When initiative matters.

Initiative matters when there is a risk. If combat only lasts one round, going first is a massive advantage. Accordingly, the longer combat extends, the less important initiative becomes because results will eventually average out. Recently, I had a session where this was more perceptible.

Artwork by Bertdrawsstuff

Right now, I'm testing a deadly combat system. I mean deadly; combat usually lasts one to two rounds (and I like it that way). The characters won most initiative rounds and used their resources to attempt to dispose of as many enemies as possible before the enemies got a response. This was effective. It mitigated the damage they accumulated, but it costed resources (spell points, abilities, etc).

Having realized the importance of winning initiative (specially against necromancers and cultist), the players even consumed meta-currency to turned failed initiative rolls into successes. To understand this a bit better, I must tell you that our meta-currency--called Divinity--can be used to influence rolls on a 1:1 basis (a la DCC luck), but in our case it is also the roll-under target number to stay alive at zero health. Each of the characters, currently at around mid-level, has about 2-4 Divinity points. Well, during one of the initiative rolls, all players lost initiative and two of them used a Divinity to turn that failure into a success. A precious resource was consciously used, and a risk assumed, because initiative mattered.

Fast-forward two combat encounters later, players lose initiative again. This time, they don't have enough Divinity to turn it into a success. A character gets hit with a kill spell and, without getting too much into the mechanics of the spell, the player is one Divinity point short from preventing the character's death. Norf, the dwarven knight, gets melted.

A simple session, but an interesting lesson into the underlying ramifications of initiative. I saw, in a more tangential way, that the value of initiative scales with risk: higher risk, higher importance for initiative. And when imitative matters, the players engage, with resources or otherwise, in the outcome. This may seem self-evident, but I never consciously recognized it in this way until now.

Design Considerations

I think this example can provide a perspective for how to gauge the needs of an initiative system. If the game is low risk, initiative should be considered to be either extremely simple, limited to the highest risk part, or ditched altogether. If the system is high risk, initiative can provide another layer of interesting interaction with the rules. Although I don't think that a high-risk system should inherently have a more complex initiative system, I think it would be more justified than for a low-risk system.

One way to gauge how much risk the system has can be to measure the amount of turns that it takes to resolve the gameplay loop relying on initiative, such as combat. If combat is quick because characters and monsters can be killed in a hit or two, then initiative is important. If combat is lengthy, then the results will naturally average out, and initiative is of lower importance. Think of rolling 1d20 vs 10d20. The result of 1d20 is impossible to predict, but the result of 30d20 will confidently be within an average of a standard curve (central limit theory, anyone?). An exaggerated example, but I hope you get the point.

Of course, this is only one consideration regarding the design value of initiative.