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Oro
when i run rpgs i use a stopwatch to allow the characters a certain amount of time to figure out what they want to do in high stress situations. ive got a really nice 7 jewel swiss wind-up.

if they dont tell me what they want to do before times-up then they just sit there and act stupid.

in SR, though ive never run it, i would use the reaction score.

at first players HATE it, they feel like theyre being cheated outa something, i still cant figure that out. but after the first couple gaming sessions they learn to really like it, it adds a great feel to combat and a good amount of realism too.

id just like to hear some thoughts on what people think of this method.
ThreeGee
How would you translate the reaction score to a time exactly?
Oro
just give them that number of seconds
Fortune
So if the Sammy has 4 actions in a turn (which in Shadowrun is approximately three seconds), you give them .75 seconds to decide on each action?

Or do they get 12 seconds to decide each action, while the Mage with a reation of 5 has to come up with his actions in 5 seconds?
Austere Emancipator
It's the same ole argument of the Player's Mind vs. Character's Mind.

Let's say a computer nerd-type plays a grizzled ex-special ops mercenary type. With this method, you are forcing the player, with no experience of combat and little understanding of what's going on, to tell you what the character, with a lot of combat experience and likely a very good understanding of what's going on, is going to do. This means it's both unfair and not necessarily any more realistic than giving everyone nearly unlimited time (until the GM blows a fuse).

I have often wondered about how to implement something like that in a fair and semi-realistic manner without fucking up game balance or anything else. It's really difficult. For example, if someone asks for a quick description during their action, it really isn't their fault if it takes me 10 seconds to describe whatever they're glancing at. Simply making sure everybody understands what's going on as well as their characters would can take a lot of time, and lack of that understanding often comes up only when people begin to describe their actions.

Whatever works for you, though. I'm sure it can add a lot of feel to combat. I would suggest basing the time allowed on something like Combat Pool or allowing more time with Edges and certain powers/ware/skills, though, to allow the tough guys more time to figure out their actions than the wimpy face.
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (Oro)
So if the Sammy has 4 actions in a turn (which in Shadowrun is approximately three seconds), you give them .75 seconds to decide on each action?

I figure he probably means someone with, say, Initiative 31 would have a total of 31 seconds for those 4 actions...
Fortune
Yeah, I edited in a different and still inane option.
Mercer
(Edited for Relevance)

I use something similar to this. Typically, I give a player the "usual" amount of time to say their action, say 3-5 seconds. Any more stunned silence than that, I usually start a countdown, like "5 seconds til you lose your action... 4... 3... 2... 1..." If they can't think of anything, they can always hold an action so I don't feel like there's a real penalty to it. Mainly, I started it because in a big group, combat takes long enough as it is. Having everyone mull over their responses just slows it down to a crawl, and its hard to maintain a sense of urgency that way.

Its also a pet peeve of mine when players take too long to decide on their actions. It is combat, and its supposed to be quick and chaotic. I look at really putting a lot of thought into what you should do and the possible consequences as bad role-playing, or metagaming. Its not a game of chess where you're supposed to be able to stare at the board envisioning the possibilities. Its more like a game of speed chess, where you have three seconds or you lose your turn.

Besides that, depending on whats going on, players have between 2 and 10 minutes between their action and the next action (in a game with six players, three of which were learning the rules, it was routinely 15 minutes between actions, but that was a special case). Theres no reason why they should waste everybody elses' time when their turn comes up. Thats just inconsiderate.
Oro
no, i mean that you give them their reaction score to decide every time they get to act, if they ask for a description then it stops the clock, if they ask for rules info then it stops the clock, if they just sit there and try to figure out what to do then the clock keeps going. its really not unfair cause youre basing the time on a stat that should equate to how fast their character thinks, also they have time while everyone else acts to figure out what to do.

this method also cuts way down on out-of-game talk and speeds up the game quite a bit
Fortune
So you penalize the characters with lower reaction scores, and give the speed Sammy even more of an advantage than the extra actions he has during each turn by giving him more time to make decisions?
Oro
yuppers, he thinks faster and is prolly more combat savvy
Fortune
Which is already reflected in his extra actions in the same amount of time.

Not to mention that this is just not always the case. just because someone has jacked up reflexes does not mean he is any more competent in combat, or more experienced, or even that he thinks faster. He just reacts faster.

A merc with 20 years of combat experience but no enhanced reflexes is probably much more comfortable in a combat situation that the young but newly-enhanced street sam.
Austere Emancipator
Reaction isn't the best descriptor of situation awareness, though. Again, consider the ex-specops merc type char. He might have only Boosted-3 with a Reaction of 7, usually going twice in a CT. On the other hand, he might have a Tactical Computer implant (for whatever weird reason), which allows him a whopping Combat Pool of 13 in many situations. His character background describes him as having a lot of combat experience and being level-headed in stressful situations.

Now consider Mr Speedfreak, an insane, jumpy hunk of meat and metal. He has a whopping REA of 16 and always goes 4 or 5 times in a CT -- but his "combat experience" mostly consists of beating up old women and the odd punk kid. Because he's stupid and not a very balanced person, he only has a CP of 8 despite his amazing QUI.

For some reason Mr Speedfreak has more than twice the team to describe all his actions than Mr Grizzled Veteran, and he gets to do it twice as often. From an in-game point of view, it seems like Mr Speedfreak is far more in control of all aspects of his and other people's actions than Mr Grizzled Veteran, while the opposite would make more sense.

This is why would rather include at least CP in the calculations if I did use such a system.
toturi
As a House Rule, I have no objections against giving someone with higher initiative some form of advantage. But let us examine the situation as it is now:

The faster person can delay his action. The slower person already has the in-game disadvantage of not knowing what the faster person is doing. The faster person can choose to preempt the slower person in such a way that the slower person's action becomes moot.

Using your Reaction timer, I'd allow the faster person his Reaction in seconds to decide his action. If he decides to delay however, he gets only the Reaction of the poor guy who had to wait.

For example,

Mr Speedy has Reaction 10 and Mr Slow has Reaction 4. Speedy rolls higher initiative, but he delays. So when Mr Slow decides to act on his turn, Mr Speedy has only 4 seconds to decide how he is going to preempt Mr Slow.

This would curb the situation AE had mentioned and remember this, combat is resolved from the highest Initiative to the lowest, Mr Slow's player (acting last) has the longest time (total) to decide what he wants to do.
Wounded Ronin
While it might not entirely make sense or be fully justifiable in any way, I think that the stopwatch method nevertheless has the potential to make combat riotously fun. It would be really exciting.
Mercer
QUOTE (Oro)
no, i mean that you give them their reaction score to decide every time they get to act, if they ask for a description then it stops the clock, if they ask for rules info then it stops the clock, if they just sit there and try to figure out what to do then the clock keeps going.  its really not unfair cause youre basing the time on a stat that should equate to how fast their character thinks, also they have time while everyone else acts to figure out what to do.

this method also cuts way down on out-of-game talk and speeds up the game quite a bit

When you consider that they still have several minutes between actions (much longer for the lower reaction people, who may only get one action a round), it seems odd to suggest how many seconds they get to decide on an action will matter much. The only time I could see it making much of a difference is one the actions directly after something major changes the nature of the encounter, such as a number of enemies showing up or leaving at one time. Or, for that one guy who never pays attention during the round and requires an entire recap of the enounter every action (which is kind of annoying).

Typically, as a player, I'm usually thinking about my next action during everyone elses actions over the course of the round. If its appropriate, I'm looking up stuff in the book (in this context, "appropriate" means I'm looking up things to do with my character, such as the effects of my tazer, and not say, looking up the archetypes the GM is using against us so I can pick out their weak points). In fact, I'm usually chomping at the bit to get my next action, so how much time the GM gives me is pretty moot. When the GM looks over, I'm ready. (And if I'm not, I usually blurt out something quick or delay my action so that I won't slow down the next guy in line; because if I burst into a warehouse with sec guards all over, my character isn't going to be able to get out the protractor and ruler and figure out the most advantageous place to drop the concussion grenade so as to effect the maximum number of enemies while minimizing the risk to myself or my allies.)
Tziluthi
Although this innovation wouldn't be so great as a broad range rule, it seems like a good way to speed up the game, add a bit of desperation and exitement to the combat (i.e. realism, if not in the rules at least in the atmosphere), and generally make the game fun for everyone, just so long as the players aren't anally-retentive, rule-lawyering pedants. Cool idea, Oro.
Jrayjoker
I've tried this and it just doesn't work with my group. Other groups may have a different opinion. Perhaps the best way to do it would be to give everyone the same amount of time to decide and declare their actions in the first initiative, then request that in subsequent initiatives everyone be prepared to declare immediately because of the delay inherent in game play (usually a couple minutes +/-).
Jaruen
You guys who say that you are typically thinking ahead to your next action seem to me to be a wonderful minority in the game. You would not believe how many times I or one of my friends, while running a combat, are met with blank stares from someone who just spent the entire round of combat joking with another player about how they are going to fart, or moon the bad guy, or where they are going to lunch. I thought this was just in my group of friends, but then I moved for a bit, got a new bunch of friends, played SR, entered combat, and voila, there is that deer-in-the-headlights again. So if you and your whole group don't seem to have this problem, I have just one request. Move to nearby, and let me play in your group?????!!!!!??!!??!!??!!
Kagetenshi
Whereabouts are you?

~J
Aku
or, perhaps the more apt question, would be how OLD are you and your friends?

Seems very sophmorish to me... and i'm only 21...


mooning the enemies? who are they, william wallace and his scotts?
GrinderTheTroll
QUOTE (Oro)
when i run rpgs i use a stopwatch to allow the characters a certain amount of time to figure out what they want to do in high stress situations. ive got a really nice 7 jewel swiss wind-up.

if they dont tell me what they want to do before times-up then they just sit there and act stupid.

in SR, though ive never run it, i would use the reaction score.

at first players HATE it, they feel like theyre being cheated outa something, i still cant figure that out. but after the first couple gaming sessions they learn to really like it, it adds a great feel to combat and a good amount of realism too.

id just like to hear some thoughts on what people think of this method.

I started doing this sometimes because the players would often sit and have a conference about what Sam #1 should do. 5 minutes later, he'd decide to walk through the door and shoot the first thing he sees. Bleh. I run a mental stopwatch at that point, and give them about 15-30 sec to make up their mind.

This is a good technique to use if you want to impart stress during a time of strees in the game. For example, we were all in a meeting room and suddenly someone bursts in the door and says the room has a bomb to get out. The GM gave us each a sheet of a paper and 30-sec to write down what we wanted to do. This was good since we had no time to confer just scribble down what we'd do.

The result? Everyone who took the effort to run for the door took Moderate to Severe, those who ran/dove out the window, took Moderate from falling.
Tarantula
QUOTE (GrinderTheTroll @ Jan 6 2005, 12:52 PM)

The result?  Everyone who took the effort to run for the door took Moderate to Severe, those who ran/dove out the window, took Moderate from falling.

No one grabbed the nearest recently deceased troll to use as cover? Or just a fat corp goon? A desk? Table?
Solstice
QUOTE (Oro)
yuppers, he thinks faster and is prolly more combat savvy

Moronic concept. Why is this topic still going? My group plays to escape the stresses of reality and above all the time constraints that taint every fucking facet of real life, they don't play so I can sit there with a fucking stop watch and take their actions away from them. What an abortion of an idea.
Solstice
QUOTE (GrinderTheTroll)

I started doing this sometimes because the players would often sit and have a conference about what Sam #1 should do.


that's called metagaming...you don't need a stopwatch to put an end to that, explain what metagaming is then dock them karma/cash accordingly if it continues.

Man, no wonder everyone plays D20 look at some of the SR GMs......
GrinderTheTroll
QUOTE (Solstice)
QUOTE (GrinderTheTroll @ Jan 6 2005, 12:52 PM)

I started doing this sometimes because the players would often sit and have a conference about what Sam #1 should do. 


that's called metagaming...you don't need a stopwatch to put an end to that, explain what metagaming is then dock them karma/cash accordingly if it continues.

Man, no wonder everyone plays D20 look at some of the SR GMs......

If you took the time to read my post instead of flame me, you see I run a mental counter, not a real stopwatch.

We all do this when we as the GM want things to move along fast than they are. Metagaming or whatever, it too has it's place just not in every situation, IMO.
Wounded Ronin
I was discussing the idea of a "stopwatch method" with a friend the other day. We discussed the limitations (i.e. player mind vs. character mind, GM overload) as well as the good point (making combat exciting again).

Then the following occured to me; I remember that when I was listening to a John Mullins interview Mullins said how although military training tries to condition you to react "automatically" in various ways you can never be absolutely sure how you will perform in a combat situation. I also remember reading in "Black Hawk Down" how at one point when one of the Rangers was being fired on he reflexively tried to take cover but since there was no cover where he was he ended up ducking behind a slender metal pole.

This gave me the idea that players could pick one action that their characters were drilling to do, such as "drop prone behind nearest cover" or "fire two SA shots at nearest enemy". If you used this in conjunction with the Stopwatch Method the drilled action could be what your character falls back on if the player fails to declare an action within his/her allotted time.

In the event that the drilled action is undoable, such as dropping prone behind cover when there is no cover, the PC just spends that action looking like a retard.

Wouldn't that be awesome?
GrinderTheTroll
Making actions second-nature and unconcious by continual practice is why I allow some degree of meta-gaming, since players obviously don't have the benefits of that training as they play. I don't like extra rules where I can avoid them.
Solstice
I don't think he knows what metagaming is. .....


Aside from that...it's your job as the GM to keep things moving and I don't mean by keeping time in your head. It's your job to ensure that the story flows and events happen the proper time period. I use story elements to demonstrate to the player(s) that they took to long trying to decide what to do (i.e. the target letf in the limo or whathaveyou).

Oh and I wasn't flaming...i was making my opinion on the subject known without any doubt.
hyzmarca
How about this, every character gets 30 seconds per CT for all of their actions. A Sammie with 5 actions would only get 6 seconds to decide each action. This increases the chances of a character with reflex enhancments doing something stupid, which makes sense. That why they are called relex enhancments, not thinking or perception enhancments.

GM descriptions stop the clock, but requests for information in combat always require a perception roll.
Oro
when i get a new group and introduce them to the "stopwatch method" i tell them that they should pick 3 or 4 fall-back actions to do incase they get stumped. everytime its their turn to act then they first figure out which of those 3 or 4 would be wisest, if none of them would be prudent then get creative, but do it fast cause when i get to zero youre just gonna stand there.

when i first posted this i got flamed because of the linking-your-thinking-time-to-your-reaction-attribute concept, well, what you choose for the limiting factor of time is not that important, you could just do 5 seconds across the board to be fair (and its much easier to keep track of in a large group), what is important is that you give them a firm time limit to get the chaos/sweat back into combat and to keep things moving.

sometimes it is good to start counting down as soon as you get to a characters action, this adds some feel to it too though youll get sick of saying 5...4...3...2.., thats why i just use a stopwatch, they can all hear the seconds slip by.

thanks for tearing my idea down into little itsy-bitsy pieces ( =

Fortune
Funny that in the many posts you have made in this thread, including the first, you never once mentioned, or even hinted at the existance of any 'fall-back actions' or anything of the like in your games. You specifically stated that if the players didn't tell you what they were doing, they did nothing.

QUOTE
when i run rpgs i use a stopwatch to allow the characters a certain amount of time to figure out what they want to do in high stress situations. ive got a really nice 7 jewel swiss wind-up.

if they dont tell me what they want to do before times-up then they just sit there and act stupid.


As for tearing your idea to pieces ... I have no problem speaking my mind when I think an idea is unfair. I didn't once say that the whole 'stopwatch thing' was crap. Merely that it was unfair to penalize the charaters with lower Reactions (who may or may not be more intelligent and/or more combat experienced), while giving the ones with Reaction enhancements more benefits other than the extra actions they already have.
Oro
im new to SR and ive never run a game in it so my basing-on-reaction concept was flawed, i agree now.

the smilie at the end of my "tearing it to pieces" statement was ment to convey that i appreciated the feed-back and i do.

i didnt relate the entirety of the concept (fall-back actions to name just one facet) because to write the whole thing down would have been much more text as ive been using this method for quite some time.

as for fall back actions thats just a tool to help the player think faster, if he doesnt tell me WHICH fall back action hes going to take then he still stands motionless.

i truely do appreciate the feed-back on this concept and how it might (not) work in SR.
Fortune
Don't get me wrong. Some form of limiting the OOC crap that can occur during combat is desirable, but I think that is better dealt with through the GM taking the reigns of the game.

If a mechanic is absolutely required, as was suggested, Combat Pool might be more workable, or even Intelligence. I just don't like the idea of basing the time limit on Reaction.
Necro Tech
You want to speed up the whole combat, just enforce players paying attention. As someone pointed out, it takes minutes to go through a round of combat. Have your players start thinking what they are going to do when it isn't their turn. When it is their turn, they shouldn't need any time at all to decide. They want an update fine, clarification, fine. They start with "Uhhhh......." skip them. They can adapt. Otherwise, penalize their karma.
Arethusa
Within reason (I won't fault anyone if the GM and mage just spent the last six minutes working out a manaball and the next people in line lost all interest; I've been there, and I did't give a fuck either), I'm fine with that.
maneius
Since we're on the subject of initiative and such;

I've always found it a bit weird that the uber-speedfreak takes his extra actions after the slower folk, so I think that maybe a system like feng-shui uses might be worth trying. Essentially, you start at the highest initiative rolled and work down to zero, with each character going on their initiative value and every 4 or 5 (roughly) numbers down.

What do you think?
Jrayjoker
IIRC SR1 allowed you to do just that.

If I rolled a 41 and everyone else got a 6 I got to go at 41, 31, 21, 11, then everyone else goes, then I go at 1. I think the new system (while flawed) is still a more realistic interpretation of reality. When you are talking about 3 seconds everything is practically simultaneous anyway, from a perspective of moving 5 meters and hitting someone taking about 3 seconds.
Sandoval Smith
I think it doesn't work. The problem with the older intiative rules is it could give the speed freak an overwhelming advantage to the point where unless you made sure all the opposition was either as speeded up as they were, or radically increased the number of oppenents, they'd be wiped out in the first round of combat before anyone else even got a chance to go.
Jrayjoker
Highly trained reactions are still measured in the 10ths of seconds typically, so having everyone start at about the same time and the speed freaks going more times per initiative makes sense to me.

I can hit a drum head a few times in 3 seconds, and I know some folks that can probably do it 20 times or more, but if you start us like an olympic event...BANG... we'll both start at about the same time. I'll sound like a SA pistol, and he'll sound like a burp gun.
Oro
extra actions at the start really would make it the quick and the dead, there would be few ways for the slugs to live through combat.

i made my own system a long time ago and in that your initiative is based on skill, luck-of-the-die, attributes and what youre going to do first so your initiative is modified by the action you intend to take.

in SR initiative is so much more important than any other system ive played. in D20 it really doesnt matter that much, WhiteWolf-somewhat, paladium-who cares. so already it is a priority for any combat character in SR and to make it even more important would, i think, break the game.
Daishi
The characters are a lot more combat savvy than the players (I hope). So that's what I try to keep in mind, and let them figure out what they are going to do. I'm okay with discussing actions a bit because depending on the situation, some players will have a better idea of what's going on and who the team's characters should roughly act than others. I just try to keep a feel for when the decision making or discussions start to drag the action down, and then step in and say "Okay, everybody else be quiet for a sec. Make your choice." Start snapping my fingers and generally hustle the player.
Bastard
Jaruen-

We are so using this. I Think a flat time would be best....because someone will cry over someone else having an unfair advantage, and they will make all these same arguements posted here. 15 seconds? 30?
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