Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D still acts first in all of our rounds of gaming.

Imagine a table full of gamers. Each one of them has a character with multiple options available to them. Now think of all of those characters in the same scene with a giants, a dragon, and a band of ogres. How do you keep all of those characters straight and make sure that everyone gets to take their turn? We roll for initiative, and let the dice tell us who gets to take what turn and when. We’ll explore how 5e D&D works, as well as variations that exist in the game.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition may have some of the most confusing rules surrounding initiative and combat rounds. Most people that have played multiple editions of D&D are familiar with the idea of a surprise round, but AD&D 1e didn’t actually have a surprise round, it actually had a process for determining the number of segments lost to surprise, and the only actions that could be used against the surprised characters are actions that took the same or fewer segments as the segments lost to surprise. Apparently it’s usually not a surprise that someone with a great sword is going to attack you.