Howdy All,
I've been tasked with creating a list, "as complete as reasonably possible with no more than a couple of hour's thought," of popular game mechanics for board and card games. I've been given a seed list to start, and I've scarfed the list from BoardGame Geek (both included at the end of this post). There's also a web tool that automatically generates board game design challenges that I'll try to find again.
Can y'all help me out, either by pointing me at a list or essay, or by offering additional mechanics? Cast as wide a field as you wish to. More is better than less.
Thanks! I sincerely appreciate it. I'll check back again in about six hours.
Jonathan
The Seed List:
Push-your-luck
Combo building (poker, Yahtzee)
Piece capture by replacement
Piece capture by surrounding
Piece capture by jumping
Roll-and-move
Simultaneous play
Real-time play
Trick taking
Tile laying
Roleplaying / individual victory conditions (these are probably actually separate mechanics)
Matching high dice (as in Risk combat)
Rock-paper-scissors
Point attrition (as in MTG or Cthulhu Dice - this probably has a formal name but I don't know it)
Target score
Die-roll result table (which has some specific cases like CRTs which it might be worthwhile to enumerate)
Auction
Rules-writing (as in Nomic)
Tech tree, as in Civilization/RTS (the concept of improved powers and abilities was introduced along with the tech tree, but are the two inseparable?)
Last man standing
Catch-up mechanics
Leader-favoring mechanics
The BGG List:
Acting
Action Point Allowance System
Area Control / Area Influence
Area Enclosure
Area Movement
Area-Impulse
Auction/Bidding
Betting/Wagering
Campaign/Battle Card Driven
Card Drafting
Chit-Pull System
Co-operative Play
Commodity Speculation
Crayon Rail System
Dice Rolling
Hand Management
Hex-and-Counter
Line Drawing
Memory
Modular Board
Paper-and-Pencil
Partnerships
Pattern Building
Pattern Recognition
Pick-up and Deliver
Point to Point Movement
Rock-Paper-Scissors
Role Playing
Roll and Move
Route/Network Building
Secret Unit Deployment
Set Collection
Simulation
Simultaneous Action Selection
Singing
Stock Holding
Storytelling
Tile Placement
Trading
Trick-taking
Variable Phase Order
Variable Player Powers
Voting
Worker Placement
Thanks for the input, Pastor_Mora. I've accumulated a few other resources and I'll put them here later today, or perhaps tomorrow.
Later on, when I have time, I hope to use the information I've gathered to flesh out the Game Mechanics section of the BGDF.