Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1013318OD&D.

"Is there something I can take cover behind?"
* die roll * "Yes."

"Can I get a shot at the biggest ogre?"
* die roll * "Not where you are."
"Okay, I move to where I get a shot."

"Is the orc leader in range of a thrown spear?"
* die roll * "Yes."

Honest to Crom, it works great.

This is pretty much the basis of FU and Mythic's GM emulator. You ask a Yes/No question and get an answer. I prefer FU and Emergent though as they five a more granular answer. "Is there something I can take cover behind?" and you can read that as "No. but theres something here you can use to make cover - a table you can upend." (Assuming the contents of the room havent been established yet. The system isnt supposed to be used at that scale of detail.)

Grover, this isn't a bad question BUT you should elaborate more on what exactly you are looking for in a system.

More importantly, what systems have you run that worked great for you?

Did you run them RAW or houserule them?

If you houseruled them, what EXACTLY did you do to make the game run well for you?

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1013370As long as there is a high degree of trust in the group, it works great.  It is absolutely critical that the players know that the NPCs might screw them, but the GM never will.

Yes.

However, I often use minis for abstract placement and general visual representation, not exact square by square whatever.

Quote from: DavetheLost;1013388In all seriousness, if a given system does not mesh well with your GMing style, don't run it.  There are plenty of games I don't play or run because I don't like the way the mechanics work.  Why make it harder on yourself?

Agreed.

Here's a question for everybody: have you noted that players seems to want Minis and Maps in fantasy games more than other genres?

Maybe its just my experience, but the same players who go Melon Theater (thank you Tenbones!) for Cthulhu and Traveller will want Minis & Maps for D&D (even pre-3e D&D).

Quote from: Madprofessor;1013436I sometimes throw some dice, a soda can, a notebook, a pencil or whatever is at hand on the table in a rough approximation of relative positions to help players visualize a complex tactical situation (or sometimes I'll sketch a 1 minute map) - but I won't waste much time on it, or bother moving markers on the "map."  It is just an expedient of communication where a quick visual of spatial relationships is quicker and less confusing than words.

This. This, this, this, this. We're talking an aid to play, not the bleeding Sistine Chapel. What is it with the dang grids, anyway??? I had no trouble with using plain sheets of paper two weeks ago; the players seemed to deal with it just fine. They seemed to have heaps of fun diving through doorways and throwing the furniture around, all with no grid lines, rulers, tape measures, calipers, micrometers, laser range-finders, split-leg dividers, astrolabes, gromons, or even the infamous Gygaxian (TM) Bounce Stick.

In forty years, I've never seen an RPG that required a grid, except for D & D 4E, and I refuse to go anywhere near that game because of it. I saw some guy trying to use wire templates that fitted the square grid at Gary Con, and walked away vowing to never, ever do that kind of thing in a game that I run. I freely admit that I like making things for my players, to make the games more fun for them, and they seem to enjoy it.

Play what you like, how you like. Dave and Gary said it was ok.

Heretic!  Unbeliever!  Poo poo head!

Marinate the Jesuit!  Marinate the Jesuit!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1013469Heretic!  Unbeliever!  Poo poo head!

Marinate the Jesuit!  Marinate the Jesuit!

What, in this the best of all possible threads on this the best of all possible forums in this of all the best possible hobbies.

I'll see your literary allusion, and raise you one.

We really need to bring back the "hats off" smiley.

Apparently some local group is playing 4e D&D without the maps or pogs. So even something like that.

As for the fireball. I think thats a bad example to argue as even in 5e its got a huge blast radious.

In AD&D & 2e it still was a 40ft sphere. But it had a volume and would deform to fill area outside the sphere as it were. A volume of of 33000 cubic feet that expanded to fill halls and such. So it could cover say cover 33 of your standard 10x10x10 dungeon spaces. Thats enough to fill a 50x50 space room with fire to spare. Or 3 spaces short of filling a 60x60 room.
An O, BX, 3e and 5e fireball is just a 40ft sphere. It will not quite fill a 4x4 room due to being a spherical zone rather than a volume filling available space.

So unless the PCs or target are in a really large room or outside. Placement isnt exactly a problem unless someone is trying to cut it really close.

A better example would be good ol Lightning Bolt. But even that you dont need minis for. Just a good idea of where everyone was when the bolt was launched. Helped if the player or NPC is taking the time to line up for a shot.

When in doubt just set down some dice to represent positions quick to help visualize positions.

Here is a quick ref recreation of my old graph paper plotting of the fireball area. Made this for a player who was having trouble with that.



oops. Forgot to note that the grid is 10ft and the AD&D/2e foreball is laid out flat to show the amount of area it can cover assuming a 10ft ceiling. An AD&D or 2e fireball in a standard 10x10x10 hall is going to spill out in all directions following the paths of the halls possibly a huge distance.

I GM 5e D&D in text chat with no tactical display, so that's one I'd recommend. BX/Classic D&D is very similar.

The only game where I tried to GM without tactical display and felt forced to add one in, was 4e D&D, it is extremely square & minis dependent, deliberately so I think - they wanted to sell minis.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1013357Prevent? No but hinder, yes. Just trying to figure who is hit by a fireball is one common issue. Roll randomly or arbitrarily assign those involved and the player is robbed of his ability to place it where he would have wanted given a map.

I tend to see this as a positive. Without minis I typically roll 6d6 for the number of mooks in a big AD&D battle who get incinerated by the fireball. Takes a moment. With minis the MU player wants to place the fireball at the exact spot on the grid map to maximise kills, similar final result but takes 10 times as long. Also the image of the fireball incinerating the enemy front rank while leaving the PC front rank unscathed doesn't sit very well with me - but 4e & 5e D&D encourage this, 5e even has spell-sculpting powers where the PC can specifically avoid hitting allies. A far cry from 1e's volume-filling fireballs.

D&D, TOR, DW, T&T...and that only counts fantasy games. Outside of a few games, like TFT that Skarg mentions most games rely or assume mapless combat.

Quote from: AsenRG;1013404Dungeon World, Feng Shui 2, Tunnels and Trolls, Fate and Classic Traveller are what I would recommend:). Yes, FS2 and CT aren't fantasy, but they're written broadly enough that you can play anything with them, and it would make next to no difference mechanically.

I think d6 system would fit Grove's style well, eg d6 Fantasy or Mini-Six. It's definitely not minis based (unlike eg Savage Worlds), and it's definitely 'cinematic' in tone. It's a system where I think players are much more likely to accept rules-free cut scene interpolations - "the bullets force you to take cover" or "You flee & escape" than in some of the more simulationist-crunch systems. But it's not a storygame system either.

4E works fine without a gird or even a map--if you know what your are doing, and don't mind slight differences in play.  Though I can see why if people are going that route, they'd rather play something else.  It's part of why I'm running 5E now instead of 4E.  But that's just more grist for the mill--yep, the map/grid/markers/scenery are tools, and sometimes it is convenient and even fun to use them.  Plus, you can always flip the question on its head--which games are fun to use with the map, the grid, the ruler, the piece of string, etc?  The ones that encourage you to play with that kind of thing as part of the game.  That makes the things a little less tools and a little more toys. It's a question of degree, not hard boundaries.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1013457Here's a question for everybody: have you noted that players seems to want Minis and Maps in fantasy games more than other genres?

Maybe its just my experience, but the same players who go Melon Theater (thank you Tenbones!) for Cthulhu and Traveller will want Minis & Maps for D&D (even pre-3e D&D).

My experience is the opposite, though my non-fantasy experience is limited enough, I'm sure it isn't representative.  Perhaps that's part of it.  The players I'm around have largely mastered most fantasy games we are playing, and can take or leave miniatures as the mood strikes.  With other genres, we are not on such sound fitting, and thus the grid and miniatures help smooth over some of the rough edges.

Palladium Fantasy if it runs anything like Robotech does, which it should.  I've played and GMed Robotech for years without using miniatures.  We've used maps on occasion to give people an idea of the setting/planet of the week, but just for display.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1013457Maybe its just my experience, but the same players who go Melon Theater (thank you Tenbones!) for Cthulhu and Traveller will want Minis & Maps for D&D (even pre-3e D&D).

I sort of agree and sort of disagree. We used miniatures nearly always for fantasy RPGs, but never for Star Trek. We used miniatures a lot , probably most of the time, for Star Wars, but rarely for Call of Cthulhu. This directly correlates to the number of miniatures I have painted for each of those settings. Which correlates directly to the number of miniatures that were  available to purchase circa 1976-2005 for each of those settings.

Quote from: Bren;1013542I sort of agree and sort of disagree. We used miniatures nearly always for fantasy RPGs, but never for Star Trek. We used miniatures a lot , probably most of the time, for Star Wars, but rarely for Call of Cthulhu. This directly correlates to the number of miniatures I have painted for each of those settings. Which correlates directly to the number of miniatures that were  available to purchase circa 1976-2005 for each of those settings.

Yeah, I'm all over the place, too. With D&D and similar, I do love to go crazy with miniatures, elaborate terrain/Dwarven Forge/etc set-ups, the works. Heck, even mood lighting and fog effects sometimes. As I said - crazy.

For Cthulhu (and other horror), I like to keep it miniatures-free, because the unnamed-yet-horrible thing emerging from the darkness loses something when reduced to a two-inch-tall miniature.

And while I have a ton of Warhammer 40k and Star Wars minis, I'm sadly lacking on 25/28mm sci-fi minis suitable for Traveller, etc.