Anticipation

What I love about simple initiative is the way it swings around.

The encounter starts, and every monster attacks. It's chaos. Your fighter goes down, the cleric is on fire, you're cursed and level drained and tied up with ropes and shoved down pits. Every bad thing happens at once, and you're totally helpless. All you can do is sit, groaning, and wait for your turn.

That anticipation makes it all the better when it swings around to your turn, and suddenly every good thing happens at once. You punch a kobold through another kobold, the dragon blows up, the monsters are backstabbed and tripped and disintegrated and thrown over cliffs. You're totally unstoppable.

Until next turn comes around...