Roll....initiative!!

[captainspud]

I got this idea from some blog or other, but couldn't find it again when I went to download them, so I made my own.

I have 1" wide "tents" for each initiative slot in my fights, which I hang over my DM screen.

Heroes get their own custom tents with their character portrait (drawn by moi!), while NPCs use generic "Bad 1" and "Ally 3" tents. (I run a 4ed superhero game, hence the art. )

I lay them out in the order they roll up. Moving them around for delays is easy, and because they're two-sided, everybody at the table can always see who's coming up when; people tend to be more ready for their turn when they have some warning that they're up next.

I also made up a dozen or so indicator tickets that I can hang over the tents to indicate "save ends" conditions (informally, we put them directly on the minis if it's an "end of next turn" effect)-- status effects, ongoing damage, and six colours of "special".

You can see the printout sheet here (warning, it's HUUUUUUUUGE):

http://www.captainspud.com/stuff/init tracker.jpg

Again: not my idea at all. Anybody remember which blog had this tip? I've looked, but there are so many...

 

[Smoke Jaguar]

I use a wet erase marker set to write down ini's, save ends, hp, and a small amount of other stuff. It is up to the PC's to remember who is marked. I do index cards over the DM screen with the PC's order to help them to know when they are almost up.

The thing I hate is sorting all the initiative rolls for monsters and PC's, espceially when it is with some 15 total. I do ini rolls with excel for all the monsters but then writing them in order with the PC's inserted drives me nuts. I feel it takes too long.