Init, Innit?

(Get it?)

So this whole initiative thing in RPGs. And please understand here I'm talking about the kind of RPGs wherein who gets to bash a motherfucker's teeth in first actually matters. I don't care if you don't need initiative systems in your Saved By the Bell RPG.

(Not sure if that sounds like a fun game or not...)

For reference, I talk a bit about initiative here, here, here, and here. So this has been on my mind a bit.

You see, it's all quite simple.

I don't like initiative. It gets in the way. It takes time. It slows things down. It is complexity that doesn't always add much to the game. But I have a really hard time imagining a game wherein there is combat and you have no method for deciding who gets to roll the dice next. So this post is me thinking out loud about the problem. It will meander. Click away while you still have the initiative to do so.

Here are the types of initiative systems I am aware of in RPGs:

1. Sides

1981's D&D codified the vague initiative system from previous versions into a very slick and simple method. Each "side" of a battle (frex PCs vs. monsters) rolls 1d6. Whoever gets the higher number goes first.

This is the method I've used most. I've played and ran a ton of old school D&D (via Labyrinth Lord, mostly) and this method, out of all the methods I've tried, works best. It is fastest and smoothest. Embedded within this method is the idea that you can work out the details on the fly. Because knowing that the PCs go first doesn't tell you which one goes first. You have to sort that out. In our Monday night Doomslakers group it works like a charm. We have mutual respect and we appreciate the story that is being told. If it feels like I should attack first, then I do. It works.

As a caveat, you can allow individuals to add their Dex mod to side init and that works fine too. So it might be the case that the PCs lost init, but Dex the Speedy, having +2, still goes first.

2. Individual

This is the most common method in D&D type games. It is the only method I've experienced when running or playing anything approaching a modern game. It is the default method for DCC RPG, for example, and for all modern iterations of D&D. And I hate it. It is the slowest method I know of. It involves the highest degree of GM-workload. And it is the most popular with common RPG players.

Is that because it's good or because it's just what people know? I suspect the main reason for its popularity is that it caters to each player's sense of individuality. It is not a group effort, it is my effort. I am fast. I am lucky, etc. It recognizes individuals. Which all sounds great, but fuck's sake it's a time sink.

I would declare my intention to never use this method again except that a lot of games have perks built into the initative system. DCC RPG has Initiative as a stat on your sheet. Ditching the method is probably OK, but you would need to consider how it impacts PCs.

I am a special goatflake!

NOTE: I have nothing to say about AD&D's initiative method because frankly I have never known what it is. Something about rolling 1d10, lower is better? Even when I was playing that game in high school I have no memory of how we did init! I suspect we did d6 side init.

3. The Sack

Daniel Sell's Troika! has a clever init system wherein you select objects for each PC and each monster then put it all into a sack. You draw out an object and that tells you who goes next. One object represents end of round.

Reach into my sack.

I actually bought the initiative cards for this game and used it when I ran Supercalla. It worked fantastically well for me as GM. It reduces workload to almost zero. I like it quite a bit. But I do not believe the players loved it. This is because it is entirely possible for a PC to go a round or two without taking any actions. And that probably feels shitty.

It also leads to irrational results. Frex if you had two guys duking it out in mid-air and someone else trying to disarm a bomb. What if you draw the bomb dude's card twice in a row, then end of round, then bomb dude again? Are the two combatants just hovering in mid air, waiting for their turns? Sure, you could GM fiat that shit and just say who goes next. But I like to stick with a game's rules as closely as possible and having to do such a thing indicates something might be slightly broken about the system.

4. Preset

Some games use a preset init system. Frex: Holmes' 1977 D&D had a system in which your Dexterity score determines who goes first. For monsters, you'd roll their Dex on 3d6 and go. My recent first experience with Warhammer Fantasy Role Play indicates that in that game you have a set init score and you just go in that order. Our group monkeyed with Cadillacs & Dinosaurs once and it felt like that game also had a kind of fixed initiative (but phase-based?).

I'm OK with these methods. They do the job of removing GM workload and avoiding all fiddly questions. Initiative is pre-determined and you just go with it. The downside, I think, is that it leads to some possible absurdities and that it makes combat more predictable. As an absurdity, what if your PC with the highest init by a country mile is at the rear of the party as you burst into a goblin den? That guy is going to shove past everyone, get out front, and land a blow first? Maybe. Sure. But perhaps that slow little dwarf who kicked down the door will bury their blade in a goblin throat first? It requires GM adjudication, does it not?

But to me, making combat predictable is a bigger sin.

His init was highest. Alas, he was last in line.

5. Phases

Some games have a phase system. I am not nearly as familiar with this. I know that Villains & Vigilantes had this method, and I believe the above mentioned C&D had one. My limited, pitiful understanding is that you would basically count down from some number, such as 10, to represent a combat round. If your PC's attacks go on phases 2, 4, 6, and 8 then you'd get 4 actions. If Mine is only 6 then I'd only get to go when phase 6 was called out. This is more-or-less the same kind of method as #4 above, but with caveats.

It's a neat idea.

Not phased.

Eat me.

6. Popcorn-Balsera

This method is based on a method used by someone named Leonard Balsera and was written into Marvel Heroic Roleplaying and later into FATE as "elective action order". I like the term "popcorn imitative".

All it amounts to is you somehow figure out who goes first then that person decides who goes next and when everyone has gone, you start over. I can't imagine that this method hasn't been used countless times in organic play over decades. I know for a fact I have defaulted to this method in games over the years, without calling it out as a method. It's just a natural way to play.

And I like it. In my other blog posts about Sand in the Bone/Dead Wizards I talk about this a lot. What I'm going for is a slightly more codified version in which there is some GM dice rolling used to decide when/if enemies get a turn between each PC action.

7. Troll Style

I never owned, played, or even read Tunnels & Trolls. So I only recently became aware of it's combat system. In it, there is no initiative. Both sides just make one big attack roll and the loser takes damage distributed between its members.

Of all the methods, this one seems to reduce combat to the simplest approach. It feels like it would be fast and furious. But at what cost? Would this method sacrifice granularity and detail? What if you had a bunch of farmers with pitchforks and one armored knight against a battalion of bastards? Would the knight's side constantly lose the roll, taking damage every round while no damage is dealt the other side? The knight lands no blows?

Of course that interpretation assumes that damage is related to actual physical strikes instead of being purely abstract, a representation of morale and fatigue. Either way, interesting.

8. None

Of course you don't have to have a codified method. You can wing that mother. GM fiat, player negotiations, etc. But I think it would be wrong to refer to this as having no system. You will always have a system. Even if you decide what it is round-by-round. Having no written method only gives you an illusion of winging it. I guarantee that by the end of one combat you will have your method and you'll use it again, until it becomes a problem.

And that's all the various initiatives I know about. If you know of other methods that are distinct, tell me about them.

Dead Wizards Initiative Idea

In the last post I was talking initiative and I mentioned the idea I was cooking up for Dead Wizards. Here's the idea a little more fleshed-out, along with a couple of alternates.

When there seems to be a fight on the horizon, the Judge* makes a threat roll. This is a d6 roll referencing the table below. Or, if you have a d3, you can throw it. Whatever.

1d6	Result
1-2	No enemies act
3-4	At least 1 enemy acts
5-6	More than 1 enemy acts

The results are self-explanatory. Since I can't predict how many enemies any given fight will feature, I am not going to put ranges of numbers. The Judge will use their best judgement based on the fiction. If the result is 3-4 and there are 3 enemies then maybe just 1 of them acts before the players. If the roll is a 6, maybe all of them act first. Only the Judge will know in a given situation what would be the most natural or most badass way to handle it.

After the threat roll and any resulting actions from the bad guys, the Judge chooses 1 player to go first. That player will take action or hold their action as they wish. Then they will choose the next player to go. They cannot choose a player who has already acted in the round. They can choose an enemy to go next.

But before that player goes, the Judge will make another threat roll. And that same process will repeat until all the players have taken a turn. So the order of events in a battle round would look like the table below.

1	Threat Roll
2	Judge chooses first player to act
3	Threat Roll
4	First player chooses next player to act
5	Threat Roll
6	Last player chooses next player to act
7	Repeat pattern until all players act
8	End of round

If all the enemies have acted, the Judge stops making threat rolls until all the players have acted. Then, if necessary, a new round begins with the Judge making a threat roll and selecting a player to

start the round.

In any event, after the last player acts, then it is time to start a new round by exactly the same process.

*I'm using the term Judge for the GM as a placeholder for now. It might stick, or I might invent something cooler.

Thoughts

I have played a lot more RPG sessions in the past 5 years than I did in my entire gaming life beforehand. I just didn't have a lot of friends to game with when I was young and we were too meandering to get our shit together for "regular" games. Playing a ton of Labyrinth Lord, in particular, has lead me to think of the standard D&D initiative systems as a little too clunky for the vibe I am going for in Dead Wizards. I want there to be combat, but I want it to be a little more fast-and-furious. So I am working on ways of handling initiative that I believe are faster and smoother.

I might be wrong, but this method feels like it would do the trick. It reduces the GM's load to a single d6 roll prior to each player's actions. And it reduces the players' load to just taking their action and picking someone else to go. There isn't much to keep track of except who has went so far.

Alternate #1

Same as above, but the Judge doesn't track which enemies have attacked and so they make the threat roll between every player turn until the end of the round. They select enemies each time purely based on the drama. In this method I would tweak the threat roll table a little bit so the enemies don't get action quite as often.

1d6	Result
1-3	No enemies act
4-6	Enemies act

Alternate #2

This one is kind of a totally different method and it eliminates all tracking, making initiative 100% random.

The Judge still makes a threat roll on 1d6, but they also make a PC roll at the same time. The PC's initiative die would be based on how many characters are in the group. So a group of 4 would just use a d4. A group of 5 would be a d5 (or d10 divided by 2 if you don't have an actual d5, which most people don't). And so on.

The Judge would roll both dice. If the threat die indicates the enemies may act, then they do. The PC die would indicate which of the PCs gets to take their action next.

This is probably an even faster method than the main one detailed in this post. But my thinking is that you'd always go with the dice, which means player 1 could potentially go 2 or 3 times before player 2. A single PC could end up taking a crazy number of actions before all the PCs have gone. Unless you want to re-roll the PC die each time it indicates someone who has already went.

Or perhaps after player 1 has taken action and the die is a 1 again, that means player 2 gets to go. Or something along those lines.

Afterthoughts

The side-based initiative, such as what we see in D&D (B/X 1981), is also quite fast and easy. I would even argue against myself here and say it's faster and easier than what I've outlined here. And maybe I'll just go with it in the end. It all depends if I feel like an alternate method better serves the vibe of game I'm going for.

Also wanted to say that the ideas herein are not altogether new. There are games that allow players to decide who goes next, especially outside the OSR sphere. There are probably games with highly random initiative. I know that the Troika! method is completely random, fast, and fun as hell to use. I use it when running that game. My only hesitation with adopting something similar here is that it loses some of its charm when gaming online. I do most of my gaming online so I'm writing my game with that in mind.

Taking the Initiative (or some other init joke)

Almost every RPG I have ever ran or played has some kind of initiative system. Such a system determines who gets to act first and next and since most RPGs are terribly concerned with the crunchy details of battles this proves to be an important feature.

So when people tell me you don't need any initiative system I give them the same look a parent gives their 14-yo when he says he doesn't know how those magazines got under his pillow*. I mean, I get it. You don't need initiative, really. A good gaming group will roll with the drama and it'll be great. A less-cohesive group may struggle. And while I don't ever try to write my game materials specifically for dysfunctional gaming groups, I do like to include tools that I want to use myself. And I do like having some kind of initiative system in my fighting-heavy games.

I have monkeyed with various methods. Issue #1 of Black Pudding features Quick Init. In this system you roll a die and subtract 1 and the result is how many PCs get to act before the enemies. The GM chooses who acts based on the fiction. I tried that method a few times and it works just fine, but isn't exactly what I was hoping for.

Another method I like is the one used in The Black Hack. Each PC makes a Dex check. Those who pass go first, those who fail go after the enemies. It's just about as quick and dirty as you can get and it lends a huge advantage to those with a good Dexterity score.

The method I'm noodling right now for my Dead Wizards RPG is as follows.

When battle is imminent, the Judge switches to combat mode, which is pretty bog standard for RPGs. It just signals to the GM and group that rules specific to action order are now in effect. So the Judge makes a threat roll, which is just a d6 roll that determines if enemies get to act before the PC and how many of them. Then the Judge selects the first player to act. After that player acts, the Judge rolls another threat roll and then the player picks the next player to act. And you just continue that same pattern until all PCs and enemies have acted in the round.

What I like about this method is that it embraces the narrative power of not really having initiative, allowing players to decide who goes next. But it maintains some randomness to the order of events via the 1d6 threat roll. It also grants the GM lots of leeway in deciding which enemies get to act next.

I haven't playtested this yet.

*OMG... does that date me? Nobody has "magazines" anymore. We have the world in our pockets, including nudie pics. Also... I'm not some sexually repressed asshole. I wouldn't necessarily be all "Junior, you know better" if I found a magazine stash. It's just a funny example. Get off my back!!

Quick Init II

QUICK INITIATIVE II

In Black Pudding #1 I presented my method for dealing with initiative on page 23 (“Quick Init”). I adopted this method a while back because I was not satisfied with group initiative (no consideration for fast PCs) or individual initiative (too many rolls, slows combat down). The quick method is to just roll a die and the result is how many PCs get to act first. The GM would then decide which PCs get to go in what order, based on context.

This really works. But I'm finding that the method as presented in Black Pudding tends to grant a strong preference to PCs unless you modify the die roll or the die being rolled based on context. But I don't present much of a description on how to do that.

So here's a revision of the method I think I'll test on my players. This revision simplifies the rule even more by reducing it to a single die type and dismissing the idea of going up or down die steps.

1. Roll 1d6-1. The result is how many PCs get to act before the enemies.
2. Natural 1 = no PCs go first.
3. Natural 6 = all PCs go first.
4. +1 to roll if the party contains any rangers, hunters, elves, monks, or ninja types.
5. -1 to first initiative roll if the party was preoccupied with another activity.
6. -1 to all initiative rolls if party is outnumbered.

And that's it. Of course, surprise rules still apply.

If you happen to be running a game with a very small party, such as 2 or 3 PCs, you could use a d4 instead. But I feel like the d6 is fitting for typical party sizes and it gives a reasonable chance for either side to totally win initiative.