Track Initiative

This is the old standby. When nothing else is at hand you will almost always have this at your gaming session. Whether you write it down in a simple list, keep everyones name written down and the monsters and just write their initiative numbers down, or create an XY Axis graph it is all the same.

Pros: Simple, Almost always available.

Cons: Wastes paper, can be very disorganized

Now days almost every DM has a laptop, smartphone, or some sort of personal disorganizer at the gaming table with them. Adventures are easily attainable online, there is a ton of software available for various different systems, and with wifi the internet is never more than a foot away. There are a plethora of different systems out there.  Infact there are almost as many programs for RPG players as there are RPG’s.  And if all else fails there is always a spreadsheet or the old faithful standby, Notepad.

Pros: Dynamic, Displays exactly what you want, Adaptable.

Cons: Can be time consuming, software can be hard to come by for the system you want or may not be intuitive, can be a substantial investment.

So there has to be some sort of middle ground.  Something that doesn’t cost alot and at the same time is flexible. For the longest time I myself used an excel spreadsheet to track initiative in combat.  The only problem is once I got everyones names in there, I couldn’t exactly drag and

drop everyone into the correct order.  In the olden days (The Year 1990 BG, Before Google that is) I used the old pen and paper method.  Thing about this is it took time and your always loosing your paper or wasting a forest worth of scraps of paper.

Then I found this little gem the other day at the hobby shop, the Game Mastery Combat Pad.  Now please do not get me wrong, I am not being paid to advertise nor have I been bought out by “The Man” (whichever one it is). This is a genuinely useful product. Sells for $10-$15 bucks, which is what I would pay for a pack of pencils and a couple of notebooks so the price is perfect fine. Available in most FLGS or online at places like this. It’s wet and dry erase, and since I already use dry erase markers for my battle map that isn’t a problem either.  Best of all, it’s dynamic.  I write my players names on the green magnets and their AC at the start of the game. When it comes time for battle I quickly jot down the NPC abbreviations & maybe hit points on the black or blue magnets and then just drop them in order of initiative.  The space to the left is perfect for notes, tracking effects or hp, etc.

Now I know it doesn’t seem like much, but this one little item alone has helped out my games tremendously. The players can all easily see it so they know who’s turn it is, what round it is so they know how long their effects last, and it has speed up my combat preperation. Before even with using a spreadsheet it was taking me a minute to three to get fully prepped for each combat encounter.  Now it takes me no more than 30 seconds and that is if I don’t have initiative for the monsters already rolled up and their names already on the magnets.

Hopefully this helps someone else out there.  If not, no one asked you anyway. Go back to using an abacus for all I care.