Apocalypse Initiative for D&D

So D&D initiative is rather boring turn based. Over the years D&D has used a variety of methods to manage it. But some of the games that I have been playing (Masks, Dungeon World, The Warren, Night Witches) use a different kind of initiative system. They all get the idea from the original Apocalypse World. The idea situation runs roughly like this:

1. As the story progresses, pick a character and put them in a situation and ask ‘What do you do?’
2. The character narrates an action which resolves the situation of escalates the issue
3. Based upon the narrative, select another character & put them in a situation…

So here is how I have been attempting to use Apocalypse Initiative in my current D&D game.  It worked very well for the adventure ‘Midnight on Blood lake’ which had the characters hunting/being hunted by a high level warlock. Think the characters trying to hunt the Alien in the original Alien movie. It went something like this:

• GM: Eion- You head the sound of movement to the left in the area with the large rock. (Its actually a minor illusion to distract the party) What do you do?
• Eion: I callout to the party that there is evil over there by the big rock and charge around the left of the rock
• GM: OK (looking around) Khatak, you hear the call, what do you want to do?
• Khatak: Drawing my sword I charge around the rock from the right
• GM: Right, so Etelion what are you doing?
• Etelion: I hang back and wait and see what happens?
• GM: Eion and Khatak you advance around the rock and find another there (Rolling dice) Etelion, you are hit in the back for 7 points of damage, by some kind of spell. What do you want to do?
• Etelion: Thats half my HP! I fall down on the floor and mumble an invisibility spell
• GM: sounds good, meanwhile (Rolling dice) Mordelinal you are also hit in the back at almost the same time for 3 points of damage. What do you want to do?
• Mordelinal: I spin around and charge whatever attacked me.
• GM: great, roll perception, (seeing the roll fail) you spin around and fail to see anything, there are a bunch of boulders around you but you have no idea where the attack came from. Meanwhile Etelion and Khatak you have reached each other when you hear the bolt of energy and a cry of pain from the others, what do you do?

Generally this worked quite well, everyone was trying different things, and it worked fine when the party split off trying different methods to hunt the warlock. I didn’t always require characters to make rolls when they acted and I still have problems with thinking about ways to increase the drama rather than say ‘nothing happens’ or ‘you miss’.

When the party was in a more normal battle I found that I was able to modify the method by instead of jumping from player to player I would work sequentially around the table, putting each player in a situation and asking them what they do? In essence breaking down the battle into a set of single character battles. It's important that in a strict combat, each player gets a turn. I went a little like this:

• GM: As the party go down the slope into the archeological dig the gnome suddenly shouts something out. Etelion, you hear a sound behind you and realise a pair of dogs are running towards you at top speed. What do you do?
• Etelion: Burning hands on the dogs as they approach me (dice are rolled, the dogs are injured but not killed)
• GM: (rolling) the dogs attack doing 5 damage, meanwhile Eion the workers near you heft their pickaxes and attack you, what are you doing?
• Eion: I hit them with my greataxe (rolling) 15 damage
• GM: Ouch! That cleaves one of the men in two, the other one (rolls) slices into your leg, 6 damage.
• Meanwhile, Mordelinal being in the middle of the party you are currently unengaged, in front of you Eion is fighting some of the workers, Khatak is going to be engaged in a second or two, meanwhile behind you Etelion is being mauled by dogs. Who are you going to help?
• Mordelinal: I unsling my bow and take aim at the gnome...

And as such the battle progressed, Etelion overcame the dogs and was then unengaged, so they had flexibility on their actions. Meanwhile the frontliners (Eion and Khatak) continued to carve through the workers, while Mordelinal got into a sniper battle with the gnome.

Right now the idea is not complete, and I’m still testing how it feels with my current group. Have a try and let me know what you think of the idea.

Enjoy you game:

Mark

How to fail the most important roll of the adventure and make the adventure better

An incredible thing happened to us in our last RPG session.  “The paladin is on his knees before the undead king, bolstered by the bard who had been singing praises, and makes his case to the long dead king.”
I picked up my 2 six sided dice and rolled them.

Snake eyes!

Even with all the bonuses, this was a failure, big time.

But as a result of that roll, the adventure became so much better.

Introducing Dungeon World

For those who have never heard of it, Dungeon world is a rules-light narrative based fantasy adventure game.  The core rules are simple, every time you want to do an action, roll 2 dice and add your attribute bonus (-3 to +3).

• If you roll a 10+ it works
• If you roll a 7-9 it works, but there is a complication (you put yourself in danger, you get hurt, you lose something, and so on)
• If you roll a 6 or less, the action fails and the GM gets to add a new event to the game (which usually ups the stakes or makes a misfortune happen).

As you might have noticed, there is a lot of story telling, and it puts the GM under a lot of stress to come up with new ideas on the fly.  But I am enjoying playing it and it is giving me such good ideas for my own games.

The Story So Far

Sir Grifford of Imos (Paladin, my character) was tasked by the Church of the Silverflame to verify that the body of the long dead king Boltar the brave, was still resting in its hidden tomb.  With Nanoc the Barbarian, Galadiir the Elvish Wizard and Bertam the Bard, the adventures discovered that the body had been taken and had tracked it to an abandoned elven temple high on the mountains.
Having hacked and slashed their way through the orcs and bandits defending the place our brave adventurers reached the high temple and saw the body of Boltar lying on the alter with cultists around it performing a ritual.  One black knight stood between us and our goal, with right on our side what could go wrong? (Famous last words)

What Did Go Wrong

Remember earlier when I mentioned that every time the player rolls 6 or less the action fails and the GM introduced a new event.  Well, I seem to remember that just about every one of the first ten rolls we made failed.  So here are some of the complications that happened:

• The magical spell casting skull which we beat earlier reappeared
• The female drow elf which had fallen off the side of the mountain reappeared in the combat seeking to murder Bertam who tricked her
• One of the PC’s stands on one of many long dead corpses which turned out to be undead rather than dead (big oops)
• The ritual which was to reincarnate Boltar hits the point of no return and we realise we cannot stop his resurrect, only stop the cult from completing the ritual to control the resurrect d king
• The ghost of the Boltars wife (a very possessive woman), who has been hidden inside Galadiir’s staff, decides that she must protect her husband at all costs and allow him to come back to life, so she possessed the drow and takes to defending the body.
• Nanoc fighting the black knight with her great sword manage to together smash into the wall of the temple and the wall and then sections of the floor begin to crumble

As you can see the stakes are getting pretty high, but the worst is yet to come.  For one of the failures, the GM asked me a question:

“What would be the worst thing if Boltar were to come back to life?”

Put on the spot I came up with the first thing on my mind:

“Boltar was an Elf hater (In our story, the Great Elven Empire has just fallen apart), if he finds out what the elves have done well…”

With hindsight, it was a great answer from the perspective of the story, but not from the perspective of common sense.
I also love the way that our GM often asks us to give facts for the story and weaves it all together.  Some of that is Dungeon world, and some of that if just good storytelling.

The Final Roll

Having defeated the cultists, watched several of the major NPC’s fall/escape through the crumbling floor, and having nearly lost the body of the king to the chasm, we try to explain to the undead king what has happened.  The king believes that we resurrected him and demands to know what has happened.  So we explain that the Church of the Silverflame sent us to find him (we don’t mention that we tried to stop his resurrection), and he sort of believes it until he spots the elf wizard (oops).  At which point we try to explain about the need to a local guide to navigate around the elven temple and place of power which he was brought back to life in.

But that’s when I rolled the snake eyes.

The king decides that he has had enough of us, binds the part in a web of lightning and flies off to the distance.  By the time the lightning has worn off, he is long gone.

Conclusion

Well, it wasn’t just my bad roll which messed the party up.  It was a lot of bad rolls all around.  But what a story we made out of those bad rolls.
So here is a thought to all you GM’s out there:

Instead of just using a bad roll as ‘you miss’ or ‘it doesn’t work’, think about using those bad rolls to introduce new story elements or new problems for the party to encounter.  Increase the stakes, add to the tension, or make it much tougher for the party.

Make those failures more meaningful.