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The Magic System

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The Magic System Design Decisions 4: The Magic System Welcome to the fourth entry in my Design Decisions series. This time we’re going to talk about Magic, and how I got to the magic system I am implementing in this game. The Dark Unknown is a game of fairly high fantasy—it was a given that it would have magic. The rough shape of the magic system was one of the first things I got down when I start my planning and working on the design. As the idea started out with a more direct tie to the Ultima series, the magic system took the Ultima style as a baseline assumption and found little ways, then larger ways to deviate from it. And, of course, it is not as though that “style” was consistent from game to game. Ultimas 1 and 2 had a small handful of spells that were bought and then used up when cast, and you could either be a wizard or a cleric. Ultima 3 had two sets of spells, ‘sorcery’ and ‘prayers’. Most classes got access to just one of those, though two classes could cast both (but only the weaker ones from each). You just know all the spells available to you (you did not need to learn them), but which ones you could cast was limited by your casting stat. Spells were grouped into lesser and greater magics. The game came with physical books for each magic type, and the one for sorcery spell, the Book of Amber Runes, actually had a sticker seal that closed the section on the more advanced magic. Those who wished to cast from the forbidden section first had to cross the Great Stygian Abyss—the first appearance of that name in Ultima. In-game, however, there was no distinction, and if your INT was high enough you could just cast those advanced spells. Each category had 16 spells in it, selected as A through P. From 4 on, the divide between ‘wizard’ and ‘cleric’ fell away, and all classes that had access to magic had the same spells available to them. In Ultima 4, we had one spell per letter (for example, “Awaken”, “Blink”, “Cure”, and a few stretches, like “Z-Down”). It also introduced the concept of using reagents (what D&D would call “material components”) to cast your spells. The spells were described in the Book of Ancient Wisdom that came in the box, but some were presented with unknown reagent requirements, which you then had to learn in-game. It was Ultima 5 that made the last big change to the system- there were now 8 levels of spells (to go with the general motif of making 8 a recurring number), and you could not cast spells more advanced than your own level. It also introduced the concept of the Words of Power- 26 syllables starting with A- Z, whose meaning defined the spells. An Nox was Negate (Cure) Poison. In Vas Mani is Invoke/Create Greater Healing. And so forth. The words primarily have Latin roots. It was possible, in Ultima 5, to discover undocumented spells by putting together the right combination of reagents and words. After that, Ultima 6’s primary addition to the canon was that you did not always have access to all spells you were capable of casting, but rather had a spellbook and had to find or buy spells to add to your spellbook. I will stop there, for sanity’s sake- this is as far as I went in taking ideas for building The Dark Unknown’s system. One idea I liked from the fluff around Ultima III was the “Stygian Abyss” that had to be crossed before you can master the more powerful spells. This allowed me to create a natural two (ish) act structure- you have to solve Act 1 with only the spells before the Abyss, and in Act 2 you gain the ability to cross it and have access to the full list of spells. How it is crossed changed a few times in development, but it is still a feature of the game. Spells would be purchased or found, and you would have a spellbook. This allowed me a second way to gate content- starting out, you need to do an early quest to obtain a spellbook. It, however, is weak- it can only support 1st and 2nd level spells. Later you acquire a full strength spellbook, but still can’t cast the really high level spells until you get through the Abyss. By this time, I knew that one of the goals of the game was going to be to acquire and cast a higher level spell, and this was now one of the goals of Act 2. Spells you find will be in one of two forms. They might be on a scroll, in which case they could be read as a one-use casting of the spell that costs no mana. However, unlike what you might be used to from D&D, a spell can’t be learned off a scroll—they exist only for the using. The other form is in a special kind of book called an Audachta Nemesos. With an audachta, the spell can be added permanently to your spellbook, though doing so consumes the audachta. (More on the reason for that name in the Language of Magic section, below.) The Spells I started coming up with spells, and initially came up with 8 levels of spells (as I had already decided to stick with the 8 character levels), with 6 spells per level. I remember scratching them on a notepad while eating lunch back in 1999, even though I wound up putting it aside for years before I actively started working on the game. After some initial adjustment, we started here: Level 1: Cure, Disarm Trap, Distract, Flame Blade, Light, Strike. Notably, no ranged attacks or heals yet, though we can cure poison. The Light spell starts in the spellbook. Level 2: Illusion, Lesser Heal, Magic Bolt, Poison Blade, Protect, Unlock. Unlock is worth calling out because it’s a giant pain- having it means I have to work hard at designing towns and dungeons such that I don’t assume that I can force you to find a key before opening a door. The spell is difficult to find, however, so I’m willing to allow some sequence breaking with its use. Level 3: Fire Armor, Fireball, Iceball, Poison Wind, Telekinesis, Wall of Flame. Telekinesis is a tried and true part of good puzzles. Fireball and Iceball being the same level turned out to be redundant, though. Level 4: Blessing, Heal, Levitate, Life Drain, Smite, Transport. Levitate later became Water Walk when I realized I didn’t really want players thinking they could use it for anything else. Transport is a special one- this is another plot gate mechanism. Certain areas can only be reached through the Transport spell which can only be cast at special circles. Actually, both it and Water Walk are plot gatest—Water Walk is only known in some few places, and it opens up new regions of the map. Level 5: Mirror Ward, Paralyze, Return, Shockwave, Summon Ally, Swordstrike. Mirror Ward is similar to UO’s Magic Reflection, except it randomly picks a nearby target. Obnoxious in part because so many things need to check and see if the target has the spell up. Return is similar to Ultima VI’s Help spell- takes you back to the main castle, or to the entrance of a dungeon if you’re in one. It doesn’t work everywhere, though. Level 6: Empower, Explosion, Jinx, Mass Curse, Lightning Storm, Negate Magic. This is the first level that requires crossing the Abyss. Empower is needed in Act 2, and one of the main quests of Act 1 is finding a way to get access to Negate Magic without dealing with the Abyss. Level 7: Charm, Fear, Fire and Ice, Meteor Swarm, Permanence, Summon Daemon. Nothing from this level or higher is required to finish the game, so we begin to get extremely flashy and powerful. Permanence can be used to make some of the low-level buff spells permanent. Level 8: Arrow of Glass, Conflagration, Quickness, Reincarnate, Time Stop, ?????. Arrow of Glass is a callback to Ultima’s glass swords- a one-shot kill to most enemies. I leave one spell out to preserve the spoiler. Reincarnate is one of several spells that you can only cast in certain places, but once cast the next time you die you’ll pop right back up. After that you’ll need to return to a safe place where you can cast it again. Honestly, if you have 8th level spells your odds of dying are probably pretty low, though! Unfortunately, one day I thought of a spell I really wanted to add (I wish I remembered which one it was!), and I thought, you know, if you’re going to go with 8 as a recurring number, just go all-in. So, I sat down and came up with 2 more spells per level, bringing me to a nice 8x8 square. But for some of the levels there wasn’t a lot of design space left that I was interested in tapping—for first level, there’s only so much I want you to be able to do. At that point I had the idea of adding some spells that would be in the world, but weren’t useful on your quest. I mean, isn’t it kind of silly that every spell known to wizards would have a direct application? This, of course, led to the obvious bit of feature creep- I thought of uses for all of them.
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