11-11-2009, 10:18 AM | #1 |
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Verona, Italy
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Is the Initiative roll the single most important roll in the game?
Hi everyone.
I got the impression that the initiative roll that start hostile encounters might be the single most important roll in the game. Has this been expanded somewhere, perhaps with a wider range of modifiers and more varied results? So far I checked martial arts and action 2, yet I couldn't find anything about that in those 2 volumes.
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11-11-2009, 10:25 AM | #2 |
Stick in the Mud
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Rural Utah
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Re: Is the Initiative roll the single most important roll in the game?
I haven't rolled for initiative in GURPS in... well ever. You set up the sequence during character creation. Highest move character goes first.
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11-11-2009, 10:40 AM | #3 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Is the Initiative roll the single most important roll in the game?
You just about never make this roll. It's a special case of the surprise rules intended for situations where two groups of people mutually surprise each other, and determines which side is more surprised. In the vast majority of cases where both sides are expecting trouble and encounter one another, you simply start the combat sequence and have individuals act in order of Basic Speed.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
11-11-2009, 11:00 AM | #4 | |
Pike's Pique
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio U.S.A.
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Re: Is the Initiative roll the single most important roll in the game?
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Thats something I've seen obsessed over in D&D games, not GURPS sessions. When I ran encounters , either the adversaries had surprise or they didn't. There wasn't initiative rolls because even with NPCs involved I had them go in the order of the mopve or speed number. Or heck maybe just based on how close they were to the player characters on the map. - Ed Charlton
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11-11-2009, 11:31 AM | #5 |
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Verona, Italy
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Re: Is the Initiative roll the single most important roll in the game?
Oh well, actually I rolled it no more than 3 times during my current campaign, but I mis-read a message in another thread that made me guess wether it should be rolled routinely.
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11-11-2009, 11:56 AM | #6 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
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Re: Is the Initiative roll the single most important roll in the game?
I combined the two methods in 3e -- 1d6 + (unrounded) Move. i found either alone was inadequate: a simple die roll was far too random, while just using Move gave far too much advantage to someone who might be only marginally faster. By combining them, the higher Move tended to go first, but not always.
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11-11-2009, 12:00 PM | #7 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Binghamton, NY, USA. Near the river Styx in the 5th Circle.
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Re: Is the Initiative roll the single most important roll in the game?
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11-11-2009, 12:13 PM | #8 | |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
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Re: Is the Initiative roll the single most important roll in the game?
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Although the system I used did determine Turn Sequence (and I use modified 3e rules anyway).
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11-11-2009, 12:22 PM | #9 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Binghamton, NY, USA. Near the river Styx in the 5th Circle.
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Re: Is the Initiative roll the single most important roll in the game?
I find it's important to be picky on this subject because too many people conflate Turn Sequence with Initiative in GURPS because what GURPS calls Initiative bares no resemblance to what other games call Initiative.
Quote:
We'd probably have been better off if they had dropped the word "Initiative" from 4e for the concept and simply used some variant of the Mental Stun rules for Combat Surprise.
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Eric B. Smith GURPS Data File Coordinator GURPSLand I shall pull the pin from this healing grenade and... Kaboom-baya. |
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11-11-2009, 12:24 PM | #10 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Is the Initiative roll the single most important roll in the game?
Yes. These things tend to be confused becase D&D used "initiative" to mean something that gamers took as the dictionary definition of the word, but which would have been more logically be called "order of individual action." GURPS uses "initiative" in the more traditional military sense, to mean which side in a conflict is acting, forcing the other side to react, and thus controlling the conflict. It has nothing to do with individuals.
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