You are here: Level One / Blog / Pros and Cons of Greyhawk Initiative Dungeons and Dragons is a game that has changed dramatically over the years. If you are a Fifth Edition player who went back to one of Gygax’s play tests, it’d be fairly hard for you to keep up. What few players understand, though, is that every change in the way the game has played has been hard fought. When change comes to Dungeons and Dragons, it’s usually speaking. Look at the change from Second Edition to Third, or Third to Fourth. Major systems get overhauls and players tend to get angry. The D&D community has split dozens of times over seemingly minor rule changes, with players tending to stick by their choices. In 2017, a new rule change was proposed. The so-called Greyhawk Initiative System would change the way that combat order works in Dungeons and Dragons. While this might seem like a minor change on the outside, it’s something that might fundamentally change the way that one of D&D’s core systems works. Future players must not only consider the changes that this system makes in the game, but both the pros and cons of adopting this radically different system for initiative. https://litrpgreads.com/blog/pros-cons-greyhawk-initiative
Ouch, yeah, don't want to get in the middle of that fight. The flip from 3.5 to 4 turned into a minor civil war. An advantage that the modern table top gamer has over what it was like years ago is the laptop and tablets that can be used. For those of us who really only had paper and pencils, every system had to be evaluated on what benefit did it bring to the game and how much was there a trade-off in added complexity and time. If some of this could be automated and the players only have to deal with results, then adding time and complexity are no longer a factor and it can be just viewed through the lens of how much richness it brings to the gaming session. Rolemaster really expanded combat into a very rich system, with added results, and with added danger to even experienced and high-level characters, however, the tradeoff was an increase in the time needed to level-up a character and flipping through multiple pages of charts for combat results. Not to mention a large increase in activity recording for experience awards. Automating some of that would increase DM and player set-up time, but, it can be done out of a gaming session and the game itself could flow along much smoother.
