Board & card
Board games, card games, dice games, and wargames, including app-assisted ones.
143 mechanics appear in this medium with at least one cited example.
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.
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.
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.
Auction and Bidding
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.
Ball Possession
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.
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.
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.
Boss Encounters
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.
Branching Dialogue
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.
Checkpoints and Saves
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.
Clue Giving
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.
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.
Commodity Currency
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
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.
Constraint Logic Puzzles
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dice Pool
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.
Difficulty Settings
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.
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.
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.
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.
Escape Room Puzzles
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.
Experience Levels
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.
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.
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.
Game Clocks
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.
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.
Handicapping
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.
Hidden Movement Pursuit
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.
Hidden Piece Identity
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.
Hidden Roles
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.
Hidden Scoring
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.
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.
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
Last Hitting
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
Legacy Campaign
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.
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.
Loot Boxes and Gacha
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.
Loot Distribution
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
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.
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.
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.
Memory
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.
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.
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.
Multiple Endings
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.
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.
One Versus Many
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.
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.
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.
Pattern Recognition
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.
Permadeath
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.
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.
Piece Capture
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
Rating and Matchmaking
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.
Real-Time Play
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.
Referee Adjudication
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.
Relationship Systems
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.
Reputation & Factions
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.
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.
Resource Gathering
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.
Roguelike Meta-Progression
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Shared Narration
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.
Side Swapping
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Team Play
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Traitor
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.
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.
Variable Player Powers
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.
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.
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.
Word Building
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.
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.