How do you guys deal with initiative in the following situation:

PC1 is away from the rest of the party, and decides to enter a room. Oh no! The room is full of guards! COMBAT TIME! PC1 and the various NPCs roll for initiative. They fight a round or two.

Then, the rest of the PC party shows up to lend a helping hand! What to do about initiative? Does everyone re-roll? Or do you simply tack the new PCs to the bottom of the list, making them play last?

I'd have new arrivals roll initiative and insert them into the order. Easiest to do at the top/bottom of a combat round.

Forcing them to go last kind of flies in the face of the narrative initiative system, so don't do that.

Hmm but how about when they arrive?

Depending on what they do you could rule they have an action at the end of the round before they get to act on their initiative.

For example say the foes are unaware the rest of the party are coming through a different door but the PC already in combat has an open comlink and they can hear him/her fighting for their life explaining why they rush in and get an action to decide how they react to what they see upon entering.

Might be as simple as giving them a chance to do something say if a blast door is shutting and they have a chance to either stay outside and have to find a way to reopen those doors or risk leaping inside and preying there's cover nearby.

I keep track of the initiative results when they're rolled. You can do this on a word processing document, spreadsheet or piece of scrap paper. That way when new participants enter the scene I just have rolls made for the newcomers and fit additional turn slots into the sequence that way.

If you use an electronic document or a turn order sheet inside a page protect with dry erase markers it's a lot easier to do this.

I use sticky notes for each initiative slot, different colours for different 'teams', you can then move them about to add in new initiative slots.

I also sometimes make everyone roll initiative as characters can still act even if they are not in the room and it ensures that you split your attention between players, it also makes it easier to handle the party coming back together.

I also sometimes make everyone roll initiative as characters can still act even if they are not in the room and it ensures that you split your attention between players, it also makes it easier to handle the party coming back together.

This is a good move. There was a bit on Order 66 where they talked about a time when the players were split into 2 groups, 1 pilot flying a fighter in space while the rest were on the planet. The GM ran both combats at the same time so everyone at the table was engaged, and it let them do some interesting things with the initiative slots.

I also sometimes make everyone roll initiative as characters can still act even if they are not in the room and it ensures that you split your attention between players, it also makes it easier to handle the party coming back together.

This is a good move. There was a bit on Order 66 where they talked about a time when the players were split into 2 groups, 1 pilot flying a fighter in space while the rest were on the planet. The GM ran both combats at the same time so everyone at the table was engaged, and it let them do some interesting things with the initiative slots.

I like this. Makes it easy to manage and definitely lends a cinematic aspect to the gameplay.

I also sometimes make everyone roll initiative as characters can still act even if they are not in the room and it ensures that you split your attention between players, it also makes it easier to handle the party coming back together.

This is a good move. There was a bit on Order 66 where they talked about a time when the players were split into 2 groups, 1 pilot flying a fighter in space while the rest were on the planet. The GM ran both combats at the same time so everyone at the table was engaged, and it let them do some interesting things with the initiative slots.

I like the idea of going between the two scenes. It especially fits in a Star Wars game, since many of the battles in the movies were split in this way. Thank you for sharing the example from Order 66, which I never listen to, and am a big fan of.

In the OP's situation, when combat starts, have everyone roll initiative. Then, rather than saying the other characters are a round or two away, put it in terms of maneuvers. From your example, 1 or 2 rounds would be 3 maneuvers to get "into the fight" This gives your players an option. They can suffer strain to take 2 maneuvers in the first round, and then only need one more to be able to take an action in the battle, one round after the fighting started. If they want to "save" strain, it takes them longer. This could also be an opportunity for some cool talent use, like Field Commander to give other characters added maneuvers.

Also, there's a very handy Initiative Tracker in the Compiled Resource List thread. I highly recommend it.

Have your characters all roll at the same time. It's a lot of fun. I was able to do it once in a game I ran and switching from scene to scene made the encounter feel very cinematic.

I'll be splitting the party much more, now that I know how well it works and how much fun it was.

Like lupex, I use stickies (post-its), except I fold them in half and in half again to fold over the screen. Pink = bad lightsabers = NPC's, blue = good lightsabers = PC's. Since it's a four-"page" screen, it's easy for me to keep track of who had how many successes & advantages on their initiative roll. Text documents & scratch paper work, too.

It's funny, I had a prison break scenario last night, and they flipped the switch, letting everyone out (cue total chaos, a la one of my favorite movies I'm reticent to spoil here....). I needed to allow some random NPC's into the fray. Although I fully support the method of having everyone roll initiative & give everyone a turn, I still needed to inject a rabid Wookiee. Plopping him in on the initiative order seemed to work great.

OggDude's GMTools has an encounter generator with an Initiative chart at the top with PC and NPC check boxes. It really makes life simple.

Honestly I think you'll be OK just making a roll when the new characters enter the combat and inserting them into the initative order in some way that seems appropriate.

When we played at Gamernation Con with GM Chris, he'd jot down the Initiative rolls when they were made but wouldn't keep them after he'd recorded the Initiative Order.

When a new character arrived, he just made a roll and put them in some place that seemed like it made sense. If it was a good roll, he'd add them toward the top, if it was a poor roll they'd be toward the bottom.

In my own games it's happened a couple of times and I've tended to just add the new characters at the bottom of the Initiative order.

Another thing Chris did that I liked was, in certain cases, he'd just use one NPC slot even for a couple of groups of minions, just to save time.

I'm not sure why this would be much of an issue but I'd just have everyone re-roll Initiative. My reason is that the situation is changing enough to warrant it and it's really not that hard to do. Plus you get an opportunity to make adjustments based on if the new PCs are rushing in or sneaking in (do your Adversaries roll Cool or Vigilance this time?), do some of the approaching PCs have exceptionally high Cool? Are some of the party faster (less Encumbered) and will they show up earlier or is everyone using the same pace? Do the approaching PCs know the battle is around that corner or is it the next one (Vigilance)? Could they come up from behind, is there cover on the way or can they be seen running at long range? Lot's of variables...

I guess the underlying issue is what if the player in combat rolls rubish and the other players roll well?

Does it matter if the PC gets to act first even though he wouldn't have based on his own dice roll? If it may, then perhaps for the first round, make the player in the combat take his rolled result and thereafter just allow the normal procedure to play out.

Alternatively, if you just have the party roll and play it out as normal, if the solo player goes ahead of his team I would throw a destiny point into the mix and upgrade a difficulty dice as the player is feeling a bit vunerable for being alone. If the player rolls a despair then have the split group attacked as well, so he will be flying solo longer than he expected.

I also think you have to ballance out the reason for the player going solo, perhaps there is a larger plan? In which case if the plan seemed reasonable it may be somewhat unfair to punish a player. On the other hand if he was just rushing ahead with no plan in mind then a harsh reminder as to why parties should stick together more often than not could be called for. It is pretty hard to kill a PC and having a subsequent rescue attempt could be a fun adventure for the rest of the group.

Also, there's a very handy Initiative Tracker in the Compiled Resource List thread. I highly recommend it.

I second this, I printed it on blue card stock and laminated it. I'm a paper-at-the-table gamer and having my game aids in different colors makes them stand out better.

As far as the original question, my answer is none of the above/all of the above.

I make that decision based on what is happening and the narrative at the time. I do what 'feels' right at the time.