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Irregular Turn Order Mechanic

Variable Turn Order

Clockwise has become quite a standard term in games of nearly every type, and is often nearly overlooked when learning or teaching a game’s rules. However, at its core this simple term succinctly describes one version of a foundational mechanic that influences every tabletop game to some degree.

Each tabletop game designer needs to determine how to handle players’ turns in each game, and though that part of games is frequently taken for granted, irregular turn order offers a lot of potential to adjust the mechanics of a game in fun and interesting ways!

Overview of Irregular Turn Order

As mentioned above, a key part of most games is player turn order. Irregular turn order refers to any game that varies from the default pattern of circling the table with each player taking a turn. For the purpose of turn order as a tabletop game mechanic, clockwise and counterclockwise are just about the same thing as they each go player by player with no variation.

Varying the turn order in games can do a lot to help games become more thematic, can help players be more engaged, and can help game experiences feel fresh and new each time. I have found both that considering an irregular turn order can help spark new game ideas, and that considering a variety of turn orders for a specific game idea helps that idea develop further and can really add a lot more strength to the design.

Important Considerations with Irregular Turn Order

Below, let’s briefly review a handful of possible turn order variations, as well as some of their potential implications for the games that we design and create.

Clockwise and Counterclockwise Turn Order: This is often the default option for board and card games. Each player takes a turn in order of where the players are seated, and continue doing so until the end of the game. This offers a nice, even, measured approach to the game that requires little extra thought so that players can focus on other aspects of the game.

Player-Driven Turn Order: This category of turn order variation gives players some interesting opportunities as they take a major role in selecting the turn order each round. This often invites designers to consider opportunity cost, fixed cost, or bidding mechanics that give players a trade-off of ideal turn positions for a higher cost. Player-selected turn order describes a number of possible ways of determining turn order, including the following:

  • Auction Turn Order: In some games, players bid for turn order in some type of auction, which may vary in how it is conducted using different auctioning methods.
  • Benefit-Based Turn Order:Each turn players have the opportunity to choose more valuable benefits paired with later turns the following round, or less valuable benefits or even penalties paired with earlier turns the following round. Kingdomino is one good example of this, as if players select better tiles, they take a later turn the next round.
  • Action-Based Turn Order: In a number of games, the order in which players take a specified action (often passing) determines turn order. Pass order can either determine the first player the next round, or dictate the order of every turn that occurs after that. Azul is an example of a game that determines the first player each round by the player who takes a penalty tile first.

Process-Driven Turn Order: This category of turn order variation describes instances where players’ turn order is not quite random, nor completely consciously chosen, but rather driven by a game-managed process that players can often influence to some greater or lesser degree. Variations under this category include the following:

  • Position-Based Turn Order: Players’ turn order could be determined by their position in the game. For example, a game might let the player with the least points go first and the player with the most points go last, giving behind players a chance at catching up.
  • Action Cost Turn Order: Related to the above idea, a game could also have some kind of other track that determines turn order, which adds a turn priority cost to more powerful actions, and a turn priority benefit to less powerful actions, creating additional trade-offs throughout the game.
  • Action-Claiming Turn Order: This is another method of giving players a limited amount of choice in turn order throughout the game. This describes games where turn order is determined by the order in which actions are taken or claimed. The game Broom Service is a good example of this, as going first is a disadvantage, so each player to last claim a main action (use a brave witch) begins the next round, which does a good job of balancing who is able to take main actions. One of our upcoming games, Golddigger’s Mine, employs this mechanic as well, in an adjusted way that permits the first players of a card to select a replacement card, and makes sure that all players receive a full turn.

Game-Driven Turn Order: This category of turn order variation describes games that have a built-in mechanic that decides the first player with no conscious input from the game players. This can still help support gameplay, balance, or theme in interesting ways, even though turn order is not a decision players need to consider.

  • Progressive and Regressive Turn Order: Progressive turn order describes a game played in rounds, where each round the role of first player progresses to the following player, making the previous first player now become the last player for the next round. Skull King uses this turn order variation in order to help balance the game in important ways. Regressive turn order does the same thing in an opposite way, making the last player each round the new first player, the previous first player the new second player, and so forth.
  • Role-Based Turn Order: In some games where players take on various roles, a specific role may be assigned to be the first player of each game or round. Alternatively, roles can completely dictate the order of all turns, as players might secretly select a role that is then revealed or acted on when it is time for that role to take a turn. One Night Ultimate Werewolf is one example of this variation.
  • Random Turn Order: Games where players’ turns are completely random are less common, but one way of doing this is to have players randomly select numbers or other things that immediately show which order players take their turns in.

Simultaneous Turn Order: This category includes games like Sushi Go, and describes games where distinct turns are still important, but each player takes a turn at the same time, waiting until all have finished before beginning the next turn together.

No Turn Order: This final variation describes games that ignore turns altogether, and often engages players in a race to complete an objectives following the game’s rules. A few examples of games with no turn order include Dutch Blitz, Big Fish, Lil’ Fish, and Wacky Six.

Cautions and Tips for Using Irregular Turn Order

Irregular turn order can add a lot of fun variety and interesting thematic decisions to games, but the decision to use irregular turn order should be carefully made with the variation carefully explained, as varying the regular pattern of turn orders can sometimes confuse players or make the learning curve a little bit steeper.

In addition to this, be sure that your variations in player turn order contribute to the theme and feel and flow of the game rather than detract from it. There are a lot of fun things designers can do with irregular turn orders, and I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas with ways it can be used!

What are some interesting ways you have seen irregular turn order be used as a part of a game? How else can irregular turn order be used strategically? Please comment below with your thoughts!

Irregular turn order refers to any game that varies from the default pattern of circling the table with each player taking a turn.

Variable Turn Order

Examples of Games that use Irregular Turn Order

  • 7 Wonders
  • Azul
  • Big Fish, Lil’ Fish
  • Broom Service
  • Dutch Blitz
  • Kingdomino
  • One Night Ultimate Werewolf
  • Pit
  • Skull King
  • Sushi Go!
  • The Resistance
  • Wacky Six
  • Werewolf

Other Tabletop Game Mechanics to Explore

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Finance Mechanic

Finance Mechanic

Financial mechanics in board games have always intrigued me. From simple staples such as Monopoly, to stock management games such as Chicago Express, to games with multiple currency management such as Alhambra, financial management in games creates a level of calculation and development that is both satisfying and enjoyable.

Most recognizable are the games that utilize real-life currencies to be managed, but the idea of finance as a game mechanic has a long reach, extending across the board to even affect games like Settlers of Catan, which loosely uses resources as currency that should be financially managed. Let’s look into how including finance as a game mechanic can help us improve the games we design and create.

Finance Mechanic

Overview of Finance

Finance as a tabletop game mechanic can include investment, loans, stock management, and other structures, and most generally describes including anything as a perpetual currency throughout the game.

This means that when finance is used as a contributing mechanic in a game, the game may include real money, thematic money, or even resources that are earned throughout the game and used to progress towards victory.

Much of the value of including finance in a game is that (1) most people are already familiar with the basic concept of finance management, and (2) money is already a desirable commodity for many people and as such, game scenarios where money is accumulated and spent without worries about real-life risks and consequences can be an enjoyable goal for many players.

Because money is a normal part of life and related to many topics, finance can also help make games more thematically accurate and familiar to players. Finance is an opportunity to capitalize on players’ previous knowledge in order to make games more intricate and relatable. Finance can better help games be modeled after real life in enjoyable ways!

The wide variety of potential applications for this mechanic make it a great option for all designers to include in their tool kits. See below for some ideas of how to identify and use finance in the games you play and create! What are some of your favorite games with finance as a contributing mechanic?

Important Considerations with Finance

The first question to ask when considering adding finance to your game is whether your game can bear the added complexity that comes with currency. Do the advantages outweigh the costs? Usually, simplifying is better than adding complexity in many games, but in some situations currency can actually make games simpler as it can represent anything! Money can be used to purchase food, tools, land, and much more, instead of players needing to hold some of everything in their hands. Money management can also add some fun decisions, or can even make up an entire game while remaining versatile and enjoyable.

When including finance in a game, consider whether to use a single general currency as in Coup, or whether to include multiple limited currencies as in Splendor. Some games use a combination of both, such as Catan Histories: Settlers of America, which includes gold as a general currency in addition to the limited currencies of resources from the original game.

Finance can take many roles in tabletop games. In addition to simply using currency throughout the game, tabletop games can center around a financial concept such as investment or loans or stock management, which lends itself to a good number of other mechanisms and strategies. Along with Chicago Express, some examples of games that have done this include Monopoly and Stockpile; while Rook and other similar games even use a financial mechanic while eliminating finances themselves.

Cautions and Tips for Using Finance

When using finance in a game where money is not a winning factor, be careful to incentivize spending and clearly communicate to players that money is not inherently beneficial. In many games that include money, players feel some sense of accomplishment from simply stockpiling funds, even when they would be more beneficial when spent. In such cases, help the players realize that unspent money is useless by incentivizing and encouraging using the money correctly whenever possible.

Also make sure that your game avoids requiring players to make large calculations unless that is an important part of how the game plays. Unless managed well, finance games are often in danger of requiring players to make calculations or remember sums throughout the game, which can become a barrier to players enjoying the game and can divert attention away from the game’s focus.

Whatever direction you take including finance in your game, whether as a peripheral currency or as a mechanical focus, please share your successes! Let us know of other investment, loans, or stock management games you enjoy and create!

What are some interesting ways you have seen finance be used as a part of a game? How else can finance be used to strategically enhance game play? Please comment below with your thoughts!

Finance as a tabletop game mechanic can include investment, loans, stock management, and other structures, and most generally describes including anything as a perpetual currency throughout the game.

Finance Mechanic

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Memory Mechanic

Memory Mechanic

For quite a while I thought my little brother was cheating somehow in the matching game we owned, as he would consistently win no matter who he played with. I finally realized that he just has a great memory, which is the most important factor in those games.

However, the value of memory doesn’t stop with matching games. On another occasion I was playing Chess with an opponent who asked if he could play blindfolded. Mystified, I agreed, and he put a blindfold on and we each called out our moves, which I would make on the game board. To my amazement he won the game, and playing Chess blindfolded has been something I have since begun working to learn how to do.

Many other games use memory as a secondary mechanic, and a good memory can be quite a useful skill when playing or designing games. Considering how we can better employ memory as a factor in games can help add variety and another layer of depth to the games we create. Please share your thoughts on using memory as an important mechanic of board and card games!

Overview of Memory

Memory can be used as a game mechanic when there is hidden, secret, or simply important information that when remembered or tracked gives players an advantage. This definition also includes strategic games where there is enough complexity that remembering positions and strategies can give players an advantage.

This certainly comes into play in Chess and Chess 4, where there is enough going on that it is easy to miss things and forget about dangers and traps. This also includes other strategy games such as Pentago, and social deduction games such as The Resistance.

Below let’s go over some thoughts on how we can use memory as a mechanic to improve the games we design and build!

Important Considerations with Memory

Incorporating memory into a game can be most easily and overtly done by adding a hidden information element that players work to discover throughout the course of the game. This is often found in deduction games such as Codenames, Clue, Coup, and The Chameleon.

These games often provide limited amounts of information to various players, with more information becoming available as the game progresses. Oftentimes players are on teams, with smaller teams being compensated with more information, as in One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Saboteur, Secret Hitler, and Werewolf.

Strategic-focused games might also provide hidden information, as in Stratego, but most often they create scenarios where so many options are available that players have to pick and choose, whether consciously or unconsciously, what to remember.

Many other games use memory in related ways such as in Sushi Go, where players are not required to remember anything but can benefit from keeping track of which sushi ingredient options are available at different places around the table; in Pit, where players need to remember who currently has the bull and the bear; and in our upcoming game, Golddigger’s Mine, where players have symmetrical decks with some limitations and can benefit by remembering which cards other players have played and which ones are still available.

Cautions and Tips for Using Memory

When incorporating memory as a mechanic in the games you create, unless your game is specifically a memory or matching game, consider making sure that memory is optional rather than required. People often dislike feeling forced, and more players can enjoy a game when there are multiple paths to victory including memory as only one of several options for getting ahead. This gives players a sense of choice and creates some fun variation from game to game.

In addition, memory as a game mechanic should usually be a strategic part of the game rather than used mainly for calculations. Tallying up points by memory or calculating other mechanical things with memory can detract from the overall experience of the game, and can make it feel more like a shortcut. Using memory as an optional strategic advantage, on the other hand, can be much more appealing to players and can help them feel more engaged in the game!

What are some interesting ways you have seen memory be used as a part of a game? How else can memory be used as an avenue to victory in strategic games? Please comment below with your thoughts!

Memory can be used as a game mechanic when there is hidden, secret, or simply important information that when remembered or tracked gives players an advantage. This includes strategic games where there is enough complexity that remembering positions and strategies can give players an advantage.

Memory Mechanic

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Alliances Mechanic

Alliances

Similar in some ways to the Cooperation Mechanic and the Negotiation Mechanic, alliances in card and board games are often a useful way to help players strategically interact and work together while keeping an aspect of competition in the game.

Alliances will often show up informally in many different games as a single player begins to pull ahead, but designers can also plan for alliances in a variety of different types of games to create interesting and unique opportunities!

After reviewing the article below, please share your thoughts to continue the discussion as we work together to create joy through tabletop games.

Overview of Alliances

Alliances as a board and card game mechanic refers to creating opportunities for players to formally or informally work together in a competitive environment to combine strengths and create unique player trade-offs. This does not include fully cooperative games or games with only a head-on conflict between two players.

Alliances can do quite a bit to level the board as well. I remember losing games of Chess 4 to less-experienced players because they formed alliances to remove me from the game early on. Alliances can be a good way for those less-experienced players to have a chance in many games, which minimizes the learning curve required and makes those games more accessible to more players.

Important Considerations with Alliances

We’ll separate this section into two parts: one for informal alliances, which are not consistently employed but can be designed as an important factor in gameplay, and the other for more formal alliances, or alliances that are planned into the game’s structure and required for playing the game.

Informal Alliances: Many game structures implicitly encourage alliances and even provide structure for them without explicitly defining or requiring them. These include games such as Settlers of Catan and Risk, where players are incentivized to work together for trades and support in order to survive and eventually conquer.

Game designers can encourage informal alliances by granting players permission to trade and work together, and by designing for situations where players can work together to catch other players left hopelessly ahead.

Formal Alliances: Formal game alliances include making player alliances a part of the game’s core play, whether they are required (as in The Chameleon) or optional (as in Falconry). These types of full-round or full-game alliances between are fairly common in games, but another type of formal alliance that I haven’t really seen before is requiring players to work together under specific rules to achieve particular objectives throughout the game.

This might, for example, include a game where players receive specific shared bonuses for working with one or more other players to accomplish a task or turn in specific resources. This would be especially interesting in a game with battles or some other kind of direct conflict, as players would balance each other out by working as allies for one battle and opponents in the next.

Formal alliances also include asymmetric alliances that create competitions between varying numbers of players, such as the Allied Nobility variant of Falconry, where two players form an alliance to defeat a single player with each side varying in its abilities and proficiencies during gameplay.

What other types of alliances would you like to see or create in future games? Please share your thoughts!

Cautions and Tips for Using Alliances

When designing a game with alliances, whether optional or required, it is useful to make sure through analysis and playtesting that potential alliances are balanced, with each participant having an equal chance at benefiting from the alliance, of course based on individual choices and decisions throughout the game.

This especially applies to any alliances that create an asymmetric challenge for players, as each potential combination should be carefully playtested and balanced whenever practical and feasible.

However you choose to incorporate alliances into your games, consider specifying a few options for trading and working together in the game instructions to give players permission and better encourage collaboration.

What are some interesting ways you have seen Alliances be used as a part of a game? How else can Alliances be used strategically in games? Please comment below with your thoughts!

Alliances as a board and card game mechanic refers to opportunities for players to formally or informally work together in a competitive way throughout the game.

Alliances

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Unique Abilities Mechanic

Unique Abilities

Nobody in life starts out with the exact same combination of challenges, opportunities, experiences, and capacities, and this is reflected in many areas of life. This is especially useful in business and sports, where teams are created so that team members’ unique abilities combine to accomplish more than could otherwise be achieved.

Many game designers replicate this in board and card games alike. Players are given varying starting positions, action potential, and options that create exciting and new game experiences each time. Let’s explore some of the ways that unique abilities can be added to the games we design in old and new ways to create more joy.

Overview of Unique Abilities

Unique abilities in board and card games include anything that gives one player a unique advantage or impact on the game. These abilities can include role or faction asymmetries, as well as unique engines or combinations of cards and actions that players develop over the game that give them a competitive advantage.

Unique abilities are quite common in social deduction games such as Secret Hitler and Saboteur, where one or more teams of players hide from and inhibit other players, but unique abilities are also found in a large variety of other tabletop games and can add extra excitement and vigor to most games. Often games can benefit as designers consider ways to add unique abilities to the games we create. Here are some ideas of how we can get started in doing so:

Important Considerations with Unique Abilities

Unique abilities may be organized in a variety of ways, both precedented and unprecedented. Here are some of the ways that I have considered. What else comes to mind for you?

One common option for unique abilities is to have them assigned to players from the start of the game in an asymmetrical way that adds some interesting variation to games and mixes up the strategy that players must follow. Great examples of this include cooperative games such as Forbidden Desert and Forbidden Island, which give each player a random unique role with associated abilities that can become quite useful throughout the game.

The reverse of that option (though both options may sometimes be combined) is unique abilities that must be acquired throughout the game and affect the game in various ways. These might be purchased, as in CastleScape and Dominion, or could alternatively be distributed throughout or traded for, as in Coup.

Another related consideration is how frequently unique abilities may be used. Some games might have cards with one-use abilities (the above-mentioned CastleScape is an example of that), some games such as Bang! permit unlimited usage of a player’s special abilities, and other games do something in between such as limiting usage to a certain number of times.

Finally, along the line of limiting players’ usage of unique abilities, some games grant points or bonuses for players not using their unique abilities during that round or during the game. Other games such as Raising Robots provide each player with a certain amount of energy or resources that can be used to activate unique abilities, but may also be used in other beneficial ways.

However you assign and limit unique abilities, consider the cautions and tips below while doing so to create a game that works well in an enjoyable way.

Cautions and Tips for Using Unique Abilities

The first and biggest task when adding unique abilities to a game is balancing them so that no player gains an undue advantage. Calculations and spreadsheets can be important parts of this process, but ultimately playtesting is key to making sure any set of unique abilities provides a chance at victory without automatically guaranteeing it.

When balancing unique abilities, consider both the immediate effect of your actions and the ultimate consequences. Some abilities might provide advantages at front and disadvantages later on, and others might do the opposite. Unique abilities might relate to trading, building, exploring, conquering, and more, and usually a variety of unique abilities helps each game feel fresh and new.

One other things that should be considered is the importance of creating the right amount of resistance, either through built-in obstacles or other players’ interactions. Care should be taken to make sure that unique abilities don’t make the game feel repetitive and dull, and as a general rule, players can feel a greater sense of excitement when unique abilities are more impactful and harder to take rather than less impactful and easier to take. Choices that really matter are great to intentionally plan into the game.

What are some interesting ways you have seen unique abilities be used as a part of a game? How can they best be employed in creating strategic games? Please comment below with your thoughts!

Unique abilities in board and card games include anything that gives one player a unique advantage or impact on the game.

Unique Abilities

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Other Tabletop Game Mechanics to Explore

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Negotiation Mechanic

Negotiation Mechanic

Negotiating is a skill that can be useful in many areas of life, and a great low-stakes way to learn more about negotiation is by playing board games! Many board and card games offer prime opportunities for engaging in and practicing negotiation.

Furthermore, negotiation in tabletop games can be a lot of fun! In this week’s article, we’ll look into ways that we as game creators can intentionally make negotiation a part of the games we design and create.

Overview of Negotiation

Negotiation takes place in games whenever players are permitted to trade or coordinate actions, while still competing for victory or related objectives. While probably possible, negotiation is less often found in fully cooperative games as players might discuss options but more rarely negotiate or compromise with an ulterior agenda in mind.

Negotiation certainly includes player-to-player trades, but also goes beyond this to include any other agreements that players might make throughout a game, whether binding or not. Negotiation can often be explicitly encouraged in a game’s rules, but may also be implicitly allowed to make it an possibility that occurs more irregularly.

Important Considerations with Negotiation

In addition to being explicitly or implicitly permitted, negotiation in games can take several forms. Here are a few of the ones that came to mind for me:

  • Internal Negotiation: Internal Negotiation is probably the most common, and occurs whenever a game provides enough variation in objectives or paths to victory that individual players need to negotiate and bargain internally to make a hard decision between competing objectives. This can be found in a wide variety of games (such as Azul or Wingspan) including solo games where compromises must be made.
  • Social Negotiation: Social Negotiation refers to games where players need to coordinate a shared action or convince other players to take an action that might be more or less beneficial to each party involved. This is most common in games where players have a high level of interaction to reach a shared conclusion, like in One Night Ultimate Werewolf and Secret Hitler, or in games where players optionally negotiate informal deals or actions to help bring about their own ends, such as in Chicago Express and Coup. Oftentimes, Social Negotiation involves working to prove players’ in-game identity, such as in The Chamelion, where all players seek to identify the Chamelion while throwing off suspicion from themselves.
  • Exchange Negotiation: Exchange Negotiation usually takes place in a transactional manner, and is often the easiest to implement. The most well-known example might be in Settlers of Catan, where players can trade resources with the active player to gain the right combinations to build with, but this type of negotiation is also found in games like Pit and Monopoly.

When adding negotiation as a game mechanic, designers can often benefit from considering a variety of ways to structure it such as by specifying when and what kinds of negotiation may occur, and suggestions for examples of negotiations players might consider.

Experimenting with various structures of negotiation can often yield interesting ideas as designers think about whether players must exchange only in a specific order or with specific players, whether anything can be negotiated (e.g. bribing a player with resources to take a specific action), and whether to require and how to facilitate negotiation.

Cautions and Tips for Using Negotiation

While negotiation can be a lot of fun to include in a game, designers should do all they can to help eliminate ambiguity and give players a running start.

To eliminate ambiguity, examples can be quite helpful to show what negotiations can occur under what kinds of circumstances, especially when negotiation is an important part of the game.

To give players a running start with a game, especially games with a high level of Internal Negotiation, game designers and developers can often help ease the experience for game players by providing tips of things to watch for and guidelines that will help throughout the game so that players can maximize the satisfaction that comes from having made a good in-game decision.

What are your favorite games that use negotiation? Besides what has been pointed out in this post, how else can negotiation be incorporated in strategic games? Please comment below with your thoughts!

Negotiation takes place in games whenever players are permitted to trade or coordinate actions, while still competing for victory or related objectives. Negotiation is less often found in fully cooperative games as players rarely negotiate or compromise with a separate agenda in mind.

Negotiation Mechanic

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Direct Conflict Mechanic

Direct Conflict

Direct conflict, while a common part of many board games, is often a mechanic that is purposefully avoided because of its potential to cause hard feelings or create an unsatisfactory experience for players. However, when implemented correctly, it can really add a lot of purpose and direction to games, and encourage much more player interaction throughout the game.

Some of my favorite games, including Chess, utilize direct conflict as a core part of the game, and make for experiences that are engaging and invite further play. Let’s take a brief look at how we can create games that include direct conflict without creating anger or contention.

Direct Conflict

Overview of Direct Conflict

Direct conflict has been a part of tabletop games for centuries, and is found in many 2-player games, as that format naturally seems to lend itself to a battle or a duel. Direct conflict in tabletop games can be described as anything that encourages players to intentionally inhibit or interrupt other players throughout the course of the game.

This definition both includes and goes beyond what many people refer to as “Take that!” mechanisms, which usually describe abnormal actions that are used mainly or exclusively to inhibit another player rather than to directly help oneself (though in doing so, the attacking player often draws closer to victory as well, since victory in games is often comparative in nature). Direct conflict, however, goes well beyond “Take that!” to include ongoing competition as in Risk or Falconry, as well as actions to directly inhibit multiple other players at once, as in Saboteur or Secret Hitler.

Important Considerations with Direct Conflict

As mentioned above, designers hoping to implement direct conflict have an array of options including thematic battle encounters, cards to assign penalties to other players, and simple action blocking to get ahead.

While considering opportunities for direct conflict, designers need to consider whether to make it a core part of the theme, or whether to instead make it more incidental. As a general rule, direct conflict that is a core part of the game is easier for players to implement and accept, while direct conflict that is an unnecessary option can sometimes cause more disappointment and distress. As an example, players expect conflict when playing Bang!, while being robbed from in Settlers of Catan always hurts a little more.

The biggest difference between seeing direct conflict as a puzzle instead of as an irritating obstacle often comes from helping players expect the setbacks rather than making them an arbitrary surprise. As you include direct conflict in your games, try to find thematic and logical ways to  include it that flow naturally during gameplay and involve the players well.

Cautions and Tips for Using Direct Conflict

Care must be taken when including direct conflict in a game, as it can cause parts of the game to be distasteful or unpleasant for many players if implemented wrong. Because of this, when implementing direct conflict, game designers should consider what emotions the game is designed to encourage and plan for that.

For example, while direct conflict is an important part of The Resistance, player anonymity helps replace frustration and anger with mystery and intrigue. Pentago involves conflict in a way that is expected, which makes it more intellectually engaging than frustrating. Coup often gives players a chance to fight back using bluffing and challenges, which invites players to step up to the challenge rather than merely feel defeated.

The best guide for adding direct conflict to a game is to pay attention to how players feel when direct conflict is introduced. If the game feels insulting or confrontational, or even if it just feels disappointing or discouraging, remove or adjust the conflict opportunities until all players can enjoy the game and feel like they still have a good chance at winning.

This tip also applies to conflict introduced by the game itself, whether events that affect players or arbitrary inhibitions in the rules. People play games to have fun and enjoy the experience, and anytime conflict stops being a fun challenge and starts becoming a source of frustration, the conflict should be reevaluated and either changed or completely removed. The question of what aspects are really necessary to the game design and play is a great one to ask whenever this situation arises.

What are some interesting ways you have seen direct conflict be used as a part of a game? How have you used it in ways that encourage positive player interaction? Please comment below with your thoughts!

Direct conflict in tabletop games can be described as anything that encourages players to intentionally inhibit or interrupt other players throughout the course of the game. Direct conflict is often found in 2-player games, and goes well beyond “Take that!” mechanisms to include ongoing competition throughout the game and actions to affect all opponents at…

Direct Conflict

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Elimination Mechanic

Elimination (Square)

Elimination is an interesting mechanic to include in tabletop games. Many people don’t like to eliminate others, while even more don’t like to be eliminated themselves. However, there is something fun about playing a game and knowing that some real consequences are at stake—even if those consequences are only a 30 minute or hour wait while other players finish the game.

Many types of elimination games exist, and most of them can be an enjoyable experience to play; however, many elimination games can be improved, and in today’s article we dive into a number of ways that designers can improve on the downsides of elimination and highlight the upsides. Please share your thoughts on elimination in tabletop games below!

Elimination Mechanic

Overview of Elimination

Elimination in board and card games usually refers to aspects of a game that make it possible, and often even required, for players to eliminate—or remove—other players during the game in order to win. Some of the most classic examples of this include Monopoly, a game in which players work to drive other players bankrupt, and Risk, a game where players embark on a campaign to conquer the world, replacing other players’ armies with their own.

Elimination games usually do not include 2-player games, where neither player is eliminated until the end of the game, when doing so immediately finishes the game. Chess is an example of this; two players compete until one can checkmate the other, which ends the game, making it so that player elimination is never a part of the game (even though pieces are eliminated, as is common in combat or conflict games). Other games may be evaluated in similar ways, and as shown below, under some conditions even 2-player games can include elimination as a core mechanic.

Important Considerations with Elimination

Elimination games can come in several different forms, each of which offers its own unique advantages and disadvantages. See below for a few that stand out to me. What are your favorite examples of elimination in games?

  • Standard Elimination: This is probably what most of us think of when we hear about a game with elimination. Standard elimination refers to a game where players eliminate other players one by one until only a single player is left standing. This has the advantage of a clear and absolute victory and easy to understand winning conditions. Chess 4, unlike traditional 2-player Chess  features battling between four individual players, each of which needs to be eliminated until only one player is left. This multiplayer aspect makes enables standard in-game elimination, which makes Chess 4 an elimination game.
  • Accelerated Elimination: This type of elimination allows players to be eliminated, but quickly accelerates the rate of elimination or the end of the game to minimize player disengagement. This has the unique advantage of creating a game that can feel slow and strategic, then with the first elimination (or another event) quickly turn into a fast-paced race for the finish (and to survive). Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure is one game that does quite a good job of incorporating accelerated elimination as the first player escaping or sometimes an elimination or another event sets a timer that ends the game after only a few more rounds.
  • Simulated Elimination: This mechanic simulates standard elimination as players are eliminated and removed from the game, but enables players to rejoin the game immediately after, often with reduced ability or a disadvantaged condition, though if players are forced to completely restart, they should probably be given some advantages that allow for potentially catching up. Bang! The Gold Rush expands the standard elimination Bang! game to offer eliminated players a simulated way to rejoin the game and seek revenge on other players, though they cannot then proceed to win the game. I would like to someday design a game that includes this by allowing player elimination, but permitting eliminated players to rejoin the game (as ambassadors or friends) and continue earning points for the eliminated character. This would eliminate them from some aspects of the game, but open up new aspects that might even give them an advantage over the other players.
  • Selective Elimination: This variation features elimination from only certain aspects of the game, while still enabling eliminated players to play in other parts of the game. This is one that I don’t have any examples of yet, but I would be interested to hear of some. I have considered creating games with several areas that players may be eliminated from, but with new options that open up as each one closes down. Do you know of any examples of this type of mechanism?
    • Edit: One comment below mentioned The Quacks of Quedlinburg as using Selective Elimination in an even more limited manner, round by round. I really like the idea of temporary Selective Elimination that makes being eliminated, while still real and impactful, even less devastating for eliminated players and keeps them in the running. This is an additional way to include elimination while avoiding many of the downsides. Thanks for sharing!

Cautions and Tips for Using Elimination

Some cautions and ways to mitigate potential challenges with each type of elimination include the following:

  • Standard Elimination: This type of elimination is well known and easy to implement, but often leaves eliminated players bored or disengaged as they wait for the game to end. All other types of elimination seek to solve this problem through various means.
  • Accelerated Elimination: This partially solves the disengagement problem by decreasing the time that eliminated players need to wait for the game to end, but doesn’t do it perfectly in some cases, and could be supplemented by other types of elimination.
  • Simulated Elimination: This can help solve the problem of eliminated players disengaging from the game, but as players rejoin they should still be offered a chance at winning, or else their continued play might feel hollow. However, the mechanic should be well balanced so that the players that do the eliminating still feel a sense of accomplishment and impact the game in a meaningful way.
  • Selective Elimination: This may be a good balance between giving the eliminating players a sense of accomplishment while not ruining the game for the eliminated players. However, implementing this type of elimination will likely take much more planning and testing to balance the mechanic across the game.

What are some interesting ways you have seen elimination be used as a part of a game? How have you used it in new and engaging ways? Please comment below with your thoughts!

Elimination in board and card games usually refers to aspects of a game that make it possible, and often even required, for players to eliminate—or remove—other players during the game in order to win. Elimination games usually do not include 2-player games, where neither player is eliminated until the end of the game, when doing…

Elimination (Square)

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Random Selection

Random Selection Image

Randomness is an interesting concept. The right amount of randomness can make our lives more exciting and eventful, while too much randomness can become stressful or damage our sense of control.

Some level of randomness has become a part of most tabletop games, which leads us to the question, how much randomness should any given game include, and how can it best be implemented in the games we design and create?

See below for a few of my thoughts, and please share your own thoughts and perspective on randomness in games using the comment form below.

Overview of Random Selection

Random selection in tabletop games entails (1) having one or more aspects of your game vary based on chance and (2) having an efficient and engaging randomizer. Each of these is important, but can be highly customized based on your particular game.

Aspects that might vary based on chance might include board layout, player set-up, action or resource selection, selection from custom collections, and more. Randomizers might include dice, card decks, component bags, tile stacks, and more.

Random selection is nearly ubiquitous in tabletop games, and though strictly strategy games do not need it, controlled and well-designed random selection can help increase a game’s audience, replay value, and variability.

Important Considerations with Random Selection

Let’s quickly go over a few important considerations with many aspects that could use random selection and several randomizing tools that we might use.

Below are some of the possible aspects that could often benefit from random selection:

  • Board Layout: Games such as Bruxelles 1897, Codenames, Forbidden Desert, Forbidden Island, and Settlers of Catan exemplify using random selection to create a variable board layout. This variable layout makes each game more interesting and adds variable elements to each playthrough from the start. Random board layouts are often a great way to go, but the increased set-up time should be considered.
  • Player and Game Set-up: This aspect describes pre-game and pre-round elements that are randomized either for the whole group or for each individual player. Randomly selecting elements to include in each playthrough or set of turns is a good option for adding obstacles that players must overcome and creating greater uncertainty and more decision points throughout the game. Some varied examples of random selection in player and game set-up include these: 7 Wonders, Alhambra, Castle Panic, Meteor, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Rook, Saboteur, The Resistance, and Trekking the National Parks.
  • Action and Resource Selection: Randomizing action, item, or resource selection often has a smaller affect on a game than the above options might, but doing so can help keep things interesting throughout the game and ensure that actions, turns, and whole games have at least slight differences each time. Games that randomly select in-game elements to keep each round varied even after the initial set-up include the following: Carcassonne, Kingdomino, Tsuro, Wildcraft!, and Wingspan.
  • Custom Collection Selection: Finally, when considering creating games that invite players to create a custom collection to randomly select from, Clank!, Quacks of Quedlinburg, and Dominion are all great examples. These games permit players to create (and sometimes modify) their own unique pool of actions or resources, then randomly select from that pool throughout the game. This adds an element of control that helps players manage the randomness to some degree.

One of the biggest lessons for me from reviewing some game aspects that can be randomized is to do what we can to help players control the randomness in the game—something we can refer to as guided randomness. This helps players feel more involved, and helps create participants rather than pawns in any given game.

Across most of the elements we can randomize, below are a few of the tools that we might use to create the random selection:

  • Dice: Dice are used in many games, and are a standard way of randomly selecting from multiple options. These dice may be either standard or customized, and are frequently used to roll to select one option from multiple options with an equal chance of selecting each. Our article on dice rolling goes deeper into this as a tabletop game mechanic.
  • Card Decks: Card decks often entail extra hassle, especially if they must be shuffled frequently or in small quantities, but they have many benefits and are a key aspect of tabletop games. Card decks are often used to allow players to progressively eliminate options, select multiple options at a time, and select from a customized pool, all of which offer many more design options than a simple set of dice might.
  • Component Bags: Component bags have many of the same advantages as card decks, but they give an extra level of ease and flexibility as options may be added or eliminated and mixed with no need for the trouble of shuffling, and like card decks, they can offer variable options and a customized pool. However, component bags are best for smaller components, and may not be a good option for items that need to communicate more information.
  • Tile Stacks: Tile stacks take up more room than most of the other options, but are often used to provide randomization with components that have a higher quality and a greater durability. Tile stacks can be shuffled and laid out in a similar way to cards, but with a little more hassle. These are often best used as more permanent parts of a game rather than as components that need to be changed often throughout the game.

Many random selection tools are available, and creators should always consider which option works best for each randomly selected aspect of their games, paying attention to the type of component that needs to be randomized, the amount of information that needs to be communicated, the purpose of the randomization, and the permanence of each random selection.

Cautions and Tips for Using Random Selection

When adding elements to your game that will be randomly selected, be careful to avoid randomizing too much. Too much random selection in a game can quickly make that game feel stale and out of the players’ hands, which has the potential to remove a large portion of your audience that might otherwise be interested.

Care should also be taken to streamline each random selection process so that players spend a minimal amount of time and effort making each selection. This will speed up player set-up and turns, and will give you more game time to focus on important decisions and thematic elements.

What are some interesting ways you have seen random selection be successfully used as a part of a game? How else can random selection be used, even in strategic games? Please comment below with your thoughts!

Random selection in tabletop games entails having one or more aspects of your game vary based on chance and having an efficient and engaging randomizer. Each of these is important, but can be highly customized based on your particular game.

Random Selection Image

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Cooperation Mechanic

Cooperation Tabletop Game Mechanic

When getting to know new people, I often enjoy asking about others’ favorite sports and hearing some of their stories of experiences playing on teams or watching them compete. Once when having a dinner conversation with a new friend I asked about what sports he had played, and he told me that his high school sport was band.

Hearing that made me laugh, but he made some good points while defending his position. I have always enjoyed playing sports, and one commonality between most sports, even band, is the need for cooperation. Sometimes everyone tries to make it through together and sometimes two or more teams compete, but in either case people work together and help each other accomplish a goal.

Many board and card games invite or require cooperation as well, and can offer great opportunities for players to build relationships, work together, and solve problems as a team. Please take a minute to look over some of my thoughts on cooperation below, and let me know your perspective on cooperation in board games!

Cooperation Tabletop Game Mechanic

Overview of Cooperation

Games with cooperation are great for groups that are a little less competitive or just want to enjoy a challenge together. Depending on the type of cooperation, games might have varying degrees of conflict and working together.

We can define cooperation games as any game that encourages or requires players to work together to reach goals or win the game. This is a fairly broad definition, but can be useful when thinking about how we might add cooperation in the games that we design. Finding ways to help players work together to achieve goals can often make games unifying, uplifting, and enjoyable in a way that no other game mechanic can do.

Cooperation is a fantastic way to increase player interaction in games, and many games can be improved as designers and players alike look for ways to make aspects of a game or even a whole game a team effort. See below for some important distinctions to consider when designing or looking for cooperation in a game!

Important Considerations with Cooperation

Cooperation can take any of several different forms, and sometimes multiple forms at once! Here are the main ones. Let me know of other types of cooperation you have seen in games!

  1. Full Cooperation: Full cooperation describes any game in which all players help each other and win or lose together. This includes games like Forbidden Island, Forbidden Desert, Pandemic, Wildcraft!, Castle Panic, and Meteor.
  2. Team Cooperation: Team cooperation describes any game in which teams are formed that cooperate with one another, but work against other teams. This includes games like Saboteur, The Resistance, Falconry, Codenames, Rook, and One Night Ultimate Werewolf.
  3. Forced Cooperation: Forced cooperation describes any game where players cannot win without cooperating, but each player competes with the others and wins individually. In some cases players must cooperate with one another or all players on a team or in the game lose together, and in other cases players only jeopardize their own personal victory if they do not cooperate. Examples of forced cooperation might include Between Two Cities, Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Pit, and Saboteur.
  4. Incidental Cooperation: Partial cooperation describes any game in which players are benefitted by cooperating with one another, but cooperation is not required. This is probably the most common form of cooperation in games, as it can naturally occur whether or not it was planned into the game. Partial cooperation can include anything from an alliance in Chess 4, to shared ownership in a train company in Chicago Express, to trading resources in Settlers of Catan, as well as other variations in many other games.

When designing a game with cooperation, we need to decide what level of cooperation we want to include in the game (see above), and then find the most appropriate way to include it while keeping players engaged. Below are tips for designing a game with each of the four levels of cooperation:

  1. Full Cooperation: Explore thematic goals for all players to accomplish and overcome together. Make sure to include ways for every player to be involved in both strategizing and acting, whether through hidden information and moves, or a sincere need for every player to contribute to the game’s success.
  2. Team Cooperation: Often limiting either team or inter-team communication can help all team members to remain involved. Having separate and conflicting goals for each team can add tension while retaining the cooperative aspect.
  3. Forced Cooperation: To include forced cooperation, creators often must find a way to give each player access to information or resources that one or more other players need, which facilitates trade and exchange. Another way to do this is to add a shared threat embedded in the game itself (maybe even a dummy or AI player) that all players need to work together to fight while furthering their own objectives.
  4. Incidental Cooperation: This kind of cooperation often doesn’t even need to be planned in, but designers might add goals that are much more likely to be completed by two or more players working together and give shared points, or plan in other aspects of the game that give benefits for cooperation.

What other tips or considerations do you have for designers when including cooperation as a mechanism in their games? Please share below!

Cautions and Tips for Using Cooperation

Including a cooperative aspect can be a great thing for tabletop games, but in doing so we need to find ways to keep all of players involved. Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, for example, are fantastic games that I have enjoyed playing with family and friends. However, with certain groups, some players solve all the problems while other quieter players might feel somewhat left out and disengaged.

Much of the responsibility for including all players falls on those actually playing the game, but as designers we can certainly watch for and try to plan in ways to avoid problems like this. Meteor attempts to solve this problem by requiring players to usually play in silence until a certain technology is unlocked. What other ways have you seen this problem resolved?

Another common problem is that cooperation games rely too much on luck. I remember feeling this way when our family played Wildcraft!, though we still had fun playing it, and part of its purpose is educational. The responsibility for this also falls on us as designers to find ways to intelligently make games consistently challenging with a minimum of luck added for variability. Designers who have created solo variants of games might often have good insight on this, as technically every solo game could be considered fully cooperative. 🙂 What are ways you have solved this problem or seen it solved well?

What are some interesting ways you have seen cooperation be used as a part of a game? How else can cooperation be used in strategic games? Please comment below with your thoughts!

Cooperation games include any game that encourages or requires players to work together to reach goals or win the game. Finding ways to help players work together to achieve goals can make games unifying, uplifting, and enjoyable in a way that no other game mechanic can do.

Cooperation Tabletop Game Mechanic

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Engine Building Mechanic

Engine Building Sketch

In many aspects of life, we benefit less from being the one to act the fastest, and more from being the one who prepares the best. This applies to construction, gardening, sports, and tabletop games. Beginning with Chess and other strategic games, engine building has been used in games to help players feel a sense of influence, control, and increasing momentum as they move towards the end of the game.

In this week’s article we’ll take an in-depth look at engine building and how we can identify opportunities to use it in the games we design and play.

Engine Building Graphical Representation

Overview of Engine Building

First, an overview. In board and card games, engine building consists of progressively collecting components or abilities to create new abilities and enhance future gameplay. This is often a cumulative approach that results in a simpler early game and a more complex and involved middle and late game.

One benefit of this mechanism is that it invites players to feel a growing sense of momentum throughout the game, and keeps them involved by helping them feel like they have new and unique decisions that improve as the game progresses.

Engine building can be as simple as players gaining access to components and actions throughout the game or as complex as building a whole economy or ecosystem of components and options that works together to make each turn more and more impactful.

Important Considerations with Engine Building

Engine building can include card, dice, and bag building, where players build up a physical stockpile or collection of components that increase their strength and options later in the game. Players might draft components, then draft actions from or with those components throughout the game.

Engine building might also be simply increasing options on the board as the game progresses. However engine building looks in your game, it probably should include at least some component of agency—of players consciously taking actions that affect the game for them either immediately or down the road.

To start adding an aspect of engine building to your game, ask yourself what actions and decisions can affect later parts of the game, and start considering how you can link current actions and components to future ones. Here are some examples of engine building in games that might help you get started:

  • Alhambra and Trekking the National Parks both have a simple engine building mechanism of collecting components (tiles, cards, or stones) that together score points later into the game. In a similar kind of way, in Azul players build component collections that later become accessible to use to score points. Kingdomino takes another spin on this, allowing players to collect both tiles that score points and tiles that increase the number of points each tile can score.
  • Bruxelles 1897 offers multiple paths to victory, several of which include engine building as players upgrade their positions on the nobility, prestige, and building tracks. Moving up on these tracks increases options, abilities, and strength later in the game.
  • Dominion is a great intuitive example of engine building! Players use cards to draft actions that enable them to use and purchase more cards, and eventually lands and victory points. Throughout the game, players’ collections of cards (their engines) become both more formidable and more powerful, and they are able to accomplish more each turn.
  • 7 Wonders and Sushi Go! each let players draft and play cards that work together throughout three rounds to both score points and affect the effects of other cards. 7 Wonders uses more complicated and varied action cards to create a more involved board game, while Sushi Go! uses simpler cards with the same concept to create a card game that is simpler and easier to teach and play.

However you choose to include engine building in your game, consider ways that it can make the game more engaging for players. You might also consider starting the game with players’ engines partially built in some way to help move speed up the start of the game and give players something to build off of. Partially building engines before the game starts also offers some great opportunities for a balanced asymmetry that can be a fun option for some games. Let me know how you have used asymmetry in engine building to help games be more engaging in a balanced way!

Cautions and Tips for Using Engine Building

One downside to engine building is that it can sometimes make the starting turns of a game feel slow and uneventful. This can be helped by starting with asymmetry or partially built engines, as mentioned in the section above, but make sure to watch for this and carefully test your game to make sure that you don’t lose players right at the beginning of the game.

Also, as important as a game’s beginning is, we can’t forget the endgame, which is probably one of the most important parts of gameplay as it in large part determines whether players will want to come back to the game, As we have seen and experienced, watching the effects of engine building multiply throughout a game can be great, but as a designer, take care to make sure that the size or content of players’ engines don’t drag out the endgame longer than it should go. Adding effects and abilities throughout the game can easily extend time between later turns, and care should be taken to keep all players engaged in the game from the very beginning to the very end.

What are some interesting ways you have seen engine building be used as a part of a game? How else can it be used to enhance tabletop games? Please comment below with your thoughts!

Engine building in games consists of progressively collecting components or abilities to create new options and enhance future gameplay. This is often a cumulative approach that results in a simpler early game and a more complex and involved middle and late game.

Engine Building Sketch

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Tile Placement Mechanic

Tile Placement Sketch

One of my favorite things about flying in an airplane is looking down just as you’re starting to really gain some altitude and seeing country fields all laid out in more or less perfect squares of varying colors. There is something quite enjoyable about seeing the world unfold in beautiful, manageable chunks that makes me eager to look out the window until we are too high to clearly see the land.

Tile placement games have something of the same appeal, as they permit us to unfold new landscapes and new possibilities one (often square) tile at a time. Players get to create, and to make something unique to that game, which helps the increase both the enjoyability and replayability of the games that we design.

Join me as we explore some of the things to consider when designing a game that uses tile placement as a core mechanism.

Overview of Tile Placement

Games like Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan immediately come to mind for many people when thinking about tile placement, and those games have certainly done much to popularize it as a game mechanic. Many new games use tile placement, and games with tile placement can be found in nearly every category, from filler games to complex feature games, and from luck-based games to highly strategic games.

So, what tile placement as a tabletop game mechanic? For our purposes we define tile placement as a mechanic where tiles or cards are placed or moved throughout the game and where their placement affects the gameplay in some way.

Designing tile placement in a game can be a great way to add structured variability, and can provide a lot of great opportunities to build strategic decisions into your game. Tile placement is possibly most frequently used for board- or map-building in games (such as in Forbidden Island), but it can also be used in a variety of other ways as well, such as in Azul, where players create personal grids with various patterns that score points. In Falconry, square cards are placed in a grid with the goal of aligning enough of your own cards to win the game.

In addition to adding structured variability, tile placement can help players better process the various options and decisions in the game, and gives players a thematic mental image to use while organizing their thoughts and planning how to approach the game.

What do you enjoy or dislike from your own experience about tile placement as a tabletop game mechanic?

Important Considerations with Tile Placement

Usually when tiles are placed, the location matters. However, the degree to which the placement of an individual tile matters is up to the designer and the desired game style, theme, and weight. Generally, the fewer considerations players must keep in mind when placing a tile, the lighter the game; while adding more decision factors will increase the game’s length, weight, and complexity.

Here are a few examples of some of the possible considerations for players’ decision making that might make a difference in how you design your game:

  • Will the tile placed interact with tiles and components already played?
  • Will the tile placed interact with the board space where it is played?
  • Will the tile placed interact with players’ other tiles and components not yet played?
  • Will the actions triggered by placing a tile take place immediately, or throughout the game?
  •  Does the tile have a limited area where it may be placed, or can it be played anywhere?

As noted above, tiles offer a great deal of flexibility as they may interact with the board, become the board, open or close options, interact with both in-play and unplaced components, and affect the game in both immediate and future ways.

When considering a game with tile placement, use icons, colors, contrasts, and illustrations to help players quickly identify what effect the tiles played will have on the game. This is especially important in games where tiles have a lot of variation and when the game is very complex. Here are some examples of how these elements are used well in some existing tile placement games:

  • In Alhambra players complete a personal grid to score points. Colors and borders are used to quickly show players where tiles may be played, and which ones will give them points.
  • In Kingdomino colors and crown icons are used to help players easily identify useful tiles and plan how to add them to their kingdoms.
  • Azul has simple colors and players mainly have to think about how to incorporate them into their boards to make scoring patterns.
  • Falconry uses colors, symbols, and backgrounds to help players quickly identify patterns in theirs and other players’ cards.
  • In Bruxelles 1897 players have many decisions and factors to consider, which makes the decision process difficult, but cards that will be placed use distinct colors, icons, numbers, and illustrations to help efficiently communicate a lot of different information to players with minimal time and effort.
  • Tsuro keeps things simple by only requiring players to look at clearly-illustrated paths and watch where their piece will end up.

Cautions and Tips for Using Tile Placement

As you incorporate tile placement into the games you create, make sure to not try to communicate too much information at once, so that the information you do communicate comes through clearly to the players.

In addition, if your game operates without bounds (for example, a set grid size or a fixed play area such as a board or mat), keep in consideration the size of the tiles, and the player experience in finding a play area and in keeping tiles together.

What are some interesting ways you have seen tile placement be used as a part of a game? How else can tile placement be used to make board and card games even more engaging? Please comment below with your thoughts!

Tile placement is a mechanic where tiles or cards are placed or moved throughout the game and where their placement affects gameplay in some way. Designing tile placement in a game can add structured variability to your game, and can provide a lot of great opportunities to build strategic decisions into the gameplay.

Tile Placement Sketch

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Social Deduction Mechanic

Social Deduction Sketch

How well do you know a stranger? How well do you know your friends? How well do you know your family? How well do you know yourself?

Most people who play social deduction games are driven to ask themselves these questions, many times finding that the answer is, “Not well enough.”

As you review this article, ponder how you might be able to incorporate social deduction into your games or improve on current social deduction games. What thoughts come to mind?

Overview of Social Deduction

As mentioned last week, bluffing can often play a significant part in social deduction games. Social deduction is all about discovering hidden information through interacting with others. This can apply to free-for-all, team, and cooperative games, and the amount of attention you need to pay to those around you varies; but in all of these games, knowing something about the people you play with and being a good judge of character helps a lot.

Social deduction games have a lot of potential because (except in the case of solo games) people like interacting with each other! Though interaction inevitably occurs in most games, social deduction games add the aspect of reading others’ character and using social knowledge as a competitive advantage.

These games bring groups together, and can often be accompanied by many laughs, gasps, and enjoyable moments of discovery. If you want people to just have fun together playing the games that you design, consider adding an element of social deduction!

Important Considerations with Social Deduction

One thing to keep in mind is that though social deduction games can occasionally be played at a low player count, these types of games usually work best with higher player counts and larger groups. This is important when thinking about your intended audience.

For example, if you are hoping to create games for small groups, social deduction might be a difficult mechanism to incorporate, though sometimes it might be fun to do just for the challenge. On the other hand, if you are wanting to create games that appeal to large groups and gatherings of friends and family, social deduction is almost certainly a mechanism you want to consider and explore as it is a great way to include more players without drastically increasing the average play time.

Another thing to keep in mind while designing a game with social deduction is the question of what is unknown?

Along with these considerations, make sure to think about what kind of emotions you hope to create with your social deduction game. Do you want to encourage a game of suspicion and mistrust, hilarious misunderstandings, focused interest, or suspense?

Asking yourself what kind of experience you hope to create for your players is almost always a worthwhile question that helps encourage intentional game design. Along with helping refine the mechanics, asking yourself this question might help guide you to an appropriate theme that will enhance, rather than detract from how your game plays. What helps you be more intentional in the game experience?

Cautions and Tips for Using Social Deduction

One of the biggest cautions and downsides with social deduction games is that, by definition, they are nearly impossible to play solo.

Within some social deduction games solo variants might possibly be created that include the deduction aspect, but they can be quite difficult to create while remaining true to the theme and feel of the original game, as the whole mechanic of bluffing and reading other players doesn’t work well if there is nobody to bluff to or interrogate.

If you have any ideas of ways that a social deduction or bluffing mechanic could work in solo variants, please share in the comments! I and likely many others would be quite interested to explore more ideas along that line of thinking sometime.

What are some interesting ways you have seen social deduction be used as a part of a game? How else can social deduction be incorporated to enhance gameplay? Please comment below and share your thoughts!

Social deduction is entails discovering hidden information through interacting with others. In social deduction games, knowing something about the people you play with and being a good judge of character can make all the difference.

Social Deduction Sketch

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Bluffing Mechanic

Bluffing Sketch

Acting normal is never as hard as it is midway through a bluffing game when the group’s attention is focused on you, and you are suddenly asked what cards you have or why you should be trusted. Whether or not you have cards that you would need to bluff about, you immediately begin wondering what normal looks like, and how to keep a straight face.

Bluffing is a common aspect of many tabletop games, and can usually work its way into nearly any game of any type, since a core element of this mechanic is misdirection, which can come into play whenever players have private cards or secret information.

As you review this article, think about how you have or would like to incorporate bluffing into your game ideas. What thoughts come to mind?

Overview of Bluffing

Bluffing games just about always have some hidden element to them, and involve trying to misdirect other players’ attention away from the actual game plan or goal. The most obvious use of bluffing is in social deduction games (which we will post about next week), but bluffing can, even unintentionally, play a large role in other games.

A good example of this is in Dealer’s Choice, an early Parker Brother’s game that is mainly focused on making money by buying or selling cars. A central mechanic of the game is auctioning cars to the other players, with the catch that each individual car is worth a different amount to each player. In addition, once the seller selects a buyer, the seller may demand any amount of money, which the buyer must pay unless he or she challenges the item’s value to the seller and risks a penalty for being wrong. This combination opens the opportunity for players to bluff about the value of their cards, especially sellers as they confidently demand high prices and leave buyers unsure about whether to pay the demanded amount or challenge the vehicle’s true value.

This is the essence of bluffing. Creative players can work elements of bluffing into nearly any game, but tabletop game designers have a golden opportunity to plan opportunities for bluffing into the default gameplay, inviting players to increase player-to-player interaction in an engaging and positive way.

Important Considerations with Bluffing

If your games have any hidden or secret element, the possibility of bluffing is likely to creep in to some degree; however, designing a game with bluffing as a core mechanic is a great way to plan in exciting and tension-filled opportunities for bluffing. When considering whether bluffing is a good mechanic to include in your game, you might consider the following questions.

If you decide to use bluffing in your games, one good way to go about it is to decide on important game information to know, hide some or most of it with cards and other options, then define in the game instructions good opportunities for players to both bluff about their own information and challenge another player’s bluff. Once you give players examples of both bluffing and calling a bluff, they will move forward with confidence and will find some pretty innovative opportunities to do so.

Cautions and Tips for Using Bluffing

Though they can be both popular and fun, bluffing games certainly aren’t for everyone. If you are designing games with a specific audience in mind, make sure that your players are able to have fun with bluffing without feeling like they need to lie or dishonestly deceive others.

Also, make sure that the bluffing in your games revolves around significant decisions in the game, and has additional costs and benefits to trade off. In both Secret Hitler and Saboteur, the bluffing players have the conflicting and contrasting tradeoff of staying secret versus moving forward their team’s goals and objectives, which makes for some fun situations.

However you design your bluffing game and whatever the theme, try to make sure that you are creating fun situations and encouraging uplifting interactions. I’d like to hear about some of your experiences with bluffing games in the comments!

What are some interesting ways you have seen bluffing be used as a part of a game? How else can bluffing be intentionally used to enhance gameplay? Please comment below and share your thoughts!

Bluffing games just about always have some hidden element to them, and involve trying to misdirect other players’ attention away from the actual game plan or goal. The most obvious use of bluffing is in social deduction games, but bluffing can, even unintentionally, play a large role in other games.

Bluffing Sketch

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Other Tabletop Game Mechanics to Explore

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Auctioning Mechanic (Part 2/2)

Auctioning Sketch

Please Note: This is the second of two articles on auctioning as a tabletop game mechanic. The first article may be accessed here.

Last week’s article dove into various possible options for implementing an auctioning mechanic into your board or card game. Please comment with your thoughts on auctioning mechanics and how you have used them in the past!

No discussion of tabletop game mechanics is complete without also considering cautions and potential problems to keep in mind when implementing each mechanic, and this article dives into those cautions and considerations with the many auctioning mechanisms that can be utilized.

After looking over these thoughts below, please share your own ideas and breakthroughs with auctioning in games!

Important Considerations with Auctioning

Auctioning is a great way to distribute resources and invite strategic planning in your games. However, after deciding to include auctioning in board and card games, one of the important issues to consider is what to do with the funds that are raised. Many games simply return funds to the bank or stockpile, but there are several other options that will also affect players’ bidding practices, as shown below.

  • Some games, including Chicago Express, invest the funds raised into players’ shared train companies as the main source of money they can use to expand throughout the game.
  • Other games such as Dealer’s Choice have players auction their own items and keep the funds raised.
  • Another option that is sometimes used is to redistribute funds raised among the losing players so that players earn money for future auctions by losing current auctions.

At times, items may be auctioned that players do not want to purchase at the current asking price. Rather than drag out the game or leave unwanted items in the market, some games include some kind of control that decreases or reduces the price of items if no player chooses to bid on it. Other times, reducing the price is built into the auctioning mechanism, as in auctions where the price goes in reverse, from a high price to a low until someone is willing to purchase at the asking price. Blind auctions with no minimum or a low minimum also help ensure that all items are purchased at some price point.

Board and card games that use unconventional auctioning, especially blind auctions, should also have a built-in way to deal with ties and resolve equal bids. This might include taking into account a secondary ranking mechanism, requiring tied players to re-bid, requiring tied players to add to their current bid, or discarding the item and removing it from the game.

As mentioned above, creative approaches can be taken to incentivize strategically losing bids, such as compensating losing players or requiring players to win or lose a specific number of bids. Many other variations can be added to auctions to make them interesting and unique.

Cautions and Tips for Using Auctioning

Care should be taken when using auctioning in games that the auctioning does not extend the game by too much. In some cases, if too many decisions are affected by the auction it can lead to overthinking and detract from other mechanics within the game.

 Related to this, players’ feelings and emotions should be taken into consideration. Some auctions, especially timed auctions and Dutch Auctions (descending price) can bring a lot of tension and stress. Other auctions that do not play a core role in the game might be tedious and off-putting. In either case, such a problem might reflect badly on the game or make it unpleasant to play; while on the other hand, some players might enjoy decisions like that. Because of this, designers should carefully consider what emotions and interactions you hope to encourage for the game, then carefully design and test auctions to match the intended choices and gameplay.

However you decide to include them, auctions can be a great opportunity to engage players in your games. Let me know what new ideas you have seen or tried with board and card game auctions!

What are some concerns you have with auctioning being used as a board or card game mechanic? What are some ways to mitigate any potential problems? Please comment below with your thoughts!

Please Note: This is the second of two articles on auctioning as a tabletop game mechanic. The first article may be accessed here.

No discussion of tabletop game mechanics is complete without also considering cautions and potential problems to keep in mind when implementing each mechanic. This article explores cautions and considerations regarding the various auctioning mechanisms that can be utilized.

Auctioning Sketch

Please note: Through the Amazon Associates program, we earn from any qualifying purchases.

Other Tabletop Game Mechanics to Explore

Are there other game mechanics or topics that you would like to see explored further? Please comment below with any requests!