(Mods, if this belongs in House Rules please move it there but I felt this post was better served here.)

Hi all,

There's something I wanted to discuss with Dark Heresy players and GMs alike. Is it just me or is rolling for initiative, despite being one of the most fun things a GM can say to their players, is actually quite long and boring in reality and detracts from what should be an exciting combat encounter? This problem is particularly problematic if it's a relatively large combat encounter. Any sense of surprise or excitement is usually diminished by the time this process is over, something I noticed in my own games somewhat (although I'd taken steps to improve it somewhat so it wasn't too bad) and to me anyway, is painfully obvious in some recorded play sessions such as the otherwise excellent grimdark podcast.

I'm thinking of changing the process slightly so that players roll for initiative at the very start of the session regardless of whether I've got any combat planned or not. Then, if it looks like combat will occur, I'll either have the NPC initiative already rolled pregame or roll for it (in secret) leading up to the encounter (I play over roll20 so this wouldn't be hard) and then instead of saying "roll for initiative", i'll state "combat begins" and immediately have the first character take their first action. Mechanically, it should be the same, especially if I allow the players to spend a fate point immediately at the start of combat to count as having rolled a 10 for initiative instead. At the end of the encounter, I can have the players roll again if need be so the order will be different in a future encounter.

How does this sound? I can't see it presenting a problem but then again, I've only got one campaign under my belt and I wanted to see what the more experienced acolytes and GMs thought.

All the best,

Eisenhorn

Why use initiative order at all ?

I've played Ironclaw and Myriad Song. They are RPGs where turn order is:

- GM divides combatants into two groups. Usually NPCs in one, PCs in the other.

- Circumstances (eg surprise) lead the GM to decide which group goes first.

- Play then alternates between each group

- Within each group characters have their turns in whatever order they want to. GM decides the order for NPCs, players agree on an order among themselves.

- A character takes their full turn at once. There is no having part of your turn, letting someone else go, then having the rest of your turn.

- (optional) Talking is a free action. But only during your turn.

I've found that it works well. Some metagaming around the exact PC turn order, but that takes up less time than figuring out the initiative order in other games. Dark Heresy lacks the reeling mechanic of those games, so there will be less reason for such metagaming. You might find your players basing their turn order on how they are seated around the table.

It is a bit long-winded sometimes - not that it takes too long to roll one die, but collating all the results and putting them in order can take a minute or so when you've got 5-6 players in a group.

I agree with Bilateralrope .

I often just go round in order around the table, and will often boil it down to "players go first" or "npcs go first" based on relative agility and surprise.

Having the players go together in a non-strict order also helps support the players come up with combinations of actions across various players - a guy with a concussive weapon go in first, then an all-out attack to finish an opponent off, or whatever, rather than saying "no, you have to attack first, or else take delay and only get a half action".

I've played Mongoose Traveller, where a player's initiative varies on a turn-by-turn basis (based on things like firing weapons with a high recoil) and without gameplay visual aids to track it, it just gets annoying. as far as I'm concerned, combat should be much more about having a plan in a narrative sense, than having figured out a way to game the mechanics.

Yeah, I tend to do initiative with 'each PC, and enemy/allied groups.' So, let's say Filthy the Tech-Priest, Lee Harvey the Sniper, Seven the clone and Mina the Psyker are fighting twenty cultists, eight cult adepts and the cult leader. They also have backup from a trio of local Enforcers.

I have them all roll initiative while I roll for the three primary 'groups' in most encounters; the bosses, the middle-management and the mooks. Then, all the characters with the same stats go off at once.

That said, sometime I just tell them to roll initiative ahead of time, or just tell them to roll it for no reason to keep suspense going. Or if somebody isn't getting a chance to do things in the group, I'll use it to single them out and give them more time to get stuff done.

I play around a table in person, so MMMV. I don't find rolling for Initiative to be a slog, it is the actual combat I find boring (at least as a GM). I have five players, and I tell each to roll Initiative. They go around the table, telling me what they rolled (plus AgB, of course) while I scribble it down on a piece of paper. While they are rolling, I do their enemies as well.

It takes 30 seconds or so, which is a blip on the radar compared to how long combat can be!

Doing it at a table is pretty quick as well, yes. The only reason my table takes longer than 30 seconds is because they're talking **** about their initiatives, which is no end of amusement for me (especially when the bad guys are faster).

For NPCs, I would just roll Initiative once per type of similar character. And personally I rather like Initiative as an element that increases the influence a character concept has on combat (agile people go first, heavy "tanks" are tougher but slower ...).

That being said, if you really wanted to dial it down, I simply would not roll for Initiative at all. Rolling once per session sounds rather boring and redundant, because you end up with a fixed number for any subsequent encounters that evening, so why not have said fixed number be defined by something that allows you to skip rolling completely?

On a hunch:

• Higher Agility > Lower Agility
  
• If several characters have the same Agility score, the ones with fewer weight in Equipment go first
  
• If several characters have the same Carry Weight, or if the group does not keep track of this, Lower Strength > Higher Strength

There are some good ideas and suggestions here. I already split my NPCs into groups to facilitate the quickening of rolling for initiative, it's just the bit of rolling for the players and setting the order is what bothers me. Now, this actually doesn't take that long, but for me it's just long enough to kill the surprise of combat. I feel the need to get 'straight into it'. After combat has finished, I would then have players for initiative again to vary up the next encounter- it's not the length of time of rolling for initiative that bothers me, just the length of time it takes if done immediately before combat (the break between story telling and combat is too long).

Cpteveros- I hear you about the problems with combat. There are better combat games out there for sure! In our group, we've not got to the point yet where combat is as exciting as it should be, but we've made some pretty good strides towards getting there. Here are some things I do when I GM combat which seem to help:

1. When a player attacks, I've started requesting that they describe their attack in as much of a narrative way as possible (tip 3 helps towards this). Some players are better than doing this than others but it makes a difference when a character unslings the chainsword from his belt, thumbing the activation stud and swinging it in an arc rather than performing a "ready and standard attack" action.
2. Before I interject, I get a player to roll to hit and then assuming they hit, immediately roll for damage (rather than me interuppting briefly to say where they hit). Then, rather than saying "you strike the cultist for 3 damage on his right arm", I'll say "your chainsword swings down across the cultist's arm, not quite cutting as deeply into the flesh as you had hope but it tears through his clothing and opens a nasty gash across his bicep, causing him to cry in pain". I try not to break immersion by saying how much damage they've done as a physical number.
3. Combat can often appear as if each player exists in a vacuum. A player waits for his turn to occur, takes his action and play moves on. It's sometimes hard to make it feel as if they are doing things as a group, at least in a narrative sense. A tip i picked up on youtube which we've only done once so far and it seems to work, is to have a player briefly summarise the past two characters' actions as part of the narrative of describing his own actions. For example, "As the cultist opens up with his autogun causing our tech-priest to dive for cover, I bring up my chainsword and charge at him from behind whilst yelling 'for the Emperor!'"

None of these things speeds up combat per se, but they make it feel a part of the narrative rather than being an action based mini game you endure before returning to the roleplaying. As for making combat quicker, the best thing I've found is the advice given in the rulebook which states that Troop-level NPCs automatically die if they lose all their wounds (no rolling for critical damage) as well as automatically dying if someone scores a critical hit against them. I forgot to apply this rule in teh first combat I ran and it was quite a chore to run.

So far I've only played over roll20, but were I around a table, simply going around a table and deciding whether the NPCs or players go first seems like quite an efficient alternative as well.

Keep those thoughts coming!