"Random movement order in a multi-sided game?" Topic

I am running a large, multi-sided skirmish game using TSATF this weekend. It's a western treasure hunt set in northern Mexico at the end of the ACW when Mexico was occupied by French troops. On one end of the table I have Juaristas vs. French. No problem. But on the other end of the table Major Dundee and Capt. Tyreen are running for the US border and have to deal with one more Apache band on the way. Later they may or may not help the Juaritas against the French and any remaining Apaches are going to be free agents looking to pick up weapons and horses. Plus there are US andMexican bandits who don't really belong to one side or the other. I have run similar games in the past giving each unit its own card and just shuffling and drawing those but it really slowed down the game and I may have as many as twelve players. Any suggestions on how I can retain random movement order while moving the game along will be greatly appreciated. BTW, I found lots of good advice under the topic of speeding up game play in this board.

I recently ran a Legends of the Old West game that is supposed to be a two player game but I had 8 instead. So I used regular playing cards Ace thru 7 and had the players draw cards each turn, (Ace first and so on). The advantage of this over each unit having its own card is that the players knew when their turn was coming up and could prepare for it. That way when it was their turn they were ready to go.

Try this.

Decide who goes first. That player nominates who goes next, and that player can start moving his figures. The second player nominates the third and so on, until everyone has completed a turn. You may have several folks moving, at different points in their turn. Once you've moved something, you can't take the move back. If a question arises, you'll know from the sequence who went first.

Sometimes it's best to go early, at other times it's better to go late, but the player before you decides for you.

Nobody ever nominates an enemy player close to their own forces, so it's almost self-regulating.

With that many people I often divide the table into quadrants and have a turn sequence going for each area so eleven people aren't waiting for one player to do his turn.

To randomize the sequence for western games I have each player have a playing card for this turn that is face up and the card for their next turn that is face down. When all of the cards in an area have been played, turn the face down cards face up and deal extra cards. A player with troops in two areas gets separate cards for each area.

In my wild west games, I deal a card to each character for each action they can take in a round (characters range from holding one to five cards depending upon their prowess). Then we play them like poker hands (i.e.,3 of a kind would take 3 actions in a row) working our way down to high cards and then each goes one by one. This creates a cool interweaved gunfight where even a weak character (2 cards) could be a powerful character (5 cards) if he held a pair and the other character held nothing but singletons. I also use a card deck to resolve all the combat.

Lost Pict

Just assign each character/player a card, and reshuffle the deck after every turn.

If they are otherwise distracted, or don't react when you call their card, they miss a turn.

As others have noted, cards are probably the best way to go. If the aesthetics bother you, you could use numbered tokens drawn from a cup or bag, and these could be genre specific (say plastic gold coins, since it's a treasure hunt).

Doug

The sad fact is that sequential unit activation is going to slow down in direct proportion to the number of players whatever you do, from a player's pov.

By far and away the easiest and quickest way to manage it is a playing card per player, resolve in value order. If players nominate other players, you introduce decision dither.

Dear List

Mexican Jack Squint has it nailed. That's the methodology I use in my campaign games and it works excellently in table top games as well. Also, each bound (where each player has a turn) let the player who goes LAST pick the first person to go in the next round, and he can nominate himself.

To hell with cards.

I hate games where 11/12 of the time I'm just a spectator…

Practically speaking, poker chips in a bag are easier to randomize than a small stack of cards which requires shuffling.

^^^ Yep. No one wants to wiat 45 minutes for their card to come up. The table should be spilt into at least two parts so you can double the number of people doing something. The GM also needs to look at the next card coming up; if that card is too far away to effect the current activated player, get the next player moving as soon as possible.

Thanks to all for your suggestions!

Mexican Jack Squint's suggestion sounds like genius. But won't one side tend to nominate its own players to go next? So it will basically be one side moving then the other – which is what I am trying to avoid. So far I'm liking the poker chips in a bag best. I even have a Civil War kepi to draw them from.