Question: I'm working on a new board game where there's an action (we'll call it *Brazening*) that only happens every X turns (let's say it happens every 5 turns).

What's a good way to keep track of when it's time for the next *Brazening*?

The perfect method would:

* be easy for players to do
* be hard for players to forget
* require a minimum of pieces or moving parts
* not require pencil and paper

There might not be a perfect method.

Answer: 
I'm no game designer, so this is just off the top of my head: 

I'd try and tie it to a mechanic that already exists in the game and which the players can't avoid, or at least get a obvious (maybe short term) advantage from, so it's unlikely to for them to forget. 

Examples:

* Each player gets 5 cards at the start of the game and must play one each turn. When everyone has no cards left, execute *Brazening* and everyone draws 5 new cards.
* A pool of 5 times *number of players* tokens in it, and at the start of their turn a player must take a token and do something with it. When the pool is empty, it's time to *Brazen* and then refill the pool.

What kind of actions do the players take in your game? Maybe if you roughly describe the mechanics, we could find a simple may to modify them.
I recently saw a beautiful solution for this problem in the game **Ora et Labora**. It uses a wheel which you turn after a round is finished. The wheel mechanism updates not only the costs of the available goods, it can also trigger events (here settlement phases). Depending whether you play with 1,2,3,4 players or according to the fast-game or normal-game rules, there will be a unique wheel to keep the game balanced.

If you want to learn more, there is a [video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOlrBDsltrg) that reviews the game.