Temporal Structure

Term

Belongs to the term

Ludic Temporal Structure: The Ludic Temporal Structure orders what happens in a game in time - when: before, after, simultaneously.

Stack

What it is about

Every game has a temporal order. The Temporal Structure stack describes it with five questions that can be answered independently of each other: How does a match begin? How is it divided? How does time behave? When does it end? And what happens to the game state when something goes wrong or is interrupted? A game without division and without a fixed end also has a temporal structure – it then stands at the zero point.

The 19 cards are ordered by these five aspects, each with its own colour. Start: fixed like the starting position in Chess, chosen from options, as a continuation, drawn by lot or negotiated. Division: Turn Based, Round Based, Phase Based – a turn belongs to one agent, a round includes all, a phase changes what one can do. Time regime: Real Time, Simultaneous, Time Based – continuous action, simultaneous hidden decision, a timer that presses. Termination: Value Based, Event Based, Endless – a value is reached, an event occurs, or the players stop when they want. Persistence and reversibility: No Save, Checkpoint, Free Save and Rewind range from “every mistake is final” to “time can be turned back”; Suspend & Resume ensures that a match survives an interruption. This aspect mainly concerns digital games; in analog play No Save applies.

A special case is Action Based: a fixed budget of actions per segment, not a division of its own but a limit within one. A guide card with combination rules, a separator card and a blank card belong to the stack.

How to use it

Method: (1) Sort the cards by aspect colour and lay them out in groups. (2) Ask in the team: how should our game feel in time? (3) Choose one card per aspect or deliberately leave it out. (4) Check whether the combination fits together – Action Based, for instance, needs a division card to combine with. (5) Transfer the result to the worksheet. Most games combine several cards: Catan is Turn Based, Round Based and Value Based, 7 Wonders Phase Based, Simultaneous and Value Based, Pandemic Turn Based, Round Based, Action Based and Event Based, Dark Souls Real Time and Event Based with checkpoints.

Note for facilitation: Teams readily adopt the temporal order of their model game. Encourage unusual combinations: what if your board game had a real-time segment? Does your game really need a fixed end?

Time: 10 to 15 minutes.

Sequence: In ideation, after choosing the form, which suggests possible divisions, and before or in parallel with Activities and Actions – the temporal structure determines when they take place. In development, the chosen cards are translated into rules: how long is a turn, how many rounds are there, at which value does the game end? After a playtest one can compare whether the rhythm experienced matches the one intended: when was it exciting, when tedious, was the end too abrupt?

Those who do not start from the desiderata take up the stack at another point: starting from a mechanism or from constraints, early – a mobile game with short sessions suggests Time Based and Value Based –; starting from the intended experience, in the middle; starting from the story, in parallel with the Narrational Structure; starting from the form, right after choosing it.

Relations

The temporal structure determines when a match ends, the objective when a task is fulfilled. The two often coincide but are not the same: a stalemate ends without checkmate, and Tetris ends without any victory condition at all. The Activities fill the segments that the temporal structure creates. Mechanisms and their sequences lie on these segments: the bidding sequence of an auction takes place in a round but is not the round. Saving and rewinding are to be distinguished as well: they concern the whole game state; whether a single move can be taken back is a property of a mechanism. The Narrational Structure stack describes the order in which the story is told; rounds as days or phases as chapters are attributions that lie on the temporal structure. How the experience unfolds over these segments is described by the Ductus.

cards

The cards

PS-01 Turn Based Agents act in a sequential order. One agent or group is on the move, the others wait or observe. The turn belongs to one agent – the allocation of action time to individuals that the corpus sets.

PS-02 Round Based The process is divided into superordinate segments – rounds that typically cover all agents once. The round belongs to the *Ludic Corpus*: it defines a complete pass after which the game state changes, resources renew or scoring takes place.

PS-03 Phase Based The process is divided into qualitatively different sections. In different phases different Regulations apply, different Actions are available or the conditions change. Phases differentiate the action space – they determine not who acts but what is possible.

PS-04 Real Time All agents act simultaneously and continuously. There are no turns and no waiting – play time runs the same for all and without interruption. Speed and reaction become design factors; the process is a continuous stream, not a beat.

PS-05 Simultaneous All agents decide simultaneously without knowing the others' decisions; the resolution then follows jointly. Simultaneous differs from Real Time: not continuous action is at the centre but the moment of the concealed decision and the tension of the resolution.

PS-06 Time Based An automatic timer regulates the course of play. Time runs out independently of the agents – it is a pressure source on the corpus side that accelerates decisions and limits windows of action. Time Based can act on the whole process, on segments or on individual actions.

PS-07 Value Based The process ends when a defined value is reached – a highest value (victory points), a critical threshold (life points at zero) or a target value (exactly 0 in darts). The termination is quantitative and measurable by the game; the visibility of the progress is a design decision.

PS-08 Event Based Process progress is triggered by events or state changes – not by time or number of rounds. A boss is defeated, a quest completed, a territory conquered. Event Based can terminate the process (endgame trigger) or transform it (open a new chapter).

PS-09 Endless No end set by the corpus – the process runs indefinitely until the agent decides to stop. Termination lies not with the corpus but with the agent's sovereignty. Endless is not a lack of design but a deliberate choice for open processes.

PS-10 Action Based Agents can perform a fixed number of Actions per segment. The limit creates opportunity costs: each chosen action excludes others. Action Based is not a segmentation type of its own but a constraint within a segment – to be used in combination with a structuring card.

PS-11 No Save The corpus provides no restoration of an earlier state. A failure or a character's death is final; the process state cannot be turned back. No Save is the zero point of reversibility – every consequence persists.

PS-12 Checkpoint The *Ludic Corpus* defines restoration points. After a failure the process returns to the last reached checkpoint. Reversibility is controlled by the *Ludic Corpus*: the agents do not choose when it is saved – the *Ludic Corpus* determines the points.

PS-13 Free Save The agents decide at any time when a recoverable state is created. Reversibility lies in the agents' hands. Maximal control – with the downside that free saving can soften risk and consequence (save-scumming).

PS-14 Suspend & Resume The process state survives an interruption of the temporal framing. The game is paused, not ended – the frame "this is a game" is suspended and re-entered later. Suspend & Resume concerns persistence, not reversibility: one returns to the same point, not an earlier one.

PS-15 Rewind The process can be rewound continuously or in fine steps along its own timeline – not via discrete save states but as a taking-back of the process time itself. Rewind is the most radical form of reversibility: the arrow of process time becomes reversible.

PS-16 Start (Initiation) The card describes how the _Ludic Process_ begins - the temporal form of the beginning: start state and starting conditions (fixed in advance, chosen from options, persisted as a continuation, drawn by lot, or negotiated). The Start is the counterpart of Termination: as Termination describes the form of the end, the Start describes the form of the beginning. The concrete starting conditions as decision content remain _Ludic Regulations_ with an initial scope.

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