F(r)ictional Initiative - The moment before motion

 Who Moves First? Who Dares Speak?

This is only possibly by way of The Bad Doctors post on Sloppy Drippy Combat.
Let's get Sloppy-Drippi'er.

There is a moment before motion.
Before sword or seduction.
Before plea or pact or plunge.
A breath hangs — unclaimed.
Who will take it?

Sometimes you know.
Sometimes it’s written in the rhythm of the world.
But sometimes it isn’t.
And that’s when you tally the reasons.

In my life, fuck linear storytelling. Fuck any storytelling. Fuck linear fiction. Just fuck. Moments proliferate in extasy and panic and dwelling.  Nick Sullo

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A Procedure for F(r)ictional Initiative

If you don’t know who goes first —
because it’s messy, chaotic, pulsing with tension —
then tally the reasons.
Recognize my italics. Things may flip, who goes when and calls for what.

• In combat or intimidation, tally reasons the other side should fear you.
  The side most feared declares whether they go first or last.
  (Fear can spring. But Fear is also pause. Fear may decide to wait.)

• In social fraternizing, tally reasons you revere the other side.
  The side most revered goes first.
  (Respect demands the floor, and if you are fraternizing, you want the others grandeur)

• In bargaining, tally reasons the other should want to bargain with you.
  The side with least reasons to trade decides if the other should make the first offer, or if they want to
  (Trade is all tactics, and now the play is with more open cards. Feeds into leverage)

• In sex, dream, or duel, invent your own rubric. It may be orthogonal 

  • “Things of beauty I see.” versus OR BETTER YET WITH “Reasons I want them to touch me.” I DONT KNOW HOW HAHA!
    Let them touch concurrently, or claim the reason to make the touch more loving, to ask how and why and make it hit good.

  • “Truths I cannot bear to swallow.” versus "Reasons to fear those that guard the king as we accuse him"

Whoever wins the tally seizes or surrenders the moment, depending on how the situation is geared.
You figure that gearing out, that is the de in design. A hole blown in the system to make it play. Make it fit your table and your idea of a situation. Don't have a clue? Ask your table. They don't wanna respond? Guess this system is not for them, and that is all ok.

If it’s a tie — flip a coin, roll a die, test, whatever you do when you seek mechanical resolution.* 
Or Breathe together. Decide: “We speak as one,” and blur the boundary in grand melée.
Then it gets really messy.    

* This is the least interesting part, and what people tend to focus on. Wisdom scores and what-nots, a mathematical epileptic fit that collapses into a little number that puts you on a neat row. No thankies.

Reasons to fear. Gollorr

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Grand Mêlée: The Joy of the Mess

And this is only made possible because of A Knight at the Opera (what a name!)

Once the tally (or blur) is settled, let it spiral.
Here’s how I used to do it—with tokens, tension, and shouting.
Let everyone have their personal cool token, because material matters. 

1. The GM defines the situation.
   Don’t rush. Let the air simmer.
   Frame the moment with pressure, mood, and weight.

2. If the world threatens the characters, telegraph with surgical intent, and make claims from the friction. This is how, in Victories & Miseries:

   • Standard Threats: Describe the next motion and its likely consequences.
     What happens if no one acts? Be specific.
     If uncertain, consult the impact table. Test, Roll dice. Play forward, but hold the consequence.

   • Swift Threats: Ask for Traits.
     If no one has a matching counter-trait, the threat hits, no counter-action.
     Tarrying is punishment. Let the consequences unfold.

   • Hidden or Smart Threats: Offer only hints at the souce, not its concrete position.
     Glimpses. Tell-tale signs. Let them react in the dark.

   • Delayed Consequences: Decide the impact now.
     Then leave a trace in the fiction. A bloody glove. A twitch.
     The damage will come. Players can change how, degrees of hurt, not if the poison courses through their veins.

3. Players ask questions.
   Clarify. Hesitate. Feel things out.
   Get the fiction into your fingers.

4. Players can choose to declare a plan — and slam down a token.
   Intent. Action. Claim something to go faster or slower. To poise yourself,
   If your hands are full, you haven’t committed. This is ok.
   You’re holding your breath. Token in hand.

5. The GM lines up the resolution.
   Start with the simplest intent, or the one that makes sense to come first.
   Or reverse it — most complex first. (I am not your mother)
   Use the logic of the F(r)ictional tally to frame the order.
   Listen to the players offers. Move things around if they claim a reason. Let them lie in wait. Make a mess of 1-8. It needs to bend systems to be fictionally real. Dare.

   • Fear waits, prepared.

   • Reverence steps forward, and halts others.

   • Trade can reveal.

   • Beauty aches for counter action and defines it.

6. Together, resolve the action.
   Anyone who hasn’t put down a token can still act. They cannot refute what has happened, but they can do either of the following by putting their token down now

   • Interject the moment right after. If they want to interject while or before, they need an instinct.

   • Ride the moment and capitalize on it.

7. The GM decides and resolves the other side.

   • Do they become part of this moment?

   • Or do they spark the next? (back to step 6.)

8. After resolving, remaining players may now commit.
   Token by token.
   Until all are spent.
   You are now in the mêlée.

9. Repeat. Escalate. Scream. Swoon.
   The fiction is catching fire.
   Ride that adrenaline.
   Once everyone has acted, return to step 1.

Melée. Jacub Rebelka

What Counts as a Reason?

Anything true.

Not just flavor. Not (just) threat.
These are offered truths declared into the fiction,
meant to be invoked tactically, or revoked when the world turns.
It is not "reasons they fear me" it is reasons they should fear me. 
Beauty in the eye of the beholden.

• “I have a blood-red blade, caked in old blood.”

• A round later, their opponent: “But now my dagger is soaked — and its blood is freshly yours.”

They are leverage. They are tempo.
They are a shifting field of fictional weight.
That blade may help the fleeing foot.

• “I wear his crown, blood-wet.”

• “She loved me first.”

• “I carry the ruin of your family.”

• “I was beautiful in the light.”

• “He named me before he named you.”

Sometimes the GM adds one:
A whisper in the wind, a trembling wall, a memory made real. The threats hinted at can be these.
Treat these as hints, or invites, or a dare to act.
It is also a what to come, a telegraphed moment. 
A dire promise.

If you claim the moment with one, you claim it with truth.
Your reasons can be challenged. Answered. Reversed.
They should be.
Fiction as time with teeth.

Are the fish reasons to fear the mermaid, and is the net a reason for it to fear you? Pixkefir

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When Do You Tally Again?

Whenever the fiction shifts.
Whenever someone sees an opening.
Whenever someone wants it more.

Shout it. Moan it. Reveal it.

“FEAR ME, FOR I HAVE SLAIN YOUR LEADER.”
“RIGHT THERE — AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN.”
“I REMEMBER YOUR VOWS, AND SO DO THE DEAD.”

Write them down if you like. (I am not your mother.)
But hold them like spears or like bags.
Wield them like proof for a murder you are about to commit.
Wield them like lipstick on a kiss to come.

Do we only tally new reasons, do we reconsider old ones, do we count them all so it necessitates writing?!?
I am not your mother.
What i do at my table is vibey: We take only new ones, unless an old one is especially poignant, still oppresive in its fictional gravity, or because someone has it on the tip of their tongue.
Because that is real fear and reverence there.
And I want it to bleed to and from the fictional world.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.

Seeing those corpses would make me re-tally. Kevin Nowlan

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Why Use This?

Because initiative isn’t about timing.
It’s about heat.
About what’s trembling under the skin.
About who the moment is looking at.

So if you don’t know who moves first —
ask:
Who must respond?
Who burns louder?
Who fears?
Who reveres?
Who is already trembling with truth?

That’s who.
Let them act.
Let them not.

And if the other dares to interrupt…
Well.
Tally again.

A kiss is a reason. Jake Wyatt

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Fear me. Revere me. Ache for me.
I wrote this down.
Now you respond.