If you’ve been playing around with SyncRPG, either in our public events like the Riverford Freelancers and Escape from fort Nurovd or running your own game, you’ve probably seen or used the initiative window in the virtual tabletop, found under Window > Initiative.

All of the campaign files provided on SyncRPG come with a “roll initiative” macro built into the “Disc/Misc” panel. The players can roll their initiative themselves, or a GM can select all PC and NPC tokens and mash the macro once to roll it for everyone, and sort the list in the initiative window. You can even add new characters to the initiative mid-combat if you like.

Token hidden to the players don’t show up in their initiative windows, but they show up in yours with a gray background. You can use this to keep track of all the hidden baddies without worrying about the players knowing what’s going on behind the GM screen.

Once the initiative is set, you can move through the players sequentially by hitting the “Next” button at the top of the initiative window. If you accidentally move past a character, you can click the little arrow next to it and click on “Previous.” The rounds will be tracked automatically as you loop back around to the top of the list, helping to track the duration of spells and other effects.

When players or your monsters inevitably want to delay or ready actions, you can use the “Toggle Hold” command to mark a token as holding in initiative. Their name plate will align to the other side of the window, letting everyone know they’re waiting. When they come off delay, hit Toggle Hold again, and manually drag them to their new position in initiative. Continue as normal, mashing “Next.”

When you’re done with a combat, click on “Remove All” to clear out the initiative list, and reset the round counter. This only really matters if you’re planning to use the same map for another encounter, because the initiative windows are unique to a map.

There are a few other handy options available under that arrow icon. If you’re running an encounter where you’d like the enemy tokens visible but their initiative hidden for some reason, you can use the “Hide NPCs” option so the players have no idea when exactly the NPCs will get to act. I generally don’t like to restrict my players with “Lock Movement,” which only allows them to move their tokens when they have initiative, but if you find your players to be a bit overzealous with their movement and exploration, this setting will help keep a handle on things.

Discuss 'Advanced Initiative Usage' on the SyncRPG forums