Categories

Every mechanic has exactly one primary family, chosen by asking which element, if removed, would make the mechanic cease to exist. Overlaps are recorded through parent, child, and related links rather than by multiple categories. See the tie-break procedure for contested cases.

• Resource management

  Acquiring, holding, converting, and spending finite quantities that constrain what a player can do.

  Test: Is it about allocating a scarce pool now?

  18 entriestie-break rank 7

• Chance & risk

  A randomiser (dice, decks, tables, generators) or a deliberate wager against known odds is the identity of the mechanic.

  Test: Is the randomiser or wager the whole point?

  15 entriestie-break rank 2

• Progression & capability

  What a player or avatar is able to do and how that capability set changes within or across sessions, including asymmetric starting capability.

  Test: Does it make future turns stronger or different?

  27 entriestie-break rank 5

• Space & position

  Position, adjacency, territory, or line of sight on a spatial representation is the operative state.

  Test: Is position the operative state?

  20 entriestie-break rank 8

• Information & hidden state

  Who knows what: concealment, revelation, and asymmetry of game state between players or between player and system.

  Test: Is it about who knows what?

  14 entriestie-break rank 3

• Interaction & exchange

  The core act is a transaction or contest between players over shared or transferable things: trading, bidding, drafting, voting.

  Test: Is it a transaction between players?

  30 entriestie-break rank 4

• Time & action structure

  Partitioning play into units (turns, phases, real time) and rationing how many or which actions may be taken within them.

  Test: Is it rationing actions or structuring time?

  21 entriestie-break rank 6

• Action resolution

  Adjudicating whether an attempted action succeeds and how the result is graded and interpreted, independent of which randomiser (if any) is used.

  Test: Is it about adjudicating success?

  19 entriestie-break rank 1

• Narrative & choice

  Structuring authored or emergent story: branching, consequence, reputation, and persistence of decisions across sessions.

  Test: Is it structuring story or consequence?

  14 entriestie-break rank 9

• Puzzle & pattern

  The central challenge is recognising, assembling, or deducing patterns under constraints, where a solution is in principle determinable.

  Test: Is there a determinable pattern to find?

  13 entriestie-break rank 10