt and tortured. That’s where we take things that might not necessarily be our own fears but we understand them to be a fear that is widely felt.”
Teng did admit that at least one of her personal fears made it into the set though: the Wickerfolk, tree-like entities that capture and transform survivors into more of their own kind. “#that’s something I am personally terrified by, so I definitely wanted to include it.”
Whether it’s the monster that lives under your bed or killer doll chasing you down with a knife, Duskmourn casts a pretty net to attract horror fans. With so many references and influences to pull from, it was important for the developers to not only find the right tone for the set, but also to ensure that the horrors they created didn’t step over the line.
“This is probably the set where I’ve been the most wary of triggering imagery,” Cartagena, who was also the art director on thebody horror-centric Phyrexia: All Will Be Onesays. “You want to be on that line. You don’t want to make people uncomfortable, so you have to create some distance. You want the audience at times to feel smarter than the set. If you make it all uncomfortable all the time, it’s just going to be jarring.”
One of the ways they tried to ride that line is by balancing horror with some humor and light-heartedness. The friendly beasties and the mischievous gremlins are two examples of ways the designers were able to inject some levity into the set, but there was also a lot of consideration put into the way that horror was represented.
“There are certain things we absolutely are not going to show in the set,” Teng says. “There’s a line between horror that scares you but you feel this excited thrill, and horror that you so violently reject that you are genuinely upset and disturbed [by].”
While Duskmourn invokes many of the characters and conventions of the Slasher genre, for example, you won’t actually see much gore. The violence and viscera that the genre is known for are implied in Duskmourn, which largely comes down to the difference in format between film and TCGs.
Magic’s age rating is 13+, even for more intense sets like Duskmourn.
“One of the things about creating horror for our cards is that it’s always going to be there on the card,” Teng explains. “It’s not like a movie where you watch it, you get through the gory part, and then it’s gone. As long as you’re looking at the card, it’s in your face. We didn’t go explicit because we didn’t want it to be in your face all the time. It hits differently when you may’t look away.”
One of the best examples of Duskmourn’s implied violence is Meat Hook Massacre 2 - a tongue-in cheek reference to Texas Chainsaw Massacre and a meta-commentary on horror sequels that also serves as in in-joke for an older Magic card, the original Meat Hook Massacre from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. Teng says the devs were delighted by the idea of Meat Hook Massacre 2 as soon as it was pitched.
Cartagena says that putting these kinds of constraints on themselves forces the team to be more creative. “There’s gore horror and atmospheric horror. There is poop joke comedy and actually witty comedy. We want to be on the witty side. We want to come up with ideas that are evocative and suggestive and that play with you as an audience member, we don’t want to show you everything.”
Duskmourn’s setting has faced some amount of backlash from players who feel that the imagery and references to modern technology and culture are pushing the game too far away from its original fantasy identity, but Cartagena and Teng say pushing the boundaries of what Magic can be is what has kept the game alive and thriving for so long. “If we just try to stay within what people expect Magic to be then Magic would go stale,” Teng says. “What’s awesome about Magic is the way it keeps growing and pushing the boundaries. Its strength is that I can adapt to all sorts of genres and moods and tones.”
“It’s kind of like the Oscars,” Cartagena says. “The Oscar winners are always the average. They’re great movies, the best films, but it’s exactly what you expect. It’s not very memorable and it’s certainly not experimental. As creatives we need a space where we can experiment with what it means to be Magic.” When he thinks about designing for Magic he isn’t just thinking about it as a game, but as a piece of art that reflects, interacts with, and influences culture. And while the designers are always talking about where the line is, it’s important to him to be able to push that boundary when the time is right too. “There’s millions of options of how to win the game,” he says. “We want as many options for creating a fantasy.”
