Favours

I don’t fully understand your question.

Do you want to set up a game system that requires players to help each other without a pre-made deal on the premise that since player A helped player B; B owe A something?

Many games enforce deals but those deals are spelled out by both sides ahead of time “I’ll give you 10 units of Iron if you give me one unit of oil every round for the rest of the game” for example.

i guess it depends on the game but i think you will need to make a list of actions that can be done as favors and what value they have.

For Example

Move Value 1
Attack Value 2
Defend Value 2

So if player A did the favor (Move) they could ask for move in return but not attack or defend. Is this the sort of thing you are thinking of?

You could have "Favour" tokens. Each time a player recieves a favour the get a favour token. Each time they do a favour for someone else they can remove one of these favour tokens from themselves.

If the tokens have some penalty (say: reduces their victory points while they have them) then you give them an incentive to return favours that others give them.

Another school of thought would be that this is a self-balancing mechanism that doesn't really need to be fixed. If I'm playing a game in which a potential move can help an opponent (like Carcassonne: Traders and Builders, where closing off a city can give me goods, but gives someone else points), I have to consider the fact that I will probably not get any return for the favor I've done.

I have a player in one of my gaming groups who does expect these favors in return. He'll often try a meta-trade (for instance, in Settlers: "OK, I'll give you a sheep for now, but try and remember me later on..."), and if the deal is never reciprocated, he'll whine and complain. I don't really feel bad about it in terms of the game, because he should have expected it going in. Caveat Emptor!

So for a game with a new mechanic that would enforce this reciprocation... hey, it might work. It could easily turn out to be a good game, too. But if you're thinking of "fixing" an existing game, I don't think it's a big problem that's screaming for a solution.

I find this interesting, as these deals for "future consideration" were foundational to the culture of the last group I was in. I suppose that in making such an offer you accept the risk that the future help won't materialize, but if someone consistently failed to make good on promises of future help after accepting something, that this could create a meta-game whereby that person would have a hard time making deals of any sort in future games, as he would be known to be untrustworthy.

In that sense, I do agree with Gil that it's probably self-balancing over many playings of a game, but if you're worried about this issue messing up a single game, just add a rule that deals must be binding. One way you might achieve this comes from a variant I once saw for Samurai Swords; the idea is that you put a price on every deal, and a player who reneges on a deal must give the other player the agreed-upon price. This actually is supposed to make betrayal less emotional, since it becomes a business decision, and the betrayed player gets something out of it. I think it's a nice mechanic that could work for a variety of game settings.

-Jeff