Initiative: Evolutions in design

[Umbran]

First, this sounds like a cool idea.

My understanding is that this initiative scheme was first developed for FATE (which officially uses a "highest Notice/Empathy skill"), and I tried it in an Atomic Robo arc with my players, and they liked it a great deal there. I think I first saw it used in a GUMSHOE steampunk-action variant, and in that it led to nicely cinematic action, with fewer "wasted" actions - fewer times that initiative order blocks someone's action, or makes it moot. It also completely gets rid of the question of how holding action works, as it flows naturally from the system.

Since I want my Ashen Stars game to have similar cinematic flow to its action, it seems like a good fit.

 

[GMMichael]

So I must have missed it. What is a non-initiative system? One way or another everyone needs to take turns. Now those turns might resolve simultaneously, but there are still turns.

What about a semi-initiative system? I use a system like this:

- Turns exist, but only to provide priority in near-simultaneous actions
- You can act at any time, but only on your turn do you definitely get to preempt those quicker than you
- You have a fixed number of actions each round, so -when- to use them becomes important

This puts less emphasis on when your turn is, and more emphasis on when you use your actions. Interestingly, the GM can still use a standard initiative chart to track this.

 

[Lord Twig]

What about a semi-initiative system? I use a system like this:

- Turns exist, but only to provide priority in near-simultaneous actions
- You can act at any time, but only on your turn do you definitely get to preempt those quicker than you
- You have a fixed number of actions each round, so -when- to use them becomes important

This puts less emphasis on when your turn is, and more emphasis on when you use your actions. Interestingly, the GM can still use a standard initiative chart to track this.

I see what your saying, but it seems more work than it's worth. But just to make sure...

An example. Four players and one bad guy. Order is 1, 2, 3, bg, 4.

First round.

Turn one:
1: I want to shoot the bad guy!
2: Me too!
3: Me too!
4: And me!
GM: Ok and the bad guy wants to shoot you guys. I guess 1 goes first.
1: Okay, I hit. (damage is done, etc.)

Still turn one:
GM: Ok. Now...
2: I shoot!
3: Me too!
4: Me too!
1: I'll shoot too! I still have an action left.
GM: Ok, the bad guy want to shoot you guys too...

I assumed you would just go to the second player's turn if there was still a conflict? Or do you go by highest Dex (or Empathy, or Moxy, or arbitrary go-first-stat, or whatever)? But how is that better?

I mean, I'm sure that sometimes people just want to move or might volunteer to go after some one else because of the action they are taking, but it is a lot of negotiation for each turn. Or maybe someone will save all their actions until everyone else has used all of their's so they get several moves in a row, but how does that make sense from a verisimilitude perspective?
Why would that character suddenly be able to do a bunch of things while no one else can react? Or what if two people want to wait till everyone else used their turns? Do you force the faster person to go first? Or the slower? Or do they both just lose their turns?

Sorry this is a little longer than I expected, but I don't quite understand how this would work. Or what the benefit of it would be.

 

[GMMichael]

First round.

Turn one:
1: I want to shoot the bad guy!
2: Me too!
3: Me too!
4: And me!
GM: Ok and the bad guy wants to shoot you guys. I guess 1 goes first.
1: Okay, I hit. (damage is done, etc.)

Still turn one:
GM: Ok. Now...
2: I shoot!
3: Me too!
4: Me too!
1: I'll shoot too! I still have an action left.
GM: Ok, the bad guy want to shoot you guys too...

You nailed it!

Well, sort of. You're right about the moving and attacking other opponents making it more interesting. Another factor that makes it more interesting is finite defenses; defending uses an action. I use another rule that helps, which basically amounts to momentum: if you use multiple actions to do the same thing, then you get to keep the roll/contest that you like best. You can only do this on your turn.

Yes, after the first player's turn it goes to the second. He can act if he has actions, or he can pass, or he gets skipped if he doesn't have actions. Note that the second player's actions would preempt the first player's actions while it's the second player's turn (another reason to wait).

I let my players choose what attribute best decides their ability to act quickly.

Why would that character suddenly be able to do a bunch of things while no one else can react? Or what if two people want to wait till everyone else used their turns? Do you force the faster person to go first? Or the slower? Or do they both just lose their turns?

That's just it: everyone CAN react. But in studying, we learn that man is mortal, and can only do so much - hence the action limit.

If you wait until everyone uses their turns, you can push your turn back, or simply just save your actions (but they don't carry into the next round). If two people are doing this (in order to have...the last laugh?) I would give first choice to the PC with the higher initial initiative, or make them roll off as a last resort. A better reason to push your turn back is to take the highest initiative in the next round - giving yourself a slight edge in future action resolution. Effectively, the price for doing this is to completely give up your turn (but not your actions) for one round.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Little bit of a necro, but I'd like to see how your action-pacing initiative is coming along. Mine has survived a few versions with, as far as I can tell, very little modification. And then there are the usual complaints about turn-based initiative, as voiced by LindyBeige:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLzzh7AuEBkEnAr1Ic5LKbJbvBq2BzVTGr&v=_P7iSbnd4WU
Short version: turn-based initiative is broken.

I still haven't nailed down how I want to make it work, but I've had a couple more thoughts.

The biggest thought is that I don't like how initiative generally encourages acting at the first possibility. That isn't what I see in the cinematic action I'd like to model. Not only do you have characters pausing to taunt each other, negotiate, or just catch their breaths, but you also have opponents just circling around looking for openings, or even standing there waiting for someone to make the first move, even though violence is a foregone conclusion. It seems like, often, letting (or forcing) the other person take the initiative is at least as desireable.

By contrast, in most games, there is little reason not to act as fast and as often as you can.

So outside of the game, what consideration is being represented in the cinematic action (loosely modeled on the real world) of waiting for your opponent to go first? (Not a rhetorical question--feel free to offer suggestions!)

One that I can think of is that striking first in an engagement forces you to tip your hand as to what sort of strike you are doing, allowing your opponent to determine how best to defend, counter-attack, etc. If you are really good, you might not care. Just go first because you'll take them out before they have a chance to do anything. If you are more equally matched, you need every advantage you can get.

By contrast, going first provides an obvious advantage (and not the one you might be thinking) in that it allows you to dictate the initial conditions of the combat. Are you striking your opponent directly, trying to grab a hold of them, bullrush them, etc. Any of those choices will limit what your opponent's choice of effective responses are.

So it seems the main consideration is that acting first allows you to take decisive control of elements of the combat (and potentially end it before it has gotten started with a knockout or killing blow), while waiting for the opponent to make the first move allows you to respond more effectively by customizing your response to his action.

It seems that a system that differentiates the interaction of various maneuvers, and makes some responses mechanically superior versus some actions, will provide a mechanical framework that would support this sort of narrative.

This could be done either through a set of hard-coded actions and reactions, or just through a free-form adjudication style--either can accomplish them same thing, depending on your system.

What other reasons might encourage someone to wait to react rather than aggressively act in an impending conflict?

The other thought is that I really need a way to make sure I don't have to be thinking ahead and trying to predict the future. Since these engagements are happening simultaneously in the fiction, but we are seeing sequential parts of them that may be longer than a traditional "round" of initiative, it can be difficult to determine how to switch between them without having a defined round, and yet still have each character ready to potentially switch engagements when needed. And then the additional consideration is that I don't want this to be a subsystem--I want it to be part of an overall scene pacing system. I think that last part is going to be the easiest once I get the other part figured out.

What I might have to do is find a way of determining "significant moments" which are when you cut away to another exchange. Then I need to figure out how these significant moments relate to each other. It's worth noting that I don't have to have each engagement take up the same amount of time. Fuzzy pacing works here.

Thoughts on that? (See my initial post for examples of what I mean about switching engagements.)

Hm, I see... Then my answer is that no components need to be involved, that none are necessary for any part of a role-playing experience, that all are completely superfluous, and that no challenges arise in the absence of any sort of initiative system.

I looked at Dungeon World. Its "initiative" seems similar in some ways to how I do things, but feels a bit more gamey (narrativist/gamist hybrid, which I don't see many examples of outside of 4e D&D) than I'm going for.

Could you provide some examples (just make something up) of the sort of completely free-form play you are describing? In some initial playtests of early elements of this system I used completely free-form initiative, but that was in contests versus only two characters. When you throw in more creatures I think the GM could benefit from some sort of more structured rules, which is what I'm going for.

 

[chaochou]

The biggest thought is that I don't like how initiative generally encourages acting at the first possibility. That isn't what I see in the cinematic action I'd like to model.

From this, and from your opening post, I think you may have more luck looking at some kind of bidding mechanism for initiative. That is to say, players have a set number of bennies and can wager them for initiative over the course of combat. Perhaps with ways of spending, losing and winning them.

That kind of idea, if coupled with a suitable combat system, will give initiative a natural ebb and flow as well as a potentially interesting decision space for players.

Not only do you have characters pausing to taunt each other, negotiate, or just catch their breaths, but you also have opponents just circling around looking for openings, or even standing there waiting for someone to make the first move, even though violence is a foregone conclusion. It seems like, often, letting (or forcing) the other person take the initiative is at least as desireable.

If you want these things to be decisions, rather than narrated as colour after the fact, then you need a system in which active defense and counterattack can be more effective than hit as hard as possible in an attritional race to 0 hp.

The Riddle of Steel is the closest I've seen to it, but that's very hard to obtain these days.

A system like HeroWars allows players to bring any and all skills to bear to win contests, with combat simply representing another contest. So you can use intimidate or taunt or balance as the basis for a roll in a fight, provided you narrate a plausible use. That uses a system of points pools and bids on actions to determine outcomes.

 

[Psikerlord#]

It becomes important when someone is incapacitated or killed to know when exactly that happened. If Bargle the wizard is hit before casting his spell it is ruined. If Jacko the thief takes an arrow to the eye and is killed, then he won't be attacking.

Additionally, you can get focus fire issues using whole side initiative where the players sort out their turns - the PCs all swamp and destroy the focused target on their turn. The monsters then respond in kind, focus firing one PC. It can be a bit predictable and you don't feel like there is "chaos" to the battle.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Reading this thread reminded me of another one where an initiative deck came up as an idea. I REALLY like that idea - each PC gets a card, so do monsters. You draw a card and that person takes their turn. It has more of a surprise factor than rolling an tallying up an intiative board, since no-one know who will be the next card drawn. I think ideally keep it simple with no modifiers to init/the cards, everyone has an equal chance (I guess you could give a guy with special speed, or init feat, or something 2 cards instead of one, etc?).

Currently for our d&d variant game we roll init every round, and everyone rolls. So you get a bit of chaos round to round. There is a limited delay or ready action option - you have to take your opportunity when it comes, or you go last. We are playing online, which makes cards a bit difficult, but I would rather move to an initiative deck. Hmm possibly I can do this on roll20 actually, from memory they have a deck function.

 

[Vaslov]

Another initiative system worth adding to the discussion is from Clockwork Dominion. I have never used this before myself so I likely will not get the details correct. There are free quick start rules if anyone wants to read up on it.

Each player is dealt 4 cards. They discard one and keep the other three. Each card has two numbers on it, one ranging between -5 and +5 and the other ranging 0 to 100. Looking at the first number, using the second number to break ties, players with the higher value go first, if they want. Or they can wait.

Once the acting character is identified they then declare their action. If the action does not impact another character the action happens and the card is turned over. Rinse and repeat. If the action does affects another character(s) then the play moves to what is called an exchange. Characters impacted by the exchange can then turn over their initiative cards to react. Reactions in the system can range from counter attacks to defensive moves. There are even options to interrupt the acting characters turn by turning over multiple initiative cards giving the interrupting character a full action before the acting characters turn. The gamemaster has a slightly different set of rules to help prevent overload on the number of cards they need to manage for npcs.

If anyone has experience actually using the system it would be great to hear what their thoughts on it are. I have some concerns about the complexity of the rules and game flow. That said, the idea will keep all players looking for "what can I do" at every moment and gets rid of some of the "it's not my turn" distractions that occur at gaming tables.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Additionally, you can get focus fire issues using whole side initiative where the players sort out their turns - the PCs all swamp and destroy the focused target on their turn. The monsters then respond in kind, focus firing one PC. It can be a bit predictable and you don't feel like there is "chaos" to the battle.

The oldest editions of D&D maintained the chaos of melee combat by determining targets randomly. Once engaged in melee combat neither the PCs nor the monsters could select specific targets, all damage was applied to nearby foes haphazardly. Most people probably house ruled target selection effectively eliminating the element that provided the chaos.