Turn Taking

Letting one player do some action or actions before letting other players act.

Many games only let one player act at a time. This Turn Taking makes the evaluation of actions in the game easier to do, since all players can supervise each other. Further it lets each player have control over what to do without having to keep track of what the other players are doing at the same time.

Examples

Many classic Board Games, including Chess, Go, and Hnefatafl, alternate between two players that can make their moves. In constract, Diplomacy] is a turn-based game without Turn Taking as all players do their turns simultaneously. Puerto Rico as a week form of Turn Taking: a round consists of each player in turn choosing an action that they wish to have performed. The action chosen by the first player is however performed by all players before the next action is chosen and so on until all players have chosen actions (part of the challenge of the game lies in that the choosing player gets a bonus and not all actions occur each round).

Some games have Turn Taking but may let the same player do several turns in a row depending on the game state. For example, Golf uses Turn Taking where the player the farthest from the hole has the turn until all players have hit the ball into the hole. Eight-ball in contrast lets a player continue to make turns until he or she has committed a foul or has fails to legally pocket a ball. Spin the Bottle uses randomness to determine whose turn it is next and players may play a complete game session without having a turn. Agricola and Carolus Magnus are examples of games where players can intentional make plans for being able to both the last turn in a round and the first in the next, setting up a flip-flop situation.

Using the pattern

Turn Taking considers gameplay where the possibility to update game states are restricted to one player at a time while the related pattern Turn-Based Games discusses the general effects of dividing games into different parts where some actions are possible and others not (all games with Turn Taking are Turn-Based Games but not all Turn-Based Games make use of Turn Taking, e.g. Diplomacy or Ricochet Robots).

Turn Taking in Turn-Based Games may occur on many levels, and rounds, segments, and phases may be used in addition to turns to structure gameplay.

This allows players more chances to perform actions, including interrupting Interruptible Actions and increasing possibilities for reasonable waiting times in Synchronous Games, and can modulate actions such as Capture. Many times the Turn Taking for interrupting actions is not explicitly called out in game play every time they occur but players have to individually claim them within a reasonable Time Limit.

The order in which Turn Taking takes place can be varied in several different ways. The Turn Taking can be constructed so that every player gets one turn before the Turn Taking process begins to repeat or is reset (with possible Ultra-Powerful Events interjected), that players can have several turns as long as they have some form of Limited Resource, or simply uses continuously use Randomness to determine who has the next turn. Having each player get one turn in a larger cycle provides a sequential turn-taking cycle with the round-robin sequences as the most common and causing "hit left; dodge right"patterns to emerge. Other sequential orders can be produced by Bidding or by measuring Resources or Score values, of which the latter can be used to have Balancing Effects.

Analysis Paralysis can occur as soon as Turn Taking is used in Multiplayer Games but can be more likely due to the presence of other patterns such as Action Programming, Budgeted Action Points, Cognitive Engrossment, Predictable Consequences, and Stimulated Planning.

Interruptible Actions

Can Be Instantiated By

Dedicated Game Facilitators, Game Masters

Can Be Modulated By

Balancing Effects, Budgeted Action Points Time Limits, Units

Consequences

On a most basic level, Turn Taking provides Role Reversal for players from being active to being passive participants in the game but the Turn Taking can also have changes in more specific functional roles. Having Turn Taking in games make them into Turn-Based Games of one form or another and is likely to have many of the typical characteristics of these types of games (e.g. limiting Freedom of Choice since one cannot act whenever one wants and potentially creating Analysis Paralysis without the presence of any other specific pattern). On one level Turn Taking is opposite to Real-Time Games since it defines updates to the game state in terms of player turns rather that time units, but the two pattern can be combined through the use of Time Limits to how long a turn may take.

Turn Taking modulates Multiplayer Games by allowing players to separate their activities during gameplay into planning what to do, performing the planned actions, and observing the effects of the actions (this can become intermixed if players have a possibility of making several different turns, e.g. through Budgeted Action Points or having many Units). The planning can be done in other players' turns to a certain extent (depending on the presence or not of Predictable Consequences and Limited Foresight), and in this sense Turn Taking can support Stimulated Planning. Turn Taking does however also modulate Predictable Consequences since players can have more or less good knowledge in which order turns may be made (depending on if a game has a fixed or flexible turn order). Also for Multiplayer Games, having Turn Taking may cause players not having their turn to have Downtime, which can be used to take use of Game State Overviews or act as Spectators (possibly to figure out other players' Secret Goals). The Downtime cause by Turn Taking can lead to Analysis Paralysis if not modified by Time Limits, and this can lead other players to start using Guilting as a way of Self-Facilitating the game flow. Another effect of Turn Taking in Multiplayer Games can be used to create more organized Negotiation when only the active player is eligible to negotiate with, and this can create less pressurized Social Interaction.

For actions that take more than one round to completed, Turn Taking makes these into Interruptible Actions if other players can affect the game state related to the action. This can in turn be countered in games where the Turn Taking order can changed, since this opens up for the possibility of players having two turns after each other - this is for example found in Agricola and Carolus Magnus. These events, called flip-flop events when being the last turn in one round and the first in the next round, usually give significant advantages to the players which can be seen as a Combo in itself. When this is possible, striving for these cause Stimulated Planning and provide one way to achieve Game Mastery.

Turn Taking can relieve, create, and modulate Tension. Players may be relieved from Tension since they do not have to consider that The Show Must Go On while it is their turn and from having Downtime when it is not their turn. The latter can however also create Tension to others due to Analysis Paralysis. Already present Tension can also be increased by Turn Taking since it can force players to have to wait while Anticipation, Hovering Closures, and Interruptible Actions exist.

Relations

Can Instantiate

Analysis Paralysis, Combos, Interruptible Actions, Role Reversal, Self-Facilitated Games, Spectators, Stimulated Planning, Tension, Turn-Based Games

with Analysis Paralysis

Downtime, Guilting

with Multiplayer Games

Analysis Paralysis, Downtime

Can Modulate

Game State Overviews, Multiplayer Games, Predictable Consequences, Secret Goals, Tension

with Multiplayer Games

Negotiation, Social Interaction

Can Be Instantiated By

Dedicated Game Facilitators, Game Masters

Can Be Modulated By

Balancing Effects, Budgeted Action Points Interruptible Actions, Time Limits, Units

Possible Closure Effects

-

Potentially Conflicting With

Real-Time Games, Tension, The Show Must Go On

History

A renamed version of the pattern Turn Taking that was part of the original collection in the book Patterns in Game Design.