Daggerheart and Draw Steel are two TTRPGs that are intended as alternatives to D&D to do the kind of heroic fantasy that most players for the last decade at least have used D&D to play.
I suspect that I'll continue to run 5E, or at least the 2024 update to 5E, as my primary RPG for many years to come. But taking these two RPGs, I find it kind of interesting how both have taken similar routes to coming up with alternatives to long-held mechanics from the OG.
The main one that struck me here is the way that initiative in combat works.
Draw Steel is pretty straightforward: there is an initiative roll, but it's a glorified coin flip. Once it's determined if the party or the monsters go first, turns in combat are alternated between one hero and then one squad of monsters (Draw Steel is also designed so that most fights will be against a larger number of monsters than the players, so it's fair that, say, two "horde" monsters go between each player's turn).
The huge departure here, though, is that the players and the monsters need not take turns in the same order each round. The intent here is to encourage players to strategize with one another: one player might have an ability that helps set up another's ability, and it's possible that a player might benefit from going later in the round because, for example, one of their class's unique resource generation triggers might occur and allow them to use a more powerful ability.
There are some interesting consequences of this design: one is that triggered abilities must refresh at the start of the round, rather than a turn, because it's possible that a player might not get their next turn for a long while - if they go first on round 1 but last on round 2, that means that everyone basically gets two turns between theirs.
I do also think that it requires a little more careful bookkeeping. In D&D, I rarely worry too much about how many rounds a combat has taken because I treat the initiative list as just a big wheel - I don't care much about what part of my car's tires were facing up when I started driving somewhere. However, you'll really want to check off who has gone each round to ensure everyone is truly getting their fair share of turns (monsters too!)
Daggerheart has a far less structured form of initiative: inside and outside of combat, the "spotlight" passes from players to the GM. As a caveat, while I did read through the Daggerheart SRD, most of my familiarity has been from watching Critical Role's showcases like Age of Umbra (which I haven't finished) and the live Bell's Hells game, Oaths and Ash. (Much as I enjoy a FromSoft-inspired world like Age of Umbra, the one I'm really eager to see is the Colossus of the Drylands campaign frame, their sort of epic weird-west one - which apparently there is an actual play of on the Darrington Press YouTube channel).
Anyway, in Daggerheart, players who use an ability that involves a roll will pass the Spotlight back to the GM if one of two things happen: if their roll fails or if they roll with Fear. (As a reminder, Daggerheart is a 2d12 system, but the d12 must also be designated as the Hope and the Fear die, and things are better for you if you roll with Hope, meaning the Hope die is the higher result.)
Mathematically, I think this means that you're far more likely to pass the Spotlight back to the GM with any given roll. While your chance of rolling with Hope is higher because rolling the same on both dice counts both as a result with Hope and also a critical success (even double 1s,) once you factor in the chance to fail the roll (even if you get Hope,) most of the time control goes back to the GM.
Here's an area where I don't totally know how it works: if the GM is using a bunch of smaller monsters, I don't know if that effectively becomes easier because their spotlight is used to activate lesser creatures. Again, my familiarity with the system is a bit limited, but I do get the sense that it's designed to allow singular monsters to make a bigger impact.
The bizarre thing about Daggerheart's pseudo-initiative, then, is that technically, a single PC could take all the turns in combat. I don't think that's the intention, but I don't think there's any hard rule that every party member has to get a turn before anyone gets a second turn. And... I think that's the sort of thing I might make a house rule.
One thing to consider, though, is the way in which both of these eschew the standard set-order-of-turns that D&D (and most similar games) use. In both cases, the choice of turn order is put largely on the players, to talk out at the table. I think at a good table where everyone's respectful and having fun, that could be a lot of fun, but I think there's a potential pitfall in which players might argue about who gets to go next. Ideally, you're playing with cool people who are willing to engage strategically and think about the success of the group rather than their own glory, but I can imagine the GM/Director needing to intervene and moderate these discussions.
Again, I don't think it would be as much of an issue for Draw Steel, as each player still has to go once per round - you're not arguing who gets to take a turn, only when they do. But Daggerheart, like, frankly, a lot of its design, is oddly crunchy in some ways but also a bit vibes in other ways, and this feels like an example.
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