Popcorn Initiative: A Great Way to Adjust D&D and Pathfinder Initiative with a Stupid Name

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September 13, 2013

All right, kiddos, I am breaking from my usual game of writing thousands and thousands of words tell you how to run a game in exhausting detail (deliberate word choice, don’t correct me). Instead, I’m going to throw a house rule at you. Use it. Don’t use it. I don’t care. I’ve been using it in my Pathfinder Game and I am happy enough with the results that I think it is ready for Primetime and it works in any dice-based initiative game, I think.

Special thanks to Marvel Heroic RPG and Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play 3rd Edition for the basic ingredients Popcorn Initiative. Special thanks to my weekly Pathfinder victims for testing the system (not that I gave them a choice) and naming it. Apparently, Sean and Kim dubbed it Popcorn Initiative after some kids’ playground game or something I am unaware of. They tried to explain, but I couldn’t get myself to give a s$&%.

Popcorn Initiative: How it Works

At the start of each combat, each PC, NPC, monster, or group of monsters rolls initiative. The highest roll goes first. That is nothing new. After the high roller has finished their turn, they decide who goes next (PC, NPC, monster, or group of monsters). That creature or group of creature takes their respective turns and then nominate who goes next. Thus, each and every PC, NPC, monster, or group of monsters gets a turn. Once everyone has gone, the last person who goes gets to decide who starts the next round. That last person can choose themselves.

I do it with index card. Every creature and thing that needs a turn gets written on an index card and laid out on the table. I put poker chips on each person after they take their turn to indicate they’ve gone.

Waiting and Readying

No creature can pass the initiative if it comes to them. Life doesn’t work that way. In a panicked combat, you act when your reflexes allow and try to win. Patience usually gets you killed. However, you can Wait and Ready.

Readying an action works the way it does in your game. You specify an action and a trigger condition. When the trigger condition comes up, you can choose to take your readied action or hold it until it is triggered again by something else. Your readied action remains available until initiative comes around to you again. If you haven’t taken your readied action by the time you are nominated again, you have lost that readied action. You can always ready it again if you want. That risk is the price of readying.

Waiting means you choose not to take your turn right away. You hold on for a second and wait for another opportunity to act. You pass the initiative to someone else and you are now waiting. Since you haven’t taken your action yet, you need to be nominated again in the iniaitive order and you have to wait until someone chooses you to go again. I turn the card sideways to indicate you are waiting.

If it is your turn and the only creatures left to act are all “waiting” you may not wait. You can choose to take no action, but you can’t wait. This prevents standoffs where multiple creatures are all waiting out the end of the round. It also prevents people from using the wait mechanic to game the end-of-round advantage of being able to nominate who starts the next round.

Durations

Durations on effects are tricky because of how the initiative system can be gamed to futz with them. In Pathfinder, this is how I’m handling it.

Add an “end of round” phase at the end of each round, after the last creature has gone but before the next round starts. All timed effects expire in this phase after having exhausted their full duration. Therefore, an effect that lasts X rounds will actually end up lasting X rounds plus a couple of extra seconds.

For example, Alice casts a spell that lasts 1 round on Bob. Alice is the last person to go that round. After that, the end of round phase occurs. The spell does not expire here because it has not yet lasted for one full round. So, it lasts through the entire next round and expires in the end of round phase at the end of the NEXT round.

An easy way to track it is to time effects with a d10. When Bob casts the spell that lasts 1 round, put a d10 out set on “1.” At the end of round, count down the effect. However, do not remove the die when it reaches 0. Instead, remove the die when it is already ON 0 and a round ends. So the die essentially becomes “X rounds left after the current round.” Durations last through the 0th round AND THEN END.

D&D 4E shouldn’t require any finagling to use Popcorn Initiative since most durations are keyed directly to creature actions, but I haven’t experimented and you might want to make some adjustments. I can see some ways in which the system might be gamed, but I don’t think it is serious enough given that both the PCs and the baddies are on an equal footing being able to game it.

Doesn’t This Encourage Metagaming?

Who gives a s#&$? Seriously. Shut up.

Why Use This System?

There are a few benefits to using this system. Most of them involve pacing, party engagement, and party tactics. The system allows the party to set up more complex actions and teamwork, often things they would never consider doing in standard initiative systems because they can follow up on assistance right away.

Beyond that, though, it kind of pushes the players to be more attentive. There is no initiative tracker to watch. They never know when their turn is coming up. Instead, they are watching for opportunities. They don’t spend as much time “planning their turn” as they do “waiting for a good opportunity to show up” and then basically asking to be “tapped in.” It engages the players in the action when it is not their turn.

It also gets the players talking. Often, in character, I’ve noticed. Every player generally has to talk to another player at the end of every turn. And usually that communication directly involves the situation. They don’t say “okay, Bob, you can go.” Usually it is something like, “Bob, can you handle that ogre?” Which is cool. Because they are working together. And if Bob has a better idea, Bob usually says so. “No! I’m the only one who can take out the flier.” <takes turn> “Mary, can you pin down that ogre?” Of course, like all in-combat communcation, you may need to curb it if the players try to fit in minutes of tactical discussion. Keep it to a sentence.

From a DMing perspective, it is far, far easier to keep track of than writing down intiative. You can keep combat moving smoothly from person to person and everyone has to remain on their toes.

The system also hands the players an advantage in most fights. A party of five PCs against a single monster can get 8 or 9 turns against a monster before it gets to go a second time. This requires them to game the system pretty heavily, but it is possible. In my experience, the players rarely seem to do this, but it can help them handle more difficult fights.

Why Not Use This System?

As I noted, this system favors the PCs. And the PCs are already favored by most combat systems. Whenever they have a numbers advantage (which, in Pathfinder and 3.5), they have a significant. Even when they don’t have a technical numbers advantage, because of the tendancy of GMs to group identical monsters on one initiative, the players will often have a numbers advantage even when they don’t.

There is also an argument about abstraction and metagaming. If those are issues for you, then this system is probably unacceptable. That’s fine.

However, I don’t think either of those cons are a deal breaker FOR ME. I am not overly concerned about making combats a little easier because the gains in combat speed (through engagement and player attentiveness) mean I can fit more game into my game sessions. That means the attrition the players didn’t suffer during the “easier” fight can be worked into another encounter.

And, after watching how the game functions with this system, I don’t honestly see it being that much less tense, even though the party is coming out of combats with a few more resources intact. The pressure of being ready to act at a moment’s notice and to watch for opportunities rather than plan actions seems to provide a good deal of tension on its own.

As for the abstraction and metagaming: I’m not going to argue with you if you worry about that. Its cool. Honestly, I worry about it too. That’s a big issue for me. But… I’m okay with this. And I’m okay with it because I have found that it actually FEELS more like a battle. As noted, the players spend less time focussed on planning their next move and more time watching for opportunities or creating opportunities for each other. In short, they are waiting for openings to act and then siezing the moment. When their moment is up (when their reflexes catch up to the window of opportunity), they have to act or else they don’t know when they will have another chance. So, even though it is just as arbitrary, abstract, and metagamey as any other initiative system, I find that it sets a good tone and creates the right mindset.

Tips for Making it Work

If you want to try this, let me give you some advice.

First of all, don’t adjust difficulty because it makes fights easier. Not right away. Play with it for a few weeks and let everyone get used to it, then tweak difficulty if you really need to. It took a lot for me to resist the urge to fiddle with the difficulty to “compensate.” Instead, I’ve just started building more into the adventuring day and it has worked well.

Second of all, game the system. Don’t play nice. The players have the advantage with this system, so be willing to screw them the moment they give you the opportunity to have a powerful foe take two turns in a row. Nominate the players in the worst position to act. Play to win. That sounds brutal, but it actually helps balance out the advantage the players have and adds to the tension and challenge without putting them in too much risk.

Third of all, encourage the players to pass their turns in character and keep a tight control over how much they can say. A sentence is all they get. It is still a combat round. But it is much cooler in character.

Fourth of all, when you pass the turn, narrate why a certain player suddenly has the opportunity to act instead of anyone else. Especially if you’re following the advice about nominating the worst choice (for the players). “While Jozan and Lidda are defending themselves by the grell’s flailing tentacles, Soveliss has an opening to act.”

Fifth of all, build encounters with more different types of monsters to give the baddies more turns in the initiative order. You can’t always find an excuse to do so, but when you can, it helps. Try splitting up your monster groups by building some variety into them. Instead of six identical goblins, rejigger the feats on three of them and give them bows so you have three goblin skirmishers and three goblin archers.

Sixth of all, push and prod your players to act. When someone’s turn comes up, don’t let them hem and haw and umm. If they don’t start talking to you immediately (stating an action or asking a question), remind them that they can wait if they want to risk it. Get your players used to the idea of having zero time to plan. They might grumble at first, but they will get better at it quickly. And eventually, they will tell you how exciting and fun your combats are.

Seventh, and finally, don’t wait. Don’t let the monsters wait, ever. Just go. I know I said “game the system,” but don’t even consider waiting as a tactic. Especially with a group of monsters. It just slows thing down. Waiting is a terrible option. It exists solely to keep a player who isn’t ready from pulling the drag chute on your game. You are not a player. You are the DM and you should always be able to do something useful.

Future Experiment 1: Breaking up Groups

I want to experiment with breaking up groups of identical monsters in order to add more challenge and get away from the dog pile mentality. But I want to do so in a way that doesn’t slow the game or require additional bookkeeping. Here’s what I’ve been toying with.

I do not want individual initiative slots for each specific rat or goblin or spider. I don’t want the players breaking it down to the degree of selecting “goblin number three.” Just maybe specify “the goblins can go.”

So, let’s say there are five goblins. Each one is entitled to an action. So, there is just one goblin card on the table. One slot for goblins. Each time “Goblins” are chosen to go next in the initiative order, one of the goblins can go. Any goblin. Doesn’t matter if they have already acted this turn. Not acted. Whatever. Any one goblin can go.

The goblins have to be nominated a total of five times because there are five goblins. But it could just be one goblin taking five actions. Or two goblins where on takes three actions and one takes two. It doesn’t matter as long as five total sets of actions are taken by goblins.

After a goblin has gone, the DM chooses who goes next, as usual, but he CAN specify the goblins go next. He can burn through the goblins actions one after the other or whatever.

This will encourage very smart groups (when numbers are about even) to try and force the monsters to go early in the round and often (throwing actions back to the goblins). If the goblins can end the round, they can take a massive number of actions in a row and cause a disaster.

This is what I plan to experiment with next.

Using the Cards and Chips system, here is what I would do. Place a card on the table for each PC, NPC, creature, and group of identical creatures, as normal. Place a chip on the cards for each action that creature or group is entitled to. Remove the chips as creatures take their actions.

Future Experiment 2: Dangerous Foes

If the “breaking up groups” thing works okay, the next step is to create dangerous monsters. Basically elites or solos that come from upgraded standard monsters.

In Pathfinder, increase the CR (and adjust XP) of a single monster by two in order to: 1) double its hit points and 2) give it an additional action. The additional action would work just like a second “action” chip available on its card. If you increase the CR (and adjust XP) by three, triple the HP and give it a third action. Increase by four, and give it four times the HP and a fourth action.

To do the same in D&D 4E, I would use standard monsters only. The level of the monster wouldn’t change. Instead, you simply double, triple, or quadruple the amount of XP and multiply its HP by the same factor. Then, allow it to take that number of turns. This would allow to easily turn standard monsters into functional elites or solos without having to stat up a bunch of rules AND help those monsters suffer less from various conditions imposed on it. As an added rule, I would consider allowing it to save at the end of each turn against ONE ongoing condition even if it is not normally allowed a save. This keeps certain conditions not keyed to the monster’s actions (such as abilities that last until the start of the caster’s next turn) from affecting it for two, three, four, or more times as much. In fact, I was experimenting with doing this in a normal, die-rolling initiative system to replace solos and elites with something that worked better. One last adjustment. If the creature has multiple actions, any encounter powers should be given “Recharge 6.” My more clever readers will notice that adjusting the HP, number of actions, and giving Encounter powers a Recharge 6 effectively makes one monster the equivalent of two, three, or four monsters for almost all system math purposes (provided you let it save vs. ongoing conditions so as not to be affected multiple times by the same effect).

This experiment is a way off. I want to fiddle with the breaking up of groups first.

 

 

 

 


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39 thoughts on “Popcorn Initiative: A Great Way to Adjust D&D and Pathfinder Initiative with a Stupid Name

  1. I actually really like this method versus the original way of doing initiative. I’ll give this a shot and try some of your experimentation methods to see how it works. Thanks.

  2. Really interesting, I’m going to give it a try, i’m thinking in order to weigh the scales back into my favour (a little) i might get players to roll a d6 when they are deciding who goes next and if its 1-5 they can decide on a 6 I (the gm) can. Most of the time its going to be them and it may even add a little extra tension for the sake of one simple roll?

    • I like this addition. I might even make it to where the gm gets a better chance to interject. Maybe roll a d6 for every monster who hasn’t acted that has a higher initiative bonus than the PC who’s turn it currently is.

  3. I like it! Right now, when it comes to D&D/PF I run my initiative in groups (Mobs vs PC’s, back and forth) allowing my players to work out their own order on their collective turn. I found it makes them all “lean in” and work together. They can work out some good combos/synergies, etc. Is there metagaming in there? Sure, but like you said, who cares (at least, I don’t in my games when it comes to this aspect of the game), my players love it and it gets them working together really well – why take that away.

    Specifically, back to your system, I like it a lot. My players really enjoy the strategy of combat and I think this could really appeal to them. The next time I run one of those games I may consider giving it a try… thing is, I’ve been running Dungeon World exclusively for a bit now and… no initiative, etc.

    Good stuff, I dig it 😉

  4. This is a nifty idea! I’ve tried for a few sessions now to limit time down using a one minute timer, but that always devolves into nothing because the other players still wont pay attention to what is going on. This is a great way to get everyone into the flow of combat, and probably prevent me from making rocks fall on the party. I’ll definitely give this a try, thanks!

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  6. What about spells with 1 round casting time, like summon monster? Since you have to concentrate from the current round to just before your turn in the next round, a summoner could be the last in the current round and the first in the next, preventing that someone tries to stop the spell.

    • For spells that require a fixed casting time, you could give that spell a countdown for the number of turns based on how many combattants are fighting. For example, say you’ve got 4 pcs and 4 enemies and your summon takes one round. When the spell is cast, put a d8 on 8 then count down each time someone takes their turn. Would that work?

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  8. Wanted to let you know: I tried this with my group last night and it was well-loved by all (once we got the hang of it). Thanks so much for posting!

    We really loved the talking in character, narrating “nominations” in-game was phenomenal, and me not having to keep track of initiative was a boon :).

    We tried an alternative way to do groups of monsters. Basically, I keep track of how many monsters are in a group, and when the group is nominated every creature in that group gets to go (it gets as many actions as there are monsters in the group). This makes fights kind of swingy – six attacks does a lot of damage (especially when you’re rolling in the high teens consistently as I did last night) – but as long as you spread the attacks around it works. After six attacks and much blood spilled, the tension is much higher for the PCs to be awesome. It does incentivize the PCs to use their all actions (- 1 PC to keep the end of the round under control) early to keep the Horde from going. But again, it’s a nice rhythm of Success, Big Threat, Success Again.

    We did notice it was difficult to keep track of large numbers of combatants. We don’t have very much space to play on, so having a bunch of index cards is not necessarily a good option for us. But I’m sure we can work around that.

    Anywho, just wanted to say thanks for posting this. It was really really fun.

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  10. My DM introduced us to this form of initiative this past week, and it was /fantastic/ it did everything you said it would, we all stayed engaged, there was less cross chatter about things that weren’t game related, and people weren’t browsing Imgur or Facebook while gaming cause they didn’t know when they would go next.

    I’m going to start using this method of Init in all the games I run and am going to encourage all my friends to do the same…

  11. As a follow-up, I have moved toward splitting groups as I suggested in “Experiment 1.” It seems to be working pretty well. It makes things even more dynamic. Just throwing that out there. Yeah, I’m awesome.

  12. We’ve been running this in our DnD Next group for a few weeks. My player’s love it! The last 2 weeks I’ve split groups like Angry was thinking about. IE if I had say 4 bugbears I split them into 2 groups of 2. Player’s really liked that. I also threw a curve ball at them, gave “legendary” creatures, in this case a dragon, a 2nd action each round that the creature could take whenever. Sort of like an interrupt. For example, player 1 would go, take his turn and then chose player 2 to go next but before player 2 could go I would jump in with the dragon’s “bonus” turn for the round. Player’s really liked that as well. They had no idea when the dragon’s extra turn would be and it made an epic fight more epic. They did dispatch the dragon but used a lot of their resources to do so, which in my mind is what a legendary/epic fight should be.

    Only tricky part was tracking who has/hasn’t acted in a given round. This is smoothing itself out as we play using this initiative system more or more. If we get confused we simply ask “Who hasn’t gone yet.”

  13. It appears that this would benefit the PCs extremely heavily. A modification could be introduced that no more than two PCs can “pop” at a time before the other side gets a turn (assuming the other side has NPC’s left to take a turn). This would avoid a “gang-up” scenario where the PCs dogpile the biggest opponent to get him out at the beginning of the round so he has no counter punch.

    Alternatively, you could declare “simultaneous action” in that, even if an NPC/monster dies, they don’t get removed (succumb to their wounds) until the end of the combat round, allowing them to get in their “dying blows”. That is a somewhat bigger change to the way combat works, but it might simulation the simultaneous chaos of combat — everyone is actually acting all at once.

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  15. Sounds interesting.

    How about this: when a creature goes and attacks or otherwise adversely affects another creature, then the target creature gets the opportunity to go right after, if it so chooses. I’m thinking that this would result in even more dramatic narration:

    “As you plough into the nearest berzerker, he swings his wicked axe at your neck and [rolls d20] only your reflexes keeps your head on your shoulders! [Rolls damage] Take 10 damage!”

    Not sure how to do it with more than one victim though. Like for an area of effect attack. Maybe just pick one. What do you think?

    • Well… that’s a bit of a hyperbolic overstatement. But you can also remove initiative provided the GM is willing to keep the pace of the combat himself and manage the action economy a bit. It’s necessary in a game like D&D and Pathfinder to keep some semblance of balance between the actions of the combatants but, you are right. It doesn’t HAVE TO be initiative.

  16. One extension of this I have thought of but not yet put to the test in 4e is the following: Whenever an attack is particularly well defended against the initiative swings to the defender. This might work better in systems with active instead of DnD’s passive defenses and action pools, though.

  17. This looks like a really interesting system. I’m thinking about trying it out in my game because I have a really big group, which can sometimes bog down combat. I was curious though, do you think this would translate well into a 3.5 game?

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  19. I have a variant of popcorn initiative for D&D 4E that I like:

    Round 1 (fast heroes):
    Everyone rolls initiative normally, with one exception – the monsters all roll as a single group. Typically, I use the leader’s initiative value. On round 1, only the monsters and the players who beat the monsters in initiative get a turn. All players who beat the monsters are given a poker chip. The player (if any) who beat the monster’s initiative by the most goes first. When they start their turn, they turn in their poker chip. When they finish, they pick another player with a poker chip to go, and so on until all the poker chips are spent.

    Round 1 (all monsters):
    All the monsters go, in whatever order they want, each monster getting one turn. When they are done, ALL the players get another chip.

    Round 2 and beyond (all heroes):
    The ‘slowest’ of the fast heroes from round 1 picks the first hero to go. When the player starts their turn, they turn in their chip. When they start their turn, they turn in their poker chip. When they finish, they pick another player with a poker chip to go, and so on until all the poker chips are spent.

    When it is time for the monsters to go, repeat the round 1 (all monsters) step, above.

    Lather, rinse, repeat.

    —————————————

    Angry DM makes some good points about how the volatile turn sequence keeps all the players engaged even when it is not their turn.

    I allow all sorts of side ‘table-talk’ during a players turn, but once they are done and ready to make a selection, they must pick quickly without discussion. To encourage this, I say something like “Have the player on your left go next, or … you can pick somebody else.” But it is important to keep it moving fast, or else ALL of the players will slow done ALL of the turns.

    —————————————

    PROS: I found the rounds each pass about twice as fast because the heroes and monsters are each clustered and the players are engaged. There are no ‘whose turn is it?’ delays.

    CONS: Some of the chaotic fun is lost because both sides have a much stronger control over their own sequence of turns. This offers a slight advantage to the players, which is somewhat offset by promoting the slow minion initiative the the usually faster leader.

    NOTES: Players could gain this advantage anyway by delaying to cluster their turns together anyway. But I found the delay mechanic is rarely used because it is boring and anti-climatic.

    • I tried a version of your Initiative with the poker chips, but I ran into a snag when the turn of the NPCs with the Party came up.
      In my Playing group, I currently have five PC’s, one NPC small group, four other single NPC’s. During a melee, there were also two Monster Groups. When a player picked the first NPC Cleric to heal someone, that was all right, but I run the NPCs in my group along with running the monsters. That left a PC with a turn, as well as a number of monsters and NPCs.
      It didn’t seem right for me to do all the picks of who went next except the one remaining PC. I tried having the PC’s roll a dice to see who would pick the next NPC, but that just added extra dice rolling to the mess, and put it back on me again anyway.
      How do you handle NPCs in the Pick Choice? Do the Players take some over? I have had Players sometimes abuse this role, which is why I run the NPC’s. Any advice with your system?

  20. So let’s say you have a pack of five monsters with AOE, like 4e Hellhounds. AOE is not uncommon in monsters. It’s going to come up a lot.

    Typically we start a battle with the PCs in Marching Order. This is the explicit advice for 5e and common practice for 4e, 3.5, Pathfinder, 13th age, etc.

    What’s to stop you, as the DM, from having these monsters AOE the clustered party over and over and over until they’ve all dead? Do you just have to make sure to never force the party to start the fight in a cluster? Or do you pull the punch and not “play to win”? Or do you not care? I think the first round mob attack is a real serious drawback.

    The PCs will want to focus fire on round 1, too. They’re going to want to get the strikers in place around one foe, and have the ranged guys spread out and nuke him so he never gets a turn. In Pathfinder, this could actually mean several monsters go down or get taken out by Save or Lose spells before they act. In 4e, it definitely means at least one monster will get dropped before it goes — if the PCs win initiative. (If not, then they’re clustered and vulnerable to AOE as above.)

    It sounds like it makes more sense for a game that doesn’t have the following characteristics:

    Monsters with a 1/day (3e/5e) or encounter (4e/13th Age) big gun power.
    Lots of AOE (4e, 3e, Pathfinder)
    Save or Lose spells (3e, 5e, Pathfinder)
    Forced Movement (4e up the wazoo!)
    The ability to move, attack, debuff, and do forced movement all at once (4e!)

    So Fate might be very good with this system, for instance.

    • My approach is used specifically in D&D 4e (which is the system I best know). I think it would add “spectator interest” to other RPGs, too.

      You say “marching order,” but you seem to imply forced clumping. My players do not have a marching order that looks like 3×3 grid. They start spread out. I rarely clump my 4E minion monsters for the same reason. So I don’t see this as a problem for the players.

      If the PCs are clustered in a tight spot (such as a mine cart), it would be appropriate to hit them with an AOE attack. But I would not design an encounter where the players are in a mine cart and they must fight 5 flying AOE adversaries. That’s just bad encounter design. I don’t define “playing to win” as designing a total party kill encounter.

      Yes, a smart party will focus fire on all rounds (not just the first) to eliminate the offense of the adversary. Yes, if many of them win initiative, they are going to take down a threat or two. This functions the same in ordinary initiative and popcorn initiative. How do you see this playing out differently with ‘normal’ initiative?

      Yes, the monsters get a small advantage to clumping with the faster leader, but they could have gotten most of that advantage by delaying and clumping with the slowest member. I agree with you, the majority of the monster advantage is the first round. But I rarely have an encounter start with the PCs face to face with the monsters, so the encounter layout is more complex than all eight monsters swarm the fighter in the front. And yes, the PCs get an even stronger advantage my manipulating their order, but they could have gotten most of that advantage by delaying into whatever order they wanted. And I believe that those two differences offset close enough to be worth the additional player engagement and play speed.

      Thanks for your comments.

  21. Interesting point. Some thoughts:

    – Ambushes and surprise can be very effective IRL, no? That’s why armed forces use them. Non-Popcorn initiative systems call that a “surprise round”. I’ve been using Popcorn for a little under a year (since the original post was made… wow), ambushed the PCs, and had it work out fine. PCs are tough. Scare them with an unforeseen credible threat.

    – I wouldn’t assume that “in marching order” necessarily equals “clumped together”. Ask your players, and let them feel like competent adventurers for “realizing” that they should space out a bit.

    – I don’t play to win as the DM: my players are my friends (and also my work colleagues) and if I really wanted to win I would just throw the Terrasque at them with a surprise round and call it a day. Instead, I see it as my job to present them with goals that have obstacles to get to them and let them figure out how to get there. “Surviving this well-planned ambush” is one goal I might use. But that’s mostly only interesting because: 1) it can make your villains look really smart; 2) it’ll probably take a lot of the PCs resources to do it – resources they’ll have to work without later on down the line. You can accomplish both objectives without wiping the PCs out. I realize there are different philosophies about DMing, though.

  22. I’m really wanting to try this out, my home group is online though, so I’ll have some programming to do to force MapTools to run initiative like this. (Needed a new project)

    Ambushes/Surprise I had this thought (5e):
    – When a surprised PC/Group gets Initiative they must pass the Initiative to the opposing team
    – As a GM I can be a bit less cutthroat on surprise rounds by after I gang up on a surprised character, give them the initiative to make them no longer surprised for future groups, and they have to pass it back to me.
    – This allows one Creature to be warned (remove surprise) as long as a non-surprised character rolls highest initiative.

  23. Does anyone see any issues with using Popcorn initiative in 5th edition games? I’m thinking of using it in a new game I’m running and don’t think it will mess with things too badly.

    I am wondering about how “legendary actions” would work with the system though – maybe they interrupt directly after the player’s action, and then the character can choose who goes next after the interrupt?

  24. I like it but at my table it doesn’t really add strategy (players always act first except one, then monsters, and then, last player, so next round can start with all players except one, and so on… ALWAYS).
    So I have added one rule, don’t know if it breaks things too much.. If a PC or a monster has taken its turn this round, he can’t make an Attack of Opportunity, he can only make one before it’s turn. And you can’t avoid an AoO with Acrobatics.

    So, sometimes a monster or a PC don’t move and ask for not being nominated to take it’s turn, because he “blocks” an enemy. Or on the contrary, someone nominate an enemy to take its turn, so his friend will past safely next to the enemy after that.

  25. This does sound like a cool way to do initiative. I am particularly keen on things that get players to pay attention when it’s not their turn. In my homebrew, I built a number of ways to assist other players, but this might be more effective.

  26. Pingback: House Rules for Speed | Ludus Ludorum

  27. Interesting. Without having tried it yet, it occurred to me that I one could slightly modify it to allow the DM to occasionally interleave monsters’ turns by way of interrupting a player’s turn at times s/he deems appropriate through the power of DM fiat. This would be considered an optional rule, and when invoked, initiative would pass back to the interrupted player after their opponent’s turn is completed.

    As an example:

    Bob: attacks; “maria, why don’t you finish this gobbo off”
    DM: “hold that thought”; the goblin in question disengages and flees (or perhaps the goblin shaman throws in some healing). “Back to you, maria ..”

    Pros: this somewhat balances the advantage handed to players, and allows for ratcheting up the drama at key points. It can also break up the flow of “all the party, then all the bad guys”.

    Cons: since it relies on DM fiat, it could break the sense of fairness / simulationism if abused, or depending on the attitudes of players.

    thoughts?

    • I described something similar higher up (Oct. 10th 2013). The difference between your suggestion and mine seems to be that in your case it is DM fiat only, whereas my suggestion makes it go both ways. Meaning that the option of choosing to act happens whenever a PC attacks a monster *and* whenever a monster attacks a PC. A matter of taste, I think.
      You might also go all “Dungeon World” and simply omit initiative entirely, basing who goes when on the narrative. This enables the GM to override initiative and granting a bad dude an extra action or some such, as long as it is grounded in the narrative and/or heightens the drama without simply slapping the PCs down.

      I think it all comes down to what the GM and the players are comfortable with.

      • Ah, so you did.

        yeah, I was borrowing heavily from DW, but still trying to retain the as much “realism” as possible without slowing things down. I like your idea of having mooks get their turn as reaction to PC actions and vice versa; the idea of concurrent (initiative-less) actions is interesting too.

        Lots of interesting little ways to tweak this – I’ll try some things out and report back once I have some first hand experiences.

  28. These archives are quite useful!

    I tested this with my 4e group recently, and the first reaction I got was that this was a serious blow to start/end-of-next turn effects. Placing an aura on an enemy that damages any enemy that starts its turn next to the target is kind of worthless if you do this near the end of the round and the first monster to go passes the turn back to the PC that created the effect, so all of a sudden you have an effect intended to persist through one action for everyone which instead ends after the first monster turn. The same idea forces players to take their turns at once if they want to avoid missing out on an end-of-next-turn buff. Admittedly I had mixed in the Experiment 1 where each monster had its own slot (easy with the init tracker I used) and the players picked groups rather than individuals, so in this case there was no way for the players to force the intended target of the lingering effect to suffer it. This (plus monsters winning first initiative and bottlenecking the players, who seemed to forget to use any of their forced movement effects) left a sufficiently bad taste in the session that I went back to normal tracking, and the players were relieved despite having spent the rest of the battle clumping their turns to pick off enemies before they could act. Still, our combats shortly after that felt like they ran faster off the lingering energy, so it was a good experiment.

    Of course, this ends up indirectly buffing save-ends effects, which are generally worse than end-of-next-turn as they are shut down by anything that allows early saves… though I think that’s more for trying to debuff elites/solos into oblivion.

    Now that they know about it, the problem would be ‘solved’ by only ever using these effects at start of round, which adds a new dimension to combat (and to being outnumbered, as you can’t control top of round if there are more monsters than you since they can always kick actions back to control end of round). One thought I floated was that Waiting would delay these end-of-turn effects to the wait-position turn, which has the opposite problem of letting these effects stretch out for two rounds of actions if used at the right moment (unless monsters also start waiting to abuse this, which just escalates the arms race). That would make things easier, though. Still, I’m not convinced my players want this sort of complexity.

  29. Pingback: Popcorn initiative with some sugar on top – Dice 'n' Dragons

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