No Sam I Am, I'm not going to eat broken glass to prove I don't like it.
I mean, the moral of that story is don’t knock it till you try it. And the fact that everyone in this thread who has actually tried it has either said they like it or that it wasn’t as bad as they thought it would be but just wasn’t right for them should be an indication that this is more of a green eggs and ham situation than a Gorey alphabet situation.
That's quite different from the OP's statement of "if the specific orc you were going to hit dies, you don't get to do anything,
Well then the OP’s statement is inconsistent with the rules for Greyhawk Initiative and Speed Factor Initiative.
but still bad. I also cannot see how it makes indecisive players ANY faster.
Which is why you should try it, because it does, and if you can’t see it just from imagining it, you’ll need to actually see it from looking at it.
They have even less info to make choose their action, risk ruining not just their turn, but someone else's.
Less info to inform their choice is actually part of what makes it faster. You don’t have a ton of variables to try and account for, so you just have to pick something. And again, if you tried it, you’d see that players losing their actions is a much rarer occurrence than you think it’s going to be. Just have the players declare what action they’re going to take (Attack, Cast a Spell, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, Hide, Ready, Search, or Use an Object, or Improvise an Action). 95% of the time, what they declared will still be possible on their turn. If you’re still worried about turns being lost, do what I do and allow the players to Ready a different action instead of taking the action they declared.
So what will happen is the bossiest player in the room just tells everyone what to do.
I have never seen that happen, and even if I did, it would be very easy to put a stop to. Just put your foot down as DM. “Clara is declaring her action right now, I don’t want anyone else telling her what to do.”
The order you yell out your action matters, or the place that you sit.
Not really. Imagine you’re in the seat right of the DM. DM says, “the goblins are going to attack. Steve, what do you do?”
“I’ll attack with my longsword.”
“Ok. Clara, what do you do?”
“I’m going to cast Magic Missile.”
“Got it. Dave?”
“I’m pretty hurt, so I’m going to chug a healing potion.”
Then the DM turns to you and asks what you’re going to do. Does what everyone else declared really impact your decision all that much? I guess maybe if you’re a healer you might decide not to cast Cure Wounds on Dave after he said he’d take a potion. On the other hand, you could interject and briefly say, “Hey Dave, I can Cure Wounds you if you want to save that potion.” It’s really not all that different from discussing tactics in the standard Initiative rules, it’s just that that discussion is being held with less detailed information and isn’t interrupting the action.
Just terrible all around. You may as well be telling me that your players work better when everyone has to talk backwards.
If everyone who had actually tried having their players talk backwards either loved it or said, “it has its pros and cons, but wasn’t right for me and my group,” I’d give it a try.