As with all game, it is important to keep them moving or they quickly become boring. Traditional game often grind to a halt because their rules are slow and have many bottle necks. Whole story lines stand idle, waiting for one player to do their part. This is not good. Matrix Games are fortunate in that they have few bottle necks. Players make their arguments and things happen. If one player fails to turn in an order for a turn, the game by passes them and goes on. OOPS! Better be faster next time! It may sound unfair – but in fact it is like sending in an argument that fails – nothing happens, good or bad. Conflict can be the one big bottle neck in the face to face rules since only the strongest player gets to make an argument. I recommend getting around this by asking all the players in the game to make arguments – even if they are not all rolled on. This not only keeps the game moving but involves everyone in all the actions of play. SITTING AROUND WITH NOTHING TO DO A sure fired way to kill a game – even a great game – is to leave the players sitting for too long. If turns take more than a week to turn around, players may loses interest. Rapid turn around time is better. But what about games that focus on one player and ignore the others? Well Matrix Games aren't in that category! Each turn ALL players argue (whither their characters are living or dead!) Players can argue for any character in the game so the story is the most important factor – not one character's actions. As players are able to leave nonessential characters behind, the game can speed up to a climax that everyone is part of! RPGs make one or two players the star at the expense of side lined characters. THE X-FILES CHALLENGE I am about to do an experiment in just how fast a PBEM Matrix Game can go. I plan on doing three turns a week (which will complete a whole game in a month or less). If it works I may try doing a turn every two days in a future game. I am excited to see how it works! Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #19 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Chris Engle. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com