A question about Chaosium Basic Role Playing Initiative

[Jd Smith1]

I get the concept: If you move around, that delays your future actions within the combat sequence. Actually rather realistic.

I imagine it works OK in fantasy, but in a setting with firearms, there will be more movement.

But how do you keep track of it? Bob has the high DEX, but he moves to get a flanking shot, dropping his DEX count, and basically stopping him and letting others go.

Given that the system is pretty deadly, you're not going to want to just stand in the open and shoot it out, so it sounds as if the bookkeeping of the order of actions is going to be a major hassle.

Anyone have any insight on this?

 

[aramis erak]

Last time I ran it, BRP was still using Strike Ranks, not Dex..... but looking at BRP 4E (what I've got that's not using SRs)... from a mechanistic standpoint...
1) keep your NPCs in 2 or 3 different dex scores. Makes it easier.
2) modern tactical shooting is highly mobile, but seldom continuous movement; the 5m without penalty is an aggregate 1 m per 2.5 sec... so it's plenty for the step out, snap, and move back to cover.
3) given the 5 dex ranks between attacks, set your NPCs to 5 points apart... If your elites are 17, have the rank and file at 12.

Knowing you stick to VTTs, I'd honestly suggest a spreadsheet in another window (or even on a separate device.
6 or so columns... Assuming row 2

Name	Dex	Penalty level	Action 1 On	Action 2 on	Action 3 on
			=round(B2/max(1,b3),0)	=max(D2-5,0)	=max(e2-5,0)

protect the header row.
once you have everyone's action level in, select all rows ecept the header, sort descending on col D.
End of round, sort descending on B, to get declaration order.
Penalty level: 0 is no penalty, 1 is also no penalty; 2 is half, 3 is 1/3, 4 is 1/4, and so on.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Last time I ran it, BRP was still using Strike Ranks, not Dex..... but looking at BRP 4E (what I've got that's not using SRs)... from a mechanistic standpoint...
1) keep your NPCs in 2 or 3 different dex scores. Makes it easier.
2) modern tactical shooting is highly mobile, but seldom continuous movement; the 5m without penalty is an aggregate 1 m per 2.5 sec... so it's plenty for the step out, snap, and move back to cover.
3) given the 5 dex ranks between attacks, set your NPCs to 5 points apart... If your elites are 17, have the rank and file at 12.

Knowing you stick to VTTs, I'd honestly suggest a spreadsheet in another window (or even on a separate device.
6 or so columns... Assuming row 2

Name	Dex	Penalty level	Action 1 On	Action 2 on	Action 3 on
			=round(B2/max(1,b3),0)	=max(D2-5,0)	=max(e2-5,0)

protect the header row.
once you have everyone's action level in, select all rows ecept the header, sort descending on col D.
End of round, sort descending on B, to get declaration order.
Penalty level: 0 is no penalty, 1 is also no penalty; 2 is half, 3 is 1/3, 4 is 1/4, and so on.

Actually, on mulling it over, I'm just going to make a permanent Initiative roster, with each PC be listed at the five marks, so all I have to do is plug in the NPCs (whom I use group initiatives for).