ABSTRACT
This book is a grimoire: a guidebook to the construction of magic systems that doubles as a compendium of arcane lore, encompassing the theory, history, and structure of magic systems in both games and human belief. e book thus combines the rigors of scholarly analysis with the strengths of a handbook for game design and a textbook of magic. e book is a cookbook, a compendium of recipes, a spellbook for weaving more potent and subtler magic in games. e text is intercut with examples of how to design and program magic systems written as snippets of pseudocode, with working examples downloadable from the book’s website. e book will show how to set up tables of correspondences and spell components, and how to write a program integrating those components as part of game mechanics. It shows how to divide a simulated world into domains of inuence (i.e. schools of magic like alteration, conjuration, and necromancy), and how to use specic rules systems to simulate powers within these realms.
