Description
There are no turns. Players play as quickly as possible, subject to certain constraints, until the game or phase is completed. Playing quickly confers some type of advantage.
Discussion
Real-Time Games bring a lot of excitement to the table, as players frantically work to completely execute their actions. However, they also bring a lot of challenges for the designer. First, Real-Time Games need to be very simple. Anything that causes confusion requires the players to stop the action, resolve the issue, and then continue, or just carry on with a confused player who stops enjoying the experience or possibly violates the rules unwittingly. This can place very real constraints on what can and can’t be done from a design standpoint. The designer also needs to address timing issues if players are conflicting in actions they wish to perform. There are several ways to deal with this: • Players play cards onto stacks. The sequence in the stack indicates the order.
• The player who touches a token first is allowed to manipulate it. • Players do not interact during the real-time portion but only after it is completed, and interactions can be resolved at leisure. The level of intensity and focus required from players in a Real-Time Game means that the game needs to be short. Twenty minutes is a reasonable maximum duration for a completely uninterrupted Real-Time Game. Another consideration is dealing with mistakes and cheating. Some games, like Pit Crew and Space Alert, have specific rules for dealing with mistakes that give a penalty to the players or cancel the attempted action. As players are absorbed in their own actions, cheating can also be an issue. In cooperative games like Space Alert, cheating is a different consideration. However, for competitive games, the designer may need to incorporate design techniques such as making sure that everything is in the open, that text on cards is large enough to be understood across the table rapidly, and that there is as little manipulation of components as possible (e.g., once a card or die is placed in a spot, it cannot be moved from that spot). However, there have been several successful games that have not protected against mistakes and cheating, and it does not appear to have impacted their success. In Captain Sonar (more correctly classified as using a Punctuated Real-Time mechanism, TRN-08), each team writes and erases on laminated control panels behind a screen. It would be quite simple for a team to cheat behind the screen or make undetected mistakes. In practice, however, the social contract seems to hold and players are not concerned about this. This may open up more complex design opportunities for Real-Time Games, as long as the game is marketed toward an audience that accepts this stance regarding potential cheating. Because of the nonstop nature of Real-Time Games, they are often structured with two phases: Action and Resolution. Action is when real-time action occurs. After a condition is met, typically a timer expiring, but possibly when a task is completed, or when a hand or deck of cards is exhausted, there is a Resolution phase. In this phase, results of the action phase are determined, without any time pressure. This two-mode approach allows for complex mechanisms that might otherwise not be possible. There are typically two types of endings to a real-time phase. In the first, whenever the end-phase condition is met, the phase ends immediately. Players are informed that it is over, and that is that. Spit (aka Speed or Blitz) and Pick-A-Polar Bear are both triggered when one player reaches a particular game state (all cards gone from their deck in Spit and a player claiming
to have no more legal options to take a card in Polar Bear). At that time, the phase instantly completes. Some games use the phase-end trigger to set up “bonus time” for the other players, informing them that they have a set amount of additional time before the phase ends. For example, in Show & Tile, the first player to complete their artwork flips a sand timer. When that timer runs out, the artwork phase is over, and players proceed to the guessing phase. Other games flip this dynamic around and give players who finish early an additional bonus task that must be completed by the time all players finish the core task. In Pit Crew, when a team finishes the real-time task of repairing its car and getting it out on the track, the team switches to rolling a die to move the car, rolling over and over. Meanwhile, the other teams continue to repair their car and start rolling their own die if other teams are still working. The last team to finish does not roll its die but stops all other teams from rolling. This puts added pressure and tension on the teams who are still working on their repairs while others move around the track and add some narrative arc to the activity. Games with an Elapsed Real Time ending (VIC-13), where they end after a fixed amount of time, also typically will fit into this mechanism (although not always—they may have a standard turn structure). Examples of this include “Escape Room” style games such as the Unlock series, where the players are under pressure to complete the game within a certain time frame. Note that games without a turn order but that do not have time pressure, such as The Mind, do not fit into this classification.
Sample Games
Brawl (Ernest, 1999) Escape: The Curse of the Temple (Ostby, 2012) Falling (Ernest, 1998) Light Speed (Ernest and Jolly, 2003) Pick-A-Polar Bear (Landsvogt, 2013) Pit Crew (Engelstein, 2017) Show & Tile (Loomis and Shalev, 2018) Space Alert (Chvátil, 2008) Spit (Unknown) Unlock!: Escape Adventures (Carroll, Cauët, Demaegd, 2017)
描述
没有回合。玩家在受到一定限制的情况下尽快玩耍，直到游戏或阶段完成。快速玩耍会带来某种优势。
讨论
实时游戏（Real-Time Games）给桌上带来了很多兴奋感，因为玩家疯狂地工作以完全执行他们的行动。然而，它们也给设计师带来了很多挑战。首先，实时游戏需要非常简单。任何造成混乱的事情都需要玩家停止动作，解决问题，然后继续，或者只是让困惑的玩家继续下去，不再享受体验或者可能无意中违反规则。这可能会从设计角度对可以做什么和不能做什么施加非常真实的限制。如果玩家希望执行的行动发生冲突，设计师还需要解决时间问题。有几种方法可以解决这个问题： • 玩家将牌打到堆叠上。堆叠中的顺序指示顺序。
• 第一个接触代币的玩家被允许操纵它。 • 玩家在实时部分期间不进行互动，只有在完成后才互动，并且可以在闲暇时解决互动。 实时游戏中玩家所需的强度和专注水平意味着游戏需要很短。二十分钟是完全不间断实时游戏的合理最长持续时间。另一个考虑因素是处理错误和作弊。一些游戏，如《Pit Crew》和《Space Alert》，有处理错误的特定规则，对玩家进行惩罚或取消尝试的行动。当玩家全神贯注于自己的行动时，作弊也可能是一个问题。在像《Space Alert》这样的合作游戏中，作弊是另一种考虑因素。然而，对于竞争性游戏，设计师可能需要结合设计技术，例如确保一切都在公开场合，卡片上的文字足够大，可以跨桌迅速理解，并且尽可能少地操纵组件（例如，一旦卡片或骰子放在某个位置，就不能从该位置移动）。然而，有几款成功的游戏并没有防范错误和作弊，这似乎并没有影响它们的成功。在《Captain Sonar》（更正确地归类为使用间断实时机制，TRN-08）中，每个团队在屏幕后面的层压控制面板上书写和擦除。团队在屏幕后面作弊或犯下未被发现的错误非常简单。然而，在实践中，社会契约似乎成立，玩家并不担心这一点。只要游戏面向接受这种关于潜在作弊立场的受众，这可能会为实时游戏开辟更复杂的设计机会。由于实时游戏的不间断性质，它们通常由两个阶段构成：行动和解决。行动是发生实时行动的时候。在满足条件后，通常是计时器到期，但也可能是完成任务时，或者手牌或牌堆耗尽时，有一个解决阶段。在这个阶段，确定行动阶段的结果，没有任何时间压力。这种双模式方法允许原本不可能实现的复杂机制。实时阶段通常有两种类型的结局。在第一种中，只要满足阶段结束条件，该阶段立即结束。玩家被告知结束了，就这样。《Spit》（又名《Speed》或《Blitz》）和《Pick-A-Polar Bear》都在一名玩家达到特定游戏状态时触发（《Spit》中玩家牌堆中的所有牌都不见了，《Polar Bear》中一名玩家声称
没有更多合法的选择拿牌）。那时，该阶段立即完成。有些游戏使用阶段结束触发器为其他玩家设置“奖励时间”，通知他们在阶段结束前有一组额外的时限。例如，在《Show & Tile》中，第一个完成艺术品的玩家翻转沙漏。当计时器用完时，艺术品阶段结束，玩家进入猜测阶段。其他游戏颠覆了这种动态，给早早完成的玩家一项额外的奖励任务，必须在所有玩家完成核心任务时完成。在《Pit Crew》中，当一个团队完成了修理汽车并将其开上赛道的实时任务时，该团队切换到掷骰子移动汽车，一遍又一遍地掷。与此同时，其他团队继续修理他们的汽车，如果其他团队仍在工作，就开始掷自己的骰子。最后一个完成的团队不掷骰子，而是阻止所有其他团队掷骰子。这给仍在进行维修的团队增加了压力和紧张感，而其他人则在赛道上移动，并为活动增加了一些叙事弧线。以经过的实时时间结束（VIC-13）的游戏，即在固定时间后结束，通常也符合这种机制（尽管不总是这样——它们可能有标准的回合结构）。这方面的例子包括“逃脱房间”风格的游戏，如《Unlock》系列，玩家面临在特定时间内完成游戏的压力。请注意，没有回合顺序但没有时间压力的游戏，如《The Mind》，不属于此类。
游戏范例
Brawl (Ernest, 1999) - 《Brawl》 Escape: The Curse of the Temple (Ostby, 2012) - 《逃离神庙》 Falling (Ernest, 1998) - 《Falling》 Light Speed (Ernest and Jolly, 2003) - 《光速》 Pick-A-Polar Bear (Landsvogt, 2013) - 《Pick-A-Polar Bear》 Pit Crew (Engelstein, 2017) - 《Pit Crew》 Show & Tile (Loomis and Shalev, 2018) - 《Show & Tile》 Space Alert (Chvátil, 2008) - 《Space Alert》 Spit (Unknown) - 《Spit》 Unlock!: Escape Adventures (Carroll, Cauët, Demaegd, 2017) - 《大搜查/Unlock!》系列