New custom initiative rule Options

[Evilness45]

Hello, you might (not) remember me for trying to write a new ruleset based on shadowrun.

This time is initiative passes, which I feel aren't nicely done. I think they slow down gameplay to a crawl, especially considering the turn last only 3 seconds.
SO! Here's what I have.

Each players rolls initiative, which is just like in shadowrun. Inititative roll + initiative score = current initiative for this round.
Depending on each players' initiative, they will be given a bunch of action points. The average character will have 3 or 4 AP.
The player have one movement option, and one action option. Both may each a variable amount of AP, depending on the player's decision.

EXAMPLE:
Player A got 4 action points. He spend one to run. He then spend 3 on shooting with his pistol.
With these 3 AP spent on shooting, he could do one aimed bullet, a called shot, or just fire 3 bullets.

As for shooting several bullets in a single turn, I was thinking of merging them all into a single attack. Instead of resolving 3 separated attacks, the player would do a single attack that is significantly more powerful.
Each extra AP spend on the attack would use an additional bullet, add +1 damage, +1 attack dice pool, +1 recoil. Melee attacks don't care about recoil, obviously.

What do you guys think?
Also, am I clear on these rules?

[Kesendeja]

sounds good, but I think the action cost need expanding.

[TheOOB]

So adding an action point system is supposed to simplify things and make things quicker? I don't see it.

[Ryu]

Hello, you might (not) remember me for trying to write a new ruleset based on shadowrun.

This time is initiative passes, which I feel aren't nicely done. I think they slow down gameplay to a crawl, especially considering the turn last only 3 seconds.
SO! Here's what I have.

Hmm. Given that you have to build a sequence of actions anyway, I don´t see how using the same order multiple times slows you down. Maybe you can explain your goal some more?

Each players rolls initiative, which is just like in shadowrun. Inititative roll + initiative score = current initiative for this round.
Depending on each players' initiative, they will be given a bunch of action points. The average character will have 3 or 4 AP.
The player have one movement option, and one action option. Both may each a variable amount of AP, depending on the player's decision.

EXAMPLE:
Player A got 4 action points. He spend one to run. He then spend 3 on shooting with his pistol.
With these 3 AP spent on shooting, he could do one aimed bullet, a called shot, or just fire 3 bullets.

As for shooting several bullets in a single turn, I was thinking of merging them all into a single attack. Instead of resolving 3 separated attacks, the player would do a single attack that is significantly more powerful.
Each extra AP spend on the attack would use an additional bullet, add +1 damage, +1 attack dice pool, +1 recoil. Melee attacks don't care about recoil, obviously.

What do you guys think?
Also, am I clear on these rules?

You tie everything to Initiative, disregarding IP modifiers. Those with high INI will act earlier and for more effect. You need to watch the balance of unaugmented vs. augmented chars here. You also need to rework all initiative-enhancing augmentations, possibly by replacing IP with AP.

Define action costs. SR has simple and complex actions on an 1:2 ratio, which follows KISS.

Your integrated attack combines the effects of aiming for DV and dp. Add SA/FA modes and lethal is putting it lightly. Automatic pistol 4 + Burst 2 + 2 added AP... 8 DV base for a small weapon. Do you want to resolve multiple bursts as one attack, too?

[Fortinbras]

Okay, imagine you're GMing for someone who is playing Shadowrun, or any RPG, for the first time. They encounter some baddies.
You say "Roll Initiative!"
He says "How do I do that?
You say "Roll your Initiative score. Add the number of hits to your score and that is the number you go on. When I call out that number, that is when you do the thing you want to do.
He does and goes on 10. 10 comes around and
You say "What do you do?"
He says "I shoot it."

Explain to him, in a simple, non-run on sentence how to shoot it, as demonstrated above. If you can do this, it works. If you can't it doesn't.

[Mardrax]

You'd probably need to define the number of AP every action takes, and define firing a weapon in each mode as a separate action. SS taking 3. SA taking 1.5, rounded up. BF taking the same for 3 bullets. FA taking 1 per 3 bullets with a minimum of 2 spent. Or somesuch.

Can't say I really see the point though. Would you care to elaborate how such a system would actually drag the game down less than the IP system?

[Tech_Rat]

Personally, I think this adds even more work to the game system. We have to figure the number of AP each person, Take what moves their going to make, figure the ap total of it, subtract from their current ap, then go forward with the turn. Seems too convoluted.

[Ryu]

Another approach:

1. Roll Initiative

2. Declare actions (lowest INI result first)
Characters get 1+IP simple actions per turn, spending 2 in place of a complex action. One unspend simple can be carried over to the next turn.

3. Resolve actions (highest INI results first)

[Eratosthenes]

Action points, as others have said, seem to be overly complex.

The problem with defining actions is that you need clear categories of things. Not everything takes the same amount of time, and many things can be multi-tasked by even the most unaugmented person (walking/running, talking, while fiddling with something in their hands like a gun). Hence the need for movement/simple/complex actions.

I sense the APs are meant to replace simple/complex actions?

The bonuses for combining APs to attacks is too high (recoil penalty for example is pretty much subsumed by the attack bonus).

[Yerameyahu]

Eclipse Phase makes a distinction between mental and physical actions, which I find useful.

[Draco18s]

Another approach:

1. Roll Initiative

2. Declare actions (lowest INI result first)
Characters get 1+IP simple actions per turn, spending 2 in place of a complex action. One unspend simple can be carried over to the next turn.

3. Resolve actions (highest INI results first)

The downside to this approach is that everyone has to remember what their action was when it finally resolves back to them.

[Yerameyahu]

Yeah, I've never liked 'reverse' systems in actual play.

[Ryu]

The downside to this approach is that everyone has to remember what their action was when it finally resolves back to them.

Certainly. We use the standard system for a reason. The upside would be that the faster chars can react more dynamical to the slower chars, trying to interrupt their actions. (That´s why I´d only hand out a single action per IP.)

[capt.pantsless]

I think they slow down gameplay to a crawl, especially considering the turn last only 3 seconds.

They slow-down the in-game-world-elapsed-time, which is the WHOLE point of augmented characters. A street-sam is supposed to be able to shoot 3 different people dead by the time the first shell-casings hit the ground. That's one of the cool things about SR. If you want to speed something up, speed-up the real-world table-time, not the game-world time.



As others have said, if everyone has their FULL action points as soon as their initiative number comes up, suddenly that same Street-sam gets to do all of their actions before anyone else can react. 1st and 2nd ed. had this problem, SS's could clear whole rooms. It was a major balance issue.

[Evilness45]

My idea behind giving AP system where you spend lots of points in a single attack is to simply make everyone roll once per attacks. The default rules makes some character acts only once per turn while everyone else gets to act up to 3 or 4 time. That's lots of rolls. What I simply want it to make a system where everyone gets the same game time.

Of course I realise that allowing a character to spend all their action points in a single "timelapse" would have been too powerful, and this is why I'm trying to make it less deadly. Hence the extra damage per AP spend instead of just extra attacks.

Does it make sense?

me no english speak good (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Also, I certainly don't want to increase the time lapse per round. That would be ridiculous : "This unaugmented elite marksman can shoot two bullets every six seconds, and that's as good as he gets."

[sabs]

This is not really functionally different from the Sr3 Initiative..
Instead of Action Points, you take your initiative roll you get to go X times based on your initiative roll.

[Muspellsheimr]

My idea behind giving AP system where you spend lots of points in a single attack is to simply make everyone roll once per attacks. The default rules makes some character acts only once per turn while everyone else gets to act up to 3 or 4 time. That's lots of rolls. What I simply want it to make a system where everyone gets the same game time.

So, in your game, combat is the only thing that happens?

Go play a different game.

[Evilness45]

So, in your game, combat is the only thing that happens?

Go play a different game.

This is the kind of comment you should keep to yourself.

I'm rewriting a game based on shadowrun's system. It's not shadowrun, so what happens in it is up to me. Right now I'm focusing on the battle aspect of it. I never said combat would be the only thing.

That being said, I'm curious to know how you managed to conclude that combat is the only thing in my game...

[Muspellsheimr]

What I simply want it to make a system where everyone gets the same game time.

This, with the solution being "fixing" combat. Basically says combat is the only aspect of your game worth anything. Or do you honestly expect a combat monster to have equal game time during social interactions, or investigative work? Or any number of other aspects or moments in the game?

The game is setup so that combat favors players who built their characters for combat. The same applies to social favoring social, legwork favoring legwork, etc. The game was designed in a way that all of those should come into play during a 'balanced' run, and thus total game time is roughly the same for everyone involved.

Again, if you can't handle that, go play another fucking game (or in this case, use another system as your base).

[Evilness45]

/facepalm

Ok right, so...

anyone else have an opinion?

I admit I might have omitted that I'm rewriting the whole game. This is one of the rule in that rewriting.

[phlapjack77]

I'm interested in seeing the final product, although I have nothing to offer input-wise (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Ok, I would suggest instead of "merging" all 3 attacks into one killer combo, that the character could spend AP on an "aim" action, so 3AP spent = 2 aims, 1 shot. Aim can increase accuracy or damage.

[Evilness45]

I'm interested in seeing the final product, although I have nothing to offer input-wise (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Ok, I would suggest instead of "merging" all 3 attacks into one killer combo, that the character could spend AP on an "aim" action, so 3AP spent = 2 aims, 1 shot. Aim can increase accuracy or damage.

I was already thinking of doing something like that. Basically 1 AP here is roughly one simple action. So you could spend a bunch of AP just to aim, and get extra dice. Or do a called shot to get extra damage much like how it goes in shadowrun right now.
I'm just debating giving the option of spending both extra bullets and action points for extra oomph. (+1 recoil, +1 dice, +1 damage, one bullet spent)

Like I said, the idea here it to make the turn runs faster by making everyone act just once.

[sunnyside]

I can appreciate wanting to speed things up by people just getting one action per round.

However if you're already rebuilding maybe just free yourself from the idea of all sorts of different actions. Maybe in your game, the slow motion affect of bosted reactions is simply represented by getting to do their one action soon, and a bonus to things you'd deem relevant to the world moving in slow motion, which would be most things really, certainly firing a gun.

So you could give out an initiative boost as now, but extra IPs would instead give extra dice to a whole lotta stuff.

Actually that seems to have a better "feel" to it in a way. Especially in hand to hand combat.

[Fortinbras]

/facepalm

Ok right, so...

anyone else have an opinion?

I admit I might have omitted that I'm rewriting the whole game. This is one of the rule in that rewriting.

I'll reiterate. Your new player says "I shoot it." Explain to me, simply as possible, how I shoot it.

[BishopMcQ]

Previous versions of SR have dealt with the same problem differently. One solution which builds off of previous editions is roll a number of dice equal to your IPs. Add the sum of the dice to your Initiative. Highest score goes first. Every 10 points equals another action.

So we have John (J) with a 31, Mark (M) on 22, Guard (A) at 18, Guard (B) at 17.

J shoots on 31, M shoots on 22, J shoots on 21, A goes on 18, B on 17, M on 12, J on 11, A on 8, B on 7, M on 2, J on 1

Yes, this means that the Street Sam can be so fast as to annihilate everything before they've even had a chance to react. I'm okay with that, though YMMV. In my experience, it speeds up combat though.