Playing Card Initiative in GURPS: Randomness Done Right

The High Priestess of the Tarot deck by SceithAlm.

The High Priestess of the Tarot deck by SceithAlm.

Playing Card Initiative is a concept found in the Savage Worlds RPG ruleset where initiative is randomized by drawing from a deck of playing cards. This is expanded upon and put into the framework of the GURPS system.

Expanding on Initiative

Static Initiative

In GURPS, Initiative, or combat order, is decided by ordering combatants in descending order of their Basic Speed. This is an example of static behaviour: the order of combatants will not necessarily ever change for a given group of combatants from one combat to another; it is merely their relevant speed from other combatants that ever really matters.

By principle, this works incredibly well and stresses the importance of character points that a player has placed into their DX or Basic Speed in order to model the readiness and agility of that character when reacting to situations (of stress). When designing creatures or combatants, the Basic Speed is also usually modelled around this system. Things work and the general realism of the model stays intact.

Dynamic Initiative

There is something to be said about the behaviour of what I call dynamic initiative. Many roleplaying game systems, including the wildly popular Dungeons & Dragons (and related variants such as Pathfinder), use a system of randomness in order to distinguish the possibility of chance slipping into the model. The degree to how much randomness is present varies from system to system.

An example of a really quirky but clever way of employing such randomness is present in the Savage Worlds ruleset where, instead of the roll of the die, initiative is determined by the drawing of playing cards from a typical playing card deck. This leverages on the existing probability distribution present there where order of suits indicate order in combat.

How This Fits Into GURPS

Static to Dynamic

Moving from a static to a dynamic system of initiative requires careful footing. This is merely a variant proposed to those Game Masters (GMs) that wish to introduce a twist to the idea of initiative by employing the neat idea found in the Savage Worlds ruleset to drive the system of initiative.

Precedence

Precedence remains an important factor here. If this is to be ported to the GURPS system, the relative Basic Speeds of combatants should still remain important. Character points were put into them, indirectly or directly, and therefore their importance to order in combat should be retained. This proposed variant to the initiative system will not change that.

Proposed Model

In this proposed variant, the following should be done prior to any combat and only on the first turn of combat. Unless a situation arises that calls for a change in combat order, the combat order for a given combat should remain as is once determined.

  1. Sort all combatants in ascending order by their Basic Speed.
  2. Draw a single playing card for all combatants, and an additional card such that the total number of cards they draw is equal to their relative order as determined in (1).
  3. Determine the order that combatants will combat by now ordering combatants by their best drawn card.

The notion of a best drawn card will differ on the basis of what sort of cards are used. In a typical playing card deck, the usual order of suits applies (1,2,…,9,J,Q,K,A). If a Joker is included in the deck, the combatant that draws it can determine their own order in combat and, if the GM is willing, can be provided a single Fate point that they can use to reroll a dice roll made in only that combat.

For example, let us consider the following situation.

Basic Speed 5.25 5.50 6.00 6.25
Number of Draws 1 2 3 4

Ordering the combatants on their basis of Basic Speed, the fastest combatant among four combatants will draw four cards. This means their relative probability of acquiring say an Ace of a suit is incredibly higher than the slowest combatant and thus their position in combat is highly ensured. But, drawing on the notion of chance, sometimes something can go wrong and they are not first or even amongst the first to go. Ties should always be settled on the basis of Basic Speed.

To further this concept, one could use other sorts of playing cards including a non-occult Tarot deck. Any sort of ordering can be made on the basis of cards, but one could use the following as drawn from common games featuring Tarot decks (irrational ranking) or use whatever makes sense.

In the following, the higher the precedence of a card, the better it is or the greater precedence it has over other cards. “Black” suits are the swords and staves (spades and clubs) and the “Red” suits are the cups and coins (hearts and diamonds). Trumps typically beat any normal suit.

Suit Type Precedence
Black K > Q > C > V > 10 > 9 > … > 1
Red K > Q > C > V > 1 > 2 > … > 10
Trumps XX > … > I > The Fool
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