You’d be shocked at the number of things you can make the players do for you. As a designer, there’s a desire to have complete control of the game state, if only to make sure players don’t end up putting themselves in a bad position. However, if properly applied, you can turn any decision you have as a designer into a decision for the players.

Players in Charge

The most common times players are put in charge of a game is during an auction or a draft. While the designer could spend time and energy finding the appropriate prices for different cards or effects, letting the players bid for them or draft them in order of strength means they are all effectively at a fair price. Some games let players decide when the game ends, either with end game conditions that can be triggered by players or some rummy-style games like Gin Rummy that literally just let a player decide that the game is over. One of my favorite things to leave to players is tie-breaking, a common issue among games that can often lead players to feeling like they lost because of something practically randomized. I’ve seen games that have “breaks ties” as an explicit in-game player power that can be bought or stolen.

What Can Players Do For You?

Leaving players to do your dirty work leaves you a lot of time to work on the rest of your game, first and foremost. Players will spend the game making optimal decisions based on the options you give them. The deck builder genre is practically built out of cards with varying strength that players decide which are worth playing or not. Another huge upside is that the player know they are controlling the game, which makes them feel powerful and important. Players love directing play, since they can often direct it against their opponents. If done well, it can turn into a defining mechanic, such as Race/Roll for the Galaxy’s gimmick of having phases only when players decide to have them.

Beware the Player

You may have noticed that I stapled “if done well” onto much of the article. Letting your players direct gameplay can have disadvantages. It can lead to serious snowballing, such as when the player with the first player token gets to then take the first player token again. It’s also very punishing to newer players, since they will have to learn a lot about the game in order to make some possibly minor decisions. In general, players might start to atrophy over having to design the game for you. This could lead to player getting bored after figuring out the most powerful strategies or getting sloppy in later rounds after having to make too many decisions.

Have an Exit Strategy

Most of the problems here come from players just taking too long, either because there is too much to do or because they don’t know enough. A great way to help both of these is to set up a default to avert rather than a complete set up. For example, in Five Tribes there is a sort of auction for first player, except that there is no bidding, just one payment per player. This means that each player only has to make that decision once per round. A more common one is leaving the first player token with the player who had it last. Any player can change who goes first, but no one is obliged to. And don’t worry, the default can still be player directed (like the first player token), just so long as there’s something there.

Conclusion

The next time you can’t decide something, try and think of what the player would do. And if you can’t, just actually make the player do it. At a minimum you’ll be able to see where their priorities lie when you watch the first playtest. Always remember: you can just make the players do it.