Precinct Omega Podcast - Design #6 - Turns
Added 2021-02-05 12:00:03 +0000 UTCInspired by Jake Thornton's own Patreon campaign, I was moved to take a look at the concept of turns:
What are turns?
How do different designers and games approach them?
What alternative solutions are being used?
Why do we have turns at all?
Comments
I think I'm going to need to do an episode soon in which I just look back at observations from patrons and share them with the wider world.
Precinct Omega
2021-02-10 14:09:20 +0000 UTCDay off work, so catching up on podcasts. There are other ways to structure the turn beyond the two you discussed. Rather that break the IGO-UGO structure down to unit by unit, you can split it phase by phase. This creates an I move, You move, I shoot, you shoot system where in each phase we perform one phase of the turn with all our units, then the other player does. It's not without It's own issues, but does at least keep both players engaged and avoids the issue to tracking activations unit by unit. For completely simultaneous play I had to search through my game collection. I found Wings of War/Wings of Glory. This uses a phased system of Planning, Move, Fire, Move, Fire, Move, Fire. In the planning phase each player secretly plots three move cards, guessing where the enemy will go. Then players simultaneously reveal a card, moves their plane, then shoots. Planes can overlap, it's assumed one is higher than the other, all shooting is simultaneous too so two planes can shoot one another down at the same time. It also has no dice, if you shoot you hit. Actually i may have to get this one back on the table at some point... I do think the lack of a second brain when playing solo is worthy of further discussion. I used to think that solo games should be more complex to give the player more to think about. However I have noticed that approach leads to more mistakes, perhaps simpler is better? Or could play aids be used to help act as a dumb second brain to help the poor solo gamer?
Jonathan Lupton
2021-02-08 15:36:34 +0000 UTCBrilliant podcast as usual. I do have a couple of opinions though. I class games into three groups... 1, I Go You Go (GW games) 2, Alternate Activation (Star Wars Legion). 3, Random Activation (Bolt Action) I also think Alternate and Random activation suits larger scale game extremely well, not just skirmish, although that is where they shine. Turns, I think they play a larger part of the game... Depending on whats going on, they can resent the table, end ongoing effects, allow for out of sequence events, enable scoring of objects, I believe they play a bigger part in the actual game. I'd be happy to come on your podcast too.
Dale Platt
2021-02-05 22:14:14 +0000 UTC
