Ludic Procedure

A Ludic Procedure brings rules into the order of this game: first this, then that. The turn sequence of a round - draw a card, take an action, draw up -, the dice check of a role-playing game, the course of a night in Werewolf.

It is composed through order; a single rule has none. Its steps lie on the places of the Temporal Structure. It has a precondition - when does the sequence begin? -, a postcondition - how do you know it is finished? - and is reproducible: under the same conditions, the roll of the dice included, it yields the same result.

In the pattern order it stands composed and game-specific. It realises a Ludic Mechanism - the auction becomes this game’s bidding sequence. Not every mechanism needs a procedure; some are realised as a standing configuration of rules. Together with rules and other procedures it also realises an Organisational Structure: the bidding round and the price adjustment at the end of the round make up this game’s market. And not every procedure realises a catalogued pattern: a game’s turn sequence is often only its own.

What it is not. It is not a pattern: mechanism and Organisational Structure are transferable, the procedure holds for one game. It is not feedback: an organisational structure bundles mechanisms into a web of effects, a procedure orders steps. And it is not the process: the procedure is determined, the process is what happens in a match.

In everyday language

• “mechanic” (the term is narrower): a sequence (“draw, then place”). 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.
• “rule” (the term is narrower): a sequence (“roll, then move”). Does not distinguish specification from rule: changing a value is balancing, changing a link is redesign; nor the single rule from the sequence. The term Ludic Rule reads like the everyday word in English; the prefix keeps the two apart.

Place and design access

Place on the axis: CORPUS - the procedure is a determination of the corpus, the composed realisation in its regulation. In the pattern order it stands composed and game-specific; its transferable counterparts are the mechanism and the organisational structure.

Design access: designable - designers set the order, step by step.

Relations on the axis:

• CORPUS: the procedure is a special form of Ludic Regulation - regulation in the form of the sequence - and inherits its edges: it determines at the bearers, at entities, actions, operations and the places of the coordinate structures. Not every game has one; minimally regulated games have rules but no procedure. It consists of at least one rule; the same rule can stand in several procedures or in none. Procedures realise mechanisms and organisational structures - one procedure none, one or several: the day in Werewolf realises voting and elimination at once. Its counterpart on the side of fiction is the Ludic Sujet, ascriptions in the order of this game; the two interlock where a step of the procedure triggers a place of the sujet.
• FORM: the form spans the space of possibilities of procedures - which can be realised and who carries them out and monitors them: the algorithm in a digital game, the players at the table, often with a player aid, the game master in Werewolf.
• PROCESS: in the process the procedure is run through; its steps lie on the Temporal Structure.
• AGENT: procedures regulate the action space of agents in sequence - who may and must do what and when - and carry out what follows from their actions: after the roll comes the distribution of resources. What the agents want, feel and how they decide, procedures do not determine.

The trias at this concept

Regulation - the procedure is regulation: rules in order.

Appearance - a procedure is not a bearer. Its steps can appear at the bearers - the clatter of the dice, the turning of the card - and so can its mediation: the player aid, the flow chart.

Ascription - it has none of its own. Ascriptions attach to the places on which its steps lie: the phase counts as night, the step as harvest.

Delimitations

Delimitation from Ludic Rule

Against the Ludic Rule: in sequence and single. A rule has no order; the procedure is their order. The telltale sign is “first …, then …”: where a rule says it, it is a procedure.

Delimitation from Ludic Mechanism

Against the Ludic Mechanism: realisation and pattern. The auction is a pattern; how bidding goes in Modern Art - openly in turn, sealed with one bid, at a fixed price - are different procedures realising the same pattern. In case of doubt, context-freedom decides: what travels between games is a mechanism; what runs this way only in this game is a procedure.

Delimitation from Ludic Process

Against the Ludic Process: determined and happening. The procedure stands in the corpus before anyone plays. The process is what happens in a match - including what no procedure provides for: the negotiation at the table, the break, the argument about a rule.

Examples

• Board games: the turn sequence of a round - choose an action, carry it out, draw up, pass on.
• Pen-and-paper role-play: the dice check - determine the dice pool, roll, apply modifiers, compare with the target number, apply consequences.
• Modern Art: five kinds of auction, each a procedure of its own for the same pattern.
• Catan: after the roll, the distribution of resources, hex by hex.
• Werewolf: the night - the werewolves wake and choose, the seer wakes and checks, morning breaks.

Explanation

Some rules are not single “if-then” sentences but whole sequences: first this, then that, then the other. These are Ludic Procedures. The dice check, the turn sequence, the night in Werewolf - all procedures.

Watch for clear beginnings and ends: when does the sequence begin, and how do you know it is finished? And when a sequence implements a known pattern - an auction, a vote -, it pays to look into the Mechanisms stack: it shows which adjustable parameters the pattern has. To get started: write your favourite game’s turn as numbered steps.

Usage context

• Phase: mainly development.
• Tools: no stack, because procedures are game-specific. They are noted as numbered step sequences in the regulations worksheet (planned) and for the players on player aids. How nested procedures are noted is open.

Theoretical foundation

• Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games (2007): procedural rhetoric - meaning also arises through procedures, not only through content.
• Katie Salen, Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play (2003): rules as procedural systems; the sequence of play.