Stack Seeding

Manipulating the randomness of drawing stacks by ensure the presence of certain elements in certain parts of the stacks.

Drawing stacks are used to create randomness in games but sometimes games need some more structure to ensure that gameplay develops as the game designers intended. One way of doing this is manipulate where specific tiles or cards are in the stacks. This Stack Seeding can either be done when the the stack is created or during gameplay.

Examples

In Thunderstone the deck with monsters is created from first randomizing monster cards, then creating several separate decks by dividing these and adding a thunderstone or guardian cards. These separate decks are then stacked on each other to create one deck where the thunderstone and guardian cards are guaranteed to be within certain intervals of the deck but their specific places are still unknown. Pandemic uses a similar method to create a player deck with epidemic cards, and drawing these initiates another type of Stack Seeding - reshuffling drawn infection cards and placing these on top of those infection cards not yet drawn. Forbidden Island uses the same structure for tiles.

A weak example of Stack Seeding can be found in games where players can look at a card at the top of the deck and choose if it should remain there or be placed at the bottom instead. Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game is an example of games that provide this type of mechanism.

Using the pattern

Placing at the bottom of the Drawing Stack

Quite obviously, Stack Seeding requires the presence of Drawing Stacks.

Drawing Stacks Geometric Progression

Consequences

Stack Seeding are a way of steering the Randomness of Drawing Stacks. By doing so, Stack Seeding provides games with more Predictable Consequences and can, depending on what Cards or Tiles are used to seed the stacks, ensure Higher-Level Closures as Gameplay Progresses, e.g. making thunderstones being found after guardians have appeared in Thuderstone.

Relations

Can Modulate

Drawing Stacks, Randomness

History

New pattern created in this wiki.

References

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Acknowledgements

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