Selectable Set of Goals

Goals which players can choose a subset to strive towards.

Games typically provide players with many goals that they can try to complete. In some cases this means that players can choose one or several goals from a larger set of goals. The Selectable Set of Goals can be defined so that players have to select goals first and then can try to achieve them or that they have all goals accessible all the time but only need to complete some of them to complete a larger goal.

Examples

The Ticket to Ride series of board games provides each player with a number of destination tickets which provides goals. Players have to keep some or all of them (types of tickets and numbers varies between the versions). Fulfilled goals provide bonus points while unfulfilled ones cause point penalties, so the selection is binding although players can acquire more tickets during play.

The board game Settlers of Catan provides several goals to players which gives them points, constructing buildings, having the longest road, having the largest army, and having point cards. These create Selectable Set of Goals to each players since it is not important which goals are achieved; the player who reaches a certain total (typically 10) wins the game.

The Civilization series of computer games provide several winning goals that players can strive for, e.g. military dominance, cultural victory, or winning a space race (the exact goals vary between versions of the game). All the goals are available to all players all the time but the first player to reach any of the goals wins the game, making the set of winning goals into a selectable one. A weaker example regards technology trees in these games. Players can choose from a number of technology which to research, but the example is weaker since players often can - and are motivated from a gameplay perspective - to research all possible technologies. The choose is therefore more related to which order players wish to research the technologies.

The different worlds in Super Mario 64 offer a Selectable Set of Goals through the stars placed in them. While players can collect all stars in a world, the typically only need to collect a certain amount to unlock another world and thereby progress in the game. In fact, since unlocking new worlds often depend on a total number of stars collected all the stars placed in all the currently unlocked worlds together build a Selectable Set of Goals.