Making Sure the Game Ends

A game's length should not vary too much above its typical length. If it does, it can become boring, or cause issues for the players.

Avoid just relying on random events, or player choices, to end your game. Use a "ratchet", that inexorably moves the game to its end.

Soft ratchets

 A "soft ratchet" generally moves the game in one direction.

Magic has a life total. When a player's life total is reduced to zero, they lose the game. Players will generally lose life, but they can also hold on for a very long time, and even gain life.

Chess has two softer ratchets — the fact that pawns can't go backwards, and, more importantly, the fact that captured pieces do not return. However, pawns often become stuck, and the game still works without them. Chess turns can be played without the loss of components. Pieces can just keep moving around. All this makes chess games vary greatly in length.

I've struggled a lot with soft ratchets. Filling your game with them still doesn't guarantee a timely end. If a card is a ratchet, players won't necessarily draw it. If it's an action, they won't necessarily use it.

One of the biggest ongoing problems with Radlands, that can't really ever be completely fixed, has been games that take way longer than the average game length. The game has no real ratchets, so I've just had to add soft ratchets all over the place. I think I've largely mitigated the problem, but it's pushed the game very much towards aggressive play.

Keep healing/repairing to a minimum in your game. It exists in opposition to damage, and together, they don't tend to progress the game.

Hard ratchets

A "hard ratchet" moves the game continuously and irreversibly in one direction. The game might end in a set number of rounds. This is a hard ratchet.

Scrabble has 100 tiles, which are depleted at a fairly predictable rate, after which, the game ends. This is a fairly hard ratchet.

Add a hard ratchet to most games, as a backup game-end condition.

I add points to most games I make, these days, regardless of genre. They're a backup hard ratchet, behind the regular gameplay. Winning by points can be a bit anti-climactic, however. It's less fun than winning by defeating the other players normally. As such, I tend to make victory by points happen only about a third of the time.

In my gangster game, I ended up adding two ratchets. One is "gang members", which increases the damage you do to other players, when you attack. As this number approaches 10, the opponents' chance of survival gets very low. That's a strong ratchet, but it's not guaranteed to work.

Later, I just added Rep, a score you can't easily avoid getting. It's a much harder ratchet. You can win the game the usual way, by eliminating all the other players, or you can just get 10 reputation.