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The card mechanic has a lot of options, and can be as simple as red vs blue, where blue means you pick any unit, and red means they pick any unit.

It can be expanded to force an opposing unit to act.

It can be limited to unit type or specific unit.

It can be tied to negative activation with dice, where you need to roll a target number.

There can be more (or less) cards than units.

Lots of possibilities, depending on what sort of granularity or control is desired.

I know that Tomahawks and Muskets uses a card-draw system, but different cards even represent what that type of unit can even do. For example, you might pull Native American allies move., then Regulars reload/fire, then regulars move, then Irregulars move, etc, etc.

I believe Bag The Hun (Or is it Check Your Six) have different move and different shoot cards in the activation deck as well.

Are these examples Positive or Negative in your mind?

I see that as restricted positive. There is no chance that Nothing Happens.

Positive activation for sure.

Deck/ hand in the bag as already mentioned are a randomizer for unit activation, either a deck, or a bag (or any container really) if filled with dice/ counters/ representations for each unit fielded as they are drawn they get to be activated.

The system can be as simple as each representation allows a unit of the owners choice to be activated or as complex as activating a specific unit with specific action and everything in between the two extremes noteworthy is the dice masters series were (I know it is a dice collection boardgame) each dice drawn gets rolled and the side turned up determines its role as a resource, special or fighting unit, I see no reason why this could not be used in a wargame.

Wherefore these terms "positive" and "negative"?

@Manchu - see the original post.

Positive means you pick a unit and it definitely tries to do what you want.

Negative means you pick a unit, and maybe it does what you want. Or not.

My question is, why those terms? They don't really seem to fit what they purport to describe. Surely this is just automatic activation and testing to activate. And what do you mean by "tries to do what you want"? Is that like, for example, in Bolt Action where a unit can automatically activate except when pinned and in that case must test to activate? Or is that an example of so-called "negative" activation?

As for this:

 Easy E wrote:
In such a game, the Player knows how many orders they have and spends them like a resources to move and activate troops. However, their are not enough activation to go around and choices must be made. A good example of this system is escaping me at the moment, so feel free to add an example below.

In the strict sense of a game in which you (could) have more units than activations, BattleGroup is an example.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Easy E wrote:
I know that Tomahawks and Muskets uses a card-draw system, but different cards even represent what that type of unit can even do.

No, the draw in M&T determines what kind of unit from which side can do how many actions but not what type of action the unit can do.

I don't know why he picked that labeling, sorry. I was going with it in this thread.

Well you could go with "resource management" instead of positive and "push your luck"? for negative?

The main difference of the two is the certainty of activation (positive?) versus the uncertainty of activation (negative?)

Even in the bolt action example the pinning is the exception of the rule not the rule so the overall system is a system were units get activated for sure.

No clue on the positive/ negative selection of words, but they do not sound wrong.

Maybe "automatic" activation and "dependent" activation would be more descriptive.

Dependent on passing some kind of test, (die roll, having the right card, etc, ) I mean.

I still think the card draw can fit in either side depending on how it's implemented. There are many possible variations, as JohnHWangDD mentioned earlier.

I think any mechanism can be made in either direction if it is tied to an either definite or chance activation.

There's a neat thing in Pulp Alley. Essentially one player has "the initiative" and decides which player has to activate a model next. Like Blood Bowl there's turn-overs when you lose a combat or a plot-point goes wrong. So models can be eliminated, or at least stunned out of action before they can anything, but in general everything gets to activate (if not strictly in the order you may have wanted).

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Maybe "automatic" activation and "dependent" activation would be more descriptive.

I think this might be the clearest relabeling.

 Manchu wrote:
My question is, why those terms? They don't really seem to fit what they purport to describe. Surely this is just automatic activation and testing to activate. And what do you mean by "tries to do what you want"? Is that like, for example, in Bolt Action where a unit can automatically activate except when pinned and in that case must test to activate? Or is that an example of so-called "negative" activation?

Well, the labeling may not be the best, but it got the discussion going! It was what i could think of at the time.

Edit: Thanks for the clarification on T&M. I was going from vague memory.

I asked because I wondered if I was missing something.

It seems to me that the clearest distinction to draw here is between automatic activation and test for activation. Who gets to activate a unit (or which unit) and when is a separate mechanic. Similarly, whether a player might have more or less activations than units to activate is a separate mechanic.

The most basic issue is, how much direct control should the player have over the game? I mentioned this in my Lion Rampant overview:

 Manchu wrote:
One way to think about game design is as a spectrum between competitive and simulative. Competitive games are obviously played to find out who wins. Competitive game design thus tends to emphasize player agency: the players have a large degree of direct control over what happens during the game. Simulative games, by contrast, are played to find out what happens. Such games tend to put mechanical obstacles between the players' intentions and how things actually play out.

I think I probably lean towards "positive activation" but I imagine there would be some kinds of negative activation that I'd be in for. - For example a 'push your luck' situation can end up with you not getting very far at all.

When doing attacks and things, you still feel like you're 'doing' things, even with bad luck. I can imagine a negative activation sort of situation can lead a person to feeling like all they're doing is sitting on the sidelines getting pummeled.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Maybe "automatic" activation and "dependent" activation would be more descriptive.

Thinking a bit more, "dependent" is really good. Sometimes, it's not that a unit nominated for activation needs to pass a test but there is some other required element. In Ga Pa, for example, I think a unit needs LOS to a commander to be given orders. As the battle wears on, smoke from all the muskets (not to mention climatic conditions) fouls the air and makes drawing LOS increasingly difficult. IIRC your units keep moving without orders, too, which encourages the players to think very carefully about deploying complicated strategies. To me, this kind of thing is often more fun than playing a game that is only a game, where every figure has the same knowledge/will as the controlling player.

Smoke, etc. depends on tech level and training. It matters if everybody has radios vs requiring visual signaling.

Sure, it's not something that would make sense in 40k for example. Well, I guess you could have a rule where your allied SM units haughtily refuse to activate.

Depends on which edition of 40k. I believe RT distinguished this sort of thing between, say IG vs. Eldar/SMs.

How do you mean distinguished? (I was just making a lame joke.)

It's very hazy, but RT, being a proper RPG, had different tech for IG vs SM/Eldar, such that smoke would matter. That would affect comms, which could be used as a basis for different "negative activation" thresholds.

However, I don't like negative activation for skirmish level games, even if it's an arguably more "realistic" mechanic. The randomness it drives is undesirable. If you have a tense tactical situation developing, and then one side gets hammered by negative, while the other sails forward, that kind of defeats the tactical advantage that might have been built up. One has to be careful with this sort of thing, because it can swing things very quickly.

Don't think I would enjoy testing for activation in a game where the players control figures individually. But I have no problem with it in skirmish games played with units of figures, like Lion Rampant. I especially like how in Lion Rampant you can have problems with your knights overzealously charging without orders.

The best way to activate figures in skirmish games is for one person to control each figure, or a small number of them, and people's own internal drives will results in differences in the way they use their figures.

That limits every 1v1 battle to 2 units, which is rather uninteresting. Sure, it's fine for Zombicide where there are lots of survivor choices, and an AI opposition. For something like 40k, not so much. Even Mordheim and Necromunda would be an issue. And even Zombicide is moving to multiple models per player.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
That limits every 1v1 battle to 2 units

Why?

KK was suggesting 1 player = 1 figure. That's 2 units for 2 players, in "pure" form.

Even if it's "a few" figures per player, we're topping out at maybe 4 figure per side. That's very tight.

What I had in mind is SBG, where in a small game each player controls roughly 20 figures.

OK, sure, tho that's roughly and order of magnitude larger than what KK suggests. Me, I'm targeting 6 to 12 models for KOG light.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
That limits every 1v1 battle to 2 units, which is rather uninteresting. Sure, it's fine for Zombicide where there are lots of survivor choices, and an AI opposition. For something like 40k, not so much. Even Mordheim and Necromunda would be an issue. And even Zombicide is moving to multiple models per player.

Yes, it of course is only any use in games where you expect to have a relatively large number of players. However as this forum is for design, we can talk about possibilities and ideas for new games as well as variants for old titles.