"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. - Competitive Balance
Players can select different roles to play in a game, with different abilities. - 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. - 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. - Hit Points
A stat that tells you how close your in-game avatar is to dying. - House Rules
When the players tweak the official rules to make the game more fun for themselves. - Luck Manipulation Mechanic
A rule that allows you to retry a botched dice roll. - 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. - Turn-Based Combat
Combat is abstracted as combatants taking turns to strike at each other.
