Mark Rosewater

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Mark Rosewater is a prolific Magic: The Gathering card designer for Wizards of the Coast and a former comedy writer for the sitcom Roseanne. With the title of Head Designer for Magic, he oversees the design of new expansion sets. He is often referred to as "MaRo," originally a Wizards office name for him. In the Mirage expansion of the card game, a creature card named Maro was included, named after him.

Rosewater has helped design and develop many card sets, including Tempest, Unglued, Urza's Destiny, Odyssey, Mirrodin and Ravnica: City of Guilds.

Rosewater writes a weekly column on the official Magic: The Gathering website called Making Magic, which has been the target of both criticism and praise. By giving an "insider's view" of Magic design, he often writes about topics which often generate much comment. In one such controversial article[1], Rosewater described the importance of including rare cards which are inherently (even intentionally) "bad" when compared to others. In another[2], he wrote about why he voted for Mike Long, a player once suspended from official tournaments due to cheating, for the newly made Pro Tour Hall of Fame for Magic: The Gathering. He often writes his articles in off-the-wall or unusual styles. There are also many articles in which he writes from the point of view of the game's cards or mechanics.

Rosewater is also famous for designing Magic gameplay puzzles, which were published in The Duelist and even led to their publication in the book Magic: the Puzzling (1996, ISBN 1-57530-100-8). In the foreword of the book, Richard Garfield describes rosewater as a term coined at Wizards of the Coast to describe "a card that has no use except in puzzles".

Rosewater attended Boston University, and has a background in comedy writing, including writing for the hit sitcom Roseanne. One of the most notable things about his weekly column is the frequency with which he mentions that he wrote for the popular 1980's sitcom. It has become a running joke among Rosewater and his readers. Mark's comedy writing shines through in his current endeavours as well: he judged the Unglued pre-release tournament while wearing a chicken suit, and the Unhinged tournament in a donkey suit.

[edit] Notable articles

"Timmy, Johnny, and Spike"[3], the article in which Rosewater introduced R&D's famous psychographic profiles of the three different types of Magic player. Several years later, he wrote another article, a "revisited" (and revised) appraisal of the three archetypal player types. [4]
"Mons Made Me Do It"[5], an article famous for its odd ending.
"Topical Blend #2"[6], which was written based on the results of two reader polls—one on a Magic subject and one on a non-Magic subject—yielded the results of The Sixth Color and Mark Rosewater is %#@$ Insane!.
"Topical Blend #1"[7], considered by Rosewater to be one of his best columns, combining the subjects of girls and design mistakes.
"Elegance"[8], a highly-controversial (and oft-discussed) fifty-word article in which every word linked to another fifty-word article (he explained its purpose here).
"Free Association"[9], a nonlinear multi-part column navigated by free association
"State of Design 2005"[10], in which he outlined his plan as Head Designer for the future of Magic design
"When Cards Go Bad"[11], "Rare But Well Done"[12], and "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly Truth"[13], where he writes about why some cards are bad, some cards are rare, and some cards are bad rares
"Myr Myr, Off The Wall"[14], an article in which he continuously switched between many writing styles
Also well known are his five articles on Magic color theory, which jointly are second-most-linked-to articles ever, behind Timmy, Johnny, and Spike^{[citation needed]}