New Project: Mulling Mechanics
Ok, so I haven't written anything in a while, and though I seem incapable of writing anything particularly personal in this forum, I rather miss writing about various games and mechanics. So, new project. I realized not all that long ago that a game's appeal to me lies far more in its mechanics than its theme. I was also thinking that my game collection is too big, and one way I could think about shrinking it would be to get rid of games that had overly-overlapping mechanics. With that in mind, I wandered over to boardgamegeek.com, which handily organizes games by mechanic. 47 different mechanics, to be precise. So I'm going to take a look at each mechanic in turn, alphabetically, working (at least until I get bored) from Acting through Worker Placement.
So first let's take a look at some popular games, and how they're defined mechanically, just to get a feel for the concept.
Apples to Apples in categorized as: Hand Management and Simultaneous Action Selection.
Risk: Area Control / Area Influence, Area Movement, Dice Rolling, Set Collection.
Scrabble is: Hand Management, Tile Placement.
Settlers of Catan falls under: Dice Rolling, Hand Management, Modular Board, Route/Network Building, and Trading.
So we're not talking about theme here (e.g. World War II, Zombies, Pirates) and, more subtly, we're not talking about category (e.g. kid's, word, memory, real-time). Well, not “more subtly” at all. Boardgamegeek has actually made a completely arbitrary distinction between “category” and “mechanic.” Why, for example, is “bluffing” a category, but “bidding/wagering” a mechanic? Does not the one necessitate the other? So with that in mind, once I finish talking about mechanics, I'll probably go back and cover the more mechanic-like “categories.” (I.e deduction, but not fantasy).
So first let's take a look at some popular games, and how they're defined mechanically, just to get a feel for the concept.
Apples to Apples in categorized as: Hand Management and Simultaneous Action Selection.
Risk: Area Control / Area Influence, Area Movement, Dice Rolling, Set Collection.
Scrabble is: Hand Management, Tile Placement.
Settlers of Catan falls under: Dice Rolling, Hand Management, Modular Board, Route/Network Building, and Trading.
So we're not talking about theme here (e.g. World War II, Zombies, Pirates) and, more subtly, we're not talking about category (e.g. kid's, word, memory, real-time). Well, not “more subtly” at all. Boardgamegeek has actually made a completely arbitrary distinction between “category” and “mechanic.” Why, for example, is “bluffing” a category, but “bidding/wagering” a mechanic? Does not the one necessitate the other? So with that in mind, once I finish talking about mechanics, I'll probably go back and cover the more mechanic-like “categories.” (I.e deduction, but not fantasy).