Jumping right into...

POPCORN

Many people have different variations or definitions for this one, but I'm gonna go with the version where players pick whoever goes after they do. Simple, straight forward, and honestly is super amazing for narrative heavy, cinematic games. That's it really.

I love this for games like Avatar: Legends and other Powered by the Apocalypse type games that are extremely combat tactics light, and are more concerned about the cool story. You can easily pass the turn to whoever is ready, and hence reduce the amount of waiting time between turns, creating a more beat by beat narrative that is both fast in-world and fast above table.

The cons are that the group has to be improv ready to some extend (or at least to the same level) and the GM or group should be ready to pass the spotlight and keep an eye out for people who have not had a turn or spotlight in awhile.

I've heard people complain about popcorn initiative but chances are you're already doing it without any prompts! Whenever you role play a scene, even in D&D, you're simply passing the conversation to whoever is ready to speak next! That's how simple it is, it isn't even labelled for conversation scenes.

Countdown

Time is set on a track or clock, and different actions cost a certain number of segments (e.g. a fast dagger would cost 1 segment but a big fireball could cost 5 or 6). You act whenever your track hits zero. Feng Shui and Hackamster are games I can think of that use a system like this. I love it for the physical "realism" it sort of provides, but mechanically this means that people need to get REALLY familiar with their abilities and if they commit to a big action, they have to weigh the risk of totally getting messed up before their next turn.

I love that it sort of syncs people up. I'd love to re-create this feel but with a different system. As a game designer, assigning a speed to every action is arbitrary, and if you play Magic: the Gathering, you know the difference between 1 and 2 cost of time on the track is way bigger than the cost of 2 to 3, and so on so forth. This means that 1 time cost abilities are a lot harder to balance and optimize - in relation to other abilities they may end up being either extremely powerful (in order to be worth still choosing over other long abilities) or extremely weak (meant for early game or inconsequential abilities). 

As a player, it's fun to guess what the enemies are going to do and how long it will take, and especially for spellcasters, it potentially makes martials more important as they need to protect the casters. 

If you know a high fantasy game that uses this, do let me know. I'd love to test it out.

Speed Sandwich

Simply put there are Fast and Slow characters - fast characters act before the enemies and slow characters act after. All characters roll for initiative against a set number, if they fail, they are slow, if they pass, they are fast. Sometimes, the GM may add slow enemies that act after slow characters. 

This is just another really quick system that recreates a bit of that JRPG feel to me, having PC - NPC - PC - NPC sort of vibe. Not much else to say here! It feels close to zipper initiative. I like this more for board games and card games than I do for TTRPGs. I think it's just a feel to me.

Not much to add on to pros and cons here - it's fast, it's simple, if it's crowded on the enemy side, good luck!

The System I'm Working On

I'm working on a game that's a rogue-lite, but I also want it to be fast. I want to simulate skill over thinking whilst maintaining that turn-order aesthetic. In the previous post, I also mentioned that I'm really inspired by Final Fantasy 10s initiative and how it can move around.

I don't know what to call it, but there's a turn track with 10 slots on it. Players roll for initiative once, and place themselves somewhere on the track depending on how well they roll. Then start with any characters going up from 1 on the track - then whenever a character acts, they have to expend a resource (usually an action) to do something, then move a defined set spaces up. This means that if you act fast and the next person is potentially 3 or 4 positions after you, you could act multiple times - but to generate inconsistency and randomness here, I'd implement some sort of card system that pushes players between 1 to 10 slots forward. Most cards being 10s - as since this track has 10 slots, it basically means the player doesn't move.

Now this track is something that the player characters can interact with as well. Speed (such as from games like Hades or Hollow Knight) can be simulated with frequency on the turn track, rather than a number. In D&D, you get your initiative, and sure you act first, but other than that, you're still acting once per round. With this system, some players may get to act more than once, and some players may only get to act once per turn track. 

It sounds really abstract right now because it is. It's still being developed, but I've done a few playtests, and it's looking promising. Players are thinking of combos and tactics. Will keep y'all posted as I test this system more!

That's All Folks

Let me know if you've got a system not mentioned here or if there's a system you'd like to try and don't forget, who's awesome? You're awesome.