There are two different points being made here: Movement/Ranges and Initiative/Turn Order. I want to take them in turn. This is the longest/hardest to explain so this is the first post.
Movement/Ranges
I agree that the zones and how movement works is one of the pillars of Shadowdark. Basically, there are 4 zones - listed as you put them as: Out, Far, Near and Close. [Although Close really really constricted!] You can visualize them as circles with Close being the center or as linear range bands, as I did, but either way there are these four. I abstracted the words into numbers for a reason which I'll come to in a minute, but, for the moment consider relativity. What is Near or Far for one PC is not Near or Far for another PC, especially when they move between zones.
Ranges in SD are deliberately vague. The 5, 30, 60...feet are rules of thumb not hard and fast numbers. I think having actual number of feet as examples is useful, but is also misleading. What SD says about movement is that a PC can move
Near in a round, but what does it mean to move
Near?" I don't think the spirit of SD is to interpret Near as 30 feet, but rather a zone, so I interpret this to mean from one "zone" to a neighboring "zone" in a round, ie. from Near to Close, from Far to Near, from Out to Far, etc. Visualized on the circle (or range bands) it is literally one area to its neighboring area. Right?
Now, another point about movement, the rules also state that a PC can move "
Near" and then "
Near" again if that is their only action in a round. Given my interpretation, that must mean a PC could move from Out to Far and then to Near, or from Far to Near and then to Close in one Round, but that would be their complete turn.
My final point on Ranges deals with relativity.
Picture each individual PC, NPC, and Monster has a circle around them (close, near, far, out). As each individual moves their circle moves with them. As the circle intersects with the other individual circles we have Venn diagrams where we can determine the relative distance between each individual on the battlefield, distances expressed as Close, Near, Far, or Out. A computer could handle this easily, I can't always in my head. I can represent it on paper or in a post or in a post for clarity, but very abstractly. Consider my table for a minute: 3 = Out, 2 = Far, 1 = Near, 0 = Close. Then on the other side of the circle: 0 = Close, -1 = Near, -2 = Far, -3 = Out. I didn't use the words because of relativity. Looking at the table I posted for
Round 3 Begins note that
Gb, Gb,
G1, G2, G3, F, U, N, and Bw are all in Zone 2, they are all are in Close (should be Near actually) Range with each other performing melee combat. Willow and Wendel are in -2, which is two zones from where the scrum is taking place...that is Far from that combat for them, so can only do ranged attacks. If Willow moves forward into the same zone as a Goblin she would be moving Near to it. That's how I'm visualizing things.
Now, there IS A PROBLEM with my table and that is Close (or 0)...technically it shouldn't exist. Reasonably, we should have just Out, Far, Near, Far, Out. Everyone in Near can fight melee with everyone in Near. Far can range attack to Near or to Far. It could look like this:
- Simple UDT.png (2.26 KiB) Viewed 1838 times
It still doesn't deal with two Individuals both being in FAR and wanting to hit each other with swords, though. Say Fergus runs past the Goblins and into a zone beyond them...he is now Near to Goblins in that zone, but Far from those he left behind, yes? I hop you can see the problem?
What I think I'll do is keep my linear table
privately to help me visualize positioning (same zone = Near, next zone = Far). I think I will I
post the Simplified UDT for you?