I recently found this method of fast-paced combat without initiative rolls that was pioneered by Professor Dungeon Master. Here’s the overview (with my adaptations from D&D to “4.5E” as I call our house-ruled version of the 4E rules).

This overrides part of the canon combat rules. Weapons, armor, damage tracks, etc. remain unchanged. But the process of combat now works as follows.

• Step 1: Everyone states what they’re going to do. And once you’ve stated it you can’t change it. You are locked into that move. You have 60 seconds to decide.
• Step 2: Everyone rolls the dice. Runners and enemies all at once. This includes both their attack dice and their fist/weapon/spell damage dice as well.
• Step 3: The GM looks at the dice results and narrates what happens.

Some caveats:
• Ranged Attacks: These always go first, and if the attack kills the target it cancels their attack. Spells count as ranged attacks (unless they’re touch spells).
• Sneak Attacks: If you manage to sneak up behind someone, that’s a free attack. They can’t see you to attack you back.
• Contested Actions: Say that a runner is about to wade into combat but notices a group of enemies trying to sneak up on them from behind. The enemies are about to come through a door in the back of the room and he’s the closest to them. The runner and the lead enemy make attack rolls. The runner’s roll is better, so he can reach the door before they do and then slam it shut and lock it as his action for that combat round. If the lead enemy had won, they would barrel through the door and join in the combat as of the next round.
• Surprise Attacks: Say that the runners are stealthily creeping around a corp’s warehouse and come across a group of guards playing cards in their break room. If the runners decide to attack, then they get a +3 bonus to their attack rolls and the guards get a -3 penalty to their attack rolls. This only applies to the first round of combat.

After all that, is one side dead, surrendered, or run away? If not then we do it all over again – you have 60 seconds to decide your actions for the next round of combat. Rinse and repeat until the fight is over.

Ok, so that’s how it works. I decided to give it a try in our last session. We don’t normally use minis but I dug out a large vinyl grid map I haven’t used in a decade, and then appropriated some boardgame pieces and flat glass beads as stand-ins for the PCs and any enemies.

So, it was a little shaky at first and it kind of took a while to get into the swing of it but I swear the end result is way better. No one’s just hanging around surfing the web on their phone while waiting for their initiative turn to come around again. At any rate, I’d recommend giving this a shot, especially if you’re used to combats dragging on and on in your games. Nobody has time to not be paying attention and it keeps them laser-focused on the fight. I swear it shaved an hour off the game all told.

Let me know how it works out for you!

It's a whole new way of thinking about Shadowrun combat. I like the idea.

It reminds me a of bit of RuneQuest's "statement of intent" phase but without the added complexity of "Strike Ranks".

I have a few questions.
- The 60 seconds. Just to make sure I get it right: Is it 60 seconds total for everyone at the same time? 60 unstructured seconds where the players both plan and say what they do? (or is it 60 sec. per player?).
- If it is, does that mean that if someone doesn't declare actions in time, the character doesn't do anything that turn?

- What have you done with Wired Reflexes and the like? How do the normaly 2 or 3 initiative passes for cybered characters fit in? If they're just gone, what do Street Samurai players say?

Excuse the "noob", or rather the SR2 GM that has only really looked at the rules in subsequent edition (no chance to play), but if you get rid of initiative what happens to that Street Sam that doubled down with Wired Reflexes 2 or--gasp! why!?--WR 3? They've sunk a lot of resources into getting that gear that makes them dominate in Initiative roles and, with these rules, by this sentence your functionally getting rid of that?

I can see the merit of the "60 seconds to decide" as a way of stopping the kind of never-ending tactical discussions between players, but unless there was some countervailing bonus it would seem that you may have invalidated a whole bunch of cyberware.

Now, please, don't get me wrong. I use GURPS and I'm frequently asking for ways to simplify combat rules. I certainly get it in that regards. What I would merely point out is that if you take away initiative, then the people that have invested in that should probably get some bonuses in this new approach, right? Some way that they can shine for the implanted chrome or cast mana?

So, for example, if you were to keep the initiative system and use the "60 seconds to decide" I can certainly see that someone changing their mind should lose an initiative pass. (I'm remembering back in the day something along the lines that you rolled your Initiative, which determined your first point of action and then subtracted 10 to take another action until you had no more "Initiative points" left.)

What would that countervailing bonus be in this system? Or, rather, how did you handle it since you've used it in-game rather than me just talking theoretically?

60 seconds for the group as a whole. If anyone doesn't decide, then they've elected to just stand there (I guess they froze up in the face of impending danger).


Good question - this hasn't come up yet. I've currently got 3 players, and they're playing a Rigger, a Street Shaman, and a Decker. Nobody has enhanced reflexes (either technological or magical) and so I didn't even think about that until after the game. I'm open to suggestions, though I'm kind of leaning towards to just giving them multiple attacks/actions when everyone else is doing their one attack/action.

See previous answer. I definitely wouldn't want to allow them an opportunity to change their minds, even at a penalty. That's kind of the whole point of the new system. "Put down your phone and pay attention to the here and now. 60 seconds starts now and you're locked into your choices at that point - no takebacks!"

Clearly you can do what you want. I'm merely suggesting that it would make sense that if a super-speedy character has the ability to process information that fast that they can do multiple attacks they can also probably assess the situation and go, "Hey, yeah, I'm not going to do that thing anymore" at the cost of, say, one of the multiple attacks that they were going to have anyway. Otherwise it terms into a video game where you're mashing the buttons so much with your initial action that you don't realise that the person that you were fighting has stepped out of the way. (Too much Jedi: Survivor influences this analogy. )