Introducing "urgency" into games

[Nick B]

How have people gone about introducing an "urgency" or "time is of the essence" objectives into games? I am thinking of this for occasional scenarios - I'm not suggesting it is lacking from the game generally.

I have in mind the "you must take the objective by 10.00 hrs otherwise it will be too late" etc mission/orders. So the attacker really has to push on.

Whilst I'm not really a fan of set number of turn games this would, in some rules, be a way of managing this. However, this won't work in CoC as you can have games which, whilst having potentially dozens of phases, may only last a single turn. Maybe this could give impetus to the defender to use CoC Dice to churn through turns but it is too uncertain how many 5's you may get to assure this mechanism will work.

I guess you could set a game time limit i.e. 2-5hours (or whatever) real time to complete the game?

Should the attacker get a support bonus to offset the time pressure?

Any thoughts and suggestions welcome.

Cheers

Nick

[dalemunk]

We did use setting a certain number of turns succesfully, not only does it add pressure to the attacker, it also adds uncertainty on top - x number of turns might go fast or slow...

[Nick B]

That's useful to know - thanks. How many turns did you go for? - just to get an idea of the range to look at.

[sjwalker51]

I’ve toyed with the idea of using a chess clock in some games to encourage players to complete turns in a timely fashion!

[Captain Reid]

If the game's umpired then the umpire can just rattle the chip bag and force a decision (or move on to the next). Without an umpire it is a bit harder but a certain amount of moral pressure might be brought to bear by yawning, consulting one's watch or pretending to fall asleep . . .

[Gaff-Oz]

This is an interesting question as the attacker can attack at their leisure, if the command dice don't suit you then wait for the next roll. I've found in most of the games I've played, as they trigger randomly, the number of turns is extremely low. It's not unheard of to settle the issue in a single turn, and I can't remember a game that extended much past two or three. The probability of rolling 3 sixes out of 5 dice is 162:25, so it should happen every 6 or 7 command rolls/phases, but it never seem to for me. Maybe I'll start keeps track, on those numbers a 3 turn game would be roughly 20 phases so it might be coming out right. That's without someone burning a CoC dice to do it, but there usually more exciting things to do with those (who doesn't love an ambush or interrupt?). What is other people's experience?

[Vanth]

When you're under a barrage or smoked like bacon, ending the turn is a good use of a CoC die...

[Derek H]

The probabaility of rolling three or more sixes on five dice is 3.55% so a Turn will end on average once every 28 phases.

[chris cornwell]

The probabaility of rolling three or more sixes on five dice is 3.55% so a Turn will end on average once every 28 phases.

You can also roll 4 or even 5 sixes....so a bit less?

[Derek H]

The probability of rolling three or more sixes on five dice is 3.55% so a Turn will end on average once every 28 phases.

You can also roll 4 or even 5 sixes....so a bit less?

That will be why I calculated the odds for "three or more sixes on five dice".