Parallel Actions

calendar Nov 8, 2024 · 2 min read · Design

Parallel actions speed up resolution in a way nothing else ever could.

Example 1: 5 Players and 10 Bandits

Look at how the table acts, focussing for a disturbing moment on the players, rather than characters.

Standard Back-and-Forth Initiative

The GM calls for initiative:

  1. Alice, Bob, Charlie, Drake, and Emily roll Initiative.
    • The GM either adopts a new initiative system (we now have two!) because rolling for individual bandits isn't realistic.
  2. Brief intermission while people sort who goes first
  3. Drake attacks a bandit.
  4. Drake rolls Damage.
  5. Alice attacks a bandit.
  6. Alice rolls Damage.
  7. Charlie attacks a bandit (miss).
  8. A bandit attacks Charlie.
  9. GM rolls Damage.
  10. A bandit attacks Alice (miss).
  11. A bandit attacks Alice.
  12. GM rolls Damage.
  13. A bandit attacks Drake (miss).
  14. GM rolls Damage.
  15. A bandit attacks Charlie (miss).
  16. Bob attacks a bandits.
  17. Bob rolls Damage.
  18. A bandit attacks Bob (miss).
  19. Emily attacks a bandit (miss).
  20. A bandit attacks Bob (miss).
  21. A bandit attacks Drake (miss).

In engineering, this is referred to as a 'shitshow'. We're clearly going to die before reaching the end of this combat.

  1. Bob has a second attack -

No!

Okay, moving in parallel, each player rolls against two bandits. If they hit, then they deal Damage; otherwise they take Damage.

Alice Rolls Bob rolls Charlie Rolls Drake Rolls Emily Rolls
Hit Miss Hit Hit Hit
Damage roll Damage roll Damage roll Damage roll Damage roll
Miss Miss Hit Miss Hit

Alice hits, and Bob rolls a miss. A moment later, Alice rolls for Damage on the Bandit, while the GM rolls for Damage to Bob's character.

We can parcel this up in different ways. The first example takes more time to resolve initiative than I've shown, and the second devolves into fairly clunky damage assignment. But these generally convey the differences.

Switching to Alice's perspective, the first looks like this:

  1. Roll initiative.
    • GM faffs with dice.
  2. GM asks Alice what her initiative score was.
  3. People roll dice.
  4. People roll dice.
  5. Alice attacks a bandit.
  6. Alice rolls Damage.
  7. People roll dice.
  8. People roll dice.
  9. Scrolling Instagram.
  10. A bandit attacks Alice (miss).
  11. A bandit attacks Alice.
  12. Alice records 8 Damage.
  13. Back to Instagram...
  14. Look at that cute puppy.
  15. More news on the genocide...
  16. Why are we still doing genocides?
  17. I can't believe this orange cat.
  18. Are orange cats really stupid?
  19. Google's AI answer is the top result.
  20. It looks legit, wait, do I need to roll something?
  21. No, false alarm. Are we winning?

Conversely, Alice barely stops acting in the new system.

Alice Rolls
Hit
Damage roll
Miss
Receive Damage