RCS:Initiative
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Initiative is two things:
- How well the character has outmanoeuvred his or her opponents.
- How fast a character can act during a turn.
A character with a high initiative can take time to watch the situation unfold and act on the situation only after seeing what strategy the enemy intends to follow. Or, if the character with high initiative wants to get something done right away or prevent a lower-initiative character from accomplishing something, the character with high initiative can choose to exercise his or her strategic advantage to act sooner than anyone else.
For each participant in the combat, a small index card is used which bears the character's name and a box large enough for a number to be written into. The index cards can also be used for other useful information, like the personal integrity chart; use whatever details you would like.
After everyone has completed their turns in a given round, or when combat begins, initiative is rolled for each character for the next round. A character's initiative is equal to the result of 2D6, plus the character's Dex, plus the character's Movement speed, plus the character's Tactics skill if any; upon rolling initiative, the index card corresponding to that character is marked with the initiative score.
Points from the tactics pool can be used to alter the initiative of characters on that side. This represents the basic effect of providing cover fire and other mutual support during combat. Points used from the tactics pool for initiative are of course no longer available for use in other DMs.
Order of Initiative
Once all characters' initiatives have been rolled during the given round, players arrange the index cards in plain sight on the tabletop in order from least to greatest. The character with the lowest initiative goes first. If two or more characters have equal initiative scores, randomly determine who goes first using whatever method seems best (flipping a coin, rolling a die, drawing from a hat, etc.), then apply tally marks to each according to their rank compared to each other; a person with "16 |" has lower initiative compared to someone with "16 |||", and both have lower initiative than someone with "17". The idea of initiative numbers is to get an order of cards from lowest to highest -- the actual numbers on the cards don't matter as long as the order is perfectly preserved.
Use a visible token like a poker chip, coloured glass stone, or large coin (two-dollar coins are more abundant in Canada than poker chips and work just as well) to indicate the character that is presently acting: place the token on top of the index card of the character whose turn it is. This token is called the Taking Turn Token.
Declaring and Resolving Actions
Before a character may perform an action, his or her player declares what he or she is going to do. For instance, if someone is cornered in an office and decides to jump out of a second-storey window to avoid capture, the player would declare this: "Jena dives out the window!" Actions always reveal their intended targets -- for instance, if Jena's player wanted to shoot at the third enemy on the left, she would say, "Jena shoots her Rifle at the third enemy on the left", and not "Jena attacks!" (If Jena's player did use the latter option, the referee would ask her to clarify which target unless there was only one possible target, so other characters would be able to decide whether they wanted to interrupt.) At this point, any other character with a higher initiative is entitled to seize the initiative (see below) to interrupt the intended action. If no other character seizes the initiative, the action is then performed. All movement and damage inflicted from actions are immediately resolved, so the first person to get a shot off during combat is likely to be the victor of the combat.
When a character has finished taking his or her turn, the Taking Turn Token is removed from that character's card, the character's card is "tapped"—turned 90 degrees—and the Taking Turn Token is placed on the next card in line. When the token is put onto the next character's card, the next character is entitled to move unless another character chooses to seize the initiative as stated below.
Once the final character has acted, the cards are all gathered, the numbers and tallies are erased, the initiative is rolled again, and the cards are once again sorted into the rolled order and are all now "untapped".
Seizing the Initiative
The intent of the initiative system is to place the advantage into the hands of the people with greater rolls and tactical skill. The best advantage in any combat situation is the ability to watch the battle unfold and react to changing events as they occur: acting later in the round gives you the tactical advantage and allows you to outmanoeuvre your opponents. However, since all damage and movement is resolved immediately in this combat system (just as it is in normal MegaTraveller), it is sometimes disadvantageous to act later in a round. For instance, a person may want to shoot first if they already know which target they will fire at, or a person may want to move first if they want to block off an enemy's possible retreat. To handle these situations, a person may seize the initiative and act earlier than someone else.
Instead of rolling a "to interrupt" task as in the standard rules, a person with a higher initiative (who has not yet "tapped" their character's card) automatically may act first under either of the following conditions:
1) The Taking Turn Token is moved onto a character with a lower initiative, or 2) The character who is taking his or her turn has a lower initiative and declares an action.
Anyone who has not yet tapped their character may freely interrupt the person with the Taking Turn Token if their initiative is higher: the person declares "Seizing initiative!", and then the index card of the person with the higher initiative is moved in front of the index card of the person with the lower initiative, and the Taking Turn Token is removed from the former person and placed on the interrupter.
If the interrupted person is interrupted after they have already expended one Short Action (e.g., they are allowed to complete one Short Action but are interrupted when they declare a second Short Action), some sort of other token such as a quarter or translucent bingo marker should be placed on the former person's card to make it clear that the person only has one Short Action left once play returns to that character.
When someone seizes the initiative, the Taking Turn Token is moved onto their character. Thus, another character with an even higher initiative than the character who seized initiative may also seize initiative, and so on and so forth as needed. Because the cards are also moved, the order of the characters' turns is always completely linear and there is no risk of any significant confusion as to who goes next after the person who seized initiative. This eliminates the need for the interrupt rules in the Player's Manual; any number of interrupts may be made in a given round, though once a character has tapped his or her card he has taken his or her turn on the given round and can no longer make any further actions or interruptions until the next round.
To be perfectly clear, seizing the initiative does not allow a person more than two Short Actions on a given round -- it simply allows a person to act first on a given round. Also, a person who seizes the initiative cannot choose to defer their second Short Action for later in the turn; once you declare seizure of initiative, you take your entire turn immediately unless you are also interrupted.
Initiative may only be seized after someone has declared an action but before they are able to act on it. Initiative cannot be seized in the middle of a person's action unless the referee rules otherwise -- for instance, a person ducking from cover to cover may warrant an attack of opportunity when the person appears. This is intended to prevent the difficult situations where someone has been interrupted mid-move and no longer remembers their original position nor how many hexes/squares of movement they had left, or where someone has been interrupted in the middle of shooting an automatic weapon and no longer remembers how many more bullets are still waiting to be resolved.
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