3-Player Tournament Seeding

[skribs]

I'm making a tournament-themed board game. I've got a pretty good idea of how it will work for 2 or 4 players, but I'm struggling a little bit with 3. The basic idea here is this:

• Each round features a tournament, in which players will roll dice against each other to compete. If the players tie, they reroll until one player wins.
• In a 2-player game, each round has a winner and loser. The winner gets a Gold Medal token. Most tokens after 12 rounds wins.
• In a 4-player game, the Current Player will choose who to face first. Those two will roll, then the other two will roll to determine the Winner and Loser bracket. The winners will roll for Gold and Silver medal tokens, the losers will roll for the Bronze medal token. At the end of the game, Gold is worth 5 points, Silver 3 points, Bronze 1 point.

I'm stuck on what to do in a 3 player game, and I'll explain why in a second. Ideally, the solution I have would meet these criteria:

• Gives the Current Player an edge, for it being his turn (the idea is his school is hosting the tournament so he has home field advantage)
• Gives the Current Player a meaningful choice in what to do (in other words, a choice where there isn't an automatic best answer, and also a choice that has some impact)
• Does not change the rules too much from the 4-player rules (meaning still uses Gold/Silver/Bronze and uses the same fight system)

With that said, here are my possible solutions, and why I do and don't like them:

1. Current Player Chooses the Bracket and Who Gets the Bye. These rules would be that the Current Player chooses whether he's facing one of the others first, or if he gets the Bye. If the winner of the first round wins the second, then the two losers go for Silver and Bronze. If the winner of the first round loses the 2nd round, then the player who is 1.000 wins Gold, the player at .500 wins Silver, and the player at .000 wins Bronze.
   The problem with this is that the obvious choice is for the Current Player to take a bye, so it's not really a meaningful choice as the game can be "solved". This is the rule as currently written in my playtest rules, and I do want to see how fast my group will "solve" this problem.
2. Current Player Gets a Bye Automatically. Using the same rules as above for the bye, but take away the choice from the player, since the choice is automatically made for you. This simplifies the rules some and keeps the power in the hands of the Current Player, but it has two drawbacks - now, there's one less choice to make, and it makes it so the first thing you do as the Current Player is sit and watch, which seems counter-intuitive to me.
3. Current Player Chooses Who to Face and Who Gets a Bye. The opposite of option 2: this time, the Player still gets the Choice in #1, but cannot choose themselves to get the bye. The advantage here is that the Current Player gets a more meaningful choice. The disadvantage is that the power of the bye goes to another player. (This is the option I am most leaning towards).
4. All Three Players Throw Their Dice in at Once. Take it from a tournament bracket to a FFA. This changes the rules a bit, but it does eliminate the problem of the bye. (I am thinking about including this as a variant for 3- and 4-player games).
5. Round Robin Tournament. The next idea I have is to do a Round Robin tournament. So the Current Player chooses who to face first, who to face second, and then the other two compete as well. If everyone wins one match in the round, then restart the rolls for everyone.
   This would eliminate the problem of the bye, but now you're adding in a lot more rolls and time to the game, especially if there's a lot of 1-1-1 win tournaments. It also makes the choice of who to play first meaningless, since you're going to face everyone anyway, and it might as well just be "the player to your left" and then "the player to your right" and finally "the other two players" fight.
6. Round Robin Tournament with Ties. The Round Robin idea, but this time, individual ties are allowed. This changes the fight rules some, but allows the game to move a little bit faster. So if P1 and P2 tie, P2 beats P3, and P3 beats P1, then P1 has 0.5 wins, P2 has 1.5 wins, and P3 has 1 win, and you have a leaderboard with which to divvie up medals.
   I think this is starting to get more complicated than I want the game to be.
7. Round Robin Tournament with Advanced Stats. The previous idea was too complicated, so this one definitely is. The idea is you keep track of not only victories, but margins of victory. At this point we might as well go back to the free-for-all.
8. Disallow 3-man Games. Simple solution to the problem - don't allow the problem to exist. But I don't want the third person to be bored if there isn't a fourth.

So I ask the Martial Talk community - how have you dealt with 3-player brackets in competitions? Do you have a solution I haven't listed? Which of my solutions do you think would best fit?

This is to be a family-friendly game on the light side of strategy, that focuses mostly on dice rolls.

 

[skribs]

I just came up with another possible solution:

Current Player Chooses Bracket, But Bye Competes First Against the Loser of the First Match. This way, if you take the bye, you still need to win 2 matches to win. If you lose the first match, you're still guaranteed a chance at silver. And both players who compete in the first match have a chance at silver and a chance at gold. You potentially only have to win 1 match, like the player who got the Bye in the first item above, but you don't get that automatically. You get that by winning in the first match.

 

[CB Jones]

You could use a Louisiana bye.....later on when I have time I will explain

 

[CB Jones]

Louisiana Bye:

-Player A fights Player B...then
-Loser of AB fights Player C
-If loser of AB wins (Player C loses)...tourney over....Winner of AB is 1st place, and Winner of the Loser of AB is 2nd place, Player C is 3rd
-If Loser of AB loses (Player C wins)...Player C fights Winner of AB for 1st and 2nd...Loser of AB is 3rd place.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

You could make the game require 4 or more players. Then make a special edition/ruleset for 2 players. Plenty of games do that.

 

[skribs]

You could make the game require 4 or more players. Then make a special edition/ruleset for 2 players. Plenty of games do that.

It's already too expensive with the parts required for 4 players!

 

[skribs]

Louisiana Bye:

-Player A fights Player B...then
-Loser of AB fights Player C
-If loser of AB wins (Player C loses)...tourney over....Winner of AB is 1st place, and Winner of the Loser of AB is 2nd place, Player C is 3rd
-If Loser of AB loses (Player C wins)...Player C fights Winner of AB for 1st and 2nd...Loser of AB is 3rd place.

Louisiana Bye. That's what I was thinking of in my 2nd post. I'll go with that, as I think it still gives the Current Player a choice, and the choice is meaningful.