One of the biggest problems new tabletop game designers face is making a good game loop. While game loops are important for any kind of game. Video games can have more leeway with a bad game loop while a tabletop game will lead it to no one playing.
For all tabletop games a game loop is everything. If there’s not a strong game loop, players will be confused and continuously looking back at the rules.
Understanding the Basics
Before breaking down what makes a good game loop I’m going to show off the absolute basic loop of some of the most popular tabletop games.
Dungeons & Dragons: Roll a 20-sided die and either add or subtract.
Magic the Gathering: Grab a card, place a card, pick attackers, end turn, repeat.
Monopoly: Roll two six-sided dice, move that many places, buy or pay, repeat.
Cards Against Humanity: Place a card, winner selected, draw card.
I have broken down these games to their core loop. Each one of those games is built around that core idea. As long as players understand that core idea the rest of the game will eventually make sense.
In Dungeons & Dragons, when something happens, you or someone else will be rolling a die, and either adding or subtracting a number to find out the result. That’s how combat works, that’s how role-play works, and that’s how investigation works. Each one of those three have their own game loops, but they all bubble down to the one core loop.
Shifting over to Magic the Gathering, it’s core loop is dependent on what’s in your hand. For example, what if you can’t play a card? Instead of adding a different new it’s as simple as move onto the next stage, which is to pick attackers.
Both Dungeons & Dragons and Magic the Gathering are seen as complicated games. In magic, most cards have an assortment of abilities. In Dungeons & Dragons, you have to make a character who has 18 skills, six stats, something called an AC, and a giant list of spells. The only reason these games work is because it always comes back to that core loop.
Making Your Own Loop
Now that you have a better understanding of core loops. Now it’s time to dive into making a game loop. For this, I’m going to use Dungeons & Dragons as an example as they have three different game loops all in one game.
As mentioned Dungeons & Dragons as a whole is built around rolling a 20-sided die and either adding or subtracting. To game of fives they add an additional loop on top of it for its three different sections; Combat, Role-play and Investigation.
In the Combat game loop it starts with everyone rolling a die to determine who goes first. Once it’s a player’s turn, they get three actions to use; movement, action, and bonus action. Right there is the combat game loop.
Switching over to role-play’s game loop you will see it is different. Players will say or do something in character, roll skill, learn the result. That’s weird. I’m starting to notice something.
Finally, is the investigation game loop. Players will learn what’s around them, roll skill, learn the result. Well, that one’s just the same as the last one.
As something you may notice is that game loops tend to be this magic number of 3.
Even in my own project Corrupted Frontier, I accidentally followed this 3 rule. My game uses a completely different combat system yet still follows a three step method.
Looking at Dungeons & Dragons magic system, you can see this same 3 step system. The reason why I use a tabletop role-play game as my example is because it’s a couple game loops stacked on top of each other that work cohesively together. But this idea of three seems very restricting.
In the post Types of gameplay loops you should know by Joss Querne, he highlights a game loop called “Play loop”. This game loop consists of Objective, Challenge, and Reward. Looking at a game like Monopoly the Play loop is; Own everything, Buy/Avoid properties, and Earn Money.
Rule or Suggestion
Like any good game designer you were thinking rules are meant to be broken and you are kind of right. Even in my project eventually this rule is broken.
The keyword is eventually. As players continue to play, they will become more confident with the game loop so you can slowly start expanding it.
In Dungeons & Dragons as you level up, you gain more actions or abilities that can add a new step to the game loop. Even in a board game like Monopoly you eventually start adding houses onto property properties or mortgaging them.
When expanding the game loop you need to do it slowly and overtime as players play. This doesn’t just allow new players to be eased into the complexity a game may have but also keep the game from getting stale.
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