Whose Turn is it Anyway? Initiative in T2k

[Adm.Lee]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

FWIW, at this month's convention game, I'm finally going to attempt the "popcorn & chips" method I sketched out in post #23 of that older thread.

I ran a playtest game Saturday with some people who can't make it to the convention. The popcorn seemed to work OK, but I may have overwhelmed the group with too many NPCs. It seemed like the NPC groups (pairs or foursomes with similar initiative levels) always had more chips(actions) to play, while the PCs ran out quickly.

That may have been a function of the players picking from my selection of pregens-- they drew a lot of 2- and 3-action PCs, only one 6-action guy. There were a lot of Veteran & Experienced bad guys, I should probably tone that down.
- It could have been because I set up the opposition for 8 PCs, but I only had 5 players at the table.
- It could also have been that the players didn't hold back on spending their actions quickly. One of the encounters was a hasty ambush, so shooting early & often should have been a good tactical choice!

On the other hand, we made it through 2 or 3 30-second turns in two combat encounters, each of which took just a bit more than an hour to play out. That, of course, is one of the things I really wanted to have played out-- did I have enough material to fill up a four-hour time slot?