Writing Every Day 12: Poor Initiative

*Somehow I failed to post this installment. Sorry about that!

I feel bad for initiative rules. They have to handle so many different things.

In most of the games I've played in, a combat encounter has an initiative system to track who acts when. I know that there are games out there that handle initiative differently, but I'm speaking from my own experience here.

So, the way initiative typically shakes out the players each make a roll for their PC and the Game Master makes a roll for the antagonists. Sometimes antagonists get a couple of batches of rolls based on groups, or if there's a major villain or significant creature in the encounter. Once all the rolls are sorted out, PCs and NPCs act in order of the "best" initiative to the "worst" one at a time. Rinse repeat.

Why do I feel bad for initiative? Because often the rule has to represent a whole bunch of different stuff. It is used to sort the order of turns at the table, as above. But initiative also gets to represent the flow of time during the battle to a certain extent. While some games suggest that the actions of a round unfold simultaneously, in practice it's easier on the GM to cross off villains as they're destroyed and mark damage when it occurs, meaning characters who act first often get the edge in the encounter. So it acts as an organizational tool, plus a way of tracking time.

In some systems, initiative also acts as a cooldown clock for effects. Characters can have abilities that stipulate they can be used only once per round, or damage that is applied once per round (from the start of one initiative to the start of the next). Initiative is also used as a measure of readiness. A character who is surprised by an event can receive a penalty to his or her initiative roll, or be unable to even roll initiative for the round of the surprise.

Initiative is already doing a whole lot. Most of what it represents makes sense at first blush. After all, having all the players tell the GM what their PCs do at the same time is chaos. Having a measured unit to control powerful abilities or ongoing damage is useful. These things all make sense. I feel like initiative is a system worth spending time on as a designer; choosing how to determine which characters gain a bonus, if any, to the roll can be a significant advantage over the course of a combat encounter, particularly when PCs and NPCs all play by the same rules.

Which leads me to something that, if you haven't checked out, I suggest you spare some time for: popcorn initiative by the Angry DM. Angry is a prolific RPG blogger and way, way smarter than I am. If you haven't checked out his site I enthusiastically suggest you do so right away. He often writes with a slant toward the D&D mindset, but his advice is useful regardless of the system you use.