Yesterday's post mentioned a "complex casting system" in a game some friends and I tried to design a few years ago. I was reading through the forums where we were doing this design work (they're still up, hidden), and was going through the long thread where we discussed said magic system. I decided I'd cut-n-paste the main design post into a blog post. Sure, this represents many hours of conversations, thought, and design on my part but it's not like there's anything super proprietary or anything in it, and I'm sure hundreds if not thousands of other caster players have thought up similar systems. And, it'd need hundreds more hours of work to refine into something "real" that could be put into a game. I like to promote discussion on design and such, so here it is...

The "research mockup" referred to in the text is:

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Magic System Proposed Design
Version 2.0 (10/23/2006)

Overview

The magic system I'm proposing here is fairly complex, and is designed to provide a much "deeper" caster experience than the simple "buy scroll, you have the spell" type system we've seen in almost every MMO. I've tried to work in some features that make it a little more accessible for the "lazy" or more casual player that wants to play a caster, but doesn't want to learn the complex system. In the end, though, to be a really "good" caster player, you're going to need to learn the more complex system.

The system is based on the premise that in order to "learn" a spell, that is, have it in your spellbook and be able to cast it, you first have to research it. This is done by using the spell research interface, which I have made a crude mockup of -- you can see that at the following URL:

You can see from the mockup that spells are made up of Words, Components, and Sigils. More on that later. Casting (and Research) will be controlled by a number of skills. These will be arranged into trees TBD later. They will be specific skills such as Summoning Demonic Entitles rather than more generic skills such as Alteration like EQ1 has. When you try to Research a spell, a skill check will be done on the skill(s) the spell is tyring to use, and if you succeed, the spell will be learned and added to your spellbook. If you fail, you might lose some or all of the components, or if you fail really badly you might die.

When you want to cast a spell you just select it from your book, or hit the hotkey you have it bound to. A skill check will be done on the spell's skill(s) (the skillcheck for research and cast will be slightly different) and if you succeed you cast the spell, if you fail something bad might happen.

When you start the game with any casting skills, you will have in your spellbook some basic starter spells. You can use these for a while, they'll be enough to be effective. You'll also be able to use these as the basis for learning the spell system. You can look at any spell in your book to see how it was composed and can reason out from that how to create other spells.

For the non-interested, casual, or lazy player, there will be the option to buy spells at certain skill levels from some NPCs. They won't be the "super duper cool-ass" spells you could have, but they'll be enough to play the game and be somewhat effective.

Research

The heart of the spell system is Research. Again refer to the research screen mockup at

As you can see, spells are made up of Words, Components, and Sigils. We'll talk about each one in order.

Words are the main thing that describe what the spell will do. There will be a number of magical languages a caster must know in order to do magic. These will be individual skills in the skill trees. We'll invent a few languages, and use a few from the real world. I definitely want to have Sumerian, Celtic, and probably Enochian. We can invent the rest. We don't need full languages, just the words needed to arrange spells. As you can see in the mockup, the player doesn't have to actually memorize the language -- the words are displayed with the English meaning in parentheses. You simply drag the words from the Words tab on the left, onto the layout section on the right. You have to arrange them in proper order, of course, and we can have varying grammars in the different languages for flavor and to add difficulty.

Components are physical things you have to have in order to use the spell. These are things like herbs, incenses, charms, amulets, talismans, wands, staves, etc. Some components will be consumed when casting, either every time you cast or randomly, and some will never be consumed (such as Amulets). For example, say we have a Blort Demon summoning spell. The components are Asafoetida powder and a Blort Demon amulet. One unit of the Asafoetida powder will be consumed when you cast the spell, while the Amulet will not.

Some components, like wands or staves, will be held (automatically) when you cast the spell.

We can control how expensive/annoying the component system is by carefully deciding how to set the consume/maybe consume/never consume flags for each spell.

Sigils specify the scope and scale of the spell. Scope is what the spell effects: yourself, a target, or an area of effect. Scale is how powerful or "big" the spell will be. We can invent our own sigils or just use a weird font like the one I used for the mockup. Probably best to make up our own. Sigils will also be used to mitigate spoiler site effects (more on that later, though). Sigils were originally (in version 1.0) "Gestures" but after talking extensively with Zar this weekend, we came up with Sigils. They're easier to put in the game, and I think will "look" and "feel" much more mystical and "cool".

So, once you've arranged the Words, Components, and Sigils you think will define a valid spell, you hit "Experiment..." and if you've arranged a valid combination, and pass the skill check(s), the spell will be added to your spellbook and you can then cast the spell anytime (assuming you have enough mana and the components). If you fail, you won't learn the spell, the system won't tell you what caused the fail (bad combination, or failed skill check), and based on how badly you fail, you might die. Twisted Evil

Casting

Once you've got a spell in your book, casting is easy. You either select it right from the book, or press a hotkey you've assigned it to. If you have enough mana, of course, and the components needed, you'll cast the spell. If you fail the skill check(s), you fail, and if the fail is bad enough (critical fail), you might die.

That's really all there is to casting -- it's a simple casting system like most other MMOs. The complexity is all in the way you acquire spells (research). Casting needs to be simple, because you're not going to want to have to do complex actions while a mob is trying to make you into its dinner.

Rituals

I'm proposing another class of spells, called Rituals, that cannot be researched. Rather, you learn them from quests or from ancient tomes you might find in the game. These will usually require the participation of multiple characters, and be very complex. But the effects they have will be very impressive indeed. I will expand on this later.

Random, Unsorted Thoughts

When summoning or animating things, part of the "sentence" you will construct will include a clause for "under my control". If you leave that out, you create a "dumbfire pet" like the Necromancer rat summon that EQ2 has (used to have?). The "under my control" part causes a Will stat check. If you fail, the pet is "dumbfire" and will probably kill you. Razz Especially if it's a really powerful demon and you're just a Neophyte level caster. So, yeah, you might pass the skill check to summon that really powerful demon ... but if you can't control it, you're dinner. So you have to use your head when casting summons.

Spoiler site effect mitigation: To control the effect spoiler sites have on the magic system, the sigil alphabet will be randomized on character creation. Twisted Evil So what means "target" for one character might mean "self" for another. Would be kind of unfortunate if someone thought they had a "Kill" spell but used the sigil that meant "target" for another character, but meant "self" for them.

Skill trees: I haven't worked out how I want the skill trees to work just yet. I'm almost there, and will post on it later. It will probably have 3 trees: Harmful, Beneficial, and Summoning. We can use this to control power and prevent people from becoming "superbeings" by learning everything.

Spell books in libraries: I do plan to have readable books in libraries and other places, and some of them may give you spells you likely won't figure out on your own. Of course, you'll have to pass the skill checks, but it'll be really cool for players that explore and such.

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So there you have it. What do you think of this design, on a basic level? Is it something you'd like to see in a game? Or is it too complex? Or not complex enough? ;)