RE: [BNW] The BNW game system

[Theo McGuckin <tsm@jlab.org>]

> Ah, I missed that part. That does make a big difference. Now, what
> changes did you make for initiative? I'm curious.

Well it became a pain because init. could get pretty high in BNW (20's)
and there was also the weird situation that someone could have an init. of
30 and someone else have a 6 and the 30 goes, using all his actions before
the 6 even moves. This sounds great for the 30, until the 6 pulls out a
grenade and drops it at the 30's feet and the 30 can't do anything but
stare at it dumbly as it goes off in his face because he used all his
actions.

Our first "cut" at a fix was to have everyone take an action in init.
order, then subtract 5 from their init. If their init. was less than 0
then they got no actions.
In the above case if Delta A had a 30 init. and Delta B had a 6 then the
order would be:
A @ 30
B @ 6
subtract 5
A @ 25
B @ 1
subtract 5
A @ 20
B gets no action (init. drops below 0)
-5
A @ 15
-5
A @ 10

But this still left things lop-sided with A taking a ton of actions while
B stood around twiddling his thumbs. And could lead to situations where A
simply waits for all of B's actions to run out (he can hold one at most)
and then jumps out and beats him to death with B un-able to respond.

The final system we decided on was meant to give the characters (both PC
and NPC) a good amount of control over when their actions took place in
the round no matter how few they got.

Divide each round into 5 phases (1-5). Everyone rolls init. and jots down
their own number and number of actions (this way the GM doesn't have to
keep track of everyone's rolls himself). The GM calls out the init. phases
in order and anyone can take one action in a phase as long as they have
any actions left. If two people declare actions that oppose/interact with
each other then init. rolls are compared and the one with the higher init.
can change his action to something else if he wants. The lower init. roll
can only change his action to a dodge. Actions then take place in init.
order.

So in the case above delta A rolls a 30 and delta B rolls a 6 (say A is a
speedster and B is a goliath).

Phase 1:
A says he's going to shoot B
B says he's going to move up and try to punch A.
A changes his action to running back a bunch of yards and firing.
B can change his to dodge, but figures he can take it, so doesn't and just
moves up.
A resolves attack, B moves.

Phase 2:
A says he's going to shoot B again
B says he's going to pick up a desk and throw it at A
A decides to change his action to a dodge action
B resolves his attack and A dodges.

Phase 3-5:
A shoots B
B is out of actions so can't do anything

---------------------------------------------------------------------

It's not perfect (B still took most of his actions at the start of the
round) but it seemed to work fairly well. We only used it for one or two
sessions before we moved on to other games, but everyone seemed to get the
gist fairly quickly. One change I thought about making was only allowing
ANYONE to change their action to a dodge after hearing what everyone was
going to do (instead of allowing the higher init. to do whatever he
wanted). Also setting the order so that the lower init. had to decide if
he was going to dodge before the higher init. had to.

Theo McGuckin - SysAdmin, JLab, Safety Warden (Bldg. 85)


	You feeling lucky punk?
	You want a piece of me?!?
	Roll for initiative Monkey-boy!