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: 
If you only need the *Brazening* to happen *approximately* every X turns, you could simply roll a die at the beginning of every turn with a 1/X chance. For a 1/5 chance, for instance, roll a D10, and if it comes up 1 or 2 then *Brazen* away!

Whether or not this method is useful would depend completely on the purpose of the *Brazening* mechanic and the importance of its predictability. If it's necessary for some kind of restocking of important materials (like drawing cards or recovering health), this method probably won't work. On the other hand, if the purpose of the *Brazening* is to periodically make things more difficult/interesting for your players, or to temporarily modify other mechanics to mix things up, its randomness might be desirable!
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.