I have brought this topic up before, saying that 'cute' start player mechanisms, such as 'whoever can hold their breath the longest goes first' or 'owner of the game goes first' or 'the player who's travelled the most goes first' as well as the more common 'oldest/yougest player goes first'. It was brought to my attention last time that some games have an inherant advantage to playing first, or last, or whatever and that especially in Germany where many of these games come from they are played by families with young and old players alike. So a mechanic that makes the oldest player play first might indirectly give a young child a bit of an advantage to make up for the fact that the older player probably has more experience (in general if not in that particular game).
So in that case at least there's logic behind it, even if I don't necessarily agree with the logic. In other cases the consensus was that it's fun to use some unique method or some creative, arbitrary way to determine who plays first, especially if there's no advantage or disadvantage to it.
The reason I bring this up now is this: I realised another thing, maybe a manifestation of why I didn't like the unequitable start player mechanics to begin with...
I usually play games with more or less the same group of people. That being the case, without a randomly determined start player, the same guy would play first every single time we play. Unless someone plans on out-aging another player, or out-travelling, or practice holding their breath, then every time we play a given game the same guy will go first.
This of course means that if you are that guy, you ALWAYS are player 1 in that particular game. You'll never play second, or third. If there is an advantage to going first, you'll always have it, and if there's an advantage to being later in the turn order, you'll never see it.
Similarly, if you're NOT that guy, then you'll NEVER be player 1.
This is the beef I have with non-random start player determiners. I guess I just wanted to get that off my chest.
- Seth
That's the mechanic my group uses frequently. Of course, if all players are experienced, we have to resort to a more random method. One favorite is giving the ol' Fickle Finger of Fate a spin!