{"id":80,"date":"2016-08-22T17:16:55","date_gmt":"2016-08-22T17:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/?p=80"},"modified":"2016-08-27T06:37:01","modified_gmt":"2016-08-27T06:37:01","slug":"80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/80\/","title":{"rendered":"You’ve Got The Turn, You’ve Got The Power (Yeah!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not going to do a fancy introduction for this one, I just want to get into something that I haven\u2019t noticed much discussion of: Turn autonomy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Turn autonomy is the number of things a player can do on their turn. Note that in some games, a player might have many options but can only pick one; my term refers to being able to pick many options in a single turn. In many games, this is effectively the statistic that measures how much a player can get away with before an opponent interferes.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at a couple of examples and see how much turn autonomy they give the player.<\/p>\n

High Turn Autonomy: Warmachine<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Similar to many other minis games, Warmachine<\/em> gives each player a ludicrous amount of autonomy on their turn. Each player gets to move and attack with everything in their army before their opponent gets a turn, and games will frequently look like one player demolishing the other, only for that player to deal even more damage in return when the turn passes to them.<\/p>\n

Though this form of turn progression is mainly a genre holdover, it does have its benefits. A lot of Warmachine<\/em> and companion game Hordes\u2019 <\/em>selling points are based on coolness: You can have an army of Imperial Russian steampunk robots get into a fistfight with a bunch of bipedal elephants led by the human version of Hedonism Bot. By allowing players plenty of time to exploit the synergies of their army, it makes them feel like they\u2019re accomplishing something.<\/p>\n

The downside of this increased turn autonomy is player uninvolvement. If it isn\u2019t your turn, there isn\u2019t much you can do to interact with the opponent besides certain tricks with upkeep spells and shuffling damage around on a few units. Depending on army size and player inexperience, you could spend as long as half an hour waiting for your opponent to beat your face in before you can do anything about it.<\/p>\n

A large amount of turn autonomy that can\u2019t be interrupted by opponents has its uses, but it requires a specific kind of game to be effective. These games are generally complex and for \u201ccore\u201d tabletop gamers that are willing to accept that it won\u2019t be their turn most of the time.<\/p>\n

Low Turn Autonomy: Smash Up<\/strong><\/p>\n

Games with small amounts of turn autonomy frequently use it as a challenge factor to prevent players from effortlessly winning. Smash Up<\/em> is a good example: The main reason you can\u2019t immediately take over a base on your first turn is because you can only play one minion and one action at a time. This limit is easy to remember (until your time traveler wizards give you six extra actions) and creates a different gameplay feel than ones that use a resource system to dictate how many cards you can play on a turn.<\/p>\n

Short turn autonomy games are much more common than long turn autonomy games, and range from shorter American-style games to denser Euros like Terra Mystica<\/em>. However, some games make visible the mechanic\u2019s major flaw: If an opponent develops a lead, having low turn autonomy means you won\u2019t be able to do very much to catch up. This creates helplessness maybe a little deeper than that in high turn autonomy games, where a player might feel that they\u2019ll never be able to put together a plan faster than their opponent can tear it apart.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Much like chance, politics, and hidden information, turn autonomy is an essential part of non-simultaneous games, and a dial that the designer can adjust at their will. However, I haven\u2019t seen in brought up or discussed in my reading of several other board game design communities. Being conscious of its use is another tool to add to the designer\u2019s toolbox, and one I hope to be able to use when I stop my endless barrage of games that everyone plays at the same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not going to do a fancy introduction for this one, I just want to get into something that I haven\u2019t noticed much discussion of: Turn autonomy. Turn autonomy is the number of things a player can do on their turn. Note that in some games, a player might have many options but can only pick one; my term refers to being able to pick many options in a single turn. In many games, this is effectively the statistic that measures how much a player can get away with before an opponent interferes. Let\u2019s look at a couple of examples and see how much turn autonomy they give the player. High Turn Autonomy: Warmachine Similar to many other minis games, Warmachine gives each player a ludicrous amount of autonomy on their turn. Each player gets to move and attack with everything in their army before their opponent gets a turn, and games will frequently look like one player demolishing the other, only for that player to deal even more damage in return when the turn passes to them. Though this form of turn progression is mainly a genre holdover, it does have its benefits. A lot of Warmachine and companion game Hordes\u2019 selling points are based on coolness: You can have an army of Imperial Russian steampunk robots get into a fistfight with a bunch of bipedal elephants led by the human version of Hedonism Bot. By allowing players plenty of time to exploit the synergies of their army, it makes them feel like they\u2019re accomplishing something. The downside of this increased turn autonomy is player uninvolvement. If it isn\u2019t your turn, there isn\u2019t much you can do to interact with the opponent besides certain tricks with upkeep spells and shuffling damage around on a few units. Depending on army size and player inexperience, you could spend as long as half an hour waiting for your opponent to beat your face in before you can do anything about it. A large amount of turn autonomy that can\u2019t be interrupted by opponents has its uses, but it requires a specific kind of game to be effective. These games are generally complex and for \u201ccore\u201d tabletop gamers that are willing to accept that it won\u2019t be their turn most of the time. Low Turn Autonomy: Smash Up Games with small amounts of turn autonomy frequently use it as a challenge factor to prevent players from effortlessly winning. Smash Up is a good example: The main reason you can\u2019t immediately take over a base on your first turn is because you can only play one minion and one action at a time. This limit is easy to remember (until your time traveler wizards give you six extra actions) and creates a different gameplay feel than ones that use a resource system to dictate how many cards you can play on a turn. Short turn autonomy games are much more common than long turn autonomy games, and range from shorter American-style games to denser Euros like Terra Mystica. However, some games make visible the mechanic\u2019s major flaw: If an opponent develops a lead, having low turn autonomy means you won\u2019t be able to do very much to catch up. This creates helplessness maybe a little deeper than that in high turn autonomy games, where a player might feel that they\u2019ll never be able to put together a plan faster than their opponent can tear it apart. Conclusion Much like chance, politics, and hidden information, turn autonomy is an essential part of non-simultaneous games, and a dial that the designer can adjust at their will. However, I haven\u2019t seen in brought up or discussed in my reading of several other board game design communities. Being conscious of its use is another tool to add to the designer\u2019s toolbox, and one I hope to be able to use when I stop my endless barrage of games that everyone plays at the same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83,"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.phantomknightgames.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}