Button Men: Multiplayer Variants

The Rules

Button Men: Multi-Player and Tournament Formats

Below is a collection of the multiplayer variations and tournament formats that have crossed our e-desk in the last few years. Sift through them and enjoy. Elsewhere you will find the quick and complete list of tournament legal Button Men.

Button Men Free-For-All Tournament:

From: Jeremy Bement, JeremyBement@webtv.net

Sorry for the delay, but here is more info on how I ran a Free-for-All 24-hour Button Men tournament...

At the comic book shop where I work we hold occasional 24-hour RPG Madness marathons. During the last one, I decided to hold a BM tourney as well, with no set rounds and no official pairings.

I told people about it beforehand and had them pick out their favorite BM. I designed a scorecard with the player's name and Name of Button Man being used on top. Underneath I did the layout similar to the traditional DCI Magic scorecard, with room for your opponent's name and W L W L next to it.

The rules were simple: at any time during the 24-hour marathon, you could challenge another person wearing a Button Man to a fight. Basic tournament rules applied (including not allowing non-tournament buttons) and you would play that person best two out of three rounds. On the card, if you won 2 to 1, you wuld circle W L W to show you lost once and won twice. Hope you get the idea!

You could play another person a maximum of three times in the 24 hours. I didn't want to face a situation of two people playing each other 50 times just to get a lot of wins. At the end of the marathon, I collected everyone's scorecards and calculated their "batting average" (total number of wins - games not people beat - divided by total number of games played - adding total wins and losses together). For example, a person who played two people, winning both matches 2 to 1, would have an average of .667 The person with the best batting average was declared the Champion, and received the super-special Changeling Button.

Jeremy Bement

Multiplayer Button Men

A short collection of variants by James Ernest

We've been struggling with the concept of multiplayer Button Men for a while now. Here are a few suggestions, some wild, some simple, for you to try. Below them is a letter from a fan, with a couple more suggestions.

While there are no official multiplayer rules, we encourage anyone to try all of these and see what sparks his interest. Also, if you've got a multiplayer format you'd like to share, please send it to James Ernest, ernest@speakeasy.org. He'll put it up here for the whole world to enjoy.

The Basic Idea: The free-for-all doesn't quite work. In grand melee games, it's always too easy to pick on the loser, or pick on the winner, whichever bothers them more. In Button Men, the general tendency is to pick on the loser, to drive them out of the game so they will stop hitting you. Which is no fun for the small characters, who are usually the victims. Free-for-all is not horrible, but we just didn't think it was good enough to be the official multiplayer rule. So we put out the call for variants.

The most common first try is a predator-prey relationship that borrows its name from Jyhad, the trading card game (later renamed Vampire: the Eternal Struggle, released by Wizards of the Coast.) Players sit in a circle, and attack only the player to their left. Once your prey is gone, you can attack the next player on, and so forth until only one player is left. Unfortunately, this relationship still tends to favor the larger characters, though not as much.

Initiative in predator-prey still goes to the lowest single number, so one interesting variation is to actually reseat players based on their starting roll. This makes the biggest players dead last, forced to munch through two or three smaller players to get ahead, while everyone else is picking on someone slightly larger than themselves. I rather like this solution, though I haven't played it enough to be sure.

Since I'm fond of the two-player game, I also like the idea of just playing a bunch of two-player games, like a mini-tournament. Everyone plays each opponent best 3 out of 5, and the player with the most games (or the most rounds, if you prefer) wins the game. You can also do this "Swiss-6" style in which each player must play with 6 different characters through the course of the tournament, to demonstrate their overall skill at the game. We're considering this type of format for our "World Championships" at Gen Con.

Ping-Pong: This is a variant that plays very strangely. The basic idea is to give those who get picked on a fighting chance. Whoever gets attacked takes the next turn. This means that two people can knife-fight themselves out of the game, or that the turn can bounce around like a ping-pong ball in a paint mixer.

Lights Out: This variant takes a different approach: Players who have been hit on one turn (where "turn" means one hit for each player) can't be hit again for the rest of that turn. This means that it's possible to lock out the last player, if they go last but have no one left to hit. They pass, but that's okay, since they also haven't been hit themselves. To make sure that the last player doesn't go last every round, you re-determine initiative each turn, based on the dice left on the table. Each turn, find the lowest numbered player, and play from there to the left. (Hey, we said it was weird.)

Subject: Multi Player Buttonmen

Date: 04/30 3:10 AM

From: Hovey, James, HOVEYJA2@mail.northgrum.com

When I asked you about multiplayer rules for Buttonmen you asked me if we'd tried anything interesting, well if you weren't merely humoring a madman...here's what we've tried:

We've played two different ways. Basically you play a number of rounds equal to the number of players minus one instead of a flat 3. Each time you 'attack' a different person (ie, in five player there would be four rounds: attack to the left, attack to the right, attack to the left skip one, attack right skip one) This is important because it gives everyone a shot to go after Iago with his 4d20 and has to take a turn attacking Avis (d4,d4,d6,d12,d12 - I think..)

The only difference in the versions is when the round ends. Version one has the game end when only one person has dice left. When your 'prey' (pardon the Jyhad term!) is out you move on to attack the person who was their 'prey'. The problem with this version is it 'screws' (an industry term) the guy with the smaller dice. He can score more on his prey than his hunter scores on him, but that doesn't matter because some bastard using those big d20s will wind up capturing 8-9 dice and having a d20 left. Basically the big dice can score huge, while the little guy captures at most 4-5 dice and gets no benefit from having given nothing up to his opponent.

Version two the round stops as soon as the first person is out of dice, then you all total points. This kind of screws (that industry term again!) the guy with the big dice. He can't capture any more than the little guy, but he's giving away much larger points to the other players.

All in all version two seemed fairer, although the average dice size dropped considerably. We also just split up and played a double elimination tournament using normal rules. That was pretty great - its nice to have an entertaining game that plays in 5-10 minutes so you can do that kind of thing.

I think I mentioned this last time, but I am stunned how balanced the game is two player. You guys should get the nobel peace prize for game design! Chess isn't nearly as balanced as Button Men! We also like that their are a ton of factors to consider in the game... it isn't nearly as simple as it seems. It is an excellent CheapAss Game!

Keep up the great work!

James H aka Iman Fasil

Subject: Button Men multiplayer idea

From: AAHench@aol.com

We recently tried a multiplayer variant we made up. Turns out it had some similarities with "Ping Pong" and "Lights Out".

Everyone rolls their dice and determines initiative. The lowest initiative gets to attack. The attacker can strike any die belonging to any other player. The attacker rerolls the attacking dice as usual. The player that was attacked then gets to strike back against the attacker ONLY. The counterattacker rerolls as usual. A new turn then starts by checking initiative and picking a new attacker. This does allow the same character to be the "attacker" several turns in a row. But that character would be hit by counterattacks in between each time.

The winner of the game is the first player to win three rounds.

If the player with the best initiative cannot capture any player's die, the attack option passes to the next higher initiative. As an optional rule, the passing player could be allowed to reroll one die.

When checking initiative, not having a die always loses to having a die . So someone with one die left showing a '1' would lose to a player with a '1' on one die and a '20' on the next. Not having any dice at all means you can't win initiative (couldn't do anything anyway).

Subject: Button Men rules

From: Dracos, dracos@fylo.net

I only got my Button Men today, and after as few games decided to look for stuff on the net, so here I am on this cheapass site. I got to the tournament rules, and decided that the concept of "pickpocketing" might balance it out a little. Meaning, the ability to steal the dice another player has already captured. It would work like this:

A character decides to capture an already captured die. In order to do this, they would have to have the same die size as the one they want. They roll their die, and the player who has the desired die rolls it. If the theif's result is higher, they get the die. It is considered captured, and not able to be used in an attack (even if it is being stolen back by the original owner). If the theif loses the pickpocket roll, nothing happens, except mabe revenge from the almost-victim.

This will obviously increase play time, and would influence swing die selection in two-player games, as the player would need to have 2 of the same die in order to take one of them back. In a multiplayer setting where any player can attack any other player at any time, it introduces a new realm of strategy based on score outcome.

I'll introduce this to the people I play with, and maybe you and others can refine it. Thanks for such a cool game.

Dracos

www.fylo.net/dragonsforge

Subject: Multi-player Button Men Variant

From: Clark D Rodeffer <cdrodeffer@juno.com>

I want to say, I still greatly enjoy Button Men. "The List" from the recently updated fan site is a wonderful way to check out the stuff I've missed. Although I didn't see the Dork Tower Button(s?) anywhere. I saw one or two floating around at a Con last year.

Anyway, I got to thinking about multi-player Button Men. One of the problems is making it fair for all the players, no matter how many there are. With two players trying their best in a three out of five match, it's already pretty fair. But with three or more players, there are petty diplomacy issues that can get in the way. Everyone picks on certain Button Men until they're eliminated, either because they're easy targets or really annoying. Or there's a situation where one player realizes he can't win, but he can influence the outcome enough such that one of the other players is more likely to win. So, despite the fact that it requires more equipment, why not even the odds a bit by mixing Button Men and classical wargaming.

Set up a generic wargaming layout. It could be an elaborate set-up with terrain, grids and obstacles, or it could be a simple card table. Each player gets to choose N unique Button Men, and each player gets M vetos to use against his opponents' choices. Kinda like jury selection. Choosing N and M can be totally arbitrary. But a good starting point for X players is N = 2 Button Men + 1 extra Button Man for every two square feet of area in the layout (round down) and M = X - 2 vetos. So in a 5 player game on a square card table measuring roughly 3 feet by 3 feet, each player would get 6 Button Men and 3 vetos. Increasing N and decreasing M leads to even more mayhem, which might be even more fun.

Then the players make initial dice rolls for each Button Man. (Note that this could take lots and lots of dice and some sort of marker system to keep track of which dice belong to which Button Men, which dice are what types, etc. But hey, you sell markers and dice too, right?) The worst initiative roll (i.e., highest lowest face value) gets to place the first Button Man anywhere on the layout, followed with the next worst roll and so on. The last Button Man placed gets to attack immediately if its owner places it within one inch of an opposing Button Man. Rules of engagement and movement could be as simple as:

1. If your Button Man is within one inch of any opponent, you must attack for at least one turn before attempting to move away. If you have two or more Button Men within one inch of any opposing Button(s), they may gang up on them in turn. Figure initiative based on the die rolls at the beginning of the engagement.

2. On your turn, if you are unable or unwilling to attack, you can attempt move as many inches in any direction as you have dice left, as long as you have an unobstructed path. If you are retreating from an engagement in which you lacked initiative, your opponent(s) get a parting shot that takes affect before your move.

3. Once it's all over, winners and losers are still figured on the usual point total scoring system.

Or something like that. What do you think? Would this kind of a set-up make the Sailor Moon Button Men more competitive with the other series? What happens when two Lunch Money Button Men gang up on one of the larger Soldiers? Is Zeppo more effective? Does Echo keep changing with every engagement? Is it reasonable that Giant and Max get to move a bit more quickly? Bunnies -- look at the BONES!

Clark Rodeffer