Properties › Randomness
Randomness: none
No randomiser in the canonical form.
125 mechanics are coded this way.
Achievements
A list of named goals, usually kept by a platform rather than by the game's own rules, records each one when its condition is met in play and adds it, often with a point value, to a persistent profile shown to others.
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.
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.
Aspects and Tags
Short free-text phrases written on a character, item, or scene, such as Ex-Cop or On Fire, carry mechanical weight: invoking one that fits the situation adds dice or a bonus, and some can be turned against their holder.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Combat Building
During a fight players spend materials gathered in the match to raise walls, floors, ramps and roofs in real time, as cover, height or a blocked route, and opponents can shoot the structures down
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.
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.
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.
Crowd Blending
A player's figure looks the same as computer-controlled figures around it, so the player survives by acting like them while an opponent watching the crowd must pick that figure out by its behaviour
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.
Death Penalty
On defeat a character returns to play instead of being deleted but pays a recoverable cost, such as lost experience, damaged gear, a timed weakness, or belongings left at the body to be fetched back
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.
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.
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.
Fail Forward
A resolution principle under which a failed check must change the situation, introducing a cost, complication, or new development, rather than leaving the state as it was before the attempt.
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.
Full-Loot Loss
A defeated character survives, but the equipment it carried is destroyed or left, in whole or part, where the victor or anyone else can take it, often with insurance or protected storage softening the loss
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.
Ghost Data
A recorded run, usually the best one so far, is replayed alongside a live attempt on the same course as a non-interfering figure, so the player races or compares against a past performance rather than a live opponent.
Gifting
A player sends an item or resource to another player who owes nothing in return under the rules, so the transfer is one-way and any reciprocity rests on custom rather than on agreed terms.
GM Moves
The facilitator's interventions are codified as a named list of moves, triggered when a player misses a roll, when the table looks to the facilitator, or when a golden opportunity arises, and governed by a stated agenda and principles.
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.
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 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.
High-Score Tables
A machine or service keeps a ranked list of the best final scores achieved on a game, usually with a short name or initials entered by each scorer, and shows it to later players as targets to beat.
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.
Hitboxes and Hurtboxes
Each attack has an active volume and each target a vulnerable volume, both defined apart from the drawn sprite or model and switched on for specified frames, and an attack connects only when the two overlap.
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.
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.
Kill Streaks and Bounties
Consecutive defeats of opponents without being defeated are counted, and set counts grant the streaking player rewards such as new capabilities; many games also pay a bounty to whoever ends the streak
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.
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
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.
Lives and Continues
The player holds a small counted stock of attempts, each failure spends one and restarts play from a set point, and exhausting the stock ends the game unless a continue is bought, so attempts are a rationed resource.
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.
Lock-On Targeting
The player designates a target and the system then holds the camera, facing, or attacks on it until the lock is released or switched, so attacks connect without continuous manual aim.
Map Markers and Waypoints
The interface places icons on a map, minimap, or compass that mark objectives, points of interest, or player-set waypoints and updates them as state changes, so where to go is disclosed by the system rather than found in the world.
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.
Morality Systems
The game tracks a character's ethical standing on one or more scales, moves it in response to the player's actions, and gates abilities, content, or endings on where the character stands.
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
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.
Parry and Dodge Windows
A defensive input succeeds only if it is entered within a short window relative to an incoming attack, negating the hit and often opening a counter-attack opportunity.
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.
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.
Platforming
An avatar traverses platforms and hazards by running and jumping under a fixed movement model, so progress depends on the timing and placement of each jump rather than on choosing among options.
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-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
Prestige Resets
The player voluntarily discards accumulated progress to restart from the beginning with a permanent multiplier or bonus, so each cycle runs faster than the last and the reset itself is the progression.
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.
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.
Quick-Time Events
A prompt appears during a scripted sequence and the player must enter the indicated input within a short window; success continues the sequence and failure branches to a penalty or a death.
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.
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.
Rhythm Action
Notes shown ahead on a track or bar meet a judgement point in time with a piece of music, the player enters the matching input as each arrives, and every input is graded by its timing, so a song's result sums many graded timing tests.
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.
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.
Scene Framing
Play is organised into scenes that a designated participant opens by stating where and when the scene is, who is present, and what is at stake, and closes by cutting away once the stake is resolved.
Seasonal Leagues
A live game periodically opens a temporary parallel realm in which all players start new characters in an empty economy under new rules or content; when it ends, characters and items move to a permanent realm and a new season begins
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
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.
Shared Holdings
A group pools assets in storage it holds in common, behind access rights set by rank or role, and any member with access can withdraw them, within any limit the rules set
Side Conversion
A player who is caught or defeated joins the side that caught them for the rest of the round, so that one side grows as the other shrinks until every player is on one side or a time limit ends the round
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Coding guideline for randomness
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.