help with multiplayer games

how do you guys play multiplayer games?
Does every player take his turn? or do you do all movement, all shooting and all cc for all the players at once?

who gets to fight? just the player whose turn it is? or all models in base contact?
what about models in base contact (CC) but that are not involved with a player whose turn it is?

Do you treat 3-man mulitplayer games the same as 4 or more players or do you keep seperate rules?

I know I asked a lot of questions but it's really something that's been bothering us
thanks in advance for sharing your experiences!

Well, if you manage to get chaos on the streets, (i'll get you a link) i use that, where that really explains it all. You play special scenarios, and have turns as standard.

heres a slightly butchered version of the rules (text fonts have been messed up) http://www.scribd.com/api_user_11797_beranor/d/6696242-Chaos-on-the-Streets

Some of my friends have a system for multiplayer games that's loosely based on another system (LotR I think):

Player A moves.
Player B moves.
Player C moves.
Ect.

Player B shoots.
Player C shoots.
Etc.
Player A shoots.

Player C fights combat.
Etc.
Player A fights combat.
Player B fights combat.

Next turn:
Player B moves.
Player C moves.
Etc.
Player A moves.

Player C shoots.
Etc.
Player A shoots.
Player B shoots.

Etc. Etc.

This helps alleviate ganging up to an extent, doesn't leave any player without something to do for any length of time, and provides a more 'parallel' sequence of events - If Player D is last, then they don't have to suffer three rounds of shooting before they even get to move.

Here is the official Chaos on the Streets version

Depending on our playing surface, we make a few changes to CotS.


If it is 4'x4', we deploy in corners, as that leaves 2' between warbands, and gives a rather bad starting position for most peeps to encourage getting closer, even for shooters.


If it is a 6'x4', we found that one warband was always way far out, and ended up winning by just cleaning up the mess from the others, so we pre-picked the starting positions available and then rolled to pick from them, allowing everyone to be, once again, within 2' of someone.


We allowed all close combat to attack each other every close combat phase, regardless if any of the models had that turn.


Our biggest arguments came from alliances, or specifically breaking them.

We also use the official Chaos on the streets rules.

We do not have so much problems with long turns, especially in the beginning we are fast.

After two or three round when we some opponents the shooting turns get longer, and finally when the close combat starts we need some more time. But normally there is everybody in the game involved .

What we do is to define a limit of game turns at the beginning, because multiplayer games have the potential to really need a lot of time. We also try to play scenarios, where the players are forced to do something (treasure hunt/ hint hunt, lost prince, conquer building, hunt monster etc.) to win the scenario.

I think the ast point is the most important one to bring all your players into the game.

We play the standard Chaos on the Sreets way of multi-player when required but avoid out as much as possible. Mordheim is best as 1vs1 so if we have even numbers then we'll play forced alliances to keep 1 vs 1 style.

We have played several games using the method mentioned by Dribble Joy but there are aspects that are really dodgy even though it does improve the speed and flow of multiplayer games which is good. If you want to know more of that method them do a search on this forum.

thanks guys!

Last night we played a variant of the system dribble joy mentioned.

Player A moves
Player A shoots

Player B moves
Player B shoot

Player C moves
Player C shoots

Combat

In the combat phase every model in base contact got to make his normal attacks. On the plus side there was no confusion about who got the fight, everyone did his normal attacks.
it did mean however that nobody ever got to take down a knocked down model because by the next combat phase everyone had his recovery phase. It also meant that some players couldn' get a countercharge set up because of models that weren't dead yet since combat still had to happen (example: player A charges B, in a normal game B's model would have been killed by the more powerfull A and in B's turn he could charge A, that couldn't happen here) Perhaps we could balance it out by rolling a dice for first turn every round.
Since all the cons and pros applied to all players it didn't really bother me much, only slight advantage was to the players moving first. All in all, I liked it

I'm gonna read chaos on the streets rules this afternoon and we'll propably try that out next time and see what we like most! I love that there are also multiplayer scenario's included.

Captain Bernhardt wrote:

Combat

The system I mentioned is more intended for games where one side fights and then another. In Mordheim and other games where everyone fights in the same round of combat I think your suggestion of a collated combat phase is better.

So perhaps something like this:

A moves.
B moves.
C moves.

B shoots.
C shoots.
A shoots.

Combat.

B moves.
C moves.
A moves.

Etc.

Dribble Joy wrote:

A moves.
B moves.
C moves.

B shoots.
C shoots.
A shoots.

Any warband with shooters will be excessively frustrated with moving into a position and then watching that position become useless before shooting from that position.

Much like having one combat phase for every 3 other phases makes close combat neutered.

If you are really gung-ho on condensing multiplayer by phases, you will probably have to go by initiative order all around, which is excessively complicated in itself.

Any changes for a core mechanic of 'one player takes a whole turn before the next player' will either imbalance significant parts of the game or complicate something to the point of changing the game itself.

The only reason I see for this is too speed up multiplayer games, which is easier done by just installing time limits. 10 minutes a turn, for example. Penalties enforced if the next turn doesn't make up the difference, things like that.

Ack, yes, only having one round of combat for each full turn would be bad.

As for the movement, I think it only affects the way you move. You have to judge what other people will do and can use it to force others to move in a certain way after you. It's not perfect, but the main aim is to stop one player sitting there while the others play and not being able to react until their turn, at which point the first thing they have to do is take a rout test.

brokenv wrote:

Dribble Joy wrote:

A moves.
B moves.
C moves.

B shoots.
C shoots.
A shoots.

Any warband with shooters will be excessively frustrated with moving into a position and then watching that position become useless before shooting from that position.

that's why we did move and shoot for each player before moving to the next player. So shooting is still usefull.

I didn't feel combat was neutered. it added more depth and tactical tought to your movement phase since you have to keep in mind that other players get to move before you fight. it also made moving into combat with multiple opponents less suicidal. it did lead to longer combats though. combats lasted longer and over several turns now.

I read chaos in the streets. We'll propably try that first and then compare to see what we like most