Quote from: Phillip;643779Traveller, I most often run old D&D these days because it's the crowd pleaser in my current circle. Otherwise, I tend to other old things such as RuneQuest (which I note has "strike ranks") and Traveller. Even more complex old games such as Chivalry & Sorcery work fine.

This isn't answering the question in any way. What actions can be done in parallel, can you give an example. Do you go through the players one by one and get their actions, as GM?

I already explained it in about as much detail as you might get in a rulebook short of a sequence of "phases" (already a step toward rigidifying abstraction, but an often handy one).

There's so much about so much on the Web, I'll bet you could catch up on basic hobby game practices that have been around since the 19th century.

This:

Quote from: Phillip;643646GM decides NPC actions, then goes around the table in any order to get PC actions. Dawdling can mean your character is waffling about, or you might get a second chance after the others have spoken.

Then everything gets worked out in whatever order is convenient. Sometimes in the course of that, one event clearly must precede another. In other cases, there's an important question who will be quicker; a toss of the dice can settle that easily.

is the exact same as running a normal initiative system on a timed basis, take too long to make your move and you lose out. It offers no intrinsic advantages beyond that. The battle wheel is better if you want a more believable game since it models the time it takes to do things rather than just giving one segment to each player and NPC, leading to both a more structured (in that you aren't flipping coins) and a more sophisticated (as opposed to complicated) experience.

The rest as I said is about the underlying system, if it's a slow clunky system neither the battle wheel nor simultaneous moves (and they really aren't) will speed things up.

Quote from: Phillip;643781I'll bet you could catch up on basic hobby game practices that have been around since the 19th century.

Oh internet sarcasm, that's me crushed. If only you knew what you were talking about you wouldn't need to use it.

Okay, here's my attempt to explain simultaneous moves to the non-grognard.

That entities are moving at the same time does not imply that they are moving at the same speed. We can explore this to whatever level of detail we wish (grade-school maths coming in handy). An approach that makes for a slow-paced game appears for instance in D&D Supplement III, Star Fleet Battles and Champions: divide the turn into a large number of segments and plot each piece's movement one of those small increments at a time.

For an example of a much more simplistic approach, consider the original D&D turn sequence. The D&D set itself presented no turn sequence at all, that being one of many matters for which the reader was expected to refer to the Chainmail booklet.

Note that this formalism was conceived for battle scale (1:10 figure:man) depiction.

The Simultaneous Moves System:

1. Both sides write orders for each of their units (groups of figures of like type), including direction of movement and facing.

2. Both sides move their units according to their written orders, making one-half of the move, checking for unordered melee contact due to opponent movement, and conducting split-moves and missile fire, and taking any pass-through fire; then the balance of movement is completed as ordered.

3. Artillery fire is taken.

4. Missile fire is taken.

5. Melees are resolved.

(There is a rule for "charge if charged" cavalry orders. Also, morale checks can occur during the fire and/or melee portions, depending on circumstances.)

This differs from the Move/Counter Move System only in movement per se being simultaneous. Shooting and melees are resolved simultaneously in both systems.

Now, in the typical conditions of a D&D adventure, I would have all missiles strike before completion of movement (as an arrow's flight is swifter than the charge of man or horse). In the dungeons, quarters are sometimes so close that only already prepared shots can reasonably be loosed.

One thing to note here is that we are not restricted to always following a program by rote!

A commonplace example is the commonsense switch from (say) a second-by-second reckoning during a detailed combat simulation to (say) an hourly, daily or even weekly one when attention turns to an extended journey.

Likewise, we can adjust our treatment of a fight to reflect whatever happen to be matters of significance on that occasion, without needing robotically to apply the same procedures when they do not reflect our interest.

Is it of real interest whether Event A occurs prior to Event B? How much interest? Depending on our answers in the particular case, what is warranted may range from no consideration at all, to a fair bit of careful accounting for factors.

Quote from: Phillip;643862The Simultaneous Moves System:

1. Both sides write orders for each of their units (groups of figures of like type), including direction of movement and facing.

2. Both sides move their units according to their written orders, making one-half of the move, checking for unordered melee contact due to opponent movement, and conducting split-moves and missile fire, and taking any pass-through fire; then the balance of movement is completed as ordered.

3. Artillery fire is taken.

4. Missile fire is taken.

5. Melees are resolved.

(There is a rule for "charge if charged" cavalry orders. Also, morale checks can occur during the fire and/or melee portions, depending on circumstances.)

This differs from the Move/Counter Move System only in movement per se being simultaneous. Shooting and melees are resolved simultaneously in both systems.

Now, in the typical conditions of a D&D adventure, I would have all missiles strike before completion of movement (as an arrow's flight is swifter than the charge of man or horse). In the dungeons, quarters are sometimes so close that only already prepared shots can reasonably be loosed.

Okay, thanks, that's a bit clearer. To briefly describe the battle wheel system in contrast:
1. Decide who goes first by whatever means you like, higher reflexes, sitting closer to the GM, quickdraw skills, drawing of straws, whatever.

2. Actions like melee, movement, missile fire all take place whenever anyone wants to take them. If shooting a bow takes 4 'actions', their counter advances by 4 around the wheel. They can take actions next when the 'clock hand' moves to their spot.

3. Two or more counters on the same place on the wheel are played from the bottom first, in other words whoever got there first.

That's it, that's the whole structure. No rounds, turns, segments, missile fire first or whatever.

It leads to good old fashioned chaos, a big mashup of melee, movement, missile fire and more with the right system behind it (not Exalted), anything can happen at any time. I'm fairly sure that's as quick as simultaneous initiative, although clearly it's different in many ways. My experience of it has been quite exhiliarating so far.