Quote from: Benoist;544851Literally MILLIONS of gamers do it that way, and if anything, the use of grids and minis and uptight minigames to manage these sorts of things is a minority in the hobby, not a majority. Come on guys. It's not hard to imagine, is it?

And the key to this is just that: communication, and empathy, describing stuff effectively, asking the DM when you have a doubt on something, and knowing when to just make a sketch so that a pic saves you a thousand words.  Easy peasy.

Not just gamers.

Believe it or not I don't have complicated rulesets when discussing things with my co-workers.

When we need to come up with lesson plans or benchmarks for certain classes we ...

Just talk.

And then we make decisions.

Seems to work fine.

but I can see how socially inept nerds might not understand the concept.

Quote from: Benoist;544851Sure, exchanges between DM and players can turn into the "20 questions" thing, and that's when you pop up the sheet of paper or veleda board to draw a quick sketch, since obviously not everyone is getting what you're talking about and seeing in your mind's eye as the DM.

To take back my example earlier you might describe a room of 50 feet on a side with the adventurers Cadmus, Elbeghast, Xarbathos and Rorhwen coming close by the southern corridor in such terms:



Now if the players keep asking questions or that it otherwise seems clear that the players are not on the same page, you just draw a quick sketch like this:



With C, X, E and R being the PCs, the small hollow dots being the cultists, the black dot being the leader of the bunch turning his back to the PCs, the huge circle in the middle being the pit, and you're basically there. You are not breaking up the miniatures, not spending turn after turn thinking in terms of squares and bullshit, and you get on with the actual imagining of what's going on around you.

It's not rocket science.

It really, really isn't. And I wish you guys would quit making it sound like something it isn't. Literally MILLIONS of gamers do it that way, and if anything, the use of grids and minis and uptight minigames to manage these sorts of things is a minority in the hobby, not a majority. Come on guys. It's not hard to imagine, is it?

And the key to this is just that: communication, and empathy, describing stuff effectively, asking the DM when you have a doubt on something, and knowing when to just make a sketch so that a pic saves you a thousand words.  Easy peasy.

It's how I do stuff but with worse drawings.

A couple years ago, I ran my group through AD&D Temple of Elemental Evil.  We managed to do the entire adventure not only with no battle maps, but most of the time the mapper wasn't even mapping.

It can be done.  Even with a screwed up map like those in ToEE

But this goes back to "D&D existed long before 3e every came out, and millions of gamers managed to do just fine."

Quote from: Sacrosanct;544872but most of the time the mapper wasn't even mapping.

Bread crumbs?  Wards?  How did they not get lost?  The mapper is one of the most important roles in classic D&D.

I mean I guess you could just give them sketches, but IMO mapping is challenging but (given time) a very rewarding task.  When you're running for your lives or trying to scan the architecture for secret passages or things that seem "off", it's invaluable.

Quote from: Peregrin;544873Bread crumbs?  Wards?  How did they not get lost?  The mapper is one of the most important roles in classic D&D.

I mean I guess you could just give them sketches, but IMO mapping is challenging but (given time) a very rewarding task.  When you're running for your lives or trying to scan the architecture for secret passages, it's invaluable.

A lot of luck, really.  The party did make a pretty good effort to go carefully and clear out areas they had been to previously, so a lot of "We go left.  Ok, then right." left them somewhat unscathed.  That, and made Int checks to remember which direction went where.

But I should note "somewhat" unscathed.  They lost two henchmen from being outflanked, and two of the PCs had to end up being raised at the church of ST. Cuthberts in Homlett due to unlucky choices and poor mapping.

Quote from: Peregrin;544873Bread crumbs?  Wards?  How did they not get lost?  The mapper is one of the most important roles in classic D&D.

I mean I guess you could just give them sketches, but IMO mapping is challenging but (given time) a very rewarding task.  When you're running for your lives or trying to scan the architecture for secret passages or things that seem "off", it's invaluable.

I'm going to have to agree with you on this. I suppose it's possible without a mapper but it'd take more than a little good fortune.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;544872A couple years ago, I ran my group through AD&D Temple of Elemental Evil.  We managed to do the entire adventure not only with no battle maps, but most of the time the mapper wasn't even mapping.

It can be done.  Even with a screwed up map like those in ToEE

But this goes back to "D&D existed long before 3e every came out, and millions of gamers managed to do just fine."

The run through the Temple we did last year...one of the players is a draftsman who would risk the dangers of random encounters to re-walk areas previously explored if due to an earlier mapping error the map didn't seem to jive with an entrance, exit, or stairs.  No lie!

This whole concept is really funny.  Someone is going to have the authority, and generally speaking, the player is going to be better off if its the guy a few feet away from him, than some game designer hundreds of miles away that he'll never meet.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Benoist;544851Sure, exchanges between DM and players can turn into the "20 questions" thing, and that's when you pop up the sheet of paper or veleda board to draw a quick sketch, since obviously not everyone is getting what you're talking about and seeing in your mind's eye as the DM.

Or you play with an erasable map grid on the table so you don't have to pull anything out and use it whenever necessary, which is pretty much what I've long seen done.  Like I said earlier, whether you wind up with "20 Questions" is going to depend on how complicated the planning and actions of the players and NPCs are.  In my experience, this happens in all but the simplest encounters, so this happens most of the time.  I can image groups where the action is simple enough that this is the exception rather than the norm and, as I've pointed out in a thread a while back, you can reduce D&D combat to a one dimensional tactical exercise where all that matters, like in the old Wizardry computer games, is what rank your character is in (aka marching order).

Quote from: Benoist;544851To take back my example earlier you might describe a room of 50 feet on a side with the adventurers Cadmus, Elbeghast, Xarbathos and Rorhwen coming close by the southern corridor in such terms:

QuoteDM: You are entering a large square room. Perhaps 50 feet on a side. Each side of the square has an opening/door in the middle of it. You reach the room through one of them, on the south wall. There is a 10-foot pit in the middle of the room. A hooded figure is praying close to it surrounded by some worshippers, all humanoids it seems, but all wearing black hoods. They are humming slowly and don't seem to have noticed you.
Player 1: how far are we from them again?
DM: You'd say about 20 feet. It's dark in the room, and they are all looking at the pit in the center of the room right now, which probably explains why they didn't spot you.
Player 1 (turning to the others): we could rush to them and take them on quickly. We'd have surprise at least. We can cover that distance in a few seconds.
Wizard player (to DM): How spaced are they? Are they all in a group around the pit, or spread out in the room beyond or what?
DM: The former. You'd say that they're spreading 5 or so feet around the pit in all directions, all pretty close to the edge.
Wizard player (to the other players): I could fireball them.
Player 1: Are you crazy?! That's going to be visible in all directions, not to mention, you might actually cook us all too!

Based on the initial description, I would have assumed the pit was also square.  Before the Wizard player question, I would have assumed the other humanoids were surrounding the hooded figure, and not the pit.  If no player thought to ask questions before committing to a course of action, the misunderstanding could have been significant, which illustrates the problem of assumption clash even with this pretty simple example.  Your diagram also adds a detail lacking in your description -- the fork in the corridor across from the players.

Quote from: Benoist;544851Now if the players keep asking questions or that it otherwise seems clear that the players are not on the same page, you just draw a quick sketch like this:



With C, X, E and R being the PCs, the small hollow dots being the cultists, the black dot being the leader of the bunch turning his back to the PCs, the huge circle in the middle being the pit, and you're basically there.

And with that diagram, I wouldn't have made the false assumptions I made with the description only, so why not just cut to the chase and sketch it out in the first place?  And why not draw it on something with a grid to help with scale and proportion instead of a blank sheet?  Isn't that why most notebooks intended for writing have ruled lines on them and why engineering notebooks are full of graph paper?  In other words, isn't an erasable map grid pretty much designed to be used for this purpose?  Sure, you can hammer nails with a rock or the handle of a screwdriver, but if you know you are going to be driving nails, why not buy a hammer?

Quote from: Benoist;544851You are not breaking up the miniatures, not spending turn after turn thinking in terms of squares and bullshit, and you get on with the actual imagining of what's going on around you.

We don't break out miniatures.  We use pawns and dice, which we keep on the table, and which take no more time to place on a map board than it would take you to draw some circles or letters.  Sure, players can spend time thinking about squares but doing so allows them to answer questions about range and movement possibilities themselves without having to query the GM about how far things are and what they think they can or can't do.  It's not perfect but, in my experience, it's far less disruptive to immersion than having to suspend my character's mind's eye view of the scene until I get ask the GM clarifying questions.  Instead of suspending my imagination until the questions are answered, I can just look at the map and answer them myself.  And that, fundamentally, is where the "actual imagining of what's going on around you" fails for me with verbal descriptions like those in your example.

If I imagine what's going on around my character based on assumptions and those assumptions turn out to be false, I have to retcon what my character had been thinking for the past N rounds before the misunderstanding was clarified.  An alternative is to play "20 questions", which means that I'm not actually imagining of what's going on around my character but am, instead, suspending my imagination until I can get enough clarification to imagine it.  The other alternative that I'm aware of, and I've actually done this so this isn't just a snarky straw man, is to play a character that understands and interacts with their world in a very simple way such that the details don't matter.  Evil cultists in the room?  That's all I need to know.  I run up and hit them with my axe and I'm going to do that no matter how far away they are, how far apart they are, and regardless of what shape the pit is.  Just assume I'm headed for the closest one and I'm making an attack roll.  

You can convey detail with words, detail with images, or do without the detail.

Quote from: Benoist;544851It's not rocket science.

It really, really isn't. And I wish you guys would quit making it sound like something it isn't. Literally MILLIONS of gamers do it that way, and if anything, the use of grids and minis and uptight minigames to manage these sorts of things is a minority in the hobby, not a majority. Come on guys. It's not hard to imagine, is it?

It's also not rocket science to use a map board and markers for combat.

Beyond questioning the claim there are literally millions of people playing tabletop role-playing games right now, I think your claim that those using grids to manage combat are a minority is undermined by the popularity of D&D 3.5, Pathfinder, and (yes) D&D 4e as well as plenty of other games that either assumed grid or hex maps or support them over the years as well as the various types of erasable map boards sold in game shops as well as the virtual tabletops that provide grids or hexes.  How many people are playing D&D 3.5, D&D 4e, or Pathfinder without a grid and how much of the hobby isn't playing those games?  Do you have anything other than speculation to support your claim?

As for imagining it, you make a false assumption that's not uncommon in debates like this, which is that I've only experienced a single narrow style of play.  I've played games without GMs, games with multiple GMs, games with map grids, games without them, games with dice, games without dice, games with single characters, games with multiple characters, convention games, and so on.  It's not a matter of what can be done or what I can imagine but what works best.  I can drive nails with a rock or a screwdriver handle, and have done so, but that doesn't make either of those choices better than using a hammer designed to drive nails.  And would I want to buy a rock to drive nails if I have a hammer?  Maybe if you don't drive a lot of nails, a rock would be a better all-purpose tool for you.

I suppose I should add that the use of an illustration and map board only has to be as "uptight" as you want it to be.  What it gives you is a common objective frame of reference for position and distance.  What you or the rules do with that is up to what you want.  You could leave things like movement and weapon ranges entirely up the the discretion of the GM if you want, though that leads back to the "20 Questions" problem when a player assumes their character could move further than the GM does, for example.

Quote from: Benoist;544851And the key to this is just that: communication, and empathy, describing stuff effectively, asking the DM when you have a doubt on something, and knowing when to just make a sketch so that a pic saves you a thousand words.  Easy peasy.

And my point is that a sketch on a map grid saves a thousand words, more often than not, as do position markers and a common understanding of movement rates and weapon ranges.  And while it's easy to say that the player should ask the GM when they have a doubt, how is a player supposed to know when they've misunderstood the GM unless they confirm all of their assumptions with the GM?

Sure, you can solve all of that if you keep everything simple.  Replace a map grid of the dungeon with a standard marching order and reduce corridor combat to a single dimension.  Reduce the tactics in combat to picking a target and don't worry too much about how the character gets there or any terrain complexity.  I played plenty of hours of Wizardry on my Apple ][ computer that was that simple.  But if the players want things like position, movement, and timing to matter, trying to maintain and coordinate all of that with verbal descriptions and subjective rulings would quickly overwhelm the abilities of most normal people.

Quote from: RPGPundit;544908This whole concept is really funny.  Someone is going to have the authority, and generally speaking, the player is going to be better off if its the guy a few feet away from him, than some game designer hundreds of miles away that he'll never meet.

Given that I've probably played more hours of games using homebrew rules than published rules, the guy who designed the rules was often the guy a few feet away from me if not me, because I contributed to a lot of those homebrew rules.  The issue isn't one of authority for me but information flow.  Instead of asking the GM how far my character can move or whether he can hit a target, I can look down at the map and figure it out myself, and if I have any question about how the results will be resolved, I can look them up in the rulebook myself, all while the GM is managing NPCs or talking to the other players.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;544524Everything everyone else has said.  I feel there's some "nyah back at you!" in it pertaining to comments that 4e (and 3.5e, and 3e) had a "video game" feel.

Just another new type of bullet in Edition Wars.

Huh. I wasn't a huge fan of 3/.5, but I never got the "video game" feel from it that I did 4e.

Quote from: Piestrio;544863Believe it or not I don't have complicated rulesets when discussing things with my co-workers.

When we need to come up with lesson plans or benchmarks for certain classes we ...

Just talk.

And then we make decisions.

Seems to work fine.

You don't work for an ISO 9000 certified manufacturing company, do you?  Take a look at ISO 9000 certifications.  Then ask yourself why manufacturing companies go through all of the trouble do document their processes so they can be objectively reproduced by anyone and there are no uncertainties about what needs to be done.

There are some very real issues here that are beyond the scope of this discussion, but let's just say that there comes a point in every growing start-up that I've seen where they have to move away from a few people in a conference room just making decisions toward actually processes and rules or things fall apart and can't grow beyond a certain point.

Quote from: Piestrio;544863but I can see how socially inept nerds might not understand the concept.

It has nothing to do with social skills and everything to do with how much the details and results matter.  My kids can slap things together with Lego without any rules, but I wouldn't want to fly in an airplane made out of parts manufactured like that.  In many ways, you can look at it as a quality control issue.  If you don't care that much about the quality or get acceptable results just winging it, then you don't need a lot of control.

This is completely nuts. Nobody's discussing the fact you might like grids and markers and maps. You like what you want. What is totally ridiculous is to portray a game style that doesn't use these gimmicks and has worked for a gazillion gamers over the years as though it couldn't possibly work or is somehow broken and needs fixing for anyone but yourself (which can be dealt with at the level of D&D Next with a dedicated tactical miniatures module, for instance). That's bullshit.

Quote from: RPGPundit;544908This whole concept is really funny.  Someone is going to have the authority, and generally speaking, the player is going to be better off if its the guy a few feet away from him, than some game designer hundreds of miles away that he'll never meet.

RPGPundit

Unless they have been given ample reason not to trust the guy a few feet away from him...in which case you wonder why they're sitting at THAT table to begin with, but it does happen.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;544992Huh. I wasn't a huge fan of 3/.5, but I never got the "video game" feel from it that I did 4e.

I'll cop to having thrown down the VG insult about 3e but it had more to do with the way Feat Trees worked; they seemed very much like how you built your powers in Diablo II, the way you'd stack one together so you'd have the prerequisite for the next, and so on.  To be fair, that kind of "meet a requirement, that fulfills a prerequisite, so you can pick and choose this next thing" could maybe be traced back to the AD&D bard, but then the AD&D bard isn't based on a computer game's expectation of "character build".  If anything it's the other way around.