Question for designers! 🤔 🎲✂️
How do y’all handle ending a multiplayer game with a tie-breaker? How have you avoided it from feeling arbitrary?
How do y’all handle ending a multiplayer game with a tie-breaker? How have you avoided it from feeling arbitrary?
Comments
Defender - Sit closest to the First Player.
Efficiency - Have the most unspent resources.
Kingmaker - have the other players vote on it 😉.
Instead of breaking the tie, consider differentiating the different "win" states by theme, so someone might be a Mogul while someone else a Superstar. Kind of like yearbook superlatives.
There’s no reason. Some games it makes sense that they want to be multi-victor games. Most aren’t (thus my question)
The other reasonable tiebreaker is turn order compensation, depending on how beneficial it is to finish fast/last.
But when pressed, I would lean into whatever the game’s theme may call for. A secondary win condition.
If the tie-breaker can be tied, then you need another one. And games too often just ignore that.
Something based on turn order or "first to achieve" are good candidates.
If the game is simple enough though it might just be whatever's available, or whatever prevents another tie.
Note: I've not yet got this right in one of my games.
I like tiebreakers that cannot be tied, so turn order is a fair option. Usually one player overcame a worse playing position so deserves to win. Also, because the winner of ties is clear before the end it feels less like the flip of a coin.
2. Efficiency -- in Dominion, the person who had fewer turns wins ties
3. Theme -- in Undergrove, most trees wins ties
Efficiency - fewest tiles wins, because you got the same score w less stuff...
Vs
Theme - most tiles wins, because it's about collecting and you picked up more stuff
E.g., in 7 Wonders, if players are tied on points, the player with more gold wins. That way, if players think it might be close, they might lean into keeping gold.