I’m interested to hear more approaches to this, as the only ones I can think of that don’t require lots of GM skill are those that amount to everybody takes a turn before anybody takes another turn, ALL the time, like Index Card RPG. This approach sounds potentially forced to me, but I’m curious to give it a try.
Initiative Systems Deep Discussion
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Other ways of determining initiative that haven’t been evoked :
- traditional : youngest player goes first
- thematic : a list of themes with ranks is established. Actions take places according to the rank of the theme they address. Something like Shoot / Melee / Move, only, with drama in place of verisimilitude.
- “I got your initiative right here, Buddy” (Lincoln Green, E. Ravachol)
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Spot on. I rankle when rules describe a game as “a conversation where players take turns speaking” that’s not how conversations work! Sometimes a player may be budgeted the lion’s share of the spotlight and that’s ok! Sometimes a player may get minimal time to shine and that’s also ok! Both to keep the conversation flowing naturally and allowing players who prefer to listen often and rarely act the kind of environment they want.
I really like your idea of keeping notes/tags for how often players have acted/participated and what skills they’ve used. I especially like it because as great a GM tool as it is, why don’t we make it an actual mechanic? Something like giving each player 2-4 “spotlight tokens” that they can cash in whenever they want to act. Could also code the tokens to specific skills/genres of action so for example a warrior would get 3 violence tokens + 1 talk token but a rogue would get 2 violence tokens + 1 sneaky token + 1 talk token. Controlling how often the tokens refresh and allowing multiple tokens to be spent at the same time for a bigger spotlight means players get to control their involvement while still having a framework that ensures a player who is quiet all night has the same impact as one that’s taking the spotlight for a majority of the time. Very barebones but just spitballing.
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I really like the way initiative is handled in Kill Shot, a cinematic game about assassins.
Each side (PCs and NPCs) get a certain number of Options to use during their turn. Each Option represents an action the team takes. If the action is successful, the player / NPC can pass their turn to the next person or keep trying to push the advantage.
if the action is unsuccessful, the opposing side has the opportunity to interrupt and take over. There’s a lot of back-and-forth and a bit of a push-your-luck mechanic going on.
It was designed to represent movies where one guy might punch another in the face repeatedly until he makes a mistake, then the defender takes control and goes on the offensive.
This same initiative system can be used to represent social situations too. Think of a debate where one person is talking fervently and then makes a brief pause or a mistake, and the next person interjects and steals the spotlight.
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The best “Initiative” system I know is the “Plot” system in Shinobigami – a semi PvP game about ninjas living in the shadows of the modern world.
At the start of each round of combat, each player hides a d6 behind their hand, with the number of their choice facing up. All players reveal their die (Their “Plot value”) simultaneously. The plot value has the following effects:
- Its your “initiative”, so higher plot values act first.
- It’s the maximum “value” of ninpo (special maneuvers) you can use on your turn.
- It’s also your fumble value, so any roll (on 2d6) that you make that is less than or equal to your plot put you in a “fumble” state where you automatically fail all rolls for the rest of the round. (Including the “dodge rolls” you make to avoid attacks.)
- It’s ALSO your ‘position’ on the ‘battle map’; If you are on Plot 6, you need an attack with a range of at least 2 to hit a character on 4.
So it’s a sort of “I know that you know that I know that you know” kind of decision, with lots of upsides and downsides and room for taking calculated risks.
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There are so many interesting systems in this thread. I especially like the phase-based examples like in Doctor Who or Basic D&D. I think there is a lot of potential to subtly push certain genres or expectations based on what the order of events is. A while ago I was designing a game where the PCs were all dogs, so I had the idea that each combat round would start with them barking at each other (e.g. intimidation/morale check) and only then move on to attacking. I didn’t get very far with that though.
Another really interesting idea is described here by Patrick Stuart: https://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2018/10/physical-initiative-and-query-initiative.html
The first option (physical initiative) is cute but kind of gimmicky.
The second option is the idea that you start with a very vague description of the ‘enemy’, and the more questions you ask about the situation, the greater your risk of “losing” initiative. So it is a push-your-luck mechanic but also simulates a person’s tendency to hesitate when they are unsure or surprised. Plus, it could sometimes produce situations where a trigger-happy PC attacks someone who wasn’t actually a threat to them. “A shape comes out of the doorway.” “Fuck! I shoot them!” “OK, you just shot the cleaning lady.” Very Coen Brothers/Tarantino.
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This is awesome. I’ve been looking for something to add to my WoDu game that doesn’t break narrative flow but still provides some structure for OSR addled brains. Here’s how I’ve adapted it:
SPEED: Characters are ranked by Speed to define the Initiative Order. When it is unclear who should act next, the players and DM can consult this ranked list. Additionally, Initiative Order can be used to identify which player rolls for the party. Speed is mainly impacted by armor and weapons and follows Very Fast > Fast > Normal > Slow.
This is the coolest initiative system I have heard of and I love it.
OK, I’ve made a panoptical of this with some analysis in it. I haven’t looked into the various (in-/)compatibilities because I don’t think they are decisive. By posting it here I am hoping that some of you will spot something or just will find it fun to push the analyze further.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yETLa6pU0NWe29DCCZX5IoxlABmuxcDE/view?usp=sharing
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Another method to list for completeness’s sake, one of the simplest: no initiative.
Classic Traveller does this for personal combat. Everyone declares movement, and then it’s resolved, everyone moves to their new positions. Then, everyone declares their attacks; everyone rolls to hit, and then after that, damage is applied to everyone simultaneously. Even if you can take out an enemy in one hit, the enemy will get a return strike before going down.
In the fiction, everything is understood to happen all at once. In practice, everyone takes turns declaring their actions (people aren’t all talking over one another). The rules don’t give much guidance on how to handle situations where this creates unfair advantages. The spirit of Traveller is to fall back on the players’ sense of fair play, an implied repertoire of wargame techniques (like writing down orders in secret and then revealing them together), and when all else fails, the Referee’s common sense.
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Hello,
That would be : each round for every actor, action type phases : movement > attack hidden progressive reveal : can change your mind… or not, adjudicated, short actions, narrative on another scale, can change mind until satisfied, equal speech opportunities + simultaneous damage phase being the new thing here. Thank you !
I have trouble picking an option in the “action ordering” and “action planning” columns for this system. That’s because it’s unclear when to use simultaneous reveal, and to what extent you can change your mind. A clear tilting point would be useful, least it’s done on a “get on with it” basis. Maybe it’s a “… can change your mind to react” after all, with a penalty of “no planning” for abusers. As with all arbitration principles, by formulating it, you lose nothing worth keeping.
No one mentioned the shot clock with Feng Shui, which marries initiative to the number of actions in a turn. I remember seeing on various boards it wasn’t a selling point for some, but my table always enjoyed it.
I tried to do a homebrew system once, in a similar way where initiative was tied to your Spotlight, and you used Spotlight to make your dice pools during your turn. Highest value goes first. Use as much or as little to make multiple actions, or ‘pass’ at any point for the next highest value, and play continues until all Spotlight is used. There was a lot more fiddly bits that didn’t quite get things off the ground, but I always liked that idea and think there’s something there conceptually anyway
At least Rickard did on June 2019. On the table it’s considered an elaborate action cost.
What would be the cost ? the currency is the very initiative stat. And it’s linked to other things like range.
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I like the idea of declaring a number of actions in advance (a’la Burning Wheel). This reflects better the chaos of battle (sword- or word-based one) as you tend to commit to certain sequence of actions and have to live with the consequences of your choices. It’s kinda like running: you commit to a path and can’t simply reverse your trajectory on a whim.
I also like another system which I don’t think was mentioned in this thread. I call it initiative through recovery. The basic idea is that your initial start order is whatever you like the most, but what happens next depends on the recovery time of the action taken. Your actions are no longed taking a single slot and time is divided into much smaller parts. You can make it as simple or as complex as you feel like it too. You want the time it takes to recover from the action to depend on your skill or attribute? You can. You want all actions to take, say, 1-6 slots each? That’s fine too.
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Sorry not sorry to resurrect: in the age of fast paced social networks I value forum threads such as this one to be a deposit of knowledge.
It looks like a designer followed this same question:
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I know that the Troika! initiative system has been mentioned previously in this thread but I think that Revolution Comes to the Kingdom adapts this to great effect.
It works really well for stealth procedures, producing some suitably tense moments in play.
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That looks really nice! A well put-together ruleset. I like this handling of initiative, as well; it would be interesting to try in practice.
How have you seen it in action with stealth procedures?
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Yeah, playing session six of an ongoing campaign later today!
There have been a couple of combat encounters where there hasn’t been a shot fired and guards have been disarmed, but if the initiative draw had gone differently it could have been a very different situation.
The stealth stuff works really well. There’s quite a push-your-luck element to it, which is suitably tense. Especially when coupled with the Squad mechanics. It does capture the feel of a sneaking about in like, Metal Gear Solid or something.
I think that @Coalhada gives an overview of it in an episode of Fear of a Black Dragon from about a year ago.
https://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/fear-of-a-black-dragon/revolution-comes-to-the-kingdom
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Other options from the old days
Runequest had a calculated strike rank (SR) based upon your size, your dexterity, weapon length. Taller people and longer weapons had a lower SR because of their reach. In a melee round you count up from SR1 to SR12 for the 12 seconds in a round and people go at their SR. Readied missile weapons go at your DEX SR, spells go at your DEX SR+1 per point of Power put into the spell, because gathering POW takes time. It was brilliant for tactical, round by round combat. Drawing a weapon took 5SR and you could use some SR up in moving.
Champions gave every character a speed characteristic, and that determined how many actions you could have in a 12 action round. Your actions were divided up evenly, so if you had 3 actions you would go in 4, 8 and 12. If you had 6 actions you would go in 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 etc.
Some PbtA games (e.g. the version of Uncharted Worlds I got) don’t have round by round initiative, you just roll for the result of the combat and then GM and player narrate the relevant bits of the result depending upon how the score looked.
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One initiative option that is fairly rare, but I kinda like it is the initiative checklist. I can’t remember where I found it so I just improvised an example here. I remember it had a clever solution to having multiple combatants, I just can’t remember what it was.
Go down the list from top to bottom, verify if you fulfil earlier tiers than your opponents, if that’s the case you go before them. If you’re at the same tier, drill down the list until you find a tier either combatant is not fulfilling.
- You are ready for combat, weapons drawn, spell books at the ready.
- You are aware of your opponent
- Your reach is longer than theirs.
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