Asymmetric Starting Conditions

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That players do not begin their game sessions with the same possibilities.

Examples

Classical Board Games have Asymmetrical Starting Conditions simply because they are turn-based and being the starting player is usually advantageous. Chess solves this in tournaments by letting players play several times and take turns which side they play. Go usually does this as well but can make use of compensation stones, called Komidashi in Japanese, for the white player that plays second; Based upon statistics this handicap has been set at 6.5 stones when using Japanese rules (the half point is to avoid ties). It has been proven for the more modern Hex that the first player has a winning strategy (the short proof is part of its Wikipedia entry[1]); it is however non-trivial determining it.

Since historical battles in practice never have had identical conditions for all involved sides, it is not to surprising that practically all Wargames, e.g. Advanced Squad Leader and Rommel in the Desert, have Asymmetrical Starting Conditions for their various scenarios. Not all these are intended to be balance and for these one may need to play multiple times with changed sides to determined the most skilled players; Memoir '44 is an example of a game that explicitly suggests this.

Warhammer 40K

Using the pattern

Game Worlds

Heterogeneous Game Element


Asymmetric Abilities Asymmetric Goals Asymmetric Information Asymmetric Resource Distribution

Turn-Based Games

One has some options in making games balanced even if players have Asymmetrical Starting Conditions. The most obvious one is Balancing Effects but another is to use either Back-to-Back Game Sessions or Rotating Starting Player since they remove imbalances by ensuring that all players have had all starting conditions.

Diegetic Aspects

Interface Aspects

Narrative Aspects

Consequences

Asymmetrical Starting Conditions is likely to make Player Balance difficult to achieve in games, unless modulated by Balancing Effects or having extensive play testing to ensure that no imbalance actually exists.

Relations

Can Instantiate

with ...

Can Modulate

Can Be Instantiated By

Can Be Modulated By

Back-to-Back Game Sessions, Balancing Effects, Rotating Starting Player

Possible Closure Effects

Potentially Conflicting With

Player Balance

History

New pattern created in this wiki.

References

  1. Wikipeidia entry for the board game Hex.

Acknowledgements

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