Like any GM, I needed a way to track initiative. Instead of writing it down, using cards, or buying one of the many doodads available online – I thought I’d create my own.

It needed to be cheap, easy to make, quick to set up and clearly readable at a glance.

If you want to make the same, here’s all you need:

• Wooden clothespins (double check the quality, some are rougher than others making them difficult to write on)
• Marker and pencil
• Ruler/measuring tape
• Index cards/cardstock/paper
• Cutting knife/scissors
• GM screen (or equivalent)

Optionally:

• White/Blue tack (temporary adhesion of the initiative numbers to your DM screen)

How To

Player and Monster Markers

Start by writing down each player character name on both sides of a clothespin – doing so for each character in your campaign. Then create four clothespins with the numbers “1” to “4” written on them – for the monsters.

I recommend cutting a piece of index card to help store them when not in use, like shown below.

Initiative Bar

Cut a narrow strip of paper to roughly 1,5cm by 27cm (this fits neatly at the top of the second panel on the 2024 GMs screen). Then mark each centimeter along its length with pencil, and every 5cms with a marker (clothespins are roughly 1cm wide, so each block can neatly hold a pin).

Then write the numbers 1 to 27 in each of the corresponding pencil blocks. Optionally you can write the larger categories (0-5, 5-10 etc.) to help visually segment your sections.

As you can probably tell from the images, my setup started with only the black pen, and I added the pencil numbers during a second iteration. Always feel free to make your own changes, it’s your system now.

This allows any initiative from 0-27 to be tracked. If someone scores higher than 27 or lower than 0 you’ll have to adapt, but that luckily doesn’t happen super often, and rarely happens more than once.

Once you’re done writing the numbers, use White Tack to attach it to the top of your GM screen. I really like white tack for GM screen notes, as it’s easy to shuffle things around anytime you learn it has a better place.

Roll Initiative!

Then wait for combat to start, and your players to roll initiative. Go around the table and ask for their scores. If a monster isn’t on the field yet (e.g. they barge in on initiative count 20), you can hold that pin behind your screen and put it up as soon as you get to that initiative count.

What I really like about this system is that you can gather player initiative in any order, and adjust/resolve matches as you go. Which is something I struggled when I was still writing initiatives down.

Finally, assign each group of monsters in your combat tracker a number ranging from “1” to “4” and use the respective pins to track their initiative.

This little system has saved me a bunch of time, made things clearer for the players, and allowed me focus on making combat fun and exciting. Let me know if you build your own – I’d love to see what tweaks you come up with!

I tried playing without my GM’s screen once, and as soon as combat turned around I had my players ask me where the trackers were!