Puzzle Maker’s Dictionary — Social Puzzling, Communities, and Metagames

Look for the owl mark beside a passage to read or begin a discussion.

Customization, Mastery, and Modding: Let Players Adapt and Author the Game

Technical terms: Game customization, Personal style, House rule, Built-in customization, Mastery metagame, Social metagame, Modding

Personal style adapts play within unchanged rules. A house rule changes the shared system. Built-in customization offers supported choices such as roles, decks, settings, or templates. Modding treats the game itself as material to alter.

A mastery metagame includes study, practice, and strategy discussion. A social metagame builds relationships, recognition, spectation, and creative sharing around play.

What you can do with it

Support customization at the level your community can understand and share. Creation skills may differ from solving skills, so give makers templates without forcing them to imitate optimized experts.

Ask a player

Could you make the activity your own without losing a shared language with other players?

Nearby ideas

  • Scenario — author a new situation within one system.
  • Community-created content — renew play through makers.
  • Standards — preserve enough convention for shared understanding.
  • Authorship — credit who changed or created what.

Richard Garfield, Skaff Elias, and Robert Gutschera, Characteristics of Games (2012), pp. 226–231; Robert Zubek, Elements of Game Design (2020), “Macrostructure.” ---

← Back to Social Puzzling, Communities, and Metagames

About this dictionary’s sources and method