"Mazes and Mutants: The game about mazes, as played by mutants."
"Only a game designed by nerds would have 'charisma' as a fantasy power."
— Stanley Pines, Gravity Falls, "Dungeons, Dungeons, & More Dungeons"
Like most media, Tabletop Games have a number of tropes common or even specific to them.
A subindex of Game Tropes. Collectible Card Games and Tabletop RPGs, in turn, contain subindexes of this, so please put tropes primarily associated with those tabletop game forms directly onto the more specific index. See also Video Game Tropes and Gaming Stat Tropes.
Tropes:
Subindexes:
- Action Initiative: The players' in-game Initiative stat determines who goes in which order.
- Adventure-Friendly World: How the game's setting is designed to justify the gameplay mechanics.
- Anti-Hoarding: Gameplay mechanics that discourage hoarding up in-game resources.
- Artistic License – Chess: Authors tend to get the details of playing chess wrong.
- Ascended House Rules: A house rule becomes an official rule.
- Competitive Balance: Players can select different roles to play in a game, with different abilities.
- Deck Clogger: A card designed to clog up your deck (or deck analogue).
- Diagonal Speed Boost: On a square movement grid, moving diagonally is faster than otherwise.
- Dice: Players roll these to determine or influence certain events in the game.
- Digital Tabletop Game Adaptation: An existing tabletop game gets a digital implementation. Can be done as a standalone app or as a Mini-Game.
- Drafting Mechanic: A mechanic where players pick resources from common pools.
- Extra Turn: A rule that allows you to take an extra turn after you already acted.
- Extrinsic Go-First Rule: Who goes first is determined by something outside the game itself.
- First-Player Advantage Mitigation: The first player will often have an advantage. These mechanics try to balance it out.
- Hit Points: A stat that tells you how close your in-game avatar is to dying.
- Junior Variant: Simplified board game variants made for kids.
- Literal Wild Card: A resource whose main function is to be substituted for one of the player's choosing.
- Luck Manipulation Mechanic: A rule that allows you to retry a botched dice roll.
- No Unified Ruleset: A traditional game that doesn't have a definitive, official version.
- Official Game Variant: A game comes with an official variant in addition to the main ruleset.
- Popular Game Variant: A popular unofficial ruleset.
- Roll-and-Move : Roll one or two dice, and move according to the result.
- Scoring Points: Complete in-game objectives to get abstract points and win the game.
- Solo Tabletop Game: In which the rules allow a tabletop game to be played by a single player.
- Tabletop Game A.I.: A non-digital algorithm that can sub in for a human player.
- Three Approach System: Players can choose from three different gameplay styles.
- Trick-Taking Card Game: Players choose which cards to play from their hand. The highest card in a set "takes the trick," with points awarded based on tricks taken.
- Turn-Based Combat: Combat is abstracted as combatants taking turns to strike at each other.
