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Jeff Howard has a new book coming out soon: Game Magic: A Game Designer’s Guide to Magic Systems. From Amazon.com (where you can pre-order the book):
This book provides a guide to performing magic and combining arcane symbols to render meaningful and powerful utterances. The author analyzes magic systems in games and shows how to effectively design better systems. The text encompasses the theory, history, and structure of magic systems in both games and human belief and incorporates pseudocode examples of how to design and program magic systems, with working examples offered online.
Jeff has written extensively about how real magic can inform the design of magic in fantasy video games, improving the player’s experience by making magic systems more engaging. Jeff’s students at Dakota State University have created the Arcana Ritual Toolset, “an extensible, open-source editor for creating your own magic systems.”
Arcana’s goal is to change the way magic systems are being portrayed in video games. Moving away from the traditional style of simply pushing buttons to cast spells employed by games like World of Warcraft, Arcana employs a more sophisticated and integrated approach. Inspired by games like Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, Arcana looks to make you invest time into actually learning the complex rituals behind actual magic systems. By combining complex sacred geometrical patterns, tarot cards, and specific ritual instructions, Arcana is attempting to put some actual magical knowledge into video game magic systems. [source]
I look forward to writing a review of the book as soon as it is published.