Savage Worlds Initiative for OSR Games

Alright, so this probably isn't anything new or overly creative, but I figured it was about time to get something on my empty blog. 

I'm an unabashed fan of Savage Worlds. It's my go-to system for low-prep games with newbies to the hobby when I want to do something sufficiently outside of standard fantasy. It's light, intuitive, and the initiative system is really fun to use, since it requires you to have a deck of cards on the table, and tempts with the reward of a bonus if you draw a joker. 

Unfortunately, the layout of the Savage Worlds core rulebook is utter crap. It's far too wordy for how light the system is, the layout is in an unintuitive order, and, in my opinion, it's just plain ugly. Fortunately, they're currently Kickstarting a new edition which, at the time of writing, is way, way over its goal with plenty of time to go.

For the benefit of everyone who runs OSR games, I've taken the liberty of reformatting the Savage Worlds initiative rules to be system-agnostic and shorter. I've also taken the liberty of switching the suit order back to the normal alphabetical, since literally every card game known to modern man uses that card ranking (Seriously, Pinnacle. Why?).

Anyway, here it is in its 200 word glory:

Use a single deck of playing cards with both Jokers left in to determine everyone’s Initiative. 

Deal in characters as follows:

• Every PC is dealt a single card. Any Henchmen under that Player’s control act on her initiative card as well. 

• Named or otherwise Significant Adversaries are also dealt a card.

• Each group of normal Adversaries are dealt a card, which they share. The GM can choose to split this up however she wants so as best to represent how the enemies are coordinated in combat.
• Once all Players and Adversaries have taken their turns, discard all cards and re-draw for the next round's order. 
• Shuffle: Shuffle the deck after any round in which a Joker was dealt.

The Countdown

• Once the cards are dealt, the Player or Adversary with the highest card goes first, followed by all others in normal descending order (Ace high, Deuce low).

• Ties are resolved by suit order: Clubs are first, then Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades (alphabetical order, the standards for most card games).

• When a Player draws a Joker, her character can go whenever she wants in the round, even interrupting another PC’s or Adversary’s action if she wants.
•  In addition, the character doubles all her ability bonuses on checks and saves until the end of the round, regardless of whether she has acted yet.

Yep, that's it. If you want to modify it to accommodate particularly fast enemies or PCs, have said character redraw if they draw a card below a certain value (SW uses 5 for its Quick feat).

Hopefully some of you will find this useful. It's easy to slap into most games. Equally hopefully is that this will force me to start posting semi-regularly. Fingers crossed!