Things I dig: Popcorn initiative (Combat order & Initiative variant)
Today I want to talk about popcorn initiative and why I love it despite its very stupid name. For those of you who don’t know what popcorn initiative is, it is a variant approach to figuring out the order of combat. So typically, when you are figuring out initiative, everyone rolls dice and the combat order is based on the highest to lowest results. And that’s pretty much how any dice-based game operates its initiatives - certainly systems like D&D or Pathfinder or any of those .. that’s just how you do initiative. And usually, there’s some mechanic that helps or hinders combat order that some characters will have and others won’t. In D&D, your dexterity modifier, for example, can affect your initiative roll.
Popcorn initiative is a variant approach to figuring out combat order. So I’m going to first talk about what it is and how you’d use it and then why.
So what popcorn initiative is - the person who’s turn in combat it is picks who goes after them. They can pick anyone who is inthe combat order - a fellow PC, an NPC, a bad guy or a group of bad guys. There’s no rolls, there’s nothing like that. It’s just - this PC kicked off the action so they go first and now they decide who goes next. If you have a round to get ready, you figure out who goes first by rolling off, as normal - but after that very first person is decided, there are no dice rolls.
So the person whose turn it is picks who goes after them. Then that person, after they’ve taken their turn, they pick who goes after them. This goes on until everyone, including any NPCs and bad guys who are controlled by and decide who goes next by the GM, have had a turn. Whoever the last person is in this round is the first person in the next round.
Popcorn initiative doesn’t allow for held actions or anything like that because the idea is to sort of try and capture that frantic dynamic tone of the heat of the moment and battle. So you go when you’re called to go, you can’t hold your turn - you can pass it, but you can’t hold it.
Again, the idea is - in the heat of the moment, patience and pondering will get you killed. What you can do though is ready an action which works the same as this rule as written in most games - you specify the action and a trigger condition. When the trigger condition comes up, you take your readied action. If you haven’t taken your readied action by the time you are nominated again, you have lost that readied action. You can always ready it again if you want. That risk is the price of readying.
So you can see already popcorn initiative does a couple of things -
It allows for players to be strategic about their combat turns with deciding who goes after them - one of my favourite examples of this is if you have a caster cast entangling vines or whatever to root the mooks in place, and then passes the turn to a blaster who can call lightning on them or something and effectively destroying a whole group of mooks right then.Or you can make sure your heavy hitters go before the bad guys to do as much damage to them before they even have a turn, and make sure they are the biggest threat so that presumably when he bad guy’s turn is called, they have a face full of barbarian or whatever to deal with.
Because initiative is basically redone every turn, players can iterate based on changes to the battlefield - if the barbarian went first this time to capitalize on the big bad, but now they’re pretty weakened but the mooks are still up, the approach to handling it can be changed on the fly and in the moment.
Players have an edge with this kind of advantage because despite the cinematic nature of the fight - things being passed back and forth - limited restrictions on movement and flavour - it’s fairly tactical in its essence - so GMs, you can take the gloves off a bit to make it a bit more of a challenge.
The thing popcorn initiative does not articulate well is how to deal with timed slots for turns. This in and of itself is whatever, but where it should be kept in mind is if you have things like spell effects or something that say they last till the end of the turn. Say the caster who casts it is at the end of the selection order - what does this mean? Does it mean the effect ends at the end of their current turn or this initiative order round because next round is a new initiative. Does it last until their turn? Ok but if they go after the bad guy, is it proccing twice in that round? Lots of ways you can do stuff like that - the important thing is to just pick one and go with it for consistency. I personally will have spell effects last for one extra round after its cast and it procs on the bad guy’s turn. Pretty similar to standard D&D combat which is part of the reason I do it this way - my players are already familiar with that cadence.
So that’s the what and the how - and for both of you who been here before - you know i like to adopt a what/how/why approach. So let’s talk about the why. Why should you use popcorn initiative, despite its terrible name?
There are a lot of reasons - the main ones involve PC engagement during combat which - at least in 5e is arguably the weakest part of the system - but broadly as well, it kind of elevates the combat from ‘you hit him square in the hit points (paraphrasing my friend Ron Blessing, Savage Interludes podcast host here). It also works to have more interesting pacing in combat as well as lets the party have more complex actions and teamwork - things they’d never even really have a chance to do with a standard initiative system. I mean you can sort of get around with Help actions in different systems but like.. It’s not the same.
Also, you’ll find that using this system makes players more attentive to combat. There’s no initiative order for them to zone out on until their turn, and their effectiveness during their turn can be a direct result of what the other players before them have done. Instead of just waiting for their turn, they are watching for opportunities they can work with even when it isn’t their turn.
And finally, from a GMing perspective, it is WAY easier to track than writing down and keeping reference of everyone’s initiative at the start of combat.
Tips for Making it Work
So you should definitely try this because it’s a lot of fun. If you’re planning on making it a regular part of your GM bag of tricks or regular game or anything, there are a few things I want to mention:
You’re going to want to tune down monster difficulty because this is just kind of unfamiliar to everyone and you don’t want to accidentally TPK just on trying something. I get it. Try to avoid the urge. If you’re genuinely seeing your players like fast approaching a TPK, you can always adjust on the fly if you want to, but don’t start combats easier. Let the PCs figure out their shit with fights with the same level of difficulty you’ve always had and then you can tune up or down accordingly in the subsequent weeks.
Don’t play nice. Play to win. I know this sounds contentious but it isn’t. This is a system that gives tactical advantage to your players and so the second you can have a powerful bad guy go twice in a row, let them go twice in a row and fucking unload. Again - i know this sounds kind of brutal, but it just adds tension and challenge without putting your players in too much REAL risk. Because if the bad guy has gone twice in a row - at the end of this round and the start of next - ALL the PCs are going to be able to take a shot at them before their next turn. Some maybe even twice.
Take advantage of the inherent above-the-table conversations that will happen - “Ok i’m going to cast entangling vines, so that you can call lightning next!” - and use this to encourage characters passing their turn in combat. “Daksha, I’ve rooted them - show them your lightning!’ This is just fun man. It is a combat still so don’t let them have massive conversations but that one sentence in character - that’s cool as hell.
Make sure you have mooks. There is nothing as anticlimactic as having a combat with one single baddie and they aren’t able to do shit because the whole party just focus fires on them and downs them before its even their turn. If you have more than 2 baddies, you force an initiative order that splits up the PC turns because they’re not going to want all the baddies to go together and twice in a row. This is a system that relies on the strength of the action economy so make sure you can use that.
Push your players to act. Don’t sit there and harangue them obviously but when someone’s turn comes up, don’t let them spend too much time hemming and hawing. If they can’t think of something to do, remind them they can pass their turn or hold their action. Get them used to making decisions quickly in combat. There may be some concerns initially but honestly its just a familiarity thing. Once they get used to not being able to strategize ahead of time, they’ll know their abilities, they’ll know what opportunities look like, and they’ll be able to engage in this quick, exciting combat well.
Your players can hold and pass turns, but your monsters shouldn’t. Just go. Especially with mooks. Waiting and holding turns in popcorn initiative really only exists to give the player control over their turn. It’s not a tool you should use as the GM. Just fucking go.
So yeah… popcorn initiative. You should definitely try it out. It’s super fun to run and it’s even more fun to play.I haven’t really talked about that part but my experience with popcorn initiative has been primarily as a player. I super love it. It’s so much fun. It’s a tactical approach to combat that feels dramatic and cinematic. It makes combat significantly more interesting.
