Dynamic Initiative

Last month, I talked about my recent experiences playing wargames online with friends via VASSAL. Our most recent game is Liberty or Death, which concerns the American War of Independence (or the American Insurrection, as the game calls it). I've been enjoying it, though I'm finding it a much more complex game than Falling Sky. Partly, I think it's a function of the time period and scope of the game and partly it's because I'm playing a more significant faction. In Falling Sky, I played the Belgae, who are a minor faction; in Liberty or Death, I'm playing the Patriots, who are, obviously, one of the two primary antagonists. Even so, most of the things I learned playing Falling Sky carried over into Liberty or Death, which only makes sense, given that they both use the same underlying mechanics.

One of those mechanics is its unique approach to turn order. Each turn, an event card is drawn. At the top of each card is a series of symbols, all of which is associated with a faction. For example, in the image above, the card "Benjamin Franklin Travels to France" shows the so-called Betsy Ross flag of 1777 first, followed by the flag of the Kingdom of France, the Union Jack, and lastly an arrowhead representing British allied Indian forces. The order of the symbols indicates the action priority of the factions in a turn. 

However, there's an added complication. If you look to the bottom left, there's an area entitled "Sequence of Play." In that area are two boxes called "Eligible Factions" and "Ineligible Factions." After the very first turn of the game, in which all factions are eligible, whether or not a given faction can act is determined by what happened the previous turn. If a faction acts in one turn, it is generally ineligible to act the next turn. Thus, only a faction that didn't act the previous turn can make use of an event card in the present turn – and which one of them gets the option to do so first is randomly determined based on which event card appears and which symbol is listed first.

There are a couple of additional wrinkles to the turn order. The player of a faction may forego his action on a turn in order to sit out the turn and gain resources. In doing so, he keeps his faction eligible for the next turn, which may be a wise move, since players can see the next upcoming event card. Further, by passing on an action in this way, a player changes the order of initiative for future turns. All factions also have a "brilliant stroke" card, which enables eligible factions to act of sequence once per game. Though rarer, this can nevertheless shake up the game's turn order.

In play, this system is dynamic and enjoyable. It keeps the sequence of play from stagnating into an "I go, you go" sort of affair. Having seen it in action during the course of two different wargames, I found myself wondering about how to do something similar in RPG combat. Plenty of roleplaying games have had dynamic initiative systems before, but they tend to rely on rolling dice every round or some kind of action point economy. Both approaches are fine, though action points require bookkeeping, which, in my experience at least, tends to lead to their being ignored. Rolling dice every round is better, but it can slow things down. What I like about the system in Liberty or Death or indeed any of the COIN series of games is that it requires only the turning of a single card, which provides all the information needed to adjudicate turn order.

I have no idea how this would work yet, or whether it's possible at all. A few years ago, I toyed with a chit-based initiative system – I really wanted to find a way to incorporate Holmesian chits into contemporary RPGs – but I was not satisfied with the results. I will have to keep thinking about this.