Speeding up the game: Test Results

What's fascinating when introducing a rule to a system is figuring out what has happened to the system when that rule is tested. I tried out the challenge rule in a 3-player game and it didn't work. Or, I should say, it didn't work as I wanted it to work. That is a good thing as a disconfirmation of a hypothesis is much better than the confirmation. The latter yields no new information. The former tells you there is either a flaw in your logic or a problem with your model. 

The challenge rule didn't work because the second player challenged the first player to gain an advantage against the 3rd player without the 3rd player being able to react properly. It felt bad and I saw no significant increase in the speed of play. It didn't work well with a culture of taking ordered turns and waiting for your opponents' best moves.

There was the suggestion that players all activate their systems at once, and resolve in initiative order, which I should also try out. There is some suggestion that this speeds up play. It was made in parallel with the comment that if 'pass' was a card it would be the most popular card to play. There is truth to this as we have seen from the version of capacitors that let players draw additional cards from their decks.  I'm okay with pass being popular, and have considered it making it a card draw, although having a time-out end condition seems important and testing it out as a draw meant the first round did not end. 

Of course the players can voluntarily play faster, to the point of abandoning the mental math entirely, as calculating optimal choices each turn and again at the end of the round, but I really would like some way to put time-pressure on players that isn't a timer or liable to cause arguments.