One of my players has a bit of a problem with the new initiative system, and the fact that the party can choose in what order they use their initiative 'slots'. While he understands 'realism' is a relative thing in fantasy roleplaying games, this new initiative system urks him, because it seems unrealistic that a character with slower reflexes would get their turn before a character with faster reflexes. Sure, you could say that the faster PC is 'slowing down' for the other, in order to let them go first, but that would allow the opposition to possibly get in a blow.

So why do you think the new system allows players to choose their initiative order? And how can it be justified in terms of 'realism', if at all?

Otoh, how do you justify conventional initiative systems in terms of realism? The idea that everyone does their thing in strict order, maintaining that order continuously is ridiculous. The notion that they take turns at all is ridiculous. We accept it because it's as good a way as any to abstract the way things might work based on characteristics and randomisation. Like a lot of RPG systems. It does the job, very well, and we are used to it. But just because we are used to it and it works, does not mean it is not severely abstract and literally ridiculous. That can be said about the WFRP system, too. So, the only difference, I would suggest, is that your player is used to one method and not used to the other.

UniversalHead said:

Initiative is made of two elements. The first is simple speed at which one acts. However, the second is the ability to "react" to events better than others. Old initiative systems used to work by having everyone declare their actions in reverse order (being the second) and then act them out in order (being the first). This allowed quick witted PCs time to see what others were doing and react accordingly. The idea proves unwieldy in practice and most RPGs now simply use the latter part. However, it is only half the pciture.

IMO WFRP3e's system is a nice compromise. It allows quick witted PCs to be in a better position to react to events (and put their allies in a better position too) and generally move faster.

I think this Initiative system falls closer to the 'realism' end of the spectrum. It's a more outrageous notion to me that people would always act in the same order during the course of a battle.

There still needs to be some sort of structure to abstract a complex situation, but this system, to me, reflects more closely people being able to react to the changing tides in a fight.

I think the new system allows the party to decide the initiative order because it encourages teamwork, adds variety to the flow of combat, gives players something they can control in combat, and requires less book-keeping on the GM's part.

I don't think it's any more or less realistic than a rigid system where fastest equals first to act. Real combat is chaotic. No matter how 'realistic' an RPG claims to be, its combat system is going to be highly abstracted, to the point where it isn't modeling anything like real combat. It might be modeling TV or movie combat, but it's nothing like the real thing.

Realistically, the quickest aren't always the first to act, and being fast doesn't mean that you're in the perfect position to be effective. So you could look at WFRP initiative as a model for when you get your best opportunity to take an action in this 6-second segment of time, regardless of your general reaction speed. As a group, you all benefit from having sharp-eyed and quick-acting characters. If you like, you could assume that the faster characters sometimes yell, "Heads up!" or "Behind you!" and thereby give a slower-moving character a chance to act "out of turn".

If damage in combat was dealt simultaneously, and the initiative order system was only an administrative convenience, then I'd have less issue with the v3 approach - i.e. all combatants work out what damage they do and to whom, and then all the damage is allocated. Arguably there are some combatants who would be so fast, or so slow, that they should deal damage first or (if they get killed) not at all, as the case may be, but that may be getting a bit too hard. If we're taking about the swirling maelstrom of melee, then damage should fall into that maelstrom as well, which seems more 'realistic' than turn by turn allocation of combat damage.

If people have an issue with a constant, unchanging order of initiative, I would have thought that modifiers work during combat to adjust the initiative order so it doesn't stay static - e.g. someone suffers an injury, or is using a weapon that slowly fatigues them, or they slip because of a bane.

But if the group can choose in their absolute discretion that a slow, lumbering dwarf tank can deliver copious amounts of potentially unanswerable damage (depending on how many of the opposition said tank can kill) just because another group member has no armour and dances like a butterfly and stings like a...well, butterfly, then I don't get it, regardless of any "Heads Up!"s and "Behind You"s. As much as anything my problem is with the fact that the selection is totally up to the group in its discretion, which doesn't in fact reflect any physical "position to be effective" or "best opportunity to act" - it reflects a group's ability to pre-plan approaches to take advantage of what I see as a logical inconsistency.

Reynald de Chatillon said:

I think it's part of the "say yes" and "teamwork FTW" philosophy in the game's design. If you disagree with that philosophy in this instance, you can very easily track each character's initiative in the order that they rolled. It probably won't have any big effect on the way the game plays.

But there are no guarantees that the PCs' plans will work out. What happens if they put all their faith in the dwarf's ability to deal damage, and he flubs his roll? Doesn't that create some drama with the rest of the party, which now has to salvage their plan, and might now be sitting ducks? Isn't that just as interesting, if not more so, than knowing that the elf is going to attack first every round, and the dwarf is going to act last, for every single combat?

I think it's much more satisfying for players when their plans do work out according to their situation-specific plan, than if their success relies on playing their designated part at the point during which they normally get to act every time they enter combat.

I can't really say it any better than Dave has. I LOVE the initative system. It makes the game teamwork centered.

As for "realism", I just have to point out a few things from around the hobby. L5R tried an overly realistic system in which the players declared their actions from highest to lowest, so that those with a higher iniative could see exactly what the lower iniative players were up to. So you had a declared actions round from lowest to highest initative, then the actions went off from highest to lowest.

Here's where it gets even more real. Particiapants take a wound penalty to actions, including initative. This meant that both the declaration of actions and the initative rolling had to be done EVERY round.

While I like Legend of the Five Rings, this is VERY easily my least favorite mechanic as it took amazingly long to get through combat unlike DnD's 3X roll of one initative number for the battle.

You can easily see which one is more "real" but clearly there comes a point in which the game needs to "move along".

I would say most initative systems currently used in RPG design aren't overly realistic, rather they are designed to facilitate game play. This one REALLY facilitates game play and may seem less real than others, but quite honestly, if you are that concerned about realism, then you are going to need a system like L5R.

well if you view it as the spped at which people react then ya it is sort of unrealistic.

Instead think of it as a fast witted person shouting a word of warning to another person so the person that got warned can react faster, then the person that warned him would be behind because the warning took some of his attention away.

I don't even think you need to go so far as to consider real stuff happening at distinct times like words of warning. It seems to me that a combat is a chaotic and confused mess with a thousand different things happening at once that is impossible to track or make meaningful sense of in a quick and convenient RPG system. Instead of the conventional systems which make no sense and very vaguely and unconvincingly reflect the confused melee with a simplistic dependance on individual stats, WFRP makes no sense and very vaguely and unconvincingly reflects the confused melee with a simplistic dependance on shared stats.

And it works really well.

Skywalker said:

The fault in this statement alone shows that it really is just a preference for one system over another. "Initiative" in a combat is a combination of dozens upon dozens of factors, both personal, and external. Strength affects the speed at which an action is completed, start to finish, reflex affexts how quickly you can start and action, intuition affects how quickly you can asses your surondings and make a decision appropriate to what is happening around you. These are three factiors that are listed on a base charactar sheet that I could think of off the top of my head in about 3 seconds, and this doesn't take into account any external factors, what type of action are you doing, how quick is the action, if its an attack, how bulky is the weapon, what is the terrain like, is it raining, what is the visibility, are you wounded, what kind of armor are you wearing, how well was it made. As I said dozens upon dozens, I'm sure I could spend hours coming up with things that would cause and effect on the order in which people were able to start/complete actions. This doesn't even take into account the idea of combatants, or participants in a social encounter, taking discrete turns, performing one entire action, unmolested by anyone else, then simply waiting around for their "turn" to come around again.

As a GM it comes down to either tell your players to suck it up and get used to the new system, or use a rigid, discrete order system like he wants, simply invoke the golden rule of gaming, do what your group finds fun, and ignore the rule book if it gets in the way of a good time.

Hi, this is my very first post here. First I have to be honest and tell i'm still waiting for my WRFPG 3 box though I already own the .pdf version. (I'm french...)
I have "game-mastered" WRFPG v1 and v2 a couple of times and am quite interrested in "giving a chance" to this brand new incarnation.

I didn't like the previous' versions' initiative rules and ended in using a netbook with a "Calc" (Excel-like) sheet to manage the initiative.
To make it short I would say that I recorded the characteristics of all the players and all the required NPCs or Creatures.

When a fight occured, I just had to all the opponents and hit the magical "Fight !" label... Then the computer was randomely generating the initiative order and displaying it in the right order on my screen...
I even had the possibility to track the wounds etc.. using some sub-menus.
it was far from being perfect but worked pretty well and gave a nice feeling of chaos on the battlefield... We never knew who was going to hit first next turn and didn't have to roll any dice... (That was with the V2)

I'm reading the new rules and am a bit worried about the new initiative rules... Maybe there's something i didn't understand...

Let's imagine a fight between 3 "heroes" and 3 beastmen...

The "heroes" can see them coming from the distance, clearly... no obstacles or anything.

The initiative dice are rolled... Hero 1 (long bow)> 0 success / Hero 2> 1 sucess / Hero 3 > 2 sucesses /// Beastmen (as a group) > 3 successes

The beastmen have the initiative. They charge (but are still far enough to be shot by some missile weapon)

Then it's "Hero 3"'s turn... I think the "heroes" can choose their initiative order and "swap" their places (tokens on the initiative tracker)...

So "Hero 3" is supposed to be quicker and have a better "vision" of the combat and we can imagine him yelling out and order to "Hero 1 (long bow)".
So he "swaps" his turn with "Hero 1"

"Hero 1 (long bow)" shoots first (no matter what the result is...)

Then it's Beastmen's turn... (they got the same "initiative" but since they're not the "good ones" they hit second ^^)

Then it's "Hero 2"'s turn

and finally "Hero 3" who has swapped his place at the beginning ot the turn...

And we can perfectly imagine this situation... It's fluid and as realistic as it can be without being too "heavy" to be fun.

But what if some creatures had fallen down from a tree right on the shoulders (^^) of our "Heroes" ?
It's not that easy and clear to me in this new context... no long distance shot, etc...
How would you explain or "justify" this "swapping" of places ?

thanks a lot (sorry for the length of the message !)

There is no owned place on the initiative track to have to swap. If the PCs collectively roll initiative and end up with spots 1, 2, and 4 on the initiative track, they collectively decide each turn who goes in which spot. It doesn't matter who rolled what.

I thought that if "Hero 1" rolled a 0 success inititative, he would have to place "his" token on the place marked "0" on the tracker...

I understood that it was not really his "own" place since the groupe could choose the order... no matter who rolled what...

I mean, how do you "justify" this "free initiative choice" in a close combat (for instance) ?

If Hero 1 rolls 0 successes, then "a" token, not "his" token is placed at the zero spot on the track. The players coordinate and decide who will act in each of the initiative spots available each round.

If the party is working well together, the "in game" justification can be anything including shouts, hand signals, or knowing looks. The opposite of this is reflected by increasing the Party Tension meter if two (or more) PCs want to act when any given Initiative spot becomes available or if the players are taking too long to decide who should go.

I got this... Even if the "A" VS. "HIS" difference does definitely not completely convince me...

i still don't see it as clearly in a close combat situation, but I agree... the Party tension meter may be a useful tool to counter-balance this.
(I think the tension meter should be used carefully to avoid giving the players the feeling that they're infantilized and punished though... don't you think ?)

Thanks a lot, that's giving me food for thoughts...

Another aspect of play that puts "fun" before "realism" is the shared-ability aspect of the party cards. It doesn't really make sense from a purely "simulationist" point of view to have one character's ability shared across an entire party, but that's how this game is geared.

Clearly, the game is designed to encourage and enable teamwork while eliminating extra layers of complexity. With a strict turn-order system, you need to introduce a system for delaying actions. Instead of adding a new rule, WFRP3 just lets players determine the order they want to go. Now that I think about it, WFRP2 had this exact same situation. You could, by delaying actions, have the party take their turns in any order they desired. But it could get complicated, and it tended to punish delaying characters by having them act after all of the opponents, as well.

I'd rather that the game err on the side of player freedom and opportunity for teamwork than try to simulate combat (which no RPG is really capable of anyway).

le_renard said:

I agree that the Party Tension Meter should not be used to punish the players or make them feel stupid. But if they're taking a long time to decide things, I would much prefer to slide the stress marker one space higher than sit there there with my head in my hands or try to argue with the players. If this happens, what I'm going to do is say, "Since you guys are taking a long time to figure out the order you want to act, I'm going to move the party tension up one space. I imagine that that you're saying things like, 'Get behind me!' and 'No, I've got this one!' and 'Come on, let's do this!"

You can look at it as a punitive use of the stress meter, but it can be used to reflect how the characters are actually dealing with one another. I think it's going to be a useful tool when player indecision starts to interfere with the ability to have a good time. Without being heavy-handed, or having things erupt into an out-of-character argument, it's a nice way for the GM to let everyone know that things are slowing down, the fun level is dropping, and maybe they should make a decision quickly... or the tension might keep rising. Without this tool, the players could be deadlocked or spend too much time planning.

I know there will be complaints that this is meta-game thinking, but the choice to raise party tension is entirely up to the GM and their tolerances for delays.

To be honest, I really appreciate how elegant of a solution that is. By giving the PCs the freedom to choose their order of action, it opens up the game to unwanted delays. By giving the GM control over party stress, it keeps the players on their toes and encourages them to think fast and not abuse that freedom. The rules aren't forcing the players or the GM to do anything, but there are mechanisms in place so that problems can be addressed without upsetting anyone greatly.

DagobahDave said:

Yes... I think you're right. I should stop trying to look too much for useless justifications (that I won't find !) and enjoy this new gaming perspective with its inherent qualities and limits. This initiative + tension meter formula seems ok to me now. Thanks !

I really don't see the party tension meter as a punishment thing. When we have been undecisive the GM has moved it up on us. But in our last session two of us were having great fun arguing and goading each other in character and moving the tension meter up ourselves without even asking the GM!

Of course he wasn' so relaxed about it when we tried to move it back down though