Category Archives: Game Mechanics

Game Mechanic: Auction and Bidding

Many games use the auction and bidding mechanic as a way distributing resources in the game. There are many types of auctions that can be employed:

Traditional or English Auction: This is what most people think about when they hear auction. An item is posted for sale in front of a group of potential buyers who make bids and counter-bids out loud until there are no further bids. Then the last bidder “wins” the auction and buys the item at the last bid. There are many variants of this style, but the core issue is that the buyers publicly compete with each other to purchase the item by making ever increasing bids.

Clipboard English Auction: Usually used with charity functions where people contribute various items which are then publicly displayed. Participants then make written bids on a sheet of paper in front of the item. People can increase the bid by writing their name down and making a higher offer. At the end of the auction the highest bid wins.

Sealed Bid Auction: In a sealed bid auction, the name says it all. Bidders make blind secret bids, usually by placing their offer in an envelope, and after a certain amount of time the envelopes are opened, and the winner is announced. Usually no other information is provided.

Dutch Auction: Bidding starts at a very high price, and then the price is reduced until someone accepts the offer. Dutch auctions usually involve multiple units of the same item being sold one at a time.

In most games resources are allocated by either a random factor (drawing a card) or by earning points in some way. Adding an auction might make things interesting particularly if the game involves each player having similar or identical goals. Or perhaps even totally different goals?

Exploding Dice

I just discovered something that I thought was very interesting. The concept/mechanic is EXPLODING DICE. It can work a number of ways. You roll a number of dice and if you roll the target number you roll it again. You can either count the first roll or not.

Example of counting the first roll: You roll 3d6 and on any rolls of 6 you count the roll and then roll those 6s again. This can result in amazingly powerful results. So, you roll a 1, 3, and a 6 for a total of 10. You then re-roll the six and get another 6 for a total of 16. You then re-roll again and get a 4 for a total of 20.

Example of not counting the first roll: You roll 3d6 and on any rolls of 1 or 6 you do not count those die rolls and then roll those dice again. This will remove the outlier effects of extremely low rolls and extremely high rolls. I think it would make the game rather boring, but if you want to remove “strange” outcomes this would be the way to do it. On the other hand you could do something really crazy and remove any rolls of 3 or 4 without counting and then re-roll those dice. This would do the exact opposite creating either extremely high rolls or disastrously low rolls.

Using different types of dice will have an even more profound effect. D4 dice will have a much higher probability of hitting the high number and thus causing a potentially cascading effect of EXPLODING DICE if you use enough D4s. If you roll 5 D4s you should get 1 to 2 4s, but if you get 3 or 4 4s then the re-rolls could continue for some time.

Is it OK to “steal” game rules or mechanics?

There are two components to this question: legal and ethical. I will address the legal issues first, and touch upon the ethical issues so that you guys can comment further.

Legally game rules are NOT protected. What is protected is copyright, trade name, trademark, and possibly design and innovation that can be patented. Rules do not fit into any of these.

Copyright protects the original creative work of an author or other artists. This includes written words, images, and music. Such work cannot be copied or attributed to someone else without permission. However, there are a lot of exceptions to this rule. Fair use is the biggest one. You are allowed to use “brief” excerpts in scholarly works if properly cited. You can parody a work to almost any degree. Music has become more complicated over the last few years, but thankfully game designers do not have to worry about those rules. At least for now. A musician can play any music or song without permission as long as it is a live performance and no recording is being sold. The same is the case for book readings.

A rough non-legal rule is that as long as you are not just wholly copying the work, and providing proper citation, it should be fine. If you take a set of rules and use the exact same mechanics, but you do not copy the text, images, trade name, or trademark then there is no violation, you do not need any permission, and you do not have to provide any attribution.

Trade name and Trademark should be fairly easy to understand. Do not use other people’s names or logos without their permission. But what if the names and logos have become part of the Public Domain like chess or checkers? Then it is open season.

Patent is another issue:

A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state or intergovernmental organization to an inventor or assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for detailed public disclosure of an invention. An invention is a solution to a specific technological problem and is a product or a process.

Wikipedia

I am not really sure how a set of rules or a rule mechanic could become a patentable technology or process, but the courts have been recognizing “process” patents that would never have been granted before: Priceline was granted patent protection for its use of the age old Dutch-auction system in its online system.

In conclusion, as of today, game rules are not protected. Game text, images, trade names, and trademarks are protected unless they have become part of the Public Domain.

Ethical Considerations

No one wants to be a jerk. At least most of us do not want to be a jerk. Also, it might be bad for your sales if people think you are just “stealing” the work of a beloved and respected founder of the gaming community.

However, for me there is a difference to “hacking” a game and “stealing” it. One of my favorite games is De Bellis Antiquitatus. This game was designed in the 1990s as one of the first “fast play” wargames. It provided a very short yet compelling, if somewhat abstract, set of rules for ancient battles. I took the rules and changed them for the age of muskets. When I was finished I had created a very different game built upon the foundation of DBA. This practice is so common that I think it is silly to discourage it.

On the other hand, what if a set of rules goes out of print, and you want to recreate it word for word with full attribution to the author? That would be a violation of copyright law unless you obtained prior permission, and most authors will not agree to this since they are hoping someone will pay them to put it back into print, or they are working on a revised edition and they do not want the old version competing with their new version. So you cannot just reprint something even if it is out of print. Very irritating if you ask me. Ironically, you CAN “hack” a similar set of rules that work just the same, uses the same game mechanics, but is not an outright copy of the rules. Many people have done this with D&D.

I had an idea on how to not only hack ‘Hordes of the Things, 2nd Edition’ (which is essentially out of print right now), but also add extra content in order to create a more comprehensive game system with lots of neophyte friendly pictures, diagrams, and explanations on how to not only play the game but to also create and paint your armies. I was going to name it ‘Multitudes of Monsters and Mages’, but the HOTT community reacted so negatively to this that I decided to stop. Oddly enough the author was more than happy to see me do this, and offered to help but would not officially approve the project. Now the game is being distributed by “illegal” photocopies and PDFs.