I've been back and forth, up and down, around the bend (wooh!), and round the houses with the issue of initiative. But in the end, while I wish I could dream up some fancy pants awesome system, traditional initiative - at least some form of sequential resolution where who acts first gets an advantage over later players (to some degree) - just works.
There are two choices I can think of:
PC goes first, doesn't matter which, unless circumstance absolutely precludes it. If the PC succeeds, he picks who follows, if he fails the GM picks (and vice versa). Once everyone's acted the round ends and one unit of narrative time passes (if you need to measure or count down an exploding bomb or something.
Or:
GM resolves each action in any old order and effects are resolved at the end of the round. IE, if characters score damage they accumulate 'hits' of some kind and then roll them to see how that translates to actual damage at the end of the round. This means things sort of happen concurrently, as they would (once all have taken an action round ends as above), but get sorted out after.
I cannot see any way past sequential ordering. Every other idea i've found or read about seems certainly no quicker. There's no point being clever for the sake of clever.

Tick systems like exalted's battle wheel work for me. I don't like complexity or accounting, even rejecting a simple death spiral mechanic, but the tradeoff in this case is worth it. It leads to unpredictable, fluid, flexible, edge of your seat combats where any damn thing can happen.

Besides, one action per round systems don't make any sense. How often can someone punch with a knife versus swinging a two handed axe, these things don't take the same amount of time. Then mix in skill levels, so an axe master can hit three times as often as joe peasantlevy, and you've got something new.

Problem with tick systems is players never remember the cost and never remember to keep monitoring their place. This was always the case with Feng Shui and it annoys me to no end (players are the laziest fuckers on earth).

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;639879Problem with tick systems is players never remember the cost and never remember to keep monitoring their place. This was always the case with Feng Shui and it annoys me to no end (players are the laziest fuckers on earth).

Then don't be shy about introducing elements like tick wheels, initiative tracks, or action cards. Board games use them because they work, and we shouldn't just disregard them or write them off because they were invented for a different gaming discipline than ours.

One of WFRP 3's strengths was it's presentation. Something you need to know? Bam, it's there, right in front of you. No fussing about with a rulebook or crossing things off a sheet of paper, it's on a card or track right there.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;639879Problem with tick systems is players never remember the cost and never remember to keep monitoring their place.

The battle wheel uses counters to track their place, the overhead comes with remembering action moves, but that can be greatly mitigated by writing down skill costs on the character sheet and keeping a cheat sheet of the most common actions (like movement) on the table.

As I said it's a compromise, but the best of a bad lot if you're looking for something completely different and exciting. Plus for the crafty amongst us the counters and wheel present excellent opportunities for customisation.

The central thing about initiative and action systems for me is that different actions take different lengths of time, which rules out all of the standard you go-I go methods. A system has to encompass this idea, and the battle wheel is the most optimal I've come across so far.

There must be an easier way of doing this without battle wheels or other potential distractions. I'd rather keep it all in the imagination as much as possible.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;639903There must be an easier way of doing this without battle wheels or other potential distractions.

Sadly, there mustn't. Some things just can't be simplified without cost. For me that cost is too high so I live with the overhead, as do my players. Maybe for some a straightforward one action per round mechanic would be better.

This is interesting, another topic that is right in tune with my current considerations as well:

I have designed my core rpg rules to be playable as a miniatures game too, at least in combat.
However, when i used to use them as miniatures rules, i used to use speed/initiative differently, i used to let the characters have 1 - 4 Actions depending on speed, and some things took more than one action to perform.

Right now, i wonder if i should adapt those rules for my rpg instead of use the basic Initiative + roll thing ...

I am curious about that "wheel" in Exalted that is referred to.

In his game Galactic Adventures, David Johansen had a neat trick - players could trade chance of success for quality of success, and vice versa. I used that concept in StarCluster 2E - and in all my games since - using it for inititative, chance, and quality, allowing players to freely trade from one to the other. What this does is give the players abstract tactics. They can say "I will hurry this strike and get it in quickly, even though I may  have a greater chance of missing." or "I will hold back and wait longer for a better opening to do more damage." or "I will take the first chance I get to get a wounds in, even though I risk only a superficial cut."

-clash

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;639903There must be an easier way of doing this without battle wheels or other potential distractions. I'd rather keep it all in the imagination as much as possible.

If you can work out a better way, you'll affect game design for years to come, but the battle wheel does it's job well, with a minimum of fuss.

Older Shadowrun let characters take multiple actions (One for every 10 points of "initiative" they rolled), but every that was a little clunky (Doesn't solve the problem of remembering your initiative numbers), and would be better handled with a battle wheel. Feng Shui has the shot clock, which is similar to Shadowrun, but... clunkier.

Quote from: Catelf;639959I am curious about that "wheel" in Exalted that is referred to.

It's kinda like a clock, with the big hand starting at 12. Battle starts, everyone gets moved to their starting points depending on their initial initiative roll, with acting sooner being better than acting later. Then the hour hand moves on to 1, anyone in that space takes their action, and then gets moved on a number of spaces depending on how long it took. Different actions can take different amounts of time, and thus move you different amounts of spaces forward when you take them.

When everyone's done, it moves to 2. Take actions, move the wheel onwards, etc. Repeat until everyone is done fighting. New combatants can join in in the same way as originally, roll for their initial initiative and get placed that number of spaces away from "now".

Quote from: Ladybird;639967If you can work out a better way, you'll affect game design for years to come, but the battle wheel does it's job well, with a minimum of fuss.

Older Shadowrun let characters take multiple actions (One for every 10 points of "initiative" they rolled), but every that was a little clunky (Doesn't solve the problem of remembering your initiative numbers), and would be better handled with a battle wheel. Feng Shui has the shot clock, which is similar to Shadowrun, but... clunkier.



It's kinda like a clock, with the big hand starting at 12. Battle starts, everyone gets moved to their starting points depending on their initial initiative roll, with acting sooner being better than acting later. Then the hour hand moves on to 1, anyone in that space takes their action, and then gets moved on a number of spaces depending on how long it took. Different actions can take different amounts of time, and thus move you different amounts of spaces forward when you take them.

When everyone's done, it moves to 2. Take actions, move the wheel onwards, etc. Repeat until everyone is done fighting. New combatants can join in in the same way as originally, roll for their initial initiative and get placed that number of spaces away from "now".

How about Initiative tokens?
You get tokens equal to initiative, and as you perform actions, the longer time they take, the more tokens you use.

If the initiative values as a standard is between 1 - 8 or less for all characters in the game, (like storytelling system), then one may have numbered tokens, that then also represent the initiative for that action, but an action may still require more than one token to use ...

Quote from: Catelf;639981How about Initiative tokens?
You get tokens equal to initiative, and as you perform actions, the longer time they take, the more tokens you use.

If the initiative values as a standard is between 1 - 8 or less for all characters in the game, (like storytelling system), then one may have numbered tokens, that then also represent the initiative for that action, but an action may still require more than one token to use ...

I understand what you're going for with this, but it's clunkier; you're passing a lot of tokens around the table, and potentially (Depending on how quickly the ruleset plays) doing this very quickly. It's also kinda dependent on everyone being sat at a table together, to make token-passing easier.

You'd still have to process some means to replenish otherwise everything grinds to a halt.

The Battle Wheel idea is a good idea. But for me, it's an exceptionally daunting design prospect: havign to cost actions and balance is not going to be easy.

Most such systems are inside fantasy games, like Exalted, and there is, if simplistically, less complexity. If your setting includes vehicles, spaceships, heavy weapons, as well as guns and melee combat, then you have a lot of complexity.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;640038Most such systems are inside fantasy games, like Exalted, and there is, if simplistically, less complexity. If your setting includes vehicles, spaceships, heavy weapons, as well as guns and melee combat, then you have a lot of complexity.

I use it for everything from fantasy to cyberpunk to science fiction, once the central idea that different actions take different lengths of time is understood it's just a matter of assigning values to the main ones and modifying them by situation.

A small light person isn't going to be quick at swinging a six foot long two handed sword, but a towering troll will be able to flick it around like a knife - as quickly as a troll can do that, which mightn't be too quickly. Unless it was a highly skilled troll. It's great, you can make the results as finely grained as you want based on a variety of factors, each resulting in a very different combat outcome, which really gives a flair to battle. The way I have it set up, the highly skilled are the ones most to be feared, which seems fairly realistic to me.

I use a modified battle wheel with different combat rules to simulate ship to ship mapless 3D combat, but it's still the same core concept.

Can you show me this system? Is it your own idea?

I used to own Exalted, but I don't think I made it as far as the combat rules before I gave up (3e might excite me, but that's nother topic).