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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rune" data-source="post: 8400238" data-attributes="member: 67">I agree with all of this generally, but will add that Dungeon World doesn’t have to lack tactics. It’s just that those tactics have to be established narratively.With regard to the disconnect in D&D (especially WotC-era D&D), I think there are two main culprits:1. An emphasis on grid-based play (present in the rules, even if used in theater-of-the-mind). Things like specific movement speeds and opportunity-attack-safe-zones overemphasize the importance of positioning in my experience. It certainly doesn’t preclude players from taking a more narrative approach to positioning, but it seems to me (consistently across multiple groups) to steer their thinking toward a desire for precise positioning, in order to get the most out of the movement and opportunity-attack rules.My proposed solution: exact positioning and especially movement speed don’t matter until they matter. If the character can reach where they need to, they do. If they need to outrun someone, or catch them, movement speed will matter. If they want to hold a position, describe how much of it they can threaten. If they want to dance around several enemies, describe which ones get opportunity attacks. All of this can flow from the narrative, instead of a grid.2. Cyclical turn-based initiative. Both elements contribute to the narrative/mechanical disconnect. The consistent cyclical structure seems to me to be the more egregious, but the two are both intricately intertwined. Once the cycle is set, predictable patterns emerge (at the expense of dynamic narrative).One could say (as the rules do*) that the entire round is meant to represent simultaneous combat with ordered resolutions. But that isn’t really true. The mechanics make quite clear that all of a character’s turn happens before the next’s begins. How do we know? Because the rules allow for (expect) a character to move up to their entire speed, attack multiple times, and kill the other (as just one common example).Does the second character get a chance to move out of the way? Run away? Land even a single blow? Nope. Dead, before even taking a step. That’s not simultaneous in any sense, and the narrative can't make it so.My proposed solution: Initiative only matters when it matters. Most of the time, it won’t matter. When you really do need to find out whose movement or action happens before someone else’s, contest initiative like any other ability check. 5e is actually built pretty well for this and there’s plenty of leeway to find a comfort spot, here. Some people prefer to lean heavily into the narrative and away from action economy. Others prefer to keep the action economy unchanged (I tend toward this end). It works.Importantly, it looks to the narrative to determine if the check is going to happen, and then to the check to determine the narrative outcome. Cyclical initiative can’t do that; it is entirely prescriptive.* Or not. I can’t find any mention of it in either the PHB or the DMG. At least not in any appropriately related section. This assumption might just be a holdover from previous editions – in two of which it was also manifestly not true.</blockquote>

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