Game Design Log: Taking Turns

 Most board games have turns. Unlike a video game or sport where the action tends to happen in real time, the nature of board games makes them unsuited to process player actions without some kind of turn structure. Anyone who has sat down to play a game of Monopoly or Risk knows basically how to take a turn in a board game. It is a rare board game that can eschew turn taking altogether, and those games usually intentionally lean into the chaotic nature of everyone trying to do different things all at once. Captain Sonar is my favorite example of a game that utilizes a turnless system, and it can be a particularly loud and hectic play experience as a result. But assuming (for this article) that you aren’t recreating Two Rooms and a Boom we can leave these outliers and move into the topic with the understanding that you need to have some kind of turn order to make your game functional.

TTRPG and board games have a set turn order for each player to perform their actions in sequence. I take my actions, then you take yours. Regardless of how complicated the turn structure can become, the basic idea of  “you go, then I go” is easy for players to grasp. So how and why do you structure what “taking a turn” looks like in your own games? I tend to categorize games into broad groups, creating a list of tags that can be applied to your game. Turns can be Sequential or Taken, Discrete or Interrupted, and Complete or Phased. These are set up as opposing styles, but not all of them are mutually exclusive, so your game could hybridize Discrete and Interrupted turns for example. But generally speaking games stick to one keyword from each category. That’s certainly enough preamble, let’s dive into the nitty gritty of what each of these terms means.

Sequential or Taken refers to the order you take your turns. Any TTRPG with an initiative system, or any board game where play moves clockwise around the table, are Sequential. In these games each player will get one turn, moving in a set pattern until every player has gone, then the next round of turns begins. Sometimes this order gets shaken up between rounds, i.e. the first player token moves to the left, or the winner of the last hand starts off the next one. This is far and away the most common way to handle turns, as it feels the most “fair” during gameplay. To that end abilities that let you take the turn away from an opponent in sequential games are often very unfun to play against, but more on that later.

The more strict sequential games, where turns consistently move in the same direction, ensure each player gets an equal turn. These represent a solid and dependable method of game design. It risks maybe being a little boring next to the more dynamic options, but I think of this method of turn taking as a solid foundation for a more complex game. More dynamic options can be as simple as randomizing player order with a dice roll each turn, or as complex as giving individual players discrete abilities that can shift the turn order from round to round or even mid-round. This creates a wider array of potential tactical options, and your game can get very complex very quickly the more intricate your Sequential turns become.

Turns that are Taken, conversely, are grabbed by a player regardless of who took the last turn. An easy example would be a circle of children throwing a ball back and forth, the ball might be passed to one child three or four times before going to a different child once. Taken turns are much rarer because it can often feel unfair to be the child not getting the ball passed to you, but there are plenty of games that make it work. Once Upon a Time is a storytelling game with a Taken turn structure. Each player has a small hand of cards with a single word written on it, such as Princess, or Dragon. The first player will begin to tell an epic tale, playing the cards out of their hand as they bring those elements into the narrative. So when you say “The Princess took up hunting for sport.” in your story you would play down the Princess card. However any other player could then cut in with “But the mighty Dragon was too fearsome a foe to be felled by arrows alone.” playing their Dragon card as they did so. In this way play swings around the table to whomever is able to bring their cards into the story being told and Take the turn. There is no regard for who went last, who hasn’t played yet, or even if the last card played was your own. 

Discrete or Interrupted refers to whether or not a player can take game actions when it is not their turn. In a game with Discrete turns you will have the opportunity to complete all of your actions without interference from other players. Once again we see this in chess, where I cannot suddenly jump my pawn into a new space while you’re busy sliding your rook to checkmate me. If you’re wondering, yes chess will be my example for every “boring but dependable” element of turn design. Chess is, after all, an incredibly easy game to learn when compared to something like Blood Rage or even Settlers of Catan. Yet it is likely the most famous tactics game ever made, and no other champion board game player commands the same measure of prestige as a chess grandmaster.

More common in modern tactical games are Interrupted turns, where other players can take a reactive action on your turn. This adds the potential to play for all players at all points of the game. To put it another way, you can never fully check out of what is going on so long as you have a potential game action you can take during my turn. This more reactive gameplay pattern itself has a few variations as well. Can you interrupt at any time during the turn? Or only during specific phases? Can you stop the active player’s action in the middle? Or do you have to wait until they’ve completed an action? When these reactive, turn breaking Interruptions are overused, too powerful, or otherwise too disruptive you can have a game that feels unfun to play because you keep getting interrupted during your own turn.

Lastly Complete vs Phased turns describes how much of a turn you take all at once. A Complete turn is as it sounds, you take any of your actions interchangeably during your turn. This works well for games with relatively few actions per turn, usually just one or two, as it allows each turn to move faster by removing the idea of sequencing. In chess, since it is our prime example, each turn consists of a player making one individual move with a piece. This is a very straightforward complete turn. This style of turn becomes unwieldy and difficult to balance the more actions a given player can take however. In a war game, such as any of Warhammer’s large games, the turns are highly phased. Having a separate phase for Shooting, Movement, and Combat helps to organize the incredibly high number of player actions the game requires. If you could do any of those actions in any order with any unit the game would become impossible. Each unit has the ability to do five or six different actions on each turn, and you likely have ten to twenty units in your army. Telling a player “Perform any number of these seventy different game actions” is untenable.

Phased turns, such as Warhammer’s, are broken down into pieces. Different actions are locked to specific phases. This creates a more structured turn that is helpful when there are many different actions players can or must take. Some phased turns have each player complete each phase as it passes, where others have each player go through the phases individually. But that is more about the Discrete vs Interrupted divide. Back to the Warhammer example from above, rather than taking a jumble of seventy actions, you are asked to “Use any number of your Movement abilities during the Movement phase.” The structure gives players guidance on how many actions to do, making it so much easier to track information for everyone at the table. 

So that’s a fairly in depth summary of how game turns tend to operate. In building your own game, I don’t think it is particularly helpful to start building a game by thinking of the turn order. Turns are more of a factor of other decisions about how your game operates. It’s about knowing what type of turn suits your game best. Join me next time I overthink some aspect of game design.