Genre Police: Seizing The Initiative

A while back now, I talked about different dying mechanics in systems and enjoyed the difference the mechanics made to how a game felt. 

Since then, I’ve been thinking about how other games distance themselves or create narrative focus through mechanics. And once you do that, you really can’t stop. So I sat down and made a list of things I think could be looked at. 

One that kept hitting me was an initiative sequence. As the majority of games would have it, there’s a moment of transition between when we have a nice and easy focus in a standard storytelling mode and when we need to chart where everyone is at any given time. This leads me to realise we treat combat differently in different systems, giving it slightly different weights right from the off. 

So I will look at how handling that moment where everybody draws swords/handguns/laser cannons can change our view of everything.

Separation/Anxiety

Most systems have a moment where things kick off and slide modes – we are now in the ‘combat section’. 

It’s a complaint I’ve heard a lot that everyone gears up for combat and then has to take a moment rolling initiative, which pauses the narrative. And this is somewhat true; it interrupts the flow of the game. So why do so many games continue with such an idea?

Well, for one thing, I think stopping and taking a moment reinforces a few things for the players. First, it begins a separate section of the game where we know you will be thinking in a more tactical sense – thinking about distance, number of foes etc. It gives our games a moment to shift gear and process a different set of skills than the freeform storytelling parts. 

In that moment, we are also subconsciously adjusting our expectations – here is a moment where we need to be prepared to die. 

While not all deaths in any game occur outside of an initiative-like structure, most of them probably do and we know we are now in the danger zone. We should be more nervous. We are in the ‘holy circle’ now. Or at least this is the idea. For some game tables, this is where someone gets up to refill the chip bowl or nip to the bathroom before it kicks off.

A lot of games play a new or extra game with the turn sequence in combat. This adds a few details to the ritual of transitioning between ‘narrative’ and ‘combat’, which paint a differing picture (even though this is often a false binary, it’s all narrative). 

In Deadlands and Savage Worlds, players deal out playing cards for initiative. This gives a sense of being in a saloon and also means that the order of actions in any given round of combat can change depending on the cards dealt. It makes the turn sequence only reliable in the short term, forcing people to make decisions in the moment because they might not get in the same way once the cards have counted out and they are dealt new ones.

Feng Shui 2 has a simple roll to start initiative but then has players move down a track depending on how much time the action they are performing takes. Someone might perform a long action that drops them from place 12 to 6 or undertake a series of smaller actions, meaning they get more actions in the sequence, at 12, 9, 8 and 6, for example. 

It means that players are thinking about how much time will pass in their action and what they can afford before the track gets down to zero (at which point, everyone checks if they are out of ammo, and we begin the initiative rolls again). Thinking about all of this puts a very intense focus on combat and flows time in a very natural way. It also means players aren’t sitting still waiting for their turn but instead anticipating their next chance to perform some made martial arts or gun-fu manoeuvre. This feels cinematic and fast-paced.

Smooth Edges

Some games are less interested in that transition. Mörk Borg, for example, just has the players roll a die to see which ‘side’ goes first, players or monsters. After that, players pick an order on the players’ turn. The game is telling players it doesn’t care what order they do things in – it’s not interested in simulating second-by-second reality. Instead, it just wants to know how the hurt is being delivered. 

In theory, you could have the players all describe their actions, makes attacks or whatever and then have them all simultaneously make the defence saves they need to not get walloped. 

This divide makes engaging in combat a nasty and quick surprise from the narrative mode because Mörk Borg is often brutish and deadly even when it isn’t in combat. It also very clearly makes all players a ‘team’ fighting against the opponents. Turns become about them as a group.

Another way of doing things is just throwing caution to the wind. In a lot of Powered By The Apocalypse  games, there’s literally no transition between a combat scene and a non-combat scene. One character simply chooses to use violence, and some different moves happen. 

This means a GM will follow the narrative in any given moment of violence and cross-cut between players in a way that makes sense. This means we can all see that the camera is focused on a particular person’s journey through the sequence of events for a moment, and the GM can leave them wherever they may and pick another player to look at. This means the ‘holy space’ of combat isn’t seen as a separate thing. Instead, it is just a part of the unfolding narrative. You don’t have to ‘change modes’, and you don’t know when the focus might be on you. You have to keep paying attention to what is happening around you! This focus is very intense and gives PBTA games a feeling that most combats are full of story possibility and character growth – but can also be quite exhausting for some players, who feel like they’ve lived the whole of a novel in one longer combat. 

When my Masks players got caught in a huge battle to save London from a series of Cthulhulian-style entities, it was several sessions of people being smashed through landmarks and guerilla warfare against the minions of the King In Yellow. From a player’s perspective, it seemingly had no end, and I could tell it got very challenging for them to keep up emotionally.

I hope that begins to paint a small picture of how changing initiative and turn sequence can really affect how a game feels and that you can make changes to the game you are playing if you want more or less focus dropped into the moment bones break and bodies land.