Simplifying Combat: dropping the initiative roll

Hey, isn't combat boring?

Wait, what? You thought combat was what role-playing was all about? No, I believe you're thinking about war-gaming. Role-playing is a distinct type of gaming, arguably not-a-game — among it's many odd features, two that stick out for me are the fact that (1) the rules are almost secondary, and (2) "winning," per se, isn't terribly important or even necessarily possible.

In that context, how are we expected to revel in combat? Some people enjoy very detailed simulationist mechanics, and in those games, players are likely thinking deeply about minimaxing their characters, comboing their abilities and optimizing their team synergy. That's fine and good, but I'd say even if you were ostensibly role-playing when you started doing that, you've temporarily segued into wargaming. Just not my style, I'm afraid.

Preach on, brother

What don't I like about role-playing combat? Well, first of all, it's slow. When a minute ago you might have been narrating over days at a time, in combat, you often find yourself spending an hour of realtime in correspondence with thirty-seconds of gametime. That ruins the pacing of an otherwise breezy session.

Second, it feels like a different kind of activity. This is a product of the wargaming aspect, and the way that combat slows things down. When a character wants to pick a lock, you talk it out, state a difficulty, roll and move on. Not so with combat. Instead, everyone is acting in a highly regimented order, and the conversational flow of the action is lost.

Personally, I'd love to get rid of the combat round, and replace it with something more free-flowing. For all the criticisms lobbed their way, this is something the World games (Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, etc.) accomplish quite nicely. The game conversation flows in exactly the same way, with players taking turns, round robin, to say what they are doing, and the GM responding in turn.

I'm not quite ready to go that far, however. But I do think we can do away with initiative.

So how would that work? I can't say that I came up with the idea entirely on my own. Some genius posted the kernel of the idea on rpgpub.com (apologies to this forgotten luminary — I can't find the thread), so I can't take much credit beyond some refinements.

The idea is that, every round, you poll all combatants about what they are trying to do that round. The player should just describe it in a freeform way. Everything challenging they are trying to do requires a roll, and if the GM thinks they are doing too much, then the roll (or rolls) should be penalized, possibly heavily. Then, everyone just rolls, and people succeed or fail depending on what they roll.

What does "initiative" even mean, here?

This all takes place, from a mechanical perspective, roughly simultaneously. Not actually simultaneously, but it's important to note that if A attacks and kills B in the same round that B attacks and kills A, then both die, neither precluding the other.

A wrinkle appears in situations where an action seems designed to preclude another. For instance, a character might try to rush to shut and bar a door before a horde of goblins stream through, or an archer might try to slay a blackguarding holding a child at knifepoint before the child is killed. In such cases, we do make an opposed initiative roll between the two characters. 

If the precluding actor succeeds at the initiative roll, then his or her action may be attempted, and if that succeeds, then it happens before whatever the precluded character was doing. But if the interrupting character fails the initiative roll, then whatever action was planned also fails. This is a simple way to discourage players from overusing this opportunity. 

Judo throws just look cool as heck

Note that, either way, the precluded action doesn't necessarily fail, although it may be obviated or impaired by the result of the interruption. For instance, if a character wants to leap behind concealment before archers unleash a hail of arrows, then a successful initiative roll would mean that character is a lot harder for those archers to hit...but not impossible.

And it's that simple. No more initiative. Just ask everyone what they are doing, announce what the NPCs are doing, and roll them all in any order without worrying about interference.

For my second post in the Simplifying Combat series, I'll talk about how to get rid of hit points and damage rolls.