Initiative in RPGs

Imagine your game, everyone's sitting forwards at the table, the standoff off is tense, the rhetoric is passing backwards and forwards between PCs and NPCs, players are fully engaged, it escalates to strong words, then finally to violence as someone draws their sword.

...and the entire game grind to a halt as the mechanisms of "initiative" kick in and everyone sits back starts checking their phones and grabbing snacks. There ladies and gents, you have a failed mechanism. Initiative is just about the least interesting aspect of any combat. It needs to be quick, and it needs to be smooth, it needs to get out of the way.

I first ran into Initiative problems back in the 90s playing Games Workshop's implementation of Judge Dredd (Side note, the latest Mongoose edition of Judge Dredd has fortunately switched to a roll2D6 system which itself is based on Traveller) . In that game turns were broken down into ten phases and your character might act on phases 3 and 8. This meant the referee had to count down through the phases, many of which might not have anyone active, to ensure everyone at the table got to "go" at the right time. But it was worse than that, because two PCs might activate during the same phase, so that you have to determine which of them actually goes first. The result of all this shenaniganing is that rather than assisting the combat, the initiative becomes a slow, divisive, complex problem in itself. Other systems have similar problems, consider that old classic Rune Quest which literally has players comparing the size of their weapon!

The very worst initiative system I've come across, has been repeated in multiple systems and follows this process. Everyone rolls their own initiative then in initiative order you go round the table asking what each PC is going to do this round, then you go around again with every person carrying out the declared action. OMG what a dire slow onerous process. Not only does it destroy any pace the game may have achieved but it ends up with some portion of the players not even being able to do what they want because the situation/environment has changed before play comes round to them!

My question to budding game designers, is what are you trying to achieve with your complex slow-ass initiative system? Is your goal some sort of "realism". Ask yourself, does realism make your game better for the players, and if it does, at what cost? me, I say realism generally destroys play.

Well, that's lots of moaning, but does this moaning ninny have an answer for you? An answer that's quick and easy? Yes I do. Its called "Going clockwise round the table". But I'm not going to explain how that works :)