Dev Pile: Materiality and Dinner Plates

I’m exploring a mechanism today, a kind of drafting mechanic, and I want to talk about in light of its relationship to stuffness and abstraction. Basically, here’s me starting with a mechanism and then talking about the other elements that follow based on the game.

The mechanic is:

A player drafts an identity that sets rules and goals from them off the top of a deck, and then pass it on. There are ways to change the drafting set, but players have some awareness of the next card in the deck, meaning they are aware of information about the next player.

This isn’t a a simultaneous draft like Sushi Go or LFG, where there are hands of cards that move around the table at the same time. It’s much more of a draft like seen in Mafia Del Cuba where the players select rolls or diamonds, which are small objects easily palmed in the hand under the cover of the box.

With that, the game has a defined mechanic and the next questions are the abstraction and the stuff.

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https://press.invincible.ink/dev-pile-materiality-and-dinner-plates/