The Scroll Rack

An interview with the Editor-in-Chief

Remember a time not so long ago when we didn’t have all the information we wanted about all things Magic: The Gathering at our fingertips? Shawn Sullivan remembered, and it’s pure 90s nostalgia. When I was handed a Takklemag-azine at Chalice V and flipped through a few pages, I knew I was looking at something special. Takklemag brought me back to the days of going to Barnes and Noble bookstore with my dad to pick up a copy of Inquest, Scrye, The Duelist, and MAD magazine as a kid. Takklemag-Azine is the perfect balance of ads, gossip, deck primers, fictional fantasy stories, collections, puzzles, and more.

After reading through Takklemag a couple of times, I needed to know more. So, I reached out to Shawn Sullivan from the Emerald City Trolls for a bit of Q&A to attempt my first run at investigative journalism to find out what makes Takklemag-Azine tick and how it came to be.

Interview James Portello (Thescrollrack.com) Shawn Sullivan (Takklemag-Azine).

Q: Tell us about yourself and your so-called “Old School RAP sheet.”

A: “Uh oh, five-oh five-oh!” I guess, long story short, I started playing OS in 2018, after a period of a few years washing through Standard (I came back to the game during original Innistrad block), Modern, and Legacy. Then I just decided I wanted to collect cards I liked because corporate Magic sucks. The person I bought my Jet from introduced OS to me by showing me a deck with Tundra Wolves, Savannah Lions, Crusades, and so on, and I knew I’d found my thing. OS was still small in Seattle at the time, but a few folks had started playing it, and we organized our group, The Emerald City Trolls. Since then, my big accomplishments as a player include 2nd place at Lobstercon 2019(?), Top 4 in the 2021(?) Winter Derby, and a few Spice awards. I also have hosted several OS events. All of them have a theme and a special rule set for Friday night. These have been The Brothers’ War, Nightmare ‘99, The Maze of Ith, Fire Walk With Me, and Ragnarok. I also designed a format we haven’t played yet, The Coming Dark, which was killed by Covid. My next event is The Satanic Panic, in Seattle May 17-18, which features a special rule set “Magic: The Summoning” on Friday night. You get to collect Satanic relics and summon a demon, and cheating is allowed. Wholesome fun for the whole family. Details on these events and formats can be found on the Emerald City Trolls’ webpage https://emeraldcitytrolls.com/events.html.

Q:  In the “Letter from the Editor.” you wrote that this project started at the end of 2022 because of a “few folks Reminiscing about the days of the classic magazines like Inquest, Scrye, and The Duelist.” Who were those individuals? Was it at an event weekend? Are there any striking conversations you remember that got Takklemag into motion?

A: Most of those folks are the people who ended up writing articles (though a few who were there and wanted to write something couldn’t and hopefully will contribute something in the future). I don’t remember exactly how it started, but I remember having a couple chats with folks at events like Chalice and Lobstercon and a lot of discussion happening in various Discords or other online forums. A lot of it was 1:1 or small group chats, kind of randomly at first. In terms of getting it into motion, that started like most things that actually get done do: I made a spreadsheet, put in deadlines, and assigned out tasks. Then I continued to bother people until they either got it done or gave up 🙂

Q: How did you come up with the name Takklemag-Azine? 

A: It wasn’t my idea 🙂 I don’t remember whose idea it was. It was almost certainly one of the article authors, but I’d be hard-pressed to guess which one. They’re all so creative. But if I had to, Simon, Slanfan, Pat, and Aaron West are my leading guesses. It could have been Mase, too. He was in the conversations but didn’t end up writing an article (yet?).

Q: Takklemag issue #1 had all the right key components. Was this by design from the beginning or, can we expect issue #2 to be completely different?

A: I intended it to be more or less like the Duelist and have all the components of the big magazines from the 90’s, instead of something more like a fanzine (which are great! props to the people making those). A few recurring columns (The Rumor Millstone, Banding/Something with DFB, Magic: the Puzzling), plus some one-off ones. At least one piece of fiction and one spikey strategy piece per issue. Some ads. And then just whatever people want to write. We brainstormed a bunch of ideas, and then people picked things they wanted to write about. One thing I hope we can get in the future that no one picked up was interviewing an artist. Those kinds of pieces were always really fun back in the day. But it’s a lot of work to do a good interview and can be intimidating.

Q: The artwork was very cohesive for what I assume was AI; who was responsible for the art?

A: I made all the art, backgrounds, and other graphical elements using Midjourney plus Photoshop. It’s pretty incredible what you can make using AI art tools these days. And the technology is advancing so fast issue 2 could be even better. One key element was describing the style for the images consistently. “High fantasy artistic style” was in almost all of the queries, along with “Frank Frazetta” for many of them. Specifying the aspect ratios was also very helpful to get them into the layout I wanted. Then, just iterating in Midjourney. It has a very nice system for generating four ideas; then, if you like any of those, you can have it make strong or weak variations on it until you get what you like. Or, you can just get four new images. The hardest part was getting hands to look right. Some images I couldn’t use were amazing, except there would be three thumbs and nine fingers on a hand. I do also want to note that there is controversy over these tools, particularly because they are trained with images that AI companies mostly don’t have explicit permission to use. It’s a gray area, and I have mixed feelings about it. Artists deserve compensation for their work. But we also don’t make humans compensate everyone whose work they might have studied or learned from or been inspired by before, and I do think training AI is past the halfway point towards “learning from” vs. “stealing from” others. In any case, without the AI tools, I would have had to either have no art or stolen art, and both of those feel more wrong than having AI art.

Q: I saw on Discord that the satire ads are your favorite part of producing Takklemag. Why is that?

A: I like humor and satire. I think they are a great way to poke fun at how things were back then and really help foster the nostalgia we were aiming for. So, it was important to me to make some fun ads to include. 1-900-KILR-DEK calls back to the ridiculous, exploitative 1-900 numbers of the 90’s. Grossology is typical of an ad for a hastily thrown-together game created by a bunch of marketing suits aimed at a youth audience they really had no clue about others, seeing that they would throw lots of money at gaming hobbies. Even More Fucking Legends points at the shoot-from-the-hip, let’s-figure-out-wtf-we’re-doing vibes Wizards exuded the first few years. Not to mention the OS in-joke about there being new cards from Legends constantly. Chaos is an aborted card game I started designing in the 90’s, the cards for which I found in my childhood closet over the summer. Shivan Hoard is an ad from a random (fictional) game store in Akron, OH, with a not-quite-there understanding of how to make a compelling ad. I remember seeing random game store ads in the 90’s, and both feeling interested in figuring out how to go to one while also wondering why they were advertising their little store in a national hobby magazine. This ad also has a few Easter eggs for careful readers. The pizza ad started with a real ad from the 90’s, clearly just thrown into the magazine by a big brand who has found a channel to their target demo with a bland tagline in the top right. Also, you can’t just print a magazine with whatever number of pages you want, so the ads padded out the zine to be a printable length.

Q: The Rumor Millstone: Harmless nonfiction fun, or is there some truths in a few of those stories? 

A: You’d have to ask Pat 😀 But I will say OS is a small community, and news of drama and misdeeds spreads faster than a slam book at North Shore High School.

Q: You wrote a piece for Takklemag, “The Lost Book of Rass.” I play Book of Rass in 93/94 quite often in my Power Monolith deck. So, I was a fan of the story from the title. Where did you get the inspiration for the piece?

A: It started with a few basic things I knew I wanted to do. First, I wanted to showcase a duel between two wizards. OG mags would often include stuff like that, mostly to help kids imagine how exciting it would be if they became one of those wizards and got to do the things in the story. I knew I wanted to have the duel reflect an actual game of Magic, too. If you follow the events of the story carefully, both wizards are casting spells on curve, and their life totals tick down from 20 based on what the cards they are casting would do until one of them dies. Lastly, I wanted to embed ten or so flavor texts into the story. To do that, I went through all the OS flavor text in Scryfall, picked out some likely contenders, and then tried to see which ones could be fit around some kind of coherent story. The main characters, Mairsil and Vervamon, appear on multiple OS flavor texts. Sidaine and the Institute for Arcane Study are also in flavor texts. Then, it was a matter of giving them something to fight over (Book of Rass) and a place to fight (Tower of Coireall). Those were chosen more or less randomly, as distinctively named OS cards people might recognize but not ones they see all the time. “The Battle for Jayemdae Tome at Mishra’s Workshop,” for example, would pull in a bunch of associations people have with those cards as Magic game pieces. “Oh, this story is The Deck vs. Workshops.” I didn’t want that. Also, I wanted to tell a story where both duelists thought they were the good guy. Vervamon ends up easy to cast as “the good guy,” but Mairsil never thinks of himself as a bad guy. Believable villains do not run around believing themselves to be villains. The Joker, Sauron, and even Satan think they’re on the side of righteousness. You can clearly see Mairsil thinks he is too. And you might even agree with him… who is the Institute to decide who gets to use what magic, anyway? Who’s running this B&R list, a bunch of self-anointed jerks?

Q: How long did “The Lost Book of Rass.” Take to produce, and what did the creative process look like?

A: I like to write (never published anything, though, I’m a hack, see my unpublished works, or even ask me for my even more unpublished works). My process is typically to form the characters, their motivation, the source of conflict, and the setting in my mind, and then just begin writing. That developed basically out of my experience as a Dungeon Master, where I learned no matter how much I planned a story, it all went to hell when the characters got involved, and I needed to improvise off the fundamentals. I wrote the first draft of the story over two nights, with some drinking involved 🙂 Then there was a session getting the flavor text quotes in there in a way that wasn’t too obvious, another couple editing sessions, some feedback (thanks!), and more editing. Finally, a few sessions making art in Midjourney and laying it out in Photoshop. It was the first article I laid out, so that was slow, but I learned a lot, and the later ones were easier.

Q: The storyline was phenomenal in “The Lost Book of Rass.” but my favorite part was how you utilized and depicted the cards we know and play into physical incantations in the piece, Time Walk being my favorite description. How difficult was it to describe the physical casting of the spells? What was your favorite spell to describe casting?

A: Most importantly, I wanted the methods of casting each spell to be different and mysterious. I didn’t want readers or even the opposing wizard to know fully what was being cast or how. “He accesses two blue mana and casts Mana Drain,” bleh. I kind of just opened my mind to the nature of the spell being cast, imagined doing that, and how the spell would manifest and let words come out. A beer or two helps with this 🙂  I wanted to make sure each spell was described in a way that referenced the card and its mechanics, while also feeling unique. Time Walk was definitely fun to describe. I wanted to describe it from the victim’s point of view first, helplessly seeing your opponent manipulate time, with the victim realizing how horrible it must have felt when they used that spell against others in the past. Mirror Universe was also fun to describe. Few Magic cards invite you to imagine what it would be like if your existence transitioned into an alternative reality, with Shahrazad being the other major one I can think of. So powerful!

Q: The biggest question I kept thinking while reading “The Lost Book of Rass.” was, is this an actual game you played and turned into writing? And if so, who was the game against?

A: No, the game was fictional. But as I mentioned, I wanted it to be a possible real game in terms of what spells were cast when, how much mana was available, life totals of the wizards, etc. I’m glad you got that sense from it though. Part of the intent was for people to get that impression and be drawn into it, trying to figure out if the actual cards would work out like this in a real game. The best magic systems are grounded in a set of finite rules, so I grounded my magic system in Magic.

Q: Why did you choose Book of Rass? Why not Jayemdae Tome or Jalum Tome?

A: I wanted it to be a card outside, say, the top 100 OS cards, as I mentioned, so players would have fewer preconceived notions about it. It could really pull someone out of the story if I described Jayemdae Tome in a way that doesn’t match whatever lore they have in their head about it, for example. It also had to be something wizards would really care about and fight over. A book of lost knowledge is a really easy trope to follow 🙂 Other objects that could have worked, though would have been things like Feldon’s Cane, Runesword, or Ring of Immortals. Artifacts lend themselves really well to classic kinds of wizard-duel storylines.

Q: Can we expect more from this storyline or any new stories like it from you?

A: More stories. But probably not involving these specific characters. Or at least, I haven’t given enough thought to these characters to say whether or not they have more stories to tell. They might, though… perhaps Vervamon regrets his actions and tries to repair the damage he caused. Or has to destroy the Book of Rass when he realizes its potent spells are safe in the hands of no one and has to face the dangers of the Tower of Coireall himself. Or, maybe he turns coat and decides to try resurrecting his love, Sidaine. Along other lines, maybe Mairsil uses his necromancy to come back from the dead as a Lich to seek vengeance. I don’t know. I’ll figure it out later 🙂

Q: If someone would like to get a copy of Takklemag-Azine issue #1, how do they go about doing that?

A: Most of the 200 I had printed have already been given out. Chalice attendees all had an opportunity to get one. All of the authors have received some to hand out as they see fit. I’ve also sent a few to folks I know in other playgroups to hand out. I still have some left too, though I still owe copies to Trolls. Folks can reach out to their local groups (especially authors) to see if they have any, or they can ask me. If I still have any extras by Glorycon, I’ll bring them there. Frantz has first dibs for that (Levi already got one at Chalice). TO’s deserve all the love you can give them. Also, I do have a PDF copy available at https://emeraldcitytrolls.com/takklemag/takklemag1final.pdf

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

A: Just that it was a pleasure to work on this with all the authors. I pestered people to get things done, but other folks did most of the work. It’s way too easy to give all the credit to the last guy in the relay race. Takklemag was a team effort. If you enjoyed it, there are QR codes at the bottom of page 58 to support the not-insignificant printing costs. Any proceeds beyond that go to Reading is Fundamental, the largest literacy charity for children in the US. Also, there will be more issues. I am guessing in the neighborhood of 1-2 per year, mainly because this is a pure hobby-slash-waste-of-time-and-money. But then again, that describes OS in a nutshell, so yeah. An immense river of oblivion is sweeping us away into a nameless abyss.

That wraps up my Discord interview with Mr. Sullivan on his newest project, TAKKLEMAG-AZINE. I’m looking forward to “The Satanic Panic.” in 2024, and I need to get off this computer to pack for YetiCon tomorrow. That said, look for my next article on my experience at YetiCon!

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