The Planeswalker Uniqueness Rule

Disclaimer: Unless you want to listen to me ramble on about Magic for several paragraphs, you might want to skip to the last paragraph. That's when I finally get to the spiritual point of this blog post.

There used to be a rule in Magic: the Gathering that said that you couldn't have more than one of the same type of planeswalker under your control at the same time. You couldn't have two versions of Gideon on the field at the same time. Even now, planeswalkers are considered "Legendary" and are subject to the legends rule. You can't have two planeswalkers of the same name on your side at the same time. You can now have Gideon, Martial Paragon and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar on the field at the same time, but you still can't have two copies of Gideon, Martial Paragon in play at the same time, so the "Planeswalker Uniqueness Rule" still sort of applies.

The idea that planeswalkers should be unique applies to the design of planeswalkers as well. Just about every type of planeswalker has their own unique niche. Using Gideon as an example again, he often fights hand-to-hand, leading a charge of soldiers, relying on his magical invulnerability to keep him safe on the front line. As such, most of his planeswalker cards have abilities that turn him into an indestructible soldier creature and that create more soldiers and/or empowers them. Gideon is the soldier planeswalker. Being a soldier and leading soldiers is his mechanical and thematic niche.

Ever since I started playing Magic, I've wanted to have my own made-up planeswalker character, but I always wanted my planeswalker to be unique. I wanted my planewalker to do things that no other planeswalker did. So, on October 30, 2018, I looked at all the planeswalkers with abilities similar to those I wanted my planeswalker to have and tried to determine whether my character's abilities were unique enough to not overlap with any other planeswalker's niche.

When I discovered that the only planeswalkers that dealt with elementals did so by turning lands into elementals, I learned that part of my character's niche could be creating elementals (specifically lightning elementals) that were not also lands. Sure, there was one planeswalker that created non-land elementals, but that was only one copy of a planeswalker whose actual niche was pyromancy. That planeswalker's name was Chandra. At the time, there were several different versions of Chandra, and only one of them dealt with elementals, so I figured I could pick up the elementals niche without stepping on her toes too much.

That was true until just recently, when three new Chandra cards were revealed, all of which interact with elementals. This presented me with a problem. Chandra was learning to use elementals, but I still wanted my planeswalker to be unique. However, I know that this desire for uniqueness is impractical. No matter what ideas I come up with for my character, someone is eventually going to come up with those same ideas for actual, in-game planeswalker characters. It was unrealistic to think that my character could keep elementals all to himself forever. And, as it turns out, he doesn't have to, and it's all thanks to the lore.

Chandra is a pyromancer, while my character is a sparkmage. Chandra uses fire and creates fire elementals, while my character uses lightning and creates lightning elementals. Mechanically, there is very little difference between fire and lightning in the card game, but in other systems, fire and lightning are separate, though sometimes related, elements. Fire elementals and lightning elementals are different kinds of beings, even if the card game makes little distinction between them.

But the real reason I'm okay with both Chandra and my planeswalker character using elementals is the fact that I can pretend that Chandra learned the benefits of using elementals from my character. You see, Chandra is one of the founding members of a planeswalker organization called the Gatewatch, and, in my personal version of the story in which my character exists, so is my character. Since they were both members of the Gatewatch for quite some time, they would have had the opportunity to watch each other use magic and to learn some of each others' tricks, especially if they specifically trained each other in their techniques. Chandra already had the ability to create elementals before meeting my character, but most of her cards reflect the fact that she prefers to burn things herself. My character could have been the one to show her that elementals are useful for far more than burning things, which might have sparked her current interest in developing the skill of using them.

But really, the whole idea of uniqueness is kind of overrated. People and ideas don't have to be unique just for the sake of being unique. Good ideas are worth borrowing, and good people are even more worthy of emulation. Besides, people are all unique anyway, even when they are actively trying to copy others. So instead of trying to make sure my planeswalker character has unique abilities, I should try to make sure he is a decent character, at least from a storytelling perspective. And instead of worrying whether I and my ideas are unique, I should focus on making sure that my ideas and I are good, even if that makes me "too" similar to other good people and my ideas "too" similar to other good ideas. Whether we're talking about ideas, fictional characters, or real people, being unique isn't terribly important; being good is.