If I am.....

.....going to start blogging again I should try and ensure the preview picture that comes up makes more sense then an Odyssey Photo (much as I love that Odyssey photo).


Fortunately I do have drawing of me as the Bishop of Games, the Dice Pope so lets use that.

Action Limitation

I got thinking about action limitation and all the different ways board games limit what you can do because having to choose what to do is what drives making decisions (and good game play involves making informed decisions).

Turn is not quite the right term because sometimes a turn is a subpart of a larger game cycle.  For example, worker placement your turn is placing a worker and taking a single action.  But that is contained within some sort of larger action limitation because at some point the action spaces clear, workers come home, and stuff goes back onto the board.

The term I’m going for is “game cycle” it'll do for now.

Limited Actions: you can do N actions from a list of available actions (where N can be 1) and you will have the same number of actions next game cycle.

Resource Spend – there is a cost in doing something be that spending resources, money, cards, or even exhausting a card.  But if you can pay the cost you can keep doing stuff.

Common actions – picking from a pool of common actions that only one person can do within that game cycle.

Random available actions – what you can do in a turn changes based on some random factor could be rolling dice, drawing out of a bag, and having some cards available.



Push your luck – do stuff until some turn ending event you’d rather avoid happens.

Real time passing – do an action that will take a certain amount of real time and you can’t do something until that time has passed, generally controlled by a sand timer.

 

These seem like major mechanics, but they are often combined together.   But there are also other twists and modifiers that designers use which I don't think quite make it to a major mechanic.

 

For example

 

Sub Turns - for example do a thing(s), and then do another thing(s) a bit later on.  For example Terraforming mars. 

Not all players have the same number of actions – for example Caverna when you get an extra dwarf.

Picking an action does something for other people as well – for example race for the galaxy.

Actions have a sequence – for example Antikes roundel

Drafting your actions – for example Innis.

Making a choice on a card – pick a or b for your self which then gives the other to somebody else – for example fire on the lake.

Limited Repeatability – there is some sort of limited repeatability.

 

To me this covers a lot but I’m sure I’ve missed lots of possible options. 

 

So lets play a game – either suggest a mechanic I’ve missed and I’ll see if I think it’s already covered by the above or suggest a game you don’t think goes into the above structure and I’ll try and work out what I think it would be.......