Ludic Pattern

A Ludic Pattern is a named, fixed configuration of determinations in general form. It belongs to no single game: it travels between games, can therefore be catalogued, and in every game that takes it up it is realised by that game’s own determinations - rules and procedures, ascriptions and a sujet. It aims at an experience; the experience is its aim, not its component.

The Ludic Pattern is the genus of patterns. Its special forms are the Ludic Mechanism and the Ludic Organisational Structure in regulation, the Ludic Argumentum and the Ludic Narrational Structure in fiction. Without a special form, named combinations are its instances, from one term or from several: Worker Placement joins several mechanisms, the faction system joins determinations from regulation and fiction. Which kind a pattern is, is stated by its dimension pattern_kind (§10).

Place and design access

Place on the axis: CORPUS - a game takes patterns into its corpus and realises them there through its determinations. Unlike its special forms, the Ludic Pattern belongs to no single term of the trias: it covers patterns of regulation, of fiction and patterns across both.

Design access: designable - which patterns a game takes up, how it realises them, which it combines or exchanges. Whether players recognise a pattern as such is not designable: pattern legibility follows from the three terms at the pattern.

Relations on the axis:

• CORPUS: four concepts are special forms of the Ludic Pattern - Mechanism, Organisational Structure, Argumentum, Narrational Structure. Each is a pattern and inherits its edges; among the patterns are none, one or many of each special form. A pattern is realised by the game’s determinations - Rule and Procedure realise the Mechanism, the Procedure the Organisational Structure, the Sujet the Narrational Structure. Named combinations consist of determinations and other patterns, from one term or from several.
• FORM: the Ludic Form spans the possibility space in which patterns can be realised.
• AGENT–CORPUS: the Ludic Frame limits which patterns are coherent within it.
• AGENT: realised in a game, patterns order the agents’ room for action and create the dilemmas between which they decide - in the auction: how high to bid, when to drop out. What the agents want, feel and how they decide they do not determine.
• AGENT–PROCESS: patterns aim at Ludic Experience and Ludic Ductus - hub-and-spoke at the rhythm of setting out and returning.
• INTENT: the Ludic Desiderata guide the choice of patterns.

The trias at this concept

A Ludic Pattern lives in one term or in several; which is the case is decided by the aspect test.

Regulation - the patterns of regulation: Mechanism and Organisational Structure, plus named combinations such as Worker Placement or hub-and-spoke. A spatial layout with regulation also stays here, because regulation sets the values of the coordinate structures.

Ascription - the patterns of fiction: Argumentum and Narrational Structure. Their building blocks are Narrems; the narrem itself is not a pattern.

Appearance - Appearance forms no patterns of its own; it does not compose. It enters patterns only through named combinations that join several terms: 2.5D joins a layout in the plane with an appearance that shows depth.

Across the term boundary - Some named combinations constitutively need more than one term; that is why they cannot be a special form: branching narrative joins a narrative framework with decision points of regulation, the faction system joins fixed teams and asymmetric rules with an ascribed identity.

Delimitations

Delimitation from Ludic Procedure

Against the determinations of a game: transferable versus game-specific. The Ludic Procedure is the exact sequence description in this game; it realises a pattern - the auction is realised as one procedure in Modern Art, as another in Ra. Likewise, Rules realise a mechanism as a standing configuration and the Ludic Sujet realises a narrative framework. What holds for only one game is a determination, not a pattern (stack test).

Delimitation from Ludic Activity

Against the Ludic Activity: configuration versus domain. Hunting requires various actions - observing, stalking, shooting - but it is not a fixed configuration of determinations; the activity groups actions by their subject. A pattern is fixed: Worker Placement is in every game placing, priority and the return of the workers at the end of the round.

Delimitation from Ludic Frame

Against the Ludic Frame: realised versus derived. A frame is also named, transferable and catalogued - western, roguelike. But it is an interpretive schema: determinations are derived from it, it is not realised by them. A roguelike suggests permanent death and procedurally generated levels; what achieves this are patterns and determinations, not the frame.

Delimitation from Ludic Narrem

Against the Ludic Narrem: configuration versus unit. The narrem is transferable like a pattern - gold travels from game to game - but it is the content of a single ascription, without inner structure. The Mechanism is atomic too, but in another sense: it is composed of no other pattern, yet structured within. A pattern of fiction composes narrems - the argumentum rescue joins a threatened object, a threat and time that presses.

Examples

• Auction, a Mechanism: price finding through bids - realised differently in Modern Art and Ra.
• Market, an Organisational Structure: supply and price feed back on each other - the resource market in Power Grid makes dearer what many buy.
• Rescue, an Argumentum: Pandemic (humanity from diseases), Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Hyrule from Ganon), Shadow of the Colossus (a loved one).
• Hero’s journey, a Narrational Structure: the sujet of Zelda: Ocarina of Time realises it in fixed temples and cutscenes.
• Worker Placement, a named combination of Placement, Priority and Schedule: Agricola, Viticulture.
• Hub-and-spoke, a named combination of spatial layout and regulation - the hub is safe, the spokes dangerous: Hades, Monster Hunter: World, Destiny 2.
• Branching narrative, a named combination across two terms, of narrative framework and decision points: Mass Effect, Detroit: Become Human.
• Faction system, a named combination across two terms, of fixed teams, asymmetric rules and ascribed identity: StarCraft, Root.
• 2.5D, a named combination across two terms, of a layout in the plane and an appearance with depth: Hollow Knight, Ori and the Blind Forest, Octopath Traveler.

Explanation

A pattern is what you can carry from one game into the next. The auction from Modern Art is also in Ra, saving the world in Pandemic as in Zelda. A pattern has a name, you find it in catalogues, and every game implements it in its own way - with its own rules, its own sequences, its own ascriptions.

Not every name in a catalogue is a pattern. The “English auction” is a setting of the auction - open bidding, rising bids - and therefore a value label. The “grid” only says how the space is laid out. A pattern brings more than values: a fixed configuration that you can design, take apart and exchange. What happens if, in Worker Placement, you replace priority with an auction?

Some patterns live in the rules, some in the fiction, some join both. Branching narrative needs a narrative framework and decisions fixed by the rules. Whoever adopts such a pattern adopts both parts.

Usage context

• Stacks: Mechanisms, organisational structures, argumenta and narrational structures are pattern stacks. Named combinations stand where they are needed - hub-and-spoke in the spatial stack, the faction system in the structures stack; stacks are tools, the classification belongs to the card.
• Classifying external catalogues: whatever the decision ladder carries up to stage 4 is a Ludic Pattern; stage 4 states its kind.
• Design: exchanging and recombining patterns - the design pattern reference breaks patterns down into mechanisms so that one can ask what a variation does.
• Analysis: Which patterns does a game use, and how does it realise them?

Theoretical foundation

• Christopher Alexander et al., A Pattern Language (1977): named, transferable solutions with context and connections - the origin of the pattern concept in design.
• Bernd Kreimeier, “The Case for Game Design Patterns” (2002): the link to games.
• Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen, Patterns in Game Design (2005), and Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev, Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design (2019): the two catalogues against which LUNA tested the pattern level - 480 entries, of which 69 named combinations (2 across several terms), 22 term-internal patterns, 262 value labels.
• Cameron Browne (2021) defines the ludeme as a unit of information that can be transferred between games; Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola, The Rule Book (2024), call the patterns of Björk and Holopainen “essentially abstracted and generalized ludemes”. Both attest the transferable pattern level independently of LUNA.

Subdimensions

pattern_kind - the kind of pattern. Two mutually exclusive values:

• term_internal - term-internal pattern: an instance of one of the four special forms; lives in one term. Auction, market, rescue, hero’s journey.
• named_combination - named combination: several determinations with a name of its own and without a special form, from one term - in regulation without feedback - or from several. Worker Placement, hub-and-spoke, Hidden Movement; across several terms branching narrative, iterative narrative, faction system.

For instances of the special forms the value is always term_internal and is derived; it is set on the direct instances of the Ludic Pattern. Value labels have no value: they are not instances but a value of a pattern’s parameter. What a pattern consists of, and whether it joins several terms, is not stated in the field but as a decomposition on the instance.