Quote from: LordVreeg;477138right, that makes sesne, and brings some nice strategy to the idea.

I got the idea from David Johansen's very cool game Galactic Adventure. It solved a lot of niggling stuff in a very neat way.

-clash

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;477097What about characters that don't or can't act, or attack, for that round?

If they don't act, they can't seize initiative, so whoever held it, still keeps it.

Quote from: RPGPundit;477131That's my point. Ghost Whistler was complaining about "roll each round" initiative, while claiming that the only game he knew of that did one-roll initiative was 40k, when in fact the most popular, most diverse, and biggest selling system of the last 10 years had this exact same mechanic.

WRONG!

The most popular etc etc game up through the late 1990's had you roll initiative every round.

The most popular etc. etc. game from about 1999/2000 till now had you roll initiative ONCE at the start of combat.

And trust me, I spent three years working for WotC teaching D&D 3rd ed and 4th ed at game stores/conventions.  I know how initiative works in the game.

Quote from: GamerDude;477170WRONG!

Whoa!  Slow down just a little bit, blink a few times, and read his posts again.

He's in agreement with you.

Quote from: jibbajibba;477092A system I used in a CCG I built that would easily convert to an RPG was that initiaitve stayed withte h side that dealt damage.

*snip*
 The winner keeps initiative and so controls the combat... *snip*

The point is that in the system if you take damage you loose initiative and you don't deal damage for that round. The system massively favours the strong over the weak but its a CCG and combat needs to be fast.

The mecahnism is fairly realistic in that in real melee combat if you are getting hit you don't tend to hit back you tend to cover up and look for an opening (ie steal initiative). It would be easy to take the principle and apply it to an RPG. Basically the winner of initiative is the attacker. That remains the case until they fail to hit their opponent when intitiave moves over and the attacker becomes the defender. You can add special moves like Repoiste that seize initiative or ones like a hail mary that allow you to make an attack even though you don't have inititive at the risk of taking more damage or being easier to hit.
The advantage is that you don't need to count ticks, you still have a concept of rounds which is useful for timing other events (like spell effects), and it both removes the roll each round for initiative which you don't like and the one roll determines initiative for the whole combat which I assume you don't like or you would just use that.

It does change combat. Fast guys that attack first get a big bonus as you can keep on hitting you opponent for low damage and so stop them hitting you. Being able to block those attacks and somehow seize initiative becomes critical.
*snip*.

:hatsoff:

RPG system I am currently working on uses a similar approach and has no seperate "initiative" roll. It's all part of the whole action and initiative ie. "the first strike" may not be all that important if you decide to bait the opponent, you might feign a retreat to draw the opponent into lunging at you or to take advantage of some obstacle etc.

If the player has controll they can dictate the way they apply their (accumulated) roll (s), first or last doesn't matter, depends on ones style.

The RPG Zenobia (as well as others) has something similar (if I remember correctly?!) in that a player can string some hits together and cash them in when they become overwhelming...kinda like stringing along the opponent, keeping them off balance and reactive with jabs and feints then down comes the hammer.
Once the flow starts there is no applying "mods" till the cash in. Nothing to break the d. rolling/"narrative" action of the combat.
Most "mods" are used in the narrative as reasons why certain things are taking place ie. allowing one to further the "spread" by rolling again.

In my system if the "leading" player loses edge due to a nasty roll some/all of the accrued "Hits" can be used against them!

Systems like this require a bit more skill/desire in regards to describing the flow of combat...I find it very engaging.

Quote from: GamerDude;477170WRONG!

The most popular etc etc game up through the late 1990's had you roll initiative every round.

The most popular etc. etc. game from about 1999/2000 till now had you roll initiative ONCE at the start of combat.

And trust me, I spent three years working for WotC teaching D&D 3rd ed and 4th ed at game stores/conventions.  I know how initiative works in the game.

:hmm:

seems to me that D&D etal. let the DM choose how to go about "initiative". Various options were given...at least through 2ed.
Or are you just refering to 3ed and beyond?

Lace and Steel, a swashbuckling game I used to run, used the fencing manuvers to determine who had initiative from round to round. Each round (they called them 'passes') consisted of one attack and one defense. The player who kept initiative in the previous round would be the attacker in the current one. The only way for the defending player to seize initiative and become the attacker for the next pass was to successfully play a defense manuver (parry, dodge, riposte, or lock blades were all defense manuvers. Lock blades was special in that it required a str. vs. str. test and the winner could then take initiative next round.) I'm over-simplifing this somewhat, because just using a manuver wouldn't shift initiative to the other player. You could sucessfully defend, but still not take initiative. A particularly strong opponent, for example, could beat aside a weaker opponent's attempts to parry forcing the defender to give ground. One of my players found this out when he tried to fend off a broadsword wielding ogre highwayman while the rest of the party raced to help him.

The game's combat system used cards however, so it probably wouldn't translate well into another game, but it did really do a good job of capturing the feel of a pitched duel. Amongst my players it was by far the favorite of the swashbuckling games I've run.

Quote from: IceBlinkLuck;477181Lace and Steel, a swashbuckling game I used to run, used the fencing manuvers to determine who had initiative from round to round. Each round (they called them 'passes') consisted of one attack and one defense. The player who kept initiative in the previous round would be the attacker in the current one. The only way for the defending player to seize initiative and become the attacker for the next pass was to successfully play a defense manuver (parry, dodge, riposte, or lock blades were all defense manuvers. Lock blades was special in that it required a str. vs. str. test and the winner could then take initiative next round.) I'm over-simplifing this somewhat, because just using a manuver wouldn't shift initiative to the other player. You could sucessfully defend, but still not take initiative. A particularly strong opponent, for example, could beat aside a weaker opponent's attempts to parry forcing the defender to give ground. One of my players found this out when he tried to fend off a broadsword wielding ogre highwayman while the rest of the party raced to help him.

The game's combat system used cards however, so it probably wouldn't translate well into another game, but it did really do a good job of capturing the feel of a pitched duel. Amongst my players it was by far the favorite of the swashbuckling games I've run.

:cool:
will keep my eye out  for this game, I have only seen it for sale once years back, maybe Noble Knight has it...would like to see how this works out in play...thanks for the synopsis!

Quote from: RPGPundit;477131That's my point. Ghost Whistler was complaining about "roll each round" initiative, while claiming that the only game he knew of that did one-roll initiative was 40k, when in fact the most popular, most diverse, and biggest selling system of the last 10 years had this exact same mechanic.

RPGPundit

Ghost Whistler does not play RPGs, as should be obvious from his comments. He merely reads them (not very carefully, at that) and complains about them on the internet.

Roll-once-for-initiative is extremely common.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;477203Ghost Whistler does not play RPGs, as should be obvious from his comments. He merely reads them (not very carefully, at that) and complains about them on the internet.

Roll-once-for-initiative is extremely common.

Show me on the doll where I complained about initiative.

Quote from: flyingmice;477129In StarCluster games, each round an initiative is rolled, but the player can speed up his portion in initiative by taking penalties to Chance and/or Quality of Success, or by slowing down her place in initiative, gain bonuses to Chance and/or Quality. Being wounded sufficiently exacts a penalty on initiative as well as on Chance and Quality.

This is interesting, but I'm not sure how it would work at the table - what happens if everyone chooses to slow down their place in the initiative to gain a bonus? Do they all bottom out in the same position as they started out in, but with maximum bonuses? If so why doesn't everyone do this all the time? Does the system balance to account for strategic advantages you gain by going last anyway, in that everyone else has played their hand?

Also I assume the bonuses and penalties are applied to every action in that round regardless of what those actions are, what's to stop PCs starting a fistfight while the wizard attempts a particularly difficult spell they needed to cast anyway, giving him a bonus purely by dint of being involved in a combat?

I'm not criticising, just genuinely curious whether the system addresses these issues.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;477212Show me on the doll where I complained about initiative.

So what exactly are you playing again?

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;477230So what exactly are you playing again?

Quote from: TAFMSV;477174Whoa!  Slow down just a little bit, blink a few times, and read his posts again.

He's in agreement with you.

(goes back triple re-reads it) You are right. My brain honestly processed the post the opposite meaning. Now that is embarrassing.

I won't edit my post but I will respectfully retract it with an apology.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;476893I been thinking about initiative.

Every rpg i've played has had a roll for initiative - order of combat - each and every round. But those systems never took into account what happened in the previous round (proably for brevity's sake).

40K is the only game i've come across where one roll is made for initiative throughout the entire combat. That's as different a system i've seen.

What systems take into account the previous round's actiions prior to a new order of combat being determined if any?

NOTE: He said "every RPG I've Played" and "40K is the only game I've come across".  I don't think a fair question honestly based on a gamer's personal experience should get a severe beating.  My opinion of course.

Now, my concept for a game where your actions affect everything and simultaneous actions are just that.

The game system I've been working on this is called "Fluid Imitative" or "Fluid Combat" Some games have something similar but either handle "simultaneous" actions about as well as any other RPG and/or require a bit too much book keeping for my tastes.

The idea is everything happens on a continuous clock, broken down in 1 second increments. Your "Initiative Roll" determines when you can start acting, of course lower roll is soon so better.

Then,  each possible action takes so many seconds. Finish your current action you declare your next action - and that takes X seconds - when that point on the clock is reached we resolve the action.

Now, once the action has started there is no rolling for "who goes first". In most other RPG's this is important because, while almost every RPG I've read/played says everything in the same round happens "Simultaneously" the actions of the character going first in a round can and will affect anyone going later. So two gunslingers firing in the exact same round at each other, whoever gets "initiative" can affect the modifiers for the second character if the attack succeeds.

So instead, the effects of all actions taken in the same round (second) are applied at the end of that round and it doesn't matter who actually 'goes' first.  You can just keep going around the table starting on one side or the other you don't have to worry about who went first.

There are effects to your action.  If you are reloading a revolver and have 2 rounds loaded this round, as your opponent cocks back the hammer on his revolver (pointed at you, single action) you can declare to stop reloading and instead dodge THE NEXT ROUND.  If you do then you make a dodge roll which does affect the attackers shot because they are simultaneous.  Choose to keep loading hoping your attacker misses and - well it's a straight up shot for them.

I tried to keep this short. If anyone has interest I can start a new thread and explain in more detail.