Simultaneous turns d&d

[clash]

Has anyone played d&d where all players perform their actions at the same time?

My reasons are twofold. It will make combat feel more real/ chaotic and it will speed up play by having everyone act at once.

My idea is this: monster ac and saves is completely visible. You switch so that the one doing the action always rolls the dice and each player performs their action at the same time writing down damage or results of their action. Then after everyone is done you resolve their actions in turn order applying the various effects. In any case where their action no longer makes sense they may take the dodge action instead.

So it's not a fully formed idea but that's why I'm here. Any thing to add to this? Any glaring flaws? Any idea how to gracefully handle advantage of disadvantage situations that arise?

[Unoriginal]

Has anyone played d&d where all players perform their actions at the same time?

My reasons are twofold. It will make combat feel more real/ chaotic and it will speed up play by having everyone act at once.

My idea is this: monster ac and saves is completely visible. You switch so that the one doing the action always rolls the dice and each player performs their action at the same time writing down damage or results of their action. Then after everyone is done you resolve their actions in turn order applying the various effects. In any case where their action no longer makes sense they may take the dodge action instead.

So it's not a fully formed idea but that's why I'm here. Any thing to add to this? Any glaring flaws? Any idea how to gracefully handle advantage of disadvantage situations that arise?

Two questions:

1. Are the people with whom you play alright with wasting X-time-per-rest abilities on foes who are dead/not at the same place as they were/already affected by an ability that has the same effect or on situations that are already resolved?

2. Are NPCs going to have their whole turns written at once by the DM too?

[clash]

Two questions:

1. Are the people with whom you play alright with wasting X-time-per-rest abilities on foes who are dead/not at the same place as they were/already affected by an ability that has the same effect or on situations that are already resolved?

2. Are NPCs going to have their whole turns written at once by the DM too?

1. My thought was they could abandon any action to just dodge instead but as far as movement goes, if the target is still in range they could target the area where the target is. So they would decide to move to the target and attack it rolling their to hit and damage. If the target moves so long as they are still in range, they can follow them.

2. I'm not sure about this one. I think it could be done either way. What are your thoughts?

[Jamesps]

Are the people with whom you play alright with wasting X-time-per-rest abilities on foes who are dead/not at the same place as they were/already affected by an ability that has the same effect?

There's a lot of old tactical games that forced players to take into account the possibility of wasted abilities that had a pretty big following. It's a different sort of gameplay, but it's fun in its own way.

Many of the Final Fantasy games worked on this metric, where everybody declares their action and then initiative determines what happens. I imagine it'd be better for theatre of the mind though since precise movements are going to be impossible for anyone going late in the turn order (Final Fantasy eschewed movement altogether).

One thing I would consider for this sort of play is allow players the option to /always/ default to the dodge action if they don't want to take their original action. For instance if there's only one enemy left and the wizard had a fireball queued and didn't want to waste it.

[MaxWilson]

Has anyone played d&d where all players perform their actions at the same time?

...

So it's not a fully formed idea but that's why I'm here. Any thing to add to this? Any glaring flaws? Any idea how to gracefully handle advantage of disadvantage situations that arise?

Yes, I've been running 5E this way for years. WEGO instead of IGOUGO: DM hints at monster actions, then everybody declares actions, then everybody resolves. It solves a half-dozen serious problems with vanilla 5E (like forcing players to spend 75%+ of their time during combat not being allowed to even talk to the DM because it's "not your turn") and introduces a couple of minor problems that the DM has to solve for themselves (like "when does a monster that was knocked prone stand back up?").

Overall it's the single best change you can make to 5E.

See https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?633095-Evil-Oni-Action-Declaration-Thread for an example of how this looks in practice, in a Play By Post game.

[clash]

Yes, I've been running 5E this way for years. WEGO instead of IGOUGO: DM hints at monster actions, then everybody declares actions, then everybody resolves. It solves a half-dozen serious problems with vanilla 5E (like forcing players to spend 75%+ of their time during combat not being allowed to even talk to the DM because it's "not your turn") and introduces a couple of minor problems that the DM has to solve for themselves (like "when does a monster that was knocked prone stand back up?").

Overall it's the single best change you can make to 5E.

See https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?633095-Evil-Oni-Action-Declaration-Thread for an example of how this looks in practice, in a Play By Post game.

I've read some of this and it looks similar. Without me digging to deep into it, how are you handling advantage and disadvantage that players didn't account for when figuring out their actions?

[MaxWilson]

I've read some of this and it looks similar. Without me digging to deep into it, how are you handling advantage and disadvantage that players didn't account for when figuring out their actions?

It's a nonissue. Players declare actions, DM resolves actions, asking for dice rolls when necessary. If a player character A (or enemy character) is firing arrows at target B, and someone else C has declared that they will charge A and attempt to melee them, then A probably gets a shot off at B before C arrives, and then A's other attacks are at disadvantage, but none of this is unexpected by the players, or at least not enough to generate complaints.

What is the root problem that you're trying to solve or avoid here?

[clash]

It's a nonissue. Players declare actions, DM resolves actions, asking for dice rolls when necessary. If a player character A (or enemy character) is firing arrows at target B, and someone else C has declared that they will charge A and attempt to melee them, then A probably gets a shot off at B before C arrives, and then A's other attacks are at disadvantage, but none of this is unexpected by the players, or at least not enough to generate complaints.

What is the root problem that you're trying to solve or avoid here?

Oh, I understand. That's a bit different from my idea. My idea is that players roll all the dice they need to when they are declaring their actions. Then when the dm says what do you do, they say I hit goblin 1 with an attack dealing 10 damage, all rolled ahead of time. That way players aren't counting up damage dice or anything like that on their actual turn in initiative.

[MaxWilson]

Oh, I understand. That's a bit different from my idea. My idea is that players roll all the dice they need to when they are declaring their actions. Then when the dm says what do you do, they say I hit goblin 1 with an attack dealing 10 damage, all rolled ahead of time. That way players aren't counting up damage dice or anything like that on their actual turn in initiative.

Oh, sorry for the confusion then. You're right, that's much different.

I doubt you'll have many problems with advantage/disadvantage though, because it's easy to add a second die. You'll probably get players strategically planning the order of their actions to maximize their advantages, if that's allowed, and that will slow the game down a bit but also make it more fun (because more teamwork).

[Anonymouswizard]

What could also be interesting is simultaneous resolution with or without an order of operations (e.g. does movement take precedence over attacks? Although I suspect with such a system you'll abandon the gridf for zones). So you still declare actions in order, but the effects of said actions all kick in at the end of the round.

To make it work you'd probably reroll initiative every round and declare from low to high, but it would make situations such as a mutual takedown much more possible. I do suspect that you'd wat a defined order of operations so that what actions can and can't be interrupted isn't an argument, for D&D I'd go for AIMS (Attacks>Items>Movement>Spells), for games with squishier characters Movement would take precedence, in games which make combat spellcasting hard or long I'd make spells take precedence (and you could add more categories if you want to). It does however run the risk of feeling 'board gamey', as rounds now clearly go 'initiative, declaration, resolution, cleanup'.

[MaxWilson]

What could also be interesting is simultaneous resolution with or without an order of operations (e.g. does movement take precedence over attacks? Although I suspect with such a system you'll abandon the gridf for zones). So you still declare actions in order, but the effects of said actions all kick in at the end of the round.

To make it work you'd probably reroll initiative every round and declare from low to high, but it would make situations such as a mutual takedown much more possible. I do suspect that you'd wat a defined order of operations so that what actions can and can't be interrupted isn't an argument, for D&D I'd go for AIMS (Attacks>Items>Movement>Spells), for games with squishier characters Movement would take precedence, in games which make combat spellcasting hard or long I'd make spells take precedence (and you could add more categories if you want to). It does however run the risk of feeling 'board gamey', as rounds now clearly go 'initiative, declaration, resolution, cleanup'.

In practice if you're doing simultaneous resolution there's no need to restrict the order of action declarations (just keep enemy declarations secret), so no need to roll initiative every round. Instead of an official order of operations, DM judgment can be used to determine order of effects based on what is realistic (in practice it helps to give PCs the benefit of the doubt to help avoid unnecessary arguments), with initiative contests as needed when the DM isn't sure.

This leaves you going "declaration, resolution, declaration, resolution", which is exactly how 5E works outside of combat too.

[Anonymouswizard]

In practice if you're doing simultaneous resolution there's no need to restrict the order of action declarations (just keep enemy declarations secret), so no need to roll initiative every round. Instead of an official order of operations, DM judgment can be used to determine order of effects based on what is realistic (in practice it helps to give PCs the benefit of the doubt to help avoid unnecessary arguments), with initiative contests as needed when the DM isn't sure.

This leaves you going "declaration, resolution, declaration, resolution", which is exactly how 5E works outside of combat too.

Oh, Diplomacy style 'everybody writes their action and reveals at once' is also possible, and many other variations. I was just working under the assumption that we want initiative for whatever reason. Probably because we want fast reactions to give an advantage, and this is a potentially large one.

Also, it's possible that in combat you'll have a lot of sorry duration effects flying about where durations may be shorter than the combat Kenneth, meaning a cleanup phase to tick down timers by one and get rid of those that are ended. Although on reflection it should come between declaration/writing and resolution.

I also think that there are benefits two an established offer of operations, particularly in the 'if everybody agrees to a system arguments are less common' way. Such a system should of course be ignored temporarily when it produces absurd or unfun results, but it's presence stops people trying to game three uncertainty to benefit them both ways. It's mainly to deal with situations like 'I declared I'd attack Geoff but he declared he's disengaging, do I get my swing', which I suppose it's already modelled well enough of you use OAs, as well as warriors trying to interrupt a caster's spell.

Also most games I've played, D&D or otherwise, have tended towards 'declaration, negotiation, resolution' outside of combat with the middle step being working out what skill and/or tools you're going to be allowed to use. It's generally skipped in combat because it slows down an already tedious part of RPGs, but I've seen it pop up occasionally (generally when a player tries to make a called shot to avoid armour or something).

[Greywander]

I've considered simultaneous turns before. One idea I had was that of a "location smear". Basically, if you move, then for the purposes of targeting, you're treated as being in every location you move through. This way, it's never really possible to move out of someone's range, you can only start your turn out of their range and stay there. This can also create interesting scenarios where you declare an action on a target that is currently out of range, predicting that they'll move withing range while actions are resolved.

You could also mostly forgo initiative, except when there's a potential conflict in the order of things. If a player is attempting to do something, and an enemy wants to get their action in first (or vice versa), the two could roll an opposed initiative check to see whose action resolves first. That way, you're only rolling initiative when you really need to, but it can also change from round to round. If the game had been designed with this system in mind, I'd expect a greater emphasis to be placed on reactions. Perhaps once the resolution phase has been started, you can spend your reaction to change your action or something, assuming your action hasn't been resolved yet.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Has anyone played d&d where all players perform their actions at the same time?

My reasons are twofold. It will make combat feel more real/ chaotic and it will speed up play by having everyone act at once.

My idea is this: monster ac and saves is completely visible. You switch so that the one doing the action always rolls the dice and each player performs their action at the same time writing down damage or results of their action. Then after everyone is done you resolve their actions in turn order applying the various effects. In any case where their action no longer makes sense they may take the dodge action instead.

So it's not a fully formed idea but that's why I'm here. Any thing to add to this? Any glaring flaws? Any idea how to gracefully handle advantage of disadvantage situations that arise?

Yes we did; totally got rid of initiative for a while in one long running campaign. It worked ok for a while, with one main issue that any group that got surprise was guaranteed to get 2 rounds of attacks off before any casualties. This was fine when it worked in favor of the party, but did nearly end up in a TPK at one point. We stopped doing it near the end of tier 2 as 5e just has too many mechanics that were based on a turn order. Reactions and Legendary Actions in particular were becoming problematic.
I did kind of like it when we had it, and did add to that chaotic feel we were after, but I'm not sure 5e is the game to use this on.