I was at a meetup game the other week and was watching a new GM struggle to remember the initiative order of the players and the NPCs. After the game ended, I asked if they wanted to hear a cool trick I came up with to remember initiative and track HP at the table with little prep. They said sure, and I outlined the trick that has saved my life in running D&D or action / initiative heavy games over the last few years. I call it DRAWING YOUR INITIATIVE and I can’t believe I haven’t yet written an article on it.
Drawing Your Initiative
This system is super simple, and requires a small paradigm shift in thinking, but helps out incredibly if you are the type of game master who forgets the order or names of characters / npcs often. Here’s the process.
- Take your sheet of scrap paper (any size will do, but a bigger one leaves room for more info) and draw the shape of the table somewhere near the top.
- Point from left to right and ask for players initiatives, then mark them down based on their approximate positions at the table. Bonus: Write their character names next to the initiative number.
- Draw a small table (or just mark it in a space at the bottom) and put in the enemies initiative and any reminders (A, B, Fighter 1, Mage Red Cloak, etc.) to denote the NPC.
- Draw a line under the NPC initiative and then write the current HP, marking it off and scratching it off as the NPC gets hit.
This simple visual trick merges the physical space of the table and gives you an easy reminder for the quick information you need. You can expand it by making notes next to the players and NPC names (a C for charmed, a D for disadvantage, etc.) and scratching it off is easy. If you keep the concept to a Top for PCS, Bottom for NPCS and use an 8.5 by 11 piece of paper, you’ll have plenty of expansion or note space.
Hopefully this helps some of the GMs out there who struggle with keeping track of initiative order and HP for the crunchier games. If you’ve got a clever initiative trick, I’d love to hear about it. I’m always up for new ideas to incorporate into my games.
That’s a cool technique!
My favored setup is a little more labor-intensive, but I like a stack of index cards, one per player or monster. Top of the stack is whoever’s turn it is currently, and when that turn is over, flip the card to the bottom of the stack. You can use the cards to track monster hit points, and it’s also handy for things like conditions or ongoing damage, especially when stuff has a countdown or an end condition. So you can jot down, say, “Frightened (save ends)” to remember to make the save, and if the save is made, then cross the condition out. Similarly something like “Ongoing fire 5 (3)” for three rounds, and each round gets a hatch mark until it ends.
Where I think it stands out is that when you’re assembling the stack at the start of combat when everyone rolls initiative, you can also add a special card for “end of round” to know when you’re back to the top of the order. So basically once the stack is put together, the initiative numbers don’t matter anymore; it’s just next person, next person, next person until you start over. What I like about that is when actions are delayed or initiative order is changed for whatever reason, you can just take the person’s card out and then slip it back into the new initiative order seamlessly!
Cool idea!
I use static initiative. I have a chart that has all the relevant info I need (as a GM) on the chart and each character is placed in initiative order. During combat, I use colored paperclips to denote when NPCs go.
Cool trick indeed, I use it at work to remember names during meeting !
Another one : you seem to count monster hp from full to down (15 -> 10 -> 3) I rather count the damage they took (adding is usually easier than substracting) so in this case it would be 0(15)-> 5 -> 12
I can’t remember exactly what generated the idea, but I think I was out to eat with some people and saw the hostess stand’s computer system with all the tables and seat numbers.
Why count HP down on your monsters? Count damage up – it is much easier, mentally, to add than to subtract. Write the HP total as you do now, but then put a line beneath it, then start counting up from zero until you hit (go past) the total.
I’ve done that too and if I’m using the same HP for each enemy, it works well. The one benefit to counting down is that I can quickly gauge how “bad” the monsters look when the NPCs ask which one is damaged most. I can still do that comparing the two numbers (damage done and total HP), it just feels easier to count down for how MY brain is wired.