- Accompanist (role)
- Ad libitum
- Agenda
- Aleatoricism
- Aspect
- Balance
- Bartle types
- BCG
- (Cognitive) flow
- Conductor (role)
- Constellation
- Constructor (role)
- Co-optionality
- Cue cards
- Dice
- Dimension
- Downbeat
- Downtime
- Elegant Game
- Emergence
- End Condition
- Event (musical event)
- Extended technique
- Facilitator
- Fighting
- Flow
- Found sound
- Gameplay flow
- Genre
- Heteronomous Music
- Horizon of intent
- Improvisation rite
- Insert game
- Inspire cards
- Instrument Preparation
- Judge (role)
- Karaoke
- King-making
- Learning curve
- Ludomusical dissonance
- Meaningful Choice
- Mechanic
- Music game
- Non-idiomatic music
- Notation Cards
- Open work
- Parameter
- Pervasive Game
- Player (role)
- Prompter (role)
- Psychographics
- Quarterbacking
- Rhythm cards
- Rhythm game
- Roles
- RPG
- Rule Cards
- Speedrun
- Stacking
- Trading
- Transition
- Upgrade
- Victory condition
- Xenochrony
- XP
- Yes, and...
- Zine
This glossary entry is a draft. You can help by editing it or discussing in the comments
A game that has a relatively low amount of rules for what it does.
Usage
Striving for elegance in rules might be just a matter of aesthetics — the game creator achieves a design recognized as beautiful, and rests satisfied. It's not purely a callback to classical/baroque dichotomy, but there are practical reasons for elegance too. For example, one of the considerations is that inelegant games have a higher cognitive load and hence, the skill floor.
Games are experienced through playing, so, at least in titles of relative complexity, players (as the participatory audience) are required to make a non-trivial effort just to enact the game. It's best to let players focus on their decisions, or observation of the in-game situation, than merely on the administrative task of running the game. That's elegance is usually seeked in games.
The concept of elegance is the most fitting to "old-school", often abstract, emergence-based games, and the game of Go is considered to be one of the most elegant games ever created.
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