I’m about 2/3 of the way through my first read (skipped over the GM Section to read the world info, but now I’m jumping back to tackle that). I remember reading the word “initiative” near the beginning of the book but it’s not in the index and everything else I’ve read hasn’t helped me figure this out. So, my question:
Is initiative in BitD determined purely by the narrative? eg when it makes sense for a character to act? Is it always just clockwise around the table?
Sometimes, doing something faster than someone else will be an essential part of an action roll. Success means you must have done it faster. Like, maybe you want to quickly draw your knife and stab a guy and he wants to do the same to you. The action roll resolves overall success, including issues of speed or timing.
Sometimes the whole obstacle will be “are you quick enough?” and you can answer that with an action roll, too.
Usually, it’s obvious who’s acting first and who’s reacting, etc. If it’s not obvious and you don’t want to simply decide, let the dice system resolve it.
If you mean initiative in the sense of players taking turns, then that isn’t a thing in this game. Characters act according to the details of the situation, and players don’t have to wait for their turn to say what they’re doing — except in the normal way that you ‘wait your turn’ in a conversation.
Thanks much, John! Stumbling through my first session with some folks on the 19th. I appreciate the help!
I feel like all of these comments from John Harper and the editors should be collected into the SRD. A lot of these are gems, and having them more easily accessible would be way useful.
Is the SRD open for pull requests like this? Maybe in a `clarifying-questions` folder?
There are editorial questions about how this could work, but I think it’s worth considering
Perhaps! I’m open to that idea. I think a lot of this is in the book, but everyone absorbs the info in their own way. Sometimes a different bit of wording makes the difference.
Really enjoying the book so far, by the way. Having just published a book myself, I can only dimly comprehend the effort of doing the writing, layout, art, and cartography all by yourself. And for it to be so good on top of that! Wow.
After MCing several sessions, I’m finding that it depends on how the characters do in their engagement roll. If they are in a controlled position, then their enemies react to the characters. If the PCs are in a risky or desperate position, then they are reacting to the NPCs.