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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeff Wilder" data-source="post: 4605337" data-attributes="member: 5122">Did they fix it?  I think my copy of Deadlands is first edition, and whomever created the table for spell effects had a seriously warped idea of the relative frequency of poker hands.  Even considering the possibility of drawing extra cards, hucksters' magic would fail most of the time.I created an initiative system using cards, once.  My players were afraid to even playtest it, so I have no idea how it would have gone.  Lemme see if I can dig up the email (it was over five years ago).Here we go:I was thinking about the 3E initiative system and what I liked about it and didn't like about it, and it struck me that one thing I don't like about it is its predictability.  A goes, then B goes, then C goes, then A goes, then B goes ... it's not very cinematic.  There's no "ebb and flow" to battles.For instance, I was watching Spider-Man last night, and in the climactic battle with Green Goblin, the Goblin just PUNISHES Spider-Man.  Beats the living hell out of him, without Spider-Man having much of a chance to respond ... until the tide turns, and Spider-Man beats the living hell out of the Goblin.  A LOT of cinematic fights go this way, and it's a pretty cool dramatic technique.So I was trying to figure out how to do it in 3E.  What if the first round of combat went normal, and after that every four rounds or so was randomized?  IE, each participant would have four index cards in the mix, instead of one, and they'd be shuffled together.Think about it ... it's POSSIBLE that your PC would be able to act 4 times in a row without the villain being able to respond.  (And vice versa, of course, though in party-on-one fights it's very highly unlikely NOBODY would get a chance at the villain during his rampage.)  If the villain gets his actions in early, you have to suffer through them, but you do so in the knowledge that soon things are gonna change and you'll get YOUR turn.  Similarly, if you get all your actions in, and don't quite put the bad guy down, there's a lot of dramatic tension involved as you wait to see how he bounces back.What do y'all think?This has the potential for a billion unforeseen implications, so it's not something I'm advocating switching to.  But would y'all be up for giving it a try sometime in one of our games' battles, just once or twice, to see how it plays?Actually, the easiest way to do it would be to use a deck of playing cards, and assign each participant one rank (Ace through King), then shuffle and draw the cards in order.  Either unused ranks could be set aside, or the DM could use an unused rank as a signal to pause for some description or to bring the environment into the battle.Hmmm.  This could really be a cool system, especially for a super-heroes genre game.</blockquote>

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