Introduction
Magic systems are great. However, there's a big disconnect between the magic systems of fiction, and the magic systems we can implement in games. There's a dream of implementing magic systems in a computer as some "alternate physics" that have underlying, consistent rules with interesting emergent dynamics and gameplay. This blog is going to be documenting my progress in understanding this gap: what makes designing formal, implementable magic systems hard, what are some reasonable methodologies you can follow, and what I've managed to do so far. I use writing to work out my thoughts, so expect these posts to sometimes be rambley. I'll try to prefix a post as (distillation) if it's a summarization of helpful insights, and prefix a post as (scratch pad) if it's me working through the ideas. Except some repetition as I continue to rework things. My research methodology is going to be a combination of the following: - Reading literature directions that see...