Effects › Social
Kingmaking
A player who cannot win can decide which other player does.
14 mechanics carry this tag.
Alliances
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.
Area Control
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.
Deal-Making
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.
Divide and Choose
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.
End-Game Triggers
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.
Player Elimination
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.
Player Judge
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.
Role Selection
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.
Semi-Cooperative
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.
Stock Holding
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.
Take That
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.
Tournament Formats
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.
Trading
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.
Voting
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.