mario should say

This is part 11 of a multi-part series of posts about the awesome features of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, in no particular order.

Find the earlier parts here:

Part 1 Link: We Worked Hard on It!

Part 2 Link: It's Easy to Learn!

Part 3 Link: It's Easy to GM!

Part 4 Link: It's Easy to GM and Supports Narrative and Roleplay!

Part 5 Link: It Revolutionizes Investigation and Mystery Solving in TTRPGs

Part 6 Link: PCs are Not Just Mystery Solving Automatons

Part 7 Link: Excellent Time-Keeping Mechanics Keep the Pressure On

Part 8 Link: Fun and Easy Character Creation

Part 9 Link: Themes of Disability

Part 10 Link: It Has Intense Action

“Rolling for initiative” is kind of a meme in TTRPG spaces, like it’s supposed to be this big exciting thing, but the reality of it is that it usually stops the action deader than any other game mechanic. I am not usually one to say that rolling dice “takes away from or interrupts the roleplay” or whatever, in fact I think that sentiment is stupid and usually betrays a very narrow understanding of ttrpgs, but this might be an exception. Many other games do this better to varying degrees, but I’ll be using D&D5e because it’s bad and thus illustrates my point. In what should be the fastest-moving part of the regular gameplay, everyone has to stop, roll dice, wait for the DM to go around the table asking for each number, wait for the DM to roll for the NPCs, wait for the DM to sort all the numbers from highest to lowest, and then the action can continue. It’s the sheer number of steps and input required from so many different players before anything can happen, in a scene where things are supposed to be happening very fast in the world of the game, that makes this so egregious.

We didn’t want this for Eureka, so we came up with something else: a rollless, instant turn order system. “Epicenter Initiative.”

The first character to attack, or to make any action that requires the game to shift to being turn-based, acts first. (This isn’t determined by a stat, just by their player saying they do it, just like any other action would be.) The target of that action, if it has a target, goes second, and the rest of the characters act in sequence from closest to the instigating character to farthest away. As soon as the first punch is thrown, all players at the table instantly know the turn order, and the scene continues seamlessly.