Initiative systems for different kind of games

[Harshax]

Each round, everyone gets a turn, and someone from the party that won initiative spends their turn first (party's choice). After that, one of the targets that still has a turn goes next (target party's choice). If none of the targets still have a turn, someone else from their party goes next (target party's choice). If nobody in the party still has a turn, it goes to the other party (and again, they choose who). If nobody has turns, start a new round.

How would this work if the party has no means to communicate, such as operating inside of a sphere of silence, trying to be ultra-stealthy, underwater, during a severe thunderstorm or perhaps executing an ambush from multiple locations?

[jt]

I'd just ignore it. Even when they're all together, it's not like the characters are stopping to discuss who's going to take the next stab. It's an abstraction of something that's happening almost simultaneously, with a splash of putting things in an order an author might use. "Alice stabbed Bob who then stabbed Cheryl who then stabbed Alice, then Darcy stabbed Enrique." flows better than if I shuffle that and get "Alice stabbed Bob, then Cheryl stabbed Alice, then Darcy stabbed Enrique, then Bob stabbed Cheryl."

[hyzmarca]

The core issue with intitive systems is information vs preemption.
Declaring later is always better, because it lets you have more information before you make your choice. Declaring last is always best.
But at the same time, acting first is usually best. There are fiddly bits that make acting later better, like taking a hit before fully healing instead of after, but generally, acting first lets you preempt your enemy's action by disabling or killing him before he gets a turn, which is almost always better than any fiddly thing you can do with action order.

These two are diametrically opposed, and it's impossible to have both in a system where declaration and resolution happen at the same time. Which is unfortunate, since declaring and resolving an action before moving on to the next is much, much faster and simpler than a two-phase set-up.

One thing to do, I don't know if this is interesting or it sucks, is to do reverse initiative declaration, simultaneous resolution. At the table, this means that actions are declared dice are rolled, HP is subtracted, and status effects are added with an asterix so that they don't take effect until after everyone has done their thing for that turn. This means that a person can still stab his killer while he's dying. In effect, it removes preemption from the equation.

[Harshax]

If the effects of combat actions don't apply until everyone has done their thing, then counterspell are completely ineffective and you can't disarm an opponent of their world-ending McGuffin.

[jt]

Simultaneous resolution is slow to adjudicate. Resolving a turn in Diplomacy takes a noticeable amount of time to puzzle out, and its rules are a lot simpler than your average tabletop RPG. But computerized Diplomacy goes plenty fast, so maybe for an online-only RPG this is actually the way to go.

I could imagine that all the players and monsters enter their actions simultaneously (the GM doing the monster work while players strategize together), the computer does the default resolutions to everything and shows the GM, the GM edits whatever they want to change due to fudging or the way they're adjudicating clever stunts that don't fit in the mechanics, then the GM hits a button that shows the final result to the players, and we start a new round.

If the effects of combat actions don't apply until everyone has done their thing, then counterspell are completely ineffective and you can't disarm an opponent of their world-ending McGuffin.

You can have categories of actions that move faster than others. Rock Paper Scissors is a simultaneous resolution game.

[OgreBattle]

You can still disarm/counterspell with simultaneous, just have a way to go "oh I rolled X vs his Y result so I succeeded/failed to counterspell"

You can then have a clash of attacks/ki/power, double KO's, jousting, and so on.

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'cause as is, D&D style initiative doesn't let two knights charge on horseback and strike with their lances, one is still and the other is moving.

Something I've been mulling over is "Declare your 'stance' which affects initiative and what actions you can take, then take your action".

There's a limited number of stances like...
Active: The fastest stance, you can move/standard/bonus action
-examples: charging, disengaging, running
Reactive: a defensive stance, bonus to defense but your movement is based on reaction to others
-examples: covering an ally, guarding a passage and intercepting anyone that goes by, pursuing an enemy
Focus: The slowest stance, you do a full round action
-examples: Most spells, a kiai shout dimension cutting slash


You declare stance in reverse initiative order, so if the slowest enemy is focusing then a faster PC can choose an active stance to move away from them. If you know "When dragons use the focus stance their breath weapon AoE increases" then it lets faster characters anticipate and act accordingly

Actions resolve simultaneously by phase, so first Active actions are resolved, then reactive, then focus. So two guys charging are active and resolve simultaneously, but if one guy is actively charging and the other is reactively bracing the active charger resolves his action, then in the reactive phase that guy resolves if he survives.

[erik]

If the effects of combat actions don't apply until everyone has done their thing, then counterspell are completely ineffective and you can't disarm an opponent of their world-ending McGuffin.

What if the only time you use initiative is to resolve those kind of things, to see who got the drop on whom. Usually it doesn't matter, people all do their turns and their actions occur during that round, even if they get KO'd at some point during the round. But if someone wants to interrupt another character then that's an initiative roll.

[Harshax]

What if the only time you use initiative is to resolve those kind of things, to see who got the drop on whom. Usually it doesn't matter, people all do their turns and their actions occur during that round, even if they get KO'd at some point during the round. But if someone wants to interrupt another character then that's an initiative roll.

I think I like this. Maybe don’t even roll initiative unless someone declares an action intended to disrupt an opponent? To summarize:

Everyone declares an action.
For Interrupt actions (counterspell, disarm, guarding another), the participants each roll initiative to see who went first.
Resolve all the actions.
Apply all the effects.

[EDIT: Didn't read your response close enough. You did suggest not rolling initiative, unless it mattered.]

Is this right?

[OgreBattle]

What games have simultaneous resolution as the standard?

[brized]

What games have simultaneous resolution as the standard?

It's not a TTRPG, but Yomi (digital or physical). It relies on cards for actions, and they have builtin mechanisms for conflict resolution.

There are different move types, which have automatic priority:
Attack > Throw > Block/Dodge > Attack

So if someone plays a Throw vs. your Attack, the Attack goes through and the Throw fails.

Attacks and Throws have speed, like 1.1, 4.8, etc. Stronger moves generally have slower speed. In the rare case two moves have the exact same speed, you get a double hit. Blocks return to your hand unless you get Thrown, and when you block an Attack, you draw a card. There's much more nuance, but those are the basics. It might port over to a Winds of Fate system, but there would need to be cards for equipment, basic attacks, and special attacks like trip/grab/disarm etc., not just powers like spells.

[OgreBattle]

Ah yeah, I've looked at Yomi and read some threads about it here before.

"Decide your action in secret, then everyone reveals" is the way they do it for their 1 on 1 combat. Could try porting that to a tabletop RPG with multiple people, so some adjustment for a bunch of different PC's NPC's acting is needed

[jt]

Pokemon is simultaneous resolution, and an RPG (though the wrong kind). Its double battle and triple battle variants handle multiple characters, so you could use that as a model. Your Pokemon are implied to be standing in a line parallel to the opponent's, and each can only target the one directly in front of it and the two adjacent to that. Your Pokemon don't get to move between spots on the line.

That solves some of the problems with simultaneous resolution - it's hard to deal with movement, and every possible location a character can be in makes specifying targets harder. There are probably less restrictive solutions, though.

[brized]

Gloomhaven also uses cards for actions and initiative. It's pretty interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSWMvXT6jCw&t=5m17s