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Am I wrong to think that one of the advantages to using a battlemat at all is to more accurately represent spatial relationships? Whatever the other weaknesses of hexes and 1-2-1 squares (and I'm not claiming either is perfect), when a mini shows as further away on the battlemat, it's further away.
Man, I thought the grid intruded in 3.5, but the advice I'm reading here is pretty much tantamount to "don't believe what your eyes tell you about the relative distances between the fighter, the rogue, and the dragon; always go to the grid and judge by that."
Seriously, a tactical RPG that relies on the players deliberately training themselves to do that ... it's just bizarre. I honestly don't get how it can not bother people.
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Seriously, a tactical RPG that relies on the players deliberately training themselves to do that ... it's just bizarre. I honestly don't get how it can not bother people.
"Deliberately training"? Is that what you call playing Nethack, Daleks, and Chess?
Seriously, it's not that hard to understand.
"... unless you're a grid bug", -- N
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Am I wrong to think that one of the advantages to using a battlemat at all is to more accurately represent spatial relationships? Whatever the other weaknesses of hexes and 1-2-1 squares (and I'm not claiming either is perfect), when a mini shows as further away on the battlemat, it's further away.
I think the advantage of the battlemat is to represent the spatial qualities of the characters in relation to each other, not to represent the spatial qualities of distance. Even 1-2-1 is just an approximation. 1-1-1 is just a looser approximation (1.4~ rounds to an integer of 1 fwiw). And hexes never came into fashion because the D&D cartographers used squares.
"Real Wargamers" don't use battlemats to represent the spatial quality of distance. They use a ruler for that.
So give each player a piece of string cut to exactly how many squares they can move? Templates for bursts and blasts and such (like those fun wire ones)? And then just toss the grid out and play an open area? Cover would be interesting, probably mostly in the DM's hands to adjudicate. Anyhow, didn't mean to sidetrack the discussion but it reminds me a lot of what we did in basic D&D when we used platic army men, weebles and legos to figure stuff out.
One of our groups have been doing this (it's on a grid, but we have been using string. It leads to slower movement (where is the string? Can I get there without provoking?). We had more problems when we had an X-Y-Z battle (fighting down a mountainside with stairs, so ranged attacks had to calculate the hypotenuse. Calculating the root of the sum of two squares certainly doesn't help things run smoothly.
In the games I've run and/or played in with the straight 1-1-1 rules, it hasn't been too much of an issue, but that may be because we don't have a ranger or warlock in the party (anymore). Even back then, it wasn't too hard to find out who was closest. Our party does tons of movement (at least half the party is charging at least every other turn) and it's generally been made more beneficial to have the 1-1-1 system than it's been a hindrance.
Never been quite sure how someone can be an anti-4E guy. You can be for it, or indifferent. I mean, it's not coming into your house and molesting your children. If you don't interact with it it won't come after you with knives. You're not "anti" it any more than you're "anti" any of the vast number of people who you've met but not gone on to be close friends with.
But that's cool. Not every game's for everyone. Neither Wizards nor any of the 4E designers are going to cry themselves to sleep because their product didn't win the hearts and minds of every last person who touched it. There's room in the world for people to like different things.
Never been quite sure how someone can be an anti-4E guy. You can be for it, or indifferent. I mean, it's not coming into your house and molesting your children. If you don't interact with it it won't come after you with knives. You're not "anti" it any more than you're "anti" any of the vast number of people who you've met but not gone on to be close friends with.
But that's cool. Not every game's for everyone. Neither Wizards nor any of the 4E designers are going to cry themselves to sleep because their product didn't win the hearts and minds of every last person who touched it. There's room in the world for people to like different things.
The OP was someone that was initially against 4e, but has been actually playing it in order to get a better sense of the game (instead of not liking it simply based on how it looked at first glance). Despite the name of the thread, it's actually quite positive in terms of 4e. Hopefully more people that "hate", or are just indifferent to 4e are willing to give it a try and find out if parts they thought they would hate are as bad as it seems, worse, or not actually a problem.
For myself the battlemat is simply a tool to help with mechanics and doesn't really symbolize that much. Like actually in-game, the characters can be jumping, rolling, etc. all over the place in a combat scene and on the board the piece has moved maybe once or twice. It is more or less for me a, "I have engaged this guy", "I can see this guy", etc. kind of deal. It is something you refer back too to make sure everything runs smoothly.
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I enjoy your posts on this topic Jeff but I just don't grok the 1-1-1 problem, and never have. In fact I *so* don't get it that I fear I'm missing something.
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I wish they had left the distance measurement alone. I wish I had skill points to some degree.
Skill points are dead easy to add back in - at character creation you have 5x Skills Known points, and can put up to 5 points in any class skill. The Skill Training feat gives you 5 skill points that you can spend on any skills, including non-class ones.
(I can't see a good way to gain skill points on level-up, if that's what you're after, but you can certainly retrain skill points so that when you get your half-level bump you move points from one skill to another, with a net effect that one skill improves and another doesn't.)
Am I wrong to think that one of the advantages to using a battlemat at all is to more accurately represent spatial relationships? Whatever the other weaknesses of hexes and 1-2-1 squares (and I'm not claiming either is perfect), when a mini shows as further away on the battlemat, it's further away.
Perhaps the battlemat is to approximate and/or simplify spatial relationships. You remove the grid and pull out the tape measure to accurately represent spatial relationships.
Personally, the only issue I have is if you travel long-distances "diagonally," which in theory covers more mileage than if traveled non-diagonally. In a small-ish dungeon room, the difference between diagonal and non-diagonal move, while substantial, is smaller and easier to hand-wave for me.
I enjoy your posts on this topic Jeff but I just don't grok the 1-1-1 problem, and never have. In fact I *so* don't get it that I fear I'm missing something.
Well, some people simply prefer it to be a bit closer to reality (which in turn helps not seeing the game as a boardgame in some way).
The diagonal of a square with a border length of 1 is the squareroot of 2, which is approximately ~1.4.
Approximating that length with 1.5 (which is essentially what the alternating 1-2-1-2 does in a simplified fashion) is a lot closer to reality than approximating it with 1, while (and this is the important part) still being perfectly easy to understand and use.
Therefore, to me at least, it is a much better solution.
Bye
Thanee
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Another way you might set your mind at ease with the whole 1-1-1 thing is to view it like HP. There is a certain amount of realism that is tossed out the window to accomodate the system.
Which is not neccessarily a bad thing, if you think of it as a combative fantasy chess match. You can certainly change the rules and make a 1-2-1 work, I happen to use it and am even considering some changes to Blast AoE's by working up a cone like system (I already have more rounded cut-outs for Burst. When we try it, if it doesn't work, it's no big deal. We never look at the RAW as something that was meant to be perfect.
The important thing in our campaigns is to focus on role play and not rule play. I always saw D&D as a game about story and Player/DM interaction, not combat simulation. Getting close to combat realism is nice if it happens, but not something I must have while playing D&D. There are other games for that type of realism.
Well, some people simply prefer it to be a bit closer to reality (which in turn helps not seeing the game as a boardgame in some way). <snip>
Don't worry I understand the math.
Jeff seemed to be implying that switching to 1-1-1 somehow made interpreting the batte-mat harder..?
__________________ "The last time I ran into myself, I kicked my own ass." Chasing the DM, a blog for DM's like me who really feel they should know what they're doing by now.
For DM's: 4E Dungeon Index (adventures, conversions, and sidetreks by level, last updated 16th Oct. through Dungeon #171).
Am I wrong to think that one of the advantages to using a battlemat at all is to more accurately represent spatial relationships? Whatever the other weaknesses of hexes and 1-2-1 squares (and I'm not claiming either is perfect), when a mini shows as further away on the battlemat, it's further away.
Man, I thought the grid intruded in 3.5, but the advice I'm reading here is pretty much tantamount to "don't believe what your eyes tell you about the relative distances between the fighter, the rogue, and the dragon; always go to the grid and judge by that."
Seriously, a tactical RPG that relies on the players deliberately training themselves to do that ... it's just bizarre. I honestly don't get how it can not bother people.
I really enjoy these threads but i, too, cannot really see where the problem with 1-1-1 is. Its just a arbitrarily choosen measurement unit for distance representation. I have some hardcore oldschool wargamers in my game, and they never batted an eye. We do not "measure the distances" - that is what the grid is for, after all. If we wanted it that detailed, we would play without one, measureing as you do in tabletop wargaming.
But if it bothers you, you should change it.
Edit: Or to emphazise: the problem arises by constantly comparing one measurement unit (centimeters) to another (squares) while feeling that one has more "real" reality to it than the other. Both are arbitrarily defined methods of distance representation, and in 4e, the preferred method (but not the only method) is "squares."
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Last edited by Keefe the Thief; 1st July 2009 at 02:50 PM..
Like many others, I've almost always used the marked strings. I used the marked strings in the two of the four 4e test games I've played in and we use the marked strings in my weekly Pathfinder game.
Give it a try. One less thing pulling your mind out of the game is one less thing pulling your mind out of the game.
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