In case it was missed, I am designing/selecting spells for my Black Hack inspired game called The Red Concordant.

I mentioned that I was working on the Blue spell list. I use colors as a name for a given school of magic based on certain broad criteria. I use colors in development, but provide a more evocative name once the final list is created. The goal is to be different from the traditional D&D schools of Evocation,Conjuration,Abjuration, etc...

One advantage of using a color scheme in development, is that if certain spells qualify for two or more colors, I can easily determine a color for those spells and put them aside. For example, if the same spell appears on the blue and red lists, I have a purple list of spells to consider later. Due to the criteria, they tend to feel like they belong to both schools, yet are slightly different.

Anyway, work continues, albeit slowly as the beginning of the school year approaches.

    Didn't abandon the Red Concordant. After a sidequest into a byzantine numerology experiment, I'm back to working on the Blue spell list.

    I got sidetracked a bit from Magic section of the Red Concordant by exploring material for the referee. Specifically, sketching out alternative magic systems.

This lead me to gematria (or isopsephy, if you prefer).

The main idea is that the name of a spell would tell you how powerful it was. Power is measured by spell level.

For example, for The Black Hack, the spell Dimension Door works out to be a 4th level spell. It's one of the rare ones that the calculated spell level is the same as the original spell level.

This lead me to another issue in that using gematria is great for generating new spells, but requires a lot of work to convert the old ones.

For example, Light is a 1st level spell. Using gematria, it's a fourth level spell, so I have to play with the name to get it back to a 1st level spell. It took about 10 to 15 minutes to discover that renaming Light to Portable Blue Light, reverts it back to a 1st level spell. Magic Missile didn't take nearly as long, changing it to Flaming Missiles works.

Despite the work involved, it can generate some more evocative names for spells given enough time.

For generating spells, I took all the words from spell names in OSRIC, 2e, Rules Cyclopedia, and The Black Hack. I ran gematria for all the individual words. The gives me a table of words that I can use to generate a spell of a specific level.

The rules are straight forward, choose a spell level you want and then choose words that will total the spell level you want. Just remember that spaces count as 1 point.

For example, for a 6th level spell using two words, I'll pick a word from the 2 point list and another from the 3 point list. Remembering that the space between the two words counts as 1 point, 2+3+1=6.

Randomly picking words, I get: Resilient Wormhole.
I imagine that it is similar to Gate, but weaker.

That's progress so far, I'll keep you posted.