There have been a couple of discussions I've read rtecently and so I conceived this. I have no idea if this could be made to work, but it's quirky enough it could be fun. Firstly let's assume that we have a simple means to actually decide which combatant will act first.

That character doesn't necessarily act first, he chooses the arena of combat that will start (other games do a similar thing, like Dr Who, for example) and the first person to act.

The nominated character must either forfeit his action for the turn, or act in the manner prescribed. Once he finishes he chooses who will follow him, along with the mode of combat. If he forfeits his action he likewise chooses who next will act and what mode.

So you might have a sequence where the Charming Man is facing three Angry Thugs. He decides a thug will start and elects to use social combat: the thug, hopefully bamboozled, will either forfeit acting entirely for the round or attempt to best the Charming Man with words not weapons. Either way the Thug elects one of his buddies to act and chooses Physical Combat, now forcing the Charming Man to resort to Queensbury's Rules.

Is there mileage in this? It's sort of a union of the new Dr Who rules (though I know CoC prioritises combat actions similarly; guns go first iirc) and the MHR system which is genius in it's simplicity.

Why do I get to decide how my opponents react to me?

What benefit does your system provide at the table? What are you trying to do with it? The Who system makes things work like in the show, and the MHR system adds a tactical metagame to combat, but what does your system do?

Don't get me wrong, I think you're on to something, I'm just not sure what.

Quote from: Ladybird;591588Why do I get to decide how my opponents react to me?

Isn't that what the doctor himself does? He uses Fast Talk and Technobabble to blindside amd bamboozle his opponents, even if they are armed. So if the Doctor goes first, he gets to force the issue.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;591593Isn't that what the doctor himself does? He uses Fast Talk and Technobabble to blindside amd bamboozle his opponents, even if they are armed. So if the Doctor goes first, he gets to force the issue.

Perhaps it would have been better phrased as "why do I, the player, get to decide how my character's opponents react to my character"?

The situation in Who is, the Doctor is attempting to talk his opponents into reacting how he wants. He - and by extension, his player - aren't getting to dictate the opposition's reactions.

(They are dictating that the opponents wait until he stops talking, but that's quite minor and an artefact of turn-based initiative.)

It's an abstraction of the Doctor bamboozling his target. The player doesn't have to choose the Dr, his PC, he can choose an enemy and force that enemy into social combat hoping that will weaken him enough to force him to forfeit his action.

How about: everyone determines initiative. The character at the top of the initiative list decides whether they want to talk, fight, move or act... and then they do. Any other character can then decide to join in that phase, and they can go on initiative order or whatever.

Highest remaining character than gets to choose from what's left on the list. They get their action, then anyone else can join in. Repeat until end of round.

Now, individual characters can act according to their tendencies (The Doctor is a talker, for example, but Captain Jack is more of a fighter, Rory is more of a doer, etc), and the order of your scenes can vary depending on who is involved, but nobody is getting to choose anyone else's actions. You also kinda lose out on reactions, but setting as your phase action "I do this thing when someone else acts later in the round" still kinda works.

Essentially that's it.

However there'd need to be some means to know when a partiuclar phase (eg the social combat phase, or whatever) comes to an end. THat's the part I struggle with. That and block computation, perhaps I should visit Logopolis.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;591726Essentially that's it.

However there'd need to be some means to know when a partiuclar phase (eg the social combat phase, or whatever) comes to an end. THat's the part I struggle with. That and block computation, perhaps I should visit Logopolis.

Subphase structure would be:

a: High initiative chooses subphase
b: High initiative acts
c: Other initiatives choose to act or pass this subphase
d: Other initiative acts, act

Which in play goes:

Ladybird: "Who rolled highest. Dave."
Dave: "I run away."
Ladybird: "Okay, cool. Anyone else moving?"
Laura: "I get to cover."
Ladybird: "And the cyberleks advance, too. Okay, who's next? John."