Quick update before we get started. Tumulus 07 “Slay the dragon.” has arrived from the printer and will be shipping out soon. If you are a subscriber, watch for a shipping notification in the next week or so. A limited number of Tumulus 06 “Hammer a nail in the coffin” copies are now available as back issues. Grab one before they are gone.

And now, let’s collect food, adopt some stray cats, and maybe dress them in adorable frog costumes. Cat Lady by Josh Wood will teach us why bundling options creates interesting decisions for players.

Cat Lady

In Cat Lady (Wood, 2017), you are a cat lady. This makes you (as the game points out) part of “an elite group of people including Marie Antoinette and Ernest Hemingway.”1

It is a card drafting and set collection game. The main market (card display) is always 9 cards arranged in a 3x3 grid. Cards consist of food (chicken, tuna, and milk), costumes, catnip, toys, lost cats, and spray bottles. There is also a secondary market of 3 stray cats.

Players take turns drafting cards from the grid until an empty row or column needs to be refilled and there are no cards remaining in the deck.

At the end of the game, all cards are added up.

Cat cards must be fed the food specified on their cards (e.g. Bronte requires 2 tuna). If you’ve adopted a cat that can’t be fed, you lose 2 VP for each unfed cat.

The player with the most costume cards gains 6 VP and those who do not have at least one costume card lose 2 VP. Catnip cards award extra VP for fully fed cats, but only if you have more than 1 catnip card. Toy cards award points based on how many different toys you have.

After all of this is calculated, the player with the most VP wins.2

Grid-based drafting system

It’s the 3x3 grid-based drafting system that I think we can learn from the most in Cat Lady. It uses an exceptionally simple system to create interesting choices:

1. You must take an entire row or column of three cards on your turn.

2. You may not take the row or column that currently has the cat token.

3. At the end of your turn, place the cat next to the row/column you just took.

In the photo above, for example, you could draft the Tuna, Chicken, Frog Costume from the top row or the Tuna, Cooper, Catnip from the first column. You could not, however, draft the Cooper, Yarn Ball, Lost Cat from the second row because the cat token is currently blocking it. After selecting a row or column, you’d move the cat token so the next player couldn’t select the same row or column you just did.3

The decision space for any player during their turn is small. There are 3 rows and 3 columns and one is always blocked by the cat — 5 total options.

It’s a solid system that prevents grabbing the same row or column twice, but what makes it a tough decision is the bundling of options.

You can never take just one card. You get three cards whether you want them or not.

Just one more cat… oh no.

You are choosing a package of items on your turn, not just a single card. Each bundle may contain cards with positive value, some with negative, and some that require future actions.

For example, LeVar Purrton requires 1 tuna and 1 chicken to be fed. You could grab the first column in the photo to gain 2 tuna, but you’d also adopt Cooper who will need 1 chicken for himself. You’ll need more food for this new cat. You’d also gain a catnip which is worth negative VP if you don’t get more catnip cards before the game ends.

You could, instead, grab the top row. You’d get 2 tuna and 2 chicken and also a frog costume. That’s good, but having the most leftover food at the end of the game will lose you 2 VP. You’ll need to get some more cats if you take that bundle.

In practice, this game works like a never ending seesaw of cats and food. You don’t have enough food so you draft food cards, but then you have too much food. You pick up a cat, but end up with two and maybe some extra food you don’t need. Now you’ll need more food, which results in more cats, which results in more food. Meanwhile the end of the game is quickly approaching.

You get this, but also that.

I think what makes Cat Lady special is that you can never get what you want in isolation. You can usually pick up the can of tuna or chicken leg you need. You can often snag a costume or two. Each time you take these items, however, you’ll also get things you don’t want. This avoids a game design where you simply grab the most valuable item. Instead, you must evaluate packages which (as we saw with the fair cake cutting in Pacts) is a frustratingly difficult task at times.

In some ways, I think this an important design concept in TTRPGs as well.

If the party has a selection of simple quests to choose from, they will simply pick the one with the highest value item at the end of it. If the quests are bundles of outcomes, however, it becomes increasingly hard to evaluate them. Once they each have positive, negative, and questionable value tied to them, it is a tough choice indeed.

Perhaps you can accept the quest and retrieve a powerful artifact that will come in handy later, but it will also cause a faction to become hostile. The artifact is the only way to defeat a Big Bad Evil Monster later, but will also result in a curse. Killing the monster will also result in something awful — plague or famine.

The best bundles, in my opinion, are those where you get an immediate benefit (e.g. the can of tuna you need right now) but at a future cost (e.g. one more cat you’ll need to feed before the end of the game).

To put it another way, each quest option needs three outcomes at the same time:

1. Positive value: Gaining a powerful item, defeating something evil, wealth, fame

2. Negative value: A curse, a new threat, a major setback, permanent wounds

3. Debt (future cost): A loan to be paid back, a timebomb that must be defused

This bundling is made explicit (and abstract) in Cat Lady, but can be thematically integrated into TTRPG quests.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Constraints not more options: Cat Lady creates interesting choices for players not by adding more and more options, but by constraining the few options given. Only 6 options and 1 is locked out each turn.

• Bundle the options: Players can often (though not always) take the card they want or need, but it always comes with cards they don’t want. It’s a very rare draft in the game to get three cards of equal value.

• Immediate benefit at future cost: A particularly interesting framing is when players can get exactly what they need right now, but force themselves into VP debt for the future. Picking up two more cats now doesn’t seem bad until the game is about to end and you still need to feed them.

What do you think? Where have you seen bundling of options (e.g. quests, rewards, items, draft choices, etc.) in games?

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

As we wait for Tumulus 07 “Slay the dragon.” to arrive from the printer this week, let’s explore a dice pool mechanism.1 Encounters: BattleTech uses a (mostly) 6d6 dice pool and some push-your-luck to allow players to be mercenary commanders completing dangerous contracts for the Great Houses.

Encounters: BattleTech

Reimplementing the same system used for Encounters: Shadowrun (Bills & Knudson, 2016), Encounters: BattleTech (Kirtley & Knudson, 2024) adapts the system from cyberpunk to battle mechs.2 The backstory is filled with the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere, as one would expect from the venerable BattleTeach franchise.3

In this game you are one of the mercenary commander executing contracts for the Great Houses. Each one is a chance to earn some C-bills (money) to buy upgrades for your mech. Earn enough reputation and you win the game.

That’s the theme. Mechanically, the game is a dice-based push-your-luck game. Each player takes a Combat Command card to get started. The cards define which dice colors will be used by that player and provides a unique variable player power (e.g. “The first equipment card you buy each turn costs 1 fewer C-bill.”).

On a player’s turn, they select a contract card that has a stated reward and also some special effects. The player can then attempt to complete the contract by defeating encounters. Encounters are drawn from a separate deck and a number called the Encounter Value (EV). That’s the target number required to defeat the encounter.

As the player proceeds, they can either keep defeating encounters or they can decide to quit. If they quit, they retain the C-bills earned (allowing the purchase of better equipment), but get no Reputation (victory points to win the game). If they make it to the end, using all their dice, they get both C-bills and Reputation.

There’s a surprising amount going on in this small-box game, so I won’t attempt a full rules explanation. Instead, I’d like to focus on the method used to defeat the encounters.

Defeating encounters

You begin your turn with dice from the dice pool as defined on your Commander Card. This is always 6 six-sided dice (6d6) with one of the dice being a different color (yellow, blue, green, or black). Then you roll all your dice.

Each encounter has a target number on it between 1 and 13. To defeat the card, you need to place dice on it that add up to exactly the target number. If the target is 12, you could place: 4+3+3+2 or 6+6 or 5+5+2. You could not place 5+5+3 because that would take you over the target number.

Assuming you continue, you’ll need to defeat the next encounter card with your remaining dice. Dice used on previous encounter cards are locked and may not be used again during this contract run.

This continues until you are down to just a few dice. On that last encounter, if you are able to use (i.e. “lock”) all of your dice, you complete the contract and earn some Reputation (VP).

This is, of course, increasingly hard to do with fewer and fewer dice each encounter. You might pull an encounter card with a target value of 1. If you don’t have a die showing a 1 you are out of luck. It’s why you might want to bail before you get to that point, collect your C-bills and try again another day. If you ever make it to the end of the encounters and can’t place your dice to defeat it, you get nothing.

A note on equipment upgrades

While I think the “lock dice to defeat a target number” is the interesting bit from this game, the equipment upgrade system must be mentioned.

As noted above, it is almost impossible to finish a contract with the default 6d6 dice pool. This is particularly true when the special effects and conditions from the contract and encounters are applied. So how does one ever earn victory points?

The C-bills earned from exiting a contract before total failure can be cashed in on equipment. Thematically, equipment cards are Precision Ammo, Autocannons, Handheld Lasers, Streak Missiles. Mechanically, each one allows you to add dice to your pool and modify them after they are rolled. It’s a form of luck mitigation that is absolutely necessary to win the game.

It actually creates a rather nice game arc. Players begin the game able to defeat some encounters but then must escape before they fail and get nothing. They do partial contracts, gaining C-bills to put toward future equipment upgrades. Eventually they purchase an item or two and encounters become a little easier. By the end of the game everyone has a tricked out mech that can rip through encounters. It’s then a race to the 10 Reputation required to end the game.

Applications in other games

While I’m sure a similar “use dice to add up to an exact number” mechanism has been used before, this might be the first time I’ve seen it. There are many “use dice that add up to at least X or greater” systems, but requiring an exact match makes it a bit trickier. In fact, it’s because it is almost impossible at first that makes the dice-modifying equipment cards so important.

I could see a similar mechanism used for combat in fantasy TTRPGs. It’s an easy adaptation because the system is already themed around combat where the dice-modifying cards are largely weapon types. The original Encounters game was one set in Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time universe called Encounters: Bravest Warriors (Knudson, 2014), so it’s not too far of a stretch.

I also think this system would be an interesting one to use for a solo cyberpunk hacking game. Similar to how Before the Bog God used a dice game for competing rituals, this target number system could be how a player hacks networks. They could gain dice to their pool by collecting data and then modify rolls with enhanced gear or a better rig.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Small changes make a big difference: If the encounter system said “lock dice equal to or greater than the target number” it would be significantly easier to defeat encounters. There would be less reason to gain C-bills to buy equipment upgrades. The entire game would feel different.

• Making a system: Brian Knudson created a game system when he made Encounters — one that could be adapted to Shadowrun, BattleTech, and Adventure Time. There’s value in thinking about how your game design can turn into a platform for many games.

• Theme vs. mechanism: While the system is mechanically interesting, it would be a stretch to call it a highly thematic one. As someone who used to play some BattleTech, I didn’t really get the BattleTech feel when playing Encounters: BattleTech. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does illustrate how thematic integration is hard.

What do you think? Is the Encounters system interesting enough to support many different re-themes? More importantly, could it work in a TTRPG?

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

I play a lot of area control games. Whether you call it area influence, area majority, or area control, it’s one of my favorite genres.

When another designer asked me, “What would you want to see in an area control game?” it really made me think. I’ve played so many of them, many of which are in my top games of all time. Trying to pin down the most enjoyable elements, however, is no small task.

This week, I’m straying from the usual objective exploration of a particular game mechanism. Instead, this is my personal preference for what I’d want to see in an area control board game.

1. It needs a map.

Probably the most important part of an area control game for me is the map. The map can be thematic or abstract, but there needs to be one. It’s important because by having a map, adjacency matters (i.e. which areas are next to others). It also can create interesting rewards for controlling specific areas (as done in Eschaton) or routes/paths through the areas that create interesting choices.1

So the game needs a map, but the map has to matter. If there’s a map and adjacency doesn’t matter, the areas are all equivalent, and there are no routes, well, then the map barely counts as a map.

There are, of course, exceptions to this. You could make the case that lane battlers are area control games, in which case no map is required.2

2. It needs an anti-turtle mechanism.

In Tabletop: Analog Game Design (Costikyan & Davidson, 2011), there’s a chapter by Lewis Pulsipher on the three-player problem. This is the problem that arises in three-player conflict games where the two players who are behind will team up and attack the player in the lead. This emergent “bash the leader” results in multiple problems such as the game going on too long or kingmaking.3

Pulsipher calls this “leader bashing” and goes on to identify three other gameplay problems including turtling — gameplay that focuses solely on defense rather than offense. It’s when a player hides in an uncontested corner of the map, letting the other players battle it out.4

Therefore, area control games need an anti-turtle mechanism — a way to force conflict and prevent players from avoiding combat altogether.

The larger the map, the easier it is to turtle, and therefore the more important it is to have an effective anti-turtle mechanism built into the game.

Blood Rage does this by destroying an area of the map each round, reducing the size of the map. It eventually pushes factions into conflict with each other.5 Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy solves this by the ever-increasing need for resources. To keep growing, you need to expand into an opponent’s territory.

It is notable that by building these mechanisms into the game, they naturally create a satisfying game arc, ensuring that the end of the game feels different from the beginning.

3. It needs a catch-up mechanism.

Area control games are often zero sum games. Someone’s gain (territory, resources, victory points) is someone else’s loss. While this core tension is one of the parts I enjoy most about the genre, it can also be very unforgiving.

In Rising Sun, for example, it is entirely possible to have a catastrophic first war phase in the game. Poor planning and some lost wagers in the zero-luck battle system can put the losing player in an almost unrecoverable position. It is possible to have all of your units wiped off the map. For a game that can run more than a couple hours, that can be suboptimal for the player who knows they can’t win.6

Therefore, area control games need some form of catch-up mechanism. A catch-up mechanism is some way to prevent the runaway leader problem where success leads to more and more success for the lead player. It’s a way to keep lagging players in the game and interested in what’s happening on the table.7

The catch-up mechanism can be as simple as giving the trailing player a better turn order position. More complex systems make it increasingly hard for the lead player to accumulate more territories or resources.

This is perhaps my most controversial opinion on this list. Some players would say you should just “get gud” and not get wiped from the map in the first place. It’s a “skill issue” they might say. While I agree with that in a theoretical sense, given my limited gaming time, I want to maximize the amount of fun for everyone at the table. Keeping everyone in the game is a core way of accomplishing that.

4. It needs asymmetry (maybe).

Asymmetry has been part of board games for hundreds if not thousands of years. Viking board games like Hnefatafl and European Fox & Geese games give the two players fundamentally different forces.8 This has continued in modern gaming with games like Cosmic Encounter, Dune, and Terra Mystica where player factions have their own rules. Root is perhaps the most well-known modern example of this.

Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy does a particularly good job of this.9 Each faction is only slightly different in mechanical ways, and yet they lead to vastly different emergent strategies when played. The factions in Rising Sun all feel like they have game-breaking abilities, and yet they are well-balanced in practice.

Asymmetry is particularly important in area control games because everyone is competing on the same map. Having unique factions with different abilities and goals leads to the emergent storytelling and narrative I value in these games. To me, it makes an individual play of a game more likely to be memorable.

I could be convinced, perhaps, that not all area control games need asymmetric factions. That said, I find that I enjoy area control games more if they have asymmetry or variable player powers.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• What you want to see in a game: I found the question of “What do you want to see in X type game?” to be a surprisingly interesting one. I’ve played countless area control games but never took the time to carefully think about what I enjoyed about them. Choose a game genre you enjoy and know extremely well. Try the same exercise, listing the top 4 elements your ideal game would have.

• A way to analyze games: Creating lists of important elements gives us a vocabulary and a way to analyze games. Rather than just saying “this game is fun” we can start to break it apart into its component mechanisms, allowing us to learn from it.

• That’s just like, your opinion, man: While most weeks I dig into how a specific mechanism works (e.g. manoeuvre-based combat) this week is just my opinion. You might not care about catch-up mechanisms or variable player powers. I’d be curious to hear what your opinion is in the comments.

What do you think? Which of these area control game elements that are important to me are also important to you?

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

Last week we looked at the dice-based combat in 2D6 Dungeon. I’m in a dice mood so this week we are looking at another dice game. Hellboy: The Dice Game is a push-your-luck dice and card game from Mantic. While it’s a simple game, it can serve as both a lesson in push-your-luck game design and creative inspiration.

Hellboy: The Dice Game

Designed by Rob Burman and Matt Gilbert, Hellboy: The Dice Game was released as part of the Hellboy: The Board Game expansion Kickstarter.1

“In Hellboy: The Dice Game, you take on the role of a B.P.R.D. recruit exploring a mysterious location. As a new recruit your abilities and resources are limited so you’ll need your wits about you to try and survive. Push your luck to press deeper into the unknown or play it safe and live to fight another day.”

The game components consist of a deck of 40 cards, wound cubes, and custom dice that can be used as spares for Hellboy: The Board Game.

Each card has a Fight Value (1-5), a number of Clues (i.e. 0-4 victory points), Damage (0-3 wounds if not defeated), and possibly some special effects.

Pure push-your-luck

On your turn, you flip the top card of the deck and attempt to defeat it by rolling the blue, special die along with up to three of your pool of attack dice. The total hits on your rolled dice need to meet or exceed the Fight Value of the card to defeat it.

If you are successful, you claim the card but pass the used dice to the next player. You can then choose to either end your turn or reveal another card. If you stop, you permanently claim the defeated cards, earning the Clues (victory points) on them. All dice are passed to the next player and they start their turn.

If, however, you decide to continue instead, you reveal the next card and must attempt to defeat it. You’ll have less dice available this time because you can’t use the dice previously used this turn. If you defeat the card, you can again decide to stop or keep going.

If you ever gain 3+ wounds, you are “knocked out” and lose all the cards claimed this turn (i.e. you get zero Clues this turn).

The first player to gain 15+ Clues wins the game.

Attack dice design

The game uses the same four varieties of dice as Hellboy: The Board Game: Yellow, Orange, Red, and Black. Each one has different faces ranging from 0-4 hits per face:

• Yellow (Y): 1,1,1,0,0,0 (0.5 avg, 50% hit)

• Orange (O): 2,2,1,1,0,0 (1.0 avg, 67% hit)

• Red (R): 3,2,2,1,1,0 (1.5 avg, 83% hit)

• Black (B): 4,3,3,2,2,1 (2.5 avg, 100% hit)

There’s also a blue die that has random effects: lose a wound, x2 hits for one die, +1 hit, +2 hits, cancel a skull/wound, and reroll one die. Ignoring that die, we can calculate some average hits for two-die combinations:

Yellow dice are pretty bad. Rolling two of them, you have about a 75% chance to get a single hit. Even with three of them, it’s only an 88% chance to get 1+ hits and the chance to hit 3+ hits is around 13% or less.2 That said, a Yellow+Black combo has the same average value of 3 hits as a Red+Red combo.

You only ever get one Black die at the start of your turn, so it’s a tough choice when to decide to use it.

Given a card with Clues and Damage on it, it’s a matter of selecting the right available dice with the right % hit and average total hits.

Dice as a resource

The game is not without its flaws. The event cards in particular feel overly random and impactful, causing you to potentially lose 1-2 of your 3 wound cubes just because you had a bad card draw. There are bosses like Rasputin, but they don’t feel particularly special or thematic (e.g. “re-roll your highest scoring attack die”).

What I think it does well, however, is to implement the dice as a resource to spend. You always start your turn with 12 dice. With each new, revealed card, you can use 0-3 of them along with the mandatory special blue die. That’s probably the most interesting choice of the game.

You can use your Black and Red dice right away and ensure you defeat the card, but then they are unavailable. It’s entirely possible to push your luck more with riskier dice rolls and score 5+ Clues in a round. That’s 33% of the way to a victory per turn if you can pull it off.

While I’m generally not a fan of decreasing decision spaces in games where you have fewer and fewer options as the game progresses, it feels right in this game.3

Solvable games

While I didn’t take the time to calculate and visualize all of the dice probabilities from 1-3 attack dice plus the blue die, I think someone could. If this were done, I’m afraid the game would become looking up the current card and available dice on a table and selecting the right set. For example, with N dice of each color left and a card with a Fight Value of X, you should choose A, B, and C dice to roll.

Would this be a case of a degenerate game state? I’m not sure, but it’s important to consider how “solvable” your game designs are. If someone were to calculate it all out or, worse yet, be able to calculate it in their head at the table, it would impact the experience.

The E.B. White quote applies: “Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.” Solving games potentially sucks all the fun out of them. Therefore many people just avoid doing so even if it’s technically possible.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Dice as a resource: A key takeaway from this game is to use the dice themselves as a resource. Many TTRPGs use dice pools, but being able to choose which ones to spend is an interesting twist. I could see this used as a magic or stamina system.

• Push-your-luck mechanisms: If you read SCM each week, you know I love push-your-luck mechanisms in games. They are easy to implement and (to me) almost always improve a game in a simple way. They are worth researching.

• Math and “solvable” games: Some games intentionally keep their underlying statistics hidden from players. Others are more upfront with it, even including probability tables on player boards. Being solvable isn’t necessarily a design flaw, but it is something to consider when designing.

What do you think? Have you played Hellboy: The Board Game or Hellboy: The Dice Game? Do you think the game is potentially mathematically solvable? If so, does that matter?

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

Making a solo dungeon crawl good is tough enough, but making the combat interesting is perhaps the toughest challenge. With just one player, rolling the dice over and over can get tedious quickly — especially for misses. While there’s nothing wrong with the classic opposed roll slugfest until one side dies, I’m always excited to see something new.

This week we are looking at a solo dungeon crawl called 2D6 Dungeon. Specifically, the way it uses a D66 roll during combat and the ability to change the dice.1

A solo dungeon crawler game

2D6 Dungeon is a “roll-and-write, print & play, solo player, dungeon crawler game” by Toby Lancaster released in 2023. The setting is a world called Coradine:

“It is a land where the people have a longstanding peace, war seemingly forgotten, and the regions and realms respect a unified sovereignty. But beneath this shroud of peace is a turbulent underworld; a dark realm that is riddled with dungeons and underground chambers where monsters hide away guarding their treasure, and organised groups of bandits and brigands form plans to raid the settlements above.”

The rulebook is upfront that the core aim of the game is to “gather treasure, experience points, and legendary status” but there are many opportunities to build an interesting narrative as well.

Ultimately, the goal is to complete all ten levels of the dungeon beginning with Level 1 - The Entry. Other levels include The Crypt, The Cultist Den, The Monster Maze, and eventually end at Level 10 - The Dungeon Lords.

It’s a classic dungeon crawl with weapons, potions, magic, monsters, and loot.

The part I found particularly interesting was the combat system, but there’s a lot there to explore. So this week I want to look at just one part of combat: manoeuvres.2

Just one weapon

One departure from the usual dungeon crawler mechanisms is that adventurer’s will use just a single weapon during their adventure. Usually, in my experience, dungeon crawl games rely on the character finding progressively better weapons as they explore. They might start with a dagger, pick up a longsword later, and eventually find the +5 Bog Sword of the Lost Frog Wizard.3

2D6 Dungeon takes the opposite approach. During character creation, the player must choose: Longsword, Greataxe, or Heavy Mace.4 That will be their weapon for the entire game. There is a thematic explanation for this:

“You can’t just pick up any weapon in the dungeon and expect to know its intricacies, so you stick to what you know best and wield the same weapon throughout your adventure. Years of training have taught you how to use it with a decent level of skill.”5

Instead of swapping out weapons for better ones, your character will learn more manoeuvres — attacks tied to specific 2-dice combinations. There are 24 manoeuvres for each of the three weapon types, divided into three levels. Characters begin the game with just two Level 1 manoeuvres but will get the chance to improve this over time.

Using manoeuvres in combat

Combat in 2D6 has a lot going on. There are manoeuvres, dice shifting, interrupts, armor deflection, fatigue dice, and some special always-hit/always-miss rolls. You can’t flee combat. It continues until one side wins.

I’m not going to try to do a full combat rules explanation here, but I do want to give a very high-level overview.6 Here’s the sequence:

1. Player attacks: You roll D66 using differently-colored dice. If the dice match one of your manoeuvres, you hit your foe and deal damage based on the manoeuvre’s type. For example, the longsword’s Biting Stroke does D6+1 damage while the Heavy Mace’s Blistering Swing does 2D6+6 damage.

2. Shift if necessary: Failing to match a manoeuvre combination is a miss, but you have a chance to modify your roll using Shift Points. Each Shift Point can adjust a die up or down by 1, but this does not loop from 1 to 6 or 6 to 1.

3. Check for interrupts: Each monster has an Interrupt Stat listed. If either of your manoeuvre dice match the monster’s interrupt, the damage is reduced by that amount. For example, damage might be reduced if you roll a 3 or 4 on your primary (first) die.

4. Monster attacks: If the monster is still alive, it attacks back using a similar method. The player rolls D66 for the monster and applies its Shift Points to try to match one of the monster’s manoeuvres. On a hit (i.e. match), it deals damage to the character.

This process continues until either the monster dies or the player dies.

Although it’s probably a topic for its own article, it’s worth mentioning the Fatigue Dice here. Each round, a Fatigue Die acts as a tracker and is incremented. Once it hits 4, both the player and monster get +1 Shift Point. At 5, each side gets +2 Shift Point. At 6, both sides have +3 Shift Points. This acts as a timer on the game ensuring that hits get more and more likely to hit. Using d6 dice and 3 Shift Points, the combat is going to end quickly.7

A probability puzzle to solve

When the player rolls D66, the dice have 36 possible combinations ranging from 1-1 to 6-6, remembering that the order of the dice matters.

Let’s say you have a longsword and two manoeuvres:

1. [4-3] Swing = D6-1 damage

2. [4-1] Carving Blow = D6 damage

You will hit the monster when you roll either a 4-3 or a 4-1. That’s a 2:36 (5.6%) chance of an exact hit:

But you can use 2 Shift Points to turn a miss into a hit. That means a 2-1 or a 6-1 would also hit, as would a 4-5 or a 2-3. This significantly changes the chance of hitting your foe. You now have a 17:36 (47%) chance of a hit:

You might have noticed that choosing the correct manoeuvres has a large impact on your hit chance. Selecting two manoeuvres with a lot of overlap in values reduces the overall chance of a hit. Choosing two that cover a wider range of the D66 values improves your chance to hit. For example, let’s look at what happens if we have 4-2 Hack and 3-5 Brutal Drive as our manoeuvres:

With less overlap, there is now a 22:36 (61%) chance to hit. So why not just choose those two manoeuvres from the start? Because one of them is a Level 2 manoeuvre. Yet another reason why leveling up and improving manoeuvres is important.

The combat itself might be procedural, but the choice of manoeuvres can be a tough one. The attacks with a 6 or 1 as part of the combination often deal more damage, but are harder to shift into.

Dice combinations to trigger actions

This sort of dice combination mechanism shows up in other games too. I’ve written about how Rumble Nation uses a roll roll pick two system where the two dice determine which province is reinforced. Parallels could also be drawn to the “Playing Dice with Death” system mentioned in the Giant Enemy Crab article.

My recent guest piece in the Monthly Mecha newsletter about how Celestial Bodies uses a reverse-Battleship system for combat is similar — a D66 roll to match a hit location.

Recently I tried Spooky Tower and it uses a 2d6 dice roll to determine which cards players can add to their tableau and which cards in their tableau they can activate. In that case, the dice can be used individually or added together. This results in three possible combinations for each roll. For example, rolling a 4 and a 3 could be used as 4, 3, or 7.

These “roll dice to try to match some targets” systems are really interesting to me because they are both simple (in terms of mechanical complexity) and yet quite deep. There are so many ways to slightly tweak and adjust this general mechanism to create tough choices for the player.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Everyone has d6 dice: Having sold at small conventions and events, I’ve learned that while not everyone has polyhedral dice, almost everyone has six-sided dice at home. Using systems like this that use just d6s potentially makes it more accessible to those who are new to the hobby.

• Dungeon crawler combat: I love Dark Fort as much as the next person, but there is room for innovation in the solo dungeon crawler space that makes combat really interesting. It’s hard to do, and I think the 2D6 Dungeon system is a great example of making it feel fresh and new.

• Dice combos vs. targets: If we broaden this idea to “rolling two or three dice to try to hit specific value targets” then we can see it in many games. They don’t need to rely on the Yahtzee style re-rolls either as 2D6 Dungeon’s Shift Points demonstrate.

What do you think? Have you tried 2D6 Dungeon? What do you think of this combat system? If you’ve seen similar systems elsewhere, please let me know in the comments.

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

If you are one of the attendees of the free public library class I just taught in Baltimore, welcome! I had a wonderful time with the class and really enjoyed chatting about game design for two hours on Saturday.

This week’s game is HacKClaD — a “tactical deck-building arena battler” designed by Kaku and published by Japanime Games.1 There’s a lot going on in the game, but I want to focus on just one part: drafting turn order at the start of each round.2

HacKClaD

You are a Witch. Your ability to see into the future and use magic weapons make you uniquely able to battle the Clad — a giant monster attacking humanity:

Humanity is under relentless assault from the Clad, catastrophic entities that reshape the battlefield with every strike. To answer this threat, five extraordinary Witches enter the fray, each wielding a customizable arsenal of skills, affinities, and tactics. Their mission is simple: survive the Clad’s onslaught and gather the most Magic Shards to claim victory.

That’s the story behind HacKClaD (Kaku, 2021).

As a game, I’d consider it to be a rather abstract boss battle game. Each player is a witch with variable player powers and all witches are battling a single giant monster called the Clad. When witches successfully attack the Clad, they are rewarded with crystals that are worth victory points (VP) at the end of the game. If they are injured by the Clad, they drop some of their acquired crystals onto the map.

It’s a race over the course of 9 rounds to do the most damage possible to the Clad while also picking up any dropped crystals on the map.3

Strangely, the Clad is never defeated during the game.4 Damage is applied, but the Clad keeps moving until the end of the 9th round. Similarly, the witches are never killed or knocked out of the battle. When injured, they lose some crystals and respawn at one of the designated points on the map.5

Together, these mechanisms give the game the feel of a video game — more akin to Diablo than a more simulationist or realistic approach. There’s no reason to hold back and no time to be overly defensive. It’s a pure race to pound on the Clad and make crystals pop out like a slot machine.

Using precognition to battle the Clad

The core game loop for HacKClaD is:

1. Forecast Phase: Draw and reveal three Clad cards, showing what it will do.

2. Draw Phase: Draw three action cards from your deck.

3. Draft Phase: Determine turn order.

4. Action Phase: Resolve player and Clad actions in order.

During the Forecast Phase, witches use their precognition ability to know what the Clad is going to do each round. This is implemented by a deck of Clad cards that are drawn, three at a time, and displayed at the top of the board. Each card details how the Clad will activate: turn, move, drop crystals, or attack. Attacks usually hit a zone of adjacent squares on the map indicated by a red highlight.

The Clad cards will activate left to right each round and they are open information for all players. You know when and how the Clad will move and attack.

During the Action Phase, activations alternate between witches and the Clad: Player 1, Clad, Player 2, Clad, Player 3, Clad, Player 4.

This turns the battle into a puzzle to be solved. Each round you’ll draw 3 cards from your deck with various actions: attacks, blocks, movement. You’ll need to figure out how and when you want to execute those to maximize your attacks.

Although all players are battling the Clad and not each other, it is still a competitive game.6 You can push the Clad into other players, dealing trample damage. You can pick up dropped crystals before others can.

The main way to compete, however, is in how you draft your turn order.

Drafting turn order

The Draft Phase is interesting but a little hard to explain without having the cards in front of you to see how it works. The upper row of slots on the board shown above are the Turn Slots. The lower row are the Standby Slots.

1. The player with a card in the rightmost Standby Slot goes first. I’ll explain what the Standby Slot is in a moment.

2. They take their card from the Standby Slot and return it to their hand.

3. They then choose an empty Turn Slot and place one of the cards from their hand into it. This indicates their turn order for the round.

4. They gain the effect under the Turn Slot that was chosen.

5. Then the next rightmost player follows the same process until all players have drafted a Turn Slot.

After everyone has drafted turn slots, actions are taken in order starting with the leftmost player Turn Slot. They alternate (as noted above) between players and Clad. Each player gets one turn to take all of their actions before it moves to the Clad. When players go to take their turn, they slide their card in the Turn Slot down to the Standby Slot.

An interesting turn drafting system

This turn order drafting system does a couple of things:

• Rotating draft order: Turns Slots are resolved left to right but Standby Slot drafting order is right to left. This means that taking an earlier turn slot will mean you get a later draft pick in the next round. Conversely, taking a later turn slot will give you an earlier draft pick in the next round.

• Choice of benefits: Each turn slot has an associated benefit under it: draw 1 card, +1 Magic Point, draw card and top-deck a card, or a free move. All of those are good so it factors into your turn order choice.

• Draft with a card: You have to use one of your action cards to draft (reserve) your turn order slot. That card will, however, move to the Standby Slot below it and then you’ll return it to your hand in the future. You don’t lose the card, but it’s unavailable for a while.

• Visible and easy to track: Players just slide their card from the Turn Slot down to the Standby Slot below it. From there, it’s easy to know who drafts first next round.

It can be incredibly difficult to line up attacks. Each attack only hits a certain zone and many need to be adjacent to the Clad to work. You can see what the Clad will do via the Forecast Phase, but it is impacted by the chaos of the other players.

Sometimes it makes sense to grab the Turn 1 slot so you get to take your turn before the Clad moves too much. Othertimes, it makes sense to go later to get a better benefit or a better draft pick in the future.

Turn order in solo mode

While the game is designed to be best at 3-4 players, it can be played at 2 players and there is a solo mode. In solo mode the draft works in a similar way, but with an important change.

You draft your turn order slot and take your turn as usual. When you slide your card down from the Turn Slot to the Standby Slot, however, you mark the turn slot with a crystal. That slot is unavailable until all slots have a crystal (i.e. they have all been used), at which time all crystals are removed and the process starts over.

Options become limited in this way and it feels even more like a puzzle to solve.

Applications in initiative systems

I’ve written about initiative systems before, including the system in A Gest of Robin Hood and For What Remains. It’s a topic I always find interesting because it has important applications in both board games and roleplaying games.

The HacKClaD system reminds me a little bit of the slot-based initiative used in Emberwind RPG, especially how it alternates between player and foe. I’m not aware, however, of a TTRPG that uses a drafting system like this one.7

I think this initiative system could be directly applied to solo roleplaying games, particularly ones with combat systems.

HacKClaD is puzzle-based and abstract, so it doesn’t feel out of place. Could this system be integrated into a highly thematic solo TTRPG? I think it could, but it would need to be done with care. It would certainly risk breaking the immersion of combat and making it feel like an abstract puzzle.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Abstract vs. thematic games: HacKClaD looks like a highly thematic game. It has a backstory, impressive art, and character backgrounds. The mechanisms, however, are focused on hit points and ignore some expectations of the genre such as actually defeating the boss and having meaningful consequences for character death.8

• Turn order matters: Many games have first player advantages or last player advantages. It’s one of the trickiest things to balance and handle in game designs. By using an active drafting system, it turns what could be something that must be “designed out” of a game into a challenging part of the game itself.

• Initiative systems are tough: Random initiative order is easy but might feel unfair at times. More complicated systems can be perfectly balanced but start to feel abstract and like a puzzle or minigame to be solved. There is no right answer here — only an attempt to pick the system that fulfills the promises your game makes to the player.

What do you think? What other games have you played where you draft or compete for turn order? Have you played any TTRPGs that use turn order drafting?

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

Issue 06. Hammer a nail in the coffin.

Tumulus Issue 6 is shipping out to subscribers around the world!

Tumulus is a quarterly collection of analog gaming inspiration, tools, design theory, and playable content from Skeleton Code Machine. Each issue has a theme such as “Keep the wolves at bay.” or “Kick open the door.” Design exercises are included for you to try what you’ve learned.

Tumulus is creative, thought-provoking, and worthy of a place on your shelf.

Get Tumulus

What’s inside this issue

The theme for Tumulus Issue 6 is “Hammer a nail in the coffin.” and is focused on vampires, skeletons, ghosts, haunted houses, and the dangerous dead. It’s inspired by my recent reading of Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World by John Blair.1

In “The Dangerous Dead” (p. 7), you can read about undead archetypes and the countermeasures to use against them. We explore how death is used as a motivator in games and “Markov chains for restless spirits” (p. 19). There’s also a haunted house generator based on elements from a 2,000 year old ghost story (p. 27). The Blood Borg article includes a three-question interview with creator Adam Vass.2

Finally, “A Place for All My corpses” (p. 48) is an “incomplete by design” playable game about managing a cemetery. It’s broken (on purpose) with design exercises and questions for you to try. I must admit this light-hearted mashup of A Place for All My Books and Graveyard Keeper is quite amusing to me. It might very well turn into a full Exeunt Press game some day.3

Pick your issues when ordering

Please select your preferred issues when subscribing. Tumulus 06 is the current issue and will ship immediately. Tumulus 07 is the next one and won’t ship until June 2026.

If you start a new subscription, your first issue will ship out right away if you select the current issue. Subsequent issues will be mailed to you once per quarter. No matter when you subscribe, you’ll always receive four issues.

Resubscribing? No problem! Just select the issues you want to ensure you don’t get a duplicate issue. Remember that subscriptions don’t auto-renew by design. You’ll need to resubscribe to receive four more issues.

As always, if you have any questions about your order or need to update your address, please send an email to games@exeunt.press.

Back issues are available

Not ready to subscribe just yet? A limited number of back issues are available at full list price.4 New issues are added after the next one has shipped.

Upcoming issues

Curious what’s coming up in future issues? Here are the themes for the next three:

• Issue 07. “Slay the dragon.” (June 2026)

  • Knights, dragons, wyverns, swords, and fire

  • Includes printed Dragon Pages TTRPG bookmark

• Issue 08. “Insert coin to continue.” (September 2026)

  • Exploring how video games can influence tabletop games

  • Includes printed Massive Damage TTRPG bookmark

• Issue 09. “Ponder the orb.” (December 2026)

  • Wizards, magic, spellcasting, crystal balls, classic fantasy

What do you think? Which issue sounds the most interesting?

Issue titles and covers are subject to change, but that’s the plan! The two TTRPG bookmarks are already printed and ready to be included with the next issues.

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

Last week we looked at the only Richard Garfield game that Richard Garfield still routinely plays — SpyNet. Specifically, we explored how it creates incentives to keep the market from clogging. Be sure to read the comments for more about Dutch auctions and Winston drafts!

This week we are digging into another board game, but this one was just released. Moytura by David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin uses one simple rule to transform the game from a routine area control battle into something unique.

A note on area control vs. area majority

I’ve written before about the differences between area control, area majority, and area influence games. These terms include similar and overlapping mechanisms, but in short area control implies that total domination of an area is required. Area majority is similar but the most powerful faction in the area is considered first, but there might be second or third place rewards as well.

Moytura would most accurately be called an area majority game, but I tend to use the terms interchangeably. Given a choice, I prefer to just call them area control games. That’s what I’ll do in this article.

Battling for control of ancient Ireland

Moytura (Thompson & Benjamin, 2026) is the third in the Mythos Collection of “2-player games of strategy and mythology” from Bitewing Games.1

“The battle of Moytura has begun. As a leader of the Tuatha Dé Danann, spread your influence across the land to succeed in your quest to become High Ruler of Ireland, invoking the powerful deities of the Tuatha Dé Danann to aid you in your cause with their command of water, travel, war, and creation — but the road will not be easy for in your path to legend stand the sinister Fomorians and other mythical beings hungry for battle, not to mention a rival clan with ambitions of their own. Steel yourself and prepare for a legendary struggle.”

Play takes place on a map of mythical Ireland split into color-coded regions. Each region is subdivided into a number of spaces.

One player is the white faction and the other is the black faction. There are also three other Fomorian factions on the board controlled by the game. Each round, players select one of the five available deities which determines the type of action they can take. Eriu allows your followers to expand two spaces away. Boand allows expansion up to five spaces away but only when connected by water. Morrigan automatically defeats two enemy units when expanding. The cost of selecting and upgrading these deity abilities changes each round.

After each player has taken their turn, the Fomorians expand across the map based on a card draw. Originating from their largest group, they spawn new groups of 1 or 2 more Fomorians in multiple directions.2

Victory points are awarded only twice during the game — after Round 5 and after Round 10. The faction with the majority control in each region gets the most VP. A smaller number of VP is awarded to the second place faction.

The game-controlled Fomorians can gain points and even win the game in Moytura. This means it’s possible for both players to lose if the game ends with the Fomorians in the lead. So it’s a three way race for the entire game.3 It forces players to work together at least a little bit (similar to a semi-coop game) lest the Fomorians run away with the lead and they both lose.

That twist on the genre is worthy of exploration by itself. For me, however, the real twist is that players can’t attack each other directly.

No conflicts vs. the other player

Area control games (similar to lane battlers) are rooted in conflict. Battling or having the ability to reduce the power of opposing factions is almost always a core part of the game. What would Blood Rage be without the Loki strategy? Would Rising Sun be the same without zero-luck combat?

It is, of course, present in Moytura as well. When player followers and Fomorians end up in the same space, a conflict occurs. Tokens are removed two at a time (one from each faction) until there is only one faction left.4

What you can’t do, however, is start a conflict with the other player (emphasis in the original):

3. Expand
Choose an origin space to expand from and a target space to expand into. The origin must contain one or more of your followers. The target cannot contain either player’s followers or the enemy’s stronghold marker. It can contain enemy units.5

I’ll admit that we had to re-read that a few times during our first play of the game because it was so shocking. What do you mean I can’t attack the other player? Doesn’t that mean they will just expand unopposed for the entire game?

Area control without direct combat

This is the most interesting aspect of the game for me: You need to keep the other player in check, but you can only ever act indirectly.6

So instead of launching an attack to remove your opponent’s followers (tokens), you need to deny them victory points in more subtle ways:

• Expand into their regions to prevent them from getting the first place victory points. Or, if possible, prevent even second place.

• Intentionally allow the Fomorians to expand so they steal the majority from your opponent.

• Expand and remove Fomorians through conflict to split their forces, causing them to expand into your opponent’s regions instead of yours.

• Select the deity (action type) they want so that it rotates to the top, most expensive position — snatching it out of your opponent’s reach for the round.

All of the above are ways a player can exert influence on the game state without direct conflict with the opposing player. Throughout all of these methods, white and black factions never directly expand into each other’s spaces.

No movement after expansion

There is one more design aspect that makes the game even more challenging: There is no movement or “marching” mechanism in the game! Once they are placed, you can’t move your followers.

This means you can effectively (but temporarily) block your opponent from expanding into spaces on the map. The tough decisions come, however, in deciding how many followers to commit to a space. They are a limited resource and not to be wasted. Do you drop five followers so they will survive against potential Fomorian conflicts? Or just drop one and hope for the best?

Challenging assumptions of the genre

David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin are well-respected masters of the conflict game and area control genres.7 Perhaps this is how they were able to take the genre in new directions by subverting some of the elements I would have assumed were necessary: direct player conflict and unit movement.

Although the games are completely different, it reminds me of how The Skeletons is a TTRPG without a core resolution mechanism (e.g. dice rolling). I’d have assumed that every TTRPG had to have such a thing, but removing it creates a fascinating new game.

Knowing the conventions and assumptions of a genre allows you to break them: Can I make a dungeon crawl without combat? Can I make a progression system without levels? Can I have a wargame without direct conflict?8 What if you couldn’t move your units?

In fact, I’d offer this as an exercise this week: Choose your favorite genre of tabletop game and try to list out some of the assumed components. Examples might be combat in dungeon crawls, resources in eurogames, or cards in trick-taking games. Then think about what a game would look like if you inverted some or all of those assumptions!

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Area control never gets old: At least it never gets old for me. Every time I think the genre might stagnate or that I’ve seen it all, a new game comes along that reinvigorates my interest in it. Never assume a tabletop game genre “has been done already.”

• Lean to identify assumptions: If you play a lot of games, you can probably accurately describe genres: trick-taking, area control, TTRPG, and so on. It is a tougher challenge to make an actual list of assumed components — items most people would believe are required to be present in a game of the genre.

• Then break the conventions: I continue to believe that listing the assumptions and then trying to subvert some or all of them is a great way to spark design inspiration. You don’t need to implement all the inversions. Even just thinking about them might be enough to get you started on something unique.

What do you think? Have you play Moytura or a game that uses influence versus control when competing with other players? What other assumed components exist in wargames and area control games?

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

I’m back from my first Break My Game playtesting event at MEPACON, and it was a fun time. I was able to get two plays of Ratsail completed, both of which provided a ton of valuable feedback.1 If you were one of the players, thank you so much!

Last week we looked at how Neighborhood Robots adapts a solitaire card game, turning it into a narrative TTRPG about communities.

This week we are looking at SpyNet — a card drafting game from Richard Garfield.

SpyNet by Richard Garfield

I first heard of SpyNet via an interview with Richard Garfield on the Shelf Stable podcast. Richard is the creator of Android: Netrunner (2012), King of Tokyo (2011), KeyForge (2018), and a little game you may have heard of called Magic: The Gathering (1993). The interview is fascinating, and I highly recommend checking out the whole thing.

During the interview, Richard was asked if he plays any of his own games.2 He said that the only one he still plays regularly is SpyNet. This caught me by surprise because I had never heard of it.

It’s a game originally published in 2017 by Z-Man games that is mostly an abstract card game:

“You are a spymaster. Your mission: Dominate the world of undercover intelligence by deploying agents to complete vital missions. To complete your mission, you must first build an underground network of highly trained agents from different branches of espionage.”

It is played in 2v2 teams with 4 players or 1v1 with 2 players.3

The goal is to play cards into four different branches that are set up much like you’d expect in a lane battler — red, yellow, blue, green. If you dominate one of the lanes (i.e. higher value played than opposing players), you can play a mission card to that lane. Mission cards earn victory points (stars) at the end of the game.

Play continues until the deck runs out. Mission points are added up, and the player (or team) with the highest score wins.4

I’m going to use the terms branch and lane interchangeably in this article.

Agents, funding, and missions

There are only three types of cards in the 76-card SpyNet deck:

1. Agent (34 cards, 45%): Add power to branches based on face value. Must be played to a matching branch color (red, yellow, green, blue).

2. Mission cards (32 cards, 42%): Score points if played. May only be played to a branch dominated by your agents.

3. Funding cards (10 cards, 13%): Played with an agent to increase its power.

Players either recruit (draft) cards or deploy (play) cards on their turn. With only one starting card in their hand, it’s important to get cards quickly. And because which cards you get relies on chance (including the mission cards) drafting becomes a very important part of the game.

The way SpyNet handles this is to have players draft from a 3-card shared market if they choose the recruit action on their turn. The way the market works, however, is really interesting.

Drafting cards from a market

There is a facedown deck and a market (i.e. available cards) of three facedown piles of cards. Let’s call them Pile 1, Pile 2, and Pile 3 going left to right. This is already different from most drafts because the cards aren’t visible to everyone.

The recruiting player can look at Pile 1 and decide if they want to take the cards or not. If not, they can look at Pile 2 and take them if they want. If they don’t want that pile either, they can look at Pile 3 and take that pile. Finally, if they don’t want any of the piles, they can take a random card from the top of the deck.

If they select one of the three piles of cards (after looking at it), three new cards are drawn to refill or pad the piles. This means each pile gets one new card on top of it, regardless of how many cards are in it. The pile that was just taken would have one card in it.

This means that less desirable cards in the market begin to accumulate more cards on top of them. That makes them more attractive when deciding which pile to take.

It also creates an interesting choice: Take one card I really want? Or take a pile of 3+ cards that might be helpful in the future?

Is this a Dutch auction without currency?

Over the last few years, I’ve become quite enamored with Dutch auctions in tabletop games.5 I’ve written about Dutch auctions and dynamic markets previously. If you ever meet me in person, there’s a good chance that I’ll work Dutch auction mechanisms into the conversation.

Here’s a quick review in how they work from the BGG Auction: Dutch page:

“A simultaneous single-bid system in which the lot starts at a very high price, and then is gradually decreased by the auctioneer or other controlling mechanism, until someone agrees to claim the item at its current price, ending the auction. The first bidder to accept the current price is the winner, such that there are no ties. A Dutch Auction is sometimes also called a one-bid auction because of this feature that the first bid made is also the only bid in the auction.”

In practice, however, many games use a slight modification of this. The players add coins to less desirable cards, effectively lowering the price of each card. The price (cost) of a card can eventually go negative. A negative cost means the player gains money by taking the card — they gained more coins than they spent.

When I added this Dutch auction style mechanism to Turtchester to unclog the market, it meant that I had to add a currency (coins) to the game.6 I didn’t see a way around it. How can you bid or auction without coins?

SpyNet handles this challenge (i.e. ensure the market doesn’t get clogged) in a similar way to a Dutch auction, but with an elegant difference. Additional cards (not coins) are placed on top of the pile not taken. The less desirable piles gain ever more cards, ensuring that eventually someone will be bound to take the pile.

Is it a Dutch auction? Perhaps not based on strict definitions. The biggest difference is that cards are added to every pile regardless of position.

It feels adjacent to a Dutch auction to me and a really interesting way to implement it without the addition of coins to the game.7 The mechanism in SpyNet prevents the market from being clogged, acts as a timer on the game (i.e. when cards run out), and can be implemented without any additional components.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• There are always games I’ve missed: I consider myself to be fairly well versed in board games. I play a lot of games and consume a ton of board game media. And yet there are always older games from well-known designers that I’ve never heard of.8 I was fortunate to hear about this one on a podcast and able to pick up a used copy for just a few dollars.

• Drafting: In many ways, drafting is simply choosing one option from a set of available options such that others can’t take the same option. For example, you take a card from a hand of cards and pass the hand to the next person so they can choose a card. It’s simple, but has endless permutations and possibilities.

• Dutch auctions are cool: Or more accurately, mechanisms that create increasing incentives to take less desirable options (e.g. cards, etc.) are cool. It’s a good way to keep open drafting markets dynamic and prevent them from getting clogged. SpyNet shows that adjacent mechanisms can be implemented without the need for a currency and/or coins.

What do you think? Have you ever heard of SpyNet or played it? Have you seen examples of other Dutch auction style mechanisms (i.e. incentives for less desirable options) in other games? What are some other examples I should check out?

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

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We’ve looked at degenerate game states and a few board games recently, including Hercules and the 12 Labors.

It’s time to explore a tabletop roleplaying game this week!

Neighborhood Robots, part of the Griot Anthology, uses a solitaire card game at its core to tell a compelling story about community care. It can teach us some design lessons about thematic mechanisms and victory/defeat conditions (or lack thereof).

The Griot Anthology

I picked up a copy of Griot Anthology by Thoughtcrime Games at PAX Unplugged last year.1 Edited by Misha Bushyager and Quinn Murphy, it is a compilation of seven tabletop roleplaying games:

1. Black Future by Quinn Murphy

2. Come Out from Your Grave by Basil Wright

3. Intergalactic Teaz by Bluu Smith and BrieAnna Allen

4. Midnight Train Ticket by Laura Simpson

5. Mines by Tyrone Reid

6. Neighborhood Robots by Navaar Seik-Jackson

7. Reich Breakers by Shan Wolf

Neighborhood Robots caught my attention because it is a solo journaling game, has an interestingly mechanical structure, and includes big stompy mechs.

Its system is based on a card game called Clear the Dungeon designed by Mark S. Ball, but with some important changes.

So let’s start with a look at how that game works.

Clear the Dungeon

I’d imagine most people are familiar with solitaire card games: Klondike (Patience or Solitaire), Freecell, and other similar variants. Using a standard deck of cards, you attempt to complete certain tasks or form card combinations to win the game. Most lack any sort of thematic elements. The gameplay usually involves both skill and chance, but some games are simply not winnable from the start.2

Clear the Dungeon (Ball, 2019) is a solitaire card game that fits in into the same genre as the example above, but with a theme.3 The player is fighting monsters in a dungeon, attempting to defeat them all. Granted, it’s not much of a theme, but it does exist.

Here’s a quick overview of how Clear the Dungeon is played:

1. Separate all the face cards into one pile. All the remaining cards go into a separate draw pile.

2. Make three stacks of face cards (face down) and turn the top card of each face up. There will be three face cards visible representing the monsters.

3. Each round, draw three cards from the draw deck. Each card must be played or discarded. These represent your attacks.

4. Cards can be played for their value against any of the visible monsters.

5. The goal is to have two cards with a value equal to or greater than the target (10-12). They don’t need to be played to the same target face card and they will stay there across rounds.

6. If a target face card has two cards played, a trigger card of matching suit must be played as the third card. This triggers the attack and defeats the monster.

7. Play continues until all monsters are defeated or the deck runs out.

This idea of playing cards to beat a target but then needing a “trigger” card is based on the slightly earlier Gridcannon (Francis & Thursten, 2019).

The game creates some interesting choices. If you play an ace (value 1), you lock yourself into needing a 9 or 10 in the future. If you play cards that are too high, you are potentially wasting them. Splitting them up across cards makes sense, but reduces your flexibility in future turns. For a simple game, it’s mechanically interesting.

Neighborhood Robots

Returning to the Griot anthology, Neighborhood Robots by Navaar Seik-Jackson takes the Clear the Dungeon system (with some modifications) and turns it into a solo journaling game about “taking matters of community care, protection, and rebellion into your own hands.”

It’s the 22nd Century and the government has started a war with the Poreau — aliens who were former allies of us. All resources are redirected to the war effort and military, leaving citizens to survive on their own. Help won’t come from the government. Instead, they must build mechs to fight back and solve problems.

Much like Clear the Dungeon, the face cards are separated out. Four face cards are visible at a time, with the first being a thematic key for the remaining three. The face cards represent the sources of threats to the community and the harms they cause:

• Kings: Threats caused by the government.

• Queens: Threats caused by the aliens.

• Jacks: Threats to the community’s resources.

You won’t be fighting monsters, but instead eliminating threats by constructing task-specific mechs. This is done by playing cards that represent mech components:

“As the chronicler of the events, you decide what each component is. If your water tributary is down, you likely wouldn’t meet it with revolutionary violence like you would the encroaching military, for instance. So placing a ten card would mean different things in each of those situations.”

When the components are in place (i.e. two cards with equal or greater value than the target), they must still be triggered by playing a card of matching suit. This completes the mech and eliminates the threat.

The game adds the concept of a salvage pile. If all three threats have two cards on them and you are unable to play a trigger (i.e. you have no matching suit cards), you can discard to a salvage pile instead. Those cards can be pulled out of the salvage pile in future rounds when constructing new mechs.

The continued fight

Victory works the same way as Clear the Dungeon, but with the added step of journaling the narrative when complete. Defeat, however, is perhaps the most significant deviation from the original card game.

There is no way to lose.

In Clear the Dungeon, if the draw deck goes empty, you lose. In Neighborhood Robots, however, you continue to play:

“In the event that you reach the end of your draw pile and salvage pile without eliminating all of the threats, reshuffle all of the number cards back into a face down pile and draw again until complete. For narrative documentation, consider this an extended time of regaining the necessary components to continue the fight.”

I think this is perhaps the most interesting twist and change from Clear the Dungeon. Where Clear the Dungeon exists only to be won or lost, Neighborhood Robots exists to tell a story of community response. What would a game ending in defeat mean in this context? Would it mean that the community and all future generations just gave up?

So instead the deck gets reshuffled.

Narrative time passes.

The struggle continues — indefinitely long until victory is achieved.

The mechanical core of journaling games

Some solo journaling games don’t have much of what I would consider a “mechanical core.” You roll a die or draw a card and read the prompt. They intentionally keep the mechanical bits to a minimum so as not to overwhelm the story being told. Every new mechanism added to a game risks making it feel less thematic.4

It is possible, however, to have a solo journaling game with a mechanical core that leads to tough (or interesting) choices that help develop the story.

Moon Rings and Necromancer Heretic, both from Junk Food Games, are recent examples that comes to mind. In Moon Rings, while it is based on the Carta SRD, it adds limited resources, a push-your-luck mechanism, and ways to mitigate poor luck. Necromancer Heretic uses blackjack as the core mechanism. Only when your hand of cards reaches 21 do you gain one of the five ritual points needed to win.

Lacksmith is one of my other favorite examples that uses a dice game to tell the story of running a blacksmith shop.

Neighborhood Robots uses a modified version of Clear the Dungeon as its mechanical core to tell a compelling story: When you need that last component to finish a mech or when the mech is ready but you can’t seem to get the card you need to trigger it.

Those moments could be frustrating in an abstract game, but in a journaling game, they actually make it easier to tell a story.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Solitaire card games: If you haven’t yet, check out Regicide (Abrahams, Badger, et al., 2020) and then go down the rabbit hole of all the new solitaire card games being developed that use a poker deck. There’s some really interesting innovation happening in that space, and Clear the Dungeon is just one example.

• Solo journaling with a mechanical core: If you’ve played Caveat Emptor, you know that I enjoy solo journaling games mixed with board or card game mechanisms. Providing incentives to have the player choose one prompt versus another is really interesting to me. Taking an existing solitaire card game and turning it into a thematic journaling game can be a fun exercise.

• The struggle continues: Neighborhood Robots removes the ability to lose the game from Clear the Dungeon. It feels like the right decision given the theme of the game. It puts the story first and the mechanisms exist to serve the story.

What do you think? Have you played any of the games in the Griot Anthology? What do you think about solo journaling games that have a significant amount of mechanical grit? Do you enjoy having tough mechanical choices blended with narrative prompts?

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

Last week we looked at degenerate game states which is when the game collapses into a simpler (and often less interesting) form. The article generated quite a bit of discussion, so be sure to check out the poll and comments at the end.

This week we are looking at the dice-based combat system in Hercules and the 12 Labors. It is simple and yet gives the feel of a dungeon crawl without the dungeon. It could be easily modified for use in TTRPGs.

Hercules and the 12 Labors

In Greek mythology, the hero Hercules (or Heracles) was hated by the goddess Hera.1 She caused him to kill his wife, Megara, and their children in a fit of madness. Regretting his actions, he asked the Oracle of Delphi how he could make atonement. She told him to serve King Eurystheus of Mycenae for twelve years and to perform whatever labors the king demanded.

These labors which include slaying the Nemean Lion, capturing the Erymanthian Boar, and cleaning the Augean stables serve as the setting for Hercules and the 12 Labors (Brown, 2025).

It is a dice game where you play as Hercules and attempt to progress through each of the 12 labors to reach the end of the game. Using a deck of cards that includes a description of the labor, you’ll roll dice, apply damage to the labor, and track your Spirit (health) and Divinity.

To win the game you need to complete all 12 labors and reach the top of the Divinity (yellow flame) track.

How to defeat the Nemean Lion and others

Each labor is represented by one or more cards from a deck. For example, the first labor is the Nemean Lion which is a single card with a single dice track. The Erymanthian Boar spans two cards and has two dice, each on its own track.

The goal is to apply dice to the labor that meet its specific requirements. The Nemean Lion can only be damaged by dice with a value of 5 or 6. The Ceryneian Hind requires pairs of dice with equal values.2 The Augean Stables require dice with a value of exactly 1.

Each time dice that meet the requirements is applied, it reduces the health of the labor. Reduce the labor to zero and it is successfully completed.

This process repeats for all 12 labors.3

The combat game loop

That’s the high level picture of combat, but let’s dig into the actual core game loop.

At the start of each labor, a Mood card is drawn that will apply a lasting effect for the labor. Some are good (e.g. gain an extra die) and some might make the labor more difficult (e.g. all dice rolled are -1).4

Then the player rolls all of their available dice, usually 4-5 total dice depending on the chosen difficulty and bonuses.

After rolling, there’s a chance to mitigate some of the luck by manipulating the dice. There are “blue square” abilities that are usually provided via equipment and rewards from previous labors. Each ability can only be used once and changes the value of the dice in some way: Increase/decrease the value of a die by 1 and reduce Spirit by 1. Turn a 6 into a 3 or a 3 into a 6. Turn an odd die into an even die. Flip a die to its opposite side.

The dice can also be used to block damage, restore Spirit (health), or gain Divinity (required to win the game). Dice used in this way are, however, locked and unable to be used to apply damage for that round of combat.

After everything has been rolled and manipulated, damage is applied to the labor, reducing the labor’s health (tracked by a gold die). If it is reduced to zero, the labor is defeated.

If the labor still has health, the gold labor die is moved along the Labor Impacts track. Each space on the track has an effect which may include losing Spirit, restoring the labor’s health, reducing Divinity, or losing a die. When the gold die reaches the end of the track (marked by a skull), the game ends in defeat.

This system creates a nice visual tension as the tracking die moves with each round. You can see what type of damage is coming next and how many rounds you have left before defeat because it’s printed on the card. While the player’s actions are heavily impacted by input randomness, the enemy’s actions are deterministic.

Progression

The player begins the game with the Bow of Hercules card which allows a die to be modified +/-1 at the cost of reducing Spirit.

With the defeat of each labor, the player gains a reward in the form of a new card they can add to their tableau. It’s the reverse of the labor card that was just defeated. The Nemean Lion yields an Impenetrable Hide card that can both modify dice and block damage. Defeating the Hydra gives the player the Venomous Blood card which allows for two re-rolls.

Gaining cards with new abilities, losing Spirit, and gaining Divinity creates a game arc so that each labor encounter doesn’t feel exactly the same.

A dungeon crawl sans dungeon

Thinking about Hercules and the 12 Labors reminded me of the articles on dungeon crawls that I wrote in 2025. I identified some of the common elements of dungeon crawls, calling out five of the most important ones:

1. Character progression

2. Combat encounters

3. Loot, equipment, rewards

4. Puzzles and environmental challenges

5. Randomization and replayability

It’s interesting to view Hercules and the 12 Labors through this lens. It definitely has combat encounters, as that is most (if not all) of the game. The player is rewarded with loot, equipment, and rewards with the completion of each labor. There is character progression in the form of Divinity.

On the other hand, there are no puzzles or environmental challenges to solve. It is simply one labor after the next using the same mechanical combat system.

While there is randomness in the form of the dice rolls, the world in which Hercules operates is not random at all. The labors are always the same and always presented in the same order. The Mood card at the start of each labor is random, but doesn’t really change the world of the game.

Is this game a dungeon crawl?

I’m not sure and I’d offer that the specific answer may not be important. The act of thinking through the question to arrive at answer is, however, useful. It allows us to wonder how far we can strip a dungeon crawl down to its bare essentials. It raises interesting questions like whether or not a dungeon crawl requires a map — something I would have said yes to prior to playing this game.

Trying to make a dungeon crawl sans dungeon can open up some really interesting and creative design spaces.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Greek mythology as a theme: You’d think that eventually we would tire of games with themes based on Greek mythology, but we don’t. There is something eternal about the stories that continues to captivate us — especially when combined with beautiful art and spot foil on the cards.5

• Dice combat: There are endless ways to implement dice combat mechanisms that are far more interesting than a simple opposed roll. The dice requirement plus labor effect track in Hercules and the 12 Labors is a good example.

• Dungeon crawls without maps: While I’m not convinced that Hercules and the 12 Labors is a true dungeon crawl, it can be fun to ask the question. Stripping a genre of game down to its bare essentials can often serve as the base for a new and interesting game design.

What do you think? Could you see this dice combat system being used in a TTRPG? How would you modify this game to make it more like a roleplaying game than a board game? Does it need a map to be a dungeon crawl?

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

I first heard the term degenerate game state on the So Very Wrong About Games podcast. It made sense in context even if I didn’t exactly know a definition of it. It seemed to imply the mechanisms of the game were poorly designed, but in a very specific way.

Lately, I’ve been thinking more about degenerate states as they relate to tabletop game design in both TTRPGs and board games. This led me to go hunting for a clearer understanding of the term and perhaps where it came from.

What follows is what I found and why I think it’s an important concept to understand when designing games.1

We need to start with a little geometry, but stay with me.

Every square is a rectangle

There is a concept in mathematics called degeneracy that is either the root of the term in game design or at least adjacent.2

Here’s how Wolfram MathWorld describes it:

“A limiting case in which a class of object changes its nature so as to belong to another, usually simpler, class.”

First, it is important to understand a limiting case but to understand that we need to think about special cases.

A special case is where every instance of A is also an instance of B but not vice versa. The classic example is that all squares (A) are rectangles (B) but not all rectangles (B) are squares (A). A square is a special case of a rectangle.

Similarly, an equilateral triangle (three equal angles) is a special case of an isosceles triangle (two equal angles).

Pushing it to the limit

A limiting case is a special case where one or more of the properties of the original are taken to their extreme. It’s a special case pushed as far as it can go — often to zero or infinity. As Paul Stephenson says, “If an object is defined in terms of a variable, it’s worth seeing what happens at the very ends of the range of values it can take.”3

A circle might be considered a limiting case of an oval or ellipse. This is because an ellipse is defined as “a plane curve surrounding two focal points, such that for all points on the curve, the sum of both distances to the two focal points is constant.” Under normal conditions you get a nice egg shape, but what happens if we keep decreasing the distance between the two focal points?

When we reduce that distance to zero (i.e. the two focal points have the same location), it becomes a circle — the limiting case of an ellipse.

Extreme results and degeneracy

In the case of the circle and ellipse, they still sort of look the same. One could easily agree that while the circle is less “ellipse-ish” than a more egg-shaped one. The circle still follows the rules of an ellipse, but it is a very special ellipse.

Other times, when we push the variables to the extreme, the very nature of the original object or concept changes. The result is qualitatively different from the rest of the class, making it a degenerate case.4

Let’s look at two examples from geometry:

1. Circle with radius zero: The degenerate case example that makes the most sense to me is a circle. As we reduce the radius ever smaller, eventually the circle becomes a single point. Is it still a circle with radius zero (r=0)? I guess, but it doesn’t qualitatively look and feel like other circles when you do that.

2. Triangle with a 180 degree angle: You can do something similar with a triangle, where you make two of the angles zero and one of them 180 degrees. It meets all the rules for a triangle, but it no longer looks like a triangle — it looks like a line.

While it is not always the case, many times degenerate cases “belong to another, usually simpler, class” as noted above. Pushing the variables to an extreme, past a special case into a degenerate case makes the final form something simpler, less complex, and sometimes less interesting.

But, for now, let’s hold that definition and think about degeneracy another way.

Hacks, exploits, and degeneracy

In “The Coming AI Hackers”, Bruce Schneier notes that “Everything is a system, every system can be hacked, and humans are natural hackers.”5

He then gives a few examples of what he considers hacking:

“Airline frequent-flier programs are hacked. Card counting in blackjack is a hack. Sports are hacked all the time. Someone first figured out that a curved hockey stick blade allowed for faster and more accurate shots but also a more dangerous game, something the rules didn’t talk about because no one had thought of it before. Formula One racing is full of hacks, as teams figure out ways to modify car designs that are not specifically prohibited by the rulebook but nonetheless subvert its intent.”

While I think the mathematical definition above is at the root of the modern usage of the term in game design, Schneier’s idea of hacking appears to be mixed in as well. Specifically, the idea of people technically following the rules while at the same time exploiting a weakness in the design is critical.

Browsing the BGG forums and articles on the subject yields multiple related definitions that mix degenerate strategy and degenerate game state. Most of them seem to touch on the idea of hack or exploit:

• The abuse of a single mechanism within the game by repeatedly taking the action. While the action itself isn’t a problem, choosing it over and over is.6

• A dominant strategy that, while following the strict rules of the game, always leads to victory.7

• Actions taken to exploit a weakness in the game design and yet do not violate the rules of the game, making the game less fun for other players.8

• A flaw in the design itself that allows a player to gain an unintended advantage.9

• Playing in a way that ignores the unwritten rules of the game. Not playing the game in the proper or intended manner.

More than just a hack, however, there is often a focus on an exploit that is not prohibited by the rules. I found this analogy from a Reddit comment about “take that” mechanisms and degenerate game states to be helpful:

“Consider sports: There are sports that permit physical contact, and sports that do not. Even the sports that permit contact have rules about how far you’re allowed to go. One of the reasons for this is because if you don’t reign in physical contact, violence can become the most dominant way of playing the game: if you physically cripple your opponent, you’ve effectively won. So it no longer ends up being about the actual game, the focus becomes winning on the physical contact aspect.”

Although I am not a game theory expert, all of these ideas seem very close to the concept of strategic dominance, where “strategy A dominates another strategy B if A will always produce a better result than B, regardless of how any other plays.”

Is strategic dominance an example of degeneracy in games?

I think it can be, but perhaps not always. Let’s look at three possible examples.

Ex 1. Black Lotus in Magic: The Gathering

The most commonly cited example of degenerate play is from Magic: The Gathering, a game I have surprisingly little experience with.10 The exploit is described in Rules of Play (Zimmerman and Salen, 2003):

“In early editions of Magic: The Gathering, certain card combinations were simply too powerful and could destroy a player on the first turn, before a match had a chance to develop. Wizards of the Coast, the publishers of the game, declared certain cards “officially” illegal, most notoriously the Black Lotus card, in order to keep this kind of play experience in check. In regulated tournament play, the outlawed cards were not used.”

Again, we see that the game has been “hacked” or “exploited.” While the rules (as written at the time) are followed, a strategy or method can be used to ensure victory and presumably reduce the fun of the other players involved.

Ex 2. Big Money in Dominion

Some examples are less clear if they are degenerate strategies or not.

The Big Money strategy in Dominion (Vaccarino, 2008) reduces the game to a simple formula: “Buy Province with $8, buy Gold with $6-$7, and buy Silver with $5 or lower.”11

Big Money appears like a degenerate strategy against novice players. It almost always wins and it collapses the game decision space into an easy and obvious strategy. It reduces the fun for the other players and potentially for even the person using it.12

But Big Money is not invincible. Adding a Smithy to draw more cards can enhance Big Money in a way that improves it versus the basic, vanilla Big Money. Adding cards from expansions creates even more Big Money beating strategies. One could make the argument, as the Dominion Strategy website does, that, “Studying a board to figure out how to design a deck capable of beating Big Money: well, that’s what Dominion is all about.”

Zimmerman and Salen are careful to note the same idea in Rules of Play, stating that “there is something exciting about having players explore the space of possibility in your game, rooting around for new strategies and new ways to play.” This creates what they call degenerate strategy ecosystems in which players continue to find exploits that invalidate the earlier ones and improve the game experience overall.

Ex 3. The three-player problem and turtling

I’ve mentioned Lewis Pulsipher’s three-player problem a few times before:

“In a three-player conflict game (e.g. a historical wargame) if there are three players, the two players who are behind will generally team up and attack the player in the lead.”

In itself, three-player conflict game designs aren’t the problem. Problems can arise, however, if all players decide to turtle — focus solely on defense rather than offense.

The strategy becomes one in which you wait for the other players to be weakened by fighting each other so you can swoop in and win. When everyone does this (i.e. everyone turtles), this creates a potential degenerate game state where play collapses into simply waiting for someone to attack.

It is notable that this is not a dominant strategy because it may not reliably result in victory for the player using it. Instead, it collapses the entire game state.

Adjacent concepts

Before we settle on a working definition of degenerate strategies and game states, it is important to note some adjacent concepts. I’ve seen all of these referred to as examples of degenerate game states, but that categorization could be debated:

• Soft locks: In video games a soft lock (or softlock) can occur when the game remains playable, menus can be accessed, but progress is halted due to a design flaw. For example, the quest item to spawn the boss monster is lost or you are trapped in an area of the map with no exit.13 I think this is very close to the three-player turtle problem noted above.

• Excessive garbage time: We previously explored garbage time in games in the context of closure and conceding defeat. Excessive garbage time in a game also collapses the strategy for players in a way similar to a degenerate strategy. There are few decisions to be made and instead it’s just playing it out to the end.

• Kingmaking: I’ve seen oft-hated kingmaking brought up as an example of degenerate play. I’m not sure I agree with that, as it feels more like a value judgement or kind-of-fun preference than a true degenerate game state. Has the game been reduced to something simpler that is qualitatively different from the original? Perhaps.

• Fragile game design: All of these examples and discussions seem to go back to our exploration of what Cole Wehrle calls fragile game design. Fragility is something different than victory points and the written rules. It is the unspoken and unwritten rules that are just as important (or more important) than the rules themselves. Some of the examples of degenerate strategies seem to violate the unspoken rules of the game which is why players may frown upon them.14

It is possible (and seemingly common) for people to describe things they don’t like in games as being degenerate. I understand this because it is a messy concept to try to define.

That said, I’m going to try to describe it in a way that makes sense to me and is useful when analyzing games.

A collapse into a simpler form

Let us return to our original definition of mathematical degeneracy: “A limiting case in which a class of object changes its nature so as to belong to another, usually simpler, class.”

To me, this is the most helpful starting point for understanding degenerate strategies and degenerate game states in games. Degenerate not in the sense of a “declining” or “worse” state — just a simpler class that is qualitatively different from the original.

Just like the ellipse that can be exaggerated until it is a circle and eventually just a point, games can retain their original rules and yet become something different — something simpler.

A degenerate strategy or degenerate game state is therefore one in which the game, while following its own rules, collapses into a simpler form that is qualitatively different from the original.15

I like this definition because it removes the value judgement from it. While this collapse into simplicity is often associated with a reduction in fun and interest it doesn’t always need to be the case. I’d argue degenerate game states are almost always bad, but it leaves a tiny bit of room for exceptions. The game is different, and often that means worse, but perhaps a counter example could be found.

It also doesn’t rely on the use of a hack, exploit, or loophole for a degenerate strategy or degenerate game state to occur. That implies player intent which can be messy. Instead it focuses on the results.

The key elements are a (1) strict adherence to rules, (2) a reduction to a simpler form, and (3) the simpler form is qualitatively different from the original game.

A degenerate game state is when there is some inherent part of the game’s design that allows the play to collapse into something simpler and different than the original game. It’s when a wargame turns into a game where it makes no sense to start a battle or an economic game where repeating a single action is the best path to victory. All the rules are still in place, but some variable has been pushed to an extreme.

Degeneracy is when your elliptical game collapses into a single point.

We are loophole exploiters

In the AI hacking article above, Bruce Schneier notes: “Hacking is as old as humanity. We are creative problem solvers. We are loophole exploiters. We manipulate systems to serve our interests.”

This is true and unavoidable. If there is a way to exploit a game design, someone will eventually find it. Players are looking for ways to win, trying new strategies, and exploring the decision space. In that process they may very well find a degenerate strategy.

So how do we handle this? In Rules of Play, the authors are direct in their opinions:

“Try to find degenerate strategies and get rid of them! We learned in the previous schema that positive and negative feedback systems can emerge unexpectedly from within a game’s structure and can ruin a game experience for players. The same is true of degenerate strategies. A close analysis of your game design can sometimes reveal them but the only real way to root them out is through rigorous playtesting.”

This is solid advice.

In the end, it is only extensive playtesting that can prevent degenerate strategies and game states.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Degeneracy as collapse: I write Skeleton Code Machine articles as a way to learn and to organize my thoughts. Writing this has helped me think about degenerate game states as a collapse into a simpler form that inherently changes that game — not a way I thought before I started. I hope this is a helpful piece of vocabulary and a tool for you to use in game analysis.

• Value depends on context: It is very easy to blend value judgements (i.e. “this is good” or “this is bad”) with technical game terms. Degenerate game states are often bad, but we can create a more objective definition at the same time.

• Playtesting is the way: In the end, as with most of game design, the only way to sort this all out is with extensive playtesting. Having recently run playtests at Unpub, I can confirm that nothing finds flaws like public playtesting.

What do you think? Were you familiar with the concepts of degenerate strategies and game states or is this new to you? How would you define it? If you can think of more examples from games, let me know in the comments!

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

Last week we looked at how Thief’s Market turns the fair division problem and the ultimatum game into a dice game. I learned from the poll at the end that 75% of readers (N=48) would rather get nothing than allow an unfair proposer to gain anything. Read that one and answer the poll at the end if you haven’t already!

This week we are exploring the stealth mechanism in what the So Very Wrong About Games podcast has called “The Only Game that Matters” — Seal Team Flix.

An elite force of special operators

Seal Team Flix (Ruth & Thomas, 2018) is a “tactical dexterity game” that is likely inspired by first-person and tactical shooter games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (2012), Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon (2001) and Insurgency (2014).1

The rulebook begins with “The story so far…” which sets the trope-filled and cliche-packed tone of the game:

“The year is 2018, and FBI and NSA sources have intercepted chatter between a violent, fringe eco-terror group called “Gaia’s Hope”, some seedy financiers, and international arms dealer “Mal” O’Dorus. Gaia’s Hope is one of the most dangerous terror groups in the world, with the doomsday philosophy that “man has become a blight upon the planet and must be exterminated”. Supported by satellite imagery that has determined force numbers and patrol patterns, an elite force of Special Operators has been tasked to discover their plan and disrupt their operation.”2

The game includes many of the elements you’d expect in a tactical shooter game:

• Counter-terrorist vs. terrorist factions

• Modern, floorplan-based maps

• Weapon and equipment loadouts (e.g. MP5 and M1A SOCOM)3

• Medical kits that restore health

• Armor that reduces damage

• Flashbangs, grenades, bombs to defuse, hostages to rescue

The twist is that it’s a dexterity game, specifically a flicking game, which is a genre I don’t usually play often.

As many readers may not be familiar with flicking games, it’s worth taking a short detour to explain how they work.

What are dexterity and flicking games?

While it’s a broad and poorly defined class of games, dexterity games usually include some type of physical component of play that relies on reflexes and/or coordination. Most modern board games include elements of strategic thinking, making choices, memory, and visual pattern matching. They don’t, however, usually include things that make players move quickly or try to carefully stack items.

Crokinole (1876) and Klask (2014) are examples of pure, abstract dexterity games. These games can feel like tabletop versions of air hockey or billiards in how they are played — flicking or moving things toward a goal or target.

Other dexterity games are more thematic like PitchCar (1995), Junk Art (2016), and Rhino Hero: Super Battle (2017).4 Kabuto Sumo, for example, has players competing as sumo wrestling insects trying to push their opponents out of the ring using a slide/push mechanism.

A subset of dexterity games include flicking games — games where players must flick a token with their finger as part of the game. Crokinole, Catacombs: Third Edition (2015), Flick ‘em Up! (2015), and ICECOOL (2016) are perhaps the most popular examples. Players place a flat disc/token on the board and (without moving their hand), flick the disc to hit a target.

How to flick a disc

Seal Team Flix includes a very detailed explanation of how to do this:

“HOW TO FLICK: While shooting or performing some other tasks, you will need to Flick a Disc. To do so, simply place the Disc on the map, curl your index finger, and line it up with the rear (or top, if you’re really good) of the Disc. Line up your arm so that the Disc will slide in the direction you want, and then simply extend your index finger. This is only one of many ways to propel the disc, but the only rule with regard to legal Flicks is that your HAND CANNOT move. You may move your fingers all you want, but your hand must remain stationary.”

The Seal Team Flix board has little cardboard walls that are matched to the walls printed on the map. Cover boxes (brown cubes) are added to block some shots. Enemies are cardboard standees placed throughout the map.

When a player shoots, they take the appropriate number and size of discs (e.g. the MP5 SMG gets 1 medium disc in single fire mode or 2 small discs in burst mode) and flick them at the intended target. If the disc touches the target, it’s a hit and damage is applied.5 Because the enemy targets can’t flick back, dice are rolled to determine return and reaction fire.

The part of Seal Team Flix I found most interesting, however, was how sound is tracked to create a sense of stealth — a concept notoriously hard to implement in an engaging way in tabletop games.6

Simulating stealth and noise

When a player shoots or otherwise makes noise (e.g. grenade) in Seal Team Flix, they place sound tokens at the location of the sound.

Each gun has its own sound level with larger guns making more noise. The springfield 770 sniper rifle is one of the loudest, generating 5 sound tokens. The HK MP5 submachine gun is one of the quietest, generating only 2 sound tokens per fire. Optional suppressors can be equipped which reduces the sound tokens placed by 1 and there’s a dart pistol that makes no sound.7

Let’s say you begin the mission and there’s an enemy sentry or patrol right at the start and blocking your path. The team is spotted and an alert marker is placed which adds +4 sound to the area. The first player shoots and misses, adding 4 sound tokens to the player’s area. The second player shoots and hits, but they need to add another 2 sound tokens to the same area for a total of 10 sound.8

The players can move and continue their mission on future turns, but the sound tokens stay in place. This governs how the enemy units move:

• Sentries: Enemy sentry units never leave their starting area, but will always move closer to the sound. Once alerted they stay alert and will shoot if they ever have line of sight to a target.

• Patrols: Enemy patrols will move one area closer to the loudest sound on the map each round. This might not be toward where the players currently are and instead might be where they generated the most sound.

In addition, the amount of sound determines how many new patrols will be spawned on the map. The sound tokens for each area are added up and divided in half, rounding up. A ten-sided die (d10) is rolled that many times and each roll has a chance to spawn another patrol on the map.

Thematic stealth mechanisms

The sound mechanism in Seal Team Flix feels thematically integrated into the game. Player characters start the mission concealed. Sentries and patrols aren’t alerted yet, meaning the team can move without drawing attention. Eventually, however, someone will need to take that first shot — generating sound and alerting nearby patrols.

From that point on, the mission escalates with each new shot generating more sound which generates more patrols and more reason to shoot again. Similar to how missions in Cyberpunk 2077 or Ghost Recon: Wildlands may start as stealth missions, but at some point always seem to turn into a wild gunfight by the end.9

Sound can also be used as a distraction using this mechanism because tokens are placed where the sound is generated and not at the origin. Tossing a flashbang can make a different area the loudest on the map, attracting patrols until those sound tokens eventually fade away.

It’s not a perfect system. Without a “game master” there is no hidden information in the game, meaning that the location of all enemies is always known. There is no “fog of war” either, so the full map is known from the start. This allows players to avoid (or try to avoid) many of the enemies as the move through the map. Is this a bug or a feature? Hard to say.

Extraction Point

Stealthy tactical shooter games are something I’ve thought about before. Tumulus 03 “Kick open the door.” includes a mini-game called Extraction Point. Based on the Carta SRD, the player uses cards to create a house map with three floors. They then take actions including Advance, Peek, and Breach & Clear that each require different amounts of time.

The idea I wanted to try to capture was that fast actions save time but are more risky, while slow actions burn more time but are safer. It doesn’t use a noise/alert system, but playing Seal Team Flix makes me think one could easily be added.

Like many of the playable mechanisms and games in Tumulus, Extraction Point is intentionally “incomplete by design” with a number of exercises at the end focused on improving the game. One of the exercises mentions how enemies never move or patrol the house, a challenge solved quite elegantly in Seal Team Flix.

Issue 03 is available as a Tumulus back issue while supplies last if you’d like to check it out.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Dexterity and flicking games: I’ve played Jenga, Kabuto Sumo, and Jungle Speed previously, all of which qualify as dexterity games. Other than Crokinole, however, I think Seal Team Flix might be the first flicking game I’ve played — certainly the first thematic one. It’s an interesting genre, and I’d be curious if some of the concepts could be integrated into TTRPGs.

• Stealth mechanisms are tricky: The easiest way to implement stealth in a game is using a hidden movement mechanism, but this almost always requires two opposing teams or a GM running the game.10 You often need a way to track undetected vs. alert status. Noise tracking can become fiddly and burdensome quickly if extra care is not taken.

• A stealth puzzle to solve: When designed well, stealth mechanisms almost feel like puzzles to solve: Should I toss a flash bang over there to draw the enemies so you can move the other way? Should I wait for a patrol to pass before crossing a hallway? It is a careful balance between making the enemy AI predictable enough and yet not so predictable as to be easily avoided.

What do you think? What are some of your favorite stealth or noise tracking systems in games you’ve played? I’m particularly interested in thematic ones that don’t just abstract it away into a single stealth roll. Also, if you love a flicking game, let me know!

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

I’ve returned from Unpub Festival 2026 filled with ideas and creativity while also being utterly and completely exhausted. The playtests of Ratsail and Epsilon went really well. My notebook and rulebook are filled with notes and feedback that I’ll need to process this week.

While there, I won two board games as part of the raffles. One of those games was the new edition of Thief’s Market designed by Dave Chalker. I was able to have a very brief chat with Dave about the game and its interesting “pie cutting” mechanism.1

Thinking about this game led me to game theory, something called The Ultimatum Game, and an old mathematics article about pirates. All of that might teach us something about how players make decisions at the table.

Thief’s Market

In Thief’s Market (Chalker, 2025), you play as a group of thieves who just pulled off a big heist. The time has come to divide up the loot and then head to the market to make some purchases.

The game is played over a series of rounds with each round being divided into two phases:

1. The Loot Phase

   1. The first player rolls all the loot dice (10-16 dice in total) to the middle of the table. They also add the first player token to the pool of dice.

   2. On each player’s turn, they can either (a) take as many dice as they’d like from the center pool of dice or (b) steal all the items from any player, returning one to the center. The first player token can be taken and stolen as well.

   3. This splitting/stealing continues until every player has at least one item.

2. The Market Phase

   1. Each player takes turns using their collected dice to purchase cards from the market. The cards represent characters, markets, heists, and relics that allow players to modify dice and gain points in future rounds.

   2. If any player has obtained a total of three relic cards, the game ends.

This is not a full rules teach, but should provide enough detail for use to explore the core mechanism of the game: the choice to either take dice from the center or steal from another player.

Cutting the pie

When I briefly spoke to Dave Chalker about the game, he described it as “cutting the pie” which I think is a good description. We looked at fair cake cutting (i.e. “I cut, you choose”) mechanisms in the past in the context of Pacts (Brin, 2025):

In Pacts, each round one player will draw five pact cards and divide them into two piles of their choosing. In addition, they will also add a 2nd Player token to one of the piles, increasing the desirability of the pile — there’s an advantage to going second. Then the other player will choose one of the piles. Finally both players will resolve their actions — 1st player and then 2nd player order.

In Pact, this fair division optimization problem is upset by having items that are extremely hard to value. It is almost impossible to create two piles of truly equal size or value, making it a really interesting (and sometimes agonizing) choice.

I wouldn’t call Thief’s Market a pure “I cut, you choose” game.2 The difference is that in “I cut, you choose” games, the player is making a split of a pool of items and allowing another party to choose one of the pieces. This strongly incentivizes equal distributions, as the other (rational) player will take the largest piece available.

Thief’s Market instead has the player “cut the pie” with the looming risk of their entire piece being stolen. In Pacts, if you make unequal piles, you still end up with a pile. In Thief’s Market, if you take took many dice, you may end up with no dice at all.3

In some ways, this makes the decisions during the Loot Phase even more complicated. A player must decide if they should take dice from the center, and if so, how many they should take. Or, they must decide if they steal, and if so, who to steal from.

The ultimatum game

While trying to find similar mechanisms in experimental economics or mathematical games, I came across the ultimatum game first described by John Harsanyi in 1961:

1. The first of two players (Proposer) is given a sum of money and is asked to decide how to split it between themselves and the second player (Responder).

2. The Proposer makes an offer of a split of the money to the Responder.

3. If the Responder accepts the offer, they both get the agreed upon amounts. If the Responder rejects the offer, neither gets anything.

I think this touches on something happening in Thief’s Market, but it requires some explanation.

You’d expect that experiments involving the ultimatum game would show that the Responder would accept most offers because their choice is between the offered amount ($X) or nothing at all ($0). It’s almost a Hobson’s Choice.

And yet, experiments have shown this is not the case as Lauren Strano describes at The Decision Lab:

“What actually happens: In real-life experiments, low offers are usually rejected by Player 2 because people value fairness, even at personal cost. Additionally, proposers often offer 30-50% of the money because they assume that completely unfair offers will be punished, and they want at least something out of the proposition.”4

One possible reason proposed for this is that “people tend to reject an unfair offer, even if it means sacrificing their reward.”5

When presented an unfair offer, it would seem that people are quite likely to cut off their own nose just to spite their face.6

Working backward to a solution

So if our thieves are unlikely to be fully rational when making decisions, how can we know what to do in the game? Is there an optimal play that maximizes gain and reduces the risk of being stolen from?

That’s where I came across the “A Puzzle for Pirates” by Ian Stewart in Scientific American which describes a variant of the ultimatum game.7 It directly involves splitting a shared loot pile between multiple pirates:

“Ten pirates have gotten their hands on a hoard of 100 gold pieces and wish to divide the loot. They are democratic pirates, in their own way, and it is their custom to make such divisions in the following manner: The fiercest pirate makes a proposal about the division, and everybody votes on it, including the proposer. If 50 percent or more are in favor, the proposal passes and is implemented forthwith. Otherwise the proposer is thrown overboard, and the procedure is repeated with the next fiercest pirate.”

Much like Thief’s Market, multiple players are involved and the consequences for being too greedy when splitting the loot are harsh. It’s a two-page article that is well worth reading, but here is the bit that I found to be most interesting:

“The secret to analyzing all such games of strategy is to work backward from the end. At the end, you know which decisions are good and which are bad. Having established that, you can transfer that knowledge to the next-to-last decision and so on. Working from the beginning, in the order in which the decisions are actually taken, doesn’t get you very far. The reason is that strategic decisions are all about “What will the next person do if I do this?” so the decisions that follow yours are important. The ones that come before yours aren’t, because you can’t do anything about them anyway.”

So to determine what to do, you need to start with the very last two pirates who are making decisions. Once you figure out what they might do, you can ponder what the one before them would do, given the decision of the first two. This continues all the way up the chain until it reaches you whether it is 10 pirates or 100 pirates.

The actual conclusions in the article are fairly complicated, but it illuminates the exploration of the game in an interesting way. On a player’s turn they need to not only assess the current game state, the value of the loot pile, but also if the next person in line will steal from them.

The player’s choice must involve working backwards from the end.

Additional complexity

Two other factors are worth noting that are important in exploring the gameplay of Thief’s Market:

1. The dice do not have equal value: Each die has multiple faces. The value of each of those faces depends on what each player is trying to purchase and what cards they have that might modify certain dice. Like in Pacts, this inability to easily tie a value to each “pie slice” makes the decision incredibly difficult to just “math out.”

2. There is a player order token: Just as Pacts includes a 2nd Player order token, Thief’s Market includes a 1st Player token. Almost by definition, these tokens do not have a quantitative value (i.e. one that can be expressed as a fixed number).

Putting this all together, optimal play involves making plans about which cards to purchase, trying to make choices that don’t seem too unfair, and making your best guess at assigning a value to the dice and first player token.

This creates an interesting self-balancing mechanism that has significant dependence on social cues, without being a “social” or “party” game.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Fair division optimization problems: In game theory, fair division is when multiple parties are all entitled to a limited resource and need to divide it in a way that is agreeable to everyone involved. These problems are simple to explain but deceptively complex, which means they are fertile ground for game design.

• Players are not always rational: As the ultimatum problem may show, some players may be fine getting nothing (rather than something) if it means they can cause someone perceived as acting unfairly to get nothing too.

• Make the loot pile hard to value: Both Thief’s Market and Pacts ensure that the limited resources to be split are hard (or impossible) to accurately value. The addition of a non-resource like a player order token compounds this. It switches the game from being “mathy” to being a tough “gut” choice.

What do you think? Do you enjoy fair division problems in tabletop games? How could something like this be used in a TTRPG?

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

It’s a busy week!

I’m preparing for Unpub in Baltimore where I’ll be doing the following:

• Publisher Diaries Panel (Thursday 3/12 @ 4:00 PM): Tony Tran has invited small publishers to a Q&A about what made their games successful and how others can learn from their mistakes. I’ll be on the panel with Xoe Allred and Heather O’Neill.

• TTRPG Speed Dating (Thursday 3/12 @ 6:00 PM): Check out TTRPGs from 10 different designers in quick 15-minute sessions. I’ll be running the first public playtests of Exclusion Zone Botanist: Epsilon — character creation and exploring a location or two.

• Ratsail playtests (Friday 3/13 @ 5:00 PM): Running playtests of Ratsail (“Turtchester”).1 Sail ships and spend influence to compete for control of the Rat Isles in this area majority and open drafting game for 2-4 players.

Also, Tumulus Issue 06 “Hammer a nail in the coffin.” is shipping to subscribers this week! Watch your email for a shipment notification and check your spam folder if you don’t see one in the next few days.

But for now, let’s talk about tabletop game mechanisms.

Considering deck-building is one of my favorite board game mechanisms, I’ve surprisingly never directly covered it in a Skeleton Code Machine article.2 That changes today! We will be exploring how Shards of Infinity (a deck-builder) uses red-bordered mercenary cards to add more options during play.

What is a deck-building game?

Donald X. Vaccarino released Dominion in 2008 and forever changed board game design.3 The game introduced (or made popular) many of the elements that we now associate with deck-building games — games in which players use individual decks that they create during the course of the game.4

Specifically, three elements stand out:

1. The game has a currency (e.g. coins) that players accumulate and then spend to acquire new cards into their deck.

2. There is a common or shared market that contains cards that players can choose from when spending their currency.

3. Players draw X cards from their personal deck each turn, play each card, and then discard them all. Their discard pile is reshuffled to create a new deck when necessary.

Since its release, there have been many games that have iterated on the idea of Dominion or outright copied it. Donald has cited both A Few Acres of Snow (Wallace, 2011) and Eminent Domain (Jaffee, 2011) as examples of completely new games inspired by Dominion.5

Games like the very clearly titled Ascension: Deckbuilding Game (Gary, et al., 2010) introduced a dynamic market (i.e. the available cards change over time) to replace the static market style of Dominion. Ascension is also an example of adding multiple currencies (Runes and Power) to the game versus the single currency (Coins) of Dominion.

The deck-building genre has matured and the mechanism is now present in games like Dune: Imperium (Dennen, 2020), Spirit Island (Reuss, 2017), Tyrants of the Underdark (Lee, et al., 2021), Undaunted: Normandy (Thompson & Benjamin, 2019), and Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure (Dennen, 2016).

Shards of Infinity (Gary & Arant, 2018) continued to iterate on the deck-building genre in some interesting ways.

Shards of Infinity

The Shards of Infinity description gives you the theme of the game:

One-hundred years ago, The Infinity Engine was shattered and its reality-bending shards have destroyed most of the world. Now, it falls upon you to gather your forces, defeat your adversaries, and rebuild the Infinity Engine! Will you survive?

It’s a head-to-head game that I feel is best at two players. It does a few things that depart from most Dominion-derived deck-builders:

1. It has a six-card dynamic market like Ascension.

2. Players don’t compete for victory points. Instead players attack each other to reduce their opponent’s health from 50 HP down to 0.

3. It has two currencies (Gems and Power), but they are used in different ways. Gems are used to purchase cards from the market and Power is used to attack other players to reduce their health.

4. The game uses Mastery as a way to gradually increase the power of players over time, with cards gaining new effects at higher Mastery levels.6

For a small box game, there is a lot going on.7 This article is not a full rules explanation, but it is worth mentioning a few of the card types.

Allies and champions

Ally cards are the most common type of card. They have a name, cost (in Gems), faction, and effect when played. For example, the Shardwood Guardian is a member of the Undergrowth faction and causes the player to gain 2 Power and draw a card. Zara Ra, Soulflayer has the player gain 4 Power and 1 Mastery, but at a Mastery level of 10 it also allows two cards to be trashed out of the player’s deck.

Champion cards are similar with a cost and effects, but unlike ally cards, they remain in play. They are placed on the table to create tableau of Champions all of which can be used turn after turn.

In both cases (Ally and Champion), the cards are purchased from the market and placed into the player’s discard pile. They will eventually get shuffled into their deck, and then drawn. When played and/or destroyed, they go back into the discard pile to start the cycle again. The cards become a permanent part of the player’s deck for the rest of the game.

The twist that I find most interesting is the use of Mercenary Ally cards.

Mercenary ally cards

Ally cards with a red border are identified as Mercenary Ally cards. While these can be used in the same way as any other Ally card (as noted above), they also have a special ability called fast-play:

In addition to having the option to recruit a Mercenary just like other allies, you may fast-play a Mercenary instead. To fast-play a Mercenary while it is in the [market], pay its [Gem] cost, gain its effect immediately, and put it into the Play Zone. At the end of each turn, all fast-played Mercenaries move from the Play Zone to the bottom of the [market deck] (NOT your personal deck).

This means you can pay for a card in the market, play its effects, and not put it in your deck. This is really useful for a couple reasons:

• Fast-play doesn’t clog your deck: Cards aren’t worth victory points at the end of the game. So there’s no reason to accumulate a large deck in Shards of Infinity. In fact, the opposite is true: a winning strategy is to prune the deck down to just a few key cards. The smaller the deck, the faster the powerful cards will cycle through the deck to hand to discard and back.

• Get the effect before it’s too late: Normally a purchased (i.e. recruited) ally card needs to go to your discard pile first. It will take time to deplete your deck, reshuffle the discard, and then hope to draw that new card. Toward the end of the game, there might not be time to even see it get played. By fast-playing, you get the effect right now when you need it.

Of course, there are downsides to fast-playing a card. You spend the full amount but only get to use it once. It doesn’t become part of your deck to be used again. By fast-playing too often and too early in the game, you have no chance to build an engine to supply more Gems and Power later on.

Tough decisions

I’m constantly looking for player agency and tough decisions in games. I’ve found that most games that I enjoy and keep coming back to, they always seem to excel in both of these areas.

Adding the ability to fast-play cards in Shards of Infinity makes the decision space and choices even tougher than a normal deck-builder. Without it, the choice is to purchase one of the six cards in the market and put it into your deck or not. With it, now you need to choose to purchase or not, but also to either (a) fast-play for a benefit now but lose the card, or (b) put it in your deck, but it will take time to see it played.

I’ve played enough to know the answers to those questions depends on your deck, the progression of the game, your opponent’s deck, and many other factors.

Tough choices are fun!

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• It’s OK to be inspired by a game: There’s nothing wrong with taking a game you love and trying to make something inspired by it. That said, consider how different it is to ensure it’s not just a copy. There are so many ways a game can be changed, enhanced, and modified to make it feel special and unique.

• Deck-building is awesome: It’s one of my favorite mechanisms. No matter what the game is, if it has deck-building then I’m interested in trying it. Check out some of the modern examples listed above and see how the genre has changed and continues to mature over time.

• Identify tough choices: Look at your design and try to clearly identify each time a player has a choice to make. Then list out how many different options they have while noting any Hobson’s choices. For each one, is it possible to make the decision space smaller and the choice harder?

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

It’s March! That means that limited copies of Tumulus Issue 05 “Step into the fairy ring.” are now available as individual back issues.1

It also means that subscribers will soon be receiving shipping notifications for Tumulus Issue 06 “Hammer a nail in the coffin.”2 This issue is all about vampires, ghosts, and the dangerous dead. It includes a haunted house generator, an article about vampire mechanisms in Blood Borg, a playable game called A Place for All My Corpses with exercises to improve it, and more.3

Please consider supporting Skeleton Code Machine with a Tumulus subscription. Be sure to select the issues you want when subscribing.4

This week, while you are waiting for your next issue of Tumulus to arrive, we are looking at a solo journaling game called We Shall Be Monsters.5 It’s a Frankenstein-themed companion creator that uses an interesting circuit-based attribute selection mechanism.

We Shall Be Monsters

I picked up a print copy of We Shall Be Monsters at the Good Luck Press booth at last year’s PAX Unplugged.6 The cover is unassuming — almost all black with white title text. The pitch for this 17-page solo journaling game designed by Seb Pines is what drew me in.

Using a very Frankenstein-esque setting, in We Shall Be Monsters you are a reclusive scientist endeavoring to build your own perfect companion:

“Shape their body as you shape your futures together. Infuse them with vitality and see what you have created come to life and take their place beside you.”

Of course, you can’t exactly just stop by the local market and pick up a new body for your companion. Instead you’ll be creating them “from parts harvested from the dead” and you’ll stitch those parts together using an unnamed machine.

Starting with the legs, you’ll add some body parts, imbue them with life, and then move on to the next parts. Arms, torso, head, organs, brain, heart, are all required components. By the end, you’ll have a complete companion.

We are told that these parts come with a mixture of desires and ideals that are both our own (as we provide the vitality) but also from the part itself as “even dead flesh holds memory.” It won’t be simply a pair of legs, but legs that have a bit of our own personality in them as well as the personality of the former owner.

What I found interesting was the way in which the attributes are selected.

Creating attribute circuits

While many solo journaling games rely on either dice rolls or drawing cards to generate prompts and outcomes, We Shall be Monsters takes a different route. It uses what it calls circuits.

Each body part section has a matching node framework of varying size — connected green dots within a thick purple frame. Each green dot has an attribute word and description written on it. For example: “Lithe: They move with a smooth gracefulness, each step a languid movement.” or “Fragile: They are delicate and prone to breaking.”

The player selects attributes for their creation by starting anywhere on the outer purple frame and following the green connection lines until they exit the frame at another location. In the case of the legs (the first body part to be activated) the grid is a 3 x 7 matrix of attributes — wayward, nurturing, boney, poised, adventurous, entitled, manicured, and so on. Selecting two circuit routes through this matrix, the player adds some number of first attributes to their soon-to-be companion.

After answering some additional leg-related questions (e.g. Will they follow you wherever you go?), the process is repeated for the arms.

The torso matrix is particularly large, a 13 x 3 grid of 39 unique attribute names and descriptions. This continues to the final components.

Into the chest and skull, you place the heart and brain. The things that make them the most of who they are instilled into their reanimated flesh. With this, they will think and love. With these two final pieces, your creation is complete.

After a short epilogue, your new creation becomes your companion.

Open but structured

What I found interesting about the circuit mechanism is that it is completely zero luck — there are no dice or cards. The player acts with full agency in selecting which attributes the route takes as it crosses from one side of the circuit frame to the other.

Notably, players must follow the connected lines but otherwise may proceed how they wish. The circuit can flow in either direction. They can be short or long. The circuit line can even cross over itself. The only true restrictions are that you draw the number of circuits indicated and that you end when “the number of attributes your creation has equals the number of years you’ve lived.”

Having a list of attributes and asking the player to select X number from the list would be almost mechanically equivalent. Using a simple list would, however, be different in two important ways:

1. A list wouldn’t have any structure to it. The player would need to look at the entire list at the same time and make a choice.

2. A list wouldn’t have any thematic connection to the game. The concept of building Frakenstein-style electrical circuits to jolt your creation to life would be lost.

The grid forces players to look at only adjacent attributes while building circuits.

Take for example the torso. If you chose Lofty you need not (indeed can not) consider all other 38 attributes. Instead the mechanism forces you to only consider the three adjacent: Optimistic, Harmonious, and Grounded. Choosing Grounded means only Petty is available next. While you certainly could double back to grab a desired attribute, the mechanism creates a sharp focus on just a few.

In addition, once your circuit has made it most of the way across the frame, it is hard to go back and pick just one specific attribute. Gaining Adored might also mean picking up Violent along the way.

It’s a mechanism without randomness, but the thematic structure of it creates interesting, focused choices.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Zero-luck journaling games: We Shall Be Monsters made me realize that many (most?) solo journaling games choose the prompts randomly.7 Rarely, in my experience, is the player simply provided with a list of prompts or questions and then asked to choose. Using the circuit mechanism allows for player choice in a way that feels thematic and satisfying.

• Public domain settings: I’ve written before about adapting public domain works for use in board games and TTRPGs. Frankenstein, while not heavily used in We Shall Be Monsters, is clearly an inspiration.8 From Alice in Wonderland to Dracula, public domain settings are there to be mixed and remixed into new and interesting games.

• Thematic mechanisms: Not every mechanism can be made to be highly thematic. Sometimes a die roll is just going to be a die roll. But there are times we can we make a mechanism feel like what it represents. Keep an eye out and don’t pass up those opportunities.

UPDATE: This article originally said (incorrectly) Tumulus 07 was shipping soon. That was in error. It should have said Tumulus 06 is shipping soon. The issue number was wrong. The SCM editor (Murphdog) has been sacked. — E.P. 3/3/2026

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

Last week we looked at limited communication in Glatisant, an Arthurian-themed game for two players.

This week we are exploring how the Dark Venture: Battle of the Ancients board game uses an interesting roll-and-move mechanism that includes some tough choices.

Dark Venture: Battle of the Ancients

The dark, weird art of designer and illustrator Rob Lemon is what attracted me to Dark Venture: Battle of the Ancients (Lemon, 2022).1 The over-the-top description of the game is very fitting:

In a dark, destroyed world ruled by chaos, hordes of otherworldly creatures battle against one another for dominance and survival. Amidst the shrill call of battle horns, the ground rumbles as squadrons of mutated abominations rush into combat!

The game is a dark sci-fantasy skirmish game that supports solo, cooperative, and competitive modes on a grid-based map. Players move their units, attack, gather resources, acquire items, and capture objectives.

For the basic competitive mode, the goal is to gain victory points to win the game. In the scenario modes, players need to complete specific objectives detailed in the two included scenario books. For example, getting specific units to a location on the map, killing a leader, or building structures.

It’s a highly asymmetric game with five playable factions — each one with its own rules and powerful Ancient.2

• The Bohmerk (blue): Amorphous, gelatinous, shapeshifting creatures able to split into multiple units and then fuse together. They absorb enemies to grow stronger.

• The Dhargon (green): When their Elder dies, another grows from an egg to take their place. More resources means more eggs to spawn more units.

• The Orpal (yellow): They use rift crystals and a bag-draw mechanism to transport units around the map using portals.

• The Alderkang (teal): The gene-splicing Alderkang can capture units and perform an extraction on them. Once extracted, they can fabricate identical units.

• The Varpen (red): Marauding demons that can mutate. Units get progressively stronger over the course of the game.

The combat system is very straightforward. Roll a number of six-sided dice equal to your faction’s strength or defense value, add the results, and compare. The complexity comes from all of the faction abilities and rules that can bend the core rules of combat.

It is the action system, however, that I found particularly interesting.

Roll the action dice

At the start of each player’s turn, they roll six action dice. The red dice have four possible faces that dictate movement:

• 1 x Move Orthogonal (2 spaces)

• 1 x Move Orthogonal (1 space)

• 2 x Move Diagonal (1 space)

• 2 x Skull (no movement)

For each die rolled, there’s a 33% chance of orthogonal movement, a 33% chance of diagonal movement, and a 33% chance of getting nothing. With six dice rolled each time, chances are slim that they would all be skulls.3

Each die can then be applied to units on the map. For example, the Alderkang can use a Move Orthogonal 1 die and a Move Diagonal 1 die to move their Kangsbrute unit two spaces on the map. Any number of dice can be used for each unit, but each die can only be used once.

It’s an interesting system because you never know exactly how far or in which direction you will be able to move your units. It’s not quite roll-and-move, but it is something a little similar.

It also means that while the factions are highly asymmetric, the movement for each faction is basically symmetric — it is the same for all factions. Everyone rolls six red dice at the start of their turn. A bad roll is equally bad for all factions.

Movement and terrain

Terrain on the map works similarly to other skirmish and wargames like Burning Banners. There are rivers, water, roads, and other obstacles.

Crossing into a river costs an extra movement point (MP). If a Varpen warrior wanted to cross a river and come back out the other side, it would cost 2 MP to move into the river and another 1 MP to exit on the other side, for a total of 3 MP.

Some factions have the ability to convert resources (e.g. wood and stone) into new obstacles on the map. The Dhargon can build fences and walls that add 1 MP or 2 MP penalties to cross. In a game that has such variable and limited movement, this can create a significant advantage for the Dhargon.

Thankfully, Dark Venture has some luck mitigation built into the game in the form of genetic memory.

Genetic memory

Thematically, genetic memory exists because “the magik of the Cataclysm has left a temporal imprint within the cells of the creatures of this land.” Mechanically, it acts as a way to store actions for a future turn.

Each player has a Genetic Memory card that they keep near their faction player board. After rolling the red action dice at the start of their turn, they can store unused actions. This is done by placing a red token matching the die face stored (e.g. Move Diagonal). Up to three actions can be stored in this way, to be spent at any time during their turn.

This allows players to control the tempo of the game to some extent. They can choose to take fewer actions on some turns to bank actions for a big later turn. It also helps mitigate the luck of a particularly poor action dice roll by pulling from saved actions.

It’s a rather clever way of adding some player agency and strategy to an otherwise random action and movement system.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Roll-and-move is valid: I’ve called roll-and-move an outdated game mechanism in the past, but even then I noted that “in better cases, the roll might be mitigated or modified in some way.” Dark Venture mitigates luck by allowing actions to be banked for later use via the genetic memory mechanism.

• Adding player agency: While not a strict rule, I think it’s a good design method to look at each part of a game and ask (1) is there player agency and (2) can the player be given a choice.4 The genetic memory mechanism does this by allowing the player to choose not to use the dice and save them for a later turn. This can be a tough decision at times.

• Component bloat: The Dark Venture: Battle of the Ancients box contains 358 tokens, including 64 action dice tokens. It should be noted that adding the ability to store actions for later created a need for additional tokens. In a game that supports five players, that’s a lot of tokens. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is good to consider component impacts when making design decisions.

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

Last week we asked if lane battlers are actually area control games.1 The poll results at the end of the article were particularly interesting, and I’m not sure what to make of them. If you have theories, please let me know in the comments.

This week we are exploring Glatisant, a GM-less tabletop roleplaying game for two players with an Arthurian setting. It uses limited communication and hidden victory conditions in an interesting way.

Glatisant

I’ve always been fascinated with Arthurian legends and how strange many of them are. Reading through Roger Lancelyn Green’s King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table is a wild ride.2 Someone on a horse is always riding into the middle of the feast hall and then they all go off on quest — to retrieve a “white brachet” for example.3

So I was excited to try Glatisant, a two-player Arthurian tabletop roleplaying game, written by Lucas Zellers, layout/design by Emily Entner, and published by Graftbound Press.4

Glatisant is a GM-less, asymmetrical TTRPG that uses the card-based Carta System by Peach Garden Games — the same system as Moon Rings.5 In the game, each player has one of two roles:

“You play as the heroic Knight Errant or the enigmatic Questing Beast, object of their quest. The Knight must capture the Beast, and the Beast must help the Knight become worthy of their legend.”

After selecting roles, 25 cards are arranged on the table in a 5x5 grid. The Knight starts on one side and the Beast on the other. As the knight moves from card to card, they are turned up and revealed. Each card has an associated narrative prompt. For example, the 5 of Hearts:

BITTER DISAGREEMENT: Your quest leads you into a loud or hateful argument with someone you trust. Beast: Which of them is right, if either? Knight: Who do you argue with, and why?

What is interesting about the game, is how it uses resources, hidden victory conditions, and limited communication as mechanical tools to tell the story.

The knight errant and questing beast

The game is asymmetric, meaning that each player has their own rules and abilities, with Root (Wehrle, 2018) being the example most people are familiar with.6 But while Root is a competitive game, Glatisant is a cooperative one. Both players need to work together to achieve the game’s victory condition, but how they do that is a little tricky.

Here’s how the two roles are structured:

• The Questing Beast: A “fantastic Beast of the wild and magical world” that serves as the object of the Knight’s quest. This player chooses the hidden victory condition from a list at the back of the book. They have more freedom of movement, being able to move both orthogonally and diagonally around the cards. And they do not reveal the cards as they move onto them, but may drop “trail” resources to indicate where the Knight should go.

• The Knight Errant: A “protector and champion of the realm” and focus of the Beast. The Knight doesn’t know what the victory condition is, only that they must hunt the Beast. They can only move orthogonally, revealing each card as they do.

The Knight also has a set of resources including Mind, Body, and Spirit, tracked with dice or tokens during the game.

Each revealed prompt will increase or decrease one or more of the resources. Sometimes the Beast will be allowed to choose which ones change. Other times the prompt will dictate the change. The Tempest will decrease the Knight’s Body by 2 but an encounter with Merlin the Magician will increase Mind and decrease Spirit.

These resources are important because they are tied to the victory condition.

Secret victory condition

This is not a hidden movement game. The Knight knows where the Beast is located on the 5x5 grid at all times. The game does not end in victory if the Knight “catches” the Beast.

Instead, the Beast is trying to secretly guide and help the Knight. This is represented by the “Win Conditions” in Glatisant. Arranged into Easy, Medium, and Hard, they are a mix of theme and mechanism. Mechanically, the condition might require the Knight and Beast meet at the center of the grid or that the Knight has more Spirit than any other resource when they meet the Beast. Thematically, the condition might be that “only the strong” may find the Beast or “only when you have reached the end of yourself” can the Beast be found.

The key rule is that the Beast may never reveal the victory condition to the Knight directly. They may only guide the Knight by their choices in the game.

This results in the Beast and Knight working together but in an indirect way. They can incorporate hints into their narrative answers. The Beast can leave trails to guide the Knight to a particular card.7 Back and forth, they move, reveal cards, narrate prompts, and adjust the Mind, Body, and Spirit resources.

The players continue until the Beast and Knight meet on a card at which point the victory condition is (secretly) checked. If not met, the game continues. If all 25 cards have been revealed and/or the Knight has exhausted all resources, then both players end the game in defeat.

Limited communication

I have a complicated relationship with limited communication mechanisms in tabletop games. For example, I find it frustrating when a game outlaws communication but then tacitly requires it for the game to function, as I mentioned in the How fragile is your game design? article from 2024:

Limited communication co-op games: In games like The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine (Sing, 2019) and The Mind (Warsch, 2018) the rules explicitly say that players may not talk and may not openly coordinate what they are doing. Yet the games won’t work if there is absolutely no communication. So players end up developing their own ways to communicate without explicitly communicating, using subtle hints or body language. In this case, the players must almost act contrary to the explicit rules to have the game work as intended.

I also find it frustrating when cooperative games say players can’t discuss cards and specific action details to cooperate, as a strict reading of the Gloomhaven (Childres, 2017) rulebook would indicate:

“Players should not show other players the cards in their hands nor give specific information about any numerical value or title on any of their cards. They are, however, allowed to make general statements about their actions for the round and discuss strategy.”8

But other times, the limited communication doesn’t seem to get in the way of the game for me. I’d include Sky Team (Rémond, 2023) in that category.

Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised to see the limited communication structured the way it was in Glatisant.9 The players can play their roles and respond freely to prompts. The Knight has effectively no restrictions on communicating, as they have no information to hide. The Beast can say and do almost anything other than sharing one very specific victory condition.

The limit imposed on in-game communication is clear, precise, and makes thematic sense (i.e. the Beast can’t talk).

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Public domain settings: I doubt I’ll ever tire of classic settings such as Robin Hood and Arthurian legends, but I realize they aren’t for everyone. There are, however, so many public domain settings that are just waiting to be adapted into new and interesting games: The Scarlet Pimpernel, Treasure Island, The Call of the Wild, just to name a few.

• Hidden victory conditions: Glatisant uses a single, secret victory condition that determines if both players win or lose together. In other competitive games like Troyes (Dujardin, Georges, et al., 2010), each player has their own hidden objective but everyone scores all objectives at the end of the game. Two very different applications that demonstrate how hidden objectives are such an interesting area of exploration in game design.

• Limited communication: Love it or hate it, limited communication can be an interesting mechanism in games. I appreciate how the limits are very tight and specific in Glatisant while allowing freedom in responding to the prompts.

What do you think? Do you appreciate limited communication mechanisms in games? Do you think there are significant differences in how The Crew, Gloomhaven, Sky Team, and Glatisant approach limited communication? Which style do you prefer?

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

Vote for SCM in The Bloggies Round 1

Heads up that today, February 16, 2026, is the last day to vote for two Skeleton Code Machine articles in The Bloggies.

You can vote for each ones in their respective categories of Theory and Critique.

Here are the direct links to the voting forms:

🗳️ Vote: Theory Round 1

Voting link: The Bloggies: Theory Round 1

Everything is pointcrawl!

Exploring hexcrawls, pointcrawls, and other crawls to see if everything is actually just a pointcrawl. How can we reduce the illusion of choice and instead have players make meaningful decisions? Dec 02, 2025

🗳️ Vote: Critique Round 1

Voting link: The Bloggies: Critique Round 1

Playing the Chaplain’s Game

Exploring the use of coins as a divination mechanism in Mechs to Plowshares, a solo TTRPG about war, anxiety, paranoia, identity, and purpose by Anomalous Entertainment. Apr 22, 2025

We Read the Bloggies

Also, check out the amazing We Read the Bloggies project that was put together by the people at the Prismatic Waystation Discord server — a monumental effort to get every nominated blog posted as a podcast episode. I recorded readings of both Playing the Chaplain’s Game and Everything is Pointcrawl.

The podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts, including Apple and Spotify.

— E.P. 💀

P.S. Want more in-depth and playable Skeleton Code Machine content? Subscribe to Tumulus and get four quarterly, print-only issues packed with game design inspiration at 33% off list price. Limited back issues available. 🩻

Skeleton Code Machine is a production of Exeunt Press. All previous posts are in the Archive on the web. Subscribe to TUMULUS to get more design inspiration. If you want to see what else is happening at Exeunt Press, check out the Exeunt Omnes newsletter.

Skeleton Code Machine and TUMULUS are written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. TUMULUS and Skeleton Code Machine are Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

I’m happy to announce that Skeleton Code Machine’s “Playing the Chaplain’s Game” has been nominated for The Bloggies, a “yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.” Unlike most awards, nominated blog posts face each other in a tournament-style bracket. There are multiple rounds of voting, eventually resulting in a single winner. The next round of voting begins February 16, 2026.

Last week we looked at how Moon Rings uses a card-grid to create a journaling game with fingers as resources.

This week we are taking a look at lane battlers, using Air, Land, & Sea as a key example. Then we’ll explore how far you can stretch a lane battler until it becomes a “troops on a map” area control game.

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Air, Land, & Sea

The theme of Air, Land, & Sea (Perry, 2019) is fairly straightforward with art vaguely reminiscent of the Second World War: “As Supreme Commander of your country’s military forces in Air, Land, & Sea, you must carefully deploy your forces across three theaters of war: air, land, and sea.”

Two players sit across from each other with three “theaters of war” cards in a line between them: Air, Land, and Sea. Each player is dealt six cards, each tied to one of the theaters much like a card suit. The cards also have a numerical strength and sometimes have a special ability that is triggered when played. For example, the Transport (Air, Strength 1) card has the ability: “You may move 1 of your cards to a different theater.”

In addition, cards can be played face down into any theater regardless if it matches or not. Cards played this way always have a strength of 2.

After all the cards are played or someone decides to withdraw, the strength of each theater is totaled and the player with the highest value controls that theater.1 Each theater is resolved on its own, independent of the other theaters.

The player who controls the most theaters (2 of 3) is awarded victory points. The first player to reach 12 victory points wins.2

Lane battlers

Air, Land, & Sea is a perfect example of a lane battler game:

• Play is divided into multiple lanes.

• Cards are played onto opposing sides of each lane.

• Each lane has its own distinct battle that is resolved independently of the other adjacent lanes. Although lanes may interact during play.

• Overall victory is determined by winning control of individual lanes.

The three lanes (Air, Land, and Sea) are resolved based on total strength and victory points (VP) are awarded for controlling the most lanes (2 out of 3).

I’ve talked about lane battlers before in the context of Compile, a game heavily influenced by Air, Land, & See and that also uses three lanes.

In the case of Compile, however, each lane has two types or labels versus just one like in Air, Land, & Sea. For example, a Compile lane might be both Spirit and Life which allows either suit to be played into that lane. Also, the ability to shift/swap the lanes is a key part of the game and each card has multiple abilities that trigger based on different criteria.

It’s just one of the 81 games currently categorized as lane battlers on BGG, with the top ones being: Radlands (2021), Hanamikoji (2013), Battle Line (2000), Air, Land, & Sea (2019), Schotten Totten (1999), and Blood Bowl: Team Manager — The Card Game (2011).

Schotten Totten is a particularly notable example by Reiner Knizia that uses nine lanes.3 Rather than total numerical strength, players try to get ranked combinations of cards: color run, three of a kind, matching colors, or a run of successive values. A player wins when they either control three adjacent lanes or any five lanes.

Lane battlers with more than two players

In most cases the lane battlers are for two players only. While not impossible, a three player lane battle would have to look like a triangle on the table perhaps.4 It gets complicated if everyone’s cards are the same (i.e. pulled from a common deck).

Dogs of War (Mori, 2014) supports 3 - 5 players competing for three lanes. It does this by adding player-specific minis (with fancy hats!) which are used to indicate support for the winning side of each lane battle.5 The cards are from a common pool, but the addition of unique components and player colors allows for more than 2 players.

Are lane battlers actually area control games?

Games like Air, Land, & Sea, Schotten Totten, and Compile are all clearly lane battlers, sharing much of the same mechanical DNA. Games like Dogs of War, however, seem to be less like a lane battler and closer to an area control or area majority game.

This made me wonder if lane battlers are just one-dimensional area control games. If we represented the lanes as a map but retained the same basic mechanisms, would that change how we think about the game?

To test this, let’s look at a few different theoretical iterations of a lane battler design.

Iteration 1: Abstract lanes

First, imagine Air, Land, & Sea, but each player had colored tokens representing their strength rather than cards:

That definitely still looks like a lane battler. There are three clearly distinct lanes that are abstract representations of the theme. Each player places tokens on their side of each lane and then each lane can be resolved one at a time.6

Iteration 2: Thematic lanes

Next, let’s imagine that we represented the three lanes as a thematic 2D map rather than abstract lanes:

I think you’d be able to recreate Air, Land, & Sea in its entirety using a map like this. It wouldn’t look like a lane battler, but it certainly would still be one. In the example above, Orange wins Air and Sea while Green wins Land.

Iteration 3: Thematic lanes with 3 players

To continue with this thought experiment, this new map would allow us to easily have multiple players competing for each lane. They would each have tokens in their own color like this three-player example:

Now it looks even less like a lane battler and more like a classic “troops on a map” area control game. This is a three-way battle across three lanes. In this example, Orange wins Air, Pink wins Sea, and Green wins Land. Again, the tokens are shown as being all the same, but they could be different and each have their own special abilities.

Iteration 4: More thematic lanes and 3 players

Finally, let’s expand this one more time. In this iteration, there are still three players but now the Land lane has been split into three separate lanes called Land Area A, Land Area B, and Land Area C. This gives us five total “lanes” and three players:

This looks even less like a lane battler and instead almost completely like an area control game. The lanes are almost unrecognizable because they are represented as 2D areas on a thematic map. The strength being played into each one is no longer shown as values on cards and instead must be calculated by inspecting each token and adding the associated values together.

Is this still a lane battler?

I don’t know. I’d argue that it could be very mechanically similar to one, but it no longer feels like one. Somewhere between the first iteration and the last, the concept of lane battling is lost.

Applying layers of theme

It’s a fun exercise to wonder how Air, Land, & Sea would be different with a thematic map and unique minis for each unit, but there are also practical considerations. By using just cards and a few VP tokens, the game can fit in a small box and be sold for a very reasonable price. It’s easy to set up, takes up very little table space, and could be played at a coffee shop. The lack of plastic components and large map is one my favorite things about the game.

The trade-off, however, is that it feels more like an abstract game. There’s really no feeling of a battle or war game.

It makes me think back to Sarah Shipp’s layers of theme. Specifically how by making the map thematic (i.e. showing the land and water in 2D), it makes them Layer 2 “baked-in thematic elements.” The shape of the land and how it borders the water becomes an integral part of the game that can’t be avoided when playing.

There is no right or wrong way when designing on the abstract vs. thematic continuum, but it is interesting to think about.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• An interesting design space: While Compile clearly takes much of it’s design inspiration from Air, Land, & Sea, it is a very different game. Even when sharing mechanisms like having three lanes and being able to play cards face down into any lane, it has unique a feel and far different strategies. Then consider Schotten Totten where the goal is to get runs and sets vs. numerical totals. There’s a lot of room in the lane battler family for new and interesting designs.

• They are similar to area control games: I can’t help but see some similarities between lane battlers and area control games. Yes, they are different genres and styles of games, but a lot of that is how they are visually implemented.

• Abstract vs. thematic: I tend to prefer highly thematic games rather than abstract ones, but the distinction between the two isn’t always clear. It is also possible to turn an abstract game into a thematic one without many mechanical changes. The challenge often comes in the component complexity that comes along with it.

What do you think? Have you played any lane battlers that you love? Which lane battlers have you played that support more than two players? Is it helpful to think about the distinction between a lane battler and an area control game?

— E.P. 💀

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