Hello everybody and welcome to another Fan Community Spotlight. We're rolling out the red carpet this week for a movie! For specifically, a movie-themed Hearthstone set titled Movie Night in Booty Bay created by a person by the name of Lokao. In this set, every class is represented by a different movie genre and the set will be littered with various movie tropes. If you've taken a stroll through TV Tropes recently (and it's surprisingly easy to stroll through that site for much longer than you intended to), then it may be easy to think of this set as what happens when you mix it with a Hearthstone set.

But what's a movie without a Script? We're not in the business of impromptu theater. This movie needs a script.

Script and Scene is the new keyword of the set that is attached to a minion and rewards the player with completing a various objective. When you follow the script (complete the objective on the minion), you'll have made a scene (the reward for completing the aforementioned objective). Think Sidequests but attached to a minion and you've got a pretty good idea of what to expect.

Cut! Already everybody, take 5. I've got an interview to attend.

What exactly is this set about? What is the inspiration for the set theme?

Lokao: "so...Movie Night in Booty Bay's inspiration came from a really weird place. Like..I don't think anyone would expect it. It all started with me being really bored one day and just thinking "oh hey,a Mirror Priest card flavoured as a spy would be pretty cool.Spies collect info and such and priests can read minds so it fits" but then that kinda evolved into thinking "But why would spies be in priest,they're usually rogue flavoured... Maybe a whole Espionage expansion?" and then suddenly the realisation of Spy Movies hit me. I felt the idea might be a bit cliche with TheFriendlyEnemy already going with a similar concept with the Arcane Arcade,which I'd count as an inspiration for the set as well a bit. But I still decided to give it a shot, joining the custom hearthstone discord for some assistance and got to work. I wanted to use a neutral zone of WoW for the setting of the expansion,and after looking over the wiki, I felt one particular call to me. Booty Bay. I love Pirates. something about them is just really cool in fiction but theyre kinda meant to be. and that's how the expansion was born. The card in question that spiralled this whole set eventually became Spymaster Duskfall,but it didnt really change much from inception to finish."

You've got Script and Scene. How did you get inspired to make them and use them in the ways that you did?

Lokao: "So for the keyword, I wanted to do smoething that encaspsulated the movie flavor well. You'll notice set keywords a lot of the time are way more flavor focused than the evergreen ones. Corrupt, Frenzy and Reborn being the particular examples that come to mind, so I tought about things that made sense in movies. The first thing that came to mind was the keyword i ended up using, Script, representing the actions an actor has to go that you see in the movie, such as their movement and talking. I simply tought the idea of guiding your actors through the movie is neat and flavorful so I went with that. originally Scene wasnt part of the keyword and I simply used Reward instead, but then I realized that adding Scene would improve flavor by around the time I was making Idea Thief. The wording looked way better without Reward, simply put. The keyword was already pretty wordy so I didnt really go too wild with its triggers and rewards, I tried to keep it simple and even then, some simple cards got pretty wordy. If I make another set,im probably using a keyword that requires less text."

What classes did you find to be the easiest or hardest to design for and how did you overcome any challenges presented to you?

Lokao: "Honestly one of the bigger challenges in making this set was figuring out the movie that each class would represent. A lot of them came to me pretty naturally, like the Horror for Warock, Sci-fi for Mage, and Comedy for DH but some classes bounced around in theme a bit pre- designing. I wasnt really sure what to do for shaman, with it sharing with hunter and druid in a bit of a small competition for nature documentary. In fact, Shaman was originally the one with nature documentary, in fact, while druid was going for a romance movie or historical movie. Warrior also originally had a war theme that actually lasted a a bit long but the way I was taking it was a bit insensitive, so it was scrapped. Rogue was another one with a struggle in finding a theme, even if it actually stayed the same throughout the entirety. Usually,I'd just give it mystery and call it a day but that was already in Priest, and I was not gonna move that one. So I bounced for a bit between Courtroom Drama movie or Pirate movie until I had the brilliantly stupid idea to combine both in one. For cards themselves, even after Shaman found it's footing in superhero action movies, I was struggling to think of good designs for the class, especially the Elemental part of it. and Demon Hunter was another one I had struggles designing for. The class is new, it hasnt been messed around with enough yet so it doesn't have a lot of ideas to play with, and no archetypes seemed to surface in my mind for just general Comedy, but it became easier when thinking of a high school comedy, which brought up the idea in my mind of an Illidari school with wacky misadventures. As for the easy ones, Priest's mystery theme came to me pretty naturally. Druid also came along nicely. I do believe one card was scrapped for Druid but I cant for the life of me remember what it was"

Are there any other cards you wish to showcase for any reason?

Lokao: "Cards I want to showcase...man I don't even know where to start. Well, personally, in the Timmy/Johnny/Spike trifecta, I'd call myself more of a Johnny with a bit of a Timmy tendency occasionally, so there's quite a few cards I left in there for people to figure out wacky combos. The Big Reveal being definetly one of my favorites for those. Master Director, Tarunt is another, and actually wasn't originally part of the director cycle at first, instead having a Kargal Battlescar like effect for Scripts, and instead Capridi had a closer effect, with a mass Script copying Battlecry. Terence, Director of Mystery is definetly my favorite Director of the whole cycle, speaking of. his effect is simple but powerful. Thok the Freed was based on the Thok the Bloodthirsty boss from Pandaria in WoW and might be the weirdest card in the set, in my opinion. In fact, all of the Druid beasts are based on Pandarian wild life. I also wanna say I really like the utility Pirates I made in neutral, all of them. But special mention to Blackwater Cook, who also doubles as cycling for Pirate decks as well as healing. Finally, one card that'd definetly be in my top 10 for the set,if not the top spot is Mysterious Stranger, Nat. Simply a lot of potential for wacky combos with the rest of the Quickdraw hunter support"

How long have you been making your own cards? What design philosophies do you have that you wish to share and spread to new creators?

Lokao: "I actually havent been designing card for hearthstone since very recently. Really,I'd say I just got started with this set, so I still have a lot to go through. But I have had experience in general card design beforehand through Yugioh custom cards.And I'll say that although my set might seem a bit of antithesis to that, Simpler cards can be more intersting than a complex card, but whatever it is kind of idea you wish to do, always make sure to think about how you can make it more intersting. And sometimes even if an idea looks bad you should still take a good look at it and think "Okay, but WHY is this bad?Can I make it NOT bad somehow?" and if you can think of a way that could maybe be less bad,then..try giving it a shot. Game-Winning Play was originally a pretty bad card that only occasionally highrolled into a rush minion with 1 mana. But with it giving the keywords as well the only lowroll you can get is taking a minion that's too high cost, and at that point it's a gamble you're responsible for. It's a simple addition that makes the card way better. Next time you see one of your ideas is a "failure", try to think of how it can be improved instead of scrapping it."

Do you have anything behind the scenes that you wish to share?

Lokao: "from behind the scenes, I wanna comment on the art process I went for all the cards... I had all of their effects, names and stuff beforehand, art was saved for last..so I grabbed a bunch of art i could possibly use and came up a bit empty for warrior and demon hunter..turns out sports and school are very niche stuff to find art for,even after we had Scholomance Academy increasing the numbers a bit. But it worked out in the end. Originally warrior's war theme had a fatigue theme cause i wanted to try and do a "better" take on the concept that's been done many times .it didnt actually go that well. There was also an idea for "Shuffle Demon Hunter" that shuffle Homeworks into your deck that do nothing by themselves but gain bonus effects through minions but then i remembered soul fragments exist and that would be too similar. And finally, I do wanna say that the set has a bunch of references within the legendaries! Heda, Ex-Dork is a Hearthers reference for example.And each of the directors is a reference to a famous director of their genre"

Here we are at the end of the premier show, but there is much more to come. If what you've seen in the set interests you, then click the banner down below to look at the the entire set. You might want to grab a popcorn and a drink too.