Core term - linguistically invariant
Ludic Ductus
What it is about
The Ludic Ductus is the shape of experience over time in a Ludic Process: how intensity, mood and complexity develop over the playing time - crescendo, wave, plateau, implosion. The Ludic Experience says which qualities are experienced; the ductus, how they unfold.
It has two sides, type and token. The game’s side is the shape a game tends towards. It results from the determinations of the Ludic Corpus without being determined itself: every game has a ductus, even without deliberate design. The match’s side is the course that one agent experiences in one match. In the same match, whoever wins may experience a crescendo and whoever loses an implosion.
It is not set. What is designed are the determinations - rules, stocks, appearance, ascriptions - and the shape is what one aims at.
Place and design access
Place on the axis: AGENT–PROCESS - the ductus arises in the process and is borne by the agent, like Ludic Fabula, Ludic Experience and Ludic Effectus. It has two sides: on the side of the game it is the shape a game tends towards - it results from all determinations and attaches to the game; on the side of the match it is the course that one agent experiences in one match. Every edge says which side it means.
Design access: targetable - it cannot be set, but it can be missed. One chooses a basic pattern, arranges the determinations in time (Ludic Temporal Structure, pacing) and checks in playtesting whether matches unfold that way. The ductus of a match can be captured as a course that an agent reports - in a course log, in a tension curve.
Relations on the axis:
- CORPUS (game side): the determinations of the Ludic Corpus shape the game’s side. The three terms of the trias contribute to the ductus - Ludic Regulation, Ludic Appearance, Ludic Fiction (§12); at least one regulation contributes to every ductus, since every game has rules. Entity, Mechanism, Organisational Structure, Temporal Structure and Argumentum contribute as well, and objectives help organise it: proximity to the ultimate goal intensifies, a reached intermediate goal relieves. None of these is necessary for a ductus. It corresponds with the Narrational Structure - narrative patterns suggest shapes, but the ductus needs no story.
- FORM (game side): the Ludic Form spans the possibility space - which courses are realisable: the chess clock at the board, the short session in a mobile game.
- AGENT–CORPUS (game side): the Ludic Frame contributes by bringing expectations of the course - horror leads one to expect an eruption. The Ludic Sovereignty modulates it: the agents always co-shape the course within the rules; the determinations themselves they change only by virtue of their sovereignty - meta-regulation, legacy, house rules - and with them the game’s side.
- AGENT (side of the match): each agent experiences the course of a match for themselves - whoever wins a crescendo, whoever loses an implosion. Agents are addressable, not controllable: what is designed are the determinations, not what an agent experiences.
- AGENT–PROCESS (side of the match): the ductus contributes to the Ludic Effectus - the course experienced leaves effects. It is delimited against Ludic Experience and Ludic Fabula (§5).
- INTENT (game side): the Ludic Desiderata inform it: an aimed-at ductus is a design goal; it is tested against the reported courses.
Delimitations
Delimitation from Ludic Experience
Against the Ludic Experience: the experience says which qualities are experienced - tension, wonder, pride; the ductus, how they unfold. The same qualities can be arranged as a crescendo or as a wave. Both carry type and token and lie on AGENT–PROCESS; both are captured through report, the experience as an experience, the ductus as a course.
Delimitation from Ludic Temporal Structure
Against the Ludic Temporal Structure: it orders what happens in time - turns, rounds, phases, start and end; it is a coordinate structure and a bearer. The ductus is the course of experience over that time. The round structure is set; whether the rounds intensify is ductus. The temporal structure is a means of shaping it.
Delimitation from Ludic Narrational Structure
Against the Ludic Narrational Structure: it is the intended narrative framework - beginning, turn, resolution - and orders narrems. The ductus needs no story: chess and Tetris have one too. Where there is a story, the two can coincide or run against each other - the turn at the climax or in the calm afterwards.
Delimitation from Ludic Fabula
Against the Ludic Fabula: the fabula says what happened - the events of a match as they are for one agent; the ductus, how it unfolded. The same sequence of events - an equaliser in the last minute - can be a crescendo for one side and an implosion for the other.
Examples
- Chess - one game, two sides. Chess tends towards a shape that condenses over opening, middlegame and endgame. Individual matches nonetheless unfold differently: as a rout decided after twenty moves, or as a thriller into the endgame. The determinations are the same; the match’s side is different.
- Dark Souls - nested shapes: at the macro level a spiral (each area harder than the last), at the meso level a wave (exploration, boss fight, exploration), at the micro level a pulse (attack, dodge, attack).
- Catan - at the macro level an eruption: a long build-up, then a sudden end phase. The intensification comes from growing stocks, not from harsher rules.
- Journey - at the macro level Jo-Ha-Kyū: ceremonial beginning, acceleration, finale; at the meso level Rasa, a sequence of moods - wonder, loneliness, joy, awe. A ductus without a classic tension curve.
Explanation
Imagine a concert: it begins quietly, builds, reaches a climax, falls away and ends with a last surge. Whoever composed it did not just write notes but laid out the course of the experience.
That is exactly the Ludic Ductus: how a game feels over time - when it comes to a head, when it eases off, when it surprises. Not what the players experience (that is the Ludic Experience), not what happens (that is the Ludic Fabula), not how time is divided (that is the Ludic Temporal Structure), but how the whole breathes over time.
Different cultures shape this breathing differently. Western dramaturgy loves the build-up to a climax. The Japanese Jo-Ha-Kyū tradition deliberately begins slowly and accelerates towards the end. The Indian Rasa tradition thinks not in tension curves but in sequences of moods - like a menu in which every course tastes different.
You do not set the ductus directly. You choose what you aim at and create the conditions for it: rules that tighten, stocks that run low, music that rises, a turn at the right moment. Whether it holds is shown by the playtest - and every match unfolds a little differently.
Usage context
| Dimension | Classification |
|---|---|
| Phase | Ideation: choose a basic pattern - “How should our game feel over time?” · Development: arrange the determinations in time - which rules, stocks, appearances and ascriptions carry the course? · Evaluation: compare the targeted shape with the reported courses |
| Tools | Ductus stack (eleven basic patterns, one modifier; DU-META-02 on time scales) · Ductus worksheet · course log and tension curve for the match’s side |
| Tool type | generative (ideation) · structuring (development) · reflective (evaluation) |
Theoretical foundation
- Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria: ductus as leading the audience through the course of a speech - the basis for transferring it to the course of a game.
- Zeami Motokiyo, Fūshikaden and Kakyō: Jo-Ha-Kyū as a codified principle of temporal design - ceremonial slowness at the start, a concentrated finale.
- Bharata Muni, Natyashastra: Rasa - a sequence of mood qualities instead of an intensity curve; the reason the ductus has more than one dimension.
- Griot storytelling tradition (West Africa): cumulative, participatory layering - themes are introduced, left and taken up again.
- Gustav Freytag, Die Technik des Dramas: the pyramid model as the Western reference for the crescendo.
Shapes
The Ductus stack holds eleven basic patterns and one modifier. They name shapes, not building blocks: one does not pick from them as from a construction kit, one recognises in them what one aims at - and what one has built.
| Basic pattern | Shape |
|---|---|
| Crescendo | steady build-up to a climax |
| Wave | alternation of tension and release |
| Plateau | even intensity after a short build-up |
| Eruption | a long build-up that imperceptibly thickens, then a tipping point |
| Spiral | recurring cycles, each more intense than the last |
| Implosion | high start, gradual calming |
| Pulse | rapid alternation of short moments - a staccato |
| Jo-Ha-Kyū | ceremonial beginning, acceleration, concentrated end |
| Rasa | a sequence of moods instead of a tension curve |
| Griot | themes introduced, left, taken up again - layering without a climax |
| Cyclical | return as renewal in a changed context |
Rupture is not a basic pattern of its own but a modifier: the deliberate break of an established course, applicable to any basic pattern.
Three patterns do not measure intensity: Rasa orders moods, griot layers themes, the cyclical pattern returns. That is why the ductus has three dimensions - intensity, mood, complexity - and not a single curve.
Time scales
The shapes nest (DU-META-02). Most games have not one pattern but one per time scale:
| Time scale | Unit | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Macro | the whole match or campaign | a crescendo over a campaign |
| Meso | acts, chapters, phases | each act a wave |
| Micro | round, turn, encounter | a pulse in combat |
The time scales are units of the Ludic Temporal Structure; the ductus lays its shapes over them.
What it arises from
The game’s side results from all determinations. It is shaped with the three terms of the trias:
| Term | Means | Design question |
|---|---|---|
| Regulation (Ludic Regulation) | rules that tighten; thresholds; stocks that run low; accumulation | Which determinations change the pressure over time? |
| Appearance (Ludic Appearance) | music, colour, tempo of effects, spatial condensation | How does the perceptible change - and what marks the transitions? |
| Ascription (Ludic Fiction) | turns, revelations, what is at stake | Which ascriptions fall on the climaxes? |
Coherence costs: if regulation tightens (crescendo) while appearance stays relaxed, a perceptible incoherence arises. Set deliberately, the contrast becomes a means - calm music in a hectic situation (coherence mode contrastive).