How can your make your game more interesting to players during OTHER players turns?

Is there any way that people can do some part of the moves in parallel? For instance, if a turn consists of choose which cards to play, then make the actual moves that the cards enable, then you could have the 'choose cards' portion be done at the same time, with a simultaneous reveal. The cards themselves could have priority numbers, which determines the actual order of play. Possibly even the highest priority card goes, which means Player 2 does that action; then the next highest, so player 4 does an action; then the next, which might be player 2 again. Etc.

Could make all the battling (which I'm guessing is the most time-consuming part) simultaneous at the end of the turn.

Ie everyone moves/handles resources/etc, then everyone fights the game (with the players' armies teaming up if they move into the same battle).

-Speed up combat (take out fluffy mechanics).
-Build in a timer. Everyone loves when timers go buzz, ...so we watch them.
-Put more wieght in any player's choice on other players. "If they do x, I can't do y... so what are they going to do?" Usually this works, (like Catan) but sometimes it just makes people take longer.
-Include mini puzzles, or chinese finger traps, or tootsie rolls to occupy time. (not serious).

John

You can try to divide the actions of a player in some way that some are played "in-turn" and others are played "out-of-turn".

Some actions can be played in "background", maybe some movements, fights or solving some situations.

The problem with this division of actions is that the "background" actions cannot be viewed by others players or cannot be important for them.

Moreover board games tends to be very slow compared to card games. This is one (of many) reasons why I prefer card simultaneous games.

I am currently working on a co-op game with the same issues. My co-designer and I have worked hard to allow cards that players gain on their own turn to be usable during other players turns. We also have capacity limits on the hexes our board is made from and we allow players to spend a commodity to move an additional space on someone else's turn. Lastly we have a special ability that each player can use on their own and other players turns that helps by adding support in various ways. This has promoted cooperation and in a way it asks the active player to engage with the other players or keep the other players engaged on their turn so that the players will have the best chance to win the game.

=M=

I just played a game called The Big Book of Madness, which is fantastic and I recommend it to everybody. It's a cooperative deck building game where you are trying to defeat monsters escaping out of a magical book. The way it gets around having down time on other players turn is by having a "support card" mechanic, which allows players to put some of their cards into support, meaning that you can play those cards on another players turn to help them accomplish a goal. There is also a mechanic which allows you to give other players the ability to take an action on your turn, which, if timed right, can be chained so that everyone gets to perform an action on your turn. Those are just a couple of ways to keep the game interesting on other people's turns.

I've noticed that some of the best ways to keep players looking at the game rather than their smartphones during another player's turn include either quick turns or strategy that has to be planned in between actions. Dominion is an example of a game I feel does this well because most turns don't take very long and when it's not your turn, you are looking at your hand of cards, how much cards in the supply cost, what you need to do, etc. so you don't really have time to "zone out". Long story short, if a player can do their turn and then not worry about anything until their next turn, they are more likely to lose focus and interest.

Another option that works, and that other people have mentioned, is giving players actions that can be played when it's not their turn. Shadows over Camelot has the Merlin Cards, Pandemic has the "Play at any time" cards, and Dominion occasionally has attack cards that affect other players. If you have actions that can only be played on other players turns, it can mean your players get to perform two roles, their active and passive roles. Building on what connerdrake5757 said, if you had a medic for example, maybe he can only heal when it's not his turn or something like that.

The massive, epic, sci-fi ameritrash behemoth that is Twilight Imperium does a good job of keeping everyone engaged throughout the 8-hour gaming festival that is playing the game. The key to their success is to let each player only take a few actions per turn, and split those actions into micro-turns, where each player plays a single action in sequence. Each player is handed a number of "strategy markers" each game round that they can allocate to their individual actions (or save between turns). This idea keeps turns short by limiting how much gets done at a time.

In a co-operative environment, this would better allow you to co-ordinate your attacks, and would allow one player to move , and another to support in short order. How you implement combat with this system is up to you (is each "shot" (or roll of the dice) an action, or is the whole battle an action? How about 3 "shots"/action? Could you attack and get resupplied/healed by another player?

Alternately, this also would work well with an airstrike or something that gives a disadvantage to defense until the end of the round, since the bombing micro-turn can happen early, and they can still participate in the fight with their own micro-turns later in the round.

Just some thoughts...