Board Game - Common Terms

Common Terms

Although many board games have a jargon all their own, there is a generalized terminology to describe concepts applicable to basic game mechanics and attributes common to nearly all board games.

• Gameboard (or simply board)—the (usually quadrilateral) surface on which one plays a board game. The namesake of the board game, gameboards would seem to be a necessary and sufficient condition of the genre, though card games that do not use a standard deck of cards (as well as games which use neither cards nor a gameboard) are often colloquially included. Most games use a standardized and unchanging board (chess, Go, and backgammon each have such a board), but many games use a modular board whose component tiles or cards can assume varying layouts from one session to another, or even while the game is played.
• Game piece (gamepiece, counter, token, bit, meeple, mover, pawn, man, playing piece, player piece)—a player's representative on the gameboard made of a piece of material made to look like a known object (such as a scale model of a person, animal, or inanimate object) or otherwise general symbol. Each player may control one or more game pieces. Some games involve commanding multiple game pieces (or units), such as chess pieces or Monopoly houses and hotels, that have unique designations and capabilities within the parameters of the game; in other games, such as Go, all pieces controlled by a player have the same capabilities. In some modern board games, such as Clue, there are other pieces that are not a player's representative (i.e. weapons). In some games, pieces may not represent or belong to any particular player. See also: Counter (board wargames)
• Jump (or leap)—to bypass one or more game pieces or spaces. Depending on the context, jumping may also involve capturing or conquering an opponent's game piece. (See also: Game mechanic: capture)
• Space (or square)—a physical unit of progress on a gameboard delimited by a distinct border. Alternatively, a unique position on the board on which a game piece may be located while in play. (In Go, for example, the pieces are placed on intersections of lines on the grid, not in the areas bounded by borders, as in chess.) (See also: Game mechanic: Movement)
• Hex (or cell)—in hexagon-based board games, this is the common term for a standard space on the board. This is most often used in wargaming, though many abstract strategy games such as Abalone, Agon, hexagonal chess, and connection games use hexagonal layouts.
• Card—a piece of cardboard often bearing instructions, and usually chosen randomly from a deck by shuffling.
• Deck—a stack of cards.
• Capture—a method that removes another player's game piece(s) from the board. For example: in checkers, if a player jumps the opponent's piece, that piece is captured.