This past week, inspired by the Ythrek setting, I bought Greg Porter's EABA rules to see what the underlying mechanics he had in mind for the setting were. My first impression, overall, is that EABA is pretty darned impressive for the kind of system it is. I would certainly prefer it to GURPS or HERO, its obvious competitors.

However, there's a vagueness in the initiative system. EABA summarizes the transition from II to EE as follows:

1. Decide what you want to do.
2. Roll initiative based on the skill that goes with what you're doing.
3. Act in order of die rolls.

This is all pretty traditional stuff, but it has a traditional problem too - namely, the resolution of step 1 is vague.

Going from Intent to Initiative this way actually involves 2 steps rather than 1: the step where everyone declares, and the step where everyone rolls to see what order their declaration gets resolved in. But knowing what other people have declared gives you important information on what to do yourself.

(I failed my Resist Pettifoggery roll, so I have to add this historical aside: Struggle with this problem goes back at least to the 1976 Arduin Grimoire; Hargrave's first proposed solution was to go low-to-high DEX in declaring actions and high-to-low in executing them FWIW. D&D and kindred games avoid the problem by putting Initiative before your declaration of Intent, but you can't combine a system like that with one where your initiative depends on what kind of action you're actually taking.)

So two questions:

1) Does anyone who has played EABA have a sense of what the best way to handle part 1 is? Three obvious choices:

a) 'Free and clear', a la Sorcerer. The group comes to consensus about actions and you don't roll for the second part of initiative until everyone's satisfied.

b) Blind declaration - everyone writes it down without seeing what the others do, and then all roll at once.

c) Develop a sequence of declaration. The obvious choice here would be a lowest-to-highest based on Agility and/or Awareness so that you don't have to introduce yet another die roll into the process.


2) Any ideas for alternate initiative systems that avoid this problem and fit well with the rest of the EABA approach?

I don't own the game, but if the player knows what inititiative modifier/effect the skill has, why does he have to declare his action out loud at all? Can't he just decide, stick the modifier in and roll initiative with everyone else? Then go highest init to lowest?

If you want accountability, everyone writes their action on a piece of card, puts it face down in front of them and then rolls init.

Hargrave's first proposed solution was to go low-to-high DEX in declaring actions and high-to-low in executing them FWIW

Well, you could just have everyone declare silently, I suppose, but then the GM has to trust everyone to do what they were thinking they were going to do. This might work as a fourth option for some groups. I think if I were doing that I'd go for blind declaration instead. Maybe instead of 'blind declaration' all up front you could just write it down, roll appropriate dice, and declare it when it was your time to act instead - that might be a little quicker.

I'd really rather hear concrete suggestions based on at least reading-knowledge of the system though. Play knoweldge would be best of course.

I agree with you - I don't like low to high high to low on the same stat either, it's too much of an edge for the quickies. A workable variant though is to go low-to-high INT or WIS for the declare and then high-to-low DEX for the act. But see what I get for failing to resist pettifoggery? This thread isn't about the thousand and one interesting alternative D&D initiative systems (don't forget weapon speed factor, boys!), but about a particular problem that arises when you've got to declare to decide what you roll for initiative (execution order). How do you handle the order of declaration?

You could try having them write down their actions on post-it notes, hand them to the GM, and then do initiative rolls.

That combines the "Decide before knowing when you go," and the "decide without knowing what the other guy's doing," aspects of it.

Slows things down, of course.

I'll go with Option 2, please.

If the order bothers you, how hard is it to change?

What I mean is... why not just have everyone roll initiative first, then declare actions in the order of die rolls? (I know you said this doesn't work, but I think it can - You could simply add in an extra step and a penalty for a drastic change from intent to final action)

So you would have:
Declare intended action (to obtain skill for init roll)
Roll initiative
Declare final action in order of initiative (with penalty if appropriate)

The initiative would still be based on what skill the player intends to use, but the exact action could vary based on actual occurances (with appropriate penalty if changing the skill used). That would allow those who reacted slower to know what others have done, or are doing, and act appropriately - as they should IMO. (Having characters taking actions without knowing what else is going on around them seems a bit silly to me) Yes, some actions might be delayed due to modifiers for the action, but it seems reasonable to assume that those around the character would see what he's beginning to do.

This would also provide that extra nuance to reflect a character who intended a particular action getting caught flat-footed when he realises that his original plan wouldn't be the best idea and has to come up with an alternate action, causing him to be a step behind those who where able to carry through as they were prepared to.

It would mean pounding out and jotting down some house rules, but it sounds a lot easier than writing things down and passing notes to the GM every time someone takes an action. I know the latter would annoy me pretty quickly.