- When you begin an encounter, do not roll initiative.
- Instead, describe the scene: say what the characters see the monsters doing:
- Charging
- Cooking supper
- Cooking humans for supper
- Taking cover
- Readying the big bad thing
- Booking it
- Displaying destruction-demanding depravity
- Advancing in ranks
- Setting up sniper fire to cover the dudes just rushing in
- Ask the players what their characters do. Don’t worry about order. You will see a natural sequence emerge. If there is a question of order, roll off initiative between the relevant parties to settle it.
- Resolve the actions. If they just want to move, okay. If they want to shoot, okay. If they want to wade into melee, okay. Handle each situation one at a time. It’s okay if it’s a little chaotic. Embrace interruptions: “Oh, before he does that, I want to do this.” Great.
- When a PC succeeds at what he’s doing (hitting with an attack, moving, taking full defense, whatever), that’s it: move on to spotlight the next player.
- When PC fails at what he’s doing (missing with an attack, generally), hold the spotlight on that character a while longer.
- Something went wrong. Think what it was (losing footing, being overwhelmed by numbers, sipping on ichor, clanging into the chitin at the wrong angle). Whatever it was, it presents an opportunity for the monsters to nail him.
- Say what went wrong, and let that leads you into saying how it let the monsters mess with him.
- Think: earlier, before you asked the players what they were doing, when you said what the monsters were doing, were any of those monsters threatening the PC that just missed? (I mean threatening conceptually, not just being in melee range.)
- If not, think: does it makes sense for a monster to now threaten that PC? If so, say how. If not, lucky for him.
- If so, follow through on that threat: the arrow being aimed at him gets fired; the swords being raised at him give him a shave. Roll the relevant attacks versus him now. If he was surrounded by three minions, and the shaman was in back tossing lightning bolts to him like candy at a parade, make attack rolls for all four now.
- Move on to the next player.
- When you’ve spotlighted every player like this, the round ends. It’s now the next round.
- Repeat.
This is intended to make misses feel less like whiffs and more like “Oh snap I’m done for now.”
It’s also intended to keep you from having to track initiative.
It’s also intended to keep the fictional action less predictable.
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