This is the 14th of an 18 part series on How to be a DM. To start at the beginning, click here.
The actors are on stage and the director needs to start the action. “Roll for initiative!” the DM says.
Each player needs to know when their turn begins. Unlike standard board games in which turns rotate clockwise, in most RPGs turn order is determined by a die roll and jumps around the table.
Each player rolls a die, adds a bonus and comes up with a number that represents how fast they are to react. As the DM, you roll for the bad guys, add their bonuses, and get a number for them.
Compare the numbers and the highest character goes first. The next highest character goes next and so on.
This can be an area of confusion in the game. It’s just too easy for the players and DM to forget who’s up next without some sort of visual reminder.
Tracking Initiative
One simple approach to recording initiative is to use index cards with the players names on them. You fold them in half and slip them over the DM screen. This approach works well but you can’t easily represent the conditions that PCs might suffer.
Showing Conditions
During combat the PCs might get dazed, unconscious, blinded, or suffer some other effect from the conflict. Each of these conditions limits what actions they perform. So you need to track what the status of each character is during conflict.
Some people indicate conditions by marking the mini or by handing out cards to the players. I prefer to mark conditions on the list of names indicating initiative order.
Current Method
In terms of the initiative rolls of the bad guys, I have a house rule that I roll one number that applies to all of them. This simplifies things tremendously. All of the opponents may not start on the same round of combat, but I only need to jump in and act for them once. This makes it much easier for me. I also go around the table and ask each player to tell me their total, and then tell the initiative tracking player what order to use for the magnets. (To see how to make these initiative magnets, read this post.)
The stage is set and the actors are ready to start combat. In the next story, I’ll explain how I manage combat, which can be a challenge when everyone is in the heat of battle.
Bitzy the Bard
“Life is an adventure story and you are the star. Choose to play a hero!”
