F#$* Going First

In many games, initial turn order has a non-negligable impact on the game. Typically first is best. Sometimes last is best. In Stone Age, second seems best. If you're new to the game, first is definitely not best :)

I believed for a long time that games with many turns or rounds mitigated the advantage gained by going first (or turn order in general). Now I'm not convinced of that at all. Even in long games of chess, white has an advantage of between 52-56%. In very long games that we play like Eurorails, other players are routinely one or two turn away from going out when someone finally does. And many longer games can end that way - i.e. after several hours of play, one player goes out and ends the game a turn before another player would have. Settlers can be that close, and Ticket to Ride as well. Furthermore, lots of turns of low impact incremental moves is a dramatic limitation for game designers.

Many games we play now have 10 or fewer (LONG) rounds. And some of these games allow a player multiple atomic actions in a row. A game like Steam for example does this which I'll probably review next week. Brass is like this, although it has two phases of between 8 and 10 turns.

Some games deal with the natural benefits of going first simply by penalizing that player in some other way. In Magic the Gathering the player who goes first skips their draw phase. In Through the Desert instead of placing two camels in the first round, the first and second player only place one. When Darren discussed "fixing games", one suggestion for Stone Age was to adjust the amount of food for the players in the weaker positions (order of those players beginning with the weakest - 4th, 3rd, and 1st). This seems like a reasonable way to attempt to resolve the problem, however finding the right balance is difficult. Magic could have adjusted the life of the second player up for example, but the impact of that could be far reaching. And there aren't always a lot of avenues available for tweaking, how would you modify chess for example? Move a piece into play? What about checkers? Wait checkers? Forget I said that.

Notre Dame uses another technique - there is little player interaction and all players get the same number of moves. I don't think this is unique, but I can't think of another games that handle the problem this way.

Maybe this is one reason I'm so enamored with Vlaada Chvatil at the moment...in Galaxy Trucker, NO ONE GOES FIRST! Same thing with 7 Wonders and Race for the Galaxy. It's all simultaneous. These games have the added advantage that you are rarely waiting for the action to pick up again. These games also tend to have little or no player interaction though, and whether you like that feature or not, it certainly limits a game designer in what they can do.

The lesson for me is that the trick to de-emphasizing turn order is to keep all players involved during all turns. Galaxy Trucker, 7 Wonders, and Race for the Galaxy obviously all do this well by avoiding individual turns entirely. But Bohnanza, Traders of Genoa, Settlers of Catan and Ra do this well too, in different ways though. Bohnanza and Settlers do it with trading. You can improve your position even when it's another players turn. Ra does it with very quick action and the threat of a new auction at any time. Genoa gives every player an action on each players turn, so you involved the entire way. For me, all these mechanics are successful. But results may vary - I like things to stay moving so I can be involved. I hate to wait, the airport is about my least favorite place in the world. Anyway, being involved also keeps the game balanced because I can improve myself even when it's not my turn. The main player has more actions and abilities, but I have some too, and sometimes a limited ability to impact what he can do.

One last comment. Carcassonne is a bit of a mystery to me. Did you know that there are 71 tiles in the basic game? (does not include the start tile). 71 is prime. This ensures that the last player will get fewer turns than the first player. Why is that? Why did the designer Klaus-Jürgen Wrede do that? Seems intentional, right? Were I designing it my first thought would be to remove some tiles (number depending on number of players) to ensure that each player gets the same number of turns. Perhaps Wrede began that way as well, but evolved his thinking to give the first player an extra turn. Hard to say. Thoughts?