Alternative Initiative Ideas

Perhaps some king of queuing system with spaces / numbers that tracks who's turn it is. At the beginning of an encounter, all players are queued up by their initiative order (lowest first, sort of simply counting off), perhaps with some roll modifier for randomness. When a player or mob takes their action, they get added back into the queue a certain number of spaces back (based on their initiative score), and the next player / mob in line gets to act.

So, say a character has an initiative of 6. In the first round they would roll a dice and add 6 to the result. This is their starting initiative. Say they roll a 5, giving them a starting initiative of 11. Once they get to act, they are placed back in the queue at (11+6) 17, then (17+6) 23, then (23+6) 29 and so on.

Each player / mob would require a token to track their current action order / initiative. As spaces on the initiative board are cleared, things are reset (so, once spaces 1 through 10 have been emptied / have taken their actions and moved to 11 or more), all tokens / markers are reset against the base line of 1. If more than one creature shares the same initiative, the order in which the tokens or markers were placed / stacked dictates who goes first.

I don't know how this would work with other attributes or tracking durations of spells or effects, as a fast character may have their effects run out faster (assuming duration was tracked in rounds / actions). Durations could have their own markers for tracking how long they last. This would create a system where higher initiatives mean acting more frequently (and slower initiatives act less frequently), which might not work with your other game ideas.

Attack duration is wrinkle that I've seen in games in addition to having a base initiative score.

So when a Player takes an Action, that action "lasts" X units of time. If you have initiative as a decreasing value (i.e. lowest goes first) then the current mob/player with initiative has 0. Then you add the duration of the action they choose and re-insert them into the action queue. So it's a dynamic and responsive system where not all actions are treated the same. A big heal/big attack, that "lasts" longer, placing that character further down the action queue and making it longer until they act again.

The games I've seen this are computer games, which does a lot to simplify the math and tracking of this sort of system. You could have a dual system where players can improve their initiative score then the player/mob with the highest at the start of combat is "0" in the queue, the next highest is "1", and so on. Then there is a standard and simple scale of action durations, 0 - 10, you just move characters around in the queue as they perform combat actions.

I like the idea of attack duration. A variant could maybe be something that allows characters who take short / quick actions one round to go earlier in the initiative count the following round. A character that takes a slow action one round will go later in the following round. Could be something of a hybrid between queuing and straight initiative (as rounds are retained, but order could change from round to round).

Random ideas that passed into my mind.

Each action has an initiative value for the next round. So certain action could make me slower or faster the next round.

Else, an easy method would be to have initiative value on cards and make them circulate around players and ennemies somehow. Make sure allof them have unique numbers.

An idea could be to use something like RA, where the used card is placed in the middle and taken by the next player. Might not work like this but you create something with that idea.

Another mechanic interesting in the Alternity RPG was the possibility to delay your initiative for acting faster in the next round.