Against Dominant Mechanics
Some rules guide play. And some rules monopolize it. Designing by omission.
Designing through omission.
I continue to fight The 1 HP Dragon. Playtests have been good. Ironically, the most productive part of my process has been playing other people's games and reading their blogs. "Slaying the dragon" is a common design goal.
So here's what I've learned: the secret to diegetic, narrative-first, combat-as-puzzles isn't what you add—it's what you omit. I've consumed a lot of games over the last year. None of them have scratched the itch. And I have a theory for why.
Most games attempting to slay the dragon add mechanics I'm convinced cannot co-exist with the gameplay I desire. They're all-consuming, gravity-bending, gameplay hogs. No matter how they're deployed—if present—they run the show.
Obviously, rules influence play. That's not novel. What I'm suggesting is that some rules influence play and censor others. If you include these rules, you exclude others. They exert an overwhelming influence.
I discovered this in my playtests. "What if my system had the puzzle but also single-digit hitpoints? Meta-currency? Tiered monster phases? Difficulty classes? Nested hit dice?" I ground through iterations. Trying to get novel outcomes (new gameplay) with familiar mechanics. The same thing kept happening. No matter how much I formalized and incentivized the gameplay I wanted, if certain mechanics were present, the game I desired disappeared.
After talking to fellow designers, I'm going to call these rules Dominant Mechanics.
What are Dominant Mechanics?
Here's a short and sweet definition of Dominant Mechanics:
Dominant Mechanics are rules that cannot co-exist in a system without monopolizing play and overriding other rules.
Worded like a law: The Law of Dominant Mechanics™ (Trademark is a joke.)
If present in a system, some mechanics—Dominant Mechanics—will take precedence and replace the effects of other mechanics regardless of how those other mechanics are designed or presented.
This effect can be desirable. It's a core idea of game design that rules can guide (and by extension control) play, but for the scope of this article and my current project, a dominant mechanic is one that does so invasively—regardless of how other mechanics are implemented. Often in opposition with the designer's intent.
I'm thinking of at least three examples of a "Dominant Mechanic" when trying to slay the 1 HP Dragon.
Rollable Skills e.g. "Disarm Trap"
Back in the day, skill rolls were a lot less common in games like D&D, especially compared to its modern iterations (3rd, 4th, and beyond). In the absence of those skills, it was more common for players to try and overcome challenges by narrating their actions. When more skills were added to the game (and later expanded on), they pasted over and disincentivize this kind of game play. In AD&D, the thief's trap skills, for example, effectively cooled other classes from touching traps. After all, with the abstraction of skills, you didn't have to poke and prod at poison dart traps. In fact, doing so likely put you in more danger than engaging with the mechanics provided or letting your thief with the skill do it.
This phenomenon isn't necessarily undesirable, but it shows how skill checks—a kind of scaffolding and lever of play—"automates" or renders suboptimal a behavior. The Dungeon Master didn't have to adjudicate the results of a player saying, "I'm going to plug the holes," because the skill roll resolved the player saying, "I'm going to disarm the trap."
This is why games like Cairn, Knave, and similar "adventure" rpgs have omitted skill checks from their mechanics. Those games want the problem-solving in conversation. If a player could roll a die to abstract or even elide the means, method, and results—the diegetic conversation doesn't happen. Similarly, in games like Dogs in the Vineyard, themes like faith, sin, and judgement are left un-mechanized despite their prevalence in the game's themes. The omission is by design, likely because it's inclusion would overly control the outcomes.
Advantage/Disadvantage in Mausritter
Mausritter is a design descendent of Into the Odd with a number of changes. It's setting and grid-based inventory are the most famous. But we're going to focus on a subtle but seismic one—the inclusion of D&D's Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic. Nothing in Mausritter strays further from the Into the Odd design philosophy like the inclusion of D&D-style Advantage/Disadvantage.
If you want to know why Into the Odd omits Advantage/Disadvantage (A/D), I recommend reading Chris McDowall's explanation. It makes this next part clearer. To summarize: Into the Odd supports variable difficulty by focusing on the impact instead of the odds of success. It's a design idea famously codified in Blades in the Dark's "position and effect." By omitting A/D, players are left to weigh the fictional situation and how it impacts the results of their actions. More simply: Without A/D, players have diegetic conversations about the in-world fiction. The moment A/D is included, that focus shifts to the mechanical layer with players "chasing mechanical advantages."
What's important to recognize is that Advantage/Disadvantage doesn't technically ban or even replace the diegetic conversation. In theory the two procedures can co-exist, but in practice—with player priorities, optimal play, and finite time—A/D takes precedence.
Hit points in games with combat.
We're back where we started. In my experience, when combat has hit points, increasing or decreasing those hit points becomes the primary locus of play. Even when a game has related mechanics—like Knave's conditions or D&D's statuses—hit points take precedence. The reason is many and myriad, but before we talk about that, I want to expand what I mean by hit points.
Many games that are "hp-free," feature them by another name. If a monster takes "3 successes" from rolls to die, like in World of Darkness games, that's 3 hit points. If a player dies in one hit but has meta currency to negate those attacks, the meta currency is effectively hit points. Similarly, Fate and games like it have stress and consequences, but stress—the currency used to avoid consequences—behaves like hit points.
What makes a mechanic dominant?
It's important to underline that Dominant Mechanics are not necessarily dominant by design. I know the word suggests agency, but this phenomenon is almost entirely extrinsic to them. The things that make a mechanic dominant are the players who use them. Their biases, comfort, and expectations unevenly distribute attention and priority.
Cognitive Bias
Players form mental models and heuristics as they learn. These mental models and shortcuts, built from their past experiences, beliefs, and knowledge influence how they learn and play other games. When they pick up a new game, they try to understand it with what they already know, leading to inferences, preferences, and assumptions. This can be really useful for teaching people new games, but sometimes these mental models lead to assumptions, bias, and decision making divorced from what's present in the game.
Cognitive bias ranks mechanics via assumptions unrelated to the game itself. Often without players noticing. The rules and procedures we don't know? We have to breakdown and rebuild our mental models to include them. But the mechanics we know? They're not only included, they often come first in the pecking order. This is why sometimes, when you include a popular mechanic found in other games like D&D, it tramples over other mechanics. Usually the more subtle and novel ones. In addition to prioritizing what we know, bias can also tack on assumptions that aren't present in the rules, snowballing the dominant mechanic in play.
Occam’s Razor
Given the choice, players tend to pick the option that's most immediately effective, reliable, and convenient in play. There's a similar phenomenon in urban planning called, "desire paths," where pedestrians cut through lawns and flower beds, creating dirt paths where sidewalks are absent. I don't think it's too far a reach to suggest, that if you create a mechanic that negates the need for complexity or variables, players are likely to use it.
Hit points hold dominion over play because they're simple and efficient in almost every way non-HP mechanics are not. What they lack in detail and color, they gain in immediacy. The outcomes associated with hit points are tangible, reliable, and consistent. They're easy to remember, easy to reference, and easy to interact with as a group. The time between decision and impact when considering HP is short. My working theory is that if given the choice between attacking a creature's HP or doing something else, the vast majority (in most cases) will choose to attack a monster's hit points, even if it's suboptimal in the long run. In the immediate future, it is optimal because it's quick, reliable, and consistent.
Emergent Play
If you're a fan of game design, you're probably familiar with the idea. Rules and mechanics plant seeds for emergent play. Sometimes they push us into it, other times they guide it, and in some cases they even meet us there. A dominant mechanic exerts an unintentional and overwhelming influence on emergent play.
This is "rules elide" and other design concepts invoked without intention. Skill rolls override diegetic conversation. Advantage and Disadvantage abstract and flatten tactics. Hit points frame combat as numbers. When intentional, it's super effective, but it can be surprising how much emergent gameplay lives or dies from the presence of just one mechanic.
Dominant Mechanics in Summary
Is this a term with legs? I'm not entirely sure. I can see myself playtesting someone else's game and saying, "Oh, I know why it's not working. You have a Dominant Mechanic jamming everything up!"
"Dominant Mechanics" is my name for rules that thwart my design goals. They're not universal. In order to identify an invasive, monopolizing, radioactive, loud, gameplay-hogging mechanic, a designer would need to identify the gameplay they're trying to invoke. If the mechanic is doing what is intended, is it a dominant mechanic? Perhaps. Maybe what I'm looking for is the dominant mechanic that serves my design goals. Time will tell if this term has utility when I'm done.
Thanks to all of my design colleagues who helped me workshop a cursed name for this phenomenon. "Dominant Mechanics" was Ram's idea. You can find his blog at Save Vs Total Party Kill.
If you're interested in learning more about the ideas that informed this post, I recommend checking out the following resources:
- Mental Models. "What users believe about a system, impacts how they use it."
- Occam's Razor. A common term with a lasting impression on my designs.
- Desire Paths. Once you see them, you can't unsee them.
- Jakob's Law. How user preference becomes a burden on website UX.
- Rules Elide. I think this idea still holds water (though not exclusively).
- Fruitful Void. Look at the citations for the source. This link is easier to read.
- Affordances. This product design concept feels especially relevant.
Finally, if you're interested in exploring more thoughts on combat without health, check out the links below.
Until next time, I'll keep exploring.
Clayton Notestine
Clayton Notestine
Gila RPGs
Explorers Design is a production of Clayton Notestine. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing. Paying members get access to bonus tools and templates as a heartfelt thank you.
