Magic: The Gathering creator Wizards of the Coast is hiring a ‘Narrative Manager’ who will specifically work on the Universes Beyond section of the card game.
This immediately caught my eye because of the apparent oxymoron in the job title. Contrary to MTG sets based on Magic’s own intellectual property, which each come with their own characters, worldbuilding, and series of short stories, none of the Universes Beyond sets released so far have their own narratives to manage.
So far, every single Universes Beyond set has been a sort of ‘greatest hits’ showcase of the IP it represents. UB Assassins’ Creed, to pick an example at random, didn’t tell a new assassin-based story in a new historical time period, it just showed us the characters from the games we already knew.
Examining the job description reveals surprisingly few clues as to what it’s all about. We learn the job is based at Wizard’s Renton office in Washington state – no surprises there – and that it’s offering $139.3 – $237.9k a year. It’s not a starting role then, and indeed requires the applicant to have at least three years of creative leadership experience.
As for what the narrative manager would be doing, the description is all “culture of teamwork and integration” this and “managing workloads” that. It also says there are four main parts to the role, then only provides three bullet points. The plot thickens…
Looking at other, similar job roles for the UB team makes things a bit clearer, however. These talk about conducting research on UB properties, performing lore deep dives and collecting banks of images and quotes for art references and flavor text. I suppose, even though they don’t have their own narrative, it’s vital for Wizards to ‘get it right’ for each outside IP they take on – to keep both the fans, and the company they’re partnering with, sweet.
And even if they don’t have original plotting, those working on UB sets obviously still have plenty of creative decisions to make. What should the generic creatures be? How should the flavor text be written? How should famous characters and scenes be depicted?
When I first saw this job posting, I wondered if there was a slight chance Magic would be changing its approach to UB sets – perhaps working with other companies to tell new stories in their worlds. But that did seem a bit overambitious, and indeed looks unlikely, since this is a role that already existed, but has recently become vacant.
Starting up in 2021 with the Stranger Things Secret Lair, Universes Beyond has become an ever larger part of the card game’s roster. We got our first UB Commander precon deck in 2022 with Warhammer, our first big UB set in 2023 with Lord of the Rings, and in 2024 Wizards announced these cards would be Standard legal, and make up half of all new sets on the Magic: The Gathering release schedule for the foreseeable.
For more magical reads, check out our list of the top MTG commanders, or our guide to every working MTG Arena code.
Source: Wargamer
