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Greetings to another edition of Games Design Discussions!

Today, let's talk about games that incorporate a time limit into the mechanics. I have seen this done a few different ways and combinations.

1. Race the Clock- Pieces move one way on the board to move closer to their goal, while the bad guys are moved via various caards/activities fromt eh other direction. If the bad guys reach a certain point first, the game is over. Lord of the Rings Board Game. Could also be just a timer.

2. Turn Limit- A set turn limit, with the occasional dice off for a final turn. Warhammer anyone?

3. End Space- You reach the "end space" first. Many traditional board games use this method.

4. Doom Clocks- I can't recall the name of the game, but players could bid actions to move the games clock downward toward sthe end of the game, instead of using them to do actions. Essentially, you would try to set up a winning position, and then try to bid the game down until it was over, whiel your oppoenent tried to use his actions to do what he needed to move the game to his advantage and begin to bid down.

5. Random game lenght- I'm not sure of a game that does this?

6. Elimination- The Game continues until one/all player/s eliminated.

7. No End in Sight- Many RPGs and Campaign games may have this unless it is combined with another ending type.

So, as people seem to have less, and less time dedicated to play games, how does one approach the question of game time for a wargame? What methods have you seen used, how do they work, and what is the optimum time for a game?

Grande Armee by Sam Mustafa has random turn and game lengths if I remember correctly. It is counter-intuitive from the traditional viewpoint that if an hour goes by an hour goes by, however it does produce the realistic effect of the commander not being able to know that his plans will unfold like clockwork.

For example, at Waterloo, the French were unable to deploy their artillery for several hours because the ground was too wet from rain the night before and needed time to dry out. This may have been a crucial factor since it gave Napoleon less time to defeat Wellington before Blucher and the Prussians would arrive in the afternoon.

Another one you missed is an 'Instant Death' type mechanic; the game runs until one side achieves their objective then bam, there's no comeback. Deadzone does this, and I have a feeling Malifaux might, and in the former I't certainly encourages you to act quickly. Since objectives for each side are secret, you can never know how close the enemy is to achieving their goal, so need to get your job done fast.

On the whole I still prefer the Warhammer system; often I find the closing turns and rolling for the 6th/7th to be the most tense moments of a game.

I like the Instant Death mechanic, too. We play a lot of CTF in various flavors, where one side must defend an objective, and the other one must seize it within X turns, or 40k style variable turns (roll after turn X). Game immediately ends of the aggressor takes (touches) the objective. It allows for a more elaborate setup, and a way to play models that you wouldn't otherwise take.

Oh, yes, one thing -- absolute time limits on 40k are a bit unfair unless both sides have approximately the same size armies; it takes a lot less time to play 4 imperial knights than the same points in imperial guardsmen

Besides, I have slowpoke friends who would just miss units all over the place while they panic about the clock, and I wouldn't want to wreck it for them.

 Easy E wrote:
Greetings to another edition of Games Design Discussions!

Today, let's talk about game sthat incorporate a time limit into the mechanics. I have seen this done a few different ways and combinations.

...Could also be just a timer.

Time limits, actual, real-time time limits, are like playing with fire. They can be incredibly awesome, but they can also be a horrendous turn off. As with any game system, the mechanic must serve the purposes of the game and contribute meaningfully to the game play experience.

The system we are developing is critically dependent on time limits. I'll give you the high level version:

A game turn is broken into two phases, Movin' and Doin'.

The Movin' phase is simultaneous and timed. We use and recommend a 20 second time limit, although for variety I have a timer system with +/- 5 seconds. Sometimes it is 15 seconds, sometimes as long as 25 seconds and anywhere in between.

The Doin' phase is not timed, but we have a system for the GM to speed the Doin' phase along if players are taking too much time.

A result of the timer is that a game turn tends to take between 90 and 120 seconds to play out. This makes the game fast, fast, fast.

It also makes the game very frenetic. That's an engineered part of the system. We want players making quick, in-the-moment decisions. We don't want players over-thinking decisions or feeling conservative or inhibited during game play. The game is very 'expressive', shall we say, and we don't want players to have too much time to feel self-conscious about being emotive, which is a necessary component of game play.

You can think of it like Pit. Sit down to play a game of Pit and within 10 seconds you are shouting like you're on the floor of a stock exchange. It is because of the timer. You know time is running out, you can see other players making trades. Are they winning? Are you losing the game by standing mute? Are you running out of time thinking about these things? "TWO! TWO! I'LL TAKE TWO! YES! I HAVE THREE! ONE! ONE! I NEED ONE!"

BAM! In the game. In the spirit. Having fun.

Timers are powerful, but they can easily be frustrating annoyances if they do not serve to enhance the overall experience of the game.

Blood Bowl comes to mind. Blood Bowl uses a real-time timer, which I think is necessary to keep the game moving, but it doesn't really help to support the experience of the game. It is mostly necessary to keep the game from taking forever. The problem with Blood Bowl is that there are a lot of factors to consider in a game turn, and the order in which you take actions is critical. So it can be frustrating feeling like you are fighting an arbitrary clock, especially if you happen to have a particularly complicated game turn.

If the mechanics of Blood Bowl facilitated fast, streamlined play with decent tolerance for error, the timer would be a little different. But the game is clunky, small mistakes can cost big-time, and successful plays often require an orchestrated ballet of actions and risk management. The game also requires lots of tear down and set up, which is a detraction from the timed game turns.

In comparison, Dreadball is much better designed for a real-time timer. The game flows organically, you aren't resetting your models after every drive, and gameplay is a little more fast and loose than Blood Bowl. Even the visual style and fluff are fast and electric. A timer accentuates and enhances these elements, rather than fighting against them.

I like time limits in 40k. We're playing until the game turns end or 3 hours passes. Period.

In my old group of gamers, there was one guy that took upwards of 30 minutes for every move phase. He would go through every possible move action, odds of succeeding in shooting, etc, and THEN move his gak.

Very frustrating. I secretly timed him one game and showed him the times at the end of the game. After that, he sped up play and we had a good time.

Two quick examples I like but not sure exactly which box they fit in:

Battlegroup (WW2 game) uses a type of morale system where units you field not only cost points but also grant you anywhere from 0 to X morale points.

Frex, I could build a 1000 pt army that gave me 30 morale points because I went for powerful stuff and you could build a 1000 pt force that gave you 50 morale points because you went with core stuff.

Every time you have to motivate a unit, say because they're suppressed by fire, you draw a randomly numbered (1-5 IIRC) token. You keep the value of all tokens you draw this way secret from your opponent. All he knows is you drew a token and lost at least 1 morale point. Once one of you have met/passed your morale point, you've lost the game.

Spartan Game's relatively newish Planetfall game uses a Zero Hour Tracker. Both players tracker starts the game at same value.. Destroy an enemy squadron completely and immediately reduce your tracker by that unit's value (different than its points value for fielding). Hold an objective at the end of a turn and reduce your tracker by primary, secondary or tertiary objective value. First player to zero wins the game.

 kronk wrote:
I like time limits in 40k. We're playing until the game turns end or 3 hours passes. Period.

In my old group of gamers, there was one guy that took upwards of 30 minutes for every move phase. He would go through every possible move action, odds of succeeding in shooting, etc, and THEN move his gak.

Very frustrating. I secretly timed him one game and showed him the times at the end of the game. After that, he sped up play and we had a good time.

Death to the slow player! Slow players cause soooooo much frustration in soooooo many games for soooooo many people. It is interesting to see how and why players add time limits to games as a means to reduce slow play.

I am absolutely against fixed number of turns. It incentivizes playing against the clock instead of against the opponent and as a result encourages certain undesirable behaviors. The warhammer system of 'random' game length isn't much better, while it does address these issues somewhat, it doesn't completely eliminate them (even with random game length you will still hear a lot of people talk about how they were playing to the game length and they new if the game ended this turn they would win, or if the game went one more turn they would lose, etc.), and at the end of the day, most people still play in the mindset of a 6 turn game regardless as to how long the game actually runs, with the 'last turn' mentality bubbling up during turn 5.

Personally, I am in favor of an 'open ended' game length. If the objectives are opposed (as in, both/all sides are competing for the same thing, such as in warmachine scenario play), then the game should run until one player completes their objective (if you want to make the game run a bit longer you can introduce tennis scoring, wherein completing the objective requires you to outscore your opponent by a margin). If the objectives aren't opposed (as in, both players have different objectives or objectives that dont require a contest over the same finite resource, similar to most 40k objectives), then the game should run until one side completes their objectives, plus some random number of turns (so say we're playing a game, on the 4th turn I complete my objective, the game will now go one additional turn at the end of which we roll, on a 3+ it continues another turn, at the end of that turn we roll again, on a 5+ it continues another turn, etc.) to allow your opponent the possibility of either a) completing his objective, or b) causing you to fail to complete your objective before the game ends.

In both cases, I am in favor of implementing a 'checkmate' condition, similar to warmachines caster-kill, that can force an instantaneous end to the game.

Quiet like the way Flame of War handles it, specifically the mechanic for ending the game varies depending on the mission.

Some are sudden death with capture the objective, others the objectives only go live after 'x' turns, in one the objectives vanish.

Also has the scenarios such that generally if the attacking player doesn't 'win' the defender will win by default, but not in all missions in some a timeout means both count as losing (the game never has a draw).

Clocks I don't like, its too easy for the opponent to waste your time, hard and fast turn limits are very artificial as well

I don't have a problem with playing against a known number of turns. Among other things, you can craft armies that are designed to win through attrition and survival and securing objectives based on X turns.

Think of it as, "reinforcements are on the way!!". It also gives some armies a path to victory, when (intentionally) their technology doesn't give ten units that could win in a game that is 'last man standing'.

I like sudden death victory conditions too, but not 'kill the model' type, because in 40k, it's just too easy to kill pretty much anything deployed to play, if you just throw enough alpha strike at it, or other tricks like assassins or destroyer that can score guaranteed wounds. Plus, you'd see stupid castling like putting a warlord in a triple land raider squad, buffing it with magic, throwing on a techmarine and then parking it on a skyshield. And hiding the skyshield behind some dumb building or hill.

Space Hulk if played without the timer becomes far easier for the Space Marine player because it is a relatively simple and mechanistic game that approaches solvability more closely if you have leisure to work out the best solution.

I think Malifaux breaks down in a social setting towards the end. Because if you're not playing to win (ie between friends) and are more interested in the narrative of the game (forge THAT narrative, GW!) then both players get bogged down into "what-ifs" that take forever.

All this to say a timer would help.

That is called analysis paralysis and is a known psychological thing among gamers. You see the same in lots of games. Not everyone is so prone to it.

Time is the worse problem of game design.

Real time limits have been enforced mostly for the tournament scene, one needs to have a tournament wrapped up in a reasonable time and not drag for an eternity, it also spontaneous erupts as a necessity when in a players group some people are characteristically slow.

When a game is designed with this in mind, it short of works, when a game is not it inevitably falls apart.

The main problem with real time limits is the gaming of the system, the meta revolves around exploiting the game resource that is out of the hands of the game designer and exploit their opponents weakness especially in analysis paralysis (AP), it does create a predictable time frame for games but it does turn off players from playing the game or from trying things that would increase time consumption, it can also lead to players winning not by strategy but for better time management, which in my opinion is absurd.

When the game engine does not natively support real time limits it falls apart because the mechanism is ad hoc and usually ignores many things such as physical models count per player, special rules complexity inter working of game pieces and other physical needs per player.

The random game length mechanic is a bad mechanic, it introduces an uncertainty in the game, it makes tactical decisions impossible and voids any sense in planning for scenarios.

Doom clocks is an interesting concept, not properly explored in my opinion, I think the most famous atm user is mice and mystics.

Set turns is a golden compromise, is is not realistic but contains the game in a reasonable time frame and makes planning possible, it is still plagued by slow players.

Open ended is a beast, the problems are really many, but gives a better realistic conclusion to the game secession, not for everybody and the doom of many games systems, if the game designer and the players do not take it seriously into consideration it falls apart, blessed the (really) few who can make it work and enjoy it though.

You didn't mention "death clock" where each player gets a set amount of time. If the player can't achieve some objective before his time runs out the he automatically loses. This is seen in chess and warmachine/hordes tournament settings.

It is fair in that each person can move/think at their own pace but still keeps the total game lengthl to a resonable time limit for tournament organizational purposes.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
You didn't mention "death clock" where each player gets a set amount of time. If the player can't achieve some objective before his time runs out the he automatically loses. This is seen in chess and warmachine/hordes tournament settings.

It is fair in that each person can move/think at their own pace but still keeps the total game lengthl to a resonable time limit for tournament organizational purposes.

Yet as PsychoticStorm mentioned, it does still mean that time management is a critical and influential part of a player's skill at the game.

Any rule based system has some mechanism(s) that are critical and should be influential to the game. That is part of mastering the game. A person who knows probabilities has an advantage over thsose that do not when the game involves more than one die or a deck of cards. If you know that a 7 is the most likely outcome on 2d6 and the other person doesn't then you have an advantage right there (it might be slight but it is an advantage). The same with cards. If you know that a person has already drawn/played three of some type of a foursome then you know that the odds of getting the fourth are dependant on the remaining deck size.
I would also like to say to Psychopass that it is not "absurd" to win a game because your opponent has timed out. That is part of the rules and is no worse than losing at the end of a given set of turns. As an example if the oppenent has the last half a a turn and makes a desperation gambit to grab an objective and succeeds then he has won and regardless of your superior position and play you still lost due to time constraints.
Games have to have an arbitrary end point or else continue until one side completely wipes the other out. Since the later is usually not going to work in a tournament setting we must bow to the former.

In my opinion it is, from a design point of view it introduces an element outside of the game system that vastly influences the game system.

An arbitrary set of game turns, is something you can plan ahead, it does not change, it is set, a fight against time is not set in the rules, it cannot be expected and awards players victory for skills unrelated to the game, I would also find absurd a game system that requires the players to physically hit with their dice a target, not miniatures, just reward how close you can roll your dice on a target area, it introduces physical elements unrelated tot he game system and practically imbalanced.

Time management is variable and each player is not equal in it, but the physical forces themselves are not balanced against it too, does in wormahords a player with twice the average model count get extra time versus a player that has less models? from what I know at least no, how is this balanced? how are players who can simply physically perform the menial tasks of the wargame balanced against people who cannot? they are not.

Worse, players abuse the time resource that is included in the game engine but not balanced to achieve victories they would normally never would, for example employing tactics that force the enemy to spend more time than they.

I find death clock is too limited in games where you can have significantly different numbers on each side,

in those cases giving extra time to the large side can work (although you have to bring it down as their units die off so they're not left with loads 'spare')

I would like to point out that the doom clock and death clock are different concepts and mechanisms.

I like the Death Clock mechanic in Warmachine tournaments. It puts enough pressure on you that you need to think quickly, but doesn't limit you in the crucial turns (ie feat turn) where a lot is going down.

I think the thing that makes it work in WMH is that there is very little opportunity for your opponent to react during your turn. In other games where control of play is switching constantly (ie 40k where both players participate in the assault phase) death clocks really aren't a good idea.

I DON'T like the Timed Turns mechanic in Warmachine tournaments. In my experience it leads to 'jamming' (spamming many low cost infantry models in your opponent's face) to be a far more viable tactic than it otherwise would be; it means you can win solely by giving your opponent so many targets that rolling dice against even half of them takes up the turn time.

Debating which particular timed format does seem to break down into "Which poison would you like to drink first?" The practical constraint is that both players have X time to finish their game in, and the tournament is going to go on without them if they can't finish in time. The fact that finishing a wargame on schedule requires a coordinated effort by both players--both players have to cooperate, know their rules, and get things done in a timely manner--but at the same time the two players are competing to win leads to all sorts of behavioral problems.

The problem is that you can't really give a person more time because they have more models. If someone is playing "mass model army", they're eventually going to play against another "mass model army" and end up with a terrible time-per-model, so the reasoning goes that if the "mass model army" has to prepare for the worst case of facing another "mass model army" with equal time demands, then it should have no problem keeping with the same portion of the time vs. the "small model count army". It ends up being "the worst solution, except for all of the failed ones that don't work" situations:

If you go with a time-per-model solution, that doesn't end up fair because there are rules that take more time to resolve based on how many models your opponent has.
*There's no point in assigning players less time than you can give them.
*There are going to be lots of cases where player only has a few models, but those models do a lot of things, so that player with only a few models needs just as much time as a player with more models would.

So the event organizer is left with the worst solution: Each player gets half, and each player needs to be prepared to do their stuff in that time.

And when the time runs out during the game, you're left with a bunch of bad choices:
1. The players didn't finish their game in time, disqualify them. No one wins.
2. The players didn't finish their game in time, make the entire tournament run late as they try to finish their game. Everyone goes home late.
3. The players didn't finish their game in time, try to score the incomplete game. People start stalling when they're winning.
4. The players didn't finish their game in time, the person who ran out of time first loses. You get the degenerate Death Clock strategies, and clock pounding when the time starts running low.

They're all bad choices, and the question is which bad choice is the least bad. At least for #4, you can point to the reasoning that each player needs to be prepared to do their stuff in the time alloted without punishing both players.

Clearly, time is evil and needs to be abolished.

I hate time limits. They remove the ability to play a game casually because any moment spent on talking with your opponent is wasted resources, they cause massive issues with fairness and avoiding slow play, they create opportunities to get away with cheating (or even honest mistakes) because the other player(s) don't have time to dispute your actions, and they replace strategic skill with the ability to execute game actions as quickly as possible. The winner should be the player who made the best decisions, not the player who brought an army with the fewest possible models or spent the most time obsessively practicing their dice rolling to save a few valuable seconds.

And of course from a fluff perspective they're just plain stupid. A turn limit makes sense because it represents an in-universe event (reinforcements arriving, planes running out of fuel, etc). A time limit doesn't make sense because it has no connection to the events on the table. Why should my army have less time to accomplish its objectives just because you spent extra time counting out your dice every time you rolled them? That bolter shot still takes the same amount of time in-universe whether it's resolved with one quick die roll or a 15-minute argument about LOS.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
You didn't mention "death clock" where each player gets a set amount of time. If the player can't achieve some objective before his time runs out the he automatically loses. This is seen in chess and warmachine/hordes tournament settings.

It is fair in that each person can move/think at their own pace but still keeps the total game lengthl to a resonable time limit for tournament organizational purposes.

No, it isn't fair at all. In fact it's an absolutely terrible idea that has no place in serious competitive games. Chess clocks work fine in chess, where only one player can possibly be doing stuff and the other player is passively watching, but it fails horribly in a game where both players are playing simultaneously. For example, whose clock runs if there's a dispute over whether or not a model has LOS to its target? Do you switch the clocks when it's time for a player to roll saves, or do they get to slowly collect their dice and waste their opponent's time? What if there's a rules argument and you have to call the TO over to resolve it? You just can't solve this problem without creating an awkward mess of rules for using the clock that are probably longer than the rules for playing the game.

 Peregrine wrote:

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
You didn't mention "death clock" where each player gets a set amount of time. If the player can't achieve some objective before his time runs out the he automatically loses. This is seen in chess and warmachine/hordes tournament settings.

It is fair in that each person can move/think at their own pace but still keeps the total game lengthl to a resonable time limit for tournament organizational purposes.

No, it isn't fair at all. In fact it's an absolutely terrible idea that has no place in serious competitive games. Chess clocks work fine in chess, where only one player can possibly be doing stuff and the other player is passively watching, but it fails horribly in a game where both players are playing simultaneously. For example, whose clock runs if there's a dispute over whether or not a model has LOS to its target? Do you switch the clocks when it's time for a player to roll saves, or do they get to slowly collect their dice and waste their opponent's time? What if there's a rules argument and you have to call the TO over to resolve it? You just can't solve this problem without creating an awkward mess of rules for using the clock that are probably longer than the rules for playing the game.

You're seriously overestimating the difficulty of this. Warmachine uses chess clocks for competitive play and this is all very simply worked out:
- if you have a legitimate dispute (eg, LOS) that is taking more than ~ 15 seconds to resolve, you pause the clock. Same if you need to call the TO over.
- any action that you have to perform, the clock switches over to you. Whether this be making saves, counter charges, whatever. That means when you roll damage and your opponent needs to roll saves, immediately upon damage being dealt you switch the clock to the other player. If they dawdle gathering up their dice, its on their time.

Granted this works pretty well for WMH because there are relatively few situations where you do get to act during the opponent's turn (no combat during your opponents turn, very limited abilities of counter-charge or overwatch which tend to be on only 2 or 3 models per army, and very few 'saves' outside of Trollbloods). 40k would be terrible given all the hundreds of saves you need to take in every phase of the game, and fighting combat in the opponent's turn etc, but the problem definitely isn't insurmountable depending on the system.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/commercial_books/CB113-1.html

might be of interest to people in this discussion.

Trasvi wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
You didn't mention "death clock" where each player gets a set amount of time. If the player can't achieve some objective before his time runs out the he automatically loses. This is seen in chess and warmachine/hordes tournament settings.

It is fair in that each person can move/think at their own pace but still keeps the total game lengthl to a resonable time limit for tournament organizational purposes.

No, it isn't fair at all. In fact it's an absolutely terrible idea that has no place in serious competitive games. Chess clocks work fine in chess, where only one player can possibly be doing stuff and the other player is passively watching, but it fails horribly in a game where both players are playing simultaneously. For example, whose clock runs if there's a dispute over whether or not a model has LOS to its target? Do you switch the clocks when it's time for a player to roll saves, or do they get to slowly collect their dice and waste their opponent's time? What if there's a rules argument and you have to call the TO over to resolve it? You just can't solve this problem without creating an awkward mess of rules for using the clock that are probably longer than the rules for playing the game.

You're seriously overestimating the difficulty of this. Warmachine uses chess clocks for competitive play and this is all very simply worked out:
- if you have a legitimate dispute (eg, LOS) that is taking more than ~ 15 seconds to resolve, you pause the clock. Same if you need to call the TO over.
- any action that you have to perform, the clock switches over to you. Whether this be making saves, counter charges, whatever. That means when you roll damage and your opponent needs to roll saves, immediately upon damage being dealt you switch the clock to the other player. If they dawdle gathering up their dice, its on their time.

Since you're talking about switching clocks, I assume you're talking about timing under death clock. Which is scary, since you're also talking about behavior that will lose games according to the death clock rules:

If a judge’s call is required, the judge, at his own discretion, can pause the chess clock when he arrives at the table. If the judge pauses the clock, he restarts it when his call is complete. A player who pauses his chess clock receives one warning. Upon a second infraction he loses the game.

So, if your opponent disputes something and the judge comes after 2 minutes you lost two minutes of your time?

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
So, if your opponent disputes something and the judge comes after 2 minutes you lost two minutes of your time?

By the event rules, only the judges can pause the clocks.

If the judge wants to give the player back the two minutes (or however long it took), that's the judge's call. If the judge tells everyone "I'm a bit older than I used to be, so if you call for me, pause your clock", that's the judge's call, too. But that's down to individual judges making individual calls.

And if it keeps happening that the same player is causing the dispute without a real basis the Judge/TO will probably DQ him for unsportsmanlike behaviour. In fact I have seen a judge give a warning after the first incident.

So the "let's get a judge over here" tactic isn't really workable.