The Gaming Den

Mechanically, RPGs use something akin to D&D, everyone rolls initiative and go down the list in order. xWoD, Shadowrun, d20, and many more all do this. There's a little more variance in terms of how multiple actions are handled in this array; D&D clumps them together, so the fella with four actions acts four times when his initiative is called, while Shadowrun and aWoD have everyone act once in order, then a second time in the same order if they have a second action.

Depending on the group, this can be a problem. Even when attacks are resolved comparatively fast, I've seen many a player get bored in the one round wait until it's their turn again. Making victims roll does somewhat alleviate this, but at the cost of taking slightly longer to resolve and it only engages people who are being attacked.

There's actually a different way to handle this, but such methods are few and far between. Off the top of my head, the only systems that stand out are Feng Shui and Deadlands.

Deadlands hands out a certain number of cards to each player (based on initiative roll), and you go down the list of suits until someone has the card, who then spends it to make an action. Order of actions is quite random (and can clump), and players I've seen with it pay more attention because they generally can't keep track in their head of who's next (especially being as random as it is).

Feng Shui has everyone roll initiative, using that number as both order of action and number of action points. When it's someone's turn, they lower their number X amount to do something, and then it's the turn of whoever has the new highest number. Order of actions is more predictable, which can result in low-initiative folks visibly waiting awhile before they get to join the fray, but they're on par with the rest once they start acting. Everyone pays a bit of attention because of the fact how many action points (or shots for FS) is somewhat unpredictable and their own expenditure of going for multiple light actions or letting other people go several times with a big action.

Personally, I'm finding myself impressed by the immersion Feng Shui and Deadlands seeminly encourage with their respective initiative systems. Does anyone know of any other action/initiative systems? How about insights as to the possible pros and cons for each?

HERO /Champions- Fixed initiatives as attributes. In a 12 second round, each character has 1 to 12 phases on which they act. Which and how many phases is determined by a characetrs SPEED attribute compared to a chart (which can be derived the same way FF Tactics turn order works), and within a given phase order of actions is largely fixed in Dex order. It is still possible to delay your action and there are a handful of abilities which alter this slightly (lightning reflexes, block, martial throw, adjustment powers to dex/spd etc).

Teenagers From Outer Space - Seating order is turn order. Either clockwise or couterclockwise, you go around the table and each player takes their turn. While this is abusable and capricious, it is really simple to learn and keep track of and results in faster combat resolution. I'm honestly unsure if any other initiative systems' improved granularity and simulation are worth the added complexity and difficulty when compared to this.

Street Fighter requires all the characters choose actions, determine Speed (initiative order) based off of those actions, and then lock those actions in. Then in ascending order, the characters take their actions, with higher-Speed actions being able to interrupt lower-Speed actions. Characters have Abort actions so that they can change their actions after its clear they're irrelevant, but doing so incurs a cost.

Characters that act fast, interrupting everyone to get their blows in, find that they're vulnerable to slower characters.

So you're deciding what to do all at once, and then reacting.

Classic Battletech does the roll for initiative, but resolution and declaration are separate. So if you have a high roll, you get to choose your action after you've seen what the others are going to do. I liked it, but for some reason, it always bogged down seriously.

-Crissa

mean_liar wrote:Street Fighter requires all the characters choose actions, determine Speed (initiative order) based off of those actions, and then lock those actions in.

2E D&D Combat & Tactics did something similar. A creature's size and the weapon it was wielding would determine its speed (use the slower of the two). Each round was divided into speed phases (very fast, fast, average, slow, and very slow) with a sixth phase at the end if needed. You'd roll initiative per side (not per character) and that would determine which side went first each phase. A natural 1 would speed your side up one phase, and a natural 10 would slow it down a phase.

The sixth phase was used for extra things like the extra attack you get with a Scimitar of Speed or the Haste spell.

This system required each player to choose their actions at the beginning of the round and locked you into them to an extent. There were typically penalties for changing your action mid round.

never played Feng SHui but Deadlands always took too long to resolve.

The real issue is not initiative, its how long turns take in general.

Part of the problem is of course, that we now live in a world were we can get an awful lot of shit very quicly. Hell, I could order pizza while typing this post and probably get my food before somebody could respond.

The thing is, a board game is always going to have issues with turn length. You can speed it up, you can add interupts and ways of getting payers involved in parts that are not their turn.

However, except to just NOT playing any of the games minigames you are NOT going to get turns as fast as say...wow where you can input a new command every 1.5 seconds and you can MOVE any time you want.

Considering that people zone out while playing wow and go into autopilot mode because events are not transpiring fast enough game speed for a table top game should just take into account that people are getting turns at at 1-5 minute intervals. While that does occasionally suck, if people are at least considerate and the game lets people have turns that are interesting thats really the best you can hope for.

Does anyone know of a game where whoever "wins" initiative goes last, but all actions resolve simultaneously? IE, the loser has to declare their action first and anyone after that declares their action with the prior knowledge in mind, then everything happens at the same time. I feel like that would be a satisfying system.

I think L5R worked that way - you did definitely announce actions slowest to fastest, but I can't remember if the actual resolution was simultaneous or fastest to slowest (although for that matter, I'm not sure what exactly the difference between those would be).

What would be interesting is "RPS initiative", where everyone decides their action secretly (either writing it down or having some kind of tokens they could cover with their hand) and then it's all revealed at once. Actual resolution order would depend on the speed of the actions, and maybe the speed of the character.

I'm not sure how well it'd play though - it might bog things down.

I was thinking of making an initiative system like FFTactics or Front Mission where each action you take takes away from your initiative count. Whenever you fall below someone else's count it would be their turn. But that's asking for a lot out of whoever is marking down the turn order. Even simple math can get a bit hectic to keep track of on a round to round basis. And just by having that available I'd have to make abilities and feats that play around with these numbers. Now while that isn't hard it does add another layer of complexity to the game. Which I really don't mind at all but I realize that its more numbers to have to keep track of.

Ice9 wrote:I think L5R worked that way - you did definitely announce actions slowest to fastest, but I can't remember if the actual resolution was simultaneous or fastest to slowest (although for that matter, I'm not sure what exactly the difference between those would be).

What would be interesting is "RPS initiative", where everyone decides their action secretly (either writing it down or having some kind of tokens they could cover with their hand) and then it's all revealed at once. Actual resolution order would depend on the speed of the actions, and maybe the speed of the character.

I'm not sure how well it'd play though - it might bog things down.

Yeah, I have to say, I really kinda hate the declare first, resolve later systems. I find they're slow as hell.

Surgo wrote:Does anyone know of a game where whoever "wins" initiative goes last, but all actions resolve simultaneously? IE, the loser has to declare their action first and anyone after that declares their action with the prior knowledge in mind, then everything happens at the same time. I feel like that would be a satisfying system.

I mentioned Classic Battletech did this.

-Crissa

I've always liked bid systems. I can't remember the game name, but it involved samurai armies and you would hold little plastic swords as your bid for turn order each round. The more you paid for swords, the less you'd have to buy armies, so there was a trade-off of turn advantage for force advantage.

Personally, I think some kind of simultaneous resolution system is the best for RPGing, but the brainstorming I've been doing on the idea haven't born usuable fruit yet.

K wrote:I've always liked bid systems. I can't remember the game name, but it involved samurai armies and you would hold little plastic swords as your bid for turn order each round. The more you paid for swords, the less you'd have to buy armies, so there was a trade-off of turn advantage for force advantage.

Shogun is the game you're thinking of.

ANd yeah that was a cool game.

I've been running a crude home brew simultaneous resolution system for a while now.

1 action a turn.

Actions are resolved in order of declaration, but the effects of resolution are held until all declarations are over (so you roll to hit and all blocks and such are determined, but your target doesn't fall down dead until the end of the turn).

It's fairly simple really and easy enough to do.

The equivalent to initiative is the most troublesome aspect as the only advantage I can reasonably apply for being "faster" is to know what the slower characters are declaring before you declare. Which means the fastest characters actually go LAST each turn. Which freaks people out a bit.

But once you apply that it helps out with a lot of potential resolution difficulties. Like how mid turn changes in target states or the battle map work out. (if you are faster you decide which state to attack/interact with a target in of whatever states they have transitioned this turn, if slower you only get whatever you knew about at the time, etc...)

Anyway simultaneous initiative systems with just a little abstraction become not altogether hard to create. Sure people will end up simultaneously KOing each other in fights, but you know, that IS the whole point...

PhoneLobster wrote:I've been running a crude home brew simultaneous resolution system for a while now.

1 action a turn.

Actions are resolved in order of declaration, but the effects of resolution are held until all declarations are over (so you roll to hit and all blocks and such are determined, but your target doesn't fall down dead until the end of the turn).

It's fairly simple really and easy enough to do.

That sounds similar to the system used in Empire of the Petal throne, if I remember it properly.

Ice9 wrote:I think L5R worked that way - you did definitely announce actions slowest to fastest, but I can't remember if the actual resolution was simultaneous or fastest to slowest (although for that matter, I'm not sure what exactly the difference between those would be).

What would be interesting is "RPS initiative", where everyone decides their action secretly (either writing it down or having some kind of tokens they could cover with their hand) and then it's all revealed at once. Actual resolution order would depend on the speed of the actions, and maybe the speed of the character.

I'm not sure how well it'd play though - it might bog things down.

Burning Wheel does this. It definitely made combat interesting, if frustrating at times (like the enemy messing up your combo attack).

Crissa wrote:

Surgo wrote:Does anyone know of a game where whoever "wins" initiative goes last, but all actions resolve simultaneously? IE, the loser has to declare their action first and anyone after that declares their action with the prior knowledge in mind, then everything happens at the same time. I feel like that would be a satisfying system.

I mentioned Classic Battletech did this.

-Crissa

I didn't quite get from your post that everything resolved simultaneously. Cool beans.

MGuy wrote:I was thinking of making an initiative system like FFTactics.

As I alluded to before

On each segment
{
For each character
{ Turn_Count+= character-SPD
if Count >= 12 then
{ do character action;
Turn+Count -= 12 }
}
}

Is how you generate the HERO speed chart. (Although this psuedocode ignores DEX and tiebreakers)

You could theoretically do a similar system that was not based on a 12 second round so the threshold number was different and/or the decrement for taking various actions differed, but I would think such a system too complicated to use in tabletop without automated tools. I mean seriously, folks have trouble using the HERO SPD chart where it is all calculated in advance on a chart and active phases are printed on each flippin' character sheet - and even HERO players used to that get glazed over looks when I try to explain the above derivation to them. I just don't see any group I have ever played with able to track such a system with the expanded variability.

Maybe if you were gaming with a setup like Phreak's old attic where he had a DM computer and one monitor faced the players, then it would be conceivable to run it exactly like FFTactics - in that a computer handles the math and a continuously updated list of upcoming turn order is displayed for all to see.

I'm trying to decide whether I want to care about initiative or not or just let it be a one time thing that you roll up then forget. If I decide to make it matter I'd have it where:

1 All combatants roll Initiative (DM can just group enemies up)

2 Find out who has the highest initiative result. All combatants may go when their initiative equals this number.

3 On player's turn they may take actions. Each action type subtracts from their count. Move Actions take 6 standard, actions take 10, Full round actions take 14. Swift, Immediate, Opportunity Actions take 2 a piece.

4 After an action is performed and resolved everyone adds 1 to their current initiative count until they reach the target number (basically next highest initiative goes next). This does mean that if you roll your initiative number far higher than everyone else you can take multiple actions.

Delaying an action or readying one pretty much just suspends your initiative gain. Free Actions don't really mess your initiative count. A round is counted after a number of full, move, or standard actions are taken equal to the number of combatants.

On the plus side: I can write a bunch of abilities messing around with initiative. It also makes Initiative matter beyond the first roll.

On the negative side: Its more book keeping and asks people to do a bit of math.

Surgo wrote:I didn't quite get from your post that everything resolved simultaneously. Cool beans.

Yes. Range was based on the beginning of turn, all weapons had facings, and how far (a straight measurement, not how many steps you actually took) was the difficulty in hitting you that turn.

So when someone shot at you, they couldn't be sure that the difficulty wouldn't change when orders were executed, unless they had a higher initiative than you. And this let you do things like run around behind them every turn, since they would have to have their weapons aimed at the end of each turn to fire the next turn.

-Crissa

Does anyone have any particular favorites for their RPG? Do any engender themselves towards a particular 'feel' for the game, Deadlands's poker initiative being a successful use (would feel out of place in D&D)?

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

K wrote:I've always liked bid systems. I can't remember the game name, but it involved samurai armies and you would hold little plastic swords as your bid for turn order each round. The more you paid for swords, the less you'd have to buy armies, so there was a trade-off of turn advantage for force advantage.

Shogun is the game you're thinking of.

ANd yeah that was a cool game.

That was a fun game, and damn, it's been about 16 years since I've played it.

I was playing against someone who knew the game, and I remember him bidding for swords, and I always opted to buy more units. He won soundly, but I don't know how much of that had to do with him strategically gaming initiative, and how much had to do with him understanding the game overall much better than me.

Crissa wrote: Yes. Range was based on the beginning of turn, all weapons had facings, and how far (a straight measurement, not how many steps you actually took) was the difficulty in hitting you that turn.

So when someone shot at you, they couldn't be sure that the difficulty wouldn't change when orders were executed, unless they had a higher initiative than you. And this let you do things like run around behind them every turn, since they would have to have their weapons aimed at the end of each turn to fire the next turn.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I hate declare first systems. It basically was just all about taking actions to render your enemies actions useless and pretty much made winning initiative a really huge deal.

Hey I'm late to the party (just joined), but there are a couple of other action/initiative systems out there I can think of:

*Runequest Strike Ranks: rounds are divided into segments 1-10. I don't recall how first action is calculated initially, but after this timing of your next action depends on weapon size/DEX/Speed...if you went on segment 1 initially your next attack would be on segment 5 if you had a speed-4 attack or on segment 6 if you had a speed-5 attack. A faster weapon will thus give more attacks per round. Fairly messy to keep track of, IMHO.

*Raven McCracken's 'Advantage system' (vanished from the web with GeoCities, though I think I have a copy somewhere): you roll an initiative roll for each attack you have, so characters are more likely to go first if they have multiple attacks.

*JAGS' action system probably merits a mention as well. Initiative is fairly standard, but it has a reasonably complex interrupt system. Actions are Short, Medium, or Long: performing a Medium or Long action lets an opponent immediately interrupt with a shorter action unless you beat their initiative by a high margin - e.g. charging is a Long action, so an opponent can hit you with a normal Medium attack as you close. Total number of actions you get in a turn (both on your initiative and interrupt actions) is based on spending points equal to your DEX ("Reaction") with Long actions costing more points. (JAGS is a freerpg if anyone's overly curious: its mostly GURPS-esque).