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Most RPGs are single player or cooperative, so competition isn’t really a thing. Competitive RPG games tend to be MMOGs, in which case the player’s capacity for burst damage tends to matter more than anything else (and everything tends to run in real time in MMOGs, not a lot of turn-based MMOs). Competitive turn-based games generally try to reduce first turn advantage as much as possible (Collectible Card Games tend to be one of the biggest in this space), but it can still become a statistically significant issue over a very large numbers of games – especially in a format like Magic’s Commander, where the normal number of players per match is four instead of two. In the Commander situation, the first player advantage is notably less important than the last player disadvantage, which is statistically significant.
That said, there are turn-based games that run their turns simultaneously. In the turn-based gaming sphere, these games are called WEGO (as in we all go at the same time), as opposed to IGOUGO (I go, you go). These WEGO games often show up in tactical and strategy games (Atlas Reactor, Frozen Synapse, Farseer’s Domain, Mecha Simultactics), as well as online card games (Marvel Snap, Your Only Move Is HUSTLE, BattleCON). The core design element shared in WEGO games is the heavier emphasis on predicting your opponent’s decisions rather than reacting to their last turn. They’re pretty fun in general, you should give some of these a try!
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