Ludic Mechanism

A Ludic Mechanism is a transferable pattern of regulation, a special form of the Ludic Pattern: a named configuration of rule schemata that creates a recurring kind of decision and interaction space - auction, placement, set collection. It is context-free: the auction carries Modern Art, Ra and Power Grid without changing.

A mechanism is more than the sum of its rules. The auction produces the bidding dilemma - how high do I go to win without the win no longer paying off? -, and that is in no single rule; it arises from bidding, outbidding and paying together.

In the pattern order it stands atomic and transferable: atomic because it is composed of no other pattern; in itself it is structured (§10). Composed with feedback, mechanisms form an Organisational Structure: a market bundles auction and price formation. Without feedback they form a named combination: worker placement is placement, priority and schedule. A mechanism is realised in a game horizontally - as a procedure (this game’s bidding sequence) or as a standing configuration of rules: in Sushi Go, set collection is the rule “three sashimi score ten points”.

What it is not. It is not a rule - that holds for one game, the mechanism travels. It is not an action - “jump” or “trade” are actions, even if the industry calls them mechanics -, and it does not determine which actions are possible: bidding and buying exist without an auction too; the auction determines what follows from bidding. And it is not a named combination of several mechanisms, such as practice calls a design pattern (§10).

In everyday language

• “mechanic” (the term is narrower): a transferable pattern such as the auction. Does not distinguish the transferable pattern from the single rule, the sequence and the domain with feedback; nor the regulation in the corpus from the action in the process. Named combinations such as Worker Placement are also called “mechanics” but are not Ludic Mechanisms.

Place and design access

Place on the axis: CORPUS - the mechanism is a transferable pattern of regulation, but not itself a determination; in a game it is realised by that game’s rules and procedures.

Design access: designable - designers choose mechanisms, set their parameters and combine them.

Relations on the axis:

• CORPUS: Ludic Rules and Ludic Procedures realise the mechanism and in doing so determine at the bearers - at actions and entities. The mechanism itself does not determine which actions or entities are possible, but what follows from them under which conditions. Several mechanisms with feedback form a Ludic Organisational Structure.
• FORM: the form conditions which mechanisms can be realised: a sealed auction with simultaneous evaluation is effortless for a digital game; at the table it needs envelopes.
• AGENT–PROCESS: mechanisms produce temporal dynamics and shape the ductus - an auction heating up, spaces growing scarce; they act on Ludic Experience and Ludic Effectus.
• AGENT–CORPUS: the frame is the coherence space in which a mechanism seems plausible: an auction suits the art market, less the fairy-tale forest.
• AGENT: mechanisms create the dilemmas between which agents decide - in the auction: how high to bid, when to drop out.

The trias at this concept

Regulation - the mechanism is a pattern of regulation and of regulation only: it consists of rule schemata and stays within regulation - the aspect test confirmed this.

Appearance and ascription - as a pattern it has neither; its context-freedom is this independence. “Auction” comes with no auction house and no hammer. Realised in a game, it has all three: which rules, which appearance (bazaar, timer, called or written bids), which ascription (marketplace, divine trial, bribery).

Pattern legibility - that a pattern is recognised as such is a property of the realisation, not of the pattern. In Catan the trading phase is read as negotiation - cards in hand, spoken offers; with sealed bidding slips the same exchange would read as an auction.

Delimitations

Delimitation from Ludic Rule

Against the Ludic Rule: pattern and realisation. Set collection exists in many games. In Sushi Go it is one rule - “three sashimi score ten points” -, in rummy a quite different one, in happy families yet another. The mechanism consists of rule schemata; it is realised in the concrete rules of a game.

Delimitation from Ludic Organisational Structure

Against the Ludic Organisational Structure: tool and system. The auction is a mechanism; the market that bundles auction and price formation into a web of effects with feedback is an organisational structure. The same pattern can be one tool among many in one game and in another the order around which everything revolves.

Delimitation from Ludic Action

Against the Ludic Action: pattern and doing. An action is what happens - jumping, trading, bidding. A mechanism is the pattern that determines under which conditions what follows from it. It does not determine which actions are possible: an auction is a mechanism, bidding and buying are actions that exist without it too. The industry calls both mechanics; Sicart formulates game mechanics from the agent’s side and means rather actions.

Delimitation from Ludic Activity

Against the Ludic Activity: pattern and field of action. The activity bundles actions by subject matter - hunting, building, trading. The mechanism says nothing about the subject matter: an auction does not determine what is bid for, paintings in Modern Art, power plants in Power Grid. That is why the same mechanism occurs in different activities. Subtract appearance and ascription, and the mechanism remains what it is; of an activity a rule complex remains, but not the activity itself.

Delimitation from Ludic Temporal Structure

Against the Ludic Temporal Structure: reversibility of the element and of the game state. Whether a single move can be taken back or an effect undone is a property of the mechanism - its cross dimension reversibility (§10). Persistence and reversibility of the temporal structure concern the whole state of the match: loading resets the whole game. Which segments there are - rounds, turns, phases - the mechanism does not determine; it is realised within them. Rewind is the borderline case: it reverses the whole state, but step by step.

Examples

• Auction in Modern Art, Ra, Power Grid: the same pattern, three game worlds - paintings, antiquities, power plants.
• Auction in Modern Art: one pattern, five procedures - open, once around, sealed, fixed price, double.
• Placement in tic-tac-toe and Blokus: setting is an action; the mechanism determines what follows from where something is set - whether the space is blocked afterwards, whether what is set stays, whether adjacency counts. In tic-tac-toe the spaces are exclusive and what is set stays; from this arises the blocking dilemma: take the space I need, or the one my opponent needs? In Blokus adjacency counts: one’s own pieces may touch only at the corners. In Agricola placement stands in a named combination, worker placement - placement, priority and schedule -, in Carcassonne in another: placement, matching and construction.
• Set collection in Sushi Go (three sashimi score ten points), in rummy, in happy families: the same collecting, realised differently.
• Pandemic: placement, matching, coordination and decay are single mechanisms; together with feedback they form a survival system - an organisational structure.
• No laughing: a minimal pattern of conflict resolution - the funmaker provokes, the circle suppresses.

Explanation

When someone says “my game has an auction”, they are describing a Ludic Mechanism: a pattern that occurs in many games. Whether in a medieval market, on a spaceship or among forest animals - it is the same: submit bids, compare, award.

A mechanism is more than a rule. In the auction three work together - “place a bid”, “each bid must exceed the previous one”, “whoever holds the highest bid last pays it and receives the lot” - and only together produce the typical dilemma: how high do I go without paying too much? The Mechanisms stack orders such patterns in ten categories, from resource and value creation to cooperation and agreement. You choose mechanisms, set their parameters and turn them into concrete rules in your game.

Usage context

• Phase: ideation (rough direction: which patterns?), mainly development (choose, parametrise, combine, test), evaluation (recognise patterns in existing games, balancing).
• Mechanisms stack: reference cards with structural pattern, regulation configuration, design parameters, cross-cutting dimensions and design patterns; plus the design-pattern reference table.
• Granularity: most design communication happens at the level of mechanisms - more concrete than the terms of the triad, more general than a game’s rules.

Theoretical foundation

• Erich Gamma et al., Design Patterns (1994): reusable solution patterns; mechanisms relate to rules as design patterns relate to code.
• Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language (1977): thinking in named patterns as a methodological basis.
• Geoffrey Engelstein, Isaac Shalev, Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design (2019): the most extensive taxonomy of mechanisms; does not separate mechanisms and organisational structures in LUNA’s sense.
• Aki Järvinen, Games without Frontiers (2008), and Miguel Sicart, “Defining Game Mechanics” (2008): mechanics from the side of acting - rather Ludic Actions; against this LUNA sharpens the separation of mechanism and action.
• Joris Dormans, Engineering Emergence (2012), and Keith Burgun, Game Design Theory (2012): system models with feedback - forerunners of the distinction between mechanism and organisational structure.

Inner architecture

Every mechanism can be described by four parts:

• Structural pattern - input, transformation, output: the functional principle. Production: raw materials → processing → products. Auction: bids → evaluation → award.
• Regulation configuration - the rule schemata by mode: permitting (“place a bid”), constraining (“each bid must exceed the previous one”), conditioning (“when no one bids any more, the highest bid wins the lot”), possibly with a procedure.
• Design parameters - adjustable parameters with ranges that vary the pattern without changing it: the bidding procedure, the payment rule - only the winner pays, or everyone -, whether bids are open or sealed. In a game they become specifications. What can be wholly reconstructed from such values is not a pattern of its own but a value label: the English, the Dutch and the sealed auction are settings of the auction.
• Cross-cutting dimensions - how the mechanism occupies the coordinate structures: transparency (open, concealed, asymmetric, changing) in the View Structure; agent interaction (solo, cooperative, competitive, asymmetric) in the Social Structure; feedback (immediate, delayed, none, aggregated) and reversibility (reversible, final, conditional) in the Temporal Structure.

Two levels of speech. As a pattern a mechanism consists of rule schemata, not of concrete rules. It is realised in a game through a procedure or through standing rules. From the design side a mechanism contains its sequences; from the analysis side the procedure realises the mechanism.

Design patterns are mostly named combinations of several mechanisms with a practice name of their own: worker placement = placement + priority + schedule, crafting = production + matching + selection, deck building = accumulation + selection + conversion + feedback. The word is a discourse term of the field, not a term. LUNA sorts every pattern: if it can be wholly reconstructed from parameters, it is a value label; if it stays within regulation, it is a mechanism, a named combination or - with feedback - an organisational structure; if it also needs appearance or ascription, it is a named combination across several terms. All are instances of the Ludic Pattern.