No Initiative Order: How Do You Do It?

I've played several variant initiatives...
As noted elsewhere today, FFG Star Wars has slots for each side, but no individual owns a given slot; their side does. Flexible within that. Jackals has different numbers involved, but otherwise works the same. players often discuss who goes when.

Cortex Plus games generally have whomever goes pick who goes next, provided there's someone left to go. Marvel heroic and Firefly do likewise. 2d20 sets a caveat: spend points to go again, or to pass to an ally.

Sentinel Comics is slightly less restrictive. The player can pick any other NPC or minion group that hasn't gone. (And Unity allows for making PC controlled minions.).

So, I've also done a lot of T&T... everything is simultaneous within step. Generally, I've used DX to set declaration sequence... but resolution is simultaneous. Never been a big issue.

In all such games, players have connived to do things in best order, and I've encouraged that.

I expect in Daggerheart that the tokens for spotlights to work similarly, so SC, CP/MHRP/FF and 2d20 players won't have a big issue... it's one step less controlled... but the big difference is NPCs... NPCs needing a player to roll fear, or the GM to spend a fear, to get their action... so, a bit more chaotic. And the only reason I see to use it with my groups? fairness.

Reynard said:

I wanted to spin this out of the Daggerheart + thread... and besides, more games than Daggerheart use this sort of system.

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Unfortunately, not being familiar with Daggerheart, and not having waded through 18+ pages of that thread to figure out what the reference is, I don't know what you mean by "this sort of system". I will take a stab at it without that refereence, then - it might even be valuable to do so! But, if it means I write a bunch of stuff everyone else knows, because they know Daggerheart, my apologies.

Reynard said:

When the game does not ask for "initiative order" and players and GMs are meant to share and pass the spotlight, how do you do it?

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So, starting with the point that, even if the game says everything happens at once, or does not ask for an initiative order, as a practical matter human players at a table actually need to resolve things one at a time, in some order.

The most common approach I know of is "popcorn initiative" (also known as "Elective Action Order initiative" or "Balsera style initiative" or "hand-off initiative"), which is common in Fate variants, Gumshoe variants, and some Cortex-driven games. I think it may have first appeared in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, so has been around for a bit more than a decade, and was first suggested by Leonard Balsera.

In this system, when action starts, we choose someone to start the order - typically this is the first person who actually declared an action, but it may be chosen by the GM, or maybe you have an initiative roll. When the player finishes their turn, they simply choose who goes next. When all actors in the scene/encounter have gone, the last in the previous round picks the first person for the next round.

There's some strategy to work with there, in that if your enemy is the last to go, they can choose themselves to go first in the next round, getting two rounds of actions before the PCs can respond, which is often undesirable. This system allows players to plan cinematic and tactical maneuvers of the form, "I will do X, then you can do Y" with much greater facility than random order allows.

I have a set of cards to help players track who has and hasn't gone in a round: Turn Tracker Initiative Cards - Amazing Rando Design | DriveThruCards.com

I've also seen another way of handing resolution, in Deathmatch Island, but that game puts the focus on resolving conflicts, rather than individual tasks/rounds of action.

Reynard said:

What are your experiences at the table with different kinds of groups (as in, cons versus long term play groups and veterans versus newbs and so on)?

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I haven't had any problems in using popcorn initiative. I don't usually use it in D&D, in games in which initiative results determine the number of actions you get in a round, or games in which PCs have spent a lot of build resources on being good at traditional initiative. There are ways to convert games, but I haven't been in a situation where that'd be a significant improvement.

Reynard said:

How do you feel about "no initiative order" play? Does it work for you? Is it better? Worse? Just different? than traditional turn order initiative?

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Mostly just different, perhaps a little better in many circumstances. It allows for players to set up combinations of actions more reliably, which is a lot of fun.

Umbran said:

Unfortunately, not being familiar with Daggerheart, and not having waded through 18+ pages of that thread to figure out what the reference is, I don't know what you mean by "this sort of system".

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Good point. I will update the OP with the initiative rules, such as they are, from the SRD.

Reynard said:

I wanted to spin this out of the Daggerheart + thread just to stop gumming up the works for @overgeeked and besides, more games than Daggerheart use this sort of system.

So:

When the game does not ask for "initiative order" and players and GMs are meant to share and pass the spotlight, how do you do it? What are your experiences at the table with different kinds of groups (as in, cons versus long term play groups and veterans versus newbs and so on)?

How do you feel about "no initiative order" play? Does it work for you? Is it better? Worse? Just different? than traditional turn order initiative?

ETA: As @Umbran pointed out, I did not actually define the DH initiative system, such that it is. Here is the text from the SRD:
---------
Daggerheart’s turns don’t follow a traditional, rigid format:
there is no explicit initiative mechanic and characters don’t
have a set number of actions they can take or things they can
do before the spotlight passes to someone else. A player with
the spotlight describes what their character does and the
spotlight simply swings to whoever:
A. the fiction would naturally turn it toward
B. hasn’t had the focus in a while, or
C. a triggered mechanic puts it on

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We recently played a Dungeon World game where we decided that to make sure one particular player wasn’t stepping on others’ toes, or taking over the game, and we just did a special token with two colors. You flipped it from green to red when you took your turn, but anyone could go in any order but you didn’t go again til everyone reset their tokens. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, and there was no issues.

I'm partial to simultaneous initiative. Have the players all declare what they want to do at the start of the round. Make choices for the enemies as well. Tell everyone to roll their stuff at once but not say the result until prompted. Then 'run the tape' of the turn.

I resolve in order based on action type. Usually

1) Missiles
2) Melee
3) Movement
4) Spells

Actions of the same type happen simultaneously. So if you and an enemy both attack in melee, you both roll to hit and damage, even if the attack kills one combatant. But if you attack with a missile and kill a target, they die without getting to move.

If you do multiple things it takes place at the slowest speed. So if you move and attack, that takes place on step 3.

The main benefits are
-Easy for the players to coordinate tactics
-But, not too 'board gamey', and the uncertainty ime speeds things up because it is harder to work out a single optimal choice
-Feels more realistic for chaotic combat imo
-Easy with theater of the mind. With turn initiative, I find I have to explain the situation anew to every player, as they don't pay as much attention when it isn't their turn. But with actions declared all at once, you just answer questions once per round.

The drawbacks
-The players need to trust you're not changing enemy action declarations to mess with them
-Can become challenging to manage with larger combats
-Takes players some time to get used to

It generally requires more GM skill and trust than traditional initiative.

Ruin Explorer said:

2) Situational awareness. I think in general DMs tend to be focused more on achieving awareness of the entire situation than players are. Most players will have an idea what the other players are doing but frequently, in my experience, it's kind of a foggy one, where they know exactly the cool stuff that PC #3 just did was, but if you question them, they're not entirely sure what PC#1 was doing. This is partly an experience thing but it's also a mindset thing, and I think it's separate from experience with moving the spotlight.

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On top of this, DMs are the keepers of the shared fiction because they need to adjudge how the impacts affect everything outside of the direct player’s action; and are updating that model constantly to define the play space for reaction or next steps in their head. Before a player does something, they’re likely going to ask a quick confirming question or two anyway - like “hey did you say that…” or “can I get to..” or whatever.

I honestly prefer not to manage a combat without some initiative order. I have found in a variety of systems that do this, that some players just don't get to do as much. That's been my experience with my own groups of friends, and at Con games.

I ran Daggerheart as written for a test session and this was one of the problems we had with it. Here's what I intend to do:

I give out an action token to each player. When they act, they spend the token. When everyone is spent, you grab back your token.

• If a character starts a combat, they get to go first.
• When a player acts they can hand off their action to another character to act. In this case, they hand their token to that player.
• If an player rolls an action with Hope, another player acts unless I seize the spotlight as the GM.
• If the acting player rolls with Fear, I get to go next and activate my bad guy (typically by spending Fear). When I'm done, a player still with an action token acts.
• If I want to, I can spend Fear to seize the spotlight and go next.

When everyone has spent their tokens, I do "cleanup" for things with durations, count down any clocks, and also do a narration. Players take their tokens back. If they handed the token to another player, they have to act in the next "round" (a term Daggerheart doesn't use but one that should be familiar to RPG players). You can only hand off your action every other "round."

Most of those rules are as Daggerheart uses them, this is just designed to keep everyone involved in the conflict.

Reynard said:

How do you feel about "no initiative order" play? Does it work for you? Is it better? Worse? Just different? than traditional turn order initiative?

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I recently had a game fall apart because one individual couldn't stop hogging the spotlight, even when confronted about it. It is not the first time I have had this experience. I have also had a problem of timid players that need to be begged to give input when it's not their initiative turn.

Based on these experiences, I have little to no interest in these "no order" systems. Social management is a key part of game rules.

Am I correct in interpreting that the "no initiative order" here specifically refers to initiative order in combat for RPGs with combat?

Assuming that the answer to my Q is "yes," it does make me wonder why the issue of initiative order comes up for combat specifically. I wonder if it's cultural baggage from DND. Or I wonder if there is something fundamentally different about combat vs non-combat situation.

Sorry if this is off-topic. Please feel free to direct me to a different thread if this is discussed elsewhere.

definiteFreakyFishGuy said:

Am I correct in interpreting that the "no initiative order" here specifically refers to initiative order in combat for RPGs with combat?

Assuming that the answer to my Q is "yes," it does make me wonder why the issue of initiative order comes up for combat specifically. I wonder if it's cultural baggage from DND. Or I wonder if there is something fundamentally different about combat vs non-combat situation.

Sorry if this is off-topic. Please feel free to direct me to a different thread if this is discussed elsewhere.

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No, I think it's a good point. Most social situations or exploration scenes aren't run in an initiative sequence.

Personally when I GM a more free-flowing game that doesn't have initiative, I effectively become the director of the action. I might ask the players to give a loose statement of intent at the start of the scene, or let players jump in when they see fit, or pick on a particular player to go next. I'm conscious of screen time and if one person has been in the background lately I'll call them to the forefront.

Quite often a particular sequence just 'makes sense' - like player A is at the head of the patrol so they go first, then it's player B who's trying to suppress the ambushers to the East, then it's player C who wants to call in radio support, etc.