When I described the best ways to track initiative in Dungeons & Dragons, I showed how I track initiative by draping named initiative tents over my dungeon master’s screen. I favor this method because I like a visible reference to the characters’ and especially the monsters’ stats. At the table, paging through the monster manual or finding monster pages shuffled in my other papers takes me too long. Hanging key numbers in plain sight speeds play.

Collected Monster Initiative Tents

When I fill a monster’s initiative tracker, I save it for future games. Over a couple of years, I’ve accumulated hundred of tents, from aboleth to zombie. I appreciate this resource, but when the reuse proved helpful, I wished for monster tents that could hold more information: all the saves and an fuller outline of actions. So I created bigger trackers for more complicated monsters. These large tents work better for aboleth, while the small ones still work fine for zombie. My new design means I’ll be rewriting older tents as needed.

Download a PDF of my blank tents.

My player tents include spaces for AC and passive perception, plus space for up to 8 separate initiative scores. As an extra time saver, I have players pre-roll initiative. During the a game session, I never slow for initiative. When an encounter starts, I hand all the tents to a player for sorting, and then I drape the folds on my screen.

Some helpful players won’t wait for initiative. At the end of every encounter, they re-order the tents. I never have to call for initiative. While this skips a dramatic moment, it also blends the line between combat and the rest of the game.

Top Dog Games makes a line of pre-printed Stat Trackers that already come printed with monster information.