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I don't have the talent for description that matless play requires, and with the confusion of where everyone is and what is going on, players asking questions, it actually takes longer than using maps.
If positioning doesn't matter or it is a minor easy encounter I will skip the grid, but most of the time my players need that visualization.
I am one of the few that can do mapless playing, but I have found no matter what it takes longer to get things done. If all else fails do it diplomatic. Have everyone cast a vote on a slip of paper and put it into a hat.
I've played in games where we have done both, in the end mapless play works out better for doing things on the fly like kicking down a door into a 15' by 15'room where players are for the most part always going to be able to "move" up to an enemy.
I personally prefer using maps and grids mainly for the fact that to many factors such as movement speed, difficult terrain, AoOs, reach, Spell blast radius, friendly fire, cover, etc just kind of go out the window without them.
When I dm, i usually make maps ahead of time and label them to fit either specific battles or scenes.
Also go to your local game shop and they might have what i bought a few months back. It was a collection of 200 pages of random dungeon tiles that could be put together complete with artwork on them.
Its great and only $20.
@StealthElite What was that called?
And I agree. It does go out of the window. Though I have seen situation where a map wasn't needed.
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For minor stuff, overall, mapless can be easier. For major battles, maps are the way to go.
Especially if you have anyone with a build that requires tracking AoEs, AoOs, or does anything approaching battlefield control.
Wizards/Sorcerers with Close range spells, or cones.
Fighters/Monks who do combat maneuvers, especially with reach weapons.
Clerics/others who use Channel Energy in combat, even with Selective Channel.
Rogues, since they always need to know if/when they can get flanking, or when they need to tumble around enemies.
Any builds that have synergy with another PC, since that synergy frequently relies on positioning.
For minor stuff, overall, mapless can be easier. For major battles, maps are the way to go.
Especially if you have anyone with a build that requires tracking AoEs, AoOs, or does anything approaching battlefield control.
Wizards/Sorcerers with Close range spells, or cones.
Fighters/Monks who do combat maneuvers, especially with reach weapons.
Clerics/others who use Channel Energy in combat, even with Selective Channel.
Rogues, since they always need to know if/when they can get flanking, or when they need to tumble around enemies.Any builds that have synergy with another PC, since that synergy frequently relies on positioning.
This is the truth. I would say use the map. The one who doesn't want to sounds like he doesn't wanna take the time to find a marker for his character.
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I am one of those folks who actually introduced grids and battle maps way back in AD&D days. I did so because it stopped the endless debates about range, cover and positioning.
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Without a battlemap must actually be harder to know where you are. Grid helps a lot also there could be a player that likes the grid as well.
Whenever someone doesn't want to use a grid, I usually think it's because they don't want to have to take certian feats. Without a grid, feats like Precise Shot, and Improved Precise Shot, mean far less. A Rogue can get into a flank position just by saying: I flank them, which is a lot easier than moving your piece and flanking them without taking AoO.
If you don't use grids, you seriously gimp certian builds or classes and make others much more powerful.
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personally I use 3-d terrain for most games...
examples..
Go to cavern terrain.
Go to Dungeon terrain.
Luckily i make my own so very cost effective and great way to visualize encounters..
If i'm travelling light i bring maps or perhaps a battlemat
Go to Maps video.
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I don't think PF lends itself to play without a battle map at all. Furthermore, the map lets you do all sorts of fun and interesting things that just would not be feasible using narration.
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I had a 3.5 GM who refused to use a grid. I finally quit his game after my rogue was attacked and killed by 7 Drow, whom he described as being "near" the party. I asked if I could move to flank with the barbarian, and he told me yes, so I did. The next round I took attacks from all 7 drow. My argument's logic of "why on earth would my lightly armored rogue put himself in melee attack range of 7 drow to get ONE sneak attack" was completely lost on him. He felt he had described the situation well enough that I ought to have known the risk. I told him I was done, and he can find a new player. It ended up being a lot of unnecessary drama because this guy was too lazy to put in the effort of marking locations on a grid.
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Here's the situation that prompted me to start using grids.
This was back in AD&D, so sometime in the late 70s, early 80s.
The party decided to ambush a pair of patrolling dragons. I asked them to explain how they were going to ambush them. They said "when they go by". This did not provide me with enough information to decide when and how the attack would happen.
Since this was potentially a TPK situation, I decided to forgo any arguments about range, speed, maneuverability, etc. by having the entire encounter occur on a map. Previously we had simply described things verbally.
So I got some graph paper out and drew out the landscape. I had the players indicate exactly where their characters were located and broke the action into rounds, using paper cutouts to indicate the dragons locations. Using the speed and maneuverability rules in the monster manual I described exactly where the dragons were round by round. This also provided the exact movement options of the PCs as well. This all happened in three dimensions too, but the 2D map was enough to allow us to keep track of everything.
The battle which ensued had no arguments, no confusion about range, no confusion about area of effect, no confusion about cover or speed.
It was the smoothest epic battle we had ever fought.
The next day I bought a rollout battle grid from the game store and I've never looked back.
personally I use 3-d terrain for most games...
examples..
Go to cavern terrain.
Go to Dungeon terrain.
Luckily i make my own so very cost effective and great way to visualize encounters..
If i'm travelling light i bring maps or perhaps a battlemat
Go to Maps video.
Are you plastered with HA? Those are the molds I use but I SUCK at it by comparison. Still I love doing it. So far I've only crafted enough for a few rooms but when the kids are back to school and our schedules normalize again I hope to make more!
I started with a battlemat back in 2e; mainly for exact placement of 3d terrain like rocks and trees. I also used said terrain and a tape measure.
In 3X I used the mat all the time. I also picked up some Dwarven Forge (back when I HAD money). Just recently I found a company that makes plaster craft molds and started casting my own pieces. I am completely sucked into this new part of the hobby and even though I don't even make megadungeon games anymore I want to build an entire campaign around the terrain I've collected/built so far.
I have nothing to display as of yet (no confidence) but the molds I craft are gothic style dungeon tiles. I tried paper/cardboard tiles and they're nice and all, but it feels too much like Descent, which is to say like a board game.
I hope to get a lot better; my dream is to get good enough to build 2 or even 3 story dungeons. I would love to simulate a fight with skeleton archers on a balcony 30' ABOVE the characters' minis!
Mark, wellsmv and I both use Hirst molds extensively. wells is much better at it than I am.
I also use foam core posterboard, styrene (styrofoam) and other materials to create terrain.
Be careful, I've got about six boxes full of terrain, tools, materials and molded blocks that I've packed up now that we're trying to sell our house.
It's a time and space consuming hobby. :)
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I bounce back and forth between gridless and mapped play depending on the encounter. For larger combats that I know will be more than one or two rounds, or that have important terrain features, I'll lay out the map, but for smaller combats or encounters that take place in areas with very simple terrain, we'll go theater of the mind for expediency's sake. I found that when I combine the two, I tend to get the most out of a given gameplay session by maximizing our play-time and only wasting time setting up the board and laying out mini's when necessary, or for when that grid is going to bring something to the encounter. I like putting together the styrofoam battle maps for really epic encounters, but because of time restraints I usually don't go full 3D more than once every 5 levels or so for keystone events.
I think the most important thing if you're going to do theater of the mind, is to make sure your party is willing to abide by the GM's interpretations of placement and accessibility, and for the GM to be sure he can process all the input he's dealing with in the party's shared imagining. If your group has an obstinate rules lawyer, or you find yourself getting confused, stick to the grid.
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Here's the real question: squares or hexes?
I'm planning on starting GMing soon, and all my existing materials are hex-based. But PF really seems to groove on the square battlemaps. If I want to stay with hexes, what sorts of rule adjustments do I need to consider?
(Or do I need to just bite the bullet and buy a lot of new stuff?)
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Here's the real question: squares or hexes?
I'm planning on starting GMing soon, and all my existing materials are hex-based. But PF really seems to groove on the square battlemaps. If I want to stay with hexes, what sorts of rule adjustments do I need to consider?
(Or do I need to just bite the bullet and buy a lot of new stuff?)
Well, tactical movement, diagonal movement, and radius spreads of fireballs and related spells all come to mind for things to be aware of when using a hex-based map with a square-based game. For melee and ranged combat it probably won't be too bad, but spell-casters and alchemists might give you headaches if you don't establish how you're handling spacing and AOE's right off the bat.
I've found the 'least satisfying' games are the ones where the Gm tries to go "mapless".
So much of a combat characters abilities (the dangling carrots that we are leaving up to get) are predicated on being able to position yourself effectively to use them, that it very much cheapens the feeling of accomplishment when the GM simple hand-waves when you can and cannot use your abilities.
Plus, I've known several GMs (myself included) that are not as good at describing a scenario or environment as they think they are, and the mapless games quickly devolve into repeated questions and clarifications about location, terrain, relative positioning, etc, where the map combined with the location description vastly speeds up the assimilation of this information.
Here's the real question: squares or hexes?
I'm planning on starting GMing soon, and all my existing materials are hex-based. But PF really seems to groove on the square battlemaps. If I want to stay with hexes, what sorts of rule adjustments do I need to consider?
(Or do I need to just bite the bullet and buy a lot of new stuff?)
Buildings are often designed with square walls, which makes a square grid ideal. I've tried hexes inside buildings and it doesn't work as well IMO. I think natural areas lend themselves well to hexes, but squares aren't too bad so I tend to stick with squares so that everything is consistent.
Conversion to hexes isn't too bad, mainly you need to figure out the shape of templates (ie blast template, large monsters, etc.) and how to move off axis on a hex (which still happens). However, you will also miss out on flip maps, dungeon tiles, etc. that can make your job easier.
I prefer square less tiles and using a ruler for movement.
But then again, that's because it's easier to make your homemade tiles without squares :)
Mark, wellsmv and I both use Hirst molds extensively. wells is much better at it than I am.
I also use foam core posterboard, styrene (styrofoam) and other materials to create terrain.
Be careful, I've got about six boxes full of terrain, tools, materials and molded blocks that I've packed up now that we're trying to sell our house.
It's a time and space consuming hobby. :)
Don't I know it! Started off in the wife's craft room; banished to the workbench in the garage. Then she decided to use the garage for storage, so was exiled to a corner of the laundry/utility room.
I have boxes of molded pieces, some glued up and playable, and the rest still loose. Yet even w/everything neatly packed I've completely outgrown my workspace. Still I love doing it. I knew I was hooked the first time I glued up a few hallway and room pieces and a single doorway arch, set it all up on the table and then got down and looked at it from mini-perspective. It's so frigging cool to "see" what the party would see as they approach the room: the stony walls, the torch sconces, the faintest shadow of the monsters on either side of the doorway.
What stuff do you mold? I only have gothic stuff though if it ever gets in the budget I may p/up some fieldstone molds. I really like the accessories in the gothic line and the clean lines of it, but there's a lot of really cool stuff out there.
Sorry for hijacking this thread everyone. FYI, I prefer squares to hexes.
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Here's the real question: squares or hexes?
I'm planning on starting GMing soon, and all my existing materials are hex-based. But PF really seems to groove on the square battlemaps. If I want to stay with hexes, what sorts of rule adjustments do I need to consider?
(Or do I need to just bite the bullet and buy a lot of new stuff?)
As long as you're prepared to specify exactly which hexes are included in any given cone, and give a consistent answer, you should be fine.
Melee types may be a little disoriented since they can only charge in 6 directions instead of 8, and can only form three pairs of flankers instead of four (if your party has eight melee participants), but really it's six of one, half a dozen of the other.
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Melee types may be a little disoriented since they can only charge in 6 directions instead of 8,
Point of order: There's nothing in the rules that say you have to charge orthogonally or diagonally, just "in a straight line." You can charge eight squares forward and three to the left as long as your path is unobstructed.
I would love to hear a good GM do a mapless game. It would give me ideas.
I'm a GM and tend to rely on maps. But when playing a horror adventure (like Hangman's Noose) I would like to set aside the maps and minis and track hit points.
I use square for dungeons and buildings.
And hex for overland and natural areas such as forests and caverns.
This is the best way I have found.
Always went mapless as a kid, up through college. When I moved and found a new group as adult they had minis and a dry erase battle Mat. Though I am nostalgic of the old days, I don't think I would ever go back. There are so fewer disagreement about where you are versus where you think you are, what can you hit from where etc... And getting and painting a new mini for the next campaign is a hobby all it's own.
Here's the real question: squares or hexes?
I'm planning on starting GMing soon, and all my existing materials are hex-based. But PF really seems to groove on the square battlemaps. If I want to stay with hexes, what sorts of rule adjustments do I need to consider?
(Or do I need to just bite the bullet and buy a lot of new stuff?)
I moved to hexes shortly after using the graph paper grids. The battle mat I purchased just happened to have hexes on one side and squares on the other. It wasn't long before I had to try out hexes. I found hexes to be far superior to squares for dealing with any sort of radius of effect or dealing with moving in directions other than straight ahead or left or right.
I must have created three dozen maps using the hex pattern. In fact I wrote a computer program to print hexes on my dot matrix printer since I couldn't find hex graph paper at the time.
But over time the limitations of hexes eventually wore thin, especially the unnatural edges to buildings or corridors. People tend to think and build in rectangular fashion and the hex grid just didn't work. It also didn't project easily into the third dimension.
So about the time 3.0 came out, I moved back to square grids and haven't regretted it, even if it did make an entire notebook full of maps effectively obsolete...
I use narration for non-combat encounters only where I do not feel I need to draw out interesting terrain.
Maps are for exploration and combat.
My maps are via a white board with permanent marker drawn on it.
Large (5x8feet or so) whiteboard from Home Depot = 20$. They cut it to size for you (free).
Then I draw a grid on it with permanent marker. Since dry erase will eventually erase permanent marker every so often I touch it up.
This is a relatively inexpensive way for me to draw things out.
- Gauss
I prefer mapped combat, but my formative years were spent not knowing what mapped combat even was, so I feel like I could still do it. Nowadays it rarely comes up, but its a cue from the dm that a fight to the death is only going to happen if the players press the issue.
I came to the game from a mianiature background. Using miniatures, terrain etc. since I started D&D (1974). It saves a lot of argument (who is where, line of sight, etc.) and helps players visualize. I have layouts of everything (buildings, streets, dungeons, etc.) on cardstock. Add furniture / trees, bushes etc. along with miniatures and there you go. I enjoy it and my players do too. Originally we just used rulers but one inch gridded graphpaper worked better. Makes it easy to "upscale" from 1/10" = 5' maps.
We are heavily terrain-oriented. I never liked the grid and haven't used it in forever. For the most part, if you are using minis on standardized bases (generally 24mm/1-inch square or round), then you should be able to eyeball distances based on the base sizes.
Otherwise, there are many templates, rulers and tape measures out there, just waiting for you to go old school and measure it out like a real grognard wargamer. And if you don't? Then you are a sissy-man!
Why is it I all of a sudden got the urge to set up a Final Fantasy Style exploration/combat method for when I am running a campaign with 1-2 players?
Either way I feel square captures constructed areas well while hex captures natural landscapes well. In fact using hex maps is the basis behind a hexcrawl it makes the diagonal movements easy to measure and really makes it easy to create a natural feeling map edge such as coastline.
We are heavily terrain-oriented. I never liked the grid and haven't used it in forever. For the most part, if you are using minis on standardized bases (generally 24mm/1-inch square or round), then you should be able to eyeball distances based on the base sizes.
Otherwise, there are many templates, rulers and tape measures out there, just waiting for you to go old school and measure it out like a real grognard wargamer. And if you don't? Then you are a sissy-man!
This might work with wargamers but with boardgamers and people used to video games based on the old Tactics Engine (e.g. Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, or even the original game Tactics: War of Fate) it doesn't work so well. In fact the Tactics method is how we make movement simpler.
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Yar!
I've recently started experimenting with grid-less maps. I've also recently started building 3d terrain as well. So far it's been a great success! I have a whole bunch of 1 foot lengths of non-stretchy string and pipe cleaners with 1 inch marking on them for easily determining distance, as well as a bunch of pipe cleaners shaped into and cutouts of various cones for area of effects. We still get the accuracy of seeing it and measuring distances, but we now avoid the few anomalies created by the grid (such as the infamous lego-block fireball, cones that don't make sense unless aimed in a way that lines up, reach becoming awkward at diagonals, having to use squeezing rules in a 10' wide hallways with no one beside you because it was drawn at an angle, etc)
As for my terrain, I haven't started making individual tile pieces like some of the others above yet, but that is because I'm running Serpents Skull AP, and have been building scenes specifically for it. For example:
Those are just some examples, and I'm still working on improving my craft (these are my first attempts at 3d terrain for D&D/Pathfinder/miniature gaming purposes).
...but yeah, for non-combat we go purely descriptive. For really simple/easy encounters, we sometimes go descriptive, sometimes use a map with a grid. We do have a wet erase battle mat (square and hex grid) for random encounters, and I'm starting to build up a collection of movable pieces for putting together quick 3d terrain on the fly (mostly the Ruins paper models, but I'd like to start making my own tiles soon), but for the big encounters and plot moving battle scenes, I've been building custom 3d terrain, grid-less but still accurate.
~P
Awesome Pirate. Downright inspiring!
Yar!
Thanks for the compliments. ^_^
... that's an insane amount of work ...
I will, however, disagree with this sentiment. It is not work, it is fun! Plus, most of the time spent making it is actually spent simply waiting for things to dry. And it's all well worth it, in my opinion.
...but at the same time... I AM kinda crazy. o_O
~P
Here's a question then, since more than a couple of us are plastered: battle arena or modular rooms?
I'm firing up my gothic molds for a new dungeon build but I can't decide whether to glue down a massive single floor on a big base and then build a bunch of dividers or glue up walls ON individual walls for keyed rooms/pieces?