In one of Chirine's blog posts or video-casts he mentions that he -and Prof. Barker did as well- follows initiative common to the Minnesota area gamers. I was wondering does this have it's roots in Blackmoor and what did the first initiative rules look like? I don't have access to the resources (FFC etc) that other posters have and it intrigues me a lot.

We were using dice rolls to determine the order of movement in the late 60's with games like Korn's (WW II man to man combat) and Fight for the Skies (earlier version of Dawn Patrol), both of which we were playing several years before I met Dave Arneson.

Was the term "Initiative" used? I noticed that there is no mention of initiative in the early EPT and the published version refers to it as a "Reaction Time" roll. I've noticed Mike Mornard using that term before.

Also, EPT has the concept of the "dying blow" allowing a character killed earlier in the round to still make his attack.

Are either of these things from Dave's game? I assumed they were.

I honestly don't remember if we called it initiative or not. It could simply have been called determining the "order of movement". The term 'initiative' could have been coined later or in a different game and applied to the process since then. Sorry I can't be more helpful, that was more then 40 years ago...