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...