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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 9779026" data-attributes="member: 1465">Interesting thoughts.Keeping in mind that not all players are the same, therefore there is no solution which works for everyone at the same table, here are also some thoughts of mine.1) Procedural segmentation has the benefit of making combat simpler in a few ways. First of all, it establishes that everyone actually has a turn, which is not at all established in other phases of the game! There are in fact plenty of players who struggle to significantly participate outside of combat, not least because there might be other players with a dominating personality, always makes decisions without leaving enough room for others. At least with sequential combat, everyone is guaranteed to have a turn, and for that turn to be equal to others' turns. Second, it makes resolution very simple: player acts, DM resolves.But indeed there can be problems with sequential initiative because the most tactical players will want to maximise the outputs from their turn, and won't accept to be told to make decisions quickly, and a DM forcing them to make decisions within a certain time can be perceived as very disrespectful or even hostile; more carefree players are done with their turn quickly and spend most of the time waiting for others. 2) Complexity in any aspect of the game makes things worse... Having 20 spells to choose from obviously slows the turn down. Having a complex action economy is even worse, which is why I generally prefer games which give you one action + move. Already when you start having a secondary action (like 5e bonus actions) you get players wasting time trying to figure out how to "fill the bonus action slot", as the game becomes more of a matter about not wasting action resources.3) Simultaneous initiative can helpI prefer sequential initiative in general, but I also think that in case where disengaged players are a problem, it might be a good idea to try out simultaneous initiative i.e. round-based insted of turn-based: have all the players together do a "scrum" where they decide what each character does at this round, then let the DM resolve everything. This is of course very straining for the DM, because the resolution is a lot more complicated, especially if you don't want to change how other rules of combat work (such as reactions and readying actions).4) Forget about flourish descriptionsHonestly, I saw this happen hundreds of times: on the first session, the DM describes every attack narratively with the attempt of making every action colorful and diverse. By the second session, or even the second combat everybody's already bored with description after description, and just want to move on. Reserve descriptions for the killing blow, that's enough.5) Do not complicate furtherIf you think that adding more ways to interrupt someone's turn in order to engage another player, think again. To add a bit of salt here and there it can be ok, but at least I would not add rules for that, otherwise it can very much be that once again it will be those tactical players to use such rules to interrupt the turn of the less engaged players instead of the opposite.</blockquote>

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