My group always plays Arkham Encounters and OW Encounters in the same phase, following the players order. What are the bad consequences of this bend of the rules?

Not a lot.

There have been threads about this before, and I think we came to the conclusion that you'll put yourself at a disadvantage just as much as you'll get an advantage out of it, and most of the time it will make no difference at all.

Some people do the players' whole turns "in series" rather than "in parallel", so one guy moves and has an encounter, then another guy moves and has an encounter, and so on. MOVEMENT is the one which makes a big difference, since someone could use items to survive their encounter, then someone else could walk past them and take the items, and so on, so that in theory the same item could be used in encounters by all players in one turn. However even this method is very hard to exploit!

If you just put the Arkham and OW encounters together, go nuts. I don't think it's going to cause any serious problems. You might occasionally close a gate that someone was standing on without them expecting it, but it's very rare.

As long as you draw both if an Arkham Encounter pops a Gate on someone. No fair getting out of that first OW Encounter while you're delayed.

And as long as you don't pull some wacky cheese like being returned to Arkham and closing the Gate in the same turn.

Frankly, I don't see why you just don't follow the phases. Everyone's still going to get their Encounter; does it really bother people if you skip them on Phase 3? They're still going to get something to do on Phase 4.

I agree, its better to stick to the timing, its just a good habit because many questions about things in the game only become clear when you consider the phase order. Being relaxed with it is a bad habit that may lead to errors so its a good thing generally to have it tattooed on the inside of your eyelids. I got mine done in R'lyeh mucus green with a touch of Yellow King...you know, the colour of the vom the 456 throw up when they take too many hits...

On each phase all the players play. It's very clear on the rulebook. The difference is VERY BIG!!!

1) You MUST plan your whole turn as a single player from the begining. it's like announcing what are you going to do and press the PAUSE button. All players do that and then the PAUSE button is released and all actions happen simultaneously.

If players play all phases in a row, then this allows the other players to change their plans which is not fair, it's stealing the game.

2)if the game is in this way(each player playing all phases in a row), there is no use of the explored markers because when you return to arkham from the OW you remember what you just did and try to close the gate.

3)The other players cannot wait sooo long for 1 player to think what he is going to do.

I seem to recall Mageith saying that he has each player take his movement and encounters all at once, and that it greatly shortened the length of games.

Siromist said:

Yes, I've played hundreds of games with serial phases. Mostly to save time.

However, you are absolutely correct that the rules are perfectly clear and your description is pretty close, though I don't consider all action to be simultaneous. Wouldn't that allow investigators to join together in combat?

1) Not fair to whom or what? The game? We don't play actually all phases in a row. We have a joint upkeep phase, then the middle three phases are played in a row. Then the first player does the Mythos phase. We do understand that the actual rules do underly this variant and when a question comes up we will occassionally slow the game down to illustrate what happens strictly to the phases.

2) I think most players don't use explored markers anyway based on comments from other threads. Be we do use them because sometimes we fail to close or choose not to close.

3) This is really the place we think we pick up so much of the "wasted" time. Most of the time tricky maneuvers are not part of the play and so the games goes along pretty fast with players doing what they want to do. Sometimes we whine when another player picks up a clue we wanted, but our players would have done it anyway for the most part.

I'm not saying my way is better for anyone else but we figure we've saved about an hour a game with 4 players and having played over 250 games, thats about 6 work weeks at 40 hours a week. Occassionally we go back and try to play it the rules way but within 2 turns we've reverted back to our evil, stealing ways.

mageith

when I say stealing the game I mean for example when at the begining of the upkeep players make strategy of what to do(cause it is a team game) and say the 1st player decides to go to a location to pick up 3 clue tokens that are there. the 2nd player who is close to the same location decides to do something else. If the phases are being played in a row and the 1st playes fails to pick up the clue tokes due to an encounter, well the 2nd player can now change his mind and go pick the clue tokens himself which is not quite fair because he decidesd to do something else at the beggining.

Siromist said:

I can see your argument, but this example doesn't really work since clues are picked up upon ending movement, not after encounters. There are circumstances where this is advantageous, but I think they are mostly around combat, which is often when player order matters the most.

mageith said:

Good on you for saving so much worktime! But you are saving more than player time, you are creating circumstances that effectively give the investigation more time, and I suspect this significantly increases your winning odds. Its not in combat so much as gate closing that this makes the game easier. Consider: Jenny moves to gate, goes through, is LitaS. Same turn, Joe thinks, Ill go instead. This could not happen in normal turn order. In normal play, Joe would have moved before Jenny was lost. These are common cases, and they do add up to a lot of "extra" time on the clock of doom.

dj2.0 said:

It's probably happened. Not sure I'd bring it up to the common level, however nor that it would "significantly" increase my winning odds. I don't think if it happened every game (it doesn't) or even twice a game, it would significantly increase my winning odds. Usually an investigator jumps into a gate as soon as he has 5 clue tokens or found an elder sign. If it's not Jenny's gate, its another. No time gained or lost. We play with name sides down.

I think playing with all expansions significantly increases winning odds, so I play with only one expansion at a time. I think playing without Kingsport monsters significantly increases winning odds, so I include all monsters in play. I think choosing you investigators increases your winning odds, but sometimes we do that anyway, but its usually by less experienced players so they don't pick very well (IMO). We don't do any of this to increase or decrease our winning odds, however.

I fool around with the game a lot. Have lots of personal modifications. I try to make them either neutral or harder than the normal game.

If it does significantly increase winning odds we must be a very bad players because I think, (pretty sure) our average is less than 62%.

Siromist said:

I agree its a team game but decisions are made all through the game. Instead of making a strategy at the beginning of the turn that is locked in stone, we are allowed to react to situations. I'd maintain its not much different that a normal game. Joe agrees to take out the monsters in Jenny's way. Bad dice. McGlen may then decide to try that too, even though he'd planned to get his fifth clue at the science building. Or Jenny then must decide to do something different than she planned because the monsters are still in her way. This can happen in either the normal game or my variant.

I just don't think my variant makes a big difference in the game or the team play of it but it does make a big difference in our player satisfaction in that the game either goes faster or feels like it goes faster. Our games still take an average of about 3 hours for 4 players. When we changed we saw an immediate decline in the length of the games from about 4 hours to 3. Apparently we moved from slow to about average with this change. I'm still amazed with folks to claim to average closer to 2 hours with group play.

If I really wanted to save time, I'd eliminate my group and play by myself.

mageith said:

LOL - nah thats just your lil pet Arkham giving you special loving, is all. Your experience is worth much more than my conjecture.

I do all the things you mention too, the Kingsport monsters are especially tough I agree.

Mageith

I have no more words to convince you but the rules are clear on that and because they say so, it means that the creators of the game have checked and tested all of these cases we discuss and they ended up to believe that the parallel phase-playing way is correct!

ok wrong example. say that the 1st player fails to evade a monster and dies in battle. the 2nd player may now change his mind thinking that the clue tokens are more important and go take them which is not fair

the previous answer was for mottherobot

Of course, there's also potential disadvantages to having each player take movement and encounters at once. When a player is having an encounter, he does it without knowing if other players will be able to pick up clues or deal with monsters when it comes time for their movement phase. Therefore, the first player doesn't know how many clue tokens he should burn trying to make skill checks for his encounter. It could be that the first player was expecting another player to make a gate jump, so the first player spends two clue tokens to pass a check to pick up an ally. Then it turns out that the other player got squished during combat. Now it's up to the first player to make the gate jump, which means he needs to hoard as many clues as possible.

Each approach make the game easier in some ways and harder in others. It could be very difficult to determine which approach poses the greater challenge to the players.

Siromist said:

Again, since combat also happens when you end your movement in an area with monsters, that example doesn't work either.

Siromist, I don't really have a problem with how you play. (I don't generally have a problem with how anyone plays. Your game, your rules.) But I don't quite see how you can use the MANUAL to back you up.

AH Manual, Page 5, bottom right (little yellow square): "During each phase, every player, starting with the first player and continuing clockwise, performs actions that take place during that phase."

I don't see how "continuing clockwise" can be interpreted as "simultaneous" anything. And there is NOTHING in the manual about changing your mind between the plans you made in the Upkeep Phase and your actual movement in the Movement Phase. I cannot recall how many times I've had the player moving before me utterly fail to accomplish his goal of killing the Street monster in my path, and preventing me from being able to fulfill my plans AT ALL. What would happen in your game then? I forfeit my entire turn because my plan is impossible to execute?

Again, I have nothing against that method of play. If it works for you, go for it. But DON'T be using the MANUAL to tell me I'm WRONG. Or worse, CHEATING.

Siromist said:

I'm not sure how this isn't fair...

Since combat happens during movement, the first player can attempt combat, fail, and go to the hospital all before the second player moves. Then the second player can go and try to kill the monster too, or go and collect clues or whatever.