MTG fansite, suggestions?

[SilkSkull]

I'm working on making a fansite for classic MTG (Magic: The Gathering), centered around the classic era of Magic that got me so into the game (late 90s early 2000s ish) and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions? Even if you aren't a fan of MTG and just know what you'd like to see in a fansite about something? Thanks in advance!

(PS, thanks @dream for suggesting I make a thread)

[dream]

I love the very early cards (e.g. Alpha, Arabian Nights). The game was simple and oozing with soul. Really iconic art then too. The website scryfall (those hyperlinks) has high res card art and art crops btw; might be useful for the site.

So, what pages are you planning? Not sure how fancy you're wanting to get, but it could be cool to allow visitors to randomly find Alpha cards. A simpler idea is to conjure up pages dedicated to cards with fan lore about them. A variant of this idea are fan fic short story pages centered around a 'hand' of seven cards, where the short story ties in all seven cards. Imagine four adventurers going on a quest with a hand of three spells, etc. Could be a fun challenge that this forum could contribute to, even if they've never actually played a hand of the game, like me 

[SilkSkull]

I love the very early cards (e.g. Alpha, Arabian Nights). The game was simple and oozing with soul. Really iconic art then too. The website scryfall (those hyperlinks) has high res card art and art crops btw; might be useful for the site.

So, what pages are you planning? Not sure how fancy you're wanting to get, but it could be cool to allow visitors to randomly find Alpha cards. A simpler idea is to conjure up pages dedicated to cards with fan lore about them. A variant of this idea are fan fic short story pages centered around a 'hand' of seven cards, where the short story ties in all seven cards. Imagine four adventurers going on a quest with a hand of three spells, etc. Could be a fun challenge that this forum could contribute to, even if they've never actually played a hand of the game, like me 

It's always interesting to see what people outside the game think, I've noticed a lot with non magic players that come into contact is that everyone loves old card art (ice age my beloved) so I'd love to do that idea, I always loved the flavour of magic that's kinda gotten lost over the years, like your hand is meant to be spells out of a library full of ancient tomes, so I think I might start posting some cards/combos in a thread and seeing what people think a story could be. I'd also love to do the second idea, sort of a "card of the week/month" thing where I do a write up about the card's uses, prints, history and lore! I'm planning on doing at least: a card of the week, cards I love and why, short history, decks that are well known, explaining the colour pie, and a basic intro to those who know zero!

[dream]

Love the ideas. I’d happily write some fan fic lore of a card or a hand of cards.

I think it’d be cool to experiment too with trading. Two ideas come to mind; one is snail mail trading, but that might be too blah with privacy concerns and postage cost.

So the other idea is virtual trading brokered by the fan site. The way I picture that working is you’d have a ‘Fan Collections’ or ‘Current Hands’ webpage where you randomly give a card to contributors to fan site for every fan fic story they write up to 7 max (rationale: diminishing returns if collections get too big; max 7, which is hand size, keeps things clean and requires fun tough choices) and they can use melonland threads (maybe just this one) to conduct trade with other members, which you’d ‘execute’ on by updating the site. Very low tech but feasible and funky fun.

You could frame this in a fun way that feels “real” by showing an IRL photo of your card collection on the webpage and saying all virtual cards are ‘backed by Site Name Bank’ to give a sense that fans are virtually trading real cards. Just clarify in fine print no withdrawals allowed and all physical cards remain your property :P

You can loop back into this concept by actually having fan writers base their stories on hands that are on the Collections page. Meaning fans can trade for their dream hand on the site and then have a short story written about it.

[SilkSkull]

Love the ideas. I’d happily write some fan fic lore of a card or a hand of cards.

I think it’d be cool to experiment too with trading. Two ideas come to mind; one is snail mail trading, but that might be too blah with privacy concerns and postage cost.

So the other idea is virtual trading brokered by the fan site. The way I picture that working is you’d have a ‘Fan Collections’ or ‘Current Hands’ webpage where you randomly give a card to contributors to fan site for every fan fic story they write up to 7 max (rationale: diminishing returns if collections get too big; max 7, which is hand size, keeps things clean and requires fun tough choices) and they can use melonland threads (maybe just this one) to conduct trade with other members, which you’d ‘execute’ on by updating the site. Very low tech but feasible and funky fun.

You could frame this in a fun way that feels “real” by showing an IRL photo of your card collection on the webpage and saying all virtual cards are ‘backed by Site Name Bank’ to give a sense that fans are virtually trading real cards. Just clarify in fine print no withdrawals allowed and all physical cards remain your property :P

You can loop back into this concept by actually having fan writers base their stories on hands that are on the Collections page. Meaning fans can trade for their dream hand on the site and then have a short story written about it.

I'm a huge fan of these ideas! I hope you don't mind me taking quite a bit of this! I was thinking of doing some sort of "card collection" system and was worried about how to even begin to code that but I quite like the idea of a slower more low tech trading system that requires you to go through a time to get it done. I'm thinking of how to organize this and how to start the fan fic ideas (thinking of weekly ish posting a hand or a few on a thread here and then taking the best the community comes up with? Not fully sure how I'm gonna run this yet but I'm getting to a point where I'm almost sure the community interaction and connection back here is set in stone 

[dream]

I'm a huge fan of these ideas! I hope you don't mind me taking quite a bit of this! I was thinking of doing some sort of "card collection" system and was worried about how to even begin to code that but I quite like the idea of a slower more low tech trading system that requires you to go through a time to get it done. I'm thinking of how to organize this and how to start the fan fic ideas (thinking of weekly ish posting a hand or a few on a thread here and then taking the best the community comes up with? Not fully sure how I'm gonna run this yet but I'm getting to a point where I'm almost sure the community interaction and connection back here is set in stone 

Love it. Fwiw I can code if we wanna get fancy. I like writing funky PHP, building silly databases, and tootin around with CSS/JS. That said, I do think low tech is the way to start. Scrappy-like. Rapid iteration!

What we need more than anything in the world is other melonheads who like MTG, either as a player or as a non-player appreciator like yours truly.

Hi hello Anyone quietly reading this and wanting to get involved?

While we wait for our third amigo to step forward, we should start writing, something, anything, both of us. You mentioned a few ideas for yourself to write (history and lore, well known decks, color pie, basic intro). But for me, it'll probably need to be fan fic since I don't know anything real (story of my life). A quick tangent—here's something I find interesting...

In the early history of Magic: The Gathering, Planeswalkers were not a card type but rather a conceptual part of the game's lore. When Magic was first created in 1993, players were actually considered to be the Planeswalkers—the powerful beings capable of traveling between worlds (planes) and casting spells to summon creatures and other magical effects.

We should embrace the early concept of Planeswalkers. Planeswalkers are players! Here's a thought—I might write a MTG fan fic short story that weaves in a few cards from an early set I have in mind. Readers will discover what set and which cards I'm referencing and learn, oh wow, this short story is describing a battle between two planeswalkers playing old school Magic. Thoughts?

[SilkSkull]

Love it. Fwiw I can code if we wanna get fancy. I like writing funky PHP, building silly databases, and tootin around with CSS/JS. That said, I do think low tech is the way to start. Scrappy-like. Rapid iteration!

What we need more than anything in the world is other melonheads who like MTG, either as a player or as a non-player appreciator like yours truly.

Hi hello Anyone quietly reading this and wanting to get involved?

While we wait for our third amigo to step forward, we should start writing, something, anything, both of us. You mentioned a few ideas for yourself to write (history and lore, well known decks, color pie, basic intro). But for me, it'll probably need to be fan fic since I don't know anything real (story of my life). A quick tangent—here's something I find interesting...

We should embrace the early concept of Planeswalkers. Planeswalkers are players! Here's a thought—I might write a MTG fan fic short story that weaves in a few cards from an early set I have in mind. Readers will discover what set and which cards I'm referencing and learn, oh wow, this short story is describing a battle between two planeswalkers playing old school Magic. Thoughts?

omg yes so many times, if you need any rules checks or any ideas of how things would play out feel free to message me, I'd love an email or message (whatever works for you) once you finish the first short fic! I'm currently working on setting up an account to run the site on neocities and brushing up on my HTML and css lol. (as a side note I've always loved that players are meant to be the actual planeswalkers and that the concept of mtg used to be actual wizard duals)