Playing Cards for Dynamic Initiative

DD Note 9/6/2025: It was pointed out to me that Savage Worlds has been using playing cards for initiative for ages. 1.) I can't believe I forgot that... I have even played Savage Worlds before. 2.) the method detailed here is simpler. 

I've explained the differences below. 

DD Note 9/7/2025: I also just learned that Dragonbane, Year Zero, Twilight 2000 also use cards (I'm sure there are more).

I fully admit, I didn't reinvent the wheel here. This is just another spin on the concept.

I ran three games of Castles & Crusades at Gen Con 2025. (If anyone is curious, I ran each adventure in the Dwarven Glory series.)  It was a great time. One weird thing, though, is that I had occasional trouble with keeping track of initiative. 

Castles & Crusades uses dynamic initiative. Each round, the individual players and the Castle Keeper roll a d10 and people take turns from highest result to lowest.  

At home, I use tiles on the top of my GM screen to organize and display the order for each round. While displaying the order is handy, the process slows the game down. 

Since you're "on the clock" when running a game at a con, I decided not to do that and used the "traditional" method. That is, I verbally counted down from 10 to 1 and had the players chime in on their number to take their turn. 

Whether it was due to the fun of the game or fatigue of CKing three sessions back-to-back (as fun as it was), I had occasional trouble remembering where I was in the order of the round.

This got me revisiting an alternative idea I'd been mulling over - using playing cards to track initiative. I gave it a go last session with my local group and I think it worked pretty well.

Here's what I did:

• I set aside one full suit (ace to king) to be used to determine order. Naturally, I used Spades. 

• I set aside one full suit (ace to king) to be used to track order. I used a red suit (Hearts, I believe). 

• Each round, I shuffled the Spades and dolled them out to the players to determine who went first. The players kept their cards out in front of them, so it was pretty easy to see who was up.

• I stacked the Hearts from high to low and used them to keep track of where we were.

• After that, we repeated this each round.

While this was only one session, I think it worked well. It kept things moving quickly and made it easy to track turn order.  If you're looking for a way to speed up dynamic initiative, give it a try.  

How This is Different than Savage Worlds Initiative (and likely other games)

• Savage Worlds has a whole system based on using the deck of cards for initiative. I'm just replacing dice rolls.
• I don't use a whole deck of cards, only 13 from one suit.
• This eliminates ties (which can also slow down play, albeit not dramatically).

• I use a second set of 13 from one suit has a initiative tracker for myself.

Really Cheap Tact-Tiles Substitute

A while back I talked about Tact-Tiles, both the kinds you can buy and do-it-yourself ways to make them.  For my Lazy Homemade Tact-Tiles #2 idea, I suggested buying a very cheap dry erase kit from LTD Commodities. Well, it no longer appears to be available at LTD, but I did pick up a set myself before they pulled it.  I poked around a bit and, man, the kit is hard to find now, but I did find one set on eBay here: link.  So, obviously, right out of the gate, this option now has one strike against it.  I figured I’d go ahead and post my thoughts on this kit as a gaming tool anyhow.  Hopefully someone out there has better Google-Fu than I do and can locate a retailer if they’re interested.

Here is what you get:

The panels are paper-thin, but they are basically big stickers after all.

Each panel is 12 inch x 12 inch and you get 8 panels total.  That is a pretty good sized gaming area.

I put the panels down on my gaming table and they covered a large chunk.

I doodled a bit of a dungeon on them and they worked fairly well.  Understandably, I had to hold down the panel so it wouldn’t move, but it wasn’t a problem.

So here is the skinny:

• If you want a grid, you’ve got some work to do. I know from personal experience,
  
  there really is no way to permanently mark this kind of surface apart from scoring it.  These panels are going to turn into confetti if you score them.  One possibility would be to mount the panels onto sections of poster board and then score them.
• A quick note regarding a grid, keep in mind games like D&D 3.5 and 4e work on a one-inch grid, so you can really just use a tape measure without much trouble (well, I’m assuming that is true for 4e. I haven’t played it).  Savage Worlds operates on this grid too and, despite the emphasis on a battle map in the Savage Worlds rule book, the official demo I played at Origins used a tape measure.
• The panels stay in place reasonably well. I bumped the table a bit to test this and the panels more or less stayed in place.  I’m guessing inadvertent bumps by players might be more problematic. Having not played with the interlocking Tact-Tiles, I’m not sure how much of an advantage they offer.
• The panels were covered with a clear film that came off.  I initially wasn’t certain if this was suppose to happen. I’m still not sure, but the panels were still erasable after I removed the film (although shadowing did increase noticeably).

The Verdict

• You get what you pay for. These panels aren’t as snazzy as the original Tact-Tiles or the current Battlegraph Boards.  However, if you can find a set, this kit is a hell of a lot cheaper, especially if you consider the amount of playing surface you get.  You get 8 panels for a 2 foot by 4 foot playing area. In comparison, the Battlegraph Boards are $7.00 per 12 inch piece and a set of Tact-Tiles will run you several hundred dollars on eBay (no joke, check the ENWorld forums).
• If nothing else, these panels would be handy for those times combat spills off your regular battle mat.

Since I am fine with my homemade battle mat, I didn’t keep the kit for myself.  I hung it up in two sections in our kitchen, thinking it would be fun for my daughters.  They really liked it, but, whoa boy, was it a bad idea.  My girls are six and three and, well, their marker control is still rather suspect.  Suffice it to say, they didn’t always stay on the dry erase area.  Word to the wise, dry erase markers don’t wash off non-dry erase walls…  our kitchen is a bit more colorful now.  I certainly do not recommend the kit for its intended purpose unless you have a wall you probably be ok with your kids drawing on to begin with.

A Day Trip to Origins 2010: Part 3 – Demoing HackMaster Basic and Savage Worlds

I made good use of my day pass and played quite a few games in the Exhibit Hall.  The first  game I tried was HackMaster Basic by Kenzer and Company.  I’m a sucker for Dwarven Forge setups, and their demo caught my attention right a way (ha, well that and it was right by the door). 

HackMaster Basic made quite a stir with classic gaming fans when it hit the shelves and I was eager to try it.  First off, I quickly learned that James over at Grognardia was right in that there is little “basic” about it. I’ve since learned that it’s called “Basic” because a more complete “Advanced” version is forthcoming. 

Despite the classic look and obvious homage to classic D&D, it’s definitely its own game.  For example, combat is counted off in seconds, not rounds.  That is, player turns happen by the second rather than by the round.  This is kind of cool because it can resolve certain questions rather easily.  For example, how far can I climb in a second? The GM and the player should be able to agree on that pretty easily.  “Sure, you can get on the table, but not climb that wall.”

So your initiative roll indicates at which second you start. The GM counts up and you act when the count gets to your roll result.  The interesting spin thereafter is that you can act any second after that. So if you start at the 5th second, you can act on the 6th second, the 7th and so on, even if that second is someone else’s turn. If I recall correctly, ties are resolved by some kind of initiative score.  I can’t recall exactly.  Weapon speed determines how quickly you can attack again and you can’t necessarily attack on each turn.  For example, if your initiative is 7 and your weapon speed is 5, you can first attack on the 7th second, but can’t attack again with that weapon until 5 seconds later (i.e., the 12th turn). 

There were other intricacies too, such as how one’s shield comes into play, etc.  In general, it was a very detailed system and it seemed to involve a lot of book-keeping.  It was a neat system, but easily as complex as D&D 3.5.  The combat rules made a lot sense, but seemed to aim at being so realistic that they would result in a very slow game. Kenzer has free quick-start rules, so you can decide for yourself (although they seem more about character creation than actual play).  I have come to believe that less is more (hence the appeal of Castles & Crusades), so I can’t imagine playing this game regularly, or buying the rule book for that matter. I certainly would be up for giving it another whirl at a convention again, though.  

Next up was Savage Worlds by Pinnacle Entertainment Group.  I’ve been curious about this game for a while. Their booth was in the dead center of the hall and had two very spiffy demo tables.  I saddled up to one and asked if I could play.

The guy running the demo did a great job (I wish I could remember his name) and I was quickly knee-deep in a Savage Worlds: Deadlands scenario, my gunslinger rushing up a cliff face to save his lady love from evil cultists.

I skimmed the free Test Drive rules a year or so ago, so I had a basic understanding of the system.  Instead of attribute scores, characters assign a die to each attribute (from a d4 to the d12), with the larger the die, the better score.  You have to love that the forlorn d12 gets its due and is sort of the “18” of the game.   Combat and task resolution are straight forward: you roll the appropriate skill, which is based on an attribute die, and if you beat the target number, you succeed. Typically a 4 or better is a success (naturally, various modifiers apply). 

What makes the game mechanic fun is that major players in the game, that is player characters and heavy duty NPCs, are “Wild Cards” and therefore get to roll an extra d6 for just about any roll (except damage, I think).  The player can pick the better of the two dice (they don’t add up).  Also, there is an “exploding die” mechanic, so if you roll the highest number on a die, you get to keep rolling it, adding the rolls together. If you beat a target number by 4, you get a “raise,” and extra cool stuff can occur (depending on the purpose of the die roll). 

All of this adds up to a damn fun mechanic.  I guess that is what sets it apart.  The Savage Worlds’ dice mechanic is simply fun.  There is something about the wild die, the raises and the exploding dice that gives Savage Worlds an extra oomph that makes you eager to see what you roll.

I enjoyed the demo so much that I bought the Savage Worlds: Explorer Edition book (hell, it is only $10).  I’ve been giving it a good read-through. In some ways, Savage Worlds feels a bit like a d20 game without the d20.  For a game that is known for being simple, it has just as many modifiers and such as d20.  I was particularly surprised that the rulebook repeatedly emphasizes that miniatures and a battle-mat should be used.  That being said, there are no attacks of opportunities and nothing really seems to slow down combat to the extreme that d20 mechanics can. 

Savage Worlds has garnered a strong following and I can see why. [Christina Stiles is working on “savaging” her SpirosBlaak d20 setting into a Savage World one.]  I would love to run a campaign that would really put this RPG through its paces.  Since it’s a universal system, I would love to run some kind of time traveling campaign in which the each PC is from whatever time period the players wish and then run them through scenarios in the past, present, and future.  Anyhow, I highly recommend it.