Effects › Cognitive
Planning
Satisfaction from constructing multi-step plans and seeing them resolve.
87 mechanics carry this tag.
Action Points
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.
Adjacency Bonuses
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.
Advantage / Disadvantage
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.
Alignment Games
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.
Appointment Mechanics
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.
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.
Base Building
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.
Combat Results Tables
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.
Connection Games
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.
Cooldowns
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.
Cooperative Play
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.
Cover Systems
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.
Damage Types and Resistances
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.
Deck-Building
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.
Deduction
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.
Dice Placement
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.
Downtime Phases
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.
Drafting
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.
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.
Engine Building
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.
Equipment and Loadouts
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.
Exploration Procedures
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.
Flashbacks
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.
Fog of War
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.
Grid Movement
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.
Hand Management
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.
Hit Points
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.
Hunt Games
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
Income
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.
Initiative Order
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.
Interrupts and Reactions
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.
Inventory and Encumbrance
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.
Lane Pushing
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
Level Editors
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
Limited Communication
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.
Line of Sight
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.
Loans and Debt
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.
Lock and Key
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.
Markets
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.
Metacurrency
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.
Multiclassing
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
Needs and Moods
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.
Network and Route Building
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.
Pattern Building
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.
Physics Puzzles
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.
Pick-Up and Deliver
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.
Player-Authored Goals
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.
Point-Buy
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.
Power-Ups
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
Progress Clocks
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.
Promotion
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.
Pseudo-Random Distribution
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.
Quest Structures
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.
Race to the Finish
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.
Random Upgrade Offers
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
Rerolls
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.
Resource Conversion
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.
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.
Roll and Write
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.
Rondel
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.
Secret Objectives
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.
Security Zones
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
Set Collection
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.
Simultaneous Action Selection
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.
Skill Trees
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.
Sliding and Pushing Block Puzzles
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.
Social Conflict
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.
Socketing
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
Sowing
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.
Status Effects
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.
Stealth and Detection
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.
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.
Subclasses
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
Supply Lines
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.
Target Numbers
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.
Threat and Aggro
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.
Tile Placement
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.
Time Loops
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.
Time Track
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.
Tower Defence Pathing
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.
Trick-Taking
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.
Upkeep and Attrition
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.
Usage Dice
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.
Victory Points
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.
Vulnerability Windows
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
Worker Placement
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.
Zone of Control
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.