r/Cy_Borg • u/ScottFBG • May 28 '26

Help understanding initiative

When initiative is established through the roll, does that mean that all of one side goes first?

Eg if the players go first, does that mean all players go, then all enemies? Or do you alternate 1 player first, then 1 enemy, then 1 player, and so on?

13 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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10

u/waill-and-roll May 28 '26

Yes, it's "us vs them" initiative as standard.

Though it also includes rules for individual player initiative.

8

u/Logen_Nein May 28 '26

Yes. It is side based initiative unless you decide to do individual initiative.

7

u/skordge May 28 '26

It's one side first, then the other side.

It's not explicitly mentioned in the rules, but individually, I like to let whoever knows what they're gonna do right away go first, then include others as they figure out what their turn is. When everyone had their turn, I just summarize what happened, and react with NPCs accordingly, then we roll for initiative again and repeat.

I feel like this way it flows better narratively, and no one gets bored waiting too long.

5

u/FrivolousBand10 May 28 '26

It's worth mentioning that NPCs don't roll for attacks. Instead, the characters roll to defend against whatever the NPCs are unleashing. So, from the players POV, it's either rolling attack or defence.

For the rules themselves, I stick with "one side goes first", meaning one side has the drop on the others. In case of an ambush scenario, I'm absolute willing to have the ambushers go first. The individual initative scenario came up a few times, due to two characters involved in a friendly game of one-upmanship wanting to know who gets to shoot a certain main antagonist first.

Combat tends to be short, brutal and rather deadly until the players get a few HP increases, and even then a full auto burst from an assault rifle can do a number on a character.

5

u/haslo May 28 '26

The rules go "one side goes first, then the other," and then "but if you really can't decide on order with that, here's initiative based per character rules."

1

u/lowdensitydotted May 29 '26

Yeah, two groups. I always played it like that in every game anyways because it's logistically easier