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Using a timer to speed up games

5 replies [Last post]
Tue, 01/31/2012 - 11:25
Grall Ritnos
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Joined: 02/07/2011

Hello all. I've been fighting with trying to cut down the time of each game for my current project. I'd ideally like to bring it in around 90 minutes (since that's about all I can get my wife to play ;-) and through the first 6-7 playtests we have yet to finish a game, with several sessions running 2+ hours. I have two theories as to what is to blame for this situation:

1) My game involves an intense amount of decision making for the players. Each turn, players choose to buy or sell four different resources, then have chances to build four different parts, which can be turned into four different ships. Especially for new players, this level of complexity seems to be time consuming, although my repeat testers seem have successfully navigated the learning curve.

2) Purchasing resources during the market phase involves a fair degree of mental math (or calculator math for those who so choose), with players often buying resources costing 1-25 in lots of 1-10, and needing to do the resulting multiplication and subtraction.

As an aside, I should note that player turns are already fully simultaneous, so adding overlap is not an option.

I've just made a major revision (as yet untested), adding some measures to help players out (guides as to how many of each good should be produced, and printed multiplication values of x3 and x5 for each price now visible on the board). However, I'm not sure this is enough. I've been wondering if adding a timer might help speed things up a bit more. Currently, players have three chances to buy and sell resources during each market phase, with prices fluctuating between each chance. My current thought is to put a 30 second timer on each of these times, so that all told, players will have 90 seconds per turn to complete their transactions. Unless players want to do a lot of transactions to play the market within one turn, most will do no more than four transactions, one for each resource available. If the time expired while someone was finishing his or her calculations, they would be allowed to finish that one transaction. I see this presenting the following pros and cons:

Pros:
Possible faster game time
Adds excitement and a stock market feel to the market phase (current mechanics led to sacrificing this vibe)
2nd and 3rd buying opportunities become significant (right now many players do everything in the first phase)

Cons:
The game begins to feel like elementary school multiplication drills
More mathematical errors when rushed
Issue resolving transactions as time expires

Any thoughts on this prospect? Pros and Cons I missed? Does anyone know other games I could reference that might have a similar feel? Thanks as always, and happy gaming.

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Tue, 01/31/2012 - 11:59
#1
Orangebeard
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Joined: 10/13/2011
Block Purchase?

Hi Grall Ritnos,

Can the purchase process be simplified to not allow single unit purchases? For example, if resources are traded in blocks of 5 it will simplify the math significantly at the expense of players possibly having a few unused/wasted resources after building parts. This would still allow for price changes as the purchase unit is always 5.

Without knowing more, it is hard to say if the timer will be a positivive or negative addition; could you limit the number of transactions the players can make per phase?

You might be able to capture a "stock market" feel if the establishment of the resource prices is more dynamic; just a thought here...I am not sure how to approach that in terms of game mechanic...

Good luck with your design!

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Tue, 01/31/2012 - 22:27
#2
kos
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Joined: 01/17/2011
Lots and Pre-commitment

The first solution I would try is to buy in lots as suggested by Orangebeard. Limit the choices to be either "buy nothing" or "buy 5". This severely reduces the number of options that the player must weigh up during the round. That also makes the 2nd and 3rd buying rounds important, because if you need 12 to make what you want then you have to make sure that you buy 5 in each buying round.

The second solution I would try is precommitments. Give the players 10 seconds (or 30 seconds, or whatever) to decide what they are going to buy, and then they can sort out the maths and money-changing afterwards but they can't change their commitment. If they run out of money to pay for what they committed, they get none of that resource.

As far as cons involving a timer, I would avoid any mechanic that requires the player to spend money while the timer is going. I'm not sure what you are using for money, but if it is like Monopoly where you have to give money to the bank and then get change it is going to be a mess, with lots of scope for arguments as the timer expires (depending on the personalities of the players).

It may not work depending on how the rest of your game works, but the way I envisage a combination of Lots and Precommitment would be so simple you wouldn't need the timer at all. You said there are only 4 resources, so each player could have 4 chits. In the buying phase they can play any or all of their chits onto the table or keep them in their hand. Each chit they played commits them to buy 5 of that resource.

Regards,
kos

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Wed, 02/01/2012 - 00:17
#3
JHouse
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Joined: 04/03/2010
Unless a timer is an integral

Unless a timer is an integral part of the mechanics, it should not be used. If you want the game to speed up, simplify something. Simplification will lessen the learning curve for new players - the easier the game is to learn and play the more likely someone will want to play it again.

I know you said your repeat play testers are able to navigate the learning curve, but fundamentals should not have a learning curve to them, advanced gameplay should.

You said that there's a lot of mental math that needs to be done and adding a time limit will only frustrate those that aren't good or fast at math leaving them feeling alienated by the game.

Instead of putting restrictions on players, see if there is something that you can change that would simplify the rules that would allow a player to make make faster, more impulsive but confident decisions. If a player is able to do this then gameplay will naturally speed up circumventing use of the timer all together.

Hope this helps.

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Wed, 02/01/2012 - 11:19
#4
Grall Ritnos
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Joined: 02/07/2011
Thanks for the input

Thanks for the input! I've been suspecting for a while that the solution is not to keep slapping on band-aids, but instead to do some surgery, and I think I'm convinced of that now. While the "making change with the bank" issue is not a strong concern (rather than physical money, each player has four tracks that run 0-9, with a counter on each representing one digit in their current amount of money), I can definitely appreciate how easier decision making will speed things along. One thing I'm still wrestling with is whether or not encouraging more and smaller transactions will actually lead to time savings, because decision making time is cut down, but players will need to do subtraction several additional times, which could slow things down. Grr, if only my whole playtest group wasn't in grad school so I could try these ideas out with some regularity. Thanks again. - GR

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Thu, 02/02/2012 - 02:02
#5
The Game Crafter
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Joined: 06/09/2009
++

I was just about to say everything JHouse said, and then I read what he said. So instead, I'll just say.."what he said"

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