micro-system: initiative

[contracycle]

Another little sub-system, one which might conceivebaly be used for some extant games in place of their initiative mechanics.

Everybody gets a card, one per combatant or bystander or Other (automata etc).  Some may get more.

It doesn't matter what kinds of card they are, they only need one property, to have a Face and a Back (so long as all the backs are the same).

All cards are face down by default.  Turning a card face up indicates taking an action; the action is immediately described and resolved by the native mechanics.  The intent of the whole show is to make the action-status of each character overt and visible to all - once a card has turned the scenario all the other combatants are quite literally looking at will have changed.

A side with a surplus of numbers can afford to commit a bunch in an up-front assault, precipitating a reponse on the behalf of the smaller side, which the larger sides reserves can take advantage of.  That would be tyhe basic niherent dynamic, exploitiong it would be the challenge.  The GM would be encourage to make it fast-paced and get the players used to turning over cards in the heat of the moment rather than cooly, easily done with the advantage of numbers that mooks usually possess.

The visibility of the cards serves and interesting dual purpose, in that they can be used by the GM to maintain "objectivity".  Often a player will describe intent; the turning of the card signals initiation such that it may be observed by other characters, NPC's etc.

Once all cards are turned, the round ends.  All cards are then reset for the next round.

Players might have multiple cards; implicitly a GM has one card per NPC, so players might have cards for allies or multiple attacks, or both.  Or perhaps, several types of action cards which indicate types of actions, only one of which or X of which may be turned per turn.  As above, although the GM will know which cards are available to players, the fact that the players decision is essentially unpredictable in a meanigful sense, turning the card reveals information to the GM simultaneously with revealing it to the NPC.

This shouldn't be too onerous, as even with large numbers of cards they will probably be turned in batches, and force similar scales of responses from the opposition.  The whole idea is based on the value of physical tokens and thus placing initiative into the mind of the player rather than the character.  The characters abilities provide cards and modifiers, bt don't determine when action is taken (or more accurately, begun).  This would also make turn-length fairly flexible, depending on what actions are described.

[Henry Fitch]

I like the sound of this a lot. There could be a lot of problems with timing, though; either nobody wants to go and everybody gets bored or, more likely, a dozen people try to go at once and everybody gets confused.

[contracycle]

For the first scenario, circling and dithering are OK (as demonstrated by TROS).  In some ways thats the effect I want... "combat" starts without a clearly signalled turn structure.  In the secopnd scenario, mass action, thats also OK because I just need to work through all the turned/frantically brandished cards; I would then incorporate the mass chaos in the next description.

[Rich Forest]

Hi,

I like this idea.

And I think Contracycle's instincts about both "dithering" and "mass action" working in this system are right.  I have a system that uses a similar initiative mechanic, and my friends and I have played it about half a dozen times.  Before we played, I was concerned about the same issues that Henry brought up.  But like Contracycle expects of his system, it hasn't been a problem for us with ours yet.  Neither scenario ("nobody goes" or "everbody goes") actually came up and caused real problems in play.  Now, I'm willing to consider that this might just be because of our game group, or because we haven't played it very much.  But I also think it was because there were strategic advantages to both acting first and to waiting, and these didn't overlap much for the players in our games.  I think this might be something to pay attention to with Contracycle's system—I suspect that it would work well as a metasystem with some games, but less well with others, depending on whether there is a balance between the advantages of acting first and those of acting later.  If it's always advantageous to act first, it's likely to lead to more chaos; if it's always advantageous to act second, there might be more sitting around and waiting for someone else to go first.

When people do act, it's also interesting to note that flipping a card or (in my case) setting down a card can both be pretty quick movements.  When we played, usually one person would play a card while the other players were deciding.  A few times we have had people both put down cards at the same time, but since we were playing cards into a single stack, the card that hit the table first ended up beneath the slower player's card.  Again, this meant there were no problems deciding which one to resolve first.  This might be a bit different with flipping cards, as Contracycle is suggesting, but I think it would be pretty easy to keep track of with small numbers of players.  Now, I'm not sure what would happen if a bunch of players were flipping cards at the same time.  I could see this causing some confusion.  But it hasn't happened yet, to us.  I do think it is worth taking into consideration when designing the system.  I love a system that covers these kinds of eventualities so that I'm not stuck adjudicating them on the fly.  

Contracycle, what kind of game would you use this kind of initiative system for?  I'm curious because when I came up with my system, I was trying to model samurai swordfighting and movie kung fu, all in the interest of making the game simulate these kinds of things with minimal handling time.  What about you?  Were you thinking of any particular directions for this mechanic, or were you working on it more for the fun of pure system design?  Just curious.

Rich Forest

[contracycle]

Hi Rich, thanks for your excellent response.  I would be interested in hearing about the system you are alreadty using in further detail, if thats OK.

Whats it for.... hmm, there is not real intent behind this... (although Samurai did feature in my thinking as it happens).  I just dislike most initiative systems; while working on a pool-based system a little while ago I developed the resolution without an init mechanic and had been chewing it over for a bit.

Some things I hope for out of this system, which was roughly inspired by a wargame I played many years ago which had this movement system (Arnhem, IIRC), are the blurring of "in combat", and otherwise, and the way that I expect different goals will produce different uses.  Frex, if I were trying to flee combat, is that best to do early, when everyone else can react to your flee attempt, or late, when nobody can?  If you are being attacked right now, then probably early.  If you can reasonably hope that all the opposition will act soon (or be compelled to act), you can wait 'em out and then take your flight action free and clear.  I also need to think about missile combat etc. in this light.

[Rich Forest]

Hi Gareth,

I'd be happy to share how my variation on this kind of system works—I'm certainly not concerned about keeping it secret or anything.  The only reason I've never really gone into it in detail before is, well, that I never got around to writing it up.  It'll be interesting to compare notes.  I think our two systems, while parallel in some ways, are also different in interesting ways as well.  Since reading your post, I've already come to think about possibilities for my own system that I hadn't considered before.  Maybe we can help each other improve both our systems through this.  

I'll give you the concise version of my system.  In order to explain the initiative part, I think I need to basically summarize how resolution works.  For our purposes, I'll use samurai and combat to give the thing some context.  So here's the system, in a nutshell.

Standard 54 card deck.

Abilities and Masteries: Characters are rated by broad category traits, "Abilities," which are things like "Bujutsu," and "Ninjutsu," and by narrow category sub-traits, which are called "Masteries."  Example Masteries for "Bujutsu" might be things like "Swordfighting," "Horsemanship," "Military Tactics," etc.  For "Ninjutsu," there are Masteries like "Climbing," "Stealth," etc.  Scale is 2-7.  

Conflict resolution works like this: Draw a number of cards equal to the Ability, and play one.  If you have a Mastery in the specific thing you're attempting, you may play a number of cards from your hand equal to the Mastery.  So, if you have "Bujutsu" at 5, and "Swordsmanship" at 4, you can draw five cards and play four.

Initiative and Defense: Play a card to take an action.  Immediately after a card is in play, the opponent may defend against it by 1) playing a card of higher rank, 2) playing a card of the same suit, or 3) playing a card that is higher rank and the same suit.  In a samurai swordfight example, I think of 1) playing a card of higher rank as dodging.  It doesn't matter what suit the cards are—if your card is higher, you dodge the attack.  2) Playing a card of the same suit works as a block.  It doesn't matter how high the rank of your card is, if it's the same suit as the attacking card, you can block it.  Here, Spades are considered to be "trump."  A Spade can be used to block a card of any other suit, but only another Spade can block a Spade.  Finally, 3) playing a card that is both higher rank and the same suit is treated as a kind of reversal or counter.  It stops the other player's card, but it also stays on the table and becomes an attack back at the other player.  Spades are not trump in this case.  Only the exact same card suit can be used in a reversal.

Initiative is then dependent on the players.  Either player can initiate an attack by playing a card, face up, on the table.  From the standpoint of winning, it is necessary to initiate—only by initiating or getting a reversal can you actually do damage to your opponent.  However, it's also good to wait—there are a lot of ways to defend and force the round to go to a tie.  What you choose to do will be somewhat dependent on your hand and your strategic preferences.  If no one goes, the fighters are assumed to be circling and waiting for the right moment to attack.  This can go on for a very long time, theoretically, although that hasn't happened with us.  If two players go at the same time, the first card to hit the table is the attack card.  The other player returns his card to his hand and defends, with the added twist that by putting it down (alas, too late), your opponent knows you have it in your hand.  We've never had a conflict about whose card hit the table first.  As I said, we tend to play them into the same spot, so when two players do go at the same time, the faster player's card is on bottom.

We've used this system in half a dozen games:

1) We used it three times, I think, to play Tenchu-style, stealth-oriented Ninja games.  

2) We used it to play a game with students of kenjutsu in feudal Kyoto as Bushi families put the Emperor and the palace at risk.  

3) We used it to play a horror-themed game about a head eating monster loose in the disputed borders of two warring samurai lords.  The players alternately jumped around from playing three groups of characters who encountered the thing: one band of samurai, checking out the borders of the war; one group of ninja scouts, working for a third samurai lord; and one group of peasants who were fleeing from the battle-torn area that was once their village.

4) We used a variant of it to play Shotgun Musashi, with an adventure that combined Romeo and Juliet + murder + rising disputes and the threat of war.  The players ended up choosing to try to be the peacemakers, working against the rise of war in the county.

5) We used it to play a game of modern, Kung Fu, 70s style, Las Vegas assassins.  The whole thing was partially inspired by the coming Kill Bill and some re-watching of some old kung fu flicks.  The working title is Fist of the Assassin.  One of the combats involved an interesting part of the system as an attack was reversed, then the reversal reversed, and then that reversal reversed again in a fight between three assassins.

What's most interesting and relevant to the topic of this thread is that, in all these games, we haven't had any real problems so far with initiative.  I'm still fiddling with exactly how the cards work and interact, and I think there are still some potential problems, but we haven't played it enough yet to see quite what needs to be changed.

I think what's been key is that there are real advantages to going first, and real advantages to waiting, partially dependent on what cards you have in your hand.  Your system, I think, will work well in a similar way—it's clear already that you see it being applied so that there are distinct advantages to going now, and other advantages to going later.  I'll be interested in seeing where you go with it when you get down to working out some of its more specific applications.

Rich

[contracycle]

A few quick question Rich.

Do you as the GM know what cards the players have?  Are they drawn publicly or privately?

If players competed with each other, would they draw publicly or privately?

Do you only draw cards at the moment of resolution?  Or at the initiation of conflict?

Are card faces revealed before, after or simultaneous with the declaration of intent?

Thanks

[Rich Forest]

Good questions.  

Players draw a number of cards equal to their ability level when the conflict is initiated.  These cards form the player's hand for that conflict, and nobody (including the GM) knows what cards anyone else is holding.  So, each player can look at their hand and make strategic decisions based on what they know about what they are holding and what they think the other players might be holding.

Cards are dealt, more or less, at the same time as the declaration of intent.  You say what you are doing while laying a card, face up, on the table.  Then the opponent defends with a card, also laying it down, face up, while declaring the type of defense.

Something like:

Josh (while laying down a queen of hearts, face up): "I spring forward and make and arcing slash across your chest."
Rich: (laying a 4 of hearts, face up, on Josh's queen): "I meet you midway, knocking your slash easily to the side."

We've also considered the option of laying the card face down and revealing it later, thus putting intent a bit earlier than resolution.  

I have a more in-depth example of play in the Shotgun Musashi write-up.  Here's the relevant portion of the page.  I think the cardplay follows the same rules I've outlined above, except this variant uses a different system for determining how many cards are played.

Rich

[contracycle]

Thanks Rich, I should have read that more comprehensively the first time.  Some very subtle and intriguing ideas in there.