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Boardgame Downtime

I’m a big fan of board games, so I’d like to discuss the progression of the concept of “turn.” The two most famous of board games are Chess and Go; because both use a simple turn-based system, where one player takes his action then the other. The turn is defined by the action that a player takes; most of the traditional board games take after this concept.

One of the flaws of turn-based games is when the player is idle while not on her/his turn; it is especially long when there are several players. That idle time is downtime. Recently the newer board games have taken a different angle in how turns are taken. Games like The Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico, and Race for the Galaxy. As players have more uptime while it is not on their turns. In Catan, the active player rolls the dice, and resource is produced based on the corresponding tile, any player that is adjacent to that tile gets a resource. In Puerto Rico and Race for the Galaxy the active player selects a card/action, and all players in an orderly fashion have to perform that action. With this the amount of downtime is reduced, because players may act or perform while it’s not their active turn.

In order for board games to be fun, you want the players to be involved, or else you might as well pick up a single player video game, so you need to reduce the amount to downtime for each player. Turn-based games tend to deal with this issue, but there are work-around, such as, collective planning or bargaining or resources; game such as Last Night of Earth: The Zombie Game or Shadows Over Camelot use the traditional turn-based system, but players are constantly discuss about their strategies during each players turn.

Comments

There's also "team play" and "adversarial play"

I've used semi-simultaneous phases and co-operative play in several of my recent designs. However, there's another option (most often used in party games): Team play. Consider Trivial Pursuit... If you have six players you could have six single-player teams (quite a bit of down-time), or three teams of two (half as much down-time), or two teams of three (one-third as much down-time). Putting players in teams reduces the perception of down-time in a traditional turn-taking game.

Trivial Pursuit also uses (for lack of a better term) "adversarial play" - meaning that when it's not your turn, there's still a role for you to fill. One player reads the question (the adversary) and the current player or team has to answer it. This reduces the perception of down-time by giving players things to do that are meaningful and important to the game when it's not their turn.

There are many ways to get

There are many ways to get players involved when it is not their turn.

Also, if you provide the players enough information to plan their next turn, downtime may not be an issue at all. Ideally, just when it is their turn, the players would finish planning and be ready to go.

Another approach is to make the turns smaller, so that the tactical options on each turn would be reduced. Then analysis takes less time and downtime is reduced as well.

Here's how I'd illustrate that: think of a wargame where each turn consists of moving one soldier (this is an extreme example of course). Then, usually not too much thinking is done on such turn, and they can be played very quickly. As the game progresses, however you start developing new plans; but these plans can take shape in your head over several turns.

I would say such scheme is close to simultaneous play without the pressure and confusion of real-time.

Interruption

I think the ability to "interrupt" another player's turn can be very effective at alleviating some of the negatives associated with downtime. For example, in some card games you may be able to play certain cards at any time, even during another player's turn. In wargames, opportunity fire often works like this. While one unit is completing their move, an enemy unit may seize upon a brief window of opportunity to fire at them (say when a tank has moved out from behind cover and is about to move behind more). This often keeps a game quite suspenseful even when it is not "officialy" your turn. In party games, interruptions may happen regulalry because there is a tendency for players to mistakenly break the rules. For example, in a team game where one player attempts to describe something to their fellow team members without literally saying just what "it" is, other teams may have the opportunity to interrupt and point out that improper information has been conveyed making the guesswork too easy. In my mind, this kind of situation tends to keep everyone a little more involved. I'm not too sure where "interruptions" like these evolved from historically, but they do seem to offer an interesting twist on just what a game turn is.

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blog | by Dr. Radut