Wrath and Glory’s Initiative Or: How I Seized Initiative Over Summer Vacation
May is around the corner, and that will bring with it more details about Wrath and Glory’s release (which you can find out more about at upcoming conventions and free RPG day), but for right now we’re taking initiative and talking about Wrath and Glory’s…initiative.
That’s right folks, straight out of the design diary from the folks at Ulisses, we’ve got a look at the upcoming rules about how turns will progress in Wrath and Glory. There’s a couple of other little details as well–things like how large groups of weaker opponents will be handled, or the kinds of attacks you can make. Let’s take a look and see what initial initiative thoughts are there.
via Ulisses
One of the key goals for Wrath & Glory is to find combat that feels both exciting and fluid. So that there’s always this interchange back-and-forth between everyone at the table. With this in mind, the initiative system seems designed to specifically create a literal back-and-forth between PCs and NPCs.
Here’s how it works: The players and NPCs controlled by the GM take turns, one at a time, until every character involved in the combat has taken a turn. The players choose one from their side, then GM chooses one from his side, and so on.
Players (or the GM) can, of course, throw a monkey wrench into this system. They can interrupt to try and seize the initiative, spending either their accumulated Glory (if players) or Ruin (for scheming GMs). This lets you cut in line, effectively. You activate and then nominate another player and go.
This is an interesting mechanic…on the one hand, I love that it does create this flow between players and NPCs. You can’t simply drop everyone with an alpha strike–but it does seem like it downplays the importance of the Initiative Attribute (which is used solely to settle who goes first in an encounter–rolling your attribute dice and comparing icons/successes) a little bit. Without the framework in which this rule is situated, though, it’s hard to tell.
If there’s ever any doubt about who acts first, the characters simply roll their Initiative attribute and compare icons, with the highest number of icons acting first. In the case of a tie, player characters win over NPCs, and if the tie is between two players or two NPCs, the players choose who goes first (or the GM does, in the case of the NPCs).
But that’s not all, there’s more. We also learn of at least one kind of other attack–an Interaction attack, which can be used to set up an opponent to take damage.
If the warband was facing a tough opponent, for example, Michael could use his character’s turn to make an Interaction attack and render the opponent vulnerable, lowering its Defence. This sets up Wendy to take advantage and land a solid hit, potentially shifting more dice into the damage roll!
Speaking of damaging opponents, we also learn a little bit about how enemies will work in this system. Wrath and Glory uses a mob/swarm kind of mechanic for multiple weaker enemies. Groups of individually weaker enemies, called Troops, can form up into a Mob. So, for instance, a group of 10 Ork Boyz can mob together making their attacks with extra dice (equal to half the number in the mob), and can use their attacks however they want.
Mobs can also split their attacks if they’re fighting multiple opponents, and the GM can, if they wish, split up a mob on their turn so that there are more than one group of enemies acting in the combat.
This mechanic I like a lot. The first time I encountered something like it was in the first edition 7th Sea–it’s a very dramatic way to represent a massive swarm of enemies without having to get too complicated with the number of opponents. Especially interesting considering that they can have many smaller attacks if they want.
At any rate, that’s our preview of Wrath and Glory for now–be sure and check back for more news as it develops!
In the meantime, time to go figure out which one is better, Wrath or Glory, in a fight to the death…
