Re: Good initiative mechanics?

In message <47dd94f1$0$15885$edfadb0f@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
          Peter Knutsen <peter@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> 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.

Funny, I thought it fit the genre that Feng Shui was trying to fit very
well. Though I doubt there are many other games where a Feng Shui-style
initiative mechanic is even appropriate. Why didn't you like it?


> 
> [...]
> > 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).

Well, my take on that is that there's almost always a three-way compromise
between 1) simplicity of resolution, 2) allowing characters to act only on
the information they would have at the time, and 3) avoiding unnecessary
die-rolling. Allowing PCs to dodge only when and if they need to achieves
#3
at the expense of committing sin #2. It makes any level of dodge skill
that
much more effective - because you only use it when you need to, and when
there's a chance it'll actually work. Making characters dodge before they
know whether they need to forces them to be a bit more conservative, so
the
same amount of dodge skill doesn't go quite as far; i.e. enforcing #2
tends
to provoke sin #3.

For competent, and particularly *super*-competent characters (e.g.
superheroes, Feng Shui characters and possibly Star Wars and James Bond
characters as well) I think it fits the genre to rig the system to make
them
more efficient (this also has the benefit of speeding up combat slightly,
because there are fewer unnecessary skill rolls). James Bond is on the
boundary; let him dodge only when he needs to and you get a more
heroic/competent tone (sort of the way Cubby Broccoli pushed the
character);
force him to dodge before knowing the results and the tone becomes a bit
grittier, and probably closer to Ian Fleming's original character concept.

For more realistic games, I think you have to make PCs commit to dodging
before they know if they need to, or else just use a to-hit mechanic that
assumes they're doing their best to dodge/stay under cover at all times.
In
fact I had even toyed with the idea of a 'cover' skill that abstracts a
character's ability to find and take best advatange of whatever cover is
available. But at present that's a mechanic in search of a system to use
it
in.

A bad system can commit all of sins #1-3. A good system, I don't see how
you
can avoid one or the other of #2 or #3; they seem to be inextricably
linked.


-- 
Simon Smith

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