The Timeout Paradox
- by Kevan, September 2024
Whenever a dynasty runs some kind of turn-based or round-based gameplay that requires every player to take part, there's often a question of what to do if a player fails to take their turn.
The instinctive solution is often to add a timeout - to say that if the group has been waiting X number of hours for a player to take their turn, that player is skipped and the game continues.
But in practice this can actually slow the game down.
Minimum required activity
A big thing that timeouts do is lower the minimum required activity that's expected of players.
Under a simple secret-order mechanic where every player submits an instruction to the Emperor and they all get processed at the same time once everyone has submitted, the minimum activity for each round is clear: you send in a secret order.
To imagine some thought bubbles for different player types:
| Engaged player | Busy player | Semi-active player | Inactive player |
|---|---|---|---|
| "I'll send my order quickly to keep the game moving." | "I'll send my order as soon as I can." | "I might send an order at some point." | "I'm not going to send any orders." |
Our first two players are fine, and the game will run as fast as the slowest busy player. (If most players take six hours and a busy outlier takes 72, then the group can discuss what to do about that.)
If the third player hasn't submitted orders for a round, they'll realise that everyone is waiting for them and feel some social pressure to either engage with the gameplay or (if they decide they really don't have enough time and interest after all) step back from it. The fourth player also.
If you add a 48-hour timeout to the ruleset, the minimum required activity is now: nothing, you don't have to do anything. This would change those thoughts to:
| Engaged player | Busy player | Semi-active player | Inactive player |
|---|---|---|---|
| "I'll send my order quickly to keep the game moving." | "I'll send my order as soon as I can, hopefully within 48 hours." | "I might send an order within 48 hours, but it's okay if I don't." | "I'm not going send any orders, and that's okay." |
With any of the third or fourth type playing, the game instantly locks into a full 48 hours per round.
Even with just the first two types of player, it may still do so if any of those players regard the timeout as being a deadline: a busyish player deciding whether to take their turn at the 12 hour mark may feel that the game is allowing them another 36 hours if they need it, and that there's no rush.
Other issues
Under a timeout system, if a player sees that their opponent is on course to time out and lose their turn, they have some tactical incentive to keep quiet and hope that it happens; this slows the game down. Without a timeout, there's no reason not to remind people, even your opponents, to take their turns; this speeds the game up.
A gameplay loop with timeouts is also less reactive to other game events. If there's a contentious proposal or CfJ that would change the gameplay and is generating a lot of engaged discussion, then under a simple gameplay loop players can hold off on taking their turns until the issue has been resolved. If one engaged player is unavoidably offline for longer than they expected, the game would still wait for them. Under a timeout, the game rolls on.
Handling inactive players
It's possible to allow players to opt out of the main game loop, so that the game knows it doesn't have to wait for them. This can be a status that players can voluntarily adopt and abandon, or one that's forced upon them by other players. (The Assassin Dynasty ran on the principle that if a player failed to submit orders for round N, then round N+1 wouldn't wait for them.)
From the minimum gameplay angle, this allows a minimum player activity level of "take no dynastic actions" without it getting in the way of a game loop that waits for players to act. And if players default to being out of the loop and have to opt-in, then players who've never intended to play the dynastic game won't slow anything down.
(The value to the group of a player who takes no dynastic actions yet casts votes on the rules for those actions is a separate question.)
Case studies
- The Atlantean City Dynasty had players taking turns in a queue, and being removed from the queue if they failed to take their turn within 48 hours. But a couple of people weren't actually playing, and the game had to waste at least 96 hours waiting for them to time out. In retrospect that dynasty should either have required players to opt-in to the queue, or simply had no timeout.
- The Wizard Duel Dynasty was a good example of a dynasty that stuck to having no timeout. Players submitted secret orders to the Emperor that were only processed when everyone's were in. The fact that orders could be retracted also allowed players to hold back and see whether a particular proposal would enact, before progressing the game.
- The Thief Dynasty had "Haul" posts which could only be resolved if a quorum of players agreed on how to split them. The first four took less than a day each to resolve, but when the fifth was more contentious and discussion ran to 35 hours, the group proposed to have future Hauls time out at 48 hours. Some Hauls then started taking 48 hours to resolve (in part, I suspect, because players who could make no valid personal claim on a Haul had an incentive to keep quiet in the hope that it would time out).
- The Storytelling Dynasty had an "all players submit actions privately" gameplay loop with 96-hour timeouts, which I believe broadly ran to those timeouts.
