System Wank - Initiative

Last week, Rob Donoghue posted a summary of a few different types of initiative systems as part of his musings on his new system.  Which reminded me of the next mechanic for my System Wank series: the best initiative system I ever used.

(In retrospect, I totally should have ripped off that Best Thing I Ever Ate show from Food Network.)

The 7th Sea game introduced me to a number of really interesting mechanics.  An argument can certainly be made that Wick, Wilson, et al., did more to bring indie ideas into a mainstream game than actually creating novel mechanics.  (Of course, the same can be said about Da Vinci's exhaustive encyclopedia of inventions, and look where that got him.)  But, so far as I know, their initiative system is unique.


For those unfamiliar, 7th Sea is a swashbuckling game set in a cracked mirror version of Europe.  As a swashbuckling game, the Panache attribute is very important.  In fact, it is the attribute that determines how many actions you get in combat!

Panache is rated from 1 to 5.  At the start of every round, take a number of d10s equal to your Panache and roll them.  Don't pick them up or anything, just move them somewhere that it is easy to see them.  These are your action dice.

Each round is divided into 10 phases.  The GM starts on phase 1.  Anyone who has an action dice with a "1" showing is allowed to act.  If you have two 1s showing, you can act twice!  Once you take an action, discard that action die.  If two participants both have actions on 1, the person with the higher total of all their action dice gets to go first.  (This means that rolling a 1, 9, and 10 means you don't do most of your actions until the end of the round, but by Theah, you go first on phase 1!)

If you want to hold an action, just don't use your action die.  On any later segment, you can simply declare that you are using it now.  You will go in order based on the total of your action dice during that phase.  This is most commonly done to spend an action to "actively defend," allowing you to roll your defense against your opponent's attack instead of trusting in the static "passive defense".  Don't hold your action too long, though, because once phase 10 is done, all action dice are discarded.

If you need to use an action (say, to defend) and you don't have a die you can spend, you can choose to spend two dice from later in the round.  This is obviously expensive, but it can be worth it sometimes.

The system is very intuitive, since you are actually using the dice to mark when you take an action.  It is also incredibly dynamic, because you never know whether you'll go first or last next turn.  The economy of actions, particularly when it comes to trading an attack for defense, is far more effective that any other game I've played.  And, for my personal tastes, I simply love that your actions are based on how dashing you are.