Turn-based structures in RPGs -- what are they good for?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Let's talk about turns.

1. I do not know why gamer culture equates "taking turns" with "solo participation in sequence." I can't think of a single card or board game in which this is the case - when it's "your turn," the whole point is relevance to the other people and providing for responses, during one's turn. In fact, in most card games, "your turn" really means "everyone else's turn towards you."

2. The first awesome role-playing game which incorporated turns that I know of (and of course, I'm talking about turns as a constant feature of play, not "combat move sequence") is Soap. When it's your turn, you frame a scene - and if anyone else's character is in the scene, they are "seized" by the system and must role-play their characters in that scene. You could also spend coins to get into scenes if you wanted to. Ralph was not a Soap player, but Mike was a Soap fanatic, and nearly-identical rules are found as the overall structure for Universalis.

3. Most role-playing groups do use turns of the sort I'm speaking of ... they just don't realize or acknowledge it. Let's take a classical situation in which the "party" is together in an area, and they aren't in a fight, but lots of important stuff is going on. Yes, I agree that the shouting-down method is dysfunctional - which is why, in most long-standing groups, you won't observe it (in con games, more so, I think). What happens?

Here's what: turns, thinly disguised as the GM going to each person in some kind of sequence and asking for their input. Whether it goes from left to right, or criss-cross, or in some other order, or no particular order per time, doesn't matter. What matters is that everyone gets to contribute relative to everyone else, and that everyone gets to respond during each person's "go."

Go ahead, observe and reflect. Consider how you and your group play when you're using a traditional RPG with no guidance at all for timing/ordering things outside of fights, and with well-defined social skills on the character sheets. I'll betcha you'll see turns.

Best,
Ron

[Larry L.]

Couldn't aggresive scene-framing by the GM be considered a de facto turn structure?

In my experience they seem the achieve the same end: killing off that dysfunctional style of play where one or two players hog the limelight while the other players (stuck in "my guy" mode) steadily lose interest due to non-participation.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Larry, it could be, although I'm inclined to think that "scenes" as normally construed, i.e. imaginary locales, are actually a red herring. If, on the other hand, we consider scenes more in story-unit terms ("X amount of stuff will happen to make this investment in attention-time worthwhile"), then yes.

Best,
Ron

[Larry L.]

Ron,

Just FYI, I'm thinking particularly about my experience with My Life with Master and its "one roll per scene" setup. Absolutely beautiful. I guess I had assumed "aggressive scene-framing" implied the "one story unit" thing in a Forge context, but maybe it just "seemed obvious" to me.

Omnibus,

If it's cool to consider a certain type of scene-framing as turn-based, as well as the other things Ron mentioned, then I'm warming to the notion that turn structure (of some sort) may be inherent to functional play, for reasons which may be inferred from my previous post.

[Valamir]

For me a key contribution of turn order is a definitive structure to hang game mechanics on.  This is after all the primary reason why turns are used in board games.  Since RPGs are inherently social activities I think its perhaps by default that we look initially towards the social impact of the turn order, but honestly I find those reasons to be least compelling.

Using turn order to give shy or overrun players spotlight time is basically an attempt to use rules to compensate for a shaky social contract...something that I don't think rules are particularly effective at.

What rules ARE effective at is delivering a play experience by placing boundaries and guiding play.

I think when writing rules that focus on what a game is "about" we need to write rules with an eye to delivering a particular game experience.  Often times, those rules require a bit more structure than "traditional" rules which, as written, are largely free form with GM breaks for skills, out side of combat.  One way to get the necessary structure for the game...including non combat activities...is to organize all activities the same way that traditional rules organize combat.

Its difficult to incorporate the duration of a spell effect, or the rate of fire of a heavy weapon without providing some turn-like structure to combat which has some connection (often only a vague connection) with time.  Its not the relationship to time that is important in combat.  After all D&D got with such a fast and loose concept of time that characters could only move 120 feet in 60 seconds and swing a sword once.  Much more important than the rather amorphous definition of how long a D&D round was, was the structure that knowing who gets to go when provided to play.  The idea that a round equals a certain amount of time is really just a simmy overlay on top of the real issue which is to break play up into discrete chunks...after all, nobody cares how long a turn in Monopoly is (are those monthly rents, or annual rents or what?...who cares.) 

The round or turn structure can thus be seen to be pretty independent of "scale issues" and thus not at all limited to combat.  The idea of providing structure to play by breaking up activities into discrete chunks and arranging them into an order can be seen to be equally applicable in terms of organizational benefit to ANY aspect of play.

Its the mechanical flexibility, its the ability to write rules about non combat stuff that is every bit as specific and distinct as rules about combat stuff, its the ability to map out using rules what a session of play should look like that is the advantage of turn based (hard like Universalis, or quasi like Troll Babe) play.  This, to me is MUCH more important than any of the social issues.

Since currently its indie games that are most concerned with such things, its no surprise that its largely indie game leading the way with turn based play.

[Bill Cook]

I agree that turns are inherent in practice. Ralph, good call on their primary value as contextualizing a session and leveling investment of combat with other. And I appreciate the reminder about SC undermining system. Frustration can make you lose sight.

[John Kim]

Most role-playing groups do use turns of the sort I'm speaking of ... they just don't realize or acknowledge it. Let's take a classical situation in which the "party" is together in an area, and they aren't in a fight, but lots of important stuff is going on. Yes, I agree that the shouting-down method is dysfunctional - which is why, in most long-standing groups, you won't observe it (in con games, more so, I think). What happens?

Here's what: turns, thinly disguised as the GM going to each person in some kind of sequence and asking for their input. Whether it goes from left to right, or criss-cross, or in some other order, or no particular order per time, doesn't matter. What matters is that everyone gets to contribute relative to everyone else, and that everyone gets to respond during each person's "go."

Go ahead, observe and reflect. Consider how you and your group play when you're using a traditional RPG with no guidance at all for timing/ordering things outside of fights, and with well-defined social skills on the character sheets. I'll betcha you'll see turns.

In my prior post, I was using "turns" to mean a formal ordering of the order in which people go, that is known in advance of the action.  If you broaden "turns" to just mean any ordering, well, then of course everything is going to be turns.  So revise my prior statement as being between "formal turns" and "informal turns".  An advantage of a formal turn structure is that it guarantees regular input from everyone.  An advantage of an informal turn structure is that it can be somewhat faster.  

To draw parallels outside of RPGs, most board and card games work in formal turns.  However, there are some games which are turnless (or, if you like, they have informal turns).  For example, other games like IceTowers or Nerts do not take turns.  Again, the advantage of the latter is speed.  Both of the sample games I mention flow exceedingly fast, whereas many boardgames -- even very good ones -- can slow down on a given player's turn if she isn't on the ball.  

As for my own games, I recently discussed this in my blog in Buffy vs PtA -- the point came up a little deep in the comments with John Harper.  In our Buffy game, obviously not everyone is talking at once.  But flow is extremely unstructured.  Often someone will just pipe up and we'll follow along with that for a while, and then someone else can jump in.  It is certainly not the case that I as GM am the sole gatekeeper, since at least half of the game is inter-PC dialogue.  The system provides a way for anyone to interrupt by spending a Drama Point for a plot twist -- but the default is anything-goes.  For the pacing we are going for in this campaign, I like that informality.  

That's not to say that formal turns are good, too, but I don't think it should be viewed that informal flow is inferior to formal flow.  Actually, an interesting idea would be a truly turnless combat system. 

[Damballa]

To me, 'turn-based' structures mean Players are in placed into some rarified segment of spotlighted 'activity'; queued up in by the order-of-play.  Actors become audience for the duration; given their 'Day in the Sun'; Individuation.

There could be a Stream-of-Consciousness modernist self-referentiality to 'Turns' - the internal dialogue or viewpoint  (i.e. Woolf or Joyce) that only that a turn-based structure could allow.  

How about Twinned-turns? - players taking their turns together for extra emphasis (like double-teaming or dance partners; team sports like football plays or exercise classes)  - simultaneous actions - Collective and combined actions.

Turns could be potentially about Distorting Time.  How many split-seconds (or minutes or hours or years etc) does the PC Turn normally represent in a game?  This makes 'Turns' as Pocket universes of time - as many time-streams as there are Players in the RPG; channels of time switched between.

'Real-Times' advocates removal of the reliance on turn-based systems; for many activities in the world aren't turn-based...  I think in this context Colonel John Boyd's Conflict equation - 'Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action loop' times - could be seen as turns.

Maybe one could play around with the interactivity of 'turns'; a choice of the different kinds of Turns taken by the players -
Like using, say, a DVD Player paradigm of 'Turns' -
*Fast Forward time (at different speeds) turns...
*Slow motion turns...
*Rewind or Replaying or Repeated turns...
*Skipping to different chapters or to the End; 'getting to the point' turns...
*Pausing time turns...
*Return to Menu button?

[ewilen]

To Elliot -- I'm not sure how this is different between turn-based and freeform play.  That is, players in freeform declaration also pay attention to what other players are doing, because it will affect them when they declare things as well.  The difference is that the player knows for sure when in sequence his scene will come up.  So presumably he'll pay relatively more attention right before his scene, and relatively less attention when it is a long time until his scene.  In freeform declaration, yours might be the next scene at any time -- but conversely it is never for certain the next scene.  Offhand, I can't say I've seen a real difference here in my experience.

Well, yes, it's a matter of degree. Almost no one comes to a roleplaying session to do absolutely nothing. But surely there are people who either out of shyness or disinterest (and the dynamics of the group) spend very long stretches of time while everyone else "takes turns". For example, the guy who just sits around and waits for the combat. (And note that combat is often the most turn-structured of traditional RPGs, so there's his chance to participate.)

Ron, there's widely varying amounts of interactivity in board games, from games where you can literally interrupt during someone else's "go" to games where the only relevance of another player's turn is how fast he's advancing toward victory relative to you. An example of the first is Squad Leader; an example of the second is Electronic Battleship. Luckily, Battleship has short turns, but as far as I can tell, you could just as well play out one player's entire game then the other player's, and it would have no effect on strategy. Somewhere in the middle are games like Princes of Florence--the change in game-state brought about by another player's turn may be highly relevant to your turn, but there's absolutely no need to be present or paying attention to the process of the turn.

[Adam Dray]

I'm thinking about the Monopoly turn thing. Part of the game is turn-based and part is not. Certainly, during a turn, a player rolls dice, moves her token, takes action based on the square she lands on, and so on. But there's also a trading aspect that isn't turn-based. Here's an older version of the rules for reference, but this really isn't about Monopoly, per se.

Players can, at any time, I believe, engage in a legal trade of any kind, including cash, deeds, houses, hotels, and "Get out of Jail Free" cards. This can lead to complications like, I roll a 10 and start to move my token to your property, and before I get there you announce you want to put a hotel on it. Is that legal? (I'll bet newer versions of the rules explicitly say that it isn't but, again, this really isn't about Monopoly.)

My point is that even board games face IIEE problems. Even turn-based board games have aspects that are not turn-based.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Adam's take on Monopoly matches my own. Every "turn" in Monopoly is potentially everyone's turn to respond to the fellow who rolled and moved his piece.

Yes, I agree that board games exist which differ and are more in line with the "everyone else waits," but I don't think they are as common. I request that this thread not be flooded with examples.

Best,
Ron