
124 ◾ Game Magic
Many possible combinations do nothing in order to keep the player from
having to memorize too many spells. At the same time, fourteen runes is
a reasonable amount of density, providing enough rewards to keep players
experimenting as they learn the system. Players slowly acquire runes one
by one, curtailing their initial ability to experiment and nudging them
in the direction of productive combinations by limiting the number of
possibilities.
In addition to a syntactical logic, there is also a logic by which indi-
vidual words are constructed in terms of prexes, suxes, and similar
sounds. Because “project” and “protect” ...