Downtime in Board Games: A Hopeless Defense and Angry Rant Against Them

Downtime during board games is bad.

Right?

Simultaneous action selection is a popular way that games like to scream “you’re not going to be bored during this game,” at least in the buzzword-laden marketing language of the hobby.

But I want to tell you that downtime is good.

It’s also atrocious.

Don’t worry, I come prepared with examples.

DOWNTIME IS GOOD

Like any maxim in the hobby, we can find exceptions that bust up the supposedly neat rule. Roll and Move is bad…right? Sure, except when it’s great. The difference lies in the execution. I could cite examples, but don’t want to become distracted.

So when is downtime good? I’ll have to get there by way of specific examples.

Tales of the Arabian Nights

The gameplay in Tales of the Arabian Nights isn’t actually all that interactive, but the only way to enjoy this one is if you treat it as a shared experience. Want to know a secret? The best stories I have from this game are from the stories other players experienced.

The game works because you’re telling tales together. Whether it’s yours or someone else’s shouldn’t matter. So if I have 20 minutes between turns because 2-3 of my friends had sweepingly epic turns of good or bad fortune, it was probably the best 20 minutes of my night. If you’re waiting impatiently for it to be your turn during those moments, this is not a game you should be playing.

Decrypto

Decrypto is excellent, but you know what I might enjoy the most? The stupid stories we weave together to try to tie together disparate clues about a particular word.

The last time I played, we had a whole subplot about the adventures of a naked demon horse. Yes, I know that naked is redundant, given that it’s a horse. That’s beside the point. Point is, I don’t remember who won. But I do remember demanding that a particular clue should be paired with our naked demon horse, not necessarily because it made the most sense, but because it was the funniest within our group meta.

That only happened because there was ample downtime between clues for that improvisational exercise to germinate.

Codenames

The common complaint here is that the clue-givers have all the fun, while everyone else just sits around and waits for the other team to take their turn.

It’s here that I think I need to take a step back and examine a lot of unconscious biases ingrained in modern hobby gaming. In what world should I be playing a silly party game and NOT simply injecting comments and chaos into it? It’s only when we start thinking rigidly about games as things to be won that we sit there like statues, waiting for fun to happen to us instead of creating it for ourselves within the structure presented before us.

I’ve played Codenames 100+ times, so I have had opportunities to experiment with all sorts of nonsense. I’ll choose a card to slowly and elaborately insinuate as one of my own team’s cards, unconvinced it is (and importantly, not allowing your team to actually pick it), but moreso hoping that I seed some doubt into the other team and keep them from picking it. Once or twice, that card has belonged to the other team, who have some choice words for me after the game. It’s delightful.

Or simply weaving nonsensical theories while allowing others to have most of the true guessing power. I’ve played whole games more-or-less as comic relief, acting only as tiebreaker for my squad in a mechanical sense. These are fun sessions.

And all of that happens during the game’s so-called downtime.

Sidereal Confluence

Sidereal Confluence is not a game that comes to mind when you think of downtime, given the simultaneous play of much of it. But while trades can only happen during certain phases, negotiations can happen any time.

While people are deliberating over which technologies and planets to take in the auction phase of the game, it’s a great time to start looking around at who had a poor previous round, and start asking them what they need. I’ll create all sorts of casual, “I’ll help you out if I can” bargains during this phase, which then streamlines the in-roads to trades in the next round of the game, and also establishes me as someone willing to truly negotiate, not just do {X} for {Y} in the moment.

Others follow suit that have negotiation elements. Oh, those two are fighting in Dune and it looks like one of them could win soon? I’ll get the attention of someone else with nothing to do for the next five minutes or so and just have a chat about how we might take mutually beneficial actions.

Downtime allows for all of this, not the strict mechanical steps of the game.

And you know who hates Dune for its downtime? A couple of my friends who enjoy modern Euro puzzle-style games, where the only beneficial actions you can take are mechanical in nature. Given the nuance available to you in scheming, Dune should feature almost no true downtime, in that there’s always something you can be thinking about or proposing. But this is not obvious to new players.

Quacks of Quedlinburg

Quacks of Quedlinburg is a press-your-luck game. Unlike some in this genre, you’re on your own board the entire time. Other players’ progress can affect your risk tolerance, but doesn’t directly affect you.

Normally, players will play simultaneously, drawing tiles from their bags and resolving rounds simultaneously.

This is a bit boring compared to how great the game can be. But to achieve that greatness, we need to introduce some downtime.

A popular house rule is to play the final round of the game with everyone drawing one at a time, which allows others to watch on as other players succeed or fail. The tension of these moments can’t be overstates, and it elevates the game to something quite lovely. But this only happens for me when I’m “doing nothing” and merely watching the proceedings.

My preferred method of play would be to play the entire game this way. Sure, it would add 20 minutes or so onto the game’s playtime. But are we at the table to race through a game? Or to enjoy ourselves as much as possible?

Challengers!

Challengers is an auto-battler: you make a deck, then it faces off in a prescribed fashion against another player. It’s quite amusing, and has received accolades for how it pulls off this tournament-like atmosphere at a game table.

The game holds up to eight players, and at any player count, a series of rounds will be played. After a set number, two players will have the most points, and these two will face off in a championship round.

Let me restate that: most of the players are eliminated for the final round, and are asked to merely watch.

But not just watch. Actively participate as engaged onlookers. Pick a person to root for, and cheer them on, feeling the excitement or despair as their fate is revealed.

At its best, this final round is the game’s best moment. It creates a truly communal atmosphere and a shared experience between ALL players, not just the two battling it out.

At its worst, you have disinterested players who stop paying attention, and two players playing out a lonely final round while others go to the restroom or check their phones or something.

The downtime is good and improves the game immensely, but only if everyone adopts this idea as being true.

Bohnanza

Bohnanza is not a game known for its downtime, since it’s a trading game where you can always be involved with the active player in a trade.

However, it’s not free-for-all trading that can happen simultaneously between all players. You can only trade with that turn’s active player.

And sometimes, you’ll have nothing to offer them, and nothing you want from them. So there’s nothing to do.

Except there is.

See, someone will have the better luck in the game, drawing the cards they need and getting better trades. So it’s up to the players to balance these luck-based elements via trades.

…and it’s also up to players to engage socially with other players to determine who should be the beneficiary of trades, or cut out from trades for a time. This social meta-game is a part of Bohnanza’s experience, since you’re having to convince others to work with you consistently.

And that can only happen if you have time between trades to comment on other trades being made, or to form pseudo-alliances with players, much like I mentioned about Sidereal Confluence above.

DOWNTIME IS BAD

Well, duh.

But it’s often in the math-exercise games, particularly ones where not much from other players affects you, but you can’t technically calculate actions until it’s your turn due to passive blocking of resources or actions. Here is where there’s really nothing to do for minutes on end, and everyone else is idle or calculating.

I’ve come to believe that a lot of these games are intended as solo or at most 2P games, but the pressures of publishing dictate that the player count is extended up to 4-5P. And it’s at these higher counts where they become laborious in the extreme.

In fairness, this isn’t always the case. Auctions and shared spatial games (tile-laying, route-building, etc.) can become victims to analysis paralysis despite having ample interaction. But they’re less susceptible to it in general, for reasons stated above. Party games even less so, since the point of those games is rarely the game itself but the interactions it’s intended to create.

TAKEAWAYS

I feel it’s uncontroversial to claim that some games need to breathe, so to speak, to allow them to achieve their full potential. Often, these are games that are the most social or interpersonally engaging. The mechanics alone provide structure, but it requires space between actions to fully come alive. Downtime can be glorious here.

Conversely, the more like clockwork a game is, the less it needs outside inputs (i.e. people) to function as intended. Downtime is terrible in these cases.

I’m as guilty as anyone of glorifying games that minimize downtime, but luxuriating in an experience that isn’t just silence between players can be more rewarding that simply zipping between turns.