So my crew comes in contact with a troop of primates while trekking through the jungle . The primates are all rivals, about a dozen of them. I'm trying to decide how to handle their initiative slots; one per rival, one slot for all, or just have one go each time a hero goes (8 players potentially in this encounter ). The plan is to have the troop a fight until half are defeated , then get scared off, possibly by something more dangerous for the crew to encounter. And yes my crew is quite able to take this beating. So how would you handle this situation for initiative ?

Two slots for the monkeys so one group can distract the party while the other tries to flank it.

You are playing with large numbers of PCs; so either you are used to large # of initiative slots or you are about to learn the joy of minions.

If the foes being rivals are key and you are comfortable with long Initiative chains, roll individually. (pre roll to speed things up) Maybe group them in pairs, hunting partners or what not.

8 rivals in one Imitative slot is a lot, both for you to manage and in terms of downtime for the players. 2 groups of 4 or 4 groups of 2. Whatever you can manage.

I wouldn't do the player / opponent alternate scheme, defeats the purpose of rolling in the first place.

Good luck with the encounter.

Agree with Tear, unless there's some need for rivals, dropping them to minion grade and grouping them will be far more manageable.

I'd just do one. 8 rolls of the same initiative pool means you'll end up with the same score a bit anyway. 8 PCs are also going to end up having the same results a lot as well likely, so you'll wind up having to use Advantages to differentiate between who acts in what order on '2' or '3' for example anyway.

Or group them up, say 3 or 4 per roll, could be a good compromise.

If you're adamant about rolling them all I'd do it before session and jot down the Successes/Advantages for each one of a piece of paper with space in between each one to plug in your PCs. 8 on 8 is going to be a bookkeeping mess no matter what you do but that at least lays the ground work to organize it quickly come the time. You could even have the PCs just roll a generic initiative before you begin the session not telling them why and just have it ready to rock when the encounter happens.

If ýou have a lot of players you will love this:

http://swshinn.com/star-wars-rpg/a-stan-freebie-star-wars-eote-combat-tracker/

That initiative tracker is simply amazing. I print it at half size on A4 (meaning its there twice per page) cut the pages in half, clip them and voila, I have my very own initiative block. Ripped of paper gets re-used for player notes.

If ýou have a lot of players you will love this:

http://swshinn.com/star-wars-rpg/a-stan-freebie-star-wars-eote-combat-tracker/

That initiative tracker is simply amazing. I print it at half size on A4 (meaning its there twice per page) cut the pages in half, clip them and voila, I have my very own initiative block. Ripped of paper gets re-used for player notes.

Thats gold!

Pizo Press makes a magnetic, dry erasable board with different colored magnetic, dry erasable plaques that you can move around on the sheet. it works pretty well and you also have a large area to take notes and record damage.

If ýou have a lot of players you will love this:

http://swshinn.com/star-wars-rpg/a-stan-freebie-star-wars-eote-combat-tracker/

That initiative tracker is simply amazing. I print it at half size on A4 (meaning its there twice per page) cut the pages in half, clip them and voila, I have my very own initiative block. Ripped of paper gets re-used for player notes.

Thats gold!

Jup, it is. Editable PDF would have been even cooler for my GM, but this idea to directly manage this sounds good enough to me.