Initiative Without Dice? [Optional Core]

In the Optional System, the Team with the Edge gets to act first.
The problem is establishing which Team gets that honour. 

I am the Warden!!

During last week's recap of our first playtest session of High Plains Samurai, I mentioned the need for initiative in the game. On the surface, the idea sounds simple and viable because the majority of initiative rules in RPGs involve a dice roll and since the Optional System is a dice-rolling machine, this shouldn't be a big deal, right?

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. I had no idea how wrong that theory was.

Let's start by explaining how turn order works in Killshot, the original and only published version involving the Optional System. The main characters, AKA assassins, pretty much always go first. Because it is a game of strategy and planning, players must set a plan in motion and will likely always go first. That works for a realistic and tactical game like Killshot, but it's shit in a martial arts clone. It provides a near automatic victory for the heroes assisted by their bonus options, Pass reactions, and everything else. The only other means to force heroes to go next involves villains and thugs applying triggers before the fight scene begins, but that can get old and tired after a while. And what if the heroes set down a trigger designed to go off when the thugs' trigger activates, huh? It can potentially reach ridiculous heights.

Skill

I am the Warden!!

Skills!! It's time to talk about skills. Last week's series of posts on opposed rolls and difficulty dice brought up some concerns regarding the simplicity/complexity of a mere d20 vs d20 concept. Some people thought the entire idea was overly simplified while another (who shall remain anonymous here, but he knows who he is) had a rather intrigue calculation I wanted to quote.

So, be careful with costs. Doubling the number of people rolling and doing math on each roll makes each decision take longer.

And 1d20+strength vs 1d20+door quality is the same as (1d20-1d20)+strength vs door quality. And (1d20-1d20) is very similar to (1d20+1d20-21). So what you actually did was take 1d20+strength vs door quality, to 2d20+strength vs door quality+10.5.

It goes a bit deeper than this. When you roll 2d20, you don't get the same distribution as 1d20*2. A better approximation is actually 1d20*square root(2)+6, with "critical" fumble rules for rolls of natural 1 and 20. From the narrative of success/failure in a given game, you won't be able to distinguish between a scaled and shifted 1d20 from a game where you roll 2d20.

Now, I'm not saying that "both sides rolling" isn't a good idea: but rather, "both sides rolling" by itself adds costs without changing outcomes. There needs to be more "meat" to it than just "more people rolling".

This last part brings us to our next segment on the Optional System: skills.