Effects › Structural
Volatility
Outcomes swing substantially on single events.
31 mechanics carry this tag.
Audience Participation
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.
Betting
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.
Bluff and Challenge
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.
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.
Combo Systems
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.
Contract Bidding
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.
Cooperate or Defect
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.
Critical Hits
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.
Degrees of Success
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.
Dexterity
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.
Doubling Cube
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.
Hit Location
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.
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.
Item Modification
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
Lifepath Character Generation
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.
Loot Tables
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.
Match-Three
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.
Morale and Rout
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.
Opposed Rolls
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.
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
Procedural Generation
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.
Procs
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.
Push Your Luck
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.
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 Tables
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.
Roll and Move
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.
Sanity
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.
Saving Throws
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.
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.
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.
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.