
21
Chapter 3
From Exemplary
Game Magic Systems
to Code Recipes
3.1 MAGIC SYSTEMS AND LANGUAGE
At its heart, a magic system is a language. is is true of ctional, game,
and occult systems alike, though the nature of the medium and purpose
denes the character of the language. Various systems can be more and
less explicit and self-aware of their linguistic status, but they are always
fundamentally linguistic. Because magic systems are languages, they have
both vocabularies and grammars: a set of symbols and rules for combin-
ing them. e simplest grammatical structure is the verb: do this action,
cause this change—such as damage or heal. Most magic ...