Re: Good initiative mechanics?

Simon Smith wrote:
[...]
> Feng Shui:
> 
> All characters have a Speed stat; everyone rolls D6+Speed, generating a
> number of action points for the coming turn. Highest Speeds act first.
> Actions usually use up three 'speed points' each, occasionally less or
more.
> A defensive action uses up one speed point. Hence if you rolled 15 for
> initiative, and the mooks you were facing rolled 10, you might get the
> character acting on initiative 15, 12, 9, 5, 1, having used a couple of
action
> points for defence (defending once moved the character's next action
from
> speed 6 to speed 5, and defending twice more moved his last action of
the
> round from speed 3 to speed 1). The mooks would act on 10, 7, 4, 1. This
> works well at intermixing the actions of the two sides and is easy to
track.
> And it fits the Feng Shui genre very well.

I don't think it worked very well, and I've speciically attempted to 
avoid Feng Shui's flaws in the Modern Action RPG Initiative/Action Point 
system.

[...]
> What other systems out there handle initiative in a notably elegant way?

I'm not going for elegant, I'm going for "performs work that should 
performed", which should always be the design goal for RPG system rules.

One thing I'm very interested in, however, is whether characters should 
declare the use of a defensive option before or after they know whether 
the enemy's attack roll was successful (or, in both Sagatafl and MA RPG, 
*how* successful the attack roll was), especially of defensive actions 
(parries, dodges, and so forth) are in limited supply, with characters 
being limited to one or two per Round, or each defensive action costing 
Action Points.

Baseline Sagatafl has always been that you declare after, but that could 
change depending on how MA RPG works out (since, in many ways, MA RPG is 
my "testing ground" for various types of rules and rules structures).

-- 
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org