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NotM: Ultima Underworld-Runic Magic
By Corvus | January 29, 2008
Having covered the presentational, visual, audio and musical components of Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (UW), it’s time to move on to the components that do the bulk of the storytelling work–the ludic and textual components. I realized that attempting to explore all the ludic components in a single post was foolhardy (and not a little daunting), so I’m breaking it down into components and exploring each one more fully. We begin with magic
The magic system in UW is a perfect example of the design philosophy underlying the entire game. Like the other Ultima games, UW utilizes a runic magic system. Unlike the other Ultima games, UW does not merely transcribe runic spells into a book from which you cast, but requires you collect rune stones and assemble them into spells yourself. Casting the assembled spell requires an expenditure of mana.
Those familiar with the Nordic runes will be right at home with UW’s rune set. There are twenty four runes and each rune has a specific meaning–AN means negate, BET means small, CORP means death, and so on. Runes can be combined in twos or threes to form spells, which when read from left to right describe the effect of the spell. For example, combining IN (cause), MANI (life) and YLEM (matter) has the effect of creating food while combining IN (cause) and LOR (light) produces the magical equivalent of torch light. Adding a VAS (great) rune to front of the light spell VAS (great) IN (cause) LOR (light) produces the magical equivalent of sunlight.
This provides a consistency to magic and makes spells much easier to remember without the convenient reference card Origin provides with the game. In fact, I didn’t look up a single spell during this play-through. The spells I couldn’t remember off the top of my head, I worked out by reading the runes. The effect this approach has on the narrative is crucial. Rather than an arbitrary system involving a progression of various magical effects, UW’s runic system has an internal consistency that lends it a gravity, if you will. 
Relying upon actual cultural symbols that most RPG geeks will recognize and ensuring that the implementation of them is consistent practically removes the designer from the equation, allowing the player to build a relationship directly with the system.
Does that make sense? In other systems, I often feel the urge to criticize spell progression, question why I can only memorize ‘X’ number of spells a day, or why I have to memorize a single spell multiple times in order to use it multiple times. It feels as if a designer arbitrarily drafted a set of rules to make playing a mage fit their idea of how the character ought to progress. With an internally consistent and transparent magic system, like UW’s, I understand that the system may have limitations. And rather than feel frustration with an individual design decision, I accept those limitations as being an integral part of the overall system itself.
But UWs use of the runic magic system to make the storyworld of The Stygian Abyss a living environment don’t end there. While a majority of the possible spells are listed in the documentation, not all of them are. Some spells are found on bits of parchment discarded by the abyss’s denizens. Other are shared with you by characters in the game (a wisp gives you an apocalypse spell, for example). Even more are not documented at all, but must be extrapolated from environmental clues. For example, after defeating a gazer in the mines on the second level, you come across a sack with two runes in it (pictured to the left)–a POR (movement) rune and a YLEM (matter) rune. A little experimentation and you discover the spell YLEM POR, which allows you to walk on water. This is not the only instance of using found runes to figure out new spells either. Ultimately, it is possible to use the runes to recreate the effect of every magic scroll, wand, potion and enchanted item found within the abyss’s corridors.
This is truly the genius of UW’s ludic components and we’ll see that it’s replicated elsewhere in the game design as well. Rather than pull you out of the game to examine spell tables, UW rewards exploration of the storyworld itself. The more invested in the the world you are, the more rewarding the experience is. This serves not only to pull the player in, but to make the world a more satisfying and believable place to be. More than any of the textual elements, it’s these ludic components that turn UW from just another dungeon crawl into a rich and rewarding narrative experience.
Tagged:ludic components, NotM, runic magic, storytelling, ultima underworld. |
January 29th, 2008 at 11:39 am
That’s really brilliant, and if Richard Garriott had his hand in this, I can see where “Tabula Rasa”’s similar(but more limited) Logos system comes from. This kind of “spell alphabet” technique was also used in Silicon Knights’ “Eternal Darkness”, a lovecraftian horror-action-rpg, to great effect, including the ability to cast spells by trial and error. This kind of internally consistent system really makes the game world come alive.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Hi Joe, thanks for commenting! I don’t believe that Lord B had anything directly to do with UW’s design. By all accounts, the game was in development before it picked up the Ultima license. There were other games at the time that utilized runic system suspiciously like UW’s as well (not that using a runic system is counter intuitive or anything). What most of those games lacked, however, was a similar approach to the rest of the game design as well. What makes UW stand out, as I’ll be writing about shortly, is how this same idea is carried through the other game mechanics as well.
Now if you will excuse me, I have to go see how Herodotus relates to procedural asset creation. *kniw*
February 6th, 2008 at 11:49 am
I think that you’re dead-on here. This is my exact experience of the game - the magic system truly is transparent in the game. One of my favorite parts of UW (and I’ve never been able to complete this game once in 15 years!) is exploring each room with the hope that I might come across some scrap of paper explaining a new spell. Most of the time, UW does not feel intentionally “designed” but more “grown” naturally.
February 16th, 2008 at 5:41 am
The runic magic system in question is directly derived from the syllabic magic system Garriott had been using since at least ULTIMA V. And, of course, Garriott had been using those runes in Ultima games since the original ULTIMA came out in 1980.
I think you’re a bit hasty to discount his contribution.
February 16th, 2008 at 5:52 am
I wondered who was going to point that out.
Certainly, the spells themselves, and their runic elements were created by Garriott. But the implementation of the system is completely different in UW from any of the Ultima games I’ve played.
Someone elsewhere pointed out that there is no “modular spell system” and that the spells ultimately created are the same as the Ultima games. This is true, but my argument is that the implementation of the system in UW is far more immersive than the spellbook and reagent system in other Ultima games.
May 3rd, 2008 at 3:05 pm
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