Initiative systems for different kind of games

[OgreBattle]

So some thread I made a while ago started talking about initiative then petered out: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=504578

What I'd like to talk about is initiative systems and if certain types suit certain kinds of games. The "roll initiative and everyone goes in order" is the default with DnD and most derivatives.

For battle music time the main systems are...
1) Roll initiative & go in order (D&D)
1B) Variant: initiative passes too but generally a bad idea
1C) Anyone on your team can use any initiative slot so a speedy trickster's high roll lets the lumbering tank go at that high initiative
2) Go around the table, speedy but abstracts things more
3) Target of action goes next, though needs to answer questions like when you target an ally, AoE, target yourself, etc.
4) Phases like Movement, then action, After Sundown and Warhammer do this in different ways

How about initiative for downtime/footwork actions? Like detectives uncovering clues at the same time the criminal is covering his trail and committing new crimes.

[Stahlseele]

Nah, initiative for downtime activity strikes me as stupid . .
Initiative is for combat/right now reaction things, not for hours of investigation . .

[RobbyPants]

How about initiative for downtime/footwork actions? Like detectives uncovering clues at the same time the criminal is covering his trail and committing new crimes.

The only time I've really worried about this is when everyone is racing for loot and refusing to cooperate with other players at all (which is, in and of itself a bigger problem). I've had to resort to die rolls to figure out who gets the glowing belt first. Otherwise, as I'm busy describing a room, players interrupt to say what they're rushing to grab before anyone else.

I've also had to modify the perception rolls to figure out who acts in a surprise round when someone decides to dramatically switch from talky time to combat time. I've sometimes done Bluff vs Sense Motive or Slight of Hand vs Spot.

[Username17]

The core issue of any initiative system is what you are counting down through. You can be counting clockwise around the table, you can be counting through characters by speed order, you can be counting through declared actions by resolution time, you can be counting through phases that people can spend action points in, you can be counting through preparation auctions, and so on and so forth.

The more divorced your initiative system is from just asking the person clockwise along the table from the last person whose turn it was what they want to do, the more time your initiative system is going to take. So the initiative mini-game has to provide some kind of gameable value added or it's a giant waste of time. In particular, history has not been kind to the idea of counting through declarations in speed order and then counting through those declarations again in order of resolution. That shit has been tried repeatedly, and it just doesn't add enough to the game to make up for what a pain in the ass it is to track everyone's action declarations for a turn on some sort of LIFO stack.

-Username17

[Trill]

In particular, history has not been kind to the idea of counting through declarations in speed order and then counting through those declarations again in order of resolution. That shit has been tried repeatedly, and it just doesn't add enough to the game to make up for what a pain in the ass it is to track everyone's action declarations for a turn on some sort of LIFO stack.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean.
Do you mean "People declare what they do from lowest to highest initiative. Things happen from highest to lowest initiative"?
If yes, would something like "Lowest initative goes first, next higher initiative may react to that or do their own thing. All things happen simultaneously." be fine?

[Username17]

In particular, history has not been kind to the idea of counting through declarations in speed order and then counting through those declarations again in order of resolution. That shit has been tried repeatedly, and it just doesn't add enough to the game to make up for what a pain in the ass it is to track everyone's action declarations for a turn on some sort of LIFO stack.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean.
Do you mean "People declare what they do from lowest to highest initiative. Things happen from highest to lowest initiative"?
If yes, would something like "Lowest initative goes first, next higher initiative may react to that or do their own thing. All things happen simultaneously." be fine?

There's a profoundly limited number of things we can conceive of being "on the stack" at any given time. Working out stacks of 4+ card effects is a pain in the ass in Magic: the Gathering or Yugioh and you actually have physical cards to keep track of those interactions with. Added to that, 3 body problems are extremely difficult even with dedicated and powerful computers, and are essentially intractable while drunk and trying to play a damn game.

Any game that expects four or five player characters and equal or larger numbers of monsters to be declaring actions in a turn pretty much can't expect to be remotely playable if each actor is supposed to put their action declaration aside and resolve them separately. There are things you can do to make this sort of thing tractable, but it's shit like people playing cards face down with simultaneous reveals. It pretty much can't be ported into open ended RPGs.

-Username17

[Almaz]

I dunno, I think it is perfectly legitimate for an RPG to decide it doesn't want to support online play. Of course, I also think it should actively make that decision rather than "accidentally" stumbling into letting players play a game in a trash way, and just tell them they need a client for it.

[Trill]

But in that case, won't it then mean that any initiative system has to have the old "one person does something while everyone else waits for their turn"?
Which definitely is easy to implement (every action is done and filed before the next one), but kinda weird when you think about it (do the others just stand there and wait for their turn? How does it work when the CT are short like in SR, does everyone manage things in fractions of seconds? Do they do it faster if more people are involved?)

[OgreBattle]

"Declare action, then go in initiative order" is usually paired with a fiddly game system. Could it work with a very simple "you do one thing a turn" system like Fate Core RPG where you basically do 1 action and don't really keep track of movement or off turn actions?

The way I'm looking at it there's X amount of complexity a player handles a turn, you can add complexity in one element by smoothing things out in other segments.

Who here has played with "I hit the guy, so the guy goes next, and whoever he hits goes next unless that guy already used his action this round" initiative?

[zugschef]

That's a perfect time to ship your game with an app. Let the app take care of all the calculations.

[Zaranthan]

Let the app take care of all the calculations.

No. No. No. No. No.

This doesn't actually solve anything. The players need to be able to understand the system and the potential effects of their decisions in order to play. If you get distracted and don't notice which enemy is going next in a video game, you take some unexpected damage, say "oh darn", and move on. If you get caught off guard by the initiative app telling you who's turn it is, the game halts until the players figure out what the hell is going on.

[Harshax]

LIFO has a minor book-keeping issue where the GM has to record intent and then make sure the player performs the action they declared at the start of the round.

Would a slightly modified idea accomplish the same goal with less bookkeeping? Have the lowest initiative go first and anyone with a higher initiative can interrupt by declaring an action that must be resolved first. Someone with a higher initiative still could interrupt the first interrupt and so on. This makes initiative feel like one’s ability to assess the situation and read telegraphed intent by ‘slower’ combatants. This type of initiative resolution might make the action feel more real-time, because you’re not wasting time by first collecting all participant actions and then resolving them. Players can choose to interrupt whenever they want, but must eventually act when it is there turn in the initiative order. I think you’d want to re-roll initiative every round.

[Kaelik]

I'm pretty sure interrupting the first person so you go first would still be the best thing most of the time, unless the first person is also your ally in which case you would interrupt the slowest enemy who would interrupt your friend, ect.

You aren't really changing the stack at all, you are just declaring that people have the option to not do the best thing, but then everyone still does the best thing and you have the same system.

[Username17]

Have the lowest initiative go first and anyone with a higher initiative can interrupt by declaring an action that must be resolved first. Someone with a higher initiative still could interrupt the first interrupt and so on

That's exactly the same as regular 3e D&D initiative except you're assuming everyone holds their action instead of going at their normal time and only holding their action if there's a need. So you're saying "How about we just assume everyone takes the most disruptive and annoying initiative actions every round forever?" Not a fan.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

My biggest criticism of bog standard 3e initiative is that it can grind the momentum down to a halt when a fight is starting and things should be kicking into high gear. The last thing I want is an initiative system that makes things even slower.

[Kaelik]

Have the lowest initiative go first and anyone with a higher initiative can interrupt by declaring an action that must be resolved first. Someone with a higher initiative still could interrupt the first interrupt and so on

That's exactly the same as regular 3e D&D initiative except you're assuming everyone holds their action instead of going at their normal time and only holding their action if there's a need. So you're saying "How about we just assume everyone takes the most disruptive and annoying initiative actions every round forever?" Not a fan.

-Username17

I would say it's slightly different in that it's a huge fuck you to Wizards who are going to be making a LOT of concentration checks against damage for being attacked mid spell, since you could, if you rolled low in init, have like 8 people on the stack all doing damage to you "while" you are casting a spell.

[Username17]

I would say it's slightly different in that it's a huge fuck you to Wizards who are going to be making a LOT of concentration checks against damage for being attacked mid spell, since you could, if you rolled low in init, have like 8 people on the stack all doing damage to you "while" you are casting a spell.

The point is that people could do that in 3rd edition just by holding their actions to facestab the low init Wizard on his turn instead of taking their fucking turn. They generally do not because that is a fucking waste of time and you should usually just get the fuck on with things.

But by reversing the order you've essentially assumed that everyone is fucking around with their initiative counts in the most intrusive and time consuming possible way.

-Username17

-Username17

[erik]

Is initiative-based turn order useful enough to gameplay that we even need to care about it in lieu of just going around the table?

[Trill]

Well, in my opinion a initiative based order is important if (and probably iff) you want it to make a large difference in who goes first.
So if you want a situation like "Character A is far faster/more perceptive/twitchier than Character B and can act before him, thus alpha striking him/raising alarm/prevent him from raising alarm/stop him from doing something" then initiative is pretty important, since B having higher initiative can drastically change how the fight and situation progresses.
If however it doesn't really matter if A goes first or B goes first, then initiative can be nice (maybe have something like difference in initiative giving boni/penalties) but is not necessary

[Iduno]

Wasteland 2 managed to make action points vs initiative a thing you occasionally had to consider. I mean, only in edge cases where you got your attack speed fast enough to possibly gain a second attack, but it's a start.

Someone good at game balancing could give you options like 1) be good at attacking and get 2 attacks/round if you also don't move but everyone else goes before you and will eventually lap you 2) be good at attacking, and get one attack, but go sooner (and lap some slow people) or 3) be bad at attacking, but do it first, twice and probably attack 3 times after the slow people attack once.

The hard part is finding something as good as "going first, and also more times if the fight lasts long enough." Shadowrun tends to be deadly enough that going first is the most important most of the time, but damage in a game like D&D doesn't matter enough that making several attacks before a slow mage ending the fight with their overwhelming save-or-die/lose spells is worth the trade-off in most cases. If the game is somewhere in the middle, it should be do-able.

It could be easily solvable for computer games, but at a table you'd also have to consider the extra time it takes to do and to teach people.

[Josh_Kablack]

Is initiative-based turn order useful enough to gameplay that we even need to care about it in lieu of just going around the table?

I'm pretty convinced that for player groups of more than 4 people, tracking initiative in any form has such high costs in realtime and mental load that it is flat out not worth any increase to gameplay.

[Whiysper]

We did actually play 'Phoenix Wright' initiative for one build of our homebrew (slowest acts, anyone higher can interrupt). As Frank notes, it's basically the same as acting first with the option to hold, and we've since switched back to 'DnD 3 style' (act first with the option to hold).

They're equivalent, but the default being to 'act' rather than to 'hold' makes the game MUCH faster. Worth the trade-off - while the 'feel' of making the slowest people declare first and letting everyone else jump in is more authentic to how reaction times interact, it's not worth the slow-down, and most people won't really notice/care.

Oh, and REALLY don't do interrupt initiative if people get multiple actions, because they WILL forget what they've done, and each turn will take bloody forever. It's like the SR4 initiative passes all over again, but WORSE! Didn't think I could make a turn take longer than that. And then I did, and learnt my fucking lesson!

Also warming to Josh's 'go clockwise' default. Found surprisingly little resistance, and it does keep things smooth.

[RobbyPants]

I'm pretty convinced that for player groups of more than 4 people, tracking initiative in any form has such high costs in realtime and mental load that it is flat out not worth any increase to gameplay.

Perhaps this could be modified by some perception/stealth checks to see if one side is surprised and/or a roll to see if the players go first or the monsters.

Based on that result, you go clockwise, either starting with the GM or to the left of the GM. Maybe you're allowed to hold your action until the end of the round.

[jt]

3) Target of action goes next, though needs to answer questions like when you target an ally, AoE, target yourself, etc.

The character of that system depends on the specific set of answers you have to those questions. Let me propose a concrete one:
Each round, everyone gets a turn, and someone from the party that won initiative spends their turn first (party's choice). After that, one of the targets that still has a turn goes next (target party's choice). If none of the targets still have a turn, someone else from their party goes next (target party's choice). If nobody in the party still has a turn, it goes to the other party (and again, they choose who). If nobody has turns, start a new round.

Some good or interesting consequences of this:
- Attacking someone who's already been attacked gives their party a tactical advantage, as they get to pick who goes next. This mildly discourages focus firing.
- AOE attacks have a built-in tactical disadvantage, in that it gives your opponent more options, but you can work around this by hitting two people who already went and one who hasn't.
- Buffing a party member has a built-in advantage of letting your party go twice in a row. Additionally it means your buffs are always immediately used, which is nice.

And some less desirable ones:
- You can't have actions that target both parties (or, if you do, they need to have a special rule that says which party's turn it is).
- Attacking the person who just attacked you gives their party a tactical advantage. Which discourages consistent battle lines.

I think that turns out pretty well. But even more interesting, I think, is that the system could turn out entirely different while still being "target goes next" by answering some of the questions differently.

[OgreBattle]

After Sundown 1.X has "declare movement in order of slowest to fastest, declare action in order of fastest to slowest" to model interceptions. Had some discussions on that in the past, I think it was deemed rather fiddly.

How much you accomplish in one turn and how many rounds a typical encounter takes to resolve is also a factor in how much complexity you can handle in a turn. I haven't played it but Hunter's Moon & Shinobigami have a "everyone acts once then the encounter is over" system.

I ran a game of Fate Core for students that have never played D&D or any other tabletop RPG with that in mind and they stayed engaged. When I went with "and then there's another round, and another" in another session of Fate Core you got more yawns and people losing track.