Commons

Ludic Organisational Structure · I – Economic Order value · Tipping potential: high

Commons orders the use of a shared resource that belongs to all but can be overused by anyone: the tension between individual advantage and collective survival.

Design question – How is a shared resource that each individual can overuse managed in your game?

Reference example – Don’t Starve Together: berry bushes and trees regrow only slowly – if one person plunders them, everyone goes short. Minecraft on a shared server: whoever fells trees without replanting leaves everyone a bare world. Fishbanks: several fishing companies share one stock; if all overfish, it collapses.

Ordering domain

Orders the use of a shared resource between individual advantage and collective preservation.

Emergent behaviour

The tragedy of the commons (rational individual behaviour leads to collective ruin) and conversely the tendency towards cooperative norms that arise without a rule and bind only through agreement.

Core Mechanisms

• Accumulation (MEC-02) – Shared resource pool.
• Selection (MEC-07) – Extraction from the pool – how much?
• Monitoring (MEC-19) – Observing the behaviour of others.

Dynamic Mechanisms

• Production (MEC-01) – Regeneration of the shared resource.
• Decay (MEC-04) – Overuse → resource depletion.
• Communication (MEC-16) – Agreements about usage.
• Enforcement (MEC-23) – Sanctions for overuse.

Feedback architecture

• positive – Overuse: everyone takes more → less for all → pressure rises → take even more. (Decay)
• negative – Sanctioning: enforcement and a regeneration limit dampen overuse. (Enforcement)

Design parameters

• Regeneration – none (finite) ↔ fast (renewable)
• Extraction visibility – hidden ↔ open
• Sanctioning – none ↔ by Ludic Regulation (Enforcement)
• Threshold – no tipping point ↔ hard collapse beyond a limit
• Competition – weak ↔ strong (structural scarcity)

Risk profile

• Runaway leader – medium
• Kingmaking – low
• Stagnation – high
• Complexity ceiling – medium

Compatible with

• Ecosystem (ST-15) – Compatible: a shared resource base.
• Democracy / Voting System (ST-06) – Compatible: voting on usage rules.

Tension with

• Market (ST-01) – Tension: privatization vs. communal use.
• Hierarchy (ST-05) – Tension: who decides on usage?