Fixing Initiative and the Turn Tracker

I just saw a post in bug reports asking about initiative, and it reminded me of some common problems I've encountered during games, most recently this Saturday.  These aren't game-breaking by any means, but they distract players during a fairly intense part of the game: you've encountered an opponent and it's time to react. It's immersion-breaking, and that's bad from a story-telling perspective. This is a time when I want my players thinking about their characters and the situation, not game mechanics.  I'm also really busy providing descriptions and answers to questions, and don't need any extra work. Since there's work underway on a new VTT, this seems like the ideal time to bring this up (everyone else, please chime in on any other lacks you see related to initiative or the turn tracker, even if you don't have a vote to add). 1. Rolling initiative from the charsheet (5E OGL in my case) doesn't automatically add the character's initiative to the turn tracker.  This means that nearly every combat, one of my players will forget to select their token and roll from their sheet, and either lose a roll or force me to interrupt what I'm doing to add it manually. And yes, I have a token-action macro for people to roll that adds the roll to the tracker, but some people like working from their sheet. 2. The turn tracker remembers past combats, and once people start rolling I can't clear it without erasing rolls, other than by individually deleting lines. 3. Having to open the controls as a separate pane makes for extra work when doing common functions like "clear old turns" and "sort new turns" (I end up opening it twice most times) This isn't wholly bad: I've paused games mid-combat and come back to them weeks later due to player availability, so memory is essential. And people (both myself and other DMs I play with) close the tracker by accident all the time. But a combat has a defined end (as opposed to going on hiatus for some reason), and there's no reason for memory of the last combat's order once the DM says it's over. My suggestions: Always post initiative to the turn tracker when it's rolled, even if the tracker is closed. Prompt the DM when closing the tracker and ask if they want to clear it. Provide a "clear old initiative rolls" function with a configurable time (older than 5 minutes, older than an hour, a day, etc). Put the sort, add custom, and other functions on the DMs copy of the turn tracker (maybe as an expandable section at the bottom, although "sort" should probably be a button at the top) rather than in a separate pop-out. My VTT has too many things on it as it is during combat, I don't need more. Those won't fix all problems, and I'm sure there are some reasons to use initiative without the tracker where having it auto-post could be an issue, but I've never encountered that situation, so I can't suggest how to handle it. Beyond that: 4. It would be really nice to have a "which round is it" counter on the tracker, for tracking spells that last a number of rounds, etc.  5. I can't count how many times I've had to skip forward through a whole (long) order, because I accidentially skipped past someone (double-clicked, or just though I'd done their turn when I hadn't).  A back-arrow would be REALLY useful. I realize that all of these can be addressed throught the API, but most people aren't PRO, and frankly I've found the solutions that are out there either obsolete or too complex to use, and gave up trying.  Initiative order is pretty fundamental to an RPG, and it really needs more integrated support in the base system.

0+1 to all of this! I wish that I had another vote to add to the count. (edit: I cleared a vote from another thread that already had 400+ votes)

AFAIR Initiative will be posted to the tracker even when closed and properly rolled with token selected. The token has to be selected because otherwise how should the game know whose initiative it is? As for the remembering... there is a script called CombatMaster which will help you with that all the way... Anyway +1 to your Points for not PRO users...^^ Ken S. said: I just saw a post in bug reports asking about initiative, and it reminded me of some common problems I've encountered during games, most recently this Saturday.  These aren't game-breaking by any means, but they distract players during a fairly intense part of the game: you've encountered an opponent and it's time to react. It's immersion-breaking, and that's bad from a story-telling perspective. This is a time when I want my players thinking about their characters and the situation, not game mechanics.  I'm also really busy providing descriptions and answers to questions, and don't need any extra work. Since there's work underway on a new VTT, this seems like the ideal time to bring this up (everyone else, please chime in on any other lacks you see related to initiative or the turn tracker, even if you don't have a vote to add). 1. Rolling initiative from the charsheet (5E OGL in my case) doesn't automatically add the character's initiative to the turn tracker.  This means that nearly every combat, one of my players will forget to select their token and roll from their sheet, and either lose a roll or force me to interrupt what I'm doing to add it manually. And yes, I have a token-action macro for people to roll that adds the roll to the tracker, but some people like working from their sheet. 2. The turn tracker remembers past combats, and once people start rolling I can't clear it without erasing rolls, other than by individually deleting lines. 3. Having to open the controls as a separate pane makes for extra work when doing common functions like "clear old turns" and "sort new turns" (I end up opening it twice most times) This isn't wholly bad: I've paused games mid-combat and come back to them weeks later due to player availability, so memory is essential. And people (both myself and other DMs I play with) close the tracker by accident all the time. But a combat has a defined end (as opposed to going on hiatus for some reason), and there's no reason for memory of the last combat's order once the DM says it's over. My suggestions: Always post initiative to the turn tracker when it's rolled, even if the tracker is closed. Prompt the DM when closing the tracker and ask if they want to clear it. Provide a "clear old initiative rolls" function with a configurable time (older than 5 minutes, older than an hour, a day, etc). Put the sort, add custom, and other functions on the DMs copy of the turn tracker (maybe as an expandable section at the bottom, although "sort" should probably be a button at the top) rather than in a separate pop-out. My VTT has too many things on it as it is during combat, I don't need more. Those won't fix all problems, and I'm sure there are some reasons to use initiative without the tracker where having it auto-post could be an issue, but I've never encountered that situation, so I can't suggest how to handle it. Beyond that: 4. It would be really nice to have a "which round is it" counter on the tracker, for tracking spells that last a number of rounds, etc.  5. I can't count how many times I've had to skip forward through a whole (long) order, because I accidentially skipped past someone (double-clicked, or just though I'd done their turn when I hadn't).  A back-arrow would be REALLY useful. I realize that all of these can be addressed throught the API, but most people aren't PRO, and frankly I've found the solutions that are out there either obsolete or too complex to use, and gave up trying.  Initiative order is pretty fundamental to an RPG, and it really needs more integrated support in the base system.

Yeah, it would be great if rolling initiative from the character sheet would "just work", even if the token isn't selected.  The character sheet is the character, and the token is just a possible on-board representation of the character.  If you're controlling many characters by-token, then some generic "Initiative" button when selecting a token seems pretty reasonable.  Maybe an NPC/monster sheet where you have multiple copies on the board might be an exception to needing to select a token, but that's not the primary scenario for most players with character sheets in the games I've played.

I saw that. And thank you.

If this is appropriate here, and I realize this is not a quick thing, just a thought, perhaps having a sheet button if there is an associated sheet on the tracker would be good along with the ability to display things like HP (Or select a Bar or Attribute on sheet) maybe limit it to three or four so in the case of D&D things like HP, Passive Perception, AC could be displayed on the tracker?

Adding ideas related to the turn tracker and initiative seems like a good thing to me, so I'll restate that as: 6. Sheet buttons or fields on the tracker you can optionally link to sheet fields (hp, etc) if there is a sheet associated with that tracker entry, to display current values. These could also reference current/max values (for HP bar display or similar). Correct me if that wasn't what you meant. And I like the idea.  as DM, having a quick reference for things like HP or AC without having to click the token to see its bubbles would help me, and could free up some of the token bubbles for other uses (I use them to "last stealth roll", "elevation" when flying, and simiar, in addition to reporting sheet values. It's a nice alternative to adding more token bubbles, and real-estate around a token is in short supply, tracker windows can be larger.

Ken S. said: 1. Rolling initiative from the charsheet (5E OGL in my case) doesn't automatically add the character's initiative to the turn tracker.  This means that nearly every combat, one of my players will forget to select their token and roll from their sheet, and either lose a roll or force me to interrupt what I'm doing to add it manually. And yes, I have a token-action macro for people to roll that adds the roll to the tracker, but some people like working from their sheet. This might be a bear to address because the entries on the initiative tracker are linked to tokens, not character sheets.  You can still roll from the sheet, you just need the token selected to tell the vtt which token the roll is for.  I expect that it works this way mainly for people running games, because you are likely to have multiple enemies that don't necessarily act on the same initiative but are all linked to the same sheet.  If the initiative is tied to the sheet rather than the tokens, then each time you roll for a sheet it will replace the original roll just like it does now when you reroll for a token.

@Ken S. You got it, no notes :) @Kraynic I can see that being an issue, perhaps a "Sync Initiative" toggle on the token side if there is an associated sheet? That way if its off it act as it does now, if on, it acts as requested. That can also have the benefit of having some sync and others not if its on the token side.

@Kraynic: I see your point regarding NPCs, but if a DM wants separate initiatives for a bunch of tokens linked to one sheet, they just have to roll from the tokens. I'm not proposing eliminating "select token and roll initiative", merely suggesting that if one isn't selected, a token on the table that was linked to the sheet could be located and used when someone rolls initiative from the sheet. And yes, it could be technically challenging, but the idea of suggestions is to provide feedback on things that would be useful, and let the Roll20 devs figure how if its possible/practical to implement. @D G.: that could work, but the DM would have to configure the token one way or the other.  I like rolling from the token actually. My concern is that my players (5E OGL sheet) sometimes select a token and use my "roll initiative" Token Action macro, and sometimes (if they had their sheet open for something), just click "initiative" on the sheet to roll, and forget to select their token.  I'd want to cover them either way, to avoid interrupting the start of the encounter with housekeeping to figure out what went wrong and fix it (which I seem to have to do a couple of times per play session). edit: typo.

I try to make sure that my players have only one way to initiate an action, or if they do have multiple ways then those all act in the same way. Not all of my players are comfortable with having multiple ways of doing things. For me as GM, I make use of the  GroupInitiative  and  Token Action Maker  MODS, so I rarely need to open an NPC's character sheet.

Andrew Searles said: Ken S. said:   5. I can't count how many times I've had to skip forward through a whole (long) order, because I accidentially skipped past someone (double-clicked, or just though I'd done their turn when I hadn't).  A back-arrow would be REALLY useful. Hey Ken S. I hear you on all of that. At the moment, we're focused on a few other areas but the turn tracker is something we're keeping a close eye on. We agree, there are a lot of things we'd like to change about it. Where we see some really quick wins, we're going to try to take them. For example, we just released a back button for the turn tracker that we hope will solve this specific problem. Sorry that has been an issue for far too long. I'll let you know if we see anything else that is a quick win. Thank you for your feedback! This sure aged well. Still nothing new on a reply a year ago saying it was at least being considered. So...where's the initiative tracker updates at?

Having the AC (visible only to GM) of each creature on the turn tracker would be such a time saver.

Visibility (of AC or other info) should probably be controlled by the sheet permissions, just as it is for things like token bubbles. Player's can use a quick reference for AC/HP/etc if they don't have their sheet open. And I have had a couple of father/son teams in my games over the years, and generally the dad's want to "help" and be a second controlling player for the son's character.  Eventually that changes :-)  but it is useful as they're learning the ropes. And using control permissions for visibility would cover that use case. In addition to the reverse arrow (#5),  you no longer have to select the token for initiative rollled from the sheet to post to the tracker (#1), so that was a big fix (you do have to have a token on the VTT for the character, but it works even when they're on the GM layer, which helps one of the DMs I play with quite a lot). I am surprised that Jumpgate doesn't appear to have done anything to the turn tracker so far, but they have been ironing out the issues with the new sheet system, and I can see wanting to have that working well before they link any other things to it. But while the buttons/info-displays suggestion (#6) could be problematic, more integrated controls (#3) and a round counter (#4, and yes I know you can add one manually), along with a "clear on close" reminder (#2) would certainly seem to be easy additions. But hopefully they just haven't had a chance to do anything to the tracker yet, and will get to it soon.