/gdg/ - Game Design General

I'm trying to decide if I should just use a standard initiative system or something of my own design for the game I'm working on.
I want to get an extremely gritty and simultaneous feeling combat system, where having just that one initiative higher can mean the difference between doming an enemy and having to roll a new character. My idea is that players declare and "lock in" their actions after rolling initiative, with all actions being resolved in initiative order (it uses an action/reaction system for attack rolls). Characters would be able to take a hit to their initiative prior to their turn in order to change their actions. Combatants who are downed prior to their initiative turn still get to go, albeit with hefty penalties.
Too convoluted?

It's not too convoluted, but locked in actions quickly become fuzzy after a few actions have been resolved (especially movement), and you'll need to be careful with your rules for handling that, because they may quickly become convoluted.

Additionally, your system sometimes changes the initiative order, which is very slow. I've timed turns (with a stopwatch) and even with D&D-style fixed initiative, turn order concerns take up almost half the time of each player's turn.

Still could use thoughts on this.

I have been dreaming of an initiative system for a while, I'll explain below and feel free to use and abuse it. If I was designing a big boy system right now, I'd totally employ this.

So, instead of an initiative score, initiative is a resource.

There are no turns, but combat happens by each character and monster on the board "bidding" their initiative resource to take an action. Something like this --

>Assume, for purposes of example, everyone has 10 initiative
>Player 1 sorta wants to go right now, but isn't super worried about it.
>Monster 1 also wants to go
>Player 1 bids 2 initiative
>Monster 1 responds by raising, bidding 3 initiative
>Player 1 doesn't want to raise to 4
>No one else bids, so Monster 1 gets to take its turn
>Monster 1 moves and attacks Player 1*
>Player 1 tries to defends, fails, takes damage**
>Action has been resolved, so another bid takes place
>Monster 1 has 7 initiative left, Player 1 has 8 left
>Now that Monster 1 has attacked, it is vulnerable, so Player 1 really wants to go
>Player 1 bids 4, Monster 1 doesn't raise because it doesn't want to spend more than half current initiative
>Player 1 wins bid, attacks Monster 1, deals damage***
>Monster 1 has 7 initiative, Player 1 has 3 initiative

This goes on until no one has enough initiative to take an action, or no one wants to. Then, the "round" flips and everyone's initiative fills up back to max. Repeat until there's no more combat to do.

* You can build little mechanics in. For example, you can say that you have to bid minimum of 1 initiative in order to "move," and something like 1 more (for a total of 2) to additionally "attack."

** Here, Player 1 has a chance to defend the attack because he bid (even though he lost), so there's benefits for trying to win the bid and having to lose some of your initiative points

*** Here, Monster 1 didn't bid, so it doesn't get a chance to defend, it just takes the damage

>To be continued... character limit

It definitely needs to be fleshed out, but there is SO much room for building little mechanics in.

Going a little further, one thing I thought could be cool with this system is class abilities or special abilities based on the type of combat the character is doing.

For example, let's say there is some special sword flourish that does an extra 4 damage - one of the prerequisites could be that you have to minimum bid X initiative to accomplish it.

Same with "defense." Say every initiative point that you LOSE on a bid equals a bonus to your defense against any attacks that come your way from the bid winner.

I dunno, I have just always thought this could be an elegant "semi-continuous initiative" if done well.

Bump before bed

oWoD vampire had a similar initiative system where people would announce their actions in lowest-to-highest initiative order, and then actions would resolve from highest-to-lowest.

A lot of people didn't actually use it; the rules describing it were too verbose, and it significantly complicates something people already hate to do (creating and tracking initiative lists.)

Sounds like Warhammer. I've thought about doing this too, but the prospect of balancing and specifying the abilities of everything in terms of phases turned me off.

Now I'm moving ever closer to the OSR philosophy of loose rules and negotiated action

Thoughts?

I think I'm cursed. I'm basically incapable of thinking of good ideas that aren't horribly depressing, depressing to the point where rather than losing interest, I slowly stop designing the game makes me sad.

Notably I've tried to make a weird-noir-spy-mercenary or street level vigilante game with really brutal combat to the point where your opponents are frightened of you. It had a primarily trait based character generation system where it was assured that your character would turn out being a horribly broken, edgy, semi-insane freak. I had 3 d100 traits, good/advantages, bad/disadvantages and 'weird' tables.

The other more recent one was about mercenaries and adventurers in 1950s Africa but it could be used more or less whenever guns were available so I stated arquebuses and assault rifles along with some 40's and 50's weapons. I also included a scenario supposed to be set after operation unthinkable where the Soviet Union had collapsed into feuding warlord states. It would primarily take place in the Far East because all of the large European cities are radioactive ruins. The gimmick of the system was the characters had for all intents and purposes a psychopathy stat which had to be your highest roll at character generation unless your gym agreed otherwise. I almost had it working smoothly before I stopped, I just wanted to make a more realistic shooting rpg where fear and suppression and taking a human life were important to gameplay instead I made a psychopathy simulator. And I can't say that isn't entirely what I wanted.

This isn't a cry for help or anything! I was just wondering if anyone had any advice or tips?