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The Spell Writing Guide

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Suggested Price $9.99

The Spell Writing Guide is an in depth exploration and explanation of an algorithmic way to write spells in any magic system with set spell features. Included is the stylised Spell Writing Guide, the plain text version, and a dictionary contataining some of 5e's Creative Commons spells. The SWG contatins an in depth mathematical exploration of how we created the system and the maths behind some of the graphics we see as well as a more qualitative explanation for those who are not so mathematically inclined. The plain text version is simpler to print and read but contains the same information, The Dictionary contatins SRD spells from 5e in the style I prefer for the system (but far from the only one possible). 

While 5e has been used throughout this is system agnostic and a full understanding will grant you the ability to use this system for any system. This book also contains all the information required to do so including cyclically unique binary numbers (that'll mean something once you've read it).

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Reviews (3)
Discussions (10)
Customer avatar
Daniel C May 13, 2025 5:51 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Hey there so I have been reading through the process of writing the spells. However I am a bit confused as to how it factors in the components of a spell (V,S,M) required for it to cast?

Reading it from a player perspective, if these were written in a spell scroll/tome, I would know what it is and what it's supposed to do but not sure of what components required to even use this spell.
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Customer avatar
Gorilla O May 15, 2025 6:23 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Hi! So we actually found that in order to uniquely identify all the damage spells we simply need Level, School, Damage Type, Area of Effect, Range to (and then later we found we need duration for the non-damage spells, see Wizard spell compendium, same principal but we have 13 points to account for this extra information). My recommendation in universe would be that information like this would be added on top of the symbol. The symbol itself just being a shorthand version of the core attributes.

There's also the added complication that in The Theory of Magic we found that these components are really more of a memory jogging component than strictly necessary which is why I've gone on to sort of ignore them. As I say though, you would likely have this information along with the symbol, if you wanted to add it you could, of course, also add another two dots to the polygon and encode it like the other spell attributes. Hopefully that answers your question!
Customer avatar
Ben B April 17, 2025 1:19 pm UTC
PURCHASER
On page 7, equation 13 it says that the radius of the non-centered circle would be
r = √[(x1 - a)^2 + (x2 - b)^2]
but I'm pretty sure it should be y1 instead of x2 since I don't see any way of that working (including it making my graphing experiments very confusing until I noticed)
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Customer avatar
Gorilla O April 17, 2025 1:21 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Hi Ben!

Thanks for commenting, I'll have a look to check over the weekend and get back to you!
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Customer avatar
Gorilla O April 17, 2025 1:31 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
I Couldn't help it and had a look now but yes you're entirely correct it should be y1 not x2. D'Oh!!

Well done on spotting that, I must have mistyped all the way back at release :facepalm:.

I'll have that updated ASAP, thanks again!
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Customer avatar
Gorilla O April 20, 2025 11:01 am UTC
PUBLISHER
It's now fixed! Well done on finding that silly mistake and let me know if you find any more
Customer avatar
Richard D November 04, 2023 11:43 am UTC
PURCHASER
I absolutely love this book and will be using it for any handouts for spell scrolls to my players. But, have you considered also releasing a blank "template"? Like 11 points in a circle, or other designs? Might help some of us who are less visual art inclined to print out to write the spells?
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Customer avatar
Ronald P January 26, 2025 1:21 am UTC
PURCHASER
https://evelyn04.itch.io/spellwriting-studio

This little website tool will allow allow for easy creation and printing out.
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Customer avatar
Richard D January 27, 2025 7:23 pm UTC
PURCHASER
That's bloody amazing!
Customer avatar
Samuel M September 04, 2023 10:29 pm UTC
PURCHASER
First off, I love this whole concept. The book and dictionary are well laid out and, as a DM, will provide a ton of utility to incorporate this type of spell writing into the world. Have you thought about trying to list the breakdown into an spreadsheet to let individuals either sort by categories other than alphabetically? Or making an app to quick reference the preset spells or even make their own with inputs into the 'k=1'-'k=5' blocks?
Customer avatar
Franco P July 17, 2023 2:32 am UTC
PURCHASER
It's certainly an interesting concept, but the font is EXTREMELY hard to read. The concepts may be logical to those who have binary under their finger tips, but for those who don't (like myself) it gets extremely confusing in the first few explanations. I've got a background in math, and got honestly lost with diagramations and explanations. I very well love the concept and will give it another read another day, but as first impressions go, I'd love to see a better font, diagramations and a more gentle approach to the practical part before the theory.
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Customer avatar
Franco P July 17, 2023 3:35 am UTC
PURCHASER
I take it all back. I did not see the "Clean" version of the book and I jumped to conclusions. This is fantastic.
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Customer avatar
Gorilla O July 18, 2023 4:33 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Amazing, I'm glad you found the clean version which I included for exactly this ^_^
Customer avatar
Alan U June 21, 2023 5:11 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I love this concept, thank you! I am curious about ritual spells like Find Familiar without damage type, or Simulacrum. I'm sorry if you already covered this and I missed it.
Customer avatar
หิวจัง ? April 19, 2023 7:54 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Hello I'm DM of D&D 5e in Thailand, so in this moment my country has go very hype in D&D but in the reason of Language wall, I decide to translate some part of the content and share to the community, keep in mind that I just share some intereseting topic and also give credit to author. but I'm here to ask for the permission before I done that stuff about can I translate the content and share some of it to my commu?
Customer avatar
Henry C March 21, 2023 7:09 am UTC
PURCHASER
I was looking at the symbolic dictionary, and I might be heavily misunderstanding some basic concept, but I have a few questions for the "area" section. Namely why aren't they ordered based on their binary value, why are some binary values missing, such as 11001 (25), and why is there a "None" option for "area" but not for anything else. Again, I may be seriously lacking in my understanding of either your work or the d&d spell system as a whole.
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Customer avatar
Gorilla O March 21, 2023 10:35 am UTC
PUBLISHER
By design the system is rotationally asymmetric (i.e. you can't rotate "fire" and get "water"). The reason for this is just so that it's not technically required to know which point the original writer of the spell chose as their first or the orientation they wrote it in. Numbers such as 11001 are rotationally symmetric with 10011, 00111, 01110, etc. I believe 00111 is the one included but I may be wrong. Good Question though.

As for why "None" is in area, this is a hold over from the data used to build the Theory of Magic where one spell had None explicitly. Typically for the others I use the 000...0000 for "None".
Customer avatar
ID D March 16, 2023 1:07 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Very good book
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Customer avatar
Gorilla O March 16, 2023 2:17 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Thank you! If you want you can leave a review but I really appreciate it none the less!
Customer avatar
zhao C March 14, 2023 2:54 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Dear author after i read the Spellwritingguide I think the Figure2.1 the picture k=2and3 has some problem
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Customer avatar
Gorilla O March 14, 2023 6:05 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
I'll look into it thank you ^_^
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Customer avatar
Gorilla O March 14, 2023 6:41 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Having looked into it further I can say that they are right but I think I can see where there might be some confusion. The drawing starts from the bottom most point, the input is [10110], so for k=2: we connect the first point to the bottom left, moving along to the bottom point since there is a 0 in the input we draw a dashed line to the top left, for the bottom left we have a one again so draw a solid line to the top right etc. etc. I think the confusion may come from an unclear starting point so I really appreciate the comment
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Customer avatar
zhao C March 16, 2023 12:12 pm UTC
PURCHASER
thank for your review, I thin I know what your mean
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152
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File Last Updated:
April 20, 2025
This title was added to our catalog on March 13, 2023.
Publisher
The Gorilla Of Destiny
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