A game mechanic is a set of rules that can be grouped in a useful way to give a shorthand label communicating what kind of game one is playing. For example, Hearts and Bridge are both trick-taking games. Knowing this tells you quite a bit about these games; they probably use a standardized deck, there is a trump, memory and strategy will be important.

While any sort of game might be classified by its mechanics, the area that I am most familiar with, and one of the areas most likely to use the term 'game mechanics', is the field of board games and dedicated deck card games. Because these games are somewhat complicated and are generally based on a long tradition of earlier games, most of these will use multiple mechanics. The following list is not complete, but does cover some of the more common mechanics.

Area Control: Also known as Area Influence, in these games players compete to control as much of the board as possible. The classic games here are Monopoly and Risk, and there are no shortage of newer board games building off of this mechanic: Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, Small World, Eight-Minute Empire, El Grande, and dozens, if not hundreds, of others.

Bidding: Auction/Bidding games put resources up for auction, and players bid on them. Despite this being a simple and very familiar mechanic, it is an excellent way to allocate resources, and allows for more strategy than random draw. Games that use this mechanic include 504, Cuba, Power Grid, 1830: Railways & Robber Barons, and Biblios. Compare to Drafting.

Bluffing: A major component of the game involves lying and getting away with it. This has a lot of overlap with the vague category of Party Games, as they are most fun in large, loud, and possibly slightly drunk groups. This includes games such as The Resistance, The Resistance: Avalon, Love Letter, and Ultimate Werewolf. More complex (less compatible with drinking) games do exist, including any of the Cooperative games involving traitors and Sheriff of Nottingham.

City building: Players build and manage city or other system, and compete to out-perform competitors. The classic computer game SimCity is naturally one of these, as are board games such as Machi Koro, Puerto Rico, and 504. Games such as Ticket to Ride are closely related, but may be referred to as Route/Network Building.

Cooperative: Games in which players work together to find a winning scenario; either everyone wins or loses as a team (Pandemic, Forbidden Island, and Flash Point: Fire Rescue), or the majority of players fight against a traitor (Betrayal at House on the Hill, Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game, Letters from Whitechapel, and Shadows over Camelot).

Deck Building: Players all buy cards from a central stock to build personal decks. This includes Dominion, Ascension, and Star Realms. Dice Masters may be played in a deck-building format, although that might technically be dice building.

Deduction: Games that require you to make intelligent guesses with limited information. This may include any Bluffing game, but also includes more logic-based games such as the classic Clue, and modern games such as Letters from Whitechapel, BANG!, and Shadow Hunters.

Drafting: Players take turns choosing from the available resources. This is most common in card games in which sets of cards are passed around the table, each player choosing one and passing the deck on. This is also commonly used in tournaments of collectible card games such as Magic: The Gathering. Games such as 7 Wonders, Biblios, and Ticket to Ride use this mechanic.

Hand Management: The game involves cards, and the order in which you play the cards is a major factor. (Cards are not actually mandatory; perhaps the exemplar of this mechanic is Scrabble). Nearly any Deck Builder will use this mechanic (I have never seen one that does not). It would also include Magic: The Gathering, Bohnanza, and Munchkin.

Player Elimination: Any game where players might be eliminated before the games ends. Some games have this as a central feature, so that eliminating your opponents is the only way to win (Risk, Monopoly, Tsuro, Star Realms). Other games have it as a possibility, but not a requirement (Betrayal at House on the Hill, King of Tokyo, and Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game). Bluffing games sames such as Ultimate Werewolf and Love Letter often have this mechanic as an element.

Route/Network Building: Players compete to build the biggest network. Games like Ticket to Ride, Railways of the World, and 1830: Railways & Robber Barons have made railways the stereotypical route builder. Other games using this mechanic include Power Grid, Hansa Teutonica, and Samarkand: Routes to Riches. While network builders tend to be more complex games, there are some simple, quick games, including Tsuro and TransAmerica.

Set Collection: Players collect sets, usually of cards. In board gaming terminology, sets and runs would generally both be grouped under this mechanic. As this is a familiar mechanic from any card game ever, it is not surprising that many games use it; games such as Pandemic, Settlers of Catan, and 7 Wonders employ it as an aspect of play, and there are games that are based primarily around this mechanic, such as Arboretum and Splendor.

Worker Placement: Each player gets a certain number of workers and a certain number of tasks they can allot them to. Since players are usually choosing from the same pool of possible actions in rotation and resetting at the beginning of each round, this is sometimes called 'action drafting'. This is one of the more common game mechanics, and is used by a number of popular games: Agricola, Caylus, The Pillars of the Earth, The Manhattan Project, Lords of Waterdeep, Cuba... and the list goes on.

A complete list of gaming mechanics is probably not possible, and I have not attempted to make an exhaustive list. Wikipedia has a much more complete game mechanics page, which takes the time to actually break down the mechanics of different turn taking schemes and carefully specifies that dice are a mechanic for inducing randomness. Boardgaming.com lists mechanics such as 'singing' and 'spelling'. I hope that I have given a useful overview here, but if I have forgotten your favorite game mechanic let me know and I will consider adding it.

Basic video game mechanics are covered in the video game genres node.







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What called Hapy here? Where is it?”



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“There is to me, father.”



“That’s good.”

I turned to him, surprised. “Why good?”


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“You can, but will you?”

I reached out and took the card.


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