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We've had 3 people in our group express an interest in running this baby, but the sheer amount of mapping and miniature work required seems to be putting people off.
 
Is there some way (digitally or dry-wipe board) of being able to represent the fast paced movement that combat should be, with the ease of movement that figures and maps bring?
 
Cost isnt an issue, portability is.

Just a suggestion, because I'm not a fan of the game.

If you get a dry erase roll-up map surface and several different dry erase markers, you could use one colour for the structure and terain, one colour for the bad guys (numbering them for clarity), one color for noncombatants, and one colour for the good guys (with names for clarity). Erase and reposition the drawn marks during the battle as pieces move.

Paizo sells great 'blank' grid-marked dry-erase maps that are quite portable (I draw the maps before the session starts, but if you draw fast and go easy on the details, you can do it during the game); you can get a multicolored set of markers cheaply at Wal-Mart.

Aleatools sells the 100+ polychromatic counters you'll need to mark the ever-changing conditions of combat. You seriously will need something like that, even a 5 on 5 combat can have 20 distinct conditions floating around.

There are also Dungeons and Dragons miniatures, and they work for DnD4.0, too. Each PC needs a figure; past that, just get a few dozen humanoids, 5 clones of some humanoid, 5 clones of another/undead humanoid, and a few large/giant figures, that'll cover most combats well enough.

Quote from: Doom;371867Aleatools sells the 100+ polychromatic counters you'll need to mark the ever-changing conditions of combat. You seriously will need something like that, even a 5 on 5 combat can have 20 distinct conditions floating around.

Or use the counters as minis; you can use dry-erase on 'em. Alternatively, buy a bunch of 1" wooden circles from a craft store.

But I'd skip the whole thing. Think of it in terms of abstract zones; you're either next to someone, close to them (within 5 squares), at a distance (10 squares), or far away (more than 10). You can charge if you're close or at a distance, but not if you're far away. A move action takes you from one zone to another, so you could move from "at a distance" to "close."

You'll have to skip some of the more fiddly powers, but that's not a huge loss.

For portability you need a Paizo flip mat (the best thing Paizo offers, in my opinion!) and some sheets of that craft foam that comes in sheets.

http://www.stainedglassoriginals.com/kidscraftsupplies_foamsheets2.html

Get several different colors. Cut it into 1" squares. Red is bloodied. Blue is a mark. Green is a quarry or whatever. Throw it all into a sandwich baggie.

White is for PCs and monsters. Cut it out into squares, write the name of the PC on it, or the name of the monster or a number or whatever. Clip in a dry-erase marker, and you are done.

That's a whole battlemap system that fits in a folder.


Alternately, avoid using a battlemat completely. If you managed doing this in 3E it works the same way. Rely on the descriptions and flavor text of the powers to explain what is going on.

Using a map and miniatures is actually less work then simply describing everything (because you can augment your descriptions visually). That may be the best kept secret in gaming.

Quote from: Lawbag;371863We've had 3 people in our group express an interest in running this baby, but the sheer amount of mapping and miniature work required seems to be putting people off.
 
Is there some way (digitally or dry-wipe board) of being able to represent the fast paced movement that combat should be, with the ease of movement that figures and maps bring?
 
Cost isnt an issue, portability is.

What do you mean by "sheer amount of mapping and miniature work", here? I'm guessing you're referring to the time it would take to precisely map an area on the game table, and stuff like painting miniatures, but I can't be sure.

Are you saying you do not want to use a grid while playing 4e, for instance?

How about using the maptools (http://www.rptools.net/) application on a large TV screen?

Quote from: Soylent Green;371875How about using the maptools (http://www.rptools.net/) application on a large TV screen?

Portability, alas. There's some guy who came up with a nifty projector setup, though... here it is. (http://www.rpgenome.com/digitalmap.html) $800 bucks and a fair amount of sweat, plus you need to have some tools. Pretty cool stuff, though.

Quote from: Thanlis;371868But I'd skip the whole thing. Think of it in terms of abstract zones; you're either next to someone, close to them (within 5 squares), at a distance (10 squares), or far away (more than 10). You can charge if you're close or at a distance, but not if you're far away. A move action takes you from one zone to another, so you could move from "at a distance" to "close."

You'll have to skip some of the more fiddly powers, but that's not a huge loss.

I agree with Thanlis - just mentally translate 1 square = 5 feet and wing it.  At least for smaller fights.  The problem generally comes into play when you have a large amount of PCs against a large number of monsters - that you might want to break out the markers and Paizo mapsheet for.

Another form of portable miniatures I've been investing in is paper miniatures like Disposable Heroes (http://www.pigames.net/store/default.php?cPath=27&).

It seems kinda silly to go through this much work and invest that kind of money in a strategy game that is so loaded in favor of one side.

It's not re-usable, but a bit of contact paper should take care of that, or a sheet of plexiglas:

http://www.gamingpaper.com/

Quote from: Cranewings;371907It seems kinda silly to go through this much work and invest that kind of money in a strategy game that is so loaded in favor of one side.

Seems counterintuitive to me, too.

Quote from: Cranewings;371907It seems kinda silly to go through this much work and invest that kind of money in a strategy game that is so loaded in favor of one side.

Crazy thought - maybe there's more to 4E than the battlemat?

Quote from: Fifth Element;371918Crazy thought - maybe there's more to 4E than the battlemat?

It's always a possibility. :D

I think the vast majority of Fantasy RPGs out there have a lot more of "besides the battlemat" elements than 4e does, however. Why not use one of them?

You can just use 1" = 5ft. with a tape measure on a white board. That's what we've done for years, even back in our 3.5 days (we used a chalkboard in the same way when we were playing 3.0).

Then use spools of thread or paper cutouts for monsters and PCs. Try to find things you can write on easily.

Quote from: Fifth Element;371918Crazy thought - maybe there's more to 4E than the battlemat?

Then maybe it shouldn't be so difficult to ignore it.

If you want to get rid of the battlemap and minis altogether, probably the easiest way would be to substitute the movement effects for something else, like having the opponent dazed for one round per square moved.  Maybe take the attack roll vs Con or Str or something and upgrade it to stunned or even prone if they fail by a certain margin.

To simplify other powers, any area effects will catch a random number of enemies between one (the targeted creature) and the maximum that would be in the burst or blast.  So, a Blast 3 can hit eight creatures besides the one targeted, perhaps a d10-2 for additional creatures that would also be hit.  Rolling a 1 or 2 indicates zero additional creatures, and roll it for each such attack to simulate the changing nature of combat.

Movement effects and area attacks are really the two biggest mechanics that tie the game to a battlemat.  If you can come up with a replacement for those that is agreeable to your group, the rest should be easy.  I am not sure there is a halfway solution that would significantly lessen the need for minis and such, though.  You could eyeball it using the previously suggested 1" = 1sq and just estimate distances.

We do without battlemaps fairly often. Generally, in fights where positioning isn't important, there's no need to use them. For example, a wizard in one of our games was trying to shoot down this airship with magic missiles while it tried to laser him as he ran for cover in this destroyed city. The important thing to know was whether the wizard was visible or not to the airship, not which square he was in, so the DM ran it as a mixed skill challenge / combat without being drawn on the board.

Another time, our PCs were racing down this gallery to the bottom of the space as it collapsed. There were multiple paths, and a very labyrinthine layout that would have taken too long to draw, and which would have needed to be redrawn repeatedly, and all the PCs were on different levels anyhow. The reason they were racing was that a giant monster was chasing us down the gallery and tearing it apart as it went.

The important questions regarding position were simply: Are we on solid ground or not? Can we move at full speed further down the gallery? Are we in reach of the monster or is he within reach of us? We made a skill check each round that determined the answers to those questions: Successes meant we got the answer we wanted, failure meant the DM got to pick his preference. We didn't use the board at all. Powers that slid the monster simply got translated into 5ft increments and otherwise acted normally (i.e. someone knocked it into the central shaft of the gallery at one point using a sliding power).

There are other examples, but they are all similar. The main thing is to figure out why positioning is important in the first place, and simply answer those questions.

Quote from: Lawbag;371863We've had 3 people in our group express an interest in running this baby, but the sheer amount of mapping and miniature work required seems to be putting people off.
 
Is there some way (digitally or dry-wipe board) of being able to represent the fast paced movement that combat should be, with the ease of movement that figures and maps bring?
 
Cost isnt an issue, portability is.

No, there is no way around it. To play 4e RAW, you need physical representation, whether that be miniatures, tokens, or Xs and Os on a whiteboard or sheet of graph paper.

I don't really understand your question, though. You say dry-wipe board is okay, so . . . I am puzzled. A dry-wipe board and some coins (pieces of paper for larger creatures) are all you would need.

My advice would we to play 2e instead ... it was built for narrative combat.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;371925There are other examples, but they are all similar. The main thing is to figure out why positioning is important in the first place, and simply answer those questions.

Exactly.

Apparently Fiery Dragon produces boxes of counters for 4e play which seem to include rather a lot of counters. (Though I haven't seen them, that's just from a google search).

Our current 3.5 GM DIY'd a program to run combats and dungeons which was awesome visually, though he gave up using a laptop to DM eventually. I have to admit I still preferred the 2e approach as well though - mini's don't model dynamic combat (e.g. horse chases) very well, even with the addition of movement-based powers that reduce staticness.

Quote from: Fifth Element;371918Crazy thought - maybe there's more to 4E than the battlemat?

Maybe, just like there's more to Ars Magica than the magic system, more to Call of Cthulhu than percentile skills, and more to the World of Darkness than the supernatural. But stripping 4E of the battlemat makes about as much sense to me as stripping those other games of their major draws. You can do it, but you'd be tossing the most well-designed and well-supported aspect of the game. Why do that when you could just play a different game which is actually geared towards the sort of thing you want to focus on?

Quote from: Cranewings;371907It seems kinda silly to go through this much work and invest that kind of money in a strategy game that is so loaded in favor of one side.

Hey, there is no strategy in 4e!

Quote from: Lawbag;371863Is there some way (digitally or dry-wipe board) of being able to represent the fast paced movement that combat should be, with the ease of movement that figures and maps bring?
 
Cost isnt an issue, portability is.

You have received some good suggestions in the way of mats and software (I'll agree with the previous poster that suggestions RPTools' MapTool, assuming that's an option for you).  However, I get the portability thing...I've been that guy that carts around a big tub full of dungeon tiles, bits, minis a few times and I don't care for it either.

Two things I found hugely beneficial may be of interest to you:

A) Distributed bits.  Take the suggestions for cheap and easy representations suggested previously (spools, coins, whatever) and have a set available with each of your pals.  For me, the only things I really wanted consistency for were the PCs (who used their own minis) and terrain (it's too confusing if a tree is a nickel one week and a dime the next).  But for everything else, we could use what was at hand (I recommend shelled candy for fodder, letting the players eat their slain foes).

B) Cardboard foldup chess/checker board*.  Eight times of ten, this was large enough for our needs.  You can section off parts as you see fit.  If you need to buy one, you get the benefit of a box full of useful bits (stackable chips are all the rage for tracking status, so I hear) and a modest sized box to carry other bits.  If that sounds like too much bulk to you, the board can always be tucked into a rigid folder during transport.

* Now that I think about it, 4e has an awful lot of area effects and bursts and blasts, huh?  This might not have enough squares for you.  I suppose if you like the idea of bringing a board instead of a mat, you could always fix a mat with more squares to it.

Quote from: Thanlis;371868Or use the counters as minis; you can use dry-erase on 'em. Alternatively, buy a bunch of 1" wooden circles from a craft store.

But I'd skip the whole thing. Think of it in terms of abstract zones; you're either next to someone, close to them (within 5 squares), at a distance (10 squares), or far away (more than 10). You can charge if you're close or at a distance, but not if you're far away. A move action takes you from one zone to another, so you could move from "at a distance" to "close."

You'll have to skip some of the more fiddly powers, but that's not a huge loss.

Thanks for that! Goes straight to my clip-board and from there to my post-it's which I stick on the inside of my DM screen. (Abyssal Maw's  simplified skill DC calculator was another recent addition.)

One thing - I think your proposal to do mat-less zones can't be done once the number of combatants is more than 4 per side. More precisely, zones can be maintained (in favour of counting squares) by the DM keeping track of the zones on a piece of paper, say, a 3x3 zone grid.

This is what I once suggested (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=356273&postcount=23) re: Warhammer RPG 3rd's abstract system for combat movement, and which 4E developer Rodney Thompson suggested (http://rpg.geekdo.com/thread/475067/impressions-of-an-rpg-designerdeveloper-after-two):

Quote from: WotC_RodneyI've talked a lot about what I like so far (and there's a LOT to like about this game), but there are a few things that I don't care for. The movement and distance system is one of them. I get it that they wanted to go abstract, but it's painfully obvious that this game would be much better with a grid (even a large-scale one, more like the concept of zones), rather than futzing with the distance tokens. Not only is it annoying to keep track of realtive distance if players go off in different directions, it also has inexplicable complication (why does it cost 2 maneuvers to go from long to medium range when it's only 1 to move from medium to close?) and extraneous distance tracking (I can be at close range with a guy, but not engaged with him, so in truth there's actually an invisible measurement of distance between close and engaged that the game isn't really honest about). I'm in no way suggesting that the game needs tactical movement or a 1-inch grid, but I think just being able to draw the equivalent of a big tic-tac-toe board and dropping the encounter locations into large-scale zones might have been a lot easier. As it is, distance and location is probably the most difficult to track thing in the game, and it feels like they reached too hard for abstraction while not fully embracing it.

So if go we tic-tac-to, Thanlis' proposal uses these distance categories:

Same zone: combatants are adjacent to each other. DM needs to winge flanking, but not much - opportunity attacks are a much greater hassle. Powers which let people shift 1-2 squares (I'd say) are now simplified to keeping combatants in the same zone.

Adjacent zones and zones on opposite edges of the tic-tac-toe board: ..ehm... what he said (pointing at Thanlis' post). It's not so much about squares as about movement actions (very roughly speaking). It takes 1 movement action to move from one zone to another.

For simplification - a square is 5 foot across. Simplify movement and range categories to 5 foot increments. Close Burst 1-4 affects everyone in the same zone. And "Area burst 4 within 10" basically means: "affects all creatures in either your zone or a zone adjacent to yours".

PS. I think it is important that the tic-tac-toe thing is kept behind the DM screen. What I do on similar instances (running 3.5 combats mini-less) is to draw everything on my flip mat behind the screen... not square-by-square but just very abstract and at a much smaller scale, so I know who's where. I basically use only a very small area of the flip mat, so it can fit neatly behind the screen. Otherwise I'd just be a major hassle. Also: graph paper and pencil does the job just as well.

Quote from: Windjammer;371956So if go we tic-tac-to, Thanlis' proposal uses these distance categories:

Same zone: combatants are adjacent to each other. DM needs to winge flanking, but not much - opportunity attacks are a much greater hassle. Powers which let people shift 1-2 squares (I'd say) are now simplified to keeping combatants in the same zone.

Adjacent zones and zones on opposite edges of the tic-tac-toe board: ..ehm... what he said (pointing at Thanlis' post). It's not so much about squares as about movement actions (very roughly speaking). It takes 1 movement action to move from one zone to another.

PS. I think it is important that the tic-tac-toe thing is kept behind the DM screen. What I do on similar instances (running 3.5 combats mini-less) is to draw everything on my flip mat behind the screen... not square-by-square but just very abstract and at a much smaller scale, so I know who's where. I basically use only a very small area of the flip mat, so it can fit neatly behind the screen. Otherwise I'd just be a major hassle. Also: graph paper and pencil does the job just as well.

I think that works pretty well, yeah. I like the tic tac toe board.

Quote from: Benoist;371915Seems counterintuitive to me, too.

Hey Benoist, I'm starting a game of Chess. You can have two rooks, a knight, and a bishop. I'll start with 5 pawns. If you manage to kill all five of them, I'll bring out a queen by itself.

You will have to be really smart to beat me.

Thumbs up, cranewings!
But do not forget: Any figure he looses in the process of taking the pawns will be replenished before the queen comes unto the board.

That's why I like that old school touch. Any piece lost before the queen comes out gets replaced by a pawn. (:

Quote from: Settembrini;371966Thumbs up, cranewings!
But do not forget: Any figure he looses in the process of taking the pawns will be replenished before the queen comes unto the board.

See also: mid-long term resources management yanked out of the game in favor of instant resources management (if any) in a vast majority of cases. I.e. "strategy blows, we want instant rewards tactics instead. It'll be Fun(TM), and ze game will remain ze same!".

Shit, it's a good thing y'all came along. I'd almost forgotten exactly who didn't like 4e around here.

Quote from: Thanlis;371972Shit, it's a good thing y'all came along. I'd almost forgotten exactly who didn't like 4e around here.

It's probably the same people who aren't answering a question on how to forgo using a battlemat and minis with substitution suggestions for a battlemat and minis.

Quote from: StormBringer;371977It's probably the same people who aren't answering a question on how to forgo using a battlemat and minis with substitution suggestions for a battlemat and minis.

I really couldn't tell if he wanted to do without battlemats and minis altogether, or just do it simple and cheap. So I went for the gold and answered both ways.

Hey, random questions -- do you use Ubuntu for servers as well as desktops? I've been using CentOS pretty steadily for the former, mostly because I can armwrestle IBM and Dell into pretending I'm using RHEL and giving me support. Also, do you use any PHP MVC frameworks?

Quote from: Thanlis;371990I really couldn't tell if he wanted to do without battlemats and minis altogether, or just do it simple and cheap. So I went for the gold and answered both ways.

Hey, random questions -- do you use Ubuntu for servers as well as desktops? I've been using CentOS pretty steadily for the former, mostly because I can armwrestle IBM and Dell into pretending I'm using RHEL and giving me support. Also, do you use any PHP MVC frameworks?

Ubuntu has a server version that installs without any kind of windowing, but I have rarely seen it used.  Most web hosts go with FreeBSD or RedHat.  CentOS is just RedHat with the serial number filed off, so if you are happy with that, I would stick with it.

I have been rooting around trying to come up with a decent project to work on with php other than my own forums.  Some kind of multi-player Rogue-like, along the lines of Ultima Online with simple 8-bit-ish sprite graphics.  Ruby on Rails seems to be custom made for the model level, but it necessarily sacrifices flexibility to do so.  I'm torn between Perl and PHP for modeling.  PHP would make for a decent model and a pretty good view layer, but double duty is a no-no.  :)  Using Perl for the controller would require a bit of discipline in conjunction with PHP, as the temptation to just overlaod PHP (or Perl!) with both layers would be pretty high.

I like the concept of MVC, I am just wary of the promoters and their products.  A lot of these recent programming schemes feel like solutions in need of a problem.

Quote from: StormBringer;371994I have been rooting around trying to come up with a decent project to work on with php other than my own forums.  Some kind of multi-player Rogue-like, along the lines of Ultima Online with simple 8-bit-ish sprite graphics.  Ruby on Rails seems to be custom made for the model level, but it necessarily sacrifices flexibility to do so.  I'm torn between Perl and PHP for modeling.  PHP would make for a decent model and a pretty good view layer, but double duty is a no-no.  :)  Using Perl for the controller would require a bit of discipline in conjunction with PHP, as the temptation to just overlaod PHP (or Perl!) with both layers would be pretty high.

I like the concept of MVC, I am just wary of the promoters and their products.  A lot of these recent programming schemes feel like solutions in need of a problem.

Yep. I've been messing around with CodeIgniter but it doesn't enforce anything, so overloading becomes ridiculously easy. On the other hand, it's way more flexible than any of the more doctrinaire MVC solutions, so a lower cost of mental entry, as it were.

Quote from: Benoist;371970See also: mid-long term resources management yanked out of the game in favor of instant resources management (if any) in a vast majority of cases. I.e. "strategy blows, we want instant rewards tactics instead. It'll be Fun(TM), and ze game will remain ze same!".

To be fair, the design in 3e demanded it, almost.  To me, at least, 4e plays like a polished up 3e.  The foundation for 4e was there in 3.5, it was just carrying around a lot of old tropes and design ideas as extra baggage.  Sort of "pretending" to be a true successor to AD&D -- an awkward position between trying to pay homage to the old and trying to be "modern" at the same time.

Now if we had gone straight from an AD&D-esque design into something like 4e, then I would be like "wtf?", but as it stands 4e makes sense for me in terms of design progression.  The focus on minis was prettymuch a given, considering how stressed it was in 3e.

That said, I do like the tic-tac-toe board idea...I'm going to have to steal that.

That´s only true if you drank the Paizo and CharOp kool aid. To the forge with you!

Quote from: Settembrini;372015That´s only true if you drank the Paizo and CharOp kool aid. To the forge with you!

It's awfully boring these days.  :P

Quote from: Peregrin;372046It's awfully boring these days.  :P

The Forge you mean?

I wrote a rules mod for slightly gridless combat (http://games.forgreatjustice.net/2010/03/31/dd-4e-hack-gridless-combat-and-movement-advantage/), but it's really not much more than "have a map in your head and kinda ad-hoc it, man". It's maybe slightly more quantifiable than that. Something like this would be portable since the GM might have a sketchy map with some positions penciled in, but nothing else would be necessary.

I haven't gotten to actually try 4e without a map (but trying to use its tactical combat, etc). I suspect it would feel like my gridless experiences with 3e/2e, but I'm not sure.

Quote from: Benoist;372106The Forge you mean?

Yessir.

That is indeed true. Didn´t Ron want to "run for office"? That was the last thing I read on there, somebody shot me a link and I laughed my ass off. Oh, and the thing about the Wifesploitation for fullfilling mail-orders, but that´s like, 2008?

Thanks for all the advice, I think I'll be going the 10" x 10" route with coloured counters for the combatants and status indicators.

Quote from: Lawbag;372976Thanks for all the advice, I think I'll be going the 10" x 10" route with coloured counters for the combatants and status indicators.

Then you may be interested in something like Alea Tools (http://aleatools.com/Pages/PageRenderer.aspx?id=49e875ef-2c01-429c-92e5-bb55191b2072) for a wide variety of status markers.  More colours than are usually available with poker chips, but a fair bit pricier.  You mentioned that cost is no object, but some of us are on a budget.  :)

The bases are magnetized, so keep them away from your laptop.  On the plus side, however, they would stick to a metal whiteboard quite well, so turning or lifting the map for display would present no problems for disrupting placement of the tokens.  Additionally, they have some tools there for punching out images for use as tokens as well, amounting to a  1" hole punch (http://shop.scrapbooks.com/fimepu.html) that could be found at a craft store in the paper art or scrapbooking section.  These come in a variety of shapes (http://www2.fiskars.com/Products/Crafting/Punches/Squeeze-Punches) and sizes (http://www.scrapbookingalley.com/product/EP73462728.htm), so some paper status indicators could also be designed.  

Although there is no such thing as a cheap hobby, you may want to consider getting a spouse or loved one interested in scrapbooking and just use the tools as needed.  :)

Just for the record, I started a new 4E group last week which quite surprised me. Two players new to the game, two 4E vets, myself and my wife. The experienced players had never used a board and minis...period. In no prior edition. I was impressed at their tenacity, and we went ahead and played without a board, converting squares back to feet and basically doing it "old school."

The end result was fun....and it was exactly like I had always run the game, prior to 3.5. I will be curious to see where it goes from here, and how the use of powers mutates things as we go along. There is definitely a return to the "DM judgement call" doing it this way. Overall though, it made for a faster combat and players took more interesting choices of action in the course of play than they might have if the board had been restricting choice.

Now, having said all that, I don't know how easy it would have been to play this way without my own prior experience from many years of DMing...I'd imagine trying to do 4E this way for a new DM would be excruciating, or at least very energy-consuming in terms of the micromanagement, but I could be wrong.

Quote from: camazotz;373160Just for the record, I started a new 4E group last week which quite surprised me. Two players new to the game, two 4E vets, myself and my wife. The experienced players had never used a board and minis...period. In no prior edition. I was impressed at their tenacity, and we went ahead and played without a board, converting squares back to feet and basically doing it "old school."

The end result was fun....and it was exactly like I had always run the game, prior to 3.5. I will be curious to see where it goes from here, and how the use of powers mutates things as we go along. There is definitely a return to the "DM judgement call" doing it this way. Overall though, it made for a faster combat and players took more interesting choices of action in the course of play than they might have if the board had been restricting choice.

Now, having said all that, I don't know how easy it would have been to play this way without my own prior experience from many years of DMing...I'd imagine trying to do 4E this way for a new DM would be excruciating, or at least very energy-consuming in terms of the micromanagement, but I could be wrong.

A noob D&D player beginning with 4e probably wouldn't even think of going without a grid. That's all they know. For them, D&D = grid. That's what an RPG is to them.

And that's why 4e is killing the RPG hobby.

Quote from: camazotz;373160Now, having said all that, I don't know how easy it would have been to play this way without my own prior experience from many years of DMing...I'd imagine trying to do 4E this way for a new DM would be excruciating, or at least very energy-consuming in terms of the micromanagement, but I could be wrong.

I think that true. But there are quite a few things which flummox new DMs.

Seanchai

Quote from: 1989;373173And that's why 4e is killing the RPG hobby.

If it dies will you go away?

Quote from: Fifth Element;373185If it dies will you go away?

If 4e dies, will you go away?

Quote from: 1989;373173A noob D&D player beginning with 4e probably wouldn't even think of going without a grid. That's all they know. For them, D&D = grid. That's what an RPG is to them.

And that's why 4e is killing the RPG hobby.

Actually, most of the newbie groups I've played with don't use a grid, or de-emphasize its use.  Only the hobbyists/3e players I know get into the minis aspect at all.

A friend of mine (casual player who started with 3e) who wanted to run a spur of the moment 4e campaign called a bunch of people up (really odd, since I didn't even know he played tabletop), and I figured I should bring my books and my battlemat in case he didn't have one.  When I put down the mat, he was like "Oh, we're using minis?"

The other group I've seen around made up of people my age (college aged peeps) didn't start using minis until recently, when one of the more experienced players taught them to paint.  I'd never seen them use minis prior to a few weeks ago (we're talking months of play without them).

I think a lot of casual/newbie groups just don't want to be assed with finding and buying mats, minis, etc.

Quote from: 1989;373198If 4e dies, will you go away?

No. If there's a 5E, I'll probably try that. Or I might go back to 3.5. Hell, I might even keep playing 4E, since the game will still exist even if WotC doesn't support it anymore.

Quote from: Seanchai;373179I think that true. But there are quite a few things which flummox new DMs.

No kidding.  When I think back to ye olde days, even using the Metzner red box took a fair amount of time before you really grasped all the concepts or even ran all the rules correctly (much less AD&D).

Quote from: Lawbag;372976Thanks for all the advice, I think I'll be going the 10" x 10" route with coloured counters for the combatants and status indicators.

Glad you got some help in between the bickering. :)

Bickering is good for the soul...