tonight we ran our first session after a long hiatus. while trying to pick things up after so long has been fun, i find that i need a means to speed up combat. first and foremost, is there any resource that acts as a combat tracker?

how do people handle the initiative and the turn sequences? just looking for a general method that i can either adopt or that will kickstart the creation of my own method.

Initiative? With scrap paper, basically. I get the runners to make their own initiative checks, then make test for the bad guys (I may make one test for all bad guys of an identical type if there's loads of them, which is less realistic but faster). Then I just scribble them across the top in a quick matrix and count down from highest to lowest.

EG: Wolf (Amerind pseudo-street sam with Synaptic 2), Catfish (Sea Shaman with Incr Reflexes +3d6), Gaunt (Gun Kata physmage with Imp Ref 2) and Satin (Otaku with no meatworld reflexes worth a damn) are facing off against a half-dozen Supporting Artist* Halloweeners (no reflex mods) plus one Guest Star* with Incr Reflexes +2d6 on a sustaining focus.

The round 1 matrix looks like this:

W C G S H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6 GSH
16 15 13 7 6 7 8 11 8 9 14
06 05 03 01 04

I might have made one roll for all the SA Halloweeners and a separate one for the Guest Star; using the first roll (pitiful, wasn't it? ) they would all have acted on 6. In fact, in this case it would have made no difference.

Another speed option is, don't make fresh intiative tests for each round. Again it's quicker, but it does hammer someone who rolls low to start with.

*I use psuedo-acting nomenclature for how important an NPC is:

Supporting Artist (basic contact-level template - the gangers from down the block)
Minor Hero/Villain (recurring character with slightly improved stats - most Level 2+ contacts, a gang leader the PC's tangle with occasionally)
Major Hero/Villain (major recurring character with expanded background and notable stats - the Lone Star homicide detective who keeps pulling the PC's cases)
Nemesis/Guest Star (the "series" main villain or a particularly special NPC central to that episode's plot, always handcrafted the same way as a PC is).

I have a numbered list stretching from 50 to 1 and several pieces of scrap paper, some with PC's names and some with my victims of the week's names. When the initative checks are done, I paper ckip the names by the numbers and read them down in order, moving them as needed when they get wound modifiers. After each pass, I remove the bottom ten points worth.

Some tricks for a GM;

As mentioned above, roll initiative once only for the NPC's.

Forget the condition monitor and consider NPC's as either unhurt, wounded (moderate wound) or dead. That means the first hit makes them moderate and the second kills.

Give NPC's a base rating, from 3 to 5 typically, that is used for all skills, attribute and gear ratings. No variables to remeber or check then.

Only use these with secondary NPC's rather than the key ones, and let the PC's keep busy doing all things by the book.

My advice is to play puzzle games and calculate powers of 2 in your head until you can hold the status of an entire group of opposition in your mind at a time.

Then again, I'm a nut

~J

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288

good enough?

I give NPC's a standard initiative roll based on their 'level', usually between 2 and 5. That level is also the rating of all their attributes, skills, gear, spells, etc ... everything with a rating, basically. It makes things very easy to track, as I can write down a name, rating, and quick description on a sheet with a quickie condition monitor.

One possibility is to borrow a concept from card game versions of these games.

Counters. The little beads and "jewels" that you use to keep track of various things a card might have like Magic's "manna".

But First of all, to help you remember the rotation of play in an initiative easier, have the players sit in circular pattern so that the potentially fastest character is directly to your left and the potentially slowest character is directly to your right.
Pretty much, you'll always know the order and if not, they will.

(now back to the beads)
-Each player could have a color only they use.
-For a Combat Round, they hold as many counters as they have Intiative Passes.
-Each player will lay their beads out in a row in front of them from left to right (first action to last)
-With your "goons" and all that, you should have a color of bead for them. After determining what the goons initiative is, hand their bead to the player they are before or after. If they are after a player, then they will be placed under the turn-bead they are after. If they are before a player, then they will be placed above the turn-bead they are before. If the goon is before everyone, keep their bead.
-If two characters have a simultaneous action, remember this by having them trade as many beads as they have a simultaneous action with eachother, and placing the other players bead in place of their own bead that represented their action that they will have a simultaneous action on.
Here's a diagram to help exlpain this idea

Look at the diagram and it makes more sense.
It's really easy once you understand it, and it makes things go faster because the only thing you'll really care about is what your first numbers were and how many beads that gives you. After that, you won't care what the numbers were anymore.

If you have the ability, you can even use alternate color beads for each goon.

I have an MS-Access 2000 Database that I use just for this purpose. It will track PC/NPC damage, Initiative (rolls if you want) and basic stats as well as handle suprise rolls, and some other basic things.

My latest additions added commonly used tables and chart as pop-up windows.

If you are interested, send me an e-mail and I'll send you my latest version.

I also went the electronic route, and whipped up a very simple Excel spreadsheet. I just plug in the names of the PCs and NPCs, and their initiatives, and then let it do the rest for me.

Before that, I used paper.

*shrug* I guess one cannot compete with electronics

I write everyone's name on a piece of paper across the top and each turn I write their new initiative score under their name, going down the sheet as the turns roll by. I put a single slash mark through each init score higher than 10 for every time everyone eligable has already acted once.

I mark wounds, stun, and amount of combat pool used above each name in erasable pen or in pencil and erase or revise as necessary.


I strongly recommend not fudging the damage done to NPCs, but rather to keep trac of it, and combat pool, precisely. If you mess with that, you are throwing off the balance of the game and undermining the strategic/tactical aspect of the game. The number of pool that someone has, the amount of damage they have, and their exact wound mod is crucial, and if you fudge them the careful player who thinks in terms of the numbers will notice and will (rightly so) be annoyed.


I also tend not to fudge dice rolls. I used to, when I first started GMing, but I decided that if you fudge random spikes of chance then you're undermining the point of having a random system in the first place. Statistical calculations is part of the tactics/strategy of the game and I think that it would be unfair to the players to go and Tooth Fairy a statistically improbable roll. I mean, you don't have to worry about the role of random chance if really strange or unfavorable rolls will get screened out by the GM anyway.

Well, if you want to do it the old fashioned way or use computers to roll, you could always do it prior to the fights. For example, if you've got 8 goons roll initiative for them all for say 15 rounds (which should be more than plenty). Then, all you have to do is slap on modifiers to those that are injured.

It's just a little thing but I've found pre-rolling my NPCs initiative a real time saver, the night before I grab some dice and roll away.

If I'm putting in a large scene I roll a set of five or ten, that way I can keep recycling initiative scores as needed.

Heck with rolling. I go to random.org the night before and print out a few 20*20 tables of 1d6, 2d6, and 3d6 die roll results. Even crossing out each roll as I use it, one table can last me 2-3 adventures.

A dice bot for a computer or graphing calculator is easy to make and use.


The best part is that computer generated random numbers seem to spike high more often than physical dice do and they also tend to come in runs. So it leads for some dramatic sessions where a PC suddenly rolls a 24, a 17, and a 17.

man...I really need to figure out how to export our dice roller from RPGi.

Check this out.

Remember that annoying problem of having a TN 7.
The problem being that there is no way you can miss that 7 if you roll a 6.
And it applies further on up with numbers like 13 and such...

People have gotten crafty and used 8 sided die and done tricky little things to make the dice fit into the system.

Well, get this.
Our Dice roller allows you to say that you are rolling 'X' amount of 7 sided dice for a TN of 7 with a subtraction of "-1" from the result of each die.

What does that give you?
A 7 sided die that's 0-6 on it's faces.
That means that a roll of a 6 with a TN 7 doesn't mean you automatically get the 7 because your re-roll might be a 0.
I love that roller!

Lifesaver for some, solution in search of a problem for others.

~J

I've seen several rolls of 24+ with physical dice.

~J

I'm addressing the entire problem with 6~=7 in general.

~J

ah...yeah...it's not a problem IR, but I was completely beside myself with glee when I stumbled onto it with our roller.
*pet's it lovingly*

I've seen a 54 on a physical roll

Why did the person stop rolling?

On my next game I'm planning to try a modification where every six above a target number counts as an extra success.

I can just see someone rolling a 54.

"I got, uh, 9 successes."
"You rolled two dice."
"Yeah. I know."

The question stands though ... why did the person stop?

Maybe he wasn't using that modification, and he got bored?

"IT'S NOT AN OPEN TEST. IT'S A SUCCESS. STOP ROLLING."

Or maybe he's one of those people who stops rolling the instant they get a success, and the target number was 49 . . .

If you've rolled that many sixes in a row, it isn't normal to stop.

It's actually not a bad idea. It's very much in keeping with the "anything is possible" feel of SR rules. Allowing for theoretically unlimited successes is an interesting idea, I might have to try that. While 6 above sounds okay for high target numbers, when you think about low target numbers (like 2's) that could result in a lot of extra successes. Then again, if they're rolling for 2's then they've already won, haven't they? 18 is too steep. That'll happen too rarely to be worth remembering as a rule.

A similar variant I tried once was to allow everyone's natural 1d6 to initiative to be an exploding die (i.e. follow the rule of six), but no bonus dice did. That way it was possible for anyone to beat anyone at initiative; just increasingly unlikely as one person got wired.

I actually like how TN 6 = TN 7.

When the chips are down and the PC is making a desperate dodge test, I can make quips like, "Since you've been such a nice guy, I'll make that a TN 6 instead of a TN 7." And everyone laughs.

I roll initiative for NPCs and write it down, but I let the player remember there own scores. Then I just call out the highest NPC score ("can anyone beat 17?"), and any player that rolled higher lets me know.

I usually just fudge the combat pool for minor NPCs -- I give them a couple extra dice for every roll, fewer if they're dodging a lot. For major NPCs, I'll keep track of the combat pool.

Also, I try to pit the PCs against small numbers of powerful opponents, rather than large numbers of goons. Combat goes faster that way. If I have to do goons, I fudge heavily to keep things moving (for example, by giving all the goons the same initiative score).