Opinions: Simultaneous turns

[Wisp]

So guys, what do you think about ccgs with simultaneous turn structures? There are various ways of implementing it (fully simultaneous, phased, asymmetrical phased etc.). Personally i think it's great for multiplayer games, since you always have things to do. What do you think about the pros and cons?

[innuendo]

I love them! My game uses simultaneous phases in for it's turn structure. The full turn (called a season) is broken in 8 phases. Each player much complete the phase before the next phase can begin, and each phase is completed by players at the same time.

It's much more engaging and requires much more thought I find. I dislike magic's (and others) alternating turns game flow. Depending on the deck you play you spend 50% the time largely passive, just letting things happen to you. Then it's your turn and the other player let's stuff happen to them.. It's just not satisfying I think.

My game is even 1v1 only. So it's not multiplayer based, and I still can't imagine it with alternating turns.

The cons are interesting, because I liked trying to overcome them. The most glaring one is priority. Even with simultaneous actions, you don't ever want to get into a position where whichever player shouts their action first gets to take it. That's degenerate from a structure standpoint. So while the phases are simultaneous, the resolution is very ordered. This is largely maintained by the phase structure of the game (and limiting action types to each phase), but there are additional rules that assist resolution of effects. All in all, it's less rules than APNAP in magic, so even if initially it seems confusing, in the long run I think it's a hell of a lot simpler than the stack.

One HUGE advantage that i don't see touted enough when this topic comes up is teaching. It's so easy to teach my game since both players do the same sort of actions each phase. So to teach, you really just play a game and walk the new player through the first few seasons. "Okay, this is the development phase, here we can do this sort of stuff" and then you both do that sort of stuff and you can discuss it. Then "Okay, now this is the campaign phase, here we can do this other stuff" and then you both do it. It's a great way to "tell then show" the rules, where both players are always engaged.

I could write a lot about this, I really do love the turn structure I came up with for Siege.

[Wisp]

In terms of priority problems, my game only has one big phase, but I'm thinking that everybody would alternate taking 1 action at a time. So a players gets priority, performs an action, the action resolves, the next player gets priority and so on.

The stack is only complicated for 2 reasons anyway: 1. you can respond to your self 2. triggered abilities go on the stack. The complicated priority system stems from these two mechanics, and neither of these exist in my game which simplifies it a lot.

That's a good point about the teaching. Care to share more abou the mechanics of your turn structure for siege? I'm going to share my idea once i finish rewriting the rulebook again.

[innuendo]

My Rulebook The relevant part would be the "Seasons" section, and all the sections underneath it.

As for your version, that step process is essentially APNAP, but the open season version where you can play any action at any time in stead of certain actions based on who is AP and who is the NAP.

I'm currious how deep you could make a game with no triggered effects. It seems that would really limit your design space.

[Wisp]

Oh no I wasn't clear, there are triggered effects they just can't be responded to. Instead, they have to be planned for.

I've never heard of anything that functions quite like your phase resolution. It's an interesting concept, how does it feel when you play it?

[innuendo]

Action Sets are far and away my favorite system of effect resolution I've seen in any card game (and yes i'm biased since I created them). Since the stack was created nearly every system built since then uses some form of queue based resolution. The ordering of the queue changes game to game, but it's really hard to find a wave based resolution system out there.

In practice, it's exactly like other systems. When you teach people about magic you never explain the stack, it's too complicated to explain how APNAP works, or how stack resolution works. You do stuff, and resolves in a LIFO order.

In 95% of phases in siege every action resolves within the same group. The only time you ever need to worry about action sets in terms of resolving a situation are very rare. If it doesn't "just happen at the same time" then it typically is resolved with the standard priority rules (mostly comes up during the campaign phase with who gets to move first). I've theorized some interesting scenarios in which you could manipulate the action sets, but none of them are as confusing as the weird stuff you can do with the stack in magic.

In short, It hardly ever comes up. The rule you explain to new players is "you don't actually do anything during the phase. You just announce actions. Once we both are done announcing actions all the things we announced happen at the same time"

[Wisp]

That's a really good idea. I might play around with it

[Typherion]

I am interested to hear more about alternative turn structure models. I agree that it seems more immersive than having one active player and one passive player.

@innuendo
After checking your rulebook briefly, I can't seem to visualise how combat works with players acting simulatenously. How do you solve the following problem:

Player 1: My guy A attacks your guy X.
Player 2: Nuh uh, because my guy X is attacking your guy B.

[Kevashim]

I remember briefly toying with an idea for a time-travel based game wherein players create "timelines" of cards that each player can contribute to. These "timelines" and the cards stored in them do nothing at all until a certain critical mass of "influence" is reached (each individual card having a varying level of influence). Once a timeline reaches critical mass it cannot be altered further and instantly  resolves with all of the cards stored in it coming into effect in reverse of the order they were placed (ie, last placed card is resolved first, first placed card is resolved last).

Not really simultaneous turns at all, but it is vaguely related to the discussion at hand

[innuendo]

@innuendo
After checking your rulebook briefly, I can't seem to visualise how combat works with players acting simulatenously. How do you solve the following problem:

Player 1: My guy A attacks your guy X.
Player 2: Nuh uh, because my guy X is attacking your guy B.

I'm not sure I understand the question, but let me explain how combat works and it should help. During combat there are 3 phases.

• Engage
• Adept Attack
• Regular Attack

During assignment every army that can engage another army does so. Engagement is a one way street. So if I have an Army A and you have Army X. I can chose for A to engage X, but that doesn't mean that X engages A back.

So every army engages one other army if it can. Once all of the armies are engaged the engage phase of combat ends. At that point every army that is going to attack is assigned to one opposing army. So A is engaged to X, B is engaged to X, and X is engaged to B (for example).

Let's skip adept for now (it's like first strike) and assume no one has adept. At that point the regular attack phase happens. Each army deals damage equal to it's Attack to the army it is assigned to at the same time. So this means the following 3 things happen at the same moment:

• A deals damage to X
• B deals damage to X
• X deals damage to B

Then, the game checks to see if any armies that have damage on them are dealt wounds, and it assigns wounds and the phase ends (The game checks for damage every phase, but it is only common to see damage in the Combat phase).

So to answer what I think your question is: it doesn't matter what you assign or I assign, because my armies get to attack whomever they want, regardless of what you do, and vice versa.

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[Gargoyle]

In regards to simultaneous turns I think it can make things interesting in terms of expectation, but also lacks something. I don't generally like the idea of completely simultaneous systems, because they don't allow reactions, but nor do I like the opposite(limitless Chains/Stacks). I guess I'm generally a realist in regards to such systems, and believe they should reflect genuine interaction. So, something between these is what I think would be best, with primary moves being made simultaneously, but still the possibility of reactions at critical points(if you're attacked you don't just stand there going "Ouch, this squadron of axe wielding dwarves are really doing a number on me"). It is, of course, difficult to make a system that truly embraces this ideal seeing as 'offense' and 'defense' are relative terms in the real world, as defensive moves can be used in creative ways to create advantage and offensive maneuvers are oft pre-emptive. Not impossible, but I feel it needs a radically new approach with a more specific reference to the conception of time in action. I have an idea for this, which I may post elsewhere.

One way of doing things could be to give an influence rating on each card, then the cumulative Influence for the turn is compared to the other player's and whoever has the highest can play all their cards first. That way you add an extra dimension to gameplay, where you must consider whether or not you want to aim for high influence or simply use low cost(yet more efficeint)cards and let them have priority. With effects that can cripple their turn(at least in part), you would really have to weigh up the risks.

OR, to be even more cruel, the player who wins Influence actually gets to decide the order. Perhaps certain cards would have placement limitations.

OR you take turns choosing order and the opposite player get's one 'response' card once the order is set, to resolve last or even (in some cases)place itself within the priority, depending on the card.

OR, card's have a Speed value, and regardless of what order they are played the order goes in Descending order of speed, with disputes going to whoever has the highest card per round, the second highest if there's a second dispute etc. So as the Round progress you may have to rethink your strategy based on how the priority is looking at the time.

This sort of thing could probably relate to some sort of Pre-cognition theme, or cultural/political influence in a more macro, era-based game.

I remember briefly toying with an idea for a time-travel based game wherein players create "timelines" of cards that each player can contribute to. These "timelines" and the cards stored in them do nothing at all until a certain critical mass of "influence" is reached (each individual card having a varying level of influence). Once a timeline reaches critical mass it cannot be altered further and instantly  resolves with all of the cards stored in it coming into effect in reverse of the order they were placed (ie, last placed card is resolved first, first placed card is resolved last).

Not really simultaneous turns at all, but it is vaguely related to the discussion at hand

This is an awesome idea!  If you ever make a CCG use this concept. Seriously, this would create some really dynamic gameplay. You might even end up delaying on the completion of a certain timeline until you draw something that could make it work more in your favour. That's probably just one tactic of many that would evolve from such a system; the possibilities are enormous.