Game Magic

Make More Immersive and Engaging Magic Systems in Games

Game Magic: A Designer’s Guide to Magic Systems in Theory and Practice explains how to construct magic systems and presents a compendium of arcane lore, encompassing the theory, history, and structure of magic systems in games and human belief. The author combines rigorous scholarly analysis with practical game design advice in the form of a magical recipe book (grimoire).

The book gives you an in-depth understanding of the history and structure of magic to make your games richer and deeper. It shows how to set up tables of correspondences and spell components as well as how to write programming code integrating these components as part of game mechanics. It also illustrates how to divide a simulated world into domains of influence (such as alteration, conjuration, and necromancy) and how to use specific rule systems to simulate powers within these realms.

Showing you how to weave compelling magic into your games, the book is interspersed with examples that illustrate how to design and program magic systems. Working examples are available for download on a supporting website.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: How to Use This Book
Chapter 2: Magic Systems in Theory and Practice
Chapter 3: From Exemplary Game Magic Systems to Code Recipes
Chapter 4: Schools of Game Magic
Chapter 5: Magic as Programming, Programming as Magic
Chapter 6: Game Design Lessons from Occult Magic
Chapter 7: A Videogame Designer’s Guide to Non-Digital Game Magic
Chapter 8: Adapting Game Magic from the Literature of the Fantastic