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Elective Action Order – An Initiative Variant for your Toolbox

by Mike on 21 September 2026

There are lots of ways to handle initiative in different RPGs. D&D has a variant which many of us use — roll a d20, add your dex mod, and go in order from highest to lowest.

Shadowdark has an around-the-table initiative that's always on. It's hard to beat for its simplicity.

Dragonbane has an easy system we can port over to other RPGs. You deal out numbered cards for each of the characters and each monster or group of monsters. Flip them over and you know who goes first and who goes last – from lowest to highest number. A simple suit of a deck of cards works well for this, or you can use the almighty index card.

Daggerheart has no initiative at all. Characters just go when it makes sense for the story.

I ran a Daggerheart game recently, online with six people. With so many players and the typical issues with voice lag, I worried we'd either have people talking over one another regularly or people staying silent to avoid interrupting someone. So I took an idea from Fate Condensed and brought in "elective action order" initiative.

This style of initiative has a couple of other names. Some call it "Balsera Style" initiative after Leonard Balsera who first came up with the concept. It’s also been referred to as “popcorn initiative”. I stole an additional trick I originally saw in a game by Kevin Kulp of Swords of the Serpentine and other Gumshoe-based games.

Here's how Elective Action Order initiative works.

The GM decides who starts off the scene and asks that player "who goes after you?". The player states who goes after them and then takes their turn. When they’re done, the player they passed the next turn to decides who goes after them and then takes their turn, and so on.

It can look something like this:

"Z'hari, you're up front and see the corrupted dryads coming your way. Who goes next?"

"Eve goes next. Then Z'hari rushes forward and attacks!" (dice are rolled, actions are figured out, the turn is resolved).

"Eve, you see Z'hari cleave into the first dryads but one standing in the back looks like they're getting ready to blast some fire your way. Who goes after you?"

"Chanterelle goes after me. Eve flies up and blasts the rear dryad with an arcane bast!"

and so on.

Tracking Turns

When running a game like this, you can keep a list of the characters in front of you, either on paper or in a digital notepad. Put an N next to the character who's elected to go next and an X when a character goes. This way you can let people know who hasn't gone yet. If you're playing in person, you can use a coin or a card in front of each player. Face up and they haven't gone yet. Face down and they have. If you have a lot of players, it can be tough to remember who's next after the current character so you might still want to jot it down so you don't have to ask every time.

When Do the Monsters Go?

In Elective Action Order initiative, if monsters typically take their own turn, the players also decide when monsters go. It makes sense that the players would have monsters go last, except then the monsters might go twice before the characters go again so sometimes players want to have the monsters go before the end of the round.

But here's why Elective Action Order initiative works so well with Daggerheart – monsters don't take turns in Daggerheart! Instead, the GM spotlights a monster whenever a character fails a check, rolls with fear, or the GM uses a fear to spotlight a monster. So now monsters slot in as the characters take their actions using Elective Action Order initiative.

I think Elective Action Order initiative works well in Daggerheart, and any game (often "Powered by the Apocalypse" games) where monsters don't take traditional turns but instead activate based on the rolls of the characters.

Darrington Press even included Elective Action Order initiative in one of their adventures, The Wish Thief.

If you're running Daggerheart and find the open nature of turns too free-flowing – leading to potential issues ensuring everyone's getting their share of the spotlight – consider trying out Elective Action Order initiative. It's a simple system that keeps the cinematic flair alive.

For any other RPG, Elective Action Order is another style of initiative you might keep in your toolbox. If you think it might be a fun way to keep the story flowing in your game, give it a try.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video.

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Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers.

Talk Show Links

Here are links to the sites I referenced during the talk show.

Last week I also posted a couple of YouTube videos on Hunt For Ibbalan — Dragon Empire Prep Session 81 and Move Steps Forward – Lazy D&D & RPG Tips.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Avoid upstaging the characters with fancy recognizable NPCs from the fictional world.
Give the players a map and details of a location when it makes sense that they’d get access to it.
Break character and explain what’s going on outside of the story when it helps move the story forward.
When running a published adventure, don’t bother prepping what the adventure already covers.
Write your own notes when a published adventure doesn’t give you what you need the way you want it.
Give boss monsters a way to break out of single save or suck debilitating abilities.
Keep your group size to somewhere between four and six players. Be willing to play with as few as three or even two!

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