Ludic Organisational Structure

A Ludic Organisational Structure orders a subject domain of a game - how does the domain work?: the economy, power, combat, survival. It bundles Ludic Mechanisms into an interplay with feedback: a market combines auction and price formation so that demand drives prices and prices dampen demand. Its relation reads: acts on, reinforces, dampens.

It is a pattern structure of regulation: transferable and catalogable, and it stays within regulation - subtract appearance and ascription, and a structure of rules with feedback remains. A game has none, one or several; Civilization has several at once. It is realised in a game as a configuration of Ludic Procedures and Ludic Rules. It is laid over the coordinate structures: territory works on the Ludic Spatial Structure, reputation in the Ludic Social Structure.

What arises from it - price bubbles, escalation, the lead that reinforces itself - is suggested by the determinations but not set by them; it happens in play. What is designed are the mechanisms, their interplay and their parameters.

In everyday language

“mechanic” (the term is narrower): a domain with feedback such as a market. 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 - a transferable pattern of Ludic Regulation, but not itself a determination. It is chosen in the corpus and realised there as a configuration of procedures and rules.

Design access: designable - which patterns, which mechanisms they bundle, how these interact, how the parameters are set. What arises from it in play cannot be set, but it can be missed - it is checked in playtesting.

Relations on the axis:

CORPUS: the organisational structure is a special form of the Ludic Pattern - a pattern of regulation with feedback. It belongs to regulation but hangs on it by no edge. It consists of Ludic Mechanisms - as an interplay of several; the same mechanism can stand in several structures or in none. Ludic Procedures and Ludic Rules realise it in a game: the bidding round, the price adjustment at the end of the round and the rule that unsold goods perish together are this game’s market. It orders Ludic Activities - the market orders trading, exchanging and investing. It determines nothing at the bearers; its relation to entities and actions runs through the procedures and rules that realise it. Organisational structures are compatible or in tension with one another, and one can be part of a named combination.
FORM: the Ludic Form spans the space of possibilities of the organisational structures - a board game can only do what the players can compute by hand. The same structure can be realised in several forms.
AGENT–CORPUS: the Ludic Frame constrains which patterns are coherent within it - the farm suggests cycles, medieval trade a market.
AGENT–PROCESS: on the game side it contributes to the Ludic Ductus - the market tends towards a wave, combat towards escalation - and spans the space of possibilities of the Ludic Fabulae: it suggests which types of stories arise. It contributes to the Ludic Effectus. It sets none of these; they arise in play.
AGENT: realised in a game, it orders the agents’ room for action in a whole domain - what a purchase costs, who may vote. What the agents want, feel and how they decide it does not determine.
INTENT: the Ludic Desiderata inform the choice: what a game is meant to achieve gives the selection of patterns its direction.

The trias at this concept

Regulation - the organisational structure is a pattern of regulation and of regulation only: mechanisms interacting, with feedback. The aspect test has confirmed this - fifteen of the eighteen cards pass without further ado, two after their description was rewritten; faction system (ST-07) is a named combination across several terms.

Appearance and ascription - as a pattern it has neither; no bazaar and no stock exchange is attached to “market”. It is not entirely context-free like a mechanism: it carries the logic of its domain - the market that of value, the combat system that of confrontation. Realised in a game, it has all three: the same regulated confrontation as cards and monsters in Gloomhaven, as deck-building and soldiers in Undaunted: Normandy, as pieces without a story in chess.

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 hidden bid slips the same exchange would read as an auction.

Delimitations

Delimitation from Ludic Mechanism

Against the Ludic Mechanism: interplay and transformation. A mechanism is a pattern that transforms inputs into outputs - auction, decay, voting; it solves a single task. An organisational structure combines several so that the result of one pass changes the conditions of the next. In between lie named combinations without feedback - “English auction = auction + priority + communication” -: linear chains, not structures.

Delimitation from Ludic Procedure

Against the Ludic Procedure: interplay and sequence. Both are composite, but differently: the procedure joins steps into a sequence - first roll, then move, then resolve. The organisational structure joins mechanisms into an interplay in which they act back on one another. And it stands on the side of the transferable: in a game, procedures and rules realise it.

Delimitation from Ludic Pattern

Against the Ludic Pattern: special form and named combination. The organisational structure is a special form of the Ludic Pattern and stays within one term: subtract appearance and ascription, and a structure of rules with feedback remains. Without feedback, several determinations of regulation are a named combination - Worker Placement, hub-and-spoke. If a pattern needs determinations from several terms to be what it is, it cannot be a special form. Faction system (ST-07) stands in the stack of organisational structures but is a named combination across several terms: fixed teams in the social structure, asymmetric regulation and an ascribed identity, “us and the others” - without the identity nothing of its own remains.

Against the coordinate structures: what happens on them and the layout. The coordinate structure fixes the layout, the pattern orders what happens on it in the game. The social structure sets who plays with and against whom; the patterns of the domain “relationship and conflict” decide fights, form alliances and award standing. Likewise the spatial structure lays out the space, and territory orders who controls which places; exploration orders the progressive uncovering of what the view structure hides.

Examples

Catan: market and territory reinforce each other - whoever has built well has more to trade; a combat system is deliberately absent.
Civilization VI: market, territory, technology/research and combat at once, in compatibility and tension - more than the three a workshop chooses as its basic decision.
Pandemic: survival as the defining pattern - decay and coordination in a feedback loop up to the tipping point.
Agricola: production chain and survival - the family must be fed, and every extension of the chain costs actions that feeding lacks.
Werewolf: democracy/voting - the day’s vote decides who is out, and every vote shifts the next.
Diplomacy: alliance system on territory - alliances pay off until betrayal pays off more.
Chess: a combat system - confrontation and elimination, with no fiction beyond the names of the pieces.

Explanation

When a team says “our game needs an economy”, it makes a decision about an organisational structure: a pattern that gets a whole domain of the game running.

It is more than a collection of mechanisms. A market consists of mechanisms such as conversion, selection and auction - but only their interplay brings forth what makes a market: fluctuating prices, bubbles, a balance of supply and demand. Demand drives prices, prices dampen demand, hoarding makes supply scarce, scarcity drives prices. This cycle is what makes an organisational structure.

The eighteen cards are ordered by six domains: value and scarcity, production and prerequisites, power and decision, space and access, relationship and conflict, life and survival. Choose one to three as your basic decision and then work out the mechanisms in each - one of the most consequential decisions in design.

Usage context

Dimension	Classification
Phase	Ideation (secondary: the direction, often from the desiderata); development (primary: selection, bundling of mechanisms, feedback, parameters, risk profile); evaluation (secondary: analysis, balancing)
Tool type	reference - eighteen cards (ST-01 to ST-18), six separator cards of the ordering domains (KAT-STR-01 to -06), guide cards ST-META-01, ST-META-02 and legend ST-LE-01 (`stacks/corpus/organisational-structure/`)
Position	between the desiderata - too abstract - and the mechanisms - too fine-grained: the bridge between “what should the game achieve?” and “which mechanisms do we need?”

Theoretical foundation

Meadows, Thinking in Systems: reinforcing and balancing feedback, tipping points, leverage points - the vocabulary of feedback.
Dormans, Engineering Emergence: Machinations, formal models with feedback - the most direct precursor and an obvious notation.
Järvinen, Games without Frontiers: mechanics versus game systems - precursor of the distinction between mechanism and organisational structure.
Burgun, Game Design Theory: strategy systems above single mechanics.
Engelstein and Shalev, Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: list economy and combat among the mechanisms - the conflation LUNA resolves.
Alexander, A Pattern Language: patterns at different levels of composition - organisational structures as neighbourhoods, mechanisms as buildings.
Bertalanffy, General System Theory: emergence, hierarchy, openness.

Inner architecture

Three features, all of which must be met, plus the position within one term:

Bringing forth - phenomena of the rule structure that none of the parts shows alone: price bubbles arise from the market, not from conversion alone.
Feedback - at least one loop in which the result of one pass changes the conditions of the next.
Ordering function - it orders the interplay in a whole domain, not a single interaction.

And it stays within regulation (aspect test). Whether a pattern carries a game as an organisational structure or only as a part is a role in the game: exploration and crafting are marked context-dependent on their cards.

Five components describe every organisational structure: (1) ordering domain - what it orders (§11). (2) Mechanisms - core mechanisms without which it is not what it is, and dynamic mechanisms that drive the behaviour. (3) Feedback - reinforcing and dampening loops. (4) Parameters - adjusting screws with spectra: price formation fixed or flexible, market access open or restricted. (5) Risk profile - what the structure tends towards: runaway leader, kingmaking, stagnation. These tendencies follow from the determinations; the event itself happens in play.

Ordering domains

Ordering domain	Enum	Separator	Cards	Guiding question
Value and scarcity	`value`	KAT-STR-01	Market · Banking/Credit · Commons	How does scarcity arise - and how is value assigned?
Production and prerequisites	`production`	KAT-STR-06	Production Chain · Crafting/Recipe · Technology/Research	What presupposes what, and what becomes of what?
Power and decision	`power`	KAT-STR-02	Hierarchy · Democracy/Voting	Who decides - and can it be contested?
Space and access	`space`	KAT-STR-03	Territory · Network/Infrastructure · Exploration	Who controls, connects and opens up places - and how does that change in play?
Relationship and conflict	`relation`	KAT-STR-04	Combat · Alliance · Faction · Reputation/Trust	How are conflicts decided, alliances formed and standing earned?
Life and survival	`subsistence`	KAT-STR-05	Evolution/Adaptation · Ecosystem · Survival	What remains, what grows back, what decays?

The domains are named after their subject. Where one names the same subject as a coordinate structure - space, relationship -, this is no collision but the overlay: the coordinate structure fixes the layout, the pattern orders what happens on it. Production and prerequisites are three patterns, not one - they share the prerequisite graph but not their feedback.

What it is about