Recent threads that I and others started got me thinking about Initiative in SR 6E. Here is a house rule idea. I'm not saying its a good or bad idea; YMMV. Its just something that came to me. I'm interested in what others think about it. It's not a new idea; other games have used similar systems (I'm pretty sure the old "World of Darkness: Combat" supplement had nearly exactly this system in it.)
Under this house rule, your Initiative is not your turn order. It is your ability to make choices on the battlefield about when to act and to gain information about what is going on. The higher your initiative, the more aware you are, the more ready you are for action, compared to others.
Therefore, the order of play is altered. Instead of starting turns with the person highest in the initiative order, you start with the person with the LOWEST initiative. Lets call that person Alice. They state what they plan to do on their turn in general terms: "I"m going to run to that car, take cover, and shoot at Bob", for example. Then they pause. At this point, you work your way up the initiative scale, and check; does anyone want to take their turn before Alice does? If someone does (say, Chuck), then Chuck states their intent in general terms. "I'm going to fire at Alice!" At this point, Alice's turn is put on "pause" in a sense, and we resolve Chuck's turn in the same fashion; check if anyone with a higher initiative score wants to go first. Eventually you'll reach a state where no one wants to "interrupt" anyone. Now you let the people who declared turns take them in a last in first out manner. In the case above, first Chuck takes his turn, then Alice. All are obliged to try to follow their stated intent, although circumstances may prevent them from doing it partially (or at all) in which case its really up to the GM and the player to work out what is reasonable.
After that is done, all people who took their turns are "done" with (I) actions for that round. They can still take (A) actions if they have any available actions left. You then check to see who is left with the lowest initiative and do the process again. Keep doing this until everyone has had their turn and an opportunity to take (I) actions. Then, that's the end of the round; do end of round stuff, reset everyone's actions, and start a new round.
POTENTIAL BENEFITS OF THIS SYSTEM: High initiative, already valuable, is much more valuable under this system. Also, once you have finished a combat round, it can lead to a more "natural" seeming narrative of what happened. Its more tactical and creates more opportunity for interesting choices.
POTENTIAL DRAWBACKS TO THIS SYSTEM: The narrative may be more natural, but the flow is more complicated, and there is more "process time" to figure out who is actually taking a turn; this could take some people out of the moment and make combat seem more artificial. You need some way to track who has taken their turn and who hasn't that is reliable and clear. Remember intents can be a problem in high tension moments; if a stack of people all "interrupt" Alice, by the time Alice gets to take her turn she might have completely forgotten what she was going to do.
Anyway, its an idea. I'm not sure if it is good one. The crunchy 19 year old gamer in me thinks "that is SO AWESOME!", but the laid back 50 year old GM in me thinks "geez, what a nightmare to keep track of".
As a slight variation, to make it less complicated to track, you can say that the "interrupted" person is under no obligation to stick to their original stated intent when their turn comes around, but if you do that then I think you also need to give a new chance for "interruption". But that then makes having the lowest initiative conceivably a very frustrating place to be; you keep being asked what you want to do, but then not being able to do it!
