Initiative Systems are one of those mechanics that don’t seem complicated. Like most things in games, they’re an abstraction . Trying to model everyone going all at once in the middle of a fight would end poorly. What’s interesting is how different systems handle this.

Team-Based Turns

Determine the order of teams to act. Each team decides how their characters will act, and in what order.

Ironclaw does this most notably. The side that initiates combat goes first, in whatever order the players choose. Then, the other side goes. While simple, this leads to two main problems:

1. Larger groups make this system harder to manage (Who’s gone already?  Who hasn’t? Who’s going right now?)
2. Whoever goes first has a massive advantage.
   • This problem is made even worse but the first problem

Ironclaw solves problem 2 fairly well. Each side rolls Initiative, but instead of determining the order, it determines readiness. One of the possibilities of readiness is to be “Focussed” which allows the character to perform an action outside of his turn. This makes the first round unpredictable instead of a steamroll.

Character-Based Turns

Determine the order of characters to act. Each character then gets to take a turn, in order, often performing multiple actions.

D&D is most known for this. At the start of combat, everyone rolls for initiative. Order it from highest to lowest, and those characters go in that order. Faster characters tend to go closer to first but can vary in the exact order. Unprepared characters may still go first, in contrast to the previous example.

Shadowrun uses a modified version of this; each round initiative is rolled. After each character has gone (one “Pass”) subtract 10 from everyone’s initiative, people with positive initiative get another turn. Continue until no one has a positive initiative.

This type of system scales well but doesn’t allow for as much on-the-fly strategizing as Team-Based systems. Additionally, characters built to always go first can get screwed over with the die rolls, meaning they may not go soon enough to trigger what they need. Similarly, reactionary characters (like healers) may end up going first, and have nothing good to do.

Shadowrun’s system provides an additional problem: slow characters don’t get to do much. The mage gets to do 1 thing per round, but the cybered-out lunatic gets to take 2-3 turns.

Active Time Systems

Players have an initiative value. Actions modify this value by an amount dependent on the action. The initiative value determines who acts. 

These systems are a lot more interesting since there’s no turns. When the character is up to act, they act, then someone else has priority. I’ve seen two systems that do this, Arcanis and Paragon.

Arcanis does this with a clock system. Everyone rolls one or more d10 and writes down the lowest number as their clock value. There is a master clock that starts at 1 and advances one “hour” at a time. Each action advances each character’s clock value by a different number (Swinging a massive axe might advance it by 4, whereas swinging a one-handed sword might only advance by 2). This allows for a little more accurate combat, where characters doing slow things take fewer (but often more impactful) turns.

Paragon does a priority system. Your roll initiative, and assign increasing priority in decreasing initiative roll (if A, B, and C roll 8, 12, and 2, the priority would be B=1, A=2, C=3). Each action increases your priority similarly to Arcanis. However, each reaction also increases the priority. This can create interesting strategies where one character can be pinned down by spending time to dodge attacks, without ever getting a chance to react with an attack of his own.

This is my favorite system but also has a few problems. From a design standpoint, it’s trickiest to balance since you now need to weight actions against how impactful they can be. Additionally, it’s also the hardest to keep track of. Arcanis’s clock worked well but Paragon required a shared whiteboard to adequately keep track of.

Declare and Resolve (Simultaneous) Systems

Everyone decides ahead of time what they will do. After everyone has declared, resolve the set of actions. Repeat until combat is over.

Mouse Guard (and, I assume, other Burning Wheel games) has both sides declare a number of actions at the same time, and resolve everything simultaneously. This system has only 4 abstract actions (Attack, Defend, Feint, and Maneuver), and have a sort of rock-paper-scissors effect (Attack beats Feint, Feint beats Defense).

Unfortunately, that’s also why this system works. Attempting to declare specific actions (I’m going to move here, then I’m going to attack that guy) doesn’t work as well as more abstract actions (I’m going to do a Maneuver, then I’m going to Attack). It works for some games, usually more narrative-heavy, but not ones that work better with tactical combat.

Which System works?

Cop out answer: all of them do, in their own systems.

The reason for this is mostly thematic. D&D has a particular battle style largely because it grew out of wargames. Mouse Guard has a battle style that’s thematic. Ironclaw has a system that reflects how its action system works. Modeling combat is hard, so go with the next best thing: something close that fits the game’s style.

But really, which one do I use?

It very much depends on the game. Tactical combat works better when the players know the order of events, either the order of the Characters or Teams. Thematic games with more abstract combat are better with a Declaration method since that’s somewhat close to how a combat would play out. Active Time systems are good when the system is trying to highlight the differences : between actions.

What if I want something different?

Other ideas for initiative systems that I’ve heard about or thought of:

• Nomination: the current character chooses the next character to act, but it can’t be on their team.
  • Upside: Sides are usually balanced, and can create interesting tactical choices of who to choose next.
  • Downside: somewhat easily gamed, especially by a GM that can obscure information. Weird with unbalanced sides.
• Card Draw: Each character has cards to represent them. Shuffle the cards together in a deck, and draw. That character gets to act.
  • Upside: Good simulation of chaotic combat. Have to make tough decisions on who acts when. Easy to use regardless of systems.
  • Downside: Requires another game component. Can be too unpredictable.
  • Possible Modification: Have the top 3-5 cards be visible to allow for some planning.
• Order Declaration: Like team based, but instead of randomly choosing who goes first, each side secretly chooses the order for characters to act. Alternate sides as characters act.
  • Upside: Interesting choices but hard to “game.” Characters can’t get screwed over by randomly bad initiative rolls.
  • Downside: Most of the other problems as Character-Based systems. High potential for Analysis Paralysis.