D&D General Initiative Homebrew favorite.

[Lanefan]

Not bad, but I'm preferring the Sort function on a spreadsheet.

In fairness, the advantage of the clothes-peg system is that everyone at the table can see it and anyone can "operate" it.

 

[Lanefan]

For the same reason I ended up not sticking with a chart with dice tied to more specific actions. In 5e, those are the standard hit dice for monsters of those respective sizes, so this way I always know that if a monster is doing something other than attacking with a weapon or casting a spell, I always just roll one of its hit dice for its initiative. Super easy to remember and apply.

Easy to remember but really harsh on a big monster who roll 12 on its initiative*; someone rolling d4 would get at least three rolls, and therefore three actions, in before the big guy got around to doing anything.

* - I'm assuming you're counting up from 1 here for sequencing, thus a 3 goes before a 5.

Doesn’t that kinda defeat the point of even having an initiative system?

Not at all. Some things happen faster, some slower, and some at the same time.

Initiative (or more importantly, segment** tracking) is also vital if-when things take time within a round to happen. For example, your action is to move, but where exactly are you when the lightning bolt goes through your intended path.

** - and before anyone jumps in and says 5e doesn't have segments, it really does; they're just not called out as such.

Turn-by-turn action resolution does have its place, in my opinion.

As long as by random chance some of those turns can happen simultaneously, I'm on board. Otherwise, IMO it's an unnecessary over-abstraction.

 

[Charlaquin]

Easy to remember but really harsh on a big monster who roll 12 on its initiative*; someone rolling d4 would get at least three rolls, and therefore three actions, in before the big guy got around to doing anything.

* - I'm assuming you're counting up from 1 here for sequencing, thus a 3 goes before a 5.

Oh! You’re thinking creatures would declare a new action and roll again immediately after their turn? Yeah, that would definitely be unnecessarily harsh on larger creatures in that case. No, in my system everyone still only acts once per round, initiative only determines the order. So, larger creatures are much more likely to act later in the round, but they still get the same number of actions per round as everyone else (one).

 

[Andvari]

I try to minimize having a screen in front of me while DMing. If anything, I only have a PDF of the adventure or notes.

I use a screen high enough that players can't really get eye contact with me unless they stand up. And I made a simple mechanism on my custom screen where there's another screen behind it I can raise to also block that when they do. Then I wait until they sit before lowering it again. One time they waited for me to arrive for a full hour, but I was there all along behind the screen.