{ "schemaVersion": 20, "categories": [ { "id": "resource-management", "order": 0, "tiebreak_rank": 7, "label": "Resource management", "description": "Acquiring, holding, converting, and spending finite quantities that constrain what a player can do.", "test": "Is it about allocating a scarce pool now?" }, { "id": "chance-and-risk", "order": 1, "tiebreak_rank": 2, "label": "Chance & risk", "description": "A randomiser (dice, decks, tables, generators) or a deliberate wager against known odds is the identity of the mechanic.", "test": "Is the randomiser or wager the whole point?" }, { "id": "progression-and-capability", "order": 2, "tiebreak_rank": 5, "label": "Progression & capability", "description": "What a player or avatar is able to do and how that capability set changes within or across sessions, including asymmetric starting capability.", "test": "Does it make future turns stronger or different?" }, { "id": "space-and-position", "order": 3, "tiebreak_rank": 8, "label": "Space & position", "description": "Position, adjacency, territory, or line of sight on a spatial representation is the operative state.", "test": "Is position the operative state?" }, { "id": "information-and-hidden-state", "order": 4, "tiebreak_rank": 3, "label": "Information & hidden state", "description": "Who knows what: concealment, revelation, and asymmetry of game state between players or between player and system.", "test": "Is it about who knows what?" }, { "id": "interaction-and-exchange", "order": 5, "tiebreak_rank": 4, "label": "Interaction & exchange", "description": "The core act is a transaction or contest between players over shared or transferable things: trading, bidding, drafting, voting.", "test": "Is it a transaction between players?" }, { "id": "time-and-action-structure", "order": 6, "tiebreak_rank": 6, "label": "Time & action structure", "description": "Partitioning play into units (turns, phases, real time) and rationing how many or which actions may be taken within them.", "test": "Is it rationing actions or structuring time?" }, { "id": "action-resolution", "order": 7, "tiebreak_rank": 1, "label": "Action resolution", "description": "Adjudicating whether an attempted action succeeds and how the result is graded and interpreted, independent of which randomiser (if any) is used.", "test": "Is it about adjudicating success?" }, { "id": "narrative-and-choice", "order": 8, "tiebreak_rank": 9, "label": "Narrative & choice", "description": "Structuring authored or emergent story: branching, consequence, reputation, and persistence of decisions across sessions.", "test": "Is it structuring story or consequence?" }, { "id": "puzzle-and-pattern", "order": 9, "tiebreak_rank": 10, "label": "Puzzle & pattern", "description": "The central challenge is recognising, assembling, or deducing patterns under constraints, where a solution is in principle determinable.", "test": "Is there a determinable pattern to find?" } ], "properties": { "agency": { "label": "Player agency", "description": "How much the outcome of one invocation varies with the player’s choice at that moment.", "ordinal": true, "guideline": "Low: outcome mostly fixed by prior state or chance (loot tables, saving throws). Medium: one meaningful choice among a small constrained set (push your luck: stop or continue). High: an open choice space where selection dominates outcome (worker placement, drafting).", "values": [ { "value": "low", "rank": 0, "description": "Outcome mostly fixed by prior state or chance." }, { "value": "medium", "rank": 1, "description": "One meaningful choice among a small, constrained set." }, { "value": "high", "rank": 2, "description": "Open choice space where selection dominates the outcome." } ] }, "randomness": { "label": "Randomness", "description": "Whether chance is resolved before the decision (input), after it (output), both, or not at all.", "ordinal": false, "guideline": "Input = randomness resolved before the player decides (a dealt hand, dice rolled then allocated, a generated map). Output = randomness resolved after the decision (an attack roll, a loot drop). Code \"both\" only when the canonical form has both stages.", "values": [ { "value": "none", "rank": 0, "description": "No randomiser in the canonical form." }, { "value": "input", "rank": 1, "description": "Chance resolved before the player decides." }, { "value": "output", "rank": 2, "description": "Chance resolved after the player decides." }, { "value": "both", "rank": 3, "description": "Both stages are intrinsic to the canonical form." } ] }, "interaction": { "label": "Interaction", "description": "How the mechanic couples players to one another.", "ordinal": false, "guideline": "Solo: operates identically regardless of other players. Indirect: players affect each other only through shared state without targeting (blocking a worker space, depleting a market). Direct: targeted effects on a specific opponent. Cooperative: a shared goal is intrinsic to the mechanic (hidden roles is not cooperative, whatever its information coding; team-based is mixed). Mixed: canonical implementations routinely span two or more. Opponents controlled by the game system are not players: a mechanic whose canonical form pits one player against the system codes solo; code direct only when the canonical form targets another human player.", "values": [ { "value": "solo", "rank": 0, "description": "Operates identically regardless of other players." }, { "value": "indirect", "rank": 1, "description": "Players affect each other only through shared state, without targeting." }, { "value": "direct", "rank": 2, "description": "Targeted effects on a specific opponent." }, { "value": "cooperative", "rank": 3, "description": "A shared goal is intrinsic to the mechanic." }, { "value": "mixed", "rank": 4, "description": "Canonical implementations routinely span two or more modes." } ] }, "complexity": { "label": "Complexity", "description": "Rules weight needed to teach the mechanic on its own, not its strategic depth.", "ordinal": true, "guideline": "Low: one or two sentences, no exceptions. Medium: a paragraph with one to three sub-rules or timing exceptions; a single lookup table on its own is medium. High: several interacting tables, prerequisite graphs, or multiple interacting sub-rules.", "values": [ { "value": "low", "rank": 0, "description": "One or two sentences, no exceptions." }, { "value": "medium", "rank": 1, "description": "A paragraph with a few sub-rules or timing exceptions, or a single lookup table." }, { "value": "high", "rank": 2, "description": "Several interacting tables, prerequisite graphs, or interacting sub-rules." } ] }, "pacing": { "label": "Pacing effect", "description": "Effect on the rate at which play approaches an end condition or climax, or on turn length.", "ordinal": false, "guideline": "Accelerates: snowballs or forces endings (clocks, end-game triggers a player can pull forward). Decelerates: lengthens turns or stalls progress (large-hand management, hit-point attrition). Variable: depends heavily on parameters (procedural generation, difficulty settings). Neutral: no systematic effect.", "values": [ { "value": "accelerates", "rank": 0, "description": "Snowballs or forces endings." }, { "value": "decelerates", "rank": 1, "description": "Lengthens turns or stalls progress." }, { "value": "neutral", "rank": 2, "description": "No systematic effect on pace." }, { "value": "variable", "rank": 3, "description": "Depends heavily on parameters." } ] }, "information": { "label": "Information", "description": "Visibility of the mechanic’s own state.", "ordinal": false, "guideline": "Scope is the mechanic’s own state. Perfect: all relevant state is public. Hidden: concealed from everyone (a shuffled draw order). Asymmetric: some players know what others do not (fog of war, a private hand). Mixed: both hidden and asymmetric components are intrinsic. State known only to the game system and to no player is hidden; state known to a human referee or game master but not to the other players is asymmetric.", "values": [ { "value": "perfect", "rank": 0, "description": "All relevant state is public." }, { "value": "hidden", "rank": 1, "description": "Concealed from everyone." }, { "value": "asymmetric", "rank": 2, "description": "Some players know what others do not." }, { "value": "mixed", "rank": 3, "description": "Both hidden and asymmetric components are intrinsic." } ] }, "feedback_loop": { "label": "Feedback loop", "description": "Whether success makes further success more likely, less likely, neither, or is self-damped.", "ordinal": false, "guideline": "Positive: success compounds (engine building, experience levels). Negative: success is penalised or trailing players are compensated (catch-up bonuses, handicap stones given to the weaker player). None: no systematic coupling. Mixed: the canonical form contains a built-in damper (deck dilution in deck-building).", "values": [ { "value": "positive", "rank": 0, "description": "Success compounds." }, { "value": "negative", "rank": 1, "description": "Success is penalised or trailing players are compensated." }, { "value": "none", "rank": 2, "description": "No systematic coupling between past and future success." }, { "value": "mixed", "rank": 3, "description": "A positive loop with a built-in damper, or both directions present." } ] }, "decision_density": { "label": "Decision density", "description": "Decision points one player faces in one turn’s use of the mechanic, counted without regard to how much each matters (that is agency).", "ordinal": true, "guideline": "Count within one turn of the player using the mechanic. Where the mechanic spans several players’ turns without resetting (an auction from lot to sale, a trick from lead to take), count that player’s decisions until it resets. Where play has no turns, count within one encounter in real-time play, or one move in a puzzle solved alone. A decision point is a moment where the rules give the player two or more legal options. Count decision points, not options: choosing among twenty spaces is one decision point. Count only choices the mechanic itself creates: choices made through other mechanics the game also has do not count, and a mechanic that is a constraint, a tally, or a frame with no choices of its own has zero. A referee’s or game master’s rulings on outcomes are adjudication, not decision points; where the mechanic is a menu of choices for the game master (GM moves), count those choices. Inputs that test execution (timing a jump, steadying an aim) are not decision points; count only choices between routes, targets, or tactics. Where the count varies, code the typical count in the canonical form. Code density without looking at agency; the two often disagree. Low: zero or one (victory points, initiative order, placing one stone in Hex, playing one card to a trick, the clue-giver’s turn in Codenames). Medium: two or three (set collection: which card to take and whether to cash in a set; cover systems: whether to move and to which cover). High: four or more (a deck-building turn of playing and buying cards, spending an action-point budget).", "values": [ { "value": "low", "rank": 0, "description": "Zero or one decision point per turn." }, { "value": "medium", "rank": 1, "description": "Two or three decision points per turn." }, { "value": "high", "rank": 2, "description": "Four or more decision points per turn." } ] } }, "effects": [ { "id": "mastery", "order": 0, "group": "cognitive", "label": "Mastery", "description": "Perceived growth of player skill through repeated use of the mechanic." }, { "id": "discovery", "order": 1, "group": "cognitive", "label": "Discovery", "description": "Pleasure of uncovering previously unknown content, rules, or state." }, { "id": "planning", "order": 2, "group": "cognitive", "label": "Planning", "description": "Satisfaction from constructing multi-step plans and seeing them resolve." }, { "id": "inference", "order": 3, "group": "cognitive", "label": "Inference", "description": "Reasoning from partial evidence to a conclusion about hidden state." }, { "id": "engine-satisfaction", "order": 4, "group": "cognitive", "label": "Engine satisfaction", "description": "Gratification from a built system producing escalating output." }, { "id": "analysis-paralysis", "order": 5, "group": "cognitive", "label": "Analysis paralysis", "description": "Decision slowdown caused by many comparable options with calculable consequences." }, { "id": "spatial-reasoning", "order": 6, "group": "cognitive", "label": "Spatial reasoning", "description": "Reasoning about position, adjacency, paths, and lines on a represented space." }, { "id": "execution", "order": 7, "group": "cognitive", "label": "Execution", "description": "Outcome depends on the player’s timing or physical precision rather than on which option is chosen." }, { "id": "calculation", "order": 8, "group": "cognitive", "label": "Calculation", "description": "Outcome rewards exact enumeration of moves, counts, or odds within a bounded, fully specified space." }, { "id": "recall", "order": 9, "group": "cognitive", "label": "Recall", "description": "Outcome depends on retaining and retrieving state or sequences seen earlier in play." }, { "id": "tension", "order": 10, "group": "emotional", "label": "Tension", "description": "An outcome that matters is held unresolved over a span of play the mechanic itself creates, while the player keeps acting or must wait." }, { "id": "flow", "order": 11, "group": "emotional", "label": "Flow", "description": "Absorbed, continuous engagement produced by well-matched challenge and feedback." }, { "id": "ownership", "order": 12, "group": "emotional", "label": "Ownership", "description": "Sense that an artefact (character, deck, map, story) is distinctively the player’s own." }, { "id": "consequence-weight", "order": 13, "group": "emotional", "label": "Consequence weight", "description": "Heightened awareness that decisions are irreversible or costly." }, { "id": "frustration-risk", "order": 14, "group": "emotional", "label": "Frustration risk", "description": "Propensity to produce feelings of unfairness or helplessness, typically from low-agency loss." }, { "id": "sunk-cost", "order": 15, "group": "emotional", "label": "Sunk cost", "description": "Reluctance to abandon invested positions even when suboptimal." }, { "id": "fear-of-missing-out", "order": 16, "group": "emotional", "label": "Fear of missing out", "description": "Anxiety over opportunities others may take or windows that are closing." }, { "id": "spectacle", "order": 17, "group": "emotional", "label": "Spectacle", "description": "Rare, amplified, or staged outcomes produce memorable peaks distinct from sustained uncertainty." }, { "id": "compulsion", "order": 18, "group": "emotional", "label": "Compulsion", "description": "Habit-forming pull to return or repeat, produced by scheduled rewards or escalating counters rather than by decision quality." }, { "id": "bluffing", "order": 19, "group": "social", "label": "Bluffing", "description": "Incentive to misrepresent one’s state or intentions." }, { "id": "negotiation", "order": 20, "group": "social", "label": "Negotiation", "description": "Incentive to bargain, promise, or form deals with other players." }, { "id": "social-deduction", "order": 21, "group": "social", "label": "Social deduction", "description": "Reading other players’ behaviour to infer hidden roles or intent." }, { "id": "kingmaking", "order": 22, "group": "social", "label": "Kingmaking", "description": "A player who cannot win can decide which other player does." }, { "id": "teamwork", "order": 23, "group": "social", "label": "Teamwork", "description": "Coordination and shared problem-solving among players with a common goal." }, { "id": "alpha-player", "order": 24, "group": "social", "label": "Alpha player", "description": "One player directs the decisions of others in a shared-goal structure, reducing their effective agency." }, { "id": "betrayal", "order": 25, "group": "social", "label": "Betrayal", "description": "Incentive or opportunity to break an alliance or shared goal for individual gain." }, { "id": "contested-fairness", "order": 26, "group": "social", "label": "Contested fairness", "description": "Players are prone to dispute an outcome’s legitimacy because a human judgement or a deliberate asymmetry intervened in it." }, { "id": "runaway-leader", "order": 27, "group": "structural", "label": "Runaway leader", "description": "A leading position becomes self-reinforcing and hard to overturn." }, { "id": "catch-up", "order": 28, "group": "structural", "label": "Catch-up", "description": "Trailing players gain compensatory advantage." }, { "id": "emergent-narrative", "order": 29, "group": "structural", "label": "Emergent narrative", "description": "Memorable stories arise from system interaction rather than authored content." }, { "id": "replayability", "order": 30, "group": "structural", "label": "Replayability", "description": "Variation across plays that sustains interest." }, { "id": "downtime", "order": 31, "group": "structural", "label": "Downtime", "description": "Periods where a player waits while others act." }, { "id": "grind", "order": 32, "group": "structural", "label": "Grind", "description": "Repetition required to make progress, with low per-repetition novelty." }, { "id": "volatility", "order": 33, "group": "structural", "label": "Volatility", "description": "Outcomes swing substantially on single events." } ], "effect_groups": [ { "id": "cognitive", "label": "Cognitive", "description": "Effects on thinking, learning, and problem-solving." }, { "id": "emotional", "label": "Emotional", "description": "Affective states the mechanic tends to produce." }, { "id": "social", "label": "Social", "description": "Effects on how players relate to one another." }, { "id": "structural", "label": "Structural", "description": "Dynamics of the play session that follow from the mechanic, neither good nor bad in themselves." } ], "media": [ { "id": "video", "label": "Video", "description": "Digital games on any platform." }, { "id": "tabletop-rpg", "label": "Tabletop RPG", "description": "Role-playing games with a facilitator or shared fiction, including solo journaling games." }, { "id": "board-card", "label": "Board & card", "description": "Board games, card games, dice games, and wargames, including app-assisted ones." }, { "id": "physical", "label": "Physical", "description": "Sports, playground games, LARP, escape rooms, and dexterity games. Secondary: used for provenance and cross-medium comparison, never as an entry’s only medium." }, { "id": "print", "label": "Print", "description": "Printed puzzles and gamebooks: pencil puzzles, newspaper and magazine puzzle columns, and choose-your-path books. Secondary: used for provenance and cross-medium comparison, never as an entry’s only medium." } ], "statuses": [ { "id": "draft", "label": "Draft", "description": "Skeleton or incomplete entry. Rendered with a banner and excluded from search." }, { "id": "unverified", "label": "Unverified", "description": "Complete entry whose sources or provenance have not yet been checked against primary material." }, { "id": "verified", "label": "Verified", "description": "Complete entry with three or more examples; two or more sources, at least one not a wiki, including a book, paper, or rulebook with a locator; and provenance at high or medium confidence." } ], "confidence": [ { "id": "high", "label": "High", "description": "Earliest use is documented in a primary source or uncontested in the design literature." }, { "id": "medium", "label": "Medium", "description": "A widely cited earliest use exists but earlier instances are plausible or the dating is loose." }, { "id": "low", "label": "Low", "description": "The named earliest use is the earliest documented instance found, but earlier instances are plausible or the evidence is thin, so it is not defended as an origin." }, { "id": "unknown", "label": "Unknown", "description": "No defensible earliest use; only a populariser or a period can be named." } ], "source_types": [ { "id": "book", "label": "Book", "description": "Monograph or edited volume." }, { "id": "paper", "label": "Paper", "description": "Peer-reviewed or workshop paper." }, { "id": "article", "label": "Article", "description": "Magazine, blog, or news article." }, { "id": "talk", "label": "Talk", "description": "Conference talk or lecture." }, { "id": "video", "label": "Video", "description": "Video essay or documentary." }, { "id": "podcast", "label": "Podcast", "description": "Audio episode." }, { "id": "wiki", "label": "Wiki", "description": "Community-edited reference such as BoardGameGeek or Wikipedia." }, { "id": "rulebook", "label": "Rulebook", "description": "Primary rules text of a game." }, { "id": "website", "label": "Website", "description": "Other web page." }, { "id": "interview", "label": "Interview", "description": "Published interview with a designer." } ], "relation_types": [ "parent", "related" ], "ability_functions": [ { "id": "damage", "label": "Damage", "description": "Reduces an opponent’s health or equivalent measure." }, { "id": "control", "label": "Control", "description": "Removes or restricts an opponent’s ability to act or move." }, { "id": "mobility", "label": "Mobility", "description": "Moves the user, or another piece, faster or farther than ordinary movement allows." }, { "id": "protection", "label": "Protection", "description": "Absorbs, blocks, or prevents incoming damage before it lands." }, { "id": "restoration", "label": "Restoration", "description": "Restores lost health or returns a defeated character to play." }, { "id": "enhancement", "label": "Enhancement", "description": "Temporarily improves an ally’s capabilities." }, { "id": "summoning", "label": "Summoning", "description": "Brings a temporary allied entity into play." }, { "id": "concealment", "label": "Concealment", "description": "Hides the user or an ally from opponents." }, { "id": "detection", "label": "Detection", "description": "Reveals hidden state, units, or terrain." }, { "id": "negation", "label": "Negation", "description": "Cancels a spell or ability as it is cast, or ends a spell, enchantment, or condition already in place, on friend or foe." } ], "ability_delivery": [ { "id": "projectile", "label": "Projectile", "description": "Travels through space from the user and can be dodged or blocked in transit." }, { "id": "targeted", "label": "Targeted", "description": "Applies to a chosen target without a travelling object." }, { "id": "area", "label": "Area", "description": "Affects everything within a radius or region." }, { "id": "line", "label": "Line", "description": "Affects everything along a line or beam from the user." }, { "id": "melee", "label": "Melee", "description": "Delivered at contact range." }, { "id": "self", "label": "Self", "description": "Applies to the user." }, { "id": "placed", "label": "Placed", "description": "Creates a persistent object or zone at a chosen location." } ], "ability_gating": [ { "id": "at-will", "label": "At will", "description": "Usable whenever the user can act, at no cost beyond taking the action.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "cooldown", "label": "Cooldown", "description": "Unavailable for a fixed interval of time or turns after each use.", "mechanic": "cooldowns" }, { "id": "ultimate-charge", "label": "Ultimate charge", "description": "A meter filled by time, damage dealt or taken, or objectives; the ability is usable only when the meter is full.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "mana", "label": "Mana", "description": "Each use spends points from a pool shared by several abilities (mana, MP, FP, energy, or mana produced by lands in card games).", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "spell-slots", "label": "Spell slots", "description": "Each use expends a slot of a given level from an allotment restored by rest.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "per-rest", "label": "Per rest", "description": "A fixed number of uses restored by a rest or another narrative interval, without slots.", "mechanic": "downtime-phases" }, { "id": "charges", "label": "Charges", "description": "A small stock of uses that refill one at a time, or a finite stock held on an item.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "consumable", "label": "Consumable", "description": "Each use spends an item or card: a scroll, a potion, a power-up, a card discarded on play.", "mechanic": "inventory-encumbrance" }, { "id": "action-cost", "label": "Action cost", "description": "Each use takes a share of a per-turn action budget.", "mechanic": "action-points" }, { "id": "proc-chance", "label": "Proc chance", "description": "Fires on its own, without being activated, when a trigger such as a hit, an attack roll, or a card draw succeeds on a stated chance.", "mechanic": "procs" } ], "craft_operations": [ { "id": "create", "label": "Create", "description": "Makes a new item from inputs that are used up." }, { "id": "deconstruct", "label": "Deconstruct", "description": "Breaks an item down into materials or components." }, { "id": "modify", "label": "Modify", "description": "Adds, removes, or changes a property of an item already held." }, { "id": "upgrade", "label": "Upgrade", "description": "Raises an item’s tier, level, or grade on a fixed ladder." }, { "id": "combine", "label": "Combine", "description": "Merges two or more items into one." }, { "id": "transfer", "label": "Transfer", "description": "Moves a property, power, or appearance from one item to another." }, { "id": "restore", "label": "Restore", "description": "Returns a worn, broken, or spent item to use." } ], "craft_outcomes": [ { "id": "fixed", "label": "Fixed", "description": "The same inputs always give the same result." }, { "id": "random", "label": "Random", "description": "The result is drawn from a range or a table at the moment of crafting." }, { "id": "failure-chance", "label": "Failure chance", "description": "An attempt can fail, spending its inputs for nothing." }, { "id": "item-loss", "label": "Item loss", "description": "An attempt can destroy, downgrade, or permanently lock the item worked on." }, { "id": "player-skill", "label": "Player skill", "description": "The result depends on the player’s execution or choices in a crafting sequence." }, { "id": "character-skill", "label": "Character skill", "description": "The result depends on a character’s skill rank or a roll against it." } ], "craft_requirements": [ { "id": "no-cost", "label": "No cost", "description": "Needs nothing beyond the item itself and the action: a menu command with no fee, station, or material.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "materials", "label": "Materials", "description": "Spends gathered or dropped raw materials or components.", "mechanic": "resource-gathering" }, { "id": "currency", "label": "Currency", "description": "Spends money, a currency item consumed by the operation, or another spendable pool such as experience levels.", "mechanic": "commodity-currency" }, { "id": "station", "label": "Station", "description": "Must be done at a workbench, forge, vendor, or other fixed place or device.", "mechanic": "base-building" }, { "id": "recipe", "label": "Recipe", "description": "Needs a recipe, schematic, or blueprint the player has found, bought, or unlocked.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "skill-rank", "label": "Skill rank", "description": "Needs a profession or character skill at a minimum rank.", "mechanic": "experience-levels" }, { "id": "reputation", "label": "Reputation", "description": "Needs standing with a faction, guild, or vendor at a minimum level.", "mechanic": "reputation-factions" }, { "id": "sacrificed-item", "label": "Sacrificed item", "description": "Consumes a second finished item, not a raw material.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "modification-budget", "label": "Modification budget", "description": "Each item carries a finite allowance of operations that the operation spends.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "time", "label": "Time", "description": "Takes a span of real or game time to complete.", "mechanic": null } ], "scaling_axes": [ { "id": "vertical", "label": "Vertical", "description": "Capability grows in magnitude: larger numbers, higher tiers, a higher ceiling." }, { "id": "horizontal", "label": "Horizontal", "description": "Options or breadth grow while power stays roughly level: more choices, not stronger ones." }, { "id": "normalizing", "label": "Normalizing", "description": "Vertical differences are compressed or cancelled, so that players, enemies, or content of different levels meet on comparable terms." } ], "scaling_scopes": [ { "id": "character", "label": "Character", "description": "What scales is a character’s own statistics, level, or roster of options." }, { "id": "item", "label": "Item", "description": "What scales is equipment: its tier, level, or the spread of items on offer." }, { "id": "ability", "label": "Ability", "description": "What scales is the magnitude or reach of an ability, spell, or attack." }, { "id": "world", "label": "World", "description": "What scales is the opposition or the world: enemies, zones, encounters." }, { "id": "content", "label": "Content", "description": "What scales is the game across releases: expansions, card sets, seasons." } ], "scaling_bases": [ { "id": "character-level", "label": "Character level", "description": "Keyed to a character’s level or experience total.", "mechanic": "experience-levels" }, { "id": "attribute", "label": "Attribute", "description": "Keyed to an attribute or statistic such as strength or intelligence.", "mechanic": "point-buy" }, { "id": "skill-rank", "label": "Skill rank", "description": "Keyed to ranks invested in a skill, talent, or perk.", "mechanic": "skill-trees" }, { "id": "item-tier", "label": "Item tier", "description": "Keyed to the tier, level, or rarity of equipment held.", "mechanic": "loot-tables" }, { "id": "unlock", "label": "Unlock", "description": "Keyed to an option made available by an unlock, without a change in magnitude.", "mechanic": "roguelike-meta-progression" }, { "id": "release", "label": "Release", "description": "Keyed to a release: an expansion, a card set, a season, or a patch.", "mechanic": "seasonal-leagues" }, { "id": "content-level", "label": "Content level", "description": "Keyed to the level assigned to a zone, dungeon, or activity, which sets the level the player is treated as having.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "difficulty-tier", "label": "Difficulty tier", "description": "Keyed to a chosen or unlocked difficulty tier.", "mechanic": "difficulty-settings" }, { "id": "reset", "label": "Reset", "description": "Keyed to a reset that clears or rescales accumulated progress.", "mechanic": "prestige-resets" }, { "id": "real-time", "label": "Real time", "description": "Keyed to time elapsed on the real-world clock, whether or not the game is being played.", "mechanic": "appointment-mechanics" } ], "synergy_forms": [ { "id": "threshold", "label": "Threshold", "description": "A bonus switches on when enough matching parts are held or in play together, often in tiers." }, { "id": "cumulative", "label": "Cumulative", "description": "Each matching part adds to the payoff of the others, without breakpoints, so value grows with every part added." }, { "id": "setup-payoff", "label": "Setup and payoff", "description": "One action leaves a state that a later action, from a class of finishers, consumes or exploits for extra effect." }, { "id": "combination", "label": "Combination", "description": "Two specific parts together yield a distinct, named effect that neither has alone." }, { "id": "conversion", "label": "Conversion", "description": "One property, resource, or damage type is turned into another, so investment in one feeds the effects of the other." }, { "id": "loop", "label": "Loop", "description": "Parts trigger one another so that a chain sustains or repeats itself, sometimes without limit." } ], "synergy_scopes": [ { "id": "build", "label": "Build", "description": "The parts belong to one character or player: equipment, abilities, passives, or upgrades." }, { "id": "team", "label": "Team", "description": "The parts belong to different characters or players on one side." }, { "id": "board", "label": "Board", "description": "The parts are cards, units, or pieces a player has in play." }, { "id": "field", "label": "Field", "description": "The parts meet in the state of a target, terrain, or the environment." } ], "synergy_links": [ { "id": "tag", "label": "Tag", "description": "A shared type, tribe, class, faction, or keyword printed on the parts.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "set", "label": "Set", "description": "Membership in a named set whose pieces are designed to be held together.", "mechanic": "set-collection" }, { "id": "status", "label": "Status", "description": "A status, debuff, or condition placed by one part and read by another.", "mechanic": "status-effects" }, { "id": "element", "label": "Element", "description": "An element or damage type carried by the parts.", "mechanic": "damage-types" }, { "id": "position", "label": "Position", "description": "Where the parts stand: adjacency, formation, flanking, or range.", "mechanic": "adjacency-bonuses" }, { "id": "timing", "label": "Timing", "description": "A window or order in which the parts must be used.", "mechanic": "combo-systems" }, { "id": "trigger", "label": "Trigger", "description": "An event fired by one part that sets off another.", "mechanic": "procs" }, { "id": "resource", "label": "Resource", "description": "A pool spent, produced, or converted by the parts.", "mechanic": "resource-conversion" }, { "id": "stat", "label": "Stat", "description": "A statistic or modifier that one part raises and another reads or multiplies.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "relationship", "label": "Relationship", "description": "A bond, affinity, or support rank between characters.", "mechanic": "relationship-systems" } ], "weapon_delivery": [ { "id": "melee", "label": "Melee", "description": "Strikes at contact range or the reach of a held weapon." }, { "id": "thrown", "label": "Thrown", "description": "The weapon itself leaves the hand and travels to the target." }, { "id": "projectile", "label": "Projectile", "description": "Fires or launches a missile with travel time, which can be dodged, led, or blocked in flight." }, { "id": "hitscan", "label": "Hitscan", "description": "Resolves at once along a line from the weapon, with no travel time; continuous beams included." }, { "id": "area", "label": "Area", "description": "The effect is a radius, cone, or region rather than the object that carries it there." }, { "id": "placed", "label": "Placed", "description": "Set down or attached at a location and set off later, by the user or by a timer." }, { "id": "any", "label": "Any delivery", "description": "A rule or property that applies to weapons whatever their delivery, with no single delivery dominant." } ], "weapon_kinds": [ { "id": "behaviour", "label": "Behaviour", "description": "One way a weapon acts, found on weapons of many classes." }, { "id": "class", "label": "Class", "description": "A named type of weapon whose identity is a bundle of traits: range, damage profile, rate, handling." }, { "id": "rule", "label": "Rule", "description": "A system that governs the use of all or most weapons in a game." }, { "id": "property", "label": "Property", "description": "A trait or tag printed on, or attached to, individual weapons." } ], "weapon_limits": [ { "id": "unlimited", "label": "Unlimited", "description": "Usable whenever the user can act, with no stock, meter, or wear.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "ammunition", "label": "Ammunition", "description": "Each use spends rounds, arrows, or charges from a finite carried stock that must be found or bought.", "mechanic": "inventory-encumbrance" }, { "id": "magazine", "label": "Magazine", "description": "Only so many uses before the weapon must be reloaded, which takes time or an action.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "heat", "label": "Heat", "description": "Use builds heat or a similar meter; at the cap the weapon stops until it cools.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "charge-time", "label": "Charge time", "description": "The weapon must be held, drawn, or wound up before it fires, and the wait sets or scales the effect.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "durability", "label": "Durability", "description": "Use wears the weapon down until it breaks, weakens, or must be repaired.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "stamina", "label": "Stamina", "description": "Each attack spends from a stamina or fatigue pool shared with other actions.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "cooldown", "label": "Cooldown", "description": "Unavailable for a fixed interval of time or turns after each use.", "mechanic": "cooldowns" }, { "id": "action-cost", "label": "Action cost", "description": "Each use takes a share of a per-turn action budget, or a whole action.", "mechanic": "action-points" } ], "system_domains": [ { "id": "environment", "label": "Environment", "description": "The world itself: time of day, weather, seasons, elements, and terrain." }, { "id": "inhabitants", "label": "Inhabitants", "description": "Non-player characters and creatures as agents: rivals, routines, and ecology." }, { "id": "society", "label": "Society", "description": "Law, factions, and territory: collective bodies that hold an attitude or ground." }, { "id": "economy", "label": "Economy", "description": "Prices, production, and demand across a simulated population or market." }, { "id": "body", "label": "Body", "description": "The avatar's physiology: needs, injury, and exposure." }, { "id": "pacing", "label": "Pacing", "description": "Systems that meter encounters and intensity over a session." } ], "system_drivers": [ { "id": "clock", "label": "Clock", "description": "State advances on a schedule that could be printed in advance." }, { "id": "player-action", "label": "Player action", "description": "State builds up or decays from what the player does." }, { "id": "autonomous", "label": "Autonomous", "description": "Simulated agents or processes change state on their own rules, whether or not the player acts." }, { "id": "adaptive", "label": "Adaptive", "description": "The system reads the player's state or performance and adjusts to it." } ], "system_parts": [ { "id": "world-clock", "label": "World clock", "description": "An in-game clock or calendar of hours, days, or seasons that advances during play and that other parts read.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "conditional-spawn", "label": "Conditional spawn", "description": "What appears (enemies, creatures, resources, events) is drawn according to the system's state: the hour, the weather, the tier, the intensity.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "escalation", "label": "Escalation", "description": "One state rises through ordered tiers or levels, each bringing a stronger response or harder content.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "return-to-rest", "label": "Return to rest", "description": "The state falls back toward rest when the player stops feeding it: breaking contact, hiding, waiting out a relax phase.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "paid-reset", "label": "Paid reset", "description": "The state is cleared at once by paying a price: a fine, a bribe, time in jail, a lost ship or possession.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "drain", "label": "Drain", "description": "The player's meters run down with time or activity and must be refilled: hunger, warmth, fuel, immunity.", "mechanic": "needs-and-moods" }, { "id": "exposure", "label": "Exposure", "description": "Conditions of the environment (cold, wet, darkness, storm) act on the bodies or units present in them.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "propagation", "label": "Propagation", "description": "State passes from a place or entity to its neighbours by rule: fire, flood, disease, influence.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "agent-memory", "label": "Agent memory", "description": "The system records individual past encounters with the player and acts on them later.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "rank-hierarchy", "label": "Rank hierarchy", "description": "Non-player agents hold ranks or positions in a structure that change through play: promotion, succession, overlords.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "routines", "label": "Routines", "description": "Non-player agents follow timed sequences of places and activities.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "agent-needs", "label": "Agent needs", "description": "Simulated agents (creatures, residents, populations) have needs and act to meet them: feeding, hunting, buying, moving.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "population-change", "label": "Population change", "description": "The numbers of simulated agents rise and fall through birth, death, migration, or growth.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "demand", "label": "Demand", "description": "An aggregate measure of unmet demand for goods, land use, or services drives what the simulation produces or builds.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "territory-change", "label": "Territory change", "description": "Control of places passes between non-player sides through the simulation.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "treatment", "label": "Treatment", "description": "A lasting condition clears only through a remedy matched to it: an item, skill, facility, or rest.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "intensity-reading", "label": "Intensity reading", "description": "The system estimates the player's state or performance (stress, health, progress) and acts on the estimate.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "forecast", "label": "Forecast", "description": "The system's coming state is shown or signalled in advance: a forecast, a demand meter, a tier display, a calendar.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "lasting-damage", "label": "Lasting damage", "description": "Damage to terrain or structures persists and changes paths, cover, or lines of sight.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "report-step", "label": "Report step", "description": "The state changes only when a witness, guard, or sensor reports what it saw, and the report can be stopped.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "aid-lockout", "label": "Aid lockout", "description": "While the state lasts, the player's aids (radar, map, travel, saving, shops) are withdrawn.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "contentment", "label": "Contentment", "description": "A stored measure of a population's satisfaction feeds what it yields (taxes, levies, labour) and, at its low end, unrest or revolt.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "succession", "label": "Succession", "description": "When a holder dies or is removed, positions and holdings pass to heirs or successors by rule.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "side-relations", "label": "Side relations", "description": "Non-player sides hold relations with one another (war, peace, alliance) that change through play.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "headcount-scaling", "label": "Headcount scaling", "description": "Challenge or reward scales to the number of players present.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "contribution-reward", "label": "Contribution reward", "description": "Rewards are graded by each participant's share of the work.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "costly-rest", "label": "Costly rest", "description": "Recovery needs a place, time, or price, and can be interrupted or refused.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "containment", "label": "Containment", "description": "Barriers, isolation, or quarantine block or slow what spreads.", "mechanic": null }, { "id": "capacity-load", "label": "Capacity and load", "description": "A capacity (a plant's output, a road's width, a store's size) is weighed against the load placed on it, and overload or shortfall degrades what it serves.", "mechanic": null } ] }