"Age of Madness Design Notes: Turn Sequence" Topic

We've updated the blog with a post on our approach to game's turn sequence. The post can be found here:

link

In summary, we started with the idea that we enjoy playing with multiple players and many of our friends and family are either casual gamers, young gamers, or haven't played "Age of Madness" in the case of players we meet at conventions and the FLGS.

So we needed a system that was easy to learn, easy to remember, and which could intrinsically represent varying troop and leadership quality. The result after much trial and even more error was our kid-friendly, noob-friendly, 3-point action system which can be summarized in four lines:

- We take turns: each Game Turn is divided into a Red Player Turn followed by a Blue Player Turn

- One thing at a time: during his Player Turn the player activates each unit, one at a time

- Here's your time available: when activated a unit has 2 Action Points and may be given a 3rd AP under certain circumstances

- Spend your time wisely: each action (eg Move or Shoot) costs 1 or 2 AP

Sorry for the cross-post to Modern Naval…this is why I mostly play tabletop games and not video games!!! Stupid hand-eye coordination…will get editors to fix that…

Maybe it's a sign you should be writing a naval expansion :-)

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I've been looking at using the "Gruntz Activation Cards".

Here's a youtube link:

YouTube link

We tested some random activation mechanics including cards but found that too often they undermined sound combined arms tactics and really slowed down multi-player games.

For example, imagine trying to take a rubbled factory held by enemy infantry. Traditionally you might have mortars and MGs suppress the target after which assault elements would storm the defenders.

But with completely random unit activation you can have the assault troops activated first with the supporting fires activated later. That would delay the attack and would probably give the enemy extra time to recover from the suppression effects before the assault goes in.

Now, THAT could be a realistic result too. But the probability of that happening should have more to do with troop quality and player decision making than a completely random card draw. This is especially true when gamers have only a limited amount of time to play a game before having to pick up the kids at soccer or head to dinner with the in-laws.

Random individual unit-activation also causes delays in multi-player games. You draw a card and THAT specific player/unit does its thing while everyone else waits for that one player/unit to finish. With parallel activation all players on a side can be activating units while all opposing players can be ready to react.

That being said we did test some interesting probability-based unit activation approaches which showed promise. But ultimately too many players found them overly burdensome relative to any value enhancing "realism". We may test some of them again for the upcoming WWII and Far Future SciFi games.

With the Gruntz cards you get 60-some numbered cards with no duplicates. Using one central deck each player is dealt one card per unit. Once all the cards needed are dealt out they are handled one of two ways.

1) Each player looks at their cards and assigns one to each unit, places the cards face down next to the unit.

2) Each player places a card face down (without looking at them) next to each unit.

After all cards are placed turn them over and begin with the highest numbered card going first.

I will agree one of the major draw backs is it slows down game play.

Something along those lines might have merit in being able to change the probabilities of a given unit having its card drawn.

Only downside to that approach is having cards on the table in addition to any markers. The cards looked pretty big in the video and certainly larger than most multi-figure stands in 15mm.

For purely 1 on 1 games I enjoy alternate unit activation based on some sort of force quality mechanic (rather than a purely back and forth approach seen in many board games or totally random draw system). But yeah, it slows down big time in multi-player.

One possibility might be to give better units and support elements two cards. They can act on either (but don't get to act twice).

Doesn't solve the speed issue though.