{ "schemaVersion": 20, "license": { "name": "CC BY 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" }, "count": 191, "mechanics": [ { "id": "achievements", "name": "Achievements", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "A list of named goals, usually kept by a platform rather than by the game's own rules, records each one when its condition is met in play and adds it, often with a point value, to a persistent profile shown to others.", "aliases": [ "trophies", "Gamerscore", "badges", "achievement points" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "quests", "appointment-mechanics", "prestige-resets", "high-score-tables" ], "referenced_by": [ "kill-streaks" ], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Xbox 360 achievements (2005), where each game carries a fixed list of goals with point values that sum into a Gamerscore on the player's profile. Category is progression-and-capability by assignment, which departs from the default tie-break order: the progression question asks whether future turns become stronger or different, and for most achievements they do not, since the canonical form grants no capability. The reason for the assignment is that the mechanic is a cumulative, cross-session account of what a player has done, the same persistence that experience levels and prestige ranks keep. Narrative-and-choice was the losing family, since it covers the persistence of play across sessions and many achievements mark story completion; interaction-and-exchange was also considered for profile comparison, which is not a transaction. Agency is low because an achievement unlocks as a consequence of play; medium was the losing value for players who pursue a chosen goal. Interaction is solo because the condition is met identically whoever else plays; indirect was the losing value for comparison of scores among friends. Information is perfect for listed goals; hidden was the losing value for secret achievements whose condition is concealed until unlocked. Decision density is low: the list is a tally with no decision point of its own.", "effects": [ "compulsion", "grind", "replayability" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Activision patch program", "year": 1980, "year_approx": true, "medium": "video", "creator": "Activision", "note": "Manuals for Activision's Atari 2600 cartridges named a score or time and invited players to photograph the screen showing it and mail the picture in to join a named club, such as the Activision Ski Team, acknowledged with an embroidered patch; a goal set and checked by the publisher outside the game.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Reportedly added in patch 3.0.2 (2008), before Wrath of the Lich King, as a list kept by the game rather than a platform. Achievements carry points and sit in categories, and some award titles or items such as pets, tabards and mounts; quest totals earn The Loremaster and exploring every major area earns the title The Explorer.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Xbox 360 achievements", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Microsoft", "note": "Every game on the platform lists achievements with point values, a notification appears on unlock, and the points sum into a Gamerscore across all games on the player's profile. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Team Fortress 2", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "Shipped with Steam achievements, and class updates from 2008, starting with the Medic in April, granted new weapons for reaching a number of a class's achievements, a variant in which the record also grants capability.", "latest": false }, { "title": "PlayStation 3 trophies", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sony Computer Entertainment", "note": "Trophies come in bronze, silver, and gold grades, and games with a full list award a platinum trophy for collecting all the others, so the list itself has a completion goal; the first platinum came with Uncharted in August 2008.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Vampire Survivors", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "poncle", "note": "Each named goal, such as surviving a set time or raising a weapon to level 4, is recorded on the Steam profile, where 243 achievements are listed, and the same achievements gate unlocks, so meeting one also adds a character, weapon, stage, or mode to later runs.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Activision patch program", "year": 1980, "year_approx": true, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the publisher-kept form, which the Definition's \"usually kept by a platform\" admits: Activision manuals copyrighted 1980, for Skiing and Dragster, offer enrolment in a named club (the Activision Ski Team, the World Class Dragster Club) to players who send a picture of the screen showing a set time, a goal set and checked by the publisher outside the game. The embroidered patch sent as the club's token is reported in secondary accounts. The 1980 launch manuals for Checkers and Fishing Derby carry no such offer, and the first month of the programme is unconfirmed, so the year is approximate; confidence is medium because the offer is printed in dated primary documents and no earlier candidate is documented. Reported predecessors of the platform form are MSN Games badges, which Jakobsson (2011) calls a template for Xbox 360 achievements but does not date, and the in-game \"secret bonuses\" of E-Motion (1990), whose cited source is unconfirmed. Xbox 360 achievements (2005) popularised the platform-kept form with an aggregate score; Steam achievements (2007) and PlayStation trophies (2008) followed." }, "established": { "title": "Xbox 360 achievements", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Xbox 360 achievements made the list a platform feature, with point values summed into a Gamerscore on the player's profile; Steam achievements and PlayStation trophies followed the platform-kept form." }, "sources": [ { "key": "the-achievement-machine-understanding-xbox-360-achievements-in-gaming-practices-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "The Achievement Machine: Understanding Xbox 360 Achievements in Gaming Practices", "author": "Mikael Jakobsson", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "Game Studies 11(1)", "url": "http://gamestudies.org/1101/articles/jakobsson", "accessed": "2026-10-21", "locator": "The Xbox Live Achievement System; The History and Impact of Achievements", "note": "The Xbox 360 achievement system, Gamerscore and its point budgets, and the play practices built around them; names Activision's patches as an earlier similar system and MSN Games badges as the closer predecessor." }, { "key": "framework-for-designing-and-evaluating-game-achievements-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Framework for Designing and Evaluating Game Achievements", "author": "Juho Hamari and Veikko Eranti", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "Proceedings of DiGRA 2011 Conference: Think Design Play", "url": "https://dl.digra.org/index.php/dl/article/view/545", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Structure of an achievement as signifier, completion logic, and reward." }, { "key": "skiing-instruction-manual-1980", "canonical": false, "title": "Skiing instruction manual", "author": "Activision", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Offers membership of an Activision Ski Team for a Game 3 run under 28.2 seconds, proved by a picture of the screen." }, { "key": "dragster-instruction-manual-revision-3-1980", "canonical": false, "title": "Dragster instruction manual (revision 3)", "author": "Activision", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Offers enrolment in the World Class Dragster Club for a run under 6 seconds, proved by a picture of the screen." }, { "key": "firmware-v2-40-walkthrough-part-2-trophies-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Firmware v2.40 walkthrough, part 2: Trophies", "author": "Eric Lempel (PlayStation Blog)", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://blog.playstation.com/2008/06/30/firmware-v240-walkthrough-part-2-trophies/", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Trophies arrive with PS3 firmware 2.40 in June 2008, with Super Stardust HD the first game to use them." }, { "key": "first-ps3-game-to-offer-a-platinum-trophy", "canonical": false, "title": "First PS3 game to offer a platinum trophy", "author": "Guinness World Records", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/105410-first-ps3-game-to-offer-a-platinum-trophy", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Uncharted on 4 August 2008, the platinum awarded for obtaining all bronze, silver, and gold trophies in a game." }, { "key": "the-gold-rush-update-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "The Gold Rush Update", "author": "Valve", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.teamfortress.com/goldrush/", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Team Fortress 2's three new Medic weapons granted for one third, two thirds, and all of the class's new achievements." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Achievement (video games)", "note": "Activision patches (dated there from 1982, a date the 1980 manuals contradict), Xbox 360 Gamerscore, Steam achievements, and PlayStation trophies." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-achievement-tips-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Achievement Tips", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20090413165641/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com:80/info/basics/achievement-tips.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Points, easy and complex achievements, rewards of titles, pets, tabards and mounts, The Loremaster and The Explorer." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 9, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 498, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/achievements" }, { "id": "action-points", "name": "Action Points", "status": "unverified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "Each turn a player receives a fixed budget of points and spends them on any combination of actions from a menu with differing costs, with unspent points usually lost at the end of the turn.", "aliases": [ "action point allowance", "AP system", "time units", "action economy" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "worker-placement", "cooldowns", "hand-management", "cover-systems" ], "referenced_by": [ "cooperative-play", "game-clocks", "grid-movement", "initiative-order", "interrupts-and-reactions", "rondel", "time-track", "zone-of-control" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Tikal, with a ten-point budget and a public cost menu. Interaction is solo because the budget is spent identically whatever other players do; the losing value was indirect, since the actions bought usually act on a shared board. Decision density is high for budgets of Tikal's size and medium for fixed small counts such as Pandemic's four actions, as the taxonomy guideline notes. Complexity is low for the rule itself; large cost menus push it toward medium. Pacing is neutral because a per-turn budget bounds what a turn contains but neither compounds nor pulls the end forward; decelerates was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "planning", "analysis-paralysis", "downtime", "mastery" ], "examples": [ { "title": "X-COM: UFO Defense", "year": 1994, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Mythos Games and MicroProse", "note": "Each soldier has time units spent on movement, aiming, and firing, and units left in reserve fund reaction fire during the enemy turn, tying the budget to a cover-and-overwatch tactical model.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fallout", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Interplay Productions", "note": "Turn-based combat where movement and attacks each cost action points from a per-character pool set by the Agility statistic.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tikal", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling", "note": "Ten action points per turn spent across exploring, moving, excavating, and placing camps, each with its own cost; the usual reference for the pattern in hobby board games, though not the first board game with action points.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pandemic", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Matt Leacock", "note": "Each player has four actions on their own turn, each costing one, and the table plans those turns together; the small budget keeps per-turn decisions tractable.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pathfinder (second edition)", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Paizo", "note": "The three-action economy gives every character three actions per turn, with activities costing one to three, replacing the earlier standard, move, and swift action categories.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Wasteland 3", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "inXile Entertainment (Deep Silver)", "note": "Each Ranger receives a pool of action points per combat turn and spends them on movement, attacks, and other actions at differing costs; points left over can be spent on Ambush, Defend, or Prepare, the last of which carries them into the next turn.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Rebelstar", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "The earliest documented action-point budget under that name found is Julian Gollop's Rebelstar (1986), whose instructions give each unit Action Points to spend on moves and actions of differing cost, read in a 1991 reproduction; Crash's review of 1986 describes the same per-unit allowance, with aimed shots costing more than snap shots. Laser Squad (1988) uses the same term, and X-COM (1994) renamed them time units. Gollop's earlier Rebelstar Raiders (1984) probably used the system, on secondary evidence only. The earliest board game found using the term is Space Hulk (1989), with four or six Action Points per activation and leftovers lost. Movement-point allowances in hex-and-counter wargames are an older, movement-only precursor, and Gollop named the board wargames Sniper! and Squad Leader as influences, which remain unsurveyed. No evidence shows that Pax Britannica (1985) used action points. Tikal (1999) is the usual reference in hobby board games; one reviewer writes that it was not the first but revolutionised the mechanic." }, "established": { "title": "Tikal", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Tikal's ten-point budget spent across a public cost menu is the usual reference for the pattern in hobby board games, and a reviewer credits it with revolutionising the mechanic, though earlier video and board games used action points." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Actions chapter: Action Points", "note": "Definition and the comparison with action selection and worker placement." }, { "key": "tikal-rulebook-1999", "canonical": false, "title": "Tikal rulebook", "author": "Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Canonical cost menu used for the property coding." }, { "key": "pathfinder-core-rulebook-second-edition-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "Pathfinder Core Rulebook (second edition)", "author": "Paizo", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 9: Playing the Game, actions and activities", "note": "The three-action economy as a tabletop-RPG instance." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Action Points", "note": null }, { "key": "rebelstar-instructions-1986", "canonical": false, "title": "Rebelstar instructions", "author": "Julian Gollop", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/packages/sinclair/docs/game-database/R/REBLSTAR.TXT", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "From The Rebelstar Collection Players' Manual (1991)", "note": "Each unit receives Action Points per turn and every action costs a number of them; damaged units have a reduced allowance." }, { "key": "rebelstar-review-1986", "canonical": false, "title": "Rebelstar review", "author": null, "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Crash", "url": "https://crashonline.org.uk/31/rebelstar.htm", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Crash issue 31", "note": "Each character or robot is allocated a number of action points; actions cost varying numbers of points, changing items costs points, and an aimed shot costs more than a snap shot." }, { "key": "laser-squad-inlay-1988", "canonical": false, "title": "Laser Squad inlay", "author": "Julian Gollop and Nick Gollop", "year": 1988, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Action Points allocated each turn for movement, combat, and manipulation, with half the allowance unspent enabling opportunity fire." }, { "key": "space-hulk-rulebook-1989", "canonical": false, "title": "Space Hulk rulebook", "author": "Games Workshop", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Four Action Points per Space Marine and six per Genestealer activation, with a cost table and leftovers lost." }, { "key": "sdj-re-reviews-21-tikal-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "SdJ Re-Reviews #21: Tikal", "author": "Chris Wray (Opinionated Gamers)", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://opinionatedgamers.com/2015/08/28/sdj-re-reviews-21-tikal/", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Ten action points per turn; Tikal was not the first action-point game but revolutionised the mechanic." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 9, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 510, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/action-points" }, { "id": "adjacency-bonuses", "name": "Adjacency Bonuses", "status": "unverified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "A placed piece yields or scores more according to what sits in its neighbouring cells, so each placement is valued by its local relations rather than by the piece alone or by a target arrangement.", "aliases": [ "adjacency scoring", "adjacency effects", "neighbour bonuses", "placement synergies", "proximity bonuses" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "tile-placement", "pattern-building", "network-building", "income", "engine-building" ], "referenced_by": [ "base-building" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Suburbia (2012), where each hex tile adjusts income and reputation for qualifying neighbours and existing tiles react to new arrivals. Randomness is none because the adjacency rule has no randomiser; input was the losing value, since the tile market that feeds it is revealed before placement, but that chance belongs to the host supply. Interaction is solo for the personal board; indirect was the losing value for shared maps such as Terraforming Mars, where a rival's ocean raises the value of an adjacent cell for everyone. Feedback loop is positive because each tile raises the value of the cells around it; mixed was argued for Suburbia's growth penalties. The positive coding rests on persistent yields; adjacency that pays once at placement, as on Azul's wall (see pattern building), codes none. Category was contested with puzzle-and-pattern, but no target configuration is given to complete, so the operative state is position and space-and-position wins. Agency is high because the player picks a cell from the legal cells of a board, each with a computable value, and the placement alone determines the bonus; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026. Pacing is accelerates because in the canonical persistent-yield form each placement raises neighbouring yields every round, so income compounds and the economy snowballs; neutral was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "spatial-reasoning", "planning", "calculation", "analysis-paralysis", "engine-satisfaction" ], "examples": [ { "title": "SimCity", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Will Wright (Maxis)", "note": "The growth and land value of a zone respond to what surrounds it, with nearby parks, forests, and water raising value and pollution and traffic lowering it, so the player lays out districts by their surroundings; a proximity effect rather than strict cell adjacency.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Suburbia", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Ted Alspach (Bézier Games)", "note": "Each hex tile carries conditional effects that fire for each qualifying adjacent tile when it is placed, and tiles already on the board gain or lose for the new neighbour.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Terraforming Mars", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jacob Fryxelius (FryxGames)", "note": "Placing a tile next to an ocean pays two credits per adjacent ocean, and a city scores a point per adjacent greenery at the end, so tile positions on the shared map are chosen for their neighbours.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Civilization VI", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Firaxis Games", "note": "Districts receive yield bonuses from adjacent terrain and from other districts, such as science for mountains beside a campus, making city layout a persistent placement puzzle.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Islanders", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grizzly Games", "note": "Each building scores from the buildings and terrain within its radius, positive or negative by type, and the score preview before placement makes the proximity rule the whole game.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Backpack Battles", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "PlayWithFurcifer", "note": "Items are arranged on a backpack grid between fights, and many items gain power from what touches them: the Pan deals more damage beside food, a doll activates faster when dark items sit near it, and some items fuse into upgrades only when placed adjacent to their recipe partners.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No originating design can be defended. SimCity (1989) is an early and widely known video instance, though its manual describes land value raised by nearby parks, forests, and water, a proximity effect rather than a count of adjacent cells. Acquire (1964), in which a tile's effect depends on its orthogonal neighbours, is an earlier tabletop precursor without a per-neighbour bonus. Suburbia (2012) counts strictly adjacent tiles, confirmed only in its 2019 edition, and is the usual board-game reference, though no source says it is the most cited. Civilization VI (2016) names district adjacency bonuses in its official material; that it made them a strategy-game standard is an editorial judgement. Only popularisers are named." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "suburbia-rulebook-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Suburbia rulebook", "author": "Ted Alspach", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Placing tiles; adjacency effects", "note": "Canonical board form used for the property coding." }, { "key": "terraforming-mars-rulebook-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Terraforming Mars rulebook", "author": "Jacob Fryxelius", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Tile placement; placement bonuses and ocean adjacency", "note": "Adjacency payments on a shared map." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Tile Placement", "note": null }, { "key": "civilization-vi-unstacking-cities-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Civilization VI: Unstacking Cities", "author": "2K and Firaxis Games", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20191017083655/https://civilization.com/news/entries/en-civilization-vi-unstacking-citie/amp/", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Districts occupy their own tiles and players must consider district adjacency bonuses." }, { "key": "simcity-manual-1989", "canonical": false, "title": "SimCity manual", "author": "Will Wright (Maxis)", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "The Icons, p. 60; Land Value, p. 75 (Infogrames Amstrad and Spectrum edition, 1990)", "note": "Parks, forests, and water raise the land value of surrounding zones." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 509, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/adjacency-bonuses" }, { "id": "advantage-disadvantage", "name": "Advantage / Disadvantage", "status": "unverified", "category": "chance-and-risk", "definition": "A modifier applied by rolling two dice instead of one and keeping the higher result under favourable circumstances or the lower under unfavourable ones, in place of a numeric bonus or penalty.", "aliases": [ "roll twice keep best", "2d20 keep high", "boons and banes" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "dice-pool", "saving-throws", "degrees-of-success", "metacurrency" ], "referenced_by": [ "initiative-order", "rerolls", "target-numbers" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition (2014). Agency is low because the modifier is granted by circumstance and the player chooses nothing at the roll; the manoeuvring to earn advantage belongs to the host system. Complexity is low even with the non-stacking and cancellation rules, which fit in two sentences. Pacing is neutral; the mechanic speeds individual resolutions by removing arithmetic but has no systematic effect on approach to an end condition. The category, chance-and-risk, departs from the default tie-break order, which asks the action-resolution question first and would claim any modifier to a success check; it is kept because the mechanic changes the randomiser itself, not how the result is graded. Action-resolution was the losing family.", "effects": [ "flow", "planning" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Savage Worlds", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Shane Lacy Hensley (Pinnacle)", "note": "Player characters always roll an extra Wild Die alongside their trait die and keep the better, a permanent roll-two-keep-best that is a structural antecedent rather than a situational modifier.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Favourable circumstances grant advantage and unfavourable ones disadvantage on a twenty-sided roll; multiple sources do not stack and one of each cancels to a normal roll.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Shadow of the Demon Lord", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Robert J. Schwalb", "note": "Boons and banes replace the binary form with a count; the player rolls that many six-sided dice, keeps the highest, and adds or subtracts it, so sources stack but with diminishing effect.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Solasta: Crown of the Magister", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Tactical Adventures", "note": "Implements the 5th edition System Reference Document rule directly, displaying both dice and the sources of advantage such as lighting and elevation.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Baldur's Gate 3", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Larian Studios", "note": "Advantage and disadvantage are shown as paired rolls in the dice interface, with sources such as height and surprise listed, which makes the modifier legible to players unfamiliar with the tabletop rule.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No defensible earliest use. The roll-two form appeared publicly in the first Dungeons & Dragons Next playtest of May 2012; Mike Mearls's column of 28 May 2012 describes rolling two dice and taking the higher or lower in place of a -2 penalty, and his 2013 account traces the idea to the action points of D&D 3rd and 4th editions, spent to reroll a missed attack, naming no other game. Over the Edge (1992) is reported to add a bonus die and drop the lowest, or a penalty die and drop the highest, under favourable or unfavourable circumstances, a dice-pool form close to the definition, though no rulebook page was seen. Savage Worlds' Wild Die (2003) keeps the higher of two dice but always and only for major characters, so it is a structural relative rather than a situational modifier. Board-game candidates such as Magic Realm (1979) rest on recollection. Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition (2014) is the populariser and fixed the paired terms in its rules; the claim that keeping one of two dice was an old house rule is unsourced." }, "established": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition fixed the paired terms and the non-stacking situational rule, which spread from it into video-game adaptations of the ruleset such as Solasta and Baldur's Gate 3 and into other tabletop designs." }, "sources": [ { "key": "player-s-handbook-5th-edition-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Player's Handbook, 5th edition", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 7: Using Ability Scores, Advantage and Disadvantage", "note": "The canonical rules text." }, { "key": "shadow-of-the-demon-lord-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Shadow of the Demon Lord", "author": "Robert J. Schwalb", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Boons and banes as a stacking variant." }, { "key": "savage-worlds-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Savage Worlds", "author": "Shane Lacy Hensley", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The Wild Die as an always-on roll-two-keep-best." }, { "key": "playtest-first-round-overview-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Playtest: First Round Overview", "author": "Mike Mearls (Wizards of the Coast, Legends and Lore)", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20120530193547id_/http://www.wizards.com:80/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120528", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "The roll-two-take-higher-or-lower rule in the first public D&D Next playtest, replacing a -2 penalty." }, { "key": "design-finesse-part-1-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "Design Finesse—Part 1", "author": "Mike Mearls (Wizards of the Coast, Legends and Lore)", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20131127070333id_/http://www.wizards.com:80/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20131125", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Designer account tracing advantage to action points used as a reroll in 3rd and 4th edition." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 547, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/advantage-disadvantage" }, { "id": "aim-and-recoil", "name": "Aim and Recoil", "status": "unverified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "The player steers a reticle onto a target in real time while spread, recoil, and sway perturb it after each shot, so whether a shot lands is decided by continuous pointing precision and recovery rather than by a roll.", "aliases": [ "aiming", "recoil patterns", "aim down sights", "ADS", "spray control", "bullet spread", "weapon sway" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "parry-and-dodge", "cover-systems", "dexterity", "equipment-loadouts", "hitboxes-and-hurtboxes" ], "referenced_by": [ "lock-on-targeting" ], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "variable", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Counter-Strike, where recoil kicks the aim during sustained fire on top of a spread cone that widens with movement and continuous shooting. Agency is medium because the player chooses target, stance, and burst length from a small set but execution decides the outcome; low was the losing value. Randomness is output because the spread deviation is drawn after the trigger is pulled; none was the losing value for the fully deterministic spray patterns of later games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Interaction is direct because the canonical form is team play in which every shot is aimed at a specific human opponent; against system-controlled enemies only, as in single-player shooters, the coding would be solo, the losing value. Pacing is variable because time-to-kill, a parameter of the same weapon model, decides whether exchanges are instant or attritional. Decision density is medium for the stance and burst choices per engagement; low was the losing value on the ground that the decision is only when to fire. Category is action-resolution because the rule adjudicates whether an attempted shot lands; the tabletop analogue is a to-hit roll. Space-and-position was the losing family, since the reticle's position on screen is part of the state. Pacing stays variable after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; neutral was the losing value. Information stays perfect after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; asymmetric was the losing value.", "effects": [ "execution", "mastery", "flow", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "GoldenEye 007", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Rare", "note": "An antecedent of the systemic form. Holding the aim button stops movement and brings up a free crosshair, while ordinary fire snaps to an auto-aimed target, so precision is traded against mobility.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Counter-Strike", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Minh Le and Jess Cliffe", "note": "Released as a Half-Life mod in 1999 (beta) and at retail by Valve in 2000. Each weapon kicks upward during sustained fire and has a spread cone that widens while moving or firing continuously, so controlled bursts and standing still to shoot decide hits at range.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Halo: Combat Evolved", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Bungie", "note": "The reticle turns red within effective range and aim assist slows the reticle over a target and bends shots slightly toward it, an accommodation for thumbstick aiming that is now common on consoles.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Infinity Ward", "note": "Aiming down the sights narrows spread and slows movement while hip fire is fast and loose, and attachments chosen in the loadout change recoil and sway; the usual reference for two accuracy states in the genre.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Valorant", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Riot Games", "note": "First-shot accuracy is high only when standing still, running inaccuracy is severe, and recoil follows a pattern that turns random after several shots, so counter-strafing to a stop before firing is a core technique.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Counter-Strike 2", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "Each automatic weapon climbs and drifts along a fixed, learnable spray pattern with random spread layered on top, and the pattern recovers at a weapon-specific rate after the trigger is released, so landing a burst depends on pulling the mouse against the pattern and timing pauses.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No earliest use can be defended. Reticle aiming is far older than the systemic form, in trackball games such as Missile Command (1980) and in mouse-aimed PC shooters such as Quake (1996). GoldenEye 007 (1997) separated an aim mode from auto-aimed fire on consoles; its designer David Doak has said the hit reactions and timing of its gunplay evolved from Sega's light-gun game Virtua Cop, Martin Hollis's initial direction for the game. A crosshair that widens with movement is reported for Rainbow Six (1998), before Counter-Strike, but only in later secondary accounts. Counter-Strike's own 1999 beta changelogs are reported to describe its spread and recoil system as already in place and being retuned by Beta 5.0 (December 1999). It is the usual populariser of recoil and a movement-dependent spread cone as the core of competitive shooting, a reputation repeated widely, with no developer statement cited." }, "established": { "title": "Counter-Strike", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Counter-Strike is widely credited with making recoil and a movement-dependent spread cone the core of competitive shooting; its later versions fixed deterministic spray patterns, though no developer statement on its influence is cited." }, "sources": [ { "key": "swink-2009", "canonical": true, "title": "Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation", "author": "Steve Swink", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Morgan Kaufmann", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapters on input, response, and real-time control", "note": "Framework for continuous control and perceived responsiveness used for the execution and flow coding." }, { "key": "rogers-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design", "author": "Scott Rogers", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Wiley", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Combat chapter, shooting, aiming, and targeting", "note": "Design treatment of reticles, aim assist, and aiming modes." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Counter-Strike (video game)", "note": "Release history and the recoil and accuracy model of the populariser." }, { "key": "that-s-the-magic-sauce-goldeneye-designer-explains-why-it-feels-so-good-to-shoot-baddies-in-the-n64-classic-2026", "canonical": false, "title": "\"That's The Magic Sauce\": GoldenEye Designer Explains Why It Feels So Good To Shoot Baddies In The N64 Classic", "author": "Damien McFerran (Time Extension)", "year": 2026, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.timeextension.com/news/2026/05/thats-the-magic-sauce-goldeneye-designer-explains-why-it-feels-so-good-to-shoot-baddies-in-the-n64-classic", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "David Doak's statement that the hit reactions and timing of GoldenEye's gunplay evolved from Virtua Cop, Martin Hollis's initial direction." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 575, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/aim-and-recoil" }, { "id": "alignment-games", "name": "Alignment Games", "status": "verified", "category": "puzzle-and-pattern", "definition": "Players alternately place or move pieces on a lattice and win, or score, by forming a straight line of a set number of their own pieces, so each turn is a choice between advancing a line and blocking one.", "aliases": [ "n-in-a-row", "three in a row", "mills", "morris games" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "pattern-building", "pattern-recognition", "piece-capture", "connection-games" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the pure placement form (Gomoku, Connect Four) rather than from the morris family, whose movement and capture phases are treated as variations. The category assignment departs from the default tie-break order: position is plainly the operative state, so the order would give space-and-position, as it does for the neighbouring connection-games entry. Puzzle-and-pattern is assigned instead because the object is a target configuration, a line of fixed length, rather than territory or a path, and because the canonical members are solved or solvable (tic-tac-toe is a known draw; Connect Four was solved in 1988); space-and-position is the losing family. Interaction is indirect because blocking works only by occupying a shared cell; direct was argued from Nine Men's Morris, where a completed mill removes an enemy piece, but that removal is piece capture bolted onto the alignment rule. Complexity is low for the placement form; the morris games with their three phases would code medium. Decision density is low because a turn is one placement; the number of candidate cells bears on agency, not density.", "effects": [ "calculation", "spatial-reasoning", "planning", "mastery" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Nine Men's Morris", "year": 1283, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Players place and then slide nine pieces along the lines of a three-square board; forming three in a row (a mill) removes an opponent's piece, so alignment is both the goal and the capture trigger. The date is that of the Libro de los juegos, which describes the game; older boards exist.", "latest": false }, { "title": "OXO", "year": 1952, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "A. S. Douglas", "note": "Noughts and crosses programmed on the EDSAC computer at Cambridge, with the human choosing a cell by telephone dial and the machine replying; the three-in-a-row rule is unchanged and the program plays the drawn game perfectly.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Connect Four", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Howard Wexler and Ned Strongin (Milton Bradley)", "note": "Discs are dropped into a vertical grid and fall to the lowest free cell, so gravity restricts the placement choice to seven columns and makes threats stack in parity patterns; four in any direction wins.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pente", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Gary Gabrel", "note": "Five in a row on a Go board wins, but a pair of enemy stones flanked on both ends is captured and five such captures also win, so the alignment goal is shared with a custodial capture goal.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Qawale", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Romain Froger and Didier Lenain-Bragard (Gigamic)", "note": "Each turn a stone is added to a pile and the pile is sown mancala-style, one stone left on every space crossed; the first player whose own colour shows four in a row from above wins, so every sowing can extend one line while completing an opponent's.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Nine Men's Morris", "year": 1283, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Alfonso X's Libro de los juegos (1283) is the earliest text describing a morris game in full, but boards cut into stone and tile are far older; Murray catalogues claimed examples from Roman sites and a disputed carving at Kurna in Egypt, and three-in-a-row games are likely to predate any surviving description. The date is therefore the first secure documentation, not an origin. Gomoku's Japanese history and tic-tac-toe's are undated." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "murray-1952", "canonical": true, "title": "A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess", "author": "H. J. R. Murray", "year": 1952, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Clarendon Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 3, Games of Alinement and Configuration", "note": "Classification of the morris and three-in-a-row games and the archaeological evidence." }, { "key": "parlett-1999", "canonical": true, "title": "The Oxford History of Board Games", "author": "David Parlett", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Part on space games, chapter on games of alignment and configuration (morris family)", "note": "The Libro de los juegos description and the European spread of the morris games." }, { "key": "connect-four-rules-1974", "canonical": false, "title": "Connect Four rules", "author": "Milton Bradley", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Gravity-constrained four-in-a-row." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "OXO", "note": "The 1952 EDSAC program and its author." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 485, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/alignment-games" }, { "id": "alliances", "name": "Alliances", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "Players agree among themselves, outside any rules enforcement, to coordinate future actions against other players, with the understanding that the agreement can be broken whenever breaking it pays.", "aliases": [ "temporary alliances", "coalition building", "negotiated alliances", "diplomacy phase" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "trading", "voting", "take-that", "reputation-factions" ], "referenced_by": [ "cooperate-or-defect", "deal-making", "semi-cooperative", "shared-holdings", "team-play" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "variable", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Diplomacy. Interaction is mixed because allied players cooperate while acting directly against outsiders, and because the alliance structure shifts during play. Complexity is low because the rule is a single sentence permitting any agreement and binding none. Pacing is variable because stable blocs can stall a game and a coordinated gang-up can end it; neutral was the losing value. Information is asymmetric because agreements are made in private and the parties know terms that others do not. Category tension with narrative-and-choice, which could claim the emergent politics, is resolved for interaction-and-exchange because the core act is an exchange of promises between players. Feedback loop is none because the rule merely permits unenforced agreements; any ganging-up on a leader is a social choice, not a coupling written into the mechanic; negative was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "negotiation", "betrayal", "kingmaking", "emergent-narrative", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Risk", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Albert Lamorisse (Parker Brothers edition of La Conquête du Monde, 1957)", "note": "Nothing in the rules provides for truces, but players routinely agree not to attack across a border; the informal antecedent in which alliance emerges from the multiplayer conflict structure.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Diplomacy", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Allan B. Calhamer", "note": "A negotiation period precedes each simultaneous order phase; the rules permit any agreement and enforce none, and most positions cannot advance without a partner. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cosmic Encounter", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Peter Olotka, Jack Kittredge, Bill Eberle, and Bill Norton", "note": "Each encounter invites allies to either side with a share of the reward, so alliances are formed per conflict within a rules frame and dissolved immediately afterward.", "latest": false }, { "title": "EVE Online", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "CCP Games", "note": "Player corporations form named alliances that hold territory; the software records membership but not obligations, so betrayals and infiltrations are a documented feature of the game's history.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Neptune's Pride", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Iron Helmet Games", "note": "A slow real-time strategy game in which a dozen players negotiate by message over weeks, and the timing of an ally's betrayal is widely reported as the decisive play.", "latest": false }, { "title": "ARC Raiders", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Embark Studios", "note": "Solo raiders who meet on the surface signal a truce with a 'Don't shoot' emote or proximity voice chat and agree to cover each other against the machines or rival squads; nothing in the game enforces the pact, so either side can shoot the other once extraction is in reach.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Diplomacy", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to designed games built around unenforced negotiation between players; informal alliances arise in any multiplayer conflict game, and Risk (La Conquête du Monde, 1957; Parker Brothers, 1959) is an antecedent of that kind. Diplomacy is the widely cited reference for the designed form, and Calhamer's own account dates the design to the 1950s with private publication in 1959. No earlier design that makes alliances the central mechanic is documented, though one is plausible." }, "established": { "title": "Diplomacy", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Diplomacy made unenforced negotiation the central mechanic and is the widely cited reference for the designed form; persistent online worlds such as EVE Online reproduce its dynamic at scale." }, "sources": [ { "key": "diplomacy-rulebook-1959", "canonical": false, "title": "Diplomacy rulebook", "author": "Allan B. Calhamer", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "The diplomacy phase", "note": "Canonical rules text permitting any agreement and enforcing none." }, { "key": "elias-garfield-gutschera-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Characteristics of Games", "author": "George Skaff Elias, Richard Garfield, and K. Robert Gutschera", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Analysis of coalition dynamics in games with more than two sides." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Alliances", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 511, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/alliances" }, { "id": "appointment-mechanics", "name": "Appointment Mechanics", "status": "unverified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "A rule gates actions or rewards on the real-world clock across sessions, so that a crop, timer, daily task, or streak matures or expires at a wall-clock time whether or not the player is present.", "aliases": [ "appointment dynamics", "wait timers", "energy timers", "daily rewards", "login streaks", "battle passes" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "cooldowns", "prestige-resets", "loot-boxes", "quests", "real-time", "needs-and-moods" ], "referenced_by": [ "achievements", "gifting", "group-finder", "seasonal-leagues", "vulnerability-windows" ], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from FarmVille (2009), where crops mature and wither on real-time timers. Category is time-and-action-structure because the constraint is the wall clock; resource-management was the losing family for energy forms, where the gated quantity looks like a pool but refills on a schedule rather than being earned. Agency is low because the outcome is fixed by the clock; medium was the losing value for crop choice, where the player picks a duration to match an expected return. Feedback loop is none; positive was the losing value for streak bonuses that grow with consecutive attendance. Information is perfect because timers are displayed. Media is video only; the mechanic requires a clock the game can read while closed.", "effects": [ "compulsion", "fear-of-missing-out", "planning", "sunk-cost", "grind", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Animal Crossing", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "The game runs on the console's real clock, so shops open and close by the hour, events fall on calendar days, and villagers remark on absences, rewarding returns at particular times.", "latest": false }, { "title": "EVE Online", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "CCP Games", "note": "A skill set to train completes after a span measured in real time, from under an hour to several days, and training continues whether or not the player is connected, so players start a long skill before logging off.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Three wall-clock gates. Raid dungeons reset on a scheduled day, so progress carries across sessions until the reset clears it (2006 guide). Daily quests reset each night, up to ten a day (2007). Rested experience, present at launch, accrues while logged off, four times faster at an inn, to 30 bubbles of 8 hours each, about 1.5 levels, and doubles experience from kills until used.", "latest": false }, { "title": "FarmVille", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Zynga", "note": "Each crop has a real-time growth duration and withers if left unharvested beyond a window, so crop choice is a bet on when the player will next log in.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Candy Crush Saga", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "King", "note": "A small stock of lives refills one at a time on a fixed real-time interval, so failure spends a wall-clock resource and play resumes on a schedule or by payment.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dota 2", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "The Interactive Compendium for The International 2013 followed the tournament's calendar from the qualifiers to the grand finals, giving item drops for watching matches, a fantasy-team item at the tournament's close, and a 125% Battle Booster that lasted until The International ended.", "latest": false }, { "title": "AdVenture Capitalist", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Hyper Hippo Productions", "note": "Businesses keep earning while the app is closed and a return screen reports offline earnings, the offline-progress variant in which absence itself is productive.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fortnite", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Epic Games", "note": "The Battle Pass, introduced in the second season of Battle Royale late in 2017, is a tiered reward track that expires with the season, combining daily and weekly challenges with a hard deadline.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Animal Crossing: New Horizons", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "The island runs on the console clock: Daisy Mae sells turnips only on Sunday mornings from 5 AM to noon, Nook's Cranny changes its turnip price at noon each day, and unsold turnips spoil at 5 AM the following Sunday.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No earliest instance can be defended, and no game before 1996 that schedules play by a real-world clock is cited. Tamagotchi (1996) ran decaying meters in real time, Pokémon Gold and Silver (1999) tied events to the day of the week, persistent online worlds had scheduled events, and Animal Crossing (2001) built a game on the console clock; these dates rest on secondary sources. FarmVille (2009) is the usual reference as the populariser of timed gating as a mass-market structure, an editorial judgement without a cited source. Seth Priebatsch named the appointment dynamic in a 2010 TEDxBoston talk, with happy hour rather than a video game as his example." }, "established": { "title": "FarmVille", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "FarmVille, with crops that mature and wither on real-time timers, is the usual reference as the populariser of wall-clock gating as a mass-market structure; the credit is an editorial judgement rather than a sourced claim." }, "sources": [ { "key": "alharthi-2018", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing to Wait: A Taxonomy of Idle Games", "author": "Sultan A. Alharthi, Olaa Alsaedi, Zachary O. Toups, Theresa Jean Tanenbaum, and Jessica Hammer", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Taxonomy of idle games; progress rate and interactivity", "note": "Treats waiting and accrual while the player is absent as design structures of idle games." }, { "key": "the-game-layer-on-top-of-the-world-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "The game layer on top of the world", "author": "Seth Priebatsch", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "talk", "publisher": "TEDxBoston", "url": "https://www.ted.com/talks/seth_priebatsch_the_game_layer_on_top_of_the_world", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": "The appointment dynamic", "note": "The appointment dynamic, doing something at a predefined time and usually place, with happy hour as the example; the TED page confirms the talk and its happy-hour game, and the transcript wording is unconfirmed." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Animal Crossing (video game)", "note": "Real-time clock design of the first game in the series." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-raid-tips-2006", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Raid Tips", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20061108061732/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com:80/info/basics/raidtips.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Raids scheduled around dungeon resets, and progress lost when the dungeon resets on its scheduled day." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-daily-quests-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Daily Quests", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20071222043754/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com:80/info/basics/dailyquests.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Up to ten daily quests a day, resetting every night." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-resting-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Resting", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20071228043336/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com:80/info/basics/resting.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Rested experience at 200%, eight hours of rest per bubble to a maximum of 30, about 1.5 levels, and faster rest at inns." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-official-strategy-guide-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Official Strategy Guide", "author": "Michael Lummis and Danielle Vanderlip", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "BradyGames", "url": "https://archive.org/details/World_of_Warcraft_World_of_Warcraft_BradyGames_Official_Strategy_Guide", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Glossary of Terms: Rest", "note": "Well Rested characters receiving more experience at launch." }, { "key": "the-international-2013-interactive-compendium-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "The International 2013: Interactive Compendium", "author": "Valve", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dota2.com/international2013/compendium/?l=english", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "A virtual passport growing from the Qualifiers to the Grand Finals, drops while spectating, a fantasy team rewarded at the tournament's close, a Battle Booster lasting until The International ends, and 25% of each purchase to the prize pool." }, { "key": "eve-online-player-guide-skills-wayback-capture-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "EVE Online Player Guide: Skills (Wayback capture)", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20050305234820/http://www.eve-online.com:80/guide/en/g07.asp", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "7: Skills, Skill advancement", "note": "Training time measured in real time, continuing regardless of whether the player is connected, and ranging from under an hour to several days." }, { "key": "eve-online-player-guide-interface-wayback-capture-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "EVE Online Player Guide: Interface (Wayback capture)", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20050305232802/http://www.eve-online.com:80/guide/en/g05.asp", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "5: Interface, Character Sheet, Skills", "note": "The advice to start a higher skill training before logging off for a long time, since training continues while logged off." } ], "n_examples": 9, "n_sources": 10, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 587, "updated": "2026-10-28", "url": "/mechanics/appointment-mechanics" }, { "id": "area-control", "name": "Area Control", "status": "unverified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "Players place or move pieces into regions of a map and are rewarded for holding regions, by sole occupation or by having more presence there than any opponent, when control is checked.", "aliases": [ "area majority", "area influence", "territory control", "capture and hold" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "tile-placement", "worker-placement", "fog-of-war", "cover-systems" ], "referenced_by": [ "ball-possession", "connection-games", "lane-pushing", "network-building", "player-elimination", "power-ups", "security-zones", "supply-lines", "victory-points", "vulnerability-windows", "zone-of-control" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from El Grande, the usual reference for the area-majority form. Interaction is mixed because implementations routinely span indirect out-placement (El Grande) and direct removal of opposing pieces (Risk); feedback loop and randomness are coded for the majority form, where control yields points only and no dice are involved. Conquest forms in which held territory produces more pieces would code randomness as output and feedback as positive, and pacing as accelerates.", "effects": [ "planning", "tension", "kingmaking" ], "examples": [ { "title": "King of the Hill", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "Traditional playground game in which one player holds a raised position against all others; control by occupation in its barest form, with no scoring beyond holding on.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Risk", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Albert Lamorisse (Parker Brothers edition of La Conquête du Monde, 1957)", "note": "Published in France in 1957 as La Conquête du Monde. Territories are held by sole occupation, contested with dice, and each territory held adds to the reinforcements received, producing the conquest loop.", "latest": false }, { "title": "El Grande", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Wolfgang Kramer and Richard Ulrich", "note": "Caballeros are placed into regions and, at three scoring rounds, each region pays first, second, and third place by count; pieces are rarely removed, so control is relative rather than exclusive.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Battlefield 1942", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "DICE", "note": "Conquest mode: teams capture flagged control points by standing near them, and holding more points than the enemy drains the opposing team's ticket count. A widely known early capture-and-hold mode.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Splatoon", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "Turf War scores the proportion of floor covered in each team's ink at the end of three minutes, making area control continuous and measured by coverage rather than by regions.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Overwatch 2", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "In Control maps a single capture point unlocks each round; a team standing on it uncontested raises its percentage, faster with up to three players present, an enemy on the point holds the score in overtime, and the round goes to the first team to reach 100 percent.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "Holding territory is the object of Go, an ancient board game of position, so no modern origin can be defended; its earliest textual references only mention the game, and when territory scoring was first described was not established. La Conquête du Monde (1957), released as Risk by Parker Brothers (1959), popularised exclusive occupation with combat in a mass-market board game. Per-region majority scoring appears in Manhattan (1994), which scores the majority of buildings in each of six cities, and El Grande (1995) added ranked first, second, and third payouts per region; El Grande is the usual reference for area majority, though no source names it the establisher. BoardGameGeek's Area Control label reached El Grande only in 2007-08. Only popularisers are named." }, "established": { "title": "El Grande", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "El Grande's ranked first, second, and third payouts per region are the usual reference for area majority as a separable design pattern, though no source names it the establisher and Manhattan scored per-city majorities a year earlier." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Area Control chapter", "note": "Definition and the split between majority and exclusive-occupation forms." }, { "key": "el-grande-rulebook-1995", "canonical": false, "title": "El Grande rulebook", "author": "Wolfgang Kramer and Richard Ulrich", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Canonical area-majority procedure used for the property coding." }, { "key": "risk-rulebook-1959", "canonical": false, "title": "Risk rulebook", "author": "Parker Brothers", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "http://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/Risk1963.PDF", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "1963 printing", "note": "Exclusive occupation, combat, and territory-based reinforcement." }, { "key": "manhattan", "canonical": false, "title": "Manhattan", "author": "Spiel des Jahres", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.spiel-des-jahres.de/spiele/manhattan/", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "In German. The 1994 winner, scoring the majority of buildings in each of six cities." }, { "key": "el-grande", "canonical": false, "title": "El Grande", "author": "Spiel des Jahres", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.spiel-des-jahres.de/spiele/el-grande/", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "In German. The 1996 winner, with scorings of the majorities in nine Spanish provinces." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Area Majority / Influence", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 547, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/area-control" }, { "id": "aspects-and-tags", "name": "Aspects and Tags", "status": "unverified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "Short free-text phrases written on a character, item, or scene, such as Ex-Cop or On Fire, carry mechanical weight: invoking one that fits the situation adds dice or a bonus, and some can be turned against their holder.", "aliases": [ "aspects", "tags", "descriptors", "traits", "clichés", "distinctions" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "metacurrency", "player-authored-goals", "variable-player-powers", "degrees-of-success" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Spirit of the Century (2006), where aspects are phrases invoked for a bonus, compelled to complicate, and placed on scenes and opponents by maneuvers; provenance is dated from Ghostbusters, but the coding follows the canonical form. Category is progression-and-capability because the descriptors define what a character can bring to bear. Two families lost. Narrative-and-choice was argued because aspects are facts in the fiction and compels generate story; action-resolution was argued because invoking modifies a roll. Capability won because the descriptor is a standing part of the character, and the rolls it modifies belong to the resolution system. Agency is high because in the canonical form the player writes the descriptors in free text; medium was the losing value for in-play invocation, a choice of which aspect to spend on, and for talents picked from printed lists as Ghostbusters players usually did. Interaction is mixed because a player invokes their own aspects, tags those placed on opponents, and shares scene aspects; solo was the losing value for rated-trait forms such as Ghostbusters, Over the Edge, and Risus. Information is perfect because aspects are written openly; mixed was the losing value for aspects hidden until discovered by assessment. Feedback loop is none for the descriptor itself; mixed was the losing value for the invoke-and-compel economy, which belongs to metacurrency.", "effects": [ "ownership", "emergent-narrative", "contested-fairness" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Ghostbusters", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "West End Games (Sandy Petersen, Lynn Willis, and Greg Stafford)", "note": "Each of four traits carries a talent, a short phrase such as Fast Talk or Play Poker that adds three dice to the trait when it applies; players pick talents from printed lists or, if the Ghostmaster agrees, name one not listed, such as Viral Oncology or Bike Riding.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Over the Edge", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Jonathan Tweet with Robin D. Laws (Atlas Games)", "note": "Characters are described by one central trait rated at four dice and two side traits at three, all worded by the player with no list, and a flaw that adds a penalty die when it applies.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Risus", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "S. John Ross", "note": "Characters are a handful of clichés such as Swashbuckler, each rated in dice; the cliché that fits a conflict is rolled, and a side that loses a round loses dice from it, so the descriptor is also the damage track.", "latest": false }, { "title": "HeroQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Greg Stafford and Robin D. Laws (Issaries)", "note": "Abilities are freely named and rated on a numeric scale, and keywords for homeland, occupation, and magic bundle sets of abilities under a single descriptor, as keywords already did in Hero Wars (2000).", "latest": false }, { "title": "Spirit of the Century", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Evil Hat Productions", "note": "Aspects written through a staged backstory are invoked with a fate point for +2 or a reroll, compelled to complicate the character, and placed by maneuvers on scenes and opponents, where they can be tagged. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Marvel Heroic Roleplaying", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Cam Banks and Rob Donoghue (Margaret Weis Productions)", "note": "Each hero has distinctions, short phrases rolled as a d8 when they help or, to earn a plot point, as a d4 when they hinder.", "latest": false }, { "title": "13th Age", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet (Pelgrane Press)", "note": "In place of a skill list, players write backgrounds such as a former profession and distribute points among them, adding the relevant background to ability checks.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Legend in the Mist", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Son of Oak Game Studio", "note": "Characters are written as themes made of power tags and a weakness tag; every relevant helpful tag adds 1 Power to a 2d6 roll and every negative tag subtracts 1, and temporary story tags on items or scenes count the same way.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Ghostbusters", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "low", "note": "Ghostbusters (West End Games, 1986) is the earliest documented case, in its Training Manual (copyright 1986): each of four traits carries a talent that adds three extra dice when it applies, chosen from printed lists, and a player may name a talent not listed, such as Viral Oncology or Bike Riding, if the Ghostmaster agrees. The default was still a printed list and earlier games remain unsurveyed, so confidence is low. Over the Edge (1992) is the earliest documented form in which traits are worded freely by the player with no list, and Risus (1993), which names Ghostbusters and Over the Edge as its inspirations, followed with rated clichés. Fudge circulated online from 1992, but its earliest dated text, of 7 December 1993, is later; it lets players write down traits of their own and rate them on an adjective ladder. The term aspect appears in Fate 1.0, released by Rob Donoghue and Fred Hicks on 15 January 2003, which already let a player invoke an aspect for a reroll and let the game master make an involuntary invocation paid in Fudge points, the forerunner of the compel. Spirit of the Century (2006) added scene aspects, fate-point invocation for +2 or a reroll, tagging, and maneuvers that place aspects with a free tag, and Fate Core (2013) spread the form." }, "established": { "title": "Spirit of the Century", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Spirit of the Century joined invocation for a bonus, compels, scene aspects, and tagging into the canonical aspect, which Fate Core later spread; earlier games rated freely worded traits without the invoke-and-compel economy." }, "sources": [ { "key": "ghostbusters-a-frightfully-cheerful-roleplaying-game-1986", "canonical": false, "title": "Ghostbusters, A Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game", "author": "West End Games", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/ghostbusters-a-frightfully-cheerful-roleplaying-game-core-rules-player-guide/gbrpgtraining_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Training Manual, pp. 2-4 (Traits; Talents)", "note": "Training Manual copyright 1986 West End Games: four traits, one talent per trait adding three extra dice, talents picked from printed lists, and a talent not listed allowed if the Ghostmaster agrees. The linked copy is the text of an archive.org scan." }, { "key": "over-the-edge-1992", "canonical": false, "title": "Over the Edge", "author": "Jonathan Tweet with Robin D. Laws", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Atlas Games", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Freely worded traits rated in dice, and the flaw's penalty die." }, { "key": "atlas-games-1990-present-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Atlas Games: 1990-present", "author": "Shannon Appelcline", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.designers-and-dragons.com/2007/03/07/atlas-games-1990-present/", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Over the Edge's freeform central and side traits and flaw, each determined by the player rather than drawn from a list." }, { "key": "risus-1993", "canonical": false, "title": "Risus", "author": "S. John Ross", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20060111150815/http://www222.pair.com:80/sjohn/free/risus-1p53.zip", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Clichés rated in dice, clichés made up by players subject to the game master's approval, and lost dice as damage; the linked file is the author's Risus 1.5 text dated 1993 to 2003, not the 1993 wording." }, { "key": "fudge-december-1993-text-1993", "canonical": false, "title": "FUDGE (December 1993 text)", "author": "Steffan O'Sullivan", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/frp/fudge.2.html", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "Chapter 2, 2.5 Subjective Character Creation", "note": "Players write down the traits they think important and rate them from Terrible to Superb; the linked copy is a 1990s mirror of the December 1993 rules, which the Fudge licence permits." }, { "key": "fate-1-0-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Fate 1.0", "author": "Robert Donoghue and Fred Hicks", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20030821230825/http://faterpg.com:80/dl/fate-v1.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Released 15 January 2003: aspects, invoking by checking off an aspect's box for a reroll, and the game master's involuntary invocation paid in Fudge points." }, { "key": "spirit-of-the-century-2006", "canonical": false, "title": "Spirit of the Century", "author": "Rob Donoghue, Fred Hicks, and Leonard Balsera", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": "https://fate-srd.com/downloads/fate-3/sotc-srd.html", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "Aspects chapter", "note": "Invoking, compelling, tagging, and maneuvers that place aspects with a free tag; the canonical form coded for the properties. The linked copy is the Spirit of the Century SRD, not the 2006 book." }, { "key": "fate-core-system-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "Fate Core System", "author": "Leonard Balsera, Brian Engard, Jeremy Keller, Ryan Macklin, Mike Olson, Clark Valentine, Amanda Valentine, Fred Hicks, and Rob Donoghue", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": "https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/aspects-fate-points", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "Aspects & Fate Points chapter", "note": "The later codification, with aspects as phrases describing whatever they are attached to; the linked copy is the Fate Core SRD, not the print book." }, { "key": "appelcline-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry", "author": "Shannon Appelcline", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Volume on the 1990s, Atlas Games chapter; volume on the 2000s, Evil Hat Productions chapter", "note": "Publication history of Over the Edge and Fate." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 9, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 513, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/aspects-and-tags" }, { "id": "auction-bidding", "name": "Auction and Bidding", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "Players compete for an item, right, or position by offering bids under a stated auction procedure, with the item going to the highest or otherwise winning bid and the price set by the players rather than by the rules.", "aliases": [ "auction", "bidding", "auctioning" ], "parent": null, "children": [ "contract-bidding" ], "related": [ "trading", "drafting", "initiative-order", "push-your-luck" ], "referenced_by": [ "betting", "bluff-and-challenge", "divide-and-choose", "doubling-cube", "loot-distribution", "markets", "stock-holding" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "negative", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the open ascending auction in Modern Art. Agency is medium because each invocation is a bid-or-pass decision at a given price; the losing value was high, on the view that valuation determines the outcome. Interaction is direct because bids are made against named competitors and, in auctioneer forms, the price is paid to a specific player; indirect was the losing value. Sealed-bid forms are also asymmetric, with each bid known only to its bidder until the reveal. Feedback loop is negative because the winner pays most and competition raises prices for whoever is ahead. Decision density is medium for a bidder's three or so raise-or-pass choices in a typical open auction; high was the losing value for longer bidding. Pacing is neutral because a price-setting procedure for allocating items that neither compounds nor brings an ending nearer; variable was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026. Information is perfect because in the open ascending form every bid is announced publicly; sealed bids are a variant and rivals' money belongs to the host game; asymmetric was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "tension", "inference", "bluffing", "fear-of-missing-out" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Monopoly", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Charles Darrow (Parker Brothers)", "note": "A property declined by the player who lands on it is auctioned to all players at any starting price. Often ignored at family tables, it is an early mass-market board-game auction in a game derived from Elizabeth Magie's Landlord's Game.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Modern Art", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Reiner Knizia", "note": "Each card sold specifies its auction type, including open, once-around, sealed, and fixed price, and the seller keeps the proceeds, so players are alternately auctioneer and bidder. The canonical auction design.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ra", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Reiner Knizia", "note": "Once-around bidding with sun tiles of fixed value, where the winning tile is swapped for the one on the board; the auction is coupled to push-your-luck in drawing tiles before calling it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "The Auction House lets players list items with a starting bid and optional buyout, and other players bid over a timed window; a persistent player-run auction at massive scale.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Power Grid", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Friedemann Friese", "note": "Revised edition of Funkenschlag (2001). Power plants are auctioned in open ascending bids each round, with the plant market structured so that early buyers pay for the right to choose first.", "latest": false }, { "title": "EA Sports FC 24", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "EA Canada and EA Romania", "note": "In Ultimate Team the transfer market is a timed player-to-player auction: the seller sets a start price, an optional buy-now price and a duration of 1 to 12 hours, buyers raise bids in coins, and the highest bid when the timer ends takes the card, less a 5% tax to the seller.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Monopoly", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to auctions in which a game object is bought for a price. Monopoly's property auction is the widely recognised early instance in a mass-market board game; whether The Landlord's Game, from which Monopoly derives, already auctioned property is not established, and earlier instances are plausible. Bidding for the right to declare in trick-taking games (Skat in the early nineteenth century, Auction Bridge around 1904) is older but is a performance promise and belongs to contract bidding. Modern Art (1992) is often credited with making the auction the core of a hobby game." }, "established": { "title": "Modern Art", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Modern Art is often credited with making the auction the core of a hobby game, and its open, once-around, sealed, fixed-price, and double auctions are a common reference set for later designs." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Auctions chapter", "note": "Taxonomy of auction types and their properties." }, { "key": "modern-art-rulebook-1992", "canonical": false, "title": "Modern Art rulebook", "author": "Reiner Knizia", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Canonical open ascending auction used for the property coding, plus the other four types." }, { "key": "monopoly-rulebook-1935", "canonical": false, "title": "Monopoly rulebook", "author": "Parker Brothers", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Buying property and the auction rule", "note": "Provenance." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Auction / Bidding", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 506, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/auction-bidding" }, { "id": "audience-participation", "name": "Audience Participation", "status": "unverified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "A rule gives people who are not players, such as spectators, viewers, or a studio audience, a defined input into a game in progress, by vote, suggestion, or shared control, so the crowd affects the outcome without holding a seat.", "aliases": [ "crowd play", "audience voting", "stream integration", "Twitch integration", "ask the audience" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "voting", "player-judge", "shared-narration", "tournament-formats", "multiple-endings" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the Ask the Audience lifeline of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, checked against the command stream of Twitch Plays Pokémon and the Quiplash audience vote. The category departs from the default tie-break order, which would place the form in which the audience judges a scene (Theatresports) under action-resolution; interaction-and-exchange is kept because the canonical poll adjudicates nothing and the defining act is a transfer of input from non-players into the game. Agency is low because each audience member's contribution is one signal among many and the contestant chooses whether to act on the aggregate. Interaction is solo because the poll serves one contestant and affects no other player; mixed was the losing value, fitting Twitch Plays Pokémon and Quiplash, where the crowd acts on the shared game or for and against particular players. Pacing is neutral for the single poll; variable was the losing value, since a crowd in shared control can stall a game for hours. Information is perfect because the aggregate is shown, while individual contributions are usually anonymous. Decision density is low per participant.", "effects": [ "spectacle", "volatility", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Theatresports", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "Keith Johnstone", "note": "Teams of improvisers compete in challenge scenes scored by judges, and the audience is encouraged to cheer and boo; in Johnstone's later Danish Game the judges leave and the spectators shout the name of the better team, which earns the points. Audience suggestions are customary rather than a stated rule. The 1977 date is as given by the International Theatresports Institute.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "Celador (David Briggs, Mike Whitehill, and Steven Knight)", "note": "The Ask the Audience lifeline polls the studio audience with keypads and shows the contestant the percentage for each answer, which the contestant is free to ignore. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Twitch Plays Pokémon", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Anonymous streamer (running Pokémon Red, Game Freak, 1996)", "note": "A stream parsed commands typed in chat into button presses on an emulator, so tens of thousands of viewers jointly controlled a single-player game; a later democracy mode tallied commands over an interval instead of executing each one.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Quiplash", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Jackbox Games", "note": "Alongside three to eight players on phones, an audience of up to ten thousand further devices votes on the players' answers, and the audience vote counts toward who wins each round; the audience feature was carried into later Jackbox titles.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Choice Chamber", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Studio Bean", "note": "A platformer whose enemies, items, and level modifiers are chosen by viewers voting in the streamer's Twitch chat in real time, designed from the start around the audience as a source of input.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Clone Drone in the Danger Zone", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Doborog Games", "note": "In Twitch Mode the streamer's viewers earn coins, bet on the run and spend coins to spawn enemy robots into the arena to kill the streamer, so the chat shapes each fight without controlling a combatant.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Major Bowes Amateur Hour", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "low", "note": "Informal crowd input is older than any designed format and cannot be dated. The earliest documented rule found that gives non-players a decisive vote is the listener telephone vote of Major Bowes Amateur Hour, local in New York from 1934 and national on NBC from 24 March 1935, attested by a broadcast recording and a 1936 magazine report quoted by later writers; whether a talent contest counts as a game is a judgement. Applause meters followed on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts (1946) and similar shows. Kinoautomat (Expo 67) put a seat-button audience vote into a branching film, and Loren Carpenter's audience paddle game at SIGGRAPH 1991 gave a crowd shared control of a game. In Theatresports (Calgary, late 1970s) judges score the standard match and audience voting belongs to a later variant. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (1998) popularised the televised advisory poll and Twitch Plays Pokémon (2014) mass online shared control." }, "established": { "title": "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "low", "note": "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire's Ask the Audience lifeline popularised the televised advisory poll, in which a studio audience's aggregate is shown to a contestant free to ignore it; mass online shared control was popularised separately by Twitch Plays Pokémon." }, "sources": [ { "key": "impro-for-storytellers-1999", "canonical": false, "title": "Impro for Storytellers", "author": "Keith Johnstone", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Faber and Faber", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The designer's own account of Theatresports, its judging, and the audience's role in it." }, { "key": "salen-zimmerman-2004", "canonical": true, "title": "Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals", "author": "Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Games as Social Play chapter", "note": "Framing of spectators and the magic circle used to argue that a rule-granted input makes the audience part of the game." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Twitch Plays Pokémon", "note": "Dates, participation figures, and the input modes." }, { "key": "improvisation-the-origins-of-theatresports", "canonical": false, "title": "Improvisation: The Origins of Theatresports", "author": "Keith Johnstone", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20070627092251/http://www.keithjohnstone.com/improv.php", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Extract from Impro for Storytellers, on the author's site", "note": "Judges score the standard match with cards; in the Danish Game the audience shouts the name of the better team." }, { "key": "how-interactive-tv-is-older-than-tv-itself-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "How Interactive TV Is Older Than TV Itself", "author": "David Bianculli (NPR Fresh Air, via Texas Public Radio)", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.tpr.org/2014-08-04/how-interactive-tv-is-older-than-tv-itself", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Major Bowes's 1935 national show had listeners phone and write in to decide contestants' fate, with a period recording; applause meters on Talent Scouts and Queen for a Day." }, { "key": "audience-participation-cinematrix-1994", "canonical": false, "title": "audience participation, CINEMATRIX", "author": "Loren Carpenter and Rachel Carpenter (Ars Electronica)", "year": 1994, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://webarchive.ars.electronica.art/en/archiv_files/19942/E1994b_102.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "The SIGGRAPH 1991 audience participation event and the two-team paddle game controlled by red and green wands." }, { "key": "how-twitch-is-crowd-sourcing-an-amazing-pok-mon-multiplayer-game-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "How Twitch is crowd-sourcing an amazing Pokémon multiplayer game", "author": "Michael McWhertor (Polygon)", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.polygon.com/2014/2/14/5411790/twitch-plays-pokemon-creator-interview-twitchplayspokemon", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Chat commands parsed into Game Boy inputs; launched less than two days before 14 February 2014 by an anonymous Australian programmer." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 560, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/audience-participation" }, { "id": "ball-possession", "name": "Ball Possession", "status": "unverified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "One side at a time holds the right to advance and score with a single contested object, and that right transfers by turnover, by scoring, or by a rule such as a boundary or a violation, so play alternates between attack and defence.", "aliases": [ "possession", "turnovers", "ball control", "possession games", "possession and turnover" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "team-play", "area-control", "real-time", "dexterity", "game-clocks", "referee-adjudication" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "physical", "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "negative", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from basketball under the modern rules, where the side with the ball chooses how to advance it and loses it on a score, a violation, or a steal, with association football as the check. Agency is high because the side in possession has an open choice space. Randomness is none for the physical form; output was the losing value, coded from Blood Bowl, where every handling action is rolled. Interaction is mixed because the sides contest the object directly while each side cooperates internally, which the guideline codes as mixed for team play. Pacing is neutral for possession itself; accelerates was the losing value where a shot clock is attached. Feedback loop is negative because association football and modern basketball give the ball to the side just scored against; basketball before 1937-38 restarted with a centre jump, and early rugby-derived codes had the conceding side kick off to the scorers. Category was contested with space-and-position, since possession is advanced across a field, but the mechanic's identity is the transfer of a single object between opposing players, so interaction-and-exchange wins. Agency stays high after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; medium was the losing value.", "effects": [ "execution", "teamwork", "tension", "spectacle", "contested-fairness", "catch-up" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Hurling to goals", "year": 1602, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "In Carew's account of Cornish hurling, a carrier who is held must pass to a team-mate, and an opponent who catches the pass in flight wins the ball for his side, which turns from defence to attack; one goal wins the game, so there is no restart after a score.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Association football", "year": 1863, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "The Football Association", "note": "The 1863 laws give the kick-off after a goal to the side that conceded, but a ball in touch or behind the goal line goes to whoever touches it first, and fouls carry no free kick. Throw-ins against the side that put the ball out, the goal-kick and corner-kick split, and free kicks for fouls are all in the FA laws by 1874.", "latest": false }, { "title": "American football", "year": 1882, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "Intercollegiate Football Association", "note": "The scrimmage of 1880 let a side keep the ball indefinitely, and after two scoreless block games the 1882 convention required a side that failed to gain five yards in three downs to give up the ball at the spot, a possession budget that renews with progress.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Basketball", "year": 1892, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "James Naismith", "note": "The thirteen rules, first published on 15 January 1892, forbid running with the ball, so possession is advanced by passing, and give the ball to the opponents if the thrower-in holds it more than five seconds. Out-of-bounds (1913) and travelling (1921-22) later became turnovers, and a centre jump followed every goal until 1937-38, when the ball began to go to the side scored against.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Blood Bowl", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jervis Johnson (Games Workshop)", "note": "The ball is a counter picked up, thrown, and caught on dice rolls, and from the third edition (1994) a failed action is a turnover that ends the coach's turn and scatters the ball, so possession changes through risk management rather than athletic contest.", "latest": false }, { "title": "FIFA International Soccer", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Extended Play Productions (Electronic Arts)", "note": "The player controls one footballer at a time and switches by button to the one nearest the ball, while tackles, interceptions, and boundary rules transfer possession as in the physical game; a widely known early soccer simulation.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Rematch", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sloclap", "note": "Each player controls one footballer in 3v3 to 5v5 matches inside a closed arena where the ball never goes out of play and there are no fouls or offside, so possession changes hands only through tackles, interceptions, saves and goals.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Hurling to goals", "year": 1602, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "low", "note": "The earliest documented statement of the mechanic found is Richard Carew's Survey of Cornwall (1602), whose list of the hurlers' customary laws ends with the interception rule: an opponent who catches a pass wins the ball for his side, \"which straightway of defendant becommeth assailant\". It describes a custom already in force in eastern Cornwall, not a written code, so confidence is low. Bardi's account of Florentine calcio (1580) has a neutral official put the ball in play, and the transcribed parts give no side the ball; medieval texts remain unsurveyed. Rugby School's laws of 1845 are the earliest written rule found that hands the ball to the opposite side, after an illegal punt, and Cambridge (1856) gave the kick-off after a goal to the side that conceded. The FA laws of 1863 to 1874, the American downs rule of 1882, and basketball's possession to the side scored against from 1937-38 fixed the modern forms. In board games, William James Hillis's parlour football patent (filed 1893, granted 1894) hands the ball over on downs, after kicks, and on rolled fumbles, ninety years before Blood Bowl (1986), whose third edition (1994) made a failed action end the whole turn. In video games, Magnavox Odyssey Football (1972) left downs to a paper scoreboard and Atari's Football (1979) enforced turnovers on downs, but no earliest video instance can be defended." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "laws-of-the-game-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Laws of the Game", "author": "International Football Association Board", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Laws 8, 12, 15 to 17; start and restart of play, fouls, throw-in, goal kick, corner kick", "note": "Rule-assigned transfers of possession and the foul-and-free-kick fold; 2023-24 edition." }, { "key": "official-rules-of-the-national-basketball-association-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Official Rules of the National Basketball Association", "author": "National Basketball Association", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Rule 10, Violations and penalties", "note": "Turnover conditions used for the property coding." }, { "key": "elias-garfield-gutschera-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Characteristics of Games", "author": "George Skaff Elias, Richard Garfield, and K. Robert Gutschera", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Team contests and sports as games." }, { "key": "blood-bowl-rulebook-third-edition-1994", "canonical": false, "title": "Blood Bowl rulebook (third edition)", "author": "Jervis Johnson (Games Workshop)", "year": 1994, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Turnovers", "note": "The board-game turnover form, in which a failed action ends the team's turn." }, { "key": "the-survey-of-cornwall-1602", "canonical": false, "title": "The Survey of Cornwall", "author": "Richard Carew", "year": 1602, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9878", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": "Book I, hurling section (Gutenberg page marker [74] and following)", "note": "The hurlers' laws, including passing when held, the ban on the forward pass, and the interception that turns defenders into attackers." }, { "key": "laws-of-football-as-played-at-rugby-school-1845", "canonical": false, "title": "Laws of Football as played at Rugby School", "author": "Rugby School (Levee of the Sixth)", "year": 1845, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Rule xxxvi", "note": "After an illegal punt the opposite side may take a punt or drop." }, { "key": "cambridge-rules-1856", "canonical": false, "title": "Cambridge Rules", "author": "University of Cambridge", "year": 1856, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Rule 3", "note": "After a goal, the losing side kicks off." }, { "key": "laws-of-the-game-1863-1863", "canonical": false, "title": "Laws of the Game (1863)", "author": "The Football Association", "year": 1863, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Laws 3, 5, 7, and 8 to 12", "note": "Kick-off to the side that lost the goal; touch and goal-line restarts to the first player to touch the ball; no sanctions for fouls." }, { "key": "laws-of-the-game-1874-1874", "canonical": false, "title": "Laws of the Game (1874)", "author": "The Football Association", "year": 1874, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Laws 5, 7, and 11", "note": "Throw-in against the side that kicked the ball out, the goal-kick and corner-kick split, and free kicks to the opposite side for fouls." }, { "key": "football-the-american-intercollegiate-game-1911", "canonical": false, "title": "Football: The American Intercollegiate Game", "author": "Parke H. Davis", "year": 1911, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/details/footballamerican00davirich", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": "pp. 71-80; Appendix, pp. 461-470 and 493", "note": "Convention rule texts; the 1880 scrimmage, the block games of 1880 and 1881, the downs rule of 14 October 1882, and the scored-upon side's option of 1903." }, { "key": "naismith-s-rules-for-basketball", "canonical": false, "title": "Naismith's Rules for Basketball", "author": "Naismith Basketball Foundation", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://naismithbasketballfoundation.com/naismiths-rules-for-basketball/", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Transcription of the thirteen rules; no running with the ball, and fouls counting toward a goal for the opponents." }, { "key": "1954-55-season-recap", "canonical": false, "title": "1954-55 season recap", "author": "NBA.com", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.nba.com/history/season-recap/1954-55", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "The 24-second shot clock introduced for the 1954-55 season." }, { "key": "game-us-patent-516-789-1894", "canonical": false, "title": "Game (US Patent 516,789)", "author": "William James Hillis", "year": 1894, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US516789", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": "Rules for playing", "note": "Parlour football in which the ball goes to the opponent after four downs without five yards, after every kick, and on rolled fumbles and penalties." }, { "key": "nearly-40-years-of-fantasy-football-blood-bowl-through-the-ages-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Nearly 40 years of fantasy football – Blood Bowl through the ages", "author": "Warhammer Community (Games Workshop)", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/j9dhjczu/nearly-40-years-of-fantasy-football-blood-bowl-through-the-ages/", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Editions of 1986, 1988, and 1994, crediting the third with turnovers in which a failed action ends the turn." }, { "key": "football-march-1979-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Football – March 1979", "author": "Kevin Bunch (Atari Archive)", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.atariarchive.org/blog/football-march-1979/", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "A side that fails to pass the down marker in four attempts loses control of the ball; interceptions are possible." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 15, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 675, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/ball-possession" }, { "id": "base-building", "name": "Base Building", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "Players spend gathered resources to place persistent structures at a home site, each of which unlocks units, production, storage, or defence, so the layout and growth of the base is the player's capability over the session.", "aliases": [ "base construction", "settlement building", "player housing", "stronghold building", "colony building", "homesteading" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "engine-building", "adjacency-bonuses", "resource-conversion", "tower-defence", "exploration-procedures" ], "referenced_by": [ "combat-building", "level-editors", "resource-gathering", "vulnerability-windows" ], "media": [ "video", "board-card", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "high", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 2, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Dune II, the real-time strategy form the term usually means. Category is progression-and-capability over space-and-position, the losing family: each structure changes what the player can do next, which is the progression test, and although placement, adjacency, and defensibility matter, a base relocated intact would keep its function. Interaction is mixed because canonical implementations span modes: Dune II's opponents are system-controlled, which alone would code solo (the losing value), but multiplayer real-time strategy has bases attacked directly by other players, Minecraft builds in isolation, and Robinson Crusoe shares one camp. Complexity is high for build dependency graphs and power or supply caps; medium was the losing value for Robinson Crusoe's shelter track. Information is perfect for the builder's own base; asymmetric was the losing value under fog of war, where the opponent's base is hidden. Feedback loop is positive because production funds production; mixed was the losing value where upkeep or raids damp it. Agency is high because the build list is open. Decision density is medium: one build cycle asks which structure, where to place it, and whether to build now or spend elsewhere.", "effects": [ "engine-satisfaction", "planning", "ownership", "spatial-reasoning", "runaway-leader" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Volume 3 prices castle components by the section and the tower, lets a high-level character clear and hold a barony, attract followers, and draw revenue from it, so the stronghold is the character's capability beyond the dungeon.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Utopia", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Don Daglow (Mattel Electronics)", "note": "Each player places forts, factories, schools, and crops on an island from a gold budget as rounds pass; buildings produce score and gold and are threatened by rebels and storms, an early placed-structure economy.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dune II", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Westwood Studios", "note": "A construction yard founds the base; buildings require concrete, power, and a build order that unlocks later structures and units, and the base is the target of enemy attack, the template real-time strategy kept.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Minecraft", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Mojang (Markus Persson)", "note": "Public alpha 2009. Shelter is built from gathered blocks against night-time enemies, then extended with crafting stations, farms, and storage, so capability grows with the structure and the structure is the player's own.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Ignacy Trzewiczek (Portal Games)", "note": "The cooperative camp has shelter, roof, palisade, and weapon levels raised by build actions with wood and hides, and inventions are built into it; each level reduces the damage of weather and beasts.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Valheim", "year": 2026, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Iron Gate (Coffee Stain Publishing)", "note": "Players spend gathered wood, stone and metal on structures at a home site; a workbench must stand nearby before anything can be built, its add-ons and later stations such as the forge unlock better equipment, and chests, beds and walls supply storage, respawn and defence against raids. Playable in early access from 2021.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The 1974 rules price castles and strongholds and attach followers and revenue to them, the earliest documented placed-structure rule in a role-playing game, though it follows the fortification rules of miniatures wargaming and Chainmail's sieges, which are older and undocumented as a player-built economy. Utopia (1981) is an early video form with placed, producing structures, SimCity (1989) the city-building sibling, and Dune II (1992) the populariser of the real-time strategy base coded here. Confidence is medium because the lineage into video games is one of parallel invention rather than descent." }, "established": { "title": "Dune II", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Dune II fixed the real-time strategy base, with a construction yard, power, and a build order that unlocks later structures, and its example note calls it the template real-time strategy kept; the lineage from earlier tabletop and video forms is one of parallel invention." }, "sources": [ { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Strongholds, baronies, and the high-level endgame of original Dungeons & Dragons", "note": "History of the stronghold rule and its wargame antecedents." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-volume-3-the-underworld-wilderness-adventures-1974", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 3, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures", "author": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Construction of castles and strongholds; baronies", "note": "Provenance for the priced stronghold and its followers." }, { "key": "robinson-crusoe-adventures-on-the-cursed-island-rulebook-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island rulebook", "author": "Ignacy Trzewiczek", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Build action; shelter, roof, palisade, and weapon levels", "note": "The cooperative board form." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Dune II", "note": "Base construction, power, and build order in the populariser." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 504, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/base-building" }, { "id": "betting", "name": "Betting", "status": "verified", "category": "chance-and-risk", "definition": "Players commit stakes to a common pot in a structured round of raising, matching, or withdrawing before an uncertain outcome is resolved, so the size of what is won or lost is set by the players rather than by the rules.", "aliases": [ "wagering", "staking", "vying", "ante and raise", "betting rounds" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "push-your-luck", "bluff-and-challenge", "doubling-cube", "auction-bidding", "contract-bidding" ], "referenced_by": [ "cooperate-or-defect" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "both", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the modern multi-round poker betting round of stud and hold'em (ante or blinds, then check, bet, call, raise, fold on each street). Category contested: chance-and-risk over interaction-and-exchange, because the stake is a wager against an uncertain resolution and the pot is not an exchange between players; the interaction family lost but the coding is direct, since a raise is aimed at the remaining opponents. Randomness is both because the hand is dealt before the first round (input) and further cards or a showdown follow later rounds (output); input alone was the losing value, defensible for single-round vying games such as brag, and output alone describes house dice games such as craps. Feedback loop is positive because a larger stack can apply pressure a shorter one cannot; tournament blind structures act as an external damper. Agency is medium because each action is check, bet, call, raise, or fold at a known price, a small set, with the pot then decided by dealt cards and opponents; high was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026. Pacing is neutral because a staking round sets the size of what is won or lost but does not by itself speed or slow the approach to an end; variable was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026. Information is perfect because stakes, pot, and each player's action are declared publicly; the uncertain hand is the host game's state rather than the betting round's; asymmetric was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "bluffing", "tension", "calculation", "volatility", "consequence-weight", "compulsion" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Hazard", "year": 1390, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "The medieval English dice game whose stake-and-cover procedure, with a caster setting a main and others matching, is the staking antecedent without a vying round; craps descends from it. Folded here with knucklebones (astragali) as the pre-card lineage of staking on a throw.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Poker", "year": 1829, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Recorded by the English actor Joe Cowell on a Mississippi steamboat in 1829 as a twenty-card game with a single deal and one round of betting. The draw (in print by 1850), stud, and later hold'em added further cards, and stud and hold'em bet on each street, giving the canonical repeated round of check, bet, call, raise, or fold before a showdown.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Poker Night at the Inventory", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Telltale Games", "note": "Texas hold'em against four characterised opponents, implemented faithfully; cited as a digital implementation in which the betting round is the whole game and the opponents' tells are scripted.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Camel Up", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Steffen Bogen", "note": "Players take betting tiles on which camel will lead at the end of a leg and wager cards on the overall winner and loser, with earlier bets paying more; staking on a public race with no private information, which is the open-information end of the mechanic.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio (Sega)", "note": "The m HOLD'EM venue in Isezaki Ijincho, Yokohama, is a Texas Hold 'em poker minigame, so stakes are built through the poker betting rounds rather than fixed by the rules.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Primero", "year": 1526, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is for the vying round itself; staking on a throw without vying, as in hazard and knucklebones, is treated as an antecedent. Primero, a vying card game regarded as an ancestor of poker, is described in Francesco Berni's poem printed in Rome in 1526, the earliest known text on the game, and the vying tradition continued through brag. Poker is recorded from 1829 by the actor Joe Cowell, with a single round; its name is usually derived from the French poque, and the older claim of descent from the Persian as-nas is rejected by Parlett. Repeated rounds on successive cards came with draw and stud poker later in the century." }, "established": { "title": "Poker", "year": 1829, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Poker, recorded from 1829 and extended by draw and stud with a betting round on each street, gave the canonical repeated round of check, bet, call, raise, or fold; poker programs implement it unchanged and designed board games have reused the staking structure." }, "sources": [ { "key": "parlett-1990", "canonical": true, "title": "The Oxford Guide to Card Games", "author": "David Parlett", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter on vying games (primero, brag, poker)", "note": "History of the vying round and its antecedents to poker." }, { "key": "costikyan-2013", "canonical": true, "title": "Uncertainty in Games", "author": "Greg Costikyan", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter on uncertainty of outcome and hidden information, with poker as the example", "note": "Framing of betting as a wager on hidden information rather than on a randomiser alone." }, { "key": "camel-up-rulebook-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Camel Up rulebook", "author": "Steffen Bogen", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Rules text for leg bets and overall bets on an open race." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Betting in poker", "note": "Terminology of the round and its limit structures." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 538, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/betting" }, { "id": "bluff-and-challenge", "name": "Bluff and Challenge", "status": "unverified", "category": "information-and-hidden-state", "definition": "A player makes a claim about concealed state that may be false, any opponent may challenge it, and a reveal then penalises whichever side was wrong, so the decision is whether to lie and whether to call.", "aliases": [ "bluff and call", "challenge mechanic", "claim and challenge" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "push-your-luck", "hidden-roles", "auction-bidding", "voting" ], "referenced_by": [ "betting", "cooperate-or-defect", "hidden-piece-identity", "player-judge", "simultaneous-action-selection" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Liar's Dice, with Coup as the modern check case. Randomness is input because dice are rolled or cards dealt before any claim is made; Coup's deal is likewise input, and none was the losing value for card forms with no draw. Interaction is direct because a challenge names a specific claimant. Pacing is accelerates because each lost challenge removes a die or a card, converging on elimination. Feedback loop is coded positive because a player who loses material has less to threaten with and less information; none was the losing value, since the loss is small per round. Information is asymmetric because each player knows the truth of their own claims. The default tie-break order asks the chance-and-risk question before the information question; it is answered no, because the wager is against other players' judgement rather than a randomiser, so the category follows the order and chance-and-risk is the losing family.", "effects": [ "bluffing", "social-deduction", "inference", "tension", "volatility" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Liar's Dice", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Traditional. Each player rolls dice under a cup and bids on the total count of a face across all cups; a bid may be raised or challenged, and the loser of a challenge forfeits a die.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cheat", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Traditional, also called I Doubt It, with printed rules by 1914. Cards are played face down with a declared rank; a challenged false claim costs the liar the pile, and a wrong challenge costs the challenger.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Red Dead Redemption", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Rockstar San Diego", "note": "Liar's Dice appears as a wagered minigame against computer opponents, with the game enforcing cup secrecy and the challenge reveal.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Skull", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Hervé Marly", "note": "Players stack face-down discs that are roses or skulls, then bid how many discs they can flip without hitting a skull; the challenge is implicit in the flip, and a failed flip costs a disc.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Coup", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Rikki Tahta", "note": "Players claim any role to take its action regardless of the cards they hold; a challenged true claim costs the challenger a card and a challenged false claim costs the claimant one. The usual card reference for the form.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Liar's Bar", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Curve Animation", "note": "In Liar's Deck each player plays cards face down and claims they match the table card, and another player may call the bluff; a caught liar must pull a revolver trigger with one bullet in six chambers. Liar's Dice mode uses bids that are raised or challenged, the loser of a challenge drinking poison. Released in Early Access, which is still its only release.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "I Doubt It", "year": 1914, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "The earliest printed rules cited are \"I Doubt It\", the game also called Cheat, in the 1914 revision of Foster's Complete Hoyle: a player lays cards face down with a claim that need not be true, any player in turn may say \"I doubt it\", and whichever side was wrong takes the pile. It is absent from the 1897 and 1909 editions and is probably older in oral play, but no earlier printing is cited. Liar's Dice has no documented origin; the story that it reached Europe from the Inca via Pizarro traces only to popular game books of 1993. Bluff (Richard Borg), Spiel des Jahres 1993, brought dice claim-and-challenge to hobby games before Skull & Roses (2011) and Coup (2012); Coup is the usual card reference, and Skull is a bid-and-verify relative in which only the bidder can lose." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "costikyan-2013", "canonical": true, "title": "Uncertainty in Games", "author": "Greg Costikyan", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Hidden information and player unpredictability", "note": "Bluffing as uncertainty arising from concealed state and other players' choices." }, { "key": "coup-rulebook-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Coup rulebook", "author": "Rikki Tahta", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Challenges", "note": "Canonical modern rules for claim, challenge, and penalty." }, { "key": "skull-rulebook-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Skull rulebook", "author": "Hervé Marly", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The bid-and-flip variant of the challenge." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Liar's dice", "note": "Traditional rules and the undocumented origin claims." }, { "key": "foster-s-complete-hoyle-revised-to-october-1914-1914", "canonical": false, "title": "Foster's Complete Hoyle (revised to October 1914)", "author": "R. F. Foster", "year": 1914, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/53881/pg53881.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "I Doubt It, p. 695 (per the index)", "note": "A false claim is allowed, any player may doubt it, and whichever side was wrong takes the pile." }, { "key": "bluff", "canonical": false, "title": "Bluff", "author": "Spiel des Jahres", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.spiel-des-jahres.de/en/spiele/bluff/", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Richard Borg's 1993 winner; a doubted bid is revealed and the side that was wrong loses dice." }, { "key": "approximating-optimal-dudo-play-with-fixed-strategy-iteration-counterfactual-regret-minimization-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Approximating Optimal Dudo Play with Fixed-Strategy Iteration Counterfactual Regret Minimization", "author": "Todd Neller (Gettysburg College)", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": null, "url": "http://cs.gettysburg.edu/~tneller/papers/acg2011.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Traces the Inca-origin story to two 1993 popular game books." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 533, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/bluff-and-challenge" }, { "id": "boss-encounters", "name": "Boss Encounters", "status": "verified", "category": "narrative-and-choice", "definition": "A climactic, individually authored enemy or wave sequence closes a segment of play with its own rules, scale, and phases, so progress is gated by defeating it rather than by attrition against ordinary opponents.", "aliases": [ "boss fights", "boss battles", "bosses", "horde modes", "wave survival" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hit-points", "lock-and-key", "threat-aggro", "difficulty-settings", "status-effects" ], "referenced_by": [ "group-finder", "tower-defence" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "variable", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from The Legend of Zelda (1986), where each dungeon ends in a scripted boss with a weakness. Category is narrative-and-choice by assignment, which departs from the default tie-break order: progression-and-capability (the boss as a gate on advancement) and time-and-action-structure (the boss as a pacing beat) are asked first and both partly apply. The reason is that the boss's identity is an authored climax that closes a segment of story. Interaction is solo because the opponent is controlled by the system; cooperative was the losing value for raids and board showdowns. Information is hidden because the script (phases, patterns, weakness) is known only to the system and learned by the player; asymmetric was the previous value, set aside because no player holds the script, and perfect was argued for board forms with public AI decks. Randomness is none for the scripted video form; output was the losing value for card-driven board bosses. Pacing stays variable after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; decelerates was the losing value.", "effects": [ "spectacle", "mastery", "tension", "recall", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Phoenix", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Amstar Electronics", "note": "The fifth stage is a single alien mothership whose shielding must be chipped away to expose its pilot, a distinct stage structure usually cited as the first arcade boss.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Legend of Zelda", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo (Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka)", "note": "Each dungeon ends in a boss room; the boss often has a weakness keyed to the item found in that dungeon and guards a Heart Container and a Triforce fragment, tying the boss to lock-and-key progression.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 4th Edition", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Solo monsters have several times a standard monster's hit points, extra actions, and saving-throw bonuses, so one creature is designed to occupy a whole encounter against a party.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dark Souls", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "FromSoftware", "note": "Fog gates seal arenas, bosses have multi-phase move sets learned through repeated deaths, and defeating one is the condition for reaching the next region.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dota 2", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "Roshan, a neutral boss either team may fight, yields the Aegis of the Immortal, which revives its holder where it fell five seconds after death if used within five minutes. From patch 7.33 (2023) he moves between two corner pits as day turns to night, and later deaths add drops such as Cheese.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Kingdom Death: Monster", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Adam Poots", "note": "Each showdown runs the monster from an AI deck and a hit location deck specific to it, with level tiers that add cards, so the board form scripts the boss with cards instead of code.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Grim Dawn", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Crate Entertainment", "note": "The Crucible, its first add-on (August 2016), is an arena of 150 waves taken in blocks of 10, after each of which the player continues or cashes out; Tributes, the arena's currency, buy defences and blessings, and mutators reroll every 10 waves. Clearing 100 waves unlocks the next of three tiers.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Black Myth: Wukong", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Game Science", "note": "Each chapter is a run of authored Yaoguai King and Yaoguai Chief fights, with a boss near the end of each new location; chief bosses must be beaten before the main bosses can be reached, and defeating some bosses grants their transformation as a new player ability.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "dnd (PLATO)", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The PLATO game dnd, by Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood, is often credited with the earliest video-game boss: a Golden Dragon that guards the Orb and must be slain to win. Its dating (1974 or 1975) and its sequence relative to the PLATO game pedit5 are debated. Tabletop Dungeons & Dragons (1974) placed dragons as climactic lair monsters, an antecedent without a structural rule. Phoenix (1980) is the usual arcade credit, and the term boss entered common use through 1980s arcade and console games." }, "established": { "title": "The Legend of Zelda", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The Legend of Zelda popularised the end-of-dungeon boss, a scripted enemy with a weakness keyed to the item found in that dungeon; earlier bosses in dnd and Phoenix lacked that tie to segment progression." }, "sources": [ { "key": "juul-2013", "canonical": true, "title": "The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games", "author": "Jesper Juul", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Discussion of failure, repetition, and learning through retries", "note": "Framing for the learn-by-dying structure of boss fights used in Analysis notes." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-4th-edition-dungeon-master-s-guide-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Dungeon Master's Guide", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 4 (Building Encounters), monster roles and solo monsters", "note": "The tabletop codification of a single enemy built to fill an encounter." }, { "key": "kingdom-death-monster-rulebook-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Kingdom Death: Monster rulebook", "author": "Adam Poots", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Showdown Phase", "note": "The card-scripted board form." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Boss (video games); Dnd (1975 video game)", "note": "History including dnd and Phoenix, and the dating of dnd." }, { "key": "dota-2-aegis-of-the-immortal-official-item-data-feed-2026", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2: Aegis of the Immortal (official item data feed)", "author": "Valve", "year": 2026, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dota2.com/datafeed/itemdata?language=english&item_id=117", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Reincarnation with full health and mana 5 seconds after death at the place of death, lost if unused within 5 minutes." }, { "key": "dota-2-patch-7-33-notes-official-data-feed-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2: Patch 7.33 notes (official data feed)", "author": "Valve", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dota2.com/datafeed/patchnotes?version=7.33&language=english", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Roshan", "note": "Two corner pits replacing the river pit, Roshan crossing between them at the change of day and night, and drops by death count." }, { "key": "dota-2-patch-7-33-roshan-changes-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2 patch 7.33 Roshan changes", "author": "Jennifer Davis (Fragster)", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.fragster.com/dota-2-patch-7-33-roshan-changes/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "The extra life provided by the Aegis of the Immortal to the team that kills Roshan, and the day and night pits." }, { "key": "guide-game-settings-crucible", "canonical": false, "title": "Guide: Game Settings, Crucible", "author": "Crate Entertainment", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.grimdawn.com/guide/game-settings/crucible/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "The Crucible as Grim Dawn's first add-on, waves in blocks of 10 with the choice to continue or cash out, Tributes spent on defences and celestial blessings, mutators randomised every 10 waves, and the Aspirant, Challenger and Gladiator tiers unlocked by clearing 100 waves." }, { "key": "grim-dawn-crucible-dlc-released-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Grim Dawn: Crucible DLC Released", "author": "BuckGB (GameBanshee)", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gamebanshee.com/kwkhc", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Release of the Crucible on 3 August 2016 with 150 waves, the first 100 unlocking further difficulties." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 9, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 549, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/boss-encounters" }, { "id": "branching-dialogue", "name": "Branching Dialogue", "status": "unverified", "category": "narrative-and-choice", "definition": "Conversation is presented as a tree of authored lines in which the player selects from a set of responses, and each selection decides which lines, information, or consequences follow.", "aliases": [ "dialogue trees", "conversation trees", "dialogue choices" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "morality-systems", "reputation-factions", "fail-forward", "legacy-campaign" ], "referenced_by": [ "multiple-endings", "quests", "quick-time-events", "relationship-systems", "social-conflict" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Fallout, a widely cited menu form. Agency is medium because each node offers a small fixed set of options; it falls to low where options reconverge on the same outcome, a common and criticised practice. Information is hidden because the consequences of each option, and the unchosen branches, are concealed from everyone at the table until taken; perfect was the losing value, on the argument that the options themselves are visible. Interaction is solo; multiplayer forms where a group votes on a response exist but are not canonical. Decision density is medium for a typical conversation of about three choices; high was the losing value for longer exchanges.", "effects": [ "consequence-weight", "ownership", "discovery", "replayability", "fear-of-missing-out" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Buffalo Castle", "year": 1976, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Rick Loomis (Flying Buffalo)", "note": "An early published solo role-playing adventure. Numbered paragraphs offer a choice of actions rather than speech, but the authored-tree structure, with dice checks gating some branches, is the same.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Murder on the Zinderneuf", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Electronic Arts", "note": "Questioning a suspect presents five approaches, varying manner and tone of voice, and the manual says the better the approach, the better the response; the player chooses a manner rather than a line, an early presented conversation menu.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tales of the Arabian Nights", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Eric Goldberg (West End Games)", "note": "On meeting a character the player picks a reaction from a matrix, and the reaction plus a die roll selects a numbered paragraph in the Book of Tales that can grant statuses, skills, and further choices.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ultima IV", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Origin Systems", "note": "Typed keywords (name, job, health, and words characters mention) branch conversations; the player must discover the keyword, so the tree is hidden rather than presented as a menu.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fallout", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Interplay Productions", "note": "Menu dialogue trees whose options reflect the character's statistics, where a very low Intelligence limits speech to grunts and single syllables; a widely cited example of stat-gated dialogue, which became a convention of computer role-playing games.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mass Effect", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "BioWare", "note": "A dialogue wheel maps paraphrased intents to fixed positions and feeds Paragon and Renegade tallies, so conversational choices drive a morality system.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cyberpunk 2077", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "CD Projekt Red", "note": "Conversations offer gold story-advancing lines, blue optional lines that add information, and options gated by V's lifepath or attribute level; some exchanges are timed, and the line chosen changes how the other character reacts and can change a mission's outcome.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No origin can be defended, because each sub-form has its own earliest documented case. Printed branching narrative appears in Tunnels & Trolls solo adventures (1976) and Choose Your Own Adventure books (1979), though these branch actions as well as speech. In video games, Murder on the Zinderneuf (1983) presented a menu of conversational approaches whose choice changed the answer, and Ultima IV (1985) used typed keywords. Menus of actual lines are usually credited to graphic adventures of the late 1980s, with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) the earliest lead, resting on an uncited reference-work claim. Fallout (1997) is a widely cited example of stat-gated menu trees, but no cited source names it the populariser, and a 2008 retrospective singles out Planescape: Torment (1999) for dialogue as play." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "tales-of-the-arabian-nights-rulebook-1985", "canonical": false, "title": "Tales of the Arabian Nights rulebook", "author": "Eric Goldberg", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Reaction Matrix and Book of Tales", "note": "Board-game form of authored branching paragraphs selected by player reaction." }, { "key": "salen-zimmerman-2004", "canonical": true, "title": "Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals", "author": "Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Games as Narrative Play", "note": "Branching narrative structures and the relation of player choice to authored story." }, { "key": "chris-crawford-on-interactive-storytelling-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling", "author": "Chris Crawford", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "New Riders", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Critique of branching trees and the combinatorial explosion problem." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Dialogue tree", "note": null }, { "key": "murder-on-the-zinderneuf-manual-1983", "canonical": false, "title": "Murder on the Zinderneuf manual", "author": "Electronic Arts", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Interviewing suspects", "note": "Five approaches to questioning, with the quality of the answer depending on the approach chosen." }, { "key": "ultima-iv-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Ultima IV", "author": "Jimmy Maher (The Digital Antiquarian)", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.filfre.net/2014/07/ultima-iv/", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Every character answers the keywords name, job, and health, a keyword-based pseudo-parser." }, { "key": "the-crpg-renaissance-part-1-fallout-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "The CRPG Renaissance, Part 1: Fallout", "author": "Jimmy Maher (The Digital Antiquarian)", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.filfre.net/2025/01/the-crpg-renaissance-part-1-fallout/", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Dialogue options reflect Intelligence, and a character below a threshold speaks only in single syllables." }, { "key": "rpg-dialogue-systems-explored-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "RPG Dialogue Systems Explored", "author": "Vince D. Weller and Gareth Fouche (GameBanshee)", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gamebanshee.com/kdxa", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "From keywords to dialogue trees; cites Fallout and Arcanum's dialogue for unintelligent characters and Planescape: Torment's dialogue as a game in itself." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 8, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 515, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/branching-dialogue" }, { "id": "checkpoints", "name": "Checkpoints and Saves", "status": "unverified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "Progress is recorded at designated points or on demand so that failure returns the player to the last record instead of to the start, which sets how much play is at stake between records.", "aliases": [ "save points", "respawn points", "checkpoint systems", "save games", "autosave" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "permadeath", "time-loops", "platforming", "legacy-campaign" ], "referenced_by": [ "death-penalty", "difficulty-settings", "lives-and-continues" ], "media": [ "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "variable", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the automatic mid-level checkpoint of Super Mario Bros., with the save of The Legend of Zelda as the on-demand check. Agency is low because the system decides where records fall; medium was the losing value for manual and rationed saves (Resident Evil), where the player chooses when to spend a save. Decision density is low for the same reason. Category tension with progression-and-capability, where the save is the persistence of progress, was resolved for time-and-action-structure, a departure from the default tie-break order (which asks the progression question first), because the mechanic partitions play into segments and defines what one failure costs in time; progression-and-capability was the losing family. Pacing is variable because how much play is repeated after failure depends entirely on where and how far apart the record points are set; neutral was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026. Information stays perfect after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; hidden was the losing value.", "effects": [ "tension", "consequence-weight", "frustration-risk", "grind" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Super Mario Bros.", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo (Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka)", "note": "An invisible midway point in most levels returns a player who loses a life to the middle of the level rather than its start, while losing every life restarts the game.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Legend of Zelda", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo (Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka)", "note": "Inventory and dungeon progress are saved on demand, to the disk in the 1986 Famicom Disk System release and to battery-backed memory in the 1987 cartridge release, so a game could be resumed days later.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Resident Evil", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Capcom", "note": "Saving requires reaching a typewriter and consumes an ink ribbon from a finite supply, so the save is itself a rationed resource and each one is a decision.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dark Souls", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "FromSoftware", "note": "Bonfires are checkpoints that also restore health and respawn enemies; death drops carried souls where the player fell, recoverable on a single return trip.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The 7th Continent", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Ludovic Roudy and Bruno Sautter (Serious Poulp)", "note": "A save procedure stores the explored map and hand in the box between sessions, while death sends the party back to the start of the curse with little retained; a board-game save state.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Lies of P", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Neowiz and Round8 Studio (Neowiz)", "note": "Stargazers serve as respawn points; after a death P loses carried Ergo, which can be recovered at the place of death, but each hit taken on the way back shrinks the amount that can be recovered.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No origin can be defended. Mid-level restart points appear in arcade games of the early 1980s without an agreed earliest instance. Moon Patrol (1982) is the strongest candidate: its course is marked with lettered points, some of them called checkpoints, but where a destroyed buggy restarts is attested only by secondary sources that disagree. Its operator manual of September 1982 describes a course run from letter A to letter Z, with bonuses for sections completed in less than average time and an optional sector-selection switch for starting partway through, but says nothing about where play resumes after a loss. Guinness World Records credits Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns (1984) as the first game to use checkpoints, on the narrower ground that it replaced a finite stock of lives with unlimited restarts from the last checkpoint. Super Mario Bros. (1985), with invisible midway points, is a widely played early console example; its standing as the populariser is assumed from its reach rather than sourced. On-demand saving on consoles is usually associated with The Legend of Zelda, which saved to disk in its 1986 Japanese release and to a battery-backed cartridge in 1987; home-computer games saved to tape and disk earlier. The board-game save state is recent, with The 7th Continent (2017) the usual example." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "juul-2013", "canonical": true, "title": "The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games", "author": "Jesper Juul", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Discussion of punishment for failure and the cost of repeating play", "note": "Framework for failure cost used in the tension and grind coding." }, { "key": "the-7th-continent-rulebook-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "The 7th Continent rulebook", "author": "Ludovic Roudy and Bruno Sautter", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Saving the game; Dying", "note": "Board-game save procedure and the restart on death." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Saved game", "note": "History of saving across arcade, console, and computer games." }, { "key": "first-videogame-to-use-checkpoints", "canonical": false, "title": "First videogame to use checkpoints", "author": "Guinness World Records", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/504791-first-videogame-to-use-checkpoints", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "The Pitfall II (1984) record and its stated basis, checkpoints replacing a finite number of lives." }, { "key": "moon-patrol-instruction-manual-1982", "canonical": false, "title": "Moon Patrol instruction manual", "author": "Williams Electronics", "year": 1982, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "16-3007-101, September 1982: Game Operation; Special Points; Game Adjustments", "note": "The course from A to Z, timed section bonuses, and the sector-selection switch; no statement on where a destroyed car restarts." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 558, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/checkpoints" }, { "id": "clue-giving", "name": "Clue Giving", "status": "unverified", "category": "information-and-hidden-state", "definition": "One player who knows a secret word or target composes a clue under rules that forbid the obvious, and teammates must guess the target from it, with the quality of the clue deciding the score.", "aliases": [ "clue games", "encode and guess", "hint giving" ], "parent": "limited-communication", "children": [], "related": [ "player-judge", "deduction", "word-building", "team-play" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Codenames. Category is information-and-hidden-state because the mechanic is a controlled transfer of a known secret from one player to others; puzzle-and-pattern was the losing family, since guessing is an inferential puzzle, and the tie-break order placed information first. Agency is high because the clue is composed from an open space of words or gestures. Interaction is mixed because the clue is cooperative within the team and the race is competitive between teams; cooperative was the losing value and fits Just One. Randomness is input because the targets are drawn before any clue is made. Complexity is low because the restriction on clues is one or two sentences. Decision density is low because the clue-giver's turn is one clue; the guessers' stop-or-continue choices fall in their own turn, and medium was the losing value for counting the whole team turn.", "effects": [ "inference", "teamwork", "tension", "contested-fairness", "mastery" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Acting charades", "year": 1850, "year_approx": true, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "A word is acted syllable by syllable and then whole in dumb show, and the great rule is silence, so the obvious channel is closed to the actors while the others guess; an early, widely known encode-and-guess game. Teams guessing against a timer are a later form.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Password", "year": 1962, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Milton Bradley (home edition of the Bob Stewart television format)", "note": "A clue-giver may say exactly one word to convey the password and partners alternate guesses; the one-word limit anticipates the single-clue rule of later designs.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Taboo", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Brian Hersch", "note": "Each target card lists five forbidden words, and an opposing player holds a buzzer to penalise their use, so the rules on the clue are policed by the other team.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Draw Something", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "OMGPop", "note": "Asynchronous mobile form in which the clue is a drawing and the guesser assembles the word from supplied letters; the software cannot detect letters written into a drawing, so that restriction rests on convention.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Codenames", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Vlaada Chvátil", "note": "A spymaster gives one word and a number to point teammates at several of twenty-five words on the grid while avoiding the other team's words and the assassin; the canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "So Clover!", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "François Romain (Repos Production)", "note": "Each player secretly writes a one-word clue linking each pair of keywords on their clover; the keywords themselves, translations and words from the same family are forbidden. Teammates then rebuild the pairs from the clues while the writer must stay silent.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Acting charades", "year": 1850, "year_approx": true, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "low", "note": "The earliest printed clue rule found is in the Mayhew brothers' Acting Charades (undated, catalogued as about 1850): the word is acted in dumb show and \"the great rule ... is silence\", the obvious being forbidden to the clue-givers. Acting-charade books exist from 1843, and Mayhew and Thackeray both describe the acted form as a recent import from France; the riddle charade is in English print by 1777, and Cassell's indoor-amusements book (about 1881) adds Dumb Crambo with a forfeit for speaking. Password, whose CBS premiere on 2 October 1961 is confirmed by Broadcasting, is the earliest firmly dated one-word verbal clue; the 1962 home game rests on secondary sources. Taboo (1989) added the forbidden-word list, and Codenames (2015), Spiel des Jahres 2016, is the standard modern example, though no source names it the populariser." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Communication Limits", "note": "Framing of clue restrictions as a designed channel." }, { "key": "taboo-rules-1989", "canonical": false, "title": "Taboo rules", "author": "Brian Hersch", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Forbidden words and the buzzer", "note": "Forbidden-word restriction policed by the opposing team." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Password (American game show)", "note": "Dates of the television format and the home edition." }, { "key": "acting-charades-or-deeds-not-words-1850", "canonical": false, "title": "Acting Charades, or, Deeds not Words", "author": "Augustus Mayhew and Henry Mayhew", "year": 1850, "year_approx": true, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/actingcharadesor50mayh/actingcharadesor50mayh_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Introduction, pp. v-vi", "note": "The acted charade as a recent import from France, with silence as its great rule." }, { "key": "broadcasting-2-october-1961-1961", "canonical": false, "title": "Broadcasting, 2 October 1961", "author": "Broadcasting magazine", "year": 1961, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-BC/BC-1961/1961-10-02-BC.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Programming, p. 51", "note": "Password starts that day on CBS-TV." }, { "key": "codenames-rules-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Codenames rules", "author": "Vlaada Chvátil (Czech Games Edition)", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20160122120246if_/http://czechgames.com:80/files/rules/codenames-rules-en.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "One Word, p. 4; invalid clues, pp. 5-6", "note": "One-word clues that may not be, contain, or form any visible word, with a penalty for invalid clues." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 518, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/clue-giving" }, { "id": "combat-building", "name": "Combat Building", "status": "unverified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "During a fight players spend materials gathered in the match to raise walls, floors, ramps and roofs in real time, as cover, height or a blocked route, and opponents can shoot the structures down", "aliases": [ "build fights", "build fighting", "building in combat" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "base-building", "cover-systems", "resource-gathering", "tower-defence", "line-of-sight", "real-time" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Fortnite's Battle Royale mode, the form that made the mechanic central. Agency is high because piece, place, material and moment are all open and the structure decides the exchange; medium was the losing value, for a small fixed set of pieces. Randomness is none: a piece placed is the piece chosen, and the host game's loot is not the mechanic's. Interaction is indirect because a structure changes the shared space rather than acting on a named opponent; direct was the losing value, since structures are raised against one opponent and shot down by that opponent. Complexity is medium (four pieces, three materials trading speed for strength, editing); high was the losing value. Pacing decelerates because each wall absorbs fire that would otherwise end the fight; neutral was the losing value, since ramps also close distance. Information is asymmetric because a wall hides what the builder does behind it; perfect was the losing value, since placed structures are visible to all. Feedback loop is none; positive was the losing value, from materials taken off defeated players. Decision density is high (build or shoot, which piece, where, which material, when to re-harvest); medium was the losing value. Space-and-position stands over progression-and-capability, the competing family, because the structures matter only for position within the encounter and do not persist. Spectacle was considered and is not tagged, because structures rise in every fight rather than as rare peaks. Tension is not tagged: whether a fight is won belongs to the host shooter rather than to the building rule, and a piece resolves when it is placed; tension, from the material stock dwindling and walls losing durability under fire, was the losing value.", "effects": [ "execution", "mastery", "spatial-reasoning" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Rampart", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Atari Games", "note": "Play alternates between timed combat and building phases, and in the building phase the player places pieces shaped like Tetris shapes to close breaches in castle walls; building happens between fights rather than during one, so it is an antecedent.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ace of Spades", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Ben Aksoy", "note": "A team-based first-person shooter, first released as a prototype in April 2011, in which players dig and place blocks during the match; a review of the 2012 Jagex release names tunnels under enemy bases, planned defences and sniper nests as tactics.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fortnite", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Epic Games", "note": "In Battle Royale the pickaxe harvests nearly any object into wood, stone or metal, spent on walls, ramps, floors and roofs placed mid-fight, lighter materials building faster but breaking sooner; Save the World builds forts with traps against Husks, and Zero Build (2022) removes building.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Fortnite", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Fortnite (2017) is the earliest documented instance cited: Destructoid's early-access review of 2017 describes wood, stone and metal harvested with a pickaxe and spent on grid-built structures that lose durability under attack, in the Save the World mode, at the border with tower defence, and press from 2018 documents building mid-fight in Battle Royale. Ace of Spades (2011), a team shooter in which players dig and place blocks during the match, is a reported antecedent: its 2011 prototype is dated by Wikipedia, a review of the 2012 Jagex release describes building tactics, and its rules of block supply are unconfirmed. Minecraft's multiplayer and Infiniminer remain unsurveyed, hence low confidence. Rampart (1990) is an antecedent outside the definition, building in a timed phase between fights from dealt pieces." }, "established": { "title": "Fortnite", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Fortnite popularised combat building in its Battle Royale mode, with materials harvested by pickaxe and spent on prefabricated walls, floors, ramps, and roofs raised mid-fight; earlier voxel shooters such as Ace of Spades placed single blocks." }, "sources": [ { "key": "an-analysis-of-building-in-fortnite-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "An Analysis of Building in Fortnite", "author": "Samuel Van Cise", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Game Developer", "url": "https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/an-analysis-of-building-in-fortnite", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Building as instant cover anywhere, as height and as an approach tool, the Port-a-Fort, building skill as speed and manoeuvrability, a skill-gap claim attributed to Ninja, and the author's argument that building removes strategic parts of the battle royale form." }, { "key": "fortnite-gets-permanent-no-build-mode-called-zero-build-2022", "canonical": false, "title": "Fortnite gets permanent no-build mode called Zero Build", "author": "Chris Kerr", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Game Developer", "url": "https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/fortnite-gets-permanent-no-build-mode-called-zero-build", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Building as towering structures raised mid-skirmish, its removal at the start of a season in March 2022, the permanent Zero Build mode with a recharging Overshield, and Epic's description of it as a pure test of weapon, item and traversal ability." }, { "key": "early-access-review-fortnite-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Early Access Review: Fortnite", "author": "Red Veron", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Destructoid", "url": "https://www.destructoid.com/?p=221531", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Save the World's grid building, three materials ranked by strength, harvesting with a pickaxe, structures that lose durability under damage, traps against Husks, and gathering that is not viable in the middle of an attack." }, { "key": "fortnite-season-3-patch-notes-turbo-building-hand-cannon-60-fps-on-consoles-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "'Fortnite' Season 3 Patch Notes: Turbo Building, Hand Cannon, 60 FPS On Consoles", "author": "Jacob Siegal", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "BGR", "url": "https://bgr.com/2018/02/22/fortnite-season-3-patch-notes-turbo-building", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Turbo Building (hold the fire button to build the selected piece continuously) and automatic change to the next material when one runs out." }, { "key": "how-does-the-turbo-building-nerf-affect-fortnite-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "How does the turbo building nerf affect Fortnite?", "author": "Joey Carr", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Upcomer", "url": "https://upcomer.com/how-does-the-turbo-building-nerf-affect-fortnite", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "The interval between pieces placed in sequence lengthened from 0.05 to 0.15 seconds, and its uneven effect on players with different connection latency." }, { "key": "ace-of-spades-review-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Ace of Spades Review", "author": "Joe Martin", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "bit-tech", "url": "https://bit-tech.net/reviews/gaming/pc/ace-of-spades-review/1/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "The Jagex release as Minecraft with guns, tunnels under enemy bases, planned defences and sniper nests, and maps with prebuilt defences that limit building." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Fortnite Battle Royale", "note": "The pickaxe as the only starting item, harvesting of nearly every object into wood, stone and metal, walls, ramps, floors and roofs, the speed and strength trade-off, building as the mode's main distinction from other battle royale games, and Zero Build in March 2022." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Ace of Spades (video game)", "note": "The April 2011 prototype as a 16-versus-16 team shooter with capture the flag, block building, the Minecraft with rifles comparison, and the Jagex release of December 2012." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Rampart (video game)", "note": "Alternating time-limited combat and building phases and wall pieces shaped like Tetris shapes." } ], "n_examples": 3, "n_sources": 9, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 645, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/combat-building" }, { "id": "combat-results-tables", "name": "Combat Results Tables", "status": "verified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "An attack is resolved by computing the ratio or difference between attacking and defending strength, finding that column on a printed table, rolling a die, and reading a graded result such as eliminate, retreat, or exchange.", "aliases": [ "CRT", "CRTs", "odds-ratio tables", "differential tables", "combat tables", "ratio tables" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "target-numbers", "random-tables", "zone-of-control", "referee-adjudication", "opposed-rolls" ], "referenced_by": [ "morale-and-rout" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the odds-ratio table of the classic Avalon Hill wargames, with Afrika Korps (1964) as the reference text. Agency is medium because the attacker chooses how much strength to commit and so which column to roll on; low was the losing value, on the argument that the table itself offers no choice. Randomness is output because the die is rolled after forces are committed. Interaction is direct because every attack names a specific opponent's units. Complexity is medium because the canonical form is a single lookup table with a handful of result codes and modifiers; high was the losing value for designs that chain several tables. Pacing is neutral; accelerates was argued because exchanges and eliminations deplete both sides. Information is perfect because the table is printed and the odds are computable; asymmetric was argued for hidden-strength variants. Feedback loop is positive because eliminations lower the enemy's strength and improve later odds. Category was not seriously contested; the table adjudicates a declared attack, which is the boundary with random tables. Decision density is medium for one declared attack (which defenders, which units to commit); high was the losing value for counting a whole combat phase. Pacing stays neutral after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; accelerates was the losing value.", "effects": [ "calculation", "planning", "volatility", "analysis-paralysis" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Tactics", "year": 1954, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Charles S. Roberts", "note": "Roberts's self-published wargame, sold by mail order in about 2,000 copies, in which the strengths of attacker and defender are reduced to an odds ratio and a six-sided die read against a printed table gives the result; the wargaming literature credits it with the player-read combat results table.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tactics II", "year": 1958, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Charles S. Roberts (Avalon Hill)", "note": "Attacking and defending strengths are reduced to an odds ratio, the ratio selects a column, and a six-sided die selects the row, giving results that eliminate or retreat one side; the published form of the table Roberts introduced in Tactics (1954).", "latest": false }, { "title": "Afrika Korps", "year": 1964, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Charles S. Roberts (Avalon Hill)", "note": "The odds table includes exchange and back-two-hexes results, and the one-to-one column is risky enough that players learn soak-off attacks, committing weak units to bad odds to isolate a good attack elsewhere.", "latest": false }, { "title": "PanzerBlitz", "year": 1970, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "James F. Dunnigan (Avalon Hill)", "note": "An odds-ratio table for tactical combat whose results include dispersal as well as elimination, so a unit can be suppressed for a turn rather than destroyed, which widened the band of outcomes.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Squad Leader", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "John Hill (Avalon Hill)", "note": "The Infantry Fire Table replaces the ratio with a firepower column: total attacking fire power selects the column, two dice select the row, and results are morale checks or kills, with the defender's terrain modifying the roll.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Advance Wars", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Intelligent Systems (Nintendo)", "note": "A unit-versus-unit base damage matrix, modified by remaining hit points, terrain, and a small random luck term, decides the result of each attack and is shown as a predicted percentage before commitment; the nearest widely played digital form of the printed table.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Salerno '43", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Mark Simonitch (GMT Games)", "note": "Attack strength is compared with defence strength and rounded down to an odds column from 1-3 to 7-1, shifted for tanks, elite units, rain, and air, artillery, or naval support; one d6 then gives a graded result such as defender step loss and retreat, exchange, or disruption.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Tactics", "year": 1954, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Charles S. Roberts's Tactics (1954) and its Avalon Hill edition Tactics II (1958) are the standard credit in the wargaming literature for the odds-ratio combat results table resolved by a six-sided die. Reisswitz's Kriegsspiel (1824) already used dice and loss tables under an umpire, so tabulated casualty resolution is older, but the self-contained player-read table dates from Roberts." }, "established": { "title": "Tactics II", "year": 1958, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Tactics II, Avalon Hill's 1958 edition of Roberts's Tactics with nearly identical rules, carried the odds-ratio table beyond the 2,000 mail-order copies of the 1954 original. The wargaming literature credits the two editions together with the table, and the Avalon Hill titles that followed, Afrika Korps (1964) among them, use the same ratio column, die roll, and graded result codes." }, "sources": [ { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Section on Avalon Hill, Charles Roberts, and the combat results table", "note": "Provenance and the lineage from Kriegsspiel loss tables to the hobby CRT." }, { "key": "afrika-korps-rules-1964", "canonical": false, "title": "Afrika Korps rules", "author": "Avalon Hill", "year": 1964, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Combat Results Table", "note": "Canonical odds-ratio table used for the property coding." }, { "key": "squad-leader-rulebook-1977", "canonical": false, "title": "Squad Leader rulebook", "author": "John Hill (Avalon Hill)", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Infantry Fire Table", "note": "Firepower-column form with morale results." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Ratio / Combat Results Table", "note": null }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Tactics (game)", "note": "Tactics II (1958) with rules nearly identical to Tactics (1954), the 2,000 copies sold by mail order, and the odds-ratio combat results table becoming standard in board wargames." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 486, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/combat-results-tables" }, { "id": "combo-systems", "name": "Combo Systems", "status": "unverified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "Successive actions executed within a timing window chain together, with each link enabling or multiplying the next, so a correctly timed sequence yields more than the same actions performed separately.", "aliases": [ "combos", "combo chains", "chain attacks", "cancels", "combo multipliers" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "engine-building", "parry-and-dodge", "match-three", "cooldowns" ], "referenced_by": [ "hitboxes-and-hurtboxes", "interrupts-and-reactions", "kill-streaks", "rhythm-action" ], "media": [ "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Street Fighter II (1991). Agency is medium because the player chooses the next link from a constrained set of follow-ups but execution within the window decides whether the chain continues; high was the losing value for route selection in long combos. Interaction is direct because the canonical chain is landed on a stunned human opponent in versus play; solo is the losing value for score combos in skating and action games. Feedback loop is positive because each landed hit extends the window for the next; many later games add damage scaling, which would code mixed. Category is time-and-action-structure, a departure from the default tie-break order (which asks the progression question first), because the mechanic is a timing structure linking actions and combo routes are learned rather than unlocked; progression-and-capability was the losing candidate. Interaction would code solo in single-player play against the computer.", "effects": [ "execution", "mastery", "flow", "discovery", "volatility" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Street Fighter II", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Capcom", "note": "Cancelling a normal attack into a special move during its animation lets hits connect before the opponent recovers; discovered as an unintended interaction and kept, it defined the combo as a chain of hits inside hitstun.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Killer Instinct", "year": 1994, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Rare", "note": "Named its chains on screen with a vocabulary of openers, auto-doubles, and finishers, and added a combo breaker that lets the defender interrupt a chain with a timed input.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Neversoft", "note": "Tricks linked without touching down multiply a running score, and a bail discards the whole chain, which adds a push-your-luck decision to execution.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Devil May Cry", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Capcom", "note": "A style meter grades continuous, varied attacks and decays when the player pauses or repeats, so the chain is scored for variety as well as length.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Artistic gymnastics", "year": 2006, "year_approx": true, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "The open-ended Code of Points awards connection value for elements performed in direct succession, so a linked sequence scores more than the same elements performed apart; connection bonuses existed in earlier codes and the year marks the current system.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Guilty Gear -Strive-", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Arc System Works", "note": "Most normal attacks cancel into stronger normals (gatlings) and then into special moves within their timing windows, and a Red Roman Cancel spends half the Tension gauge to cancel an otherwise uncancellable move and launch the opponent, extending the combo.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Street Fighter II", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to the cancel combo of fighting games and the term combo, which spread from Street Fighter II's players in the early 1990s. Capcom's developers have described the cancel as an unintended consequence of input timing found during testing and left in. Culture Brain's Shanghai Kid (1985) is often credited with earlier combo attacks, and linked-move bonuses in judged sports are older analogues, so confidence is medium." }, "established": { "title": "Street Fighter II", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "high", "note": "Street Fighter II popularised the cancel combo and the term, which spread from its players; Killer Instinct named combo types, and the structure passed into action and sports games as a general scoring device." }, "sources": [ { "key": "street-fighter-2-an-oral-history-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Street Fighter 2: An oral history", "author": "Matt Leone", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Polygon", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Developer accounts of the accidental discovery of cancels." }, { "key": "swink-2009", "canonical": true, "title": "Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation", "author": "Steve Swink", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Morgan Kaufmann", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Input timing and response windows that make chains executable." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Combo (video games)", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 508, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/combo-systems" }, { "id": "commodity-currency", "name": "Commodity Currency", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "The standard medium of exchange between players is a consumable item with its own use in play, so every trade weighs use value against exchange value and every use removes money from circulation", "aliases": [ "pseudo-currency", "currency items", "commodity money" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "trading", "markets", "metacurrency", "resource-conversion", "loot-tables" ], "referenced_by": [ "item-modification" ], "media": [ "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Path of Exile (2013), the designed form in which currency items are both the tools that alter items and the units of trade between players. Agency is medium (use the unit now, hold it, or trade it, and at what rate); high was the losing value, on the view that choosing counterparties and rates is an open space. Randomness is none because the money itself resolves nothing: its supply arrives through loot tables and many of its uses are random rerolls, which belong to item modification. Interaction is mixed because the medium circulates in direct bilateral trades while every player's consumption moves exchange rates for all through the shared supply; indirect was the losing value, treating the bilateral trade as trading's. Complexity is medium (several denominations with floating rates); high was the losing value if each unit's use is counted. Information is asymmetric because holdings are private and rates are discovered by trading; mixed was the losing value, adding drop rates known only to the system. Feedback loop is none: wealth held in units neither compounds nor is damped by the mechanic's own rules, and consumption is an economy-wide sink rather than a coupling of one player's past and future success; mixed was the losing value, for wealth that buys item improvements that raise farming power, which belongs to the host game. The category sits close to resource-management, since the units are finite stocks spent from a pool; the default tie-break order reaches interaction-and-exchange first.", "effects": [ "consequence-weight", "calculation", "negotiation" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Diablo II", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard North", "note": "Antecedent, by player convention. Gold had little use in trades between players, so players priced items in Stones of Jordan, a ring with a predictable drop rate, until duplication flooded supply; high runes also served as money, and a later patch reportedly made Stones of Jordan sold to merchants summon Uber Diablo, a sink.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Le Havre", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Uwe Rosenberg", "note": "Antecedent, inverse form. Francs are the currency, and food can always be replaced 1:1 with Francs but never the reverse; entry fees for another player's building are paid to its owner in food or Francs, while Francs spent in the Feeding phase leave the game, so cash is weighed against feeding workers.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Metro 2033", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": null, "note": "Antecedent, single-player. Pre-war military-grade rounds are both the currency and more effective ammunition, so the player either fires money or saves it for weapons and upgrades, and each station has a Bullet Exchange. The counterparty is always a trader, never another player.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "Currency items such as the Orb of Alchemy and the Chaos Orb alter an item when applied and are destroyed by use, and they are also the units in which players price trades, the Chaos Orb becoming the dominant unit. Gold, in the core game from 3.26 (2025), pays wages, passive-tree respecs and Black Market purchases rather than serving as the trade unit.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Path of Exile 2", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "Gold drops from slain enemies, and Divine Orbs reroll existing items. Players reportedly price trades with each other in orbs, while gold, reportedly bound to the account, covers vendor purchases and the fees of an in-game Currency Exchange.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the designed form, in which the rules supply consumable items as the medium of exchange between players and no general money that matters in trade; currency by player convention (Diablo II) and money with a consumption use (Le Havre) are antecedents. Grinding Gear Games set out the design in a dev diary of 7 February 2011, during development, and named Diablo II's Stone of Jordan and High Rune economies and Guild Wars' Globs of Ectoplasm as its models. Confidence is medium because the dating spans 2011 to the 2013 release, a designed consumable money against the system precedes it (Metro 2033, 2010), and earlier MMO and MUD economies remain unsurveyed." }, "established": { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Path of Exile built consumable currency items into its rules as the medium of trade between players, after a 2011 dev diary that took Diablo II's emergent Stone of Jordan economy as its model; Path of Exile 2 keeps the orbs as the trade medium." }, "sources": [ { "key": "dev-diary-rethinking-gold-as-a-currency-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Dev Diary: Rethinking Gold as a Currency", "author": "Chris (Grinding Gear Games)", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Grinding Gear Games", "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/55102", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "The four properties of a pseudo-currency", "note": "Design rationale for currency items instead of gold (inflation, artificial sinks, wealth proportional to time played); homogeneity, utility, scarcity and handleability; trades ending in consumption; the Diablo II and Guild Wars precedents." }, { "key": "the-origins-of-money-in-diablo-ii-in-the-invisible-hand-in-virtual-worlds-ed-matthew-mccaffrey-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "The Origins of Money in Diablo II (in The Invisible Hand in Virtual Worlds, ed. Matthew McCaffrey)", "author": "Solomon M. Stein", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Cambridge University Press", "url": "https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/invisible-hand-in-virtual-worlds/origins-of-money-in-diablo-ii/A6A01F22C3C213567FBD51D8294F2B7B", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Chapter 5, pp. 105-132", "note": "Cited from the publisher's abstract and chapter metadata, not the chapter body. The abstract states that Diablo II's money failed as a medium of exchange, that players moved from barter to commodity money, and that Path of Exile's economy was designed to replicate that standard." }, { "key": "le-havre-rules-english-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Le Havre rules (English)", "author": "Uwe Rosenberg", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Lookout Games", "url": "https://www.spielkarten.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/22160029_LeHavre_EN.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Main Action B: The Building Action, p. 5; End of a Round: Feeding phase, pp. 7-8", "note": "Francs as currency, food replaced 1:1 by Francs, entry fees paid to the building's owner, Francs counted as food at feeding." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-economy-currency-trading-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile Economy: Currency Trading", "author": "Michael Shalyt", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Game Developer", "url": "https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/path-of-exile-economy-currency-trading", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Currency items as consumables, the Chaos Orb as the dominant currency, prices set by drop rate against consumption, and flipping between currencies." }, { "key": "skins-chips-and-stone-of-jordans-searching-for-the-value-of-emergent-video-game-economies-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Skins, Chips, and Stone of Jordans: Searching for the Value of Emergent Video Game Economies", "author": "Nicholas O'Brien", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Rhizome", "url": "https://old.rhizome.org/editorial/2016/dec/14/searching-for-the-value-of-video-game-economies", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "The Stone of Jordan as the players' standard currency in Diablo II, gold undervalued in trades, and duplication." }, { "key": "developer-interview-metro-2033-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Developer Interview: Metro 2033", "author": "Dean Sharpe and Andrey Prokhorov", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "interview", "publisher": "The Sixth Axis", "url": "https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2010/03/19/developer-interview-metro-2033/", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Military-grade rounds as both currency and ammunition, and the station Bullet Exchanges." }, { "key": "introducing-the-currency-exchange-market-2024", "canonical": false, "title": "Introducing the Currency Exchange Market", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3532348", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Announcement of 21 July 2024 of the Currency Exchange for the Settlers of Kalguur launch on 26 July 2024." }, { "key": "content-update-3-26-0-path-of-exile-secrets-of-the-atlas-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Content Update 3.26.0 -- Path of Exile: Secrets of the Atlas", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3787013", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "The Currency Exchange and gold (wages, passive-tree respecs, Black Market purchases) in the core game." }, { "key": "content-update-0-2-0-path-of-exile-2-dawn-of-the-hunt-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Content Update 0.2.0 -- Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3740562", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Gold dropped by slain enemies, and Divine Orbs rerolling existing items." }, { "key": "the-way-of-the-plex-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "The Way of the PLEX", "author": "GM Grimmi (CCP Games)", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/the-way-of-the-plex", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "PLEX bought for ISK on the in-game market and consumed for 30 days of game time; the neighbouring game-time token." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 10, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 641, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/commodity-currency" }, { "id": "connection-games", "name": "Connection Games", "status": "verified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "Two players alternately place pieces on a shared board and the first to form an unbroken chain of their own pieces linking designated edges or points wins outright, so every placement both extends one path and obstructs the other.", "aliases": [ "Hex family", "edge-to-edge connection", "connect two sides" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "network-building", "area-control", "tile-placement", "alignment-games", "end-game-triggers" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Hex (1942), the form Browne treats as the root of the family. Agency is high because any empty cell may be taken and the choice dominates the result. Interaction is indirect because a stone obstructs only by occupying shared space; direct was the losing value, argued from the fact that in a two-player game every block is aimed at the sole opponent, but the rule names no target and has no effect on the opponent's material. Complexity is low because the rules fit in two sentences. Pacing is neutral; accelerates was argued because the board fills and Hex cannot be drawn, but the rule does not shorten turns or snowball. Decision density is low because a turn is one placement; the many open cells bear on agency, not density. Category follows the default tie-break order, since a path on a lattice is position as operative state; the close neighbour alignment-games is assigned to puzzle-and-pattern, a departure from that order recorded in its own notes. Boundaries with network-building and alignment-games are in the Definition.", "effects": [ "spatial-reasoning", "planning", "calculation", "mastery" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Hex", "year": 1942, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Piet Hein", "note": "On a rhombus of hexagons each player owns two opposite edges and places one stone per turn; a chain joining a player's edges wins, and because a full board must contain exactly one such chain, the game cannot be drawn.", "latest": false }, { "title": "TwixT", "year": 1962, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Alex Randolph (3M)", "note": "Pegs are placed on a square lattice and linked by bridges in a knight's-move relation that bridges may not cross, so the connection is built from links rather than adjacent stones and crossing geometry becomes the blocking tool.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Havannah", "year": 1979, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Christian Freeling", "note": "On a hexagonal board three structures win: a ring enclosing at least one cell, a bridge joining two corners, or a fork joining three edges, so the player tracks several connection targets at once. Designed about 1979 and published by Ravensburger in 1981.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "NDcube (Nintendo)", "note": "Includes Hex as one of its fifty-one games with the standard edge-to-edge rule against a computer or a second player; cited as a digital adaptation of the canonical form rather than a new variant.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Hex", "year": 1942, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Piet Hein published Hex (as Polygon) in the Danish newspaper Politiken in December 1942, and John Nash devised the same game independently at Princeton around 1948; both facts are documented by Browne (2005) and by Hayward and Toft (2019). Browne treats Hex as the root of the family, and no earlier game with an edge-to-edge winning condition is documented in either work." }, "established": { "title": "Hex", "year": 1942, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Browne treats Hex as the root of the connection family, and TwixT and Havannah widened it from the edge-to-edge chain Hex established." }, "sources": [ { "key": "connection-games-variations-on-a-theme-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "Connection Games: Variations on a Theme", "author": "Cameron Browne", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Part I, Defining Connection (chapters 1 to 6); Part II, The Games", "note": "Definition of the family, Hex's priority, and the catalogue of variants coded here." }, { "key": "hex-the-full-story-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "Hex: The Full Story", "author": "Ryan B. Hayward with Bjarne Toft", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapters on Hein's Polygon and Nash's independent discovery", "note": "Provenance detail for the 1942 and 1948 claims and the no-draw proof." }, { "key": "twixt-rules-1962", "canonical": false, "title": "TwixT rules", "author": "Alex Randolph (3M)", "year": 1962, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Link-based connection with the non-crossing bridge rule." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Connections", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 4, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 506, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/connection-games" }, { "id": "constraint-logic-puzzles", "name": "Constraint Logic Puzzles", "status": "verified", "category": "puzzle-and-pattern", "definition": "A grid or arrangement must be filled so that every stated rule holds at once, such as no repeated symbol in a row, and the unique solution is reached by eliminating what the constraints forbid rather than by searching hidden state.", "aliases": [ "logic puzzles", "grid logic puzzles", "pencil puzzles", "placement constraints" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "deduction", "roll-and-write", "pattern-building", "physics-puzzles", "word-building", "escape-room-puzzles" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "print" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the printed Sudoku form, with Sagrada as the boxed-game check case. Randomness is none for the canonical puzzle; input for dice-drafting hosts. Interaction is solo because other players cannot alter the puzzle; indirect was the losing value for shared-draft hosts. Information is perfect because every constraint is given up front; hidden was the losing value and fits Minesweeper, where numbers are revealed by acting, which is the boundary with deduction. Complexity is low because the rule set fits in two sentences, in contrast with the depth of the solving techniques built on it. Decision density is medium because a move chooses a cell and a digit; low was the losing value for treating the pair as one placement. Agency is low because the solution is fixed by the givens and constraints; the solver only chooses the order of forced inferences; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "calculation", "flow", "mastery", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Number Place", "year": 1979, "year_approx": false, "medium": "print", "creator": "Dell Pencil Puzzles & Word Games (attributed to Howard Garns)", "note": "A nine-by-nine grid with some digits given is completed so that every row, column and three-by-three box holds each digit once; the American magazine puzzle later accounts trace Sudoku to.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Sudoku (Nikoli)", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "print", "creator": "Nikoli", "note": "Nikoli's adaptation of Number Place, named \"Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru\" (Sudoku for short); from 1986 Nikoli required the given digits to stand in a symmetrical pattern, which its own account credits with the puzzle's success.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mario's Picross", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Jupiter and Nintendo", "note": "Row and column clues give the lengths of filled runs and the picture is recovered by intersecting them; an early and widely distributed digital nonogram, a form published in Japan from 1987.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Witness", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Thekla", "note": "Hundreds of line-drawing panels each impose rules on the path, such as separating colours or enclosing shapes, and the rules themselves are never stated and must be induced from solved examples.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Sagrada", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Adrian Adamescu and Daryl Andrews", "note": "Drafted dice are placed on a personal window so that no two adjacent dice share colour or value and pattern cells are honoured; the placement restrictions make each turn a small constraint-satisfaction problem.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Queens", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "LinkedIn", "note": "A daily colour-region grid must receive exactly one queen in every row, every column and every coloured region, with no two queens touching even diagonally; each placement is forced by eliminating cells the rules forbid, in the manner of Star Battle.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Number Place", "year": 1979, "year_approx": false, "medium": "print", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to the Latin-square grid-placement form (Sudoku), the canonical modern form coded here. Number Place, published anonymously in Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games in 1979 and attributed to Howard Garns, is the documented origin of that form, which Nikoli popularised in Japan from 1984 and which spread worldwide in 2004 and 2005. Other constraint puzzles are older antecedents: Dell's Cross Sums (the Kakuro form), dated variously to 1950 and 1966, the Zebra puzzle of 1962, and Euler's study of Latin squares in 1782." }, "established": { "title": "Sudoku (Nikoli)", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "print", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Nikoli adopted Number Place in 1984, named it Sudoku and from 1986 set its givens in a symmetrical pattern. Press accounts of the 2004 and 2005 boom trace the puzzles that spread worldwide to Wayne Gould finding a Japanese Sudoku book in 1997 and taking computer-generated grids to The Times in 2004, so the later form follows Nikoli's rather than Dell's directly." }, "sources": [ { "key": "taking-sudoku-seriously-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Taking Sudoku Seriously", "author": "Jason Rosenhouse and Laura Taalman", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter on the history of Sudoku and Latin squares", "note": "Number Place attribution, the Nikoli period, and the mathematical lineage." }, { "key": "sagrada-rulebook-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Sagrada rulebook", "author": "Adrian Adamescu and Daryl Andrews", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Placement restrictions", "note": "Boxed-game form of placement constraints used for the board-card coding." }, { "key": "sudoku", "canonical": false, "title": "Sudoku", "author": "Nikoli", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.nikoli.co.jp/en/puzzles/sudoku/", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": null, "note": "Nikoli found the puzzle as Number Place in an American magazine, introduced it in 1984 under the name later shortened to Sudoku, and from 1986 required symmetrical givens." }, { "key": "sudoku-becomes-a-logical-success-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "Sudoku becomes a logical success", "author": "Kim Curtis (Associated Press)", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "The Spokesman-Review", "url": "https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2005/sep/04/sudoku-becomes-a-logical-success/", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": null, "note": "Citing Will Shortz, the 1979 Number Place origin; Wayne Gould's 1997 find of a Japanese Sudoku book and the generated grids he took to The Times." }, { "key": "the-crack-cocaine-of-games-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "The crack cocaine of games", "author": "Jen Gerson", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "The Globe and Mail", "url": "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/the-crack-cocaine-of-games/article18242760/", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": null, "note": "Number Place first published in Dell Pencil Puzzles & Word Games in 1979, and Nikoli's version with symmetrically arranged givens by the mid-1980s." }, { "key": "costikyan-2013", "canonical": true, "title": "Uncertainty in Games", "author": "Greg Costikyan", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Solver's uncertainty (sources of uncertainty)", "note": "Distinguishes the uncertainty of an unsolved puzzle from hidden information and chance." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Sudoku", "note": "Publication history from Dell through Nikoli to the 2005 international spread." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 503, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/constraint-logic-puzzles" }, { "id": "contract-bidding", "name": "Contract Bidding", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "Before play, players compete to declare how much they will achieve, such as a number of tricks, the highest declaration becomes a binding contract, and scoring rewards fulfilling it and penalises falling short.", "aliases": [ "contracts", "trick bids", "declaring" ], "parent": "auction-bidding", "children": [], "related": [ "trick-taking", "limited-communication", "push-your-luck", "betting" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "high", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 2, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Contract Bridge, where a partnership's highest call becomes the contract and the declarer then plays against two defenders. The category departs from the default tie-break order, which asks the chance-and-risk question first and could place the promise, a wager on a dealt hand, there; interaction-and-exchange is kept because the core act is a competitive escalation of promises between players, and chance-and-risk is the losing family. Interaction is mixed because the contest of declarations is direct while partners bid toward a shared contract; direct was the losing value and fits individual games such as Oh Hell. Complexity is high because scoring tables and the rules on doubling and bonuses are needed to make the contract meaningful; medium was the losing value for exact-bid games with a flat payoff. Decision density is medium because each call is one choice from a short ordered list, though Bridge systems load that choice heavily. Agency is medium because each call is one choice from a short ordered scale or a pass, on a dealt hand; high was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026. Information is perfect because every call is declared openly and the resulting contract is public; the dealt hands belong to the host trick-taking game; asymmetric was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "calculation", "teamwork", "tension", "mastery", "volatility" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Ombre", "year": 1650, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Three players compete for the right to name trumps and play alone against the other two, undertaking to win more tricks than either; current in Spain by the late sixteenth century and across Europe in the seventeenth, and generally credited by Parlett as the first game with a bidding stage.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Skat", "year": 1815, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Developed in Altenburg around 1810 to 1820. Players bid in a fixed numerical ladder for the right to play alone, and the game value is computed afterwards from trump length and bonuses, so a soloist can overbid without knowing it until the hand is counted.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Contract Bridge", "year": 1925, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Harold Vanderbilt", "note": "Only tricks bid and made count toward game, so the contract level is itself the stake; Vanderbilt's scoring rewrote Auction Bridge into a game about accurate declaration. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Wizard", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Ken Fisher", "note": "Every player bids the exact number of tricks they will take and scores only for hitting the number, an individual form in which overbidding and underbidding are penalised alike.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Bridge Base Online", "year": 2001, "year_approx": true, "medium": "video", "creator": "Fred Gitelman", "note": "Online Bridge platform in which the bidding box replaces spoken calls, alerts and explanations of conventional bids are enforced by the interface, and duplicate scoring compares the same contract across tables.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Muneyuki Yokouchi", "note": "Before each hand every player records a bid for the exact number of tricks they will win; everyone scores a point per trick, but only players who hit their bid exactly add a bonus for their largest connected group of markers on the shared research board. A reworking of the 2020 original.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Ombre", "year": 1650, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Parlett credits Ombre, attested in Spain in the late sixteenth century and fashionable across Europe in the seventeenth, with introducing the bidding stage in which players compete for the right to undertake a contract. Earlier Spanish or Italian games may have had similar auctions without surviving rules. Contract Bridge (1925) is the populariser of scoring strictly against the declared contract." }, "established": { "title": "Contract Bridge", "year": 1925, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Vanderbilt's Contract Bridge scoring, which counts only tricks bid and made toward game, fixed the sense of a contract scored strictly against the declaration, and Parlett traces the shift from Auction Bridge to it." }, "sources": [ { "key": "parlett-1990", "canonical": true, "title": "The Oxford Guide to Card Games", "author": "David Parlett", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Introduction of bidding in Ombre, the Skat bidding ladder, and the shift from Auction to Contract Bridge scoring, in the chapters on those games." }, { "key": "laws-of-duplicate-bridge-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Laws of Duplicate Bridge", "author": "World Bridge Federation", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Law 77, scoring table", "note": "Scoring of made and defeated contracts, with the laws on the auction giving the procedure by which the final call becomes the contract." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Contract bridge", "note": "Vanderbilt 1925 scoring change and publication history." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 474, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/contract-bidding" }, { "id": "cooldowns", "name": "Cooldowns", "status": "unverified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "After an ability is used it becomes unavailable for a fixed interval of time or turns, so the player rations powerful actions by timing rather than by spending a pooled resource.", "aliases": [ "recharge timers", "ability timers", "stamina", "energy bars" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "action-points", "initiative-order", "skill-trees" ], "referenced_by": [ "appointment-mechanics", "combo-systems", "procs", "real-time", "status-effects" ], "media": [ "video", "board-card", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from World of Warcraft, the usual reference form. Agency is medium because the decision at each invocation is binary (fire now or hold for a better window); the losing value was high for builds with many overlapping timers, which is recorded under complexity of implementation rather than of the mechanic. Interaction is solo because a timer runs the same regardless of other players, even though what it gates is often a targeted attack. Category tension with resource-management was resolved in favour of time-and-action-structure because the constraint is temporal, not a spendable quantity; the folded stamina and energy variants sit on that boundary and are the contested case. Decision density is medium: whether to fire or hold, and which ready ability to use next; high was the losing value for counting every recurring window in an encounter. Pacing is decelerates because each use locks an ability away for an interval, rationing powerful actions over time and stretching encounters relative to unrestricted use; neutral was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "planning", "mastery", "flow" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Magic: The Gathering", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Garfield (Wizards of the Coast)", "note": "Tapping a permanent to use it makes it unavailable until its controller's next untap step, a one-turn cooldown that later card games generalise as exhaust and ready.", "latest": false }, { "title": "EverQuest", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Verant Interactive", "note": "Spells carry recast timers and some class abilities have reuse timers of many minutes, so burst capacity is rationed across long encounters.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Ability-specific cooldowns combine with a short global cooldown shared by most actions; sequencing abilities around their timers became the \"rotation\" that defines class play.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 4th Edition", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Powers are at-will, encounter, or daily and return after a short or extended rest; monster powers marked \"recharge\" come back on a die roll at the start of the monster's turn.", "latest": false }, { "title": "League of Legends", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Riot Games", "note": "Each champion has four abilities on independent timers, and cooldown reduction is an itemised statistic, so timer management is a build decision as well as a moment-to-moment one.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Marvel Rivals", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "NetEase Games", "note": "Each hero's active abilities run on fixed cooldowns stated in seconds, such as Hulk's Unstoppable at 45 seconds and Gorr's Living Abyss at 12, while the ultimate instead fills a charge meter over time and through combat.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No earliest instance is defended, and the mechanic and the word have separate histories. DikuMUD-derived MUD code (DikuMUD released 1991) gives each skill its own command lag, a wait state that blocks every further command rather than the one skill; this is a global lockout and a precursor, evidenced from later derived codebases rather than the 1991 release. The one-turn tap of Magic: The Gathering (1993) is structurally a cooldown without the name. EverQuest (1999) is the usual reference for per-spell timers in massively multiplayer games, but its spell data calls them recast times, and no 1999 documentation using the word cooldown is cited. Blizzard's guide to Warcraft III (2002) defines cooldown as the time before the same spell can be cast again, also called a casting delay, which places the word in Blizzard's usage before World of Warcraft (2004); the guide page itself is undated. World of Warcraft is the usual source of the term's general spread, a claim with no dated document cited." }, "established": { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "World of Warcraft, with ability-specific cooldowns and a global cooldown sequenced into rotations, is the usual reference form and is usually credited with spreading the term, though no dated document is cited." }, "sources": [ { "key": "dungeons-dragons-4th-edition-player-s-handbook-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Player's Handbook", "author": "Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, and James Wyatt (Wizards of the Coast)", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Power usage types: at-will, encounter, and daily powers", "note": "The tabletop form in which the interval is an encounter or a day rather than seconds." }, { "key": "magic-the-gathering-comprehensive-rules", "canonical": false, "title": "Magic: The Gathering Comprehensive Rules", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Tapping and untapping; untap step", "note": "The one-turn exhaust form in card games; a living document revised with new card sets." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Glossary of video game terms (cooldown)", "note": null }, { "key": "warcraft-iii-spell-basics", "canonical": false, "title": "Warcraft III: Spell Basics", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://classic.battle.net/war3/basics/spellbasics.shtml", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Blizzard's definition: cooldown is the time before the same spell can be cast again, also known as a casting delay. The page is undated." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 3, "word_count": 537, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/cooldowns" }, { "id": "cooperate-or-defect", "name": "Cooperate or Defect", "status": "unverified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "Players each secretly choose to cooperate or defect over a shared payoff and reveal together, so mutual cooperation divides it, a lone defector takes it, and mutual defection usually forfeits it.", "aliases": [ "split or steal", "prisoner's dilemma", "trust dilemma" ], "parent": "simultaneous-action-selection", "children": [], "related": [ "deal-making", "bluff-and-challenge", "alliances", "betting" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video", "board-card", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the Split or Steal final of Golden Balls, whose payoff Friend or Foe? shares. The default tie-break order asks the information question before the interaction question; it is answered no because each choice is concealed only until the simultaneous reveal, so the category follows the order, with information-and-hidden-state and the parent's time-and-action-structure as the losing families. Agency is medium: one meaningful choice between two options whose result depends equally on the other player. Randomness is none; input was the losing value, from Cosmic Encounter, where the encounter card comes from a dealt hand. Interaction is direct because the choice settles one named opponent's share; mixed was the losing value, since mutual cooperation is a shared outcome, but no shared goal binds the players. Complexity is low because the three outcomes fit in two sentences; Cosmic Encounter's deal window and compensation would code medium. Pacing is neutral; accelerates was the losing value for television finals in which the choice ends the game. Information is asymmetric because each player knows their own commitment until the reveal; hidden was the losing value. Feedback loop is none in one-shot play; iterated play can carry reputation between rounds. Decision density is low, one decision point (split or steal); medium was the losing value if the promise made in the talk before choosing is counted, but that talk is unstructured and the mechanic itself creates only the binary choice.", "effects": [ "betrayal", "bluffing", "social-deduction", "negotiation", "volatility", "consequence-weight" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Cosmic Encounter", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Peter Olotka, Jack Kittredge, Bill Eberle, and Bill Norton", "note": "A relative with different payoffs. The two main players reveal challenge cards together; two Compromise cards give them one minute to strike a deal, while a lone Compromise loses the encounter but takes consolation cards from the opponent's hand. Described from the 1983 Eon rule book and a 1991 fan FAQ.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Trust Me", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "A Channel 4 game show hosted by Nick Bateman whose endgame had two booths of contestants, individuals or groups, each choose independently whether to take or split the money; both splitting paid both, a lone taker won it all, and if both took, the money was lost. The prize figures are unconfirmed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Shafted", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "An ITV quiz hosted by Robert Kilroy-Silk whose final, as usually described, had the two remaining contestants each choose to share or shaft the jackpot, then discuss and change their choices; two shares halved it, a lone shaft took it all, and two shafts left both with nothing.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Friend or Foe?", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "Pairs of contestants build a joint trust fund through trivia, then each secretly chooses friend or foe; two friends split the fund, a lone foe takes all of it, and two foes leave with nothing.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Golden Balls", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "In the Split or Steal final the two finalists talk openly, then each secretly picks a ball marked split or steal; two splits halve the jackpot, a lone steal takes it, and two steals leave both with nothing. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Resistance", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Don Eskridge", "note": "Each player on a mission secretly contributes a success or fail card and the cards are shuffled before the reveal; resistance members must play success, so only spies face the choice, and a fail is anonymous.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Split or Steal", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Rootpew", "note": "Two matched players talk for up to two minutes and then each secretly chooses to split or steal the pot; splitting together shares it, a lone stealer takes everything, and the game tracks a karma reputation for players who steal.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Trust Me", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "low", "note": "Trust Me, a Channel 4 game show broadcast in late 2000 and hosted by Nick Bateman, has the pure form: in its endgame two booths of contestants each chose independently whether to take or split a shared pot, both splitting paid both, a lone taker won it all, and if both took, the money was lost. Shafted (2001), Friend or Foe? (2002), and Golden Balls (2007), which popularised the name \"split or steal\", followed it on television. Cosmic Encounter (1977) is a relative rather than an instance: in the Eon-era rules a lone Compromise card loses the encounter but takes consolation cards from the opponent's hand, two Compromise cards open a one-minute deal, and two Attack cards are settled by totals, so nothing is divided or forfeited by rule. The payoff structure comes from game theory, studied by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher at the RAND Corporation in 1950 and named the prisoner's dilemma by Albert W. Tucker; that is background rather than a game. Classroom and laboratory prisoner's-dilemma exercises are plausibly older, though they usually score points rather than split a pot, and broadcasts outside the UK and US remain unsurveyed, so confidence is low. The broadcast dates conflict: UKGameshows gives 11 to 14 December 2000 and IMDb 4 November 2000." }, "established": { "title": "Golden Balls", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Golden Balls' Split or Steal final popularised the form and its name, open talk followed by a secret choice over a jackpot; the 2020 video game Split or Steal takes both its name and its payoff." }, "sources": [ { "key": "trust-me", "canonical": false, "title": "Trust Me", "author": "UKGameshows.com", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Trust_Me", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Channel 4 broadcast dates of 11 to 14 December 2000, host, the take-or-split endgame with its three outcomes, and a £3000 final pot with £1000 to each side when both split; a 2006 copy of the page gives the same figures." }, { "key": "trust-me-tv-series-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Trust Me (TV Series 2000)", "author": "IMDb", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20130820191931/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0276736/releaseinfo?ref_=tt_dt_dt", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Release information giving a UK date of 4 November 2000, which conflicts with UKGameshows' December dates." }, { "key": "the-complete-book-of-cosmic-encounter-rules-1983", "canonical": false, "title": "The Complete Book of Cosmic Encounter Rules", "author": "Eon Products (a Future Pastimes creation)", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "p. 4", "note": "Compromise and Attack challenge cards, consolation for a lone compromiser, and the one-minute deal after mutual compromise." }, { "key": "rec-games-board-ce-monthly-posting-1991", "canonical": false, "title": "rec.games.board.ce monthly posting", "author": null, "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://scv.bu.edu/~aarondf/cosmic/ftpsite/MANIFEST", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Eon-era attack and compromise cards, consolation cards for a lone compromiser, and one minute to deal after two compromises." }, { "key": "split-or-steal-cooperative-behavior-when-the-stakes-are-large-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Split or Steal? Cooperative Behavior When the Stakes Are Large", "author": "Martijn J. van den Assem, Dennie van Dolder, and Richard H. Thaler", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Management Science 58(1): 2–20; doi:10.1287/mnsc.1110.1413", "note": "The Golden Balls final's payoff and observed rates of splitting and stealing." }, { "key": "the-evolution-of-cooperation-1984", "canonical": false, "title": "The Evolution of Cooperation", "author": "Robert Axelrod", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Background on the prisoner's dilemma, its RAND origins, and iterated play." }, { "key": "salen-zimmerman-2004", "canonical": true, "title": "Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals", "author": "Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "chapter 19, Games as Game Theory Systems (p. 230)", "note": "Game-theory framing of simultaneous choices with interdependent payoffs." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Golden Balls; Shafted; Friend or Foe? (game show)", "note": "Channels, hosts, dates, and payoffs of the three shows' finals, including Shafted's change of choices after discussion." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 8, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 545, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/cooperate-or-defect" }, { "id": "cooperative-play", "name": "Cooperative Play", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "All players share a single win condition against the game system itself, so they win or lose together and the only opponent is an automated threat that escalates unless the group coordinates its actions.", "aliases": [ "co-op", "cooperative games", "co-op mode", "fully cooperative play" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "traitor", "limited-communication", "action-points", "variable-player-powers" ], "referenced_by": [ "death-penalty", "difficulty-settings", "escape-room-puzzles", "gifting", "group-finder", "hidden-movement", "loot-distribution", "one-versus-many", "player-invasions", "semi-cooperative", "shared-narration", "team-play", "threat-aggro" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "cooperative", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Pandemic, with Knizia's Lord of the Rings as the check case. As a wrapper mechanic, cooperative play is coded without the host game's randomness, decisions, or rules weight, the same rule applied to team play. Interaction is cooperative by definition. Randomness is none because the shared win condition has no randomiser; input was the losing value, taken from Pandemic's infection draws, which belong to the host. Complexity is low because the shared win condition is one sentence. Feedback loop is none for the goal structure itself, although system opponents are usually built with a positive loop against the team. Category tension with time-and-action-structure, which could claim the team-turn then system-turn cycle, is resolved for interaction-and-exchange because the mechanic is defined entirely by how players are coupled. Agency is low because as a wrapper the shared win condition supplies no choice of its own; what each player does comes from the host game's rules; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026. Pacing is neutral because a wrapper that couples players to a shared win condition; the escalating threat belongs to the host system and is not imported; accelerates was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "teamwork", "alpha-player", "planning", "tension", "emergent-narrative" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "The adventuring party shares the dungeon's risks and rewards against a referee-run world. Early play retained intra-party competition for treasure and experience, so the cooperative frame is partial.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Arkham Horror", "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Launius, Lynn Willis, and Charlie Krank", "note": "Investigators jointly close gates before a Great Old One awakens; an early fully cooperative board game whose threat is driven by a card deck rather than a human opponent.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Lord of the Rings", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Reiner Knizia", "note": "Hobbits advance along scenario tracks while a corruption track pulls each of them toward Sauron, so the team must spend shared resources on whichever member is closest to loss.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pandemic", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Matt Leacock", "note": "Four actions per turn, open hands, and an infection deck that re-stacks drawn cities on top of itself so threats recur. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Left 4 Dead", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve and Turtle Rock Studios", "note": "Four survivors must reach a safe room together; incapacitated players can only be revived by teammates and the AI Director scales horde pressure to the group's state.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Deep Rock Galactic", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Ghost Ship Games (Coffee Stain Publishing)", "note": "One to four dwarves with complementary classes mine procedurally generated caves for a shared quota while computer-controlled alien swarms attack, and the whole team succeeds or fails the mission together.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Together", "year": 1971, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to published games in which every player shares one win condition against the game; cooperation in sports and children's play is older and has no origin. Together, by Jim Deacove of Family Pastimes, is dated to 1971 or to the company's founding in 1972 and is an early commercial cooperative board game; earlier instances are plausible. The adventuring party of Dungeons & Dragons (1974) cooperates against a human referee rather than the game. The modern board form against an escalating automated opponent is often credited to Knizia's Lord of the Rings (2000), with Arkham Horror (1987) as an earlier instance; Pandemic (2008) popularised it." }, "established": { "title": "Pandemic", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Pandemic popularised the cooperative board game against an escalating automated threat and made it a commercial category; Knizia's Lord of the Rings is often credited with the modern form eight years earlier." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Game Structure chapter: Cooperative Games", "note": "Definition, the system opponent, and the quarterbacking problem." }, { "key": "pandemic-rulebook-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Pandemic rulebook", "author": "Matt Leacock", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Turn sequence and the infection phase", "note": "Canonical rules text for the coded form." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The party as a cooperative unit in early Dungeons & Dragons play, and the competitive residue within it." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Cooperative board game", "note": "Family Pastimes and the dating of Together." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Cooperative Game", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 526, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/cooperative-play" }, { "id": "cover-systems", "name": "Cover Systems", "status": "verified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "Positioning a unit behind terrain or an object reduces the chance or amount of damage it takes from attacks along the obscured line, so position becomes a defensive resource.", "aliases": [ "cover mechanics", "snap-to-cover", "cover and concealment" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hit-points", "fog-of-war", "area-control", "action-points" ], "referenced_by": [ "aim-and-recoil", "combat-building", "grid-movement", "line-of-sight", "lock-on-targeting", "stealth-detection" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Gears of War, the most widely recognised video form, with tabletop values checked against Squad Leader. Randomness is none because the cover modifier is deterministic; the attack roll it modifies belongs to the hit resolution, so output was the losing value. Interaction is indirect because cover is a property of where a unit stands and protects it against whichever opponent fires along the blocked line, without the rule targeting anyone; direct, the previous coding, was the losing value, argued from the fact that cover is always relative to a particular attacker. Solo fits the single-player campaign form, where the opponents are controlled by the system. Category tension with action-resolution (cover as a modifier to success) was resolved in favour of space-and-position because the operative state is where the unit stands.", "effects": [ "planning", "mastery", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Squad Leader", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "John Hill (Avalon Hill)", "note": "Terrain in the target hex applies a modifier to the attacker's fire roll from the Terrain Effects Chart, so stone buildings and woods are cover expressed as numbers; a tabletop antecedent of the scoped video form.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Cover grants a bonus to Armor Class and concealment grants a miss chance, separating the two ideas on the tactical grid; a tabletop antecedent of the scoped video form, and later editions keep the split.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Kill Switch", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Namco", "note": "The player sticks to walls and low objects with a button press and can blind-fire from behind them; the game is often credited with codifying the cover-to-cover shooter.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gears of War", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Epic Games", "note": "A single context-sensitive button attaches the character to cover and moves between cover points, and enemies use the same system, so fights are organised around positions rather than movement.", "latest": false }, { "title": "XCOM: Enemy Unknown", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Firaxis Games", "note": "Half and full cover impose fixed hit-chance penalties on attackers, flanking removes them, and cover can be destroyed, so each turn's main decision is where a soldier ends up.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Jagged Alliance 3", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Haemimont Games (THQ Nordic)", "note": "Moving a mercenary previews a shield icon for full, half, or no cover; cover protects only against fire from the side it faces, half cover stops roughly half of incoming bullets, and a flanking enemy strips it until that enemy is dealt with.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Kill Switch", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to the codified third-person form in which the avatar attaches to cover, moves from cover to cover, and blind-fires from behind it, which Kill Switch is often credited with combining. Earlier video cover mechanics are antecedents of that form: pressing against walls to avoid fire in Blackthorne (1994), the cover pedal of Time Crisis (1995), and pop-out-and-fire cover in WinBack (1999). Gears of War (2006) is the mainstream populariser. Cover modifiers in tabletop wargames are older still, and no first instance of that general form can be defended." }, "established": { "title": "Gears of War", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Gears of War, with a single context button that attaches the character to cover and moves between cover points, is the mainstream populariser that made the snap-to-cover system standard after Kill Switch codified it." }, "sources": [ { "key": "squad-leader-rulebook-1977", "canonical": false, "title": "Squad Leader rulebook", "author": "John Hill", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Terrain Effects Chart", "note": "Canonical board-wargame form of cover as a fire modifier." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-3rd-edition-player-s-handbook-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition, Player's Handbook", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Combat chapter, Cover and Concealment", "note": "The tabletop role-playing form and its split between cover and concealment." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Cover system", "note": "History of the video form, including WinBack, Kill Switch, and Gears of War." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 501, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/cover-systems" }, { "id": "critical-hits", "name": "Critical Hits", "status": "verified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "A rare band of the attack roll, usually the die's maximum face, that amplifies a successful hit with multiplied damage or an added effect, as an exception layered on an otherwise binary hit-or-miss check.", "aliases": [ "crits", "critical strikes", "natural 20", "critical chance" ], "parent": "degrees-of-success", "children": [], "related": [ "hit-location", "rerolls", "status-effects", "saving-throws", "loot-tables" ], "referenced_by": [ "procs", "pseudo-random-distribution" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition (2000), where the form is fully codified with a threat range, a confirmation roll, and a per-weapon multiplier. Complexity is low because the canonical statement is one sentence (a natural 20 doubles damage); medium was the losing value for the 3rd Edition threat-and-confirm procedure. Feedback loop is none because the band's probability is fixed in the canonical form; positive was the losing value for video games in which critical chance is an itemised statistic that grows with progression, which is recorded under Variations. Interaction is solo because the band is a property of the attacker's own roll and works the same whoever the target is; the targeting belongs to the attack, and direct was the losing value. Pacing accelerates because damage spikes shorten combats. The parent is degrees of success; critical hits are the two-state exception, and fumbles remain with the parent. Pacing stays accelerates after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; neutral was the losing value.", "effects": [ "spectacle", "volatility", "frustration-risk", "emergent-narrative" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Empire of the Petal Throne", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "M. A. R. Barker (TSR)", "note": "A natural 20 on the attack roll inflicts double damage, often credited as the earliest published role-playing rule that gives the maximum die result its own amplified band.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pokémon Red and Green", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Game Freak", "note": "Each attack has a small critical chance, raised for certain moves and by the user's Speed, and a critical hit roughly doubles damage and is announced with a message.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "A natural 20 is a threat that must be confirmed by a second attack roll; weapons differ in threat range (20, 19 to 20, 18 to 20) and multiplier (x2, x3, x4), making the critical a weapon statistic.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Critical strike chance is an itemised statistic built up through gear and talents, so the probability of the amplified band becomes a central optimisation target rather than a fixed die face.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gloomhaven", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Isaac Childres", "note": "Each attack modifier deck contains a 2x card that doubles the attack when drawn and a null card that misses; drawing either triggers a reshuffle at the end of the round, so the critical is a deck event rather than a die face.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Owlcat Games", "note": "A hit whose natural d20 falls in the weapon's threat range (20, or 19-20 and wider for some weapons) threatens a critical; a second attack roll with the same modifiers confirms it, and a confirmed critical multiplies damage by the weapon's multiplier, such as x2 or x3.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Empire of the Petal Throne", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Empire of the Petal Throne is the usual credit for the natural-20 double-damage rule in a published role-playing game; original Dungeons & Dragons (1974) had no such band. The Arduin Grimoire (1977) added critical hit tables with specific injuries, and wargame rules with exceptional-result bands are older, so the dating names the first role-playing instance rather than the first amplified band in any game." }, "established": { "title": "Empire of the Petal Throne", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Empire of the Petal Throne's natural-20 double-damage rule is the usual source of the critical hit in role-playing, imitated in house rules and in the Arduin Grimoire; Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition later fixed the threat-and-confirm variant." }, "sources": [ { "key": "empire-of-the-petal-throne-1975", "canonical": false, "title": "Empire of the Petal Throne", "author": "M. A. R. Barker", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Combat; double damage on a roll of 20", "note": "Provenance for the natural-20 band." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Discussion of Empire of the Petal Throne and early combat variants", "note": "Context for early amplified-damage rules in the first role-playing games." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-3rd-edition-player-s-handbook-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition, Player's Handbook", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 8 (Combat), Critical Hits", "note": "The codified threat range, confirmation roll, and multiplier form coded here." }, { "key": "gloomhaven-rulebook-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Gloomhaven rulebook", "author": "Isaac Childres", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Attack Modifier Cards", "note": "The deck-drawn board form." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 513, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/critical-hits" }, { "id": "crowd-blending", "name": "Crowd Blending", "status": "verified", "category": "information-and-hidden-state", "definition": "A player's figure looks the same as computer-controlled figures around it, so the player survives by acting like them while an opponent watching the crowd must pick that figure out by its behaviour", "aliases": [ "social stealth", "hiding in plain sight", "reverse Turing test" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hidden-piece-identity", "hidden-roles", "stealth-detection", "hidden-movement", "deduction" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from SpyParty, whose spy acts among computer-controlled party guests while a sniper with one shot picks the human out, and checked against the multiplayer of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. Agency is high because the hidden player freely chooses how to move, which figures to join and when to act, and the watcher's choice of whom and when to strike decides the round; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 30 October 2026, for a hider limited to the actions the crowd also performs. Randomness is none because the crowd is a backdrop the system animates, not a randomiser either player resolves; input was the losing value, since the decoys' behaviour differs from play to play before the watcher decides. Interaction is direct because the pick targets one human; mixed was the losing value, for team modes such as Assassin's Creed Brotherhood's Manhunt and Deceive Inc.'s trios. Complexity is medium for the look-alike crowd, the actions that give a player away and the cost of a wrong pick. Pacing is neutral; accelerates was the losing value, for the mission timers and round clocks of host games. Information is asymmetric because the hidden player knows which figure is theirs and the watcher does not. Decision density is medium (what to do, where and when for the hidden player; whom to watch and when to strike for the watcher); low and high were the losing values. Social deduction is tagged because the watcher reads behaviour to infer which figure hides a human player and what it intends; untagged was the losing value, for a reading of movement against computer behaviour rather than of players' claims. Frustration risk was the losing value for the decisive single pick, since losses come from a player's own tells or own wrong pick rather than from chance. Planning was the losing value for the hider's sequence of missions.", "effects": [ "inference", "bluffing", "tension", "mastery", "social-deduction" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dueling Machine", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Thatcher Ulrich (guy variants by Justin Hall), Indie Game Jam 0", "note": "Antecedent. A hunter with one bullet and a sonar must find a single fugitive among tens of thousands of pedestrians within three minutes, and in the networked mode another player controls the fugitive. The source code gives the fugitive a figure no pedestrian shares, and the hunter is shown its picture.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Ship", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Outerlight", "note": "Antecedent. Each player is given the name of a quarry, not a face, and is hunted in turn by another player among computer-controlled passengers; everyone is unknown until spoken to, killing anyone else draws a fine, and a player who changes outfit becomes unknown again. It began as a Half-Life modification in 2004.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Assassin's Creed Brotherhood", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Ubisoft Montreal", "note": "Citizens resemble the playable characters and some look identical to the player. Each agent hunts a contracted player by portrait and compass while being hunted; running and climbing in the target's view give a pursuer away, and killing a civilian breaks the contract.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hidden in Plain Sight", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Adam Spragg", "note": "A local multiplayer game in which players control characters in a large group of NPCs and try to blend in while completing a task. Its modes include Death Race, in which players and NPCs race to the finish line, and Thief vs. Sniper.", "latest": false }, { "title": "SpyParty", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Chris Hecker", "note": "A spy completes missions at a cocktail party of computer-controlled guests while a sniper outside watches for the spy's slightly different animations and has one shot; shooting a guest hands the win to the spy. Shown as a prototype in 2009 and released in early access in 2018. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Deceive Inc.", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sweet Bandits Studios", "note": "Agents disguised as NPCs behave as an AI character would to ward off suspicion while they hunt for a package; staff and guard disguises open restricted areas, and blowing cover exposes the agent to rival players and to the fire of NPC guards.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "SpyParty", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The earliest documented use of the form is the SpyParty prototype that Chris Hecker showed at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop of the 2009 Game Developers Conference, where press described one human spy among AI guests and a sniper who looks for subtle tells; the game entered early access in 2018. Dueling Machine (Indie Game Jam 0, March 2002), a hunter with one bullet seeking a fugitive among thousands of pedestrians, is a firmly dated antecedent, but its source code gives the fugitive a figure no pedestrian shares and shows the hunter its picture, so the search is by sight rather than by behaviour; Hecker named \"Fugitive\" from the Indie Game Jam among SpyParty's inspirations, probably the same game. The Ship, first released as a free Half-Life modification in June 2004, and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (2010) are what Hecker called games based on Assassin, the live-action game in which players hunt each other. The modification's play guide puts players among AI passengers who are unknown until spoken to, and a change of costume makes them unknown again, but a quarry is identified by asking names rather than picked out by behaviour. Confidence is medium because The Ship's 2004 hunters move unrecognised among AI passengers, a near form whose play guide does not say players and passengers look alike." }, "established": { "title": "SpyParty", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "SpyParty's public prototypes from 2009 set the form of one human picked out from a computer crowd by behaviour, framed by Hecker as a reversed Turing test; the developer of Hidden in Plain Sight (2011) named it as his starting point. The year is the early-access release. No source cited ties Deceive Inc. or other later games to it, so confidence is low." }, "sources": [ { "key": "assassin-s-creed-brotherhood-the-complete-official-guide-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: The Complete Official Guide", "author": "Piggyback Interactive", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Piggyback Interactive", "url": "https://archive.org/download/assassins-creed-guides-anthology/1%20original%20quadrology/AC2B%20AC%20Brotherhood%202010_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Multiplayer chapter, Basics: Game Principles, Onscreen Display (c. p. 156); game mode tables", "note": "Citizens resembling the playable characters, some identical to the player; contracts, compass and detection meter; running and climbing as High Profile actions; killing civilians breaking the contract." }, { "key": "about-spyparty-wayback-capture-of-29-december-2019-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "About SpyParty (Wayback capture of 29 December 2019)", "author": "Chris Hecker", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20191229021323id_/http://www.spyparty.com/about/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "About page, press quotations from GDC 2009, and comment of 19 March 2011", "note": "The 2009 Experimental Gameplay Workshop prototype, the spy among AI guests and the sniper's single shot, the inspirations including Fugitive from the Indie Game Jam, and Hecker's grouping of The Ship and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood as games based on Assassin." }, { "key": "indie-game-jam-0-wayback-capture-of-11-january-2006-2002", "canonical": false, "title": "Indie Game Jam 0 (Wayback capture of 11 January 2006)", "author": "Chris Hecker", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20060111193230id_/http://www.indiegamejam.com/igj0/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Games, Dueling Machine", "note": "The jam of 15 to 18 March 2002 and Dueling Machine's one bullet, sonar and city of pedestrians." }, { "key": "the-dueling-machine-source-code-and-readme-2002", "canonical": false, "title": "The Dueling Machine (source code and readme)", "author": "Thatcher Ulrich", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://tulrich.com/geekstuff/dueling_machine.zip", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "duel_readme.txt; dueling_machine.cpp, crowd set-up (sprite variants)", "note": "The fugitive's sprite variant excluded from the bystanders, and the fugitive's image shown to the hunter." }, { "key": "the-ship-play-guide-wayback-capture-of-21-july-2004-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "The Ship Play Guide (Wayback capture of 21 July 2004)", "author": "Outerlight", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20040721095646/http://www.theshiponline.com:80/index.php?page=&action=show&id=10205", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "2.1 Basic Tips; 2.2 Hunter & Quarry; 2.5 Security Zones, Fines & Radar", "note": "Players among AI passengers, everyone unknown until spoken to, a costume change making a player or AI unknown again, fines for killing anyone other than quarry or hunter." }, { "key": "pc-review-the-ship-2006", "canonical": false, "title": "PC Review: The Ship", "author": "Lee Berlik", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "WorthPlaying", "url": "https://worthplaying.com/article/2006/9/15/reviews/36233-pc-review-the-ship/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Quarry and hunter, a name and last-known location rather than a face, fines for other kills, and a quarry's change of outfit." }, { "key": "assassin-s-creed-brotherhood-innovates-through-multiplayer-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Assassin's Creed Brotherhood innovates through multiplayer", "author": "Matt Miller", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Game Informer", "url": "https://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/06/16/assassin-s-creed-brotherhood-innovates-through-multiplayer.aspx", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Identical-looking figures, most of them NPCs; the radar; being targeted while tracking; the Morph ability that makes the surrounding crowd look like the user." }, { "key": "preview-assassin-s-creed-brotherhood-multiplayer-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Preview: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood multiplayer", "author": "Mike Schramm", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Joystiq", "url": "https://www.engadget.com/2010-06-15-preview-assassins-creed-brotherhood-multiplayer.html", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Distinguishing human players from the AI characters, and a target who bolts revealing itself." }, { "key": "the-joystiq-indie-pitch-hidden-in-plain-sight-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Hidden in Plain Sight", "author": "Jessica Conditt", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Joystiq", "url": "https://www.engadget.com/2011/12/02/the-joystiq-indie-pitch-hidden-in-plain-sight/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Players blending in with NPCs, the Death Race and Thief vs. Sniper modes, and SpyParty as the inspiration." }, { "key": "deceive-inc-review-master-of-disguise-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Deceive Inc. review: Master of disguise", "author": "Ozzie Mejia", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Shacknews", "url": "https://www.shacknews.com/article/134792/deceive-inc-review-score-pc", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Agents disguised as NPCs behaving as AI characters, restricted areas, reading player against AI behaviour, and blown cover drawing guard fire." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 10, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 660, "updated": "2026-10-30", "url": "/mechanics/crowd-blending" }, { "id": "damage-types", "name": "Damage Types and Resistances", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "Each source of damage carries a type such as fire, piercing, or magic, and each target has fixed resistances, weaknesses, or immunities per type that scale the damage it takes, so the kind of attack matters as well as its size.", "aliases": [ "elemental weakness", "type effectiveness", "resistances and immunities", "weapon triangle", "damage resistance", "elemental damage", "vulnerabilities" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hit-points", "status-effects", "equipment-loadouts", "hitboxes-and-hurtboxes", "tower-defence" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the Pokémon type chart, the populariser and the most widely recognised form, with the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition resistance rule as the tabletop check. Category is progression-and-capability, which departs from the default tie-break order (action-resolution is asked first): the multiplier is applied after the hit has been adjudicated and is a fixed property of what the holder is and carries, so it changes what each attack is worth rather than whether it succeeds. Interaction is solo because the canonical single-player campaign sets the chart against system-controlled opponents and the multiplier works identically whoever attacks; direct was the losing value for link battles between players. Complexity is medium because the chart is a single lookup table, even with dual-type stacking; high was the losing value, and the three-value tabletop scheme would code low. Information is perfect because the chart and the target's type are public; asymmetric was the losing value for tabletop play, where the referee holds the monster's modifiers. Pacing accelerates because a matched type ends encounters sooner; variable was the losing value. Agency is medium because the choice is which of a few carried types to use. Pacing stays accelerates after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; variable was the losing value.", "effects": [ "planning", "mastery", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Volume 2 lists monsters that can be hit only by silver or by magic weapons, an immunity keyed to the kind of attack and an early form of the rule in role-playing.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Final Fantasy", "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Square", "note": "Monsters carry hidden weaknesses and resistances to fire, ice, lightning, and other elements, so a matched spell does extra damage; elemental weakness became a fixture of the series and the genre.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pokémon Red and Green", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Game Freak", "note": "A chart of fifteen types sets each attack against each defending type at double, half, or zero damage, and the multipliers stack for dual-typed targets; the chart is the game's central tactical layer.", "latest": false }, { "title": "EVE Online", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "CCP Games", "note": "Weapons and ammunition deal EM, thermal, kinetic or explosive damage, and a ship's shield, armour and hull each resist the types separately, EM doing most to shields and explosive to armour; hardeners and resistance plating fitted to the ship raise chosen resistances.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mage Knight Board Game", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Vlaada Chvátil (WizKids)", "note": "Enemies carry fire, ice, or physical resistance that halves attacks of that element, and cold fire attacks are halved only by an enemy that resists both fire and ice, so the hero chooses which cards to spend by the enemy's type.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "Resistances to fire, cold, lightning and chaos damage are character stats the player builds, and the game lowers them as play advances. A 2012 beta post set penalties by difficulty level, chaos resistance exempt, and from patch 3.0 (2017) they apply after Acts 5 and 10, so restoring resistances against the penalty is a standing cost of every build.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Thirteen named damage types with resistance halving, vulnerability doubling, and immunity negating, each applied once however many sources grant it, a deliberately simplified codification.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Elden Ring", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "FromSoftware (Bandai Namco)", "note": "Attacks split into standard, strike, slash and pierce physical damage plus magic, fire, lightning and holy, and each target applies its own defence and negation to every type separately, so strike damage breaks rocky enemies, holy hurts the undead, and fire is reduced against draconic foes.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The 1974 rules give certain monsters immunity to weapons that are not silver or magical, which is the typing of damage sources in its binary form; Chainmail's fantasy supplement (1971) may hold the same rule for some creatures. The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook (1978) added a weapon-versus-armour-type table. The graded multiplier chart comes from Japanese role-playing video games, with Final Fantasy (1987) an early example and Pokémon (1996) the populariser; no single origin for the graded form can be defended." }, "established": { "title": "Pokémon Red and Green", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Pokémon's type chart, with double, half, and zero multipliers that stack on dual-typed targets, popularised the graded form and made it the centre of play; Dungeons & Dragons had already keyed binary immunities to the kind of attack." }, "sources": [ { "key": "player-s-handbook-5th-edition-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Player's Handbook, 5th edition", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 9 (Combat), Damage Resistance and Vulnerability", "note": "The codified tabletop scheme used as a check on the properties." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-volume-2-monsters-treasure-1974", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 2, Monsters & Treasure", "author": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Monster descriptions (hit only by silver or magic weapons)", "note": "Provenance for the binary immunity form." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chainmail fantasy creatures and the original Dungeons & Dragons monster roster", "note": "Context for magic-weapon immunities and their wargame origin." }, { "key": "mage-knight-board-game-rulebook-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Mage Knight Board Game rulebook", "author": "Vlaada Chvátil", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Enemy abilities, Resistances", "note": "The board form with typed resistances halving attacks." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Gameplay of Pokémon", "note": "The type chart and its multipliers." }, { "key": "resistance-penalties-and-a-league-to-test-them-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Resistance Penalties (and a league to test them!)", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/51208", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Closed-beta resistance penalties of 0, -25, -50 and -75% by difficulty, chaos resistance not penalised, set because players were building characters with only 75% of each resistance." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-3-0-0-the-fall-of-oriath-patch-notes-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile 3.0.0: The Fall of Oriath Patch Notes", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1930316", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "The Cruel and Merciless difficulties removed and the resistance penalties moved to the end of Acts 5 and 10, applying in all areas once either act is completed." }, { "key": "weapon-systems-in-eve-online-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Weapon Systems In EVE Online", "author": "Space Junkie (Ten Ton Hammer)", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Ten Ton Hammer", "url": "https://www.tentonhammer.com/node/78427", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "The four damage types, EM, explosive, kinetic and thermal, with EM good against shields and weak against armour and explosive the reverse." }, { "key": "eve-online-player-guide-the-market-categories-wayback-capture-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "EVE Online Player Guide: The Market Categories (Wayback capture)", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2007, "year_approx": true, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20071208004821/http://www.eve-online.com:80/guide/en/g68_2.asp", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Ship Equipment: Hull & Armor; Shield", "note": "Armour hardeners and resistance plating, shield hardeners and resistance amplifiers, and damage controls that raise the resistances of shield, armour and hull." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 9, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 543, "updated": "2026-10-28", "url": "/mechanics/damage-types" }, { "id": "deal-making", "name": "Deal-Making", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "Players strike specific bargains whose terms include future conduct, such as an attack withheld, a vote cast, or a later payment, and the rules decide whether those terms bind or rest on trust.", "aliases": [ "deals", "promises", "binding deals", "non-binding deals", "bribery" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "trading", "alliances", "cooperate-or-defect", "simultaneous-action-selection" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the non-binding deals of Diplomacy's 1959 diplomacy period. Interaction is direct because each deal is a bargain between named players; mixed was the losing value, since terms often aim at a third party, and it is the value given to alliances, where standing coalitions act against outsiders. Complexity is low because the canonical rule permits any agreement and enforces none; rule sets that separate binding from non-binding terms, as in Twilight Imperium, would code medium. Information is asymmetric because terms are often agreed in private and each party knows its own intent. Decision density is high: partner, terms, acceptance, and, at the commit, whether to honour the deal; medium was argued by counting only the bargain itself. The category departs from the default tie-break order, which would ask first whether concealed intent makes this information-and-hidden-state; the category stands because the core act is an exchange of terms between players and the concealment follows from it. Pacing is neutral because an unenforced bargain over future conduct that the rules neither record nor act on; no effect on pace; variable was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026. Feedback loop is none because the rule only opens a window for unenforced bargains; any refusal to deal with a leader is a social choice rather than a rule; negative was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "negotiation", "betrayal", "bluffing", "tension", "kingmaking", "social-deduction" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Diplomacy", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Allan B. Calhamer", "note": "Before each order phase players bargain in private over supports, withdrawals, and non-aggression; the 1959 rules allow 30 minutes before the first move and 15 before each later one and enforce none of it, so every deal is tested when orders are revealed. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cosmic Encounter", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Peter Olotka, Jack Kittredge, Bill Eberle, and Bill Norton", "note": "When both main players reveal Compromise cards (later renamed negotiate cards), they have one minute to trade cards or bases or each loses three tokens; the rules carry out the exchange at once and set no terms about future conduct, so it fits the definition only loosely. The 1983 Eon and 2018 Fantasy Flight rules agree; the 1977 wording is unconfirmed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Junta", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Vincent Tsao", "note": "The President promises Cabinet posts and shares of the foreign-aid budget for support; posts are handed out with no duty to keep those promises, while a budget the whole Parliament passes must be paid as announced. Described from a later publisher rulebook; the 1978 wording is unconfirmed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Chinatown", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Karsten Hartwig", "note": "Each round opens unrestricted bargaining over lots, shop tiles, and money, whose value lies in the income of businesses completed later; most terms settle on the spot, and the rules are silent on promises for later rounds, which rest on trust.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Neptune's Pride", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Iron Helmet Games", "note": "Players can send technology and credits to one another directly, so a typical deal pays now for a promise about fleet movements that the software does not enforce.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Dane Beltrami, Corey Konieczka, and Christian T. Petersen", "note": "Deals whose terms can be resolved immediately bind and are carried out, while promises about later turns bind no one, and action-card results cannot be part of a binding deal. Promissory notes, five per player in the base game, turn some promises into cards that change hands and take effect under the rules.", "latest": false }, { "title": "John Company: Second Edition", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Cole Wehrle", "note": "Families steering the East India Company must trade votes, offices and loans with one another, including borrowing money from other players to fund a later retirement, because almost nothing can be done alone and most things are open to negotiation.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Diplomacy", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to designed games whose rules make bargaining over future conduct a sanctioned part of play, and is dated by the earliest dated rule text. Informal side deals arise in any multiplayer conflict game and cannot be dated. Negotiated loans between players, which Magie's Landlord's Game patent (1904) is reported to allow, are agreements about future payment but belong to loans and debt. By his own account Calhamer began Diplomacy in 1953 and finished a first set in 1954, and a typescript titled \"Realpolitik\", dated 1958 by the archive that holds it, already makes alliances \"as binding as the players are willing and able to make them under the rules.\" The 1959 rulebook, for the edition Calhamer sold himself, times a diplomacy period before every move and states \"The rules do not bind a player to anything he says.\" So Long Sucker, credited to Hausner, Nash, Shapley, and Shubik and dated 1950 by later accounts, also permits agreements of any form with no penalty for breaking them, but its earliest cited rule text is a 1964 publication; dated by design rather than by rule text, it would take the title. RAND's political-military games, reported from about 1954, were research simulations whose rules remain unsurveyed. Confidence is medium rather than high because So Long Sucker's design date precedes Diplomacy's first set and pre-1959 commercial parlour and political games remain largely unsurveyed." }, "established": { "title": "Diplomacy", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Diplomacy's timed diplomacy period, in which the rules bind no one to anything said, is the canonical non-binding form, which Neptune's Pride later carried into video play." }, "sources": [ { "key": "rules-of-the-game-of-diplomacy-1959", "canonical": false, "title": "Rules of the Game of Diplomacy", "author": "Allan B. Calhamer", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "In General: Diplomacy, p. 1", "note": "Sets a diplomacy period of 30 minutes before the first move and 15 before each later one, in which a player may say anything, and states that the rules do not bind a player to anything he says; the coded form." }, { "key": "a-dozen-years-of-diplomacy", "canonical": false, "title": "A Dozen Years of 'Diplomacy'", "author": "Allan B. Calhamer", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.diplom.org/~diparch/resources/calhamer/dozen.htm", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Designer's account of beginning the game in 1953, finishing the first set in 1954, and putting it on the market in 1959; early games negotiated by written notes, and binding alliances rejected as unrealistic." }, { "key": "introduction-to-diplomacy-1975", "canonical": false, "title": "Introduction to Diplomacy", "author": "Allan B. Calhamer", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.diplom.org/~diparch/resources/calhamer/intro-calhamer.htm", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Designer's statement that nothing said in negotiation is binding, and his own claim that Diplomacy was the first adult board game to allow free negotiation." }, { "key": "the-games-game-theorists-play-cabinet-issue-45", "canonical": false, "title": "The Games Game Theorists Play (Cabinet, issue 45)", "author": "D. Graham Burnett", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/45/burnett.php", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Quotes So Long Sucker's 1964 rule 12, which permits agreements of any form and provides no penalty for failing to keep them." }, { "key": "lloyd-shapley-obituary-the-daily-princetonian-29-march-2016-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Lloyd Shapley obituary (The Daily Princetonian, 29 March 2016)", "author": "Amber Park", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2016/03/lloyd-shapley-gs-53-mathematician-and-nobel-laureate-passes-away", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Dates So Long Sucker's co-invention by Shapley, Nash, Hausner, and Shubik to 1950." }, { "key": "the-complete-book-of-cosmic-encounter-rules-1983", "canonical": false, "title": "The Complete Book of Cosmic Encounter Rules", "author": "Eon Products", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "p. 4", "note": "Compromise cards give the main players one minute to deal in cards, Lucre, or bases, or each loses three tokens to the Warp." }, { "key": "cosmic-encounter-revised-rulebook-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Cosmic Encounter revised rulebook", "author": "Fantasy Flight Games", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://cdn.svc.asmodee.net/production-fantasyflightgames/uploads/2026/09/ce01_cosmic_encounter_revised_rulebook-compressed.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Negotiate cards, a one-minute deal limited to trading cards or establishing colonies, three ships lost on failure, and terms carried out as agreed." }, { "key": "junta-rulebook", "canonical": false, "title": "Junta rulebook", "author": "Vincent Tsao", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://alderac.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Junta_rulebook-1.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "Phase 2, Cabinet appointments; Phase 4, The Budget", "note": "Publisher-hosted edition without edition credits; promises of Cabinet posts need not be kept, while an approved budget must be paid as announced." }, { "key": "twilight-imperium-fourth-edition-prophecy-of-kings-living-rules-reference-version-2-0-2020", "canonical": false, "title": "Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition: Prophecy of Kings Living Rules Reference, Version 2.0", "author": "Fantasy Flight Games", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://cdn.svc.asmodee.net/production-fantasyflightgames/uploads/2026/08/ti10_pok_living_rules_reference_20_web.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "28 Deals; 69 Promissory Notes; 94 Transactions", "note": "Deals resolvable immediately are binding and others non-binding; action-card results cannot be part of a binding deal; promissory notes trade as negotiation tools." }, { "key": "twilight-imperium-fourth-edition-learn-to-play", "canonical": false, "title": "Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition Learn to Play", "author": "Fantasy Flight Games", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://cdn.svc.asmodee.net/production-fantasyflightgames/uploads/2026/08/ti-k0289_learn_to_play_2020_web.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Base-game booklet giving the binding and non-binding distinction, with payment to attack during a later turn as the non-binding example, and five promissory notes per player as enforceable contracts." }, { "key": "chinatown-rules-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Chinatown rules", "author": "Karsten Hartwig", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://images.zmangames.com/filer_public/01/bf/01bfdafd-99f7-4cb0-b14d-2e5914854027/zm7044_chinatown_rules.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "3. Trades", "note": "Z-Man edition; an open trading phase over buildings, shop tiles, and money, with no rule on promises." }, { "key": "elias-garfield-gutschera-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Characteristics of Games", "author": "George Skaff Elias, Richard Garfield, and K. Robert Gutschera", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Politics, coalitions, and kingmaking in games with more than two players." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Negotiation", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 13, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 516, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/deal-making" }, { "id": "death-penalty", "name": "Death Penalty", "status": "unverified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "On defeat a character returns to play instead of being deleted but pays a recoverable cost, such as lost experience, damaged gear, a timed weakness, or belongings left at the body to be fetched back", "aliases": [ "corpse run", "corpse recovery", "experience loss", "experience debt" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "permadeath", "checkpoints", "lives-and-continues", "experience-levels", "inventory-encumbrance", "cooperative-play" ], "referenced_by": [ "full-loot", "kill-streaks", "player-invasions", "security-zones" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from DikuMUD, with World of Warcraft's corpse run and spirit healer as the widely played form. Agency is medium because the cost is fixed but recovery is one choice: fetch the corpse before it decays or abandon it, run back as a ghost or pay the spirit healer; low, from the cost firing without a choice, was the losing value. Interaction is solo because the system imposes the cost; open corpse looting (DikuMUD, Ultima Online) and resurrection by allies make indirect or mixed the losing value. Complexity is medium (a cost, a corpse, a decay timer); low, for a bare experience loss, lost. Feedback loop is positive because a character returning without its gear or under a weakness is more likely to die again; none, for experience loss alone, lost. Category tension with resource-management where the cost is dropped currency.", "effects": [ "consequence-weight", "frustration-risk", "tension", "grind" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Players Handbook", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax (TSR)", "note": "Antecedent. Each raising or resurrection costs the character a point of Constitution, and its starting Constitution caps how many times it can return at all. A raised character is weak and must rest in bed a day for each day dead, and a failed survival roll leaves it dead for good.", "latest": false }, { "title": "DikuMUD", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sebastian Hammer, Michael Seifert, Hans Henrik Stærfeldt, Tom Madsen and Katja Nyboe (DIKU)", "note": "A character killed in combat loses half its experience points, never more than half a million, but keeps its level. Its corpse, holding everything it carried and wore and its gold, lies in the room where it died, open to anyone there, and after ten ticks it decays and spills its contents onto the floor.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ultima Online", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Origin Systems", "note": "In the February 1998 online guide, a killed character chooses between instant resurrection, at a loss of 10% to attributes and skills, and wandering as a ghost to a shrine or healer, during which skills decay faster. Its possessions stay where it fell, open to anyone passing unless a living ally gathers or guards them.", "latest": false }, { "title": "EverQuest", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Verant Interactive", "note": "Death costs experience from level 5, and the character respawns at its bind point while its corpse and all its items stay where it fell. Only the owner may loot it unless /consent is given, and it decays after 30 minutes to a week depending on level. A cleric's resurrection on the spot returns part of the lost experience.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "In March 2004 the spirit healer revived for an experience loss that never cost a level. At launch, death costs equipped items 10% durability and the player returns as a ghost at the nearest graveyard; running back to the corpse costs nothing more, while the spirit healer revives on the spot for 25% durability on all items and up to 10 minutes of resurrection sickness.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Demon's Souls", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "FromSoftware", "note": "All carried souls, the currency for levels and goods, are left in a bloodstain where the character died, and it returns as a spirit with half its maximum health. Touching the bloodstain recovers the souls; dying again first loses them for good.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dota 2", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "A killed hero loses gold from its unreliable pool while reliable gold is kept, and waits out a respawn timer that grows with level, 8 seconds at level 1 to 100 at level 25 in patch 7.00. Buyback spends gold to respawn at once at the fountain, priced from patch 7.11 (2018) at 100 plus a thirteenth of the hero's net worth.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Grim Dawn", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Crate Entertainment", "note": "Players report that outside Hardcore mode a death costs experience, a token amount on Normal and more on Elite and Ultimate, and that returning to click the body recovers most but not all of it. On the harder difficulties the monsters that made the kill reportedly regain health.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft: Dragonflight", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "The pre-expansion update notes cut resurrection sickness from 10 minutes to 1 and replace the spirit healer's flat 25% durability loss with 10% below level 10 and 50% from level 10, so the instant revival trades a shorter weakness for heavier wear on gear.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "DikuMUD", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Provenance is scoped to a rule under which a defeated character always returns to play and pays a cost. DikuMUD's 1991 source code halves a dead character's experience and leaves a corpse holding all its gear and gold. Bartle writes that early MUDs had permanent death, so MUD1 and its 1980s descendants probably sit on the permadeath side, but the death rules of AberMUD (1987) and LPMud (1989 to 1990) remain unsurveyed, hence low confidence. Earlier tabletop and computer role-playing costs belonged to revival spells or services in systems where death could still be final: Dungeons & Dragons (1974) and the 1978 Players Handbook charge recuperation and Constitution, and Wizardry (1981) a temple tithe whose failure can lose the character for good. Under the definition those revival fees are antecedents, a hybrid with permadeath, not the always-return rule." }, "established": { "title": "DikuMUD", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "DikuMUD's halved experience and corpse holding all gear set the always-return rule in code, and EverQuest kept the experience loss and corpse run in a commercial game; the death rules of other early MUDs remain unsurveyed." }, "sources": [ { "key": "designing-virtual-worlds-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Designing Virtual Worlds", "author": "Richard A. Bartle", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "New Riders", "url": "https://mud.co.uk/richard/DesigningVirtualWorlds.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Chapter 5, Life in the Virtual World: Alternatives to Permanent Death (pp. 558-562 of the Creative Commons PDF); p. 590", "note": "Typology of non-permanent death (resurrection in a worse condition, ghosts that must find the body, looting by others) as a time penalty and possible tangible loss; early MUDs had permanent death." }, { "key": "dikumud-source-gamma-release-1991", "canonical": false, "title": "DikuMUD source (Gamma release)", "author": "DIKU MUD team (repository of co-author Michael Seifert)", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://github.com/Seifert69/DikuMUD-Gamma/blob/master/dm-dist-gamma/fight.c", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "fight.c, die() and make_corpse(); limits.c, gain_exp() and corpse decay", "note": "Half of experience lost on death, capped and floored without level loss; a lootable corpse holding all gear and gold that decays after ten ticks." }, { "key": "advanced-dungeons-dragons-players-handbook-1978", "canonical": false, "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Players Handbook", "author": "Gary Gygax", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "TSR", "url": "https://archive.org/download/advanced-dungeons-dragons-players-handbook/Advanced%20Dungeons%20%26%20Dragons%20-%20Players%20Handbook_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Character Abilities, Constitution (Resurrection Survival); Cleric spells, Raise Dead (5th level)", "note": "Constitution loss for each revivification, the cap on returns, and bed rest after raising." }, { "key": "wizardry-proving-grounds-of-the-mad-overlord-player-s-guide-1981", "canonical": false, "title": "Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, Player's Guide", "author": "Sir-Tech Software", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/sir-tech-wizardry-1-a2-v2.1-black-manual-ph/components/wizardry%20players%20guide_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "p. 16; p. 33, The Temple of Cant", "note": "A tithe to revive, ashes and permanent loss on failure, and rescue expeditions for a wiped party." }, { "key": "ultima-online-help-and-guidance-dying-wayback-capture-1998", "canonical": false, "title": "Ultima Online: Help and Guidance, Dying (Wayback capture)", "author": "Origin Systems", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/19980214052059/http://www.owo.com:80/help/play/start/die_indx.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Death!; Resurrection; Being Dead; Your stats", "note": "Instant resurrection at a 10% loss to attributes and skills or wandering as a ghost; exposed possessions." }, { "key": "everquest-players-guide-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "EverQuest Players Guide", "author": "Juanita Jones, Russell Phoenix, Jimmy Monkerface, and Damien Waples (Prima Games)", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/everquest-players-guide/Everquest%20%20Players%20Guide_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Chapter Five, Dying (Binding; Self-looting; Corpse-dragging; How Long Will My Corpse Last?); glossary, Resurrect; conduct rules, Bind-point/Corpse Camping", "note": "No experience loss before level 5, owner-only looting, corpse decay by level, resurrection returning part of the lost experience, and the ban on corpse camping." }, { "key": "everquest-manual-supplement-wayback-capture-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "EverQuest manual supplement (Wayback capture)", "author": "Verant Interactive", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20010307063049/http://www.everquest.com:80/guidebook/media/manual_supplement.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "The /consent command and the warning about players who loot a consenting newcomer's corpse and do not return the items." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-death-wayback-capture-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Death (Wayback capture)", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20041130034721/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com:80/info/basics/death.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Death; Being a Ghost; Finding Your Corpse", "note": "Launch rules, with 10% durability on death, a ghost run with no further penalty, and the spirit healer at 25% durability and up to 10 minutes of resurrection sickness." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-death-pre-release-wayback-capture-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Death (pre-release, Wayback capture)", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20040331042313/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com:80/info/basics/death.shtml", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "The March 2004 spirit healer reviving for an experience loss that never costs a level." }, { "key": "demon-s-souls-review-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Demon's Souls review", "author": "James Quentin Clark (RPGFan)", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.rpgfan.com/review/demons-souls/", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Souls left in a bloodstain and lost forever on a second death; the spirit form at half maximum health." }, { "key": "dragonflight-pre-expansion-update-notes-2022", "canonical": false, "title": "Dragonflight Pre-Expansion Update Notes", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2022, "year_approx": true, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/23814291", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Characters", "note": "Resurrection sickness cut to 1 minute and spirit-healer durability loss set to 10% below level 10 and 50% from level 10 (was 25%); the post prints no year." }, { "key": "dota-2-7-00-update-gameplay-changes-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2: 7.00 update, gameplay changes", "author": "Valve", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dota2.com/700/gameplay", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Respawn time", "note": "The respawn timetable, 8 seconds at level 1 (from 8.8) and 100 at level 25." }, { "key": "dota-2-patch-7-11-notes-official-data-feed-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2: Patch 7.11 notes (official data feed)", "author": "Valve", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dota2.com/datafeed/patchnotes?version=7.11&language=english", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Buyback cost changed from 100 + level squared times 1.5 + time times 0.25 to 100 + net worth / 13." }, { "key": "buyback-dota-2-glossary-2026", "canonical": false, "title": "Buyback (Dota 2 glossary)", "author": "Winio Team", "year": 2026, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://winio.ai/glossary/dota2/buyback", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Buyback lets a dead hero spend gold to respawn immediately at the fountain, on a long cooldown." }, { "key": "dota-2-reliable-vs-unreliable-gold-how-gold-loss-items-and-buybacks-work-2026", "canonical": false, "title": "'Dota 2' Reliable vs. Unreliable Gold: How Gold Loss, Items, and Buybacks Work", "author": "Jose Enrico Coronel (Player.One)", "year": 2026, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.player.one/dota-2-reliable-vs-unreliable-gold-how-gold-loss-items-buybacks-work-163692", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Reliable gold is protected when a hero dies and gold lost to the death penalty is taken from unreliable gold; buyback spends reliable gold first." }, { "key": "what-do-you-loose-when-you-die-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "What do you loose when you Die???", "author": "Grim Dawn Steam community players", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Steam Community", "url": "https://steamcommunity.com/app/219990/discussions/0/1739968490557433974", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Players' statements (2018 to 2020) that death costs a token amount of experience on Normal and more on Elite and Ultimate, that retrieving the body regains most but not all of it, that monsters regain health after a kill, and that Hardcore death is final." } ], "n_examples": 9, "n_sources": 16, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 684, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/death-penalty" }, { "id": "deck-building", "name": "Deck-Building", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "Players start with identical weak decks and improve them during play by acquiring cards into their own draw pile, so each purchase changes the distribution of future hands.", "aliases": [ "deckbuilding", "in-game deck construction" ], "parent": "engine-building", "children": [], "related": [ "hand-management", "drafting", "set-collection", "roguelike-meta-progression" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "mixed", "feedback_loop": "mixed", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Interaction coded from Dominion, where players meet only through the shared supply. Many descendants (Star Realms, Clank!) add direct attacks and would code as mixed. Feedback loop is mixed because the positive loop (better cards) is damped by dilution: every card added lowers the frequency of every other. Pacing stays accelerates after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; neutral was the losing value. Information stays mixed after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; hidden was the losing value.", "effects": [ "engine-satisfaction", "planning", "ownership", "mastery", "replayability", "runaway-leader" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dominion", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Donald X. Vaccarino", "note": "Acquired cards go to the discard pile and circulate only after the next reshuffle, so every purchase is a delayed investment. The ten-card Kingdom varies per game.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pathfinder Adventure Card Game", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Mike Selinker and others", "note": "Campaign-structured card game in which deck-building serves as character progression across sessions, the closest widely played instance to a tabletop-RPG use of the mechanic.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dream Quest", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Peter Whalen", "note": "Early single-player fusion with roguelike structure. Card acquisition replaces experience levels as the primary progression and the deck is lost on death.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Star Realms", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Robert Dougherty and Darwin Kastle", "note": "Adds direct conflict (authority damage) and faction synergies to the Dominion core, shifting interaction from indirect to mixed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Slay the Spire", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Mega Crit", "note": "Early access 2017, full release 2019. Card removal matters as much as acquisition; deck thinning is an explicit resource spent at merchants.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Inscryption", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Daniel Mullins Games (Devolver Digital)", "note": "Each run of the first act starts from a small fixed deck, and map events between card battles offer new creature cards to add, sacrifice-based upgrades, and card removal, so the deck the player draws from grows over the run.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dominion", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Dominion is near-universally credited as the first game built around in-play deck construction. Pre-game deck construction (Magic: The Gathering, 1993) is a distinct mechanic and is not coded as a precedent." }, "established": { "title": "Dominion", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Dominion is near-universally credited with in-play deck construction; Star Realms adds direct conflict to the Dominion core, and the video lineage runs through Dream Quest and Slay the Spire." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Card Mechanisms chapter", "note": "Definition and the distinction from deck construction." }, { "key": "dominion-rulebook-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Dominion rulebook", "author": "Donald X. Vaccarino", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Provenance and canonical rules text." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Deck, Bag, and Pool Building", "note": null }, { "key": "gmtk-two-types-of-random", "canonical": true, "title": "The Two Types of Random in Game Design", "author": "Mark Brown (Game Maker’s Toolkit)", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "video", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Input versus output randomness framing used for the properties coding." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 515, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/deck-building" }, { "id": "deduction", "name": "Deduction", "status": "verified", "category": "puzzle-and-pattern", "definition": "Players uncover a hidden fact fixed at setup by making queries whose answers eliminate possibilities, racing to be the first to state the solution with certainty.", "aliases": [ "logical deduction", "deduction game", "inductive reasoning game" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hidden-roles", "secret-objectives", "fog-of-war" ], "referenced_by": [ "clue-giving", "constraint-logic-puzzles", "crowd-blending", "hidden-movement", "hidden-piece-identity", "limited-communication", "memory", "traitor" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "mixed", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Cluedo. Interaction is mixed because a suggestion targets a specific player for a reply (direct) while the race to the solution couples players only through the shared hidden fact (indirect); indirect was the losing value. Information is mixed because the solution is hidden from everyone while the dealt cards are asymmetric. Cluedo's dice movement is treated as a separate mechanic. The category assignment departs from the default tie-break order, which asks the information question before the puzzle question and would place a concealed solution under information-and-hidden-state, as it does for memory and clue-giving. Puzzle-and-pattern is assigned because the identity of the mechanic is the inferential procedure that converges on one determinable answer, while possession of hidden state is covered by hidden roles and secret objectives; information-and-hidden-state is the losing family. Agency is medium because the answer is fixed by setup, and the player's choice is which permitted query to pose, from a constrained form; high was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "inference", "mastery", "tension", "planning", "analysis-paralysis" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Cluedo", "year": 1949, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Anthony E. Pratt", "note": "Three cards are sealed as the solution and the rest dealt out; a suggestion obliges the next player holding a matching card to show one privately, so each query eliminates possibilities for the asker alone.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mastermind", "year": 1970, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Mordecai Meirowitz", "note": "One player sets a hidden code and the other submits guesses, receiving only counts of exact and partial matches; a pure two-player query-and-feedback form. Devised about 1970 and published by Invicta Plastics in the early 1970s.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Call of Cthulhu", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Sandy Petersen", "note": "Investigators gather clues through skill rolls and interviews to reconstruct a hidden scenario the Keeper has prepared; the deduction is narrative and the queries are in-fiction actions.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Esoterrorists", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Robin D. Laws", "note": "The GUMSHOE system guarantees that core clues are found whenever an investigator with the relevant ability looks, so play concentrates on interpreting evidence rather than on rolling to obtain it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Return of the Obra Dinn", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Lucas Pope", "note": "Sixty fates must be identified from frozen death scenes; the game confirms answers only in groups of three, so the player must cross-reference evidence rather than guess entry by entry.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Wordle", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Josh Wardle", "note": "A five-letter word is fixed for the day and each of up to six guesses is a query answered letter by letter in green (right place), yellow (in the word elsewhere) or grey (absent), so every guess eliminates candidates in the manner of Mastermind.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Cluedo", "year": 1949, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to the published commercial form. Cluedo, patented by Anthony Pratt in the mid-1940s and published by Waddingtons in 1949, is the usual citation for a commercial game organised around elimination of possibilities by query. Pencil-and-paper code-breaking games such as Bulls and Cows may be older but lack dated documentation, so they are treated as undated antecedents." }, "established": { "title": "Cluedo", "year": 1949, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Cluedo is the usual citation for a commercial game built on query and elimination, and Mastermind later stripped the structure to a two-player code-breaking form." }, "sources": [ { "key": "cluedo-rules-1949", "canonical": false, "title": "Cluedo rules", "author": "Anthony E. Pratt", "year": 1949, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Making a suggestion and disproving it", "note": "Canonical query-and-reply procedure." }, { "key": "costikyan-2013", "canonical": true, "title": "Uncertainty in Games", "author": "Greg Costikyan", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Hidden information and solver's uncertainty (sources of uncertainty)", "note": "Distinguishes uncertainty resolved by reasoning from uncertainty resolved by chance." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Deduction", "note": null }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Cluedo", "note": "Pratt attribution and publication dates." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 3, "word_count": 522, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/deduction" }, { "id": "degrees-of-success", "name": "Degrees of Success", "status": "verified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "A resolution procedure that grades the result of a check into three or more ordered bands, such as critical success, success, partial success, failure, and fumble, each with its own consequence.", "aliases": [ "graded results", "success levels", "partial success", "critical hits and fumbles" ], "parent": null, "children": [ "critical-hits" ], "related": [ "dice-pool", "fail-forward", "saving-throws", "clocks" ], "referenced_by": [ "advantage-disadvantage", "aspects-and-tags", "gm-moves", "hit-location", "hit-points", "metacurrency", "opposed-rolls", "social-conflict", "target-numbers" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Pendragon (1985), where the bands are read directly from a roll-under result. Randomness is output because in the canonical form the bands are defined on the die outcome; the procedure can in principle grade a non-random input, so none was the losing value. Decision density is low for the canonical form; in Apocalypse World the partial band often hands the player a choice among costs, which would code medium. Category is action-resolution because the mechanic is the grading of the result, independent of whether a d20, percentile dice, or a pool produced it.", "effects": [ "emergent-narrative", "volatility", "consequence-weight" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Pendragon", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Greg Stafford (Chaosium)", "note": "A twenty-sided roll under a skill succeeds, a roll equal to the skill is a critical, a 20 is a fumble, and opposed rolls compare bands so that a lower success is a partial success.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fallout", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Interplay Productions", "note": "Attacks and some skill checks resolve as critical failure, failure, success, or critical success, with critical failures drawing from tables of mishaps such as dropped or jammed weapons.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Apocalypse World", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "D. Vincent Baker", "note": "Every move resolves 2d6 plus a stat into three bands, with 7 to 9 as a mixed result that succeeds at a cost or offers a choice; the band structure is the whole resolution system.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Ignacy Trzewiczek (Portal Games)", "note": "Action dice separate success from cost by rolling a success die, a wound die, and an adventure die together, so one roll yields a graded combination of outcome and complication.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Blades in the Dark", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "John Harper", "note": "The highest die of a pool maps to four bands (1 to 3, 4 to 5, 6, and double 6) whose meaning is further scaled by a declared position and effect level.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Brendan Conway (Magpie Games)", "note": "Moves are rolled on 2d6 plus a modifier and read in the Powered by the Apocalypse bands of full success, partial success with a cost or hard choice, and miss, each with its own consequence written into the move.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "RuneQuest", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "RuneQuest's percentile checks already graded results into critical, ordinary success, failure, and fumble, which meets the definition of three or more ordered bands. A single amplified band on its own, as in Empire of the Petal Throne (1975), belongs to critical hits. Pendragon (1985) is the game most often cited for making graded results, including a partial band in opposed resolution, central to play, and Apocalypse World (2010) popularised the three-band move." }, "established": { "title": "Apocalypse World", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "low", "note": "Apocalypse World popularised the three-band move, with a mixed 7 to 9 result that succeeds at a cost, as a template for many later games, among them the Powered by the Apocalypse bands of Avatar Legends; Pendragon is most often cited for making graded results central to play." }, "sources": [ { "key": "king-arthur-pendragon-1985", "canonical": false, "title": "King Arthur Pendragon", "author": "Greg Stafford", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Resolution chapter; criticals, fumbles, and partial success in opposed rolls." }, { "key": "apocalypse-world-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Apocalypse World", "author": "D. Vincent Baker", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Basic moves; the 10+, 7 to 9, and 6 or less bands." }, { "key": "blades-in-the-dark-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Blades in the Dark", "author": "John Harper", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "The Basics, Action Roll", "note": "Result bands scaled by position and effect." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 493, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/degrees-of-success" }, { "id": "dexterity", "name": "Dexterity", "status": "unverified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "Physical manipulation of components, such as flicking, stacking, balancing, or throwing, resolves an action directly, so success depends on motor skill rather than on a randomiser or a chosen option.", "aliases": [ "dexterity games", "flicking", "stacking and balancing", "physical skill resolution" ], "parent": null, "children": [ "rhythm-action" ], "related": [ "quick-time-events", "push-your-luck", "real-time", "parry-and-dodge" ], "referenced_by": [ "aim-and-recoil", "ball-possession", "handicapping", "physics-puzzles", "race-to-the-finish" ], "media": [ "board-card", "physical", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Crokinole, whose oldest known board dates from 1875 or 1876, with Jenga (1983) as the stacking check. Randomness is none because no randomiser is used; outcome variance is produced by execution, and output was the losing value for readers who treat an imprecise flick as a die. Interaction is mixed because flicking games target an opponent's pieces directly while stacking games couple players only through a shared structure. Decision density is low because a shot is one choice of target and angle; the flick itself is execution. Category is action-resolution because the physical act adjudicates success; chance-and-risk was the losing candidate, and the push-your-luck element of stacking games is recorded under Variations.", "effects": [ "execution", "mastery", "spatial-reasoning", "volatility" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Crokinole", "year": 1876, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Discs are flicked across a round board toward a centre hole; a shot must contact an opponent's disc when one is present, so every flick is both a scoring attempt and an attack, resolved by the shooter's precision. The date is that of the earliest known board, made in Ontario and dated 1875 or 1876 by different sources.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pétanque", "year": 1907, "year_approx": true, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "Steel boules are thrown to finish closest to a target jack, and knocking an opponent's boule away is a legitimate tactic; the codified form emerged in Provence in the first decade of the twentieth century.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Jenga", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "Leslie Scott", "note": "Players remove one block from a tower and place it on top; the mover who topples the tower loses, so each turn is a precision test whose difficulty rises with every previous success.", "latest": false }, { "title": "PitchCar", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jean du Poël", "note": "Wooden discs are flicked around a modular track; leaving the track returns the car to its previous position, which makes each shot a trade of distance against risk.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Wii Sports", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "Motion-sensed swings in bowling, tennis, and golf map the player's arm movement to the shot, so accuracy of physical motion rather than button selection decides the result; digital games otherwise usually substitute a timing window.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Nintendo Switch Sports", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "Players hold the Joy-Con as they would the real racket, ball, or sword, and its gyroscope translates the swing, throw, or slash into the in-game shot, so physical motion rather than a button choice decides the result in tennis, bowling, badminton, and chambara.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "Games of physical skill such as marbles, knucklebones, and bowls are far older than their printed rules, so no origin can be defended; Strutt describes marbles games such as taw (1801, cited from the 1845 edition) and Gomme prints fivestones and huckle-bones (1894). Crokinole's oldest known board, Eckhardt Wettlaufer's, is dated 1875 or 1876, and a crokinole-type flicking board was patented in the United States in 1880; Fincher's tiddlywinks patent followed in 1888. Jenga, designed by Leslie Scott in 1982 and first marketed in 1983, is the most widely recognised modern instance. BoardGameGeek has used Action / Dexterity as a category since at least 2006 and added specific mechanics such as Flicking and Stacking and Balancing only later." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Resolution chapter", "note": "Physical action treated as a resolution mechanism alongside dice and cards." }, { "key": "jenga-rules-1983", "canonical": false, "title": "Jenga rules", "author": "Leslie Scott", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Canonical stacking form used for the push-your-luck variation." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Flicking; Stacking and Balancing", "note": null }, { "key": "game-board-us-patent-226-615-1880", "canonical": false, "title": "Game-board (US Patent 226,615)", "author": "Joshua K. Ingalls", "year": 1880, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US226615A/en", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "A board with a central goal, scoring rings, and cushion posts, played by flicking pieces with a finger." }, { "key": "a-personal-view-from-leslie-scott-the-inventor-of-jenga-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "A personal view from Leslie Scott, the inventor of Jenga", "author": "Leslie Scott (V&A British Toy Making blog)", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20120306051211/http://www.vam.ac.uk/things-to-do/blogs/british-toy-making-blog/personal-view-leslie-scott-inventor-jenga", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Created in 1982 and first put on the market in 1983." }, { "key": "the-traditional-games-of-england-scotland-and-ireland-vol-i-1894", "canonical": false, "title": "The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Vol. I", "author": "Alice Bertha Gomme", "year": 1894, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/traditionalgames01gommuoft/traditionalgames01gommuoft_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Fivestones, p. 122; Huckle-bones, p. 239", "note": "Printed throw-and-catch rules for knucklebones games." }, { "key": "the-sports-and-pastimes-of-the-people-of-england-1845", "canonical": false, "title": "The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England", "author": "Joseph Strutt (edited by William Hone)", "year": 1845, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Thomas Tegg", "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/48983/pg48983.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Book IV, Chapter IV, section V, Marbles and span-counter", "note": "First published 1801; rules for marbles games such as taw, in which boys shoot at marbles in a ring." }, { "key": "a-new-and-improved-game-uk-patent-16-215-1888", "canonical": false, "title": "A New and Improved Game (UK Patent 16,215)", "author": "Joseph Assheton Fincher", "year": 1888, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://tiddlywinks.org/?p=282", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "The tiddlywinks patent, applied for on 8 November 1888, with counters made to jump into a bowl." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 8, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 530, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/dexterity" }, { "id": "dice-placement", "name": "Dice Placement", "status": "verified", "category": "chance-and-risk", "definition": "Players roll their dice and then place them one at a time on action spaces that require or reward particular values, so the roll constrains which actions are reachable and placed dice block or outbid later placements.", "aliases": [ "dice workers", "dice allocation", "roll and allocate" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "worker-placement", "drafting", "rerolls", "roll-and-write", "lifepath" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "negative", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Kingsburg, with Alien Frontiers as the check case. Category contested: chance-and-risk over time-and-action-structure, the family of worker placement; chance wins because the roll before placement is the identity of the mechanic and the whole decision is the allocation of a random result, whereas a worker's value is fixed. Agency is medium because the roll fixes the reachable spaces; high was the losing value. Randomness is input because dice are rolled before allocation; manipulation by rerolls or value shifts does not change the stage. Interaction is indirect because placed dice block spaces. Decision density is medium: a placement turn asks which dice to combine, which space to claim, and whether to spend a token to alter the sum; high was the losing value for counting a whole round of placements. Information is perfect because rolls are public; Roll for the Galaxy's concealed assignment would code asymmetric. Feedback loop is negative because in the canonical Kingsburg form the lowest roller places first, so a poor roll is compensated with priority on the action spaces; none was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "planning", "calculation", "fear-of-missing-out", "tension", "frustration-risk", "catch-up" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Yspahan", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Sébastien Pauchon (Ystari Games)", "note": "Nine dice are rolled and sorted by value into the rows of a tower, and each player in turn takes one row and performs its action with as many units as there were dice; an immediate antecedent in which dice are drafted from a shared roll rather than placed on spaces.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Kingsburg", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Andrea Chiarvesio and Luca Iennaco (Fantasy Flight Games and Stratelibri)", "note": "Each player rolls three dice and, in order from lowest total, places one or more of them on advisors numbered 1 to 18 whose number the dice must sum to exactly; an occupied advisor is closed to others. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Alien Frontiers", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Tory Niemann (Clever Mojo Games)", "note": "Dice are ships; orbital facilities demand pairs, straights, or minimum values, hold limited docking slots, and some allow a placed die to be bumped, so a roll is parsed into the best legal set of placements.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Castles of Burgundy", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Stefan Feld (alea)", "note": "Two dice per turn each select an action keyed to the value, such as taking a tile from the depot of that number or placing one on an estate space of that number, with worker tokens spent to adjust a die by one; there is no blocking, so the form reduces to constrained selection.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dicey Dungeons", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Terry Cavanagh", "note": "Each combat turn the player rolls a handful of dice and drags them onto equipment cards with value requirements, such as even numbers or a minimum, in a single-player roguelike; the solo form keeps allocation and loses blocking.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Jump Over the Age (Fellow Traveller)", "note": "Each cycle's rolled dice are assigned to tasks where higher values give better results; crew members add their own die, stress damages dice until they cannot be placed, and a glitch die has an 80% chance of the worst result and 20% of the best.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Kingsburg", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the placement form, in which rolled dice occupy exclusive action spaces; Kingsburg is generally credited with it. Yspahan (2006) drafts dice from a shared roll a year earlier and To Court the King (2006) rolls dice for card powers without spaces; both are antecedents. Earlier designs in which a rolled value selects an action may exist, so the dating is loose." }, "established": { "title": "Kingsburg", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Kingsburg's exact-sum placement on exclusive advisor spaces is generally credited as the start of dice placement; Alien Frontiers added set requirements and bumping, and The Castles of Burgundy removed blocking." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Worker Placement chapter", "note": "Dice used as workers, treated as a variant of worker placement." }, { "key": "kingsburg-rulebook-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Kingsburg rulebook", "author": "Andrea Chiarvesio and Luca Iennaco", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Influencing the King's advisors", "note": "Canonical procedure, including the lowest-roll-first order and exact-sum placement." }, { "key": "alien-frontiers-rulebook-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Alien Frontiers rulebook", "author": "Tory Niemann", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Docking ships at orbital facilities", "note": "Set and value requirements per space and the bumping rule." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Worker Placement with Dice Workers", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 505, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/dice-placement" }, { "id": "dice-pool", "name": "Dice Pool", "status": "verified", "category": "chance-and-risk", "definition": "A randomiser in which the number of dice rolled scales with a rating, and the result is read by counting dice that meet a target or by taking the best die rather than summing a single roll.", "aliases": [ "success-counting dice", "roll and keep" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "degrees-of-success", "advantage-disadvantage", "push-your-luck", "roll-and-write" ], "referenced_by": [ "opposed-rolls", "rerolls", "saving-throws", "usage-dice" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the success-counting form of Shadowrun (1989) and Vampire: The Masquerade (1991). Agency is low because the pool is assembled from ratings and read mechanically; roll-and-keep forms (Legend of the Five Rings) that let the player choose which dice to keep would code medium. Complexity is medium because pool size, target number, success threshold, and botch rules are separate sub-rules. The category, chance-and-risk, departs from the default tie-break order, which asks the action-resolution question first; it is kept because the identity of the mechanic is the randomiser itself, while how the count is graded belongs to degrees of success. Action-resolution was the losing family.", "effects": [ "frustration-risk", "downtime" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Ghostbusters", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "West End Games (Sandy Petersen, Lynn Willis, and Greg Stafford)", "note": "A trait rating sets how many six-sided dice are rolled and summed against a difficulty; the additive pool with one marked Ghost Die that can introduce complications.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Shadowrun", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "FASA (Bob Charrette, Paul Hume, and Tom Dowd)", "note": "Six-sided dice equal to a skill are rolled against a variable target number and successes are counted; sixes are rerolled and added under the Rule of Six, an early exploding-dice rule.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Vampire: The Masquerade", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Mark Rein-Hagen", "note": "Ten-sided dice equal to attribute plus ability are rolled against a difficulty; each one rolled cancels a success and a result with no successes and at least one 1 is a botch.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jay Little (Fantasy Flight Games)", "note": "Attack and defence dice pools of custom-faced dice are sized by ship statistics and compared hit for evade, with modifications spent to reroll or flip faces.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Blades in the Dark", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "John Harper", "note": "A pool of six-sided dice equal to an action rating is rolled and only the highest die is read, with two sixes a critical; rolling zero dice means rolling two and taking the lower.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Vaesen", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Free League Publishing", "note": "A test rolls as many six-sided dice as the character's attribute plus skill, and each six is a success, usually needing only one; a failed roll may be pushed and rerolled at the price of a Condition.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Ghostbusters", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Ghostbusters is the game most often credited with a rating-sized pool as the core resolution of a role-playing game; Shadowrun (1989) and Vampire (1991) popularised success counting. Wargames such as Axis & Allies (1984 edition) and Warhammer rolled one die per unit and counted hits earlier, and Tunnels & Trolls (1975) summed several dice for combat, so the claim is specific to pools whose size is a character rating." }, "established": { "title": "Vampire: The Masquerade", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Vampire: The Masquerade carried the success-counting pool, sized by attribute plus ability and read against a difficulty, to a large audience, after which it became the main alternative to the d20; Shadowrun had attached success counting two years earlier." }, "sources": [ { "key": "shadowrun-first-edition-1989", "canonical": false, "title": "Shadowrun, first edition", "author": "Bob Charrette, Paul Hume, and Tom Dowd", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Success tests, target numbers, and the Rule of Six." }, { "key": "vampire-the-masquerade-first-edition-1991", "canonical": false, "title": "Vampire: The Masquerade, first edition", "author": "Mark Rein-Hagen", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Chapter on rules; dice pools, difficulty, and botches." }, { "key": "ghostbusters-a-frightfully-cheerful-roleplaying-game-1986", "canonical": false, "title": "Ghostbusters, A Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game", "author": "West End Games", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Additive six-sided pool and the Ghost Die." }, { "key": "blades-in-the-dark-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Blades in the Dark", "author": "John Harper", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "The Basics, Action Roll", "note": "Pool sized by action rating and read by the highest die." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Dice Rolling", "note": "Board-game usage of multi-die pools." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 496, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/dice-pool" }, { "id": "difficulty-settings", "name": "Difficulty Settings", "status": "unverified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "A rule-level parameter, chosen before play or adjusted by the system during it, scales enemy strength, resources, or margins for error so that the same content can be played at several levels of challenge.", "aliases": [ "difficulty levels", "difficulty modes", "dynamic difficulty adjustment", "DDA", "difficulty tiers" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "handicapping", "checkpoints", "permadeath", "cooperative-play", "boss-encounters" ], "referenced_by": [ "lives-and-continues", "prestige-resets", "rating-and-matchmaking" ], "media": [ "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "variable", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Wolfenstein 3D (1992), the usual reference for player-selected named tiers. Category is progression-and-capability, which departs from the default tie-break order (action-resolution is asked first, and was the losing family): the setting changes the capability gap between player and system for the whole session and shifts the odds of every check without adjudicating any of them. Agency is medium because the player makes one choice among a small set; low was the losing value once the choice is locked. Feedback loop is none for static tiers; negative was the losing value for dynamic difficulty adjustment, which compensates a failing player and is recorded under Variations. Information is perfect because the chosen tier is displayed; hidden was the losing value for concealed dynamic adjustment, where only the system knows the parameters have moved.", "effects": [ "flow", "mastery", "replayability", "contested-fairness" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Pelé's Championship Soccer", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Atari", "note": "The game number selects a level of computer difficulty, the console's A and B switches handicap each player, and the manual notes that the computer becomes harder to beat whenever the player's score is higher, an early documented dynamic adjustment.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Wolfenstein 3D", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "id Software", "note": "Four named tiers, from a pleading easy setting to a boastful hardest, change enemy damage and placement, with a portrait on the selection screen that changes with the tier.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Raids run at a chosen difficulty. As announced for Warlords of Draenor (2013; reportedly patch 6.0, 2014), Raid Finder, Normal and Heroic scale to group size and Mythic fixes it at 20. Legion's Mythic Keystones (2016) raise enemy health and damage with each level, add affixes such as Raging or Bolstering at levels 4, 7 and 10, and upgrade the key for beating a timer or deplete it on a miss.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pandemic", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Matt Leacock", "note": "The number of Epidemic cards shuffled into the player deck (four, five, or six) selects introductory, standard, or heroic difficulty without changing any other rule.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Left 4 Dead", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve and Turtle Rock Studios", "note": "The AI Director adjusts the frequency and ferocity of the zombie attacks to the survivors' performance during play, a dynamic adjustment the players do not choose.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "Endgame areas are Map items whose mods alter both their challenge and their rewards. Unlike Halo's skulls or Hades' Heat, the mods are rolled on the item and can be rerolled with currency orbs, so the player chooses which rolled map to run, or alters it, rather than picking named handicaps from a list.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Grim Dawn", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Crate Entertainment", "note": "Normal is open from the start, and an optional Veteran mode, switched on or off before loading in, makes its monsters stronger and more numerous. Elite and Ultimate open only once the base game's final boss is defeated, and the same character replays the campaign against more powerful, higher-level enemies for better equipment.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Spirit Island", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "R. Eric Reuss", "note": "Optional adversaries each carry a level scale that adds rules and alters the invader deck, with a published difficulty number for each combination of adversary, level, and scenario.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Celeste", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Maddy Makes Games", "note": "Assist Mode exposes individual parameters (game speed, infinite stamina, invincibility, extra dashes) instead of named tiers, so difficulty is a set of toggles the player composes.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Doom Eternal", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "id Software (Bethesda Softworks)", "note": "Five chosen difficulty levels make demons attack more often and deal more damage, the top one adding permanent death, and after repeated deaths in one encounter the game offers Sentinel Armor, which sharply cuts incoming damage.", "latest": true }, { "title": "Last Epoch", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Eleventh Hour Games", "note": "Each Monolith of Fate timeline carries a Corruption level that raises monster health and damage along with item rarity and experience; from beta 0.8.2 (2021) defeating the timeline's Shade of Orobyss adds Corruption. At 1.0 the monster bonus is 60% more damage and health at Corruption 100 and 505% at 500.", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No origin can be defended, so dated floors and popularisers are named. The Atari VCS console (1977) carried physical left and right difficulty switches, and the 1977 Combat manual documents them shortening one player's missile range and slowing their plane; arcade cabinets of the late 1970s are also said to expose operator-set difficulty through DIP switches, though no operator manual documenting it is cited. The 1980 manual for Pelé's Championship Soccer documents both software-selected levels of computer difficulty and an opponent that grows harder when the player leads, a dated dynamic adjustment earlier than the often-cited Xevious (1982), whose adaptive enemies are attested only by fan sources. Wolfenstein 3D (1992) is the usual reference for player-facing named tiers, but no cited source calls it the populariser, and earlier named tiers are likely. Naughty Dog named its system Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment, but the developer of the 2017 remake states that it was present only in the second and third Crash Bandicoot games, not the 1996 original. Board-game difficulty tiers are a 2000s cooperative-game convention with Pandemic (2008) as the usual reference." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "juul-2013", "canonical": true, "title": "The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games", "author": "Jesper Juul", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Difficulty, failure, and skill", "note": "Framing for matched challenge and the discomfort of failure used in Analysis notes." }, { "key": "pandemic-rulebook-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Pandemic rulebook", "author": "Matt Leacock", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Setup; number of Epidemic cards", "note": "The board-game tier form." }, { "key": "making-crash-bandicoot-part-6-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Making Crash Bandicoot – part 6", "author": "Andy Gavin (with Jason Rubin)", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/07/making-crash-bandicoot-part-6/", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Naughty Dog's naming and description of Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (masks, slowed hazards, extra continue points); the passage is ambiguous about which game shipped it." }, { "key": "why-crash-bandicoot-n-sane-trilogy-is-so-difficult-according-to-devs-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Why Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Is So Difficult, According to Devs", "author": "Mario Brash (COGconnected)", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://cogconnected.com/2017/07/crash-bandicoot-difficulty-vv/", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Vicarious Visions states that dynamic difficulty adjustment was originally present only in the second and third games." }, { "key": "combat-game-program-instructions-1977", "canonical": false, "title": "Combat game program instructions", "author": "Atari, Inc.", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Difficulty switches (manual C011402-01)", "note": "The A and B console difficulty positions change missile range and plane speed per player." }, { "key": "pel-s-championship-soccer-instructions-1980", "canonical": false, "title": "Pelé's Championship Soccer instructions", "author": "Atari, Inc.", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Section 10, Game Select Matrix, and the note on computer difficulty (manual C011402-16 Rev. 1)", "note": "Software-selected levels of computer difficulty and a computer that becomes harder to beat when the player's score is higher." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Dynamic game difficulty balancing", "note": "Overview of adaptive forms and their history." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-game-overview", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile game overview", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/game", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Endgame Map items whose mods alter their challenges and rewards, and orbs that randomly reroll item properties." }, { "key": "major-raid-changes-coming-in-warlords-of-draenor-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "Major raid changes coming in Warlords of Draenor", "author": "Matthew Rossi (Engadget)", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.engadget.com/2013-11-08-major-raid-changes-coming-in-warlords-of-draenor.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Four raid difficulties announced at BlizzCon 2013, three scaling to group size and Mythic a fixed 20-player raid." }, { "key": "preview-mythic-keystones-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Preview: Mythic Keystones", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/20271497/preview-mythic-keystones", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Enemy health and damage rising with each keystone level, the timer, depleted keys, and new modifiers at levels 4, 7 and 10." }, { "key": "beta-0-8-2-patch-notes-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "Beta 0.8.2 Patch Notes", "author": "Eleventh Hour Games", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Last Epoch forums (Eleventh Hour Games)", "url": "https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/beta-0-8-2-patch-notes/37724", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Monolith of Fate", "note": "Corruption raising item rarity, experience, monster health and damage, and Timeline Stability; defeating the Shade of Orobyss adding Corruption." }, { "key": "last-epoch-1-0-patch-notes-2024", "canonical": false, "title": "Last Epoch 1.0 Patch Notes", "author": "Eleventh Hour Games", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Last Epoch forums (Eleventh Hour Games)", "url": "https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/last-epoch-1-0-patch-notes/62536", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Monolith of Fate", "note": "The Corruption modifier at 1.0, 60% more monster damage and health at Corruption 100 and 505% at 500." }, { "key": "guide-game-settings-game-difficulties", "canonical": false, "title": "Guide: Game Settings, Game Difficulties", "author": "Crate Entertainment", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.grimdawn.com/guide/game-settings/game-difficulties/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Normal available immediately, the Veteran mode for Normal with stronger monsters and more spawns, and Elite and Ultimate unlocked by defeating the base game's final boss, with more powerful enemies and better equipment." }, { "key": "left-4-dead-steam-store-page-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Left 4 Dead (Steam store page)", "author": "Valve", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://store.steampowered.com/app/500/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "About This Game", "note": "The AI Director tailoring the frequency and ferocity of the zombie attacks to the players' performance." } ], "n_examples": 11, "n_sources": 14, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 604, "updated": "2026-10-30", "url": "/mechanics/difficulty-settings" }, { "id": "divide-and-choose", "name": "Divide and Choose", "status": "unverified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "One player splits a shared pool into one portion per player, the others choose portions in turn, and the divider takes the portion left over, so the divider is pushed to make portions they value equally.", "aliases": [ "I split, you choose", "I cut, you choose", "cake cutting", "fair division" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "drafting", "auction-bidding", "trading", "set-collection" ], "referenced_by": [ "loot-distribution", "side-swapping" ], "media": [ "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Piece o' Cake, where one player cuts a revealed cake of slices into at most one portion per player and chooses last, each other player having taken a portion or forfeited the pick to eat slices saved earlier. The category follows the default tie-break order; the losing family is resource-management, since the pool is a set of goods being allocated. Agency is high because the divider's partition is an open choice space that fixes what every player can receive; medium was the losing value, on the view that a chooser makes one pick from a few portions. Randomness is input because the pool is drawn before the divider decides; none was the losing value, since the procedure itself has no randomiser. Interaction is direct because the split is built against the known positions of specific opponents and each pick hands the remainder to named players; indirect was the losing value, on the view that choosers take from a shared pool as in drafting. Information is perfect because pool, portions, and picks are public; hosts with hidden hands (Hanamikoji) code asymmetric. Feedback loop is none; negative was the losing value, since choosers can take the portion the leader needs, but no rule ties the split to standing. Decision density is low: a chooser makes one pick, and the divider's partition is one decision point however many boundaries it has; medium was the losing value, counting each boundary placement separately.", "effects": [ "calculation", "tension", "kingmaking", "analysis-paralysis" ], "examples": [ { "title": "San Marco", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Alan R. Moon and Aaron Weissblum", "note": "In the four-player game two distributors each split eight action and limit cards into two offers; a decision maker takes one and the distributor keeps the other. With three players a single distributor makes three offers, the others choose in turn, and the distributor keeps the last. The split decides who can act where on the board.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Coloretto", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Michael Schacht", "note": "A collectively loaded variant in which players in turn either add a drawn card to one of several shared rows, one row per player and at most three cards each, or take a non-empty row and sit out the rest of the round, so no single divider exists and the mechanic shades into drafting.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Piece o' Cake", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jeffrey D. Allers", "note": "One player cuts a round cake of slices into at most one piece per player; the others in turn take a piece or forfeit to eat slices saved earlier, and the cutter chooses last. Each slice taken is eaten for points or saved toward end-game majorities, so players value pieces differently.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hanamikoji", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Kota Nakayama", "note": "Two of each player's four actions, each used once a round, are splits: offer three cards of which the opponent takes one, or two pairs of which the opponent takes a pair, and the offerer keeps the rest.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Agent Avenue", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Christian Kudahl and Laura Kudahl", "note": "Each turn the active player offers two cards, one face up and one face down; the opponent takes one for their own side and the offering player keeps the other, so every offer is a two-portion split with a bluff in the hidden half.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "San Marco", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Provenance is scoped to divide-and-choose as a rule of a published game in which the divider keeps the leftover portion. The procedure itself is older: Hesiod's Theogony (c. 700 BCE) depicts it in myth, Steinhaus (1948) takes two-person halving as an established rule, and Brams and Taylor (1996) start from it as a well-known procedure. San Marco (2001) is the earliest documented published game with a divider who keeps the leftover. Magic: The Gathering's Fact or Fiction (Invasion, October 2000) is an earlier split-and-choose rule in a published game, but the unchosen pile is discarded and the divider gets nothing, so it is an antecedent rather than an instance. BGG's I Cut, You Choose tag lists no earlier divider-takes-last game. Confidence is low because BGG's tagging of older games is thin, and traditional card games and 1990s German games remain unsurveyed. Piece o' Cake (2008) is the most literal board-game rendering and is the form coded here." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "the-problem-of-fair-division-1948", "canonical": false, "title": "The Problem of Fair Division", "author": "Hugo Steinhaus", "year": 1948, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Econometrica 16 (1), pp. 101-104", "note": "The abstract of Steinhaus's talk at the Econometric Society's Washington meeting of September 1947, printed in the meeting report (Econometrica 16(1), pp. 33-111). As quoted in Wikipedia's Last diminisher article, it ends by having the last two participants \"apply the classical rule for halving the remainder\", treating two-person cut-and-choose as known; the page within 101-104 is unconfirmed. It gives Steinhaus's three-person procedure and credits the n-person extension to Banach and Knaster." }, { "key": "fair-division-from-cake-cutting-to-dispute-resolution-1996", "canonical": false, "title": "Fair Division: From Cake-Cutting to Dispute Resolution", "author": "Steven J. Brams and Alan D. Taylor", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 1, Proportionality for n=2; Chapter 4, Envy-freeness and equitability for n=2", "note": "Starts from 'I cut, you choose' as a well-known procedure and covers its two-person guarantees and extensions." }, { "key": "theogony-1914", "canonical": false, "title": "Theogony", "author": "Hesiod, translated by H. G. Evelyn-White", "year": 1914, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0130:card=507", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "lines 535-557", "note": "Prometheus cuts up an ox and sets out portions, and Zeus is invited to take whichever he likes; a mythic depiction of the procedure." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Last diminisher", "note": "Quotes Steinhaus (1948) on the classical rule for halving between two, and attributes the n-person procedure to Banach and Knaster." }, { "key": "coloretto-rules", "canonical": false, "title": "Coloretto rules", "author": "Michael Schacht (Rio Grande Games)", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.riograndegames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Coloretto-Rules.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "One row per player, at most three cards per row, adding a card or taking a row, and sitting out the round after taking one." }, { "key": "hanamikoji-rulebook-english-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Hanamikoji rulebook (English)", "author": "Kota Nakayama (EmperorS4)", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-UUhGhkNzLsdTBYX1U5a25xWjg", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Linked from EmperorS4's product page, which credits COLON ARC with the original edition; the four once-a-round actions, including the Gift and Competition splits." }, { "key": "san-marco-rulebook-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "San Marco rulebook", "author": "Alan R. Moon and Aaron Weissblum", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Three-player rules", "note": "Provenance; with three players the start player, as sole distributor, makes three face-up offers and keeps the last. No publisher copy is cited." }, { "key": "san-marco-review", "canonical": false, "title": "San Marco review", "author": "boardgame.de", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgame.de/reviews/sanmarco.htm", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Four-player rule; two distributors each divide eight cards into two offers, a decision maker chooses, and the distributor takes the remaining offer." }, { "key": "fact-or-fiction-invasion-card-text-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Fact or Fiction (Invasion) card text", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "An opponent separates five revealed cards into two piles; the caster takes one and the other goes to the graveyard." }, { "key": "piece-o-cake-rulebook-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Piece o' Cake rulebook", "author": "Jeffrey D. Allers", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Canonical cut-and-choose procedure used for the property coding." }, { "key": "piece-o-cake-game-rules", "canonical": false, "title": "Piece o' Cake game rules", "author": "UltraBoardGames", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The server divides the cake into at most one piece per player, each chooser may forfeit to eat saved slices, the server chooses last, and eaten and saved slices score separately." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "I Cut, You Choose", "note": "Files the mechanic as a method of drafting and names San Marco as an example." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 12, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 518, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/divide-and-choose" }, { "id": "doubling-cube", "name": "Doubling Cube", "status": "verified", "category": "chance-and-risk", "definition": "Before rolling, a player may offer to double the stake of the current game; the opponent must either concede at the present stake or accept the doubled stake and take sole possession of the right to double again.", "aliases": [ "doubling", "redoubling", "cube action", "stake doubling", "the cube" ], "parent": "push-your-luck", "children": [], "related": [ "betting", "roll-and-move", "race-to-the-finish", "auction-bidding" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "mixed", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from backgammon money play, checked against match play with the Crawford rule. Agency is medium because each side has one binary choice, double or not and take or drop, and the choice dominates the result of the game at that moment. Randomness is output because the cube itself has no randomiser but every cube decision is a wager on the dice to come; none was the losing value. Complexity is medium for cube ownership plus the usual adjuncts (Crawford, Jacoby, beavers); the bare offer-and-take rule would be low. Feedback loop is mixed: the side ahead cashes its lead, but the taker receives the cube and is the only side that may redouble, which is a built-in damper. Pacing accelerates because a dropped double ends the game at once.", "effects": [ "calculation", "tension", "consequence-weight", "volatility", "mastery", "catch-up" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Backgammon (doubling cube)", "year": 1925, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "The cube, marked 2 to 64, sits centred until a player turns it to 2 and offers it; a taker keeps it on their side and may later redouble. Introduced in New York club play in the 1920s and in print by the early 1930s; the game itself is far older.", "latest": false }, { "title": "FIBS (First Internet Backgammon Server)", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Andreas Schneider", "note": "An online backgammon server implementing the cube in money and match play with ratings, an early widely used digital venue in which cube decisions were made against human opponents at a distance.", "latest": false }, { "title": "GNU Backgammon", "year": 2004, "year_approx": true, "medium": "video", "creator": null, "note": "A neural-network backgammon program that evaluates each cube decision as a take or drop with equity figures, which made quantitative cube analysis available to ordinary players; development began in the late 1990s.", "latest": false }, { "title": "eXtreme Gammon", "year": 2009, "year_approx": true, "medium": "video", "creator": "Xavier Dufaure de Citres", "note": "A commercial analysis program whose cube-error statistics became the standard measure of play quality in tournament reporting, a case of a mechanic's decision being adjudicated by software after the fact.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Marvel Snap", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Second Dinner (Nuverse)", "note": "Each match is staked at one cube; a player may snap to double the stake, and the opponent can retreat at the current stake or play on, with a further automatic doubling on the final turn. Unlike the backgammon cube, both players can snap, so there is no exclusive right to redouble.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Backgammon (doubling cube)", "year": 1925, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The cube is generally attributed to New York backgammon clubs in the 1920s; no inventor is reliably named and the date is inferred from the first printed descriptions in the early 1930s. Earlier staking schemes in trictrac and other tables games did not pass the right to redouble, which is the distinguishing feature." }, "established": { "title": "Backgammon (doubling cube)", "year": 1925, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The backgammon cube of 1920s New York club play set the offer, take, and exclusive right to redouble, and internet servers and analysis programs later implemented it unchanged." }, "sources": [ { "key": "parlett-1999", "canonical": true, "title": "The Oxford History of Board Games", "author": "David Parlett", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Race games chapters (the tables family and modern backgammon)", "note": "History of backgammon and the 20th-century addition of the doubling cube." }, { "key": "backgammon-1976", "canonical": false, "title": "Backgammon", "author": "Paul Magriel", "year": 1976, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapters on the doubling cube", "note": "Standard treatment of take points, cube ownership, and match-play adjuncts." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Doubling cube", "note": "Rules summary and the Crawford, Jacoby, and beaver conventions." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 552, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/doubling-cube" }, { "id": "downtime-phases", "name": "Downtime Phases", "status": "verified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "Between adventures or scenarios the game runs a structured phase in which each character takes a limited number of actions from a menu such as recover, train, work on a project, or indulge, and campaign time advances.", "aliases": [ "downtime phase", "downtime actions", "winter phase", "camp phase", "long rests", "between-adventures phase" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "upkeep", "scene-framing", "legacy-campaign", "income" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "negative", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the downtime of Blades in the Dark (2017), where each character takes two activities from a fixed list after a score. Agency is medium because the invocation is a choice of a few activities from a short menu; high was the losing value for open-ended training systems. Randomness is output because activities such as healing and long-term projects are chosen and then rolled for; none was the losing value, fitting deterministic rests. Interaction is solo because each character resolves their own activities; cooperative was argued for crew-level actions. Pacing is decelerates because the phase is a designed lull between climaxes; accelerates was argued because campaign time is compressed, a year in Pendragon's Winter Phase. Feedback loop is negative because the phase restores depleted pools toward a baseline, damping attrition. Category was contested with narrative-and-choice, but the mechanic is a rationed action structure placed at a fixed point in the campaign cycle. Feedback loop stays negative after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; mixed was the losing value.", "effects": [ "planning", "ownership", "emergent-narrative", "downtime" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Pendragon", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Greg Stafford (Chaosium)", "note": "The Winter Phase runs a fixed sequence each year, with experience checks, aging rolls, economic circumstances, family events, and horse survival, so a year passes between adventures and characters age across a generational campaign.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ars Magica", "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein-Hagen (Lion Rampant)", "note": "Play is divided into seasons, and in each a magus chooses one activity such as studying, inventing a spell, or enchanting an item; adventures occupy a season and the laboratory phases are where most advancement happens.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Kingdom Death: Monster", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Adam Poots", "note": "After each showdown the settlement phase runs a sequence of events, innovations, building, and endeavours spent by surviving characters before the next hunt; the phase is where losses are repaired and the settlement grows.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Darkest Dungeon", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Red Hook Studios", "note": "Between expeditions the hamlet phase assigns heroes to the tavern or abbey to relieve stress, to the sanitarium to remove afflictions, and upgrades buildings; heroes used for recovery are unavailable for the next run.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Blades in the Dark", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "John Harper", "note": "After a score each character takes two downtime activities from a list, such as acquire asset, long-term project, recover, reduce heat, train, or indulge vice, and the crew resolves payoff, heat, and an entanglement roll.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Daggerheart", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall (Darrington Press)", "note": "When the party rests, each player picks two downtime moves from a fixed list: tend to wounds, clear stress, repair armor, prepare, and on a long rest work on a project that advances a countdown. Each rest also gives the GM Fear, and a long rest lets the GM advance a long-term countdown.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Pendragon", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Earlier campaign play already passed time between sessions, with Dungeons & Dragons insisting on campaign timekeeping and Traveller tracking aging, but neither gives the interval its own phase. Pendragon is the game most often cited for a named, sequenced phase with rationed activities. Ars Magica (1987) generalised it to seasons and Blades in the Dark (2017) popularised the term downtime for the activity menu. An earlier structured between-adventures phase is plausible, so confidence is medium." }, "established": { "title": "Blades in the Dark", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Blades in the Dark set the per-episode menu of a fixed number of downtime activities, such as recover, train, long-term project, and indulge vice, and popularised the term downtime for it; the Forged in the Dark games carry the same menu." }, "sources": [ { "key": "pendragon-1985", "canonical": false, "title": "Pendragon", "author": "Greg Stafford", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Winter Phase", "note": "Provenance and the annual-sequence form." }, { "key": "blades-in-the-dark-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Blades in the Dark", "author": "John Harper", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Downtime; downtime activities", "note": "Canonical activity menu used for the property coding." }, { "key": "appelcline-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry", "author": "Shannon Appelcline", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chaosium (Pendragon); Lion Rampant (Ars Magica)", "note": "Publication histories of Pendragon and Ars Magica." }, { "key": "ars-magica-1987", "canonical": false, "title": "Ars Magica", "author": "Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein-Hagen", "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Seasons and laboratory activities", "note": "Seasonal structure of activity between stories." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 499, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/downtime-phases" }, { "id": "drafting", "name": "Drafting", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "Players select items in turn from a shared pool or from packs passed around the table, so that each pick both builds a private holding and removes the item from everyone else's options.", "aliases": [ "card drafting", "pick and pass", "closed drafting", "open drafting" ], "parent": null, "children": [ "worker-placement" ], "related": [ "deck-building", "hand-management", "auction-bidding", "worker-placement" ], "referenced_by": [ "dice-placement", "divide-and-choose", "loot-boxes", "upgrade-offers", "role-selection", "set-collection", "trading", "variable-player-powers" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the closed pick-and-pass draft of 7 Wonders. Information is asymmetric rather than mixed because each player knows the contents of every pack that passed through their hands; the shuffle that filled the packs belongs to the deck, not to the draft. Interaction stays indirect even when a pick is made purely to deny it to a neighbour, since the effect travels through the shared pool without targeting. Open-draft rows would code information as perfect.", "effects": [ "planning", "inference", "fear-of-missing-out", "analysis-paralysis", "replayability" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Magic: The Gathering (booster draft)", "year": 1996, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Players open sealed packs, keep one card and pass the rest, then build decks from what they drafted. Booster draft was a sanctioned format by the first Pro Tour season and is the model for most later card drafts.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fairy Tale", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Satoshi Nakamura", "note": "Five-card hands are drafted pick-and-pass and then partly played, four times over; a compact self-contained draft that is often noted as a precursor to 7 Wonders.", "latest": false }, { "title": "7 Wonders", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Antoine Bauza", "note": "Three ages of seven-card packs are passed simultaneously, alternating direction each age. The draft is the entire action economy, since every pick is built, sold, or buried under a wonder.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Sushi Go!", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Phil Walker-Harding", "note": "Pick-and-pass drafting feeding set collection with no separate play phase, reducing the mechanic to its minimum form.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hearthstone (Arena mode)", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "A single-player draft: thirty successive picks from three offered cards, with no passing and therefore no denial, isolating the valuation half of the mechanic.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cascadia", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Randy Flynn", "note": "Four habitat tiles are on display, each paired at random with a wildlife token; on a turn a player takes one pair for their own landscape and the display refills, so each pick also removes that pairing from everyone else.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Magic: The Gathering (booster draft)", "year": 1996, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Booster and Rochester drafts developed in Magic's organised play in the mid-1990s and are the recognised source of card drafting as a design pattern; informal drafting among players is likely a little earlier than the sanctioned format. Picking in turn from a pool is older in sports player drafts and in choosing sides, which are antecedents rather than game mechanics in this sense." }, "established": { "title": "Magic: The Gathering (booster draft)", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Magic's booster draft, open a pack, keep one card, pass the rest, is the recognised model for later card drafts; 7 Wonders (2010) later made pick-and-pass the whole action economy of a widely played board game." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Card Mechanisms chapter", "note": "Definition and the closed versus open distinction." }, { "key": "7-wonders-rulebook-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "7 Wonders rulebook", "author": "Antoine Bauza", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Canonical pick-and-pass procedure, used for the property coding." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Closed Drafting; Open Drafting", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 515, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/drafting" }, { "id": "end-game-triggers", "name": "End-Game Triggers", "status": "unverified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "A stated condition, such as a score threshold, an exhausted supply, a fixed number of rounds, or a single decisive event, that ends the game or starts its final round, so players manage when the game ends as well as how it is scored.", "aliases": [ "game end conditions", "end conditions", "sudden death", "game-end triggers", "fixed round count" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "victory-points", "hidden-scoring", "player-elimination", "race-to-the-finish", "clocks" ], "referenced_by": [ "connection-games", "morale-and-rout" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the player-pullable threshold and exhaustion forms of modern board games, with Catan (1995) and Dominion (2008) as the reference texts. Agency is medium because in these forms a player can choose to pull the trigger, by buying the last Province or claiming the tenth point, or to delay it; low was the losing value, true of fixed-round and turn-limit forms where nobody chooses. Interaction is indirect because one player's trigger ends play for everyone through shared state. Complexity is low because the rule is a sentence. Pacing accelerates by definition, since the rule exists to force an ending; variable was argued because the fixed-round form has no systematic effect on tempo. Feedback loop is none for the rule itself; the threshold form is pulled by the leader and the exhaustion form by whoever benefits, but the rule does not itself compound success. Decision density is low because the trigger offers one decision, whether to pull it, and often none. Category was not contested: the rule structures time. The sudden-death form shades into action-resolution when the decisive event is itself an adjudication.", "effects": [ "tension", "planning", "fear-of-missing-out", "kingmaking" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Civilization", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley (MicroProse)", "note": "If no civilization has conquered the world or reached Alpha Centauri, the game ends at a fixed calendar year and the highest score wins, a turn-limit trigger that sets the horizon for every long-term plan.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Golden goal (association football)", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "FIFA and the International Football Association Board", "note": "In extra time the first goal scored ended the match immediately, a sudden-death trigger adopted in 1993, used in the 1996 European Championship and 1998 World Cup finals tournaments, and withdrawn in 2004 after criticism that it made teams defensive.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Catan", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Klaus Teuber", "note": "The game ends the moment a player holds ten victory points on their own turn, so the trigger is pulled by the winner and hidden point cards mean the table may not know it is coming until it fires.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dominion", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Donald X. Vaccarino", "note": "The game ends after the turn in which the Province pile or any three supply piles are emptied, so a player who is ahead can race to empty piles and a player who is behind must avoid helping.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dune: Imperium", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Paul Dennen (Dire Wolf)", "note": "At the end of each round the game ends if any player has reached 10 or more victory points or the conflict deck is empty, so the trigger combines a threshold any player can cross with an exhaustion limit on the number of rounds; ties break on spice, then Solari, water, and garrisoned troops.", "latest": true }, { "title": "Ark Nova", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Mathias Wigge (Feuerland Spiele)", "note": "The game end triggers when a player's appeal and conservation counters, which run toward each other on a shared track, land in the same scoring area or pass each other; every other player then takes one final turn before scoring.", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": null, "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No earliest use can be defended; every game has an ending rule and most traditional games end by elimination, by a race, or by a dealt-out deck. Player-chosen endings are older than German-style design: in Gin Rummy, dated to the early 1910s, a player may knock to end a deal, and Acquire (1964) lets the active player declare the end once a chain reaches 41 tiles or all chains are safe, and decline to declare, though that wording is documented only in the 1999/2008 rules. Catan (1995) ends automatically when a player has ten points on their own turn, a race threshold rather than a declared ending, and no source names it the populariser of the manageable trigger. Dominion (2008) ends when the Province pile or any three supply piles are empty, the usual reference for pile exhaustion. Sudden death in sport and turn limits in strategy video games developed separately." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "dune-imperium-rulebook-2020", "canonical": false, "title": "Dune: Imperium rulebook", "author": "Paul Dennen", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Dire Wolf", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Round structure; Endgame", "note": "Round-end check for 10 or more victory points or an empty conflict deck; most points wins; tiebreakers in order of spice, Solari, water, garrisoned troops." }, { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Game End and Victory chapter", "note": "Classification of end conditions in tabletop design." }, { "key": "catan-rulebook-1995", "canonical": false, "title": "Catan rulebook", "author": "Klaus Teuber (Kosmos)", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Ending the Game", "note": "The ten-point threshold on the holder's own turn." }, { "key": "dominion-rulebook-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Dominion rulebook", "author": "Donald X. Vaccarino (Rio Grande Games)", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Game End", "note": "Pile-exhaustion trigger." }, { "key": "dunnigan-1980", "canonical": true, "title": "The Complete Wargames Handbook", "author": "James F. Dunnigan", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "William Morrow", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter on how wargames work, sections on game length and victory conditions", "note": "Fixed turn counts and sudden-death victory in wargames." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Sudden Death Ending; End Game Bonuses", "note": null }, { "key": "acquire-rules-1999", "canonical": false, "title": "Acquire rules", "author": "Avalon Hill (Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast; game design by Sid Sackson)", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://media.wizards.com/2015/rules/acquire_rules.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Ending the Game, p. 5, and FAQ (1999/2008 text)", "note": "The active player may declare the end when a chain reaches 41 tiles or all chains are safe, and need not declare." }, { "key": "catan-game-rules-almanac-2020", "canonical": false, "title": "Catan Game Rules & Almanac", "author": "Catan GmbH and Catan Studio", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.catan.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/catan_base_rules_2020_200707.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Ending the Game, p. 5", "note": "The game ends when a player has ten or more victory points during their own turn." }, { "key": "gin-rummy", "canonical": false, "title": "Gin Rummy", "author": "John McLeod (pagat.com)", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pagat.com/rummy/ginrummy.html", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Knocking with ten or fewer deadwood ends a deal at the player's choice; the game is dated to the early 1910s." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 9, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 507, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/end-game-triggers" }, { "id": "engine-building", "name": "Engine Building", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "Players assemble interlocking capabilities over the course of play so that each unit of input yields increasing output, converting early investment into late-game acceleration.", "aliases": [ "economic engine", "tableau building", "combo engine" ], "parent": null, "children": [ "deck-building" ], "related": [ "deck-building", "resource-conversion", "skill-trees", "worker-placement" ], "referenced_by": [ "adjacency-bonuses", "base-building", "combo-systems", "income", "prestige-resets", "socketing" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Randomness coded none because the canonical form (Puerto Rico, Race for the Galaxy's tableau) has no randomiser in the engine itself; card-driven implementations add input randomness through the draw. Information coded perfect because tableaux are public.", "effects": [ "engine-satisfaction", "planning", "runaway-leader", "analysis-paralysis", "ownership", "flow" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Puerto Rico", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Andreas Seyfarth", "note": "Buildings and plantations form a production chain; the order in which a player assembles them determines how much each shared role phase yields.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Race for the Galaxy", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Tom Lehmann", "note": "A public tableau of cards whose powers trigger in shared phases, so engine efficiency is measured in cards produced and consumed per round.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Terraforming Mars", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jacob Fryxelius (FryxGames)", "note": "Production tracks rise as cards are played, so income compounds each generation and the end-game triggers accelerate as engines mature.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Wingspan", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Elizabeth Hargrave", "note": "Birds placed in a row each add a \"when activated\" power, so one action triggers a growing chain of effects.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Factorio", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Wube Software", "note": "Early access 2016. The whole game is an engine: automated production chains convert raw inputs into increasingly complex outputs with explicit throughput.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Satisfactory", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Coffee Stain Studios", "note": "Components crafted and delivered complete each tier, which unlocks new machines, blueprints and logistics, and those feed larger automated production lines, so early factories become the input for later ones that turn the same ore into more output.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Puerto Rico", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to engine building as a self-contained design goal in modern board games, for which Puerto Rico is the game most often cited. Antecedents in 18xx railway games (1829, 1974) and the Civilization board game (1980) involve compounding economic investment, and earlier instances of that broader pattern are likely. The term itself is informal and later." }, "established": { "title": "Puerto Rico", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Puerto Rico is the most cited example of engine building as a self-contained design goal, with production chains whose yield grows with each building added; the term itself spread later through online discussion rather than from any rulebook." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Board-game economic mechanisms of which engines are assembled." }, { "key": "adams-dormans-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design", "author": "Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "New Riders", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 7 (Design Patterns), engine patterns; Appendix B (Design Pattern Library)", "note": "Engine patterns and positive feedback loop terminology." }, { "key": "woods-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games", "author": "Stewart Woods", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "McFarland", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Context on the Eurogame design culture in which the pattern spread." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 515, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/engine-building" }, { "id": "equipment-loadouts", "name": "Equipment and Loadouts", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "Before or between engagements the player selects a limited set of items, weapons, or abilities from a larger pool into fixed slots or under a budget, and that selection defines what the character can do until it is changed.", "aliases": [ "loadouts", "equipment slots", "gear", "wargear", "kit selection" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "skill-trees", "inventory-encumbrance", "loot-tables", "variable-player-powers" ], "referenced_by": [ "aim-and-recoil", "damage-types", "full-loot", "hit-location", "item-modification", "procs", "socketing" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Create-a-Class in Call of Duty 4 (2007), the slot form most often credited with popularising the term. Agency is high because the slot combination is an open choice space. Interaction is solo because the selection works identically whatever others choose; indirect was the losing value, since competitive players pick partly to counter what opponents may bring. Information is asymmetric because a loadout is known to its owner and revealed to opponents only in play; perfect was the losing value and applies to single-player and cooperative forms. Feedback loop is none for the selection itself; the unlock tiers that surround it in the canonical game are a positive loop belonging to experience-levels. Capability choice is coded here; how much can be carried is inventory-encumbrance, and fixed asymmetries set by the game are variable-player-powers.", "effects": [ "planning", "ownership", "mastery", "analysis-paralysis", "replayability" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Characters buy arms and armour from a priced list with starting gold, class rules restrict what each may use, and the armour worn sets armour class, so equipment is the first capability choice made.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader", "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Rick Priestley (Games Workshop)", "note": "Each model's wargear is chosen from options with points costs inside an army budget, so list-building is a loadout decision made before the game begins.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Counter-Strike", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Minh Le and Jess Cliffe", "note": "Released as a Half-Life modification in 1999. A buy menu opens for a few seconds at the start of each round; money earned from previous rounds is spent on a weapon, armour, and grenades, so the loadout is rebuilt every round under a budget.", "latest": false }, { "title": "EVE Online", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "CCP Games", "note": "In a station the pilot fits modules into a ship's high, medium and low slots; turret and launcher hardpoints cap the weapons among the high slots, and every module draws on the ship's CPU and power, so a fitting must satisfy slots and two budgets at once.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Infinity Ward", "note": "Create-a-Class assigns a primary weapon, sidearm, grenade, and three perks to slots from an unlocked pool; the game is often credited with spreading \"loadout\" as a general term, though the word was in game use earlier.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dead by Daylight", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Behaviour Interactive", "note": "Each killer and survivor takes a loadout of up to four perks, up to two add-ons and one offering into a trial, and a survivor also one item; the killer's power is fixed by the character chosen, so the loadout varies only around it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gloomhaven", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Isaac Childres", "note": "Before a scenario each character equips items into head, body, legs, hand, and small-item slots and chooses which ability cards to bring, both fixed for the scenario.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Helldivers 2", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Arrowhead Game Studios (Sony Interactive Entertainment)", "note": "Before each drop the player fills four stratagem slots, such as airstrikes, support weapons or sentries, from a larger unlocked pool and picks one team-wide booster, and that selection fixes what can be called in until the mission ends.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The 1974 equipment list with prices and class restrictions is the earliest documented form of chosen equipment defining an individual character's capability, though orders of battle in wargames and wargear in miniatures rules are antecedents for units. Counter-Strike (1999) popularised the per-round buy menu and Call of Duty 4 (2007) the slot-based form; it is often credited with spreading the term." }, "established": { "title": "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Call of Duty 4's Create-a-Class, with a primary weapon, sidearm, grenade, and three perks filled from an unlocked pool, popularised the slot-and-perk form and is often credited with spreading loadout as a general term." }, "sources": [ { "key": "dungeons-dragons-volume-1-men-magic-1974", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 1, Men & Magic", "author": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Equipment list and costs; armour and weapon restrictions by class", "note": "Equipment-as-capability rules in the 1974 text." }, { "key": "call-of-duty-4-modern-warfare-manual-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare manual", "author": "Infinity Ward", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Multiplayer; Create-a-Class", "note": "Canonical slot form used for the property coding." }, { "key": "gloomhaven-rulebook-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Gloomhaven rulebook", "author": "Isaac Childres", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Items and item slots", "note": "Board-game slot loadout." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Wargame origins of the 1974 equipment lists." }, { "key": "eve-online-player-guide-ship-fitting-wayback-capture-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "EVE Online Player Guide: Ship Fitting (Wayback capture)", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20050306000013/http://www.eve-online.com:80/guide/en/g08.asp", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "8: Ship Fitting, Hi-Slots, Hardpoints, Turrets and Launchers; Mid-Slots and Lo-Slots", "note": "Turret and launcher numbers capping the weapons in the high slots, and every slot limited by skills, power and CPU, so that no ship can fit one of everything." }, { "key": "review-dead-by-daylight-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Review: Dead by Daylight", "author": "Mike Futter (Game Informer)", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://gameinformer.com/games/dead_by_daylight/b/pc/archive/2016/07/06/review-dead-by-daylight.aspx", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Each survivor and killer having a procedurally generated upgrade path, the bloodweb, whose nodes are unlocked to level up, and perks such as a killer's audio cue when survivors are near." }, { "key": "dead-by-daylight-wiki-loadout", "canonical": false, "title": "Dead by Daylight Wiki, Loadout", "author": "Dead by Daylight Wiki (wiki.gg)", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Zero to four perks, zero to two add-ons and zero to one offering for either side, zero to one item for survivors, and one fixed power for killers." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 538, "updated": "2026-10-30", "url": "/mechanics/equipment-loadouts" }, { "id": "escape-room-puzzles", "name": "Escape Room Puzzles", "status": "verified", "category": "puzzle-and-pattern", "definition": "A team confined to a space or scenario searches for hidden clues and solves a chain of interlocking puzzles whose answers open locks or reveal further clues, under a time limit, until a final lock releases them.", "aliases": [ "escape rooms", "escape games", "exit games", "room escape" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "lock-and-key", "constraint-logic-puzzles", "word-building", "real-time", "cooperative-play" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "physical", "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "cooperative", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the live Real Escape Game form, with Exit as the boxed check case. Agency is medium because every puzzle has a fixed answer and the players' choices are search order and the allocation of people to puzzles; high was the losing value. Randomness is none because the scenario is authored. Interaction is cooperative because a shared escape is intrinsic; solo was the losing value and fits the single-player browser antecedents. Complexity is low because the rules are a timer and a goal, with each puzzle teaching itself. Pacing accelerates because the countdown forces an ending. Information is asymmetric because in the live form the game master, a human, knows the solutions and clue locations that the players must find; hidden, the previous coding, was the losing value and fits boxed and app forms, where only the components or software hold the answers. Category tension with time-and-action-structure is noted for the timer. Agency stays medium after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; low was the losing value.", "effects": [ "discovery", "teamwork", "tension", "inference", "alpha-player" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Crimson Room", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Toshimitsu Takagi", "note": "A single-screen browser game in which objects are found by clicking around a locked room and combined to open the door; the browser game most often cited for the search-combine-unlock loop, and a single-player, untimed antecedent of the team form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Real Escape Game", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "Takao Kato (SCRAP)", "note": "Teams locked in a real room in Kyoto solved a chain of paper and object puzzles against a clock to find the exit code; the live form coded here, from which the worldwide escape-room industry grew.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Room", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Fireproof Games", "note": "A series of nested puzzle boxes examined by touch, each mechanism revealing a key or part for the next; a single-player digital form that keeps the unlock chain and drops the timer.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Exit: The Game", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Inka Brand and Markus Brand", "note": "Riddle cards, a decoder disc, and components that must be cut or folded reproduce the chain of locks in a box; answers are entered on the disc, and the final rating depends on elapsed time and the number of help cards used.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Unlock!", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Cyril Demaegd", "note": "Numbered cards are combined by adding their numbers and a companion app holds the timer, checks codes, and delivers penalties and hints, so the software replaces the game master.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Escape Simulator", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Pine Studio", "note": "A group of up to ten players shares a locked room, searching, picking up and breaking objects for clues and feeding the answers into locks until the exit opens; the official rooms were designed with real escape-room operators, and a built-in editor lets players build and share rooms.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Real Escape Game", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to the timed team form defined here, which is credited to SCRAP's Real Escape Game in Kyoto in 2007; Nicholson's 2015 survey identifies it as the start of the facility industry, though isolated earlier live puzzle-room events may exist. Single-player browser games with the same search-and-unlock loop are antecedents: Mystery of Time and Space (2001) and Crimson Room (2004), the most widely cited of them. Point-and-click adventure games of the 1980s and 1990s are the broader antecedent." }, "established": { "title": "Real Escape Game", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "high", "note": "SCRAP's Real Escape Game set the timed team form in a live room, and Nicholson's 2015 survey identifies it as the start of the facility industry; boxed and digital escape games followed from 2016." }, "sources": [ { "key": "peeking-behind-the-locked-door-a-survey-of-escape-room-facilities-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Peeking Behind the Locked Door: A Survey of Escape Room Facilities", "author": "Scott Nicholson", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Sections on history and on puzzle structures", "note": "Survey of escape room facilities, their puzzle organisation, and the lineage from browser games to SCRAP." }, { "key": "exit-the-game-rulebook-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Exit: The Game rulebook", "author": "Inka Brand and Markus Brand", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Solving riddles and the decoder disc", "note": "Boxed form of the clue-and-lock chain and the scoring by time and help cards." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Escape room", "note": "Dates for Crimson Room, SCRAP, and the spread of facilities." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 491, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/escape-room-puzzles" }, { "id": "experience-levels", "name": "Experience Levels", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "Characters accumulate experience points from play and, on crossing fixed thresholds, gain a discrete level that grants a bundle of improvements such as more hit points, better odds, and new abilities.", "aliases": [ "levelling", "XP", "character levels", "level-up" ], "parent": null, "children": [ "skill-trees" ], "related": [ "skill-trees", "hit-points", "roguelike-meta-progression", "loot-tables" ], "referenced_by": [ "death-penalty", "legacy-campaign", "lifepath", "multiclassing", "player-authored-goals", "point-buy", "promotion", "quests", "upgrade-offers", "socketing", "subclasses" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Dungeons & Dragons (1974), where the benefits of each level are fixed by a class table and the player chooses nothing at the moment of levelling; later editions and most video implementations attach choices (feats, perks, skill points) that would code agency medium and move the choice content into skill trees. Randomness is none because thresholds are deterministic; the hit dice rolled at level-up are coded under hit points. Complexity is medium because each class reads its thresholds and benefits from a single lookup table; high was the losing value. Runaway leader is not tagged because the canonical form is not competitive; competitive implementations would add it. Pacing is decelerates because thresholds grow so that each level takes longer than the last, and awards from trivial opposition stop paying, stretching progression over time; variable was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "ownership", "grind", "sunk-cost", "compulsion" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Experience is awarded for treasure recovered and monsters defeated; each class has its own threshold table, and a new level brings another hit die and improved combat and saving-throw rows.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Rogue", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, and Ken Arnold", "note": "Experience from kills raises a displayed level that increases maximum hit points and to-hit chance, with no player input at the threshold.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dragon Quest", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Chunsoft (Yuji Horii)", "note": "Levels gained by repeated random encounters gate progress through the world, establishing the console template in which grinding for levels substitutes for puzzle-solving.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mage Knight Board Game", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Vlaada Chvátil (WizKids)", "note": "Fame earned from combat moves a marker along a track; crossing marked thresholds grants a level that alternates between a new skill and an increased hand or command limit.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gloomhaven", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Isaac Childres", "note": "Experience is earned from specific card actions rather than from kills, and a level-up adds one new card to the character's pool and one perk, persisting across a campaign.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pokémon Scarlet and Violet", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Game Freak (Nintendo, The Pokémon Company)", "note": "Pokémon earn experience from battles, including the Let's Go auto battles, and each one crossing the threshold of its growth curve gains a level, raising its stats and at set levels teaching moves or triggering evolution.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "high", "note": "The threshold-and-table form is documented in the 1974 rules. Peterson treats quantified character advancement as the signal innovation of Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, with Chainmail's Hero and Superhero tiers as a static antecedent. No earlier game is generally credited with experience points." }, "established": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "high", "note": "The 1974 rules fixed the per-class threshold table and the level as a bundle of improvements, and computer role-playing games such as Rogue and Wizardry adopted that structure almost immediately." }, "sources": [ { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 4 (The Character), on experience and advancement", "note": "Origin of experience points and levels in Blackmoor and the 1974 rules." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-volume-1-men-magic-1974", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 1 (Men & Magic)", "author": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Experience tables by class and the treasure-based award rule." }, { "key": "player-s-handbook-5th-edition-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Player's Handbook, 5th edition", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Chapter 1, Beyond 1st Level; the current threshold table and the proficiency bonus by level." }, { "key": "adams-dormans-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design", "author": "Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "New Riders", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Positive feedback terminology used in the properties coding." }, { "key": "review-in-progress-evolve-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Review in Progress: Evolve", "author": "Nic Rowen", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Destructoid", "url": "https://www.destructoid.com/review-in-progress-evolve/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "The monster hunts and devours prey to evolve through three stages of power within a match." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 543, "updated": "2026-10-30", "url": "/mechanics/experience-levels" }, { "id": "exploration-procedures", "name": "Exploration Procedures", "status": "verified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "Travel through unknown terrain is divided into fixed units of time or distance, each running a set sequence of steps such as mapping, ration use, and an encounter check, so exploration is a repeated procedure rather than free narration.", "aliases": [ "dungeon turn", "hexcrawl", "wilderness travel", "travel procedures", "point crawl", "fast travel", "journey rules" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "random-tables", "fog-of-war", "upkeep", "map-markers", "base-building" ], "referenced_by": [ "resource-gathering", "usage-dice" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "cooperative", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the dungeon turn of Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 3 (1974). Category is time-and-action-structure over space-and-position and chance-and-risk, the losing families: the identity of the mechanic is the unit of time and the fixed sequence run inside it; the map is its object but position changes follow ordinary movement rules, and the encounter check is one step whose table belongs to random tables. Randomness is output because the check follows the decision to spend a turn; both was the losing value, since what the table then produces is input to the next decision. Interaction is cooperative because the party moves as one with a marching order, a mapper, and a caller; solo was the losing value for single-player video forms. Complexity is medium for the dungeon turn; high was the losing value for full hexcrawls with getting lost, weather, and foraging. Information is asymmetric because the referee holds the map. Pacing decelerates because distance becomes turns.", "effects": [ "discovery", "planning", "tension", "grind", "emergent-narrative" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Outdoor Survival", "year": 1972, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jim Dunnigan (Avalon Hill)", "note": "An antecedent: players move across a hex map of wilderness by turn, lose food and water each turn, and must find water and shelter; the 1974 Dungeons & Dragons rules direct referees to use its map for wilderness adventures.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Volume 3 sets the ten-minute dungeon turn: the party moves a distance fixed by encumbrance, rests one turn in six, burns torches by the turn, and the referee rolls for wandering monsters each turn, with hex-per-day travel and a chance of becoming lost outdoors.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Oregon Trail", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "MECC", "note": "The Apple II version of the 1971 teletype game advances the wagon in fixed segments, each consuming food and days and rolling for illness, breakdowns, and weather, with pace and rations as standing decisions and rivers as choice points.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Flight paths at launch (2004): route masters must first be reached on foot and spoken to, and only the home city's point is active at the start. Once two points are known, a fee buys an automatic flight between them with no wait, on routes the official site says were designed to show sights such as dangerous high-level areas from the air.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Darkest Dungeon", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Red Hook Studios", "note": "Each corridor segment lowers the torch, consumes provisions, and may trigger a hallway encounter or curio, so a dungeon run is a chain of identical steps whose costs accumulate into stress.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The 7th Continent", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Ludovic Roudy and Bruno Sautter (Serious Poulp)", "note": "Moving onto a new terrain card reveals it and costs action cards drawn from a deck that doubles as the hunger clock, so each step of exploration spends time and risks the deck running out.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Shadowdark RPG", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Kelsey Dionne (The Arcane Library)", "note": "Dungeon time runs in crawling rounds, with random encounter checks whose frequency depends on how dangerous the place is, and a torch lasts one hour of real time; overland travel goes hex by hex, with encounter rolls set by how unsafe the route is.", "latest": true }, { "title": "Last Epoch", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Eleventh Hour Games", "note": "A Monolith of Fate timeline opens as a web of islands; the player starts in the middle and uncovers branching paths by completing echoes, each granting a reward if the player survives and adding Timeline Stability, which unlocks the timeline's quest echoes. A point-crawl form, added in beta 0.8.2 (2021).", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "high", "note": "Scoped to the explicit per-turn procedure of role-playing exploration. The dungeon turn in Volume 3, with movement by encumbrance, light and rest by the turn, and a wandering monster check each turn, is documented in the primary text. Turn-based travel with per-turn consumption is older in board wargames and in Outdoor Survival (1972), antecedents that the 1974 rules adopt for wilderness play; Peterson documents both. The terms hexcrawl and point crawl are later hobby terms from online discussion." }, "established": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "high", "note": "The ten-minute dungeon turn of Volume 3, with movement, light, rest, and a wandering-monster check each turn, set the procedure down explicitly; old-school revival games keep it, and video games inherited it through The Oregon Trail and the roguelikes." }, "sources": [ { "key": "dungeons-dragons-volume-3-the-underworld-wilderness-adventures-1974", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 3, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures", "author": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "The Underworld (move, light, rest, wandering monsters); The Wilderness (movement, becoming lost)", "note": "Canonical rules text for the dungeon turn and the wilderness day." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Discussion of the dungeon turn, Outdoor Survival, and wilderness adventures", "note": "History of the procedure and its wargame antecedents." }, { "key": "the-7th-continent-rulebook-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "The 7th Continent rulebook", "author": "Ludovic Roudy and Bruno Sautter", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Exploring; the action deck and hunger", "note": "Board form in which the card draw is both the step cost and the clock." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "The Oregon Trail (1985 video game)", "note": "Segment structure and the 1971 original." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-public-transportation-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Public Transportation", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20041112012749/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com:80/info/basics/publictransportation.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Flight paths unlocked by speaking with route masters, flights for a fee with no waiting, and the home city's point active at the start." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-official-strategy-guide-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Official Strategy Guide", "author": "Michael Lummis and Danielle Vanderlip", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "BradyGames", "url": "https://archive.org/details/World_of_Warcraft_World_of_Warcraft_BradyGames_Official_Strategy_Guide", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Flight Paths", "note": "Flight points discovered on foot, per continent, with home city points active from the start." }, { "key": "beta-0-8-2-patch-notes-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "Beta 0.8.2 Patch Notes", "author": "Eleventh Hour Games", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Last Epoch forums (Eleventh Hour Games)", "url": "https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/beta-0-8-2-patch-notes/37724", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Monolith of Fate", "note": "The echo web of islands, starting in the middle and uncovering branching paths by completing echoes, guaranteed echo rewards, and Timeline Stability unlocking quest echoes." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 533, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/exploration-procedures" }, { "id": "fail-forward", "name": "Fail Forward", "status": "unverified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "A resolution principle under which a failed check must change the situation, introducing a cost, complication, or new development, rather than leaving the state as it was before the attempt.", "aliases": [ "failing forward", "success at a cost", "no whiffing" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "degrees-of-success", "clocks", "metacurrency", "branching-dialogue" ], "referenced_by": [ "flashbacks", "gm-moves", "quick-time-events" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Burning Wheel Gold (2011), where the facilitator chooses the complication after a failed test. Agency is low because the player does not choose the consequence; Fate Core's succeed-at-a-cost option, where the player picks between failure and a costly success, would code medium. Randomness is none because the principle contains no randomiser; the failing roll belongs to the host resolution mechanic. Pacing is accelerates because every result changes the state, which prevents the stalled scene a null failure produces. Feedback loop is none for the principle; attached rules that award advancement for failure (Burning Wheel, Dungeon World) add a negative loop.", "effects": [ "emergent-narrative", "flow", "consequence-weight" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Apocalypse World", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "D. Vincent Baker", "note": "On a miss the facilitator makes a move as hard as they like, so a failed roll always produces a new development rather than an absence of effect.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Burning Wheel Gold", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Luke Crane", "note": "Players state intent and task before a test; on failure the facilitator must either deny the intent with a complication or grant it with a cost, and the Let It Ride rule forbids retrying the same test.", "latest": false }, { "title": "13th Age", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet (Pelgrane Press)", "note": "The rules ask the facilitator to treat a failed check as things going wrong rather than the character falling short, and name the principle fail forward or no whiffing.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Monolith Productions", "note": "Player death promotes the enemy who caused it within the Nemesis hierarchy, converting failure into persistent content and a personalised antagonist.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Disco Elysium", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "ZA/UM", "note": "Failed skill checks routinely open their own dialogue, consequences, and later opportunities, and some red checks are deliberately written so that failure is the richer branch.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Daggerheart", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall (Darrington Press)", "note": "A failed action roll never leaves the scene unchanged: failure with Hope brings a minor consequence and failure with Fear a major one, the spotlight swings to the GM, and the GM is directed to consider a move.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No origin can be defended. The idea is recalled from independent design discussion on The Forge in the early 2000s, with Sorcerer & Sword (2001) and InSpectres (2002) named as precursors, but only by later forum recollection. No source places the phrase or a required consequence of failure in the first Burning Wheel (2002) or its 2006 revision; the intent-and-task rule cited here is from Burning Wheel Gold (2011). Dogs in the Vineyard (2004), by saying yes or rolling with stakes and fallout, and GUMSHOE (The Esoterrorists, 2006 or 2007), by never gating core clues behind a roll, addressed stalled failure by other routes. The phrase is reported in online use from about 2010 and is in print in 13th Age (2013), which names it fail forward or no whiffing; it may derive from business and education usage, such as John C. Maxwell's Failing Forward (2000), but no source shows the link. Apocalypse World (2010) is the populariser of the rule through its miss rule." }, "established": { "title": "Apocalypse World", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Apocalypse World popularised the principle through its miss rule, under which the facilitator makes a move whenever a player misses, so a failed roll always produces a new development; Dungeon World carries the same rule." }, "sources": [ { "key": "burning-wheel-gold-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Burning Wheel Gold", "author": "Luke Crane", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Intent and Task, Let It Ride, and the rules for failure." }, { "key": "apocalypse-world-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Apocalypse World", "author": "D. Vincent Baker", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The MC chapter; making a move when a player misses a roll." }, { "key": "fate-core-system-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "Fate Core System", "author": "Leonard Balsera, Brian Engard, Jeremy Keller, Ryan Macklin, Mike Olson, Clark Valentine, Amanda Valentine, Fred Hicks, and Rob Donoghue", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Running the Game; Succeed at a Cost as the explicit statement of the principle." }, { "key": "13th-age-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "13th Age", "author": "Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "p. 42 (as quoted in an EN World forum post)", "note": "Earliest printed use of the phrase found, \"fail forward\" or \"no whiffing\"." }, { "key": "13th-sage-skill-checks-in-13th-age-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "13th Sage: Skill Checks in 13th Age", "author": "Rob Heinsoo (Pelgrane Press)", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://pelgranepress.com/2016/06/08/13th-sage-skill-checks-in-13th-age/", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "The designer using fail-forward as established vocabulary for skill checks." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 532, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/fail-forward" }, { "id": "flashbacks", "name": "Flashbacks", "status": "verified", "category": "narrative-and-choice", "definition": "A player pays a cost to declare, after the fact, that their character took a preparatory action earlier, and the declared action is narrated as a brief scene and takes effect in the present situation.", "aliases": [ "retroactive declarations", "flashback scenes", "retcons" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "metacurrency", "fail-forward", "gm-moves", "clocks" ], "referenced_by": [ "scene-framing" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Blades in the Dark (2017), where a flashback costs zero, one, or two stress by plausibility and may still require a roll. Agency is high because the player authors the content of the declaration. Randomness is none because any roll belongs to the host resolution system. Complexity is medium for the cost scale and roll exception. Pacing is accelerates because the device replaces a planning phase. Category was contested with resource-management, since the declaration is bought with a pool, but the pool is the host metacurrency and the mechanic's identity is the retroactive authorship.", "effects": [ "flow", "emergent-narrative", "planning" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Spirit of the Century", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Evil Hat Productions", "note": "A player may spend a fate point to declare a fact about the scene, including things their character arranged earlier; the declaration rule is a general antecedent without the flashback framing.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Leverage", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Margaret Weis Productions", "note": "During a job a player spends plot points to establish a flashback showing that the crew prepared for the current obstacle, mirroring the television series' reveal structure.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Blades in the Dark", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "John Harper", "note": "There is no planning phase; once the score is under way a player may invoke a flashback for a stress cost set by the GM, and the retroactive action resolves as if it had been taken then.", "latest": true }, { "title": "Scum and Villainy", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Stras Acimovic and John LeBoeuf-Little", "note": "The Forged in the Dark rules carry flashbacks unchanged into a space-opera setting, and most games in that family keep them as a core procedure.", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": "Leverage", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to the named flashback, a paid retroactive declaration of a past scene. Leverage is the earliest rules text identified that names it, but fact-declaration mechanics in Fate (Spirit of the Century, 2006) and narrative-control currencies such as Universalis (2002) are close antecedents, and the device may have been used informally in heist play before publication. Blades in the Dark (2017) is the populariser and the source of the stress-cost form." }, "established": { "title": "Blades in the Dark", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Blades in the Dark removed the planning phase, priced flashbacks in stress by plausibility, and made them the central procedure of a score; Scum and Villainy and the rest of the Forged in the Dark family carry the form unchanged." }, "sources": [ { "key": "blades-in-the-dark-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Blades in the Dark", "author": "John Harper", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "The Score; flashbacks", "note": "Canonical stress-paid form used for the property coding." }, { "key": "leverage-roleplaying-game-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Leverage Roleplaying Game", "author": "Margaret Weis Productions", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Flashbacks", "note": "Earliest named use identified." }, { "key": "spirit-of-the-century-2006", "canonical": false, "title": "Spirit of the Century", "author": "Evil Hat Productions", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Declarations", "note": "Fate-point fact declaration as antecedent." } ], "n_examples": 4, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 496, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/flashbacks" }, { "id": "fog-of-war", "name": "Fog of War", "status": "verified", "category": "information-and-hidden-state", "definition": "Parts of the map and the positions of opposing pieces are concealed from a player except where their own units currently have sight, so information must be gained by scouting.", "aliases": [ "shroud", "hidden movement", "double-blind play" ], "parent": null, "children": [ "hidden-movement" ], "related": [ "procedural-generation", "cover-systems", "hidden-roles", "area-control" ], "referenced_by": [ "deduction", "exploration-procedures", "hidden-piece-identity", "lane-pushing", "line-of-sight", "map-markers", "referee-adjudication", "stealth-detection" ], "media": [ "video", "board-card", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Warcraft II. Agency is medium because what a player learns depends on where they choose to look; low was the losing value, on the argument that the concealment itself offers no choice. Interaction is indirect because players shape each other's information through movement without targeting; direct was the losing value, since scouting a specific opponent is targeted. Complexity is low for the video form, where the rule is a sentence; umpired double-blind play (Kriegsspiel) would code high because it needs a third party and procedures. Pacing is neutral because a visibility mask changes what each player knows; the rule neither lengthens turns nor forces an ending; decelerates was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "inference", "tension", "bluffing", "discovery", "planning" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Kriegsspiel", "year": 1824, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Georg von Reisswitz", "note": "An umpire held the true positions and told each side only what its troops could see, so concealment was enforced by a third party; later double-blind practice gave each side its own map.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "The referee holds the dungeon map and describes only what the characters can perceive, while players draw their own map from the description; exploration is the only way to extend it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Empire", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Walter Bright", "note": "The world map begins unknown and each unit reveals terrain and enemy pieces within its sight range, an early digital implementation of hidden map state.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Warcraft II", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Distinguishes the black unexplored shroud from a grey fog over explored terrain in which enemy units are no longer shown; this two-layer form became the real-time strategy standard.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dota 2", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "An Observer Ward planted by a team is an invisible watcher giving it ground vision in a 1600 radius for six minutes, and heroes see less far at night, Axe 800 against 1800 by day, in the game data of October 2026.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Captain Sonar", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Roberto Fraga and Yohan Lemonnier", "note": "Two submarine crews track one another on identical maps behind a screen, deducing position from announced headings and sonar; the board-game form without an umpire.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Total War: Warhammer III", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Creative Assembly", "note": "On the campaign map unexplored regions sit under a shroud that is uncovered as armies and settlements extend their sight, and areas outside current vision are covered by fog of war; abilities such as Kairos Fateweaver's 'Reveal Shroud' and 'Track Army' buy sight of hidden ground and enemy armies.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Kriegsspiel", "year": 1824, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Reisswitz's Kriegsspiel is the earliest well-documented game in which an umpire restricted each side's knowledge of the other's positions, and nineteenth-century wargaming developed the double-blind form from it. Earlier concealed-information games may exist, and the phrase \"fog of war\" belongs to military theory, conventionally associated with Clausewitz, before it was adopted by game design. Empire (1977) is an early video instance." }, "established": { "title": "Warcraft II", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Warcraft II separated a black shroud over unexplored ground from a grey fog over explored ground where enemy units are no longer shown, and this two-layer form became the real-time strategy standard." }, "sources": [ { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Provenance for the umpired wargame form, from Peterson's account of Reisswitz's Kriegsspiel and the umpire's control of information." }, { "key": "costikyan-2013", "canonical": true, "title": "Uncertainty in Games", "author": "Greg Costikyan", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Hidden information (sources of uncertainty)", "note": "Hidden information as a distinct source of uncertainty, used for the information coding." }, { "key": "captain-sonar-rulebook-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Captain Sonar rulebook", "author": "Roberto Fraga and Yohan Lemonnier", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Board-game double-blind play without an umpire." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Fog of war (video games section)", "note": null }, { "key": "dota-2-observer-ward-official-item-data-feed-2026", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2: Observer Ward (official item data feed)", "author": "Valve", "year": 2026, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dota2.com/datafeed/itemdata?language=english&item_id=42", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "An invisible watcher giving ground vision to the team in a 1600 radius, lasting 360 seconds." }, { "key": "dota-2-axe-official-hero-data-feed-2026", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2: Axe (official hero data feed)", "author": "Valve", "year": 2026, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dota2.com/datafeed/herodata?language=english&hero_id=2", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Day sight range 1800 and night sight range 800." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 541, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/fog-of-war" }, { "id": "full-loot", "name": "Full-Loot Loss", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "A defeated character survives, but the equipment it carried is destroyed or left, in whole or part, where the victor or anyone else can take it, often with insurance or protected storage softening the loss", "aliases": [ "full loot", "full-loot PvP", "gear drop on death" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "death-penalty", "permadeath", "loot-tables", "equipment-loadouts", "inventory-encumbrance", "security-zones" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Ultima Online and EVE Online, the open-world forms in which another player defeats a character and takes what it carried. Agency is low because the loss fires on defeat without a choice at that moment; medium, from the choices of what to carry or insure before setting out and, for the victor, what to take, was the losing value. Randomness is none, from Habitat and Ultima Online, where everything carried is exposed; output, from EVE Online's per-module drop roll, was the losing value. Interaction is direct because the gain goes to a human victor who targeted the loser; indirect, for passers-by looting a body left by a monster, and mixed were the losing values. Complexity is medium (a drop rule, protected storage, an insurance contract). Pacing is neutral; decelerates, from the loser's setback, lost. Information is asymmetric because the carrier knows what is at stake and an attacker learns it only when the body or wreck is opened; perfect lost. Feedback loop is positive because the victor is re-equipped with the loser's gear; mixed, where insurance pays the loser back (EVE Online, Escape from Tarkov), lost. Decision density is medium (what to carry, what to insure or keep in protected storage, and for the victor what to take); low, treating the loss as one event that fires on defeat, lost. Tension is tagged because what is carried stays at risk until it is brought back to safety; untagged, since the loss resolves at the moment of defeat, was the losing value. Category tension with interaction-and-exchange, since the mechanic moves goods between players.", "effects": [ "consequence-weight", "frustration-risk", "tension", "emergent-narrative" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Habitat", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Lucasfilm Games (Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer)", "note": "A killed avatar is teleported home with its pockets empty, and the object in its hand drops at the scene for anyone to pick up; whatever else it carried is lost. Thievery and gunplay were later confined to land outside the city limits.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Meridian 59", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Archetype Interactive", "note": "In the August 1996 user's guide everything in a dead character's knapsack is left with its corpse, \"where they can be recovered by any passing friend or foe\", while a bank or a guild's storage chest keeps what is stored in it. A death in the Arena costs only the weapon and armour in use.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ultima Online", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Origin Systems", "note": "In the February 1998 online guide, a killed character returns to life by instant resurrection or as a ghost, but everything it carried stays where it fell, exposed to whoever passes by to claim it unless a living ally gathers it up or a hireling or pet guards it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "EVE Online", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "CCP Games", "note": "In the 2005 player guide a destroyed ship leaves some of its parts in a container anyone can open, the pilot escapes in a pod, and destroying the pod wakes the character in a clone and loses its implants, which no insurance covers. By 2011 half of a ship's fitted modules were destroyed and half dropped as loot.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Albion Online", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sandbox Interactive", "note": "At launch a death in a red or black zone drops the full inventory and equipment, a yellow-zone death drops only materials, and a green-zone death drops nothing. In 2013 the developers ruled out insurance because \"Death needs to have severe consequences\".", "latest": false }, { "title": "Escape from Tarkov", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Battlestate Games", "note": "Everything a character takes into a raid is lost if it dies or fails to extract in time, except what sits in its secure container. Insured items come back by mail only if no player extracted with them, and from patch 0.13.5 (2023) not if computer-controlled scavengers took them.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Habitat", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Habitat's designers describe a killed avatar going home with empty pockets and its held object dropped where it fell, and recount a player picking up and carrying off the gun dropped by the operator-run DEATH avatar; Bartle dates Habitat's pilot to 1986 to 1988. DikuMUD (1991) also left a corpse holding all of a character's gear open to anyone, and is recorded under the death penalty. Bartle writes that early MUDs had permanent death, which places them under permadeath. Island of Kesmai, which Bartle dates to CompuServe in December 1985, is documented for the rule only through its successor Legends of Kesmai, whose help file of 1997 leaves what a slain character held in its hands for anyone to take; Kesmai's 1985 rule and other 1980s online worlds remain unsurveyed, hence medium confidence." }, "established": { "title": "Ultima Online", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Ultima Online joined an always-return death to open looting of everything carried. Albion Online's developers, who said in 2013 that full loot was in their game, named it among the old-school games they love, and in 2017 their chief executive agreed that Albion's full loot returned to the style of games like Ultima Online and EverQuest. EVE Online's insurance and partial drop form a second line: Escape from Tarkov's creator has said that losing a ship he had bought in EVE sparked the idea of extraction, though no source ties Tarkov's insurance to EVE's." }, "sources": [ { "key": "meridian-59-user-s-guide-1996", "canonical": false, "title": "Meridian 59 User's Guide", "author": "The 3DO Company", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://discmaster.textfiles.com/file/21326/Inform%C3%A1tica%20F%C3%A1cil%20Multimedia%20Especial%20Juegos%20Windows%2095%20(JULIO%2097).iso/meridian.EXE/DISK1/DATA.1/guide-7.html", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Saving Your Character, Death (guide-7); Challenge Combat: The Arena (guide-43)", "note": "The knapsack left with the corpse for any passing friend or foe, bank and guild chests kept, and the Arena's loss of only the weapon and armour in use; dated 19 August 1996." }, { "key": "designing-virtual-worlds-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Designing Virtual Worlds", "author": "Richard A. Bartle", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "New Riders", "url": "https://mud.co.uk/richard/DesigningVirtualWorlds.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Chapter 1 (Habitat, Island of Kesmai, Meridian 59); Chapter 5, Life in the Virtual World, pp. 541, 560, 570 and 590", "note": "Looting as a weak form of player-versus-player play and complaints from its victims (p. 541); bodies looted by others as a tangible loss (p. 560); bound items kept from looters (p. 570); early MUDs had permanent death (p. 590)." }, { "key": "the-lessons-of-lucasfilm-s-habitat-1991", "canonical": false, "title": "The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat", "author": "Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "MIT Press (in Cyberspace, First Steps, ed. Michael Benedikt)", "url": "http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "The Great Debate; Current Status", "note": "Death sends an avatar home with empty pockets and drops the held object at the scene; the poll on murder, theft and gunplay confined to outside the city limits, and the dropped DEATH gun taken by a player." }, { "key": "legends-of-kesmai-help-file-legends-hlp-1997", "canonical": false, "title": "Legends of Kesmai help file (LEGENDS.HLP)", "author": "Kesmai Corporation", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://discmaster.textfiles.com/file/24006/1997-02_Disc_2.13.iso/legends/legends.z/legends.hlp/legends.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Topics Resurrection; Conflict Between Player Characters", "note": "Items held in the hands dropped at death for a creature or another player to take, sack and belt kept unless creatures loot them, everything left when the remains are burned or eaten, and player killing banned by company policy. On a cover disc of February 1997." }, { "key": "ultima-online-help-and-guidance-dying-wayback-capture-1998", "canonical": false, "title": "Ultima Online: Help and Guidance, Dying (Wayback capture)", "author": "Origin Systems", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/19980214052059/http://www.owo.com:80/help/play/start/die_indx.html", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Resurrection; Being Dead", "note": "Possessions left where the character fell, exposed to whoever passes by unless an ally gathers them or a hireling or pet guards them." }, { "key": "meridian-59-revelation-newbie-guide-wayback-capture-1998", "canonical": false, "title": "Meridian 59: Revelation, newbie guide (Wayback capture)", "author": "The 3DO Company", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/19980128220603/http://www.3do.com:80/meridian/newbe.htm", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "The full inventory left with the corpse for any passing friend or foe, and the bank, vault and guild chests that keep stored items." }, { "key": "meridian-59-frequently-asked-questions-wayback-capture-1998", "canonical": false, "title": "Meridian 59: Frequently asked questions (Wayback capture)", "author": "The 3DO Company", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/19980128222804/http://www.3do.com:80/meridian/faq.htm", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "The killed character goes to the Underworld and loses all its possessions; player killers' names show in red." }, { "key": "eve-online-player-guide-legal-system-wayback-capture-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "EVE Online Player Guide: Legal System (Wayback capture)", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20050307000120/http://www.eve-online.com:80/guide/en/g17.asp", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Stealing items", "note": "Some parts of a destroyed ship are left in a cargo container that anyone can open and empty." }, { "key": "eve-online-player-guide-skills-wayback-capture-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "EVE Online Player Guide: Skills (Wayback capture)", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20050305234820/http://www.eve-online.com:80/guide/en/g07.asp", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Skills and Character Death; Implants", "note": "The pilot survives a ship's loss in a pod; a destroyed pod activates a clone; implants are lost on a pod kill and not covered by insurance." }, { "key": "eve-online-player-guide-tips-and-advice-wayback-capture-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "EVE Online Player Guide: Tips and Advice (Wayback capture)", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20050306221002/http://www.eve-online.com:80/guide/en/g16.asp", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Losing ships and items as part of play, and the advice to insure every ship, with 12-week platinum contracts." }, { "key": "eve-online-adding-implants-to-killmails-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "EVE Online adding implants to killmails", "author": "Brendan Drain (Engadget)", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.engadget.com/2011/10/20/eve-online-adding-implants-to-killmails/", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Half of a destroyed ship's fitted modules are destroyed and half dropped as loot." }, { "key": "albion-online-interview-the-heritage-of-ultima-online-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "Albion Online interview: the heritage of Ultima Online", "author": "Worlds Factory", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "interview", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.worldsfactory.net/2013/09/20/albion-online-interview-the-heritage-of-ultima-online/", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Szymon Wilkosz of Sandbox Interactive on full loot, the love of Ultima Online, and no insurance because death needs severe consequences." }, { "key": "albion-online-how-losing-items-upon-death-works-green-yellow-red-regions-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Albion Online: How Losing Items Upon Death Works (Green, Yellow, Red Regions)", "author": "Jonathan Leack (GameRevolution)", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gamerevolution.com/guides/341481-albion-online-losing-items-upon-death-works-green-yellow-red-regions", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Item loss by zone colour at launch, nothing in green, materials in yellow, full inventory and equipment in red and black." }, { "key": "how-albion-online-is-making-eve-s-ruthless-territory-battles-accessible-to-small-guilds-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "How Albion Online is making EVE's ruthless territory battles accessible to small guilds", "author": "Tyler Wilde (PC Gamer)", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "interview", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pcgamer.com/how-albion-online-is-making-eves-ruthless-territory-battles-accessible-to-small-guilds/", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Stefan Wiezorek of Sandbox Interactive on the full loot system as a mechanic not suited to a mass market, and his agreement that it returns to the style of Ultima Online and EverQuest." }, { "key": "we-never-planned-the-game-to-be-for-everyone-how-escape-from-tarkov-pioneered-a-new-era-of-fps-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "\"We never planned the game to be for everyone\": How Escape from Tarkov pioneered a new era of FPS", "author": "Ed Smith (GamesRadar+)", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "interview", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gamesradar.com/games/fps/we-never-planned-the-game-to-be-for-everyone-escape-from-tarkovs-creator-reflects-on-the-unwavering-vision-that-pioneered-an-fps-genre/", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Nikita Buyanov on losing a ship bought in EVE Online as the spark for the concept of extraction." }, { "key": "escape-from-tarkov-patch-makes-it-even-harder-to-get-lost-gear-back-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Escape from Tarkov patch makes it even harder to get lost gear back", "author": "Imogen Donovan (NME)", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.nme.com/news/escape-from-tarkov-patch-makes-it-even-harder-to-get-lost-gear-back-3481157", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Insured gear was lost only if a player looted the body; from patch 0.13.5 items taken by computer-controlled scavengers are not refunded." }, { "key": "12-things-new-players-need-to-know-about-escape-from-tarkov-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "12 things new players need to know about Escape from Tarkov", "author": "John Schutt (Shacknews)", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.shacknews.com/article/146186/wardogs-recon-guide", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Everything brought into a raid is lost on death or a missed extraction, except the secure container, and the conditions under which a trader returns an insured item." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 17, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 632, "updated": "2026-10-28", "url": "/mechanics/full-loot" }, { "id": "game-clocks", "name": "Game Clocks", "status": "verified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "Each side holds a budget of wall-clock time that runs while it is their turn to act, and exhausting the budget forfeits the game, a move, or possession, so thinking time is a rationed in-game resource.", "aliases": [ "chess clocks", "shot clocks", "time controls", "time limits", "time forfeit", "move timers" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "real-time", "initiative-order", "ball-possession", "action-points", "handicapping" ], "referenced_by": [ "lives-and-continues" ], "media": [ "board-card", "physical", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the tournament chess clock as codified in the FIDE Laws of Chess, where a flag fall before the required moves loses the game. Agency is medium because the clock adds one recurring choice, how much time to spend on this move, to whatever the host game offers. Interaction is solo because each budget runs independently of the opponent's play; direct was the losing value, since a player may move fast to exploit an opponent's time trouble, but that pressure is behavioural rather than a rule effect. Complexity is low for the single forfeit rule; increments, delays, and byo-yomi would code medium. Feedback loop is none; positive was argued because a player short of time plays worse and falls further behind. Decision density is low because the allocation is one implicit choice per move; medium was the losing value.", "effects": [ "tension", "execution", "mastery", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Chess (tournament time controls)", "year": 1883, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "A double clock introduced at the London 1883 tournament runs only on the side to move; under the FIDE Laws of Chess (Article 6) a player whose time expires before completing the prescribed moves loses, provided the opponent could still mate. Modern controls add an increment or delay per move.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Basketball (shot clock)", "year": 1954, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "National Basketball Association", "note": "The team in possession must attempt a shot that strikes the rim within twenty-four seconds or lose the ball, a time budget tied to possession rather than to the game; the NBA adopted it for the 1954-55 season to end stalling.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Mario Bros.", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo (Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka)", "note": "A per-level timer counts down from a fixed value and costs a life when it reaches zero, the time-forfeit rule applied to a single-player course.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Street Fighter II", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Capcom", "note": "A ninety-nine-count round timer ends the round when it expires and awards it to the fighter with more health, so a leading player can run the clock and a trailing one must force action.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pokémon Trading Card Game Live", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "The Pokémon Company International", "note": "In timed matches each player has a separate clock that runs only while that player is making a decision, and a player whose clock reaches zero loses; each decision also has a short countdown after which the game chooses automatically.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Chess (Anderssen versus Kolisch match)", "year": 1861, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Sandglasses used to limit thinking time in the 1861 Anderssen-Kolisch match in London are the usual citation for the first time limit in competitive play, and the mechanical double clock is documented at the London tournament of 1883; both are recorded in standard chess histories. Sports adopted time budgets within the game later, the basketball shot clock in 1954 being the best known. The video-game level timer dates from the arcade era." }, "established": { "title": "Chess (tournament time controls)", "year": 1883, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "The mechanical double clock of the London 1883 tournament runs only on the side to move, the per-side budget that the FIDE Laws of Chess codify with a loss on time; the 1861 sandglasses had limited thinking time before it." }, "sources": [ { "key": "fide-laws-of-chess-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "FIDE Laws of Chess", "author": "Fédération Internationale des Échecs", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Article 6, The chessclock", "note": "Canonical time-forfeit rule used for the property coding; edition in force from 1 January 2023." }, { "key": "official-rules-of-the-national-basketball-association-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Official Rules of the National Basketball Association", "author": "National Basketball Association", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Rule 7, Shot clock", "note": "Time budget attached to possession." }, { "key": "elias-garfield-gutschera-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Characteristics of Games", "author": "George Skaff Elias, Richard Garfield, and K. Robert Gutschera", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Game length and time limits as a design characteristic." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Chess clock; Shot clock", "note": "Dates of the 1861 sandglasses, the 1883 clock, and the 1954 shot clock." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 493, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/game-clocks" }, { "id": "ghost-data", "name": "Ghost Data", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "A recorded run, usually the best one so far, is replayed alongside a live attempt on the same course as a non-interfering figure, so the player races or compares against a past performance rather than a live opponent.", "aliases": [ "ghosts", "ghost racers", "time-trial ghosts", "asynchronous ghosts" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "high-score-tables", "race-to-the-finish", "real-time" ], "referenced_by": [ "player-invasions" ], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the time trial of Mario Kart 64 (1996), where the fastest run on a course is replayed as a translucent kart and can be saved to a Controller Pak and carried to another player's console. Category is interaction-and-exchange because the ghost is a contest between a live player and a recorded one. This departs from the default tie-break order, which asks the information question first: a ghost discloses a faster line through the course, and information-and-hidden-state was the losing family, but disclosure is a by-product of the contest rather than its identity. Time-and-action-structure was also considered, since the replay is synchronised to the race clock. Agency is low because the ghost replays a fixed run and the only choice it offers is which ghost to load; medium was the losing value. Interaction is indirect because the recorded player affects the live one only through a shared reference that cannot collide or be targeted; solo was the losing value for racing one's own ghost. Information is perfect because the ghost's position is shown throughout. Decision density is low: the mechanic adds no decision point to the race.", "effects": [ "mastery", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Hard Drivin'", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Atari Games", "note": "The operator's manual describes a challenge lap in which a driver who beats the qualifying time races the recorded path of the best driver on record; home ports name that car the Phantom Photon, and whether the arcade rival can be hit is unconfirmed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Mario Kart", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "The instruction booklet tells players that after a good enough time trial they can choose the same course again and race against themselves; the booklet describes no way to save that ghost.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mario Kart 64", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "In time trials the best run is replayed as a translucent kart on later attempts and can be saved to a Controller Pak, so a ghost can be taken to another console and raced there. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mario Kart Wii", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "Through the Mario Kart Channel players downloaded the ghosts of friends, of rivals slightly faster than themselves, and of regional and world champions, so the recorded opponent could be a stranger; the online service has since ended.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Demon's Souls", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "FromSoftware", "note": "Bloodstains left where other players died replay their last seconds when touched, and translucent phantoms of players elsewhere in the same area pass through the world, recorded or relayed traces of other players with no direct contact.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Forza Horizon 5", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Playground Games", "note": "Rivals events are time trials in which the player picks a target time from friend, regional or world leaderboards and races that player's ghost car on the same track and car combination, with each faster lap added to the board.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Hard Drivin'", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Atari Games' operator's manual for Hard Drivin' (1989) documents a \"challenge\" lap: the game remembers the path of the car driven by the best driver on record, and a driver who beats the qualifying lap time races that car head-to-head. Whether the arcade rival could be hit is unconfirmed; the manual does not say, a car that cannot be collided with is reported only in secondary accounts, and the name Phantom Photon is documented for the home ports. Atari's patent US 5,269,687 (priority 1990) describes a wire-frame lap car, a recording of the player's previous lap, that can be driven through without a crash, and Race Drivin' (1990) is reported to race a previous player's recorded run. Confidence is medium because earlier recorded rivals remain unsurveyed. Super Mario Kart (1992) let a player race their own time-trial run, and Mario Kart 64 (1996) is the usual reference for the saved, portable time-trial ghost. Online services from the 2000s let players download strangers' ghosts, and Demon's Souls (2009) carried recorded traces of other players outside racing." }, "established": { "title": "Mario Kart 64", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Mario Kart 64 replayed the best time-trial run as a translucent kart and let it be saved to a Controller Pak and raced on another console, and it is the usual reference for the saved ghost; later games distributed ghosts online." }, "sources": [ { "key": "hard-drivin-operator-s-manual-tm-327-1989", "canonical": false, "title": "Hard Drivin' Operator's Manual (TM-327)", "author": "Atari Games", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 1 Set-Up: Introduction, p. 1-5", "note": "The challenge lap against the remembered path of the best driver on record, and the Champ Laps and Wins counters." }, { "key": "super-mario-kart-instruction-booklet-1992", "canonical": false, "title": "Super Mario Kart instruction booklet", "author": "Nintendo of America", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Master Tips", "note": "Racing against oneself on a course chosen again after a good enough time trial." }, { "key": "mario-kart-64-instruction-booklet-1997", "canonical": false, "title": "Mario Kart 64 instruction booklet", "author": "Nintendo of America", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Time Trials: What is Your Ghost...?; Saving the Ghost; N64 Controller Pak, pp. 20–22", "note": "The ghost as a half-visible recording of the course's best time, saved to a Controller Pak and copied to another Pak." }, { "key": "system-and-method-for-recursive-driver-training-us-patent-5-269-687-1993", "canonical": false, "title": "System and method for recursive driver training (US Patent 5,269,687)", "author": "Stephanie J. Mott, Rick L. Moncrief, and Max L. Behensky (Atari Games)", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US5269687A/en", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Priority date 1990-08-01; a wire-frame lap car recorded from the user's previous lap that can be driven through without a crash, with Hard Drivin' named as prior art." }, { "key": "iwata-asks-mario-kart-wii-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Iwata Asks: Mario Kart Wii", "author": "Satoru Iwata with Hideki Konno", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "interview", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-Mario-Kart-Wii/Bringing-Racers-Together/5-Mario-Kart-goes-global/5-Mario-Kart-goes-global-214687.html", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "Bringing Racers Together, 5. Mario Kart goes global", "note": "Ghost data sent through the Mario Kart Channel and ghosts matched to the player's own times." }, { "key": "mario-kart-wii", "canonical": false, "title": "Mario Kart Wii", "author": "Nintendo", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://nintendo.com/en-za/Games/Wii/Mario-Kart-Wii-281848.html", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Ghost downloads through the Mario Kart Channel, and the end of the game's online features." }, { "key": "demon-s-souls-haunts-japan-in-february-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Demon's Souls haunts Japan in February", "author": "Siliconera", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.siliconera.com/demons-souls-haunts-japan-in-february/", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Bloodstains that let another player see a death in a phantom replay." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Hard Drivin'", "note": "The Phantom Photon name." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Race Drivin'", "note": "The Buddy Race against a previous player's recorded performance." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Demon's Souls", "note": "Bloodstains and phantoms as asynchronous traces of other players." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 10, "n_relations": 3, "word_count": 499, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/ghost-data" }, { "id": "gifting", "name": "Gifting", "status": "unverified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "A player sends an item or resource to another player who owes nothing in return under the rules, so the transfer is one-way and any reciprocity rests on custom rather than on agreed terms.", "aliases": [ "gifts", "gift requests", "friend gifts" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "appointment-mechanics", "trading", "relationship-systems", "cooperative-play" ], "referenced_by": [ "shared-holdings" ], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the free gifts of FarmVille (2009), where a player picks an item from a gift menu and sends it to chosen neighbours at no cost. Interaction is direct because each gift targets a named player; cooperative was the losing value, since the gift helps its recipient but no shared goal exists. Agency is medium for the choice of item and recipient; low was argued, because the giver's own position is unchanged whatever is sent. Randomness is none; output was the losing value, taken from Pokémon GO, whose gift contents are drawn at random. Decision density is medium (which item, which recipients, whether to accept or return a gift). Feedback loop is none; positive was argued, because players with more active friends receive more gifts. Pacing is neutral; decelerates was the losing value for gift requests that gate content on friends' replies. Category tension is with time-and-action-structure, where daily caps on sending would place it, and with narrative-and-choice where gifts feed a friendship level; interaction-and-exchange holds because the core act is a transfer between players.", "effects": [ "compulsion", "grind" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Animal Crossing", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "An antecedent costly form. Up to four players share one village, and a letter can carry an item from the sender's own inventory to a villager or to another player living in the town, a costly one-way gift. Most gifts pass between players and computer-controlled villagers; that villagers answer letters with presents is unconfirmed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "(Lil) Green Patch", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": null, "note": "A Facebook application whose players grow plants that friends send them and send plants back, each accepted one by one; the earliest documented social-network instance. Whether sending cost the sender anything is unconfirmed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "FarmVille", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Zynga", "note": "Players choose an item from a free-gift menu and send it to neighbours, who accept it from their requests (Facebook's Game Requests, later Zynga's message centre); the item is created for the recipient and costs the sender nothing. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Candy Crush Saga", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "King", "note": "Players out of lives ask Facebook friends for more, and a new episode opens once three friends answer a request or the player pays. Whether lives can also be sent unasked at no cost is unconfirmed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Clash of Clans", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Supercell", "note": "Clan members request troops for their Clan Castle and clanmates donate troops they trained at their own expense, a costly form of gifting that the game rewards with experience for the donor (in early 2013, 1 experience per troop, later per housing space, at most five troops per request).", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pokémon GO", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Niantic", "note": "A June 2018 update let players send gifts gathered at PokéStops and Gyms, carried up to ten at a time, to friends, one per friend per day, with 20 opened per day. Friendship rises once per friend per day through interactions that include gifts, and higher levels grant bonuses.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Animal Crossing: New Horizons", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "Players drop items for visitors on their island and, through Orville at the airport, mail letters with an attached present to registered friends; the recipient owes nothing back and return gifts are a matter of custom.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "(Lil) Green Patch", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the social-network form coded here, in which a player sends gifts to friends from a game's own menu; one-way gifts between players in general are older and have no defensible origin. On Facebook, (Lil) Green Patch players were sending plants to friends, who sent plants back, by October 2008 in a personal blog post, and an Associated Press report of April 2009 describes the same exchange, both before FarmVille launched in June 2009. The game's launch date and whether sending cost nothing are unconfirmed, so confidence is low. Online role-playing games probably let characters hand items to one another well before any named gifting system, though no source for this is cited. Animal Crossing (2001), in which players sharing a village mail items from their own inventories, is an antecedent costly form, and most of its gifts pass between players and computer-controlled villagers. FarmVille (2009) is the usual reference as the populariser of the free gift sent to friends, an editorial judgement rather than a sourced claim." }, "established": { "title": "FarmVille", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "FarmVille's free-gift menu, from which a player sends an item that costs nothing to chosen neighbours, is the usual reference as the populariser of the social-network form; Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans carried the pattern to friend lists and clans." }, "sources": [ { "key": "using-your-friends-social-mechanics-in-social-games-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Using Your Friends: Social Mechanics in Social Games", "author": "Mia Consalvo", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20250326002849/https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/100463/Using_Your_Friends.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "Section 4.2, Gifts", "note": "Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games (FDG '11), ACM, pp. 188-195, doi:10.1145/2159365.2159391; author's manuscript. From 70 games played October 2010 to February 2011, supports system-created gifts, usual daily sending limits, prompts to send a gift back, and critical gifts that gate progress. Makes no claim about origins." }, { "key": "essai-sur-le-don-the-gift-1925", "canonical": false, "title": "Essai sur le don (The Gift)", "author": "Marcel Mauss", "year": 1925, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Background only. The obligation to give, receive, and return in gift economies, which the mechanic leaves to custom." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "FarmVille", "note": "Release date and the neighbour and gifting features of the coded game." }, { "key": "six-secrets-of-farmville-s-success-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Six secrets of FarmVille's success", "author": "Nicholas Lovell (GamesBrief)", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gamesbrief.com/2009/09/six-secrets-of-farmvilles-success-and-33-million-people-agree/", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "September 2009 account of FarmVille gifts costing the sender nothing and of the default message asking for a gift in return." }, { "key": "is-your-facebook-charity-work-doing-any-good-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Is your Facebook 'charity work' doing any good?", "author": "John Flesher (Associated Press, via NBC News)", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna30389553", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "April 2009 report on (Lil) Green Patch, whose players grow plants that friends send them and send plants back, in an ad-funded game that does not press players to pay." }, { "key": "blog-post-on-lil-green-patch-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Blog post on (Lil) Green Patch", "author": "spudart.org", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.spudart.org/?p=4784", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "October 2008 description of the game as one where players send plants to their friends, each accepted one by one." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "(Lil) Green Patch", "note": "Funding in early 2008 and rank as Facebook's top application by September 2008." }, { "key": "animal-crossing-news-item-news-7771-2002", "canonical": false, "title": "Animal Crossing news item (news 7771)", "author": "Nintendo World Report", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/7771", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "From Nintendo's release material, up to four players in one village build relationships by exchanging gifts with other players and villagers." }, { "key": "friends-gifts-and-trading-update-post-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Friends, Gifts and Trading update post", "author": "Niantic", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://pokemongo.com/post/jundevupdate-trading", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "20 June 2018 announcement of gifts collected at PokéStops and Gyms and of friendship levels raised by sending gifts." }, { "key": "bulbapedia", "canonical": false, "title": "Bulbapedia", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Friends (GO)", "note": "Gift caps of one per friend per day, 20 opened per day and ten carried." }, { "key": "clash-of-clans-wiki", "canonical": false, "title": "Clash of Clans Wiki", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Clan Castle; Experience", "note": "Troop requests, donations to the Clan Castle and experience for donors, as of early 2013." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Candy Crush Saga", "note": "Life requests to Facebook friends and the three-friend gate on new episodes." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 12, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 541, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/gifting" }, { "id": "gm-moves", "name": "GM Moves", "status": "verified", "category": "narrative-and-choice", "definition": "The facilitator's interventions are codified as a named list of moves, triggered when a player misses a roll, when the table looks to the facilitator, or when a golden opportunity arises, and governed by a stated agenda and principles.", "aliases": [ "MC moves", "facilitator moves", "hard and soft moves", "bangs" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "fail-forward", "clocks", "random-tables", "degrees-of-success" ], "referenced_by": [ "flashbacks", "one-versus-many", "referee-adjudication", "scene-framing", "shared-narration" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the MC moves of Apocalypse World (2010), from the viewpoint of the facilitator who invokes them. Agency is medium because the facilitator chooses one move from a list of about a dozen, constrained by agenda and principles; low was the losing value, the players' viewpoint, since they do not choose the move. Interaction is mixed because the canonical list holds both moves aimed at one player's character (put someone in a spot, separate them) and moves that change the shared situation (announce future badness); solo was the losing value. Information is asymmetric because the facilitator, a human participant, knows what a soft move foreshadows. Category is narrative-and-choice by assignment, which departs from the default tie-break order, where the action-resolution question comes first and the miss trigger partly answers it; the reason is that moves also fire on lulls and opportunities, so the device structures the session's story rather than adjudicating success.", "effects": [ "emergent-narrative", "tension", "flow", "consequence-weight", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Sorcerer", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Ron Edwards (Adept Press)", "note": "An antecedent: the game and its supplements describe bangs, prepared events that force a character to decide something, delivered by the facilitator when play needs pressure, without trigger rules or a fixed list. Print edition 2001 after a 1996 electronic edition.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Apocalypse World", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "D. Vincent Baker", "note": "The MC has an agenda, principles, and a list of moves such as announce future badness, separate them, and put someone in a spot, made as soft or hard moves whenever a player misses, looks to the MC, or hands over an opportunity.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeon World", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel", "note": "Carries the GM move list into dungeon fantasy, adding per-monster and per-location moves, and spread the form to groups coming from Dungeons & Dragons.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Brendan Conway (Magpie Games)", "note": "A Powered by the Apocalypse game in which the GM answers player moves and combat exchanges by making GM moves from a list, such as shifting a character's balance, offering a risky or costly opportunity, or revealing a hidden truth, guided by stated GM principles.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Apocalypse World", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "high", "note": "Scoped to the named, triggered list of facilitator moves governed by an agenda and principles, which Apocalypse World codified. Bangs in Sorcerer (print 2001, after a 1996 electronic edition) and its supplements are an acknowledged antecedent from the same design community. The video and board analogues are later or parallel system-side pacing devices, not sources of the form." }, "established": { "title": "Apocalypse World", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "high", "note": "Apocalypse World codified the named list of MC moves, governed by an agenda and principles and triggered on a miss, a lull, or a golden opportunity; Dungeon World and the Powered by the Apocalypse family spread the form." }, "sources": [ { "key": "apocalypse-world-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Apocalypse World", "author": "D. Vincent Baker", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "The Master of Ceremonies; agenda, principles, and moves", "note": "Canonical rules text used for the property coding." }, { "key": "dungeon-world-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeon World", "author": "Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "The GM; GM moves", "note": "Populariser of the form and its trigger rules." }, { "key": "appelcline-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry", "author": "Shannon Appelcline", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "History of the Forge-era independent designers and lumpley games." }, { "key": "the-ai-systems-of-left-4-dead-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "The AI Systems of Left 4 Dead", "author": "Michael Booth (Valve)", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "talk", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "AIIDE 2009 keynote", "note": "Description of the AI Director as a pacing system; used for the hedged video analogue." } ], "n_examples": 4, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 492, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/gm-moves" }, { "id": "grid-movement", "name": "Grid Movement", "status": "verified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "Pieces move across a board divided into discrete cells, usually squares or hexagons, spending a movement allowance per cell entered, so distance, adjacency, and terrain are counted rather than measured.", "aliases": [ "hex grid movement", "square grid movement", "hex-and-counter movement", "tactical grid" ], "parent": null, "children": [ "zone-of-control" ], "related": [ "zone-of-control", "line-of-sight", "action-points", "cover-systems" ], "referenced_by": [ "network-building", "pick-up-and-deliver", "piece-capture", "platforming", "promotion", "roll-and-move", "sliding-block-puzzles" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the hex-and-counter wargame form (Gettysburg 1961 edition, checked against Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition for the square grid). Agency is medium because a piece chooses one destination from an enumerable reachable set; high was the losing value for games with large allowances. Interaction is indirect because pieces affect each other by occupying and blocking cells without targeting; the attacks that usually follow belong to other mechanics. Complexity is medium for an allowance with a diagonal or terrain rule; it would be low for plain orthogonal movement, stays medium with a single per-unit terrain cost table, and would be high only where several tables interact (terrain, weather, and road movement together). Pacing is neutral in isolation; small allowances on large maps decelerate. Agency stays medium after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; high was the losing value.", "effects": [ "spatial-reasoning", "planning", "analysis-paralysis", "mastery" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Gettysburg", "year": 1961, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Charles S. Roberts (Avalon Hill)", "note": "Reissued on a hexagonal grid after the 1958 square-grid edition; units spend movement factors per hex entered, the form that became hex-and-counter wargaming.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Intelligent Systems (Nintendo)", "note": "Units move a fixed number of squares, with terrain costing extra and granting defensive bonuses; an early mainstream case of the square-grid tactics form later carried by Advance Wars and Final Fantasy Tactics.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Five-foot squares with a 1-2-1 diagonal rule, threatened squares, and five-foot steps make the grid the operative state of combat where earlier editions had measured in inches.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Battle for Wesnoth", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "David White and contributors", "note": "Open-source hex tactics in which each unit type has its own per-terrain movement cost and defence percentage, a direct descendant of the wargame terrain table.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Into the Breach", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Subset Games", "note": "An eight-by-eight grid with full knowledge of enemy intentions; movement, pushes, and knockback make each turn a positional puzzle on the lattice.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Triangle Strategy", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Square Enix", "note": "Battles are fought on tiled maps where each unit has its own count of tiles it can move and a limit on how many height levels it can climb; reachable tiles are coloured by whether they fall inside enemy attack range, and elevation adds damage and range.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Gettysburg", "year": 1961, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to the hexagonal grid in a published hobby game, for which Avalon Hill's 1961 hex edition of Gettysburg is the usual credit; the 1958 edition used squares. Movement on square grids is ancient (chess and its ancestors) and has no defensible origin. Hex maps in military planning may predate Roberts, so the credit is for the game form." }, "established": { "title": "Gettysburg", "year": 1961, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Avalon Hill's 1961 hex edition of Gettysburg, with movement factors spent per hex entered, is the form that became hex-and-counter wargaming; the credit is widely repeated, though military hex maps may predate it." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Movement chapter", "note": "Definition and the distinction between square, hex, point-to-point, and area movement." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Discussion of Avalon Hill, Charles S. Roberts, and the adoption of the hex grid", "note": "History of the hex-and-counter form and its influence on early role-playing." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-3rd-edition-player-s-handbook-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition, Player's Handbook", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Combat chapter, Movement and Position", "note": "The tabletop role-playing square-grid form and its diagonal rule." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Hex map", "note": "Spread of hex grids across wargames and video games." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 522, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/grid-movement" }, { "id": "group-finder", "name": "Group Finder", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "An automated queue assembles players, usually strangers, into a temporary cooperative group for a chosen piece of content by filling required role slots such as tank, healer and damage, then places the group in it together", "aliases": [ "dungeon finder", "Looking for Dungeon", "duty finder", "raid finder", "PvE matchmaking" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "team-play", "rating-and-matchmaking", "threat-aggro", "cooperative-play", "appointment-mechanics", "boss-encounters" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "cooperative", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from World of Warcraft's Dungeon Finder (patch 3.3.0, 2009), the cross-realm role queue. Agency is low: the player picks the content (or a random dungeon) and declares the roles the character can fill, but who is grouped with whom is the system's choice; medium was the losing value, counting role declaration as a constrained choice that shapes the result. Randomness is output because companions, and with the random option the dungeon, are resolved after the decision to queue; none was the losing value, since the fill order is a deterministic queue rule whose result is only unpredictable to players. Interaction is cooperative because the assembled group exists to pursue one shared goal; indirect was the losing value, for queuers who affect each other only through the shared pool, where a scarce role lengthens everyone's wait. Complexity is medium (role requirements with a deserter penalty, vote kick and requeue); high was the losing value if eligibility locks and the random-dungeon reward are counted as further interacting sub-rules. Pacing is neutral: the queue shortens the time spent assembling a group, while waits for over-supplied roles lengthen the time before play; accelerates was the losing value, as were variable (queue length depends on role supply) and decelerates (dead time in the queue). Information is hidden because the pool and the matching logic are known only to the system; perfect was the losing value, on the reading that the formed group's names and roles are public. Feedback loop is none, since one run's outcome does not bear on the next match. Decision density is medium (which content, which roles, accept or decline the proposed group); low was the losing value, treating registration as a single decision point. No other family competes closely: the mechanic decides who plays with whom.", "effects": [ "teamwork", "betrayal", "contested-fairness", "frustration-risk", "downtime", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "EverQuest", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Verant Interactive", "note": "Antecedent, manual. Players assemble groups of up to six by searching /who by class, level or the whole server and sending private tells, and the players guide advises agreeing roles before a fight; no queue forms the party.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Patch 1.3 (March 2005) Meeting Stones outside each dungeon tried to build a five-person group by looking for a tank and a healer, growing less picky as waits lengthened. Patch 3.3.0 (December 2009) replaced them with the cross-realm Dungeon Finder, which teleports the group in and adds random-dungeon rewards, a Deserter debuff and vote kick.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Square Enix", "note": "The Duty Finder, as the game manual describes it, registers players for a duty without a party and matches them automatically across Worlds; a combination of all three roles is required unless a full party registers, and Duty Roulette pays enhanced rewards for a randomly chosen duty once a day. The manual Party Finder sits beside it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Destiny 2", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Bungie", "note": "Variation without role slots. Guided Games match a solo Seeker with a clan acting as Guide, answering the absence of matchmaking for raids and Nightfall strikes in Destiny (2014); a beta Seeker waited about 20 minutes to find a Guide.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Throne and Liberty", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "NCSOFT (Amazon Games)", "note": "Players select a role for Party Matchmaking (tank, healer or damage), shown as icons in the party list. Raid matchmaking forms two parties of one tank, one healer and four DPS for Normal difficulty only, while pre-formed groups have no role restrictions, and a Party Board for manual recruitment sits beside the queue.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is dated to the game; the automated form arrives in patch 1.3, released in March 2005 (sources give 7, 22 and 25 March), whose Meeting Stones assembled five-person groups by role at each dungeon's entrance from a single realm. The canonical cross-realm form with transport is the Dungeon Finder of patch 3.3.0 (8 December 2009). Manual listing tools, in which players choose and invite each other (EverQuest's /who searches, World of Warcraft's LookingForGroup channel, Final Fantasy XIV's Party Finder), are antecedents. Confidence is medium because the 1.3 wording survives through reproductions rather than Blizzard's own page, and automated cooperative grouping in other online games before 2005 remains unsurveyed." }, "established": { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "World of Warcraft's Dungeon Finder, added in patch 3.3.0 in December 2009, set the canonical form: a cross-realm role queue that teleports the group into the dungeon, with random-dungeon rewards, a Deserter debuff, and vote kick." }, "sources": [ { "key": "social-play-a-study-of-social-interaction-in-temporary-group-formation-pug-in-world-of-warcraft-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Social Play? A study of social interaction in temporary group formation (PUG) in World of Warcraft", "author": "Lina Eklund and Magnus Johansson", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "Nordic DiGRA 2010", "url": "https://dl.digra.org/index.php/dl/article/view/504", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "A brief history of LFG in WoW; results and discussion", "note": "History of grouping tools from the LFG channel to the Dungeon Finder (Meeting Stones rarely used, cross-realm grouping by role); low sociability and unexplained leaving in random groups." }, { "key": "played-and-designed-sociality-in-a-massive-multiplayer-online-game-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "Played and Designed Sociality in a Massive Multiplayer Online Game", "author": "Lina Eklund and Magnus Johansson", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture 7(1)", "url": "https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/eludamos/article/download/vol7no1-2/7-1-2-html/23407?inline=1", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Sections 3 (Dungeons in World of Warcraft), 5.1 to 5.3, and 6 (Discussion)", "note": "The Dungeon Finder as designed sociality; vote kick, blame, and the absence of a quitter reputation." }, { "key": "wow-patch-1-3-2006", "canonical": false, "title": "WoW Patch 1.3", "author": "Byron Mudry", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Ten Ton Hammer", "url": "https://www.tentonhammer.com/guides/wow-patch-1-3", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Meeting Stones", "note": "Reproduces the patch 1.3 notes on Meeting Stones and their role-aware grouping; dates the patch 22 March 2005." }, { "key": "wow-patch-1-7-2006", "canonical": false, "title": "WoW Patch 1.7", "author": "Byron Mudry", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Ten Ton Hammer", "url": "https://www.tentonhammer.com/guides/wow-patch-1-7", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Meeting Stones", "note": "The meeting stone queue; tanks and healers added at once as a group's fifth member." }, { "key": "patch-3-3-patch-notes-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Patch 3.3 patch notes", "author": "Alex Ziebart", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Engadget (WoW.com)", "url": "https://www.engadget.com/2009-11-19-patch-3-3-patch-notes.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Dungeon System", "note": "Replacement of the Looking For Group tool, teleport, cross-realm instances, random-dungeon rewards, Deserter debuff, vote kick and requeue." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-patch-3-3-0-released-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft Patch 3.3.0 Released", "author": "Alice O'Connor", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Shacknews", "url": "https://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/61515", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Cross-Realm Dungeon Finder", "note": "Release on 8 December 2009 and pooling across the realms of a battlegroup." }, { "key": "4-1-preview-dungeon-finder-call-to-arms-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "4.1 Preview -- Dungeon Finder: Call to Arms", "author": "Bashiok (Blizzard Entertainment)", "year": 2011, "year_approx": true, "type": "article", "publisher": "Blizzard Entertainment", "url": "https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-gb/news/10002882/41-preview-dungeon-finder-call-to-arms", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Detection of the least represented role, the reward for solo queuers who take it, and lack of role representation as the cause of long queues." }, { "key": "patch-4-3-raid-finder-feature-preview-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Patch 4.3: Raid Finder feature preview", "author": "Alex Ziebart", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Engadget", "url": "https://www.engadget.com/2011-09-29-patch-4-3-raid-finder-feature-preview.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Twenty-five players from all realms in a composition of two tanks, six healers and seventeen damage dealers, with automatic loot rolls and a separate lockout." }, { "key": "final-fantasy-xiv-game-manual-party-play", "canonical": false, "title": "FINAL FANTASY XIV Game Manual: Party Play", "author": "Square Enix", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/game_manual/pp/", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Duty Finder; Party Finder", "note": "Automatic matching across Worlds, role requirements, Duty Roulette rewards, and the manual Party Finder." }, { "key": "do-destiny-2-s-guided-games-work-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Do Destiny 2's Guided Games Work?", "author": "Suriel Vazquez", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Game Informer", "url": "https://gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2017/09/26/do-destiny-2s-guided-games-work.aspx", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "No matchmaking for raids and Nightfall strikes in Destiny; Seekers and clan Guides; beta waits." }, { "key": "throne-and-liberty-update-2-8-0-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "THRONE AND LIBERTY Update 2.8.0", "author": "Amazon Games", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.playthroneandliberty.com/en-gb/news/articles/update-2-8-0", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Party Matchmaking", "note": "Role selected for matchmaking (tank, healer or damage) shown in the Party UI; Party Board categories." }, { "key": "update-2-16-0-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Update 2.16.0", "author": "Amazon Games", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.playthroneandliberty.com/en-us/news/articles/update-2-16-0", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Raid: Altar of Calanthia", "note": "Raid matchmaking forms two parties of one tank, one healer and four DPS; pre-formed groups unrestricted; Normal difficulty only." }, { "key": "throne-and-liberty-update-1-3-0-2024", "canonical": false, "title": "Throne and Liberty Update 1.3.0", "author": "Amazon Games", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.playthroneandliberty.com/en-us/news/articles/throne-and-liberty-update-1-3-0", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Randomized dungeon option, a larger buff for matchmade groups, and matching by power progression." }, { "key": "ncsoft-to-launch-throne-and-liberty-on-dec-7-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "NCSOFT to launch Throne and Liberty on Dec. 7", "author": "Baek Byung-yeul", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "The Korea Times", "url": "https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2024/06/129_362444.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Korean release date of Throne and Liberty." }, { "key": "everquest-players-guide-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "EverQuest Players Guide", "author": "Juanita Jones, Russell Phoenix, Jimmy Monkerface, and Damien Waples (Prima Games)", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/everquest-players-guide/Everquest%20%20Players%20Guide_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Organizing a Party; Commands (/who)", "note": "Manual group assembly by /who search and tells." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 15, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 695, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/group-finder" }, { "id": "hand-management", "name": "Hand Management", "status": "unverified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "Players hold a private set of cards and must decide which to play, keep, or discard each turn, trading immediate use against future options under a hand limit.", "aliases": [ "card management" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "deck-building", "drafting", "action-points", "set-collection" ], "referenced_by": [ "inventory-encumbrance", "limited-communication", "simultaneous-action-selection", "take-that", "trick-taking" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Information is asymmetric (each player knows their own hand) rather than mixed because the draw-order randomness belongs to the deck, not to hand management itself. Pacing is decelerates because holding cards defers their use for later turns and each turn weighs the whole private hand, lengthening turns and spreading action out under a hand limit; neutral was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "planning", "analysis-paralysis", "fear-of-missing-out", "mastery" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Bohnanza", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Uwe Rosenberg", "note": "Cards may not be reordered in hand and must be played from the front, turning hand order itself into the managed resource.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Race for the Galaxy", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Tom Lehmann", "note": "Cards are both the things to play and the currency to pay for them, so every card kept is a card that cannot be spent.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hearthstone", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "A ten-card hand limit with overdraw burning cards makes holding too many cards a direct loss.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Crew", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Thomas Sing", "note": "Cooperative trick-taking in which the order of play from a fixed hand must be sequenced to satisfy mission constraints.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Balatro", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "LocalThunk (Playstack)", "note": "Each round the player draws to a hand of eight playing cards and has a limited number of hands to play and discards to spend, each play or discard taking up to five cards, so holding cards for a later straight or flush is weighed against scoring now before the hands run out.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No origin can be defended. Choosing which card to play from a private hand is as old as trick-taking card games, which are mentioned from 1426 (Karnöffel) but not described; an early printed account of judging how to play the cards in hand is Cotton's Compleat Gamester (1676 printing, first edition 1674) on Ruff and Honours and Whist. The design label \"Hand Management\" is in BoardGameGeek's mechanic list by January 2006; who coined or spread the term has not been established." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Card Mechanisms chapter", "note": null }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Hand Management", "note": null }, { "key": "elias-garfield-gutschera-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Characteristics of Games", "author": "George Skaff Elias, Richard Garfield, and K. Robert Gutschera", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Private hands as asymmetric information." }, { "key": "the-compleat-gamester-1676", "canonical": false, "title": "The Compleat Gamester", "author": "Charles Cotton", "year": 1676, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/bim_early-english-books-1641-1700_the-compleat-gamester-_cotton-charles_1676/bim_early-english-books-1641-1700_the-compleat-gamester-_cotton-charles_1676_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Ch. XI, English Ruff and Honours, and Whist, p. 114 (1676 printing)", "note": "Advice on playing \"mean Cards in your own hand\" by judgement and on watching what has been played." }, { "key": "boardgamegeek-mechanic-list-archived-2006", "canonical": false, "title": "BoardGameGeek mechanic list (archived)", "author": "BoardGameGeek", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Hand Management listed as a mechanic by 31 January 2006." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 489, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/hand-management" }, { "id": "handicapping", "name": "Handicapping", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "A rule-sanctioned adjustment gives the weaker player a stated advantage, such as extra pieces, a head start, or an adjusted score, so that players of unequal skill can contest the same game on roughly even terms.", "aliases": [ "handicap", "handicap system", "giving odds", "handicap stones", "odds games" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "difficulty-settings", "variable-player-powers", "dexterity", "race-to-the-finish", "game-clocks" ], "referenced_by": [ "hunt-games", "rating-and-matchmaking", "side-swapping", "tournament-formats" ], "media": [ "physical", "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "negative", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Go handicap stones, checked against chess odds and the golf handicap. Category is progression-and-capability, which departs from the default tie-break order (action-resolution is asked first, and was the losing family): the handicap changes what a player starts with or how their result is counted rather than how any action is adjudicated; action-resolution would fit forms that adjust a resolution roll. Agency is low because the handicap is fixed by rating, rule, or agreement before play and the player makes no decision in its invocation; medium was the losing value for negotiated odds. Interaction is indirect because the adjustment changes shared starting state without a targeted act; direct was the losing value, since the adjustment is defined relative to a specific opponent. Feedback loop is negative by design: success raises the handicap given next time, and the trailing player is compensated.", "effects": [ "catch-up", "contested-fairness", "mastery" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Go", "year": 1700, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "The weaker player places two to nine stones on the marked star points before the stronger player's first move, with the number set by the difference in rank; komi, a points compensation to White for moving second, is the even-game form adopted in the 20th century. Attested in Japanese sources by the Edo period.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Chess at odds", "year": 1750, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "The stronger player begins without a pawn, a knight, or a rook, or concedes the first move, a practice standard in 18th- and 19th-century club and stake play; Philidor's recorded games include many at odds. Faded once rating systems and tournament play arrived.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Golf (USGA handicap system)", "year": 1911, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "A numerical handicap derived from recent scores is subtracted from a player's gross score, so players of different ability compete on net score; club handicaps existed in Britain from the 1870s and the USGA adopted a national system in 1911.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Smash Bros.", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "HAL Laboratory (Nintendo)", "note": "A per-player handicap level from one to nine scales the knockback a fighter deals and takes, and the auto option lowers a winner's level after each match, which is the negative feedback loop implemented by the program.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Puyo Puyo Tetris 2", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sega", "note": "Versus play offers a handicap setting that can be set per player, making the game harder for the stronger player so players of unequal skill can play each other on closer terms.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Go", "year": 1700, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Handicap stones in Go are the best-documented early systematic handicap, attested in Japanese records of the Edo period and presumably older in China; an exact origin cannot be given. Chess odds are documented in Europe from the 18th century and informal handicaps in sports and wagering are surely older but undated. Golf's British club handicaps of the 1870s and the USGA's national system of 1911 are early numerical, score-derived forms." }, "established": { "title": "Go", "year": 1700, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Go's handicap stones, placed on the star points in a number set by the difference in rank, are the best-documented early systematic handicap and the form from which the mechanic is defined." }, "sources": [ { "key": "parlett-1999", "canonical": true, "title": "The Oxford History of Board Games", "author": "David Parlett", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Part on space games (Go)", "note": "Go rules including handicap stones and komi." }, { "key": "murray-1952", "canonical": true, "title": "A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess", "author": "H. J. R. Murray", "year": 1952, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Clarendon Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter on war games (wei-ch'i and Go)", "note": "Go in China and Japan, including placement handicaps." }, { "key": "usga-handicap-system-manual", "canonical": false, "title": "USGA Handicap System manual", "author": "United States Golf Association", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Handicap index calculation and net scoring", "note": "The rating-derived numerical handicap in a physical sport." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Go handicaps", "note": "Star-point placement conventions and the relation between rank difference and stones." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 493, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/handicapping" }, { "id": "hidden-movement", "name": "Hidden Movement Pursuit", "status": "verified", "category": "information-and-hidden-state", "definition": "One player moves secretly across a shared map, recording each move privately, while the other players move openly and try to corner them using scheduled reveals and clues left by each move.", "aliases": [ "one-versus-many pursuit", "hunter and hunted", "hidden mover game" ], "parent": "fog-of-war", "children": [], "related": [ "deduction", "stealth-detection", "cooperative-play" ], "referenced_by": [ "crowd-blending", "hunt-games", "one-versus-many" ], "media": [ "board-card", "physical", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Scotland Yard. Interaction is mixed because the hunters cooperate while the pursuit itself is a direct contest; cooperative was the losing value. Information is asymmetric in the structural sense that one side is wholly visible and the other wholly concealed, which separates it from the symmetric sight-range concealment of fog of war. Pacing is coded accelerates because a fixed turn limit, depleting movement tickets, and a reveal schedule tighten the net; neutral was the losing value. Feedback loop is none, although each correct inference narrows the hidden player's options and could be argued as positive for the hunters. Agency is medium because the map's connections constrain each move to a few options.", "effects": [ "inference", "spatial-reasoning", "tension", "teamwork", "alpha-player", "bluffing" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Hide-and-seek", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "Traditional. A hider conceals themselves while seekers search, but the hider is static once hidden and there is no scheduled reveal; the embodied antecedent of the pursuit form.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Scotland Yard", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Ravensburger design team", "note": "Mister X records moves on a hidden log and reveals position at fixed turns; the transport ticket spent each move is public, so detectives reason from the mode of travel. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Fury of Dracula", "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Stephen Hand", "note": "Dracula lays a face-down trail of location cards that are revealed as hunters land on them, so the clue is a time-delayed record of the route rather than a scheduled surfacing.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Letters from Whitechapel", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Gabriele Mari and Gianluca Santopietro", "note": "Jack moves on a numbered grid toward a hideout while police test adjacent spaces for clues; the reveal is replaced by a search query that returns yes or no.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nomad Games", "note": "Digital adaptation in which the software keeps the hidden log and enforces trail rules, removing the bookkeeping that limits the tabletop form; video instances are largely adaptations.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage \"Game\"", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim (Off the Page Games)", "note": "The Recruiter writes the turn number on each location visited on a private Secret Map. Agents ask whether the Recruiter has visited any location with a feature of their current space, which places STEP tokens as footprints, and can spend a STEP token to learn the exact turn of that visit.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Scotland Yard", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the board form with one hidden mover, a private log, and scheduled reveals; Scotland Yard is the widely cited reference for it, and no earlier board game of this kind is documented. Earlier double-blind wargames concealed movement from both sides and are treated under fog of war. Hide-and-seek and manhunt games are the physical antecedents but lack the recorded log and the scheduled reveal that define the pursuit form." }, "established": { "title": "Scotland Yard", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Scotland Yard set the form with a hidden log, public transport tickets, and scheduled reveals, and is the reference point for the term; The Fury of Dracula and Letters from Whitechapel later varied its reveal." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Movement chapter", "note": "Definition and the one-versus-many structure." }, { "key": "scotland-yard-rulebook-1983", "canonical": false, "title": "Scotland Yard rulebook", "author": "Ravensburger", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Mister X's travel log and surfacing turns", "note": "Canonical rules text for the coded form." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Hidden Movement", "note": null }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Scotland Yard (board game)", "note": "Award history and design credits." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 498, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/hidden-movement" }, { "id": "hidden-piece-identity", "name": "Hidden Piece Identity", "status": "verified", "category": "information-and-hidden-state", "definition": "Pieces stand in public positions but their rank or type is concealed from the opponent, usually by facing away, and an identity is revealed only when pieces make contact, so knowing where is separated from knowing what.", "aliases": [ "face-down pieces", "block system", "concealed ranks", "inverted pieces", "blind pieces" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "fog-of-war", "bluff-and-challenge", "deduction", "piece-capture", "memory" ], "referenced_by": [ "crowd-blending" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Stratego, checked against L'Attaque and block wargames (Quebec 1759). Agency is medium because a turn is one piece moved or one attack declared from a constrained set; high was the losing value for the setup phase, where the whole army is arranged freely. Interaction is direct because an attack targets a specific enemy piece. Complexity is medium for a rank table with special pieces (spy, bombs, scouts); plain face-down pieces of two or three kinds would be low. Information is asymmetric since each side knows its own pieces; mixed was the losing value for games that also shuffle pieces blind at setup. Pacing is neutral because concealing rank behind public positions changes what an attack discloses, not how quickly the game resolves; decelerates was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "inference", "bluffing", "recall", "tension", "spatial-reasoning" ], "examples": [ { "title": "L'Attaque", "year": 1909, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Hermance Edan", "note": "Pieces are flat soldiers standing in holders so that only the owner sees the rank printed on them; an attacked piece's rank is announced and the lower rank is removed. The patented form from which Stratego descends.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Stratego", "year": 1946, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jacques Johan Mogendorff", "note": "Forty pieces per side set up freely behind a lake-split midline. Attacks reveal both ranks, the scout moves any distance, the spy beats the marshal when attacking, and bombs are immobile; the flag is the hidden objective. Trademark registered in the 1940s; widely published from the late 1950s.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Quebec 1759", "year": 1972, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Columbia Games (Gamma Two Games)", "note": "Wooden blocks stand on edge with the unit label facing the owner, so position is public and strength hidden until combat; rotating a block tracks step losses. Often credited as the first block wargame.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hearthstone", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Secrets are played face down and shown to the opponent only as an icon and a class colour; the card's identity is revealed when its trigger condition is met. The structure matches the board form: position and presence public, identity hidden until contact.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Stratego Online", "year": 2026, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Wanted 5 Games", "note": "The opponent's pieces stand on the board with their ranks concealed until they are engaged in battle, so locating the bombs, miners and spy means committing pieces to attacks that reveal them.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "L'Attaque", "year": 1909, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Hermance Edan's 1909 French patent for L'Attaque is the earliest documented game in which pieces of concealed rank fight by comparison on contact. Stratego is its direct descendant. Other concealed-rank games, such as Chinese Luzhanqi, are later 20th-century relatives, and the double-blind Kriegsspiel tradition hides positions rather than identities, so is coded under fog of war." }, "established": { "title": "Stratego", "year": 1946, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Stratego, a descendant of L'Attaque, became the canonical form, with free setup, ranks revealed on attack, and special pieces such as the spy, scout, and bombs; Stratego Online keeps it in digital form." }, "sources": [ { "key": "stratego-rules-1961", "canonical": false, "title": "Stratego rules", "author": "Milton Bradley", "year": 1961, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Setup, movement, and attack sections", "note": "Canonical rules text for the free setup, rank comparison on attack, and special pieces." }, { "key": "quebec-1759-rules-1972", "canonical": false, "title": "Quebec 1759 rules", "author": "Columbia Games", "year": 1972, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Rules text for the block system in which strength is hidden and step losses are tracked by rotation." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "L'Attaque", "note": "Edan's 1909 patent and the lineage to Stratego." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Stratego", "note": "Publication history and the trademark date." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 516, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/hidden-piece-identity" }, { "id": "hidden-roles", "name": "Hidden Roles", "status": "verified", "category": "information-and-hidden-state", "definition": "Each player is secretly assigned an allegiance or identity that sets their win condition, and an informed minority works against an uninformed majority who must identify them before being eliminated.", "aliases": [ "social deduction roles", "secret identity" ], "parent": null, "children": [ "traitor" ], "related": [ "deduction", "secret-objectives", "variable-player-powers", "fog-of-war" ], "referenced_by": [ "bluff-and-challenge", "crowd-blending", "side-conversion", "voting" ], "media": [ "board-card", "physical", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Mafia. Interaction is mixed, not cooperative, because the mechanic combines team cooperation with direct elimination votes; the shared goal belongs to a team, not to the table. Information is asymmetric because the informed minority knows the whole allocation while the majority knows only its own card. Complexity is medium because the day/night cycle and moderator role need a paragraph; low was the losing value. Category tension with puzzle-and-pattern is resolved by placing the inferential procedure under deduction and the possession of hidden state here.", "effects": [ "social-deduction", "bluffing", "tension", "teamwork", "emergent-narrative", "downtime" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Mafia", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "Dimitry Davidoff", "note": "Parlour game with no components beyond role slips. The mafia learn one another at night and eliminate a townsperson; by day the whole group votes out a suspect, and the eliminated leave the circle.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Werewolves of Millers Hollow", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Philippe des Pallières and Hervé Marly", "note": "Commercial card edition of Mafia that adds special roles (seer, witch, hunter) whose night actions give the majority partial information.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Resistance", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Don Eskridge", "note": "Removes player elimination and the moderator. Spies sabotage missions by secretly playing fail cards, so evidence comes from mission outcomes rather than from night kills.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Town of Salem", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "BlankMediaGames", "note": "Browser implementation of the Mafia structure with dozens of roles and timed day phases; the server replaces the moderator and enforces night-action resolution.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Among Us", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Innersloth", "note": "Impostors are hidden among crewmates performing visible tasks; evidence is spatial and behavioural, and discussion is confined to emergency meetings.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Goose Goose Duck", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Gaggle Studios", "note": "Players are secretly Geese, Ducks or Neutrals: Ducks call sabotages and try to eliminate the Geese, Geese do tasks, report bodies and vote suspected Ducks out in meetings, and Neutrals pursue their own secret objectives.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Mafia", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "high", "note": "Davidoff's own account dates Mafia to 1986 at Moscow State University, and the attribution is widely accepted in the design literature. The claim rests on his testimony and later secondary reporting rather than on a contemporaneous rulebook. Earlier parlour games with a secret murderer (Wink Murder) exist but lack a team structure." }, "established": { "title": "Mafia", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "high", "note": "Davidoff's Mafia set the canonical structure of an informed minority, night eliminations, and day votes; The Werewolves of Millers Hollow and Town of Salem are later editions and implementations of it." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Uncertainty chapter", "note": "Definition and the informed-minority structure." }, { "key": "the-werewolves-of-millers-hollow-rulebook-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "The Werewolves of Millers Hollow rulebook", "author": "Philippe des Pallières and Hervé Marly", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Roles and the night phase", "note": "Canonical commercial rules text." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Hidden Roles", "note": null }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Mafia (party game)", "note": "Davidoff attribution and spread." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 507, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/hidden-roles" }, { "id": "hidden-scoring", "name": "Hidden Scoring", "status": "unverified", "category": "information-and-hidden-state", "definition": "Points or money earned during play are kept concealed from opponents, behind a screen or face down, so that the standings are known only in part and players must estimate who is ahead from what they saw being earned.", "aliases": [ "hidden victory points", "secret scores", "face-down scoring", "concealed tally" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "secret-objectives", "stock-holding", "memory", "victory-points", "end-game-triggers" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Tigris and Euphrates (1997), where victory point tokens are taken behind a screen as earned and only the holder knows the totals. Agency is low because concealment is passive; the holder makes no choice beyond not revealing. Interaction is indirect because the hidden tally affects others only by what they can infer. Complexity is low because the rule is a sentence. Information is asymmetric because each player knows their own tally and not the others'; hidden was the losing value, since nothing is concealed from everyone. Feedback loop is none, though the design purpose is to damp the negative loop of leader-bashing that a public track invites. Decision density is low. Category was not contested; the mechanic is about who knows the score. The boundary with secret-objectives is in the Definition.", "effects": [ "inference", "recall", "tension", "bluffing" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Acquire", "year": 1964, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Sid Sackson (3M)", "note": "In the current rules the players decide at setup whether stocks and money are displayed or kept secret; played secret, the winner is still the player with the most money after the final liquidation, so standings must be estimated from the public hotel chains and the purchases each player was seen to make.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tigris and Euphrates", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Reiner Knizia (Hans im Glück)", "note": "Victory point tokens in four colours are taken behind a screen as they are earned and the final score is each player's weakest colour, so opponents must remember which colours a rival has been collecting to judge whom to block.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Small World", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Philippe Keyaerts (Days of Wonder)", "note": "Victory coins are collected each turn and kept in a stack with their values hidden until the end, so a player's standing is inferred from the regions they held each round rather than read from a track.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Small World 2", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Days of Wonder", "note": "The digital edition keeps each player's coin total hidden from the other seats in multiplayer while the program tallies it, reproducing the hidden-value rule on a screen that could otherwise show everything.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Small World of Warcraft", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Philippe Keyaerts (Days of Wonder)", "note": "Victory coins earned each turn from occupied regions are kept stacked with their value hidden from the other players at all times, and are revealed and tallied only at the end of the game.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": null, "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No origin can be defended: concealed money and holdings are common in commercial games, and Acquire (1964), whose current rules let the group keep stocks and money secret, is only an early example; whether the 1964 rules had the option is unconfirmed. Catan (1995) keeps victory point cards hidden until the winning turn, a partly hidden score. The victory point token taken behind a screen is associated with Knizia's Tigris and Euphrates (1997), the form coded here, confirmed in its 2014 rules. Small World (2009) keeps victory coins in a stack whose value is hidden until the end; calling it the populariser is an editorial judgement. Every rule text read is a later edition." }, "established": { "title": "Small World", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Small World, whose victory coins are kept in a stack with their value hidden until the end, is the usual reference for the hidden coin stack and is often called the mechanic's populariser; the screened token form is associated with Tigris and Euphrates (1997)." }, "sources": [ { "key": "tigris-and-euphrates-rulebook-1997", "canonical": false, "title": "Tigris and Euphrates rulebook", "author": "Reiner Knizia (Hans im Glück)", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Victory points; End of the game", "note": "Victory point tokens taken behind the screen and scored by weakest colour." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Acquire", "note": "The setup choice between public and private share holdings." }, { "key": "acquire-rulebook-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Acquire rulebook", "author": "Renegade Game Studios (game design by Sid Sackson)", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://renegadegamestudios.com/content/File%20Storage%20for%20site/Rulebooks/Acquire/Acquire_RGS_Rulebook_WEB.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Setup, step 7", "note": "The group decides whether stocks and money are displayed or kept secret." }, { "key": "small-world-rules-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Small World rules", "author": "Days of Wonder (game design by Philippe Keyaerts)", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://cdn0.daysofwonder.com/smallworld/en/img/sw_rules_2015_en.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "p. 5", "note": "Victory coins kept stacked with their value hidden until the end of the game." }, { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Game End and Victory chapter", "note": "Treatment of victory-point scoring, including concealed totals." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Hidden Victory Points", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 499, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/hidden-scoring" }, { "id": "high-score-tables", "name": "High-Score Tables", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "A machine or service keeps a ranked list of the best final scores achieved on a game, usually with a short name or initials entered by each scorer, and shows it to later players as targets to beat.", "aliases": [ "high scores", "leaderboards", "score tables", "initials entry" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "rating-and-matchmaking", "lives-and-continues", "ghost-data", "tournament-formats" ], "referenced_by": [ "achievements" ], "media": [ "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the arcade table of Asteroids (1979), where the ten best scores on a cabinet are listed with three initials each and shown between games. Category is interaction-and-exchange because the table is a contest among the players of one machine for a limited number of places, and the default tie-break order asks that question before the progression one; progression-and-capability was the losing family, since a place on the table records accomplishment but grants nothing. Agency is low because the score is decided by the host game and the only choice the table offers is the initials; medium was the losing value on the ground that players pick which game or mode to chase. Interaction is indirect because players meet only through the shared list, displacing one another's entries without targeting anyone; solo was the losing value for a single player's personal-best table. Information is perfect because the list is displayed. Feedback loop is none, since a place on the table does not change the next game. Decision density is low: entering initials is the table's only input.", "effects": [ "mastery", "compulsion", "replayability" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Sea Wolf", "year": 1976, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Midway (Dave Nutting)", "note": "Advertised to operators in 1976 with a \"High Score Feature\", the cabinet shows the best score so far below the current player's score; it records no name, the minimal one-line form.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Solid-state pinball", "year": 1977, "year_approx": true, "medium": "physical", "creator": "Bally", "note": "Bally's electronic tables of 1977, Evel Knievel among them, store a high score to date, flash it while the machine is idle, and award free games for beating it, a one-line table on a physical machine.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Space Invaders", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Taito (Tomohiro Nishikado)", "note": "A single best score is shown beside the current one at the top of the screen, so every player sees the result to beat; it carries no name.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Star Fire", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Exidy", "note": "Shown at a December 1978 trade show, it lets a player with a top-ten score enter initials beside the score on screen, where they stay until someone beats it, the earliest documented initials table.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Asteroids", "year": 1979, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Atari", "note": "The ten best scores are listed with three initials each, entered by the scorer at the end of a game; its programmer is reported to have taken the initials table from Star Fire. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Bizarre Creations", "note": "Released on Xbox Live Arcade with an online leaderboard that ranks a player against everyone on the service, so the table is no longer bound to one machine.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hyper Demon", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sorath", "note": "Each run ends with a score that rises the faster demons are killed, and the game ranks it on a global leaderboard and against Steam and Discord friends' best scores.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Sea Wolf", "year": 1976, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to a single stored best score shown to later players, the minimal form of the table. A Midway periscope-and-torpedo game matching Sea Wolf is advertised in Play Meter in March 1976 with a \"High Score Feature\", and Medler (2009) names Sea Wolf (1976) as the first video game to record a high score, without recording who set it. Confidence is medium because the advertisement's text does not print the title and trade papers other than Play Meter, and electromechanical score memories, remain unsurveyed. Exidy's Star Fire, reported in Play Meter on 15 December 1978 with a top-ten table of initials, is the earliest documented ranked table with initials; Atari's Asteroids (1979) followed and is the usual reference for the form. Bally's solid-state pinball stored and displayed a high score to date by 1977, a one-entry table on the physical medium, alongside the fixed replay thresholds of older machines. Online services popularised the global leaderboard in the 2000s." }, "established": { "title": "Asteroids", "year": 1979, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Asteroids listed the ten best scores with three initials each, entered by the scorer at the end of a game, and is the usual reference for the form; its programmer is reported to have taken the initials table from Star Fire." }, "sources": [ { "key": "generations-of-game-analytics-achievements-and-high-scores-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Generations of Game Analytics, Achievements and High Scores", "author": "Ben Medler", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "Eludamos 3(2)", "url": "https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/eludamos/article/view/vol3no2-4", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "p. 180", "note": "Sea Wolf (1976) as the first video game to record a high score, without the scorer's name, and Star Fire as the first to record initials." }, { "key": "other-theme-games-1978", "canonical": false, "title": "Other Theme Games", "author": "Ralph C. Lally II", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Play Meter 4(23), 15 December 1978", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "pp. 17–18", "note": "Trade-show report of Exidy's Star Fire, whose top-ten scorers display their initials beside their scores until beaten." }, { "key": "new-from-midway-advertisement-1976", "canonical": false, "title": "New from Midway (advertisement)", "author": "Midway", "year": 1976, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Play Meter 2(3), March 1976", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "p. 13", "note": "A periscope-and-torpedo game, matching Sea Wolf, listed with a \"High Score Feature\"." }, { "key": "pinball-column-1977", "canonical": false, "title": "Pinball column", "author": "Roger C. Sharpe", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Play Meter, August 1977", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Review of Bally's solid-state Evel Knievel and its \"high score to date\" with a free-game award." }, { "key": "first-videogame-to-log-high-scores", "canonical": false, "title": "First videogame to log high scores", "author": "Guinness World Records", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-video-game-to-log-high-scores", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Sea Wolf (1976), with the high score shown below the current player's score." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "High score", "note": "Sea Wolf's stored score and Star Fire's initials." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Asteroids (video game)", "note": "The ten-entry initials table of the canonical form, and the report that its programmer took the idea from Star Fire." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 499, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/high-score-tables" }, { "id": "hit-location", "name": "Hit Location", "status": "verified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "After an attack hits, a further roll or a called shot assigns the damage to a specific body part or component, and each location has its own damage capacity, armour, or impairment effect.", "aliases": [ "hit location tables", "called shots", "locational damage", "body-part targeting" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "degrees-of-success", "hit-points", "critical-hits", "status-effects", "equipment-loadouts" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "high", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 2, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from RuneQuest (1978), where location is rolled on a d20 table after a hit. Agency is low because the canonical form assigns location randomly; medium was the losing value, which applies to called-shot forms (Fallout, BattleTech aimed shots) where the player chooses the location at an accuracy cost. Feedback loop is positive because a damaged limb degrades the holder's capability, so early wounds make later ones more likely; none was the losing value for forms in which location only varies the damage number. Information is perfect because the table and the rolled location are public; per-location totals of referee-run monsters are asymmetric but belong to hit points. Interaction is solo because the location step works the same whoever is attacking; the targeting belongs to the attack roll, and direct was the losing value. Complexity is high because the single table interacts with three sub-rules (per-location hit points, per-location armour, and impairment thresholds); medium was the losing value for forms in which location only selects which armour applies. Pacing is accelerates because a damaged limb degrades the holder's capability, so early wounds make later ones more likely and the fight spirals toward its end; decelerates was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "spectacle", "emergent-narrative", "volatility", "consequence-weight", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "RuneQuest", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Steve Perrin and others (Chaosium)", "note": "A d20 roll after each hit places it in one of seven locations (legs, abdomen, chest, arms, head), each with its own hit points and armour value; a limb reduced to zero is disabled and the head or chest at zero is incapacitating.", "latest": false }, { "title": "BattleDroids", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jordan Weisman and others (FASA)", "note": "Renamed BattleTech in 1985. Each weapon that hits rolls 2d6 on a location table keyed to the attack's facing; locations carry armour and internal structure boxes, and damage to internal structure triggers critical hit rolls against the components mounted there.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Games Workshop", "note": "The percentile to-hit roll is reused by reversing its digits to read the location, so the mechanic adds no extra roll; location mainly decides which armour piece applies.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fallout", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Interplay Productions", "note": "An aimed shot lets the player pick eyes, head, torso, arms, legs, or groin at an accuracy penalty; eye hits raise critical chance and limb hits can cripple movement or weapon use.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dwarf Fortress", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Tarn Adams and Zach Adams (Bay 12 Games)", "note": "Combat resolves against a detailed body-part tree, so a strike can sever a hand, break a rib, or pierce a named organ, and each injury carries its own functional effect on the creature.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Monster Hunter Wilds", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Capcom", "note": "Each monster part has its own hitzone values by damage type and can be broken or severed, and repeated hits on one part open a wound that Focus Mode lets the player aim at for a heavy Focus Strike.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "RuneQuest", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the canonical form, in which per-location hit points and armour replace a single pool; RuneQuest is the usual credit for it. Earlier candidates for a location roll exist: Boot Hill (1975) appears to have resolved gunfight wounds by location, the Arduin Grimoire (1977) critical tables named body parts, and naval and armour wargames before them assigned hits to components. The dating of the full per-location form is therefore loose." }, "established": { "title": "RuneQuest", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "RuneQuest is the usual credit for making location the organising principle of damage, with a rolled table and per-location hit points and armour; BattleDroids carried the location table into board wargaming." }, "sources": [ { "key": "runequest-1978", "canonical": false, "title": "RuneQuest", "author": "Steve Perrin, Ray Turney, Steve Henderson, and Warren James", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Melee combat; hit location table and armour by location", "note": "Canonical rules text for the location roll and per-location hit points." }, { "key": "appelcline-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry", "author": "Shannon Appelcline", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chaosium chapter (volume 1, the 1970s), RuneQuest", "note": "RuneQuest's departure from Dungeons & Dragons' abstract damage model." }, { "key": "battletech-second-edition-of-battledroids-1985", "canonical": false, "title": "BattleTech (second edition of BattleDroids)", "author": "Jordan Weisman and others (FASA Corporation)", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Hit Location Table; critical hits", "note": "The board form, with component damage per location." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "RuneQuest", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 497, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/hit-location" }, { "id": "hit-points", "name": "Hit Points", "status": "verified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "A numeric pool representing how much damage a character, unit, or player can absorb; damage subtracts from it and reaching zero removes the holder from play or triggers a death procedure.", "aliases": [ "HP", "health", "life total", "wounds" ], "parent": null, "children": [ "sanity" ], "related": [ "saving-throws", "permadeath", "cover-systems", "degrees-of-success" ], "referenced_by": [ "boss-encounters", "damage-types", "experience-levels", "hit-location", "morale-and-rout", "parry-and-dodge", "player-elimination", "status-effects", "threat-aggro", "upkeep" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Dungeons & Dragons (1974). Agency is low because the subtraction step offers no choice and the outcome is fixed by prior state and the damage roll; medium was the losing value, since the pool is budgeted (press on or withdraw and recover), but that decision belongs to the surrounding play, as with lives and upkeep. Randomness is none because the damage dice and hit dice belong to attack resolution and experience levels respectively, not to the pool. Interaction is direct because damage is aimed at a specific creature run by another human, the referee or a player. Information is asymmetric because the referee tracks monster totals privately; board and card implementations (Magic: The Gathering) keep all totals public and would code perfect. Feedback loop is none because the canonical form has no wound penalties; variants with them would code positive.", "effects": [ "tension", "planning", "consequence-weight", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Each character rolls hit dice by class and level; damage is subtracted and a character at zero is dead. Recovery is slow, so the pool is budgeted across a whole expedition.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Rogue", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, and Ken Arnold", "note": "A displayed hit-point counter that regenerates slowly with turns taken, making time itself the healing resource and turning rest into a food-versus-safety trade.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Magic: The Gathering", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Garfield (Wizards of the Coast)", "note": "The pool is attached to the player rather than to a character; twenty life is the whole win condition and is fully public.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Halo: Combat Evolved", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Bungie", "note": "A regenerating shield layered over a fixed health bar, so short-term pressure resets if the player disengages while long-term attrition persists.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gloomhaven", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Isaac Childres", "note": "Each character has a level-scaled pool tracked on a dial; a second clock, card exhaustion, ends participation independently of hit points.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Elden Ring", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "FromSoftware (Bandai Namco)", "note": "The Tarnished has a numeric HP pool raised by levelling Vigor and refilled by Flasks of Crimson Tears or resting at a Site of Grace; at zero HP the character dies, drops all held Runes at the spot, and respawns at the last Site of Grace or Stake of Marika.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "high", "note": "The pool-of-damage form is documented in the 1974 rules. Peterson traces antecedents in the Blackmoor campaign and in naval wargames in which vessels absorbed multiple hits, and notes Chainmail's fantasy figures who had to be \"killed\" several times. The term is first in general use through D&D." }, "established": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "high", "note": "The 1974 rules fixed the per-character numeric pool and the name hit points, which travelled into early computer role-playing games such as Rogue and remain the default damage model." }, "sources": [ { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 3 (The System), discussion of damage and hit points in Chainmail and Blackmoor", "note": "Antecedents in wargames and the Blackmoor campaign." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-volume-1-men-magic-1974", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 1 (Men & Magic)", "author": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Hit dice by class and the canonical rules text." }, { "key": "player-s-handbook-5th-edition-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Player's Handbook, 5th edition", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Chapter 9 (Combat), Damage and Healing; the modern codification with hit dice as a rest resource." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 488, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/hit-points" }, { "id": "hitboxes-and-hurtboxes", "name": "Hitboxes and Hurtboxes", "status": "unverified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "Each attack has an active volume and each target a vulnerable volume, both defined apart from the drawn sprite or model and switched on for specified frames, and an attack connects only when the two overlap.", "aliases": [ "hitboxes", "hurtboxes", "hit detection", "collision boxes", "frame data", "active frames" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "parry-and-dodge", "combo-systems", "line-of-sight", "aim-and-recoil", "damage-types" ], "referenced_by": [ "lock-on-targeting" ], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Street Fighter II, the usual reference for attacking and vulnerable boxes switched by frame. Category is space-and-position over action-resolution, the losing family: the rule does adjudicate whether an attack lands, but the operative state is the overlap of volumes in represented space, and the player's decisions are about spacing and range rather than about a success test. Agency is medium because the player chooses attack and spacing from a constrained set and execution decides the rest; low was the losing value. Interaction is indirect because the overlap test is a geometric rule applied to whatever volumes meet in shared space, and the choice of whom to attack belongs to the surrounding combat rules; direct was the losing value, argued from the fact that in a versus match the only hurtbox in reach is the opponent's. Solo fits single-player forms against system-controlled enemies. Information is perfect because the volumes are fixed and deterministic; hidden was the losing value because most games do not draw them, but what is concealed is a fixed rule rather than varying state, and frame data is published. Pacing is neutral in isolation; frame counts set speed but have no systematic direction.", "effects": [ "spatial-reasoning", "execution", "mastery", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Spacewar!", "year": 1962, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Steve Russell and others (MIT)", "note": "The PDP-1 program tests torpedoes and ships for overlap and destroys a ship on contact, with the whole drawn object as the vulnerable region; an antecedent collision test without separate attacking and vulnerable volumes. Tennis for Two (1958) had already tested a ball against net and ground.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pong", "year": 1972, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Atari (Allan Alcorn)", "note": "The paddle is divided into segments and the ball's rebound angle depends on which segment it strikes, so the collision region carries game information beyond hit or miss; an antecedent, since one region serves every purpose.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Street Fighter II", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Capcom", "note": "Each attack animation has hitboxes active for a few frames and each fighter a set of hurtboxes that shift with the pose; a limb's hitbox may extend beyond any hurtbox, so some attacks beat others on geometry alone.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Smash Bros. Melee", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "HAL Laboratory (Nintendo)", "note": "Hitboxes are spheres attached to animation bones with their own damage and knockback, and community frame data documents when each is active; competitive play is discussed almost entirely in these terms.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Touhou Youyoumu ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Team Shanghai Alice (ZUN)", "note": "The player's hurtbox is a few pixels at the sprite's centre, shown as a dot while the player holds focus, so bullets can overlap the drawn character without a hit, the convention that makes dense patterns survivable.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Street Fighter 6", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Capcom", "note": "Each move carries hitboxes and hurtboxes defined apart from the character art; dive kicks such as Jamie's, Juri's and Cammy's were given enlarged hurtboxes and smaller hitboxes, so they are hit out of the air more easily, and Jamie's dive kick has no hitbox on the foot at all.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No originating game for separate attacking and vulnerable volumes switched by frame can be defended. Whole-object collision tests are older, in Tennis for Two (1958), Spacewar! (1962), and Pong (1972), and are antecedents rather than instances. The split developed with two-dimensional fighting games, and Street Fighter II (1991) is the usual reference, but no developer interview or technical account found documents the split in it or in earlier candidates such as Karate Champ (1984); the 1987 Street Fighter developer interview does not discuss collision. The English terms are usually traced to fighting-game communities and frame-data guides, but no early dated use of either is cited, and hurtbox is formed from hitbox and so is the later word. Japanese developers use terms built on hantei (judgement), such as kurai hantei for the vulnerable region, and Japanese-language sources are the likeliest place for an earlier documented split." }, "established": { "title": "Street Fighter II", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Street Fighter II, with attack hitboxes active for a few frames and hurtboxes that shift with the pose, is the usual reference for the split, though no developer source documents it there." }, "sources": [ { "key": "swink-2009", "canonical": true, "title": "Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation", "author": "Steve Swink", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Morgan Kaufmann", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapters on simulation and polish, discussion of collision and response", "note": "Collision as part of the game feel model and the gap between drawn and simulated objects." }, { "key": "the-origin-of-spacewar-1981", "canonical": false, "title": "The Origin of Spacewar", "author": "J. M. Graetz", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Creative Computing, August 1981", "note": "First-hand account of the PDP-1 program, including collision between ships and torpedoes." }, { "key": "street-fighter-1987-developer-interview-takashi-nishiyama-and-hiroshi-matsumoto-1987", "canonical": false, "title": "Street Fighter 1987 developer interview (Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto)", "author": null, "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "type": "interview", "publisher": null, "url": "https://shmuplations.com/streetfighter/", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Originally in Gamest; English translation by shmuplations, 2025", "note": "Checked for an account of hit detection; it covers influences and design but not collision, which is why no origin is claimed." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Collision detection", "note": "Overview of collision testing in video games, including hitboxes." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 531, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/hitboxes-and-hurtboxes" }, { "id": "hunt-games", "name": "Hunt Games", "status": "verified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "Two sides on one board are unequal in number, movement and goal, so that one or a few strong pieces try to capture the others or escape while many weaker pieces, unable to take them, try to hem them in", "aliases": [ "chase games", "fox games", "unequal-force games" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "piece-capture", "one-versus-many", "hidden-movement", "variable-player-powers", "handicapping" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Fox and Geese, checked against cercar la liebre and tablut. The canonical form covers both a strong side that captures and one that escapes, as Bell's grouping of Fox and Geese with the tafl games does; the latest reference shows the escape form, and no 2020+ edition of the capture form is cited. Category contested: space-and-position over interaction-and-exchange, because both win conditions are geometric (a jump into an empty point, a net with no exit); interaction lost because the contest is between two players and nothing is exchanged. Agency is high: with no randomiser and an open board, each move is a free choice of piece and destination, and that choice decides whether the line holds or the fox breaks through; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 30 October 2026, for a fox limited to a few jumps and steps. Complexity is medium for unequal movement, chained leaps and two win conditions; low was the losing value for the oldest thirteen-goose form. Pacing is neutral, because play steps along the lines one move at a time with no clock beyond the ordinary end conditions; accelerates was the losing value, for the closing net and the captures. Feedback loop is positive because each capture weakens the net, until the hunters can no longer win; none was the losing value. Decision density is medium: which piece to move, then where, or whether to continue a chain of jumps; low, one move a turn, was the losing value. Tension and frustration risk were the losing values for the many's shrinking margin and for a side that is effectively solved.", "effects": [ "spatial-reasoning", "planning", "contested-fairness", "runaway-leader", "mastery" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Hnefatafl", "year": 400, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "A king and a small force start in the centre against a larger one that tries to hem them in, while the king's side tries to break out. Boards survive from about 400 CE and a tenth-century English manuscript preserves a diagram, but the goals are reconstructed from tablut.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cercar la liebre", "year": 1283, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Described in Alfonso X's Libro de los juegos", "note": "One hare starts in the centre of the alquerque board against twelve, eleven or ten hunters, as the players agree. The hare jumps and removes hunters but cannot itself be taken, and the hunters win by enclosing it; ten reduced to nine can never enclose it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fox and Geese", "year": 1438, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "One fox against thirteen, later seventeen, geese on a cross-shaped board. The fox captures by jumping, in chains, and the geese cannot capture but win by leaving it no move. An Exchequer record of 1438 lists two silver foxes and 46 hounds \"to play atte þe marelles\", which historians read as this game; the rules are printed by Strutt.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tablut", "year": 1732, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Recorded by Linnaeus in Lapland: eight Swedes and their king against sixteen Muscovites on a 9 by 9 board. Pieces are taken between two enemies; the king must be surrounded on four sides, and his side wins if he reaches the edge.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cows and Leopards", "year": 1909, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Two leopards against twenty-four cows, recorded in Ceylon by H. Parker in 1909. The cows enter one at a time after each leopard move and may move only when all are placed; leopards kill by jumping, and the cows win by trapping both.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ogre", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Steve Jackson", "note": "In the basic scenario one Ogre cybertank attacks a command post guarded by twelve armour units and twenty infantry squads. The Ogre wins by destroying the post and escaping, the defence by destroying the Ogre; the size of the defending force is the stated handicap.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tafl Champions: Ancient Chess", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Gritstone Games", "note": "The attackers outnumber the defenders and must capture the defenders' king, who tries to escape the battlefield; the game offers the same objective on boards of several sizes.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Cercar la liebre", "year": 1283, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The earliest rules cited for the form are those of cercar la liebre in Alfonso X's Libro de los juegos, dated 1283 (fol. 92r): one hare against ten to twelve hunters, the hare capturing by leaps and the hunters winning by enclosure. Murray places the earliest hunt game in this manuscript. Tafl is a reported antecedent: boards survive from about 400 CE and a tenth-century English manuscript preserves a hnefatafl diagram, but its unequal goals are reconstructed from tablut (1732). Grettis saga, written after about 1300, names a hala-tafl or fox game without rules. Strutt's claim that Fox and Geese is as old as the thirteenth century in England is unconfirmed, and the age of the South Asian leopard and tiger games remains unsurveyed." }, "established": { "title": "Fox and Geese", "year": 1438, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Fox and Geese is described with the same cross board and the same fox-against-flock rules in England, Iceland (as refskák), Scandinavia, Italy and France, and Fiske reads the later siege game asalto, played on its board, as based on it. Bell treats the South Asian games as independent, so the lineage holds only for the European family." }, "sources": [ { "key": "murray-1952", "canonical": true, "title": "A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess", "author": "H. J. R. Murray", "year": 1952, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Clarendon Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 5, Hunt-games, p. 98", "note": "The class of hunt games, with the earliest example placed in the Alfonso manuscript of 1283; cited by Martínez Sáez (p. 98) for the absence of hunt games from medieval Arabic writing." }, { "key": "board-and-table-games-from-many-civilizations-volume-1-second-edition-1969", "canonical": false, "title": "Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations, volume 1 (second edition)", "author": "R. C. Bell", "year": 1969, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": "https://archive.org/download/B-001-002-771/B-001-002-771_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Chapter Two, War games, section 4: The tafl group, pp. 75-82", "note": "Unequal forces in which the larger hems in the smaller; Fox and Geese rules and the move from thirteen to seventeen geese; the household entry of silver foxes and hounds, given as Edward IV's; tablut; Cows and Leopards as an independent South Asian game." }, { "key": "the-antient-kalendars-and-inventories-of-the-treasury-of-his-majesty-s-exchequer-volume-2-1836", "canonical": false, "title": "The Antient Kalendars and Inventories of the Treasury of His Majesty's Exchequer, volume 2", "author": "Francis Palgrave (editor)", "year": 1836, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Commissioners on the Public Records", "url": "https://archive.org/download/antientkalendars02grea/antientkalendars02grea_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "16 Henry VI, indenture of 14 March, No. 17, p. 172", "note": "Jewels pledged to Richard, Duke of York, in 1438, including \"ii foxes & xlvi houndes of silver ovegilt to play atte þe marelles\"." }, { "key": "chess-in-iceland-and-in-icelandic-literature-1905", "canonical": false, "title": "Chess in Iceland and in Icelandic Literature", "author": "Willard Fiske", "year": 1905, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Florentine Typographical Society", "url": "https://archive.org/download/chessinicelandin00fiskuoft/chessinicelandin00fiskuoft_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Stray notes: Fox-and-geese (refskák), pp. 146-156; the Alfonsine manuscript, pp. 98-99, 254", "note": "Fox and Geese across Europe and Iceland, the 1633 English mention, asalto on the same board, hala-tafl in Grettis saga, and cercar la liebre in the 1283 codex." }, { "key": "the-sports-and-pastimes-of-the-people-of-england-new-edition-1903", "canonical": false, "title": "The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (new edition)", "author": "Joseph Strutt (edited by J. Charles Cox)", "year": 1903, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/sportspastimesof00struuoft/sportspastimesof00struuoft_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Sedentary games: Fox and Geese, pp. 258-259", "note": "First published 1801. Seventeen geese against one fox, the geese winning when skilfully played, and a second fox added in response." }, { "key": "de-la-monter-a-al-tablero-cacer-a-y-juego-en-la-corte-de-alfonso-x-2026", "canonical": false, "title": "De la montería al tablero: cacería y juego en la corte de Alfonso X", "author": "Nicolás Martínez Sáez", "year": 2026, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": null, "url": "https://revistas.uncu.edu.ar/ojs3/index.php/scripta/libraryFiles/downloadPublic/177", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Section 2 and note 9 (Libro de los juegos, fol. 92r)", "note": "Scripta Mediaevalia, in press. Quotes and translates the 1283 rules of cercar la liebre, including the agreed number of hunters and the nine-hunter threshold." }, { "key": "ogre-rulebook-sixth-edition-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "Ogre rulebook (sixth edition)", "author": "Steve Jackson", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Steve Jackson Games", "url": "https://www.sjgames.com/ogre/products/ogredesigner/img/ogre_rulebook.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Basic scenario and victory conditions", "note": "The 1977 release date, the one-Ogre basic scenario, handicapping by the number of defending units, and paired tournament games." }, { "key": "tafl-champions-ancient-chess-steam-store-page-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "Tafl Champions: Ancient Chess (Steam store page)", "author": "Gritstone Games", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://store.steampowered.com/app/1577150/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Release date and the attackers-against-king objective." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 8, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 661, "updated": "2026-10-30", "url": "/mechanics/hunt-games" }, { "id": "income", "name": "Income", "status": "verified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "At a fixed point in each round or on passing a trigger, a player receives resources at a rate set by a track, a table, or a flat salary, so the inflow is scheduled rather than earned by an action in the moment.", "aliases": [ "income phase", "salary", "income track", "periodic income", "regular income" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "upkeep", "engine-building", "loans-and-debt", "stock-holding", "downtime-phases", "adjacency-bonuses" ], "referenced_by": [ "last-hitting", "resource-gathering" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "mixed", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the bureaucracy phase of Power Grid (2004), where each player receives money from a table indexed by the number of cities powered. Agency is low because the receipt is automatic; what a player did earlier sets the rate. Complexity is medium because the canonical payment is read from a single lookup table; low was the losing value and fits a flat salary. Feedback loop is mixed because a tracked income grows with success while the Power Grid table's diminishing increments damp it; positive was the losing value and fits linear tracks such as Brass. Category is resource-management, which departs from the default tie-break order: time-and-action-structure is asked first and was the losing family, since income is defined by its place in the round, but the mechanic's identity is the inflow of a scarce pool rather than the rationing of actions. Pacing is neutral because a scheduled payment at a rate set elsewhere; the canonical tabled form is damped by diminishing increments and the step itself neither compounds nor ends anything; accelerates was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "planning", "engine-satisfaction", "calculation", "runaway-leader" ], "examples": [ { "title": "The Landlord's Game", "year": 1904, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Elizabeth Magie", "note": "Passing the starting corner pays a fixed sum as wages for labour, the flat-salary form that Monopoly later inherited as the salary for passing Go.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Monopoly", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Charles Darrow (Parker Brothers)", "note": "Each circuit of the board pays a salary of two hundred dollars on passing Go, independent of holdings, so the inflow sustains play while rents redistribute it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pendragon", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Greg Stafford (Chaosium)", "note": "The economic step of the yearly Winter Phase yields the knight's manor income, from which horses, family, and standard of living are maintained before the next season of adventure.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Civilization", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley (MicroProse)", "note": "Each turn the trade produced by worked tiles is split by the tax rate into gold, and the resulting per-turn income, less building maintenance, is the budget for purchases and upkeep.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Power Grid", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Friedemann Friese", "note": "In the bureaucracy phase each player is paid from a table according to cities powered, with increments that shrink toward the top, so the leader's marginal city earns least.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ark Nova", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Mathias Wigge (Feuerland Spiele)", "note": "Money arrives at scheduled breaks, which fire when the break token reaches the end of its track; each player is then paid at the rate printed beside their appeal marker, plus kiosk and sponsor income, so raising appeal raises every later payment.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "The Landlord's Game", "year": 1904, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Magie's patented game paid wages on passing the starting square and is the earliest designed-game salary that can be cited with confidence; Monopoly (1935) made the form universal. Nineteenth-century commercial race games may have paid out on reaching squares, so an earlier scheduled inflow is plausible. Power Grid (2004) is the reference for the tabled income with diminishing increments, and Pendragon (1985) for annual income in a role-playing campaign." }, "established": { "title": "Monopoly", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Monopoly's two-hundred-dollar salary for passing Go, inherited from The Landlord's Game, made the scheduled payment universal and is the most widely known income rule; Power Grid (2004) is the reference for the tabled form." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Economics chapter", "note": "Definition and the distinction from upkeep." }, { "key": "power-grid-rulebook-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "Power Grid rulebook", "author": "Friedemann Friese", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Phase 5, bureaucracy; income table", "note": "Canonical tabled income used for the property coding." }, { "key": "monopoly-rules-1935", "canonical": false, "title": "Monopoly rules", "author": "Parker Brothers", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Salary; passing Go", "note": "Flat salary form." }, { "key": "pendragon-1985", "canonical": false, "title": "Pendragon", "author": "Greg Stafford", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Winter Phase; economic circumstances", "note": "Annual manor income in a tabletop RPG." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 497, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/income" }, { "id": "initiative-order", "name": "Initiative Order", "status": "verified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "A procedure, usually a roll or rating, that fixes the sequence in which participants act within a combat round, after which play proceeds in that order until the encounter ends or the order is redetermined.", "aliases": [ "initiative", "turn order", "combat sequence" ], "parent": null, "children": [ "time-track" ], "related": [ "auction-bidding", "action-points", "cooldowns", "advantage-disadvantage" ], "referenced_by": [ "game-clocks", "interrupts-and-reactions", "real-time", "rondel", "simultaneous-action-selection" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the cyclic individual form fixed in Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition (2000), in which each participant rolls once and the order repeats. Randomness is input because the roll is resolved before anyone chooses an action; the AD&D (1979) form, where actions were declared before the roll, would code output. Complexity is low for the cyclic form; segment-based and weapon-speed forms would code high. Interaction is indirect because order affects everyone through shared state without targeting. Pacing is neutral for the mechanic itself; the decelerating effect of turn-based combat belongs to the turn structure, not to the ordering rule.", "effects": [ "downtime", "planning", "volatility" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Chainmail", "year": 1971, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren", "note": "Each turn a die roll decides which side moves first, a convention inherited from earlier miniatures wargames; the whole side acts as a block.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeon Masters Guide", "year": 1979, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax (TSR)", "note": "Each side rolls a six-sided die every round after declaring actions, with ties resolved by weapon speed and spell casting time, producing a dense sub-rule set.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Final Fantasy IV", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Square (Hiroyuki Ito)", "note": "The Active Time Battle gauge replaces a discrete order with per-character timers that fill at speed-dependent rates, so initiative becomes continuous.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Each participant rolls a twenty-sided die plus a Dexterity modifier once; the resulting cyclic order persists for the encounter and can be deliberately delayed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gloomhaven", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Isaac Childres", "note": "Each player's two chosen cards carry an initiative number; the leading card sets that round's position, so order is a hidden simultaneous choice rather than a roll.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Frosthaven", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Isaac Childres (Cephalofair Games)", "note": "Each character secretly plays two ability cards and names one as the initiative card; its number, compared with one revealed card per monster set, orders the round from lowest to highest, with a tie between characters broken by the second card and a tie with a monster going to the character.", "latest": true }, { "title": "Baldur's Gate 3", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Larian Studios", "note": "When combat starts every participant makes a d4 initiative roll that fixes the order in which characters act for the encounter, and some abilities modify a character's place in that order.", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": "Chainmail", "year": 1971, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to the role-playing lineage, whose combat sequence descends from Chainmail. Deciding move order by die roll is a general miniatures-wargame convention that Chainmail inherited, so no origin of the bare idea can be named. Dungeons & Dragons (1974) deferred combat sequencing to Chainmail; the individual, per-character order associated with the term emerged in later editions. Peterson documents the sequence rules and the ambiguity of the 1974 text." }, "established": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The 3rd edition fixed the individual cyclic order the term now usually means: each participant rolls a d20 plus Dexterity once, and the order repeats for the encounter." }, "sources": [ { "key": "frosthaven-rulebook-2022", "canonical": false, "title": "Frosthaven rulebook", "author": "Isaac Childres", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Cephalofair Games", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Card selection; Determining initiative", "note": "Two cards played face down, one named as the initiative card; monster initiative from one revealed card per set; ordering lowest to highest; tie-breaks by the second card and in the character's favour against monsters." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Sections on Chainmail's turn sequence and the 1974 combat rules", "note": "Wargame inheritance and the lack of an explicit initiative rule in the 1974 text." }, { "key": "advanced-dungeons-dragons-dungeon-masters-guide-1979", "canonical": false, "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeon Masters Guide", "author": "Gary Gygax", "year": 1979, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Combat; Initiative", "note": "The side-based round with weapon speed factors." }, { "key": "player-s-handbook-3rd-edition-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Player's Handbook, 3rd edition", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 8 (Combat), Initiative", "note": "The cyclic individual form used for the property coding." }, { "key": "gloomhaven-rulebook-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Gloomhaven rulebook", "author": "Isaac Childres", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Initiative", "note": "Card-driven initiative." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 523, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/initiative-order" }, { "id": "interrupts-and-reactions", "name": "Interrupts and Reactions", "status": "unverified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "A rule that lets a participant act outside their own turn in response to a defined trigger, such as an enemy moving into view or a spell being cast, with the response resolving before or instead of the action that provoked it.", "aliases": [ "reaction cards", "instants", "out-of-turn actions", "opportunity fire", "overwatch", "attacks of opportunity", "the stack" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "initiative-order", "action-points", "take-that", "combo-systems", "morale-and-rout" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "tabletop-rpg", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "high", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 2, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the instant-speed response in Magic: The Gathering, in which a player with priority may cast a response that resolves before the spell it answers. Agency is medium because the responder chooses whether and with what to react, but only within a window the opponent opened. Randomness is none for the timing rule itself; the opportunity-fire forms roll to hit, but that chance belongs to the attack. Interaction is direct because a reaction names the action and usually the player it answers. Complexity is high because the canonical form needs rules for priority, a last-in-first-out stack, and the distinction between what can and cannot be responded to; the single-trigger forms (attacks of opportunity) would code medium. Pacing decelerates because every action opens a window in which others may act. Information is asymmetric because the possibility of a response is known to the holder and only inferable by the opponent; perfect was the losing value, true of the wargame and role-playing forms where the capability is printed. Category was not contested; the rule partitions time and decides who may act when, which is the family's test, and it is the boundary with initiative order.", "effects": [ "tension", "bluffing", "planning", "analysis-paralysis" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Mille Bornes", "year": 1954, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Edmond Dujardin", "note": "When an opponent plays a hazard and a player holds the matching safety, that player may play it at once, out of turn, as a coup-fourré, cancelling the hazard and scoring a bonus; checked in rules descended from the Parker Brothers edition, not the 1954 French text.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Squad Leader", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "John Hill (Avalon Hill)", "note": "A Defensive Fire Phase lets the non-moving player fire at units that have just moved through open ground, so moving in the open becomes a calculated risk. Whether the 1977 rules also allowed fire during movement itself, as Advanced Squad Leader's Defensive First Fire does, is unconfirmed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Magic: The Gathering", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Garfield (Wizards of the Coast)", "note": "Interrupts could be played at any time, including against another interrupt, and the latest resolved first, while instants answered back and forth all took effect together; the Sixth Edition rules of 1999 replaced both with the stack, and leaving mana untapped signals a possible response.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "A creature that leaves a threatened square or performs a distracting action provokes an attack of opportunity, a free melee attack by each adjacent enemy that resolves before the movement completes, so positioning on the grid is policed off-turn.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "A real-time form with no turns: the trigger is an enemy's visible cast, shown on a progress bar, and the window is its cast time. At launch (2004) the rogue's Kick interrupts the spell being cast and bars it for 5 seconds on a 10-second cooldown; the mage's Counterspell, 30 yards on a 30-second cooldown, stops the cast and bars that spell for 15 seconds.", "latest": false }, { "title": "XCOM: Enemy Unknown", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Firaxis Games", "note": "A soldier may end their turn on Overwatch, forfeiting an action now for a reaction shot at the first enemy that moves in sight during the alien turn, with an aim penalty; the choice to hold fire is the game's central trade.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Each creature has one reaction per round, spent on an opportunity attack, a readied action, or a spell such as shield or counterspell, and the single-reaction budget rations how much off-turn play the table must track.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Konami", "note": "Any activation can be answered by the opponent before it resolves, building a chain that resolves in reverse order, so a set trap or quick effect played on the opponent's turn can negate the card that provoked it.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Mille Bornes", "year": 1954, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "The earliest documented reaction rule found is the coup-fourré of Mille Bornes (1954), a safety played out of turn the moment an opponent plays the matching hazard; it is documented in rules that follow the Parker Brothers edition, and no copy of the 1954 French text is cited, though the publisher's current rules, which date the game to 1954, give the same out-of-turn play and bonus. Mah-jongg's claim on another player's discard, in Babcock's rules of 1920, also breaks turn order on a trigger, but it is the game's normal way of taking tiles rather than a response effect, so it is not counted. In wargames, SPI's Red Star/White Star (1972) let non-phasing units fire during the enemy's movement at units leaving a zone of control, Panzer Leader (1974) added opportunity fire as an optional rule, and Squad Leader (1977) made defensive fire part of its sequence. Magic: The Gathering (1993) let interrupts answer interrupts, and its Sixth Edition rules (1999) replaced them with the stack, which gave the family much of its vocabulary. Earlier card games and miniatures rules remain unsurveyed." }, "established": { "title": "Magic: The Gathering", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Magic: The Gathering's Sixth Edition rules of 1999 introduced the stack, on which responses resolve last-in-first-out, and gave the family much of its vocabulary; Yu-Gi-Oh!'s chains follow the same form." }, "sources": [ { "key": "magic-the-gathering-comprehensive-rules", "canonical": false, "title": "Magic: The Gathering Comprehensive Rules", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Timing and priority; the stack", "note": "Canonical rules for responses resolving last-in-first-out; a living document descended from the Sixth Edition rules." }, { "key": "panzer-leader-rulebook-1974", "canonical": false, "title": "Panzer Leader rulebook", "author": "Avalon Hill", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Optional and experimental rules; opportunity fire", "note": "Optional opportunity fire at a unit as it moves." }, { "key": "squad-leader-rulebook-1977", "canonical": false, "title": "Squad Leader rulebook", "author": "John Hill (Avalon Hill)", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Defensive Fire Phase", "note": "Fire by the non-moving player at units that have just moved." }, { "key": "player-s-handbook-3rd-edition-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Player's Handbook, 3rd edition", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 8 (Combat), Attacks of Opportunity", "note": "The threatened-square trigger." }, { "key": "player-s-handbook-5th-edition-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Player's Handbook, 5th edition", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 9 (Combat), Reactions", "note": "The one-reaction-per-round budget." }, { "key": "mille-6-manual-page", "canonical": false, "title": "mille(6) manual page", "author": "OpenBSD", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://man.openbsd.org/mille.6", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "A computer version following the Parker Brothers rules; a safety matching an opponent's hazard is played immediately as a coup-fourré for 300 points." }, { "key": "mille-bornes-r-gle-du-jeu-dition-prestige", "canonical": false, "title": "Mille Bornes, règle du jeu (Édition Prestige)", "author": "Dujardin (Jumbo)", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://media.jumboplay.com/1130300234_Manual.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": "Le Coup-Fourré, p. 13; Compter les points, p. 8", "note": "In French. A safety may be played when an opponent plays the matching attack, even out of turn, as a coup-fourré worth 300 points beyond the safety; the history page dates the game to 1954." }, { "key": "red-star-white-star-consolidated-errata-addenda-1973", "canonical": false, "title": "Red Star/White Star Consolidated Errata & Addenda", "author": "Simulations Publications, Inc.", "year": 1973, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Combat (E); Sequence of Play E", "note": "Non-phasing units may fire once during the Enemy Movement Phase at units leaving friendly zones of control; phrased as a correction, so the 1972 rules held a version of it." }, { "key": "red-star-white-star", "canonical": false, "title": "Red Star/White Star", "author": "Spotlight on Games", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://spotlightongames.com/summary/redstar.html", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "The 1972 sequence of play lists non-phasing fire attacks within the Movement Phase." }, { "key": "the-original-magic-rulebook-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "The Original Magic Rulebook", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/original-magic-rulebook-2004-12-25", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Transcription of the 1993 rules; interrupts may interrupt interrupts and resolve first, while instants answered in turn take effect at the same time." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-official-strategy-guide-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Official Strategy Guide", "author": "Michael Lummis and Danielle Vanderlip", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "BradyGames", "url": "https://archive.org/details/World_of_Warcraft_World_of_Warcraft_BradyGames_Official_Strategy_Guide", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Rogue chapter, abilities (Kick); Mage chapter, spells (Counterspell)", "note": "Kick and Counterspell with their lockouts, ranges and cooldowns at launch." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-spells-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Spells", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20041115034024/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com:80/info/basics/spells.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "The cast progress indicator, casts delayed by damage, and casts cancelled by stuns or movement." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 12, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 549, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/interrupts-and-reactions" }, { "id": "inventory-encumbrance", "name": "Inventory and Encumbrance", "status": "verified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "What a character can carry is capped by weight, slot count, or volume, so acquiring more than the limit forces the player to drop, store, or sell holdings or to accept penalties to movement.", "aliases": [ "carry weight", "carrying capacity", "inventory limits", "inventory management" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hand-management", "loot-tables", "upkeep", "markets" ], "referenced_by": [ "death-penalty", "equipment-loadouts", "full-loot", "pick-up-and-deliver", "usage-dice" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "negative", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the coin-weight encumbrance of Dungeons & Dragons (1974), where total load sets the movement rate. Agency is medium because the choice is which items to keep from a bounded set. Complexity is medium because the 1974 form is a single short threshold table; high was the losing value for systems that add per-item bulk and container rules. Pacing is decelerates because managing load adds trips, sorting, and stalls. Feedback loop is negative because success in gathering treasure slows the character; none was the losing value on the view that the limit has no memory. Capacity is coded here; which items are chosen for their capabilities belongs to equipment-loadouts. Decision density is medium because a pickup asks which items to carry and whether to accept slower movement; low was the losing value.", "effects": [ "planning", "consequence-weight", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Weight is measured in gold-piece units and the character's movement rate falls in steps as load rises, so carrying treasure out of the dungeon is itself a problem.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Colossal Cave Adventure", "year": 1976, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Will Crowther, extended by Don Woods", "note": "In the version expanded by Don Woods (1977) the player can hold only a handful of objects at once, so solving the cave requires deciding what to leave behind and where; an early video-game inventory constraint.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Talisman", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Robert Harris (Games Workshop)", "note": "A character may carry no more than four Objects, excluding Followers, and must discard down when a fifth is gained unless a Mule is held, a slot limit on a board.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Resident Evil", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Capcom", "note": "A six- or eight-slot inventory with item boxes in save rooms forces choices between weapons, ammunition, healing items, and keys, and the constraint defines the genre's pacing.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "From launch (2004) capacity is itself loot: a fixed 16-slot backpack plus four bag slots that take found or bought bags, the first usually 6-slot, so a bigger bag is an upgrade. The bank sells extra bag slots, each tier costing ten times the last, and a hunter's quiver or ammo pouch fills one bag slot in exchange for faster firing.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Death Stranding", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Kojima Productions", "note": "Cargo has weight and a stacking position; overloading and poor balance cause stumbling and falls, so capacity is modelled physically rather than as a number.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Lethal Company", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Zeekerss", "note": "Each crew member holds at most four items, two-handed scrap blocks ladder climbing and further pickups, and carried weight slows movement, so every trip from the facility to the ship is a choice of which scrap to haul and which to leave.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "high", "note": "The 1974 rules are the earliest documented game to tie a character's movement to the weight of what is carried, and the primary text is unambiguous. Wargame stacking and supply limits are antecedents for units rather than individuals. Colossal Cave Adventure in its 1977 expanded form is an early video carry limit, and Diablo (1996) popularised the grid inventory." }, "established": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The 1974 rules tied movement to the gold-piece weight carried, the weight-threshold form retained through later editions and familiar from open-world role-playing games; Diablo (1996) popularised the grid variant." }, "sources": [ { "key": "dungeons-dragons-volume-1-men-magic-1974", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 1, Men & Magic", "author": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Equipment weights and movement rates by load", "note": "Canonical coin-weight encumbrance used for the property coding." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Origins of the 1974 equipment and movement rules in miniature wargaming." }, { "key": "talisman-rulebook-1983", "canonical": false, "title": "Talisman rulebook", "author": "Robert Harris", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Objects", "note": "Four-Object carry limit, the board-game slot form." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Inventory (video games)", "note": null }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-bags-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Bags", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20041214034203/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com:80/info/basics/bags.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "The permanent 16-slot backpack, four additional bag slots, 6-slot bags as the usual early finds, and bank bonus slots that hold bags." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-official-strategy-guide-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Official Strategy Guide", "author": "Michael Lummis and Danielle Vanderlip", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "BradyGames", "url": "https://archive.org/details/World_of_Warcraft_World_of_Warcraft_BradyGames_Official_Strategy_Guide", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Banking; Hunter chapter (ammunition container)", "note": "Each new tier of bank space costing ten times the previous one, and the hunter's ammunition container in a bag slot." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 481, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/inventory-encumbrance" }, { "id": "item-modification", "name": "Item Modification", "status": "unverified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "The player changes the properties of an item already held, rerolling, adding, removing or upgrading them by spending consumables or materials on it, often with a random result, so an owned item is improved in place", "aliases": [ "reforging", "rerolling", "enchanting", "currency crafting" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "resource-conversion", "loot-tables", "rerolls", "equipment-loadouts", "commodity-currency", "socketing" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "high", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 2, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the currency orbs of Path of Exile (2013), the random form on which that game built its itemisation, rather than from the provenance example, whose deterministic enchantment would code randomness none. Agency is medium because the player chooses the item, the orb, and whether to apply another, while the property drawn is left to chance; low was the losing value, since the result of one application is fixed by the draw. Randomness is output because each orb is applied before its result is known. Complexity is high because each orb is legal only on items of a given rarity and several move items between rarities, under caps on the number of properties; medium was the losing value, for a single orb taught alone. Pacing is neutral; decelerates was the losing value, since repeated attempts lengthen the path to a finished item. Information is perfect because the item's properties and each orb's effect are stated; hidden was the losing value, if the pool and weights held by the game system count as the mechanic's own state. Feedback loop is none because a successful roll does not raise the odds of the next; the loop in which better gear farms more orbs belongs to the host and was the losing value. Interaction is solo; the orbs' exchange role between players is commodity currency. The category sits close to chance-and-risk, which the default tie-break order reaches first; the category stands because the mechanic's output is a lasting change in what the character can do.", "effects": [ "compulsion", "volatility", "grind", "sunk-cost", "ownership" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Magic-users of Wizard level may enchant items as well as manufacture them, and the cost examples include \"Enchanting Armor to +1\" for 2,000 gold pieces and two months of game time, a deterministic raise of one property on an item already owned.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Diablo II", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard North", "note": "The Horadric Cube's formula of three perfect gems and a magic item yields a new random magic item of the same type, spending gems to reroll the properties of an item the player holds. Blizzard's guide said further formulas would be revealed as they were discovered.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Enchanting, described as a service profession, breaks magic items down into materials used to enhance weapons and armour, adding a known property to gear already owned.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "Consumable orbs act on an owned item by rarity. Transmutation makes a normal item magic, Alteration and Chaos Orbs reforge magic and rare items with new random properties, Exalted Orbs add one random property up to six, Divine Orbs reroll the values, and Scouring removes all properties.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Path of Exile 2", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "Currency orbs again act on items the player already holds. The 0.2.0 update notes state that existing items can be rerolled using a Divine Orb, the orb that randomises the values of an item's properties.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "low", "note": "Under the definition, which includes deterministic as well as random modification, the earliest documented use cited is the Men & Magic cost list, where \"Enchanting Armor to +1\" costs 2,000 gold pieces and two months. It is a single line on a referee-set scale, and earlier wargame and campaign precedents remain unsurveyed, so confidence is low. The earliest random form cited is the Diablo II Horadric Cube page of August 2000; Path of Exile (2013) made random modification the core of its itemisation." }, "established": { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Path of Exile made random modification the core of its itemisation, with consumable orbs that reroll, add, or remove properties on an owned item by rarity; Path of Exile 2 keeps the orbs." }, "sources": [ { "key": "dungeons-dragons-volume-1-men-magic-1974", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 1, Men & Magic", "author": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Tactical Studies Rules", "url": "https://archive.org/download/dndbook1/dungeons_and_dragons_book_1_-_men_and_magic_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Characters, Magic-Users (pp. 6-8), examples of costs", "note": "Wizards manufacture magic items for gold and game time; the cost of enchanting armour to +1." }, { "key": "crafting-in-games-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Crafting in Games", "author": "April Grow, Melanie Dickinson, Johnathan Pagnutti, Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Michael Mateas", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "Digital Humanities Quarterly 11.4", "url": "https://dhq.digitalhumanities.org/vol/11/4/000339/000339.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Recipe Definition, para. 40; Variable Outcome, paras. 79-85", "note": "Survey of 64 crafting systems in 47 games; recipe making as the usual sense of crafting, and variable outcome as uncommon among them." }, { "key": "diablo-ii-strategy-guide-items-the-horadric-cube-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Diablo II Strategy Guide - Items: The Horadric Cube", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20000816004630/http://www.battle.net:80/diablo2/items/cube.shtml", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Transmuting Formulas", "note": "The cube formulas, including three perfect gems and a magic item for a new random magic item." }, { "key": "crafted-items-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "Crafted Items", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20011212164841/http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/crafteditems.shtml", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Lord of Destruction crafted items with fixed and random properties, called a form of gambling for high-level players." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-info-trade-skills-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Info - Trade Skills", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20050102011832/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com:80/info/professions/", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Enchanting as a service profession that disenchants magic items to enhance weapons and armour." }, { "key": "item-data-currency-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "Item Data: Currency", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20131108075608/http://www.pathofexile.com:80/item-data/currency", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Chaos Orb, Exalted Orb, Orb of Alteration, Orb of Augmentation, Regal Orb, Orb of Scouring, Divine Orb, Orb of Transmutation", "note": "The text of each orb, including its legal target rarity and the six-property cap on rare items." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-game-overview-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile: Game overview", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20131013220227/https://www.pathofexile.com/game", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Gold removed in favour of orbs that randomly reroll the properties of other items." }, { "key": "1-2-0-patch-notes-forsaken-masters-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "1.2.0 Patch Notes - Forsaken Masters", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/998489", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Hideout crafting benches on which the player selects a specific modifier, within three-prefix and three-suffix limits." }, { "key": "content-update-0-2-0-path-of-exile-2-dawn-of-the-hunt-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Content Update 0.2.0 -- Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3740562", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Existing items can be rerolled using a Divine Orb." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 9, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 604, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/item-modification" }, { "id": "kill-streaks", "name": "Kill Streaks and Bounties", "status": "unverified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "Consecutive defeats of opponents without being defeated are counted, and set counts grant the streaking player rewards such as new capabilities; many games also pay a bounty to whoever ends the streak", "aliases": [ "killstreak rewards", "killing sprees", "streak bounties", "shutdown gold" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "achievements", "take-that", "push-your-luck", "combo-systems", "death-penalty" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), whose rewards at three, five and seven kills without dying are the canonical form; the bounty paid for ending a streak (Dota 2, League of Legends) is treated as a variation, because the developer's own definition of a killstreak is kills without dying earning rewards, and because the bounty form has been cut back in both of its home games. Agency is medium (when to deploy a held reward, where to aim an airstrike, whether to play safe to protect the count); low was the losing value, since the count advances only through kills made by other rules. Randomness is none; output was the losing value for random reward contents such as care packages. Interaction is direct because rewards strike human opponents; mixed was the losing value, since in team modes the UAV serves the whole team. Complexity is medium: a threshold table, a reset rule and a deploy rule. Pacing accelerates, because rewards produce further kills in a score-limited match; neutral was the losing value for time-limited modes. Information is asymmetric: the streaker knows the count and opponents learn of it when a reward arrives; perfect was the losing value, for games that announce sprees to everyone. Feedback loop is positive, since success buys capability that produces more success and neither the reset nor the last threshold penalises success; mixed was the losing value, reading the reset as a damper or counting a bounty on the streaker, and negative would follow if the bounty form were canonical. Decision density is medium (whether to play cautiously near the next threshold, when to deploy a held reward, and where to aim it); low was the losing value, counting only the deploy decision. Catch-up is not tagged: the canonical form gives a trailing player nothing, while the bounty variation would carry it. Resource management competes as a family in the bounty form, where the reward is gold.", "effects": [ "runaway-leader", "tension", "spectacle", "frustration-risk", "consequence-weight" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Unreal Tournament", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Epic Games and Digital Extremes", "note": "Antecedent, recognition only. The game counts each player's kills since their last death and announces counts of 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 (\"is on a killing spree!\" to \"is Godlike!\"), and a victim on five or more prompts an \"ended by\" message naming the killer; no reward or bounty attaches.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Infinity Ward", "note": "Three kills in a row unlock a UAV that shows enemies on the radar of the player's team for about 30 seconds, five an airstrike placed anywhere on the map, and seven an attack helicopter that hunts enemy troops.", "latest": false }, { "title": "League of Legends", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Riot Games", "note": "Bounty variation. A champion's bounty was tied to kill and death streaks until patch 14.21 (October 2024), when positive bounties came to accrue from gold earned instead; a Shut Down kill collects the bounty and clears it from the victim.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Call of Duty: Black Ops II", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Treyarch", "note": "Scorestreaks replace killstreaks, counting score from almost any action that helps the team, with objective play worth more than kills; death resets progress toward new streaks, but active streaks keep earning points.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dota 2", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "Bounty variation. A hero on a kill spree carries extra gold and experience for whoever kills it; patch 7.25 (March 2020) raised the spree gold bounty to a range of 200 to 690, and 7.26 a month later halved kill streak gold.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Infinity Ward", "note": "Players equip three killstreaks from a list priced from four kills (UAV, Bomb Drone) to fifteen (Juggernaut), and being eliminated sets the streak back to zero; a scorestreak system can be chosen instead.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the canonical reward form: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's rewards at three, five and seven kills, described in an August 2007 hands-on, are the earliest documented use cited. Unreal Tournament (1999) is an antecedent: its code counts kills since death, resets the count on death and announces the end of a spree, but grants nothing. The streak gold of the Defense of the Ancients maps for Warcraft III, the source of the bounty branch, is reportedly older, though no cited changelog dates it. Confidence is medium because the 2007 evidence is a preview and earlier shooters and mods remain unsurveyed." }, "established": { "title": "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Call of Duty 4 attached rewards at three, five, and seven kills without dying and is often credited with popularising killstreaks; later Call of Duty games kept the form and varied it with scorestreaks." }, "sources": [ { "key": "joystiq-hands-on-call-of-duty-4-multiplayer-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Joystiq hands-on: Call of Duty 4 multiplayer", "author": "Kevin Kelly", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Engadget (Joystiq)", "url": "https://www.engadget.com/2007-08-10-joystiq-hands-on-call-of-duty-4-multiplayer.html", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Rewards at three, five and seven kills in a row (UAV radar, airstrike, helicopter) and the advice to take cover from them." }, { "key": "unreal-tournament-botpack-source-documentation-deathmatchplus-1999", "canonical": false, "title": "Unreal Tournament Botpack source documentation: DeathMatchPlus", "author": "Epic Games", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center project archive", "url": "https://project-archives.etc.cmu.edu/2001/fall/coyote210/Docs/undox/Botpack.DeathMatchPlus.html", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Killed(), NotifySpree(), EndSpree()", "note": "Spree counter incremented per kill, reset on death, announced at 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25." }, { "key": "unreal-tournament-botpack-source-documentation-killingspreemessage-1999", "canonical": false, "title": "Unreal Tournament Botpack source documentation: KillingSpreeMessage", "author": "Epic Games", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center project archive", "url": "https://project-archives.etc.cmu.edu/2001/fall/coyote210/Docs/undox/Botpack.KillingSpreeMessage.html", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "The spree announcements and the \"killing spree was ended by\" message." }, { "key": "the-basics-of-call-of-duty-modern-warfare-killstreaks-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "The Basics of Call of Duty Modern Warfare Killstreaks", "author": "James Mattone", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Activision", "url": "https://blog.activision.com/call-of-duty/2019-10/The-Basics-of-Call-of-Duty-Modern-Warfare-Killstreaks", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Killstreaks earned by multiple kills without dying, progress reset on death, three equipped, and a perk converting them to score in a single life." }, { "key": "what-are-scorestreaks", "canonical": false, "title": "What are Scorestreaks?", "author": "Activision Support", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Activision", "url": "https://support.activision.com/au/en/call-of-duty--black-ops-ii/articles/what-are-scorestreaks", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Black Ops II scorestreaks, earned by team-beneficial actions, reset on death while active streaks keep scoring." }, { "key": "dota-2-patch-7-25-2020", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2 patch 7.25", "author": "Valve", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dota2.com/datafeed/patchnotes?version=7.25&language=english", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "General gameplay", "note": "Hero kill spree gold bounty raised from 60–480 to 200–690 and experience bounty from 400–1800 to 500–2040; area kill gold with a comeback factor replaced." }, { "key": "dota-2-patch-7-26-2020", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2 patch 7.26", "author": "Valve", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dota2.com/datafeed/patchnotes?version=7.26&language=english", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "General gameplay", "note": "Kill streak gold reduced by 50% and all bounties by 10%." }, { "key": "patch-14-21-notes-2024", "canonical": false, "title": "Patch 14.21 Notes", "author": "Riot Games", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/game-updates/patch-14-21-notes/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Bounties", "note": "Bounties formerly tied to kill and death streaks, now to gold earned; shutdowns clear the bounty; Riot expects losing teams to give away less gold." }, { "key": "complete-modern-warfare-2-killstreaks-available-at-launch-2022", "canonical": false, "title": "Complete Modern Warfare 2 Killstreaks Available at Launch", "author": "Salman Haider Zaidi", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "MP1st", "url": "https://mp1st.com/news/complete-modern-warfare-2-killstreaks-available-at-launch", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Infinity Ward's launch list of killstreaks and their kill counts, three equipped, reset on elimination, scorestreak option." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 9, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 526, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/kill-streaks" }, { "id": "lane-pushing", "name": "Lane Pushing", "status": "verified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "Computer-controlled units spawn on a timer at each base and advance along fixed lanes toward the opposing base, while players fight alongside them to break the towers guarding each lane and to defend their own", "aliases": [ "pushing", "laning", "minion waves", "lane control" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "tower-defence", "area-control", "supply-lines", "team-play", "real-time", "fog-of-war" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "mixed", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Dota 2, in the line of the DotA Allstars map, with League of Legends as the check. Agency is medium: the lane-level choice is to push the wave, hold it or leave the lane, and which structure to strike, while the waves themselves are never commanded; high was the losing value, counting positioning as an open choice space. Randomness is none, since waves spawn on a fixed clock with a fixed composition; output was the losing value, for Dota 2's creep damage ranges, which belong to the host game's combat. Interaction is mixed: teams of players oppose each other, cover lanes cooperatively and fight directly; indirect was the losing value, on the reading that sides act on each other mainly through the shared battle line. Complexity is medium (waves on a clock, towers that fall in order, barracks or inhibitors whose loss upgrades the attacker's waves); high was the losing value once backdoor protection, tower auras, the Glyph, siege creeps and timed wave upgrades are counted. Pacing accelerates because fallen towers open the base, upgraded waves force sieges and waves grow over time; neutral was the losing value, given the defender's dampers. Information is perfect for the spawn clock and structures; asymmetric was the losing value, because every host hides wave positions under fog of war. Feedback loop is mixed: a positive loop (lost towers stay lost, lost barracks upgrade the attacker's waves, super creeps pay the defender less) beside built-in dampers that favour the defender; positive was the losing value. Catch-up is not tagged because the dampers follow position rather than deficit; tagging it was the losing value. Decision density is high (which lane to take, whether to push the wave, when to strike a tower, and when to leave); medium was the losing value, grouping these as push or hold, wave or structure, stay or rotate. Category is space-and-position because a lane's state is where the battle line and the surviving structures stand.", "effects": [ "spatial-reasoning", "teamwork", "planning", "runaway-leader", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Future Cop: LAPD", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "EA Redwood Shores (Electronic Arts)", "note": "Antecedent. In the Precinct Assault mode players buy and deploy hovertanks to invade the opposing base and fight alongside them, capturing automated turrets and outposts; units are purchased rather than spawned on a clock.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Aeon of Strife", "year": 1998, "year_approx": true, "medium": "video", "creator": "StarCraft custom map by players", "note": "Each player controls one hero while the computer spawns waves of units that march on the opposing base along three lanes dotted with defensive towers, which heroes and waves must take down before reaching the base.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Defense of the Ancients", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Eul (Warcraft III custom map)", "note": "Carries the layout to Warcraft III, three tower-guarded pathways crossing a river between two bases; under DotA Allstars, players who leave their assigned lanes lose towers and expose the way to their base.", "latest": false }, { "title": "League of Legends", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Riot Games", "note": "Minion waves spawn every 30 seconds from each Nexus; behind a lane's outer and inner turrets a last turret guards the inhibitor, whose fall gives the attackers super minions in that lane until it respawns after five minutes.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dota 2", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "A creep wave spawns every 30 seconds at each faction's barracks; each lane's towers stay invulnerable until the one before them falls, a lost barracks makes the attackers' lane spawn super creeps, and losing all barracks brings mega creeps to every lane.", "latest": false }, { "title": "League of Legends: Wild Rift", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Riot Games", "note": "Each of three lanes holds a trio of turrets; there are no inhibitors, so destroying a lane's base turret brings super minions, and the Nexus defends itself with blasts in place of Nexus turrets.", "latest": true }, { "title": "Guards of Atlantis II", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Artyom Nichipurov (Wolff Designa)", "note": "Minions fight minions between rounds in a lane's battle zone; when one side's minions are wiped out the lane is pushed one zone toward the enemy throne and a wave counter is removed, and pushing into the throne wins.", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": "Aeon of Strife", "year": 1998, "year_approx": true, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Aeon of Strife, a custom map for StarCraft (1998), is the widely cited origin: Dean (2011) describes computer-spawned waves sent along three tower-lined lanes while each player controls one hero, and Ferrari (2013) names it as the inspiration for Defense of the Ancients. The year is approximate: the map's date is unconfirmed, given as the late 1990s and, in some accounts, 2002, and its author is reportedly a modder known as Aeon64. Accounts also differ over whether the opposing side was a second team of players or a computer force. Herzog Zwei (1989), in which each player controls a single command unit, and the Precinct Assault mode of Future Cop: LAPD (1998), in which purchased hovertanks invade the enemy base, are antecedents without timed waves on fixed lanes. Confidence is medium because the map is known only through later accounts." }, "established": { "title": "Aeon of Strife", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Aeon of Strife's computer-spawned waves along three tower-lined lanes are named as the inspiration for Defense of the Ancients, which carried the layout to Warcraft III and led to League of Legends and Dota 2." }, "sources": [ { "key": "from-generative-to-conventional-play-moba-and-league-of-legends-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "From Generative to Conventional Play: MOBA and League of Legends", "author": "Simon Ferrari", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "Proceedings of DiGRA 2013: DeFragging Game Studies", "url": "https://dl.digra.org/index.php/dl/article/download/664/664", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Introduction; pp. 3–4 (DotA lineage and the map); Opening phase, Laning phase and Endgame (pp. 7–14)", "note": "Waves every 30 seconds, tower-guarded lanes, assigned lanes, the siege of inhibitors and super minions, the leading team's advantage in the endgame, and Aeon of Strife as DotA's inspiration." }, { "key": "the-story-of-dota-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "The Story of DOTA", "author": "Paul Dean", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Eurogamer", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20130109192619/http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-16-the-story-of-dota-article", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Aeon of Strife's AI-spawned waves along three tower-dotted lanes, Eul's DotA, DotA Allstars under Guinsoo and IceFrog, and the distinction from tower defence." }, { "key": "map-and-modes-wild-rift-2022", "canonical": false, "title": "Map and Modes (Wild Rift)", "author": "Riot Games", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://support.riotgames.com/en-us/wild-rift/gameplay/map-and-modes", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Three lanes with three turrets each, no inhibitors, super minions from the base turret, and the Nexus's own blasts." }, { "key": "patch-11-23-notes-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "Patch 11.23 notes", "author": "Riot Games", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/game-updates/patch-11-23-notes/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Objective Bounties", "note": "Turret and other objective bounties that activate only for a team sufficiently behind on experience, gold, dragons and turrets." }, { "key": "guards-of-atlantis-ii-rulebook-2022", "canonical": false, "title": "Guards of Atlantis II rulebook", "author": "Artyom Nichipurov", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Wolff Designa", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Minions; Battle Zone; Pushing a Lane; Wave counters", "note": "Minion battles between rounds, pushing a lane one zone, wave counters and the throne victory; rules text as reproduced on RulesPal." }, { "key": "dota-2-wiki", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2 Wiki", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Lane Creeps; Buildings", "note": "Spawn interval, wave composition and upgrades, super and mega creeps, tower tiers and invulnerability, backdoor protection, Tower Protection and the Glyph of Fortification." }, { "key": "league-of-legends-wiki", "canonical": false, "title": "League of Legends Wiki", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Inhibitor", "note": "Super minions from a destroyed inhibitor and its five-minute respawn." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Multiplayer online battle arena; Future Cop LAPD", "note": "Herzog Zwei and Future Cop's Precinct Assault as cited antecedents, Aeon of Strife's three tower-protected lanes, and Riot's use of the genre term." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 8, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 641, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/lane-pushing" }, { "id": "last-hitting", "name": "Last Hitting", "status": "unverified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "Only the attack that defeats a unit earns its bounty of gold or a similar reward, so players time a final blow on weakened enemies, and in the denying form may finish allied units to withhold that reward from opponents", "aliases": [ "last hit", "denying", "creep score", "killing blow" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "income", "loot-tables", "resource-gathering", "semi-cooperative", "tower-defence" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Dota 2, in which a lane creep's gold goes to the hero who lands the killing blow, experience goes to enemy heroes nearby, and allied units below half health may be denied. Agency is medium: for each creep the player chooses among a small set (take the last hit, deny an allied creep, or hold off), while whether the blow lands in time is execution; high was the losing value. Randomness is none; output was the losing value, because Dota 2 rolls hero attack damage within a range after the attack is committed, though League of Legends' fixed damage shows the range belongs to the host. Interaction is indirect, since both sides contest a shared unit and a deny withholds a reward without targeting the opposing hero; direct was the losing value. Complexity is medium (killing-blow credit, proximity experience, a deny threshold and reduced experience for denied creeps); low was the losing value, for League of Legends' form without denies. Pacing is neutral; accelerates was the losing value, as the gold leads it feeds shorten matches. Information is perfect: unit health is public. Feedback loop is positive, since gold and levels from won last hits and denies make further last hits easier and open kills on the lane opponent, and the bounty is fixed whatever the standing; none was the losing value, on the reading that gold becomes strength only through items. Decision density is medium (which enemy creep to finish and whether to deny instead, within one wave); high was the losing value, counting each creep as its own decision point. The category, resource-management, departs from the tie-break order, which would reach interaction-and-exchange first as a contest over shared units; it is kept because the act's purpose is acquiring the currency the host spends.", "effects": [ "execution", "mastery", "tension", "runaway-leader" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Antecedent. Killing neutral creeps is a source of gold and of hero experience, and the engine lets a player attack allied or own units at any time, the opening on which DotA's denying was built.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Defense of the Ancients", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Eul (Warcraft III custom map)", "note": "Players attacked their own creeps to stop opponents gaining gold, a use of the Warcraft III engine the map first discouraged by hexing anyone who attacked an ally and reportedly later allowed for non-hero units below half health; denied units' experience was retuned across versions.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cutthroat Caverns", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Curt Covert (Smirk and Dagger Games)", "note": "Only the player whose attack card strikes the killing blow on a monster takes its prestige, however much damage others dealt, so players hold strong cards until they can be sure of the kill while someone must still wear the monster down.", "latest": false }, { "title": "League of Legends", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Riot Games", "note": "Experience comes from being near a minion's death, but gold only from the last hit, logged as a creep score visible to everyone in the match; there is no denying.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dota 2", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "The killing blow on a creep earns its gold; allied creeps below 50% health can be denied, giving the enemy no gold and half the experience, and patch 7.26b (2020) removed the share of gold a denier had received since patch 7.20.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Heroes of the Storm", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Variation by removal. Experience is pooled by team and there are no last hits, which Dustin Browder presented as stopping one player from taking an ally's experience and gold.", "latest": false }, { "title": "League of Legends: Wild Rift", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Riot Games", "note": "The last hit still pays a minion's full gold, but nearby allied champions who did not land it share part of its value, and auto-targeting favours the lowest-health minion in range; there is no denying.", "latest": true }, { "title": "Deadlock", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "A dying trooper releases souls in orbs; a floating orb must be shot to claim it, and an enemy who shoots it first takes the souls. Since February 2025 troopers yield souls to nearby players without a last hit, and an orb deny splits 50/50.", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": "Defense of the Ancients", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Dated to the DotA map for Warcraft III, the reference form of the mechanic with denying. The killing-blow bounty is reportedly a rule DotA inherited from the Warcraft III engine, so Warcraft III's own creeping (2002) is the nearest earlier candidate, and the StarCraft custom map Aeon of Strife remains unsurveyed. Denying is documented only retrospectively, by Cook, Summerville and Colton (2017) and in players' wiki notes on early DotA versions; no contemporary changelog is cited, hence low confidence." }, "established": { "title": "Defense of the Ancients", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Defense of the Ancients is the reference form, with gold credited to the killing blow and denying of weakened allied units; League of Legends kept last hits without denies and Dota 2 kept both." }, "sources": [ { "key": "from-generative-to-conventional-play-moba-and-league-of-legends-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "From Generative to Conventional Play: MOBA and League of Legends", "author": "Simon Ferrari", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "DiGRA 2013", "url": "https://dl.digra.org/index.php/dl/article/download/664/664", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Conventions of League of Legends: Laning phase; Uncertainty in the lane", "note": "Gold only for the last hit and experience by proximity; creep score as a public measure; waiting until the last second before allied minions take the kill; the passive gold trickle by comparison." }, { "key": "off-the-beaten-lane-ai-challenges-in-mobas-beyond-player-control-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Off The Beaten Lane: AI Challenges In MOBAs Beyond Player Control", "author": "Michael Cook, Adam Summerville, and Simon Colton", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "arXiv (1706.03122)", "url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.03122", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Challenges: Inventing Techniques & Discovering Exploits", "note": "Gold for the killing blow in Dota 2; denying invented by players from DotA's Warcraft III implementation, rebalanced as it became official, and absent from League of Legends." }, { "key": "dota-2-patch-7-26b-2020", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2 patch 7.26b", "author": "Valve", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dota2.com/datafeed/patchnotes?version=7.26b&language=english", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Denies no longer grant gold; deny experience given to enemies raised from 40% to 50%." }, { "key": "liquipedia-dota-2", "canonical": false, "title": "Liquipedia Dota 2", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Denying; Gold", "note": "Deny thresholds for creeps, heroes and towers, denied experience, the early DotA hex on attacking allies and the later half-health compromise, and the version history of deny experience." }, { "key": "liquipedia-warcraft", "canonical": false, "title": "Liquipedia Warcraft", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Gold; Creeps", "note": "Creeping as a source of gold, and experience from creeps." }, { "key": "bon-courage-radiquer-les-mauvais-comportements-sur-heroes-of-the-storm-est-une-priorit-pour-blizzard-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "[Bon courage] Éradiquer les mauvais comportements sur Heroes of the Storm est une priorité pour Blizzard", "author": "Fabio", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Journal du Geek", "url": "https://www.journaldugeek.com/2014/05/01/heroes-of-the-storm-blizzard-rage/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Dustin Browder on removing the last hit so that no player takes an ally's experience and gold, and on team experience." }, { "key": "everything-you-need-to-know-about-league-of-legends-wild-rift-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "Everything you need to know about League of Legends Wild Rift", "author": "MartaSch", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Dignitas", "url": "https://dignitas.gg/articles/blogs/League-of-Legends/14049/everything-you-need-to-know-about-league-of-legends-wild-rift", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Gold from minions that die nearby without the player's attack, the remaining last-hit bonus, and auto-targeting of the lowest-health minion." }, { "key": "league-of-legends-wiki", "canonical": false, "title": "League of Legends Wiki", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "WR:Gold", "note": "Wild Rift minion gold to the last hitter and a 40 or 50% share for nearby allied champions." }, { "key": "deadlock-wiki", "canonical": false, "title": "Deadlock Wiki", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Souls; Update: February 25, 2025", "note": "Soul orbs, confirming and denying, comeback multipliers on trooper souls, and the change that removed the last-hit requirement for trooper souls." }, { "key": "game-review-cutthroat-caverns-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Game Review: Cutthroat Caverns", "author": "Andrew Stephens", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "sheep.horse", "url": "https://sheep.horse/2010/4/game_review_-_cutthroat_caverns.html", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "All prestige to the player who strikes the killing blow, and the withholding of strong attacks that follows." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 10, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 566, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/last-hitting" }, { "id": "legacy-campaign", "name": "Legacy Campaign", "status": "verified", "category": "narrative-and-choice", "definition": "A series of linked sessions in which the outcomes of each game permanently alter the rules, components, or world for every later game, through irreversible changes such as stickers, destroyed cards, and sealed unlocks.", "aliases": [ "legacy game", "legacy system", "persistent campaign", "campaign game" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "permadeath", "roguelike-meta-progression", "branching-dialogue", "experience-levels" ], "referenced_by": [ "checkpoints", "downtime-phases", "morality-systems", "multiple-endings", "time-loops" ], "media": [ "board-card", "tabletop-rpg", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "mixed", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Risk Legacy. Interaction is indirect because the legacy layer's own decisions (names, scars, cities, opened packets) change the shared board every later game is played on, without targeting a player; mixed was the losing value, set aside because it imported the competitive or cooperative character of the host game (Risk Legacy, Pandemic Legacy) rather than coding the layer itself. Information is hidden because sealed packets are concealed from everyone until a trigger; the altered board itself is public. Feedback loop is mixed because the winner of a session chooses a lasting advantage while losers receive compensations. Decision density is medium because the between-games procedure asks which reward to take and where to apply it on the board. Pacing is neutral because irreversible between-session changes alter later games but do not systematically speed or slow them; the fixed session count is a horizon, not a pullable trigger; accelerates was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "consequence-weight", "ownership", "emergent-narrative", "discovery", "sunk-cost" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Pendragon", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Greg Stafford (Chaosium)", "note": "An antecedent with persistence but no physical modification. A winter phase ages characters each year, heirs inherit when knights die, and the campaign is designed to span generations, so the persistent, irreversible record of a dynasty is the object of play.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Risk Legacy", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Rob Daviau and Chris Dupuis", "note": "Over fifteen games players name continents, place permanent city and scar stickers, tear up cards, and open sealed packets when printed conditions are met; the winner of each game signs the board.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pandemic Legacy: Season 1", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock", "note": "A twelve-month cooperative campaign in which diseases mutate, cities scar, and characters acquire permanent scars or are lost, with a dossier of sealed story cards opened on triggers.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gloomhaven", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Isaac Childres", "note": "Stickers record unlocked scenarios and achievements on a world map and sealed envelopes hold new classes; the designer labels the components legacy-like because they can be reset.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pandemic Legacy: Season 0", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock (Z-Man Games)", "note": "Played over twelve campaign months, each game brings new cards, rules, and conditions that persist into later games, and the aliases players create keep the contacts and assets they gain.", "latest": true }, { "title": "Wildermyth", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Worldwalker Games", "note": "Characters age, retire, die, and can be promoted to a persistent legacy roster that reappears in later campaigns with their history intact, so the player's prior play changes future content.", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": "Risk Legacy", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Scoped to the permanent, physical modification of components across sessions. Risk Legacy is widely credited as the first published game of this kind, and its designer has described the intent in talks and interviews. The broader campaign structure, with persistent characters and world state, is older and descends from wargame and role-playing campaigns documented from the 1970s." }, "established": { "title": "Risk Legacy", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Contemporary press credits Rob Daviau's Risk Legacy with creating the legacy genre, and the games that followed took its format of permanent stickers, destroyed components and sealed unlocks: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (2015), SeaFall (2016), Charterstone (2017) and later legacy editions of established games. Pandemic Legacy, the most widely played of them, set the cooperative story variant rather than the form itself." }, "sources": [ { "key": "risk-legacy-rulebook-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Risk Legacy rulebook", "author": "Rob Daviau and Chris Dupuis", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "After the game; sealed packets", "note": "Canonical rules for permanent modification and triggered unlocks." }, { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Game Structure chapter", "note": "Definition and distinction between campaign and legacy." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Sections on Braunstein, Blackmoor, and campaign play", "note": "Origin of the persistent campaign in wargaming and early role-playing." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Legacy Game", "note": null }, { "key": "how-one-man-created-a-new-genre-and-a-legacy-in-tabletop-gaming-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "How One Man Created a New Genre and a Legacy in Tabletop Gaming", "author": "Teri Litorco (Nerdist)", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://nerdist.com/article/how-one-man-created-a-new-genre-and-a-legacy-in-tabletop-gaming/", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": null, "note": "Daviau credited with creating the legacy genre with Risk Legacy, permanent changes with no reset, and Pandemic Legacy and SeaFall as later games in the format." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Legacy game", "note": "Risk Legacy (2011) as Daviau's first game in the format, and the list of legacy games that followed." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 521, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/legacy-campaign" }, { "id": "level-editors", "name": "Level Editors", "status": "verified", "category": "narrative-and-choice", "definition": "Players build playable levels inside the game from its own palette of pieces and rules, test them, and save or publish them so that they or others can play them as ordinary play spaces", "aliases": [ "level editor", "construction set", "course maker", "map editor", "track editor", "game generator" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "procedural-generation", "player-authored-goals", "base-building", "platforming", "tile-placement" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Super Mario Maker, the form most readers know, checked against Lode Runner's game generator: the maker picks pieces from the game's palette, places them on the play space, tests the level and saves or uploads it to a shared pool. Agency is high because the layout is an open choice space. Randomness is none. Interaction is indirect: a maker's level reaches other players through a shared pool without targeting anyone; solo was the losing value for Lode Runner and Excitebike, whose levels stay on one machine or disk, and cooperative for Super Mario Maker 2's co-op making. Complexity is medium (a palette, placement, validity rules such as Lode Runner's one runner and one to five guards, and a test or clear check); high was the losing value for logic-wiring forms (Pinball Construction Set's wiring kit, LittleBigPlanet, Fortnite devices bound by events). Pacing is neutral, since the editor has no end condition of its own; variable was the losing value, because the maker sets the pace of the level built, as was decelerates, since editing suspends play. Information is perfect: the maker sees the whole level while building it. Feedback loop is none; positive was the losing value, from rankings, likes and Maker points that raise popular makers' visibility. Decision density is high (which piece, where, which theme or style, whether to test, whether to publish). Execution and tension were considered for the clear check and left off, since the check tests the host game's platforming rather than the editor. Space-and-position was the competing family, since placement is spatial; narrative and choice stands because the player becomes the author of content that others play.", "effects": [ "ownership", "planning", "spatial-reasoning", "replayability" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Pinball Construction Set", "year": 1982, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Bill Budge (BudgeCo)", "note": "The player drags flippers, bumpers, targets, spinners and other parts onto a table with an on-screen hand, links them through a wiring kit, adjusts gravity and elasticity, and tests the table in play; a finished table can be saved as a standalone game for others.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Lode Runner", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Doug Smith (Broderbund)", "note": "The game generator places nine basic shapes (diggable and solid floor, ladders, bars, trap doors, gold, guards, the runner) with the number keys; a board needs exactly one runner and one to five guards, and is play-tested and saved to a data disk.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Excitebike", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "Design Mode lets the player build a motocross track from hills and obstacles and then race on it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "LittleBigPlanet", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Media Molecule", "note": "Players build levels with the same tools, materials and stickers the developers used, share them online, and rank, comment on and tag other players' levels.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Mario Maker", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "Courses built in the editor were uploaded to Course World for others to play; uploads ended on 31 March 2021, while courses downloaded earlier remain playable.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fortnite", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Epic Games", "note": "Fortnite Creative, added in December 2018, lets players place devices, packages of pre-programmed game mechanics bound to one another by events, on an island; a published island is reached by its island code, and a listed one can appear in Discover.", "latest": true }, { "title": "Super Mario Maker 2", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "Makers build courses from parts and themes, alone or with a second player on one screen, upload them to Course World with a description and tags, and earn Maker points when courses are popular.", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": "Pinball Construction Set", "year": 1982, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The BudgeCo manual for Pinball Construction Set, dated 1982, documents a full in-game construction kit: parts placed by hand, a wiring kit, physics settings, test play and saving. Lode Runner (released June 1983) is often described as one of the earliest games with a level editor, and its manual documents the game generator. Confidence is medium because the 1982 date rests on the manual's copyright line and earlier computer and mainframe games remain unsurveyed." }, "established": { "title": "Super Mario Maker", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Wikipedia's history of the level editor, citing Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 2023 description of Bit.Trip ReRunner's \"Mario Maker-esque\" editor, states that later games with level editors are often influenced by and compared to Super Mario Maker, whose editor is the main focus of the game and whose courses are built, cleared, and uploaded for others. Confidence is low because that lineage rests on one secondary claim, and LittleBigPlanet (2008) had already made a shared, rated pool of player levels the main draw of a game." }, "sources": [ { "key": "pinball-construction-set-manual-1982", "canonical": false, "title": "Pinball Construction Set manual", "author": "Bill Budge", "year": 1982, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "BudgeCo", "url": "https://archive.org/stream/PinballConstructionSetBudgeFirstEdition/PinballConstructionSet-Budge-Original_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Parts placed with an on-screen hand, the wiring kit, the World menu for gravity, speed and elasticity, test play, saving to a data disk and Make Game for a standalone copy; copyright 1982." }, { "key": "lode-runner-manual-atari-computers-1982", "canonical": false, "title": "Lode Runner manual (Atari computers)", "author": "Doug Smith", "year": 1982, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Broderbund Software", "url": "https://archive.org/download/LodeRunnerBroderbund/Lode_Runner_Broderbund_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Making Your Own Games; Designing Your Own Game Boards; Saving Your Creations", "note": "The game generator for designing, moving, erasing, play-testing and saving boards, the nine basic shapes, one runner and one to five guards; the manual carries a 1982 copyright line." }, { "key": "lode-runner-2020", "canonical": false, "title": "Lode Runner", "author": "Jimmy Maher", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "The Digital Antiquarian", "url": "https://www.filfre.net/?p=4502", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Broderbund encouraging Smith to include his level editor, levels paid for from neighbourhood children, the June 1983 release, and Championship Lode Runner's levels mostly sent in by fans." }, { "key": "excitebike-nintendo-game-page-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Excitebike (Nintendo game page)", "author": "Nintendo", "year": 2007, "year_approx": true, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/NES/Excitebike-751574.html", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Players create and then race on their own tracks in Design Mode." }, { "key": "play-create-and-share-with-playstation-s-groundbreaking-genre-defying-and-highly-anticipated-release-littlebigplanet-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Play, Create and Share With PlayStation's Groundbreaking, Genre-Defying and Highly Anticipated Release LittleBigPlanet", "author": "Sony Computer Entertainment America", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://sony.mediaroom.com/2008-10-27-Play-Create-and-Share-With-PLAYSTATIONs-Groundbreaking-Genre-Defying-and-Highly-Anticipated-Release-LittleBigPlanet", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "The developers' own tools, materials and stickers given to players, sharing over PlayStation Network, rankings, comments and tags." }, { "key": "super-mario-maker-for-wii-u-discontinuations-faq-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "Super Mario Maker for Wii U Discontinuations FAQ", "author": "Nintendo", "year": 2021, "year_approx": true, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/53854/~/super-mario-maker-for-wii-u-discontinuations-faq", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Course uploads ended on 31 March 2021; courses downloaded before then remain playable." }, { "key": "how-to-share-a-level-super-mario-maker-for-nintendo-3ds", "canonical": false, "title": "How to Share a Level (Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS)", "author": "Nintendo", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/21369/~/how-to-share-a-level-(super-mario-maker-for-nintendo-3ds)", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "The Clear Check, by which a maker must clear a level before sending it by StreetPass." }, { "key": "super-mario-maker-2-nintendo-game-page-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "Super Mario Maker 2 (Nintendo game page)", "author": "Nintendo", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.nintendo.com/au/games/nintendo-switch/super-mario-maker-2/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Course parts and themes, co-op making on one screen, uploads with descriptions and tags, Maker points, and the release date of 28 June 2019." }, { "key": "creating-gameplay-with-devices-in-fortnite", "canonical": false, "title": "Creating Gameplay with Devices in Fortnite", "author": "Epic Games", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/fortnite/creating-gameplay-with-devices-in-fortnite", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Creative's launch in December 2018, devices as pre-programmed game mechanics placed on an island and bound by events and functions, and UEFN-only devices." }, { "key": "visibility-screen", "canonical": false, "title": "Visibility Screen", "author": "Epic Games", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/fortnite/visibility-screen-in-fortnite", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Listed islands eligible for Discover, unlisted islands reached only by island code, and moderation of releases." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Level editor", "note": "Lode Runner as one of the earliest games with a level editor, Doom's third-party editors, Super Mario Maker's likes and boos, and later level editors often influenced by and compared to Super Mario Maker." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 11, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 581, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/level-editors" }, { "id": "lifepath", "name": "Lifepath Character Generation", "status": "verified", "category": "chance-and-risk", "definition": "A character is created by stepping through successive periods of a prior life, choosing a career or event at each step and rolling for its outcome, so skills, assets, age, and sometimes death accumulate from a generated biography.", "aliases": [ "lifepaths", "career terms", "character history generation", "background generation", "random character history" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "random-tables", "variable-player-powers", "experience-levels", "permadeath", "player-authored-goals", "dice-placement" ], "referenced_by": [ "point-buy" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "high", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "mixed", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 2, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Traveller's career terms, with Cyberpunk's Lifepath tables as the check case. Category contested: chance-and-risk over progression-and-capability, because the output is a capability set and the procedure resembles a compressed experience ladder; chance wins because the identity of the mechanic is the roll at each step, including survival and mustering-out rolls, and a chosen-path form such as Burning Wheel's lifepaths is recorded as a variation that would code randomness none and fall to progression. Agency is medium because the player chooses the service, the skill table, and whether to re-enlist, but the roll decides the result; high was the losing value for Burning Wheel. Randomness is output because each roll follows a choice; both was the losing value, since one term's result is the input to the next decision. Feedback loop is mixed because more terms add skills and benefits while aging and survival rolls punish staying on. Complexity is high because several tables interact (service, skill, aging, and mustering-out tables keyed to term count and rank). Pacing is decelerates because a chained sequence of rolled terms, each adding further tables, must be completed before play begins, lengthening the first session; neutral was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "emergent-narrative", "ownership", "volatility", "discovery", "replayability", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Traveller", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Marc W. Miller (Game Designers' Workshop)", "note": "The player picks a service, rolls to enlist, and resolves four-year terms, each with a survival roll, chances of commission and promotion, rolled skills, and aging after the fourth; a failed survival roll in the 1977 rules kills the character before play. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cyberpunk 2013", "year": 1988, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Mike Pondsmith (R. Talsorian Games)", "note": "The Lifepath section names the device: tables for family background, friends, enemies, romances, and yearly events are rolled from age sixteen to produce a history and contacts, separate from the role's skill allocation.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Darklands", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "MicroProse", "note": "Each character is built by choosing a sequence of occupations in five-year stages, each adding skill ranges at a cost in age, so an older character starts abler but with less time; a digital career-step generator set in medieval Germany.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Burning Wheel", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Luke Crane", "note": "Characters are built by chaining named lifepaths, such as Born Peasant, Farmer, and Soldier, each adding years, skills, traits, and resource points under restrictions on which may follow which; choice replaces the roll, shifting randomness to none.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cyberpunk 2077", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "CD Projekt Red", "note": "A Lifepath chosen at the start, Nomad, Streetkid, or Corpo, sets the prologue and unlocks background-specific dialogue options throughout, a reduced three-way form that keeps the name and the biographical framing but not the stepwise generation.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Twilight: 2000 (fourth edition)", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Free League Publishing", "note": "Besides archetypes, characters can be made with a step-by-step Life Path through military or civilian careers (army branches, law enforcement, intelligence, crime), whose dice results can produce a character entirely at random along with the skills and specialties it starts with.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Traveller", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "high", "note": "Traveller's career generation is the standard credit in RPG histories such as Appelcline's for generated prior careers, and the term Lifepath comes from Cyberpunk (1988). En Garde! (GDW, 1975) staged a character's career as the game itself and is an antecedent in spirit rather than a generation procedure, and Dungeons & Dragons (1974) created characters in a few rolls with no history." }, "established": { "title": "Traveller", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "high", "note": "Traveller's career terms, with enlistment, survival, promotion, aging, and mustering-out rolls, are the standard credit for the procedure; Cyberpunk later named it the Lifepath and Burning Wheel kept the chained paths without dice." }, "sources": [ { "key": "appelcline-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry", "author": "Shannon Appelcline", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Volume on the 1970s, Game Designers' Workshop chapter (Traveller); volume on the 1980s, R. Talsorian Games chapter", "note": "Publication history of Traveller and Cyberpunk and the reception of career generation." }, { "key": "traveller-rulebook-1977", "canonical": false, "title": "Traveller rulebook", "author": "Marc Miller", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Book 1, Characters and Combat: character generation", "note": "Canonical procedure, including enlistment, survival, re-enlistment, aging, and mustering out." }, { "key": "cyberpunk-2013-rulebook-1988", "canonical": false, "title": "Cyberpunk 2013 rulebook", "author": "Mike Pondsmith", "year": 1988, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Lifepath", "note": "Origin of the term and the event-table form." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Traveller (role-playing game)", "note": "Edition history and the reputation of death during character generation." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 495, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/lifepath" }, { "id": "limited-communication", "name": "Limited Communication", "status": "unverified", "category": "information-and-hidden-state", "definition": "Players who share a goal are forbidden by rule from freely discussing their private information, so coordination must pass through a narrow sanctioned channel such as a rationed clue or a single token.", "aliases": [ "restricted communication", "communication limits", "no-talking rule" ], "parent": null, "children": [ "clue-giving" ], "related": [ "cooperative-play", "hand-management", "deduction", "real-time" ], "referenced_by": [ "contract-bidding", "trick-taking" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "cooperative", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Hanabi. Interaction is cooperative because the restriction only matters where players share a goal; adversarial concealment is treated under hidden roles and fog of war. Information is asymmetric because each player holds knowledge the others lack, in Hanabi inverted so that a player sees every hand but their own. Complexity is low because the constraint itself is one or two sentences; medium was the losing value on account of Hanabi's clue grammar. Agency is medium because the sanctioned channel offers a small constrained set of utterances. Decision density is medium rather than high because each turn is one choice among clue, play, or discard.", "effects": [ "teamwork", "inference", "tension", "planning", "mastery" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Contract Bridge", "year": 1925, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Harold Vanderbilt", "note": "Partners may describe their hands only through the bidding, and table talk is illegal; conventions developed to compress hand information into the permitted calls.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hanabi", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Antoine Bauza", "note": "Players hold their cards facing outward and may spend a shared clue token to tell one player all of their cards of one colour or one number; on a strict reading of the rules nothing else may be said. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Steel Crate Games", "note": "One player sees the bomb and the others see only the manual, so the channel is restricted to speech under a timer rather than by a clue budget.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Crew", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Thomas Sing", "note": "A trick-taking cooperative in which each player may, once per mission, display a single card with a token indicating whether it is their highest, lowest, or only card of that suit.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Sky Team", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Luc Rémond (Le Scorpion Masqué)", "note": "Pilot and co-pilot roll dice behind screens and may discuss strategy before rolling but never the dice; during placement both must stay completely silent, so each die placed on the cockpit is the only signal of intent until the round ends.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Whist", "year": 1742, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "The earliest printed rule found that restricts what partners may tell each other is in Hoyle's Short Treatise on the Game of Whist (1742), whose laws say that after the trump card is seen no one ought to remind a partner to call. The 1864 Laws of Short Whist forbid any intimation by word or gesture about one's hand and penalise drawing a partner's attention to the trick, while signalling conventions such as the call for trumps (about 1840) became the sanctioned channel; Contract Bridge inherited this. Whist partners share a goal against another pair, which the definition covers; earlier rules may exist. Shadows over Camelot (2005) forbade revealing exact card values in a cooperative game, and Hanabi (2010), Spiel des Jahres 2013, popularised the rationed-clue form and is the standard example; its first publisher is unresolved." }, "established": { "title": "Hanabi", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Hanabi popularised the rationed-clue form, in which a shared token pool is spent to tell a player all their cards of one colour or number and nothing else may be said; The Crew adapted it to trick-taking." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Communication Limits", "note": "Definition and the role of the constraint in cooperative design." }, { "key": "hanabi-rulebook-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Hanabi rulebook", "author": "Antoine Bauza", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Giving a clue", "note": "Canonical clue grammar and the prohibition on other communication." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Communication Limits", "note": null }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Hanabi (card game)", "note": "Publication history and reception." }, { "key": "a-short-treatise-on-the-game-of-whist-1742", "canonical": false, "title": "A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist", "author": "Edmond Hoyle", "year": 1742, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/bim_eighteenth-century_a-short-treatise-on-the-_hoyle-edmond_1742/bim_eighteenth-century_a-short-treatise-on-the-_hoyle-edmond_1742_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "The Laws of the Game at Whist, pp. 7-10; Law 6, p. 9", "note": "After the trump card is seen, no one ought to remind a partner to call." }, { "key": "the-laws-of-short-whist-1864", "canonical": false, "title": "The Laws of Short Whist", "author": "J. L. Baldwin (ed.), Arlington Club", "year": 1864, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/lawsofshortwhis00bald/lawsofshortwhis00bald_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Law 86, p. 31; Etiquette of Whist, p. 32 (first American edition, 1866)", "note": "No intimation by word or gesture about one's hand; drawing a partner's attention to the trick is penalised." }, { "key": "hanabi-rules-german-edition-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Hanabi rules (German edition)", "author": "Abacusspiele (game by Antoine Bauza)", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://abacusspiele.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Hanabi_Regel.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "A. Einen Hinweis geben", "note": "In German. Eight clue tokens, one colour or number clue per token, and no other talk under a strict reading." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 526, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/limited-communication" }, { "id": "line-of-sight", "name": "Line of Sight", "status": "verified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "An attack, spell, or observation is permitted only if a straight line can be traced from the acting piece to the target without crossing blocking terrain, so what a unit can affect is decided by geometry.", "aliases": [ "LOS", "sight lines", "visibility rules", "line of effect" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "cover-systems", "fog-of-war", "grid-movement", "stealth-detection" ], "referenced_by": [ "combat-building", "hitboxes-and-hurtboxes" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Squad Leader. Interaction is indirect because the trace is a property of positions on the shared map, and choosing which enemy to fire at belongs to the attack it permits; direct, the previous coding, was the losing value, argued from the fact that a line is always traced to a specific target. Solo fits single-player video forms against system-controlled enemies. Randomness is none because the trace is deterministic; the fire roll it permits belongs to the hit resolution. Complexity is medium because tracing needs a centre-to-centre or corner-to-corner convention plus a list of what blocks and what merely hinders; Gloomhaven's walls-only rule would code low, and only several interacting tables (elevation, hindrance, and smoke together) would code high. Pacing decelerates because blocked lines delay engagement and reward manoeuvring for position before fire; neutral was the losing value. Information is perfect: the geometry is public even where a fog rule hides what the line would reveal. Category tension with information-and-hidden-state, where LOS serves as the visibility test inside fog of war, was resolved for space-and-position because the operative state is the line on the map, not who knows what. Agency is low because the trace is a deterministic test on positions already set; the decisions that matter lie in prior positioning; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "spatial-reasoning", "planning", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "PanzerBlitz", "year": 1970, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "James F. Dunnigan (Avalon Hill)", "note": "Fire requires a line from the firing hex to the target hex that is not blocked by woods, towns, or intervening higher ground; widely cited as an early tactical wargame built around the explicit sight line.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Squad Leader", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "John Hill (Avalon Hill)", "note": "Line of sight is traced from hex centre to hex centre; terrain the line touches blocks or hinders fire, and smoke adds hindrance, so sighting disputes are settled with a thread on the map.", "latest": false }, { "title": "X-COM: UFO Defense", "year": 1994, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Mythos Games and MicroProse", "note": "Soldiers reveal and can fire only at aliens inside their field of view across a tile map, and the same test governs alien reaction fire, so turning a soldier is a decision.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Line of sight for targeting and the separate line of effect for spells are traced from a corner of the attacker's square to the target's, and partial blockage becomes cover.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gloomhaven", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Isaac Childres", "note": "Line of sight runs from any corner of the attacking hex to any corner of the target hex and is blocked only by walls, not by figures or obstacles, a deliberate simplification for a long campaign.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Isaac Childres (Cephalofair Games)", "note": "Melee and ranged attacks need line of sight, which exists if any straight line runs from a corner of the attacker's hex to a corner of the target's hex without touching a wall; obstacles and figures do not block it, and range cannot be counted through walls.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "PanzerBlitz", "year": 1970, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to the explicit hex-grid sight-line rule in a hobby wargame, where PanzerBlitz is the usual credit and Squad Leader (1977) popularised the centre-to-centre thread convention. Earlier miniatures rules and Kriegsspiel-derived games adjudicated visibility by umpire or by eye, so the general idea has no defensible origin. The tabletop role-playing grid form follows Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition (2000)." }, "established": { "title": "Squad Leader", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Squad Leader popularised the hex-centre to hex-centre trace, checked with a thread, with terrain classed as blocking or hindering; Advanced Squad Leader keeps the convention." }, "sources": [ { "key": "squad-leader-rulebook-1977", "canonical": false, "title": "Squad Leader rulebook", "author": "John Hill", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Line of Sight rules and Terrain Effects Chart", "note": "Canonical centre-to-centre trace with blocking and hindrance terrain." }, { "key": "panzerblitz-rulebook-1970", "canonical": false, "title": "PanzerBlitz rulebook", "author": "James F. Dunnigan", "year": 1970, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Line of sight and spotting rules", "note": "Provenance for the explicit hex sight line." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-3rd-edition-player-s-handbook-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition, Player's Handbook", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Combat chapter and Magic chapter, line of sight and line of effect", "note": "The tabletop role-playing form and the split between sight and effect." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Line of sight (video games)", "note": "Use of sight lines in strategy and stealth video games." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 511, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/line-of-sight" }, { "id": "lives-and-continues", "name": "Lives and Continues", "status": "verified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "The player holds a small counted stock of attempts, each failure spends one and restarts play from a set point, and exhausting the stock ends the game unless a continue is bought, so attempts are a rationed resource.", "aliases": [ "extra lives", "1-ups", "continues", "credits", "stock", "lives system", "game over" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "checkpoints", "permadeath", "game-clocks", "difficulty-settings", "tower-defence" ], "referenced_by": [ "death-penalty", "high-score-tables", "power-ups" ], "media": [ "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the three bases of Space Invaders with the extra lives of Super Mario Bros. as the console form. Category is resource-management, which departs from the default tie-break order: time-and-action-structure is asked first and was the losing family, since the stock partitions play into attempts, but the mechanic's identity is a scarce pool spent on failure. Agency is low because losing a life is not a choice; medium was the losing value for the continue decision and for pursuing a risky extra life. Feedback loop is positive because extra lives are earned by survival and score, so a player doing well accumulates more chances; none was the losing value for fixed-stock forms with no extra lives. Pacing accelerates because a finite stock forces an ending; neutral was the losing value where continues are unlimited. Information is perfect because the count is displayed.", "effects": [ "tension", "consequence-weight", "frustration-risk", "grind", "compulsion" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Coin-operated pinball", "year": 1931, "year_approx": true, "medium": "physical", "creator": "D. Gottlieb & Co., Bally, and others", "note": "Baffle Ball (1931) and Ballyhoo (1932) sold a fixed number of balls per coin; later tables settled on three or five balls and awarded extra balls and replays for score, the physical template for a counted stock of attempts.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Space Invaders", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Taito (Tomohiro Nishikado)", "note": "Three bases are shown beneath the field, one is lost per hit, an extra base is awarded at a score threshold, and losing the last ends the game, the form most later arcade games copied.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Mario Bros.", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo (Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka)", "note": "Play starts with three lives; 1-Up mushrooms, a hundred coins, and enemy chains add more, game over returns to the first world, and a hidden input on the title screen continues from the first stage of the world lost.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gauntlet", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Atari Games", "note": "Health drains continuously and each inserted coin adds health, so the stock of attempts is a continuous quantity rather than a count and the credit itself is the resource.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Smash Bros. Melee", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "HAL Laboratory (Nintendo)", "note": "Stock matches give each fighter a set number of lives; a knock-out spends one and the fighter respawns on a platform, and the standard competitive format is four stock.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Streets of Rage 4", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Dotemu, Lizardcube, and Guard Crush Games", "note": "A stock of lives set by difficulty is topped up by reaching score thresholds; when all players run out the stage restarts, and a retry can be bought with extra lives or star moves at the cost of a reduced score, while Arcade Mode allows no such purchase and ends the run.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Coin-operated pinball", "year": 1931, "year_approx": true, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The counted attempt comes from coin-operated pinball of the early 1930s, where a coin bought a fixed number of balls; bagatelle is older but was not metered in this way. Video games inherited the structure directly, with Breakout (1976) giving a number of balls and Space Invaders (1978) popularising the three-life display. For the continue, SNK's Vanguard and Fantasy (both 1981) are the usual candidates and neither is securely first. Dating is loose throughout, so confidence is medium." }, "established": { "title": "Space Invaders", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Space Invaders popularised the displayed stock of three lives, with an extra life at a score threshold and game over when the last is lost, the form most later arcade games copied." }, "sources": [ { "key": "fear-of-failing-the-many-meanings-of-difficulty-in-video-games-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Fear of Failing? The Many Meanings of Difficulty in Video Games", "author": "Jesper Juul", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "The Video Game Theory Reader 2 (Routledge)", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Typology of punishment (energy, life, game termination, setback)", "note": "Framework for lives as a punishment type, used for the tension and consequence-weight coding." }, { "key": "rogers-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design", "author": "Scott Rogers", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Wiley", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Lives, extra lives, and game over", "note": "Design treatment of the lives system and its decline in home play." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Life (video games)", "note": "History of lives, 1-Ups, and continues across arcade and console games." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 512, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/lives-and-continues" }, { "id": "loans-and-debt", "name": "Loans and Debt", "status": "verified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "A player may take resources now in exchange for an obligation to repay later, with interest, a recurring charge, or a lasting penalty, so present capacity is bought at the cost of a future constraint.", "aliases": [ "loans", "debt", "mortgages", "borrowing", "taking a loan" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "upkeep", "stock-holding", "income", "player-elimination", "markets" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "mixed", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the loan action of Brass (2007), which gives ten, twenty, or thirty pounds and permanently lowers the income track by one, two, or three levels. Agency is medium because the invocation is one choice, whether and how much to borrow, from a small set. Interaction is solo because the lender is the bank; direct was the losing value for games that permit loans between players. Pacing is accelerates because borrowed capital compresses the build-up; decelerates was the losing value, coded from Monopoly, where mortgaging prolongs a losing player's survival. Feedback loop is mixed because the facility compensates whoever is short of cash while interest and income loss compound against a borrower who cannot recover; negative was the losing value. Complexity is low for the single-sentence Brass form; interest schedules such as Traveller's mortgage would code medium.", "effects": [ "planning", "calculation", "consequence-weight", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Monopoly", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Charles Darrow (Parker Brothers)", "note": "A property may be mortgaged to the bank for half its printed price and collects no rent until redeemed for the mortgage value plus ten per cent, so the loan is secured and its cost is both interest and lost income.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Traveller", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Marc W. Miller (Game Designers' Workshop)", "note": "A starship is bought on a forty-year mortgage repaid in monthly instalments, and the campaign's trading and passenger work exist to meet the payment; the schedule itself behaves as upkeep.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Animal Crossing", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "The player's house is financed by a loan from Tom Nook that carries no interest and no deadline; each repayment unlocks an expansion and a larger loan, so debt is the progression ladder.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Brass", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Martin Wallace (Warfrog)", "note": "The loan action gives cash at once and drops the income track by a level per ten pounds; the debt is never repaid as a lump sum but is paid for in every later income phase.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cities: Skylines II", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Colossal Order", "note": "The city can borrow from the Loans tab of the economy panel; the loan adds a monthly charge to expenses, its interest rate is cut by building a City Hall and a Central Bank, and it can be partly repaid early or enlarged.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Monopoly", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Monopoly's mortgage rule is the earliest widely played designed-game loan that can be cited with confidence. The Landlord's Game (1904) and the folk Monopoly variants of the 1920s may already have allowed mortgaging, so an earlier instance is plausible. Traveller (1977) brought the mortgage into role-playing and Brass (2007) is the reference for the income-reducing loan in modern board design." }, "established": { "title": "Brass", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Brass popularised the income-reducing loan, cash taken at once and paid for by a permanent drop on the income track, which many eurogames have since adopted; Monopoly's mortgage (1935) is the usual citation for the earliest designed-game loan." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Economics chapter", "note": "Definition and the distinction from upkeep and income." }, { "key": "brass-rulebook-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Brass rulebook", "author": "Martin Wallace", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Actions; taking a loan", "note": "Canonical income-reducing loan used for the property coding." }, { "key": "monopoly-rules-1935", "canonical": false, "title": "Monopoly rules", "author": "Parker Brothers", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Mortgages", "note": "Provenance and the secured-loan form." }, { "key": "traveller-book-2-starships-1977", "canonical": false, "title": "Traveller, Book 2: Starships", "author": "Marc W. Miller", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Starship economics; bank financing", "note": "Mortgage with a monthly repayment schedule in a tabletop RPG." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 513, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/loans-and-debt" }, { "id": "lock-and-key", "name": "Lock and Key", "status": "verified", "category": "puzzle-and-pattern", "definition": "Progress through a space is barred by locks that open only once the player has obtained a specific key, item, or ability found elsewhere, so the order of exploration is controlled by what has been collected.", "aliases": [ "lock-and-key puzzles", "key items", "ability gating", "key-item gating" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "skill-trees", "procedural-generation", "sliding-block-puzzles", "quests" ], "referenced_by": [ "boss-encounters", "escape-room-puzzles", "map-markers" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from The Legend of Zelda's dungeons. Information is hidden because key locations are held only by the game system and the player must find them; asymmetric, the previous coding, was the losing value and fits tabletop dungeons, where a human referee knows where the keys are, and perfect was argued because locks are visible. Pacing decelerates because progress halts at each lock until its key is found. The category assignment departs from the default tie-break order, which asks the progression and space questions before the puzzle question and would place the mechanic under progression-and-capability, since ability gating makes the avatar more capable, or under space-and-position, since the locks are laid out in a map. Puzzle-and-pattern is assigned because the determinable structure the player works out is the dependency graph of keys and locks, regardless of what the keys are; both other families are losing. Agency is low because the dependency graph fixes which locks can open in what order; the player chooses only the order in which to search reachable space; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "discovery", "spatial-reasoning", "planning", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Locked and secret doors in the dungeon are passed with found keys, the knock spell, or force, and referee-authored dungeons place keys away from their doors to shape the route through the levels; a tabletop antecedent of the video form credited in provenance.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Colossal Cave Adventure", "year": 1976, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Will Crowther, extended by Don Woods", "note": "A set of keys found in the building opens the grate into the cave, and later obstacles are passed only with specific carried items, so the text world is a graph of item-gated rooms.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Legend of Zelda", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo (Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka)", "note": "Small keys open dungeon doors, a boss key opens the final room, and overworld items such as the raft and the ladder gate whole regions; the canonical form of both key-item and ability gating.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Metroid", "year": 1994, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo R&D1", "note": "Doors are colour-coded to the weapon that opens them and movement abilities gate regions, so the map is a prerequisite graph the player learns to read; the model for the metroidvania.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Exit: The Game - The Abandoned Cabin", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Inka and Markus Brand (Kosmos)", "note": "Codes derived from puzzles are the keys; the decoder disk confirms a code and releases the next riddle cards, an escape-room lock chain in card form.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hollow Knight: Silksong", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Team Cherry", "note": "Movement abilities found across the kingdom, among them the Clawline grapple, Cling Grip wall climbing, the Drifter's Cloak and Silk Soar, act as permanent keys: each reopens already explored regions of the interconnected map to routes that were visible but unreachable.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Colossal Cave Adventure", "year": 1976, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to the video-game form. Colossal Cave Adventure is the usual credit as an early, widely documented video game whose space is gated by carried items, with Atari's Adventure (1980) as an early well-known graphical form and The Legend of Zelda (1986) as the game whose dungeons made the structure canonical. Locked doors with keys elsewhere in the dungeon are present in tabletop role-playing from 1974, and treasure hunts and locked-room fiction are older; these are antecedents of the scoped form." }, "established": { "title": "The Legend of Zelda", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The Legend of Zelda made the structure canonical with small keys, boss keys, and item-gated overworld regions, and its dungeons are the model for lock-and-key mission graphs in level- design analysis." }, "sources": [ { "key": "adams-dormans-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design", "author": "Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "New Riders", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 11, Progression Mechanisms: Lock-and-Key Mechanisms; Chapter 10, Missions and Game Spaces", "note": "Formal treatment of lock-and-key as a progression and level-design structure." }, { "key": "adventures-in-level-design-generating-missions-and-spaces-for-action-adventure-games-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Adventures in Level Design: Generating Missions and Spaces for Action Adventure Games", "author": "Joris Dormans", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Workshop paper on procedural content generation that models Zelda-style dungeons as lock-and-key mission graphs." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Metroidvania", "note": "History of ability-gated exploration from Metroid and Castlevania onward." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 512, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/lock-and-key" }, { "id": "lock-on-targeting", "name": "Lock-On Targeting", "status": "unverified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "The player designates a target and the system then holds the camera, facing, or attacks on it until the lock is released or switched, so attacks connect without continuous manual aim.", "aliases": [ "lock-on", "Z-targeting", "target lock", "soft lock" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "aim-and-recoil", "hitboxes-and-hurtboxes", "cover-systems", "real-time" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the Z-targeting of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), where holding a button locks the camera and Link's facing onto a marked enemy, movement becomes circling and sidestepping around it, and attacks and projectiles are directed at it. Category is action-resolution because the lock decides whether attacks reach their target, taking over the part of resolution that aim and recoil leave to the player's pointing; space-and-position was the losing family, since the lock also governs camera and facing, as it was for aim and recoil. Agency is medium because the player chooses which target to lock, when to switch, and when to release; low was the losing value on the ground that the lock removes aiming choices. Interaction is solo because the canonical form fights system-controlled enemies; direct was the losing value for player-versus-player play in the Souls series. Complexity is medium for the lock, the change in movement, and target switching; low was the losing value for a lock that only turns the camera or guides a missile. Decision density is medium for the choices of target, switch, and release within an encounter; low was the losing value for single-enemy fights. Information is perfect because the locked target is marked.", "effects": [ "spatial-reasoning", "flow" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Star Raiders", "year": 1979, "year_approx": true, "medium": "video", "creator": "Atari (Doug Neubauer)", "note": "An antecedent: photon torpedoes home on the tracked ship while it is in full lock-on, centred and in range, but the game rather than the player picks the tracked ship, and the lock lapses within twelve game-loop iterations unless the target stays centred. The ROM is dated 1979; retail release followed in 1980.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Elite", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "David Braben and Ian Bell", "note": "In the Acornsoft original, a ship brought into the crosshairs while a missile is armed becomes the missile's locked target, a beep sounds and the indicator turns red; the lock holds until the missile is fired or unarmed, and the missile steers itself in.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Panzer Dragoon", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sega (Team Andromeda)", "note": "Holding the fire button and sweeping the reticle across enemies locks onto several at once, and releasing it fires homing lasers at every locked target, so designation replaces aim.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Star Fox 64", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "Holding the fire button charges a shot that locks onto an enemy under the reticle and homes in on it when released.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "Z-targeting locks the camera and Link's facing onto an enemy marked by the fairy Navi; while locked, Link circles, sidesteps, and backflips relative to the target. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Metroid Prime", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Retro Studios", "note": "A lock in first person holds Samus's aim on a target while the player strafes around it, so a first-person game hands pointing to the system and keeps movement with the player.", "latest": false }, { "title": "EVE Online", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "CCP Games", "note": "Weapons and other targeted modules act only on a ship or object the pilot has locked, with no manual aim, while the ship orbits the target by command. A lock takes longer to form against a lower sensor resolution, and skills raise how many targets a ship can hold at once.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dark Souls", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "FromSoftware", "note": "Locking on fixes the camera on one enemy and turns rolls and steps into movement relative to it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Black Myth: Wukong", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Game Science", "note": "Clicking the right stick locks the camera onto one enemy and clicking again releases it, keeping the target framed through staff combos and dodges without manual camera steering.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Elite", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Elite (1984), by David Braben and Ian Bell for Acornsoft, has a player-designated, held, and releasable lock documented in its original code: a ship brought into the crosshairs with a missile armed is stored as the missile's target and marked, and the lock holds until the missile is fired or unarmed. Confidence is low because 1970s networked combat games and early flight simulators remain unsurveyed. Atari's Star Raiders (1979, retail 1980) is an antecedent: its torpedoes home on a ship in full lock-on, but the game picks the tracked ship and the lock decays unless the target stays centred. Tatsumi's Lock-On (1986) and Sega's After Burner (1987), whose 1987 review in Computer and Video Games names Lock-On as its model, are later arcade missile locks. Panzer Dragoon (1995) made sweeping multi-target lock-on the core of a rail shooter. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) popularised locking the camera and movement onto one enemy in three-dimensional melee; Mega Man Legends was previewed in 1997 with auto-targeting likened to Tomb Raider's. In a 2011 Iwata Asks interview Koizumi dates the wish to target opponents to Super Mario 64 and traces Z-targeting's handling of several enemies, one flagged while the others wait, to a staged sword fight at Toei Kyoto Studio Park; Osawa recalls a ninja show instead." }, "established": { "title": "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "high", "note": "Ocarina of Time's Z-targeting, which locks the camera and Link's facing onto a marked enemy so that movement becomes circling and sidestepping, popularised the lock in three-dimensional melee, and target locks became common in later 3D adventure games." }, "sources": [ { "key": "the-legend-of-zelda-ocarina-of-time-instruction-booklet-1998", "canonical": false, "title": "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time instruction booklet", "author": "Nintendo", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://cdn02.nintendo-europe.com/media/downloads/games_8/emanuals/nintendo_8/Manual_Nintendo64_TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime_EN.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "Navi and Z Targeting, pp. 11–12; Using the Sword, p. 20", "note": "Z Targeting surrounds the enemy with the Focus Cursor and makes Link look toward it; locking on keeps the enemy in sight, lets Link keep distance or close in, and makes attacks more accurate." }, { "key": "iwata-asks-the-legend-of-zelda-ocarina-of-time-3d-original-development-staff-part-1-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Iwata Asks: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D – Original Development Staff, Part 1", "author": "Satoru Iwata with Nintendo developers", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "interview", "publisher": null, "url": "https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/3ds/zelda-ocarina-of-time/1/2", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "3. 'Let's Go to Toei Kyoto Studio Park!'", "note": "Koizumi's account of the sword-fight show behind Z-targeting's handling of several enemies and of the targeting problem in Super Mario 64, and Osawa's differing memory of a ninja show." }, { "key": "elite-source-code-bbc-micro-cassette-version-main-flight-loop-part-11-of-16", "canonical": false, "title": "Elite source code (BBC Micro cassette version): main flight loop, part 11 of 16", "author": "Mark Moxon", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://elite.bbcelite.com/cassette/main/subroutine/main_flight_loop_part_11_of_16.html", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Commentary on the 1984 code; an armed missile locks onto a ship in the crosshairs, with a beep and a red indicator." }, { "key": "elite-source-code-bbc-micro-cassette-version-abort2", "canonical": false, "title": "Elite source code (BBC Micro cassette version): ABORT2", "author": "Mark Moxon", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://elite.bbcelite.com/cassette/main/subroutine/abort2.html", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "The routine that sets or removes a missile's lock target." }, { "key": "star-raiders-reverse-engineered-source-code", "canonical": false, "title": "Star Raiders reverse-engineered source code", "author": "Lorenz Wiest", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://github.com/lwiest/StarRaiders", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Lock-on markers and homing torpedoes for a tracked object chosen by the game, with a lock that counts down unless the target stays centred." }, { "key": "arcade-action-after-burner-1987", "canonical": false, "title": "Arcade Action: After Burner", "author": "Clare Edgeley", "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Computer and Video Games 73, November 1987", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "After Burner's sights enlarge when locked onto enemy craft before a homing missile is fired, compared with Lock-On." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time", "note": "Z-targeting, and the target-lock system as a common element of later 3D adventure games." }, { "key": "eve-online-player-guide-interface-wayback-capture-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "EVE Online Player Guide: Interface (Wayback capture)", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20050305232802/http://www.eve-online.com:80/guide/en/g05.asp", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "5: Interface, Ship Modules", "note": "High-slot items such as weapons and miners are activated only after the pilot has gained a target lock on the object." }, { "key": "eve-online-player-guide-electronic-warfare-wayback-capture-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "EVE Online Player Guide: Electronic Warfare (Wayback capture)", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2007, "year_approx": true, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20071208004715/http://www.eve-online.com:80/guide/en/g61_1.asp", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Sensor dampening", "note": "Remote sensor dampeners lower a target ship's sensor resolution and targeting range, so it takes longer to get a target lock." }, { "key": "eve-online-player-guide-skills-wayback-capture-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "EVE Online Player Guide: Skills (Wayback capture)", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2007, "year_approx": true, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20071206164722/http://www.eve-online.com:80/guide/en/g615.asp", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "The Skill Categories", "note": "The Electronics category holds the skills for targeting range and for the number of targets a pilot can lock." } ], "n_examples": 9, "n_sources": 10, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 540, "updated": "2026-10-28", "url": "/mechanics/lock-on-targeting" }, { "id": "loot-boxes", "name": "Loot Boxes and Gacha", "status": "verified", "category": "chance-and-risk", "definition": "Players spend currency, often real money, on a sealed container whose contents are drawn from a weighted random pool, so the purchase buys a chance at an item rather than the item itself.", "aliases": [ "gacha", "blind boxes", "crates", "booster packs" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "loot-tables", "drafting", "markets" ], "referenced_by": [ "appointment-mechanics", "pseudo-random-distribution" ], "media": [ "video", "board-card", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the Team Fortress 2 crate-and-key form, where a purchased key opens a container whose contents are drawn after payment. Agency is low because the only choice is whether to buy; the draw itself admits no influence. Complexity is medium because rarity tiers, duplicate rules, and disclosed odds add sub-rules to a one-line core. Feedback loop is none for the canonical draw; pity timers in the gacha variant are a negative loop and were the losing value. Category was contested with resource-management because the premium currency is a managed pool, but the wager against a random pool is the identity of the mechanic.", "effects": [ "fear-of-missing-out", "sunk-cost", "frustration-risk", "grind" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Capsule-toy vending (gacha)", "year": 1965, "year_approx": true, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "An antecedent in physical media. Coin-operated machines, in Japan from about 1965, dispense a sealed capsule from a set of collectible toys; the buyer sees the set but not which item the coin will yield. Bandai's 1977 Gashapon line, a trademark, gave gacha its name.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Magic: The Gathering", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Garfield (Wizards of the Coast)", "note": "An antecedent in card games. Booster packs contain a fixed number of cards drawn by rarity slot, so building a competitive deck means buying sealed product repeatedly or trading for the rare slot's output.", "latest": false }, { "title": "MapleStory", "year": 2004, "year_approx": true, "medium": "video", "creator": "Wizet (Nexon)", "note": "Gachapon tickets bought with cash-shop currency are redeemed at in-game machines for a random item; often cited as an early video-game form of the paid random draw.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Team Fortress 2 (Mann-Conomy Update)", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "Mann Co. Supply Crates drop during play but open only with a purchased key; the crate-and-key split, item trading, and visible rarity made the form familiar in Western markets.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Genshin Impact", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "miHoYo", "note": "Character and weapon banners publish their draw rates and run a pity counter that guarantees a top-rarity result within a fixed number of pulls, the regulated gacha form.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "MapleStory", "year": 2004, "year_approx": true, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to video games; capsule-toy vending (1960s) and collectible card boosters (1993) are earlier paid random draws in other media and are treated as antecedents. MapleStory's Gachapon is the most commonly cited early paid random draw in a video game, though the exact date of its introduction is loosely documented and other Korean and Chinese free-to-play titles of the mid-2000s used similar systems. Team Fortress 2 (2010) is the populariser in Western video games." }, "established": { "title": "Team Fortress 2 (Mann-Conomy Update)", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Team Fortress 2's Mann Co. Supply Crates, which drop in play and open only with a purchased key, made the paid random draw familiar in Western markets; Counter-Strike: Global Offensive uses the same crate-and-key split." }, "sources": [ { "key": "video-game-loot-boxes-are-linked-to-problem-gambling-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Video game loot boxes are linked to problem gambling", "author": "David Zendle and Paul Cairns", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "PLOS ONE 13(11)", "note": "Survey evidence linking loot box spending to problem gambling severity; defines the form studied." }, { "key": "video-game-loot-boxes-are-psychologically-akin-to-gambling-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Video game loot boxes are psychologically akin to gambling", "author": "Aaron Drummond and James D. Sauer", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Nature Human Behaviour 2", "note": "Structural comparison of loot boxes with gambling criteria across contemporary games." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Loot box", "note": "Timeline of adoption and regulatory responses." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 3, "word_count": 490, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/loot-boxes" }, { "id": "loot-distribution", "name": "Loot Distribution", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "A cooperating group allocates each shared reward, such as a boss drop or a treasure hoard, among its members by a stated rule, such as ranked need and greed rolls, turns, a leader's award, banked points or per-player loot", "aliases": [ "loot rules", "need before greed", "group loot", "treasure division", "loot allocation" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "loot-tables", "divide-and-choose", "auction-bidding", "trading", "team-play", "cooperative-play" ], "referenced_by": [ "shared-holdings" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from World of Warcraft's rule-enforced need-before-greed roll (the Group Loot and Need Before Greed methods of 2004, and Group Loot in Dragonflight). Agency is medium: one claim among three ranked levels, after which chance decides; low is the losing value, since the roll settles every contest between equal claims. Interaction is mixed, as for team-based mechanics: the rule runs inside a cooperating group and serves it, yet each drop is a zero-sum contest between named teammates. Indirect (a contest over a shared pool without targeting) is the losing value; cooperative is rejected because no shared goal decides who wins the item. Information is perfect because the item, the eligible members, the claims and the rolls are announced; a member's real need lies outside the mechanic's state, and asymmetric is the losing value if it is counted. Pacing is neutral, with decelerates the losing value for the roll windows between fights. Feedback loop is none for the memoryless per-drop roll; negative belongs to the EverQuest one-item-each custom and to Dragon Kill Points. Decision density is low: one claim per drop. Complexity is medium: three claim levels, an eligibility filter, and a method and threshold set by the leader. The cooperative wrapper belongs to team play and cooperative play, not to this category.", "effects": [ "contested-fairness", "betrayal", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons (Basic Set rulebook, Holmes edition)", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "J. Eric Holmes, from Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "An antecedent. The rulebook reports that treasure \"is usually divided equally among members of the party\" and ties experience to the share, so a character who takes more of the loot, such as a thief stealing gems on the way home, also takes the extra experience. It states a custom, not a division procedure.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Players Handbook", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax (TSR)", "note": "Appendix V offers equal shares, one share per experience level, or equal shares plus bonus shares voted to outstanding characters. Henchmen take half shares and obstructive characters forfeit theirs. Magic items are grouped into parcels that players dice for, the highest roll choosing ahead of the rest, with one roll per level and the best kept.", "latest": false }, { "title": "EverQuest", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Verant Interactive", "note": "Autosplit divides coin automatically. Items are allocated by player custom, documented in the 2001 Prima guide, by greatest need and then a /random lottery among those who need the item, and a winner takes no second item until everyone has one. The publisher's Play Nice Policy bans ninjalooting.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Final Fantasy XI", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Square", "note": "Party drops enter a shared treasure pool, and each member casts a random lot or passes on each item from a menu; the highest lot takes the item. The 2003 BradyGames guide calls this \"bidding\". Whether lots were present at the 2002 Japanese launch is unconfirmed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "The party leader picks one of five methods (Master Looter, Round Robin, Group Loot, Need Before Greed, Free-for-All) and a quality threshold above which a roll box opens. Need Before Greed bars rolls by characters who cannot use the item. Separate Need and Greed buttons date from patch 1.9; before it, players typed \"n\" or \"g\" and used /roll.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gloomhaven", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Isaac Childres (Cephalofair Games)", "note": "Money tokens and treasure go to whichever character loots the hex, by a Loot ability or by ending a turn there. Loot is \"not shared with the other players\", and players cannot trade money or items, so free-for-all looting is the stated rule and every allocation is final.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft: Dragonflight", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "At launch Group Loot was the only loot method for any raid group. Need is limited to the specializations the Dungeon Journal lists for the item and beats any Greed roll; patch 10.1.0 added a Transmog roll ranked between them. Guilds funnelled tradeable drops to one character and reassigned them within the two-hour trade window.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Players Handbook", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the earliest published rules for dividing a group's shared treasure, since the definition requires a stated rule: Appendix V of the Players Handbook gives three share agreements with modifiers and a dice procedure for magic items. The Holmes Basic Set (1977) is an antecedent. Its one sentence that treasure \"is usually divided equally among members of the party\" reports a custom and ties experience to it, with no rule a group adopts and no way to settle an indivisible item. The 1974 booklets have no division rule. Unpublished campaign practice before 1978 is plausible, and Dragon and The Strategic Review remain unsurveyed, hence medium. If provenance is scoped to a roll the game itself runs, the earliest documented use cited is Final Fantasy XI (2002), through its 2003 guide; whether lots were present at launch is unconfirmed, and earlier online games remain unsurveyed. World of Warcraft (2004) is the populariser." }, "established": { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "World of Warcraft (2004) popularised the need-before-greed roll as a method the game itself enforces, turning the EverQuest custom of need first and a lottery into a leader-set option with a quality threshold. Its 2004 strategy guide records Need Before Greed as the dominant player rule." }, "sources": [ { "key": "advanced-dungeons-dragons-players-handbook-1978", "canonical": false, "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Players Handbook", "author": "Gary Gygax", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "TSR", "url": "https://archive.org/details/advanced-dungeons-dragons-players-handbook", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Appendix V: Suggested Agreements for Division of Treasure, c. p. 122", "note": "Equal shares, shares by level, voted bonus shares, share modifiers, magic items parcelled and diced for, and the advice to settle the system before the adventure." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-basic-set-rulebook-holmes-edition-1977", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons (Basic Set rulebook, Holmes edition)", "author": "J. Eric Holmes, from Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/details/holmes_basic", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Experience Points and Experience Levels, c. p. 11", "note": "Treasure \"usually divided equally among members of the party\", with experience following the share." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-basic-rulebook-1981", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Basic Rulebook", "author": "Tom Moldvay (TSR)", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/details/dn-d-basic-rules-moldvay", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Dividing Magical Treasure, pp. B60-B61", "note": "Non-magical treasure usually divided evenly; magical treasure by the players' choice or by a percentile roll for first pick." }, { "key": "everquest-players-guide-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "EverQuest Players Guide", "author": "Juanita Jones, Russell Phoenix, Jimmy Monkerface, and Damien Waples (Prima Games)", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/everquest-players-guide/Everquest%20%20Players%20Guide_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Groups: Splitting the Loot, Splitting Money, Splitting Items; EverQuest Ground Rules, Play Nice Policies: Ninjalooting", "note": "Autosplit for coin, need first, the /random lottery, one item each before seconds, and the ninjalooting ban." }, { "key": "final-fantasy-xi-official-strategy-guide-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Final Fantasy XI Official Strategy Guide", "author": "Michael Lummis and Elizabeth M. Hollinger with Edwin Kern and Kathleen Pleet (BradyGames)", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/details/ffxi-2003-guide", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Glossary: Bidding; etiquette for hunting special items", "note": "Party treasure divided by casting lots from a menu, and the convention that a hunt's organiser receives the item sought." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-official-strategy-guide-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft Official Strategy Guide", "author": "Michael Lummis and Danielle Vanderlip (BradyGames)", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/World_of_Warcraft_World_of_Warcraft_BradyGames_Official_Strategy_Guide/World_of_Warcraft_World_of_Warcraft_BradyGames_Official_Strategy_Guide_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "An Introduction to MMORPGs: Etiquette in the World of Warcraft, Treasure Distribution; The Basics of Party Dynamics, What's a Party (p. 22): Loot Systems Explained", "note": "The five launch loot methods, the threshold, Need Before Greed restricting rolls by usability, the pledge of Need Before Greed as the dominant player rule, and ninja looting." }, { "key": "dev-watercooler-mists-of-pandaria-looting-explained-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Dev Watercooler: Mists of Pandaria Looting Explained", "author": "Greg Street (Ghostcrawler), Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2012, "year_approx": true, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/4736886", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "The Need, Greed or Pass roll in Raid Finder replaced by independent per-player loot, with the aim of relieving social pressure among strangers. The page shows the day without a year." }, { "key": "dkp-explanation-historical-afterlife-dragon-lotto-rules", "canonical": false, "title": "DKP Explanation (Historical): Afterlife Dragon Lotto Rules", "author": "Afterlife guild", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20250113230538/http://afterlifeguild.org/dkplist/dkp-explanation-historical/", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "The original Dragon Kill Points as a lottery weighted by points, with tiers, class eligibility and absence penalties, and the aim of avoiding \"bad lottos\"." }, { "key": "dragon-kill-points-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Dragon Kill Points", "author": "Krista-Lee Malone", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "Games and Culture 4(3), SAGE", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "DKP as an intra-guild economy that produces cohesion and obligation (abstract)." }, { "key": "dragon-kill-points-a-summary-whitepaper-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Dragon Kill Points: A Summary Whitepaper", "author": "Edward Castronova and Joshua Fairfield", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "SSRN", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "DKP as a self-enforcing, non-pecuniary allocation system for goods produced by player effort and the game (abstract)." }, { "key": "gloomhaven-rulebook-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Gloomhaven rulebook", "author": "Isaac Childres (Cephalofair Games)", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://cdn.1j1ju.com/medias/8d/c5/21-gloomhaven-rulebook.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Loot and End-of-Turn Looting, p. 27; Buying and Selling Items, p. 43", "note": "Loot goes to the character who takes it, is not shared, and cannot be traded." }, { "key": "master-loot-s-removal-deals-another-blow-to-wow-s-dwindling-sense-of-community-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Master Loot's Removal Deals Another Blow to WoW's Dwindling Sense of Community", "author": "Amelia Mary-Justice", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Inven Global", "url": "https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/6226/master-loots-removal-deals-another-blow-to-wows-dwindling-sense-of-community", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "The removal of Master Loot in patch 8.0.1 and the reported Hazzikostas remark on fairness." }, { "key": "group-loot-in-vault-of-the-incarnates-do-we-like-it-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Group Loot in Vault of the Incarnates: Do We Like It?", "author": "Seliathan", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Raider.IO", "url": "https://raider.io/news/460-group-loot-in-vault-of-the-incarnates-do-we-like-it", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Group Loot as the only raid method in Dragonflight, Need limited by specialization, and the trade-window workaround." }, { "key": "diablo-iii-forum-tidbits-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Diablo III Forum Tidbits", "author": "BuckGB", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "GameBanshee", "url": "http://www.gamebanshee.com/kwqdw", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "A pre-release Blizzard statement that each player in a party sees their own drops." }, { "key": "warcraft-wiki", "canonical": false, "title": "Warcraft Wiki", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Need before Greed", "note": "Patch history of the roll, including the 1.9 buttons, the 3.3.0 class filter, the 8.0.1 removal of Master Loot, and the 10.1.0 Transmog roll." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 15, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 647, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/loot-distribution" }, { "id": "loot-tables", "name": "Loot Tables", "status": "verified", "category": "chance-and-risk", "definition": "Rewards from a defeated enemy, opened container, or completed task are drawn from a weighted random distribution, so what the player receives is decided by chance after the action is taken.", "aliases": [ "drop tables", "treasure tables", "random drops" ], "parent": "procedural-generation", "children": [], "related": [ "roguelike-meta-progression", "push-your-luck", "experience-levels" ], "referenced_by": [ "commodity-currency", "critical-hits", "equipment-loadouts", "full-loot", "inventory-encumbrance", "item-modification", "last-hitting", "loot-boxes", "loot-distribution", "power-ups", "pseudo-random-distribution", "random-tables", "upgrade-offers", "resource-gathering", "socketing" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "high", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 2, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the treasure tables of Dungeons & Dragons (1974), where nested percentage tables make complexity high: a treasure-type table feeds several interacting sub-tables. Video implementations hide the tables from the player, so the player-facing rule (\"defeat it, receive something\") would code low; medium was the losing value. Information is asymmetric because in the canonical referee-mediated form the referee holds the tables and sees the roll before the players learn the result; hidden was the losing value, and applies to video forms in which only the game system knows the table. Feedback loop is none because the draw itself has no memory; the positive loop of better gear enabling faster farming belongs to the surrounding progression system and was the losing value.", "effects": [ "discovery", "volatility", "grind", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Volume 2 assigns each monster a lettered treasure type; the referee rolls percentile dice against the table for coins, gems, jewellery, and magic items, with further sub-tables for the items themselves.", "latest": false }, { "title": "HeroQuest", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Stephen Baker (Milton Bradley and Games Workshop)", "note": "Searching a room draws from a shuffled Treasure deck that mixes gold, potions, and hazards such as wandering monsters, so each search is a weighted gamble.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Diablo", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard North", "note": "Monsters and chests drop items whose base type, quality tier, and magical affixes are each rolled, making the drop rather than the fight the object of repeated play.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Each boss has a fixed loot table with per-item drop percentages; repeating an encounter weekly in pursuit of a low-probability drop is the canonical form of loot-driven grind.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Borderlands", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Gearbox Software", "note": "Weapons are assembled from randomised parts across rarity tiers, so the table generates the item rather than selecting it from a list; the marketing emphasised the count of possible combinations.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "Drops carry randomly rolled properties, as in Diablo, but the currency that replaces gold is itself a set of dropped orbs that reroll the properties of other items, so a drop is often the input to further random rolls rather than a finished item. The developer describes every system that can carry random properties as itemised, including flasks and the Map items that gate the endgame.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fortnite", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Epic Games", "note": "Floor loot, chests, supply drops and vending machines give weapons in rarity tiers from Common to Legendary, and patch notes report per-item drop chances, such as the Epic Rocket Launcher's rise from 0.11 to 0.73 percent in 2018; whether a chest appears at a spot is rolled too, a chance one 2018 mode raised from 50–70 to 80–90 percent.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Diablo IV", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Enemies, bosses and chests drop gear whose rarity tier and affixes are rolled at the drop, so a kill yields a random item from a weighted pool and the build is assembled from what chance provides.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The 1974 treasure tables are an unambiguous primary source and the usual tabletop origin. Informal reward rolls in the Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns of the early 1970s plausibly precede publication, and random event tables in wargames are older but did not generate rewards. Diablo (1996) is the populariser of the video form." }, "established": { "title": "Diablo", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Diablo (1996) made the randomised drop the central loop of a commercial video game, rolling base type, quality tier and affixes for each item; later action role-playing games such as Path of Exile roll drop properties in the same way. The tabletop treasure table of Dungeons & Dragons (1974) is the older form." }, "sources": [ { "key": "dungeons-dragons-volume-2-monsters-treasure-1974", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 2, Monsters & Treasure", "author": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Treasure types table and magic item sub-tables", "note": "Canonical rules text for lettered treasure types." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "History of the 1974 rules' treasure and reward systems and their wargame antecedents." }, { "key": "diablo-manual-1996", "canonical": false, "title": "Diablo manual", "author": "Blizzard North", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Item quality tiers and randomised properties as presented to the player." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Loot (video games)", "note": null }, { "key": "path-of-exile-game-overview", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile game overview", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/game", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Orbs that randomly reroll the properties of other items in place of gold, every system that can carry random properties itemised, and endgame Map items whose mods alter challenge and reward." }, { "key": "fortnite-v5-40-patch-notes-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Fortnite v5.40 Patch Notes", "author": "Epic Games", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180906162252/https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/patch-notes/v5-40", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Battle Royale, Weapons + Items, Rarity color adjustments", "note": "Rarity tiers removed or added per weapon, and drop chances such as the Epic Rocket Launcher's 0.11 to 0.73 percent." }, { "key": "fortnite-v4-1-patch-notes-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Fortnite v4.1 Patch Notes", "author": "Epic Games", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180509022606/https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/patch-notes/v4-1", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Battle Royale, Limited-Time Mashup: Infinity Gauntlet, Loot", "note": "The chance of a treasure chest spawning raised from 50–70 to 80–90 percent in a limited-time mode." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 499, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/loot-tables" }, { "id": "map-markers", "name": "Map Markers and Waypoints", "status": "unverified", "category": "information-and-hidden-state", "definition": "The interface places icons on a map, minimap, or compass that mark objectives, points of interest, or player-set waypoints and updates them as state changes, so where to go is disclosed by the system rather than found in the world.", "aliases": [ "quest markers", "waypoints", "objective markers", "quest compass", "minimap icons", "map pins" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "fog-of-war", "quests", "lock-and-key", "exploration-procedures" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the quest compass of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Category is information-and-hidden-state over space-and-position, the losing family: the marker's point is what the system discloses about the location of a goal, and although it is drawn on a spatial representation it alters nothing about position itself. Agency is low because the system sets the markers; medium was the losing value for player-placed waypoints and pins. Information is perfect because a marker, once set, is public to the player; hidden was the losing value on the ground that the system alone knows the location before it marks it (asymmetric does not apply because the system is not a player). Pacing accelerates because search and direction-following time is removed; neutral was the losing value. Decision density is low, since the choice is only which marker to follow.", "effects": [ "flow", "spatial-reasoning", "compulsion", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Rally-X", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Namco", "note": "A radar beside the maze shows the player's car, the pursuing cars, and the flags still to be collected, but not the walls, so objectives are marked before they are seen while the route must be found.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Grand Theft Auto", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "DMA Design", "note": "An arrow on screen indicates the general direction of the current target in a top-down city, so missions can send the player anywhere without written directions.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Grand Theft Auto III", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "DMA Design (Rockstar Games)", "note": "A circular radar in the corner shows mission givers and targets as coloured blips relative to the player, the minimap form most open-world games adopted; Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004) added a player-placed waypoint.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Bethesda Game Studios", "note": "A compass bar marks the active quest's target and nearby undiscovered locations, replacing the written directions of Morrowind (2002); the change is the usual reference point in debate over markers.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Elden Ring", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "FromSoftware (Bandai Namco)", "note": "No objective markers are set; sites of grace emit rays suggesting a direction, map fragments must be found, and the player places their own markers and beacons, a deliberate return of wayfinding to the player.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hogwarts Legacy", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Avalanche Software (Warner Bros. Games)", "note": "Quests are tracked with waypoints and quest-tracking icons on the map and minimap, and the minimap shows a path toward the tracked objective.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Rally-X", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Rally-X (Namco, 1980) is an early documented case of a radar that marks objectives the player has not yet reached, the flags still to be collected. Midway's operating manual for the North American release (January 1981) tells players to touch each round's ten check points \"with the help of the radar screen\"; sources disagree on the day of the Japanese release in 1980, not on the year. Star Raiders, for Atari home computers, also charted enemy positions on a scan and a galactic chart, but those mark threats rather than pointing to an objective, and its date is unconfirmed. The compass of The Legend of Zelda (1986) marks the Triforce on each dungeon map, and Grand Theft Auto (1997) shows an arrow in the general direction of the current target. Grand Theft Auto III (2001) as the source of the minimap with mission blips and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) as populariser of the quest compass are editorial judgements without a cited source. Objective markers plausibly exist in still earlier arcade and computer games, so confidence is low." }, "established": { "title": "Grand Theft Auto III", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Grand Theft Auto III (2001) is the usual reference for the minimap with mission blips, the form most open-world games adopted. The quest compass of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) is the usual reference point in debate over markers; both credits are editorial." }, "sources": [ { "key": "rogers-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design", "author": "Scott Rogers", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Wiley", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Design treatment of HUDs, minimaps, radar, and marker icons." }, { "key": "an-architectural-approach-to-level-design-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "An Architectural Approach to Level Design", "author": "Christopher W. Totten", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Wayfinding through landmarks and environmental cues as the alternative to interface markers, used for the design considerations." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Mini-map", "note": "History of radar and minimap displays." }, { "key": "arcade-archives-rally-x-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "Arcade Archives RALLY-X", "author": "Hamster (Nintendo eShop)", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/arcade-archives-rally-x-switch/", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "The licensed reissue of the 1980 Namco game; use your radar to hit the course checkpoints while collecting flags." }, { "key": "rally-x-manual-midway-1981", "canonical": false, "title": "Rally-X manual (Midway)", "author": "Midway Mfg. Co.", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/ArcadeGameManualRallyx/rallyx_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Playing Instructions, p. 9", "note": "Manual for the North American release, dated January 1981 on its cover; the player uses the radar screen to touch the ten check points of each round, one of them the Special Check Point." }, { "key": "grand-theft-auto-manual-playstation-1998", "canonical": false, "title": "Grand Theft Auto manual (PlayStation)", "author": "Take-Two Interactive (Sony classic manuals)", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://secure.cdn.us.playstation.com/manuals/classic/games/grand-theft-auto-manual-en.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": "Mission Arrow, PDF p. 6", "note": "The yellow arrow indicates the general direction of your intended target." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 523, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/map-markers" }, { "id": "markets", "name": "Markets", "status": "unverified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "Players buy from and sell to the game at prices the system sets and moves in response to purchases, sales, supply, or events, so the rate of exchange is a changing state rather than a fixed recipe or a negotiated deal.", "aliases": [ "supply and demand", "price tracks", "dynamic pricing", "commodity speculation" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "trading", "auction-bidding", "inventory-encumbrance", "network-building" ], "referenced_by": [ "commodity-currency", "loans-and-debt", "loot-boxes", "pick-up-and-deliver", "resource-gathering", "seasonal-leagues", "stock-holding" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "negative", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the resource market of Power Grid (2004), where each purchase empties the cheapest slot and raises the price for the next buyer. Randomness is none for this track form; input was the losing value because Traveller and Elite move prices by roll. Interaction is indirect because depletion changes the price for others without targeting them. Feedback loop is negative because demand raises the cost of further demand. Category is resource-management, which departs from the default tie-break order: interaction-and-exchange is asked first and was the losing family, but the counterparty is the system, not another player, so the mechanic is about allocating a pool at a moving price rather than a transaction between players.", "effects": [ "planning", "fear-of-missing-out", "analysis-paralysis" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Acquire", "year": 1964, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Sid Sackson (3M)", "note": "Share prices are read from a table indexed by hotel chain size and tier, so the system reprices stock as the board changes and players buy at the posted figure.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Traveller", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Marc W. Miller (Game Designers' Workshop)", "note": "Book 2 generates purchase and resale prices from the trade classifications of the worlds involved and a modified roll, so cargo bought on one world is sold to a generated market on another.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Elite", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "David Braben and Ian Bell", "note": "Each system's station posts commodity prices generated on arrival from its economy type and a random component, so buying cheap in one economy and selling dear in another makes the trade route the player's plan; the player's own trades do not move the price.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Power Grid", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Friedemann Friese", "note": "First published as Funkenschlag (2001). Coal, oil, garbage, and uranium sit on a price track; buyers take from the cheapest filled space and the track restocks from the most expensive end each round at a rate set by player count and game step.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Offworld Trading Company", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Mohawk Games", "note": "A real-time market reprices every resource with each unit bought or sold by any player, so production and sabotage are both played through their effect on price.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "TaleWorlds Entertainment", "note": "Each town buys and sells goods at prices set by local supply from workshops, villages, and caravans; every unit the player sells raises the merchant's stock and lowers the price offered for the next, and sieges or cut trade push prices up, so traders spread sales across towns.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No originating design can be defended. Stock-market board games of the interwar period moved prices by dice, Stock Ticker (1937) being the example dated in reference sources; the Monopoly Stock Exchange add-on (1936) used fixed prices and is not one. Acquire (1964) sets share prices by chain size and tier, read in its 1999/2008 rules. Traveller (1977) generated prices for a role-playing campaign, and in Elite (1984) prices come from each system's economy and a random value on arrival and do not respond to the player's trades. The 18xx share markets, from 1829 (1974), are reported to move prices with sales. Power Grid's supply-indexed track first appeared in Funkenschlag (2001), and its designer credits the market to McMulti (1974) and Playboss (1969). Power Grid (2004) is the usual reference for the track in modern board design, an editorial judgement. Only popularisers are named." }, "established": { "title": "Power Grid", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Power Grid (2004), first published as Funkenschlag (2001), is the usual reference for the supply-indexed price track in modern board design, the canonical board form in which each purchase raises the price for the next buyer. The credit is an editorial judgement; its designer traces the market to McMulti and Playboss." }, "sources": [ { "key": "power-grid-rulebook-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "Power Grid rulebook", "author": "Friedemann Friese", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Phase 3, buying resources; resource market restocking", "note": "Canonical price-track rules used for the property coding." }, { "key": "traveller-book-2-starships-1977", "canonical": false, "title": "Traveller, Book 2: Starships", "author": "Marc W. Miller", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Trade and Commerce, p. 42", "note": "Generated purchase and resale prices in a tabletop RPG." }, { "key": "power-grid-deluxe-rules-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Power Grid Deluxe rules", "author": "Friedemann Friese (2F-Spiele and Rio Grande Games)", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.riograndegames.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Power-Grid-Deluxe-Rules.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Phase 3: Buy Resources; Phase 5: Bureaucracy", "note": "Prices printed on the market spaces, and restocking from the most expensive space." }, { "key": "funkenschlag-at-fifteen-the-story-of-power-grid-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Funkenschlag at Fifteen: The Story of Power Grid", "author": "Chris Wray (Opinionated Gamers)", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://opinionatedgamers.com/2016/07/11/funkenschlag-at-fifteen-the-story-of-power-grid/", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Interview-based history; Funkenschlag sold at Essen 2001, with the resource market drawn from McMulti and Playboss." }, { "key": "elite-on-the-6502-market-item-prices-and-availability", "canonical": false, "title": "Elite on the 6502: Market item prices and availability", "author": "Mark Moxon", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://elite.bbcelite.com/deep_dives/market_item_prices_and_availability.html", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "The 1984 source code sets prices from base price, economy, and a random value generated on arrival." }, { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Economics chapter", "note": "Definition and the boundary with trading and auctions." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Market; Commodity Speculation", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 527, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/markets" }, { "id": "match-three", "name": "Match-Three", "status": "verified", "category": "puzzle-and-pattern", "definition": "Pieces on a grid are swapped or dropped so that three or more identical pieces line up, the matched pieces are removed, and the grid refills, often producing chain reactions.", "aliases": [ "match-3", "tile-matching", "swap-and-match", "gem matching", "cascade matching" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "pattern-recognition", "set-collection", "combo-systems", "pattern-building" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "both", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Bejeweled (2001), the populariser, with Shariki (1994) as the structural origin. Randomness is both because the board is a random input to each decision and the refill after a swap is output randomness that decides cascades; output was the losing value. Agency is medium because the player chooses among the matches currently available rather than from an open space. Feedback loop is none in the canonical form, where a cascade scores a bonus but does not make later matches more likely; Puzzle Quest's extra turn on a match of four would code positive. Pacing is neutral; move-limited and timed variants shift it to accelerates. Category is puzzle-and-pattern because the task is finding a configuration, though Juul argues the outcome mixes pattern finding with luck.", "effects": [ "flow", "spatial-reasoning", "volatility", "spectacle" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Shariki", "year": 1994, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Eugene Alemzhin", "note": "Swapping two adjacent balls to line up three of a colour removes them and drops the balls above into the gap; the earliest combination of swap, match, and gravity refill in the lineage traced by Juul.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Bejeweled", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "PopCap Games", "note": "Popularised the form as a browser and downloadable game; a swap is allowed only if it makes a match, and the game ends when no legal swap remains.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Infinite Interactive", "note": "Combat is a shared match-three board where matched colours feed mana for spells and skull matches deal damage, coupling the puzzle to role-playing progression and to a direct opponent.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Candy Crush Saga", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "King", "note": "Levels impose move limits and objectives over hundreds of hand-authored boards, with special pieces created by matches of four or more and a lives system that monetises failure.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Potion Explosion", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Stefano Castelli, Andrea Crespi, and Lorenzo Silva", "note": "Marbles are drawn from inclined dispenser tracks; when the marbles that slide together are the same colour they are also taken, producing physical chain reactions equivalent to a cascade.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Royal Match", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Dream Games", "note": "Swapping lines up three or more identical objects, which clear and are refilled from above; each level sets goals within a fixed move budget, and larger matches create boosters such as rockets, TNT and light balls that clear rows, areas or a whole colour.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Shariki", "year": 1994, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Juul (2007) traces the swap-and-match form to Shariki, with Tetris (1984), Columns (1989), and Dr. Mario (1990) as earlier matching-tile games that drop pieces rather than swap them. Bejeweled (2001) popularised the form and fixed the genre's common name; earlier swap games are plausible but undocumented." }, "established": { "title": "Bejeweled", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Bejeweled (2001) popularised swap-and-match, made it the archetypal downloadable casual game, and gave the genre its usual name, in the lineage Juul traces from Shariki (1994). Later games such as Puzzle Quest and Candy Crush Saga built on its swap-only-if-it-matches form." }, "sources": [ { "key": "juul-2007", "canonical": true, "title": "Swap Adjacent Gems to Make Sets of Three: A History of Matching Tile Games", "author": "Jesper Juul", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "Artifact 1(4)", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Lineage from Tetris through Shariki to Bejeweled and the analysis of matching as a genre." }, { "key": "a-casual-revolution-reinventing-video-games-and-their-players-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players", "author": "Jesper Juul", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter on downloadable casual games and matching tile games", "note": "Design conventions of the genre and the role of luck in cascades." }, { "key": "potion-explosion-rulebook-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Potion Explosion rulebook", "author": "Horrible Games", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Physical cascade rule used for the board-card example." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Tile-matching video game", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 509, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/match-three" }, { "id": "memory", "name": "Memory", "status": "unverified", "category": "information-and-hidden-state", "definition": "State that was briefly shown and then concealed, such as face-down cards or a played sequence, must be retained and recalled without aids, so success depends on remembering what has already been revealed rather than on new information.", "aliases": [ "concentration", "pelmanism", "pairs", "memory matching", "recall games" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "pattern-recognition", "hidden-piece-identity", "set-collection", "deduction" ], "referenced_by": [ "hidden-scoring" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the pairs game (Pelmanism, Concentration, Ravensburger's Memory), checked against Kim's Game and Simon. Category contested: information-and-hidden-state over puzzle-and-pattern, because the challenge is retention of concealed state rather than finding a determinable pattern; puzzle was the losing family. Randomness is input because the shuffled layout is fixed before play and revealed by it. Information is hidden because face-down cards are concealed from everyone and every reveal is public; asymmetric was the losing value, since players differ in what they retain, but that is a property of players rather than of the state. Feedback loop is positive because a match grants another turn and each reveal adds to shared knowledge, so matches come faster as the game proceeds. Agency is medium because the choice of which card to turn is informed but constrained; decision density is medium for two linked choices per turn.", "effects": [ "recall", "mastery", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Concentration (Pelmanism)", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "A shuffled pack is laid face down; a player turns two cards, keeps them and plays again if they match, and otherwise turns them back in place for all to see. The British name comes from the Pelman memory-training institute, founded in London in 1898 or 1899, but no printed rules for the game are cited before 1959.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Kim's Game", "year": 1901, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "After Rudyard Kipling; named by Robert Baden-Powell", "note": "Objects are displayed on a tray for a short time, covered, and then listed from memory. Kipling's novel Kim describes it as the Play of the Jewels; the name Kim's Game and written rules come from Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys, which made it a standard observation exercise. Recall is scored directly rather than used in play.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Memory", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "William H. Hurter (Ravensburger)", "note": "The commercial picture-pairs edition that gave the mechanic its most common name in several languages; identical in procedure to Pelmanism with pictorial tiles and a fixed grid.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Simon", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Ralph Baer and Howard Morrison (Milton Bradley)", "note": "A handheld electronic game without a screen that plays a lengthening sequence of lit buttons and tones that the player must reproduce; sequence recall rather than location recall, with the sequence growing by one each round until an error.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Mario Bros. 3", "year": 1988, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "The N-Spade bonus game is a pairs board of eighteen face-down cards with a limited number of mismatches allowed; a faithful embedding of the Concentration procedure inside a platform game.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Buckshot Roulette", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Mike Klubnika", "note": "Before each load the Dealer announces how many live rounds and blanks go into the shotgun, then loads them in an order nobody sees; players must keep count of which shells have already been fired to judge whether the next one is live before choosing whom to shoot.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Kim's Game", "year": 1901, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "low", "note": "The earliest dated description cited of a shown-then-concealed recall game is in Chapter IX of Kipling's Kim (1901), where trifles on a tray are counted, covered, and listed from memory as \"the Play of the Jewels\"; the name Kim's Game and written rules come from Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys (Horace Cox, 1908), whose first edition, in a facsimile, has twenty or thirty small articles shown on a tray and the boy who remembers the most winning. The novel is fiction and shows only that the game was known. No printed rules for the face-down pairs game (Pelmanism, Concentration) are cited from Cassell's indoor-amusements book or the Hoyle editions of 1897 to 1929, though its British name comes from the Pelman Institute, founded in 1898 or 1899. Ravensburger's memory (1959), credited by the publisher to the Swiss diplomat William H. Hurter, is the populariser of the commercial pairs form and the name." }, "established": { "title": "Memory", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Ravensburger's Memory (1959) popularised the picture-pairs form across Europe and gave the mechanic its most common name in several languages. The older Kim's Game and the uncodified Pelmanism precede it." }, "sources": [ { "key": "kim-1901", "canonical": false, "title": "Kim", "author": "Rudyard Kipling", "year": 1901, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2226/pg2226.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Chapter 9, the Play of the Jewels", "note": "Literary source of Kim's Game and its training rationale." }, { "key": "scouting-for-boys-a-handbook-for-instruction-in-good-citizenship-1908", "canonical": false, "title": "Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship", "author": "Robert Baden-Powell", "year": 1908, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Horace Cox", "url": "https://archive.org/stream/scoutingforboys0000lord_t5a2/scoutingforboys0000lord_t5a2_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Games and Practices, Kim's Game, p. 54 (Scout Book Club facsimile of the first edition)", "note": "Names Kim's Game and gives its rules; the facsimile reproduces the 1908 Horace Cox edition with its 1908 copyright line." }, { "key": "scouting-for-boys-third-edition-1910", "canonical": false, "title": "Scouting for Boys (third edition)", "author": "Robert Baden-Powell", "year": 1910, "year_approx": true, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/in.ernet.dli.2015.125011/2015.125011.Scouting-For-Boys-Ed-3rd_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Kim's Game, p. 51", "note": "Names Kim's Game and gives its rules and a badge test." }, { "key": "memory-brand-page", "canonical": false, "title": "memory brand page", "author": "Ravensburger", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.ravensburger.de/de-DE/produkte/spiele/marke-memory", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "In German. The game of the Swiss diplomat William H. Hurter first went on sale in 1959." }, { "key": "memory-rules-1959", "canonical": false, "title": "Memory rules", "author": "Ravensburger", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Canonical commercial rules for the pairs procedure." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Memory", "note": "Hobby definition and the range of games that use retained information." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Concentration (card game)", "note": "Procedure, names, and variants of the pairs game." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 512, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/memory" }, { "id": "metacurrency", "name": "Metacurrency", "status": "verified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "A scarce pool of points held by the player rather than the character, earned by play and spent to bend outcomes from outside the fiction, for example to reroll, improve a result, or avoid death.", "aliases": [ "hero points", "fate points", "bennies", "inspiration", "luck points" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "fail-forward", "advantage-disadvantage", "push-your-luck", "degrees-of-success" ], "referenced_by": [ "aspects-and-tags", "commodity-currency", "flashbacks", "relationship-systems", "rerolls" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "mixed", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from hero points as in James Bond 007 (1983), where a point shifts a result one quality level and the only decision is whether to spend. Complexity is low for that form; Fate Core's invoke-and-compel economy would code medium. Feedback loop is mixed because canonical implementations split on direction: points awarded for strong results compound success, while points awarded for accepting complications (Fate compels) compensate adversity; none was the losing value. Information is perfect because pools are usually open; asymmetric was the losing value for games in which the facilitator keeps a reserve the players cannot see. Emergent narrative and catch-up belong to the compel form (Fate) rather than to the canonical hero point and are not tagged.", "effects": [ "planning", "consequence-weight" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Top Secret", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Merle M. Rasmussen (TSR)", "note": "Under the optional Fame and Fortune rule an agent gains one Fame point per experience level, may bank them, and knows the total, while the Admin secretly rolls a stock of Fortune points; either may be spent to reduce a fatal wound to one point remaining, and spent points never return.", "latest": false }, { "title": "James Bond 007", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gerard Christopher Klug (Victory Games)", "note": "Hero Points are spent to improve the quality rating of a result or worsen an opponent's, letting the player purchase cinematic competence after the dice have fallen.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Games Workshop", "note": "A small, rarely replenished stock of Fate Points lets a character survive what would otherwise be death, a narrow spend with a strong save-it-for-later pull.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Arkham Horror (second edition)", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Launius and Kevin Wilson", "note": "Clue tokens, which are also an objective, can be spent during a skill check to roll an additional die, so players trade progress toward the goal for control over a roll.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fate Core System", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Evil Hat Productions", "note": "Fate points are spent to invoke an aspect for a bonus or reroll and earned by accepting a compel, a complication that follows from an aspect, forming a closed economy.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Baldur's Gate 3", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Larian Studios", "note": "Inspiration points, earned when a character acts in accordance with their background, are spent to reroll failed ability checks, a digital implementation of the 5th edition rule with a capped pool.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Top Secret", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The optional Fame and Fortune rule on page 45 of the 1980 rulebook (second printing, April 1980) is the earliest documented metacurrency found: Fame points are earned one per experience level, accumulate, and are known to the player, and they or the Admin's secretly rolled Fortune points may be spent to reduce a fatal wound to one point remaining. Two independent histories, John H. Kim's and Jon Peterson's, credit it as the first hero-point-like rule, and Peterson traces it to Merle Rasmussen's 1978 design letter. The spend only averts death or knockout and the rule is optional, so this is a narrow form, and confidence is medium rather than high. Peterson documents partial precursors from 1977 to 1979, such as proactive saving throws and once-per-mission escapes, none of them an earned pool. James Bond 007 (1983) is the widely credited general hero-point rule, and its playtesters described Hero Points in 1982. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay used Fate Points for death avoidance in 1986; Fate (2003), codified with the compel in Spirit of the Century (2006), popularised the economy in which fate points are earned by accepting complications and spent to invoke aspects. No datable origin for the word metacurrency is cited." }, "established": { "title": "James Bond 007", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "James Bond 007 (1983) is widely credited with the general hero-point rule, a player-held pool spent to shift a result after the dice fall; John H. Kim's survey names it the pioneer of the general form. Top Secret's earlier Fame and Fortune points only averted death." }, "sources": [ { "key": "top-secret-1980", "canonical": false, "title": "Top Secret", "author": "Merle M. Rasmussen (edited by Allen Hammack)", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "TSR Games", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Optional Rules: Fame and Fortune, p. 45 (2nd printing, April 1980)", "note": "Fortune points secretly rolled by the Admin and Fame points earned one per level and known to the player, either spent to reduce a fatal wound; spent points never return." }, { "key": "james-bond-007-role-playing-in-her-majesty-s-secret-service-1983", "canonical": false, "title": "James Bond 007 Role Playing In Her Majesty's Secret Service", "author": "Gerard Christopher Klug", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Hero Points; earning and spending to shift quality ratings." }, { "key": "fate-core-system-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "Fate Core System", "author": "Leonard Balsera, Brian Engard, Jeremy Keller, Ryan Macklin, Mike Olson, Clark Valentine, Amanda Valentine, Fred Hicks, and Rob Donoghue", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Aspects and Fate Points; invoking and compelling." }, { "key": "player-s-handbook-5th-edition-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Player's Handbook, 5th edition", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Chapter 4 (Personality and Background), Inspiration." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Top Secret (role-playing game)", "note": "Fame and Fortune points as an early rule letting players alter results." }, { "key": "hero-point-mechanics-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "Hero Point Mechanics", "author": "John H. Kim", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/systemdesign/heropoints.html", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Survey crediting Top Secret (1980) as the first hero-point-like rule and James Bond 007 (1983) as the pioneer of the general form, with a timeline to the 1990s." }, { "key": "a-history-of-hero-points-fame-fortune-and-fate-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "A History of Hero Points: Fame, Fortune and Fate", "author": "Jon Peterson (Playing at the World)", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "http://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2021/01/a-history-of-hero-points-fame-fortune.html", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Rasmussen's 1978 design letter for Top Secret, the 1977-1979 partial precursors, and a 1982 playtest report of James Bond 007 Hero Points." }, { "key": "spirit-of-the-century-srd-2006", "canonical": false, "title": "Spirit of the Century SRD", "author": "Evil Hat Productions", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://fate-srd.com/downloads/fate-3/sotc-srd.html", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "1.8 Fate Points; 1.8.2 Compels", "note": "Players earn fate points when their aspects create problems for them and spend them to invoke aspects." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 8, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 553, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/metacurrency" }, { "id": "morale-and-rout", "name": "Morale and Rout", "status": "verified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "When a unit takes losses or faces a shock, a test against its morale rating decides whether it holds, and a failed test makes it break, flee, or surrender, so battles are decided by nerve giving way before every unit is destroyed.", "aliases": [ "morale checks", "morale tests", "rout rules", "break tests" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hit-points", "status-effects", "combat-results-tables", "supply-lines", "end-game-triggers" ], "referenced_by": [ "interrupts-and-reactions", "sanity" ], "media": [ "board-card", "tabletop-rpg", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Squad Leader (1977), where a morale check is a two-dice roll against a printed morale number taken whenever a unit is hit by fire, and failure breaks the unit, which must then rout away from the enemy. Category was contested three ways. Progression-and-capability was argued because a broken unit is a named state that alters capability, as in status-effects; resource-management was argued from digital forms in which morale is a depleting pool. Action-resolution won because the identity of the mechanic is the test, an adjudication of whether the unit does what its owner wants under stress; the broken state is the test's output, where in status-effects the state and its rule are the mechanic and no test need be involved. Agency is low because the test is forced by events and the owner decides nothing at the moment of resolution. Randomness is output because the die is rolled after the triggering event. Interaction is solo because the test is the unit's own roll and works the same whoever caused it, as with saving throws; direct was the losing value, since the triggering fire comes from a named enemy and the targeting belongs to that attack. Pacing accelerates because routs cascade and end battles before annihilation. Information is perfect because ratings are printed on the counter; video forms with hidden morale would code asymmetric. Feedback loop is positive because a broken neighbour or a lost leader lowers the next unit's chance of holding.", "effects": [ "volatility", "emergent-narrative", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Chainmail", "year": 1971, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren", "note": "After a melee, and when a unit suffers heavy losses, a two-dice morale check modified by troop type and casualties decides whether the unit stands, falls back, or routs from the table, carrying the medieval miniatures convention into the rules that fed Dungeons & Dragons.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Squad Leader", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "John Hill (Avalon Hill)", "note": "A morale check result on the fire table forces a two-dice roll against the squad's morale number; failure breaks the squad, which must rout to cover in the Rout Phase and can rally only with a leader, so suppression rather than killing drives the infantry fight.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Basic Set", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Tom Moldvay (TSR)", "note": "Each monster has a morale score from 2 to 12 and the referee rolls two dice against it at the first death on the monster's side and again at half losses; a failed roll makes the monsters flee or surrender, so most fights end short of extermination.", "latest": false }, { "title": "X-COM: UFO Defense", "year": 1994, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Mythos Games and MicroProse", "note": "Each soldier has a morale value that falls with wounds and the deaths of nearby comrades; when it drops low enough the soldier may panic, dropping the weapon and fleeing, or go berserk and fire at random, and the player loses control for the turn.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Shogun: Total War", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "The Creative Assembly", "note": "Each unit carries a morale state that falls under casualties, flank attacks, fatigue, and the sight of routing allies; when it fails the unit routs off the battlefield and may be rallied or ridden down, so battles are won by breaking an army, not by killing it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "TaleWorlds Entertainment", "note": "Each soldier starts a battle with morale set by the party's morale rating and loses morale when nearby comrades are killed or wounded, less so in a shield wall; soldiers whose morale falls far enough panic and run, and a few fleeing men can break a whole formation.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Chainmail", "year": 1971, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Chainmail is the earliest text whose morale rule is well documented in the secondary literature, through Peterson. Hobby miniatures rules of the 1960s are reported to have used morale tests already, and Featherstone's War Games (1962), which printed rule sets by Tony Bath, Featherstone, and Lionel Tarr, is often cited, but the sources listed here do not document a morale test in it. Reisswitz's Kriegsspiel (1824) and its successors left morale to the umpire's judgement, so an earlier designed test is plausible but unidentified." }, "established": { "title": "Squad Leader", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Squad Leader (1977) made the morale check, a two-dice roll against a printed rating with broken units that rout and rally, the centre of a board wargame. Video strategy games from X-COM (1994) to the Total War series later made rout the main way battles end." }, "sources": [ { "key": "dunnigan-1980", "canonical": true, "title": "The Complete Wargames Handbook", "author": "James F. Dunnigan", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "William Morrow", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter on how wargames work, sections on morale and combat results", "note": "Morale as a standard wargame rule and its purpose of ending fights short of annihilation." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 3, on Chainmail's morale and post-melee rules", "note": "Provenance of the Chainmail morale check and its miniatures inheritance." }, { "key": "squad-leader-rulebook-1977", "canonical": false, "title": "Squad Leader rulebook", "author": "John Hill (Avalon Hill)", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Morale Check; Rout Phase; Rally Phase", "note": "Canonical rules used for the property coding." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-basic-rulebook-1981", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Basic Rulebook", "author": "Tom Moldvay (TSR)", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Monster morale; the 2d6 morale score for monsters." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 481, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/morale-and-rout" }, { "id": "morality-systems", "name": "Morality Systems", "status": "verified", "category": "narrative-and-choice", "definition": "The game tracks a character's ethical standing on one or more scales, moves it in response to the player's actions, and gates abilities, content, or endings on where the character stands.", "aliases": [ "alignment systems", "karma systems", "virtue systems" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "branching-dialogue", "reputation-factions", "legacy-campaign" ], "referenced_by": [ "multiple-endings", "security-zones" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the most widely recognised video form, with the tabletop values checked against the 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide. Information is perfect because the meter is shown; hidden was the losing value, from Ultima IV, where virtue counters are concealed and reported only indirectly. Feedback loop is positive because most implementations reward extremes with bonuses or exclusive content, so commitment to one pole compounds; none was the losing value for tabletop alignment, which gates rather than rewards. Category is narrative-and-choice by assignment, which departs from the default tie-break order, where the progression-and-capability question (gated abilities) comes first; the reason is that the tracked quantity is a consequence of choice rather than a capability.", "effects": [ "consequence-weight", "ownership", "replayability", "sunk-cost" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeon Masters Guide", "year": 1979, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax (TSR)", "note": "Alignment, declared as Law, Neutrality, or Chaos in 1974 and expanded to nine alignments in earlier AD&D books, gains a graph on which the referee tracks drift caused by actions; changing alignment carries penalties and some classes are lost by straying.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ultima IV", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Origin Systems", "note": "Eight virtues are tracked by concealed counters that rise and fall with acts such as fleeing, stealing, or overpaying; attaining full virtue in each is the win condition, and the exact values are reported only through a seer.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pendragon", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Greg Stafford (Chaosium)", "note": "Thirteen paired personality traits (such as Chaste and Lustful) sit on opposed scales adjusted by behaviour and occasionally rolled against to compel action; religious and chivalric bonuses reward extremes.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "BioWare", "note": "A single light-dark axis moved by dialogue and quest choices, with Force power costs and mastery bonuses tied to the extremes, so the system rewards commitment to a pole.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fable", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Lionhead Studios", "note": "Good and evil points alter the avatar's appearance and townsfolk reactions; the meter is loud and visible rather than concealed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader (video game)", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Owlcat Games", "note": "Dialogue and story choices award experience on three conviction scales, Dogmatic, Iconoclast, and Heretical; each scale has five ranks that grant party abilities and unlock conviction-locked equipment and dialogue, and the dominant conviction shapes the ending.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeon Masters Guide", "year": 1979, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide is the earliest documented rule identified in which a character's ethical standing is tracked, moved by actions, and consulted for penalties. It builds on alignment declared as a fixed category in Dungeons & Dragons (1974), and referees may have tracked conduct informally before it, so confidence is medium. Ultima IV (1985) is widely cited as the first video game to track morality through in-world actions and make it the object of play, and Knights of the Old Republic (2003) popularised the single-axis meter." }, "established": { "title": "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003) popularised the visible single light-dark axis with bonuses at the poles, the most widely recognised video form. Mass Effect's Paragon and Renegade bar follows the same pattern." }, "sources": [ { "key": "advanced-dungeons-dragons-dungeon-masters-guide-1979", "canonical": false, "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeon Masters Guide", "author": "Gary Gygax", "year": 1979, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Alignment (alignment graph and changing alignment)", "note": "Tabletop form in which the referee tracks drift and penalises change." }, { "key": "pendragon-rulebook-1985", "canonical": false, "title": "Pendragon rulebook", "author": "Greg Stafford", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Traits and Passions", "note": "Opposed personality scales adjusted by behaviour." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Origins of Law and Chaos alignment in the fantasy fiction that preceded Dungeons & Dragons." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Alignment (role-playing games)", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 3, "word_count": 509, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/morality-systems" }, { "id": "multiclassing", "name": "Multiclassing", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "One character combines the kits of two or more classes, by taking levels in each class or by pairing two masteries, so that its capabilities are the sum of what each class grants at the level reached in it", "aliases": [ "multi-classing", "dual-classing", "dual-class", "dual mastery" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "variable-player-powers", "experience-levels", "skill-trees", "point-buy" ], "referenced_by": [ "subclasses" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "high", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 2, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the level-by-level form of Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition and the 2024 edition, where each level gained may go to any class whose prerequisites the character meets. Agency is high because the class list is open at every level and the choice decides which features the character gets; medium was the losing value, since prerequisites and the features already taken narrow the useful options. Randomness is none: rolled hit points belong to hit-points. Interaction is solo. Complexity is high because character level and class level govern different quantities, spell slots come from a combined-level table, and named features have stacking exceptions; medium was the losing value and fits the dual-mastery form. Pacing is neutral because the cost of a level is set by total character level, so splitting levels does not change the rate of advancement. Information is perfect. Feedback loop is none: the mechanic decides what levels supplied by experience levels buy, as skill-trees excludes its host's loop; positive was the losing value. Decision density is low: one decision point per level gained, which class takes the level; medium was the losing value, counting the decision to leave the current class separately. Engine satisfaction was considered and not tagged, because the canonical rules sum class kits and damp stacking rather than compounding output.", "effects": [ "planning", "ownership", "analysis-paralysis", "consequence-weight", "replayability" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Elves begin as fighting-men or magic-users and switch class from adventure to adventure but not during one game, gaining the benefits of both up to 4th level as a fighter and 8th as a magic-user.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons Supplement I: Greyhawk", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Robert Kuntz (TSR)", "note": "Half-elves progress simultaneously as fighters and magic-users, dwarves as fighters and thieves, and elven thieves in three classes at once, with earned experience divided among the classes even after one reaches its racial limit.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Players Handbook", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax (TSR)", "note": "Non-human characters may be multi-classed, splitting experience equally and averaging hit dice across two or three classes. A human with 15 in the original class's principal ability and 17 in the new one's may switch class once, never advancing in the old one, and may use its functions again only after the new class level exceeds it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Final Fantasy V", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Square", "note": "Characters change job at will and earn ability points that raise the current job's level; abilities learned in one job can be set while another job is active.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "A character may add a new class at any level-up and gets all the features of every class taken, with hit points, base attack and saves summed across classes; an experience point penalty for multiclassing exempts each race's favoured class.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Titan Quest", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Iron Lore Entertainment", "note": "The player picks one of eight masteries at the first level-up and may add a second at level 8, after which the same skill points are split between the two trees; a mastery's proficiency bar unlocks its skill tiers.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Grim Dawn", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Crate Entertainment", "note": "A first mastery is chosen at level 2 and a second at level 10, making a dual-class character. Skill points go into each mastery's bar, which unlocks skill tiers and raises attributes, or into its skills, and spent points can be reclaimed for a fee.", "latest": true }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 2024 edition", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "At any level-up a character may take a level in a new class if it has 13 in the primary ability of the new class and of its current classes. Experience cost and Proficiency Bonus follow total level, a new class grants only some starting proficiencies, and spell slots come from combined caster levels on a Multiclass Spellcaster table.", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Men & Magic (1974) lets elves advance as both fighting-men and magic-users, one class at a time per adventure, the earliest rules cited for a character holding two classes. Greyhawk (1975) made the form simultaneous, with experience divided among the classes, and the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook (1978) uses the term \"multi-classed\" and adds the human character with two classes. Pre-publication drafts and campaign notes from before 1974 remain unsurveyed, so confidence is medium. Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition (2000) popularised the level-by-level form, and Titan Quest (2006) the dual-mastery form in action role-playing games." }, "established": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition (2000) popularised the level-by-level form, in which any level gained may go to a new class and the character holds the sum of every class taken. The 2024 edition keeps that form." }, "sources": [ { "key": "dungeons-dragons-volume-1-men-magic-1974", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 1, Men & Magic", "author": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Tactical Studies Rules", "url": "https://archive.org/download/dndbook1/dungeons_and_dragons_book_1_-_men_and_magic_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Character classes and races: Elves", "note": "Elves switching between fighting-man and magic-user from adventure to adventure, with level caps in each." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-supplement-i-greyhawk-1975", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons Supplement I: Greyhawk", "author": "Gary Gygax and Robert Kuntz", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "TSR", "url": "https://archive.org/download/tsr02003supplement1greyhawk/tsr02003%20-%20Supplement%201%20-%20Greyhawk_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Character classes: Dwarves, Elves, Half-Elves, pp. 5-6", "note": "Simultaneous progression in two or three classes with experience divided among them." }, { "key": "advanced-dungeons-dragons-players-handbook-1978", "canonical": false, "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Players Handbook", "author": "Gary Gygax", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "TSR", "url": "https://archive.org/download/advanced-dungeons-dragons-players-handbook/Advanced%20Dungeons%20%26%20Dragons%20-%20Players%20Handbook_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Character Classes: The Multi-Classed Character; The Character With Two Classes, p. 33", "note": "Multi-classed non-humans, the human with two classes, ability prerequisites for switching, and divided experience and hit points." }, { "key": "final-fantasy-v-advance-instruction-booklet-agb-bz5p-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Final Fantasy V Advance instruction booklet (AGB-BZ5P)", "author": "Square Enix", "year": 2007, "year_approx": true, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/final-fantasy-v-advance-fhug-manual/3.5%20Manual%20Scan_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "The Job System: Why Get a Job?; What's an Ability? (English section, pp. 22-23)", "note": "Ability points raising job levels, and learned abilities usable while a different job is set." }, { "key": "multiclass-characters-hypertext-d20-srd-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Multiclass Characters (Hypertext d20 SRD)", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/multiclass.htm", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Classes: Multiclass Characters", "note": "Adding classes at level-up, abilities as the sum of each class, character level and class level, and versatility \"at the expense of focus\"." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-3-5-system-reference-document-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 System Reference Document", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/dnd35srd/Races.rtf", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Races: Favored Class", "note": "The favoured class and its exemption from the experience point penalty for multiclassing." }, { "key": "titan-quest-review-2006", "canonical": false, "title": "Titan Quest Review", "author": "David Craddock", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Shacknews", "url": "https://www.shacknews.com/article/42666/titan-quest-review", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "One of eight masteries at the first level-up, a second at level 8, the proficiency bar unlocking tiers, and paid refunds of skill points." }, { "key": "guide-character-masteries", "canonical": false, "title": "Guide: Character, Masteries", "author": "Crate Entertainment", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.grimdawn.com/guide/character/masteries", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "First mastery at level 2 and a second at level 10, creating a dual-class character." }, { "key": "guide-character-character-basics", "canonical": false, "title": "Guide: Character, Character Basics", "author": "Crate Entertainment", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.grimdawn.com/guide/character/character-basics", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Spending Skill Points", "note": "Skill points spent on the mastery bar to unlock skill tiers and raise attributes." }, { "key": "guide-about-introduction", "canonical": false, "title": "Guide: About, Introduction", "author": "Crate Entertainment", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.grimdawn.com/guide/about/introduction", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Grim Dawn made by former members of Iron Lore Entertainment as a spiritual successor to Titan Quest." }, { "key": "grim-dawn-on-steam", "canonical": false, "title": "Grim Dawn on Steam", "author": "Crate Entertainment", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://store.steampowered.com/app/219990/Grim_Dawn/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Dual class combining any two of the six base classes, and paid reclaiming of skill points." }, { "key": "system-reference-document-5-2-1-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "System Reference Document 5.2.1", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://media.dndbeyond.com/compendium-images/srd/5.2/SRD_CC_v5.2.1.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Character Creation: Multiclassing, pp. 24-25", "note": "Prerequisites of 13, experience and Proficiency Bonus by total level, partial proficiencies, Extra Attack not stacking, and the Multiclass Spellcaster table." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 12, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 632, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/multiclassing" }, { "id": "multiple-endings", "name": "Multiple Endings", "status": "unverified", "category": "narrative-and-choice", "definition": "A bounded story has several authored conclusions, and which one a player reaches is decided by accumulated choices, tracked flags, or a final decision, so the ending is a readable record of the path taken.", "aliases": [ "alternate endings", "ending branches", "true ending", "bad endings", "golden ending" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "branching-dialogue", "morality-systems", "legacy-campaign", "player-authored-goals", "audience-participation" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card", "print" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Chrono Trigger (1995), where endings are indexed by when and how the final boss is defeated, with Choose Your Own Adventure as the check case. Category is narrative-and-choice by assignment, which departs from the default tie-break order, where the progression-and-capability question comes first and partly applies because endings are often unlocks pursued across New Game Plus runs; the reason is that the ending is a story outcome rather than a capability. Information is hidden because the conditions and the other endings are concealed until found; perfect was the losing value for games that show a route flowchart. Decision density is low because the ending is the result of decisions made elsewhere; the choice points belong to branching dialogue and morality systems. Randomness is none; Fiasco's dice-driven Aftermath is recorded as a variation with output randomness. Agency is low because the ending is selected by a rule reading accumulated flags from earlier play; at most a final pick among what the record left open remains; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "consequence-weight", "replayability", "discovery", "fear-of-missing-out", "ownership" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Consider the Consequences!", "year": 1930, "year_approx": false, "medium": "print", "creator": "Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins (Century Co.)", "note": "Three linked stories, each opening with a branch diagram, let the reader choose for the characters at each decision and reach one of 43 endings in all; told in the third person rather than as \"you\".", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Cave of Time", "year": 1979, "year_approx": false, "medium": "print", "creator": "Edward Packard (Bantam Books)", "note": "The first Choose Your Own Adventure book offers dozens of endings reached by page choices, with no single correct one; a gamebook.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Castlevania II: Simon's Quest", "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Konami", "note": "One of three endings is shown according to the number of in-game days taken to finish, so the ending grades the whole run rather than a last choice; an early console instance of counted endings.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Chrono Trigger", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Square", "note": "Around a dozen endings depend on when in the story the final boss is defeated and on side-quest flags, and New Game Plus exists largely to make the early-defeat endings reachable. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fiasco", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Jason Morningstar (Bully Pulpit Games)", "note": "The Aftermath rolls each character's collected dice and reads the total on a table from triumph to catastrophe, then the players narrate a montage to match; the ending is authored on the spot within a dice-selected band.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Prospero Hall (Z-Man Games)", "note": "The 1982 gamebook rebuilt as a card-driven cooperative game with a story deck and challenge rolls, keeping the branching structure and several endings; the group's choices and tracked dangers decide which closing card is read.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Slay the Princess", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Black Tabby Games", "note": "How the player treats the Princess in the first chapter decides which version of her appears next; collecting four such versions across loops opens the final choices, while walking away early or taking the Narrator's reward gives shorter endings.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Consider the Consequences!", "year": 1930, "year_approx": false, "medium": "print", "confidence": "low", "note": "The earliest work with multiple authored endings found is Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins's Consider the Consequences! (Century Co., 1930), three branching stories with 43 endings, whose publisher billed it as a story that ends in a dozen or more ways. The book itself, copyright 1930 by the Century Co. and cited from a scan, has the reader decide each character's course at every crisis and turn to the paragraphs for that course. Whether a choice novel told in the third person counts as a game is disputed, so confidence is low; if it does not, the title falls to later branching books. Queneau's \"Un conte à votre façon\" (1967) and Dennis Guerrier's branching fiction (1969) followed, and Edward Packard's Sugarcane Island, written in 1969 and printed in July 1976 with 39 endings, began the line that became Choose Your Own Adventure, a mass-market form from 1979. In video games, 1986 is the earliest well-documented year, with Metroid and Bubble Bobble, which Guinness credits as the first; earlier claims are unconfirmed. Chrono Trigger (1995) is often associated with counted endings, but no cited source names it the populariser." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "salen-zimmerman-2004", "canonical": true, "title": "Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals", "author": "Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Games as Narrative Play", "note": "Branching narrative structures and the relation of player choice to authored outcome." }, { "key": "chris-crawford-on-interactive-storytelling-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling", "author": "Chris Crawford", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "New Riders", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Critique of branching trees and endings as the visible cost of the combinatorial explosion." }, { "key": "fiasco-rulebook-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Fiasco rulebook", "author": "Jason Morningstar", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "The Aftermath", "note": "Dice-selected ending bands in a tabletop role-playing game." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Choose Your Own Adventure", "note": "Series history and the counts of endings per book." }, { "key": "consider-the-consequences-1930", "canonical": false, "title": "Consider the Consequences!", "author": "Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins", "year": 1930, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "The Century Co.", "url": "https://archive.org/details/consider-the-consequences-1930", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Section I, Helen: the first crisis and paragraphs H-1 and H-2", "note": "Scan of the 1930 printing, whose copyright line reads 1930, by the Century Co. (in the Wikisource transcription made from it). The reader decides the course of Helen, then Jed, then Saunders at each crisis, and each course sends the reader to its own paragraphs, mapped in a branch diagram." }, { "key": "consider-the-consequences", "canonical": false, "title": "Consider the Consequences!", "author": "Demian's Gamebook Web Page", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://gamebooks.org/Item/11406", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": "Item 11406", "note": "Century Co., 1930; three stories with branch diagrams and 17, 10, and 16 endings." }, { "key": "sugarcane-island", "canonical": false, "title": "Sugarcane Island", "author": "Demian's Gamebook Web Page", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://gamebooks.org/Item/162", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": "Item 162", "note": "Written in 1969 and first printed by Vermont Crossroads Press in July 1976, with 39 endings." }, { "key": "a-very-brief-history-of-gamebooks-up-to-1979-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "A Very Brief History of Gamebooks (up to 1979)", "author": "Jason Dyer (Renga in Blue)", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://bluerenga.blog/2019/06/06/brief-history-of-gamebooks/", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Quotes the 1930 publisher's blurb and lists Queneau (1967) and Guerrier (1969) before Sugarcane Island." }, { "key": "first-videogame-with-multiple-endings", "canonical": false, "title": "First videogame with multiple endings", "author": "Guinness World Records", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/93537-first-videogame-with-multiple-endings", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Credits Bubble Bobble (Taito, 1986) as the first video game with different ending sequences, depending on performance and game mode." }, { "key": "metroid-34th-anniversary-article-2020", "canonical": false, "title": "Metroid 34th anniversary article", "author": "Famitsu", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.famitsu.com/news/202008/06203434.html", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "In Japanese. Released 6 August 1986; Samus's appearance in the ending depends on clear time." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 10, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 520, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/multiple-endings" }, { "id": "needs-and-moods", "name": "Needs and Moods", "status": "verified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "Characters carry several decaying meters such as hunger, energy, and fun that must be refilled by spending time or items, and their combined level sets a mood that gates what the character will do.", "aliases": [ "needs systems", "motives", "mood meters", "needs bars" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "upkeep", "relationship-systems", "appointment-mechanics", "resource-conversion" ], "referenced_by": [ "sanity" ], "media": [ "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from The Sims (2000), where eight motives decay and aggregate into a mood. Category is resource-management because the player allocates a scarce quantity, the character's time, among several draining pools. This departs from the default tie-break order, which asks time-and-action-structure first (meters as clocks), a losing family alongside narrative-and-choice (mood as the engine of emergent story). Agency is medium because the choice is which need to service from a handful; high was the losing value for open-world forms. Feedback loop is positive because low mood degrades performance and refuses commands, so neglect compounds; none was the losing value for pure maintenance forms such as Tamagotchi. The board form (This War of Mine: The Board Game) tracks several per-character states but has no aggregate mood beyond its misery state; upkeep covers the single-meter case.", "effects": [ "planning", "emergent-narrative", "ownership", "compulsion", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Little Computer People", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Activision (David Crane and Rich Gold)", "note": "The resident of an on-screen house asks for food, water, and attention and his mood declines when neglected, an often-cited early precedent for maintained character needs.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tamagotchi", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Bandai (Aki Maita)", "note": "Hunger and happiness meters fall in real time on a keychain device, and neglect leads to sickness and death, so care is scheduled around the clock.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Sims", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Maxis (Will Wright)", "note": "Eight motives (hunger, comfort, hygiene, bladder, energy, fun, social, room) decay and are refilled by object interactions; their weighted sum is the mood that decides whether a Sim obeys commands and how well it performs at work.", "latest": false }, { "title": "This War of Mine: The Board Game", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Michał Oracz and Jakub Wiśniewski (Awaken Realms)", "note": "Each survivor carries five states (fatigue, hunger, illness, misery, wounds) on a scale from zero to four; hunger rises at dusk without food and fatigue with night work, and reaching four kills the character or, for fatigue, forces sleep.", "latest": false }, { "title": "RimWorld", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Ludeon Studios (Tynan Sylvester)", "note": "Early access 2013. Colonists have needs (food, rest, recreation, comfort, beauty) and a mood built from stacking thoughts; below thresholds they suffer mental breaks that disrupt the colony.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Palworld", "year": 2026, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Pocketpair", "note": "Each base Pal carries a hunger gauge that falls faster while working and a sanity (SAN) gauge drained by overwork and a missing bed; low SAN makes a Pal refuse work more often and can tip it into a Depressed state with slower work and movement. Playable in early access from 2024.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Little Computer People", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Little Computer People is the usual earliest reference for a simulated character with needs the player must tend, though its meters were sparse. Tamagotchi (1996) popularised decaying real-time meters and The Sims (2000) fixed the multi-motive form with an aggregate mood, the form coded as canonical. Earlier pet or household simulations may exist but none is widely cited." }, "established": { "title": "The Sims", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The Sims (2000) established the multi-motive form, eight decaying needs whose weighted sum is a mood that decides whether a character obeys and how well it performs. Earlier tended-character games such as Little Computer People and Tamagotchi had fewer meters and no aggregate mood." }, "sources": [ { "key": "the-sims-manual-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "The Sims manual", "author": "Maxis", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Needs and mood", "note": "The eight motives and the mood aggregate coded for the properties." }, { "key": "sylvester-2013", "canonical": true, "title": "Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences", "author": "Tynan Sylvester", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "O'Reilly Media", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter on emergence and story", "note": "Cited for the framing of simulation-driven emergent story used in Analysis notes, not for rules of any specific needs system." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Little Computer People", "note": "Provenance of the tended-character form." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "The Sims (video game)", "note": "Description of motives and mood." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 550, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/needs-and-moods" }, { "id": "network-building", "name": "Network and Route Building", "status": "unverified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "Players place route segments between nodes on a map to build a connected network and score or earn for the connections made, so the value of each placement depends on what it links to and whom it blocks.", "aliases": [ "route building", "network building", "track laying", "connection building" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "tile-placement", "area-control", "markets", "grid-movement" ], "referenced_by": [ "adjacency-bonuses", "connection-games", "pick-up-and-deliver", "stock-holding", "supply-lines" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Ticket to Ride for the act of placing route segments, with the 18xx and crayon-rail forms as checks. Randomness is none because placement itself is deterministic; input was the losing value, since Ticket to Ride funds placement with drawn cards and Empire Builder draws demand cards, but that chance belongs to the acquisition mechanics around the network. Interaction is indirect because a claimed route blocks others without targeting them. Feedback loop is none in the Ticket to Ride form, where a claimed route scores once and makes later claims neither cheaper nor more productive; positive was the losing value and fits the income forms (18xx, Empire Builder), where a larger network earns the money that builds more track. Pacing accelerates because the end condition is tied to running out of segments, so every claim brings the ending closer. Pacing stays accelerates after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; neutral was the losing value.", "effects": [ "spatial-reasoning", "planning", "fear-of-missing-out", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "1829", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Francis Tresham (Hartland Trefoil)", "note": "Players lay hexagonal track tiles to extend railway routes between cities, and a company's revenue depends on the stations its trains can reach; the root of the 18xx family.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Empire Builder", "year": 1982, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Darwin Bromley and Bill Fawcett (Mayfair Games)", "note": "Track is drawn in crayon on a wipeable map at a cost per mileage marker, and delivering goods along the network pays for more track, so the network and the economy grow together.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Railroad Tycoon", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sid Meier (MicroProse)", "note": "Track is laid tile by tile across terrain whose grade sets the cost, and routes earn by connecting producing and consuming stations; the network is the player's whole position.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ticket to Ride", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Alan R. Moon (Days of Wonder)", "note": "Players claim fixed routes between cities with sets of matching cards and score for completed destination tickets; a claimed route is closed to others, so timing and blocking decide the game.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mini Metro", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Dinosaur Polo Club", "note": "Players draw and redraw lines between stations that appear over time, keeping a growing network passable with a limited stock of lines, carriages, and tunnels.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Next Station: London", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Matthew Dunstan (Blue Orange)", "note": "Each player redraws the Underground on their own map sheet: a revealed station card names where the current line may extend, the player draws one segment to a matching station, and each of four lines is scored for the sights it serves and the tunnels it takes under the Thames.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No originating design can be defended. Tresham's 1829 (1974) is the most widely cited early hobby game built around laying track to form an earning network and the root of the 18xx family. David Watts's Railway Rivals, in which players draw track between towns and earn from connections, may be as old or older: it is dated to 1973 by reference sources and to self-publishing from 1969 by one history, reviewed in 1975, and a museum set is marked 1980, but no first-edition document is cited. As Dampfross it sold some 300,000 sets in Germany from 1984. Empire Builder (Mayfair, 1982), the first of Mayfair's crayon-rail series, carried the form in North America, and Ticket to Ride (2004), with sales in the millions, is the mainstream populariser of route claiming. No earlier game with player-placed route segments is cited, though nineteenth-century railway games remain unsurveyed." }, "established": { "title": "Ticket to Ride", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Ticket to Ride (2004), with sales in the millions, is the mainstream populariser of route claiming, after which route building became an established category label. The earning network of track is older, in 1829 (1974) and the crayon-rail games." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Area Control chapter", "note": "Definition of network and route building and its distinction from area control." }, { "key": "ticket-to-ride-rulebook-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "Ticket to Ride rulebook", "author": "Alan R. Moon", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Claiming a Route; Destination Tickets", "note": "Canonical rules for route claiming and connection scoring." }, { "key": "woods-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games", "author": "Stewart Woods", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "McFarland", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Context for the game's role in popularising the mechanic." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Network and Route Building", "note": null }, { "key": "mayfair-games-inc-records-finding-aid-2022", "canonical": false, "title": "Mayfair Games, Inc. records finding aid", "author": "The Strong National Museum of Play", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.museumofplay.org/app/uploads/2022/08/03.-Mayfair-Games-Inc.-records_paper-finding-aid_072922.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Mayfair founded in spring 1981; Empire Builder (1982) the first in its series of crayon-rail games." }, { "key": "railway-rivals-the-history-1994", "canonical": false, "title": "Railway Rivals: The History", "author": "David Watts (Sumo, via The Game Cabinet)", "year": 1994, "year_approx": true, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "http://www.gamecabinet.com/sumo/Issue16.17.18/Rival.html", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "The designer's list of maps and licensed editions, with Dampfross sales of 300,000 sets from 1984; no first-edition date is given." }, { "key": "railway-rivals-rostherne-games-set", "canonical": false, "title": "Railway Rivals (Rostherne Games set)", "author": "Science Museum Group", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co224336/railway-rivals", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "A Rostherne Games set marked copyright 1980." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 527, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/network-building" }, { "id": "one-versus-many", "name": "One Versus Many", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "One player runs the opposition against all the other players, who cooperate to defeat them; the two sides play by different rules, the solo player is a competitor rather than a facilitator, and their position is not secretly logged.", "aliases": [ "one versus all", "overlord games", "asymmetric versus", "1vN" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hidden-movement", "gm-moves", "variable-player-powers", "cooperative-play", "rating-and-matchmaking" ], "referenced_by": [ "hunt-games", "player-invasions", "side-conversion", "side-swapping" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Descent: Journeys in the Dark (2005), with HeroQuest as the check case. Category contested: interaction-and-exchange over progression-and-capability (the sides have asymmetric capabilities, the territory of variable player powers) and over time-and-action-structure (the overlord often takes one long turn against many short ones); interaction wins because the structure is a contest between one player and a coalition. Randomness is none for the structure; nearly every host adds output randomness in combat. Interaction is mixed because the many cooperate while the contest with the one is direct. Information is asymmetric because the solo player typically holds a hidden hand or knows the map, although positions are public; perfect was the losing value. Complexity is medium for one extra rule set; high was the losing value for later Descent editions. High was the losing value from the overlord's side, whose turn discards and plays cards, places spawns, and activates monsters. Agency is low because as a wrapper goal structure it assigns seats and win conditions; the allocation and combat choices come from the host game's rules; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "teamwork", "alpha-player", "contested-fairness", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "HeroQuest", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Stephen Baker (Milton Bradley and Games Workshop)", "note": "One player, the evil wizard (Zargon or Morcar by edition), holds the quest map, places monsters and furniture as the heroes open doors, and moves every monster; the heroes play openly and cooperatively against a human opponent rather than a dice-driven dungeon.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pac-Man Vs.", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "One player controls Pac-Man on a Game Boy Advance screen showing the whole maze while up to three ghost players share the television with a limited view around each ghost; whoever catches Pac-Man takes over the role, so the solo seat rotates.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Descent: Journeys in the Dark", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Kevin Wilson (Fantasy Flight Games)", "note": "The overlord player spends threat tokens, earned each turn, on a hidden deck of trap and reinforcement cards and controls every monster, while the heroes share a pool of conquest tokens as a team life total. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Evolve", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Turtle Rock Studios", "note": "Four hunters with complementary classes track one player-controlled monster that feeds to evolve through three stages, a shooter built entirely around the four-against-one structure.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dead by Daylight", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Behaviour Interactive", "note": "Four survivors in third person repair generators to escape while one killer in first person hunts them; the sides have different cameras, controls, and progression, and what the killer cannot see is a matter of sight lines rather than a secret log.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Friday the 13th: The Game", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "IllFonic (Gun Media)", "note": "One player is Jason Voorhees against seven counselors, who hide, band together to escape, or fight back. Jason's abilities to track and hunt grow stronger as the night goes on.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Evil Dead: The Game", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Saber Madrid", "note": "One player is the Kandarian Demon against four survivors: the Demon spends Infernal Energy to summon enemies, set traps, jump-scare and possess survivors, mobs or objects, while the survivors cooperate to collect the map pieces and finish the ritual.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "HeroQuest", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the open-overlord board form. HeroQuest is an early and widely played board game in which one player openly runs the opposition against a cooperating group. The Dungeon Master of Dungeons & Dragons (1974) is excluded as a facilitator who is not meant to win, and Scotland Yard (1983) and The Fury of Dracula (1987) are earlier one-against-many structures that conceal the solo player's position and are treated under hidden movement pursuit. Earlier open-overlord designs may exist in the 1980s dungeon market." }, "established": { "title": "HeroQuest", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "HeroQuest (1989) brought the open overlord, one player running every monster against a cooperating party, to a mass-market board game. Descent (2005) kept the human overlord and added an economy and a hidden deck." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Game Structure chapter", "note": "Taxonomy of competitive, cooperative, and team structures within which the one-versus-many form sits." }, { "key": "heroquest-rulebook-1989", "canonical": false, "title": "HeroQuest rulebook", "author": "Stephen Baker", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "The evil wizard player", "note": "Canonical duties of the solo opponent, including map knowledge and monster control." }, { "key": "descent-journeys-in-the-dark-rulebook-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "Descent: Journeys in the Dark rulebook", "author": "Kevin Wilson", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "The overlord player, threat, and the overlord deck", "note": "The coded form, with the hidden hand that fixes information as asymmetric." }, { "key": "friday-the-13th-the-game-steam-store-page-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Friday the 13th: The Game (Steam store page)", "author": "Gun Media", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://store.steampowered.com/app/438740/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "About This Game", "note": "One player as Jason Voorhees against the player and six others as counselors, who may hide, escape together or take Jason on as a group, and Jason growing stronger as the night progresses." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 470, "updated": "2026-10-30", "url": "/mechanics/one-versus-many" }, { "id": "opposed-rolls", "name": "Opposed Rolls", "status": "unverified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "Two parties each make a roll and compare results, so the number one side must beat is set by the other side's roll rather than by a fixed threshold, and the higher result prevails.", "aliases": [ "contested rolls", "opposed checks", "contests", "dice-off", "roll-off" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "target-numbers", "degrees-of-success", "saving-throws", "dice-pool", "stealth-detection" ], "referenced_by": [ "combat-results-tables", "parry-and-dodge", "social-conflict" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Risk (1959, from La Conquête du Monde, 1957), a widely played dice-off, with Pendragon (1985) as the role-playing check. Agency is low because once the contest is declared the outcome is the dice; the choice to attack belongs to the host mechanic. Interaction is direct because the procedure names a specific opponent whose roll is the target; solo was the losing value for contests against a referee-controlled creature, which still target a specific party. Complexity is low for the plain compare form; Risk's multi-die pairing and Pendragon's band comparison would code medium. Information is perfect because both results are revealed; opposed rolls made behind a referee's screen would code asymmetric.", "effects": [ "volatility", "frustration-risk", "emergent-narrative" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Risk", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Albert Lamorisse (Parker Brothers edition of La Conquête du Monde, 1957)", "note": "The attacker rolls up to three dice and the defender up to two; dice are paired from highest down and the defender wins ties, so every exchange is a direct comparison of rolls with a built-in defensive edge.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tunnels & Trolls", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Ken St. Andre", "note": "Each side rolls dice and adds its combat adds, the totals are compared, and the loser absorbs the difference as hits, an opposed roll that is the whole of melee resolution.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pendragon", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Greg Stafford (Chaosium)", "note": "Opposed resolution compares success levels: both roll under their skill, the higher successful roll wins, and the loser's success is downgraded to a partial, which ties the contest to degrees of success; the procedure is described from later editions, and the 1985 wording is unconfirmed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Opposed checks (Hide against Spot, Bluff against Sense Motive, grapple checks) have both sides roll a twenty-sided die plus modifiers and compare, alongside the fixed Difficulty Class used for unopposed tasks.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Armello", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "League of Geeks", "note": "Combat has both participants roll dice at once, with swords counting as hits and shields as blocks against the opponent's hits, so the result is a visible comparison of two rolls modified by cards burned into the pool.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Talisman: The Magical Quest Game – 5th Edition", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Robert Harris and Doug Hopkins (Avalon Hill)", "note": "In battle each side rolls one die and adds Strength (Craft in psychic combat), another player rolling for a creature; the higher attack score wins, the loser loses a life, and a tie is a standoff.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No earliest use can be defended: dice-offs are ancient in gambling and the comparison of two rolls has no traceable origin. The structured attacker-against-defender comparison is documented for La Conquête du Monde (Lamorisse, 1957), which Parker Brothers released as Risk in 1959; Parker's rulebook says only setup differs from the French original, while a later history says the French defender rolled up to three dice, so the 1957 dice counts are disputed. Risk is the populariser in board games. H. G. Wells's Little Wars (1913) settles melee by counting men, with no dice-off; other early wargames remain unsurveyed. In role-playing, Tunnels & Trolls (1975) compares the two sides' rolled totals, three years before RuneQuest (1978), whose attack and parry rolls are each checked against their own percentage rather than against each other. Pendragon (1985) uses a compared roll-under contest in which the higher successful roll wins, though its 1985 wording is unconfirmed." }, "established": { "title": "Risk", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Risk (1959), Parker Brothers' release of La Conquête du Monde (1957), made a structured attacker-against-defender dice-off the engine of a mass-market board game. Comparing two throws is older than any documented game." }, "sources": [ { "key": "risk-rules-of-play-for-parker-brothers-continental-game-1959", "canonical": false, "title": "Risk: Rules of Play for Parker Brothers' Continental Game", "author": "Parker Brothers", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "http://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/Risk1963.PDF", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "p. 5, How to Attack; p. 11, The Original French Rules (1963 printing)", "note": "The three-versus-two dice comparison with ties to the defender, and Parker's statement that only setup differs from Lamorisse's 1957 La Conquête du Monde." }, { "key": "tunnels-trolls-first-edition-1975", "canonical": false, "title": "Tunnels & Trolls (first edition)", "author": "Ken St. Andre", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "How to Have Combat, p. 11", "note": "Combat by comparing the two sides' rolled totals, the loser taking the difference." }, { "key": "king-arthur-pendragon-1985", "canonical": false, "title": "King Arthur Pendragon", "author": "Greg Stafford", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Resolution chapter, opposed resolution", "note": "Comparison of success levels between two rollers." }, { "key": "appelcline-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry", "author": "Shannon Appelcline", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chaosium", "note": "RuneQuest's percentile skill system and its spread through the Basic Role-Playing family." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-player-s-handbook-3rd-edition-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook, 3rd edition", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 4, Skills, opposed checks", "note": "Opposed checks alongside fixed Difficulty Classes." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 523, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/opposed-rolls" }, { "id": "parry-and-dodge", "name": "Parry and Dodge Windows", "status": "unverified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "A defensive input succeeds only if it is entered within a short window relative to an incoming attack, negating the hit and often opening a counter-attack opportunity.", "aliases": [ "parry windows", "dodge windows", "invincibility frames", "i-frames", "perfect guard", "timed blocking" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "quick-time-events", "combo-systems", "hit-points", "opposed-rolls" ], "referenced_by": [ "aim-and-recoil", "dexterity", "hitboxes-and-hurtboxes", "platforming" ], "media": [ "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Dark Souls (2011), the usually credited populariser, with Street Fighter III (1997) as the named parry form. Agency is medium because the player chooses among block, dodge, and parry, each with a different risk, but execution rather than selection decides success; low was the losing value. Interaction is solo because the canonical form answers a system-controlled attacker, which is not a player; in fighting games the same window is a direct contest between human players, the losing value. Randomness is none: the window is deterministic and the variance is in execution. Category is action-resolution because the mechanic adjudicates whether an attack lands; time-and-action-structure was the losing candidate since frame windows are a timing structure. Pacing is neutral because a timed input negates one hit and may open a counter; the lengthening and shortening effects offset within each exchange and leave no systematic direction; accelerates was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026. Feedback loop stays none after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; positive was the losing value.", "effects": [ "execution", "mastery", "flow", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Fencing", "year": 1896, "year_approx": true, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "A physical antecedent of the video-game form. The parry-riposte is the sport's core exchange: a blade action timed to the attack deflects it and, in foil and sabre, confers the right of way for an immediate counter. The year marks the first Olympic programme; the conventions are older.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Punch-Out!!", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "Each opponent telegraphs punches with a tell; dodging or blocking at the right moment opens a brief window in which counter-punches land, and the entire fight is a series of such windows.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Street Fighter III", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Capcom", "note": "Tapping forward at the instant of impact parries an attack with no block stun or chip damage, which makes the parry a high-risk, high-reward alternative to blocking in a two-player contest.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dark Souls", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "FromSoftware", "note": "The dodge roll grants invincibility frames and a timed shield parry staggers the attacker for a riposte; stamina costs make each defensive choice a commitment, and the roll's window depends on equipment load.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "FromSoftware", "note": "Deflecting on contact fills the attacker's posture gauge rather than merely negating the hit, so the timed defence becomes the primary offensive route.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sandfall Interactive (Kepler Interactive)", "note": "During enemy turns of its turn-based battles, the player dodges, parries, or jumps each incoming attack in real time; a parry demands tighter timing than a dodge but grants Ability Points and a counterattack.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Punch-Out!!", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Provenance is scoped to video games, the medium of the canonical form; in physical play the parry-riposte of fencing is far older and is treated as an antecedent. Punch-Out!! is often cited as an early video game in which timed dodges against telegraphed attacks are the whole resolution of combat, but no source claims priority for it and the developer interviews found discuss its hardware rather than its dodge design; earlier arcade instances are plausible and undocumented. The named parry is older than Street Fighter III (1997): Prince of Persia (1989) had a sword parry, Samurai Shodown II (1994) is commonly credited with the first fighting-game parry, and WeaponLord (1995) had deflect counters. Street Fighter III popularised the parry in fighting games. Dark Souls (2011) is usually credited with popularising the window-based form in action role-playing games, a claim repeated widely but not sourced; Demon's Souls (2009) is the earlier game in the same lineage." }, "established": { "title": "Dark Souls", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Dark Souls (2011), following Demon's Souls (2009), is usually credited with popularising invincibility-frame dodging and timed shield parries in action role-playing games, a claim repeated widely but not sourced. Street Fighter III (1997) popularised the parry in fighting games." }, "sources": [ { "key": "swink-2009", "canonical": true, "title": "Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation", "author": "Steve Swink", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Morgan Kaufmann", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapters on human perception and response", "note": "Reaction-time limits and input response that bound feasible window lengths." }, { "key": "dark-souls-instruction-manual-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Dark Souls instruction manual", "author": "FromSoftware and Namco Bandai Games", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Parrying, riposte, and rolling controls in the usually credited populariser." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Street Fighter III", "note": "The parry system and its release date; the article cites Electronic Gaming Monthly No. 92 (March 1997), pp. 64-76." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Samurai Shodown II; Weaponlord; Prince of Persia (1989 video game)", "note": "Parries before Street Fighter III. The Samurai Shodown II priority claim is uncited there; WeaponLord's entry cites GamePro No. 78 (March 1995), pp. 40 and 43." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 543, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/parry-and-dodge" }, { "id": "pattern-building", "name": "Pattern Building", "status": "unverified", "category": "puzzle-and-pattern", "definition": "Players place pieces onto a personal board or grid to complete specified arrangements, such as rows, colour layouts, or shapes, scoring when the target configuration is achieved.", "aliases": [ "pattern construction", "grid filling", "mosaic building", "personal board patterns" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "set-collection", "tile-placement", "pattern-recognition", "match-three" ], "referenced_by": [ "adjacency-bonuses", "alignment-games", "constraint-logic-puzzles" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Azul (2017), the usual reference for the modern form, checked against Poker Patience (1909), the earliest documented form, and its hobby revival Take It Easy (1983). Agency is high because the player chooses among many placements and the choice dominates the score; medium was the losing value for forms where the piece is dictated and only the cell is chosen. Randomness is input because tiles are revealed before placement. Interaction is indirect because players share a tile supply but build private boards; Take It Easy's called tiles and Poker Patience's called cards would code solo. Complexity is medium owing to adjacency scoring and placement restrictions. Feedback loop is none because Azul's adjacency scoring pays once, when a tile is placed, and confers no lasting yield; positive was the losing value, and it is the coding used for adjacency bonuses, where neighbour effects persist as per-round income. Category is puzzle-and-pattern because the target configuration is determinable in advance; space-and-position was the losing candidate because placement is on a grid.", "effects": [ "spatial-reasoning", "planning", "ownership", "analysis-paralysis", "sunk-cost" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Poker Patience", "year": 1909, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Twenty-five cards are laid one at a time into a five-by-five layout, each next to a card already placed, and the rows and columns score as ten poker hands; in the multiplayer form the dealer calls each card and every player places the same card in a private layout.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Take It Easy", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Peter Burley", "note": "A caller draws hexagonal tiles and every player places the same tile anywhere on a private board; completed straight lines of one colour score, so the game is pure placement toward a pattern with no interaction. A hobby revival of the called-card form of Poker Patience; the 1983 date and first publisher rest on secondary sources.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tetris", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Alexey Pajitnov", "note": "Falling tetrominoes are rotated and placed so that complete rows form and vanish; the target pattern is the full row and the penalty for incomplete ones is a stack that climbs toward failure.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Azul", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Michael Kiesling", "note": "Tiles drafted from shared factories fill rows on a player board and then transfer to a five-by-five wall where each colour may appear once per row and column; adjacency scoring and penalties for overflow drive the puzzle.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Harmonies", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Johan Benvenuto (Libellud)", "note": "Players take three terrain tokens a turn onto a personal hex board, stacking them into mountains, trees and other shapes; animal cards show the exact habitat pattern each animal needs, and a cube is placed on every completed pattern that matches.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Poker Patience", "year": 1909, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "The earliest rules cited are the Poker Patience chapter of Hoyle's Games Modernized, new in its 1909 revision, in which each player lays twenty-five cards into a private five-by-five layout to score poker hands in rows and columns, and in the multiplayer form every player places the same called card; that dated text fixes the year. Tony Hall dates the game to autumn 1908 on the word of an undated booklet by \"Jackpot\" and infers a first Goodall booklet by Charles Vidal Diehl that year, but no 1908 imprint or press is cited; the 1909 text says the game had \"recently come into favour\" and Diehl called its origin doubtful, so confidence is low. Bingo shares the structure in weaker form, since the player does not choose where a number goes. Take It Easy (1983) revived the called-piece form as a hobby game, and Azul (2017), Spiel des Jahres 2018, is the usual reference for the modern form and the mechanism label." }, "established": { "title": "Azul", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Azul (2017), Spiel des Jahres 2018, is the usual reference for the modern form of drafting pieces onto a private board toward scoring configurations, and the label gained currency with it and Sagrada (2017). Poker Patience (1909) already had players build patterns in a private grid." }, "sources": [ { "key": "hoyle-s-games-modernized-1909", "canonical": false, "title": "Hoyle's Games Modernized", "author": "Professor Hoffmann", "year": 1909, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/39445/pg39445.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": "Poker Patience, pp. 267-268; preface to the revised edition of 1909, p. vii", "note": "The layout, the ten scoring hands, and the multiplayer form with called cards; the preface says the chapter is new in 1909." }, { "key": "poker-patience-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Poker Patience", "author": "Tony Hall (The World of Playing Cards)", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.wopc.co.uk/members/tony-hall/poker-patience", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": null, "note": "Dates the game to autumn 1908 on the word of an undated booklet by \"Jackpot\" and infers Diehl's first Goodall booklet that year; the earliest dated item it cites is a 1912 advertisement." }, { "key": "azul", "canonical": false, "title": "Azul", "author": "Spiel des Jahres", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.spiel-des-jahres.de/spiele/azul/", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "In German. Spiel des Jahres 2018, designed by Michael Kiesling." }, { "key": "azul-rulebook-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Azul rulebook", "author": "Michael Kiesling", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Wall-tiling phase and scoring", "note": "Canonical placement constraints and adjacency scoring used for the property coding." }, { "key": "take-it-easy-rules-1983", "canonical": false, "title": "Take It Easy rules", "author": "Peter Burley", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Called tiles and line scoring in the hobby revival of the form." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Pattern Building", "note": null }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Tetris", "note": "Row-completion rule for the video example." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 551, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/pattern-building" }, { "id": "pattern-recognition", "name": "Pattern Recognition", "status": "unverified", "category": "puzzle-and-pattern", "definition": "Players race to perceive a configuration satisfying a stated rule, such as a matching pair or a valid triple, in a shared layout; the first to call or grab it is rewarded, and play does not otherwise transform the layout.", "aliases": [ "speed matching", "spot-the-pattern", "visual search", "perceptual puzzles", "speed recognition" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "pattern-building", "set-collection", "match-three", "real-time" ], "referenced_by": [ "alignment-games", "memory", "rhythm-action", "word-building" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Set (published about 1990). Agency is medium because the outcome turns on the player's own perceptual performance within a small constrained choice (which instance to call, and when), the same reasoning used for platforming, where execution rather than chance decides; low was the losing value, argued because the valid configurations are fixed by the dealt layout, but low is reserved for outcomes fixed by prior state or chance. Randomness is input because the layout is dealt before anyone acts. Interaction is indirect because players compete for the same layout without targeting one another; the grab-the-totem form (Jungle Speed) edges toward direct. Pacing accelerates because every successful claim removes cards from a finite deck, so play runs toward exhaustion in real time with no turns to slow it. Category is puzzle-and-pattern because a determinable pattern exists in the layout; action-resolution was the losing candidate since speed of execution decides who scores it, which is why the execution tag is applied. Agency stays medium after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; low was the losing value.", "effects": [ "execution", "mastery", "tension", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Snap", "year": 1866, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Players turn cards from their own packs, and whoever first calls Snap when a card matches one already showing wins the turned cards, which demands constant vigilance; Jaques of London introduced purpose-made Snap cards in 1866, and the central-pile form came later.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Set", "year": 1990, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Marsha Falco", "note": "Twelve cards are laid out and any player may call a set of three in which each of four attributes is all the same or all different; designed in 1974 and published around 1990 (1991 is also given), it is the reference form of rule-based recognition.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Jungle Speed", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Thomas Vuarchex and Pierric Yakovenko", "note": "When two revealed cards show the same shape the two players involved race to grab a central totem, with decoy cards that penalise a wrong grab.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dobble", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jacques Cottereau and Denis Blanchot", "note": "Any two cards share exactly one symbol; players race to name it, with symbol sizes varied to defeat scanning habits.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Papers, Please", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Lucas Pope", "note": "Each traveller's documents must be checked against the day's rules for discrepancies before a time limit ends the shift; the player earns per processed entrant, so spotting mismatches under time pressure is the core loop.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Dave Campbell (Dolphin Hat Games)", "note": "Players flip cards onto a central pile while chanting taco, cat, goat, cheese, pizza in turn; when the card matches the word spoken, everyone slaps the pile and the last to slap takes it, as do players who flinch at a non-match.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Snap", "year": 1866, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "The Victoria and Albert Museum records that John Jaques & Son first introduced Snap in 1866, and Cassell's indoor-amusements book (about 1881) prints its rules: the first player to call Snap when a card matches one already showing wins the turned cards. Play with ordinary cards may be older and is undocumented. Set, designed by Marsha Falco in 1974 per her own account and published around 1990 by Set Enterprises, founded that year, is the most cited designed form of rule-based recognition. Dobble, from Jacques Cottereau's 1976 prototype and Denis Blanchot's development, launched in France in 2009 and as Spot It! in 2011, carrying the speed-matching form to a mass market." }, "established": { "title": "Set", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Set, published around 1990, is the canonical rule-based form of the race to spot a valid configuration and the usual citation in hobby discussion. Identity-matching races are older, from Snap (1866), and Dobble (2009) carried the speed-matching form to a mass market." }, "sources": [ { "key": "set-rules-1990", "canonical": false, "title": "Set rules", "author": "Marsha Falco", "year": 1990, "year_approx": true, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The attribute rule and the open call that define the canonical form." }, { "key": "koster-2004", "canonical": true, "title": "A Theory of Fun for Game Design", "author": "Raph Koster", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Paraglyph Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "How the Brain Works", "note": "Games as pattern learning; the cognitive framing used here." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Pattern Recognition", "note": null }, { "key": "snap-john-jaques-son", "canonical": false, "title": "Snap, John Jaques & Son", "author": "Victoria and Albert Museum", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O26667/snap-card-game-john-jaques", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "John Jaques & Son first introduced the game of Snap in 1866." }, { "key": "cassell-s-book-of-in-door-amusements-card-games-and-fireside-fun-1881", "canonical": false, "title": "Cassell's Book of In-door Amusements, Card Games, and Fireside Fun", "author": "Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.", "year": 1881, "year_approx": true, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/49137/pg49137.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Snap, p. 144 (third edition)", "note": "Rules for Snap with special picture cards; the caller of a match wins the turned cards." }, { "key": "company-information-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Company information", "author": "Set Enterprises", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20150810031428/http://www.setgame.com:80/company-information", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Set Enterprises founded in 1990; SET developed by Marsha Falco in 1974." }, { "key": "the-mind-bending-math-behind-spot-it-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "The Mind-Bending Math Behind Spot It!", "author": "Linda Rodriguez McRobbie (Smithsonian Magazine)", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210117202726/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/math-card-game-spot-it-180970873/", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Cottereau's 1976 prototype, the 2009 French launch as Dobble, and Spot It! in 2011." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 517, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/pattern-recognition" }, { "id": "permadeath", "name": "Permadeath", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "When a character dies, all progress bound to that character is lost and cannot be restored by reloading, so each life is a single irreversible attempt.", "aliases": [ "permanent death", "ironman mode" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "roguelike-meta-progression", "hit-points", "legacy-campaign", "procedural-generation" ], "referenced_by": [ "checkpoints", "death-penalty", "difficulty-settings", "full-loot", "lifepath", "lives-and-continues", "player-elimination", "seasonal-leagues", "time-loops" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Rogue. Agency is low because the mechanic itself offers no choice at the moment it fires; the choices it shapes belong to the surrounding play. Pacing is contested: the rule forces runs to end and so accelerates the session structure, but moment-to-moment play slows as players become cautious, so decelerates was the losing value. Feedback loop is none because loss resets to the start rather than compounding or compensating. Category tension with narrative-and-choice (consequence) was resolved by the tie-break order.", "effects": [ "consequence-weight", "tension", "frustration-risk", "emergent-narrative", "mastery", "sunk-cost" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "A character reduced to zero hit points is dead, and short of high-level resurrection magic the player begins again with a new first-level character, losing accumulated levels and treasure; an antecedent in which finality is a default rather than a designed ban on restoration.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Rogue", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, and Ken Arnold", "note": "Death ends the game and the saved game is removed when it is restored, so the only persistence is the high-score list; this is the form later roguelike definitions codify.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Intelligent Systems (Nintendo)", "note": "A unit that falls in battle is gone for the rest of the campaign; because units are named characters, players commonly restart chapters to avoid any loss.", "latest": false }, { "title": "XCOM: Enemy Unknown", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Firaxis Games", "note": "Soldiers killed in a mission are permanently lost with their ranks and abilities; the optional Ironman mode removes manual saving so that the loss cannot be undone.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pandemic Legacy: Season 1", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock", "note": "Characters who accumulate too many scars are lost from the campaign and their components removed, so a cooperative legacy game carries permanent character loss across sessions.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Noita", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nolla Games", "note": "Death ends the run and the character, wands and spells collected in it are lost; only a few unlocks carry over, so each descent through the procedurally generated mines is a single attempt.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Rogue", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the designed rule that deletes saved state on death, for which Rogue is the usual well-documented reference and the source of the roguelike convention. Character death was already final by default in tabletop Dungeons & Dragons (1974), where no reload existed; that default is an antecedent rather than a designed prohibition. Beneath Apple Manor (1978) may precede Rogue but its handling of saving is less well documented. The term \"permadeath\" is later, from multi-user dungeon and roguelike communities." }, "established": { "title": "Rogue", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Rogue (1980) made deletion of saved state on death a deliberate rule, the form later roguelike definitions codify; the Berlin Interpretation (2008) lists permadeath among the genre's defining factors." }, "sources": [ { "key": "fear-of-failing-the-many-meanings-of-difficulty-in-video-games-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Fear of Failing? The Many Meanings of Difficulty in Video Games", "author": "Jesper Juul", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "The Video Game Theory Reader 2 (Routledge)", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Typology of failure punishments (energy, life, game termination, setback) within which permadeath is the game-termination extreme." }, { "key": "the-berlin-interpretation-definition-of-roguelike-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "The Berlin Interpretation (definition of roguelike)", "author": "International Roguelike Development Conference", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Lists permadeath among the high-value factors of the roguelike genre." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Permadeath", "note": null }, { "key": "a-guide-to-the-dungeons-of-doom", "canonical": false, "title": "A Guide to the Dungeons of Doom", "author": "Michael C. Toy and Kenneth C. R. C. Arnold", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Computer Systems Research Group, University of California, Berkeley (4.4BSD User's Supplementary Documents, USD:30)", "url": "https://docs-archive.freebsd.org/44doc/usd/30.rogue/paper.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": "Section 4, Commands, S (save), p. USD:30-5", "note": "Rogue removes the save file as soon as a restored game starts, to stop players saving before danger and restarting if they die." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 496, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/permadeath" }, { "id": "physics-puzzles", "name": "Physics Puzzles", "status": "verified", "category": "puzzle-and-pattern", "definition": "The player arranges objects or sets a launch and then lets a simulated or real physical system run, and the challenge is predicting gravity, momentum, and collision well enough that the system produces the required result.", "aliases": [ "physics-based puzzles", "chain-reaction puzzles", "contraption puzzles" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "dexterity", "sliding-block-puzzles", "platforming", "constraint-logic-puzzles" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video", "board-card", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from The Incredible Machine, with Angry Birds as the projectile check case. Agency is high because parts may be placed anywhere and the arrangement determines the outcome. Randomness is none because the simulation is deterministic once set in motion; physical marble runs introduce real variance but the coding follows the digital canonical form. Interaction is solo. Complexity is low because the rules are a goal and a parts box, with the physics supplied by intuition rather than by rules text. Information is perfect because every element is visible, though the system's behaviour must be predicted. Decision density is medium because placing one part asks which part, where, and in what orientation; high was the losing value for counting the whole setup before a run as one move. Category tension with action-resolution is noted for projectile forms, where execution precision decides the result.", "effects": [ "spatial-reasoning", "discovery", "planning", "spectacle", "mastery", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Mouse Trap", "year": 1963, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Marvin Glass and Associates", "note": "Players assemble a chain-reaction contraption over the course of a roll-and-move game and trigger it to capture an opponent; the contraption is built to a fixed plan rather than solved, so it is cited as the boxed antecedent of the chain-reaction form rather than a puzzle proper.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Incredible Machine", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Dynamix", "note": "A parts box of ramps, pulleys, balloons, and animals must be arranged so that running the simulation achieves a stated goal; the canonical construction form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Angry Birds", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Rovio Entertainment", "note": "A slingshot sets angle and power for a projectile and the rigid-body simulation decides what collapses; the projectile form in which one launch is the whole decision.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gravity Maze", "year": 2014, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "ThinkFun", "note": "Challenge cards fix the start and target towers and the pieces available; the player builds a path so that a dropped marble reaches the target under gravity, a boxed puzzle with unique solutions.", "latest": false }, { "title": "GraviTrax", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "Ravensburger", "note": "A modular marble-run construction system whose task cards set start, finish, and permitted pieces; the real system is run to test the build, so prediction error shows as a marble that stops short or leaves the track.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Besiege", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Spiderling Studios", "note": "Siege machines are assembled from more than seventy block types and then released into a physics simulation that decides whether they roll, fly, fire or fall apart; each campaign level sets an objective such as destroying a castle or army.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "The Incredible Machine", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to the game whose whole structure is a physics puzzle with a determinable solution, for which The Incredible Machine is the usual citation. Earlier antecedents exist in other shapes: artillery games from the 1970s simulated trajectories within a combat frame against an opponent rather than a fixed goal, and Mouse Trap (1963) staged a physical chain reaction without a puzzle to solve. Angry Birds (2009) popularised the projectile form on mobile platforms." }, "established": { "title": "The Incredible Machine", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "The Incredible Machine (1993) is the usual citation for a game built entirely around arranging parts and running a physics simulation to reach a goal, the canonical construction form. Angry Birds (2009) later made the projectile form a mass-market mobile genre." }, "sources": [ { "key": "the-incredible-machine-manual-1993", "canonical": false, "title": "The Incredible Machine manual", "author": "Dynamix", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Parts and the goal of each puzzle", "note": "Canonical construct-and-run procedure." }, { "key": "gravity-maze-instructions-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Gravity Maze instructions", "author": "ThinkFun", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Challenge cards and setup", "note": "Boxed form with fixed challenges and unique solutions." }, { "key": "swink-2009", "canonical": true, "title": "Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation", "author": "Steve Swink", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Morgan Kaufmann", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapters on simulation and perceived physics", "note": "Framing of simulated physics as something the player learns to predict through feedback." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "The Incredible Machine", "note": "Publication history and design credits." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 519, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/physics-puzzles" }, { "id": "pick-up-and-deliver", "name": "Pick-Up and Deliver", "status": "unverified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "Players move a carrier of limited capacity to collect goods or passengers at one location and carry them to another location that pays for them, so earnings depend on the route between source and destination.", "aliases": [ "pickup and delivery", "cargo delivery", "delivery contracts" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "network-building", "inventory-encumbrance", "markets", "quests", "grid-movement" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Empire Builder (1982), where demand cards name a load, a destination city, and a payment, and a train of limited capacity carries loads along the player's own track. Category is space-and-position, which departs from the default tie-break order: resource-management is asked first and was the losing family, since capacity, loads, and payments are finite quantities, but the payment is earned by moving goods from one place to another and the route is the cost, so position is the operative state. Agency is high because the player chooses which demands to serve, in what order, and by which route; medium was the losing value, fitting fare-by-fare video forms such as Crazy Taxi. Randomness is input because demands are drawn before the player plans; none was the losing value for forms with fixed, public goods. Interaction is indirect because players compete for limited loads and contracts on a shared map without targeting one another. Information is perfect because Mayfair's rules (2008 edition) deal demand cards face up, so every player's contracts are public and the deck order is input randomness; whether the 1982 first edition also dealt them face up is unconfirmed. Asymmetric was the losing value, fitting forms with privately held contracts. Decision density is medium: which demand to pursue, which load to take on, and where to unload; high was the losing value, counting the ordering of stops when one trip serves several deliveries. Pacing is accelerates because payments buy track and faster or larger carriers that make later deliveries cheaper, so earnings compound over the game; neutral was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026. Feedback loop is none because the described loop is move, load, carry, collect; any reinvestment of earnings into track or carriers belongs to the host economy, not to the delivery rule; positive was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "planning", "spatial-reasoning" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Cargoes", "year": 1934, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "William Longyear (Selchow & Righter)", "note": "Ships travel from port to port picking up and delivering goods, and players earn money for their cargo and for returning safely home; whether a ship's hold is limited is unconfirmed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Star Trader", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Dave Kaufman", "note": "Each player captains two trading ships, buying merchandise at one star system and selling it at another. The January 1974 instructions in People's Computer Company give the hold as \"UP TO 39 TONS\" in the archive.org text, and the BASIC listing in What to Do After You Hit Return (1975) asks for the maximum cargo tonnage, \"USUALLY 30\".", "latest": false }, { "title": "Empire Builder", "year": 1982, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Darwin Bromley and Bill Fawcett (Mayfair Games)", "note": "Each face-up demand card lists three demands, each a load, a city, and a payment, of which one may be filled before the card is replaced; trains of two or three loads run on track drawn in crayon. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Elite", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "David Braben and Ian Bell", "note": "Cargo bought at one station is carried in a limited hold to another system and sold there, so the payment is the price difference across the journey; the delivery is chosen by the player rather than contracted.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Merchant of Venus", "year": 1988, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Hamblen (Avalon Hill)", "note": "Ships buy goods made by alien cultures and sell them where they are in demand, cultures are revealed as systems are explored, and passengers with fares to named destinations ride in the same holds, so routes are planned around hold space.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Crazy Taxi", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sega", "note": "A fare picked up on the street must be driven to a named destination before the fare's timer runs out; time left on that timer at arrival is paid as fare, and Arcade Rules extend the game clock, so one passenger at a time replaces a set of contracts.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Age of Steam", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Martin Wallace (Warfrog)", "note": "Coloured goods cubes on cities are moved along built track to a city of the matching colour, and each link crossed adds income to the player who owns it, so a delivery can pay an opponent; the locomotive's link range, not a hold, limits the carrier.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Death Stranding", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Kojima Productions", "note": "Orders name cargo and a destination across open terrain, and deliveries are rewarded with ratings and likes that raise carrying capacity; cargo weight, stacking, and damage on the way shape the route as much as distance does.", "latest": false }, { "title": "SnowRunner", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Saber Interactive (Focus Home Interactive)", "note": "Contracts pay for hauling cargo from where it is stocked to construction and repair sites across flooded, muddy maps, so earnings depend on choosing a truck and a passable route between source and destination; timed contests pay more for faster delivery.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Star Trader", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Star Trader is the earliest documented instance, described with its instructions and a sample run in People's Computer Company (vol. 2, no. 3, January 1974): each player captains two trading ships of limited hold, buying cargo in one star system and selling it in another. Its BASIC listing is printed in PCC's What to Do After You Hit Return (1975). Selchow & Righter's Cargoes (c. 1934, designed by William Longyear) is a reported antecedent, in which ships pick up and deliver goods between ports for pay; it rests on two catalogue records dated circa 1934, its rules are not cited, and whether its holds are limited is unconfirmed. Game of Uncle Sam's Mail (1893) is reported as an unpaid mail-delivery race, an antecedent at most. Board games between the 1930s and 1974 remain unsurveyed. Empire Builder (1982) popularised demand-card delivery in board games, Merchant of Venus (1988) space trading on a board, Elite (1984) cargo runs in video, and Crazy Taxi (1999) the timed fare." }, "established": { "title": "Empire Builder", "year": 1982, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Empire Builder (1982) popularised demand-card delivery in board games, in which contracts name a load, a city and a payment and a train of limited capacity carries goods along the player's track. Elite (1984) is the usual reference for cargo runs in video games." }, "sources": [ { "key": "cargoes-game-1934-1963", "canonical": false, "title": "Cargoes Game, 1934-1963", "author": "The Henry Ford", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.thehenryford.org/collections/explore/artifact/81931", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Museum catalogue record; players pick up and deliver goods from port to port and earn money for their cargo; designed by William Longyear for Selchow & Righter." }, { "key": "cargoes", "canonical": false, "title": "Cargoes", "author": "Osher Map Library", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://oshermaps.org/browse-maps?id=97440", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Library catalogue record dating the game circa 1934, with cargo and consignment cards." }, { "key": "star-trader-1974", "canonical": false, "title": "Star Trader", "author": "Dave Kaufman", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/stream/pcc2-3_original/pcc2-3_original_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "People's Computer Company, vol. 2, no. 3, January 1974", "note": "Article with the game's instructions and printouts of a four-player sample run; two trading ships per player, each carrying \"UP TO 39 TONS OF CARGO\" as the text reads, buying at one star system and selling at another. The linked copy is the text of an archive.org scan of the issue, with Dave Kaufman named as the contact." }, { "key": "what-to-do-after-you-hit-return-1975", "canonical": false, "title": "What to Do After You Hit Return", "author": "People's Computer Company", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/stream/Whattodoafteryouhitreturn/1974%20What%20to%20Do_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Star Trader (program listing and instructions)", "note": "The BASIC listing, whose setup asks for the \"MAX CARGOE TONNAGE\", \"USUALLY 30\", and stores the answer as the hold limit tested on each purchase; the text is an archive.org scan with a 1975 copyright line." }, { "key": "empire-builder-rulebook-2008-edition-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Empire Builder rulebook (2008 edition)", "author": "Darwin Bromley and Bill Fawcett", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20150907222546/http://www.mayfairgames.com/files/supportfiles/mfg4500-rules-v1_0.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Mayfair MFG 4500 (copyright 1982 to 2008), Wayback snapshot; the 1982 first edition is not cited. Demand cards dealt face up, one demand filled per card, train capacity, and crayon track; used for the property coding." }, { "key": "merchant-of-venus-rulebook-classic-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Merchant of Venus rulebook (Classic)", "author": "Fantasy Flight Games, after Richard Hamblen", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/merchant-of-venus/Support/MoV_Rulebook_CLASSIC_lo.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "The 2012 implementation of the 1988 design, whose component forms may differ. Hold capacity, cultures revealed on first contact, and passengers with fares." }, { "key": "crazy-taxi-owner-s-manual-1999", "canonical": false, "title": "Crazy Taxi owner's manual", "author": "Sega", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Arcade manual 4201-6468-01; time left at the destination is converted into the fare." }, { "key": "building-blocks-of-tabletop-game-design-there-will-be-games-forum-thread-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design, There Will Be Games forum thread", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20191019221745/https://therewillbe.games/forum/20-table-top-miniature-games/206290-building-blocks-of-tabletop-game-design-an-encyclopedia-of-mechanisms", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Forum post of 22 March 2019, Wayback snapshot; the book's authors treat pick-up and deliver as a higher-level collection of mechanisms rather than a single mechanism." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Pick-up and Deliver", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 9, "n_sources": 9, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 516, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/pick-up-and-deliver" }, { "id": "piece-capture", "name": "Piece Capture", "status": "verified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "A piece removes an opposing piece from the board by moving onto it, leaping over it, or enclosing it, so a spatial relation between pieces converts directly into permanent material loss.", "aliases": [ "capturing", "taking pieces", "capture by replacement", "custodial capture", "leaping capture" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "grid-movement", "zone-of-control", "promotion", "hidden-piece-identity", "sowing" ], "referenced_by": [ "alignment-games", "hunt-games", "roll-and-move" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from chess (capture by replacement), checked against draughts (leaping) and hnefatafl (custodial). Category contested: space-and-position over interaction-and-exchange, because the capture is triggered by a geometric relation and its result is a changed position; interaction lost because a removal, though targeted, is not a transaction. Agency is medium because the choice is whether to take, with which piece, and whether to allow the recapture; high was the losing value for chess as a whole game and low for compulsory capture in draughts. Complexity is medium for the chess form with its exceptions (en passant); plain custodial capture would be low. Feedback loop is positive because a material lead simplifies into a won ending through exchanges.", "effects": [ "calculation", "spatial-reasoning", "consequence-weight", "runaway-leader", "mastery" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Hnefatafl", "year": 400, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Custodial capture: a piece is removed when caught between two enemies on a line, and the king usually needs four. Viking-age boards survive; the rules are reconstructed largely from the related Sami game tablut recorded by Linnaeus in 1732.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Draughts", "year": 1100, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Capture by a short leap over an adjacent enemy into the empty square beyond. Captures are compulsory and may chain, which makes sacrifice combinations the main tactical content. Known as checkers in North America.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Chess", "year": 1475, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Capture by replacement: the mover occupies the captured piece's square and the occupant leaves play. Captures are optional, so exchanges are calculated sequences rather than forced events; en passant is the one exception to the geometry. The date is that of the modern queen's move; replacement capture is older (see provenance).", "latest": false }, { "title": "Battle Chess", "year": 1988, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Interplay", "note": "A faithful digital implementation of chess whose only addition is an animated fight for each capture; cited as an adaptation of the classical rule rather than a new form.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Onitama", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Shimpei Sato", "note": "Capture by replacement with movement patterns taken from a rotating set of five cards, so the set of available captures changes every turn.", "latest": false }, { "title": "5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Conor Petersen (Thunkspace)", "note": "Chess capture by moving onto an enemy piece is extended along two extra axes, turns and timelines, so a piece can capture on an earlier board or another timeline, and a move into the past branches a new timeline.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Polis (petteia)", "year": -450, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The Greek board game polis, usually identified with petteia, is mentioned in Athenian comedy by about 440 BCE, and the only technical description, in Pollux, says a piece is taken by enclosing it between two enemy pieces, so custodial capture is the earliest capture rule that can be documented. Roman latrunculi, mentioned by Varro in the 1st century BCE, is its likely continuation, though both rule sets are reconstructed. Replacement capture is attested for chaturanga in India by about the 6th century CE, and the leaping capture of alquerque and draughts is medieval. Race games that send a hit piece back to the start are described under race-to-the-finish." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "murray-1952", "canonical": true, "title": "A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess", "author": "H. J. R. Murray", "year": 1952, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Clarendon Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Games in the ancient world chapter (petteia, latrunculi); War-games and Hunt-games chapters", "note": "Custodial and leaping capture and their distribution across cultures." }, { "key": "parlett-1999", "canonical": true, "title": "The Oxford History of Board Games", "author": "David Parlett", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chase games and displace games chapters (tafl, draughts, chess)", "note": "Classification of capture geometries and the transfer of alquerque capture to the chessboard." }, { "key": "fide-laws-of-chess", "canonical": false, "title": "FIDE Laws of Chess", "author": "Fédération Internationale des Échecs", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Article 3, The moves of the pieces", "note": "Canonical rules text for capture by replacement and en passant." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 498, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/piece-capture" }, { "id": "platforming", "name": "Platforming", "status": "verified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "An avatar traverses platforms and hazards by running and jumping under a fixed movement model, so progress depends on the timing and placement of each jump rather than on choosing among options.", "aliases": [ "platform games", "jumping puzzles", "jump-and-run", "platform traversal" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "grid-movement", "checkpoints", "parry-and-dodge", "procedural-generation" ], "referenced_by": [ "level-editors", "physics-puzzles", "power-ups" ], "media": [ "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Super Mario Bros., the most widely recognised form. Agency is medium because the player chooses route and jump timing within a fixed movement model; low was the losing value, on the argument that most failures are of execution rather than choice. Complexity is low because the rules fit in a sentence, even though the movement model behind them is tuned in detail. Decision density is low because a jump is one decision whose quality is in its performance. Category tension with action-resolution, where success is adjudicated by player execution, was resolved for space-and-position because the operative state is where the avatar is relative to platforms and gaps; action-resolution was the losing family.", "effects": [ "execution", "flow", "mastery", "spatial-reasoning", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Donkey Kong", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo (Shigeru Miyamoto)", "note": "The player clears rolling barrels with a fixed-arc jump and climbs ladders between sloped girders; generally credited with making the jump the defining verb of the form.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Mario Bros.", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo (Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka)", "note": "Jump height varies with how long the button is held, momentum carries into the air, and levels scroll, which together fixed the side-scrolling platformer's movement model.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Sasuke", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "Tokyo Broadcasting System", "note": "Competitors cross a timed obstacle course of platforms, gaps, and walls under their own body's movement model; the platforming problem without a screen, later exported as Ninja Warrior.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Meat Boy", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Team Meat", "note": "Short, dense levels with instant respawn and wall-jumping; failure costs seconds, so the design isolates execution from every other kind of cost.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Celeste", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Maddy Makes Games", "note": "Air dash, climbing stamina, and timing forgiveness such as coyote time; an assist mode exposes the movement parameters as player-adjustable options.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Mario Bros. Wonder", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo EPD", "note": "Side-scrolling stages are crossed by running and jumping past Goombas and Piranha Plants to the goal, with power-ups such as the elephant form and the drill mushroom, which burrows through floors and ceilings, altering the fixed movement model.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Donkey Kong", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to the jump-based platform game in the form that became canonical, for which Donkey Kong is the usual credit. Space Panic (1980) has ladders and platforms but no jump and is an antecedent, and other 1981 releases such as Jump Bug also have jumps, so the credit is not a strict priority claim. Physical obstacle courses are far older and are not coded as an origin." }, "established": { "title": "Super Mario Bros.", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Super Mario Bros. (1985) fixed the side-scrolling platformer's movement model, with a variable- height jump, momentum carried into the air and scrolling levels. Donkey Kong (1981) is generally credited with making the jump the defining verb of the form." }, "sources": [ { "key": "swink-2009", "canonical": true, "title": "Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation", "author": "Steve Swink", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Morgan Kaufmann", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Super Mario Brothers case study and the chapters on input response and jump mechanics", "note": "Analysis of the jump as a tuned movement model, used for the execution and flow coding." }, { "key": "super-mario-bros-instruction-booklet-1985", "canonical": false, "title": "Super Mario Bros. instruction booklet", "author": "Nintendo", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Controls and basic movement", "note": "Primary description of the variable-height jump and run controls." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Platform game", "note": "Genre history including Space Panic, Donkey Kong, and the scrolling form." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 503, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/platforming" }, { "id": "player-elimination", "name": "Player Elimination", "status": "unverified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "A player who meets a loss condition is removed from play while the game continues for the others, so the session ends only when one player remains or a separate end condition fires.", "aliases": [ "elimination", "knockout", "last player standing" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "take-that", "hit-points", "permadeath", "area-control" ], "referenced_by": [ "end-game-triggers", "loans-and-debt", "side-conversion", "tournament-formats" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Risk, with Monopoly's bankruptcy as the check case. Agency is low because elimination is a consequence of prior state rather than a choice made at the moment it occurs. Randomness is none because the removal rule itself has no randomiser; the combat that triggers it belongs to the host. Interaction is direct because one player removes another; indirect was the losing value for forms such as musical chairs where the system eliminates. Pacing is accelerates because each removal shortens rounds and concentrates the remaining players. Feedback loop is positive because the canonical forms transfer the eliminated player's assets to the eliminator. Category tension with time-and-action-structure, which could claim the shortening of the round, is resolved for interaction-and-exchange because the act is one player ending another's participation.", "effects": [ "downtime", "consequence-weight", "runaway-leader", "kingmaking" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Musical chairs", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "Traditional. One chair fewer than players; whoever fails to sit when the music stops leaves the game, and a chair is removed each round until one player remains.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Monopoly", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Charles Darrow (Parker Brothers)", "note": "A player who cannot pay a debt is bankrupt and leaves the game, handing their property to the creditor, so each elimination strengthens whoever caused it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Risk", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Albert Lamorisse (Parker Brothers edition of La Conquête du Monde, 1957)", "note": "A player whose last army is destroyed is out, and the conqueror takes their territory cards; play continues until one player holds the whole map. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "King of Tokyo", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Garfield", "note": "Monsters at zero health are eliminated, but a parallel victory-point condition keeps most games short enough that the eliminated wait only minutes.", "latest": false }, { "title": "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "PUBG Corporation", "note": "Up to a hundred players are eliminated on death as a shrinking play zone forces encounters; eliminated players may spectate or immediately queue for a new match, which removes the downtime cost.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fall Guys", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Mediatonic", "note": "Up to 32 players run a series of obstacle and team rounds, and those who fail to qualify in each round are eliminated while the rest continue, until a single player or team wins the final.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": null, "confidence": "unknown", "note": "Elimination is intrinsic to knockout tournaments and to playground games, none of which has a documented origin. Cassell's Book of In-door Amusements (about 1881) already prints three familiar elimination games: Musical Chair, in which the player left without a seat is out; Ranter Go Round, played with three lives until one player remains; and Snip-Snap-Snorum, in which a player who becomes bankrupt must go out of the game. Magie's Landlord's Game patent of 1904 has no elimination, her 1924 patent puts a penniless player out while the winner is the first to $3,000, and Darrow's Monopoly patent (1935) makes bankruptcy elimination the way the game ends. Monopoly and Risk (Parker Brothers, 1959, from La Conquête du Monde, 1957), whose object is to eliminate all other players, are the familiar popularisers of elimination by bankruptcy and conquest, but neither is an origin. BoardGameGeek added Player Elimination as a mechanic between 2012 and 2013." }, "established": { "title": "Risk", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Risk (1959), whose object is to eliminate all other players and whose conqueror takes the loser's cards, is a familiar populariser of elimination by conquest; Monopoly (1935) shares the credit for elimination by bankruptcy. Elimination itself is older than any documented game." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Game End and Victory chapter", "note": "Definition of player elimination and the downtime problem." }, { "key": "risk-rulebook-1959", "canonical": false, "title": "Risk rulebook", "author": "Parker Brothers", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "(i). Elimination of Opponents", "note": "Canonical rules text, including transfer of cards to the conqueror." }, { "key": "risk-rules-reproduction-of-the-1959-edition-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Risk rules, reproduction of the 1959 edition", "author": "Winning Moves (licensed from Hasbro)", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://winning-moves.com/images/Risk_Rulesv2.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Object of the game; (i). Elimination of Opponents", "note": "The object is to occupy every territory and eliminate all other players." }, { "key": "cassell-s-book-of-in-door-amusements-card-games-and-fireside-fun-1881", "canonical": false, "title": "Cassell's Book of In-door Amusements, Card Games, and Fireside Fun", "author": "Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.", "year": 1881, "year_approx": true, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/49137/pg49137.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Musical Chair, p. 35; Ranter Go Round, p. 125; Snip-Snap-Snorum, p. 136 (third edition)", "note": "Three elimination games presented as already familiar, including bankruptcy elimination." }, { "key": "game-board-us-patent-1-509-312-1924", "canonical": false, "title": "Game-board (US Patent 1,509,312)", "author": "Elizabeth Magie Phillips", "year": 1924, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US1509312A/en", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "A player with no money and no cards is out of the game, while the winner is the first to $3,000." }, { "key": "monopoly-rulebook-1935", "canonical": false, "title": "Monopoly rulebook", "author": "Parker Brothers", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Bankruptcy", "note": "Elimination by debt and transfer of assets to the creditor." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Player Elimination", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 500, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/player-elimination" }, { "id": "player-invasions", "name": "Player Invasions", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "A player enters another player's ongoing single-player session as a hostile, uninvited or on a trigger the host has set, and the intrusion ends when one of them is defeated or the host clears the area", "aliases": [ "invasions", "invasion PvP", "invaders" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "one-versus-many", "ghost-data", "cooperative-play", "security-zones", "death-penalty" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Demon's Souls (2009), with the Dark Souls (2011) manual as the check case. Agency is medium because the mechanic offers each side a small set of choices, when and where to engage for the invader and whether to fight, flee towards the boss or call help for the host; high was the losing value, but the open choices of the fight belong to the host game's combat. Randomness is input because the matchmaking sends the invader to a host it did not choose, before either decides anything; none was the losing value. Interaction is direct because the invader targets one human host; mixed was the losing value for invasions met by summoned defenders, a variation. Complexity is medium for the item, the eligibility of the host, the end conditions and the stakes; high was the losing value for covenant systems. Pacing is decelerates because the invasion halts the host's progress through the level with a fight that must resolve first; neutral was the losing value. Information is asymmetric because the host learns that an invader has arrived but not where it is, while the invader knows whose world it is in; perfect was the losing value, since the Demon's Souls invader is visible once in sight. Feedback loop is none: each invasion pays its winner, but no win makes the next more likely; negative was the losing value, because a host killed by the invader can no longer be invaded until restored. Decision density is medium, two or three choices per encounter on either side; low was the losing value. Inference was considered and left out: in the canonical form the invader is a visible phantom, and picking a human out of look-alike figures belongs to the crowd-blending variation.", "effects": [ "tension", "frustration-risk", "contested-fairness", "emergent-narrative" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Demon's Souls", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "FromSoftware", "note": "A player in Soul Form uses a Black Eye Stone to invade a living host's world against their will as a Black Phantom, aiming to kill the host before the boss; Blue Phantoms the host has summoned can defend them. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dark Souls", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "FromSoftware", "note": "The manual says the invader uses a specific item and connects to a random host's world, that a boss battle ends the invasion, and that either winner gains Humanity while a losing invader loses it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Resident Evil 6", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Capcom", "note": "In Agent Hunt, enabled for certain stages once the story is cleared, other human players enter a campaign as its creatures, and the host is not told which creatures humans control.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Watch Dogs", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Ubisoft Montreal", "note": "In online hacking an invader enters another player's single-player campaign and hides among the city's computer-controlled citizens; the target is notified of the invasion and can send the invader back by finding and killing them.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Bloodborne", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "FromSoftware", "note": "An invader rings the Sinister Resonant Bell and enters a host's world where a bell-ringing woman is present, which happens when the host plays cooperatively or rings the same bell; the invader wins by defeating the host and is sent home without reward if killed or if the host reaches the boss area.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Deathloop", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Arkane Studios", "note": "Playing as Julianna, a player invades a stranger's or a friend's campaign to hunt Colt, who may need to be killed up to three times while Julianna has one life; a host who disables invasions is hunted by a computer-controlled Julianna.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Elden Ring", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "FromSoftware (Bandai Namco)", "note": "A Bloody Finger sends the invader to an eligible host, but invaders can only join worlds opened to them: a host who has summoned a cooperator, or one who uses the Taunter's Tongue. Hunters wearing the Blue Cipher Ring can be summoned to defend an invaded host.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Lords of the Fallen (2023)", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Hexworks (CI Games)", "note": "The developer's FAQ says players can be invaded even when playing solo, as long as they are online; a Vestige's Slaughter Lampbearer option hunts players in designated invasion zones, and the host's AI enemies fight beside the invader. An update of July 2025 made invasions optional and off by default.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Demon's Souls", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Demon's Souls, released in Japan in February 2009 and in North America that October, is the earliest documented use cited: its strategy guide describes the Black Eye Stone, which lets a player in Soul Form invade another player's world against their will, and a 2009 Game Developer column describes dead players invading living ones to take their life. The same game's bloodstains and passing phantoms are recorded or relayed traces and belong to ghost data. Journey (2012) joins strangers cooperatively, and duel requests in online role-playing games take place inside a shared world, so neither is this form. Confidence is medium because earlier hostile intrusions into a single-player session remain unsurveyed." }, "established": { "title": "Demon's Souls", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Demon's Souls set the form of an item-triggered invader, a host who must be living to be invaded, defenders summoned from signs, and an invasion that ends at the boss, and Dark Souls (2011) repeated it in its manual. A 2015 Game Developer feature credits the Souls games with popularising invasions and names Watch Dogs among the games they inspired, and Deathloop's director named Dark Souls and Demon's Souls as an influence, though less than Arkane's unreleased The Crossing. Resident Evil 6 is compared to them only in press." }, "sources": [ { "key": "demon-s-souls-black-phantom-edition-strategy-guide-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Demon's Souls (Black Phantom Edition) Strategy Guide", "author": "Wayne Gibson and Matthew Whisker (Namco Bandai Partners)", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/DemonsSoulsBlackPhantomEditionStrategyGuide/Demons_Souls_Black_Phantom_Edition_Strategy_Guide_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Online Mode, pp. 45-46: Blue Eye Stone, Black Eye Stone, Red Eye Stone; Basics of PvP", "note": "The Black Eye Stone invasion against the host's will, the invader's goal of killing the host before the boss, Blue Phantoms defending the host, the penalties for a defeated invader, and the soul-level range for matching." }, { "key": "dark-souls-instruction-manual-xbox-360-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Dark Souls instruction manual (Xbox 360)", "author": "Namco Bandai Games", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/dark-souls_manual_xbox360/Dark%20Souls_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Online Features: Co-op; Invasion (How to start invasion, Invasion goal)", "note": "The invader connecting to a random host's world, the invasion ending at a boss battle, and Humanity gained or lost by the winner and the losing invader." }, { "key": "a-dash-of-gank-spoils-the-stew-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "A Dash of Gank Spoils the Stew?", "author": "Simon Ludgate", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://gamedeveloper.com/design/a-dash-of-gank-spoils-the-stew-", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Dead players invading living ones in Demon's Souls, a host killed by the invader left dead, and the complaint that hosts had no choice about being invaded." }, { "key": "demon-s-souls-haunts-japan-in-february-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Demon's Souls haunts Japan in February", "author": "Siliconera", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.siliconera.com/demons-souls-haunts-japan-in-february/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "The Japanese release moved to 5 February 2009." }, { "key": "be-the-enemy-in-resident-evil-6-s-agent-hunt-mode-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Be the enemy in Resident Evil 6's Agent Hunt mode", "author": "Sal Romano (Gematsu)", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gematsu.com/2012/08/be-the-enemy-in-resident-evil-6s-agent-hunt-mode", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Human players entering another's game as creatures once the story is cleared, without the host being told which creatures they control." }, { "key": "bloodborne-how-to-make-the-most-of-multiplayer-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Bloodborne: How to Make the Most of Multiplayer", "author": "Masaaki Yamagiwa (Sony Interactive Entertainment)", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://blog.playstation.com/2015/04/03/bloodborne-how-to-make-the-most-of-multiplayer/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Versus PvP", "note": "Invasion possible where a bell-ringing woman is present; the guest's aim is to defeat the host and it returns home if it dies, if the host reaches the boss area or on the Silencing Blank." }, { "key": "how-dark-souls-multiplayer-mechanics-are-invading-other-worlds-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "How Dark Souls' multiplayer mechanics are invading other worlds", "author": "Alex Wawro (Game Developer)", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/how-i-dark-souls-i-multiplayer-mechanics-are-invading-other-worlds", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Invasions popularised by the Souls games and inspiring Watch Dogs and Dying Light; Demon's Souls invasion by an in-game item." }, { "key": "dinga-bakaba-deathloop-est-un-murder-puzzle-une-sorte-de-cluedo-invers-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "Dinga Bakaba : « Deathloop est un murder puzzle, une sorte de Cluedo inversé »", "author": "CNC", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.cnc.fr/jeu-video/actualites/dinga-bakaba-deathloop-est-un-murder-puzzle-une-sorte-de-cluedo-inverse_1514883", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Deathloop's director naming Dark Souls and Demon's Souls as an influence on its multiplayer, with Arkane's unreleased The Crossing as the main one." }, { "key": "watch-dogs-online-invasion-hacking-tips-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Watch Dogs: Online Invasion Hacking Tips", "author": "Bill Lavoy (Prima Games)", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20190826104705/https://primagames.com/games/watch_dogs/feature/watch-dogs-online-invasion-hacking-tips", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Invaders hiding among computer-controlled citizens in another player's single-player campaign, the notice of invasion, and killing the invader to send them back." }, { "key": "deathloop-pvp-details-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "Deathloop PvP details", "author": "Anne Lewis (Bethesda)", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://bethesda.net/en/article/cQWkrgB4E1C74KcCmQtbt/deathloop-pvp-details", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Invading a stranger's or a friend's campaign as Julianna, Colt's three lives against Julianna's one, the option to allow invasions, and the computer-controlled Julianna when it is off." }, { "key": "how-deathloop-s-multiplayer-works-and-how-arkane-prevents-it-from-being-annoying-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "How Deathloop's multiplayer works and how Arkane prevents it from being annoying", "author": "Brian Shea (Game Informer)", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://gameinformer.com/2021/03/19/how-deathloops-multiplayer-works-and-how-arkane-prevents-it-from-being-annoying", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Invasion allowed only where one of Colt's targets is present, limiting invasions to friends or turning them off, and odds tilted towards the host." }, { "key": "elden-ring-introduction-to-the-multiplayer-system-2022", "canonical": false, "title": "ELDEN RING: Introduction to the Multiplayer System", "author": "Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/elden-ring/news/elden-ring-introduction-the-multiplayer-system", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "The Bloody Finger, worlds opened to invaders by a cooperator or the Taunter's Tongue, the invader's reward, and hunters summoned through the Blue Cipher Ring." }, { "key": "co-op-multiplayer-hexworks-dev-journals-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "CO-OP & MULTIPLAYER - HEXWORKS DEV JOURNALS", "author": "Hexworks (CI Games)", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1501750/view/5159491482912766922", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "The Slaughter Lampbearer option that hunts players in designated invasion zones, one invader at a time, AI enemies siding with the invader, and the Mirror of Protection." }, { "key": "lords-of-the-fallen-frequently-asked-questions-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Lords of the Fallen: Frequently Asked Questions", "author": "CI Games", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1501750/view/5219165352619990731", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Invasion while playing solo and online, a consumable that wards off invasions, and disabling multiplayer." }, { "key": "v2-0-51-optional-invasions-new-updated-armour-sets-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "V2.0.51 - Optional Invasions & New Updated Armour Sets", "author": "CI Games", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1501750/view/1806064758648030", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "PvP invasions made optional and disabled by default." }, { "key": "lords-of-the-fallen-update-1-013-for-v1-1-282-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Lords of the Fallen Update 1.013 for v1.1.282", "author": "MP1st", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://mp1st.com/news/lords-of-the-fallen-update-1-013-slashes-out-for-v1-1-282-and-includes-over-100-enhancements-this-nov-2", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Patch notes on invasion areas and their volume boxes, PvP passwords, and the host being unable to quit during a Crimson Ritual." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 16, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 641, "updated": "2026-10-30", "url": "/mechanics/player-invasions" }, { "id": "player-judge", "name": "Player Judge", "status": "unverified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "One player, usually in rotation, serves as the sole arbiter of a round, choosing which other player's submission wins according to personal taste rather than a fixed rule, and the role then passes on.", "aliases": [ "rotating judge", "judge games", "card czar" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "voting", "clue-giving", "shared-narration", "bluff-and-challenge", "referee-adjudication" ], "referenced_by": [ "audience-participation" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Apples to Apples. Category is action-resolution because the mechanic is a procedure for adjudicating which submission succeeds, with a human in place of a rule or randomiser; interaction-and-exchange was the losing family, since submissions are played to a specific opponent; the category agrees with the default tie-break order, which asks the resolution question first. Agency is medium because a submitter chooses one card from a small hand and the judge chooses one from a small set. Interaction is direct because each submission targets the current judge by name; mixed was the losing value for games that add a betting layer. Randomness is input because hands and prompts are drawn before the choice. Information is asymmetric because the judge sees submissions without authorship while each submitter knows their own. Decision density is low because a round is one choice for each role.", "effects": [ "contested-fairness", "inference", "kingmaking", "emergent-narrative", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Apples to Apples", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Matthew Kirby and Mark Alan Osterhaus", "note": "The judge turns a green adjective card, the others each submit a red noun card face down, and the judge awards the green card to the submission they think fits best, by their own taste; the role rotates each round. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Say Anything", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Dominic Crapuchettes", "note": "The judge reads an open question, players write free-text answers, and the judge secretly selects a favourite before the others bet on which answer was chosen, so the judging is wrapped in a prediction layer.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cards Against Humanity", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Cards Against Humanity LLC", "note": "A near-direct restatement of the Apples to Apples procedure with fill-in-the-blank prompts, first released free online in 2009; the rotating judge, first called the Judge, was renamed the Card Czar by 2011 and the term has entered general use.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Evil Apples", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Super Massive Ventures", "note": "Mobile adaptation of the prompt-and-submission form in which the app shuffles submissions, hides authorship, and rotates the judge among remote players.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ransom Notes", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Evan Katz and Josh Roberts (Charty Party)", "note": "Players answer a prompt card by assembling a sentence from their limited pool of word magnets, and that round's judge reads the answers and picks the winner, who scores a point; the judge can rotate each round.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Apples to Apples", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Apples to Apples, in circulation by April 1999 when it won Mensa Select, is the earliest commercial game found in which a rotating player picks the winning submission by taste; its publisher's rules pass the role of judge to the left each round. Cards Against Humanity's first free rules (2009) called the same role the Judge, later the Card Czar, and are described as a response to Apples to Apples. No earlier rotating taste-judge is cited: Victorian parlour games such as Judge and Jury or What is my Thought like? have an arbiter who examines rather than chooses a favourite, and Personal Preference (1987) scores predictions of a ranking. Older judged contests are plausible but undocumented, so the named date is treated as a populariser rather than an origin." }, "established": { "title": "Apples to Apples", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Apples to Apples (1999) fixed the commercial form of a rotating judge who picks the winning submission by taste. Cards Against Humanity is a near-direct restatement of its procedure and is described as a response to it." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Resolution chapter", "note": "Player Judge mechanism entry; definition and the contrast with voting." }, { "key": "apples-to-apples-rules-1999", "canonical": false, "title": "Apples to Apples rules", "author": "Matthew Kirby and Mark Alan Osterhaus", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Playing a round and the judge", "note": "Canonical rotating-judge procedure; the judge picks the submission they think best fits the green card." }, { "key": "apples-to-apples-rules-publisher-s-web-copy-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Apples to Apples rules (publisher's web copy)", "author": "Out of the Box Publishing", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20001005155353/http://www.otb-games.com/applesrules.html", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Setting up the Game; How to Play", "note": "The judge selects the card they think best described by the green card, and the role of judge passes to the left." }, { "key": "cards-against-humanity-first-public-rules-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Cards Against Humanity (first public rules)", "author": "Cards Against Humanity", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20090719084921id_/http://cardsagainsthumanity.com/", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "A randomly chosen player begins as the Judge, picks a favourite answer, and the role passes each round." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Player Judge", "note": null }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Apples to Apples", "note": "Publication history and designers." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 519, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/player-judge" }, { "id": "player-authored-goals", "name": "Player-Authored Goals", "status": "verified", "category": "narrative-and-choice", "definition": "Each player writes their own character's goals, beliefs, or drives on the sheet, and the rules pay experience or metacurrency for pursuing or testing them, so the players rather than the designer set what a session is about.", "aliases": [ "Beliefs", "Keys", "XP triggers", "kickers", "drives" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "quests", "secret-objectives", "experience-levels", "scene-framing", "lifepath" ], "referenced_by": [ "aspects-and-tags", "level-editors", "multiple-endings" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Burning Wheel's Beliefs, with The Shadow of Yesterday's Keys as the check case. Category is narrative-and-choice by assignment, which departs from the default tie-break order: the progression-and-capability question comes first and partly applies, since the reward is experience and the Keys of The Shadow of Yesterday are literally XP triggers. The reason is that the goal's function is to direct which scenes are framed and what is at stake; the payout is the lever rather than the identity. Agency is high because the player writes the goal in free text. Interaction is solo because each goal belongs to one character; cooperative was the losing value, since the facilitator is obliged to challenge the goals and the table reads them. Pacing accelerates because stated goals hand the facilitator conflicts to frame at once; neutral was the losing value. Information is perfect because goals are written openly, which is the boundary with secret objectives. Feedback loop is positive because pursuing a goal pays experience that makes the character more capable, and buying off a Key pays a bonus. Pacing stays accelerates after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; neutral was the losing value. Feedback loop stays positive after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; none was the losing value.", "effects": [ "ownership", "emergent-narrative", "consequence-weight", "planning" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Sorcerer", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Ron Edwards (Adept Press)", "note": "An antecedent for the opening situation rather than a standing goal. Each player writes a Kicker, an event that has just upset their character's life and demands action, and the first session opens from it; the Kicker is the player's statement of what the game will be about. Print edition 2001 after a 1996 electronic edition.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Burning Wheel", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Luke Crane", "note": "Each character has three Beliefs and three Instincts written by the player; playing toward a Belief, having it challenged, or changing it earns Artha, the metacurrency and advancement fuel, and the facilitator is instructed to attack the Beliefs. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Shadow of Yesterday", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Clinton R. Nixon", "note": "Keys are chosen or written conditions, such as the Key of Bloodlust, each paying experience when its trigger occurs and a larger sum when the player permanently buys it off by acting against it, so a goal can be cashed in by renouncing it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mouse Guard", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Luke Crane (Archaia)", "note": "Each session the player writes a Goal for the mission alongside a standing Belief and Instinct, and the end-of-session rewards of Fate and Persona depend on whether the Goal was pursued and the Belief tested.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Lady Blackbird", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "John Harper", "note": "Pre-written characters each carry Keys adapted from The Shadow of Yesterday, with triggers that pay experience and buyoff conditions, showing the device in a one-shot form where the goals are authored for the player and then revised by them.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Wildsea", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Felix Isaacs (Mythworks)", "note": "Each character carries drives stating what they want to accomplish; following a drive earns milestones, minor ones about once a session and major ones for multi-session arcs, which are spent to raise skills and gain aspects.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Burning Wheel", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to standing goals written by the player and rewarded when pursued in play. Burning Wheel's Beliefs are the most cited form. Sorcerer's Kickers (print 2001, after a 1996 electronic edition) are an antecedent for the opening situation rather than a standing goal. Player-written Disadvantages in Champions (1981) and GURPS (1986) are earlier player-authored character hooks, but they describe complications and pay points at creation rather than rewarding pursuit in play, and Pendragon's passions (1985) are system-defined. Earlier small-press designs may hold the full form, so the dating is a lead." }, "established": { "title": "Burning Wheel", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Burning Wheel (2002) popularised the player-written Belief that earns a reward when pursued, tested or changed, with the facilitator told to challenge it. Mouse Guard (2008) and Torchbearer carry the Beliefs-and-Instincts form, and The Shadow of Yesterday (2004) rebuilt it as Keys." }, "sources": [ { "key": "appelcline-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry", "author": "Shannon Appelcline", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Volume 4 (the 2000s)", "note": "Publication history of the Forge-era independent designs, including Burning Wheel." }, { "key": "burning-wheel-rulebook-2002", "canonical": false, "title": "Burning Wheel rulebook", "author": "Luke Crane", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Beliefs, Instincts, and Artha", "note": "Canonical rules text for the coded form, including the instruction to challenge Beliefs." }, { "key": "the-shadow-of-yesterday-rulebook-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "The Shadow of Yesterday rulebook", "author": "Clinton R. Nixon", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Keys", "note": "Experience triggers and the buyoff rule." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 489, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/player-authored-goals" }, { "id": "point-buy", "name": "Point-Buy", "status": "unverified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "Players build a character, unit, or army by spending a fixed budget of points on capabilities priced in a published cost table, so every ability is bought at a stated price and builds of equal total are presumed comparable.", "aliases": [ "point buy", "point-based character creation", "build points", "army points", "character points" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "lifepath", "variable-player-powers", "skill-trees", "experience-levels" ], "referenced_by": [ "multiclassing" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "high", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 2, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Champions (1981), where characteristics, skills, and powers are bought from one starting total and disadvantages return extra points; the canonical form is the role-playing character, although the earliest documented budget is an army-points rule. Category is progression-and-capability because the output is what the character can do; resource-management was the losing family, since the mechanic is the allocation of a scarce budget, but the budget exists only to be converted into capability and is not held or spent during play. Agency is high because the menu is open and selection dominates the result. Complexity is high because power costs are adjusted by advantages and limitations and some characteristics are derived from others; medium and low were the losing values for attribute-only forms such as the Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition variant. Pacing is neutral for play; decelerates was the losing value, since building takes much of a first session. Feedback loop is none because the budget is fixed at creation; positive was the losing value for systems that later sell advancement at the same prices, a coupling that belongs to experience-levels. Decision density is high because one build is many purchases. Interaction is solo because a build is made alone; indirect was the losing value for miniatures army points, which are coded board-card and exist so that opponents field equal forces.", "effects": [ "ownership", "planning", "mastery", "analysis-paralysis" ], "examples": [ { "title": "War Games Rules 1000 BC to 500 AD", "year": 1969, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Wargames Research Group (Phil Barker, Bob O'Brien, and Ed Smith)", "note": "Points values are allocated to each troop classification, from 100 for a general to 3 or 4 for light and medium infantry, and multiplied by the number of figures. The introduction recommends the system for choosing forces, and competition armies are limited to 800 points with free choice, so the budget equalises opposing forces.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Chainmail", "year": 1971, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren (Guidon Games)", "note": "The introduction offers a table of point values as a help in selecting balanced forces, and Suggested Point Values prices each troop type from peasants and levies to heavy horse, with added costs for extra weapons. The text is cited from the 1972 second edition; whether the 1971 first edition carries the table is unconfirmed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Champions", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "George MacDonald and Steve Peterson (Hero Games)", "note": "Characteristics, skills, and powers are all bought from one starting total, disadvantages, reportedly including hunteds and psychological limitations, return points, and powers are priced by effect and adjusted by advantages and limitations. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "GURPS", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Steve Jackson (Steve Jackson Games)", "note": "Attributes, advantages, and skills are bought with character points against a total set for the campaign, disadvantages refund points, and the same currency is later earned and spent for advancement.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader", "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Rick Priestley (Games Workshop)", "note": "Points values for each model and its wargear are reported to come from a formula at the back of the book, so forces can be matched to a total; the rules assumed a game master, and the first proper army lists came in later expansions.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fallout", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Interplay Productions", "note": "Seven SPECIAL attributes are set by distributing a fixed pool of points, three tag skills are chosen, and optional traits each pair a benefit with a penalty in place of refunded points.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jay Little (Fantasy Flight Games)", "note": "Ships, pilots, and upgrade cards each carry a squad-point cost, and standard play builds squads to an equal total, with list construction a distinct activity from play.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "A variant rule buys ability scores from 27 points, with each step above 13 costing two, as an alternative to rolling; only the attributes are bought, while class and other choices remain menus.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Owlcat Games", "note": "Attributes are bought from a fixed pool at character creation, 25 points for the main character and 20 for mercenaries, with higher scores costing more points each, following the tabletop Pathfinder point-buy table.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "War Games Rules 1000 BC to 500 AD", "year": 1969, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "The Definition includes armies, and the earliest points table documented by a rulebook text is in War Games Rules 1000 BC to 500 AD, published by the Wargames Research Group (Phil Barker, Bob O'Brien, and Ed Smith) and dated February 1969 on its title page. Its Points Values section allocates a value to each troop classification, regular or barbarian, to be multiplied by the number of figures; its introduction recommends \"the basic points values system\" for choosing forces; and its competition army is limited to 800 points, the limit for that year's Wargamers Championship. Chainmail (Guidon Games) follows with Suggested Point Values for each troop type, offered as a help \"in selecting balanced forces\", cited from its 1972 second edition, whose colophon dates the first to 1971. Championship and club rules of the 1960s remain unsurveyed and may have used points earlier, so confidence is low. In role-playing games Melee (1977) fixed the sum of strength and dexterity at 24, Superhero 2044 (1977) divided 140 points among seven characteristics and awarded extra power for accepted weaknesses, and by 1980 The Fantasy Trip gave one talent point per point of IQ, with talents reported to cost one to three. Champions (1981) is the role-playing form most often credited as the populariser, buying the whole character from one total, and GURPS (1986) generalised it. Ultima I is reported to have players distribute 30 points among six attributes, though whether the 1981 original or the 1986 remake is described is unconfirmed, and Fallout (1997) is a well-known video example." }, "established": { "title": "Champions", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Champions (1981) is most often credited with popularising the whole character bought from one points total, with disadvantages that return points; GURPS (1986) generalised the form. Army- points budgets in wargames are older." }, "sources": [ { "key": "war-games-rules-1000-bc-to-500-ad-1969", "canonical": false, "title": "War Games Rules 1000 BC to 500 AD", "author": "Phil Barker, Bob O'Brien, and Ed Smith", "year": 1969, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Wargames Research Group", "url": "https://archive.org/download/ancient-001_202006/Ancient001_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Introduction, p. 1; Points Values and Competition Army, p. 3", "note": "The points values allocated to each troop classification and multiplied by the number of figures, the recommended points values system for choosing forces, and the 800-point limit for competition armies; dated February 1969." }, { "key": "chainmail-2nd-edition-1972", "canonical": false, "title": "Chainmail, 2nd edition", "author": "Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren", "year": 1972, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Guidon Games", "url": "https://archive.org/download/chainmail-2nd-edition/Chainmail%20-%202nd%20Edition_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Introduction; Medieval Rules, Suggested Point Values (p. 24)", "note": "The table of point values offered for selecting balanced forces, priced by troop type with added weapon costs; the colophon dates the first edition to 1971, and whether it carries the table is unconfirmed." }, { "key": "champions-1981", "canonical": false, "title": "Champions", "author": "George MacDonald and Steve Peterson", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Hero Games", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The point-built character, powers with advantages and limitations, and disadvantages that return points." }, { "key": "gurps-basic-set-1986", "canonical": false, "title": "GURPS Basic Set", "author": "Steve Jackson", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Steve Jackson Games", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Character points, advantages and disadvantages, and advancement at the same prices." }, { "key": "appelcline-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry", "author": "Shannon Appelcline", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Volume on the 1980s, Hero Games and Steve Jackson Games chapters", "note": "Publication history of Champions and GURPS and the reception of point-based design." }, { "key": "daily-illuminator-march-1997-1997", "canonical": false, "title": "Daily Illuminator, March 1997", "author": "Steve Jackson", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.sjgames.com/ill/1997/ill-mar97.html", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Interplay dropping the GURPS system from the project that had been going forward as GURPS Fallout since 1994." }, { "key": "player-s-handbook-5th-edition-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Player's Handbook, 5th edition", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/step-by-step-characters", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "Chapter 1 (Step-by-Step Characters), Variant: Customizing Ability Scores", "note": "The attribute-only point-buy with rising cost per step; the linked copy is the free Basic Rules (2014) text, which carries the same variant." } ], "n_examples": 9, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 516, "updated": "2026-10-28", "url": "/mechanics/point-buy" }, { "id": "power-ups", "name": "Power-Ups", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "A pickup placed in the play space, or spawned there on a schedule, grants a temporary capability to whoever touches it first, lasting for a timer or until a hit removes it, after which normal play resumes", "aliases": [ "power-up", "powerup", "pickup", "energizer", "power pellet", "Power Rune" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "status-effects", "loot-tables", "lives-and-continues", "platforming", "area-control" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Pac-Man's energizers, the provenance form, checked against Super Mario Bros.: fixed, visible pickups at spots the designer chose, applied on contact. Agency is medium because the player decides whether and when to take the pickup and how to spend the window; low was the losing value, since the effect is fixed once taken. Randomness is none; output was the losing value for Mario Kart's item boxes, and input for Dota 2's Power Runes, whose type is drawn at spawn and seen before the take. Interaction is solo, one player against the system; indirect was the losing value for arena forms (Quake, Dota 2) in which one player's take denies the others, as was mixed. Complexity is medium (the blue state, escalating scores and a window that shortens across boards, or Mario's ladder of forms with a step down on a hit); low was the losing value, counting only the pickup rule. Pacing is neutral; accelerates was the losing value, since a timed window urges action and Quad Damage shortens fights. Information is perfect; hidden was the losing value for Mario's bricks and invisible blocks, and asymmetric for runes under fog of war. Feedback loop is none because supply is fixed by level design whatever the player's standing; positive was the losing value, from Mario's ladder (a powered Mario survives a hit, so staying powered eases progress) and from arena forms in which the side that controls the map takes more spawns. Negative feedback appears only in position-weighted random draws, a variation. Decision density is medium (take now or save, then which target and when to break off); low was the losing value. Resource-management was the competing family, treating the pickup as a consumable; progression-and-capability stands because the mechanic changes what the player can do.", "effects": [ "tension", "planning", "execution", "volatility" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Pac-Man", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Namco", "note": "Four energizers, the large flashing dots near the corners of the maze, turn the monsters blue so that Pac-Man can eat them for 200, 400, 800 and 1600 points in turn, and the blue spell grows shorter as the game progresses.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Mario Bros.", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo (Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka)", "note": "Items concealed in bricks or invisible blocks give Mario a power boost into a more powerful form, and Super or Fiery Mario who is hit returns to regular Mario instead of dying; the 1-Up Mushroom, an extra life, is kept apart from them.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Quake", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "id Software", "note": "Quad Damage multiplies the damage the player deals by four, the Pentagram of Protection makes the player invulnerable and the Ring of Shadows almost invisible; all burn out after a while, and in deathmatch a taken item respawns after a delay that differs by item.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dota 2", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "Power Runes spawn on a schedule at two fixed Power Rune locations and grant a timed state to the hero who takes one, such as the Shield Rune's barrier of half the hero's maximum health for 75 seconds; since patch 7.33 no type repeats until all have spawned.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fortnite", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Epic Games", "note": "Hop Rocks, glowing rocks around a comet crater (2018), are consumed for low gravity, and Shadow Stones, found in the corrupted areas of the map (2018), apply Shadow Form on interaction for up to 45 seconds, giving invisibility while standing still, speed and a Phase dash but no weapons.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Mario Bros. Wonder", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo EPD", "note": "The Elephant Fruit, Bubble Flower and Drill Mushroom each give a form with its own action (breaking blocks with a trunk, trapping enemies in bubbles, digging through ground and ceiling), the Super Mushroom lets the player survive a hit, and the Super Star grants a short invulnerability.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Pac-Man", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Pac-Man is often credited as the first video game with a power-up, and the energizer rules are documented in a 1982 strategy book: four per screen, a blue spell that lets Pac-Man eat the monsters for escalating points, and a window that shortens on later boards. Confidence is medium because the priority claim rests on a wiki and earlier arcade games remain unsurveyed. Carried potions in tabletop role-playing games, held and used at will, are antecedents outside the definition, which requires the capability to apply on contact." }, "established": { "title": "Pac-Man", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Pac-Man (1980) is often credited as the first video game with a power-up, and its energizers, fixed pickups that grant a timed capability on contact, are the form the definition describes. Later games such as Quake and Dota 2 carry the timed, fixed-spot pickup into arena and team play." }, "sources": [ { "key": "how-to-win-at-pac-man-1982", "canonical": false, "title": "How to Win at Pac-Man", "author": "Editors of Consumer Guide", "year": 1982, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Pocket Books", "url": "https://archive.org/download/how-to-win-at-pac-man-1982/How%20to%20win%20at%20Pac-Man-1982_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Introduction; Tip One: Elements of the Game; Tip Eight: Fake-Outs; Tip Ten: Don't Eat the Last Dot", "note": "Four energizers per screen near the corners, the 200 to 1600 point sequence, the shortening blue spell, and the advice to lure at least three monsters before eating an energizer and to save the last one." }, { "key": "super-mario-bros-instruction-booklet-1985", "canonical": false, "title": "Super Mario Bros. instruction booklet", "author": "Nintendo", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/details/Super-Mario-Bros-Manual-NES-1985", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Mario's Friends", "note": "Items as a power boost into a more powerful Mario, concealment in bricks or invisible blocks, the step back to regular Mario on a hit, and the 1-Up Mushroom as a separate extra life." }, { "key": "quake-manual-1996", "canonical": false, "title": "Quake manual", "author": "id Software", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/stream/quake-manual/Quake%20-%20Manual_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Quad Damage, Pentagram of Protection, Ring of Shadows and Biosuit, the burn-out of all power-ups except armour, and deathmatch respawns after delays that differ by item; the scan carries a 1996 to 2001 copyright line." }, { "key": "dota-2-patch-notes-7-29-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2 patch notes 7.29", "author": "Valve", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dota2.com/datafeed/patchnotes?version=7.29&language=english", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "General updates, runes", "note": "The Water Rune at the Power Rune locations at minutes 2 and 4, Power Runes from minute 6 on one side, and Bounty Runes moved from the river to each side's jungle every 3 minutes." }, { "key": "dota-2-patch-notes-7-33-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2 patch notes 7.33", "author": "Valve", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dota2.com/datafeed/patchnotes?version=7.33&language=english", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "General updates, runes", "note": "The Shield Rune's barrier and duration, the rule that Power Runes do not repeat until all have spawned, and the Wisdom Rune's schedule and experience." }, { "key": "dota-2-patch-notes-7-33c-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2 patch notes 7.33c", "author": "Valve", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dota2.com/datafeed/patchnotes?version=7.33c&language=english", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "General updates, Wisdom Rune", "note": "Experience from a Wisdom Rune also paid to the team's lowest-level hero." }, { "key": "all-power-ups-in-super-mario-bros-wonder-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "All Power-Ups in Super Mario Bros Wonder", "author": "Jacob Woodward", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Retro Dodo", "url": "https://retrododo.com/all-power-ups-in-super-mario-bros-wonder", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "The Elephant Fruit, Bubble Flower, Drill Mushroom, Super Mushroom and Super Star, and Wonder Flowers that cannot be kept for later use." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Power-up", "note": "Pac-Man credited as the first video game with a power-up, and the term described as a Japanese coinage from English words." }, { "key": "fortnite-v4-0-patch-notes-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Fortnite v4.0 Patch Notes", "author": "Epic Games", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180501130955/https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/patch-notes/v4-0", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Battle Royale, Hop Rocks", "note": "Glowing Hop Rocks around the comet crater, consumed for low gravity." }, { "key": "fortnite-v6-00-patch-notes-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Fortnite v6.00 Patch Notes", "author": "Epic Games", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180927120801/https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/patch-notes/v6-00", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Battle Royale, Weapons + Items", "note": "Shadow Stones around corrupted areas of the map and Shadow Form's effects and 45-second duration." }, { "key": "fortnite-shadow-stones-how-to-get-shadow-stones-what-they-do-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Fortnite Shadow Stones: How to Get Shadow Stones & What They Do", "author": "Tom Hopkins", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Twinfinite", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190720175027/https://twinfinite.net/2018/09/fortnite-shadow-stones-get-shadow-stones-what-they-do-how/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Interacting with a Shadow Stone applies Shadow Form." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 11, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 636, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/power-ups" }, { "id": "prestige-resets", "name": "Prestige Resets", "status": "unverified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "The player voluntarily discards accumulated progress to restart from the beginning with a permanent multiplier or bonus, so each cycle runs faster than the last and the reset itself is the progression.", "aliases": [ "prestige", "prestige systems", "prestige mode", "new game plus", "NG+", "rebirth" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "roguelike-meta-progression", "engine-building", "appointment-mechanics", "time-loops", "difficulty-settings" ], "referenced_by": [ "achievements", "seasonal-leagues" ], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Cookie Clicker (2013), the multiplier form in which a reset converts lifetime production into a permanent production bonus. Agency is medium because the only choice is when to reset, but that timing dominates throughput; low was the losing value. Feedback loop is positive because each cycle starts stronger and reaches the next reset sooner. Pacing accelerates for the same reason. Decision density is low because the invocation is a single yes-or-now decision; medium was the losing value for games with a spending menu after the reset. Media is video only; no credible board or tabletop form of a voluntary reset for a carried multiplier was identified.", "effects": [ "compulsion", "engine-satisfaction", "calculation", "grind", "sunk-cost" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Chrono Trigger", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Square", "note": "New Game+ restarts the story with levels, equipment, and items carried over, the carry-over form from which the term New Game Plus spread; nothing multiplies, so it is a folded variant and an antecedent of the multiplier form.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Infinity Ward", "note": "At the rank cap a player may enter Prestige Mode, surrendering rank, weapons, and unlocks for an emblem and a return to level one; often credited with spreading the term prestige, it is an antecedent that carries status rather than a multiplier.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cookie Clicker", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Julien Thiennot (Orteil)", "note": "A prestige system added on 8 September 2013, a month after launch, wipes cookies and buildings in exchange for a permanent production boost, named heavenly chips by 15 September and later renamed ascension; the multiplier form that defines the idle-game prestige loop.", "latest": false }, { "title": "AdVenture Capitalist", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Hyper Hippo Productions", "note": "Angel investors accrue in proportion to lifetime earnings and are claimed only by resetting, each granting a percentage profit bonus; the display of pending angels makes the reset decision explicit.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Clicker Heroes", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Playsaurus", "note": "Ascension trades all progress for Hero Souls that each add a percentage damage bonus and buy permanent Ancients; a later update added Transcendence, a second reset layer above the first.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Revolution Idle", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nu Games and Oni Gaming", "note": "Prestiging resets the run to raise multipliers and the score exponent; reaching about 1.79e308 triggers Infinity, a deeper reset that pays a currency for permanent upgrades, and Eternity resets everything again for further layers.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No origin can be defended. Cookie Clicker is the populariser of the idle-game reset, and its developer's update log dates the reset for a permanent production boost to 8 September 2013, a month after launch. Earlier voluntary resets for a permanent bonus are reported but unconfirmed: Disgaea (2003) is described in reviews as letting a character transmigrate to level 1 with higher statistics, and Kingdom of Loathing's Ascension restarts the game with skills kept through Karma, from an undated point after the game's 2003 launch. Antecedents restart with something carried but no bonus to production: Call of Duty 4 (2007), often credited with the term prestige, carries status; New Game+ in Chrono Trigger (1995) carries levels and items; and the second quest of The Legend of Zelda (1986) restarts on completion without carry-over." }, "established": { "title": "Cookie Clicker", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Cookie Clicker (2013) popularised the multiplier form of the prestige reset, trading all progress for a permanent production bonus, added a month after launch. Idle games of 2014 such as AdVenture Capitalist and Clicker Heroes made the reset loop the genre's backbone." }, "sources": [ { "key": "alharthi-2018", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing to Wait: A Taxonomy of Idle Games", "author": "Sultan A. Alharthi, Olaa Alsaedi, Zachary O. Toups, Theresa Jean Tanenbaum, and Jessica Hammer", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Taxonomy of idle games; discussion of resets and prestige", "note": "Classifies prestige and offline progress as structures of the idle genre." }, { "key": "idle-games-the-mechanics-and-monetization-of-self-playing-games-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Idle Games: The Mechanics and Monetization of Self-Playing Games", "author": "Anthony Pecorella", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "talk", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Game Developers Conference talk on idle-game loops including prestige resets and their effect on retention." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Incremental game", "note": "Genre overview and the role of prestige layers." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "New Game Plus", "note": "The carry-over form and its naming from Chrono Trigger." }, { "key": "cookie-clicker-update-log", "canonical": false, "title": "Cookie Clicker update log", "author": "Julien Thiennot (Orteil)", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/main.js", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": "Game.updateLog, entries for 08/08/2013, 08/09/2013, and 15/09/2013", "note": "The developer's changelog kept in the live game file; launch on 8 August 2013, a prestige system with permanent boosts on 8 September, heavenly chips named on 15 September." }, { "key": "the-game-archaeologist-s-fear-and-loathing-in-the-kingdom-interrogating-mr-skullhead-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "The Game Archaeologist's fear and loathing in the Kingdom: Interrogating Mr. Skullhead", "author": "Justin Olivetti (Engadget)", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "interview", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.engadget.com/2010-11-09-the-game-archaeologists-fear-and-loathing-in-the-kingdom-inter.html", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Josh Nite on the origin of Kingdom of Loathing's Ascension as a restart with everything harder; no date is given for its introduction." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 528, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/prestige-resets" }, { "id": "procedural-generation", "name": "Procedural Generation", "status": "verified", "category": "chance-and-risk", "definition": "Maps, dungeons, encounters, or other content are assembled algorithmically from random inputs at play time rather than authored in advance, so each session presents a different arrangement.", "aliases": [ "procgen", "random generation", "random map generation", "random dungeon generation" ], "parent": null, "children": [ "loot-tables" ], "related": [ "loot-tables", "roguelike-meta-progression", "permadeath", "fog-of-war" ], "referenced_by": [ "level-editors", "lock-and-key", "platforming", "random-tables", "tile-placement" ], "media": [ "video", "board-card", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "variable", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Rogue. Random tables (discrete lookups rolled one at a time) are the historical parent of this mechanic; procedural generation is treated here as the composition of many such draws under structural constraints. Complexity is medium because Rogue's generator combines a few sub-rules (room placement, corridor connection, and depth-keyed contents); high was the losing value for table-driven tabletop generation (the 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide), which chains several interacting tables, and random board setup (Catan) would code low. Information is hidden because the generated layout is concealed until explored; random setup that is laid out face up before play (Catan) becomes perfect once generation ends. Category tension with information-and-hidden-state and space-and-position was resolved by the tie-break order.", "effects": [ "discovery", "replayability", "emergent-narrative", "volatility", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeon Masters Guide", "year": 1979, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax (TSR)", "note": "Appendix A chains dice tables for passages, doors, rooms, contents, and inhabitants so that a referee or solo player can generate a dungeon corridor by corridor during play.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Rogue", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, and Ken Arnold", "note": "Each dungeon level is generated on entry as rooms joined by corridors, with monsters and items placed from depth-dependent distributions, so no two descents share a layout.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Elite", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "David Braben and Ian Bell", "note": "Eight galaxies of 256 star systems are generated deterministically from seed numbers, which lets a large universe fit in memory; the same seed always yields the same system.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Catan", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Klaus Teuber", "note": "The variable setup shuffles the terrain hexes and distributes the number tokens, so the resource geography that drives every subsequent decision differs between plays.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Spelunky", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Derek Yu", "note": "Levels are assembled from a grid of hand-authored room templates with a guaranteed path from entrance to exit, then randomised in detail; a widely studied compromise between authored and generated.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dead by Daylight", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Behaviour Interactive", "note": "Each level of a trial is procedurally generated and spawn points are random, so the ground on which the killer hunts the survivors changes from one match to the next.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Deep Rock Galactic", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Ghost Ship Games (Coffee Stain Publishing)", "note": "Every mission takes place in a fully destructible, procedurally generated cave system whose terrain, objectives, hazards and enemies vary with biome and mission type.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Beneath Apple Manor", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to computer generation of levels, the canonical form coded here from Rogue. Beneath Apple Manor (1978) generated its dungeons before Rogue (1980), which became the populariser and gave its name to the roguelike genre. Table-driven tabletop generation is an antecedent: random dungeon tables are reported in TSR's newsletter The Strategic Review in 1975 and were consolidated in the 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide. Akalabeth (1980) already seeded its world from a player-entered number, and Elite (1984) used seeds to fit eight galaxies in memory." }, "established": { "title": "Rogue", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Rogue (1980) popularised computer-generated levels, building each dungeon floor on entry from rooms, corridors and depth-keyed contents, and gave its name to the roguelike genre. Beneath Apple Manor (1978) generated dungeons earlier." }, "sources": [ { "key": "advanced-dungeons-dragons-dungeon-masters-guide-1979", "canonical": false, "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeon Masters Guide", "author": "Gary Gygax", "year": 1979, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Appendix A: Random Dungeon Generation", "note": "Canonical table-driven generation procedure and the tabletop antecedent of the video form." }, { "key": "procedural-generation-in-game-design-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Procedural Generation in Game Design", "author": "Tanya X. Short and Tarn Adams (editors)", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Practitioner survey of generation techniques, authored-versus-generated trade-offs, and the roguelike lineage." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Modular Board", "note": "The board-game form, in which random setup takes the place of a generator." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Procedural generation", "note": null }, { "key": "dead-by-daylight-steam-store-page-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Dead by Daylight (Steam store page)", "author": "Behaviour Interactive", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://store.steampowered.com/app/381210/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "About This Game: Key Features, Where Am I?", "note": "Each level procedurally generated, with random spawn points, so the world changes every time the game is played." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 498, "updated": "2026-10-30", "url": "/mechanics/procedural-generation" }, { "id": "procs", "name": "Procs", "status": "unverified", "category": "chance-and-risk", "definition": "An effect attached to an item, ability, or character fires automatically with a stated probability whenever a trigger event occurs, such as landing a hit, casting a spell, or being struck, separately from that action's own roll.", "aliases": [ "proc", "chance on hit", "on-hit effects", "proc effects" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "critical-hits", "status-effects", "cooldowns", "equipment-loadouts", "pseudo-random-distribution" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the \"Chance on hit\" effects of World of Warcraft (2004), where a weapon or enchantment has a fixed chance to fire a damage, healing, or strength effect each time a melee hit lands. Category is chance-and-risk rather than action-resolution, the first family in the default tie-break order, because the randomiser is the whole of the mechanic: the trigger decides when to roll and the roll decides whether anything happens, while the attack it rides on is resolved elsewhere. Agency is low because the proc fires without a choice; the choices that raise proc chance are made through equipment loadouts, and medium was the losing value. Randomness is output, rolled after the triggering action. Interaction is solo because the canonical form fights system-controlled enemies; direct was the losing value, taken from player-versus-player play. Complexity is low for one trigger and one probability; medium was the losing value for internal cooldowns and proc coefficients. Pacing is neutral because procs heal and buff as often as they damage; accelerates was the losing value. Information is perfect because the trigger and effect are stated on the item, although many games leave the probability itself unstated; hidden was the losing value. Feedback loop is none for a fixed chance; positive was the losing value for builds in which procs trigger further procs. Decision density is low: the mechanic creates no decision point of its own.", "effects": [ "volatility", "spectacle" ], "examples": [ { "title": "ROM 2.4", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Russ Taylor", "note": "In this MUD codebase, from its October 1995 beta onward, builders can flag a weapon sharp: after a hit lands, a separate percentage roll, at most 15% and never shown to players, roughly doubles the damage. The effect is a damage multiplier, close to a critical hit, but rolled apart from the hit.", "latest": false }, { "title": "EverQuest", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Verant Interactive", "note": "Weapons that cast a spell at random in melee were called \"procing\" weapons in a June 1999 patch message, and a February 2000 patch adjusted the \"proc\" percentage on one weapon.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Diablo II", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard North", "note": "Unique and set items print a percentage chance of Crushing Blow or Open Wounds on each hit; the Lord of Destruction expansion (2001) added a percentage chance to cast a numbered level of a skill on attack or when struck.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Item tooltips list \"Chance on hit\" effects, and the Crusader weapon enchantment, attested from early 2005, originally healed 75 to 125 and added 100 Strength for 15 seconds on a share of melee hits. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dota 2", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "Items such as Maelstrom give each attack a 25% chance to release a chain of lightning, and several chance-based attack effects use a dependent randomiser rather than independent rolls.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "Up to five support gems link to a skill, and trigger supports such as Cast on Critical Strike reportedly fire the linked spell when a critical strike lands, a conditional trigger rather than a stated percentage, so the player picks the skill that rides on it. In Path of Exile 2 (2024), meta gems reportedly build Energy from events such as critical hits and cast the socketed spell when it is full.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Risk of Rain 2", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Hopoo Games", "note": "Stacking items add on-hit effects whose own hits can trigger further procs, scaled by a per-source proc coefficient; low or zero coefficients on item damage damp the chains.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "ROM 2.4", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "The ROM 2.4 MUD codebase by Russ Taylor is the earliest documented use found. Its second beta, dated 23 October 1995, gives weapons a builder-set sharp flag whose effect is a separate percentage roll made after a hit lands, the same code as the 2.4b6 release of May 1998; ROM 2.3 (1994) and its parent Merc 2.2 (1993) have no such roll. Confidence is low because other MUDs of the period remain unsurveyed, and because the effect is a damage multiplier whose chance is never shown to players. DikuMUD (released 1991) named its code hooks \"special procedures\", and some of its monster procedures rolled a chance each combat round to cast spells, an antecedent rather than an on-hit effect. In March 1997 an administrator of the Diku-derived MUD Sojourn wrote of weapons' \"procs\" without saying how they fired. EverQuest (1999) carried the word into a commercial game: a June 1999 patch message refers to \"'Procing' (items that cast spells) weapons\", and a February 2000 patch adjusts a weapon's \"proc\" percentage. Diablo II (2000) printed the chance as a percentage on items, and World of Warcraft (2004) is the usual reference as populariser through its \"Chance on hit\" item text." }, "established": { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "World of Warcraft (2004) is the usual reference as populariser of procs, making \"Chance on hit\" a standard line of item text. MUD codebases and EverQuest had chance-on-hit weapon effects and the word earlier." }, "sources": [ { "key": "rom-2-4-beta-2-source-distribution-1995", "canonical": false, "title": "ROM 2.4 beta 2 source distribution", "author": "Russ Taylor", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/ftp.game.org/ftpgame.org.zip/pub%2Fmud%2Fdiku%2Fmerc%2From%2FRom24b2.tar.gz", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "src/fight.c, one_hit(); README.version", "note": "Provenance. The sharp-weapon chance roll after a hit, in a release dated 23 October 1995, preserved from a mirror that held the author's permission to mirror the ROM distributions." }, { "key": "rom-2-4b6-src-fight-c-stock-copy-1998", "canonical": false, "title": "ROM 2.4b6 src/fight.c (stock copy)", "author": "Russ Taylor", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MUDOmnibus/Rom24b6/master/src/fight.c", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "one_hit()", "note": "The same sharp roll in the May 1998 release; this copy is byte-identical to the original distribution's fight.c." }, { "key": "everquest-patch-message-7-june-1999-fan-mirror-1999", "canonical": false, "title": "EverQuest patch message, 7 June 1999 (fan mirror)", "author": "Verant Interactive", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20030928130255/http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/19990607.html", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "The live patch text referring to \"'Procing' (items that cast spells) weapons\", preserved on a fan mirror." }, { "key": "test-server-patch-trade-skill-improvements-1999", "canonical": false, "title": "Test Server Patch - Trade Skill Improvements", "author": "alt.games.everquest", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://groups.google.com/g/alt.games.everquest/c/rNoAiagyONA/m/jE_QHxviiCcJ", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "June 1999 repost of test-server patch text mentioning \"Procing weapons\", with players asking what the word meant." }, { "key": "toril-1997", "canonical": false, "title": "Toril", "author": "rec.games.mud.diku", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.mud.diku/c/rY4eHovv3RQ/m/Fd0lZlDXmh8J", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "March 1997 thread in which an administrator of the MUD Sojourn writes of two weapons with \"very abusable procs\"." }, { "key": "dikumud-source-gamma-release-1991", "canonical": false, "title": "DikuMUD source (Gamma release)", "author": "DIKU MUD team (repository of co-author Michael Seifert)", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://github.com/Seifert69/DikuMUD-Gamma/blob/master/dm-dist-gamma/spec_procs.c", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "spec_procs.c; spec_assign.c; doc/dbsup.doc", "note": "The \"special procedures\" attached to monsters, objects, and rooms, the code name from which the word descends; the stock release has no weapon procs." }, { "key": "unique-axes-the-arreat-summit-wayback-capture-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Unique Axes (The Arreat Summit, Wayback capture)", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20000815235859/http://www.battle.net:80/diablo2/items/uaxes.shtml", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Diablo II items printing percentage chances of Crushing Blow and Open Wounds in August 2000." }, { "key": "exceptional-unique-axes-the-arreat-summit-lord-of-destruction-wayback-capture-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "Exceptional Unique Axes (The Arreat Summit, Lord of Destruction, Wayback capture)", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20010701063855/http://www.battle.net:80/diablo2exp/items/exceptional/uaxes.shtml", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Chance-to-cast item lines in the Lord of Destruction expansion." }, { "key": "mmorpg-lexicon-the-daedalus-project-march-2005-archive-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "MMORPG Lexicon (The Daedalus Project, March 2005 archive)", "author": "Nick Yee", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/2005_03.php", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "The earliest gloss of proc as \"programmed random occurence\" found." }, { "key": "video-game-jargon-proc-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "Video Game Jargon \"Proc\"", "author": "A Way with Words", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "podcast", "publisher": null, "url": "https://waywordradio.org/video-game-proc/", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Secondary account tracing the word to DikuMUD's spec_proc from newsgroup messages." }, { "key": "wiktionary", "canonical": false, "title": "Wiktionary", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "proc", "note": "Labels \"programmed random occurrence\" a backronym and derives the word from \"procedure\"." }, { "key": "wowpedia", "canonical": false, "title": "Wowpedia", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Proc; Internal cooldown", "note": "Definitions of chance-on-hit effects and internal cooldowns in World of Warcraft play; its etymology is not relied on." }, { "key": "risk-of-rain-2-wiki", "canonical": false, "title": "Risk of Rain 2 Wiki", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Proc Coefficient", "note": "Proc coefficients that scale each damage source's chance and effect." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-game-overview", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile game overview", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/game", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Support gems that affect a linked skill, up to five at a time." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-wiki", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile Wiki", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Cast on Critical Strike", "note": "The trigger support that casts linked spells on critical strikes." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-2-wiki", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile 2 Wiki", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Meta gems that build Energy from qualifying events and cast socketed spells when full." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 16, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 491, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/procs" }, { "id": "clocks", "name": "Progress Clocks", "status": "verified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "A segmented circle or track that is filled in increments as actions succeed or threats advance, so that a complex task or looming event resolves only when every segment is marked.", "aliases": [ "countdown clocks", "clocks", "threat tracks", "doom tracks" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "fail-forward", "degrees-of-success", "reputation-factions", "push-your-luck" ], "referenced_by": [ "end-game-triggers", "flashbacks", "gm-moves", "upkeep", "vulnerability-windows" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Blades in the Dark (2017). Agency is medium because a visible clock presents the player with a constrained choice (press the task or address the advancing threat); for a pure countdown clock whose ticks are imposed by the facilitator, low would apply and was the losing value. Randomness is none because the clock has no randomiser; ticks come from the host resolution system. Interaction is solo because the clock operates identically for one player or five, although most host games are cooperative. Information is perfect because Blades draws clocks openly; Apocalypse World's facilitator-side countdown clocks would code asymmetric.", "effects": [ "tension", "planning", "fear-of-missing-out", "emergent-narrative", "consequence-weight" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Arkham Horror (second edition)", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Launius and Kevin Wilson", "note": "A board-game antecedent of the role-playing clock. A doom track gains a token at each gate opening; when it fills, the Ancient One awakens and the game changes state, a countdown the players can occasionally reduce.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Apocalypse World", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "D. Vincent Baker", "note": "Each threat carries a countdown clock drawn as a face with segments to twelve o'clock; the facilitator advances it as the fiction develops and the threat comes to pass when it fills.", "latest": false }, { "title": "XCOM 2", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Firaxis Games", "note": "The Avatar Project bar fills in segments on a strategic timer and the campaign is lost when it completes; missions remove segments, so play is paced by racing the clock.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Blades in the Dark", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "John Harper", "note": "Progress clocks of four, six, or eight segments represent obstacles, projects, and dangers; action results tick them by effect level and racing clocks pit progress against a threat.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Citizen Sleeper", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Jump Over the Age", "note": "Adopts tabletop clocks directly; assigning dice to actions ticks segmented clocks whose completion advances storylines, with some clocks advancing on their own each cycle.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Apocalypse World", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the role-playing form, the freeform segmented clock drawn by the facilitator. Apocalypse World's countdown clocks are the earliest widely cited instance and the usual source of the name, and Blades in the Dark (2017) named and generalised progress clocks. Segmented countdown tracks in board games (Arkham Horror's second edition, 2005, and earlier doom and turn tracks) predate it and are treated as antecedents." }, "established": { "title": "Blades in the Dark", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Blades in the Dark named and generalised progress clocks for tasks, dangers, and factions, the form the term now denotes; Citizen Sleeper later adopted tabletop clocks directly." }, "sources": [ { "key": "blades-in-the-dark-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Blades in the Dark", "author": "John Harper", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "The Basics, Progress Clocks", "note": "Segment counts, racing clocks, and ticks by effect." }, { "key": "apocalypse-world-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Apocalypse World", "author": "D. Vincent Baker", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Fronts and threats; countdown clocks." }, { "key": "arkham-horror-second-edition-rulebook-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "Arkham Horror (second edition) rulebook", "author": "Richard Launius and Kevin Wilson", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The doom track as a board-game countdown." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 517, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/clocks" }, { "id": "promotion", "name": "Promotion", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "A piece that reaches a designated zone, usually the far edge of the board, is replaced by or upgraded to a more capable piece, so advancing position is converted into a permanent gain in capability.", "aliases": [ "pawn promotion", "crowning", "kinging", "queening", "piece upgrade" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "piece-capture", "experience-levels", "race-to-the-finish", "grid-movement" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from chess pawn promotion, checked against draughts crowning and shogi. Category contested: progression-and-capability over space-and-position, because the trigger is positional but the effect is a lasting change in what the piece can do; space was the losing family. Agency is medium because chess offers a choice of piece and underpromotion is a real option; low was the losing value for draughts, where crowning is automatic, and for shogi, where the only choice is whether to promote. Complexity is low for the chess rule; medium for shogi's promotion zone and drop restrictions. Feedback loop is positive because a promoted piece makes further promotion and capture easier.", "effects": [ "planning", "spatial-reasoning", "calculation", "tension", "runaway-leader" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Draughts", "year": 1100, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "A man reaching the far rank is crowned by stacking a second piece on it and may thereafter move backwards; in international draughts the flying king also moves any distance. Crowning is automatic and ends the move.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Chess", "year": 1475, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "A pawn reaching the eighth rank must be exchanged for a queen, rook, bishop, or knight of its colour. Promotion to a second queen became standard in the 15th-century reform; underpromotion to a knight is the notable exception to automatic queening.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Shogi", "year": 1550, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Most pieces may be flipped to their promoted side on entering, leaving, or moving within the three far ranks, and promotion is optional except where the unpromoted piece could never move again. Captured pieces are dropped back into play unpromoted.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Chessmaster 2000", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "The Software Toolworks", "note": "A digital adaptation of chess rather than a new design; the program prompts for the promotion piece, the usual interface form of the rule in chess software.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Intelligent Systems (Nintendo)", "note": "The term migrates to a level-triggered form: a unit of level ten or above consumes a class item and changes to an advanced class with new stat caps and weapons. The trigger is experience rather than position, so this is the boundary case with experience levels.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pawnbarian", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "j4nw", "note": "The hero moves by playing chess-piece cards on a small dungeon board, and reaching the top row, or starting a turn there, promotes a pawn card into a queen move.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Shatranj", "year": 850, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Promotion of the pawn to a ferz (counsellor) on reaching the last rank is described in Arabic chess texts of the 9th century, and the rule is presumed to descend from chaturanga, whose own texts are later and less explicit. Promotion to the modern queen dates from the late 15th-century reform of the moves. Draughts crowning is medieval and shogi promotion is attested in the Heian period, but both are later than the shatranj rule." }, "established": { "title": "Chess", "year": 1475, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "The late 15th-century reform that gave the queen its modern move turned promotion from a gain of a weak ferz into the decisive endgame goal, as Murray records; chess software, chess variants, and Pawnbarian reproduce that queen-promotion form, and tactical role-playing games borrowed its name. The free choice of piece was settled only in the 19th century, and draughts crowning and shogi promotion descend from older chess-family rules rather than from the reformed game, so the line is thin." }, "sources": [ { "key": "a-history-of-chess-1913", "canonical": false, "title": "A History of Chess", "author": "H. J. R. Murray", "year": 1913, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapters on shatranj and on the reform of the moves in medieval Europe", "note": "Pawn promotion to ferz in Arabic sources and the later adoption of queen promotion." }, { "key": "parlett-1999", "canonical": true, "title": "The Oxford History of Board Games", "author": "David Parlett", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Part on war games (chess and its relatives, draughts)", "note": "Promotion across the chess family and crowning in draughts." }, { "key": "murray-1952", "canonical": true, "title": "A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess", "author": "H. J. R. Murray", "year": 1952, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Clarendon Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter on war games (alquerque and draughts)", "note": "Crowning and the king's move in the draughts family." }, { "key": "fide-laws-of-chess", "canonical": false, "title": "FIDE Laws of Chess", "author": "Fédération Internationale des Échecs", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Article 3.7, the move of the pawn (promotion)", "note": "Canonical rules text for the chess form." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Promotion (chess), History", "note": "Promotion in chaturanga and shatranj, the 15th-century queen, restricted promotion in 18th-century Italy, and unrestricted choice becoming universal by the mid-19th century." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 528, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/promotion" }, { "id": "pseudo-random-distribution", "name": "Pseudo-Random Distribution", "status": "unverified", "category": "chance-and-risk", "definition": "Successive trials of a chance event are made dependent on earlier results, usually by raising the chance after each failure until a success resets it, so the stated rate holds over time while long droughts and streaks become rarer.", "aliases": [ "PRD", "bad luck protection", "pity timers", "shuffle bag" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "procs", "critical-hits", "loot-tables", "loot-boxes" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "negative", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Dota 2 (2013), where a chance-based attack effect starts each sequence below its stated rate and gains the same increment after every failed attack until it fires, then resets. Agency is low because the player makes no choice within the mechanic; the timing of attacks belongs to the host. Randomness is output, resolved after each action. Interaction is solo because the dependence is on the unit's own trials. Complexity is low because the rule is one sentence; medium was the losing value for the table of increments that matches each stated rate. Pacing is neutral. Information is hidden because the count of failures since the last success is held by the game and shown to no player, although it can be inferred by counting; perfect was the losing value for pity counters that games display. Feedback loop is negative because each failure raises the chance of the next success, compensating bad luck; none was the losing value, on the reading that the loop acts on a random process rather than on a player's standing. Decision density is low: the mechanic creates no decision point. Category tension is with action-resolution, the first family in the default tie-break order; chance-and-risk holds because the mechanic is a rule about the randomiser itself.", "effects": [ "calculation", "planning", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Tetris (NES)", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "The piece generator rerolls once when it draws the same piece as the last, a one-piece history that makes direct repeats rarer without bounding droughts.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tetris: The Grand Master", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Arika", "note": "The randomiser keeps the four most recent pieces and makes up to four draws to find one outside that history, so repeats and long droughts are rarer than with independent draws.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The New Tetris", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "H2O Entertainment", "note": "Pieces are dealt without replacement from a refilled bag, which community analysis puts at 63 pieces, so every shape's share is fixed over each bag.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Blizzard's lead encounter designer said in 2014 that heirloom drops from the raid boss Garrosh had \"bad luck protection\", growing likelier with each kill that failed to award one.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Catan: Event Cards", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Klaus Teuber", "note": "A 36-card deck, one card per two-dice combination, replaces the dice, and a New Year card placed above the bottom five forces a reshuffle, so rolls follow the dice odds without long runs.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dota 2", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "Chance-based effects such as bashes, critical strikes, and evasion start below their stated chance and rise with each failed attempt until they fire, then reset. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Genshin Impact", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "miHoYo", "note": "A top-rarity result is guaranteed by the 90th wish on character banners (80th on weapon banners), players' records show the rate rising from about the 74th, and the counter carries over between banners of the same type.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Honkai: Star Rail", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "miHoYo", "note": "Each warp without a 5-star advances a per-banner pity counter that guarantees one by the 90th pull, players observe the rate climbing from around the 70s, and the counter resets on any 5-star; a lost 50/50 also guarantees the featured unit next time.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Tetris (NES)", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Nintendo's Tetris for the NES (1989) is the earliest documented dependent randomiser cited: in a disassembly of its cartridge code, the piece-picking routine draws again when the first draw repeats the previous piece. Confidence is low because the code is read through a fan disassembly and earlier versions of Tetris and other arcade games remain unsurveyed. Drawing without replacement from a shuffled deck is the ancient antecedent, but there the dependence follows from the deck rather than being imposed to bound streaks. Tetris: The Grand Master (1998) lengthened the history to four pieces, and The New Tetris (1999) is credited with the bag form that the Tetris Guideline later fixed at seven pieces. The rising-chance form of Dota 2 (2013) is said by community wikis to come from the Warcraft III engine on which DotA was built; no Blizzard or Valve statement confirms this, and the name \"pseudo-random distribution\" is attested on a fan wiki from February 2012. Gacha pity counters spread the visible, guaranteed form in mobile games, and Dota 2 is the usual reference for the name." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "garrosh-heirlooms-have-bad-luck-protection-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Garrosh heirlooms have bad luck protection", "author": "WoW Insider (Engadget)", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.engadget.com/2014-04-10-garrosh-heirlooms-have-bad-luck-protection.html", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "A Blizzard designer's April 2014 statement that heirloom drops grow likelier with each kill, the developer use of \"bad luck protection\"." }, { "key": "tetrisnesdisasm-main-asm", "canonical": false, "title": "TetrisNESDisasm, main.asm", "author": "CelestialAmber", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CelestialAmber/TetrisNESDisasm/master/main.asm", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "pickRandomTetrimino", "note": "Disassembly of the NES cartridge code; the routine compares the drawn piece with the previous spawn and, on a match, makes a second draw that is kept." }, { "key": "tetriswiki", "canonical": false, "title": "TetrisWiki", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Tetris (NES, Nintendo); TGM randomizer; The New Tetris; Random Generator", "note": "The one-piece reroll of NES Tetris, the four-piece history of The Grand Master, the bag of The New Tetris, and the seven-piece bag and its twelve-piece drought bound." }, { "key": "dota-2-wiki", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2 Wiki", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Pseudo-random distribution", "note": "The rising-chance rule and its reset, the effects that use it, the name attested from 2012, and the undershoot of high stated chances." }, { "key": "liquipedia-warcraft", "canonical": false, "title": "Liquipedia Warcraft", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Pseudo Random Distribution", "note": "Attribution of the mechanic to the Warcraft III engine for critical strike, bash, and evasion." }, { "key": "genshin-impact-wiki", "canonical": false, "title": "Genshin Impact Wiki", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Wishes", "note": "The 90 and 80 guarantees, carry-over between banners of the same type, and the rise in rate observed in player records." }, { "key": "boardgamegeek", "canonical": false, "title": "BoardGameGeek", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Catan: Event Cards", "note": "The 36-card deck replacing the dice and the New Year reshuffle card." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 516, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/pseudo-random-distribution" }, { "id": "push-your-luck", "name": "Push Your Luck", "status": "unverified", "category": "chance-and-risk", "definition": "A player who has banked a provisional gain repeatedly chooses whether to stop and keep it or to continue for more at the risk of a bust that forfeits everything accumulated this turn.", "aliases": [ "press your luck", "stop or continue", "bust mechanic" ], "parent": null, "children": [ "doubling-cube" ], "related": [ "dice-pool", "roll-and-write", "loot-tables", "metacurrency" ], "referenced_by": [ "auction-bidding", "betting", "bluff-and-challenge", "contract-bidding", "dexterity", "kill-streaks", "clocks", "rerolls", "roll-and-move" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "variable", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "negative", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Can't Stop. Randomness is output because the decisive roll comes after the stop-or-continue choice; \"both\" was the losing value, since Can't Stop also lets the player pair the dice after rolling. Interaction is indirect (racing on shared columns) with solo as the losing value for pure multiplayer- solitaire forms such as Zombie Dice. Pacing is variable because turn length depends entirely on the bust probability curve and on how much risk players accept. Feedback loop is negative because in the canonical Can't Stop form each advance restricts the usable combinations, so the bust probability rises with the provisional gain; none was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "tension", "volatility", "sunk-cost", "frustration-risk", "mastery" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Can't Stop", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Sid Sackson", "note": "Three temporary markers advance up columns on each roll; the player may stop and make the progress permanent or roll again, and a roll that cannot be used loses the whole turn's advance.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Jenga", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "Leslie Scott", "note": "Each extraction raises the probability of collapse for whoever acts next. There is no voluntary stop, but the escalating risk curve and the loss falling on the player who overreaches are the closest physical analogue.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Diamant", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Bruno Faidutti and Alan R. Moon", "note": "Published in English as Incan Gold. All explorers decide simultaneously whether to leave the cave with their share or stay for the next card, and a second matching hazard card empties the pockets of everyone still inside.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Darkest Dungeon", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Red Hook Studios", "note": "A party can retreat from an expedition at any time, keeping loot but forfeiting quest rewards; pressing deeper raises stress and the chance of losing heroes permanently.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Quacks of Quedlinburg", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Wolfgang Warsch", "note": "Ingredients are drawn blind from a personal bag and placed on a pot track; drawing white chips totalling more than seven causes an explosion, after which the player gets either the round's victory points or its purchase, not both.", "latest": false }, { "title": "ARC Raiders", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Embark Studios", "note": "Each raid the player gathers loot on a hostile surface and chooses when to head for an extraction point; dying before extracting forfeits everything collected that raid except what fits in the small safe pocket.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Vingt-et-un with dice", "year": 1897, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "The earliest printed stop-or-bust rule found is Vingt-et-un with dice in Foster's Complete Hoyle (1897): each player throws as often as they please toward 21 and is out on passing it, losing the total built up. The scanned copy is labelled third edition and carries only the 1897 copyright line; Stokes added a line for each revision (1909, 1914), so its text is the 1897 text. That is a dated floor rather than an origin, since the card game is older and earlier printings remain unsurveyed, and its gain is a running total rather than points banked across turns. Pig, the canonical dice form, is reportedly first described by John Scarne in 1945, a page that is not cited. Can't Stop (1980) is the frequently cited modern example, on the 1982 Spiel des Jahres recommendation list, though no source calls it canonical. BoardGameGeek added the label Press Your Luck in 2011 and renamed it Push Your Luck in 2019." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Uncertainty chapter", "note": "Definition and the stop-or-continue structure." }, { "key": "can-t-stop-rulebook-1980", "canonical": false, "title": "Can't Stop rulebook", "author": "Sid Sackson", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Rules text for the temporary-marker and bust procedure in the coded form." }, { "key": "costikyan-2013", "canonical": true, "title": "Uncertainty in Games", "author": "Greg Costikyan", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter on randomness as a source of uncertainty", "note": "Framing of wagers against known odds." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Push Your Luck", "note": null }, { "key": "foster-s-complete-hoyle-1897", "canonical": false, "title": "Foster's Complete Hoyle", "author": "R. F. Foster", "year": 1897, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/fosterscomplete00fostgoog/fosterscomplete00fostgoog_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Dice Games, Vingt-et-un, p. 572", "note": "Each player throws as often as they please toward 21 and is out on passing it." }, { "key": "foster-s-complete-hoyle-revised-and-enlarged-to-october-1914-1914", "canonical": false, "title": "Foster's Complete Hoyle (revised and enlarged to October 1914)", "author": "R. F. Foster", "year": 1914, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/53881/pg53881-images.html", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Copyright page", "note": "Stokes copyright lines of 1897, 1909, and 1914, one for each revision, so a printing that carries only the 1897 line carries the text from before the 1909 revision." }, { "key": "can-t-stop", "canonical": false, "title": "Can't Stop", "author": "Spiel des Jahres", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.spiel-des-jahres.de/en/spiele/cant-stop/", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Jury entry for the 1982 recommendation list; continuing until no pair fits loses everything." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 557, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/push-your-luck" }, { "id": "quests", "name": "Quest Structures", "status": "unverified", "category": "narrative-and-choice", "definition": "Play is organised into discrete assigned tasks, each with a framing, an explicit objective, tracked progress, and a reward on completion, so authored content is delivered and consumed one task at a time.", "aliases": [ "missions", "quest logs", "side quests", "tasks" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "branching-dialogue", "lock-and-key", "experience-levels", "random-tables" ], "referenced_by": [ "achievements", "appointment-mechanics", "map-markers", "pick-up-and-deliver", "player-authored-goals", "relationship-systems" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the quest log of World of Warcraft (2004), where objectives are listed, progress is counted, and the reward is shown on acceptance. Agency is medium because the player chooses which quests to take and in what order but not what they ask. Decision density is medium for the same reason; low was argued for a single linear quest. Feedback loop is none for the structure itself; the experience rewards attached to quests belong to experience-levels. Information is perfect for the canonical log; hidden steps and secret quests would code hidden. Category is narrative-and-choice by assignment, which departs from the default tie-break order, where the progression-and-capability question comes first and partly applies because quests carry rewards; the reason is that the structure organises story and consequence.", "effects": [ "discovery", "flow", "planning", "grind" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Palace of the Vampire Queen", "year": 1976, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Pete and Judy Kerestan (Wee Warriors)", "note": "One of the earliest commercially sold adventures and an early stand-alone module, after Arneson's Temple of the Frog in TSR's Blackmoor supplement (1975); it frames a single quest, the rescue of a kidnapped princess, with a keyed dungeon and a reward, the unit that later products copied.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Akalabeth", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Richard Garriott (California Pacific)", "note": "Lord British assigns a series of quests to kill monsters of increasing difficulty, checks each on return, and grants the next; the number to complete depends on the difficulty level. Written in 1979 and published in 1980, the earliest video game found in which a character assigns a checked task.", "latest": false }, { "title": "HeroQuest", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Stephen Baker (Milton Bradley and Games Workshop)", "note": "The Quest Book holds numbered quests, each with a read-aloud framing, a map, an objective such as finding a specific room or figure, and gold rewards, played in sequence as a campaign.", "latest": false }, { "title": "EverQuest", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Verant Interactive", "note": "Named characters offer quests through keyword dialogue and accept item turn-ins for rewards; the game kept no quest log, and players tracked objectives themselves until a free-text Notes window arrived in November 2000.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Exclamation marks over givers, a quest log with counted objectives, and question marks at turn-in made the quest the unit of all content; its designers describe quest-driven levelling as a deliberate break from EverQuest's few quests and long grinds.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "CD Projekt Red", "note": "Side quests branch internally and feed consequences into the main line and the world state, so the quest is also the unit of choice and consequence rather than only of task.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hogwarts Legacy", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Avalanche Software (Warner Bros. Games)", "note": "Content is delivered as main quests, 57 side quests, 12 professor assignments that reward new spells, and 24 relationship quests, each tracked in a quest log and unlocked progressively as the story advances.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No origin can be defended: quests as a narrative form predate games, and Howard traces the game structure to the literary quest. Wargame scenarios with objectives are older than any adventure module. Arneson's Temple of the Frog, in TSR's Blackmoor supplement (1975), is widely called the first published adventure, and Palace of the Vampire Queen (Wee Warriors, 1976) is an early stand-alone module. Crowther's Colossal Cave Adventure (1975-76) set a treasure-gathering goal, scored only in Woods's expansion of 1977. In video games, Akalabeth (written 1979, published 1980) is the earliest found in which a character assigns checked tasks, and Might and Magic III (1991) had an in-game quest window. World of Warcraft (2004) popularised quest-driven levelling; no cited source credits it with the quest log." }, "established": { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "World of Warcraft (2004) popularised quest-driven levelling, with givers, a log of counted objectives and turn-in markers of the kind most later games use; its designers describe it as a deliberate break from EverQuest's few quests and long grinds." }, "sources": [ { "key": "quests-design-theory-and-history-in-games-and-narratives-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives", "author": "Jeff Howard", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "A K Peters", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Definition of the quest as a game structure and its literary history." }, { "key": "heroquest-rulebook-and-quest-book-1989", "canonical": false, "title": "HeroQuest rulebook and Quest Book", "author": "Stephen Baker", "year": 1989, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Quest Book", "note": "Board-game quest format." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Early published Dungeons & Dragons adventures and the scenario tradition they drew on." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Quest (video games)", "note": null }, { "key": "hall-of-fame-inductee-palace-of-the-vampire-queen-1976-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Hall of Fame Inductee: Palace of the Vampire Queen (1976)", "author": "ENNIE Awards", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://ennie-awards.com/hall-of-fame-inductee-palace-of-the-vampire-queen-1976/", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Published in 1976 by Wee Warriors, by Judy and Pete Kerestan; one of the earliest commercially available adventures." }, { "key": "the-difficult-origin-of-dungeons-dragons-supplement-ii-blackmoor-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "The difficult origin of Dungeons & Dragons Supplement II: Blackmoor", "author": "David Hartlage (DM David)", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://dmdavid.com/tag/the-difficult-origin-of-dungeon-dragons-supplement-ii-blackmoor/", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Temple of the Frog, written in 1975, as the first dungeon to reach stores." }, { "key": "somewhere-nearby-is-colossal-cave-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave", "author": "Dennis G. Jerz", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "Digital Humanities Quarterly 1.2", "url": "https://dhq.digitalhumanities.org/vol/1/2/000009/000009.html", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Crowther's version of 1975-76 had treasures but no score; Woods's expansion existed by May 1977." }, { "key": "akalabeth-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Akalabeth", "author": "Jimmy Maher (The Digital Antiquarian)", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.filfre.net/?p=314", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Lord British assigns a series of monster-killing quests, their number set by the difficulty level." }, { "key": "a-word-on-akalabeth-and-chronology-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "A Word on Akalabeth and Chronology", "author": "Jimmy Maher (The Digital Antiquarian)", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.filfre.net/?p=309", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Garriott, in the comments, says the game was written in 1979 and published in 1980." }, { "key": "might-and-magic-iii-isles-of-terra-manual-1991", "canonical": false, "title": "Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra manual", "author": "New World Computing", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Key commands, V - View Quests", "note": "The command displays the current quest window." }, { "key": "tip-of-the-week-the-notes-window-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Tip of the Week: The Notes Window", "author": "EverQuest official site", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.everquest.com/news/imported-eq-enus-50415", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "A client-side notes window, added on 15 November 2000, for things such as quests to complete; no quest journal." }, { "key": "how-world-of-warcraft-s-quests-came-to-be-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "How World of Warcraft's Quests Came To Be", "author": "Jason Schreier (Kotaku)", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://kotaku.com/how-world-of-warcrafts-quests-came-to-be-1826372544", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Jeff Kaplan on replacing EverQuest's few quests and long grinds with quest-driven levelling." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 12, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 543, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/quests" }, { "id": "quick-time-events", "name": "Quick-Time Events", "status": "verified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "A prompt appears during a scripted sequence and the player must enter the indicated input within a short window; success continues the sequence and failure branches to a penalty or a death.", "aliases": [ "QTE", "QTEs", "timed button prompts", "context-sensitive prompts" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "parry-and-dodge", "dexterity", "branching-dialogue", "fail-forward" ], "referenced_by": [ "rhythm-action" ], "media": [ "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Shenmue (1999), which named the form, with Dragon's Lair (1983) as the structural check. Agency is low because the prompt dictates the input; the only variable is whether the player executes it in time, which is why the category is action-resolution (success is adjudicated by execution) rather than time-and-action-structure or narrative-and-choice, the losing candidates. Randomness is none: variance comes from execution, not from a randomiser. Pacing is accelerates because a prompt compresses an action sequence into seconds and failure usually restarts rather than prolongs; neutral was the losing value. Information is perfect once the prompt is displayed; Dragon's Lair's implicit cues would code hidden. Pacing stays accelerates after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; neutral was the losing value.", "effects": [ "execution", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dragon's Lair", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Advanced Microcomputer Systems and Don Bluth Studios", "note": "Laserdisc animation plays and the player must move the joystick or press the sword button in the right direction within a brief window; a wrong or late input plays a death scene and costs a life. No button icon is shown, at most a flash in the scene, so play is largely memorisation of the sequence.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Bop It", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "Dan Klitsner (Hasbro)", "note": "The unit calls a command (bop, twist, pull) and the player must perform the matching physical action before a shrinking timer runs out; one miss ends the round. The same prompt-and-window structure without a screen.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Shenmue", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sega AM2", "note": "Named the Quick Timer Event: a button icon flashes during a chase or fight scene and the player has a fraction of a second to match it; failure typically branches to an alternate scene rather than a game over.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Resident Evil 4", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Capcom", "note": "Prompts appear in cutscenes and inside boss fights, including a knife duel resolved almost entirely by timed inputs; failure is usually death, and prompts can arrive in otherwise passive scenes.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Heavy Rain", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Quantic Dream", "note": "Nearly all action is resolved through timed and held inputs; failures are absorbed into the branching story rather than ending it, so the mechanic doubles as a narrative choice point.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Quarry", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Supermassive Games (2K)", "note": "Tense scenes are played as on-screen prompts with short input windows; missed prompts can get any of the nine playable counsellors killed, and quick-time performance feeds into which ending is reached.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dragon's Lair", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "high", "note": "Dragon's Lair's timed directional inputs over non-interactive animation are the earliest widely documented instance of the form; the term comes from Shenmue (1999), where Sega called the prompts Quick Timer Events. Bop It (1996) is a physical instance of the same prompt-and-window structure." }, "established": { "title": "Shenmue", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Shenmue (1999) named the Quick Timer Event and set the prompted form, a button icon flashed inside a dramatic scene with a fraction of a second to respond. Dragon's Lair (1983) used timed inputs without shown prompts, and Resident Evil 4 and God of War (2005) made the form standard in action games." }, "sources": [ { "key": "shenmue-instruction-manual-1999", "canonical": false, "title": "Shenmue instruction manual", "author": "Sega", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Quick Timer Event section", "note": "Names the mechanic and describes prompt-and-window play." }, { "key": "the-ultimate-history-of-video-games-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "The Ultimate History of Video Games", "author": "Steven L. Kent", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Dragon's Lair and the laserdisc games of 1983", "note": "Dragon's Lair's timed-input play and its reception." }, { "key": "swink-2009", "canonical": true, "title": "Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation", "author": "Steve Swink", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Morgan Kaufmann", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Timing windows and input response as the perceptual basis of execution tests." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Quick time event", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 490, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/quick-time-events" }, { "id": "race-to-the-finish", "name": "Race to the Finish", "status": "verified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "The winner is the first player to move a piece, or all their pieces, along a track to a goal or off its end, so victory is a matter of relative progress along a course rather than of score, capture, or territory.", "aliases": [ "race games", "racing", "bearing off", "first past the post", "shedding games" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "roll-and-move", "handicapping", "dexterity", "doubling-cube", "real-time" ], "referenced_by": [ "end-game-triggers", "ghost-data", "promotion", "time-track" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from backgammon, checked against Ludo and Hare and Tortoise. Randomness is input because the canonical race games roll before the player allocates movement; none was the losing value, defensible for dice-less races (Hare and Tortoise) and for foot races, and is recorded because the randomiser strictly belongs to the movement engine (roll and move) rather than to the victory condition. Interaction is indirect because the race couples players through relative progress and blocking; direct was the losing value for games that hit or send pieces home, which are described here under Variations as hit-and-return. Decision density is low because the race is a victory condition with no choices of its own; the choice of which piece to move belongs to the movement engine. Agency is low because the victory condition has no choices of its own; which piece moves and how far belongs to the movement engine; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026. Pacing is neutral because a victory condition met when a piece arrives; the rate of arrival belongs to the movement engine and the condition itself neither compounds nor is pulled forward; accelerates was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "tension", "planning", "calculation", "volatility", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Royal Game of Ur", "year": -2600, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Boards from about 2600 BCE; the rules are reconstructed, principally from a Babylonian tablet of the 2nd century BCE read by Irving Finkel, as a race to bring pieces along a shared track and off the board. Senet is older (see provenance), but Ur has the best-reconstructed early rule set; the surviving evidence supports the race form, not the details.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Backgammon", "year": 1650, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Fifteen pieces per side move in opposite directions around a track of twenty-four points; once all of a player's pieces are in the home board they are borne off, and the first to remove all fifteen wins. Hitting and blocking make the race contestable.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Sack race", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "A traditional playground race in which the course and the finish line are the whole rule set and the handicap is the sack; cited as the physical form, in which the movement engine is the body rather than a die.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hare and Tortoise", "year": 1973, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "David Parlett", "note": "Movement is bought with carrots at a cost given by the triangular number of the distance (1, 3, 6, 10, 15 carrots for one to five squares), so the race is resolved by budgeting rather than dice; the first to the finish with a small enough carrot reserve wins.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Mario Kart", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "The lap race is the victory condition, driving is the movement engine, and position-indexed items supply a catch-up damper that the classical board races lack.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Forza Horizon 5", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Playground Games", "note": "Most of its events are road, street and off-road races across an open map of Mexico, won by crossing the finish line ahead of the field; the Eliminator battle-royale mode is the exception, removing drivers until one remains.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Senet", "year": -3000, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Senet is the earliest securely dated race game: marked squares from a First Dynasty tomb at Abu Rawash date to about 3100 to 2900 BCE, and senet is read as a race along a track of thirty squares. Its rules are reconstructed, so the credit is for the form rather than for a documented rule set; mehen, a spiral-track game of similar or greater age, has rules too poorly known to code. The boards from the Royal Cemetery at Ur (about 2600 BCE) are later but carry the best-reconstructed early race rules, and the Game of the Goose (Italy, late 16th century) is an early well-documented single-track race and a model for many later commercial ones." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "parlett-1999", "canonical": true, "title": "The Oxford History of Board Games", "author": "David Parlett", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapters 1 to 5, race games", "note": "Classification of race games and the history of the backgammon and goose families." }, { "key": "murray-1952", "canonical": true, "title": "A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess", "author": "H. J. R. Murray", "year": 1952, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Clarendon Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Games in the ancient world chapter; Race-games chapter", "note": "Distribution of race games and the Ur and senet boards." }, { "key": "hare-and-tortoise-rulebook-1973", "canonical": false, "title": "Hare and Tortoise rulebook", "author": "David Parlett", "year": 1973, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Canonical rules text for a dice-less race, including the carrot cost table." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Royal Game of Ur", "note": "Finkel's reconstruction and the dating of the boards." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 516, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/race-to-the-finish" }, { "id": "random-tables", "name": "Random Tables", "status": "verified", "category": "chance-and-risk", "definition": "A die roll indexes a prepared list of outcomes to generate an encounter, event, or detail at play time, so the content of a scene is selected from an authored distribution rather than chosen.", "aliases": [ "encounter tables", "random encounters", "oracle tables", "lookup tables" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "loot-tables", "procedural-generation", "gm-moves" ], "referenced_by": [ "combat-results-tables", "exploration-procedures", "lifepath", "quests", "shared-narration" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "high", "pacing": "variable", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 2, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the wandering monster tables of Dungeons & Dragons (1974). Randomness is input because the table produces a situation the players then decide about; output was the losing value on the ground that the check is triggered by lingering. Complexity is high because the canonical form chains several interacting tables (the encounter check, a level-keyed table, and sub-tables for numbers and detail). Information is asymmetric because the referee holds the tables and sees the result before the players; hidden was the losing value, and applies to video forms in which only the game system knows the table. Pacing is variable because a wandering-monster check is a time pressure while an event table adds scenes. Combat results tables resolve actions and are not random tables in this sense. Pacing stays variable after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; neutral was the losing value. Tension was removed on 26 October 2026 after a blind re-tag in which all three coders found that each check resolves when it is rolled.", "effects": [ "discovery", "emergent-narrative", "replayability", "volatility" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Volume 3 has the referee check for wandering monsters each turn and, on a hit, roll on a table keyed to dungeon level to learn what appears; wilderness travel uses terrain-keyed tables in the same way.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Barbarian Prince", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Arnold Hendrick (Dwarfstar Games)", "note": "A solitaire adventure game in which each day's travel ends with a roll on an event table keyed to the terrain entered, and the resulting paragraph may send the player to further tables.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tales of the Arabian Nights", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Eric Goldberg (West End Games)", "note": "An encounter roll, a reaction matrix, and a dice-modified paragraph lookup in the Book of Tales turn each space into a generated story beat; the tables are the game.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pokémon Red and Green", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Game Freak", "note": "Japanese release 1996. Each route has a hidden table of species and weights for grass and water encounters; a step in tall grass checks for an encounter and then rolls on that table.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ironsworn", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Shawn Tomkin", "note": "Oracle tables for actions, themes, names, and settlements answer questions the player would normally ask a facilitator, making tables the engine of solo and guided play.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mothership (first edition)", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Tuesday Knight Games", "note": "The Warden's Operations Manual gives tables for randomizing scenarios through its T.O.M.B.S. cycle, letting a referee roll up the situation of a horror session.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "high", "note": "The 1974 wandering monster and treasure tables are the earliest widely cited published use of lookup tables as a general engine for generating situations in play. Wargame combat results tables (Tactics II, 1958) are the structural antecedent but resolve actions rather than generate content, and Peterson documents unpublished table use in the Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns shortly before publication." }, "established": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "high", "note": "Dungeons & Dragons (1974) made the wandering monster table a general-purpose generator of situations in play, the procedure Peterson documents from its campaign origins. Later editions multiplied the tables, Traveller (1977) extended them to world generation, and video games inherited the encounter check from Rogue onward." }, "sources": [ { "key": "dungeons-dragons-volume-3-the-underworld-wilderness-adventures-1974", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 3, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures", "author": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Wandering monsters; wilderness encounter tables", "note": "Canonical rules text for the per-turn check and level-keyed tables." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "History of the wandering monster procedure and the campaign practice that preceded publication." }, { "key": "peterson-2020", "canonical": true, "title": "The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "1970s discussion of referees, tables, and improvised versus prepared content." }, { "key": "tales-of-the-arabian-nights-rulebook-1985", "canonical": false, "title": "Tales of the Arabian Nights rulebook", "author": "Eric Goldberg", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Encounter procedure and reaction matrix", "note": "Board-game form in which paragraph lookup replaces a referee." }, { "key": "costikyan-2013", "canonical": true, "title": "Uncertainty in Games", "author": "Greg Costikyan", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Uncertainty framing used to separate input from output randomness." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 3, "word_count": 514, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/random-tables" }, { "id": "upgrade-offers", "name": "Random Upgrade Offers", "status": "unverified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "At set points in a run the game draws a small random selection of upgrades, usually two to four, and the player keeps one, so a build is assembled from choices among offers the player did not set", "aliases": [ "upgrade choices", "upgrade offer", "pick one of three", "level-up choices" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "drafting", "roguelike-meta-progression", "skill-trees", "loot-tables", "rerolls", "experience-levels" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Hades II's boon offers, checked against Vampire Survivors' level-up choices and Crimsonland's perks: at a trigger the game draws two to four upgrades from a filtered pool, the player keeps one, and the gains last until the run ends. Agency is medium, one choice among a small constrained set; high was the losing value, since the pick shapes the build. Randomness is input, because the offer is drawn before the player decides. Interaction is solo; indirect was the losing value for Mage Knight's common skill offer. Complexity is medium (pool filtering by what is held, prerequisites, rarity or upgrade levels); low was the losing value, counting only the pick. Pacing is neutral; accelerates was the losing value, since a growing build clears encounters faster. Information is hidden, because the pool's weights and the next draw are known to no player; perfect was the losing value, since the offer is visible once shown. Feedback loop is positive, because kept upgrades make later fights and later offers count for more and, where experience triggers the offer, faster kills bring offers sooner; mixed was the losing value for Slay the Spire, where each added card dilutes the deck. Decision density is low, one pick per offer; medium was the losing value for forms with a skip, reroll or banish beside the pick.", "effects": [ "engine-satisfaction", "planning", "replayability", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Crimsonland", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "10tons Entertainment", "note": "At each experience level the player selects a perk, such as faster reloads or poison bullets, reportedly from a random selection of five that the Perk Expert perk raises to seven.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mage Knight Board Game", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Vlaada Chvátil (WizKids)", "note": "On reaching a level that grants a skill, the hero reveals two Skill tokens from their own pile and keeps one, sending the other to a common Skill offer; a player may instead refuse both and take a token from the common offer.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fortnite", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Epic Games", "note": "From Chapter 4 in December 2022, Reality Augments present a choice between two random perks at intervals during a match; the first reroll is free and later ones cost Gold Bars, and the augments last until the match ends.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Slay the Spire", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Mega Crit", "note": "A card reward is described as a choice of one of three cards, which the player may also skip, leaving the deck unchanged.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hades", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Supergiant Games", "note": "A god met in a chamber reportedly offers a choice among up to three boons, each modifying a move such as the Attack, Special, Cast or Dash or adding a passive effect for the rest of the escape attempt.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Vampire Survivors", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "poncle", "note": "Each level-up offers a random selection of three, sometimes four, weapons or passive items to take or upgrade, and a limited Banish removes one option from the pool for the rest of the run.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Last Epoch", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Eleventh Hour Games", "note": "Conquering a Monolith of Fate timeline grants a choice of three randomly rolled Blessings, permanent buffs inside and outside the Monolith; replaying the timeline rolls a new set, and the player may keep the current Blessing.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hades II", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Supergiant Games", "note": "Each encounter with an Olympian god presents three randomly selected boons to choose from, and Duo boons combine the domains of two gods.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Mage Knight Board Game", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Mage Knight Board Game (2011) is the earliest use found with a primary source: its rules, as WizKids reprints them, have a hero reaching a skill level reveal two Skill tokens, keep one and send the other to a common offer. Crimsonland (2003) is a reported antecedent: each experience level grants a perk choice, and documentation of a reimplementation of the original game describes the offer as a random selection of five, but no contemporary source documents the random draw. Confidence is low because earlier arcade, computer and roguelike games remain unsurveyed." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "end-game-system-update-monolith-of-fate-2020", "canonical": false, "title": "End-Game System Update: Monolith of Fate", "author": "Moxjet200", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Last Epoch forums (Eleventh Hour Games)", "url": "https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/end-game-system-update-monolith-of-fate/21650", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Blessings", "note": "The choice of three randomly rolled Blessings on conquering a timeline, their permanence inside and outside the Monolith, and replaying a timeline to roll again or keep the current Blessing." }, { "key": "how-to-activate-reality-augments-fortnite-2022", "canonical": false, "title": "How to activate Reality Augments - Fortnite", "author": "Larryn Bell", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Shacknews", "url": "https://www.shacknews.com/article/133353/how-to-activate-reality-augments-fortnite", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "A choice between two random Reality Augments at intervals in a match, one free reroll and later rerolls for Gold Bars, and augments lasting until the match ends." }, { "key": "hades-2-all-god-boons-effects-and-benefits-2026", "canonical": false, "title": "Hades 2: ALL God Boons, Effects and Benefits", "author": "Daniel González", "year": 2026, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Vandal", "url": "https://vandal.elespanol.com/en/hades-2/hades-2-all-god-boons-effects-and-benefits.html", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Each encounter presents three randomly selected boons to choose from." }, { "key": "all-hades-2-boons-and-the-best-to-pick-2024", "canonical": false, "title": "All Hades 2 Boons and the Best to Pick", "author": "Marco Cadayona", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Gfinity Esports", "url": "https://www.gfinityesports.com/guides/hades-2-boons", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "The gods who appear and the boons they offer left to chance, and Duo boons labelled with the second god." }, { "key": "hades-ii-store-page-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Hades II store page", "author": "Supergiant Games", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Steam", "url": "https://store.steampowered.com/app/1145350/Hades_II/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Boons from more than a dozen Olympian gods; early access on 6 May 2024 and full release on 25 September 2025." }, { "key": "vampire-survivors-banish-mechanic-2022", "canonical": false, "title": "Vampire Survivors' Banish Mechanic", "author": "Jak Marshall", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Substack", "url": "https://gmdq.substack.com/p/vampire-survivors-banish-mechanic", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "A random selection of three, sometimes four, items at each level, no telling whether a passed option returns at the next upgrade point, and Banish removing an option from the pool for the run." }, { "key": "mage-knight-board-game-rulebook-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Mage Knight Board Game rulebook", "author": "Vlaada Chvátil", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "WizKids", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Skill tokens revealed two at a time on levelling, one kept and the other sent to the common Skill offer." }, { "key": "mage-knight-board-game-ultimate-edition-walkthrough-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Mage Knight Board Game Ultimate Edition, Walkthrough", "author": "Vlaada Chvátil", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "WizKids", "url": "https://wizkids.com/posters/repository/wizkids/MKUE_WalkThrough_BOOKLET-WEB.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Level Ups, Skill Level Ups and Learning from other players, p. 17", "note": "The publisher's reprint of the rules; the first player to reach level 2 reveals two Skill tokens and keeps one, the other going to the Common Skill offer, from which a later player may take one instead." }, { "key": "mage-knight-level-ups", "canonical": false, "title": "Mage Knight: Level Ups", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "UltraBoardGames", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Rules summary of the two revealed Skill tokens, the refusal option and the common Skill offer." }, { "key": "crimson-perks", "canonical": false, "title": "crimson: Perks", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Reimplementation documentation describing the original game's perk offer as a random selection of five, seven with Perk Expert." }, { "key": "slay-the-spire-wiki-card-rewards", "canonical": false, "title": "Slay the Spire Wiki, Card Rewards", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "A card reward as a choice of one of three cards, with the option to skip." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Crimsonland", "note": "Release on 22 April 2003 by 10tons Entertainment, and perk selection on each level gained." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 12, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 669, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/upgrade-offers" }, { "id": "rating-and-matchmaking", "name": "Rating and Matchmaking", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "A numerical rating moves after each game by transferring points from loser to winner in proportion to how unexpected the result was, and a pairing rule uses the ratings to decide who plays whom next.", "aliases": [ "Elo", "Elo rating", "MMR", "ranked ladders", "skill-based matchmaking", "SBMM" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "handicapping", "difficulty-settings", "team-play", "tournament-formats", "one-versus-many" ], "referenced_by": [ "group-finder", "high-score-tables", "seasonal-leagues" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "negative", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the Elo system as used in chess (USCF 1960, FIDE 1970), with Halo 2's ranked matchmaking as the check case for the pairing rule. Category contested: interaction-and-exchange over progression-and-capability (a rating climbs like a level but grants no capability) and over time-and-action-structure (matchmaking schedules games); interaction wins because the update is a zero-sum transfer between two specific players. Agency is low because the player chooses to play and the update is a function of the result. Interaction is indirect because the transfer is defined on an assigned opponent and nobody targets anybody; direct was the losing value. Information is perfect for published ratings; hidden was the losing value, applicable to the concealed matchmaking ratings of video games. Feedback loop is negative because a rising rating raises the expected score against any given opponent, shrinking the points gained per win, and the pairing rule then matches the winner against stronger opponents.", "effects": [ "mastery", "contested-fairness", "compulsion", "grind", "flow" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Chess (USCF rating system)", "year": 1960, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Arpad Elo and the United States Chess Federation", "note": "Elo's system replaced the Harkness system in 1960: a rating moves after each game by a K-factor times the difference between the actual and the expected score, the latter derived from the rating gap; FIDE adopted it in 1970. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Halo 2", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Bungie", "note": "Ranked playlists on Xbox Live gave each player a level from 1 to 50 that rose and fell with results, and the matchmaking service searched for opponents of similar level; the populariser of automated skill-based matchmaking on consoles.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Arenas, reportedly added in patch 2.0.1 (December 2006) before The Burning Crusade, rate persistent 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 teams rather than players. A win raises and a loss lowers the team rating, by more for an unexpected result, in a system the official site calls similar to Elo; matchmaking pairs teams by rating, and the rating converts weekly to Arena Points for gear if the team played ten matches.", "latest": false }, { "title": "League of Legends", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Riot Games", "note": "Ranked play began in the first season (2010) with a visible Elo-style rating; from 2013 the displayed rank became a ladder of tiers and divisions with promotion series and seasonal resets, distinct from a concealed matchmaking rating that pairs teams of similar strength.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dota 2", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "From August 2019 ranked players name the role they want before a match forms and are matched on separate Core or Support MMR, each with its own leaderboard. A January 2020 update made a win and a loss move MMR by the same fixed amount, 30 solo or 20 in a party, replacing a hidden variance that gave high-rated players small gains and large losses.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fortnite", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Epic Games", "note": "Arena mode (2019) awards Hype in matches that advances a player through the divisions of the Open, Contender and Champion Leagues, deducts a Bus Fare that grows at higher divisions from each match, and matches players of similar Hype. Ranked, which replaced Arena in May 2023, moves a rank from Bronze to Unreal by eliminations and placement.", "latest": false }, { "title": "FIFA Men's World Ranking", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "FIFA", "note": "In 2018 FIFA replaced its points formula with an Elo-derived system in which points move between the two national teams after each match according to the expected result and the weight of the competition; the ranking then seeds tournament draws.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Counter-Strike 2", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "Premier mode gives each player a visible numerical CS Rating that rises with wins and falls with losses by varying amounts, places them on global and regional leaderboards, and limits parties to players close enough in rating to be matched together.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Chess (USCF rating system)", "year": 1960, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the probabilistic, zero-sum rating transfer the entry defines. Elo's system, adopted by the USCF in 1960 and FIDE in 1970 and set out in his 1978 book, is that form. Numerical chess ratings are older antecedents: the Ingo system (West Germany, 1948) and the Harkness system (United States, 1950) derived a rating from percentage score against average opposition rather than from a probabilistic expected score. Glicko (1995) and TrueSkill (2006) extend the logic with an uncertainty term rather than replacing it." }, "established": { "title": "Chess (USCF rating system)", "year": 1960, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "The USCF's adoption of Elo's system in 1960, followed by FIDE in 1970, set the expected-score transfer that later ratings take as their base. Go, backgammon and Scrabble ratings, FIFA's 2018 ranking and the Elo-like arena rating of World of Warcraft adapt it, and Glicko and TrueSkill extend it with an uncertainty term." }, "sources": [ { "key": "the-rating-of-chessplayers-past-and-present-1978", "canonical": false, "title": "The Rating of Chessplayers, Past and Present", "author": "Arpad E. Elo", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Arco", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Primary statement of the expected-score update and the history of earlier systems." }, { "key": "fide-rating-regulations-2024", "canonical": false, "title": "FIDE Rating Regulations", "author": "Fédération Internationale des Échecs", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "FIDE Handbook B.02", "note": "Current codified form of the Elo update, including the expected-score conversion table and K-factors." }, { "key": "trueskill-a-bayesian-skill-rating-system-2006", "canonical": false, "title": "TrueSkill: A Bayesian Skill Rating System", "author": "Ralf Herbrich, Tom Minka, and Thore Graepel", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": "Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 19", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The matchmaking form with per-player uncertainty and team games, deployed on Xbox Live." }, { "key": "elias-garfield-gutschera-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Characteristics of Games", "author": "George Skaff Elias, Richard Garfield, and K. Robert Gutschera", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Ratings and pairings treated as part of the meta-game rather than the game." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Elo rating system", "note": "Ingo and Harkness antecedents, adoption dates, and adaptations of the system for Go, backgammon, Scrabble, other sports, and esports." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-arena-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Arena", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20080101032639/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com:80/pvp/arena/index.xml", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Team types, rating changes that depend on relative ratings, the comparison with Elo, matchmaking by rating, and weekly Arena Points with a ten-match minimum." }, { "key": "patch-2-0-1", "canonical": false, "title": "Patch 2.0.1", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": "Warcraft Wiki", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The patch date of 5 December 2006." }, { "key": "dota-2-s-new-experimental-update-replaces-solo-and-party-mmr-with-core-and-support-mmr-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2's new experimental update replaces Solo and Party MMR with Core and Support MMR", "author": "Nigel Zalamea (ONE Esports)", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.oneesports.gg/dota2/dota-2s-new-experimental-update-replaces-solo-and-party-mmr-with-core-and-support-mmr", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Ranked Roles moved into base ranked matchmaking, roles chosen before the match forms, and Core and Support MMR with separate leaderboards (8 August 2019)." }, { "key": "dota-2-matchmaking-update-removes-mmr-gain-loss-variance-2020", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2 matchmaking update removes MMR gain/loss variance", "author": "Kurt Lozano (ONE Esports)", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.oneesports.gg/dota2/dota-2-matchmaking-update-removes-mmr-gain-loss-variance/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Equal MMR for a win and a loss, 30 solo and 20 in a party, replacing a hidden variance at high MMR (17 January 2020)." }, { "key": "fortnite-v8-20-patch-notes-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "Fortnite v8.20 Patch Notes", "author": "Epic Games", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190327164338/https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/patch-notes/v8-20", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Battle Royale, Events, New Feature: Arena Game Mode", "note": "Hype advancing players through leagues and divisions, Bus Fare lost per match rising at higher divisions, and matchmaking by similar Hype." }, { "key": "fortnite-is-swapping-out-arena-for-a-proper-ranked-mode-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "'Fortnite' is swapping out Arena for a proper ranked mode", "author": "Andy Brown", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "NME", "url": "https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/fortnite-is-swapping-out-arena-for-a-proper-ranked-mode-3443605", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Ranked replacing Arena in May 2023, the ranks from Bronze to Unreal, and progress by eliminations and placement." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 11, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 580, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/rating-and-matchmaking" }, { "id": "real-time", "name": "Real-Time Play", "status": "verified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "Players act whenever they are able rather than in turns, so wall-clock time rations actions and speed of perception and execution determine who acts first and how often.", "aliases": [ "real-time", "real-time mode", "speed games", "timed play", "no-turn play" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "simultaneous-action-selection", "cooldowns", "initiative-order", "pattern-recognition", "dexterity" ], "referenced_by": [ "appointment-mechanics", "ball-possession", "combat-building", "escape-room-puzzles", "game-clocks", "ghost-data", "lane-pushing", "limited-communication", "lock-on-targeting", "race-to-the-finish", "rhythm-action", "time-track" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Pit (1904) for the board form and Spacewar! (1962) for video. Agency is medium because the structure adds one recurring decision, when to act, to whatever the host mechanic offers; high was the losing value. Interaction is mixed because real-time structures routinely host direct contests (Pit, Spacewar!), cooperative scrambles (Space Alert), and solo races. Decision density is low because the structure's own decision, when to act, is a single decision point; the other decisions made in real time belong to the host mechanics, and high was the losing value for counting them. Pacing is accelerates since the absence of turn gating compresses play and sand timers or countdowns force endings. Category is time-and-action-structure because the mechanic is the removal of turn partitioning; action-resolution was the losing candidate because fast execution decides many outcomes, which is why the execution tag is applied.", "effects": [ "execution", "flow", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Pit", "year": 1904, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Attributed to Edgar Cayce (Parker Brothers)", "note": "Players shout bids and swap commodity cards simultaneously with no turns until someone corners a market and rings the bell; an early mass-market designed card game built on open real-time trading.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Spacewar!", "year": 1962, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Steve Russell and others (MIT)", "note": "Two ships manoeuvre and fire continuously under gravity; an early and influential digital game, it set real time as the medium's default, so that turn-based play became the marked case.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dune II", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Westwood Studios", "note": "Base-building and combat proceed continuously for all sides, establishing the real-time strategy template in which attention rather than an action budget rations what a player can do.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Real Escape Game", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "Takao Kato (SCRAP)", "note": "Teams solve a locked-room puzzle sequence against a fixed sixty-minute clock; the countdown turns a puzzle into a real-time test and set the template for commercial escape rooms.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Space Alert", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Vlaada Chvátil", "note": "A ten-minute soundtrack announces threats while players plan together by placing action cards; the plan is then replayed in turns, so real-time pressure is confined to planning and errors surface afterwards.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Age of Empires IV", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Relic Entertainment (Xbox Game Studios)", "note": "Players gather resources, build, and fight continuously and simultaneously rather than in turns, so how fast a player issues orders to villagers and armies decides how much gets done.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Pit", "year": 1904, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to designed tabletop games, since physical games and sports are real time by default and have no origin. Pit (1904) is an early, well-documented designed card game built on simultaneous untimed action, and Spacewar! (1962) an early and influential real-time video game. Earlier real-time card games are plausible, so confidence is medium." }, "established": { "title": "Spacewar!", "year": 1962, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Spacewar! (1962), an early and influential digital game, made continuous play the norm for video games, so that turn-based play became the marked case. The designed tabletop form is attested earlier in Pit (1904)." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Turn Order and Structure chapter", "note": "Definition and the distinction from simultaneous turns." }, { "key": "pit-rules-1904", "canonical": false, "title": "Pit rules", "author": "Parker Brothers", "year": 1904, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Open-outcry trading with no turn order; provenance." }, { "key": "space-alert-rulebook-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Space Alert rulebook", "author": "Vlaada Chvátil", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "The real-time phase", "note": "Real-time planning followed by turn-based resolution." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Real-Time", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 509, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/real-time" }, { "id": "referee-adjudication", "name": "Referee Adjudication", "status": "verified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "The success and consequences of a declared action are decided by a designated neutral person applying judgement under published guidance, rather than by a table or randomiser alone, and that ruling is binding on play.", "aliases": [ "umpire rulings", "referee rulings", "free Kriegsspiel", "rulings not rules", "umpired play", "fouls and penalties" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "fog-of-war", "gm-moves", "combat-results-tables", "player-judge", "scene-framing", "ball-possession" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "tabletop-rpg", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from free Kriegsspiel as set out by Verdy du Vernois (1876), where the umpire decides the outcome of contact from experience instead of consulting tables and dice. Agency is medium because the player declares freely but the outcome rests with the referee, who weighs the plausibility of the choice; high was the losing value. Randomness is none because the ruling is the procedure; output was the losing value for forms in which the referee rules and then calls for a roll. Interaction is mixed because umpired wargames and refereed sports adjudicate contests between opponents while role-playing referees mostly rule on a character against the environment. Complexity is low for the rule itself, which is a sentence; the guidance behind it is long. Pacing is accelerates because rulings replace lookups, the historical motive for free Kriegsspiel; variable was argued because disputes slow play. Information is asymmetric because the referee knows hidden factors and reasoning. Category was contested with information-and-hidden-state, since the referee is also the keeper of concealed state in fog of war, but the mechanic coded here is the adjudication of success, so action-resolution wins. Pacing stays accelerates after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; neutral was the losing value.", "effects": [ "contested-fairness", "emergent-narrative", "flow", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Free Kriegsspiel", "year": 1876, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Julius von Verdy du Vernois", "note": "The umpire decides the results of fire and contact from professional judgement and announces them to each side, dispensing with the rigid Kriegsspiel's dice and loss tables; set out in Verdy du Vernois's Beitrag zum Kriegsspiel.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Association football (Law 5)", "year": 1891, "year_approx": true, "medium": "physical", "creator": "International Football Association Board", "note": "The 1891 revision moved the referee onto the field with authority over play; Law 5 of the Laws of the Game makes the referee's decisions on facts connected with play final, and fouls are adjudicated into penalties such as free kicks and cautions. The physical form of the mechanic.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Braunstein", "year": 1969, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "David Wesely", "note": "Players took individual roles in a Napoleonic town and declared whatever they wished; the referee ruled on outcomes by judgement, which the participants and later historians treat as a step from umpired wargaming to role-playing.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "The rules cover combat and a few checks and leave the rest to the referee, who is told to decide outcomes for situations the tables do not reach; the practice later summarised as rulings, not rules.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Blades in the Dark", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "John Harper", "note": "Before a roll the facilitator judges the position, controlled, risky, or desperate, and the effect, limited, standard, or great, so the human ruling sets the stakes and the dice decide within them.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 2024 edition", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "The Game Master decides how each declared activity is resolved, asks for a roll only when circumstances make the task challenging, and ultimately sets every Difficulty Class with a published table of typical DCs as guidance, then narrates the result.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Free Kriegsspiel", "year": 1876, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Provenance is scoped to designed games rather than sport; umpires in sport are older, and the Laws of Cricket of 1744 already provide for them. Verdy du Vernois's 1876 proposal to replace the rigid Kriegsspiel's tables with the umpire's judgement is documented in his own text and is the standard credit in Peterson's history for the designed-game form. Braunstein (1969) and the Blackmoor campaign (1971) carried the refereed form into what became role-playing." }, "established": { "title": "Free Kriegsspiel", "year": 1876, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verdy du Vernois's free Kriegsspiel (1876) replaced the rigid Kriegsspiel's tables with the umpire's judgement, the standard credit in Peterson's history for the designed-game form. Braunstein (1969), Blackmoor (1971) and Dungeons & Dragons (1974) carried the refereed procedure into role-playing." }, "sources": [ { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Sections on free Kriegsspiel, Braunstein, and the Twin Cities referee", "note": "Provenance and the lineage from umpired wargaming to the role-playing referee." }, { "key": "beitrag-zum-kriegsspiel-1876", "canonical": false, "title": "Beitrag zum Kriegsspiel", "author": "Julius von Verdy du Vernois", "year": 1876, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Primary text proposing umpire judgement in place of tables." }, { "key": "laws-of-the-game-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Laws of the Game", "author": "International Football Association Board", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Law 5, The referee; Law 12, Fouls and misconduct", "note": "The physical form and the fouls-and-penalties fold; 2023-24 edition." }, { "key": "peterson-2020", "canonical": true, "title": "The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "1970s discourse on the referee's role in task resolution." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 497, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/referee-adjudication" }, { "id": "relationship-systems", "name": "Relationship Systems", "status": "unverified", "category": "narrative-and-choice", "definition": "A tracked measure of the bond between the player character and a specific other character rises and falls with choices, gifts, and time spent, and gates scenes, bonuses, and endings as it crosses thresholds.", "aliases": [ "affection meters", "social links", "bonds", "romance systems" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "reputation-factions", "branching-dialogue", "metacurrency", "quests" ], "referenced_by": [ "gifting", "needs-and-moods", "social-conflict" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the affection parameters of Tokimeki Memorial (1994), which are known only to the system and inferred by the player from behaviour; information is hidden for that reason. Asymmetric was set aside because no player holds the parameters, and perfect was argued from Persona 3's visible ranks. Agency is medium because each invocation is a constrained choice of whom to spend time with and what to say. Feedback loop is none; the bomb system in the canonical game, where a neglected character's falling affection damages others, would code negative but is a variation. The mechanic tracks individuals; group standing is reputation-factions and the player's own ethical score is morality-systems.", "effects": [ "ownership", "consequence-weight", "fear-of-missing-out", "grind", "discovery", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Pendragon", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Greg Stafford (Chaosium)", "note": "Passions such as Love and Loyalty toward named persons are numeric traits that rise and fall with play and can be rolled to inspire a knight, an early numeric bond in a role-playing game.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tokimeki Memorial", "year": 1994, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Konami", "note": "Each heroine has a hidden affection value raised by the player's statistics and dates; neglected characters become bombs that lower other affections, and the ending depends on who confesses.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Persona 3", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Atlus", "note": "Social Links rank each relationship from one to ten through time-slot choices on a calendar, and rank unlocks fusion bonuses and scenes, so relationships compete for a finite schedule.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Apocalypse World", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "D. Vincent Baker", "note": "Hx scores between player characters are set at creation, rolled to help or interfere, and reset for experience when they pass a threshold, a bond mechanic between players rather than toward NPCs.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fog of Love", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jacob Jaskov", "note": "Two players play a couple whose compatibility, satisfaction, and hidden destinies are tracked through scene choices, making the relationship itself the board state.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hades II", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Supergiant Games", "note": "Gifting Nectar, later Ambrosia, raises a heart-based bond with each character one step per gift; some steps instead require Bath Salts at the hot springs or Twin Lures for fishing, and bonds yield keepsakes and lead to romance scenes.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Pendragon", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "low", "note": "Pendragon's numeric passions toward named persons, which rise and fall with play and can be rolled for a bonus, are the earliest documented instance identified. Chaosium confirms that the 1985 first edition was built around passions and traits, but the mechanics are confirmed only from its current rules and no 1985 page is cited; earlier tabletop games remain unsurveyed and informal tracking is older, so confidence is low. In video games, Dokyusei (PC-9801, December 1992) raised affection through conversation and dates inside a timed schedule, and Tokimeki Memorial (PC Engine, May 1994) is credited by the Japanese games press with igniting the boom of dating games on home consoles. Koei's per-officer loyalty, raised with rewards, is an adjacent precedent documented for Romance of the Three Kingdoms II (1989)." }, "established": { "title": "Tokimeki Memorial", "year": 1994, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Tokimeki Memorial (1994) is credited by the Japanese games press with igniting the boom of dating games on home consoles, built on hidden affection values per character that decide the ending. Persona 3 (2006) later popularised the visible, calendar-bound ranked form." }, "sources": [ { "key": "king-arthur-pendragon-1985", "canonical": false, "title": "King Arthur Pendragon", "author": "Greg Stafford", "year": 1985, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Passions", "note": "Numeric bonds toward named persons in a tabletop RPG." }, { "key": "apocalypse-world-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Apocalypse World", "author": "D. Vincent Baker", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Hx", "note": "Inter-player bond scores." }, { "key": "appelcline-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry", "author": "Shannon Appelcline", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Chaosium history and the context of Pendragon's personality mechanics." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Dating sim", "note": "Lineage of affection parameters in Japanese games." }, { "key": "traits-passions", "canonical": false, "title": "Traits & Passions", "author": "Chaosium (Pendragon rules wiki)", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Passions directed at named persons, rolled for an Inspired or Impassioned bonus and changed by checks and fumbles; current edition, not the 1985 text." }, { "key": "dokyusei-retrospective-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Dokyusei retrospective", "author": "Ryo Morise (Famitsu)", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.famitsu.com/news/202310/08318863.html", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "In Japanese. December 1992 PC-9801 release, the time and schedule system, and affection raised through conversation and dates." }, { "key": "tokimeki-memorial-anniversary-article-2024", "canonical": false, "title": "Tokimeki Memorial anniversary article", "author": "Famitsu", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.famitsu.com/article/202405/5937", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "In Japanese. Release on 27 May 1994 for PC Engine Super CD-ROM2, the bomb mechanic, and its role in igniting the console dating-game boom." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 529, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/relationship-systems" }, { "id": "reputation-factions", "name": "Reputation & Factions", "status": "unverified", "category": "narrative-and-choice", "definition": "Persistent numeric standings track how each of several in-game groups regards the player, rising and falling with the player's actions and gating access, prices, hostility, and story branches.", "aliases": [ "faction reputation", "standing", "faction status", "affinity" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "morality-systems", "branching-dialogue", "trading", "clocks" ], "referenced_by": [ "alliances", "relationship-systems", "security-zones" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Fallout: New Vegas. Interaction is solo because the canonical form is a single player against system-controlled factions; tabletop forms such as Blades in the Dark are cooperative at the crew level. Information is hidden because the player sees tiers while exact values and thresholds are known only to the system; asymmetric was set aside because no player holds the values, and perfect was argued for games that expose the number. Category is narrative-and-choice by assignment, which departs from the default tie-break order, where the progression-and-capability question comes first and partly applies because standing gates capability; the reason is that the mechanic structures consequence rather than power. Agency is low because each action carries a fixed delta and standing accumulates from prior choices made in other mechanics; the tracker itself asks little; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026. Feedback loop is positive because completing a faction's quests raises standing, and higher standing unlocks further quests and vendors that raise it again; mixed was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "consequence-weight", "emergent-narrative", "ownership", "fear-of-missing-out", "replayability" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Sid Meier's Pirates!", "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "MicroProse", "note": "Separate standings with England, France, Spain, and Holland fall with attacks on their ships and towns, from ill-disposed to wary to hostile, while their wartime enemies approve; a wary or hostile nation's forts may fire and its governors withhold rank and title.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Reputation with dozens of factions moves through named tiers from Hated to Exalted, with vendors, mounts, and recipes gated by tier; repeatable turn-ins made the track a defining source of grind.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fallout: New Vegas", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Obsidian Entertainment", "note": "Reputation numbers are kept for each major faction and town and shown as a title; high standing opens faction dialogue, strongly negative standing makes members attack on sight, and a mixed reputation has its own consequences.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Grim Dawn", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Crate Entertainment", "note": "Standing with allied factions rises through tiers such as Respected, which opens a bounty table, Honored, where a Writ can be bought to speed the climb, and Revered, which opens the Mandate. Slaying a monster faction's members raises standing against it, bringing more hero spawns and, at Nemesis, Nemesis spawns that can appear wherever that faction is present.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Blades in the Dark", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "John Harper", "note": "Every faction in the city has a status with the crew from minus three to plus three, adjusted at the end of each score, which determines who helps, who hunts the crew, and which turf is contestable.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gloomhaven", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Isaac Childres", "note": "A single party reputation track from minus twenty to plus twenty shifts shop prices and unlocks city events and items; a global rather than per-faction instance of the mechanic.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Last Epoch", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Eleventh Hour Games", "note": "The player joins the Merchant's Guild or the Circle of Fortune, and may leave or switch at any time, rising through the chosen faction's ranks by defeating enemies and completing quests; reputation is never lost or spent and is shared across the account in a game mode. Guild rank gates Bazaar trades, and Circle bonuses improve the rarity, quantity and quality of drops.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Star Wars Outlaws", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Massive Entertainment (Ubisoft)", "note": "Kay holds a separate standing with each of four crime syndicates, raised by contracts and lost by betrayal or gunfire in their territory; good standing opens territory, better jobs, and vendor stock, while bad standing brings attacks on sight and assassins.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Starflight", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Starflight's 1986 manual documents attitudes held separately by each alien race, moved by the player's communication posture and worsened by combat, that gate what information a race will share; it is the earliest per-faction instance cited, though thin on access and prices. A printing carrying 1986 copyright lines for Binary Systems and Electronic Arts and naming no later platform gives these rules, and a later multi-platform printing repeats them. Sid Meier's Pirates! (1987) is the earliest found in which per-nation standing gates ranks, titles, fort fire, and trade, with allies and wartime enemies reacting to attacks; its manual names states (ill-disposed, wary, hostile) rather than showing numbers. Earlier computer and tabletop games remain unsurveyed, so confidence is low. Daggerfall (1996) is reported to keep numeric standings from -100 to 100 with factions and individuals. Fallout (1997) has one general reputation; numeric per-town reputation appears in Fallout 2 (1998), and Fallout: New Vegas (2010) keeps per-faction and per-town reputation with titles. EverQuest (1999) and World of Warcraft (2004) spread labelled tiers in massively multiplayer games. No source names a populariser. Tabletop role-playing tracked renown and honour by 1985 (Pendragon), usually as a single score." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "blades-in-the-dark-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Blades in the Dark", "author": "John Harper", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Factions and faction status", "note": "Explicit per-faction status track and the rules for changing it." }, { "key": "gloomhaven-rulebook-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Gloomhaven rulebook", "author": "Isaac Childres", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Reputation", "note": "Board-game reputation track with price and unlock thresholds." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Fallout: New Vegas", "note": "Description of the per-faction reputation system and its tiers." }, { "key": "starflight-manual-1986", "canonical": false, "title": "Starflight manual", "author": "Binary Systems and Electronic Arts", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "3.2.3, pp. 21-22; 4.2.1, p. 24; 4.2.2, p. 25 (later multi-platform printing)", "note": "Per-race alien attitudes set by communication posture, worsened by combat, and gating information." }, { "key": "starflight-manual-1986-printing-1986", "canonical": false, "title": "Starflight manual (1986 printing)", "author": "Binary Systems and Electronic Arts", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/starflight-manual/Starflight%20Manual_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "3.2.5, Communications Officer, p. 20; 4.2, Alien Encounters, p. 22; 4.2.1 and 4.2.2, p. 23", "note": "Copyright lines of 1986 and no later platforms named; statements move the aliens' attitudes, friendly relations with a race bring more information, and each combat with a race makes friendly communication less likely." }, { "key": "sid-meier-s-pirates-manual-second-edition-1987", "canonical": false, "title": "Sid Meier's Pirates! manual, second edition", "author": "MicroProse (Sid Meier and Arnold Hendrick)", "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "p. 18, Personal Status; p. 21, Arriving at a Town; pp. 37-38, The Governor and European Politics; p. 39, Spanish Trade Restrictions", "note": "Per-nation standing that moves with attacks and gates fort fire, ranks, titles, and trade." }, { "key": "fallout-new-vegas-manual-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Fallout: New Vegas manual", "author": "Bethesda Softworks and Obsidian Entertainment", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/new-vegas-manual/fnv_gfw_manual-10-steam_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "p. 17, Reputation; p. 19, dialogue", "note": "Reputation numbers per faction and town with titles, gating dialogue and attack on sight." }, { "key": "last-epoch-1-0-patch-notes-2024", "canonical": false, "title": "Last Epoch 1.0 Patch Notes", "author": "Eleventh Hour Games", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Last Epoch forums (Eleventh Hour Games)", "url": "https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/last-epoch-1-0-patch-notes/62536", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Item Factions", "note": "Joining and leaving the Merchant's Guild and Circle of Fortune at any time, ranks raised by defeating enemies and completing quests, reputation never lost or spent and shared across the account, and the Circle's drop bonuses." }, { "key": "guide-character-factions", "canonical": false, "title": "Guide: Character, Factions", "author": "Crate Entertainment", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.grimdawn.com/guide/character/factions/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Reputation earned or lost with factions, the Respected, Honored and Revered tiers with bounties, Writs and Mandates, alliance with one group putting the player at odds with another, and hostile monster factions whose spawns grow to Nemesis bosses." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 9, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 621, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/reputation-factions" }, { "id": "rerolls", "name": "Rerolls", "status": "unverified", "category": "chance-and-risk", "definition": "After seeing a roll or a draw, the player may throw some or all of the dice again, or redraw, within a fixed allowance or at a cost, and the new result replaces the old one.", "aliases": [ "reroll", "re-rolls", "mulligan", "reroll tokens" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "dice-pool", "push-your-luck", "metacurrency", "advantage-disadvantage", "critical-hits" ], "referenced_by": [ "dice-placement", "item-modification", "upgrade-offers" ], "media": [ "board-card", "tabletop-rpg", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "both", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Yahtzee (1956), the three-throw form with free choice of which dice to keep. Randomness is both because the first throw is input (seen before the keep decision) and the rethrow is output. Agency is medium because the choice is which dice to keep and whether to stop; high was the losing value, since the option set is small and bounded by the allowance. Pacing is neutral; decelerates was the losing value because every reroll adds a throw, but the allowance is fixed and short. Interaction is solo even in competitive hosts, since the reroll acts only on the player's own dice. The mechanic is distinct from advantage/disadvantage (roll two, keep one, decided before seeing either) and from the keep step of a dice pool.", "effects": [ "calculation", "tension", "mastery", "planning" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Yahtzee", "year": 1956, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "E. S. Lowe Company", "note": "Each turn allows up to two rerolls of any subset of five dice; the player keeps dice toward a scoring category and the keep decision is the whole game.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Magic: The Gathering", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Garfield (Wizards of the Coast)", "note": "The mulligan lets a player shuffle an opening hand back and redraw at a cost, formalised in its draw-one-fewer form in 1997; the same term later spread to card video games.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Savage Worlds", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Shane Lacy Hensley (Pinnacle)", "note": "Bennies are a small per-session pool spent to reroll a trait roll after seeing the result, so the reroll is a budgeted metacurrency rather than a free allowance.", "latest": false }, { "title": "King of Tokyo", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Garfield", "note": "A Yahtzee-style three-throw turn in which the kept faces are attacks, healing, energy, and victory points, so the keep decision trades between resources instead of scoring categories.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hearthstone", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "The opening-hand mulligan lets the player return any chosen cards and redraw replacements once before the first turn, a card-form reroll with no cost beyond the gamble itself.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Balatro", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "LocalThunk (Playstack)", "note": "Between rounds the shop can be rerolled to replace its cards with new random ones for $5, rising $1 per reroll and resetting each shop; within a round a fixed number of discards redraw up to five cards from the deck.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Poker Dice", "year": 1897, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "The earliest printed instance found is Poker Dice in Foster's Complete Hoyle (1897): each player has three throws, may set aside any dice after a throw and rethrow the rest, may take back kept dice, or may stand pat. The scanned copy is labelled third edition and carries only the 1897 copyright line; Stokes added a line for each revision (1909, 1914), so its text is the 1897 text. The same book gives a three-roll keep-and-rethrow rule for Ten Pins with Dice. The game is older than the book, and earlier Hoyle editions were not searched, so confidence is low. Yacht, the direct ancestor of Yahtzee, is in print by 1935 in Mason and Mitchell's Social Games for Recreation, with three rolls a turn and scoring categories; Generala remains undated. Yahtzee's 1956 publication is the populariser of the three-throw, keep-any-subset form for a mass audience; the story that a Canadian couple invented it is company lore that has never been corroborated." }, "established": { "title": "Yahtzee", "year": 1956, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Yahtzee (1956) made the three-throw, keep-any-subset reroll a household form for a mass audience; King of Tokyo (2011) uses a Yahtzee-style three-throw turn. The procedure is printed earlier for Poker Dice (1897) and Yacht (1935)." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Resolution chapter", "note": "Re-rolling and locking; definition of the reroll with locked dice and its relation to push-your-luck." }, { "key": "yahtzee-rules-1956", "canonical": false, "title": "Yahtzee rules", "author": "E. S. Lowe Company", "year": 1956, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The canonical three-throw procedure." }, { "key": "savage-worlds-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Savage Worlds", "author": "Shane Lacy Hensley", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Bennies", "note": "The tabletop role-playing form in which rerolls are a spent metacurrency." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Yahtzee", "note": "History of the game and its relation to Yacht and Generala." }, { "key": "foster-s-complete-hoyle-1897", "canonical": false, "title": "Foster's Complete Hoyle", "author": "R. F. Foster", "year": 1897, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/fosterscomplete00fostgoog/fosterscomplete00fostgoog_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Dice, Poker Dice, pp. 569-570, and Ten Pins with Dice, p. 570 (third edition scan)", "note": "The three-throw, keep-any-subset procedure in print, framed as analogous to the draw in poker." }, { "key": "foster-s-complete-hoyle-revised-and-enlarged-to-october-1914-1914", "canonical": false, "title": "Foster's Complete Hoyle (revised and enlarged to October 1914)", "author": "R. F. Foster", "year": 1914, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/53881/pg53881-images.html", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Copyright page", "note": "Stokes copyright lines of 1897, 1909, and 1914, one for each revision, so a printing that carries only the 1897 line carries the text from before the 1909 revision." }, { "key": "social-games-for-recreation-1935", "canonical": false, "title": "Social Games for Recreation", "author": "Bernard S. Mason and Elmer D. Mitchell", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/in.ernet.dli.2015.239517/2015.239517.Social-Games_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Yacht, pp. 65-66 (scan of a 1942 printing)", "note": "Yacht with three rolls a turn, keep-and-rethrow, and one-use scoring categories, earlier than the 1938 date usually given." }, { "key": "hoyle-s-games-modernized-1909", "canonical": false, "title": "Hoyle's Games Modernized", "author": "Professor Hoffmann", "year": 1909, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/39445/pg39445.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Backgammon, pp. 273-274", "note": "The thrower of the opening may take the throw or throw again, a whole-throw reroll." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 8, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 556, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/rerolls" }, { "id": "resource-conversion", "name": "Resource Conversion", "status": "verified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "Players exchange specified quantities of lower-order resources for higher-order goods, buildings, or effects according to fixed recipes, so progress depends on routing scarce inputs through the right conversions.", "aliases": [ "crafting", "production chains", "building costs", "converters" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "engine-building", "trading", "worker-placement", "set-collection" ], "referenced_by": [ "base-building", "commodity-currency", "item-modification", "needs-and-moods", "resource-gathering", "upkeep" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the building-costs card in Catan. Randomness is none because the recipe itself is deterministic; Catan's production dice belong to a separate acquisition step. Interaction is solo because a recipe operates identically regardless of other players; indirect was the losing value for games with a shared limited supply of outputs. Feedback loop is none for the recipe in isolation; it becomes positive when outputs raise future production, which is coded under engine building. Information is perfect because costs are public, although holdings may be private. Agency is medium because the player chooses which of a few public recipes to execute given their stock, and the output is fixed by the table; high was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "planning", "engine-satisfaction", "analysis-paralysis" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Civilization (board game)", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Francis Tresham", "note": "Sets of trade cards are converted into civilization advances with fixed costs, and surplus population is converted into cities; the conversion schedule is the spine of a long game.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Catan", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Klaus Teuber", "note": "A printed building-costs card converts combinations of five resource types into roads, settlements, cities, and development cards, with a four-to-one bank exchange as the fallback conversion.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Item creation feats convert gold and experience points into magic items at listed prices and crafting times, making crafting a priced conversion rather than a narrative event.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Le Havre", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Uwe Rosenberg", "note": "Buildings are converters that upgrade raw goods (fish, cattle, iron) into processed goods (smoked fish, meat, steel) with explicit input-output ratios.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Minecraft", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Mojang (Markus Persson)", "note": "A three-by-three crafting grid converts gathered blocks into tools and components by shape-based recipes, which players must discover or look up; the canonical video-game crafting system.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Factorio", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Wube Software", "note": "Ore is smelted into plates and assembled through fixed recipes into gears, circuits, and science packs; assemblers run those recipes continuously, so progress depends on matching ratios of input belts to each conversion step.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Civilization (board game)", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Francis Tresham's Civilization is the earliest widely cited board game in which distinct resource types are converted by fixed recipe into advances, though purchase with a single currency is far older (Monopoly, 1935). Catan (1995) is the populariser of the multi-resource building-cost form coded here." }, "established": { "title": "Catan", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Catan (1995) popularised the multi-resource building-cost form, a printed card converting combinations of resource types into roads, settlements, cities and development cards, and that card became a widely imitated component. The Civilization board game (1980) is the earlier fixed-recipe conversion." }, "sources": [ { "key": "catan-rulebook-1995", "canonical": false, "title": "Catan rulebook", "author": "Klaus Teuber", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Building costs card and maritime trade", "note": "Canonical fixed-recipe conversion table." }, { "key": "adams-dormans-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design", "author": "Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "New Riders", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 5 (Machinations), converters", "note": "Formal treatment of conversion as a node that consumes one resource and produces another." }, { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Economics chapter", "note": "Context for conversion within tabletop economic systems." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 518, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/resource-conversion" }, { "id": "resource-gathering", "name": "Resource Gathering", "status": "unverified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "Players obtain raw materials by harvesting resource nodes placed in the world, such as ore veins, herbs, trees or fishing spots, which deplete and later respawn, so supply is fixed in place, often skill-gated and open to rivals.", "aliases": [ "gathering", "harvesting", "gathering professions", "gathering skills", "resource nodes", "node harvesting" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "income", "loot-tables", "exploration-procedures", "resource-conversion", "base-building", "markets" ], "referenced_by": [ "combat-building", "last-hitting" ], "media": [ "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "mixed", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from World of Warcraft, the best-documented form of harvesting by the player's own character, with Ultima Online as provenance. Agency is low: one harvest's yield is fixed mostly by skill, tool tier and the chance of a bonus find, the player's choice being limited to which node to use; medium was the losing value, counting that choice of node. Randomness is output (yields, bonus finds, skill-up and failure chances); both was the losing value if the choice of spawn point is counted, which no cited source documents. Interaction is indirect because players deplete shared nodes without targeting; mixed was the losing value where open player killing lets rivals prey on gatherers, as in Ultima Online, a feature of the host game. Complexity is medium: a skill or tool gate, depletion and respawn, and one colour table. Pacing is neutral: gathering supplies materials at a rate set by node density and respawn without systematically forcing or stalling an end condition; decelerates was the losing value, since each unit costs travel and time. Information is hidden because respawn timing and pool sizes are known only to the system; mixed was the losing value, because tracking shows nodes on the gatherer's own minimap only. Feedback loop is mixed: higher skill opens better nodes, damped by easy nodes that stop giving skill points; positive was the losing value. Decision density is medium: which route to run, which node to take, and whether to move on when a rival is there; low was the losing value, counting one decision per node. The category follows the seed row and departs from the tie-break order, in which interaction-and-exchange comes first and would claim the contest over shared nodes; the core act is acquiring a scarce material, and the contest is absent from the private and shared-tap forms.", "effects": [ "grind", "fear-of-missing-out", "frustration-risk", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dune II", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Westwood Studios", "note": "An antecedent in delegated form. Harvester units separate spice from spice fields that players must first search for, carry it to a refinery automatically and repeat, and a spice bloom hidden under a mound puts fresh spice on the surface.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Warcraft II", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "An antecedent in delegated form. A peasant sent to a gold mine or a forest repeats the harvesting cycle until the mine is empty or the trees in the area are cut down, he is attacked, or he is given another command, and an emptied mine does not return.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ultima Online", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Origin Systems", "note": "Mining and Lumberjacking are percentage skills used with a pick or shovel on a mountainside or cave wall and a hatchet or axe on trees, and the official guide describes regional resource banks that harvesting draws down and that regrow, so players in a region share a finite supply.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Herbalism, Mining and Skinning are gathering professions. Find Herbs and Find Minerals mark nodes on the minimap, a node's colour shows whether the player's skill can harvest it and how likely a skill point is, and static-spawn nodes are open to everyone, first come, first served.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Ignacy Trzewiczek (Portal Games)", "note": "Explored island tiles carry food and wood sources, and a source that is exhausted is covered with a black marker and yields nothing more, either in production or to gathering.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fortnite", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Epic Games", "note": "In Battle Royale the pickaxe, the only item each player starts with, breaks nearly every object in the environment into wood, stone or metal, destroying it, so every match's scenery is a shared stock of nodes. Patches tune the yield, and from 2019 competitive playlists cap each material at 500 and drop 50 of each from an eliminated player.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Animal Crossing: New Horizons", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "Wood comes from hitting trees with an axe and iron nuggets from hitting rocks with a shovel, the resources one island yields in a day are limited, and Nook Miles Tickets fly the player to other islands for more, so the calendar rather than rival players rations gathering.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Valheim", "year": 2026, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Iron Gate (Coffee Stain Publishing)", "note": "Copper deposits lie in the Black Forest rather than the starting Meadows and cannot be mined until the player crafts an antler pickaxe from the first boss's drop, so a tool tier is the gate; repeated pickaxe blows break sections off a deposit, dropping copper ore along with stone. Playable in early access from 2021.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Ultima Online", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Provenance is scoped to harvesting by the player's own character; real-time strategy harvesting by units (Dune II, 1992; Warcraft II, 1995) is an antecedent. The 1997 official guide describes skill-based Mining and Lumberjacking and regional resource banks that regrow. Raph Koster's 2006 posts say the resource-bank version failed in beta and was superseded, so the guide describes the intended design. Origin's publish notes of 10 October and 5 November 1997 document lumberjacking and mining in the live game; that its harvesting drew on regenerating pools rests on Koster's posts. Text MUDs with mining or foraging commands and Harvest Moon (1996) are plausible earlier instances and remain unsurveyed." }, "established": { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "World of Warcraft popularised the form of shared static nodes marked by minimap tracking and gated by colour-coded skill, and its gathering professions are the best-documented case of harvesting by the player's own character." }, "sources": [ { "key": "world-of-warcraft-official-strategy-guide-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft Official Strategy Guide", "author": "Michael Lummis and Danielle Vanderlip", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "BradyGames", "url": "https://archive.org/download/World_of_Warcraft_World_of_Warcraft_BradyGames_Official_Strategy_Guide/World_of_Warcraft_World_of_Warcraft_BradyGames_Official_Strategy_Guide_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "An Introduction to MMORPGs: Etiquette in the World of Warcraft, Resources; Crafting Professions: Basic Concepts (skill colours), Gatherer Professions (Herbalism, Mining, Skinning)", "note": "Shared static nodes on a first-come basis, minimap tracking, colour-coded skill gates, and node etiquette." }, { "key": "origin-s-official-guide-to-ultima-online-1997", "canonical": false, "title": "Origin's Official Guide to Ultima Online", "author": "Tuesday Frase and Melissa Tyler", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Prima Publishing", "url": "https://archive.org/details/ultima-online-origins-official-guide-1997", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Skill Descriptions: Lumberjacking (p. 79), Mining (p. 82); Economics: Resource System, Resource Bank (p. 108)", "note": "Skill-based harvesting and finite regional pools that regenerate; provenance." }, { "key": "ultima-online-publish-notes-10th-october-1997-1997", "canonical": false, "title": "Ultima Online publish notes: 10th October 1997", "author": "Origin Systems", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "uo.com", "url": "https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/technical/previous-publishes/1997-2/1997-2-10th-october/", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": null, "note": "A fix to a lumberjacking skill exploit, failed lumberjacking ruining some of the wood, and an increase in reagent frequency." }, { "key": "ultima-online-publish-notes-5th-november-1997-1997", "canonical": false, "title": "Ultima Online publish notes: 5th November 1997", "author": "Origin Systems", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "uo.com", "url": "https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/technical/previous-publishes/1997-2/1997-5-5th-november/", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": null, "note": "Mining given an animation, a delay, sound effects and stacking of ore in the backpack; fletching and lumberjacking given process time." }, { "key": "uo-s-resource-system-part-2-2006", "canonical": false, "title": "UO's resource system, part 2", "author": "Raph Koster", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.raphkoster.com/?p=519", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Chunk-level resource pools, regrowth rates, 8×8 macroing, and changes between alpha and beta." }, { "key": "warcraft-ii-manual-pc-1995", "canonical": false, "title": "Warcraft II manual (PC)", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/Warcraft_II_-_Manual_-_PC/Warcraft_II_-_Manual_-_PC_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Getting Started: Harvesting Resources", "note": "Delegated harvesting that empties mines and forests." }, { "key": "dune-ii-manual-1992", "canonical": false, "title": "Dune II Manual", "author": "Westwood Studios", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/details/dune-ii-manual", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Terrain: Spice Field; Units: Harvester; Exploration; Mounds", "note": "Antecedent harvesting from spice fields, with spice blooms." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-info-trade-skills-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Info - Trade Skills", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20050102011832/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com:80/info/professions/", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Gathering as one of three profession categories, and gatherers selling materials to other players." }, { "key": "beginner-basics-for-animal-crossing-new-horizons-growing-your-island", "canonical": false, "title": "Beginner Basics for Animal Crossing: New Horizons: Growing your island", "author": "Nintendo", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.nintendo.com/jp/ichikara/acbaa/02_en.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Enhance your dream home with Nook's Cranny", "note": "Tools for wood and iron nuggets, the daily gathering limit per island, and trips to other islands." }, { "key": "how-to-find-copper-in-valheim-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "How to find copper in Valheim", "author": "Christopher Livingston", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "PC Gamer", "url": "https://www.pcgamer.com/how-to-find-copper-in-valheim/", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "How to find copper in Valheim; How to mine copper in Valheim", "note": "Copper deposits in the Black Forest, the antler pickaxe as a prerequisite, and ore and stone breaking off a deposit." }, { "key": "robinson-crusoe-adventures-on-the-cursed-island-rules-faq-dized", "canonical": false, "title": "Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island rules FAQ (Dized)", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "What happens when a source is exhausted?", "note": "Exhausted sources covered with a black marker." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Fortnite Battle Royale", "note": "The pickaxe as the only starting item, and nearly every object destroyed and harvested for wood, stone or metal." }, { "key": "fortnite-v8-20-patch-notes-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "Fortnite v8.20 Patch Notes", "author": "Epic Games", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190327164338/https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/patch-notes/v8-20", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Battle Royale, Siphon/Material Changes", "note": "Material rules reverted in core modes but kept in competitive playlists and Arena, 50 of each material dropped on elimination, a 500 cap and a 40 percent higher harvest rate." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 13, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 696, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/resource-gathering" }, { "id": "rhythm-action", "name": "Rhythm Action", "status": "unverified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "Notes shown ahead on a track or bar meet a judgement point in time with a piece of music, the player enters the matching input as each arrives, and every input is graded by its timing, so a song's result sums many graded timing tests.", "aliases": [ "rhythm games", "music games", "beat matching", "note charts" ], "parent": "dexterity", "children": [], "related": [ "quick-time-events", "combo-systems", "real-time", "pattern-recognition" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Dance Dance Revolution (1998), where arrows rise to a fixed row in time with the song, each step is judged on a scale from Perfect to Miss, a combo counter runs, and a life gauge that drains on misses ends the song early when empty. Category is action-resolution because each judgement adjudicates whether a timed input succeeded and how well; time-and-action-structure was the losing family, since the music partitions play into beats. Agency is low because the chart dictates every input and execution decides the grade; medium was the losing value for games such as Crypt of the NecroDancer in which the player chooses the move made on each beat. Interaction is solo because the canonical song is played against the chart; mixed was the losing value for versus and doubles modes. Complexity is medium for graded judgement windows, the combo, and the life gauge; low was the losing value for a single hit-or-miss window. Feedback loop is none because a judgement does not change later windows; positive was the losing value for streak multipliers such as Guitar Hero's. Decision density is low because timed inputs are execution, not decisions; medium was the losing value for forms with a power to activate.", "effects": [ "execution", "mastery", "flow", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "PaRappa the Rapper", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "NanaOn-Sha (Masaya Matsuura and Rodney Greenblat)", "note": "A teacher raps a line, its button symbols appear on a bar at the top of the screen, and a marker sweeps across them while the player answers on the beat; the rank (Cool, Good, Bad, Awful) moves on the first line of each pair, and ending below Good fails the stage.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Beatmania", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Konami", "note": "Notes fall in columns onto a row of keys and a turntable on the arcade cabinet, and each hit triggers its sample of the song, so the player's inputs play part of the music.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dance Dance Revolution", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Konami", "note": "Four arrows on a floor mat are stepped on as arrows reach the top of the screen; each step is judged by timing and a draining gauge ends the song if too many are missed. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Guitar Hero", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Harmonix (RedOctane)", "note": "Coloured notes run down a highway toward a strum line played on a guitar-shaped controller; a streak multiplier raises the score, and star power, charged by hitting marked phrases, doubles the multiplier when the player tilts the guitar.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Crypt of the NecroDancer", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Brace Yourself Games", "note": "A roguelike in which each move or attack must be made on the beat of the soundtrack; there is no note chart, so the music gates the timing of actions the player chooses.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Colorful Palette (Sega)", "note": "Notes slide down lanes toward the bottom of the screen in time with the song, and the player taps, holds, slides, or flicks as each arrives, across difficulties from Easy to Master and Append.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "PaRappa the Rapper", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "PaRappa the Rapper (1996) is commonly credited as the first rhythm-action game, by Guinness World Records among others: button symbols shown ahead on a bar, reached in time with music, and graded. Quest for Fame (1995), a PC game by Virtual Music Entertainment published by IBM, is an earlier candidate: a 1996 review confirms that the player strums a pick controller in time with the songs or hears off notes, and a sweeping bar over a pre-drawn rhythm display is described in a fan database, but an on-screen chart graded note by note is unconfirmed in a primary source, so confidence is low. Dance Aerobics (1987, released in Japan as Aerobics Studio), music-timed mimicry on a floor mat with no chart shown ahead, Otocky (1987), reported to tie the player's shots to the music, and Simon (1978), a memory game of tones and lights, are antecedents. Konami's Beatmania (1997) and Dance Dance Revolution (1998) built arcade lines on falling-note charts and dedicated controllers, and Guitar Hero (2005) spread instrument controllers in Western home markets." }, "established": { "title": "PaRappa the Rapper", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "GameSpot, IGN, and Edge, as reported by the Wikipedia history of the genre, credit PaRappa the Rapper with the basic mechanic that formed the core of later rhythm games and with sparking the genre's popularity, and Harmonix co-founder Alex Rigopulos, interviewed by IGN in 2017, called it transformative for the studio and the most relevant of the games behind Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Confidence is medium because the falling-note chart graded against a gauge, the form most later games share, came through Konami's Beatmania (1997) and Dance Dance Revolution (1998), whose debt to PaRappa is undocumented, and Rigopulos credits Beatmania and early Konami games as well." }, "sources": [ { "key": "playing-along-digital-games-youtube-and-virtual-performance-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance", "author": "Kiri Miller", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": "https://academic.oup.com/book/8118", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "Part Two: Playing Along with Guitar Hero and Rock Band (chs. 3–4)", "note": "Guitar Hero and Rock Band play studied as musical performance." }, { "key": "first-rhythm-action-videogame", "canonical": false, "title": "First rhythm-action videogame", "author": "Guinness World Records", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-rhythm-action-video-game", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "The common credit to PaRappa the Rapper (1996) as the first rhythm-action videogame." }, { "key": "parappa-the-rapper-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "PaRappa the Rapper", "author": "Apollo Chungus (Hardcore Gaming 101)", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The bar of button symbols swept by a marker, and the rank that moves on each pair of lines and fails the stage." }, { "key": "quest-for-fame-review-1996", "canonical": false, "title": "Quest for Fame (review)", "author": "PC Joker", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "PC Joker, April 1996", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "p. 44", "note": "Strumming the pick controller in time with the songs, with off notes and a failed career as the penalty." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Rhythm game", "note": "Genre history from Dance Aerobics and PaRappa the Rapper through Beatmania, Dance Dance Revolution, and Guitar Hero, with press credits (GameSpot, IGN, Edge) to PaRappa as the template of later rhythm games and to GuitarFreaks as an inspiration for Guitar Hero." }, { "key": "parappa-the-rapper-inspir-la-creaci-n-de-guitar-hero-y-rock-band-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "PaRappa the Rapper inspiró la creación de Guitar Hero y Rock Band", "author": "Daniel Laguna", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "LEVEL UP", "url": "https://www.levelup.com/noticias/parappa-the-rapper-inspiro-la-creacion-de-guitar-hero-y-rock-band/", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": null, "note": "In Spanish. Reports Alex Rigopulos of Harmonix, in an IGN Unfiltered interview of May 2017, calling PaRappa the Rapper transformative for the studio and, in the report's paraphrase, the most relevant of the games behind Guitar Hero and Rock Band, with Beatmania and early Konami games relevant to some extent." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 531, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/rhythm-action" }, { "id": "roguelike-meta-progression", "name": "Roguelike Meta-Progression", "status": "unverified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "Currency or unlocks earned during a run survive the run's end and permanently expand what later runs start with or can contain, layering persistent progression over permadeath.", "aliases": [ "meta-progression", "rogue-lite progression", "persistent unlocks" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "permadeath", "procedural-generation", "experience-levels", "legacy-campaign" ], "referenced_by": [ "deck-building", "loot-tables", "prestige-resets", "upgrade-offers", "seasonal-leagues", "skill-trees", "time-loops" ], "media": [ "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Rogue Legacy. Agency is medium because between runs the player picks from a small set of purchasable upgrades; the losing value was low, applicable to pool-unlock forms (The Binding of Isaac) where the player does not choose what is unlocked. Feedback loop is positive because every run, successful or not, adds to the persistent layer, so later runs are strictly easier. Catch-up is not tagged: the canonical form is single-player, so there is no trailing player to compensate, and the softening of failure is recorded as the positive loop. Interaction is solo; campaign board forms are cooperative but the persistence layer itself does not depend on other players.", "effects": [ "grind", "mastery", "ownership", "replayability" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Fushigi no Dungeon: Fūrai no Shiren DS", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Chunsoft (Sega)", "note": "An antecedent. When Shiren falls, his level, raised statistics, and carried items are lost, but items deposited in the warehouse survive for later runs; the stored items are consumed or lost once taken into a run, so nothing is permanently expanded. A remake of the 1995 Super Famicom game, which very likely had the same warehouse, though the 2006 review does not describe the original.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Spelunky", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Derek Yu", "note": "Paying the Tunnel Man across several runs opens shortcuts to later worlds, the one element that persists through otherwise total resets. He was in the public beta by 29 December 2008, and version 1.0 followed on 1 September 2009; the released source of version 1.1 saves the outstanding price in the persistent high-score file, so payments carry between games.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Binding of Isaac", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl", "note": "Completing runs and challenges adds items and characters to the pool, so unlocks widen what future runs can contain rather than raising the starting power.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Rogue Legacy", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Cellar Door Games", "note": "Gold carried out of a failed run buys permanent manor upgrades (health, classes, equipment) for the next heir; runs are framed as generations of a family.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Kingdom Death: Monster", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Adam Poots", "note": "Survivors die permanently, but the settlement's innovations, gear, and principles persist, so the settlement is the meta-progression layer above individual permadeath.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hades", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Supergiant Games", "note": "Early access 2018. Darkness and other currencies are spent between attempts at the Mirror of Night and on keepsakes, and the narrative advances on every death.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Spelunky", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "The earliest documented case is Spelunky's Tunnel Man in the released game of 2009 (version 1.0 on 1 September 2009, by the developer's changelog): money paid to him across runs is kept in the game's persistent high-score file, as the released source of version 1.1 shows, and each completed payment permanently opens a shortcut for later runs. The Tunnel Man was in the public beta by December 2008, but that the beta kept payments between games is unconfirmed. The earlier warehouse of the Mystery Dungeon games, whose stored items survive a death that resets level and possessions, is an antecedent, described in a 2006 review of the Shiren the Wanderer DS remake and probably present in the 1995 original; the items are a consumable stock rather than a permanent expansion. Torneko no Daibōken (1993) is a disputed earlier candidate, since sources disagree on whether anything survives a run. Confidence is low because earlier games are plausible. The Binding of Isaac (2011) unlocked items into the pool. Rogue Legacy (2013) is the usual reference as populariser, an editorial judgement without a cited source, and arcade and action games had unlockables well before the roguelike framing." }, "established": { "title": "Rogue Legacy", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Rogue Legacy made banked currency spent on permanent upgrades between runs its central pitch and is the usual reference as the populariser of the structure, though no cited source states it." }, "sources": [ { "key": "kingdom-death-monster-rulebook-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Kingdom Death: Monster rulebook", "author": "Adam Poots", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Settlement Phase", "note": "Persistent settlement development alongside permanent survivor death." }, { "key": "the-berlin-interpretation-definition-of-roguelike-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "The Berlin Interpretation (definition of roguelike)", "author": "International Roguelike Development Conference", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The strict definition against which meta-progression marks the \"rogue-lite\" departure." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Roguelike (section on roguelike-likes and rogue-lites)", "note": null }, { "key": "ds-2006", "canonical": false, "title": "DSになって至れり尽くせりな『シレン』", "author": "Hirata Hiroshi (Impress Game Watch)", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20061215/siren.htm", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "In Japanese. Review of the DS remake; on falling, level, stats, and carried items are lost, while items left in the warehouse are never lost." }, { "key": "spelunky-changelog-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Spelunky changelog", "author": "Derek Yu (Mossmouth forums)", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20090905063745/http://mossmouth.com:80/forums/index.php?topic=4.0", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "First public release 0.96.1 on 21 December 2008; a fix to the Tunnel Man's greeting in 0.98 on 29 December 2008; version 1.0 on 1 September 2009." }, { "key": "spelunky-1-1-source-code-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Spelunky 1.1 source code", "author": "Derek Yu (Mossmouth)", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://github.com/gondur/spelunky-classic-1.1", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": "spelunky.gmk, Tunnel Man scripts (highscore_add \"TUNNEL1\" and \"TUNNEL2\"; global.tunnel1 and global.tunnel2)", "note": "Released under the Spelunky User License; the outstanding shortcut prices are stored in the high-score file and reloaded at the start of each game, and donations reduce them." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 571, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/roguelike-meta-progression" }, { "id": "role-selection", "name": "Role Selection", "status": "verified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "Players in turn take one role from a shared, visible set; the chooser performs its action with a privilege, the others may then perform it too, and a taken role is closed to later choosers for the round.", "aliases": [ "role choice", "lead and follow", "follow actions" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "simultaneous-action-selection", "drafting", "variable-player-powers", "worker-placement" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Puerto Rico (2002): starting with the governor, each player takes one of the face-up roles, every player then carries out that role's phase beginning with the chooser, who alone receives its privilege (the prospector has no phase for the others), and each role left untaken at the end of the round gains a doubloon. Category is time-and-action-structure, which departs from the default tie-break order: interaction-and-exchange is asked first and was the losing family, since the picks are a draft from a shared set, but a role is returned at the end of the round and its function is to decide which phases occur and in what order. Agency is medium because the choice is one among a handful of roles; high was the losing value. Interaction is indirect because a pick denies a role and hands its phase to everyone without targeting anyone; direct was the losing value, fitting Citadels, whose Assassin and Thief strike a named character. Complexity is medium for the privilege, the follow rule, and the bonus on untaken roles. Information is perfect; asymmetric was the losing value, fitting the face-down picks of Verräter and Citadels. Feedback loop is none; negative was the losing value, since every role a leader takes also serves the other players. Decision density is low because the mechanic's own decision is which role to take, the choices inside each phase belonging to the actions; medium was the losing value for lead-and-follow forms, where each follower also decides whether to pay to follow. Agency stays medium after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; high was the losing value.", "effects": [ "planning", "fear-of-missing-out", "kingmaking" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Verräter", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Marcel-André Casasola Merkle", "note": "One of six action cards is removed unseen, then each player in turn keeps one face down and passes the rest left, and only the holder acts on it; Bruno Faidutti credits it as the model for Citadels' character selection. An antecedent, since picks are hidden and no one follows.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Citadels", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Bruno Faidutti", "note": "The character deck passes round the table and each player secretly keeps one card; characters then act in number order, and the Assassin and Thief strike a character rather than a player. An antecedent, since picks are hidden and only the holder acts.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Puerto Rico", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Andreas Seyfarth", "note": "Starting with the governor, players take face-up roles in turn; each role's phase is carried out by every player from the chooser onward (except the prospector's), the chooser alone takes the privilege, and untaken roles gain a doubloon. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "San Juan", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Andreas Seyfarth", "note": "The card-game adaptation of Puerto Rico keeps the chooser's privilege and the follow phase, again except for the prospector, with cards serving as buildings, goods, and currency.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Glory to Rome", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Carl Chudyk with Ed Carter", "note": "The leader plays a role card from hand, and each other player either follows by playing a card of the same role, or a Jack, to take the action, or thinks and draws cards instead, so following has a price.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Twilight Imperium (third edition)", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Christian T. Petersen (Fantasy Flight Games)", "note": "Players pick numbered strategy cards in turn, and untaken cards gain bonus counters; when the holder takes the card's strategic action, the others may spend a command counter for its secondary ability, and the card's number sets turn order.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Dane Beltrami, Corey Konieczka, and Christian T. Petersen", "note": "Each round players, starting with the speaker, take strategy cards from a shared row; when the holder uses a card's primary ability, each other player may resolve its secondary ability, usually by spending a command token, and the card is then exhausted for the round.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Puerto Rico", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Puerto Rico (2002) is the oldest game that can be named with every element of the Definition: open roles taken in turn, a phase every player performs from the chooser onward, a privilege for the chooser alone, and a role closed once taken. Christian T. Petersen's designer notes for Twilight Imperium (third edition) describe it as merging the dynamic phases of Verräter (1998) and Citadels (2000), the open choice of action cards in El Grande (1995), and the growing value of unchosen options in Vinci (1999). Verräter and Citadels are antecedents, with hidden picks and no follow; Bruno Faidutti states that Citadels' draft was borrowed directly from Verräter. Twilight Imperium's first two editions (1997, 2000) and other games of 1998 to 2001 remain unsurveyed." }, "established": { "title": "Puerto Rico", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Puerto Rico combined open roles, follow phases and a chooser's privilege into the form later games use; Christian T. Petersen's designer notes for Twilight Imperium (third edition) trace the lineage through it, and San Juan carried the structure into a card game." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Turn Order and Structure chapter", "note": "Role-driven turn order and the follow structure in which other players take the leader's action." }, { "key": "puerto-rico-rulebook-2002", "canonical": false, "title": "Puerto Rico rulebook", "author": "Andreas Seyfarth", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20200529131320/https://www.riograndegames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Puerto-Rico-Rules.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Rio Grande's English rules (Wayback snapshot), not the 2002 alea text. Privilege, follow with the prospector exception, closure of taken roles, and doubloons on untaken roles; used for the property coding." }, { "key": "verr-ter-rules-1998", "canonical": false, "title": "Verräter rules", "author": "Marcel-André Casasola Merkle", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20001020184306/http://www.casasola.de:80/spiele/verraeter/regeln.htm", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "Phase 2: Aktionen aussuchen", "note": "In German; the official rules as transcribed on the designer's site (Wayback snapshot, 2000). Six action cards drafted face down by passing to the left, each acted on by its holder alone." }, { "key": "le-tra-tre-le-regard-neuf-et-le-bouillon-de-culture-the-traitor-the-fresh-look-and-the-petri-dish-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Le traître, le regard neuf et le bouillon de culture / The Traitor, the Fresh Look and the Petri Dish", "author": "Bruno Faidutti", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://faidutti.com/blog/blog/2016/03/19/le-traitre-le-regard-neuf-et-le-bouillon-de-culturethe-traitor-the-fresh-look-and-the-petri-dish/", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Faidutti states that Citadels' character selection was directly borrowed from Verräter (1998)." }, { "key": "twilight-imperium-rulebook-third-edition-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "Twilight Imperium rulebook (third edition)", "author": "Christian T. Petersen", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/14/68/14684746-8906-4b9c-b060-1dee7f62de47/ti3rules.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "Designer notes, pp. 40–41", "note": "Petersen's lineage from Verräter and Citadels, with El Grande and Vinci, to Puerto Rico; the main rules give strategy-card picks, secondary abilities, and bonus counters." }, { "key": "citadels-rulebook-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Citadels rulebook", "author": "Bruno Faidutti", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Hidden character selection and number-ordered resolution." }, { "key": "glory-to-rome-rulebook-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "Glory to Rome rulebook", "author": "Carl Chudyk with Ed Carter", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The lead-and-follow variation, in which following costs a matching card." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Follow; Variable Phase Order", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 8, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 507, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/role-selection" }, { "id": "roll-and-move", "name": "Roll and Move", "status": "verified", "category": "chance-and-risk", "definition": "A die roll or spin determines how far a piece moves along a track, and the space it lands on determines what happens, so the randomiser rather than the player sets the piece's position each turn.", "aliases": [ "spin and move", "roll to move", "dice movement", "track movement", "roll-and-move" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "race-to-the-finish", "grid-movement", "piece-capture", "doubling-cube", "push-your-luck" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "variable", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the single-token track form (Game of the Goose, Monopoly), checked against backgammon. Category contested: chance-and-risk over space-and-position, because the randomiser is the identity of the mechanic and the track merely indexes its result; space was the losing family. Randomness is output because in the canonical form the roll is the move and nothing is decided between them; input was the losing value and applies to backgammon and Ludo, where the roll is allocated among pieces, which also raise agency and decision density to medium. Interaction is indirect because players meet only through shared spaces; direct was the losing value for games that send a landed-on piece home. Pacing is variable because the average roll against track length, and any send-back spaces, set the rate of play.", "effects": [ "volatility", "frustration-risk", "downtime" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Royal Game of Ur", "year": -2600, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Four tetrahedral dice with marked corners give a move of zero to four along a shared track; the dice are part of the archaeological find, so the roll-driven movement is attested even where the rules are reconstructed. Boards date from about 2600 BCE.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Game of the Goose", "year": 1580, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "A sixty-three-space spiral with hazard and bonus spaces, documented from late-16th-century Italy. One token, no choices: the mechanic in its purest form, which made the game a wagering frame and the template for printed track games.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Backgammon", "year": 1650, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Two dice rolled before the move are allocated among fifteen pieces, so the roll constrains rather than dictates; this is the choice-bearing end of the family and the reason the entry is coded from the single-token form instead.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Monopoly", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Charles Darrow (Parker Brothers)", "note": "Two dice move a single token around a loop of properties, with doubles granting another roll and three doubles sending the token to jail; the decisions lie in what to do on arrival, not in the move.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mario Party", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Hudson Soft (Nintendo)", "note": "A digital board game whose turns are a dice block roll followed by forced movement to a space whose colour or event triggers an effect; branch points on the board are the only movement decision.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Monopoly Go!", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Scopely", "note": "Each roll of the dice moves the player's token around a Monopoly-style board and the tile it lands on pays out money or triggers events such as heists and take-downs; daily rolls are limited and extra rolls can be bought.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Senet", "year": -3000, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Senet is attested in Egypt from the First Dynasty, about 3100 to 2900 BCE, and its pieces moved along a track by throws of casting sticks, so dice-driven track movement is at least that old. The Royal Game of Ur (about 2600 BCE) is the oldest game with surviving dice and the best-reconstructed rules. Rules for both are reconstructions, so the credit is for the form. The Game of the Goose (late 16th century) is the earliest fully documented single-token roll-and-move game and the direct ancestor of the commercial track game." }, "established": { "title": "Game of the Goose", "year": 1580, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The Game of the Goose established the printed single-token track with hazard and bonus spaces, and served as the template and direct ancestor of the commercial track games that followed." }, "sources": [ { "key": "parlett-1999", "canonical": true, "title": "The Oxford History of Board Games", "author": "David Parlett", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Race games chapters (tables family and the Game of the Goose)", "note": "History of dice-driven race games and the goose family." }, { "key": "murray-1952", "canonical": true, "title": "A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess", "author": "H. J. R. Murray", "year": 1952, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Clarendon Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter on race games", "note": "Dice, throwing sticks, and tetrahedral lots in early race games." }, { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Movement chapter", "note": "Definition and the distinction from allocated movement." }, { "key": "monopoly-rules-1935", "canonical": false, "title": "Monopoly rules", "author": "Parker Brothers", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Canonical commercial form, including the doubles rule." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Roll / Spin and Move", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 522, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/roll-and-move" }, { "id": "roll-and-write", "name": "Roll and Write", "status": "verified", "category": "puzzle-and-pattern", "definition": "Dice are rolled, in modern designs usually once for the whole table, and each player records results on a personal score sheet, choosing where each is written under constraints that make later placements harder.", "aliases": [ "roll-and-write", "flip and write", "paper-and-pencil" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "dice-pool", "push-your-luck", "tile-placement", "set-collection" ], "referenced_by": [ "constraint-logic-puzzles", "dice-placement" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the shared-roll form that Qwixx made standard for the modern genre, with Yahtzee as the provenance. Randomness is input because the roll precedes the allocation; both was the losing value and fits Yahtzee, whose keep-and-reroll stage adds an output step before writing. Interaction is solo because the sheet operates identically regardless of other players; indirect was the losing value, since Qwixx lets any player's row-lock close that row for everyone, which is treated as a variation. Agency is medium (one constrained placement choice); modern sheets such as Ganz schön clever approach high.", "effects": [ "planning", "flow", "mastery", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Yahtzee", "year": 1956, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "E. S. Lowe Company", "note": "Five dice may be rolled up to three times, then the total is written into one of thirteen scoring boxes; each box can be used once, so a poor roll must eventually be written somewhere.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Qwixx", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Steffen Benndorf", "note": "Every player may use the white dice sum on each roll, so turns are nearly simultaneous; numbers must be crossed off left to right, so each mark forfeits the numbers skipped.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Welcome To...", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Benoit Turpin", "note": "Flip-and-write variant: cards replace dice and house numbers must be written in ascending order along three streets, turning the sheet into a sequencing puzzle.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cartographers", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jordy Adan", "note": "Flipped cards dictate polyomino shapes that are drawn onto a personal map grid, so the record is spatial and the mechanic borders on tile placement.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ganz schön clever", "year": 2019, "year_approx": true, "medium": "video", "creator": "Brettspielwelt", "note": "Digital adaptation of the 2018 board game. Each coloured die written to a track triggers chains of bonus marks on other tracks, and the app automates the chain resolution that slows the paper version.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Welcome to the Moon", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Alexis Allard and Benoit Turpin (Blue Cocker Games)", "note": "Flip-and-write: three card stacks are turned to offer three number-and-action pairs to the whole table, and each player writes one number into a zone of their own adventure sheet in ascending order, across eight sheets that each change the writing rules.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Yahtzee", "year": 1956, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Yahtzee is the usual citation as the earliest widely documented game in which rolled dice are scored by writing into a constrained grid, but it derives from Yacht and Generala, folk dice games of uncertain date. The genre label \"roll and write\" dates from hobby discussion in the 2010s, after Qwixx and its successors." }, "established": { "title": "Qwixx", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Qwixx made the shared table roll and the constrained personal sheet the whole game, the form the modern genre is usually traced to and that Ganz schön clever, Welcome To... and Cartographers followed." }, "sources": [ { "key": "yahtzee-rules-1956", "canonical": false, "title": "Yahtzee rules", "author": "E. S. Lowe Company", "year": 1956, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Score card and scoring categories", "note": "Canonical one-use scoring-box procedure." }, { "key": "qwixx-rulebook-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Qwixx rulebook", "author": "Steffen Benndorf", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Marking numbers and locking rows", "note": "The left-to-right constraint and simultaneous use of the white dice." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Paper-and-Pencil", "note": null }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Yahtzee", "note": "Lineage from Yacht and Generala." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 511, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/roll-and-write" }, { "id": "rondel", "name": "Rondel", "status": "verified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "Each player's marker moves forward around a fixed circle of action spaces and takes the action where it stops; a few steps are free and further steps cost, so the current position limits which actions are reachable next.", "aliases": [ "action wheel" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "worker-placement", "action-points", "sowing", "initiative-order" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Antike (2005), where each nation's marker moves clockwise round a shared rondel of eight fields, up to three fields free and one resource or coin for each further field, and the field reached gives the turn's rondel action. Category is time-and-action-structure, which follows the default tie-break order; space-and-position was the losing family, since a place on a circle is the state that matters, but the circle exists to ration and sequence actions rather than to represent space. Agency is medium because the reachable spaces form a small set; high was the losing value, for rondels with cheap long moves. Interaction is solo because markers in Antike neither block nor displace one another, and Navegador's rules state that stones on one field do not affect each other; indirect was the losing value, fitting Imperial, where a nation's marker is moved by whichever investor controls it at the time. Complexity is low for free steps plus a price per extra step; medium was the losing value for Trajan's sown rondel. Decision density is low because the typical turn is coded as a free move of one to three fields, whose one decision is how far to go. A paid move adds a second decision created by the rondel's own cost rule, since Antike lets the player pay with any resource or a coin; medium was the losing value, fitting play in which paid moves are routine.", "effects": [ "planning", "consequence-weight" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Antike", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Mac Gerdts", "note": "Each nation's marker moves clockwise round a shared rondel of eight fields, up to three free and one resource or coin for each further field, and the field reached gives the turn's rondel action, such as producing a resource or manoeuvring; cities may then be founded. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Imperial", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Mac Gerdts", "note": "Each nation, not each player, has a marker on the rondel, moved by the investor who leads that nation's government, with three spaces free, 2 million for each further space, and six at most, so a rondel position passes between players as bond holdings change.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hamburgum", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Mac Gerdts", "note": "An eight-field rondel with trade on two fields; one to three fields are free and each further field costs a prestige point.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Navegador", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Mac Gerdts", "note": "A shared rondel with market on two fields drives sailing, colonies, buildings, and market actions; each step past the three free ones is paid with one of the player's ships.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Trajan", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Stefan Feld", "note": "Each player's personal rondel is a ring of six bowls; sowing the markers of one bowl around the ring sets the action by the bowl that receives the last marker, so the distance moved comes from counts the player has arranged.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Simone Luciani and Daniele Tascini", "note": "Workers placed on five gears are carried forward as a central gear turns each round, and a worker's action improves the longer it rides; the wheel moves under the pieces, a hybrid with worker placement.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Viscounts of the West Kingdom", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Shem Phillips and S J Macdonald (Garphill Games)", "note": "Each turn a player's viscount moves clockwise around the circular board exactly the Silver value of the card played, or further at one Silver per extra space; where it stops decides the action, with trading and building on the outer path and placing workers or transcribing manuscripts on the inner one.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Antike", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to published designs. Mac Gerdts's Antike (2005) is the oldest published rondel that can be named: a nation's marker moves clockwise round eight action fields, up to three free and one resource or coin for each further field. Gerdts dates the rondel to his unpublished first prototype of Imperial, drawn in winter 1983/84, a designer's recollection that no published copy documents. Roll-and-move loops such as Monopoly's, in which dice set the distance, are not instances. Gerdts built Imperial (2006), Hamburgum (2007), and Navegador (2010) on the same structure, and his rules named it (\"Rondell\" in German, \"rondel\" in English). The 2005 first-edition rules text is not cited, so confidence is medium rather than high." }, "established": { "title": "Antike", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Antike set the form of free steps and a price per extra step around a circle of action fields; Mac Gerdts built Imperial, Hamburgum and Navegador on it, and through those games rondel became the hobby label." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Actions chapter", "note": "Reported to treat the rondel as an action-selection structure; no section is cited." }, { "key": "twenty-questions-with-mac-gerdts", "canonical": false, "title": "Twenty Questions with Mac Gerdts", "author": "Matt Thrower", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "interview", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20201108002337/https://therewillbe.games/articles-interviews/3245-twenty-questions-with-mac-gerdts", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "There Will Be Games, Wayback snapshot. Gerdts says the rondel was present in Imperial's first prototype, drawn in winter 1983/84. The page carries no date; internal references place it around 2012." }, { "key": "antike-rulebook-2009-revision-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Antike rulebook (2009 revision)", "author": "Mac Gerdts", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20130829075559/http://www.pd-verlag.de:80/spiele/antike/Regel_de_06_08_09.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "Auf dem Rondell vorrücken", "note": "In German; PD-Verlag's 2009 revision of the 2005 rules, whose first-edition text is not cited. Eight fields, one to three free, any resource or a coin for each further field, and city founding after the rondel step; used for the property coding." }, { "key": "imperial-rulebook-2016-edition-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Imperial rulebook (2016 edition)", "author": "Mac Gerdts", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20180413050339/http://www.pd-verlag.de:80/WebRoot/Store/Shops/es719366/MediaGallery/Spielregeln/Imperial/Rules_engl_2016_b_k.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "PD-Verlag's 2016 English edition, which reprints the 2006 designer note. Nation markers moved by the leader of the government, 2 million per extra space, six spaces at most." }, { "key": "hamburgum-rulebook-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Hamburgum rulebook", "author": "Mac Gerdts", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20130829015724/http://www.pd-verlag.de:80/spiele/hamburgum/pdf/rules_hamburgum.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "English rules, which use \"rondel\" as a known term after Antike and Imperial; trade on two fields and prestige points for extra steps." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Rondel", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 507, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/rondel" }, { "id": "sanity", "name": "Sanity", "status": "unverified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "A separate track for a character's mental stability drains as the character witnesses horror or strain, usually through a roll, and falling past thresholds brings madness, breakdown, or removal from play short of death.", "aliases": [ "sanity points", "horror checks", "fear checks", "stress tracks" ], "parent": "hit-points", "children": [], "related": [ "status-effects", "needs-and-moods", "saving-throws", "morale-and-rout" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "high", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 2, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Call of Cthulhu (1981) as its sanity rules stand in the classic editions: a percentile roll against current Sanity, a pair of loss values per horror, thresholds for temporary and longer insanity, and a maximum lowered by Mythos knowledge. Category is resource-management, as for the parent; action-resolution was the losing family, since the Sanity roll is a test, but the identity of the mechanic is the depleting pool and what its thresholds do, not how the roll is adjudicated. Agency is low because the roll is called by events and its outcome is fixed by chance and prior state; medium was the losing value, since the player chooses whether to look or to read a forbidden book, but those choices belong to the surrounding play. Randomness is output because the roll and the loss dice follow the encounter; none, as coded for hit points, was the losing value, rejected because here the roll belongs to the mechanic itself. Interaction is solo because the track works the same whoever presents the horror; direct was the losing value, since the Keeper is a human who stages it. Complexity is high because several thresholds interact with the loss values and the lowered maximum; medium was the losing value for board-game tracks with a single zero point. Pacing accelerates because losses are slow to restore and the track ends investigators' careers; neutral was the losing value. Feedback loop is positive because each loss lowers the number the next roll must beat; none was the losing value for fixed-loss tracks. Information is perfect because Sanity is on the player's sheet; asymmetric was the losing value for tables where the Keeper tracks it or hides loss values in advance.", "effects": [ "tension", "consequence-weight", "volatility", "frustration-risk", "emergent-narrative" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Call of Cthulhu", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Sandy Petersen", "note": "Investigators roll percentile dice against current Sanity when they meet the horrific, losing the smaller of two listed amounts on a success and the larger on a failure; a large single loss brings temporary insanity and zero ends the character as an investigator. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Arkham Horror", "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Launius, Lynn Willis, and Charlie Krank", "note": "Each investigator keeps Sanity and Strength as separate tracks, marked with paperclips, so the board game carries over the role-playing game's split between harm to the mind and harm to the body.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Silicon Knights", "note": "A sanity meter drains when monsters see the character and is restored by finishing downed enemies and by spells; as it falls the game stages hallucinations, including false system messages such as an apparent deletion of saved games.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Arkham Horror (second edition)", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Launius and Kevin Wilson", "note": "A horror check, a Will check modified by a monster's horror rating, costs Sanity on failure; an investigator reduced to zero in Arkham is sent to the asylum, loses half of their items and clues and all retainers, and returns with 1 Sanity instead of dying.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Darkest Dungeon", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Red Hook Studios", "note": "Each hero carries a stress meter beside hit points; at the midpoint a resolve test usually yields an affliction, such as paranoia, that takes some actions out of the player's control, occasionally a virtue. A full meter gives a hero without a virtue a heart attack, while a virtuous hero loses the virtue and returns to zero.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Phasmophobia", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Kinetic Games", "note": "Each investigator's sanity falls over time in the dark and faster during ghost events; the lower the team's average, the more often the ghost acts and, past a threshold, hunts to kill, while pills, light, and firelight restore or slow the drain.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Call of Cthulhu", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Call of Cthulhu, designed by Sandy Petersen for Chaosium, is the standard credit for a sanity pool that drains through rolls and ends a character short of death, and the term sanity points is tied to it. Earlier role-playing games imposed madness as a state after a failed save, with no pool. The AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (1979) has permanent, temporary, and mild insanity brought on by mental attack or curse, and the Cthulhu Mythos section of Deities & Demigods (1980) has visitors to R'lyeh save against fear and insanity and gives casters of greater summonings a 30 percent chance of going insane. No earlier mental attrition track is cited, though one in the small-press games of the late 1970s cannot be ruled out. Ravenloft (1990) added fear and horror checks to Dungeons & Dragons without a pool, and the term stress spread through Darkest Dungeon (2016) and Blades in the Dark (2017)." }, "established": { "title": "Call of Cthulhu", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Call of Cthulhu is the standard credit for the sanity pool and the term sanity points; Arkham Horror carried its split between harm to the mind and harm to the body onto the board." }, "sources": [ { "key": "call-of-cthulhu-1981", "canonical": false, "title": "Call of Cthulhu", "author": "Sandy Petersen", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Chaosium", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Sanity points, Sanity rolls, paired loss values, insanity thresholds, and a maximum lowered by Cthulhu Mythos knowledge." }, { "key": "call-of-cthulhu-third-edition-1986", "canonical": false, "title": "Call of Cthulhu, third edition", "author": "Sandy Petersen", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Chaosium", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The maximum of 99 minus Cthulhu Mythos knowledge, the Idea roll after a loss of 5 or more points, indefinite insanity on losing a fifth of current Sanity within one hour, and zero Sanity making the character a non-player character; the copyright page dates the material to 1981 and 1983." }, { "key": "advanced-dungeons-dragons-dungeon-masters-guide-1979", "canonical": false, "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide", "author": "Gary Gygax", "year": 1979, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "TSR", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Insanity", "note": "Permanent, temporary, and mild insanity as applied states with durations, with no pool." }, { "key": "deities-demigods-1980", "canonical": false, "title": "Deities & Demigods", "author": "James M. Ward with Robert J. Kuntz", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "TSR", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Cthulhu Mythos", "note": "Saving throws against fear and insanity in R'lyeh and a chance of madness for casters of greater summonings, with no pool." }, { "key": "appelcline-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry", "author": "Shannon Appelcline", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Volume on the 1970s, Chaosium chapter", "note": "Publication history of Call of Cthulhu." }, { "key": "arkham-horror-second-edition-rulebook-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "Arkham Horror (second edition) rulebook", "author": "Richard Launius and Kevin Wilson", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Fantasy Flight Games", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Horror checks, the Sanity track, and the asylum on reaching zero." }, { "key": "sanity-system-for-video-game-us-patent-6-935-954-b2-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "Sanity system for video game (US Patent 6,935,954 B2)", "author": "Henry C. Sterchi, Edward A. Ridgeway, and Denis P. Dyack (Nintendo of America)", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US6935954B2/en", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Priority date 2000-02-24; sanity falls on encountering creatures or gruesome situations, mind aids restore it, and low sanity brings impaired control, hallucinations, and audio distortion." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)", "note": "Edition history and Sanity Points in outline." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 8, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 498, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/sanity" }, { "id": "saving-throws", "name": "Saving Throws", "status": "verified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "A defensive roll made by the target of a harmful effect after the effect is triggered; success negates or reduces the effect, failure lets it apply in full.", "aliases": [ "saves", "resistance rolls" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hit-points", "advantage-disadvantage", "degrees-of-success", "dice-pool" ], "referenced_by": [ "critical-hits", "opposed-rolls", "sanity", "status-effects", "target-numbers" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Dungeons & Dragons (1974). Interaction is solo because the procedure is the same whether the hazard comes from a trap or a rival; the targeting belongs to the attack that triggers it, and direct was the losing value. Complexity is medium because the original form is read from a single class-by-level table across five categories; the 5th edition ability-based form would code low. Information is perfect because the 1974 target numbers are printed in the player-facing rules; difficulty-class forms from 3rd edition onward keep the target on the referee's side and would code asymmetric. Category is action-resolution rather than chance-and-risk because the identity of the mechanic is who rolls and what success means, not the die. Pacing stays neutral after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; decelerates was the losing value.", "effects": [ "frustration-risk", "volatility", "consequence-weight" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Five categories (death ray or poison, wands, stone, dragon breath, staves and spells), each with a target on a twenty-sided die read from a table by class and level. Success typically halves breath damage and negates other effects.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pool of Radiance", "year": 1988, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Strategic Simulations, Inc.", "note": "Implements the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons tables invisibly; the player sees only whether a spell took hold, which removes the roll as a visible event.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Collapses the categories to Fortitude, Reflex, and Will, and replaces tables with a roll plus bonus against a difficulty class set by the effect's source.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pillars of Eternity", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Obsidian Entertainment", "note": "Inverts the save into four static defences that the attacker rolls against, so the defender's value still decides the outcome but the die moves to the active party.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 2024 edition", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "The revised rules keep the six ability saving throws as one of three kinds of D20 Test, made when a character or monster is at risk and compared with a DC set by the effect or the Game Master.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "high", "note": "The five-category table is documented in the 1974 rules. Peterson traces the idea of a roll to survive an otherwise decisive effect to Chainmail's fantasy rules and to earlier wargame conventions for avoiding a hit, so the structure predates the name." }, "established": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "high", "note": "Dungeons & Dragons gave the defender's roll its name and its category table, which Peterson traces as the 1974 formalisation; later editions and computer adaptations from the Gold Box series onward reproduced it." }, "sources": [ { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 3, on Chainmail's magic rules and the saving throw", "note": "Antecedents and the 1974 formalisation." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-volume-1-men-magic-1974", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 1 (Men & Magic)", "author": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Saving throw matrix by class and level." }, { "key": "player-s-handbook-5th-edition-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Player's Handbook, 5th edition", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Chapter 7 (Using Ability Scores), Saving Throws; the ability-based reform." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 486, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/saving-throws" }, { "id": "scene-framing", "name": "Scene Framing", "status": "verified", "category": "narrative-and-choice", "definition": "Play is organised into scenes that a designated participant opens by stating where and when the scene is, who is present, and what is at stake, and closes by cutting away once the stake is resolved.", "aliases": [ "framing scenes", "aggressive scene framing", "scene economy", "cutting to the action", "hard framing" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "gm-moves", "flashbacks", "shared-narration", "downtime-phases", "referee-adjudication" ], "referenced_by": [ "player-authored-goals" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Primetime Adventures (2004), where the player who calls a scene names its agenda, location, and participants, and from the viewpoint of that framing participant. Agency is high because the framer authors the situation from an open space. Interaction is indirect because the frame sets the shared situation in which the other players then act, without a targeted effect on any of them; cooperative was the losing value, set aside because the procedure has no intrinsic shared goal and works the same when characters are at odds, as in Fiasco. Complexity is low because the procedure is a sentence. Pacing is accelerates because framing cuts transitions and the scene budget of the canonical game forces endings. Decision density is medium because one framing decision has several components. Category was not seriously contested; the mechanic structures story time rather than resolving actions, which is the boundary with referee adjudication.", "effects": [ "emergent-narrative", "flow", "ownership", "downtime", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Sorcerer", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Ron Edwards (Adept Press)", "note": "The text and its supplements instruct the facilitator to open scenes at the moment of pressure and to cut when the point is made, the practice the Forge community discussed as aggressive scene framing. Print edition 2001 after a 1996 electronic edition.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Primetime Adventures", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Matt Wilson (Dog-Eared Designs)", "note": "A player requests a scene and sets its agenda, plot or character, its location, and who is present; each character's screen presence for the episode rations how much the scene can centre on them.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fiasco", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Jason Morningstar (Bully Pulpit Games)", "note": "On each turn the active player either establishes the scene and lets the others decide its outcome, or lets the others establish it and keeps the outcome, so framing and resolution are traded as rights.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Blades in the Dark", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "John Harper", "note": "A score opens with an engagement roll and the instruction to cut to the action, skipping the planning phase; flashbacks then supply what the hard frame left out.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Sorcerer", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to scene framing as a named practice, which comes from Ron Edwards's Sorcerer (print 2001, after a 1996 electronic edition), its supplements, and the Forge discourse of 2001 to 2004; Primetime Adventures (2004) is an early, widely played game that gives the frame a formal procedure and budget. Storytelling-oriented texts of the 1990s such as Theatrix (1993) already organised play by scenes in imitation of film, so the practice predates the term; confidence is medium." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "primetime-adventures-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "Primetime Adventures", "author": "Matt Wilson", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Scenes; agenda, location, and screen presence", "note": "Canonical framing procedure used for the property coding." }, { "key": "fiasco-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Fiasco", "author": "Jason Morningstar", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Scenes; establish or resolve", "note": "Framing and resolution traded as separate rights." }, { "key": "sorcerer-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "Sorcerer", "author": "Ron Edwards", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Running the game; scenes and cuts", "note": "Provenance for the named practice." }, { "key": "appelcline-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry", "author": "Shannon Appelcline", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Adept Press; the Forge and the independent movement", "note": "History of the community in which the term spread." } ], "n_examples": 4, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 523, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/scene-framing" }, { "id": "seasonal-leagues", "name": "Seasonal Leagues", "status": "unverified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "A live game periodically opens a temporary parallel realm in which all players start new characters in an empty economy under new rules or content; when it ends, characters and items move to a permanent realm and a new season begins", "aliases": [ "challenge leagues", "temporary leagues", "ladder seasons", "seasonal realms", "league resets" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "appointment-mechanics", "prestige-resets", "rating-and-matchmaking", "roguelike-meta-progression", "permadeath", "markets" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "negative", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the Path of Exile challenge league and the Diablo II ladder season after patch 1.10, where a character chosen into the season's realm plays and trades only inside it until the season ends and it moves to the permanent realm. Category is time-and-action-structure because the mechanic partitions play into scheduled seasons; interaction-and-exchange is the nearest rival, since the fresh shared economy is what players enter the season for, and progression-and-capability is also in tension, since the reset governs what a character keeps. Agency is low because the reset, its date and its rules are imposed on everyone by the developer and the player chooses only whether and where to create a character; medium was the losing value. Randomness is none: loot and generated maps inside a league belong to the host game. Interaction is indirect because participants affect each other through the prices and supply of a shared economy entered at the same moment, not by targeting; Solo Self-Found variants remove that coupling. Complexity is medium: a separate character type, no cross-realm play, exclusive content, and migration at the end. Pacing is accelerates because a hard end date forces an ending for everyone at the scale of months; neutral was the losing value, since the mechanic has no effect within a session and the return to level 1 slows long-run progress. Information is perfect: rules and dates are announced publicly, and Diablo II's early unannounced end date was unknown to everyone rather than to some. Feedback loop is negative: each season wipes accumulated characters and wealth from the live economy, so earlier success does not carry into the next fresh start; mixed was the losing value, for the compounding of wealth within a season, which belongs to the host game's economy. Decision density is low: which realm, when to start, and whether to keep playing a migrated character are the only choices the mechanic itself creates.", "effects": [ "tension", "replayability", "fear-of-missing-out", "compulsion", "grind" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Diablo II", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard North", "note": "From patch 1.10 ladder characters, chosen at creation, play and trade only with each other in a separate economy for the season, with faster monster AI and ladder-only runewords and uniques. When the season ends every ladder character becomes a normal character, and the next season needs a new one.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Diablo III", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Seasons arrived with patch 2.1.0, and Season 1 began on 29 August 2014. Seasonal heroes start at level 1 without the account's gold, blood shards, shared stash or Paragon levels, with their own leaderboards and a seasonal transmogrification set; the season's exclusive Legendaries enter the normal loot pool when it ends.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "Midway through open beta, Anarchy and Onslaught opened as four-month leagues (June to October 2013) in which players start a new character in a fresh economy, with rogue exiles in Anarchy and faster monsters in the hardcore Onslaught; Domination and Nemesis followed with version 1.0.0 on 23 October 2013.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Last Epoch", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Eleventh Hour Games", "note": "The 1.0 release was the game's first Cycle. When patch 1.1, Harbingers of Ruin, opened a new Cycle in July 2024, all 1.0 Cycle characters moved to the Legacy realm, their stashes became remove-only Legacy stashes, and new characters could be made in either realm.", "latest": true }, { "title": "Path of Exile 2", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "Dawn of the Hunt (0.2.0, 4 April 2025) opened new leagues for players wishing to start in a fresh economy, with content available only there; when they ended on 26 August 2025, characters and items migrated to the permanent Early Access leagues. Major updates are scheduled every four months.", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": "Diablo II", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the ladder season with its own characters, games and economy, which Blizzard's Battle.net guide describes: ladder characters are \"separate from Normal Characters with their own games and economy\" for the season and become normal characters when it ends. It says characters made before the patch cannot be ladder characters, so the type began with that patch, which it names inconsistently (1.10 and 1.11). Reprints of Blizzard's announcement date patch 1.10 to October 2003, a date resting on press summaries, so the year given is the game's release rather than the season's. Diablo II's earlier ladder resets, such as the one of late June 2001 that required a new character to rank, are an antecedent that reset the ranking without a separate economy, as far as the cited pages show. When the pre-1.10 ladder began is unconfirmed, and earlier temporary fresh-world servers in MUDs and online games remain unsurveyed, so confidence is medium." }, "established": { "title": "Diablo II", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Diablo II's ladder seasons from patch 1.10, reportedly of October 2003, gave season characters their own games and economy; Diablo III's seasons were described in press as similar to Diablo II ladders." }, "sources": [ { "key": "realm-character-types-diablo-ii-the-arreat-summit", "canonical": false, "title": "Realm Character Types (Diablo II, The Arreat Summit)", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Blizzard Entertainment", "url": "https://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/basics/charactertypes.shtml", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Ladder Characters; Ladder Games Have Increased Difficulty", "note": "Ladder characters separate from normal characters with their own games and economy for the season, conversion to normal characters at its end, a new character for each season, faster monster AI and ladder-only items." }, { "key": "diablo-ii-ladder-faq", "canonical": false, "title": "Diablo II Ladder FAQ", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Blizzard Entertainment", "url": "https://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/faq/ladder.shtml", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "When will the ladder be reset?", "note": "No official reset date; a reset would be announced on the website." }, { "key": "diablo2-ladder-to-be-reset-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "Diablo2 Ladder To Be Reset", "author": "Maarten Goldstein", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Shacknews", "url": "https://www.shacknews.com/article/13873/diablo2-ladder-to-be-reset", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Standard and Hardcore ladders reset in late June 2001, with a new character needed to place on the new ladder; the ranking-only antecedent." }, { "key": "diablo-iii-v2-1-0-patch-preview-seasons-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Diablo III v2.1.0 Patch Preview: Seasons", "author": "BuckGB", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "GameBanshee", "url": "https://www.gamebanshee.com/kwq88", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Quotes Blizzard on seasonal heroes being completely separate from existing ones and starting from scratch." }, { "key": "diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls-patch-2-1-0-preview-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Diablo III Reaper of Souls Patch 2.1.0 Preview", "author": "Jason Siu", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "FullCleared", "url": "https://fullcleared.com/news/diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls-patch-2-1-0-preview/", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Seasons described as similar to Diablo II ladders; exclusive Legendaries roll into the normal item pool afterwards." }, { "key": "diablo-season-1-launches-friday-august-29-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Diablo Season 1 launches Friday, August 29", "author": "Sarah Pine", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Engadget", "url": "https://www.engadget.com/2014-08-28-diablo-season-1-launches-friday-august-29.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Start date of Diablo III Season 1." }, { "key": "resistance-penalties-and-a-league-to-test-them-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Resistance Penalties (and a league to test them!)", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/51208", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "A one-week hardcore race league in closed beta, from 24 September 2012, to test a rule change." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-open-beta-phase-two-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile Open Beta Phase Two", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Grinding Gear Games", "url": "https://pathofexile.com/public/email/open-beta-phase-two/index.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "New four-month leagues from June 2013, in which players start a new character in a fresh economy." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-release-information-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile Release Information", "author": "Chris Wilson", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Grinding Gear Games", "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/536969", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Domination and Nemesis leagues with version 1.0.0 on 23 October 2013; characters who die in the hardcore Nemesis league convert to Standard." }, { "key": "interview-scrying-the-future-in-path-of-exile-s-prophecy-update-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Interview: Scrying the Future In Path of Exile's Prophecy Update", "author": "Jason Winter", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "interview", "publisher": "MMOBomb", "url": "http://www.mmobomb.com/features/interview-scrying-future-path-exiles-prophecy-update", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Chris Wilson on why leagues restart, including the share of players who like restarting every three months and the use of content beyond the endgame." }, { "key": "reflecting-on-past-releases-part-1-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Reflecting on Past Releases Part 1", "author": "Natalia_GGG", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Grinding Gear Games", "url": "https://pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2287976", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Anarchy and Onslaught as the first pair of challenge leagues, midway through open beta; Torment's mechanic made permanent after its league." }, { "key": "last-epoch-harbingers-of-ruin-patch-notes-2024", "canonical": false, "title": "Last Epoch: Harbingers of Ruin Patch Notes", "author": "Eleventh Hour Games", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Eleventh Hour Games", "url": "https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/last-epoch-harbingers-of-ruin-patch-notes/71790", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Cycle section", "note": "1.0 as the first Cycle and 1.1 as a new one; 1.0 Cycle characters moved to Legacy with remove-only stashes." }, { "key": "dawn-of-the-hunt-faq-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Dawn of the Hunt FAQ", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Grinding Gear Games", "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3739803", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "New Path of Exile 2 leagues for players who wish to start in a fresh economy." }, { "key": "what-happens-when-dawn-of-the-hunt-leagues-end-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "What Happens When Dawn of the Hunt Leagues End", "author": "Natalia_GGG", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Grinding Gear Games", "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3826247", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Characters and items migrate to the Standard or Hardcore Early Access league at the end." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-2-content-update-timeline-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile 2: Content Update Timeline", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Grinding Gear Games", "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3811169", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "The developer's account of a league as a fresh economy with exclusive content whose characters transfer to Standard, and of a four-month update cadence." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 15, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 683, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/seasonal-leagues" }, { "id": "secret-objectives", "name": "Secret Objectives", "status": "verified", "category": "information-and-hidden-state", "definition": "Each player holds privately dealt or chosen goals worth points at game end, so opponents must infer what a player is pursuing from their visible actions while the player decides how much to reveal.", "aliases": [ "hidden objectives", "secret missions", "hidden goals", "destination tickets" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hidden-roles", "set-collection", "deduction", "variable-player-powers" ], "referenced_by": [ "hidden-scoring", "player-authored-goals", "semi-cooperative", "traitor", "victory-points", "voting" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Ticket to Ride's destination tickets. Randomness is input because objectives are dealt before play; Careers, where players write their own formula, would code none. Decision density is medium on the strength of the keep-or-discard choice when drawing tickets; low was the losing value because the held objective itself demands no further decisions. Interaction is indirect because opponents block routes without knowing they are doing so.", "effects": [ "planning", "bluffing", "inference", "tension", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Careers", "year": 1955, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "James Cooke Brown", "note": "Each player secretly writes a success formula dividing sixty points among fame, happiness, and money, and wins by meeting it, so opponents cannot tell which track a player needs.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Paranoia", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Greg Costikyan, Dan Gelber, and Eric Goldberg", "note": "Each Troubleshooter receives a secret society membership and a private mission that usually conflicts with the team's, so the party's shared task is undermined from within.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ticket to Ride", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Alan R. Moon (Days of Wonder)", "note": "Destination tickets name two cities; a completed connection scores the value and an incomplete one subtracts it, and players may draw more tickets during play, keeping at least one.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gloomhaven", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Isaac Childres", "note": "Each scenario deals two battle goals per player, one kept secret, which award progress toward character retirement and may conflict with the party's cooperative aim.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gloomhaven (digital)", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Flaming Fowl Studios", "note": "Retains the battle-goal draw in an otherwise cooperative digital campaign; the interface conceals goals from other seats in multiplayer while automating their scoring.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ark Nova", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Mathias Wigge (Feuerland Spiele)", "note": "Each player draws two Final Scoring cards at setup and must keep them hidden from the other players; when anyone first reaches 10 conservation points, every player discards one face down, and the kept card scores its end-game condition.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Careers", "year": 1955, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Careers is an early widely published game in which each player's win condition is private, and no earlier published instance is documented, although earlier wargame or parlour instances are plausible. Secret-mission variants of Risk and, above all, Ticket to Ride (2004) popularised the dealt-objective form that is coded here." }, "established": { "title": "Ticket to Ride", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Ticket to Ride popularised the dealt-objective form, with destination tickets kept or returned and penalised if unmet, and made it a mass-market standard." }, "sources": [ { "key": "ticket-to-ride-rulebook-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "Ticket to Ride rulebook", "author": "Alan R. Moon", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Destination Tickets", "note": "Canonical rules for drawing, keeping, and scoring secret routes." }, { "key": "gloomhaven-rulebook-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Gloomhaven rulebook", "author": "Isaac Childres", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Battle Goals", "note": "Secret per-scenario goals drawn two and kept one, scored toward character progression inside a cooperative game." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Careers (board game)", "note": "Success-formula rule and 1955 date." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 508, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/secret-objectives" }, { "id": "security-zones", "name": "Security Zones", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "A shared world is divided into areas with graded rules on attacking other players, from areas where any attack is a crime to areas with no rules, and an attack the area forbids flags the attacker for retribution by the system or by players", "aliases": [ "guard zones", "safe zones", "PvP zones", "high-sec and low-sec", "criminal flagging" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "area-control", "reputation-factions", "morality-systems", "full-loot", "death-penalty" ], "referenced_by": [ "player-invasions", "vulnerability-windows" ], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Ultima Online's guarded areas and criminal flag (1997) and EVE Online's security levels with CONCORD retribution (2003). Agency is medium: the attacker makes one choice, to strike or not, against a cost the zone fixes in advance; high was the losing value, counting the open choice of where to travel and whom to prey on. Interaction is direct because the rules govern targeted attacks on a specific human player and license other players to punish the attacker; mixed was the losing value, since the usual enforcer is a system police force and the grade also shapes where players go without targeting anyone. Complexity is medium (a grade per area, a flag with a duration, what the flag permits); high was the losing value, for EVE's 2012 Crimewatch with its suspect, criminal and outlaw states and limited engagements. Pacing is neutral; decelerates was the losing value, on the reading that protected areas stall player conflict. Information is perfect because the grade and the flags are displayed by name colour or security level. Feedback loop is none: a flag punishes an attack, not a success. Decision density is medium (which grade of space to travel through, whether to make the forbidden attack, and whether to take on a flagged player); low was the losing value, counting only the attack. Category tension with spatial families, since the rule attaches to places; interaction-and-exchange stands because the rule governs what players may do to each other.", "effects": [ "consequence-weight", "tension", "planning", "emergent-narrative" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Merc 2.1", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Furey, Hatchet and Kahn", "note": "Antecedent. Attacking another player sets a KILLER flag saved with the character, after which anyone may attack it without being flagged, and guards and executioners shout that it is a killer and attack it. The flag is set wherever the attack happens; the rules do not vary by area.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Meridian 59", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Archetype Interactive", "note": "In the August 1996 user's guide, inns, shops and banks are combat-free zones and only guild members may fight in cities. Elsewhere an attack on an innocent turns the attacker's name orange as an outlaw, and a kill turns it red as a murderer, whom any citizen may kill without penalty and whom the victim's revenant pursues; the Arena is a combat-sanctioned zone with none of these consequences.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ultima Online", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Origin Systems", "note": "From October 1997 a criminal act flags the character as a criminal for two minutes, during which actions against it cost no notoriety, and attacks of any kind in guarded areas call the guards. The June 1998 reputation system shows innocents blue, criminals grey and murderers red, and the April 2000 Renaissance publish gives each shard a consent-only land, Trammel, beside the open land, Felucca.", "latest": false }, { "title": "EVE Online", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "CCP Games", "note": "The 2004 new player guide gives each system a security tag from 1.0 to 0.0, with CONCORD answering unsolicited weapon fire faster the more secure the system and avoiding 0.0. A first strike in 1.0 space or near sentry guns brings CONCORD to destroy the attacker's ship.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "On PvP realms every zone is shown as friendly, enemy or contested, and a player may be attacked anywhere except friendly territory and instances. Normal realms have no contested zones, and a player who has not consented can be attacked only in an enemy capital or a battleground.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mortal Online 2", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Star Vault", "note": "Patch 2.0 (2023) places guarded areas in Tindremic and Khurite locations with guard towers along the roads, and adds a Wilderness where a murder cannot be reported or cost nation standing. A character with more than ten murder counts turns red and may be attacked without the attacker turning criminal.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Meridian 59", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "3DO's user's guide of August 1996 documents both halves of the form: inns, shops and banks are combat-free zones, combat in cities is allowed only for guild members, and the Arena is a combat-sanctioned zone without consequences, while elsewhere an attack on an innocent player turns the attacker's name orange as an outlaw, or red as a murderer after a kill, whom any citizen may kill without becoming a murderer and whom the victim's revenant pursues. Ultima Online's publish notes of October 1997 add guards called by attacks in guarded areas and a timed criminal flag. Merc 2.1 (1993) has the flag and the guards' retribution but no rule graded by area, so it is an antecedent. Island of Kesmai (1985) is a reported antecedent: a 2017 history describes player attacks confined to set areas and a Sheriff answering attacks in town, while a 1986 review states only that lawful characters were fair game for neutral or evil ones and that killing an innocent shopkeeper in town cost karma. MUD rules between Merc and 1996 remain unsurveyed, hence medium confidence." }, "established": { "title": "EVE Online", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "EVE Online grades every system on one scale, from 1.0 to 0.0, with a police response that weakens as security falls, which is the many-band form its players name high-sec, low-sec and null-sec. Sandbox Interactive's community manager said in 2014 that Albion Online would class its areas in \"a tiered system similar to the Sec system in EVE Online\", from safe zones to areas where attacking brings a penalty, and its chief executive called EVE the game with the most influence on Albion. Ultima Online's guarded towns and criminal flag are the other candidate." }, "sources": [ { "key": "meridian-59-user-s-guide-1996", "canonical": false, "title": "Meridian 59 User's Guide", "author": "The 3DO Company", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://discmaster.textfiles.com/file/21326/Inform%C3%A1tica%20F%C3%A1cil%20Multimedia%20Especial%20Juegos%20Windows%2095%20(JULIO%2097).iso/meridian.EXE/DISK1/DATA.1/guide-28.html", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Who's Who: Murderers and Outlaws (guide-28); Places (guide-35); Challenge Combat: The Arena (guide-43); Death (guide-7)", "note": "Red murderers and orange outlaws, a murderer killable by anyone without penalty, the revenant; combat-free inns, shops and banks, city combat for guild members only; the Arena without karmic consequences. Dated 19 August 1996, from a July 1997 cover CD." }, { "key": "interview-albion-online-s-community-manager-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Interview: Albion Online's community manager", "author": "f2p.com", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "interview", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.f2p.com/interview-albion-onlines-community-manager/", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "The tiered area system likened to EVE Online's security system, from safe zones to areas where attacking brings a penalty debuff." }, { "key": "how-albion-online-is-making-eve-s-ruthless-territory-battles-accessible-to-small-guilds-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "How Albion Online is making EVE's ruthless territory battles accessible to small guilds", "author": "Tyler Wilde (PC Gamer)", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "interview", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pcgamer.com/how-albion-online-is-making-eves-ruthless-territory-battles-accessible-to-small-guilds/", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "EVE Online named as probably the game with the most influence on Albion Online." }, { "key": "telecommunication-gaming-island-of-kesmai-1986", "canonical": false, "title": "Telecommunication Gaming: Island of Kesmai", "author": "Patricia Fitzgibbons (Computer Gaming World)", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/details/Computer_Gaming_World_Issue_29", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Computer Gaming World 29, June 1986, pp. 30-31", "note": "Launch on CompuServe in December 1985, lawful players fair game for characters of neutral or evil alignment, and karma lost when a lawful character kills an innocent shopkeeper in town." }, { "key": "designing-virtual-worlds-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Designing Virtual Worlds", "author": "Richard A. Bartle", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "New Riders", "url": "https://mud.co.uk/richard/DesigningVirtualWorlds.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Chapter 5, Life in the Virtual World, pp. 545-546 (p. 555 of the Creative Commons PDF)", "note": "Arenas, in which different locations of the world have different PvP rules, and character flags as the two ways to admit PvP by consent; shards devoted to PvP; and the argument that neither works when the dangerous option brings no tangible advantage." }, { "key": "ultima-online-publish-notes-29th-october-1997-1997", "canonical": false, "title": "Ultima Online publish notes: 29th October 1997", "author": "Origin Systems", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "uo.com", "url": "https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/technical/previous-publishes/1997-2/1997-2-october-29th/", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Notoriety", "note": "A criminal act flags the character as a criminal for two minutes, during which actions against it bring no notoriety change; attacks of any kind are still illegal in guarded areas." }, { "key": "ultima-online-publish-notes-9th-december-1997-1997", "canonical": false, "title": "Ultima Online publish notes: 9th December 1997", "author": "Origin Systems", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "uo.com", "url": "https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/technical/previous-publishes/1997-2/1997-7-9th-december/", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Last minute changes", "note": "Aggressive spells cast from the wilderness into a safe area call the guards." }, { "key": "ultima-online-publish-notes-11th-june-1998-1998", "canonical": false, "title": "Ultima Online publish notes: 11th June 1998", "author": "Origin Systems", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "uo.com", "url": "https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/technical/previous-publishes/1998-2/1998-8-11th-june/", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "The reputation system, with innocents blue, criminals grey, murderers red and guild enemies orange." }, { "key": "ultima-online-publish-notes-publish-5-27th-april-2000-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Ultima Online publish notes: Publish 5, 27th April 2000", "author": "Origin Systems", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "uo.com", "url": "https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/technical/previous-publishes/2000-2/2000-publish-05-27th-april/", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Land Expansion", "note": "The Renaissance publish gives each shard a consent-only PvP land (Trammel) and an enhanced PvP land (Felucca)." }, { "key": "merc-2-1-source-code-1993", "canonical": false, "title": "Merc 2.1 source code", "author": "Furey, Hatchet and Kahn (repository of Alex McHale)", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://github.com/alexmchale/merc-mud", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "src/fight.c, check_killer(); src/special.c, spec_guard() and spec_executioner(); doc/new.txt", "note": "The KILLER flag set on attacking a player and saved with the character, attacks on killers and thieves left unflagged, and guards and executioners attacking flagged players; release dated 1 August 1993." }, { "key": "eve-online-new-player-guide-security-status-wayback-capture-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "EVE Online New Player Guide: Security status (Wayback capture)", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20040227230523/http://www.eve-online.com/features/npg/07.asp", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Security tags from 1.0 to 0.0, a faster CONCORD response in more secure systems, and the law avoiding 0.0; captured in February 2004." }, { "key": "eve-online-new-player-guide-being-targeted-wayback-capture-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "EVE Online New Player Guide: Being targeted (Wayback capture)", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20040415025210/http://www.eve-online.com/features/npg/08.asp", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "In 1.0 systems or near sentry guns, a first strike brings CONCORD to destroy the attacker's ship; targeting alone does not." }, { "key": "introducing-the-new-and-improved-crimewatch-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Introducing the new and improved Crimewatch", "author": "CCP Masterplan (CCP Games)", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/introducing-the-new-and-improved-crimewatch", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Suspect and criminal flags, CONCORD attacking criminals but not suspects, flagged characters open to attack by all players, only a suspect flag for illegal attacks on ships in low-sec, and limited engagements." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-realm-types-wayback-capture-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Realm Types (Wayback capture)", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2005, "year_approx": true, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20060101200331/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/realmtypes.html", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Normal and PvP realms, zone names coloured friendly, enemy or contested on PvP realms, and attack without consent on Normal realms only in enemy capitals and battlegrounds; captured 1 January 2006." }, { "key": "patch-notes-2-0-unreal-engine-5-massive-update-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Patch Notes 2.0, Unreal Engine 5 Massive Update", "author": "Star Vault", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.mortalonline2.com/?p=31808", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Guarded areas in Tindremic and Khurite locations with guard towers on the roads, Wilderness areas without murder reports, and red names from more than ten murder counts, attackable without turning criminal." }, { "key": "mortal-online-2-players-can-now-call-guards-on-criminals-and-set-passwords-for-their-houses-2022", "canonical": false, "title": "Mortal Online 2 Players Can Now Call Guards On Criminals And Set Passwords For Their Houses", "author": "Marc Marasigan (MMOs.com)", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://mmos.com/news/mortal-online-2-players-can-now-call-guards-on-criminals-and-set-passwords-for-their-houses", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "The /guard command calls an NPC guard on a targeted criminal, and guards pursue players with the combatant debuff gained by attacking another player." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 16, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 646, "updated": "2026-10-28", "url": "/mechanics/security-zones" }, { "id": "semi-cooperative", "name": "Semi-Cooperative", "status": "unverified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "Players compete for an individual win but share a loss condition driven by the game, so if the common threat prevails every player loses and each must weigh feeding the shared defence against advancing alone.", "aliases": [ "semi-co-op", "one winner or all lose", "competitive cooperation" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "cooperative-play", "traitor", "secret-objectives", "alliances" ], "referenced_by": [ "last-hitting" ], "media": [ "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "variable", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from The Republic of Rome, with CO2 as the check case. As a wrapper mechanic it is coded without the host game's randomness, decisions, or rules weight. Interaction is mixed because players cooperate against the system threat while competing directly for the single win. Randomness is none because the shared loss condition has no randomiser of its own; input was the losing value, taken from the war and event draws of The Republic of Rome, which belong to the host. Information is perfect because the threat's state and the standings are public in the coded form; asymmetric was the losing value, taken from forms with private goals such as Dead of Winter. Agency is medium because the mechanic adds one constrained choice, how much of a turn to spend on the common threat rather than on oneself; high was the losing value. Decision density is medium because whether to spend on the common threat and how much are separate choices; low was the losing value, counting the turn's contribution as one decision point. Complexity is low because the rule is two sentences; medium was the losing value for forms that pair it with hidden goals. Pacing is variable because the game ends early when contributions lapse and runs long when players keep the threat in check; accelerates was the losing value, taken from the escalating threat. Pacing stays variable after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; neutral was the losing value. Feedback loop is none because the wrapper imposes a shared loss alongside individual wins; any pressure on the leader to carry the common cost is a social choice rather than a rule; negative was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "tension", "betrayal", "negotiation", "kingmaking", "teamwork" ], "examples": [ { "title": "The Republic of Rome", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Berthold, Don Greenwood, and Robert Haines (Avalon Hill)", "note": "Rome falls, and every faction loses, if the State goes bankrupt, the People revolt, or four Active Wars remain at the end of a Combat Phase, though a faction in rebellion can still win when Rome falls; otherwise one faction wins, so each contribution to the treasury and the legions is weighed against the faction's own advancement. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cutthroat Caverns", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Curt Covert (Smirk and Dagger Games)", "note": "The party must survive a series of encounters together, but only the surviving player with the most prestige wins, so players hold back help and compete for the killing blow on each monster.", "latest": false }, { "title": "CO2", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Vital Lacerda (Giochix.it)", "note": "If the global CO2 pollution level is at 500 ppm or higher, every player loses; otherwise the player with the most victory points wins, so building clean power serves both the shared defence and an individual score.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Archipelago", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Christophe Boelinger (Ludically)", "note": "If rebellion passes population, an uprising ends the game and every player loses unless one secretly holds the Separatist objective, who then wins alone; otherwise all players are deemed winners and victory points name a single grand winner, with secret objectives setting the end trigger and adding scoring.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dead of Winter", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jonathan Gilmour and Isaac Vega", "note": "A player wins only if the colony completes its main objective and that player's secret objective is met, so several players, one, or none may win; one secret objective may be a betrayal.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Forgotten Waters", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Mr. Bistro, J. Arthur Ellis, and Isaac Vega", "note": "Pirates crew one ship toward a shared scenario goal while chasing personal constellation stories; if the last threat event is reached or a shared danger track overtakes the crew, every player loses, but when the goal is met only players who finished at least four constellation events win, ranked by infamy.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "The Republic of Rome", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Provenance is scoped to published board games in which a single individual winner is coupled to a loss condition that the game drives and all players share. The Republic of Rome (1990) is an early and widely cited instance, and no earlier one of that form is documented; its 1990 rule wording is unconfirmed, since the rule text cited is a later printing. Supremacy (1984, Robert J. Simpson) already ended in a shared loss, a nuclear winter, but the players cause that threat with their own strikes rather than holding off one the game advances. Multiplayer wargames and political games of the 1970s and 1980s remain unsurveyed. The term \"semi-cooperative\" was in board-game use by 2003, when a patent application applied it to a 1993 Decipher game, and was a BoardGameGeek mechanic by October 2019; its first use is unknown. CO2 (2012) and Dead of Winter (2014) are common reference points for the form." }, "established": { "title": "The Republic of Rome", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "The Republic of Rome is an early, widely cited game that couples a single winner to a loss the game drives and all players share; Cutthroat Caverns, CO2, Archipelago and Dead of Winter followed in the same form." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Game Structure chapter", "note": "Semi-cooperative structure as distinct from cooperative and traitor games." }, { "key": "the-republic-of-rome-rulebook-1990", "canonical": false, "title": "The Republic of Rome rulebook", "author": "Richard Berthold, Don Greenwood, and Robert Haines", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "1.01; 1.07.334; 1.08.2; 1.12.2", "note": "Collective loss when the State goes bankrupt, the People revolt, or four Active Wars remain at the end of a Combat Phase; a Rebel wins instead in the revolt and bankruptcy cases; otherwise one faction wins. Cited from a later printing with second-edition changes and Avalon Hill errata, so the 1990 wording is unconfirmed; no publisher copy is cited." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Republic of Rome (game)", "note": "Designers, Avalon Hill release in 1990, and the fall of Rome in which all players lose unless a faction in rebellion wins." }, { "key": "co2-rulebook-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "CO2 rulebook", "author": "Vital Lacerda", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Every player loses if the global CO2 pollution level is at 500 ppm or higher; otherwise the highest score wins. Edition unstated in the copy cited; check case." }, { "key": "archipelago-rulebook-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Archipelago rulebook", "author": "Christophe Boelinger", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "An uprising when rebellion passes population means all players have lost unless one holds the Separatist objective, who wins alone; otherwise all players win and victory points name the grand winner." }, { "key": "archipelago-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "Archipelago", "author": "Space-Biff", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://spacebiff.com/2013/07/09/archipelago/", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Secret objectives add scoring and set the end of the game; the Separatist aims to make the colony collapse to rebellion." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Supremacy (board game)", "note": "Nuclear winter ends the game with every player losing; the threat comes from the players' own strikes." }, { "key": "republic-of-rome-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Republic of Rome", "author": "The Tao of Gaming (The 20th Century Project)", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://20thcenturygames.substack.com/p/republic-of-rome", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "States that The Republic of Rome was not the first game with a \"maybe nobody wins\" condition, naming Supremacy as the earliest the author knows and suspecting earlier ones." }, { "key": "system-and-method-for-playing-a-cooperative-game-us-2004-0160003-a1-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "System and method for playing a cooperative game (US 2004/0160003 A1)", "author": null, "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040160003A1/en", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Priority date 2003-02-13; calls Decipher's 1993 Star Trek – The Next Generation: A Klingon Challenge a semi-cooperative game, without defining the term." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Cooperative board game", "note": "Uses \"semi-cooperative game\" for traitor games such as Battlestar Galactica." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Semi-Cooperative Game", "note": "Mechanic 2820, online by 2019-10-20 (Wayback capture); defined as a game ending \"with either no winners or with the players winning as a group, but a single player being recognized as the individual winner as well\"." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 11, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 512, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/semi-cooperative" }, { "id": "set-collection", "name": "Set Collection", "status": "unverified", "category": "puzzle-and-pattern", "definition": "Players gather items that score or unlock effects only when held in specified groups, such as matching kinds, runs, or complete suites, so the value of any item depends on what else the player holds.", "aliases": [ "set making", "melding", "collection scoring" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hand-management", "drafting", "tile-placement", "secret-objectives" ], "referenced_by": [ "deck-building", "divide-and-choose", "match-three", "memory", "pattern-building", "pattern-recognition", "resource-conversion", "roll-and-write", "sowing", "victory-points", "word-building" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Ticket to Ride, where train cards are collected in a private hand and spent as matching sets. Information is asymmetric for that form; open-tableau collecting (Jaipur's sold goods, Splendor) would code as perfect. Feedback loop is none because superlinear set scoring rewards a set's size, not past success in general; the losing value was positive. Category tension with resource-management is noted, since collected items are often also spent.", "effects": [ "planning", "inference", "fear-of-missing-out", "tension", "sunk-cost" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Rummy", "year": 1900, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Cards are melded in sets of a kind or runs of a suit; the family, descended from Conquian, is an early and widely played form of collecting to a pattern, with the date of its emergence only loosely known.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ticket to Ride", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Alan R. Moon (Days of Wonder)", "note": "Same-colour train cards are collected in hand and spent as a set to claim a route, with longer routes scoring more than proportionally per card.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Jaipur", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Sébastien Pauchon", "note": "Goods are sold in sets, and selling three or more at once earns bonus tokens, so the timing of cashing a set competes with the risk that the market changes.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Sushi Go!", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Phil Walker-Harding", "note": "Each card type scores by a different set rule, such as pairs, triples, or majority, so the draft is a choice of which sets to pursue.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Stardew Valley", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "ConcernedApe", "note": "Community Center bundles require specified groups of crops, fish, and forage; completing each set unlocks rewards and completing them all changes the game state.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Sea Salt & Paper", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Bruno Cathala and Théo Rivière (Bombyx)", "note": "Cards score by grouping: matching pairs are played for their effects, collector cards score more the more of a kind are held, and multiplier cards raise the value of a named kind, while any player may end the round once their hand is worth enough.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Conquian", "year": 1897, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "The earliest set-collection rules read are Conquian and Authors in Foster's Complete Hoyle (1897) and Coon Can in The Standard Hoyle (1904 edition), which describes drawing and discarding toward threes, fours, and suit sequences. The Foster scan is labelled third edition and carries only the 1897 copyright line; Stokes added a line for each revision (1909, 1914), so its text is the 1897 text. Parlett dates the first description of Coon Can to the 1887 Standard Hoyle, of which no copy is cited, Conquian is attested in the 1850s but not described, and collect-the-family games such as Happy Families (1851 or 1861, disputed) may be older. Babcock's mahjong rules (first printed 1920) state the principle outright: tiles have no value except in scoring combinations. Ticket to Ride (2004) is the usual hobby reference, but no source names it the populariser, and BoardGameGeek tagged Bohnanza (1997) with set collection before Ticket to Ride appeared." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Set Collection chapter", "note": "Definition and scoring shapes." }, { "key": "parlett-1990", "canonical": true, "title": "The Oxford Guide to Card Games", "author": "David Parlett", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapters on rummy games", "note": "History of melding games and the Conquian lineage." }, { "key": "ticket-to-ride-rulebook-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "Ticket to Ride rulebook", "author": "Alan R. Moon", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Canonical set-and-spend form used for the property coding." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Set Collection", "note": null }, { "key": "foster-s-complete-hoyle-1897", "canonical": false, "title": "Foster's Complete Hoyle", "author": "R. F. Foster", "year": 1897, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/fosterscomplete00fostgoog/fosterscomplete00fostgoog_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Conquian, from p. 448; Authors, p. 469 (archive.org scan)", "note": "Printed rules for a draw-and-discard melding game and a collect-four-of-a-kind game." }, { "key": "foster-s-complete-hoyle-revised-and-enlarged-to-october-1914-1914", "canonical": false, "title": "Foster's Complete Hoyle (revised and enlarged to October 1914)", "author": "R. F. Foster", "year": 1914, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/53881/pg53881-images.html", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Copyright page", "note": "Stokes copyright lines of 1897, 1909, and 1914, one for each revision, so a printing that carries only the 1897 line carries the text from before the 1909 revision." }, { "key": "babcock-s-rules-for-mah-jongg-the-red-book-of-rules-1920", "canonical": false, "title": "Babcock's Rules for Mah-Jongg: The Red Book of Rules", "author": "J. P. Babcock", "year": 1920, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/babcock_202209/Babcock_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Rules of Play, pp. 12-13 (second edition, 1923 printing)", "note": "Tiles have no value except as they appear in scoring combinations in the hand." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 7, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 516, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/set-collection" }, { "id": "shared-holdings", "name": "Shared Holdings", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "A group pools assets in storage it holds in common, behind access rights set by rank or role, and any member with access can withdraw them, within any limit the rules set", "aliases": [ "guild bank", "corporation hangars", "shared storage", "guild treasury" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "team-play", "alliances", "loot-distribution", "gifting", "traitor" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from EVE Online's corporation hangars and World of Warcraft's guild bank, the form with storage divided into folders or tabs and view, deposit and withdraw rights set per rank or role. Agency is high because a member with withdraw rights chooses freely among everything a full hangar or tab holds; medium was the losing value, since the choice runs only within the rights and limits granted. Randomness is none. Interaction is mixed: deposits serve the group, each withdrawal depletes a pool other members draw on, and rights are granted to named members; indirect was the losing value, counting only the effect of deposits and withdrawals through the pool's contents. Complexity is medium (ranks, per-tab rights, a withdrawal limit and a log); high was the losing value for EVE Online's matrix of roles, security groups and wallet divisions. Pacing is neutral. Information is asymmetric because members without view rights cannot see what a folder or tab holds while officers can; perfect was the losing value, on the reading that the logs show every transaction to those who may view. Feedback loop is none; positive was the losing value, if a richer pool is held to equip members who then add more. Decision density is medium (whether to deposit or withdraw, from which division, and what or how much); low was the losing value, treating a visit to the store as one transfer. Tension is not tagged: each withdrawal resolves when it is made, and doubt about a member's intent lies in the group, not in the mechanic's state. Ownership is not tagged because the holdings belong to the group rather than to any one player. Social deduction is tagged because leaders grant withdraw rights by judging which members can be trusted with them; untagged was the losing value. Category tension with resource-management, which could claim the pool as a stock, is resolved for interaction-and-exchange because the rules govern who among the players may take from it.", "effects": [ "teamwork", "betrayal", "social-deduction", "consequence-weight", "contested-fairness" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Ultima Online", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Origin Systems", "note": "Antecedent. A house, a boat and their locked containers open to whoever holds the key, the 1997 guide suggests a band of three to six players pool gold for a ship deed, and the 1998 guide warns that houses are not secure; owner, co-owner and friend status is documented by 2001.", "latest": false }, { "title": "EVE Online", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "CCP Games", "note": "Corporation hangars hold folders that open by role, and a patch of June 2003 added five security groups, each with its own folder, beside market and factory folders for the accountant and factory manager roles. In April 2005 Guiding Hand Social Club agents emptied the shared hangars and wallet of the Ubiqua Seraph corporation they had joined.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Patch 2.3 (November 2007) added the guild bank, a shared repository of up to six purchasable tabs of 98 slots, with view, deposit and withdraw permissions per tab set by the guild leader, transaction limits, and per-tab logs.", "latest": false }, { "title": "New World", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Amazon Games", "note": "Any member may deposit coin into the company treasury, which pays for territory protection, claim charters and declarations of war; the Governor may withdraw any amount, and Consuls only up to a daily limit the Governor sets or removes.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "EVE Online", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is dated to EVE Online's release in 2003. Its patch notes of 13 June 2003 describe corporation hangars whose folders open by role, adding five security groups with their own folders to the roles already present, so storage gated by role predates that patch; notes of 17 May 2003, eleven days after launch, already fix bugs in the corporation hangar. Ultima Online (1997) is an antecedent: its houses at first opened to whoever held the key, Publish 1 (November 1999) let an owner name up to eight co-owners and a friends list with access to locked-down stacks, and Publish 7 (September 2000) let the owner open each secure container to co-owners alone or to friends as well. Those tiers gate one owner's storage, not storage the group holds in common. Confidence is medium because clan storage in text MUDs and the guild tools of online games of 1999 to 2002 remain unsurveyed." }, "established": { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "World of Warcraft's guild bank of patch 2.3 (November 2007) is the best candidate for the form most later games resemble: tabs, per-rank view, deposit and withdraw permissions, limits and logs, under the name guild bank. Confidence is low because no cited source says that a later game took the form from it." }, "sources": [ { "key": "ultima-online-publish-1-23-november-1999-1999", "canonical": false, "title": "Ultima Online Publish 1, 23 November 1999", "author": "Origin Systems", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/technical/previous-publishes/1999-2/1999-publish-01-23rd-november/", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "House co-ownership; strongboxes; locked-down stacks", "note": "Up to eight co-owners per house, one strongbox per co-owner, and locked-down stacks usable only by the owner, co-owners and friends of the house." }, { "key": "ultima-online-publish-7-3-september-2000-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Ultima Online Publish 7, 3 September 2000", "author": "Origin Systems", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://uo.com/?p=11152", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Lock Down and Secure Changes", "note": "Access to each secure container assigned by the house owner, to owners and co-owners or to friends as well." }, { "key": "ultima-online-the-second-age-official-strategy-guide-1998", "canonical": false, "title": "Ultima Online The Second Age Official Strategy Guide", "author": "Tuesday Frase and Melissa Tyler (Origin Systems)", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Prima Publishing", "url": "https://archive.org/download/ultima-online-the-second-age-official-guide/Ultima%20Online%20-%20The%20Second%20Age%20Official%20Guide_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Miscellaneous; Storage Containers", "note": "Houses are not secure and valuables belong in the bank box; containers and houses open with their key; ownership as holding the key." }, { "key": "origin-s-official-guide-to-ultima-online-1997", "canonical": false, "title": "Origin's Official Guide to Ultima Online", "author": "Tuesday Frase and Melissa Tyler (Origin Systems)", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Prima Publishing", "url": "https://archive.org/download/ultima-online-origins-official-guide-1997/Ultima%20Online%20%28Origin%27s%20Official%20Guide%20-%201997%29_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Hints, Ships", "note": "A band of three to six players pooling money for a ship deed." }, { "key": "prima-s-official-strategy-guide-ultima-online-lord-blackthorn-s-revenge-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "Prima's Official Strategy Guide: Ultima Online, Lord Blackthorn's Revenge", "author": "Melissa Tyler", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Prima Games", "url": "https://archive.org/download/ultima-online-lord-blackthorns-revenge-official-strategy-guide/Ultima%20Online%20-%20Lord%20Blackthorn%27s%20Revenge%20Official%20Strategy%20Guide_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Detect Hidden; Vendors, Location", "note": "Owner, co-owner and friend status of a house; owners naming friends for an unofficial rent." }, { "key": "improvements-and-bug-fixes-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Improvements and Bug Fixes", "author": "CCP CAPSLOCK (CCP Games)", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/improvements-and-bug-fixes-29", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Improvements, Corporation Management", "note": "Patch notes of 13 June 2003; security officer role for member hangars, five security groups with folders in the corp hangar, market and factory folders by role." }, { "key": "improvements-and-bug-fixes-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Improvements and Bug Fixes", "author": "CCP CAPSLOCK (CCP Games)", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/improvements-and-bug-fixes-26", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Bug Fixes, 1002 - 1031", "note": "Patch notes of 17 May 2003 fixing bugs with ships traded and assembled in the corporation hangar and with deposits to the corporation wallet." }, { "key": "shiva-additional-isk-accounts-wayback-capture-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "Shiva: Additional ISK accounts (Wayback capture)", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20040624213650/http://www.eve-online.com/features/Shiva/corporation/moreISKAccounts.asp", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Preview of the Shiva release, giving corporations seven additional ISK accounts, one wallet per division, each nameable like the hangars, beside the existing master wallet." }, { "key": "eve-online-exodus-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "EVE Online: EXODUS", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/eve-online-exodus-1", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Corporation Improvements", "note": "Release notes of November 2004 listing hangar access roles, titles and seven ISK accounts." }, { "key": "the-almighty-corporation-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "The Almighty Corporation", "author": "CCP Atlas (CCP Games)", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.eveonline.com/article/the-almighty-corporation", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Developer blog of 7 May 2007 announcing a master wallet and six named wallet divisions with access restrictions similar to hangars." }, { "key": "murder-incorporated-ten-months-of-deception-for-one-kill-in-eve-online-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "Murder Incorporated: ten months of deception for one kill in Eve Online", "author": "Tom Francis", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "PC Gamer UK (September 2005)", "url": "https://www.pcgamer.com/murder-incorporated-ten-months-of-deception-for-one-kill-in-eve-online/", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Guiding Hand Social Club agents in Ubiqua Seraph unload their assigned corp hangars, described as communal storage for trusted members, and its wallet on 18 April 2005; forum reactions; CCP's stated intent to let players do what they may." }, { "key": "guild-banks-are-now-scheduled-for-patch-2-3-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Guild banks are now scheduled for Patch 2.3", "author": "Dan O'Halloran", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Engadget (WoW Insider)", "url": "https://www.engadget.com/2007/08/19/guild-banks-are-now-scheduled-for-patch-2-3/", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Guild banks postponed from The Burning Crusade's launch; transaction limits so that a new recruit cannot walk off with the best items; activity viewable by the guild; repairs limited to ranks." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-2-3-0-patch-released-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft 2.3.0 Patch Released", "author": "Maarten Goldstein", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Shacknews", "url": "https://www.shacknews.com/article/49902/world-of-warcraft-230-patch", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Guild Banks", "note": "Release on 13 November 2007; a shared repository with up to six tabs of 98 slots, per-tab view, deposit and withdraw permissions, withdraw limits usable for repairs." }, { "key": "wow-archivist-2-3-patch-notes-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "WoW Archivist: 2.3 patch notes", "author": "Scott Andrews", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Engadget", "url": "https://www.engadget.com/2013-06-07-wow-archivist-2-3-patch-notes.html", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Guild Banks", "note": "Reproduces the 2.3 notes, including transaction logs of the last 25 actions in each tab." }, { "key": "new-world-lore-company-treasury", "canonical": false, "title": "New World lore: Company Treasury", "author": "Amazon Games (in-game text, via New World Database)", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Deposits by any member, withdrawals by the Governor and by Consuls within a daily limit, and the treasury's uses." } ], "n_examples": 4, "n_sources": 15, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 662, "updated": "2026-10-28", "url": "/mechanics/shared-holdings" }, { "id": "shared-narration", "name": "Shared Narration", "status": "verified", "category": "narrative-and-choice", "definition": "Authority to narrate what happens in the fiction is distributed among all players by rule, passing by turn, by interruption, or by spent currency, so no single facilitator owns the story.", "aliases": [ "shared storytelling", "collaborative storytelling", "storytelling prompt cards", "GM-less narration" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "gm-moves", "scene-framing", "player-judge", "random-tables", "cooperative-play" ], "referenced_by": [ "audience-participation" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Fiasco, with Once Upon a Time as the card-game check case, from the viewpoint of the player who holds narration. Agency is high because the narrating player chooses from an open authorial space. Randomness is input because dice, playsets, or prompt cards are resolved before anyone narrates; none was the losing value for Universalis, which seeds nothing. Interaction is mixed because canonical designs span a cooperative story goal (Fiasco, Microscope) and a competitive race to play out one's cards (Once Upon a Time); cooperative was the losing value. Information is perfect because everything narrated is public; Once Upon a Time's hidden hands belong to hand management. Complexity is medium because turn rights, interruption rules, and scene procedures take a paragraph. Decision density is medium because one narrated scene asks whether to establish or resolve, what to introduce, and how to steer the outcome; high was the losing value.", "effects": [ "emergent-narrative", "ownership", "teamwork", "alpha-player", "contested-fairness" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Once Upon a Time", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Lambert, Andrew Rilstone, and James Wallis", "note": "The current storyteller narrates a fairy tale and plays element cards as they are mentioned; another player may interrupt by playing a matching card and takes over the narration, so authority moves by card play.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Universalis", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Ralph Mazza and Mike Holmes", "note": "No game master; players spend coins to establish facts, frame scenes, and control characters, and may challenge one another's additions with a bidding of coins, so narrative authority is purchased.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Rory's Story Cubes", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Rory O'Connor", "note": "Nine picture dice are rolled and the players in turn weave the images into one story; the prompt-cube form of storytelling games, folded here as a variation.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fiasco", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Jason Morningstar (Bully Pulpit Games)", "note": "Scenes rotate around the table; the active player either establishes a scene and lets the others resolve it, or lets the others establish it and resolves it themselves, with light and dark dice passed to mark outcomes. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Microscope", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Ben Robbins", "note": "Players build a history out of order by adding periods, events, and scenes; the lens player sets a focus and anyone may add to the timeline, with a rule that nobody may contradict what is already placed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Wanderhome", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Jay Dragon (Possum Creek Games)", "note": "Built on the Belonging Outside Belonging engine, it has no gamemaster, dice, or turn order; all players describe the world and its seasons together through playbook moves and question prompts.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Once Upon a Time", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to published games whose core procedure passes narration among all players by rule. Once Upon a Time is the earliest widely cited game of this kind. Round-robin storytelling is an undated parlour antecedent, and Prince Valiant (1989) rotated a single storyteller role within a conventional role-playing structure, keeping one narrator at a time. Universalis (2002) established the fully facilitator-less role-playing form and Fiasco (2009) popularised it." }, "established": { "title": "Fiasco", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Fiasco popularised facilitator-less play, with scene authority rotating round the table and an establish-or-resolve choice, and with Microscope made it mainstream in the hobby; Universalis had established the form in 2002." }, "sources": [ { "key": "fiasco-rulebook-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Fiasco rulebook", "author": "Jason Morningstar", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Act One, establishing and resolving scenes", "note": "Canonical rotation of scene authority and the establish-or-resolve choice." }, { "key": "once-upon-a-time-rules-1993", "canonical": false, "title": "Once Upon a Time rules", "author": "Richard Lambert, Andrew Rilstone, and James Wallis", "year": 1993, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Telling the story and interrupting", "note": "Narration transferred by card play and interruption." }, { "key": "appelcline-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry", "author": "Shannon Appelcline", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Volume 4, chapters on the Forge-era independent publishers", "note": "Context for facilitator-less and shared-authority designs of the 2000s, including Universalis." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Storytelling", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 486, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/shared-narration" }, { "id": "side-conversion", "name": "Side Conversion", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "A player who is caught or defeated joins the side that caught them for the rest of the round, so that one side grows as the other shrinks until every player is on one side or a time limit ends the round", "aliases": [ "infection mode", "infected mode", "chain tag" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "player-elimination", "team-play", "traitor", "hidden-roles", "one-versus-many", "side-swapping" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "physical", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the crossing games of the Scottish and English playground (King of Cantland, Cock), with Halo 3's Infection as the video check case. Category tension with space-and-position, which could claim the crossing between goals and the sweeping chain, is resolved for interaction-and-exchange because the rule transfers a player from one side to the other. Agency is low because conversion follows from having been caught, not from a choice at that moment; medium was the losing value for the catchers' choice of target, which belongs to the chase. Randomness is none; input was the losing value for video forms that pick the first zombie at random. Interaction is mixed because the catch is direct while the converted cooperate with their captors; direct was the losing value. Feedback loop is positive because every catch adds a catcher and removes a runner; mixed was the losing value for forms with a damper (a broken chain frees prisoners, a last survivor gains strength). Decision density is low because the conversion itself offers no choice; medium was the losing value. Catch-up was considered and not tagged: it appears only in timed video variants that strengthen the last survivor. Contested fairness was considered and not tagged, because the inequality grows out of play rather than being set by design.", "effects": [ "runaway-leader", "teamwork", "execution", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "King of Cantland", "year": 1825, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "Dumfriesshire game in Jamieson's Scottish dictionary. One player, the king, stands between two distant goals, and runners he seizes and touches on the head (\"winning them\") become his subjects and help him catch the rest. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cock (playground game)", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "Traditional, recorded by Walter Gregor at Nairn. The Cock tries to \"croon\" players rushing across the playground by touching the crown of the head, those caught help in the rush back until all are captured, and in the Duthil form, Rexa-boxa-King, the last captured is King in the next game.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Stag-warning", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "Traditional, Shropshire. The Stag runs with clasped hands, and each player touched joins hands with him, so an ever-lengthening chain sweeps the playground with only its two end players tagging; when all but one are caught, that one becomes the next Stag.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Halo 3", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Bungie", "note": "The Infection gametype, run as a Halloween playlist in 2007, starts with one player as a zombie, and each player the zombies take down is added to them; variants include Creeping Death, in which the zombies are invisible.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games", "note": "Infected, a private-match mode moved to a public playlist in February 2012, picks the first infected ten seconds into the match. In the common Knife vs Striker variant the infected carry knives against survivors' shotguns, and they turn survivors by killing them, and the match ends when all are infected or the timer runs out.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Halo Infinite", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "343 Industries", "note": "Infection, added in June 2023, picks a few Alpha Infected each round, and Survivors they kill become Beta Infected. The final Survivor, the Last Spartan Standing, gains an overshield and unlimited ammunition while a nav point shows their position to every Infected.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "King of Cantland", "year": 1825, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "medium", "note": "King of Cantland is described in John Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, in an entry that the 1879 edition prints without the brackets it uses for new matter, so it is Jamieson's own text; it is absent from the 1808 dictionary, where Kingervie is followed by King's-hood, and is first printed in the Supplement of 1825. The entry quotes Mactaggart's Gallovidian Encyclopedia (1824) for a Galloway form whose text describes catching only. Strutt's Harry-racket (in the 1810 second edition of a work first published in 1801), in which hiders who are caught become seekers and their captors hide, is an antecedent that exchanges roles without one side growing. The game is customary and certainly older than its first description." }, "established": { "title": "Halo 3", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Halo 3's Infection (2007) set the video form of one starting zombie whose kills join its side, and Halo Infinite (2023) brought the mode back under the same name. Call of Duty's Infected (2011) has the same form, but no source cited traces it to Halo, so the line beyond one series is loosely documented." }, "sources": [ { "key": "the-traditional-games-of-england-scotland-and-ireland-vol-i-1894", "canonical": false, "title": "The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Vol. I", "author": "Alice Bertha Gomme", "year": 1894, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "David Nutt", "url": "https://archive.org/download/cu31924092530579/cu31924092530579_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Chickidy Hand, p. 67; Cock, pp. 72–73; King Caesar, p. 299; King of Cantland, p. 300; Lamploo, pp. 325–326", "note": "Crossing and chain games in which each player caught joins the catcher, with the Chickidy Hand rescue and the Lamploo penalty." }, { "key": "the-traditional-games-of-england-scotland-and-ireland-vol-ii-1898", "canonical": false, "title": "The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Vol. II", "author": "Alice Bertha Gomme", "year": 1898, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "David Nutt", "url": "https://archive.org/download/cu31924092530587/cu31924092530587_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Rax, p. 106; Relievo, p. 107; Stag, pp. 212–214; Memoir on the study of children's games, pp. 482–483", "note": "Rax has \"each one as caught becoming a catcher\"; the memoir gives an account of contest games that end with all the players on one side." }, { "key": "an-etymological-dictionary-of-the-scottish-language-new-edition-vol-iii-1880", "canonical": false, "title": "An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, new edition, Vol. III", "author": "John Jamieson (revised by John Longmuir and David Donaldson)", "year": 1880, "year_approx": true, "type": "book", "publisher": "Alexander Gardner", "url": "https://archive.org/download/etymologicaldict03jamiuoft/etymologicaldict03jamiuoft_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "King of Cantland; King's Covenanter", "note": "Jamieson's description of King of Cantland, and King's Covenanter, in which the captive replaces the captor." }, { "key": "shropshire-folk-lore-1886", "canonical": false, "title": "Shropshire Folk-Lore", "author": "Charlotte Sophia Burne (from the collections of Georgina F. Jackson)", "year": 1886, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/shropshirefolkl01jackgoog/shropshirefolkl01jackgoog_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Games of Strife and Skill, Stag-warning, p. 523", "note": "The Stag-warning chain, the source Gomme quotes." }, { "key": "supplement-to-the-etymological-dictionary-of-the-scottish-language-vol-ii-1825", "canonical": false, "title": "Supplement to the Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, Vol. II", "author": "John Jamieson", "year": 1825, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "W. & C. Tait", "url": "https://archive.org/download/aetymologicaldi00jamigoog/aetymologicaldi00jamigoog_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "King of Cantland, pp. 18–19", "note": "The first printing of King of Cantland, in which those the king seizes become his subjects and help him catch the rest; absent from the 1808 dictionary." }, { "key": "the-sports-and-pastimes-of-the-people-of-england-second-edition-1810", "canonical": false, "title": "The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (second edition)", "author": "Joseph Strutt", "year": 1810, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "White and Co., Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, and others", "url": "https://archive.org/download/gri_33125012252157/gri_33125012252157_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Book IV, section III, Harry-racket, p. 337", "note": "The earliest printing cited of Harry-racket, in which caught hiders become seekers and their captors hide." }, { "key": "the-sports-and-pastimes-of-the-people-of-england-1845", "canonical": false, "title": "The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England", "author": "Joseph Strutt (edited by William Hone)", "year": 1845, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Thomas Tegg", "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/48983/pg48983.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Book IV, Chapter IV, section III, Harry-racket", "note": "The caught hiders become seekers and their captors hide, an exchange of roles." }, { "key": "halo-infinite-infection-mode-returns-here-s-how-it-was-made-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Halo Infinite: Infection Mode Returns, Here's How It Was Made", "author": "Xbox Wire", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/06/15/halo-infinite-infection-mode/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Infection's first appearance as a Halo 2 custom game before official playlists in Halo 3, and players killed by the Alpha Infected switching sides." }, { "key": "last-night-on-earth-the-zombie-game-rulebook-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game, rulebook", "author": "Flying Frog Productions", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20260115022038/https://www.flyingfrog.net/lastnightonearth/pdf/LNOE_Rulebook_web.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "The Advanced Game: The Sun Track - Black Zone; Death of Your Last Hero; Zombie Heroes", "note": "A killed hero turned into a Zombie Hero under the zombie player who killed it, and the owner's new hero." }, { "key": "halo-3-celebrates-zombie-day-via-multiplayer-playlist-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Halo 3 Celebrates Zombie Day via Multiplayer Playlist", "author": "Shacknews", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.shacknews.com/article/49694/halo-3-celebrates-zombie-day", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "The Infection mode starts with one zombie, and more are added as the zombie takes down other players." }, { "key": "new-mw3-community-playlist-infected-coming-feb-5-on-xbox-360-and-ps3-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "New MW3 Community Playlist \"Infected\" Coming Feb 5 on Xbox 360 and PS3", "author": "MP1st", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://mp1st.com/news/new-mw3-community-playlist-infected-coming-feb-5-on-xbox-360-and-ps3", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Infected's start, loadouts and end condition, and its origin as a private-match mode." }, { "key": "halo-infinite-infection-rules-and-details-released-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Halo Infinite Infection Rules and Details Released", "author": "Carlos Perez (MP1st)", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://mp1st.com/news/halo-infinite-infection-rules-and-details-released-heres-what-you-need-to-know", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Alpha and Beta Infected, and the Last Spartan Standing's traits." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 12, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 658, "updated": "2026-10-30", "url": "/mechanics/side-conversion" }, { "id": "side-swapping", "name": "Side Swapping", "status": "verified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "A match is split into innings, rounds or halves, and the sides exchange roles or ends between them, so that each side plays both parts and the result combines what each scored in every part", "aliases": [ "changing ends", "switching sides", "swapping sides", "attack and defence halves" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "divide-and-choose", "handicapping", "tournament-formats", "one-versus-many", "variable-player-powers", "team-play" ], "referenced_by": [ "side-conversion" ], "media": [ "physical", "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from cricket's innings under the 1744 code as printed in 1755, with Valorant's half time and Left 4 Dead's Versus mode as the check cases. Category: the default tie-break order would ask interaction-and-exchange first, since the exchange is between opposing sides, but the seed category stands because the mechanic partitions a match into units and fixes who holds which role in each. Agency is low because the swap is a frame; the one choice it creates is the toss winner's choice of which part to play first, and medium was the losing value for that choice. Randomness is input because the canonical text settles that choice by a toss before it is made; none was the losing value, since the exchange itself has no randomiser and many forms fix the order by schedule. Interaction is mixed because the sides play directly against each other in every part while the result compares what each did in the same role; direct was the losing value. Complexity is low for the rule itself; medium was the losing value for forms with overtime that swaps every round. Pacing is neutral; decelerates was the losing value, since the swap doubles the play needed for one result. Information is perfect: the side that plays a role second knows the score it must pass. Feedback loop is none because the swap does not depend on who is winning; negative was the losing value for the 1863 football rule, under which the side that scored gives up its end after each goal. Decision density is low, one decision at most. Planning and contested fairness were the losing values, the coding before the blind re-code of 30 October 2026: the swap itself adds only a choice of order, and it exists to cancel the asymmetry of a single role rather than to impose one.", "effects": [ "tension", "mastery" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Real tennis", "year": 1555, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "In Scaino's 1555 treatise on the ball game, once chases are marked the players change places, the strikers going to the receivers' place and the receivers becoming strikers, and the chases are played off; the change of place in turn gives equal advantage to each side.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cricket", "year": 1744, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "The 1744 code, printed in 1755, lets the side that wins the toss choose which side goes in first, gives the umpires ten minutes between each hand, and lets a bowler change ends only once in the same innings. The 1774 code settles a bet on the first innings when one side wins in one innings.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Association football", "year": 1863, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "The Football Association", "note": "Law 3 of the 1863 laws has the losing side kick off after a goal and the two sides change goals after each goal is won, so the exchange of ends follows each score. By 1874 ends also changed at half time if no goal had been scored, and the laws adopted in February 1875 read 'Ends shall only be changed at half time', the fixed halves of the modern game.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Netrunner", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Garfield (Wizards of the Coast)", "note": "Under the 1999-2000 DCI floor rules each match alternates the players between Corp and Runner, switching at half time of a 90-minute match after a coin toss decides who plays which first; a split match goes to the higher total of game points.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Left 4 Dead", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve and Turtle Rock Studios", "note": "In Versus, one team of four plays Survivors to the first safe house while the other plays Infected, then the sides switch and the level rewinds so the other team tries to get as far; points are earned only as Survivors.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Valorant", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Riot Games", "note": "Teams play 12 rounds on attack or defence and then swap for the rest of the map, first to 13 winning. In Premier from 2023, overtime at 12-12 swaps sides every round until one team leads by two.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Real tennis", "year": 1555, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Antonio Scaino's Trattato del giuoco della palla (1555) describes the ball game of chases: once chases are marked the players change places, the strikers going to the receivers' place and the receivers becoming strikers, and the chases are then played off; he says the change in turn gives equal advantage to each side, and calls it the custom, so the rule is older than the treatise, and earlier French sources on jeu de paume remain unsurveyed. The cricket code of 1744 (printed 1752 and 1755), in which the toss winner chooses which side goes in first and the umpires allow ten minutes between each hand, is the earliest written rule cited for innings. Baseball's half-innings and the change of ends in football and lawn tennis are later physical forms." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "trattato-del-giuoco-della-palla-1555", "canonical": false, "title": "Trattato del giuoco della palla", "author": "Antonio Scaino", "year": 1555, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Gabriel Giolito de' Ferrari", "url": "https://archive.org/download/bub_gb_RSmAOUiqXFoC/bub_gb_RSmAOUiqXFoC_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Part One, ch. 2, pp. 15–16; ch. 4, p. 25; ch. 5, p. 28", "note": "Players change places once chases are marked, strikers becoming receivers and receivers strikers; the exchange in turn gives equal advantage to both sides." }, { "key": "the-game-at-cricket-as-settled-by-the-several-cricket-clubs-1755-printing-1755", "canonical": false, "title": "The Game at Cricket, as Settled by the Several Cricket-Clubs (1755 printing)", "author": "W. Read (printer)", "year": 1755, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.acscricket.com/research/Laws_of_Cricket/1755.html", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "The Game at Cricket; Laws for the Umpires", "note": "The toss-up winner orders which side goes in first; ten minutes between each hand; the bowler changes ends but once in the same innings." }, { "key": "the-laws-of-cricket", "canonical": false, "title": "The Laws of Cricket", "author": "Early Cricket (earlycricket.uk)", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.earlycricket.uk/index.php/rules", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "States that the 1755 code matches the 1744 laws; the 1774 code's choice of innings, fifteen minutes between innings, and bets settled on the first innings." }, { "key": "1744-cricket-laws-and-their-influence-on-baseball-in-america-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "1744 Cricket Laws and Their Influence on Baseball in America", "author": "Beth Hise (Society for American Baseball Research)", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://sabr.org/latest/1744-cricket-laws-and-their-influence-on-baseball-in-america/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "How the 1744 laws survive, on a handkerchief, in the New Universal Magazine of November 1752 and in the 1755 pamphlet." }, { "key": "laws-of-the-game-1863-1863", "canonical": false, "title": "Laws of the Game (1863)", "author": "The Football Association", "year": 1863, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Law 3", "note": "The losing side kicks off after a goal and the two sides change goals after each goal is won; read in the transcription of the laws submitted for adoption on 8 December 1863." }, { "key": "laws-of-the-game-1875-1875", "canonical": false, "title": "Laws of the Game (1875)", "author": "The Football Association", "year": 1875, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Law 3", "note": "Adopted at the annual general meeting of 24 February 1875 for the 1875-76 season; \"Ends shall only be changed at half time\"; read in the Wikisource transcription, with the 1874 wording it replaced." }, { "key": "netrunner-dci-floor-rules-1999-2000-tournament-season-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Netrunner DCI Floor Rules, 1999-2000 tournament season", "author": "Wizards of the Coast (DCI)", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://nrohub.blogspot.com/2012/03/netrunner-dci-floor-rules.html", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Rules 811 to 817", "note": "Players alternate between Corp and Runner, switching at half time; a coin toss winner chooses the first side; game points break a split match." }, { "key": "left-4-dead-interview-versus-mode-demo-details-and-the-joy-of-vomit-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Left 4 Dead Interview: Versus Mode, Demo Details, and the Joy of Vomit", "author": "Nick Breckon (Shacknews), with Doug Lombardi", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "interview", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.shacknews.com/article/55387/left-4-dead-interview-versus", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Teams play Survivor to the first safe house, then switch sides and rewind; points go to each team only as Survivors." }, { "key": "joystiq-hands-on-left-4-dead-s-versus-mode-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Joystiq hands-on: Left 4 Dead's versus mode", "author": "Randy Nelson (Joystiq)", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.engadget.com/2008/10/17/joystiq-hands-on-left-4-deads-versus-mode/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Teams alternate between control of the survivors and the infected, the round ending before the swap." }, { "key": "premier-launch-faq-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Premier Launch FAQ", "author": "Riot Games", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://playvalorant.com/en-gb/news/game-updates/premier-launch-faq/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "Overtime priority to the first team to 12 rounds, a vote on the starting side, a swap every round, win by two, and sudden death after three sets." }, { "key": "valorant-wiki-game-modes", "canonical": false, "title": "VALORANT Wiki, Game Modes", "author": "Weird Gloop", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Twelve rounds on attack or defence, then a swap for the next twelve; first to 13; overtime at 12-12." }, { "key": "world-tafl-federation-championship-2021-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "World Tafl Federation Championship 2021", "author": "Aage Nielsen (aagenielsen.dk)", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://aagenielsen.dk/wtfturnering2021.php", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Tournament rules", "note": "Copenhagen Hnefatafl 11x11; a match is one game with each player on each colour, half a point per game." }, { "key": "counter-strike-tournament-rules-cpl-summer-championship-2002-2002", "canonical": false, "title": "Counter-Strike Tournament Rules (CPL Summer Championship 2002)", "author": "Cyberathlete Professional League", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20020328073727/http://www.thecpl.com:80/summer/csrules.htm", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "4.10a; 4.10i", "note": "A match of two 12-round halves, one as Counter-Terrorists and one as Terrorists; a coin toss winner picks the first role, roles switch in the second half, and overtime alternates the choice." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 13, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 690, "updated": "2026-10-30", "url": "/mechanics/side-swapping" }, { "id": "simultaneous-action-selection", "name": "Simultaneous Action Selection", "status": "verified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "All players choose their actions for the round in secret and commit them at once, after which every choice is revealed and resolved together, so no player can react to another's decision within the round.", "aliases": [ "simultaneous action", "action programming", "programmed movement", "secret and simultaneous selection" ], "parent": null, "children": [ "cooperate-or-defect" ], "related": [ "initiative-order", "hand-management", "bluff-and-challenge", "real-time" ], "referenced_by": [ "deal-making", "role-selection" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Diplomacy's written orders, with rock-paper-scissors as the minimal case. Category was contested with information-and-hidden-state, since the commitments are concealed until reveal; time wins because the defining feature is that all players act in the same step rather than in sequence, and the concealment lasts only until that step resolves. Interaction is mixed because the structure hosts direct contests (rock-paper-scissors, Diplomacy attacks) and indirect ones (role selection in Race for the Galaxy) with equal regularity. Information is asymmetric because each player knows their own commitment; hidden was the losing value. Pacing is accelerates because everyone decides at once and sequential downtime disappears; neutral was the losing value.", "effects": [ "inference", "bluffing", "tension", "planning", "volatility" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Rock-paper-scissors", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": null, "note": "Traditional and undated, an antecedent of the designed form. Two players reveal one of three gestures on a count, and a cyclic dominance rule decides the result; the minimal form, with no state carried between rounds.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Diplomacy", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Allan B. Calhamer", "note": "After negotiation, every player writes orders for all their units, and the orders are revealed and adjudicated together, so an ally's promised support is only known to have been given at the reveal. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "RoboRally", "year": 1994, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Garfield", "note": "Each player secretly programs five movement cards into registers, and the registers are executed one at a time in priority order, so interactions between robots emerge from plans made blind.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Race for the Galaxy", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Tom Lehmann", "note": "Players simultaneously choose a phase card; every chosen phase occurs for everyone, but only the chooser receives its bonus, so the selection is a guess about what others will select.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Frozen Synapse", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Mode 7 Games", "note": "Both players plan five seconds of squad movement and fire orders, then the turn executes simultaneously; the interface lets players simulate possible enemy plans before committing.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Heat: Pedal to the Metal", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Asger Aleksandrov Granerud and Daniel Skjold Pedersen (Days of Wonder)", "note": "All players shift gears and play their cards face down at the same time, then cars reveal and move one at a time from the front of the race, so speed is committed before anyone sees the others' choices.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Diplomacy", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scoped to designed games played without an umpire. Rock-paper-scissors is attested in East Asia centuries before any designed board game, so no origin can be given for the idea, and umpired wargames in the Kriegsspiel tradition adjudicated simultaneously written orders earlier; both are antecedents. Diplomacy is the earliest widely cited designed game built on written simultaneous orders without an umpire. Earlier commercial instances are possible, so confidence is medium." }, "established": { "title": "Diplomacy", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Diplomacy brought secretly written, simultaneously revealed orders to a commercial board game without an umpire, the form later programming and simultaneous-selection designs vary." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Turn Order and Structure chapter", "note": "Definition, the contrast with sequential turns, and the programmed-movement variant." }, { "key": "diplomacy-rulebook-1959", "canonical": false, "title": "Diplomacy rulebook", "author": "Allan B. Calhamer", "year": 1959, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Writing and adjudicating orders", "note": "Canonical rules text for the coded form." }, { "key": "roborally-rulebook-1994", "canonical": false, "title": "RoboRally rulebook", "author": "Richard Garfield", "year": 1994, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Programming registers", "note": "The action-programming variant folded in here." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Simultaneous Action Selection", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 524, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/simultaneous-action-selection" }, { "id": "skill-trees", "name": "Skill Trees", "status": "unverified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "Players spend points earned through progression to unlock abilities from a branching graph in which each node requires its prerequisites, so build choices accumulate into a distinct specialisation.", "aliases": [ "talent trees", "tech trees", "ability trees", "passive trees" ], "parent": "experience-levels", "children": [], "related": [ "engine-building", "variable-player-powers", "roguelike-meta-progression" ], "referenced_by": [ "cooldowns", "equipment-loadouts", "lock-and-key", "multiclassing", "point-buy", "upgrade-offers", "socketing", "subclasses" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "high", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 2, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Diablo II. Agency is contested between high and medium: each individual point offers only a handful of reachable nodes, but the cumulative build space is open and selection dominates outcome, so high was kept. Complexity is high per the guideline because the mechanic is a prerequisite graph, even though any single step is easy to explain. Interaction is solo for the canonical single-character form; shared tech trees in Civilization-style games become indirect through racing to the same advances. Agency stays high after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; medium was the losing value. Pacing is neutral because points earned elsewhere are spent on a prerequisite graph; the tree decides what capability is bought, not how fast play proceeds; accelerates was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026. Feedback loop is none because the tree only decides what points supplied by experience levels buy, and prerequisites gate nodes rather than compound them; any loop through earned points belongs to the host; positive was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "planning", "ownership", "mastery", "sunk-cost", "analysis-paralysis" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Stellar Conquest", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Metagaming", "note": "Technology is divided into ship speed, weapons, and pure technology, and a player may not invest in a second-level technology until owning a first-level one in the same class, with discounts for owning a named prerequisite; a faction tech tree in a board game. The rule was read in a copy whose edition (1975, 1979, or 1984) is unknown.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Civilization", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley (MicroProse)", "note": "The technology tree is the folded tech-tree variant. Each advance requires one or two prior advances and unlocks units, buildings, and further research, so research order is a long-horizon plan.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Diablo II", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard North", "note": "Each class has three skill tabs drawn as trees. One point arrives per character level, nodes carry level and prerequisite requirements, and points could not originally be refunded, so a build was a permanent commitment.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Feats form prerequisite chains (Dodge, then Mobility, then Spring Attack) and prestige classes gate on earlier choices, giving advancement a tree structure selected from a printed list rather than a drawn graph.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "At launch (2004) each class has three talent trees; from level 10 one point a level buys ranks and deeper talents need points in that tree, so one tree and half another can be mastered. Patch 4.0.1 (announced 2010) cut 71 points to 41, one tree only until 31 were spent; Mists of Pandaria (announced 2011) offered one of three talents per 15-level tier; Dragonflight (previewed 2022) restored trees.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Kevin Wilson (Fantasy Flight Games)", "note": "Technologies are stacked as a pyramid in which each higher-level technology must be supported by technologies of the level below, so the prerequisite graph is made physical on the table.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dota 2", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "In patch 7.00 each hero gained a talent tree of four tiers, chosen at levels 10, 15, 20 and 25, each offering one of two bonuses to the hero or its abilities; a branch passed over is not available at later levels.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "A single shared passive tree of well over a thousand nodes, entered at a class-specific start point. The size of the graph pushes build planning outside the game into community tools.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Grim Dawn", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Crate Entertainment", "note": "Beside the mastery trees, each restored shrine gives one Devotion Point, up to 50 across the three difficulties, spent on the stars of constellations. Every constellation but the Crossroads requires affinity, which completed constellations grant, and brighter stars give celestial powers bound to a skill; points can be unlearned for a fee and an Aether Crystal.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cyberpunk 2077", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "CD Projekt Red", "note": "Perk points from levelling are spent in a tree under each attribute; deeper tiers open only at attribute levels 4, 9, 15 and 20, and many perks require a prerequisite perk, such as Dash needing Slippery.", "latest": true }, { "title": "Last Epoch", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Eleventh Hour Games", "note": "Beside a class tree and three mastery trees filled with a passive point a level, each skill placed in one of five specialisation slots, opened at character levels 4, 8, 20, 35 and 50, has a tree of its own; the skill earns experience and levels, by default to 20, and its levels are the points spent in that tree.", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": "Stellar Conquest", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "The earliest documented rule found that makes one advance require another is in Metagaming's Stellar Conquest, whose research rules (6.6.2) bar a second-level technology until a first-level one in the same class is owned. The rule is cited from an unofficial copy whose edition is unknown, so it is documented by the 1984 edition at latest and dated to the 1975 first edition only provisionally; the publisher's own magazine, The Space Gamer, already reported in 1975 that readers were writing in with extensions of the game's technological sequences. Francis Tresham's Civilization board game (1980) is widely credited with the tech tree; its advances were reportedly implemented as a deck of cards that discount one another, but that is unconfirmed from its rules, and how far it influenced the computer game is disputed, since Meier recalled playing it once while readers compare its cards to the computer game's chart. Civilization (1991) is the usual reference for the technology tree in video games. Diablo II (2000) is the usual reference for the character skill tree, an editorial judgement without a cited source." }, "established": { "title": "Diablo II", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Diablo II, with three class skill tabs drawn as trees and one point per level, is the usual reference for the character skill tree, after which the term spread through action and online role-playing games." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Actions chapter", "note": "Prerequisite-structured advancement in board games and the distinction between trees and linear tracks." }, { "key": "diablo-ii-manual-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Diablo II manual", "author": "Blizzard North", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Canonical description of class skill tabs, one skill point per level, and prerequisites." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Tech Trees / Tech Tracks", "note": null }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Technology tree", "note": "Attributions of the earliest tech trees to the Civilization board game (1980) and to Civilization (1991)." }, { "key": "sid-meier-s-civilization-manual-1991", "canonical": false, "title": "Sid Meier's Civilization manual", "author": "Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley", "year": 1991, "year_approx": true, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "MicroProse", "url": "https://archive.org/details/manual_Civilization", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Civilization Tutorial, pp. 27-28; Cities and Civilizations, p. 5; Civilization Advances Chart; Designers' Notes", "note": "Research as a by-product of trade, shown as light bulbs; a menu of the technologies that may be researched; prerequisites in parentheses, such as Monarchy requiring Alphabet, then Code of Laws, plus Ceremonial Burial. The printing scanned names Windows and Macintosh versions, and its designers' notes are dated September 1991." }, { "key": "stellar-conquest-rulebook-1975", "canonical": false, "title": "Stellar Conquest rulebook", "author": "Metagaming", "year": 1975, "year_approx": true, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Research, 6.5-6.6", "note": "Three technology classes, second-level technologies barred until a first-level one is owned, and prerequisite discounts; edition of the copy read not established." }, { "key": "the-space-gamer-no-2-1975", "canonical": false, "title": "The Space Gamer, no. 2", "author": "Metagaming", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Stellar Conquest commentary, on extensions of the technological sequences", "note": "Readers have written in with extensions of the technological sequences; the game was designed without optional rules." }, { "key": "the-game-of-everything-part-1-making-civilization-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "The Game of Everything, Part 1: Making Civilization", "author": "Jimmy Maher (The Digital Antiquarian)", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.filfre.net/?p=3307", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Prerequisites in the computer game's Advances Chart; Meier and Shelley on the board game's influence, and the reader correction that its cards work much like the chart." }, { "key": "civilization-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Civilization", "author": "The Tao of Gaming (The 20th Century Project)", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://20thcenturygames.substack.com/p/civilization", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Tresham's game as populariser rather than creator of the technology tree, with Stellar Conquest reported as earlier." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-ascendancy", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile: Ascendancy", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/ascendancy", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Nineteen Ascendancy classes, each with its own additional Ascendancy Skill Tree, and the Trials of Ascendancy that open Izaro's Labyrinth." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-talents-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Talents", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20051013063929/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com:80/info/basics/talents.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "One talent point per level, three lines of talents per class, mastery of one tree and perhaps half of another, and talents that are difficult to unlearn." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-official-strategy-guide-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Official Strategy Guide", "author": "Michael Lummis and Danielle Vanderlip", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "BradyGames", "url": "https://archive.org/details/World_of_Warcraft_World_of_Warcraft_BradyGames_Official_Strategy_Guide", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Using Your Talent Points; Druid chapter, talents (Feral Charge)", "note": "Talent points from level 10 and a talent gated by 10 points in its tree." }, { "key": "massive-world-of-warcraft-patch-coming-includes-cataclysm-talent-trees-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Massive World of Warcraft Patch Coming; Includes Cataclysm Talent Trees", "author": "Brian Leahy (Shacknews)", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.shacknews.com/article/65969/massive-world-of-warcraft-patch", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "The shift from a 71-point to a 41-point system, with progress down a single tree until the 31st point." }, { "key": "blizzcon-2011-blizzard-reveals-new-talent-system-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "BlizzCon 2011: Blizzard reveals new talent system", "author": "Josh Myers (Engadget)", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.engadget.com/2011-10-21-blizzard-reveals-new-talent-system-at-blizzcon.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "One of three talents every 15 levels, specialization chosen at level 10, and easy retalenting." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-dragonflight-talent-preview-2022", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Dragonflight Talent Preview", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2022, "year_approx": true, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-gb/news/23797209", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Class and specialization trees with alternating points from levels 10 and 11, and the re-introduction of talent trees; the post prints no year." }, { "key": "dota-2-7-00-update-gameplay-changes-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2: 7.00 update, gameplay changes", "author": "Valve", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dota2.com/700/gameplay", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Hero Talents", "note": "Hero Talents selected at levels 10, 15, 20 and 25, two options per level, and bypassed branches unavailable at future levels." }, { "key": "passives-and-skills", "canonical": false, "title": "Passives and Skills", "author": "LizardIRL (Maxroll)", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/resources/passives-and-skills", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Passive Trees; Skill Specialization", "note": "Last Epoch's class and mastery passive trees, five specialisation slots opened at levels 4, 8, 20, 35 and 50, and chosen skills earning experience to a default maximum level of 20." }, { "key": "guide-character-devotion", "canonical": false, "title": "Guide: Character, Devotion", "author": "Crate Entertainment", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.grimdawn.com/guide/character/devotion/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "One Devotion Point per restored shrine, up to 50 across the three difficulties, affinity requirements on every constellation but the Crossroads, celestial powers assigned to skills, and unlearning at the Spirit Guide for a fee plus an Aether Crystal." } ], "n_examples": 11, "n_sources": 18, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 673, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/skill-trees" }, { "id": "sliding-block-puzzles", "name": "Sliding and Pushing Block Puzzles", "status": "verified", "category": "puzzle-and-pattern", "definition": "Pieces are slid or pushed one step at a time within a bounded grid where they cannot pass through one another, and the goal is to reach a target arrangement in a legal sequence of moves.", "aliases": [ "sliding puzzles", "block pushing", "Sokoban puzzles", "box-pushing puzzles" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "lock-and-key", "grid-movement", "tile-placement" ], "referenced_by": [ "physics-puzzles" ], "media": [ "video", "board-card", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Sokoban for the pushing form and the 15 Puzzle for the sliding form; their property values agree. Agency is medium because each move is chosen from a small legal set and the whole sequence matters; high was the losing value, since the sequence space is large but the solution set is narrow. Complexity is low because the move rule is one sentence. Decision density is low because a move is one choice of piece or direction, though a solution requires many such moves in order. Pacing is neutral in isolation; embedded in a larger game the puzzle stalls progress until solved and would decelerate.", "effects": [ "spatial-reasoning", "planning", "analysis-paralysis", "mastery" ], "examples": [ { "title": "15 Puzzle", "year": 1880, "year_approx": true, "medium": "physical", "creator": "Attributed to Noyes Chapman", "note": "Fifteen numbered tiles and one gap in a four-by-four frame; tiles slide into the gap and must be returned to order, and exactly half of all arrangements cannot be solved.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Sokoban", "year": 1982, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Hiroyuki Imabayashi (Thinking Rabbit)", "note": "A warehouse keeper pushes, never pulls, crates onto target squares; a crate pushed into a corner is stuck for good, so irreversibility is the whole puzzle.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Rush Hour", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Nob Yoshigahara (Binary Arts, later ThinkFun)", "note": "Cars slide only along their own axis on a six-by-six grid and the red car must reach the exit; a deck of challenge cards sets starting positions by difficulty.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ricochet Robots", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Alex Randolph", "note": "Robots slide until they hit a wall or another robot, and players race to find the shortest sequence to a target; a sliding puzzle played competitively in real time.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Baba Is You", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Arvi Teikari (Hempuli)", "note": "Pushing word blocks rewrites the rules, including which objects push and which one the player controls, so the Sokoban move set operates on the rule set itself.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Patrick's Parabox", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Patrick Traynor", "note": "Sokoban-style pushing on a grid, except that boxes can be entered: pushing a box into another shrinks it inside, pushing it out grows it, and some boxes contain themselves; a level is solved when every marked cell is covered and the player stands on the goal.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "15 Puzzle", "year": 1880, "year_approx": true, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The 15 Puzzle is the earliest well-documented sliding-block puzzle, with a craze in 1880 and invention attributed to Noyes Chapman in the late 1870s; Sam Loyd's later claim to it is discredited. Sokoban (1982) is the usual credit for the pushing form in video games. The dating of the physical puzzle is approximate, hence medium." }, "established": { "title": "15 Puzzle", "year": 1880, "year_approx": true, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Slocum and Sonneveld document the 15 Puzzle's 1880 craze, and the sliding-puzzle literature treats it as the oldest type and the start of the family: pieces that cannot pass one another, moved one cell into free space toward a target arrangement. Later sliding puzzles keep that rule, but their descent from it is loosely documented. The pushing form adds an avatar to the same rule and is credited to Sokoban (1982)." }, "sources": [ { "key": "the-15-puzzle-how-it-drove-the-world-crazy-2006", "canonical": false, "title": "The 15 Puzzle: How It Drove the World Crazy", "author": "Jerry Slocum and Dic Sonneveld", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapters on the puzzle's invention and the 1880 craze", "note": "Documented history of the 15 Puzzle and the attribution to Chapman." }, { "key": "rush-hour-rules-1996", "canonical": false, "title": "Rush Hour rules", "author": "Nob Yoshigahara (ThinkFun)", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Object and rules of play", "note": "Canonical single-axis sliding form with graded challenge cards." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Sokoban", "note": "Origin of the pushing form and its computational analysis." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Sliding puzzle", "note": "The fifteen puzzle as the oldest type of sliding puzzle, Chapman's invention starting a craze in the early 1880s, and later letter-based variants." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 3, "word_count": 510, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/sliding-block-puzzles" }, { "id": "social-conflict", "name": "Social Conflict", "status": "unverified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "Characters settle a dispute through a structured exchange of argumentative moves that wears down each side's position until one yields, and the losing side is bound by the result, often softened by a compromise.", "aliases": [ "social combat", "persuasion contests", "debate systems" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "opposed-rolls", "degrees-of-success", "relationship-systems", "branching-dialogue" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "high", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 2, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the Duel of Wits as printed in Burning Wheel Gold (2011). Category is action-resolution, the first family in the default tie-break order, because the mechanic adjudicates whether an attempt to change a mind succeeds; interaction-and-exchange was the losing family, since the canonical duel is often fought between two players, and narrative-and-choice the other candidate. Agency is medium: the actions each side chooses shape the contest, but each is settled by dice; high was the losing value. Randomness is output because tests are rolled after actions are chosen; card forms such as Griftlands add input randomness from the drawn hand. Interaction is direct because the opposing side is a player or a game master's character; solo was the losing value, taken by video forms played against system-controlled characters. Complexity is high for the seven-action menu, the pool, and the compromise rule together. Information is asymmetric because each side scripts three actions for an exchange before any is revealed, and the volleys are then revealed one at a time, so each side commits without knowing the other's choices; the Feint action pays only against an opponent who scripted a Rebuttal. Perfect, the losing value, would apply if choices were declared openly, as with the dice that lie open on the table in Dogs in the Vineyard. Feedback loop is none; negative was argued from the compromise a winner owes for damage taken, but that rule settles the outcome rather than shifting the odds during the duel. Decision density is high counted across the duel until it resets, as the per-turn guideline directs for a mechanic spanning several turns: a Statement of Purpose, an action three action choices in each of several exchanges until a Body of Argument is exhausted, and the terms of compromise. A single exchange counted alone, the losing reading, holds three action choices and codes medium.", "effects": [ "tension", "planning", "consequence-weight", "emergent-narrative" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dogs in the Vineyard", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "D. Vincent Baker (Lumpley Games)", "note": "An antecedent general conflict system in which escalation starts from non-physical discussion, with sides raising and seeing with dice; a side losing the argument may escalate to physical action, fighting, or guns for more dice at the risk of fallout, or give and concede the stakes.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Burning Wheel (Revised)", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Luke Crane (Burning Wheel HQ)", "note": "The revised edition's Duel of Wits, previewed as a free chapter in March 2005, runs an argument like a fight, each side stating what it wants, scripting actions in volleys, and reducing each other's Body of Argument pools until one runs out and that side must act within the winner's purpose, less a compromise.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Bethesda Game Studios", "note": "A persuasion wheel offers four approaches (admire, boast, coerce, joke) against a character's concealed likes and dislikes, read from facial reactions; the result raises or lowers disposition rather than settling a stated dispute.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Burning Wheel Gold", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Luke Crane", "note": "The Duel of Wits has each side make a Statement of Purpose, choose actions such as Point, Dismiss, and Feint, and wear down the opponent's Body of Argument; the loser must act within the winner's purpose, minus a compromise set by the winner's remaining Body of Argument. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Deus Ex: Human Revolution", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Eidos Montréal", "note": "Set-piece conversation battles ask the player to read a character's reactions and choose an approach at each round, with a win or a loss deciding access, a hostage's fate, or a confession.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Griftlands", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Klei Entertainment", "note": "Negotiation is fought as a card battle in which argument cards attack the opponent's resolve and arguments, using the same deck-building structure as physical combat.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "The Burning Wheel (Revised)", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "low", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the earliest dedicated social-combat procedure found; general conflict systems that can also settle arguments are antecedents. Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits was probably first printed in Burning Wheel Revised (May 2005), whose Duel of Wits chapter Burning Wheel HQ released as a free preview in March 2005. Forum posts of December 2004 describe it as coming in the revision, a February 2004 review of the 2002 Classic set describes only its scripted combat, and there was no 2004 revised edition; that Classic lacked it is not directly confirmed. Confidence is low because earlier role-playing procedures for argument remain unsurveyed, and the form is coded here from Burning Wheel Gold (2011). Early role-playing settled social encounters with a single reaction roll or a referee's ruling. Hero Wars (2000) ran key moments as extended contests with a running score, an antecedent, though whether its 2000 text applies them to argument is unconfirmed. Dogs in the Vineyard (2004) folded talk into a general escalating conflict, another antecedent. Exalted's 2001 first edition is not a documented earlier example. In video games, the cross-examination of Gyakuten Saiban (2001, later Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney) is an earlier, neighbouring debate form against scripted testimony, and Oblivion (2006) is a widely cited persuasion minigame." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "the-burning-wheel-revised-duel-of-wits-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "The Burning Wheel (Revised): Duel of Wits", "author": "Luke Crane", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20051130020723id_/http://www.burningwheel.org:80/pdf/dow_95_108.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": "pp. 95-108", "note": "Free preview chapter released by Burning Wheel HQ in March 2005, before the book's May release. Each player plans three actions per exchange (p. 98), the volleys are revealed and resolved one at a time (p. 99), and Feint works only against Rebuttal or Obfuscate (p. 100)." }, { "key": "duel-of-wits-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "Duel of Wits?", "author": "The Forge forums", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://indie-rpgs.com/reference/index.php/welcome/topic/13585", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "December 2004 thread in which the Duel of Wits is described as coming in the Burning Wheel revision, with a preview chapter planned." }, { "key": "burning-wheel-gold-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Burning Wheel Gold", "author": "Luke Crane", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Duel of Wits, pp. 388–402", "note": "Canonical rules text for the coded form, including the Statement of Purpose, Body of Argument, the seven actions, and compromise." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "The Burning Wheel", "note": "Edition dates of Classic (2002), Revised (2005), and Gold (2011), and the editions' partial incompatibility." }, { "key": "review-the-burning-wheel-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "Review: The Burning Wheel", "author": "Realms", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://realms.co.uk/blog/articles/review-the-burning-wheel/", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "A February 2004 review of the two-book Classic set that covers its scripted combat and mentions no Duel of Wits or argument rules." }, { "key": "a-lazy-sequence-burning-wheel-gold-index", "canonical": false, "title": "A Lazy Sequence, Burning Wheel Gold Index", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://brehaut.net/burning_wheel_index/", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Fan page index placing the Statement of Purpose, Body of Argument, the seven actions, and Compromise within the Duel of Wits chapter." }, { "key": "thoughts-on-duel-of-wits-social-skills-and-player-control-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "Thoughts on Duel of Wits, social skills and player control", "author": "Burning Wheel Forums", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://forums.burningwheel.com/t/thoughts-on-duel-of-wits-social-skills-and-player-control/23701", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Citing the Gold Revised printing, the result binds within the context set before the duel, cannot force a change of mind (p. 399), and can be refused by Walking Away (p. 390)." }, { "key": "dogs-in-the-vineyard-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "Dogs in the Vineyard", "author": "D. Vincent Baker", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Conflict", "note": "Raises and sees, escalation from talking to gunfighting, and giving." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 8, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 551, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/social-conflict" }, { "id": "socketing", "name": "Socketing", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "Items or abilities carry a fixed number of slots into which the player inserts separate modules, such as gems, runes or materia, that grant or modify capabilities; linked slots let one module alter another", "aliases": [ "sockets", "socketed items", "gem sockets", "linked sockets", "mod slots" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "equipment-loadouts", "skill-trees", "loot-tables", "experience-levels", "engine-building", "item-modification" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "high", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 2, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Path of Exile's item sockets with active and support gems, before patch 3.29; Final Fantasy VII has the same structure with fixed slots and linked pairs. Category is progression-and-capability because the modules change what the character can do; equipment-loadouts is the nearest neighbour, and resource-management is in tension for the capacity-budget variants. Agency is high because the player chooses an active module and up to five supports for each link group from a large pool; medium was the losing value, since the host item's socket count, links and colours constrain the choice. Randomness is none: insertion is deterministic, and the socket layout a drop carries is input randomness that belongs to loot-tables; input was the losing value. Interaction is solo; the trade value of modules belongs to trading. Complexity is high: socket count, links, colour restrictions, support compatibility and module levels are interacting sub-rules; medium was the losing value and fits Final Fantasy VII's pairs without colours. Pacing is neutral because configuration happens between fights. Information is perfect: module effects and slot layout are visible, and Diablo II's undisclosed runeword formulae are a hidden variant. Feedback loop is positive: modules grow only while socketed and used (gem experience, materia AP), so a configuration that is used successfully becomes stronger; none was the losing value, for a reading that leaves that growth to experience-levels, as skill-trees excludes its host's loop. Decision density is high because configuring one link group means choosing the host item, the active module and each support in turn; medium was the losing value, counting one decision per kind (which actives, which supports, which host items) rather than per slot.", "effects": [ "planning", "engine-satisfaction", "ownership", "frustration-risk", "grind" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Final Fantasy VII", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Square", "note": "Weapons and armour have a set number of materia slots, some joined in linked pairs. Materia orbs grant spells, commands or stat changes and can be removed freely; a support materia in a linked slot enhances the materia in the partner slot, and materia gain AP and level only while equipped.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Diablo II", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard North", "note": "Socketed weapons, helms and shields, with up to three sockets, take gems and skulls whose effect depends on the item type, and a fused gem cannot be removed. Lord of Destruction (2001) added jewels and runes; runes inserted in the right order into a non-magical item with exactly that many sockets form a runeword with extra powers.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "All active skills are gems socketed into equipment, and support gems in linked sockets modify them, up to five on one skill. Socket colours restricted which gems fit until patch 3.29 in July 2026, which press coverage reports made sockets colourless by default while count and links still matter.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Grim Dawn", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Crate Entertainment", "note": "A component is applied to an item of the types it fits, such as Sanctified Bone to chest or head armour, from a set player level. The Inventor will separate them for a small fee, but the player recovers either the item or the component, not both.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pathfinder (second edition)", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Paizo", "note": "Weapons and armour carry fundamental runes and property runes. In the remastered rules (GM Core, 2023) an item holds as many property runes as its potency rune's value, and a rune can be moved to another item in a day for a tenth of its price.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Lautapelit.fi", "note": "Each ship class has a blueprint of part spaces. The Upgrade action returns part tiles to the tray and places researched parts on empty or printed spaces, provided total energy use does not exceed production, and every ship of that class changes at once.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Diablo IV", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Gear sockets take gems and, from the Vessel of Hatred expansion (2024), runes. A ritual rune and an invocation rune in one piece of armour form a runeword, the ritual rune generating Offering on a condition and the invocation rune spending it; unsocketing at a Jeweler costs nothing and destroys neither runes nor armour.", "latest": true }, { "title": "Path of Exile 2", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "Support sockets sit on the skill gems themselves, most starting with two and Jeweller's Orbs adding more, while item sockets, one or two by slot and added with Artificer's Orbs, take runes.", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": "Final Fantasy VII", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The US instruction manual (1997) documents the whole structure: materia inserted into slots in weapons and armour, removal at will, and linked slots in which support materia enhances the paired materia. The Japanese release and its manual are not cited, and pre-1997 video and tabletop antecedents remain unsurveyed, so confidence is medium. Path of Exile (2013) is the populariser of the socket-and-link form in action role-playing games." }, "established": { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Path of Exile built its skill system on sockets, links and support gems and popularised the socket-and-link form and its vocabulary in action role-playing games." }, "sources": [ { "key": "final-fantasy-vii-instruction-manual-usa-1997", "canonical": false, "title": "Final Fantasy VII instruction manual (USA)", "author": "Square", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Sony Computer Entertainment America", "url": "https://archive.org/download/final-fantasy-vii-usa_20250212/Final%20Fantasy%20VII%20(USA)_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Menu Screen Commands: 3. Materia, pp. 33-34; Equip, Materia Slots, p. 35", "note": "Materia slots in weapons and armour, removal, linked slots and support materia, AP gained only while equipped, item growth rates." }, { "key": "diablo-ii-manual-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Diablo II manual", "author": "Blizzard North", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/diablo-ii-manual/Diablo%20II%20Manual_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Items: Socketed Items (Names Appear in Gray); Gems", "note": "Inserting gems into socketed items, and that a fused gem cannot be removed." }, { "key": "diablo-ii-lord-of-destruction-manual-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "Diablo II: Lord of Destruction manual", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/diablo-ii-lord-of-destruction_202306/Diablo%20II%20-%20Lord%20of%20Destruction_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Insertable Items: Jewels, Runes, p. 26", "note": "Runes and rune sets that give an item further abilities when inserted in the proper order." }, { "key": "items-socketed-items-and-gems-the-arreat-summit-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Items: Socketed Items and Gems (The Arreat Summit)", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20000818010132/http://www.battle.net:80/diablo2/items/socketable.shtml", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Socketable item types, a maximum of three sockets, permanent fusion, gem effects by item type." }, { "key": "items-rune-words-the-arreat-summit-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "Items: Rune Words (The Arreat Summit)", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20010608224746/http://www.battle.net:80/diablo2exp/items/runewords.shtml", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Runewords only in socketed non-magical items, runes in the correct order, formulae revealed as discovered." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-game-overview-closed-beta-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile game overview (closed beta)", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20121102053426/http://www.pathofexile.com:80/game", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Skills as gems socketed into equipment, support gems affecting skills in connected sockets, up to five supports, gem levels and trade value." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-previews-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile Previews", "author": "Brother None", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "GameBanshee", "url": "http://www.gamebanshee.com/k6wfa", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "IGN and IncGamers previews of September 2010 describing colour-coded sockets, links, support gems, gem experience and free unsocketing." }, { "key": "gb-feature-path-of-exile-2-interview-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "GB Feature: Path of Exile 2 Interview", "author": "BuckGB with Chris Wilson", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "interview", "publisher": "GameBanshee", "url": "https://www.gamebanshee.com/3wru9", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Sockets moved from items into the gems for Path of Exile 2." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-2-how-to-get-more-support-gem-slots-2024", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile 2: How To Get More Support Gem Slots", "author": "Ashlee Manalang", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Gfinity Esports", "url": "https://www.gfinityesports.com/article/path-of-exile-2-how-to-get-more-support-gem-slots", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Most skill gems start with two support slots; Jeweller's Orbs add more." }, { "key": "how-to-add-sockets-to-your-weapons-and-armor-path-of-exile-2-2024", "canonical": false, "title": "How to add sockets to your weapons and armor - Path of Exile 2", "author": "Aidan O'Brien", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Shacknews", "url": "https://www.shacknews.com/article/142478/how-to-add-sockets-weapons-armor-path-of-exile-2", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Item sockets for runes, Artificer's Orbs, and the number of sockets by equipment slot." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-3-29-curse-of-the-allflame-coverage-2026", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile 3.29 Curse of the Allflame coverage", "author": "Ken Allsop", "year": 2026, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "PCGamesN", "url": "https://www.pcgamesn.com/path-of-exile/3-29-curse-of-the-allflame", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Sockets colourless by default from patch 3.29, with count and links still required." }, { "key": "mods-guide-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "Mods Guide", "author": "Digital Extremes", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.warframe.com/news/mods-guide", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Mod capacity and drain, slot polarity, capacity doubling, one mod copy on several items." }, { "key": "gm-core-pathfinder-second-edition-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "GM Core (Pathfinder Second Edition)", "author": "Paizo", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Armor & Armaments: Runes, p. 224", "note": "Property runes limited by the potency rune, and rune transfer between items." }, { "key": "runewords-vessel-of-hatred-diablo-iv-guide-2026", "canonical": false, "title": "Runewords (Vessel of Hatred), Diablo IV guide", "author": "GamerGuides", "year": 2026, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Ritual and invocation runes forming a runeword in one piece of armour, and free unsocketing at a Jeweler." }, { "key": "eclipse-second-dawn-for-the-galaxy-rules-2020", "canonical": false, "title": "Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy rules", "author": "Lautapelit.fi", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Upgrade", "note": "Removable ship parts placed on class blueprints under an energy budget." }, { "key": "guide-items-components", "canonical": false, "title": "Guide: Items, Components", "author": "Crate Entertainment", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.grimdawn.com/guide/items/components/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": null, "note": "Applying a component to an item, the item types and player level each component requires, and the Inventor's service that recovers either the item or the component, not both." }, { "key": "guide-gameplay-service-npcs", "canonical": false, "title": "Guide: Gameplay, Service NPCs", "author": "Crate Entertainment", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.grimdawn.com/guide/gameplay/service-npcs/", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Inventor", "note": "The Inventor salvages either the item or the attached component for a small fee." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 17, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 647, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/socketing" }, { "id": "sowing", "name": "Sowing", "status": "verified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "A player lifts all the counters from one pit and drops them one at a time into successive pits around a circuit, with captures or further moves decided by where the last counter lands and what it finds there.", "aliases": [ "mancala", "count and capture", "pit and pebble games", "seed sowing", "mancala movement" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "piece-capture", "set-collection", "worker-placement" ], "referenced_by": [ "rondel" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from oware (the two-rank West African and Caribbean game), checked against Kalah. Agency is medium because a move is one choice among at most six pits, though the consequences are far-reaching; high was the losing value. Interaction is direct because the last-seed capture removes counters from the opponent's row and the feeding rule obliges a player to give the opponent moves; indirect was the losing value, since sowing also fills the opponent's pits as a side effect rather than by targeting. Complexity is medium for the lap, skip-origin, and feeding rules; Kalah's simplified rules would be low. Feedback loop is none in oware because captured seeds leave play and a large store confers no further power; positive was the losing value for Kalah, where extra turns from exact landings can chain. Pacing is neutral: captures thin the board toward the end condition, but sparse endings in which seeds circulate without capture pull the other way; accelerates, the previous coding, was the losing value.", "effects": [ "calculation", "planning", "mastery", "spatial-reasoning" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Oware", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Two rows of six pits with four seeds each. A player sows counter-clockwise, skipping the origin pit on laps, and captures when the last seed makes an opponent's pit two or three, continuing backwards while that holds. A player must leave the opponent a move if able. Also spelled wari or awale.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Kalah", "year": 1940, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "William Julius Champion Jr.", "note": "The Western commercial simplification; a last seed landing in the player's own store grants another turn, and one landing in an empty own-side pit captures the opposite pit. Devised around 1940 and patented in the 1950s.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Trajan", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Stefan Feld", "note": "Sowing as action selection; the player picks up the markers in one of six bowls on a personal rondel and distributes them, and the bowl that receives the last marker determines which action is taken.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Five Tribes", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Bruno Cathala", "note": "Meeples are lifted from one tile and sown across adjacent tiles, with the colour of the last meeple set deciding the action and matching meeples on the final tile captured; sowing on a grid rather than a circuit.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "NDcube (Nintendo)", "note": "Includes Mancala as a faithful digital implementation of a two-rank game, with the sowing animated pit by pit; cited as an adaptation rather than a new form. Kalah was also among the games programmed in early 1960s artificial-intelligence research.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Mancala", "year": 600, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The earliest firmly dated boards are carved into stone at Aksumite sites in Ethiopia and Eritrea from about the 6th to 7th century CE. Claims of Egyptian or Neolithic origin rest on rows of hollows that may not be game boards and are disputed in the archaeological literature. The family's ethnographic distribution across Africa, the Middle East, and South and South-East Asia is well documented; its point of origin is not." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "murray-1952", "canonical": true, "title": "A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess", "author": "H. J. R. Murray", "year": 1952, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Clarendon Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Mancala, parts I and II chapters", "note": "Classification of two-, three-, and four-row mancala and the distribution of capture rules." }, { "key": "parlett-1999", "canonical": true, "title": "The Oxford History of Board Games", "author": "David Parlett", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter on mancala", "note": "Mechanism description and a sceptical review of the antiquity claims." }, { "key": "mancala-games-1984", "canonical": false, "title": "Mancala Games", "author": "Laurence Russ", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Rules survey of regional variants, including oware and Kalah." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Mancala", "note": "Hobby use of sowing as an action-selection device." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 3, "word_count": 519, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/sowing" }, { "id": "status-effects", "name": "Status Effects", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "A named temporary state such as poisoned, stunned, or hasted is attached to a character and alters its capabilities by a fixed rule until it expires, is cured, or is otherwise removed.", "aliases": [ "status ailments", "status conditions", "buffs and debuffs", "conditions" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hit-points", "saving-throws", "cooldowns", "critical-hits", "hit-location" ], "referenced_by": [ "boss-encounters", "damage-types", "morale-and-rout", "power-ups", "procs", "sanity" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (2014) conditions list, the clearest codified form. Category is progression-and-capability, which departs from the default tie-break order (action-resolution is asked first, and was the losing family): the mechanic is a change to what the holder can do, and whether a condition applies is usually decided by an attack or saving throw that belongs to those entries, not to this one. Interaction is direct because conditions are aimed at a specific creature run by another human, a player character by the referee or a monster by a player; solo was the losing value for video forms against system-controlled enemies. Agency is low because the state applies by rule; medium was the losing value for the choice of whether to spend an action curing it. Randomness is none because durations and effects are fixed in the canonical form; output was the losing value for random-duration variants. Feedback loop is positive because most conditions degrade the holder's capacity to avoid further harm; none was the losing value for pure damage-over-time forms. Pacing is accelerates because most conditions degrade the holder's capacity to avoid further conditions and damage, so once applied they compound toward the holder's removal; variable was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "planning", "mastery", "frustration-risk", "consequence-weight", "volatility" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Poison, paralysis from ghouls, and charm from spells attach fixed states to characters on a failed saving throw, an early documented instance of the named-condition tradition.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Final Fantasy", "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Square", "note": "Poison, sleep, stone, and other ailments are flagged per party member and cured by specific items or spells, with stone and poison persisting after battle; later entries standardised the list as status ailments.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pokémon Red and Green", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Game Freak", "note": "A Pokémon can hold one major status (burn, freeze, paralysis, poison, sleep) at a time, each with a fixed rule, and the status persists outside battle until cured.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "From launch (2004) harmful effects are debuffs of types such as curse, poison, disease and magic, and the type decides who can remove them: a druid's Remove Curse takes one curse, a priest's Dispel Magic one harmful spell, a paladin's Purify and Cleanse poison and disease. Otherwise the debuff runs out on its timer, which the official site calls \"much more common\".", "latest": false }, { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "Each elemental damage type reportedly carries its own ailment (fire hits can ignite for damage over time, cold hits chill or freeze, lightning hits shock so the target takes more damage), with chance and size scaling with the hit's damage against the target's ailment threshold. Patch 3.0 (2017) grouped bleeding and poison with them under the single term ailments.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "An appendix defines fifteen conditions, exhaustion among them (blinded, charmed, frightened, grappled, prone, stunned, and others) as reusable rules text referenced by spells, monsters, and features.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dead by Daylight", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Behaviour Interactive", "note": "Perks and killer powers apply named states for set times. Under Genetic Limits a survivor who loses a health state is Exhausted for 6 to 8 seconds, and Blood Rush lets an Exhausted survivor recover at once; Oblivious, Hindered, Haste, Endurance and Undetectable are applied the same way.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Gloomhaven", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Isaac Childres", "note": "Condition tokens (poison, wound, immobilize, disarm, stun, muddle, strengthen) sit on standees and expire by rule, so the state is public and tracked physically.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Monster Hunter Wilds", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Capcom", "note": "Repeated hits build up ailments such as poison, paralysis, sleep or blast on a monster until a threshold triggers them, each higher than the last, while hunters suffer named blights and ailments, each cured by a specific item or action.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The 1974 rules attach named states (poisoned, paralysed, charmed) to characters with fixed effects, which is the structure coded here, though they are scattered across spell and monster descriptions rather than listed. The term status effect and the consolidated list come from Japanese role-playing video games of the late 1980s, and the fully codified tabletop list dates only from the 2000s." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "player-s-handbook-5th-edition-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Player's Handbook, 5th edition", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Appendix A (Conditions)", "note": "The codified list coded for the properties." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 3 (The System), discussion of spell effects and monster special abilities", "note": "Context for the early named effects in Chainmail and original Dungeons & Dragons." }, { "key": "gloomhaven-rulebook-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Gloomhaven rulebook", "author": "Isaac Childres", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Conditions", "note": "The board form with physical condition tokens." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Status effect", "note": null }, { "key": "path-of-exile-3-0-0-the-fall-of-oriath-patch-notes-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile 3.0.0: The Fall of Oriath Patch Notes", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1930316", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Bleeding and poison counted as ailments, and the single term ailments replacing status ailments." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-wiki", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile Wiki", "author": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Shock; Chill; Frozen", "note": "Elemental ailments paired with damage types and scaled against the target's ailment threshold." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-spells-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Spells", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20041115034024/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com:80/info/basics/spells.html", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Debuffs as hostile spells, removed by Remove Curse, Dispel or similar, or more commonly left to run out." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-official-strategy-guide-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Official Strategy Guide", "author": "Michael Lummis and Danielle Vanderlip", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "BradyGames", "url": "https://archive.org/details/World_of_Warcraft_World_of_Warcraft_BradyGames_Official_Strategy_Guide", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": "Glossary of Terms (Debuff, Dispel); Druid, Priest and Paladin chapters, spell tables", "note": "Remove Curse, Dispel Magic, and Purify and Cleanse against poison and disease." }, { "key": "8-3-0-mid-chapter-2024", "canonical": false, "title": "8.3.0 | Mid-Chapter", "author": "Behaviour Interactive", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/kb/articles/475-8-3-0-mid-chapter", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": "Killer Perk Updates; Survivor Perk Updates", "note": "Dead by Daylight perks granting or inflicting the Exhausted, Oblivious, Haste, Undetectable and Endurance status effects for set durations, and the Hindered penalty from The Skull Merchant's scans." } ], "n_examples": 9, "n_sources": 9, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 493, "updated": "2026-10-30", "url": "/mechanics/status-effects" }, { "id": "stealth-detection", "name": "Stealth and Detection", "status": "verified", "category": "information-and-hidden-state", "definition": "The player avoids being noticed by guards or opponents who detect according to sight, sound, and proximity rules, and detection changes the game state, so remaining unseen is itself the objective.", "aliases": [ "stealth mechanics", "sneaking", "guard awareness", "detection states" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "line-of-sight", "fog-of-war", "hidden-movement", "cover-systems", "opposed-rolls" ], "referenced_by": [ "crowd-blending", "threat-aggro" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Metal Gear and Thief, the video form in which the detector is the system. Interaction is solo because the canonical form couples one player to system-controlled guards; direct was the losing value, which applies when the detector is another player (Burgle Bros. is cooperative against the system, Specter Ops is one against many). Randomness is none for the video form, where detection is a deterministic function of light, distance, and facing; output was the losing value, since the tabletop role-playing form resolves detection with opposed rolls. Information is hidden because the guards' awareness and their positions outside the player's view are held by the system and only partly signalled; asymmetric was the losing value, set aside because system-controlled guards are not players. Category tension with space-and-position, since detection is computed from position relative to sight cones, was resolved for information-and-hidden-state because the operative state is whether the player is known to the detector; space-and-position was the losing family. Feedback loop stays none after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; mixed was the losing value.", "effects": [ "tension", "planning", "spatial-reasoning", "mastery", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Castle Wolfenstein", "year": 1981, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Muse Software (Silas Warner)", "note": "Guards identify and pursue a prisoner seen without a uniform; a stolen uniform delays recognition, though SS guards may see through it and follow from room to room. Escaping rather than killing is the stated object.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Metal Gear", "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Konami (Hideo Kojima)", "note": "Guards see a short distance straight ahead, and entering that line triggers an alert phase that calls reinforcements; the alert and its exclamation mark became a familiar genre signal.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Thief: The Dark Project", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Looking Glass Studios", "note": "A light gem shows how visible the player is, floor surfaces differ in the noise they make, and guards escalate through suspicion, search, and alert in response to sight and sound.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Hide and Move Silently checks are opposed by Spot and Listen, with modifiers for distance and conditions, so detection is an opposed roll adjudicated on the grid.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Burgle Bros.", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Tim Fowers", "note": "A guard on each floor walks a visible patrol route toward a drawn destination and catches any player on its tile; tripped alarms redirect it, so the players manage the guard's path rather than fight it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ghost of Tsushima", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sucker Punch Productions", "note": "Jin can sneak through occupied camps to kill enemies silently with his tanto and chain assassinations; once guards detect him they become alerted, smoke bombs disorient alerted foes, and some charms slow how quickly enemies detect him.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Manbiki Shounen", "year": 1979, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the video form, in which system-controlled watchers detect the player. Manbiki Shounen, a Commodore PET game by Hiroshi Suzuki in which the player steals from a shop without being seen by the staff, is attested by independent records: a Japanese software database records its publication as a type-in listing in RAM magazine (February 1980), Suzuki's interview in Szczepaniak's history dates it to November 1979, and the program was recovered and shown in 2024. The 1979 year rests on the developer's account; February 1980 is the earliest documented publication. Taito's Lupin III (1980), Castle Wolfenstein (1981), and Sega's 005 (1981), whose guards are described as carrying flashlight beams, followed; the months for Lupin III and 005 come from secondary databases. Which counts as first turns on definition as much as date, since Manbiki Shounen was a type-in that was effectively lost until 2024. A 1982 profile documents Castle Wolfenstein's detection as identification and disguise rather than sight lines. Kojima traces Metal Gear's (1987) stealth premise to MSX hardware limits; it is usually credited with popularising alert states, which the developer sources found do not discuss. Thief (1998) is credited with light- and sound-based detection; its 1999 postmortem documents the sound and graded-awareness systems. Tabletop role-playing is an antecedent: the thief class of the Greyhawk supplement (1975) already had hide-in-shadows and move-silently abilities." }, "established": { "title": "Metal Gear", "year": 1987, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Metal Gear is credited with popularising the guard's alert state, whose exclamation mark became a familiar genre signal; Thief later added light- and sound-based detection." }, "sources": [ { "key": "dungeons-dragons-3rd-edition-player-s-handbook-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition, Player's Handbook", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Skills chapter, Hide, Move Silently, Spot, and Listen", "note": "The tabletop role-playing form of detection as opposed checks." }, { "key": "postmortem-thief-the-dark-project-1999", "canonical": false, "title": "Postmortem: Thief: The Dark Project", "author": "Tom Leonard", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/postmortem-i-thief-the-dark-project-i-", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Developer account of sound as the AIs' main signal to the player and of awareness graded beyond oblivious and omniscient; it does not discuss light." }, { "key": "inside-gaming-castle-wolfenstein-profile-1982", "canonical": false, "title": "Inside Gaming (Castle Wolfenstein profile)", "author": "Krist Boardman", "year": 1982, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/Electronic_Games_Volume_01_Number_04_1982-06_Reese_Communications_US/Electronic_Games_Volume_01_Number_04_1982-06_Reese_Communications_US_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Electronic Games Vol. 1 No. 4 (June 1982), p. 22", "note": "Contemporaneous description with Silas Warner quotes of guards who identify an undisguised prisoner and SS guards who see through the disguise." }, { "key": "go3-kojima-talks-metal-gear-history-future-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "GO3: Kojima Talks Metal Gear History, Future", "author": "David Low (Game Developer)", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/go3-kojima-talks-i-metal-gear-i-history-future", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Kojima on turning an escape premise into sneaking in because of MSX hardware limits." }, { "key": "manbiki-syonen", "canonical": false, "title": "MANBIKI SYONEN", "author": "FM-7 Museum", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://fm-7.com/museum/softhouse/shinkigensha/211800420.html", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Japanese software database entry crediting Hiroshi Suzuki and recording the PET 2001 version published in RAM, February 1980." }, { "key": "the-untold-history-of-japanese-game-developers-volume-1-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers, Volume 1", "author": "John Szczepaniak", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "p. 7 (page as cited in Wikipedia's Stealth game article)", "note": "Interview with Hiroshi Suzuki, source of the November 1979 date." }, { "key": "burgle-bros-rulebook-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Burgle Bros. rulebook", "author": "Tim Fowers", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Guard movement and alarms", "note": "Board-game form with a system-driven patrolling detector." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Stealth game", "note": "Genre history including Manbiki Shounen, 005, Castle Wolfenstein, Metal Gear, and Thief." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 8, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 580, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/stealth-detection" }, { "id": "stock-holding", "name": "Stock Holding", "status": "verified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "Players buy fractional shares in entities such as companies or chains, receive dividends or bonuses in proportion to their holding, and may gain control of an entity by owning the largest block.", "aliases": [ "share ownership", "shareholding", "stock market games", "majority control", "share dumping" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "markets", "loans-and-debt", "income", "auction-bidding", "network-building" ], "referenced_by": [ "hidden-scoring" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "high", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 2, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from 1830 (1986), the most widely played 18xx game, in which the largest shareholder becomes president and operates the company. Interaction is direct because buying into or dumping shares of a company another player runs targets that player; indirect was the losing value, coded from Acquire, where holdings couple players only through chain growth and mergers. Information is perfect because 18xx holdings are open; asymmetric was the losing value because Acquire keeps stock certificates hidden. Feedback loop is positive because dividends fund further purchases; mixed was argued on the ground that share-price falls and overcapitalised companies punish the aggressive holder. Category is resource-management, which departs from the default tie-break order: progression-and-capability is asked first and was the losing family, since control of a company extends what a player may do, but the mechanic's identity is the allocation of cash among holdings.", "effects": [ "calculation", "planning", "engine-satisfaction", "runaway-leader", "analysis-paralysis", "kingmaking" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Acquire", "year": 1964, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Sid Sackson (3M)", "note": "Players buy certificates in hotel chains as they grow; when chains merge, the largest and second-largest holders of the absorbed chain receive bonuses and choose whether to sell, hold, or trade their shares. Ownership pays without conferring control.", "latest": false }, { "title": "1829", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Francis Tresham (Hartland Trefoil)", "note": "Shares in railway companies pay dividends per share, and the largest shareholder directs the company, which founded the 18xx form in which ownership and control are joined.", "latest": false }, { "title": "1830", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Francis Tresham (Avalon Hill)", "note": "Stock rounds alternate with operating rounds; paying a dividend raises the share price and withholding lowers it, and a president may sell down and hand a weak company to the next-largest holder.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Railroad Tycoon", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sid Meier (MicroProse)", "note": "The player buys and sells stock in their own and rival railroads, can attempt a takeover by acquiring a majority, and can be ousted by rivals or the board if the share price collapses.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Chicago Express", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Harry Wu (Queen Games)", "note": "First published as Wabash Cannonball in 2007. Shares are auctioned, every dividend is split among the holders, and no one owns a company outright: any shareholder may spend a turn building track for a company they hold.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pan Am", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Prospero Hall and Peter Lee (Funko Games)", "note": "Players sell routes to the growing Pan Am company for cash and buy its stock each round at a price moved by event cards; shares cannot be sold freely, and the player holding the most Pan Am stock at the end wins.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Acquire", "year": 1964, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Acquire is the earliest widely cited designed game built on buying shares in entities whose value changes with play and paying holders at defined moments. Stock-market family games of the interwar period moved prices by dice and are plausible antecedents, so an earlier instance cannot be ruled out. 1829 (1974) added control by majority holding and founded the 18xx form; Railroad Tycoon (1990) carried shares and takeovers into video games." }, "established": { "title": "1829", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "1829 joined dividend-paying shares to control by the largest holder and founded the 18xx form, whose rules 1830 later fixed; Acquire had earlier paid holders without conferring control." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Economics chapter", "note": "Board-game economic mechanisms and the distinction between ownership, markets, and auctions." }, { "key": "1830-rulebook-1986", "canonical": false, "title": "1830 rulebook", "author": "Francis Tresham (Avalon Hill)", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Stock round; share prices, dividends, and presidency", "note": "Canonical majority-control rules used for the property coding." }, { "key": "acquire-rules-1964", "canonical": false, "title": "Acquire rules", "author": "Sid Sackson (3M)", "year": 1964, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Buying stock; mergers and shareholder bonuses", "note": "Provenance and the holder-bonus form without control." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Stock Holding", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 508, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/stock-holding" }, { "id": "subclasses", "name": "Subclasses", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "Within one class, a character takes one of a short fixed list of branches at a set level or on completing set content, and the branch grants its own package of features at later levels of that class", "aliases": [ "sub-class", "class specializations", "mastery classes", "ascendancy classes" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "variable-player-powers", "skill-trees", "multiclassing", "experience-levels" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition and the 2024 edition, where each class names its branches, the player picks one at a stated class level, and the branch's features arrive at fixed later levels for the rest of the character's career. Agency is medium: one choice among a short printed list; high was the losing value, since the pick decides every later feature of the branch. Randomness is none and interaction solo. Complexity is medium: the rule is a paragraph plus a feature list by level; low was the losing value, since the choice itself is a single sentence. Pacing is neutral: the branch changes what a level grants, not how fast levels come. Information is perfect because every branch's features are printed by level before the pick. Feedback loop is none: the mechanic decides what levels supplied by experience levels buy, as multiclassing does. Decision density is low, one decision point made once. Tension was considered and not tagged, because the outcome is set when the branch is picked and its later features are known in advance. Sunk cost was considered and not tagged, because the canonical rules let the choice stand and offer nothing to abandon; it fits the paid-respec forms of Last Epoch, where a change of mastery resets every passive point. Frustration risk was considered and not tagged, because the pick is made by the player from full information, so a regretted pick belongs to consequence weight rather than to low-agency loss.", "effects": [ "ownership", "consequence-weight", "planning", "replayability" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons Supplement I: Greyhawk", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Robert Kuntz (TSR)", "note": "An antecedent. Fighting men include paladins; a lawful fighter with charisma of 17 or more may elect paladin status from the commencement of play, gaining lay on hands and, from 8th level, dispel evil, and any chaotic act revokes the status for ever.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Players Handbook", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax (TSR)", "note": "An antecedent. Druids, paladins, rangers, illusionists and assassins are called sub-classes of the cleric, fighter, magic-user and thief, but each is a class with its own entry requirements, selected when the character is made.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dragon #69: The Thief-Acrobat", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax (TSR)", "note": "An antecedent. On reaching 6th level a thief may train as a thief-acrobat, a single \"split class\" whose tumbling, jumping and tightrope skills rise by level to 23rd while most thief skills stop at 5th.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dragon #69: The Entertainer Classes", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Len Lakofka (TSR)", "note": "A stagehand who becomes a performer at 2nd level trains as a juggler, acrobat or troubadour, each with its own level titles, weapons and abilities that rise per level above 2nd; at 9th level a second sub-class may follow, and all three make an Entertainer.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Companion Set", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Frank Mentzer (TSR)", "note": "At Name level a wandering fighter becomes a paladin, knight or avenger according to alignment and an oath to a church or ruler, the paladin casting cleric spells as a cleric of one-third the fighter's level; a neutral cleric of 9th level or more may become a druid.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Langrisser", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "NCS (Masaya)", "note": "An antecedent on the boundary with promotion. At level 10 a commander changes class, choosing from a menu when more than one is open, so Ledin's fighter becomes a knight or a lord; the new class replaces the old, decides which spells can be cast, and has its own cap of level 10.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Carrion Fields", "year": 1994, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Carrion Fields, LLC", "note": "By May 2001 the MUD's warriors gain further abilities once they specialize in a weapon type; its 2002 help files give eight styles, among them sword, mace, axe and dagger, offered at the rank of Knight, each teaching five or six skills of its own, and a second style from the rank of Master of Copper.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dark Age of Camelot", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Mythic Entertainment", "note": "Albion characters start in a basic class and at 5th level join a guild that fixes their advanced class; a fighter becomes a paladin, armsman or mercenary by joining the Church of Albion, the Defenders of Albion or the Guild of Shadows.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Ragnarok Online", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Gravity", "note": "A novice changes to one of six first jobs at job level 10. At the 2002 launch each first job has a single second job from job level 40, the swordsman becoming a knight; in mid-2003 Gravity added a 2-2 job for each, tested from June and on the main servers by August, so a swordsman of job level 40 may take the knight's test or the crusader's, each in Prontera.", "latest": false }, { "title": "MapleStory", "year": 2004, "year_approx": true, "medium": "video", "creator": "Wizet (Nexon)", "note": "A beginner takes one of four jobs around level 10, and at level 30 one of two or three advanced jobs derived from it, the warrior becoming a fighter, page or spearman and the bowman a hunter or crossbowman; the advanced job adds stronger skills to those of the basic job.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 4th Edition", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "At 11th level each character chooses a paragon path, four per class in the Player's Handbook, which adds features and powers at 11th, 12th, 16th and 20th level on top of the class; a multiclass feat opens another class's paths.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft: Cataclysm", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "At level 10 a character chooses one of its class's three talent trees as its specialization, gaining that tree's own active ability and passives, and the other trees stay closed until 31 points are spent in it; re-talenting and dual specialization remain.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "At level 10 a character selects a specialization and unlocks an iconic ability, then learns that specialization's abilities automatically at set levels, while talents come from a class-wide row every 15 levels; with the 5.0 talent system each specialization shows core abilities usable only while it is active.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "From the Ascendancy expansion (2016), completing the Lord's Labyrinth lets a character pick one of the three Ascendancy classes of its class, each with its own skill tree; later Labyrinth completions on each difficulty grant two Ascendancy points for that tree.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Every class takes a branch between 1st and 3rd level, such as a divine domain at 1st, an arcane tradition at 2nd or a martial archetype at 3rd; the fighter's archetype grants features at 3rd, 7th, 10th, 15th and 18th level.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Last Epoch", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Eleventh Hour Games", "note": "Each of five classes has three mastery classes, chosen on completing the campaign's mastery quest; points may go into the first half of every mastery tree, but the second half and the mastery's skills open only for the one chosen. From 2025 a mastery can be changed for gold, resetting every passive point.", "latest": true }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 2024 edition", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "All twelve classes gain a subclass at level 3, defined as a specialization that grants features at certain class levels, and for the rest of the character's career it gains each subclass feature of its class level or lower.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Daggerheart", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall (Darrington Press)", "note": "Each class has two subclasses; the player picks one at creation and takes its foundation card, then takes its specialization and mastery as level-up advancements, an upgrade that shuts out multiclassing in that tier.", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": "Dragon #69: The Entertainer Classes", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to a branch taken inside one class at a set level from a short list. The earliest documented use cited is Len Lakofka's entertainer class in Dragon #69 (January 1983): a stagehand who becomes a performer at 2nd level trains as a juggler, acrobat or troubadour, each with its own titles, weapons and abilities by level, though from 9th level a second and third may be added. The first official rules with the form cited are the Companion Set (1984), where fighters of Name level become paladins, knights or avengers; the Expert sets of 1981 and 1983 give name level a stronghold and a title only. Greyhawk (1975) lets a fighter elect paladin status at the start of play, a single optional status rather than a list, and the Players Handbook (1978) uses the word \"sub-class\" for separate classes chosen at creation. James M. Ward's eight areas of study for magic-users (The Dragon #17, 1978) are chosen with the character and replace the class's whole spell list, an alternative to the magic-user rather than a branch of it. Gygax's thief-acrobat, in the same issue as the entertainer, is taken at 6th level with its own features, but it is one specialisation rather than a list. All four are antecedents. Dragon's class articles to the end of 1984 offer no earlier branch from a list, The Complete Warlock (1978) fixes its types at creation, and contemporary reviews describe DragonQuest (1980) as having no classes and Rolemaster's professions as chosen at creation. The Chivalry & Sorcery rulebook (1977) and other games of the period remain unsurveyed, so confidence is medium." }, "established": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "low", "note": "The fifth edition rules give every class one branch, taken at 1st to 3rd level with features at fixed later levels, and the 2024 edition keeps the form under the name subclass, moving every pick to level 3. Mearls's 2013 design column describes the subclass as the range of characters inside a class whose shared features are its core identity. Baldur's Gate 3 (2023) states that it follows the fifth-edition rules, with 46 subclasses across 12 classes, but video games had branches taken at a level from 2001 on (Carrion Fields, Dark Age of Camelot), so the lineage cited runs inside one game line and its licensed adaptation." }, "sources": [ { "key": "dungeons-dragons-supplement-i-greyhawk-1975", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons Supplement I: Greyhawk", "author": "Gary Gygax and Robert Kuntz", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "TSR", "url": "https://archive.org/download/tsr02003supplement1greyhawk/tsr02003%20-%20Supplement%201%20-%20Greyhawk_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Character classes: Fighting Men; Determination of Abilities: Charisma; The Strategic Review advertisement, p. 66", "note": "Paladins as an elected status within the fighting men, their powers by level and loss on a chaotic act, and The Strategic Review's illusionist billed as a new sub-class." }, { "key": "dragon-69-a-split-class-for-nimble-characters-the-thief-acrobat-1983", "canonical": false, "title": "Dragon #69: A 'split class' for nimble characters: the Thief-Acrobat", "author": "Gary Gygax", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "TSR (Dragon Publishing)", "url": "https://archive.org/download/dragon-magazine/Dragon%20Magazine%20%23069%5Bocr%5D_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "From the Sorceror's Scroll, p. 20", "note": "A thief of strength 15 and dexterity 16 may specialise as a thief-acrobat on reaching 6th level, after six weeks' training by a thief-acrobat of 10th level, gaining tightrope walking, pole vaulting, jumping and tumbling by level to 23rd while most thief skills stop at 5th; Gygax calls the split class a first." }, { "key": "dragon-69-leomund-s-tiny-hut-the-entertainer-classes-1983", "canonical": false, "title": "Dragon #69: Leomund's Tiny Hut: The entertainer classes", "author": "Len Lakofka", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "TSR (Dragon Publishing)", "url": "https://archive.org/download/dragon-magazine/Dragon%20Magazine%20%23069%5Bocr%5D_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Leomund's Tiny Hut, pp. 54-60", "note": "An entertainer class of three sub-classifications, juggler, acrobat and troubadour, available once a stagehand becomes a performer at 2nd level, each with its own titles, weapons and abilities by level above 2nd, and a showman and entertainer path combining them from 9th level." }, { "key": "the-dragon-17-a-wizard-with-a-difference-1978", "canonical": false, "title": "The Dragon #17: A Wizard With A Difference", "author": "James M. Ward", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "TSR", "url": "https://archive.org/download/dragon-magazine/Dragon%20Magazine%20%23017%5Bocr%5D_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "A Wizard With A Difference, p. 10", "note": "Magic-users who take one of eight areas of study instead of being the normal magic-user, each with its own spell list by level, advancing as the D&D wizard does." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-expert-rules-1983", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons Expert Rules", "author": "Frank Mentzer", "year": 1983, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "TSR", "url": "https://archive.org/download/dungeons-dragons-set-2-expert-rules/Dungeons%20%26%20Dragons%20Set%202%20Expert%20Rules_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Fighters, Clerics: Name level; Strongholds", "note": "Name level bringing eligibility as a baron or the right to build a castle, a stronghold and title rather than a branch." }, { "key": "advanced-dungeons-dragons-players-handbook-1978", "canonical": false, "title": "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Players Handbook", "author": "Gary Gygax", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "TSR", "url": "https://archive.org/download/advanced-dungeons-dragons-players-handbook/Advanced%20Dungeons%20%26%20Dragons%20-%20Players%20Handbook_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Character Classes: The Paladin; The Ranger; The Druid; The Illusionist; The Assassin", "note": "Druid, paladin, ranger, illusionist and assassin described as sub-classes of the four main classes, each with its own requirements and chosen at creation." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-companion-set-players-companion-book-one-1984", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, Companion Set: Players Companion, Book One", "author": "Frank Mentzer", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "TSR", "url": "https://archive.org/download/dungeons-and-dragons-set-3-companion-rules/Dungeons%20and%20Dragons%20Set%203%20Companion%20Rules_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Players Companion: Fighters, Travelling; Clerics, Druid", "note": "Name-level fighters becoming paladins, knights or avengers by alignment and oath, their powers, and neutral clerics of 9th level becoming druids." }, { "key": "langrisser-instruction-manual-mega-drive-1991", "canonical": false, "title": "Langrisser instruction manual (Mega Drive)", "author": "NCS (Masaya)", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/langrisser-manual-mega-drive/Langrisser_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "ユニットの能力とパラメータ, pp. 23-24; クラスチェンジ, p. 27; 指揮官クラスチェンジ系統図, p. 41", "note": "The Japanese manual; class change open to a commander at level 10, a menu to choose when several classes are open, the class deciding which spells can be used, a unit in the highest class capped at level 10, and a chart of each commander's branching classes." }, { "key": "warsong-instruction-manual-genesis-1991", "canonical": false, "title": "Warsong instruction manual (Genesis)", "author": "NCS Corporation", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Treco", "url": "https://archive.org/details/image-001_202502", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Parameters Which Only Commanders Have, p. 25; Rank Upgrade, p. 28; Moving Formation, p. 42", "note": "The English release of Langrisser; a rank upgrade when a commander reaches level 10, a menu when more than one class is open, magic varying by class, and a chart of each commander's two branches." }, { "key": "carrion-fields-help-classes-warrior-wayback-capture-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "Carrion Fields: Help, Classes, Warrior (Wayback capture)", "author": "Carrion Fields, LLC", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20010505203238/http://www.carrionfields.com:80/Help/Classes/Warrior.phtml", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": null, "note": "Warriors gaining numerous additional abilities once they specialize in a specific weapon type, with the warrior's common skills by level." }, { "key": "carrion-fields-help-specialize-weapon-specialization-wayback-captures-2002", "canonical": false, "title": "Carrion Fields: Help, Specialize; Weapon Specialization (Wayback captures)", "author": "Carrion Fields, LLC", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20020716145449/http://www.carrionfields.com:80/display.html?keywords=weapon+specialization", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "HELP SPECIALIZE; HELP WEAPON SPECIALIZATION", "note": "Eight weapon styles with five or six skills each; the companion SPECIALIZE entry (captured 13 July 2002) offers the choice at the rank of Knight and another style at Master of Copper." }, { "key": "dark-age-of-camelot-classes-of-the-realm-of-albion-wayback-capture-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "Dark Age of Camelot: Classes of the Realm of Albion (Wayback capture)", "author": "Mythic Entertainment", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20011208041650/http://www.darkageofcamelot.com:80/albion/classes.html", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Starting Classes; Advanced Classes", "note": "Basic classes that choose a guild at 5th level, each guild fixing an advanced class with its own skills, two or three per basic class." }, { "key": "ragnarok-game-guide-characters-knight-crusader-wayback-captures-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "Ragnarok - Game Guide - Characters: Knight; Crusader (Wayback captures)", "author": "Gravity Interactive", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20040322022440/http://iro.ragnarokonline.com:80/game/jobcrusader.asp", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Job Change Information", "note": "Knight and crusader job changes in Prontera, each by its own test from job level 40; companion pages give six first jobs from the novice at job level 10." }, { "key": "ragnarok-online-character-information-swordsman-and-knight-korean-official-site-wayback-capture-2002", "canonical": false, "title": "Ragnarok Online: Character Information, Swordsman and Knight (Korean official site, Wayback capture)", "author": "Gravity Corp.", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20020802222004/http://www.ragnarok.co.kr:80/GAME/character/cha_knight.html", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Character menu; 전직 (job change)", "note": "In Korean. The menu pairs each first job with one second job, swordsman with knight, archer with hunter and so on, and the knight's job change needs job level 40." }, { "key": "ragnarok-online-game-guide-2-2-jobs-crusader-korean-official-site-wayback-capture-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Ragnarok Online: Game Guide, 2-2 Jobs, Crusader (Korean official site, Wayback capture)", "author": "Gravity Corp.", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20031120064039/http://www.ragnarok.co.kr:80/game/jobcrusader.asp", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "2-2차직업 > 크루세이더; 전직안내", "note": "In Korean. The crusader listed as a 2-2 job, its job change in Prontera open from job level 40." }, { "key": "ragnarok-online-notice-490-sakray-server-reset-on-3-june-korean-official-site-wayback-capture-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Ragnarok Online: Notice 490, Sakray server reset on 3 June (Korean official site, Wayback capture)", "author": "Gravity Corp.", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20031229082938/http://www.ragnarok.co.kr:80/News/EventNotice/NoticeView.asp?noticeSeqNo=490&mNum=1&", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "업데이트 내용 (update contents), 27 May 2003", "note": "In Korean. The fourth Sakray test server opening on 3 June 2003 with the 2-2 characters crusader and sage, their move to the main servers to follow testing." }, { "key": "ragnarok-online-notice-543-12-august-maintenance-korean-official-site-wayback-capture-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Ragnarok Online: Notice 543, 12 August maintenance (Korean official site, Wayback capture)", "author": "Gravity Corp.", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20031218102950/http://www.ragnarok.co.kr:80/News/EventNotice/NoticeView.asp?noticeSeqNo=543&mNum=1&", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "본 서버 패치내용 (main server patch), 11 August 2003", "note": "In Korean. A main-server fix to the crusader's two-handed spear graphic, so the 2-2 jobs were live before 12 August 2003." }, { "key": "maplestory-playing-guide-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "MapleStory Playing Guide", "author": "Nexon Japan", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Nexon Japan", "url": "https://archive.org/download/maplestoryplayingguide/MapleStory_PlayingGuide_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "次のステップを目指そう: 二次職業を目指そう (12th page)", "note": "In Japanese; the official guide from Nexon Japan's site, captured October 2005. At level 30 a character takes an advanced job derived from its basic job, two or three per job, adding stronger skills to the basic job's." }, { "key": "dragon-274-class-acts-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Dragon #274: Class Acts", "author": "Monte Cook", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Wizards of the Coast", "url": "https://archive.org/download/dragon-magazine/Dragon%20Magazine%20%23274%5Bocr%5D_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Class Acts, p. 45", "note": "Preview of the third-edition Dungeon Master's Guide; prestige classes cannot be chosen for beginning characters, and a character who meets a class's requirements, usually around 5th or 6th level, takes it as a multiclass while advancing." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-4th-edition-player-s-handbook-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Player's Handbook", "author": "Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, and James Wyatt (Wizards of the Coast)", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/pdfy-nzQtTTSYHQFtdao3/Player%27s%20Handbook_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Chapter 2: Character Advancement table, p. 29; Chapter 4: Paragon Paths, p. 53", "note": "A paragon path chosen at 11th level as a specialisation within the class's role, its features and powers at 11th, 12th, 16th and 20th level added to the class, class prerequisites met by the class or a multiclass feat, and paragon multiclassing as the alternative." }, { "key": "cataclysm-class-and-mastery-systems-explained-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Cataclysm class and mastery systems explained", "author": "Robin Torres (WoW Insider)", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.engadget.com/2010-07-07-cataclysm-class-and-mastery-systems-explained.html", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "The Rise of Specialization; To Recap", "note": "A Blizzard developer post reproduced before release; specialization chosen at level 10, each tree with its own active ability and passives, other trees closed until 31 points." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-class-talent-system-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft Class Talent System", "author": "Lylirra (Blizzard Entertainment)", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Blizzard Entertainment", "url": "https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/3773320", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Class Talents vs. Specialization Abilities", "note": "The BlizzCon 2011 announcement for Mists of Pandaria; a specialization still selected at level 10 with an iconic ability, specialization abilities learned automatically at set intervals, and talents from sets awarded every 15 levels." }, { "key": "so-what-is-a-subclass-wayback-capture-2013", "canonical": false, "title": "So What Is a Subclass? (Wayback capture)", "author": "Mike Mearls", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": "Wizards of the Coast", "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20131127123213/http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20130429", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Legends & Lore, 29 April 2013", "note": "The D&D Next playtest giving every class a subclass choice, deity for the cleric and tradition for the wizard, with the shared class features as the class's core identity." }, { "key": "system-reference-document-5-1-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "System Reference Document 5.1", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/SRD-OGL_V5.1.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Classes: Cleric, Divine Domain; Fighter, Martial Archetype; Wizard, Arcane Tradition", "note": "A branch for every class taken at 1st to 3rd level, with the fighter's archetype features at 3rd, 7th, 10th, 15th and 18th level." }, { "key": "system-reference-document-5-2-1-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "System Reference Document 5.2.1", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://media.dndbeyond.com/compendium-images/srd/5.2/SRD_CC_v5.2.1.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Classes: Barbarian, Level 3: Barbarian Subclass", "note": "A subclass for every class at level 3, defined as a specialization granting features at certain class levels for the rest of the character's career." }, { "key": "world-of-warcraft-patch-5-0-mists-of-pandaria-pre-patch-notes-wayback-capture-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "World of Warcraft: Patch 5.0, Mists of Pandaria Pre-Patch notes (Wayback capture)", "author": "Blizzard Entertainment", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20121005044331/http://us.battle.net:80/wow/en/game/patch-notes/5-0", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Patch Features: New Talent System", "note": "Specializations showing the core abilities of each class spec, usable only while that spec is active." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-ascendancy-classes-wayback-capture-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile: Ascendancy Classes (Wayback capture)", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20160401203614/http://www.pathofexile.com/ascendancy/classes", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": null, "note": "Nineteen Ascendancy classes, one of the three for the character's class picked on completing the Lord's Labyrinth, and two Ascendancy points per difficulty." }, { "key": "last-epoch-on-steam", "canonical": false, "title": "Last Epoch on Steam", "author": "Eleventh Hour Games", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://store.steampowered.com/app/899770/Last_Epoch/", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": null, "note": "Five classes and fifteen mastery classes that unlock more specialized abilities and build options." }, { "key": "last-epoch-passives-and-skills", "canonical": false, "title": "Last Epoch: Passives and Skills", "author": "Maxroll", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/resources/passives-and-skills", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Passive Trees", "note": "A base tree and three mastery trees per class, unlocked by the campaign's mastery quest, with the second half of a mastery tree open only to the mastery chosen." }, { "key": "quality-of-life-dungeon-other-improvements-coming-to-last-epoch-april-17th-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Quality of Life, Dungeon & Other Improvements: Coming to Last Epoch April 17th", "author": "Eleventh Hour Games", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/quality-of-life-dungeon-other-improvements-coming-to-last-epoch-april-17th/75217", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Mastery Respecialization", "note": "Respecialising the class mastery for gold from Season 2, with every passive point reset." }, { "key": "baldur-s-gate-3-on-steam", "canonical": false, "title": "Baldur's Gate 3 on Steam", "author": "Larian Studios", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://store.steampowered.com/app/1086940/Baldurs_Gate_3/", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "About This Game", "note": "Twelve classes from the D&D Player's Handbook on the 5e ruleset, and 46 subclasses branching out of the 12 classes." }, { "key": "daggerheart-system-reference-document-1-0-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Daggerheart System Reference Document 1.0", "author": "Darrington Press", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Darrington Press", "url": "https://www.daggerheart.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/DH-SRD-1.0-June-26-2025.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Character Creation: Choose a Subclass, p. 4; Classes: Subclasses, p. 8; Leveling Up: Advancements, p. 43", "note": "Two subclasses per class, one chosen at creation with its foundation feature, and specialization and mastery taken as upgraded-subclass advancements on level up, exclusive with multiclassing in a tier." } ], "n_examples": 18, "n_sources": 32, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 657, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/subclasses" }, { "id": "supply-lines", "name": "Supply Lines", "status": "verified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "A unit is in supply only if a path of permitted length, free of enemy units and their zones of control, can be traced from it to a supply source, and a unit that cannot trace one fights, moves, or survives at a penalty.", "aliases": [ "lines of communication", "supply tracing", "out of supply", "isolation rules" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "upkeep", "zone-of-control", "network-building", "area-control", "morale-and-rout" ], "referenced_by": [ "lane-pushing" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the traced-path form standard in hex-and-counter wargames since the 1960s and described by Dunnigan, with Paths of Glory (1999) as the reference rulebook because its supply rule is short and unambiguous. Afrika Korps (1964) uses discrete supply counters as well as tracing and is treated as a transitional form. Interaction is indirect because a cut works only through position on the shared map: the trace fails for whichever units lie beyond a blocked path, without the rule targeting any of them; direct, the previous coding, was the losing value, argued from the fact that players move behind particular enemy formations in order to cut them. Complexity is medium for the trace, its length, the ZOC-blocking sub-rule, and the schedule of penalties. Pacing accelerates because encirclement collapses large forces in a turn or two; neutral was the losing value. Feedback loop is positive because isolated units weaken and their loss opens further encirclements. Category was not seriously contested, since the operative state is a path on the map; resource-management was mentioned for supply-counter variants. Agency is low because the trace is a mechanical check on positions already set; the player's positioning choices belong to movement; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "spatial-reasoning", "planning", "consequence-weight", "calculation", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Stalingrad", "year": 1963, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Avalon Hill", "note": "A unit surrounded by enemy zones of control is isolated and is eliminated after two consecutive months unless a supply line, one space wide and free of enemy zones of control, is restored to a friendly source (Warsaw, Helsinki, or Bucharest for the Germans; the east edge for the Russians).", "latest": false }, { "title": "Afrika Korps", "year": 1964, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Charles S. Roberts (Avalon Hill)", "note": "Supply counters arrive by sea and must be within a short route free of enemy zones of control to support an attack, and units unable to trace a line free of enemy zones of control are isolated and eventually eliminated, so the desert campaign is fought over the coast road rather than over ground as such.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Paths of Glory", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Ted Raicer (GMT Games)", "note": "At the end of each turn every unit must trace a path of any length through friendly-controlled spaces to a national supply source, and units that cannot are eliminated, so a single space taken behind a line can destroy an army.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Unity of Command", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "2x2 Games", "note": "Supply radiates a fixed range along roads and rails from source hexes; units outside it lose steps and strength each turn and are shown with a visible out-of-supply marker, so cutting a rail hub is the main offensive aim.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hearts of Iron IV", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Paradox Development Studio", "note": "Divisions draw supply through a network traced back to the capital, and units cut off from it lose strength and organisation, so encircled pockets starve rather than fight; the 2021 logistics rework replaced the original regional supply with rail-connected supply hubs and a supply map mode.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Shadow Empire", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "VR Designs (Slitherine)", "note": "Units draw supplies from road hexes inside a logistical network and within an operational supply range; the network is extended by building roads, rail and truck stations, and units short of ammunition or food lose the ability to attack or defend.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Stalingrad", "year": 1963, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Avalon Hill's Stalingrad (1963) has a traced supply line free of enemy zones of control and eliminates units that stay isolated, a year before Afrika Korps (1964), the title more often cited for player-facing supply. Earlier Avalon Hill titles may contain similar rules, and the professional Kriegsspiel tradition handled supply through the umpire, so the date marks an early documented hobby form and not the idea. Dunnigan treats supply tracing as a standard component of the hex-and-counter system." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "dunnigan-1980", "canonical": true, "title": "The Complete Wargames Handbook", "author": "James F. Dunnigan", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "William Morrow", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Section on supply", "note": "Supply tracing as a standard rule, the ZOC-blocking convention, and the design purpose." }, { "key": "stalingrad-rules-1963", "canonical": false, "title": "Stalingrad rules", "author": "Avalon Hill", "year": 1963, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Isolation; German and Russian supply lines", "note": "Provenance for the traced supply line and elimination of isolated units." }, { "key": "afrika-korps-rules-1964", "canonical": false, "title": "Afrika Korps rules", "author": "Avalon Hill", "year": 1964, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Supply; Isolation", "note": "The supply-counter form." }, { "key": "paths-of-glory-rulebook-1999", "canonical": false, "title": "Paths of Glory rulebook", "author": "Ted Raicer (GMT Games)", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Supply", "note": "The traced-path form used for the property coding." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Hexagon Grid; Zone of Control (supply is not a separate BGG mechanism)", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 5, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 525, "updated": "2026-10-20", "url": "/mechanics/supply-lines" }, { "id": "take-that", "name": "Take That", "status": "unverified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "A player spends a card or ability to inflict a direct setback on a chosen opponent, such as a lost turn, discarded resources, or damage, which the target can rarely prevent and which costs the attacker little.", "aliases": [ "take-that cards", "direct attack cards", "screw-your-neighbour", "hazard cards" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hand-management", "player-elimination", "alliances" ], "referenced_by": [ "interrupts-and-reactions", "kill-streaks" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Mille Bornes, with Uno as the check case. Randomness is input because attack cards are drawn before the player chooses whom to play them on; none was the losing value for forms where attacks are always available abilities. Interaction is direct by definition. Pacing is coded decelerates because each attack undoes or delays progress toward the end condition; neutral was the losing value. Information is asymmetric because the attack sits in a private hand until played. Agency is medium and decision density medium because the choice is whom to target, among a handful of options, with timing as the second consideration. Feedback loop is none because attacks arrive by ordinary draw and land on a chosen target; aiming them at the leader is a social choice, not a rule; negative was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "frustration-risk", "kingmaking", "volatility", "emergent-narrative" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Mille Bornes", "year": 1954, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Edmond Dujardin", "note": "Hazard cards such as a flat tyre or an accident are played on a chosen opponent, halting their progress until they play the matching remedy; safety cards pre-empt specific hazards. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Uno", "year": 1971, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Merle Robbins", "note": "Draw Two, Skip, and Wild Draw Four punish the next player in sequence, so the target is fixed by seating rather than chosen, and timing is the only decision.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Super Mario Kart", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "Item boxes grant shells and banana peels used against other racers; the series later added the spiny shell that homes on the leader, an explicit catch-up attack.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Munchkin", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Steve Jackson", "note": "Curses and monster enhancers are played on another player's fight at the moment they are about to win a level, so the attack is reactive and its timing is the whole game.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Exploding Kittens", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Elan Lee, Matthew Inman, and Shane Small", "note": "A Favor card forces a chosen opponent to hand over a card and an Attack card passes extra turns to the next player, with Nope cards as the single counter, which makes the counter itself a take-that resource.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mario Kart World", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "Item boxes hand out cheap attacks such as Red Shells that home in on a rival ahead, and similar items spin out or slow other racers, costing the user only an item slot while the target can rarely avoid the hit.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Touring", "year": 1906, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Touring is US Patent 836,537, filed on 14 August 1906 and granted on 20 November 1906 to William Janson Roche, whose delay cards for collision, lack of gasoline, and puncture are \"designed to obstruct or suspend the play\" of an opponent until a remedy is played. Museum records credit the Wallie Dorr Company with introducing the game in 1906, and one says Dorr patented it, which the patent contradicts; Parker Brothers bought it in 1925 or 1926. Confidence stays low because nineteenth-century card games remain unsurveyed for earlier attack cards, and because whether a player chooses the target in a game of three or more is unconfirmed. Mille Bornes (1954), widely regarded as modelled on Touring though no statement by Dujardin is cited, is the usual reference for targeted hazard cards and the form coded here." }, "established": { "title": "Mille Bornes", "year": 1954, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Mille Bornes, widely regarded as modelled on Touring, is the usual reference for hazard cards played on a chosen opponent, with remedies and safeties as the counters." }, "sources": [ { "key": "mille-bornes-rulebook-1954", "canonical": false, "title": "Mille Bornes rulebook", "author": "Edmond Dujardin", "year": 1954, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Hazard, remedy, and safety cards", "note": "Canonical rules text for the coded form." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Take That", "note": null }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Mille Bornes", "note": "Publication history and the widely repeated derivation from Touring." }, { "key": "game-us-patent-836-537-1906", "canonical": false, "title": "Game (US Patent 836,537)", "author": "William Janson Roche", "year": 1906, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US836537A/en", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": "Specification, delay and remedy cards", "note": "Mileage, speed-limit, delay, and remedy cards; delay cards obstruct an opponent's play and cut their mileage." }, { "key": "touring-card-game-artifact-2005-0034-001", "canonical": false, "title": "Touring card game, artifact 2005.0034.001", "author": "Ingenium (Canada Science and Technology Museum)", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://collection.ingenium.ca/en/id/2005.0034.001", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "Introduced by the Wallie Dorr Co. in 1906 and bought by Parker Brothers in 1926; Parker licensed Mille Bornes from Dujardin in 1962." }, { "key": "history-of-the-take-that-card-game-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "History of the 'Take That!' Card Game", "author": "Spotlight on Games", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://spotlight.histmyst.org/list/takethat.html", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "A chronology of the genre from Touring in 1906, calling Mille Bornes Dujardin's adaptation of Touring with the coup-fourré added." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 3, "word_count": 523, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/take-that" }, { "id": "target-numbers", "name": "Target Numbers", "status": "verified", "category": "action-resolution", "definition": "A single roll succeeds if it reaches a fixed threshold set by the task or read from a table, so the chance of success is fixed before the roll by the gap between the threshold and the roller's modifier.", "aliases": [ "difficulty class", "DC", "TN", "roll over", "roll under", "difficulty number", "threshold rolls" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "saving-throws", "degrees-of-success", "opposed-rolls", "advantage-disadvantage" ], "referenced_by": [ "combat-results-tables" ], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg", "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition (2000), which unified the form as a twenty-sided die plus modifiers against a Difficulty Class, with Chainmail (1971) and the 1974 rules as the roll-equal-or-over antecedent. Information is perfect because the canonical player-facing number is printed; referee-set secret DCs would code asymmetric, the losing value. Complexity is low for the single comparison; the matrix-and-table forms of 1974 would code medium. Saving throws are logically a child of target numbers (a target number rolled by the target of an effect); the relation is recorded as related rather than as parent.", "effects": [ "frustration-risk", "consequence-weight", "planning" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Chainmail", "year": 1971, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren", "note": "The man-to-man and fantasy combat tables give a number that two dice must equal or exceed for a hit, read by weapon against armour type, the direct ancestor of the role-playing form.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Attacks roll a twenty-sided die against a number read from a matrix by class, level, and armour class; later editions compressed the matrix into THAC0 and then into a bonus against Armour Class.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeon!", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "David R. Megarry (TSR)", "note": "Each monster card lists, per character class, the number two dice must equal or exceed to defeat it, so the whole of combat is a printed target number.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "The Core Mechanic states the form in one sentence: roll a twenty-sided die, add modifiers, and succeed on a result equal to or greater than a target number, with Difficulty Class, Armour Class, and save DCs all instances of it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Disco Elysium", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "ZA/UM", "note": "Skill checks display a named difficulty with its number and the percentage chance, resolved by two six-sided dice plus the skill against the threshold; because the number is public, players can raise a skill or change the situation before retrying.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cyberpunk RED", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Mike Pondsmith (R. Talsorian Games)", "note": "A check adds a stat, a skill, and a d10, and the total must beat a Difficulty Value set by the gamemaster.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Chainmail", "year": 1971, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the role-playing lineage. Roll-equal-or-over tables in Chainmail and the 1974 rules are its earliest widely documented thresholds, and Peterson traces hit-probability tables further back into miniatures wargaming, so the structure is older than any name. The unified named form, the Difficulty Class, dates from Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition (2000)." }, "established": { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "low", "note": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition, unified the threshold roll as one core mechanic, a twenty-sided die plus modifiers against a named Difficulty Class, replacing the table lookups of the earlier rules." }, "sources": [ { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Combat systems and the attack matrix; Chainmail and 1974 Dungeons & Dragons hit tables as thresholds, with wargame antecedents." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-player-s-handbook-3rd-edition-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook, 3rd edition", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Introduction, The Core Mechanic", "note": "The unified roll-plus-modifier-against-Difficulty-Class statement." }, { "key": "peterson-2020", "canonical": true, "title": "The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "1970s discourse on task resolution and the move from tables to unified checks." }, { "key": "dungeon-rules-1975", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeon! rules", "author": "David R. Megarry", "year": 1975, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Printed per-class target numbers on monster cards in a board game." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 520, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/target-numbers" }, { "id": "team-play", "name": "Team Play", "status": "unverified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "Players are grouped by rule into fixed teams that win or lose together, with scores pooled and often with differentiated roles inside the team, so the contest is between groups rather than individuals.", "aliases": [ "partnerships", "team-based game", "partnership play", "raid roles" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "cooperative-play", "alliances", "variable-player-powers", "ball-possession", "threat-aggro", "trick-taking" ], "referenced_by": [ "clue-giving", "group-finder", "lane-pushing", "loot-distribution", "rating-and-matchmaking", "shared-holdings", "side-conversion", "side-swapping", "tournament-formats", "vulnerability-windows" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the fixed partnership of Whist and Bridge, with Codenames as the modern check case. As a wrapper mechanic, team play is coded without the host game's randomness, decisions, or rules weight, the same rule applied to cooperative play: the mechanic is the partnership scoring and role rules themselves, so randomness is none and decision density is low; the host supplies the dice and the turns. Interaction is mixed by the taxonomy's own guideline, which places team-based play there because it is cooperative within the team and direct between teams. Information is perfect because team membership and the pooled score are public; asymmetric was the losing value and applies where membership is concealed, a case treated under hidden roles. Agency is low because as a wrapper the partnership scoring and role rules fix the team result from host-game outcomes, offering at most a seat choice at setup; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "teamwork", "alpha-player", "mastery", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Whist", "year": 1674, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Partners sit opposite and pool their tricks; Cotton describes the game as played two of a side in 1674, and Hoyle's 1742 treatise codified its laws, making it an early and widely documented rule-fixed team in a card game.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Association football", "year": 1863, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "The Football Association", "note": "The 1863 Laws fixed sides of equal number scoring to a common tally; positional roles such as goalkeeper were differentiated by rule in later revisions. Cited as the codified form of team sport rather than its origin.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tichu", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Urs Hostettler", "note": "Partners exchange cards at the start of each hand and score together, and a Tichu call commits one player to going out first on behalf of the team, so individual risk is taken for the pooled score.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Raid groups of up to forty players divide into tank, healer, and damage roles whose rules are enforced by the threat and healing systems; guilds persist as team institutions across sessions.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Codenames", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Vlaada Chvátil", "note": "Two teams each have one spymaster and several guessers; the roles are fixed by rule for the whole game and a team wins or loses as a unit, with no individual score at all.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Fortnite", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Epic Games", "note": "Battle Royale is played alone or in teams of two to four, and a downed squad member can be revived by a teammate; from 2019 an eliminated member drops a Reboot Card that any squadmate can bring to a Reboot Van to return them to the match. Teams of 20 (2018) joined five squads of four into each of five sides.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Marvel Rivals", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "NetEase Games", "note": "Matches are 6v6, each team winning or losing as a unit, with heroes split into Vanguard, Duelist and Strategist roles and Team-Up skills that only work when particular heroes are on the same side.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "Team contest predates documentation: team sports are older than any written rules, and card partnerships are printed by 1674, when Cotton's Compleat Gamester describes Whist as played \"four, two of a side\" with partners' honours pooled and says children of eight know it; the same book has billiards played two against two. Hoyle's treatise of 1742 codified Whist's laws around partners and adverse parties. No originating design can be named. In hobby board games BoardGameGeek listed Partnerships as a mechanic by February 2006, renamed Team-Based Game in 2019. In video games the tank, healer, and damage role split was established as an online-game convention by EverQuest (1999) and consolidated by World of Warcraft (2004), drawing on tabletop role-playing parties; tying it to raiding in particular is unsourced." }, "established": null, "sources": [ { "key": "parlett-1990", "canonical": true, "title": "The Oxford Guide to Card Games", "author": "David Parlett", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "History of fixed partnerships and partnership scoring in card play, including Whist." }, { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Game Structure chapter", "note": "Mechanism definition, team formation options, and the distinction from fully cooperative play." }, { "key": "codenames-rulebook-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Codenames rulebook", "author": "Vlaada Chvátil", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Setup and the spymaster role", "note": "Fixed roles within a team and a shared win condition." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Team-Based Game", "note": null }, { "key": "the-compleat-gamester-1674", "canonical": false, "title": "The Compleat Gamester", "author": "Charles Cotton", "year": 1674, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/bim_early-english-books-1641-1700_the-compleat-gamester-_cotton-charles_1674/bim_early-english-books-1641-1700_the-compleat-gamester-_cotton-charles_1674_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Ch. XI, English Ruff and Honours, and Whist, p. 114; Ch. II, billiards", "note": "Whist played four, two of a side, with partners' honours pooled." }, { "key": "the-holy-trinity-creating-definitions-defining-creations-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "The Holy Trinity: Creating Definitions, Defining Creations", "author": "William J. Broderick", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": null, "url": "https://meaningfulplay.msu.edu/proceedings2012/mp2012_submission_171.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Meaningful Play 2012 proceedings", "note": "Credits EverQuest with establishing the tank, healer, and damage roles in online games and World of Warcraft with solidifying them." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Fortnite Battle Royale", "note": "Play alone or in teams of two to four, and revival of a downed squad member by a teammate." }, { "key": "fortnite-v8-30-patch-notes-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "Fortnite v8.30 Patch Notes", "author": "Epic Games", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190726173640/https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/patch-notes/v8-30", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Battle Royale, Weapons + Items, Reboot Van / Cards", "note": "Reboot Cards dropped by eliminated squad members, carried by any squadmate to a Reboot Van to bring them back." }, { "key": "fortnite-v4-3-patch-notes-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Fortnite v4.3 Patch Notes", "author": "Epic Games", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180530081239/https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/patch-notes/v4-3", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Battle Royale, Limited Time Mode: Teams of 20 v2", "note": "Five teams of twenty players, each made of five squads of four." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 9, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 532, "updated": "2026-10-25", "url": "/mechanics/team-play" }, { "id": "threat-aggro", "name": "Threat and Aggro", "status": "verified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "Each hostile picks its target from a running tally of how much every player has provoked it, so a party controls who gets attacked by generating, holding, or shedding that tally rather than by position alone.", "aliases": [ "aggro", "aggro management", "hate lists", "taunt mechanics", "enmity" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "cooperative-play", "team-play", "stealth-detection", "boss-encounters", "hit-points" ], "referenced_by": [ "group-finder" ], "media": [ "video", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "cooperative", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from World of Warcraft (2004). Category is resource-management because threat is a quantity each player generates and the tank must hold above everyone else, so the party is budgeting a pool. This departs from the default tie-break order, which asks interaction-and-exchange and time-and-action-structure first; both were losing families, the first because the coupling is between players and the system rather than a transaction between players, the second because throttling damage output rations actions only as a consequence of the tally. Interaction is cooperative because the mechanic exists to be distributed across a party; solo was the losing value for single-character games with a companion. Information is hidden because the canonical table is held by the system and shown to no one; perfect was the losing value for meter add-ons, later enmity displays, and the public marks of the tabletop form. Randomness is none; the tally is deterministic. Pacing stays neutral after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; decelerates was the losing value. Feedback loop stays none after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; negative was the losing value.", "effects": [ "teamwork", "planning", "mastery", "tension", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "EverQuest", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Verant Interactive", "note": "Each monster keeps a hate list ordered by damage dealt, healing done, and taunt use, and attacks the top entry; the warrior's Taunt skill exists only to move the warrior to the top.", "latest": false }, { "title": "World of Warcraft", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Damage and healing add threat on a hidden per-player table; a target switches to whoever exceeds the current holder by a margin (larger at range), so damage dealers throttle and tanks open with high-threat abilities.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 4th Edition", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Defenders mark enemies; a marked creature takes a penalty on attacks that do not include the marker and is punished for attacking others, a public tabletop translation of tanking without a hidden tally.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dota 2", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "Axe's Berserker's Call taunts nearby enemy units, forcing them to attack him for 2.1 to 3 seconds by level while he gains bonus armour (hero data of October 2026), a forced-target taunt with no running tally behind it.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Square Enix", "note": "Enmity is displayed per player beside the party list and tanks toggle a stance that multiplies the enmity they generate, so the formerly hidden table becomes partly visible.", "latest": false }, { "title": "New World", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Amazon Games", "note": "Enemies target whoever has built the most threat through damage and healing; tanks keep it with Shield Bash and taunts such as Defiant Stance, a Carnelian gem in the weapon multiplies threat while one in armour reduces it, and healers or damage dealers can still pull targets away.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "EverQuest", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "EverQuest is the usual credit for the hate list and the taunt skill that made tanking a role, and the term aggro spread through its community. Multi-user dungeons descended from DikuMUD had monsters that chose targets by simple rules earlier, so the idea of a managed target choice may predate the named form. The tabletop marking form is firmly dated to Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition (2008)." }, "established": { "title": "EverQuest", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "EverQuest is the usual credit for the hate list, the taunt skill and the tanking role, and the term aggro spread from its community; World of Warcraft refined the form." }, "sources": [ { "key": "dungeons-dragons-4th-edition-player-s-handbook-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Player's Handbook", "author": "Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, and James Wyatt (Wizards of the Coast)", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 4 (Character Classes), defender role and the marked condition", "note": "The public, tabletop form of threat management." }, { "key": "everquest-manual-1999", "canonical": false, "title": "EverQuest manual", "author": "Verant Interactive (Sony Online Entertainment)", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Combat skills, Taunt", "note": "The skill built to manipulate the hate list." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Glossary of video game terms (aggro)", "note": "Common usage and the massively multiplayer origin of the term." }, { "key": "dota-2-axe-official-hero-data-feed-2026", "canonical": false, "title": "Dota 2: Axe (official hero data feed)", "author": "Valve", "year": 2026, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.dota2.com/datafeed/herodata?language=english&hero_id=2", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Berserker's Call", "note": "Axe taunts nearby enemy units, forcing them to attack him, with a duration of 2.1, 2.4, 2.7 and 3 seconds by level and bonus armour." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 484, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/threat-aggro" }, { "id": "tile-placement", "name": "Tile Placement", "status": "unverified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "Players add tiles to a growing map or personal grid under adjacency and matching constraints, so that the shape of the play area and its scoring features emerge from where each tile is put.", "aliases": [ "tile laying", "polyomino placement", "map building" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "area-control", "set-collection", "roll-and-write", "procedural-generation" ], "referenced_by": [ "adjacency-bonuses", "connection-games", "level-editors", "network-building", "pattern-building", "sliding-block-puzzles", "word-building" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Carcassonne, where a single tile is drawn and placed each turn with edge matching. Information is hidden because the draw order is concealed from everyone while the map is public; the losing value was perfect, which fits preview-row variants such as Kingdomino. Agency is medium because the turn offers one placement from a constrained set, though experienced players would argue high once meeple placement is counted. Interaction is indirect for the shared map; personal-grid forms (Patchwork) are solo. Information stays hidden after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; perfect was the losing value.", "effects": [ "planning", "discovery", "ownership", "tension", "flow" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Tigris and Euphrates", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Reiner Knizia", "note": "Tiles of four colours are laid onto a fixed board to extend kingdoms, and placements trigger conflicts and scoring, coupling tile placement tightly to area control.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Carcassonne", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Klaus-Jürgen Wrede", "note": "One tile is drawn and placed each turn with matching edges, then optionally claimed with a meeple; the landscape, and every scoring feature in it, is built by the players.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Patchwork", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Uwe Rosenberg", "note": "Polyomino patches are bought from a circular market and fitted onto a private nine-by-nine board; placement is solo and the constraint is shape rather than edge type.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Kingdomino", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Bruno Cathala", "note": "Domino-style tiles are drafted from a face-up row and placed into a five-by-five kingdom, with the draft order setting next turn's order; information is perfect.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dorfromantik", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Toukana Interactive", "note": "Early access 2021. Hex tiles are placed one at a time into an endless landscape, with points for matching edges and fulfilling quests; the single-player, endless form of the Carcassonne loop.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No originating design can be defended. Dominoes are an older edge-matching ancestor, and MacMahon's New Mathematical Pastimes (1921) sets out edge-matched coloured squares as puzzles. Competitive tile-laying with features that emerge from placement is documented in Acquire (1964), whose tiles found and grow hotel chains by orthogonal adjacency (read in its 1999/2008 rules), and in the Spiel des Jahres winners Café International (1989) and Drunter und Drüber (1991); Scrabble remains unsurveyed. Carcassonne (2000), the form coded here, is the usual reference and sold more than ten million copies with expansions, but no source names it the populariser, and BoardGameGeek applied the Tile Placement label to Acquire as well as Carcassonne by December 2003, so the label was not coined for it." }, "established": { "title": "Carcassonne", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Carcassonne made drawing and placing an edge-matched tile the whole of a game and is the usual reference for the mechanic; Dorfromantik carries its loop into an endless single-player form." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Area Control chapter", "note": "Definition of tile laying and its distinction from area control." }, { "key": "carcassonne-rulebook-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Carcassonne rulebook", "author": "Klaus-Jürgen Wrede", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Canonical draw-and-place procedure used for the property coding." }, { "key": "woods-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games", "author": "Stewart Woods", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "McFarland", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Carcassonne's role in the spread of Eurogames beyond the hobby." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Tile Placement", "note": null }, { "key": "new-mathematical-pastimes-1921", "canonical": false, "title": "New Mathematical Pastimes", "author": "P. A. MacMahon", "year": 1921, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/stream/cu31924001535024/cu31924001535024_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Part I; Section 17, Square Pastimes, p. 23", "note": "Edge-matching pieces described as generalised dominoes, set as puzzles." }, { "key": "acquire-rules-1999", "canonical": false, "title": "Acquire rules", "author": "Avalon Hill (Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast; game design by Sid Sackson)", "year": 1999, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://media.wizards.com/2015/rules/acquire_rules.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Founding and Growing a Hotel Chain, p. 2 (1999/2008 text)", "note": "Tiles placed orthogonally next to other tiles found or grow hotel chains." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 557, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/tile-placement" }, { "id": "time-loops", "name": "Time Loops", "status": "unverified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "The game world resets to a fixed starting state after a set interval or on failure while the player keeps what they have learned and sometimes a few items, so progress is made in knowledge across repeated cycles.", "aliases": [ "time loop", "resetting world", "repeating day", "knowledge-based progression" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "permadeath", "roguelike-meta-progression", "checkpoints", "legacy-campaign" ], "referenced_by": [ "prestige-resets" ], "media": [ "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "hidden", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Pacing accelerates because the loop timer forces an end to every cycle; neutral was the losing value, since the campaign as a whole can be long. Information is hidden because the world runs on a fixed schedule known only to the system and discovered by the player; asymmetric was the losing value, set aside because no player holds the schedule, and perfect was argued since within one cycle everything is observable. Feedback loop is positive because knowledge compounds across cycles and nothing is lost; none was the losing value. Randomness is none because the canonical loop is deterministic, which is the property that makes schedules learnable. Category tension with narrative-and-choice (the loop as a story structure) and progression-and-capability (knowledge as progression) was resolved for time-and-action-structure, which departs from the default tie-break order, where progression-and-capability comes first; the reason is that the mechanic's identity is the partition of play into cycles of fixed length. Information stays hidden after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; perfect was the losing value.", "effects": [ "discovery", "planning", "inference", "tension", "mastery" ], "examples": [ { "title": "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nintendo", "note": "A three-day clock ends in the moon's fall; playing the Song of Time resets the world but keeps key items, masks, and songs, and townspeople follow repeating schedules the player learns to intervene in.", "latest": false }, { "title": "T.I.M.E Stories", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Manuel Rozoy (Space Cowboys)", "note": "Each run spends time units; when they are exhausted the team returns to the start with its knowledge intact, and a scenario is designed to take several runs to complete.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Sexy Brutale", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Cavalier Game Studios and Tequila Works", "note": "A single day in a mansion repeats, with guests murdered on fixed schedules, and the player rewinds the clock to learn each schedule and intervene at the right moment.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Outer Wilds", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Mobius Digital", "note": "A twenty-two-minute loop ends in a supernova and nothing persists but the ship's log of discoveries, so all progression is player knowledge of a deterministic solar system.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Deathloop", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Arkane Studios", "note": "A single day across four districts repeats; selected equipment can be made to persist, and the goal is to arrange eight assassinations into one day by learning the targets' schedules.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Majora's Mask is the earliest well-documented game identified with a deterministic, schedule-driven world that resets on a timer, and it is the usual reference for the structure; the BFI notes that real-time countdowns became more common in games after it. Director Yoshiaki Koizumi's pitch reportedly drew on the film Run Lola Run (1998), though accounts conflict, and Groundhog Day (1993) is a frequent cultural reference. Arcade \"loops\", which require clearing a game twice, and text adventures with fixed schedules that are replayed after failure are not in-fiction loops. Earlier games with resetting days are plausible, and user-tagged titles of 1996 to 1999 are unconfirmed, so the dating is a best guess. The board-game form is recent, with T.I.M.E Stories (2015) the usual example." }, "established": { "title": "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Majora's Mask, with its three-day cycle, learnable schedules and items kept across resets, is the usual reference for a scheduled, resetting world as a mechanic." }, "sources": [ { "key": "t-i-m-e-stories-rulebook-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "T.I.M.E Stories rulebook", "author": "Manuel Rozoy", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Time units and the end of a run", "note": "Board-game form of the loop with knowledge carried between runs." }, { "key": "the-legend-of-zelda-majora-s-mask-instruction-booklet-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask instruction booklet", "author": "Nintendo", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "The three-day cycle and the Song of Time", "note": "Primary description of the reset, what persists, and the schedule system." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Time loop", "note": "The device in fiction and its video-game section." }, { "key": "majora-s-mask-at-25-the-recurring-influence-of-nintendo-s-weird-zelda-game-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Majora's Mask at 25: the recurring influence of Nintendo's 'weird Zelda game'", "author": "Katie Granger (BFI)", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/majoras-mask-25-reccurring-influence-nintendos-weird-zelda-game", "accessed": "2026-10-12", "locator": null, "note": "The 72-hour cycle lasting about an hour of real time, Koizumi's reported Run Lola Run pitch with conflicting accounts, and the later spread of real-time countdowns." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 519, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/time-loops" }, { "id": "time-track", "name": "Time Track", "status": "unverified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "Each action costs an amount of time that moves the actor's marker along a track shared by all players, and whoever is furthest behind acts next, so the length of an action decides when its taker acts again.", "aliases": [ "elapsed-time turn order", "tick system" ], "parent": "initiative-order", "children": [], "related": [ "action-points", "race-to-the-finish", "worker-placement", "real-time" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Thebes (2007), where each player's marker stands on a track of weeks, travel and actions cost weeks, the player furthest back takes the next turn, and on a tie the marker on top, the last to arrive, goes first. Category is time-and-action-structure, which follows the default tie-break order; resource-management was the losing family, since time is spent like a currency, but spending it is what orders the turns. Agency is medium because a turn is one choice of action at its cost; high was the losing value. Randomness is none because the track is deterministic; output was the losing value, from Thebes' tile draws, which belong to its excavation rules, and the opening initiative roll of Feng Shui belongs to the parent mechanic. Interaction is indirect because spending more time hands others consecutive turns without targeting them. Complexity is low for one ordering rule and a tie-break; medium was the losing value for combat forms that reset the count each sequence. Pacing is neutral: every player spends the same total time, so choices change the order of turns rather than the length of play; accelerates was the losing value. Feedback loop is none. Decision density is low because the one decision is which action to take, which sets its time cost; medium was the losing value for Thebes' digs, where the player also chooses how many weeks to spend. Feedback loop stays none after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; negative was the losing value.", "effects": [ "planning", "downtime" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Feng Shui", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Robin D. Laws (Daedalus Entertainment)", "note": "Characters act when the shot count reaches their number, most actions cost three shots, and a character acts again when the count reaches the lower number; a new sequence starts with fresh initiative rolls when the count runs out.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Neuland", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Peter Eggert and Tobias Stapelfeldt (eggertspiele)", "note": "Each action moves the player's pawn one space round a short track, pawns cannot land on or pass the time pawn, and the time pawn then moves on to the next pawn, whose owner plays; that the rearmost pawn always plays next is implied by a 2005 review rather than stated.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Exalted (second edition)", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "White Wolf", "note": "Combat runs on ticks; each action has a speed in ticks and the character acts again that many ticks later, so quick actions buy more turns in the same span.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Thebes", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Peter Prinz (Queen Games)", "note": "Archaeologists spend weeks on a shared year track to travel, gather knowledge, and dig, and the player furthest back moves next; the length of a dig is chosen, and a longer dig draws more tiles. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Tokaido", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Antoine Bauza (Funforge)", "note": "Travellers walk a single road and the one furthest back moves next, to any open stop ahead; a long stride saves turns but forgoes the stops between, and inns make every traveller stop until all have arrived.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Patchwork", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Uwe Rosenberg", "note": "Each patch costs buttons and time on a shared track, the player behind takes the next turn, and a player may instead move just ahead of the opponent and earn a button for each space moved.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Search for Planet X", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Matthew O'Malley and Ben Rosset (Foxtrot Games)", "note": "Each action advances the player's pawn around a circular time track by its cost (researching a topic 1, surveying 2 to 4, targeting a sector 4, locating Planet X 5), and the pawn farthest back takes the next turn, so cheap actions can buy several turns in a row.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Neuland", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Neuland (eggertspiele, 2004) is the earliest instance documented at the time, in Paul Evans's review first printed in Flagship 113 (April/May 2005) after the game's showing at Essen in October 2004: each action moves the player's pawn one space along a shared track, pawns cannot land on or pass the time pawn, and the time pawn then moves to the next pawn, whose owner plays. That the rearmost pawn always plays next is implied rather than stated. Feng Shui (1996) is a reported antecedent: its shot count makes each action's cost in shots decide when the character acts again, but no 1996 rules text is cited and the mechanism is described from Feng Shui 2-era sources; its precursor Nexus: The Infinite City (1994) is unsurveyed. Peter Prinz's Jenseits von Theben (Prinz Spiele, 2004), re-edited as Thebes (2007), is dated by database records, and no rules text of the 2004 edition is cited. Tokaido (2012) and Patchwork (2014) are the usual later references." }, "established": { "title": "Thebes", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Thebes, the 2007 re-edition of Peter Prinz's Jenseits von Theben (2004), carried the board form of a shared week track on which the player furthest back moves next and the marker on top goes first on a tie. Reviews of Patchwork in January 2015 name Thebes as an earlier use of the same turn-order mechanism, and a 2020 retrospective credits Prinz with the track that Patchwork, Tokaido and others adopted, Patchwork down to the tie-break; no statement by a later designer is cited." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Turn Order and Structure chapter", "note": "Definition of the time track as a turn-order mechanism." }, { "key": "thebes-rulebook-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Thebes rulebook", "author": "Peter Prinz", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Canonical week track and furthest-back-acts rule used for the property coding." }, { "key": "feng-shui-rulebook-1996", "canonical": false, "title": "Feng Shui rulebook", "author": "Robin D. Laws", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The shot count, the cost of actions in shots, and new sequences." }, { "key": "neuland-review-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "Neuland review", "author": "Paul Evans", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://pevans.co.uk/Reviews/Neuland.html", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "First printed in Flagship 113 (April/May 2005); Neuland at Essen in October 2004, with pawns moved one space per action and a time pawn that passes to the next pawn." }, { "key": "exalted-2-review-gamegrene-2006", "canonical": false, "title": "Exalted 2 review (Gamegrene)", "author": null, "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gamegrene.com/node/595", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "Review of 21 March 2006; the second edition abolishes rounds for a linear tick system." }, { "key": "patchwork-rulebook-current-edition-2025", "canonical": false, "title": "Patchwork rulebook (current edition)", "author": "Uwe Rosenberg", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.lookout-spiele.de/upload/de_patchworkre.html_PWNR_Rulebook_DE_web.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "In German; Lookout's current edition (copyright 2025, based on the 2024 anniversary edition) of the 2014 game. The player further back on the time board plays, the token on top breaks ties, and a player may advance to just ahead of the opponent for buttons." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Turn Order: Time Track", "note": null }, { "key": "patchwork-review-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Patchwork (review)", "author": "Greg J. Schloesser and Dale Yu (The Opinionated Gamers)", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://opinionatedgamers.com/2015/01/13/patchwork/", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "Review of 13 January 2015, and Thoughts of Other Opinionated Gamers", "note": "Both reviewers name Thebes (Jenseits von Theben) as an earlier game using Patchwork's turn-order mechanism." }, { "key": "games-we-love-thebes-2020", "canonical": false, "title": "Games We Love: Thebes", "author": "Ashley Gariepy (Meeple Mountain)", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.meeplemountain.com/articles/games-we-love-thebes/", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": null, "note": "Credits Peter Prinz with pioneering the time track, says Patchwork uses the same mechanism down to the marker on top, and names Tokaido among games using a variation." } ], "n_examples": 7, "n_sources": 9, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 545, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/time-track" }, { "id": "tournament-formats", "name": "Tournament Formats", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "A fixed schedule and pairing rule composes many individual games into one larger contest, such as a knockout bracket, a round robin, or a Swiss system, and decides who advances, who is eliminated, and how the field is placed.", "aliases": [ "brackets", "Swiss system", "round robin", "single elimination", "double elimination" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "player-elimination", "handicapping", "team-play", "rating-and-matchmaking", "audience-participation" ], "referenced_by": [ "high-score-tables", "side-swapping" ], "media": [ "physical", "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the single-elimination bracket of London 1851 and Wimbledon, with the Swiss system as the check case. Category contested: interaction-and-exchange over time-and-action-structure (a format partitions play into rounds) and over progression-and-capability (advancing is progress); interaction wins because every pairing is a contest between two named entrants and the format exists to allocate those contests. Agency is low because the entrant decides nothing inside the format except how to play the games; medium was the losing value for formats with draw offers and pick-and-ban phases. Randomness is input for a bracket drawn by lot; a fully seeded bracket would code none. Feedback loop is none for the bare knockout; seeded brackets that shelter the strongest entrants are positive, and the Swiss system, which pairs winners against winners, is negative. Pacing is neutral because a schedule and pairing rule around separate games; nothing inside those games is sped or slowed by the format; accelerates was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "tension", "consequence-weight", "spectacle", "contested-fairness", "kingmaking" ], "examples": [ { "title": "London 1851 chess tournament", "year": 1851, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Howard Staunton (organiser)", "note": "Sixteen players were paired by lot in a knockout of short matches, the loser of each eliminated and the winner advancing, so a champion was decided without every player meeting; the template for later cup competitions. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Wimbledon Championships", "year": 1877, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club", "note": "The inaugural championship ran a single-elimination draw with byes to fill the bracket; seeding, introduced in the 1920s, later kept the strongest entrants apart until the final rounds.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Zurich 1895 chess tournament", "year": 1895, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Julius Müller (organiser)", "note": "Usually cited as the first use of the Swiss system: everyone plays every round and is paired each round against an opponent on the same score, so a large field is ranked in a few rounds and nobody is eliminated; still the standard for open chess events.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Swiss rounds rank the whole field, then the top eight play a single-elimination bracket; the two-stage design, with its cut and its incentive to agree a draw in the last Swiss round when both players are safe, is common at trading-card events.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dota 2 (The International)", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Valve", "note": "Teams play group stages into a double-elimination bracket, and each match opens with Captains Mode, an alternating pick-and-ban phase in which captains remove heroes from the pool and select their own; team drafting is treated as a variation of tournament formats.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Trackmania", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Nadeo", "note": "The daily Cup of the Day opens with a time-attack seeding phase on a global leaderboard, then sorts entrants into divisions of 64 that race elimination rounds on the day's track.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "London 1851 chess tournament", "year": 1851, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the documented modern tournament format. London 1851 is documented as the first international chess tournament and used a knockout. The first all-play-all international event was London 1862, and Zurich 1895 is usually cited as the first use of the Swiss system. Medieval tournaments supply the word but not a format in this sense, and pairing by lot with byes is reported for ancient Greek combat sports, an antecedent without surviving rules." }, "established": { "title": "London 1851 chess tournament", "year": 1851, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "London 1851 established the knockout for an international field, a bracket paired by lot that served as the template for later cup competitions." }, "sources": [ { "key": "elias-garfield-gutschera-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Characteristics of Games", "author": "George Skaff Elias, Richard Garfield, and K. Robert Gutschera", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "MIT Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Tournament play as part of a game's surrounding infrastructure and its effect on how the game is played." }, { "key": "fide-handbook", "canonical": false, "title": "FIDE Handbook", "author": "Fédération Internationale des Échecs", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "C.04 FIDE Swiss Rules", "note": "Codified pairing rules of the Swiss system, including score groups, colour allocation, and byes." }, { "key": "magic-the-gathering-tournament-rules", "canonical": false, "title": "Magic: The Gathering Tournament Rules", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "The Swiss-into-top-eight two-stage format and the rules on intentional draws." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "London 1851 chess tournament", "note": "Field, format, and organiser." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 484, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/tournament-formats" }, { "id": "tower-defence", "name": "Tower Defence Pathing", "status": "unverified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "Waves of enemies advance along a path toward a goal the player must protect, and the player places static defences beside or across that path, so the geometry of placement decides how long each enemy is under fire before it arrives.", "aliases": [ "tower defence", "tower defense", "TD", "mazing", "maze defence", "lane defence", "creep waves" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "zone-of-control", "boss-encounters", "base-building", "damage-types", "lives-and-continues" ], "referenced_by": [ "combat-building", "lane-pushing", "last-hitting" ], "media": [ "video", "board-card" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "accelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "positive", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Desktop Tower Defense, the populariser, in which towers are the only obstacles and the player builds the path. Category is space-and-position because the operative state is where defences sit relative to the path and, in mazing, the path itself; progression-and-capability (towers as capability growth) and resource-management (gold and lives) were the losing families. Agency is high for free placement; medium was the losing value for fixed-slot forms such as Kingdom Rush. Randomness is none because waves are scripted and shown in advance; input was the losing value for randomised wave composition. Interaction is solo; cooperative was the losing value for Castle Panic and direct for versus modes that send enemies to an opponent. Feedback loop is positive because kills pay for towers; mixed was the losing value where leaks also cost income. Decision density is high for the between-wave phase; medium was the losing value for fixed paths. Pacing stays accelerates after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; neutral was the losing value.", "effects": [ "spatial-reasoning", "planning", "engine-satisfaction", "tension", "calculation" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Rampart", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Atari Games", "note": "Between attack rounds the player places cannons inside walled territory and rebuilds breached walls from falling pieces; the alternation of placement and defence phases makes it the usual precursor, but enemies arrive by sea rather than along a path, so it is an antecedent rather than an instance.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment (custom maps by players)", "note": "Tower defence maps made in the World Editor, following StarCraft (1998) custom maps, fixed the genre's conventions of timed waves, a leak count, gold per kill, and tower upgrades; the year is the host game's release.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Desktop Tower Defense", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Paul Preece", "note": "Enemies cross an open field from edge to edge and towers are the only obstacles, so the player builds the maze they must walk; the browser game that made mazing and the genre name widely known.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Plants vs. Zombies", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "PopCap Games (George Fan)", "note": "Five fixed lanes replace the maze; placement is a column choice per lane and the economy comes from sun-producing plants, which brings the mechanic into a lighter form.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Castle Panic", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Justin De Witt (Fireside Games)", "note": "Monsters advance one ring per turn along one of six arcs toward the castle; players play cards matched to arc and ring to hit them and rebuild walls, and the game is lost when the last tower falls.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Bloons TD Battles 2", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Ninja Kiwi", "note": "Bloons travel along a set track while each player places monkey towers beside it to pop them before they reach the end; in this head-to-head version each player also spends income sending extra bloons down the opponent's track.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "unknown", "note": "No originating game can be defended. Rampart (1990), which alternated placement and defence rounds, and Missile Command (1980), with its defended goal, are antecedents without a path. Rampart's player aims the cannons and its ships follow no path to a goal, so it fails the definition on two counts. The full form, waves along a path against placed towers, was built by players in the map editors of StarCraft (1998) and Warcraft III (2002), a community history with no single documented originating map. The earliest datable examples cited are StarCraft maps in the scmscx.com archive: Turret Defense, by Trunks-Boy, with a file date of May 2000, and Sunken Colony Defense, with enemies coming down fixed rows, of November 2001. File dates show only that a map existed by then, and both are late revisions. Desktop Tower Defense (2007), by Paul Preece, is the populariser, played more than 15 million times within about three months of its March release; Preece took up Flash after his friend David Scott released Flash Element TD in January 2007." }, "established": { "title": "Desktop Tower Defense", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Desktop Tower Defense popularised the genre in the browser, making mazing and the name tower defence widely known; it was played more than 15 million times within about three months of release." }, "sources": [ { "key": "computational-intelligence-and-tower-defence-games-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Computational Intelligence and Tower Defence Games", "author": "Phillipa Avery, Julian Togelius, Elvis Alistar, and Robert Pieter van Leeuwen", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "paper", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, section defining the genre", "note": "Defines the genre's elements (path, waves, towers, lives, gold) and surveys its history." }, { "key": "castle-panic-rulebook-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "Castle Panic rulebook", "author": "Justin De Witt", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Move Monsters phase; attacking by arc and ring", "note": "The board form with ring-by-ring advance." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Tower defense", "note": "Genre history from Rampart through custom maps to browser and mobile games." }, { "key": "strategy-game-pits-players-against-desktop-invasion-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Strategy Game Pits Players Against Desktop Invasion", "author": "Aaron Rutkoff (The Wall Street Journal)", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20080409195906/http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB117987060189311315.html", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Contemporaneous account naming Paul Preece as creator, the March 2007 release, 15 million plays, and Flash Element TD by his friend Dave Scott as the spur." }, { "key": "turret-defense-2ooo1-final-starcraft-map-metadata-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Turret Defense 2ooo1 -Final- (StarCraft map metadata)", "author": "Trunks-Boy", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://scmscx.com/api/uiv2/map_info/Dy5t2jBR", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Defender and attacker forces; the archive's earliest file timestamp is 11 May 2000." }, { "key": "sunken-colony-defense-5-way-starcraft-map-metadata-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "Sunken Colony Defense 5 Way (StarCraft map metadata)", "author": "Golden_LaRcHyS_, edited by {SLY}white_wolf and RaisinMan", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://scmscx.com/api/uiv2/map_info/Tp9R9R2f", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Description says the enemy comes down all rows; the archive's file timestamps are 12 November 2001." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 527, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/tower-defence" }, { "id": "trading", "name": "Trading", "status": "unverified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "Players exchange resources, cards, or other holdings directly with one another at terms they negotiate themselves, so that the rate of exchange is set by the players rather than fixed by the rules.", "aliases": [ "negotiated trade", "bartering", "player trading" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "auction-bidding", "resource-conversion", "drafting", "reputation-factions" ], "referenced_by": [ "alliances", "commodity-currency", "deal-making", "divide-and-choose", "gifting", "loot-distribution", "markets" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the open resource trading in Catan, where any rate may be agreed on the active player's turn. Decision density is medium (partner, goods, rate); high was argued. Fixed-rate exchange with the bank is not trading in this sense and belongs to resource-conversion. Pacing is neutral because bilateral negotiated exchanges that the rules execute at whatever rate the parties accept; no systematic effect on pace; variable was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026. Feedback loop is none because the rule only opens a window for voluntary bilateral exchange; declining the leader's offers is a social choice rather than a rule; negative was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026. Information is perfect because offers and agreed terms are declared openly at the table; any private holdings belong to the host game; asymmetric was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "negotiation", "kingmaking", "emergent-narrative", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Pit", "year": 1904, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Attributed to Edgar Cayce (Parker Brothers)", "note": "Players shout offers and swap one to four cards of a commodity simultaneously and in real time until someone corners a market. Trading as the entire game, with no turns.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Monopoly", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Charles Darrow (Parker Brothers)", "note": "Darrow's patent lets a player sell property to any other player for a price agreeable to both and calls the game primarily one of barter, so the price of a deed is whatever the two players accept.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Catan", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Klaus Teuber", "note": "On their turn the active player may trade resource cards with any other player at any agreed rate, or with the bank at fixed rates; the free trade keeps non-active players engaged every turn.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pokémon Red and Green", "year": 1996, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Game Freak", "note": "Released in the West as Pokémon Red and Blue (1998). Players trade creatures over a link cable, and version-exclusive species plus trade-triggered evolutions make trading necessary to complete the collection.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Bohnanza", "year": 1997, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Uwe Rosenberg", "note": "Because cards must be played in hand order, players trade or give away cards they cannot use; the trading phase is the main decision space and gifts are allowed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Path of Exile", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Grinding Gear Games", "note": "Players exchange items and currency orbs through a secure player-to-player trade screen at terms they agree, the orbs rather than gold serving as the medium of exchange. Buyers find sellers on trade websites, third-party at first and by 2017 an official one, then contact them in-game. Settlers of Kalguur league (2024) added a Currency Exchange that fills buy orders at a set ratio for a Gold fee.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Pokémon Scarlet and Violet", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Game Freak (Nintendo, The Pokémon Company)", "note": "Players trade Pokémon with each other online, agreeing between themselves which creature goes for which, the usual way to obtain the species exclusive to the other version.", "latest": true }, { "title": "Last Epoch", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Eleventh Hour Games", "note": "Trading requires the Merchant's Guild. Two members in the same town may trade directly; in the Bazaar the seller asks a gold price and the buyer also pays a Favor cost the guild sets by the item's quality, with rank gating which trades are open. Items gained through either faction's bonuses cannot be traded but can be gifted.", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": "Monopoly", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Monopoly is the earliest designed game whose negotiated trading is documented in a dated primary text: Darrow's patent (US 2,026,082, 1935) lets a player sell property to any other player for a price agreeable to both and calls the game primarily one of barter. Exchange between players is older than any rules text and appears in children's swapping games and card-trading before designed games. Gavitt's Stock Exchange, published in Topeka, is a reported antecedent built on trading; it rests on a museum catalogue record dating it 1904 (secondary sources say 1903), and no rules text is cited. Pit (Parker Brothers, 1904), described as based on it, rests on secondary dates and a museum transcription of a 1919 rules sheet, in which two players exchange equal numbers of cards. Eighteenth-century card games such as Commerce exchange cards on fixed or blind terms, and Magie's Landlord's Game patent (1904) allows negotiated loans but no property sales between players. Catan (1995) is commonly described as the populariser in hobby design, in commentary rather than any designer or scholarly source." }, "established": { "title": "Catan", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Catan's open trading at any agreed rate on the active player's turn is commonly described as the populariser of negotiated trade in hobby design." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Economics chapter", "note": "Definition and the boundary with market and auction mechanisms." }, { "key": "catan-rulebook-1995", "canonical": false, "title": "Catan rulebook", "author": "Klaus Teuber", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Canonical player-to-player and bank trading used for the property coding." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Trading; Negotiation", "note": null }, { "key": "gavitt-s-stock-exchange-g-s-e", "canonical": false, "title": "Gavitt's Stock Exchange (G-S-E)", "author": "Kennesaw State University AEGIS digital museum", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://aegisdigitalmuseum.kennesaw.edu/items/show/216", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Catalogue record dating the game to 1904, with cards bought or traded for advantage, called the original basis for Pit." }, { "key": "pit-card-game", "canonical": false, "title": "Pit card game", "author": "Victoria and Albert Museum", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O26932", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": null, "note": "Catalogue record of a Parker Brothers set published 1919, first issued in 1904, with bull and bear cards marked copyright 1904 and an instruction sheet marked copyright 1919, under which cards are exchanged by any two players wishing to trade the same number of cards." }, { "key": "game-board-us-patent-2-026-082-1935", "canonical": false, "title": "Game-board (US Patent 2,026,082)", "author": "Charles B. Darrow", "year": 1935, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US2026082A/en", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Players may sell property to any other player for a price agreeable to both; the game is primarily one of barter." }, { "key": "game-board-us-patent-748-626-1904", "canonical": false, "title": "Game-board (US Patent 748,626)", "author": "Lizzie J. Magie", "year": 1904, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US748626A/en", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "The Landlord's Game allows negotiated loans between players but no sale of property between them." }, { "key": "trade-manifesto-2017", "canonical": false, "title": "Trade Manifesto", "author": "Chris Wilson (Grinding Gear Games)", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2025870", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Path of Exile's secure player-to-player trade screen, buyers finding items on trade websites and contacting sellers in-game, and the developer's experimental official trade site." }, { "key": "path-of-exile-game-overview", "canonical": false, "title": "Path of Exile game overview", "author": "Grinding Gear Games", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pathofexile.com/game", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "Orbs that reroll item properties used as the currency in place of gold." }, { "key": "3-25-settlers-of-kalguur-league-reveal-2024", "canonical": false, "title": "3.25 Settlers of Kalguur league reveal", "author": "Maxroll", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://maxroll.gg/poe/news/3-25-settlers-of-kalguur-league-reveal", "accessed": "2026-10-24", "locator": null, "note": "The Currency Exchange, where a buy order at a chosen ratio completes automatically while stock lasts, for a small fee paid in Gold." }, { "key": "last-epoch-1-0-patch-notes-2024", "canonical": false, "title": "Last Epoch 1.0 Patch Notes", "author": "Eleventh Hour Games", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": "Last Epoch forums (Eleventh Hour Games)", "url": "https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/last-epoch-1-0-patch-notes/62536", "accessed": "2026-10-25", "locator": "Item Factions; The Bazaar; Trading", "note": "Direct trade only between Merchant's Guild members in the same town; Bazaar purchases needing the faction rank, a Favor cost set by item quality and the seller's gold price; faction-bonus items untradable but giftable." } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 11, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 564, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/trading" }, { "id": "traitor", "name": "Traitor", "status": "verified", "category": "information-and-hidden-state", "definition": "In an otherwise cooperative game, one player or possibly none is secretly assigned to oppose the group, so loyal players must pursue the shared goal while judging whether setbacks are bad luck or sabotage.", "aliases": [ "possible traitor", "traitor mechanic", "secret traitor", "traitor game", "hidden traitor" ], "parent": "hidden-roles", "children": [], "related": [ "cooperative-play", "voting", "secret-objectives", "deduction" ], "referenced_by": [ "semi-cooperative", "shared-holdings", "side-conversion" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Shadows over Camelot, with Battlestar Galactica as the check case. Interaction is mixed, not cooperative, because a single player may hold a directly opposed goal and the loyal players resolve suspicion through accusation or exile. Information is asymmetric because the traitor knows the whole allocation; mixed was the losing value, arguable because when no traitor was dealt that fact is hidden from everyone. Randomness is input for the loyalty deal; the system opponent's draws belong to the host cooperative game. Complexity is medium because accusation, reveal, and the rules for a revealed traitor add timing exceptions to the cooperative base. Pacing is neutral; the losing value was decelerates, since a traitor slows the team's progress, but the effect is not systematic. Information stays asymmetric after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; mixed was the losing value.", "effects": [ "betrayal", "social-deduction", "bluffing", "tension", "teamwork", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Paranoia", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Greg Costikyan, Dan Gelber, and Eric Goldberg", "note": "Every Troubleshooter is secretly a mutant and a secret-society member, so each player is a traitor to the Computer and to the team; the antecedent form, where treachery is universal rather than singular.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Shadows over Camelot", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Bruno Cathala and Serge Laget", "note": "Loyalty cards dealt at setup may or may not include the traitor. Knights can accuse once per game, and a wrong accusation costs the loyal side. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Battlestar Galactica", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Corey Konieczka", "note": "Loyalty cards are dealt in two rounds, so a player may become a Cylon mid-game. Hidden contributions to skill checks give the traitor a deniable way to sabotage.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dead of Winter", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Jonathan Gilmour and Isaac Vega", "note": "Each survivor has a secret objective and one may hold a betrayal objective; the colony can vote to exile a suspect, after which the exile plays a separate objective.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Project Winter", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Other Ocean Interactive", "note": "Survivors gather resources to escape while a hidden minority of traitors sabotage repairs and poison supplies; proximity voice chat carries the accusations.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Unfathomable", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Tony Fanchi and Corey Konieczka (Fantasy Flight Games)", "note": "Loyalty cards are dealt at setup and again at the halfway point, and the rules guarantee at least one traitor only after that second deal, so early setbacks may or may not be sabotage. Hidden Hybrids can slip opposing cards into face-down skill checks, masked by two random chaos cards.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Shadows over Camelot", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the possibly absent hidden traitor inside a fully cooperative board game, for which Shadows over Camelot is widely credited. Paranoia (1984) is an earlier role-playing antecedent in which treachery is universal, and Betrayal at House on the Hill (2004) is an antecedent whose traitor is revealed, not hidden, at the haunt. Earlier hobby designs with a single secret saboteur are plausible." }, "established": { "title": "Shadows over Camelot", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Shadows over Camelot is widely credited with the possibly absent hidden traitor in a cooperative board game, a form Battlestar Galactica and Dead of Winter elaborated." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Game Structure chapter", "note": "Definition and the distinction from hidden roles and semi-cooperative games." }, { "key": "shadows-over-camelot-rulebook-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "Shadows over Camelot rulebook", "author": "Bruno Cathala and Serge Laget", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Loyalty cards and accusation", "note": "Canonical rules text, including the possibility that no traitor is present." }, { "key": "appelcline-2014", "canonical": true, "title": "Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry", "author": "Shannon Appelcline", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Evil Hat Productions", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "West End Games chapter, Paranoia", "note": "Paranoia's design of universal secret treachery as an RPG antecedent." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Traitor Game", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 499, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/traitor" }, { "id": "trick-taking", "name": "Trick-Taking", "status": "verified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "Players each contribute one card from hand to a round called a trick under a follow-suit rule, the highest card by rank or trump wins the trick, and the number or content of tricks won is scored.", "aliases": [ "trick taking", "trick-taking games", "trump games" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hand-management", "contract-bidding", "team-play", "limited-communication" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "mixed", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "asymmetric", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Whist, the partnership plain-trick game, with Hearts as the individual check case. Interaction is mixed because a trick is a direct contest between the cards played while partners pursue a shared total; direct was the losing value and fits Hearts and other individual games. Agency is medium because the follow-suit rule usually leaves a choice among a small subset of the hand; high was the losing value for the lead position, where any card may be chosen. Information is asymmetric because every card is dealt and the only concealment is other players' hands; mixed was the losing value for games with an undealt stock or kitty. Feedback loop is none because winning a trick does not make the next easier, though the lead passes to the winner.", "effects": [ "inference", "recall", "planning", "teamwork", "mastery", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Whist", "year": 1674, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "Four players in fixed partnerships play thirteen tricks with the last card dealt turned for trump; each trick above six scores for the partnership. Played from the seventeenth century and codified by Hoyle in 1742; the canonical coding here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Hearts", "year": 1880, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": null, "note": "A penalty-trick game with no trump in which each heart taken costs a point and, in the now standard form, the queen of spades thirteen; the object is to avoid tricks, and the shoot-the-moon rule inverts it. The individual form of the mechanic.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Wizard", "year": 1984, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Ken Fisher", "note": "Adds a bid for the exact number of tricks each player will take and two special ranks, the Wizard that always wins and the Jester that always loses; shows the mechanic coupled to contract bidding.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Microsoft Hearts", "year": 1992, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Microsoft", "note": "Shipped with Windows for Workgroups 3.1 and later Windows versions; computer opponents follow suit automatically and the interface enforces the legality of each play, which made trick-taking a default desktop pastime.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Crew", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Thomas Sing", "note": "A cooperative trick-taking game in which mission cards specify who must win which card, so the follow-suit constraint becomes a coordination puzzle under a communication limit.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Crew: Mission Deep Sea", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Thomas Sing", "note": "Players play cooperative tricks under standard follow-suit and trump rules, and each mission's task cards require particular players to win, or avoid, specific cards or tricks, with very limited table talk.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Karnöffel", "year": 1426, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "high", "note": "Parlett identifies Karnöffel, recorded in a Nördlingen town ordinance of 1426, as the earliest card game whose rules can be reconstructed and the earliest known trick-taking game. The trick structure itself may be as old as playing cards in Europe, which arrived in the 1370s, but no earlier game is documented; the date rests on Parlett." }, "established": { "title": "Whist", "year": 1742, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Whist, whose laws Hoyle's treatise fixed in 1742, set the partnership plain-trick form with follow-suit and a turned trump, and was played widely in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bridge is a derivative of it, and many later games carrying its name add bidding to the classic game. Follow-suit and trumps are older, through Triomphe, so the claim is to the form later games took rather than to its parts." }, "sources": [ { "key": "parlett-1990", "canonical": true, "title": "The Oxford Guide to Card Games", "author": "David Parlett", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Definition of the trick, the follow-suit and trump conventions, and the 1426 Karnöffel record." }, { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Card Mechanisms chapter", "note": "Mechanism definition and the distinction between plain-trick and point-trick scoring." }, { "key": "the-crew-rulebook-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "The Crew rulebook", "author": "Thomas Sing", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Playing a trick and the communication rule", "note": "Cooperative adaptation of the follow-suit rule used as an example." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Trick-taking", "note": null }, { "key": "whist", "canonical": false, "title": "Whist", "author": "John McLeod (pagat.com)", "year": null, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.pagat.com/whist/whist.html", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": null, "note": "The classic game is a plain-trick game for four in fixed partnerships, played widely in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and a wide variety of games based on it add bidding." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Contract bridge, History", "note": "Bridge is a derivative of whist, which had become the dominant trick-taking game." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 503, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/trick-taking" }, { "id": "upkeep", "name": "Upkeep and Attrition", "status": "verified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "Holdings such as units, workers, or ships impose a recurring cost in food, money, or supply each round, and failing to pay it degrades or removes them, so growth must be matched by income.", "aliases": [ "maintenance costs", "hunger clocks", "supply rules", "feeding" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "resource-conversion", "inventory-encumbrance", "clocks", "hit-points" ], "referenced_by": [ "downtime-phases", "exploration-procedures", "income", "loans-and-debt", "needs-and-moods", "supply-lines", "usage-dice" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "negative", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the harvest feeding phase of Agricola (2007), where each family member costs two food and each shortfall takes a begging card. Agency is low because the payment is compulsory; medium was argued where the player chooses which penalty to absorb. Feedback loop is negative because larger holdings cost more to maintain, a damper on expansion; mixed was the losing value for forms that charge a shortfall in capacity (units or workers lost), which add a death spiral, whereas the canonical begging card charges points and leaves capacity intact. Decision density is low for the upkeep step itself; the planning it compels happens in the rest of the turn. Pacing is decelerates because every holding demands a recurring payment and larger holdings cost more, so expansion is damped and growth must wait on income; accelerates was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "tension", "planning", "consequence-weight", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Afrika Korps", "year": 1964, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Charles S. Roberts (Avalon Hill)", "note": "Attacks consume supply units and units that cannot trace a line to supply are eliminated after a set number of turns, so an advance is limited by what can be kept fed.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Traveller", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Marc W. Miller (Game Designers' Workshop)", "note": "A starship carries a monthly mortgage payment, crew salaries, fuel, maintenance, and life support, and the need to meet them drives the campaign's trading and passenger work.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Rogue", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, and Ken Arnold", "note": "A hidden hunger counter falls each turn; the player becomes hungry, weak, and then faints and starves unless food is found, which stops indefinite resting and forces descent.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Agricola", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Uwe Rosenberg", "note": "At each of six harvests every family member must be fed two food, and each missing food costs a begging card worth minus three points at the end.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Torchbearer", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Thor Olavsrud and Luke Crane", "note": "The Grind advances every fourth turn and imposes conditions in sequence, while light sources burn down and rations are consumed, so time in the dungeon is itself the enemy.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Against the Storm", "year": 2023, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Eremite Games", "note": "The settlement's villagers of several species must be kept supplied with food and their other needs; when supplies fail, discontented villagers abandon the settlement and hungry ones die, shrinking the workforce until the next caravan arrives.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Afrika Korps", "year": 1964, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Supply consumption and elimination for cut-off units in early Avalon Hill wargames are the usual citation for recurring maintenance in a published game. Diplomacy (1959) capped units at supply centres, a ceiling rather than a recurring charge and so an antecedent, and nineteenth-century Kriegsspiel tracked supply, so earlier instances are plausible. Rogue (1980) is an early video hunger clock and Agricola (2007) is the populariser of feeding in modern board design." }, "established": { "title": "Agricola", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Agricola made feeding at each harvest the central tension of a eurogame and is the populariser of feeding in modern board design, charging shortfalls in points rather than workers." }, "sources": [ { "key": "agricola-rulebook-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "Agricola rulebook", "author": "Uwe Rosenberg", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Harvest; feeding phase and begging cards", "note": "Canonical feeding rule used for the property coding." }, { "key": "traveller-book-2-starships-1977", "canonical": false, "title": "Traveller, Book 2: Starships", "author": "Marc W. Miller", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Starship economics; monthly costs", "note": "Recurring ship costs in a tabletop RPG." }, { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Economics chapter", "note": "Definition and board-game examples." }, { "key": "afrika-korps-rules-1964", "canonical": false, "title": "Afrika Korps rules", "author": "Avalon Hill", "year": 1964, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Supply", "note": "Wargame supply consumption and isolation." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 492, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/upkeep" }, { "id": "usage-dice", "name": "Usage Dice", "status": "verified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "A consumable such as torches, rations, or arrows is tracked as a die rather than a count; after each use the die is rolled, and a low result steps it down one size until a low roll on the smallest die exhausts the supply.", "aliases": [ "usage die", "depletion dice", "resource dice" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "inventory-encumbrance", "upkeep", "exploration-procedures", "dice-pool" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "solo", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from The Black Hack (2016), where a 1 or 2 on an item's usage die steps it down a size and a 1 or 2 on a d4 exhausts it; provenance is dated from a 2011 house rule, but the coding follows the printed, named form. Category is resource-management because the die is a stock that is spent; chance-and-risk was the losing family, since a roll decides each depletion, but the randomiser serves to abstract a quantity rather than being the point. Agency is low because the roll is required after use; medium was the losing value, since the player chooses when to use the item, but that choice belongs to the surrounding play. Randomness is output because the roll follows the use. Interaction is solo; cooperative was the losing value for party supplies held in common. Pacing is neutral; accelerates was the losing value, since an exhausted supply forces an expedition home, an effect that belongs to exploration-procedures. Information is perfect because the die size is public; hidden was the losing value, rejected because the number of remaining uses is undetermined rather than concealed. Feedback loop is none because depletion does not change the player's success; positive was the losing value for the way each step down makes the next more likely. Pacing stays neutral after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; accelerates was the losing value. Feedback loop stays none after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; positive was the losing value.", "effects": [ "tension", "planning" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Cascading Dice: A House Rule for Tracking Ammunition", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "cwhite (intwischa.com)", "note": "Ammunition is recorded as a die such as d12; each 1 rolled while firing steps it down a size to the d4, where a 1 leaves one arrow, and the die also drops a step after each combat in which ammunition was used.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Black Hack", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "David Black (Gold Piece Publications)", "note": "Torches, rations, ammunition, and similar items carry a usage die; the turn after use it is rolled, and a 1 or 2 drops it to the next smaller die until a 1 or 2 on a d4 exhausts the supply. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Forbidden Lands", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Free League Publishing", "note": "Food, water, arrows, and torches are resource dice from D6 to D12 rolled when consumed; a 1 or 2 steps the die down and a 1 or 2 on the D6 empties it, so a party's supplies are tracked by die size across a wilderness journey.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Alien: The Roleplaying Game", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Free League Publishing", "note": "Air, food, water, and power carry a supply rating; a supply roll uses that many stress dice and each 1 lowers the rating, a pool form of the same depletion. Ammunition is handled apart, emptying when a stress die shows 1 during firing.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Black Sword Hack", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Alexandre Jeannette (Livres de l'Ours)", "note": "Built on The Black Hack, it keeps usage dice for gadgets, which must be repaired or rebuilt once their dice run out, and applies supply dice to abstract resources such as favours rather than food or ammunition, alongside a Doom die that depletes as luck is spent.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Cascading Dice: A House Rule for Tracking Ammunition", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "A house rule posted by cwhite on the blog intwischa.com on 17 May 2011, and dated independently by an archive capture of July 2011, records ammunition as a die such as d12. A 1 rolled while firing steps it down through d10, d8, and d6 to d4, a 1 on the d4 leaves one arrow, and the die also drops a step after each combat in which ammunition was used. The post offers a d20 start and a food die rolled once a day, and commenters proposed it for torches, oil, and rations. Its author recalls an unnamed Wild West game in which a single d6 ends ammunition on a 1, with no step-down. Necropraxis (2012) described a related antecedent of a different shape, a fixed d6 ammo die checked after combat, and a 2014 post on Roles, Rules, and Rolls credited the cascading dice rule from Intwischa, showing its spread. The Black Hack (2016), by David Black, is the earliest printed game cited with the rule; it steps down on a 1 or 2, named the rule the usage die, and popularised it, and games derived from it adopted the term. No source links David Black to the 2011 post. Free League's Forbidden Lands (2018) uses the same step-down under the name resource dice, and whether it drew on The Black Hack is unconfirmed. Confidence is medium: the post is dated by its own byline and a 2011 capture, and the only earlier claim, a single comment crediting Chronica Feudalis (2009), is unsupported by its reported rules, which rate skills and tools by die size." }, "established": { "title": "The Black Hack", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "confidence": "medium", "note": "The Black Hack printed the step-down die on a 1 or 2, named it the usage die and popularised it; games derived from it, such as Black Sword Hack, adopted the term." }, "sources": [ { "key": "cascading-dice-a-house-rule-for-tracking-ammunition-2011", "canonical": false, "title": "Cascading Dice: A House Rule for Tracking Ammunition", "author": "cwhite (intwischa.com)", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20130613034002/http://intwischa.com:80/2011/05/house-rule-for-tracking-ammo/", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "The step-down ammunition die from d12 to d4 on a roll of 1, the extra step after combat, the optional d20 start and food die, and commenters' proposals for torches, oil, and rations." }, { "key": "abstracting-missiles-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Abstracting missiles", "author": "Brendan (Necropraxis)", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20140523104347/http://www.necropraxis.com:80/2012/09/16/abstracting-missiles/", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "A fixed d6 ammo die rolled after combat that exhausts a quiver on a 1, with no step-down." }, { "key": "ammo-made-easy-three-left-on-3-2014", "canonical": false, "title": "Ammo made easy: three left on 3", "author": "Roger G-S (Roles, Rules, and Rolls)", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://rolesrules.blogspot.com/2014/07/ammo-made-easy-three-left-on-3.html", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "A later ammunition shortcut that credits the cascading dice rule from Intwischa." }, { "key": "the-black-hack-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "The Black Hack", "author": "David Black", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Gold Piece Publications", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Usage die", "note": "The usage die, rolled the turn after use, its step-down chain from d20 to d4, and the items that carry one, none starting above d10." }, { "key": "the-black-hack-srd-english-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "The Black Hack SRD (English)", "author": "Bruno Bord", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://the-black-hack.jehaisleprintemps.net/english/", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "A fan-hosted open-content copy of the v1.2 text of 3 April 2016, not the publisher's edition; the usage die rule and the equipment that carries one." }, { "key": "the-black-hack-kickstarter-campaign-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "The Black Hack (Kickstarter campaign)", "author": "Peter Regan", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20160321181128/https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1730454032/the-black-hack", "accessed": "2026-10-20", "locator": null, "note": "The campaign run from 7 to 28 February 2016, with the PDF edition as a reward." }, { "key": "forbidden-lands-player-s-handbook-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Forbidden Lands Player's Handbook", "author": "Free League Publishing", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Resource dice for food, water, arrows, and torches." }, { "key": "alien-the-roleplaying-game-2019", "canonical": false, "title": "Alien: The Roleplaying Game", "author": "Free League Publishing", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Supply ratings and supply rolls for air, food, water, and power, and ammunition that empties on a stress-die 1." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 8, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 500, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/usage-dice" }, { "id": "variable-player-powers", "name": "Variable Player Powers", "status": "verified", "category": "progression-and-capability", "definition": "Each player begins with a different rule exception, capability set, or faction that breaks the symmetry of the shared rules, so the same situation offers different options to different players.", "aliases": [ "asymmetric powers", "asymmetric factions", "player powers", "character classes" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hidden-roles", "skill-trees", "drafting", "secret-objectives" ], "referenced_by": [ "aspects-and-tags", "cooperative-play", "equipment-loadouts", "handicapping", "hunt-games", "lifepath", "multiclassing", "one-versus-many", "point-buy", "role-selection", "side-swapping", "subclasses", "team-play" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Cosmic Encounter, where alien powers are dealt at random and revealed. Randomness is input for the dealt form; drafted or chosen powers (Root, StarCraft) would code none. Decision density is low because the power is a standing condition rather than a per-turn decision; medium was the losing value for drafted forms. Complexity is medium for a single power, but a large set such as Root's factions is high because every player must learn every exception. Information is perfect because powers are public; hidden-power variants shift toward asymmetric and overlap with hidden roles. Agency is low because the power is dealt at random at setup and stands as a fixed condition rather than a per-turn choice; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "replayability", "ownership", "discovery", "mastery", "frustration-risk" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons", "year": 1974, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (TSR)", "note": "Fighting-men, magic-users, and clerics each have distinct advancement tables, spell access, and weapon permissions, making class an early widely played form of chosen asymmetric capability and an antecedent of the dealt-power mechanism.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Cosmic Encounter", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Peter Olotka, Jack Kittredge, Bill Eberle, and Bill Norton", "note": "Each player is dealt an alien power that breaks one rule of the shared conflict procedure, from redefining what counts as winning to reversing the outcome of an encounter.", "latest": false }, { "title": "StarCraft", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Blizzard Entertainment", "note": "Three races share no units and differ in economy, production, and defence, and were balanced against one another through years of patching rather than by symmetry.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Apocalypse World", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "D. Vincent Baker", "note": "Playbooks bundle a character's moves, gear, and advancement into one asymmetric sheet; the term spread to a whole design family and is folded in as a variation.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Descent: Journeys in the Dark (second edition)", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Adam Sadler and Corey Konieczka with Daniel Lovat Clark (Fantasy Flight Games)", "note": "Each Hero sheet carries a unique hero ability and a heroic feat usable once per encounter, and at setup each player takes one of the two Class decks open to the hero's archetype, warrior, healer, mage or scout, which no other player may share.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Vast: The Crystal Caverns", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Patrick Leder (Leder Games)", "note": "Each of five roles has its own actions and its own win condition in one cave. The Knight hunts the Dragon, the Goblins hunt the Knight, the Dragon tries to wake from its slumber, the Thief carries treasure to the surface, and the Cave player wins by collapsing the cave.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Root", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Cole Wehrle", "note": "Four factions play by substantially different rules and score in different ways on one shared map, with the rulebook teaching each faction separately.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dune: Imperium", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Paul Dennen (Dire Wolf)", "note": "Each player takes a leader card with asymmetric abilities that bend the shared rules, so players starting from identical decks value the same board spaces and cards differently.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Cosmic Encounter", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Provenance is scoped to the board-game mechanism in which a single rule-breaking power is dealt to each player, for which Cosmic Encounter, with its alien powers, is the usual citation. The name \"variable player powers\" is a later hobby label, not the game's own term. Character classes in Dungeons & Dragons (1974) and asymmetric sides in historical wargames are earlier instances of asymmetric starting capability and are treated as antecedents." }, "established": { "title": "Cosmic Encounter", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Cosmic Encounter, whose dealt alien powers each break one rule of a shared procedure, is the usual citation for the board-game form of a rule-breaking power per player." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Actions chapter", "note": "Definition of variable player powers in board-game design." }, { "key": "cosmic-encounter-rulebook-1977", "canonical": false, "title": "Cosmic Encounter rulebook", "author": "Eon Products", "year": 1977, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Alien powers", "note": "Canonical dealt-power rules." }, { "key": "descent-journeys-in-the-dark-second-edition-rules-of-play-2012", "canonical": false, "title": "Descent: Journeys in the Dark (second edition), Rules of Play", "author": "Adam Sadler and Corey Konieczka with Daniel Lovat Clark", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": "Fantasy Flight Games", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20121018023304/http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/descent-second-ed/support/DJ01_Rulebook_ENG.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-27", "locator": "p. 4, Hero Archetypes; p. 5, Hero Setup; p. 7, Hero Sheet Anatomy; p. 15, Heroic Feats", "note": "The unique hero ability and once-per-encounter heroic feat on each Hero sheet, the four archetypes, and the choice of one of two Class decks matching the hero's archetype, not shared with another player." }, { "key": "a-vast-vast-review-2016", "canonical": false, "title": "A Vast Vast Review", "author": "Dan Thurot (Space-Biff!)", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://spacebiff.com/2016/08/30/vast/", "accessed": "2026-10-30", "locator": null, "note": "The five roles of Vast, each with its own actions and goal; the Knight slays the Dragon, the Goblins kill the Knight, the Dragon wakes from its slumber, the Thief drags treasure back to the surface, and the Cave collapses once five crystal tiles are removed." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Sections on character classes in the 1974 rules", "note": "Classes as asymmetric capability predating the board-game term." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Variable Player Powers", "note": null } ], "n_examples": 8, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 510, "updated": "2026-10-30", "url": "/mechanics/variable-player-powers" }, { "id": "victory-points", "name": "Victory Points", "status": "unverified", "category": "resource-management", "definition": "An abstract scoring unit awarded for heterogeneous achievements such as buildings, sets, regions, and completed goals, summed on a track or at game end, so that unlike pursuits are made commensurable and the highest total wins.", "aliases": [ "VP", "score tracks", "point salad", "end-game bonuses" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "end-game-triggers", "hidden-scoring", "set-collection", "area-control", "secret-objectives" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Catan (1995), the usual reference, with Puerto Rico (2002) as the check for the point-salad form. Category is resource-management, chosen because no family fits cleanly, and this departs from the default tie-break order, which asks time-and-action-structure first; that family lost because checking the tally at the end does not ration actions. Victory points are not spent in the canonical form, so the \"scarce pool now\" test is a stretch, but they are a finite quantity accumulated and compared, and the family holds the other scoring and tally mechanics (income, stock holding). Progression-and-capability was rejected because points do not change capability. Complexity is medium because Catan's sources and rates form a single short lookup table; low was the losing value for a single-category track. Information is perfect because the track is public; hidden scoring is coded as its own entry. Decision density is low because the scoring moment itself contains no decision; analysis paralysis belongs to the point-salad variant and is not tagged. Agency is low because the tally converts sources at stated rates and the scoring moment itself contains no decision; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "calculation", "planning", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Cribbage", "year": 1630, "year_approx": true, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Attributed to Sir John Suckling", "note": "Points for fifteens, pairs, runs, and the go are pegged on a board as they are scored during play and in the show, and the first past 121 wins: a point track that aggregates several scoring categories, though not yet an abstract unit across unlike achievements, so an antecedent.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Catan", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Klaus Teuber", "note": "Settlements, cities, the longest road, the largest army, and certain development cards each convert to victory points on a single scale, and ten points wins: the form usually taken as the common currency of hobby board games.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Puerto Rico", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Andreas Seyfarth", "note": "Victory point chips are earned for shipping goods and large buildings score at the end, so a shipping strategy and a building strategy are compared only through the final sum; the chip supply running out is also an end-game trigger.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dominion", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Donald X. Vaccarino", "note": "Victory cards are worth points at the end but do nothing when drawn, so each point bought weakens the deck that buys it, the clearest case of victory points as a cost paid against capability.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Civilization VI", "year": 2016, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Firaxis Games", "note": "If no civilization achieves a domination, science, culture, or religious victory before the turn limit (a diplomatic victory was added by the 2019 expansion), a score summing cities, wonders, technologies, civics, and other categories decides the winner, an end-game bonus schedule in the wargame tradition.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Lost Ruins of Arnak", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Michal Štach and Michaela Štachová (Czech Games Edition)", "note": "Final scores add points from unlike sources: position on the research track, temple tiles, the printed values of artifact and item cards, and defeated guardians, minus fear cards, so exploration, research, and deck choices are all priced in one currency.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Little Wars", "year": 1913, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "The earliest dated rules found that sum unlike achievements into one score are H. G. Wells's Little Wars (1913): a battle is played \"for points\", 100 for the victory, 10 for each gun, one and a half for each cavalryman, and one for each infantryman, though Wells says points rather than victory points. Cribbage, whose name is attested by about 1630, pegs points from several card combinations and is an older antecedent. Hex-and-counter wargames awarded victory points on schedules for objectives and losses; Midway (1964) is reported to do so, but no 1960s rulebook is cited and the first printing of the phrase is undetermined. Dunnigan's handbook describes the convention without naming an origin. Catan (1995) is the usual reference for victory points as the common currency of hobby board games, an editorial judgement no source states." }, "established": { "title": "Catan", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Catan, converting settlements, cities, the longest road and the largest army to one scale with ten points to win, is the usual reference for victory points as the common currency of hobby board games." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Game End and Victory chapter", "note": "Definition and the distinction from other victory conditions." }, { "key": "dunnigan-1980", "canonical": true, "title": "The Complete Wargames Handbook", "author": "James F. Dunnigan", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "William Morrow", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapter 2, section 14, glossary entry Victory Conditions; Chapter 4, The Drive on Metz, rule 2.4 (as read in the 2000 third edition)", "note": "Victory-point schedules as the wargame form; the handbook does not say where the term came from." }, { "key": "little-wars-1913", "canonical": false, "title": "Little Wars", "author": "H. G. Wells", "year": 1913, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3691/pg3691.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Chapter II; Chapter III, The Rules, Varieties of the Battle-Game", "note": "A points schedule for victory, guns, cavalry, infantry, and prisoners deciding a battle or campaign." }, { "key": "catan-game-rules-almanac-2020", "canonical": false, "title": "Catan Game Rules & Almanac", "author": "Catan GmbH and Catan Studio", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.catan.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/catan_base_rules_2020_200707.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "Game Rules, p. 5", "note": "Settlements 1, cities 2, Longest Road and Largest Army 2 each, hidden victory point cards, and ten points to win." }, { "key": "catan-rulebook-1995", "canonical": false, "title": "Catan rulebook", "author": "Klaus Teuber (Kosmos)", "year": 1995, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Victory Points; Ending the Game", "note": "Canonical rules used for the property coding." }, { "key": "parlett-1990", "canonical": true, "title": "The Oxford Guide to Card Games", "author": "David Parlett", "year": 1990, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Oxford University Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Cribbage", "note": "Pegged point scoring across several categories as the older tradition." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 520, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/victory-points" }, { "id": "voting", "name": "Voting", "status": "unverified", "category": "interaction-and-exchange", "definition": "A decision binding on the whole table is made by counting players' declared preferences under a stated rule such as majority, plurality, or unanimity, so persuasion before the count is the real contest.", "aliases": [ "majority vote", "ballot", "collective decision" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "hidden-roles", "traitor", "alliances", "secret-objectives" ], "referenced_by": [ "audience-participation", "bluff-and-challenge", "player-judge" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "physical" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "low", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 0, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from the open majority vote of Mafia, with The Resistance's team approval as the check case. Interaction is direct because the canonical vote names a player to eliminate; indirect was the losing value, fitting approval votes on proposals. Information is perfect because hands are raised in the open; asymmetric was the losing value, applicable to secret ballots in which each voter knows only their own choice. Decision density is low because each invocation is one choice; the persuasion that precedes it is not rationed by the mechanic. Pacing is neutral; votes can either resolve stalemates or produce them, and the effect depends on the host game. Feedback loop is none because a count under a stated rule binds the table; turning a plurality against the leader is a social choice rather than a rule; negative was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "negotiation", "kingmaking", "tension" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Junta", "year": 1978, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Vincent Tsao", "note": "The president proposes a budget and the cabinet votes on it with weighted vote cards; bribery before the count is legal and expected.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Mafia", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "creator": "Dimitry Davidoff", "note": "Dated 1986 or spring 1987. The day phase ends with an open vote to eliminate a suspect, which is the majority's only instrument against the hidden minority; one majority lynch per day is the later standard form. The canonical form coded here.", "latest": false }, { "title": "The Resistance", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Don Eskridge", "note": "Each proposed mission team must be approved by simultaneous open vote, and five consecutive rejections in one round win the game for the spies, so the vote carries a cost of delay.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Among Us", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Innersloth", "note": "Emergency meetings end in a timed vote to eject a crewmate, with a skip option and ties resulting in no ejection; the software tallies and reveals the result.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Blood on the Clocktower", "year": 2022, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Steven Medway", "note": "Each day ends with nominations and a vote, and a nominee is executed if enough players vote for them, so private whispering and public argument during the day are aimed at that count.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": null, "year": null, "year_approx": false, "medium": null, "confidence": "unknown", "note": "Voting as a group procedure is ancient, so no origin is defensible. Among designed board games, Kingmaker's Parliament became a vote by Lords and Commons in Charles Vasey's revision for Avalon Hill, described in spring 1979 (the 1974 original let the King's controller assign offices); the edition year is unconfirmed. Junta, dated 1978 by secondary sources and reviewed in GAMES in May 1980, has players elect a president and vote on the budget with weighted vote cards. Mafia, created by Dimitry Davidoff at Moscow State University in 1986 or 1987, is the populariser of the elimination vote; Andrew Plotkin's Werewolf (1997) carried it into hobby circles, and the single majority lynch per day is a later standardisation of Davidoff's rules. Earlier designed voting games are likely." }, "established": { "title": "Mafia", "year": 1986, "year_approx": false, "medium": "physical", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Mafia made the open elimination vote the standard instrument of social deduction; it spread in English as Werewolf from 1997, and later games such as Among Us and Blood on the Clocktower keep the day-end vote." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Resolution chapter", "note": "Definition and the range of counting rules." }, { "key": "the-resistance-rulebook-2009", "canonical": false, "title": "The Resistance rulebook", "author": "Don Eskridge", "year": 2009, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Team vote", "note": "Open simultaneous approval vote and the rejection limit." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Resolution chapter", "note": null }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Junta (game)", "note": "Publication history and the budget vote." }, { "key": "junta-review-1980", "canonical": false, "title": "Junta review", "author": "GAMES magazine", "year": 1980, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/games-17-1980-may/games-17-1980-may_djvu.txt", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": "No. 17 (May 1980), p. 54", "note": "Players elect a president and use political cards to manipulate voting." }, { "key": "werewolf-2010", "canonical": false, "title": "Werewolf", "author": "Andrew Plotkin", "year": 2010, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.eblong.com/zarf/werewolf.html", "accessed": "2026-10-11", "locator": null, "note": "Credits Dimitry Davidoff with Mafia in 1986 and gives the majority-vote lynch; notes that Davidoff's original allowed several lynchings a day." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 6, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 538, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/voting" }, { "id": "vulnerability-windows", "name": "Vulnerability Windows", "status": "unverified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "A player-owned structure can be damaged, captured or destroyed only in a scheduled period, often after an attack has put it in a protected state whose end the defender partly sets, so sieges are fought at appointed hours", "aliases": [ "siege windows", "reinforcement timers", "structure timers" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "appointment-mechanics", "clocks", "base-building", "area-control", "team-play", "security-zones" ], "referenced_by": [], "media": [ "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "medium", "randomness": "output", "interaction": "direct", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "mixed", "feedback_loop": "negative", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 1, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from EVE Online's Upwell structures after the 2018 revision, with Shadowbane's bane circles as the earliest documented use. Agency is medium: the defender's one constrained choice is the reinforcement hour and day, the attacker's is when to open the siege; high was the losing value, for a choice that decides which day every later timer lands on. Randomness is output because the exit time is jittered up to two hours either way after the attack succeeds; none, for Shadowbane and New World's fixed hours, lost. Interaction is direct, an attack on a named owner's structure; mixed, for third parties joining at a public timer, lost. Complexity is medium (a window, a protected state, an exit rule); high, for EVE's three-phase sieges, lost. Pacing decelerates because protected states stretch a siege from one fight to several days. Information is mixed: the hour the defender sets is known to the owner before attackers learn it, and the random offset of the exit is known to no player; perfect, because running timers are shown to all, lost. Feedback loop is negative because a successful attack is slowed by the protected state it triggers, which gives the defender time to answer; none lost, and positive for Aegis windows that shorten as a system is used. Decision density is medium (the hour and day, whether to form a fleet, when to open the siege); low, treating the window as a frame whose fights belong to combat, lost. Ownership is not tagged: the attachment to the structure comes from base-building, and the window only times its loss.", "effects": [ "tension", "consequence-weight", "planning", "teamwork", "contested-fairness" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Lineage", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "NCsoft", "note": "A Blood Pledge declares war on the pledge holding a castle and may storm it only at the designated siege time, according to the official North American guide of 2002, and loses if it has not taken the crown by sundown of that game day; holders must allow a siege every few days or the castle goes into siege mode on its own.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Shadowbane", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Wolfpack Studios", "note": "An attacking guild casts a bane circle near an enemy city's Tree of Life, and the 2003 manual makes the circle, the tree and the buildings it protects invulnerable until the War phase, set 72 hours later unless the defending guild's leader or inner council brings it forward by up to 24 hours, once, within the first day; the War phase then runs until the circle or the tree falls.", "latest": false }, { "title": "EVE Online", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "CCP Games", "note": "A control tower driven below half shields goes into reinforced mode, invincible while it burns the strontium its owner stocked, so the stock sets when the attack can resume. From 2018 an Upwell structure's final fight falls on the owner's chosen day, within two hours of the owner's chosen hour.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Albion Online", "year": 2017, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sandbox Interactive", "note": "Territory raids run in prime time, and from the 2024 Foundations update territory fortifications become vulnerable during six prescribed periods a day.", "latest": true }, { "title": "New World", "year": 2021, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Amazon Games", "note": "Each company sets a siege window from its company screen, and only during that window can attackers in a declared war ignore the territory protection it has paid for, after a pre-war phase that lets the defenders prepare.", "latest": false } ], "provenance": { "title": "Lineage", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "Lineage's official North American guide, in Wayback captures of June and September 2002, says a Blood Pledge that declares war on a castle's holder may storm it only at the designated siege time and loses if the crown is not taken by sundown of that game day, and that holders must allow a siege every few days. The rule is documented from 2002, and whether the Korean release of 1998 had it is unconfirmed; either date precedes Shadowbane. The guide does not say who designates the time, hence low confidence. Shadowbane's manual of February 2003 is the earliest documented use of the fuller form: a bane siege stays invulnerable until a War phase the defending guild's leaders may bring forward, 48 to 72 hours after the bane is cast. EVE Online's control towers came with the Exodus expansion of November 2004." }, "established": { "title": "EVE Online", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "confidence": "low", "note": "The Aegis sovereignty release of July 2015 named the daily vulnerability window, set by the owning alliance, and the 2018 Upwell revision fixed the defender-chosen day and hour for the final fight. New World's company-set siege window has the same shape, but no cited source says later games took it from EVE Online." }, "sources": [ { "key": "ncsoft-lineage-blood-pledges-castle-sieges-and-war-wayback-capture-2002", "canonical": false, "title": "NCsoft: Lineage, Blood Pledges: Castle Sieges and War (Wayback capture)", "author": "NCsoft", "year": 2002, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20020918122211/http://www.lineage.com:80/guide/char_pledges_sieges.html", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Castle Sieges and War", "note": "Castles stormed only at the designated siege time, attackers losing at sundown of that game day, and holders required to allow a siege every few days; the same text is in the June 2002 capture of the Blood Pledges page." }, { "key": "shadowbane-game-manual-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Shadowbane game manual", "author": "Wolfpack Studios (Ubi Soft)", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": "https://archive.org/download/shadowbane-2003/Shadowbane%20(2003).iso/Gamemanual.pdf", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Chapter 13, Sieges, pp. 162-171", "note": "The Challenge, Standoff and War phases of a bane siege, invulnerability of the circle and the Tree of Life before the War phase, its default start 72 hours after the bane and the defending leaders' one adjustment of up to 24 hours within the first day, and the \"insomniac Guild\" the timing guards against; manual pages stamped 18 February 2003." }, { "key": "upwell-2-0-structures-changes-coming-on-february-13th-updated-2018", "canonical": false, "title": "Upwell 2.0: Structures Changes Coming On February 13th! (UPDATED)", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/upwell-2.0-structures-changes-coming-on-february-13th", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Pillar #2: New Vulnerability and Reinforcement System", "note": "Owner-chosen reinforcement hour and day, shields vulnerable at all times, first and final reinforcement periods with up to two hours of random offset, 0.5 to 5.5 days by area of space, the defenders' last stand, a day's notice to form, attackers timing exits to weekends, and the earlier system judged too unbalanced in favour of the defender." }, { "key": "patch-notes-for-aegis-sovereignty-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Patch notes for Aegis Sovereignty", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/patch-notes-for-aegis-sovereignty", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Version 1.0 (14 July 2015); Version 1.2", "note": "The Default Vulnerability Time as a daily interval whose length follows the Activity Defense Multiplier, invulnerability after a successful Entosis attack, command nodes spawning 24 to 72 hours later, and a minimum invulnerable time after a successful defence." }, { "key": "citadels-sieges-and-you-2015", "canonical": false, "title": "Citadels, sieges and you", "author": "CCP Games", "year": 2015, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/citadels-sieges-and-you", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "The pre-release Citadel design of August 2015, with weekly vulnerability hours the owner assigns, reinforcement measured in vulnerability hours, and a schedule a scout cannot see." }, { "key": "pos-s-explained-2007", "canonical": false, "title": "POS's explained", "author": "Amiable Rashala", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://eve-files.com/media/corp/amiable/amiable_rashala_pos.htm", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Reinforced Mode", "note": "A player guide (version 1.0, July 2007) describing control-tower reinforcement below 50% shields, offline modules, strontium burn whose stock sets the duration, and invincibility while reinforced." }, { "key": "shadowbane-designer-diary-2004", "canonical": false, "title": "Shadowbane Designer Diary", "author": "Damion Schubert (GameBanshee)", "year": 2004, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://www.gamebanshee.com/akdk", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Complaints that siege events start at late hours and run too long, or end too soon when a strike takes out the bane, and the aim of a siege of the right duration." }, { "key": "shadowbane-official-site-news-wayback-capture-2008", "canonical": false, "title": "Shadowbane official site, news (Wayback capture)", "author": "Ubisoft", "year": 2008, "year_approx": false, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20080827230220/http://www.shadowbane.com/community/journal/circle/SIG_GameplayChanges.php", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "The notice of 22 April 2008 that bane circles and their buildings of war due to go live during a maintenance period would be removed and attackers and defenders reimbursed." }, { "key": "shadowbane-siege-system-overhaul-2003", "canonical": false, "title": "Shadowbane Siege System Overhaul", "author": "Allakhazam", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://wow.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=1281", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "A siege overhaul meant to lengthen sieges and reduce what the developers called \"4am raiding\"." }, { "key": "lineage-artbook-2023", "canonical": false, "title": "Lineage artbook", "author": "NCSOFT", "year": 2023, "year_approx": true, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": "https://about.ncsoft.com/artbook/en/lineage", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": "Season 1, EP 3 (Kent Castle)", "note": "Castles and the siege system, which NCsoft calls a system introduced by Lineage as the world's first; no siege timing is stated." }, { "key": "albion-online-shakes-up-territory-raiding-as-its-foundations-update-goes-live-2024", "canonical": false, "title": "Albion Online Shakes Up Territory Raiding As Its Foundations Update Goes Live", "author": "Marc Marasigan (MMOs.com)", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "article", "publisher": null, "url": "https://mmos.com/news/albion-online-foundations-update-now-live", "accessed": "2026-10-28", "locator": null, "note": "Territory fortifications vulnerable during six prescribed periods a day, siege banners, and prime-time raiding." }, { "key": "new-world-war-getting-started-in-game-text-nwguide-database-2021", "canonical": false, "title": "New World: War (Getting Started), in-game text, NWGuide database", "author": "Amazon Games", "year": 2021, "year_approx": true, "type": "website", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Company-set siege windows from the company screen, territory protection ignored by attackers during the window, and a pre-war phase for defenders." } ], "n_examples": 5, "n_sources": 12, "n_relations": 6, "word_count": 671, "updated": "2026-10-28", "url": "/mechanics/vulnerability-windows" }, { "id": "word-building", "name": "Word Building", "status": "verified", "category": "puzzle-and-pattern", "definition": "Players form valid words from a limited supply of letters, by placing tiles on a shared grid or assembling them from a rack or draw, and score by letter values, word length, or placement.", "aliases": [ "word games", "word formation", "anagram games", "spelling games" ], "parent": null, "children": [], "related": [ "set-collection", "clue-giving", "tile-placement", "pattern-recognition", "constraint-logic-puzzles" ], "referenced_by": [ "escape-room-puzzles" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "input", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "mixed", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "medium" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 1 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Scrabble. Agency is high because the space of playable words from a rack is large and selection dominates the score. Randomness is input because tiles are drawn before the player chooses. Interaction is indirect because players meet only through the shared grid and the bag, with blocking of premium squares as the strongest coupling; solo was the losing value and fits Boggle, where players search the same grid independently. Information is mixed because racks are private and the bag is concealed from everyone; asymmetric was the losing value. Complexity is medium because placement rules, premium squares, and the challenge procedure take a paragraph. Decision density is medium because a turn chooses a word, a position, and which tiles to keep or exchange. Information stays mixed after a split blind re-code on 21 October 2026; asymmetric was the losing value.", "effects": [ "mastery", "calculation", "spatial-reasoning", "analysis-paralysis", "contested-fairness" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Scrabble", "year": 1948, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Alfred Mosher Butts", "note": "Seven-tile racks, a fifteen-by-fifteen grid with premium squares, letter values weighted by frequency, and a challenge rule against a dictionary; the canonical form coded here, published in 1948 after Butts's Lexiko (1931) and Criss-Crosswords (1938).", "latest": false }, { "title": "Boggle", "year": 1972, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Allan Turoff", "note": "Sixteen lettered dice are shaken into a tray and all players simultaneously list words traceable through adjacent faces within three minutes; words found by more than one player are struck, so the search is solitary and the scoring indirect.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Bookworm", "year": 2003, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "PopCap Games", "note": "Words are traced through a falling grid of letter tiles and cleared tiles are replaced from above, so the mechanic is fused with match-three refill logic and burning tiles add a timer.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Bananagrams", "year": 2006, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Abraham Nathanson", "note": "Each player builds a private crossword grid in real time from face-down tiles and must draw more whenever their grid is complete; there is no shared board and no scoring beyond finishing first.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Paperback", "year": 2014, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Tim Fowers", "note": "Letter cards are drawn from a personal deck and spelled into words whose length buys better cards, so word building supplies the purchasing power of a deck-builder.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Scrabble GO", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Scopely (with PierPlay)", "note": "The licensed mobile Scrabble keeps the shared board with premium squares and a rack of valued letter tiles for matches against friends or strangers, and adds boosts, rewards and other game modes around the classic match.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Scrabble", "year": 1948, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scrabble fixed the rack-and-grid form and is the populariser of word building as a game mechanic; Butts designed it as Lexiko in 1931 and Criss-Crosswords in 1938 before James Brunot published it under the Scrabble name. Letter-tile anagram games were sold in the nineteenth century and the crossword puzzle (Arthur Wynne, 1913) supplied the grid, so the mechanic has earlier instances and the claim is for the scored competitive form." }, "established": { "title": "Scrabble", "year": 1948, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Scrabble fixed the rack-and-grid form, with frequency-weighted letter values, premium squares and a challenge rule, and is the populariser of word building as a game mechanic." }, "sources": [ { "key": "scrabble-rules-1948", "canonical": false, "title": "Scrabble rules", "author": "Alfred Mosher Butts and James Brunot", "year": 1948, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Placing words, premium squares, and challenges", "note": "Canonical placement and scoring rules and the challenge procedure." }, { "key": "word-freak-heartbreak-triumph-genius-and-obsession-in-the-world-of-competitive-scrabble-players-2001", "canonical": false, "title": "Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players", "author": "Stefan Fatsis", "year": 2001, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Chapters on Butts and the design of the letter distribution", "note": "History of Lexiko, Criss-Crosswords, and the frequency-based letter values." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Scrabble", "note": "Publication dates and the Butts and Brunot attribution." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 3, "n_relations": 5, "word_count": 482, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/word-building" }, { "id": "worker-placement", "name": "Worker Placement", "status": "verified", "category": "time-and-action-structure", "definition": "Players take turns placing a limited number of worker tokens on action spaces to claim those actions, with each space usually holding one worker, so occupying a space also blocks it.", "aliases": [ "action drafting", "worker allocation" ], "parent": "drafting", "children": [], "related": [ "action-points", "area-control", "engine-building" ], "referenced_by": [ "dice-placement", "resource-conversion", "role-selection", "rondel", "sowing", "time-track" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video" ], "properties": { "agency": "high", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "neutral", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "high" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 2, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 2 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Caylus, where the worker count is fixed and placement is deterministic and public. Feedback loop is none for the bare structure; the common worker-growth variant (Agricola, Stone Age) is positive, damped by feeding costs, and would code as mixed. Category is time-and-action-structure, a departure from the default tie-break order, which asks the interaction-and-exchange question first: placement is a draft of actions, hence the filing as a child of drafting, but its function is to ration actions per round.", "effects": [ "planning", "fear-of-missing-out", "analysis-paralysis", "tension", "downtime" ], "examples": [ { "title": "Keydom", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Richard Breese", "note": "Frequently cited as the earliest game with the full place-to-claim-and-block structure, in which workers of differing rank compete for sites.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Caylus", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "William Attia", "note": "Workers are placed one at a time on buildings along a road, the cost of placing rises once a player passes, and the buildings are resolved in road order. The game most often credited with establishing the pattern.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Agricola", "year": 2007, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Uwe Rosenberg", "note": "Family members are workers; growing the family adds placements but each worker must be fed every harvest, which is the damper on the resulting positive loop.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Lords of Waterdeep (digital edition)", "year": 2013, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Playdek", "note": "A faithful digital adaptation of the 2012 board game, representative of how the mechanic reached video platforms primarily through ports of hobby board games.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Frostpunk", "year": 2018, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "11 bit studios", "note": "A solo, real-time relative: a fixed pool of workers and engineers is assigned each day to workplaces with limited slots, keeping the allocation structure but removing opponent blocking.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Lost Ruins of Arnak", "year": 2020, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Michal Štach and Michaela Štachová (Czech Games Edition)", "note": "Each player has two archaeologists to send to dig sites, paying the site's travel cost with cards or coins; a space must be unoccupied, so once a site's spaces are filled no one else can dig there that round.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "Keydom", "year": 1998, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Keydom (1998) and Bus (1999) are the earliest designs usually named for the mechanic, but neither was widely played, and the term \"worker placement\" became current only after Caylus (2005), which is treated here as the populariser. Earlier action-selection games may contain the pattern in part." }, "established": { "title": "Caylus", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Caylus is the game most often credited with establishing the place-to-claim-and-block pattern, and the term worker placement became current only after it; Agricola carried the mechanic into common use." }, "sources": [ { "key": "engelstein-shalev-2019", "canonical": true, "title": "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms", "author": "Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev", "year": 2019, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "CRC Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Worker Placement chapter", "note": "Definition and variants of the mechanism." }, { "key": "caylus-rulebook-2005", "canonical": false, "title": "Caylus rulebook", "author": "William Attia", "year": 2005, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Canonical procedure used for the property coding." }, { "key": "bgg-mechanics", "canonical": true, "title": "Board Game Mechanics", "author": "BoardGameGeek community", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic", "accessed": null, "locator": "Worker Placement", "note": null }, { "key": "woods-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games", "author": "Stewart Woods", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "McFarland", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": null, "note": "Context on the Eurogame design culture in which the mechanic spread." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 4, "word_count": 484, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/worker-placement" }, { "id": "zone-of-control", "name": "Zone of Control", "status": "verified", "category": "space-and-position", "definition": "Each piece projects a zone into the cells adjacent to it, and an enemy piece entering the zone must stop, pay extra, or accept an attack, so a piece controls more ground than it occupies.", "aliases": [ "ZOC", "zones of control", "threatened squares", "engagement zones" ], "parent": "grid-movement", "children": [], "related": [ "area-control", "action-points" ], "referenced_by": [ "combat-results-tables", "piece-capture", "supply-lines", "tower-defence" ], "media": [ "board-card", "video", "tabletop-rpg" ], "properties": { "agency": "low", "randomness": "none", "interaction": "indirect", "complexity": "medium", "pacing": "decelerates", "information": "perfect", "feedback_loop": "none", "decision_density": "low" }, "property_ranks": { "agency": 0, "complexity": 1, "decision_density": 0 }, "property_notes": "Coded from Afrika Korps, the most widely taught early form. Interaction is indirect, as for the other position-mediated rules (grid movement, line of sight, cover, supply lines), because the zone is a property of position that applies to whichever enemy enters it, without targeting; direct was the losing value, since in a two-player wargame the opponent is always the one impeded. Pacing decelerates because advances are halted at contact and lines must be dislodged rather than bypassed. Complexity is medium for stop-on-entry with an exit rule, and high for variants with locking, rigid versus fluid zones, and retreat-through-ZOC losses. Agency is low because the zone's effect on entry is fixed by rule and falls where positions already put it; the spacing decisions belong to movement; medium was the losing value, the coding before the blind re-code of 21 October 2026.", "effects": [ "spatial-reasoning", "planning", "mastery", "consequence-weight" ], "examples": [ { "title": "D-Day", "year": 1961, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Charles S. Roberts (Avalon Hill)", "note": "Units must halt on entering the hexes adjacent to an enemy unit, so a few counters spaced two hexes apart hold a continuous front across the French coast. The 1961 rules were revised almost at once and again in 1965 and 1977, so details may differ between editions.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Afrika Korps", "year": 1964, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "creator": "Charles S. Roberts (Avalon Hill)", "note": "The six hexes around a unit are its zone of control; movement ends on entering one and adjacent enemies must be attacked, which, with the supply rule, makes encirclement the game's central manoeuvre.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Civilization", "year": 1991, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley (MicroProse)", "note": "A unit may not move directly from one square adjacent to an enemy unit into another such square, a zone-of-control rule carried from board wargames into the 4X form.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "medium": "tabletop-rpg", "creator": "Wizards of the Coast", "note": "Each armed creature threatens its adjacent squares and takes an attack of opportunity against enemies that leave them, so melee combatants pin opponents in place as counters do on a hex map.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Unity of Command", "year": 2011, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "2x2 Games", "note": "Enemy zones of control hinder movement and cut supply lines, so pockets are formed by positioning rather than by combat results.", "latest": false }, { "title": "Civilization VII", "year": 2025, "year_approx": false, "medium": "video", "creator": "Firaxis Games", "note": "Infantry and naval units exert a zone of control over adjacent tiles: an enemy unit entering it must stop moving, though it may still attack with remaining movement; ranged units exert none and some cavalry and unique units ignore it.", "latest": true } ], "provenance": { "title": "D-Day", "year": 1961, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "medium", "note": "Zones of control are generally attributed to Avalon Hill's early-1960s hex wargames, with D-Day (1961) and Afrika Korps (1964) the usual examples. Chancellorsville and the hex edition of Gettysburg date from the same year, and some accounts place a version in Tactics II (1958), so the exact originating game is uncertain. The tabletop role-playing form of threatened squares follows Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition (2000)." }, "established": { "title": "Afrika Korps", "year": 1964, "year_approx": false, "medium": "board-card", "confidence": "low", "note": "Afrika Korps, whose six-hex zones end movement on entry and block supply, is the most widely taught early form of the rule, which became standard in hex-and-counter design." }, "sources": [ { "key": "afrika-korps-rulebook-1964", "canonical": false, "title": "Afrika Korps rulebook", "author": "Avalon Hill", "year": 1964, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Zones of Control", "note": "Canonical stop-on-entry form with mandatory combat." }, { "key": "peterson-2012", "canonical": true, "title": "Playing at the World", "author": "Jon Peterson", "year": 2012, "year_approx": false, "type": "book", "publisher": "Unreason Press", "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Discussion of Avalon Hill's hex wargames and their conventions", "note": "Historical context for the early-1960s Avalon Hill designs and their influence." }, { "key": "dungeons-dragons-3rd-edition-player-s-handbook-2000", "canonical": false, "title": "Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition, Player's Handbook", "author": "Wizards of the Coast", "year": 2000, "year_approx": false, "type": "rulebook", "publisher": null, "url": null, "accessed": null, "locator": "Combat chapter, Attacks of Opportunity and Threatened Squares", "note": "The tabletop role-playing form." }, { "key": "wikipedia", "canonical": true, "title": "Wikipedia", "author": "Wikipedia contributors", "year": 2024, "year_approx": false, "type": "wiki", "publisher": null, "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/", "accessed": null, "locator": "Zone of control", "note": "Overview of the rule across board and video wargames." } ], "n_examples": 6, "n_sources": 4, "n_relations": 3, "word_count": 510, "updated": "2026-10-27", "url": "/mechanics/zone-of-control" } ] }