Ludic Regulation

Ludic Regulation is a regulating determination: it permits, constrains or conditions. The knight moves in an L, the pawn captures diagonally, the hand limit is seven, whoever laughs is out. Its question is: How is it regulated?

It determines in two forms. As a determination of a value, the Ludic Specification sets a parameter: the board has 8 × 8 squares, a half lasts 45 minutes. As a rule, the Ludic Rule links: if this constellation is present, this effect occurs. Balancing means changing specifications; redesign means changing rules.

As a mass term, the regulation of a game is the totality of its regulating determinations; the term has no countable single item. Scope and density lie on a continuum - from free children’s play, in which regulation as a whole is at the zero point, to the tournament with a referee. At a single element it has no zero point: every element is at least specified.

What it is not. It is not the function - what an element effects results from the regulation and is derived. It does not constitute the process; the agents do that by framing what happens as play. Regulation organises it. And a rule is not a bearer: it does not appear and carries no ascription. Its mediation can appear - in the rule text, on the card, on the screen.

In everyday language

• “mechanic” (largely): “The mechanics” of a game as a whole. 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” (largely): “The rules” of a game as a whole. 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 - Ludic Regulation is a determination of the corpus: one of the three ways in which the corpus determines at its bearers, alongside appearance and ascription.

Design access: designable - regulation is constructed, not drawn: rule by rule, value by value. With it, designers regulate the agents’ action space; the agents themselves are addressable, not controllable.

Relations on the axis:

• CORPUS: regulation is part of the Ludic Corpus and determines at the bearers - at entities, actions, operations and the places of the coordinate structures (§11). Every bearer is at least specified. A determination can adhere to several bearers, for a rule links a constellation; meta-regulation adheres to none. Ludic Rule, Ludic Specification, Ludic Procedure and Ludic Objective are its subtypes: regulation in the form of the rule, of the determination of a value, of the sequence, with terminal scope. The patterns - Ludic Mechanism, Ludic Organisational Structure - belong to it without being determinations themselves; rules and procedures realise them (§10). It spans the space of possibilities of the Ludic Activities: which ones a game offers and when an agent can pursue them. It corresponds with Ludic Appearance and Ludic Fiction at the joints (§4).
• FORM: the form spans which regulation can be realised and conditions which controlling instances come into question - the algorithm in a digital game, the chess clock at the board, agents at the table, in sport and in role-play. Some rules need no one to control them because the material makes breaking them impossible: the disc in Connect Four drops down.
• PROCESS: regulation organises the process without constituting it. It holds in phases - initial, ongoing, terminal. In legacy games agents change it during the match, as far as their Sovereignty reaches: a rule changes permanently. The process itself does not change it.
• AGENT: regulation addresses the agents and regulates their action space: what is permitted to them, what is forbidden and under which conditions something is possible. What they want, feel and how they decide, it does not determine. Whether they comply with the rules is checked not by regulation itself but by a controlling instance, and that is variable - another agent (the referee, the game master, the fellow players), a machine (the chess clock) or an algorithm. It controls compliance, not the agents. Whether a rule takes hold with the agents is constrained by Capacitas - whether it is understood - and Habitus - whether it is accepted.
• AGENT–CORPUS: it corresponds with Ludic Sovereignty: which determinations are changeable is stated by regulation itself - its reflexive object, meta-regulation -, who may change them, by sovereignty.
• AGENT–PROCESS: regulation contributes to the Ludic Ductus - on the game’s side - and to the Ludic Experience and spans the possibility space of the Ludic Fabula: it determines what can happen, not what happens.
• INTENT: the Ludic Desiderata inform the construction of regulation.

The trias at this concept

Ludic Regulation is itself a term of the triad. This section states how it borders on the other two and on itself.

Appearance - does the appearance show what the element does? Spikes look sharp and hurt; the invisible block becomes a trap; the knight piece shows a horse, not the move. A rule itself does not appear; whoever designs its rule text has designed the presentation, not the rule.

Ascription - does the regulation fulfil what is ascribed? What counts as gold should be scarce. In Monopoly the jail is the safest place late in the game - a rift that discourse calls ludonarrative dissonance. A rule carries no ascription: whoever calls a constraint a “curse” ascribes something to the element or its state.

Regulation - regulation has a reflexive object: itself. Meta-regulation determines which rules are changeable under which conditions - house rules allowed? variants agreed? Reflexivity holds at depth 1; rules about meta-regulation are not considered.

Delimitations

Delimitation from Ludic Process

Against the Ludic Process: organising and constituting. The process is what happens itself; without it there is no game. What happens becomes play because at least one agent frames it so - explicitly or by convention. Regulation structures and limits what then happens, but it does not make it play: free children’s play is a process whose regulation is at the zero point.

Delimitation from Ludic Sovereignty

Against Ludic Sovereignty: changeability and authority. That a rule is changeable is determined by regulation - in its meta-regulation. Who may change it is stated by sovereignty. The two are not the same: a game can provide for house rules without giving a particular person the authority, and a game master can have authority over rules the game does not mark as changeable.

Delimitation from Ludic Frame

Against the Ludic Frame: regulating and reading. Regulation determines what holds and what happens. The frame determines nothing; it leads one to expect what will hold. “Farm” leads one to expect cycles - which seasons there are and what they bring about is determined by regulation.

Delimitation from Ludic Narrem

Against the Ludic Narrem: how something is regulated and what it counts as. Regulation determines how something is regulated; the narrem is what something counts as. The two meet at the bearer, not at each other: the cube is a counter and counts as gold. A rule carries no narrem, for it is not a bearer - whoever calls a constraint a “curse” ascribes something to the cursed figure, not to the rule. Whether the regulation fulfils what the narrem leads one to expect - gold should be scarce - is the joint with fiction (§4).

Examples

“No laughing” - a minimal game, and yet with regulation in all three modes and all phases:

	funmaker in the middle	those in the circle
permitting	may pull faces, make gestures and noises	may watch
constraining	must stay on the chair, may touch no one	may not laugh
conditioning	whoever has made everyone laugh wins	whoever laughs is out
specification	one person	everyone else
scope	initial: one person becomes funmaker; terminal: the circle is empty
reflexive	variants negotiable: does smiling count?

• Chess: the board has 8 × 8 squares (specification), the knight moves in an L (rule). The knight’s L is identity-bearing: whoever changes it plays a different game.
• Monopoly: the starting capital is a specification. House rules often change it - balancing by the players, with the authority the group gives them.
• Digital games: a patch lowers a weapon’s damage from 50 to 45 - balancing. A patch gives it a new ability - redesign.
• Controlling instances: in Werewolf the game master controls, in chess the clock controls thinking time, in a digital game the algorithm. In Connect Four no control is needed: the disc drops down.

Explanation

When we hear “game rules”, we think of rulebooks. Ludic Regulation covers more: everything in a game that is permitted, constrained or conditioned - from the hand limit to the question of whether the rules themselves may be changed. It determines what players may do, what is forbidden, when something changes, who knows what, and how the game begins and ends.

It consists of two kinds of determinations: values - seven cards, 45 minutes, 8 × 8 squares - and rules - if this, then that. Changing values means balancing a game; changing rules means rebuilding it. Recognisable patterns such as the auction are turned into rules, and several patterns with feedback form whole systems such as markets and combat systems. How much regulation your game needs is itself a decision: free children’s play gets by with almost none, an e-sports tournament does not.

Usage context

• Phase: mainly development, the construction of regulation; in ideation the direction (cooperative or competitive? turn-based or real-time?); in evaluation balancing - adjusting the specifications.
• Tools: no single stack, because atomic determinations are game-specific. What is transferable has stacks: the patterns - Mechanisms, Structures - and the kinds of Objectives; in addition the information architecture of the analogue form and meta-regulation.
• Formalisation: regulation is the only area that can be captured fully formally - pseudocode, state machines - and thus the link to implementation.

Theoretical foundation

• John R. Searle, Speech Acts (1969): constitutive rules create the possibility of an activity - chess exists only through its rules -, regulative rules order an activity that already exists. Ludic Regulation covers both.
• Katie Salen, Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play (2003): three kinds of rules - constituative rules, the formal core beneath the game; operational rules, the rules as the rulebook states them and players follow them; implicit rules, the unwritten rules of etiquette. In LUNA the core corresponds to Ludic Regulation, the operational version to its communication; the unwritten rules are a convention of the agents, not a determination of the corpus.
• On the reference term ludeme, not a concept in LUNA: Berloquin and Borvo coin it as the smallest meaning-bearing game unit; David Parlett, The Oxford History of Board Games (1999), uses it for comparison and genealogy; Cameron Browne (Ludii) as a composable primitive of a description language. The two readings do not coincide - one reason not to keep the term as a concept. In LUNA the question of identity is carried by the marker identity-bearing (§10).

Composition

Two forms of determination. A determination of a value occupies a place - this bearer has this value on this dimension: the Ludic Specification. A rule links - if this constellation is present, this effect occurs: the Ludic Rule. Questions of value can be generated from bearer × term; questions of rules cannot, because they depend on constellations. This is why rule design cannot be done by filling in.

Regulation composes through conditional chaining, on two axes, not in one chain:

	transferable (pattern)	game-specific (realisation)
composed	Ludic Organisational Structure - a market, a combat system; through feedback	Ludic Procedure - the sequence of this game; through order
atomic	Ludic Mechanism - auction, placement	Ludic Rule and Ludic Specification

Realisation runs horizontally: a mechanism becomes a procedure or a standing configuration of rules; an organisational structure becomes a configuration of procedures and rules. Only the patterns are transferable and hence catalogable; rules and specifications hold for one game. The right-hand column is regulation in a particular form, its concepts are subtypes of regulation; the left-hand column belongs to regulation without being a determination itself. Several mechanisms without feedback form a named combination: worker placement is placement, priority and schedule.

Identity-bearing is a marker, not a term: determinations whose change would yield a different game - the knight’s L, offside. The marker holds per game and can attach to a rule, a mechanism or a structure.

Coordinates

• Mode, the axis of its own: permitting (permissions), constraining (constraints), conditioning (conditions). The mode test: X is a mode exactly when permitting, constraining and conditioning cannot again be distinguished within X - otherwise X is an object or a scope. In design the mode is chosen; in analysis it follows from the determination.
• Form: determination of a value (specification) or rule (rule), §10.
• Object: the bearers - Entity (hand limit), Action (the pawn moves one square), the places of the coordinate structures (half-time and chess clock in the temporal, pitch size in the spatial, roles and teams in the social, hidden cards in the view structure) and the Operation (touch-move). Reflexive: regulation itself, meta-regulation. The eleven objects of version 2.3 are contained in this.
• Scope: initial (setup, starting position), ongoing (the move rules), terminal (end condition, scoring).
• Coherence mode: at the joint with fiction - congruent, contrastive, open (§4).

Six guiding questions - a workshop instrument, across the coordinates: What is permitted? What is forbidden or limited? When does what happen? (the three modes) · Who knows what? (the View Structure) · Can the rules be changed? (meta-regulation) · How does it begin, and how does it end? (the scope).

Properties

• Constructed, not drawn: frames, motivations and situations give impulses; regulation is built systematically. Tools for it are construction tools, not impulse cards.
• Regulation regulates; it does not control itself: whether a rule is complied with is checked by a controlling instance - another agent, a machine, an algorithm. Where an algorithm controls, the formalisation is the rule itself; where the referee, the group or the chess clock controls, it is a model of the rule. Some rules need no control because the material makes breaking them impossible. Which controlling instances come into question is conditioned by the Ludic Form.
• Density as a continuum: from minimal regulation - few explicit rules, much negotiation, high Ludic Sovereignty - to maximal - a comprehensive rule set, fixed procedures, low sovereignty.