Arithmetic Progression

That the relationship between the time or investment put into some part of the game and the possible reward or risk associated with it is linear.

This pattern is a still a stub.

Using the pattern

Drawing Stacks can be used to create Arithmetic Progression since they steadily increase the probability for drawing a specific Card, and this can be used to create implicit Time Limits (the game Pandemic uses this to guarantee that epidemics start semi-regularly). It should be noted though that when more than one Card of the same type is in the same range of a Drawing Stack the distribution is more like Geometric Progression.

History

An updated version of the pattern Arithmetic Rewards for Investments that was part of the original collection in the book Patterns in Game Design.

Acknowledgements

Jonas Linderoth