This lets the player know that it’s time to figure out exactly what they want to do, making it far more likely, when their turn arrives, that they’ll be ready to jump straight into action. For example, it allows you to put players on deck. This list not only eliminates the dead time of the call-and-response, it can also unlock other techniques for improving the pace of your combat encounters. The solution, of course, is to simply write down the group’s initiative results, sorting them into a list so that you can tell in a single glance who’s turn is next. It’s also prone to mistakes and confusion, as calls are missed or initiative check results are forgotten.

Each action becomes an isolated island floating in a vast sea of numeric chanting. In addition to wasting huge swaths of time with this inane call-and-response ritual, it also completely disrupts any sense of flow or build in the combat encounter. It seems that for some people this is just the way they think RPGs are supposed to work. I’ve even seen it happen in games using a VTT, which I find particularly baffling since it’s usually pretty trivial to set these up to auto-track initiative results. I constantly find myself playing in games like this at conventions. If you’ve never experienced this at the table, you might find it hard to believe that this is a thing that actually happens, but it’s surprisingly common.

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