The jam is upon us!

Unknown Dungeon’s One-Page RPG Jam 2026 is happening right now.1 It runs from July 12 through August 16, 2026, giving you more than 25 days to make a weird little game to submit to it.

It’s a perfect time to go through the submissions from previous jam years and get some inspiration. This week we are looking at one from last year’s jam called One Hundred Rats Devour a Tavern. It has a fun theme, tight core game loop, and uses an interesting way to generate a map.

One Hundred Rats Devour a Tavern

One Hundred Rats Devour a Tavern is written by B. Lee, J. Lee, and N. Robina. It is published by The Ravensridge Press.2 The hook is simple and effective:

“You are a sentient swarm of vengeful rats. For too long have your kind been trapped, kicked, poisoned and killed. It’s time to fight back. This tavern has been unkind to your kin, but now it’s time for revenge. Cause havoc and repel the foul humans.”3

Rather than the player assuming the role of a single entity or character, they instead play as a group of characters. Each game has the player rolling up five new rats, each with a name (Potato), trait (baby-faced), and habit (scurries).

The core game loop involves choosing the next available room of the tavern and checking for obstacles and threats. Obstacles could be something falling over or the humans launching a counter-attack. Threats are trickier and apply de-buffs.

Your rats can then take turns attempting to beat obstacles or reduce the threats by rolling dice. It’s a harsh system where rolling a 1-3 results in not only failure but the death of a rat. My poor baby-faced Potato died in the first room while trying to reduce the threat of “delicious smells” coming from somewhere in the tavern.

The rats must be fed with available food (or starve and die), and then the process continues. The goal is to conquer each room of the tavern and “burn it all to the ground.”

Making a map with dice

I found the process for making the tavern map to be particularly interesting. Not only because it was quick and easy, but also because it could be explained in the very tight space of a one-page RPG.

After rolling 12d6, they are placed on the table following some specific rules:

1. A new die must be placed adjacent to a die with the nearest number of pips.

2. Dice with 1 pip are placed last and can’t be placed adjacent to another die with just 1 pip.

3. If a die can’t be placed, it is removed from the game.

Each die placed in this way represents a room in the tavern. For example, 1s are entrances and 5s are kitchens. Four dice are added after the random ones to ensure that there are at least two entrances, one kitchen, and one larder. The full tavern map, therefore, has 16 rooms at the start of the game.

Generating dungeon maps

I’ve written about the challenges of generating dungeon maps before, including methods that involve rolling dice. Dark Fort is a good example where you roll for the room contents, shape, and number of exists.4 It’s an easy method that is quick to use.

In that article, I also looked at card-driven rooms, card grid exploration, and custom tiles (e.g. geomorphs). Each has its own pros and cons.

The dice method in One Hundred Rats Devour a Tavern avoid many of the cons listed:

• It doesn’t require custom components (e.g. tiles or special dice).

• It avoids excessive dice rolling.

• Dead ends are unlikely.

The immediate problem I thought of was if you don’t roll any 1s, there would be no entrance. That was easily handled by the included rule where four dice are held back and set to specific values (1, 1, 5, 6).

The simple placement rules ensure that the highest value rooms are toward the center of the tavern while lower value (and therefore lower risk) ones are toward the edges.5

I’m not sure if this dice-based map generating system is inspired by another game, but it’s the first time I’ve seen something like this. It’s quite interesting!

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Generating maps: Having the player create a dungeon map is a tricky task. While it increases replayability, it also increases the risk of burdensome mechanisms or suboptimal (broken) maps. The method above seems to be a good solution.

• Core game loop: One thing I appreciate about One-Page RPGs is that it forces designers to be clear and explicit about their game’s core game loop. The game is distilled down to its essence on a single sheet of paper. It can, however, be expanded later — as is being done with One Thousand Rats Devour a City.

• Playing as many characters: I’ve been fascinated by TTRPGs where you play as a group or team of characters rather than a single one. Playing as a swarm of rats (many of whom will die quickly) is a good example.

What do you think? Have you seen this map-making method used in other 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

Unknown Dungeon’s One-Page RPG Jam 2026 is underway! The annual game jam has participants creating roleplaying games on a single sheet of paper. I’m a big fan of this event and encourage you to check it out. In fact, I wrote an entire Make Your Own One-Page RPG guide to make it easier for people to participate.1

Submissions are open from July 12, 2026 through August 16, 2026. More than enough time to come up with an idea and create something!

So this week, we are looking at how to pack a lot of content into a very small space — an important skill when making a one-page roleplaying game.

The classic random tables

In the roleplaying game world, a random table is a list of items with each item associated with a number of a die. This could be a single column of items or it could be a more complex table with multiple columns.2

The Locations and Events tables from Cybermetal 2012 (Adam Vass) shown above are examples of simple, D10 random tables. You roll a ten-sided die and get a single result. The Name/Handle table allows you to roll twice on it to get an independent name and independent handle that could be combined for a single NPC.

Take, for example, this D100 Critical Failure Table from Privateers & Gentlemen (Williams, 1982). Per the rules, if a character fumbles a strike (“he’s done something clumsy or foolish that has done harm to his cause”), the player must make an additional roll to see if a critical failure has occurred. If it has, the player must roll on the table:

Note that when rolling D100 (i.e. two ten-sided percentile dice), there is a flat or even distribution of all possible values. The table groups some of the results to create an uneven distribution. There’s a 10% chance that the character falls. There’s only a 1% chance that the character hits themself for maximum possible damage.

The D20 Hit Location and Wounds Table works in a similar way. Results between 1 and 6 cause the near leg to be hit while results of 19 or 20 are a headshot.

D66 random tables

I’ve written about how to use D66 random tables, but they are worth mentioning here again. They take the pyramid-shaped probability distribution of rolling 2d6 and turn it into a flat distribution. All of the 36 possible results have an equal probability of being rolled. The number of options can also be reduced by grouping the results of one die. You can see many examples of this in Wyrm (Feral Indie Studios), including the Trait tables (above).

As you can see in the image, there are 9 Boons, 12 Scars, and 18 Mutations. This is achieved by grouping either one or both of the dice to yield the right number of options.

In a very small space, many options are given ranging from Superstitious Sellsword to Writhing Limbs. This method would work well in a one-page RPG, especially if you don’t want the full 36 options of a regular D66 table.

Combinatorial random tables

The third type of table is the one I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. It’s different than the others because it actually uses multiple tables to generate one thing, rather than one large table.3

An example can be seen at the beginning of Eleventh Beast (above).

The player rolls 1d8 three times to generate the two parts of the beast’s name and the location. Roll 1-4-3 would yield The Black Goat of Moorgate while 6-5-7 would yield The Bone Worm of Southwark. The advantage of such a table is that it creates 512 beast combinations in a small space.

A similar method is used when generating the person recounting rumors of the beast. This time with three d6 rolls, the player generates a First Name, Last Name, and source of the rumor. This yields 216 different options in a very tight space:

The “Make Your Own Dragon” generator in the latest issue of Tumulus uses this method. You roll a d6 six times to determine the various aspects of your dragon: Form, Breath, Vulnerability, Scale, Lair, and Desire. With six possible outcomes and all rolls being independent, there are 46,656 different dragons that could be rolled using that generator. And yet it all easily fits onto a single A5 page.

Using combinatorial tables

I can think of quite a few ways that multiple, small tables could be used to create a large variety of end products.

• Magic spells: Two lists can be used to make a wide variety of spells. The first (A) is a list of action verbs (e.g. banish, summon, wither, shift) and the second (B) is a list of nouns (e.g. cloud, person, undead, frog). When combined (A+B) they generate spells that immediately sound interesting (“Banish Undead” or “Summon Frog”).

• Rumors: As noted in ADVENTURE! Make Your Own Adventure, MÖRK BORG adventures often make use of rumors and lies. Multiple tables could be used to generate a wide variety of rumors. Combine the rumor source (A), subject (B), and veracity or truthfulness (C).

• Quests: Adventure hooks or quests could be made by combining the objective (A), location (B), reward (C), and obstacle (D).

• Planets: If you need some random planets, combine the size (A), atmosphere (B), terrain (C), weather (D), and special feature (E). Just six items on each of the five tables would mean there are 7,776 different planets.

There is, of course, a downside to this method. The individual tables need to be truly independent. Any item from List A needs to be able to be sensibly combined with List B or List C. This means that each item on the lists must be chosen carefully and in the context of the other lists.

The other downside is that the results potentially leave more of the work to the player. If the combined words or features are not detailed enough, it means the player will need to fill in the narrative gaps. Sometimes that’s OK, but it can make playing the game harder for less experienced roleplaying game players.4

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Make weird games: If you’ve ever thought about making your own game, the One-Page RPG Jam is a great way to give it a try. The Make Your Own One-Page RPG guide breaks the whole project into little, achievable tasks that you can actually do. By the end, you’ll have a published game. Trust me, you’ll feel great!

• Pack a lot into a little space: If you have unlimited space, you don’t need to worry about how large your random tables are. If, however, you are making a smaller game, you’ll need to compress as much as you can in a tight space. Using modified D66 tables or combinatorial tables might help.

• Check the combined results: Using multiple, small tables to generate things for your RPG usually works well. It’s important to check, however, to ensure that all the results actually make sense. Test your tables before releasing them into the wild.

What do you think? Do these A+B+C tables have a special name or are they just yet another version of random tables?

— 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 07. Slay the dragon.

Tumulus Issue 7 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 “Do not trust robots.” or “Return to the sea.” 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 of Tumulus Issue 7 is “Slay the dragon.” and is focused on dragons big and small. It begins by asking the question: What is a dragon?

In Constructing Legendary Dragons (p. 7) you can read about the common elements of dragons and roll some dice to make your own. There are game design lessons to be learned from SPI’s 1981 Dragonslayer board game (p. 15).

This issue has two playable games. The first is Passive Aggressive Dragons in which you and an opponent competitively build a lair all while trying to force the other to leave (p. 29). The other is Kill the Worm — an adaptation of the classic Fox and Geese game with villagers battling the mythological Lambton Worm (p. 51).

The article about Precious Things (a game about cozy dragons collecting things) includes a three-question interview with designer Lucas Zellers.

Free Dragon Pages bookmark TTRPG

This issue of Tumulus is shipping with a free Dragon Pages bookmark game.

You are a knight on a quest to slay a dragon. Journey to its lair, discovering boons, banes, and omens along the way. But move swiftly, lest your supplies run out! The dragon awaits!

• Use any book you’d like along with a few six-sided dice.

• Watch for key words in the text.

• Words will add or subtract from the attack dice pool.

• Each real day that passes consumes your supplies.

Created by Exeunt Press for the TTRPG Bookmark Jam 2025.

Pick your issues when ordering

Please select your issues when subscribing. Tumulus 07 “Slay the dragon.” is the current issue and will ship immediately. Tumulus 08 is the next one and will ship September 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.

I need to resub!

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. New issues are added after the next one has shipped.

And good news! Tumulus Issue 01 “Do not trust robots.” is back in stock! Due to the number of requests I’ve received and the fact that its print run was smaller than the others, I did another printing of it. Grab Issue 01 as a back issue and get an art print of Ragdoll by Strega Wolf while supplies last.1

I don't trust robots.

Upcoming issues

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

• 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

• Issue 10. “Get in the mech.” (March 2027)

  • Mecha, skirmish games, pilots, kaiju, heat, navigation

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

Issue titles and covers are subject to change, but that’s the plan! Images above are mockups. Issues 1 through 7 are printed and in stock. The two TTRPG bookmarks are already printed and ready to be included.

— 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 2026 Exeunt Press.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

I was surprised at how many people at the ALA Game Jam panel last week read Skeleton Code Machine! A few people stopped by after it was done and shared some very kind words that I really appreciated. It reminded me that this newsletter grows organically by readers like you sharing it.1

So here’s my ask: If you’ve gotten something out of these weekly explorations of tabletop game mechanisms, share this article with one person you think would enjoy it too. (And if someone shared it with you — welcome! Skeleton Code Machine is free and comes out every Tuesday rain or shine. The best place to start is here!)

Done? Nice!

Now let’s dig into Sanctum — a storytelling game about dungeons that uses its inherent structure rather than detailed mechanisms.

A story about a dungeon

With writing and layout by James Pianka, Sanctum (PDF, Print) is a “no-prep, all-verbal storytelling game” for three players, although it can be played with anywhere from one to four players with some modifications.2

Over the course of three acts, players will create a story about a dungeon and the adventure that happens within it.3 Players take turns clockwise around the table, each one adding more detail to the current act:

• Act 1: Dungeon (site, prize, guardian)

• Act 2: Intruders (identity, motivation, preparation)

• Act 3: Adventure (approach, complication, resolution)

The first player’s task is to define where the dungeon is location or what it is (i.e. “the site). Dungeons aren’t just tunnels underground with stone floors and walls filled with skeletons and green slimes. It could be a cyberpunk corpo building, a pirate ship, or an alien fortress. The goal is to, as the game emphasizes, “stay high-level and archetypal, leaving room for development.”

Subsequent turns have players defining the prize (e.g. a chest of gold) and the guardian (e.g. a stone knight).4 Again, the point is to keep it broad and vague — not to provide overly detailed descriptions.

Expanding on the ideas of others

There’s no dice rolling, no combat results tables, and indeed very little mechanical structure in Sanctum. It’s a very simple game.

Where Sanctum has an interesting twist is that it structures the game so players expand on the ideas of others. After, for example, players have broadly defined the site, prize, and guardian of the dungeon in Act 1, players then take turns expanding those ideas.

They aren’t expanding their own features, however. Instead, they are expanding a feature defined by someone else: “Each player may then expand upon a feature they didn’t define — prioritizing features no player has expanded.”

One player says that the intruders (those who enter the dungeon) are goblin mages and they leave it at that. The next player says they are motivated by finding a relic to save their clan. The third player adds that the mages acquired a map, key, and magic skull to prepare for their adventure.

These are just a few aspects of the intruders. Each one is then expanded by another player, giving a background and names to the goblins or explaining the purpose of the skull.

Making storytelling more accessible

In my experience, many collaborative storytelling games have each person add a fully-defined “thing” to the game. They might add a whole building (and its history) to a city or create an entire monster with a full description. Particularly for those new to storytelling games or when playing with strangers, this can be a real challenge.

By having each player just add a very small piece of the story and keeping each piece intentionally broad, it reduces this burden on players.

Many times, it is easier to riff on someone else’s idea and expand it than create one of your own. Again, this reduces the potential stress of playing a very open-ended storytelling game.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Structure, not mechanisms: Sanctum could have employed more mechanisms to try to accomplish the same goal: dice-based turn order, cards, tokens, trackers. Instead it simply structures the game in a way that facilitates a certain kind of play — an important lesson that more mechanisms isn’t always the answer.5

• Three acts: Ensuring that your game has a game arc is critical. Sanctum makes it explicit and part of the game. It is quite literally divided into three acts.

• Simplicity in design: Sanctum is by no means a “big” game that will last for hours. The introduction says it should take “no more than 30 minutes,” although I can see it going longer that (in a good way). It’s a good example of how a simple game can still be fun and lead to an interesting, emergent story.

What do you think? Have you played a storytelling game like Sanctum before? If so, 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

I was on the Why We Can’t Shut Up about Game Jams panel at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference & Exhibition in Chicago this week. Organized and hosted by Rebecca Strang, the panel focused on how libraries can integrate game jams into their programming:

This panel brings together librarians and game publishers to share their experience and ideas on hosting game design workshops at your library! From iterating on existing games to creating original ones, from board games to tabletop roleplaying games, from single-day events to a month-long event, come learn how play can foster creativity, facilitate community, and build connection with library resources and services.

I was one of the four people invited to be on the panel:

• Molly Porter, GameRT Meeple-at-Large, Branch Manager, Ascension Parish LIbrary at Dutchtown, Prairieville, LA

• Amber Sewell, GameRT Mage, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV

• Jeff Grisenthwaite, Game Designer

• John Mulligan, Game Designer, Exeunt Press

The room was full and everyone seemed to really enjoy the panel. So here are my responses to the first five questions, along with some Chicago pictures.

Q1. What is a game jam?

I’ve written about game jams before, but (to me) game jams have three common elements:

1. It’s a game development sprint.

2. There is a limited time period.

3. There is a specific theme, format, mechanism, or technology required.

How those three elements are defined and implemented can widely vary. A tabletop game jam might focus on a single game or system (e.g. Fallen RPG Jam) or on a broad genre of games (e.g. wargames in Postcards from the Front). The One-Page RPG Jam starting on July 12, 2026 requires that the submissions be playable RPGs and that each one fits on a single sheet of paper.1

Game jams can be ranked or not. I tend to prefer unranked game jams because I feel like the idea of having “winners and losers” (explicitly or tacitly) acts as a barrier to new creators giving it a try. When it’s just about making something for the sake of making something, I’ve found people are more likely to give it a try.

Q2. What is your experience with game jams?

My first experience with a game jam was the Tiny Tome Jam in 2021. I created and submitted Mammoth — a game about hunting and gathering in the Late Pleistocene age. It ended up being included in the printed Tiny Tome book and inspired me to continue with game design.

Since then, I’ve participated in quite a few game jams. One of the most recent was making The Trench Grub’s Thirst for last year’s Appendix N Jam. The one that is most dear to me, however, is the annual One-Page RPG Jam. It’s that one that inspired me to create Exclusion Zone Botanist, Eleventh Beast, and Caveat Emptor — three of the bestselling games from Exeunt Press.

I also ran a one-page RPG jam as part of a free class I taught at a public library. Using Make Your Own One-Page RPG, I taught a four-session, free class at one of my local public libraries. You can read summaries of each class: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4. We even ended the class with our own game jam where all the participants uploaded their games to itch.io.

In some ways, the MÖRKTOBER event I host each year is also like a game jam, albeit one that is chaotic and decentralized by design. It is focused on making things related to the MÖRK BORG TTRPG, and has a limited time period that runs from October 1 through October 31 each year.

I also keep threatening to run a game jam for Skeleton Code Machine readers too.

Q3. What challenges have you had with game jams?

For me, the first challenge would be to run a game jam in a single workshop session. When I run classes at public libraries, I never know who is going to show up. Some participants might have a lot of experience and may have even designed a game before. Other participants may have little to no gaming experience. To make a program that is fun and engaging for everyone, I’ve broken it into multiple sessions to ensure no one is left behind.

The second, perhaps most common challenge, is convincing people they can make a game! It takes a lot of encouragement. Showing examples of small games that are a little rough around the edges really helps.

Connected to that is the third challenge, which is to break the large task of “making a game” into smaller, achievable tasks. When I ran the game jam at the library, we did each step of the process together. We decided who our game would be for, we each chose a theme, we each explored possible mechanisms together, and so on. By ensuring we did each little step together, by the end, everyone had a game.

The final challenge is promoting the event. This requires a large amount of work and effort, usually on the part of the library staff. I talk about how and when to promote the event at length in the “How to run a tabletop game design workshop at your library” I presented for the Indiana State Library.

Q4. What tips do you have for running game jams?

My experience with game jams has been largely with TTRPGS and with public libraries. Given that, here are some of my tips:

• Help people choose a theme for their game. This is the hardest part, so don’t make them struggle with a blank page. Use the Theme-O-Matic.

• Encourage people to use an existing framework or SRD like Lasers & Feelings or Wretched & Alone. There’s no need to start from scratch.

• There are freely available art assets and icons to use. Share places where everyone can grab public domain art to use.

• Leverage local board game groups. Contact your library’s board game club, your friendly local game store, Unpub, and Break My Game. This helps with the promotion challenge noted above.

Q5. What’s your favorite story related to a game jam?

A few of the creators in the Make Your Own One-Page RPG public library class not only made their first games, but sold them at a game store’s local developer day. This really made the class seem worthwhile, not because of the sale, but because attendees went from zero to published game in just four sessions. They created something new, wonderful, and something they were proud to share with the gaming community.

I can’t think of a better conclusion to the class than that.

Visiting Chicago

I have to share that this was my first visit to Chicago and I had such a wonderful time. Sightseeing included Cloud Gate (the bean), The Art Institute of Chicago (as seen in Ferris Bueller), eating deep dish pizza, and having my first Chicago-style hot dog.2

Thank you so much to Rebecca Strang for setting up the panel and for inviting me. I had an absolute blast both during my day at the conference and visiting the city in general. I hope to visit again soon!

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Libraries are amazing: It was inspiring and energizing just to be around that many people who love libraries, many of whom have dedicated their entire lives to supporting libraries. Check out the work that the ALA does.

• You should participate in a game jam: They are good for the soul. Creating something feels great. Actually finishing a project (even a small one) can be so satisfying. Make weird games!

• Consider running a game jam: This is obviously a lot more work and not for everyone, but you should at least think about it. Check out the interview with Chris about his recent Lean Green Zine Jam.

Have thoughts on game jams? Leave a comment below! Also, vote in this week’s poll.

— 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

This week we are exploring how Black Rose Wars: Rebirth uses an action queue system to turn combat and conflict into a tricky puzzle to solve.

But first…

I’ll be at the ALA Annual Conference this week in Chicago! Come to the GameRT Mage’s Program: Creativity, Community, and Connection: Why We Can’t Shut Up about Game Jams:

This panel brings together librarians and game publishers to share their experience and ideas on hosting game design workshops at your library! From iterating on existing games to creating original ones, from board games to tabletop roleplaying games, from single-day events to a month-long event, come learn how play can foster creativity, facilitate community, and build connection with library resources and services.

This is only the second time I’ve ever been on a panel, and I’m very excited for it!1 If you’ll be there, please let me know in the comments!

Now, on to the battle for the power of the Black Rose!

Fighting to rebuild the Lodge

Black Rose Wars: Rebirth (Colletti, Fonseca, et al., 2023) is fantasy combat strategy game with a setting that is a little bit confusing. There’s a powerful Black Rose entity that controls the Lodge and all of its rooms. It was destroyed in the past and now mages are competing to rebuild the rooms. Or something like that:

Every player represents a Mage in this struggle to prove themselves as the true beholder of the Black Rose’s power. The mages will program spells to their board and execute them in turn order. Those spells may disable other mages spells, arm traps, arm powerful defensive moves, deal damage, or summon otherworldly beasts.

The game is played on a large, modular, hex grid of tiles. Each tile represents a room in the lodge such as the Armory, Observatory, Garden, and Pleasures Room. All tiles begin on their destroyed side. Throughout the game, players will place Instability Cubes in the available slots in each room. Once full, that tile can be flipped and victory points are gained.

Players (mages) will also be battling each other while attempting to rebuild the rooms via traps, summoned creatures (“evocations”), spells, and direct attacks. There is, however, no player elimination. If your mage ever receives damage equal to their Health Value, they are simply returned to their starting room and begin again. The player who applied the most damage that resulted in the defeat receives victory points.

There’s a lot going on in this game, and it’s far too much to explain in this article. The part I want to focus on is how players program their spells for use each round.

Schools of magic

There is an element of deck building in Black Rose Wars: Rebirth. Each round, players draw two cards from their deck and add two cards from various Schools of Magic including Agony, Alchemy, Hex, Nightmare, Shamanic, and Technomancy. Players end up with a mix of cards from the school, each card with its own ability. Some act as traps (triggered by a specific action by another player) and others are direct attacks that deal damage. Some add an Instability Cube to a room (to rebuild it) and others nullify incoming spells.

During the Study and Preparation phases, players are drawing and selecting which cards they want to be able to play in the upcoming round. Players can only select 4 spell cards to ready and the others will remain in their hand.

The interesting twist is that the spells must be put into an action queue before players begin taking turns.

Spell programming

Black Rose Wars: Rebirth uses a batch action queue system for spells. Players choose 4 spells to ready and place them on their board in order. One slot is a Quick Spell and can be used out of order. The other three must be used in order: Slot 1, then Slot 2, then Slot 3 last.

During the action phase, each mage performs one or two actions in turn order. The first player might activate/prime a trap spell and then move two hexes to activate a room’s ability. The next player might use a spell to add Instability Cubes to a room and not use their second action. This continues around the table until all players have exhausted all of their actions.

The trick is that you programmed your actions before everyone started moving around and taking actions. You may have thought that one of your rivals would be in range, but now they decided to move to the other side of the map. Even worse, you might think you could deal the final two damage to a mage only to have someone else steal the kill right out from under you. It’s also possible that you end up being defeated earlier than expected and sent back to your room to start over.

The Quick Spell slot helps mitigate this because it can be used at any time during your turn. The other spells, however, must be used in the order you arranged them.

Setting traps

Trap spells are one of the most interesting uses of this batch action queue mechanism.

First, trap cards must be activated. The spell programming order still applies here, so if your trap is last in the queue, it won’t be activated until all other spells are used first.

Second, a trap card has a triggering condition that must be met: “An Evocation is defeated or removed” or “Another mage enters a Red or Yellow room.” If the condition is met, the trap fires and its effects are resolved.

Of course, the effects of a triggered trap might trigger someone else’s active trap which might even trigger yet another trap. It gets a little complicated at times, but it’s one of the most memorable parts of the game when it happens.

A different kind of tactical play

In many strategy games, you choose your actions and you execute them during your turn. Certainly you are reacting to other players, but usually you can change your mind on which action you are about to take.

Batch action queue (programming) systems like Black Rose Wars: Rebirth create a different kind of feel. You lay out your plan and then hope for the best. Your tactical changes during the action phase aren’t which card to play, but instead where to move (if moving) and who to target (if attacking). It’s a mix of pre-made decisions and tactical control that leads to everyone taking unexpected (and yet still fulfilling) turns.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Action queues are cool: While I’m absolutely awful at playing the birds in Root (Wehrle, 2018), action queues and action programming are fascinating mechanisms.2 Take a look at Mechs vs. Minions (Cantrell, Ernst, et al., 2016) for more inspiration.

• Mitigated chaos can be fun: I’m not sure the spell programming system would be nearly as fun if not for the Quick Slot and the fact that players get two general purpose “physical actions” each turn. The action queue is a key part of the game, but it is mitigated to allow some flexibility.

• Laying traps feels great: I found one of the most satisfying parts of the game to be activating a trap and then quietly waiting for someone to trigger it — just hoping they attack me or activate a certain type of room. The fact that they can start a chain reaction of traps makes it that much better. I’d love to see this sort of thing in other games.

What do you think? Have you seen action queues or programming in other games? I’m particularly interested in TTRPG examples, so please share 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

Tumulus 07 “Slay the dragon.” has shipped to all subscribers. If you are a subscriber, you should have received a shipping notification. Check your spam folder if you haven’t seen it yet. Also, Tumulus 06 “Hammer a nail in the coffin” copies are now available as back issues.

This week, the emperor has died and there’s a battle for power! Hidden Leaders can show us how tug of war mechanisms are perfect for games of influence vs. control.

Following the death of the emperor…

In Hidden Leaders (Stocker, Markus Müller, et al., 2022) the emperor has died and the kingdom has descended into turmoil:

The island of Oshra is in turmoil. Following the death of the Emperor, the conflict between the Hill Tribes and the Imperial Army escalated. While the Water People try to maintain balance between the old rivals, the Undead aim to escalate the war. All hope rests on the six children of the Emperor: Who of them will claim the throne?

Players become one of six Leaders who are each aligned with two of the four factions: Hill (green), Army (red), Water (blue), and Undead (black). During the game they will influence the power of the Hill and Army factions which will result in victory for one of the four factions.

The game is one of influence vs. control, a concept I’ve been playing with in the upcoming Proxwar Zero game I’m working on.1

Only players who are aligned with the winning faction can win the game.

If multiple players have the correct alignment, there are tiebreakers to determine a winner of the game.

Adding heroes to your party

Hidden Leaders uses a double tug of war mechanism to track the power of the competing Hill and Army factions. They are represented by green and red tokens respectively on a board with 12 linear spaces.2 They both begin the game in the 4th space from the left.

On your turn, you play 1 hero card from your hand face up in front of you. These face up cards are called your party. Then you move either the Hill or Army faction token the indicated amount (either left or right) as indicated by the played card.

For example, the Battle Connoisseur card moves the Hill faction marker 1 to the right while the Spirited Shaman moves both the Hill and Army factions 1 to the left each. Other cards base the movement on number of cards discarded or give the player a choice, like the “-2 Army and/or -2 Hill” of the Furious Frog card.3

Many cards also have other effects that trigger when played like taking extra cards or turning cards face down (hide) or face up (reveal).4

The game ends when any player has a certain number of face-up heroes in their party. This end game trigger number ranges from 5-8 heroes depending on player count.

A tug of war with an end zone

While one might expect that whichever token (Hill or Army) is closest to an end would determine the strongest faction, Hidden Leaders does add an interesting twist. The board is 12 spaces, but the final four spaces (i.e. spaces 9-12) are marked as Undead. This creates a special “end zone” on the right side of the board. All the other spaces (i.e. spaces 1-8) are the same.

There are only two markers on the board but four possible factions. This means there are multiple outcomes for the tokens:

1. Undead win if both the red and green markers end up in the Undead end zone at the end of the game (spaces 9-12).

2. Water wins if the red and green spaces are next to each other.

3. Army wins if the red marker is 2+ spaces ahead of the Hill marker.

4. Hill wins if the green marker is 2+ spaces ahead of the Army marker.

I think this is the most interesting part of the game. It creates a four-way tug of war which is not something that is easily represented in board games.5

Carefully influencing factions

Remember that each Leader is allied with two of the four factions based on the card you drew at the start of the game.

Let’s say your leader is allied with Water and Undead. You would win the game if either: (a) both red and green markers end in the far right Undead zone, or (b) both markers end up next to each other. During the game you don’t necessarily care where the markers are, but you want them near each other. Failing that, you’ll want to boost the power of both as much as possible to get them into the Undead zone.

On the other hand, if your Leader is allied with Army and Water, you’ll want to boost the power of Army (red) when you can. If you increase it too far, however, it’ll end up in the Undead zone and you’ll run the risk of Undead coming out on top. So you want it to be high, but not too high. Also, to win with Water you’ll want the green marker to be nearby, but that increases the risk of it surpassing red.

It creates a good mix of wanting to boost the power of your favored faction and the need to not push it too far.

Games of influence

I’ve written before about games that use influence of factions rather than direct control. The King is Dead: Second Edition (Sylvester, 2020) is my favorite example of this genre because the design is so clean and elegant. It has a two-sentence rule that captures the core conceit of the game:

Whenever you take an action you will summon a follower to your court, increasing your influence with one of the factions. Each follower you take will solidify your claim to be that faction’s preferred ruler, but will weaken their ability to win power struggles.

Every action strengthens your position with a faction while, at the same time, weakening that faction’s position on the map. It makes every choice in the game painful (in a good way).

The Pax games such as Pax Renaissance: 2nd Edition (Eklund & Eklund, 2021) and Pax Pamir: Second Edition (Wehrle, 2019) are the other prime examples. Imperial 2030 (Gerdts, 2009) takes Risk and changes it into a game of influence.

In the above examples, no one player controls the pieces on the map. Players do not “have a color” as in many games.6

It’s a tough concept to wrap your head around the first time you encounter it, but a concept that I’ve really grown to love.

Conclusion

Some things to think about:

• Tug of war: Think about using tug of war mechanisms in your games. They don’t necessarily require a board as in Hidden Leaders. Tollund uses two piles of tokens and no board, but it is still essentially a solo tug of war.

• Bidding and market games: Games of influence are essentially bidding and market manipulation games. You are trying to increase the stock value of your preferred faction while owning the most shares of it. I haven’t played many cube rails or 18XX games, but I wonder if they would have a similar feel.

• Try an influence game: I really think anyone interested in tabletop game design should try an influence vs. control game at least once. It really changed how I think about game design, and it might spark your creativity in unexpected ways.

What do you think? Which influence vs. control games are your favorite? Have you seen multi-direction tug of war games before?

— 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

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.

For comments or questions: games@exeunt.press

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