Combat rounds, Initiative. How rubbish are they?, Artificial time subdivisions and current Initiative mechanics suck... Options

[Wounded Ronin]

The reason to stick with an abstract, unrealistic, artificial init system is that anything else is too complicated. All of the examples so far would add hours onto the bookkeeping of normal combat, and normal combat already takes a pretty long time... And therefore, though I don't wish to malign the hard work and ideas of their creators, these house rules are guaranteed to earn Larme's stamp of FAIL.

But you'd have more time to sip coffee while playing the game.

[Blade]

Personally I try to ignore the combat round division and just go with the narrative description of the battle, taking into account the fact that some people will be able to act about 4 times faster than others.

I ask everyone to state what they want to do, then go on to describe what happens simultaneously, using the number of initiative passes to consider how many times the characters can act comparatively to the others (i still use free/simple/complex/extended actions to "time" the actions). I got rid of initiative rolls and just use initiative to check who's going to act first when it's really important. Actually most of the time it doesn't really matter if you act a millisecond before or after the other guy.
Instead I introduced a tactics pool you can use to interrupt the action you declared using a free action instead of a simple action (for example to stop shooting if the guy you're shooting at is dead or under cover).

It leads to a more descriptive and tactical combat, but is a little more loose in rule terms and requires a bit of GM fiat.

[Kerberos]

The reason to stick with an abstract, unrealistic, artificial init system is that anything else is too complicated. All of the examples so far would add hours onto the bookkeeping of normal combat, and normal combat already takes a pretty long time... And therefore, though I don't wish to malign the hard work and ideas of their creators, these house rules are guaranteed to earn Larme's stamp of FAIL.

So does the Larme scale come in degrees? You know like minor FAIL, FAIL, major FAIL and EPIC FAIL perhaps? Also are there actually any passing grades on the scale? Inquiring minds want to know.