distributing starting places

Well, there are various ways of distributing starting places. It all depends on what you want to achieve. Do you want a quick setup, just to get the game going, and it doesn't really matter where players start out anyway? Or is the starting place strategically very important and is there a huge difference in quality between various starting locations? Do you want a different start up every time, to ensure variety, or is a less variable setup OK as well, or perhaps even more desirable?

The answers to these questions will probably give you an idea of what method of distributing the starting places you want.

Some examples. In San Marco players roll dice to place their initial cubes. This is totally random. This setup method ensures that the intial setup is different each time the game is played, and it is quick, but it doesn't give players any control over it. However, it's a fairly chaotic game, with a high degree of player interaction as well, so the exact starting location isn't hugely important for the balance of the game.

Puerto Rico's starting position (ie. what kind of plantation you start the game with) depends on the seating order. The player(s) last in the playing order receive a Corn plantation, instead of the less desirable Indigo plantation. This method is used to negate the slight advantage that players early in the player order have. It's a quick method, but players still don't have any control over it, so that small discrepancies in the quality of the starting position may bother advanced players.

Finally, you may choose a method where players have more or less control over their own starting position. In Wallenstein players have the option to draft their starting provinces. There's still a little bit of randomness to this method, because you are still restricted to what you can draft, but it gives a fair chunk of control to the players as well. Settlers' method of choosing the start positions for the villages falls into this category as well.

An even finer method would be auctioning off starting positions in some way or the other. This gives players a lot of control over where they may start. However, it does usually add a fair amount of complexity and length to a game, which you may not find desirable.

To sum it up:

Do you want something quick? Go with fixed positions, or with a random method.

Do you want something that makes each game start out differently? Go with a random, or semi-random method (ie. drafting).

Is the starting position strategically very important for the game? Go with fixed positions, or with an auction method.

This is one of the trickiest tightropes to walk when designing a game. Sometimes simplifying a mechanic makes it more accesible for the casual gamer, but you might lose some strategic depth in the process. I think it is important to realize which mechanics are really crucial to the game, and which you can do without, or simplify radically without realize losing much strategic depth. It's surprising how often you can streamline things without really losing something for the hardcore gamer though, so just keep on looking for that perfect solution that satisfies both camps, because it does exist!

In my "Junkyard Wars" game, the first player would theoretically have a big advantage in that his workers (and if not the him, the second player) could manage to scoop up all of the pieces of junk in the area around the starting square. By the time players 5 and 6 come along, they won't have anything to pick up. If there is a big powerup nearby, it's all too likely that the first player will wind up with it.

Fortunately, the first player can't take advantage of that. Normally, each worker can move a maximum of 6 spaces during a player's turn. This is different, however, for the first move and the first move ONLY. The first player doesn't move at all, the second player moves 1 space, the third player 2, and so forth until the 6th player moves 5. This staggers the start to limit the first player's advantage.

In general, for the first move the nth player moves (n-1) spaces in 4-6 player games, 2*(n-1) spaces in 3 player games, and 3*(n-1) spaces in 2 player games.

ACG

I don't think auctioning off start positions is, in general, a desirable solution. At a minimum, it introduces a learning curve, where new players won't really know what a "good" or "bad" initial position or bid is; and you force this upon them in the very first action of the game! So at a minimum, you should include a "fair" setup for first time players to be able to get into the game and get going. But here's the thing; why, then, wouldn't you just use the fair setup everytime?

Unless a game is explicitly an auction-based game, auctions, in my opinion, can be a sign of laziness on the designer's part -- they say "the designer couldn't be bothered to identify the relative value of these positions, so he's just going to let you balance the game for yourself".

Note that this is valid for a game a fixed board and fixed starting positions. For a game like Settlers, with variable setup each game, it may not be as possible to create a "fair" setup. Unfortunately, a game with a variable setup is going to have an even steeper learning curve for an auction mechanic. A different solution might be to ensure that the setup algorithm creates a balanced board, with no position being so much stronger than another that a Settlers-style approach could still be fair.

Good luck,

Jeff