Imagine, no Battlemat...

I dont think battlemaps are neccessary, but they are a wonderful enhancement to a game. Especially when you can set them up quickly and effectively. The first campaign I was in the DM didn't use a battlemap at all. It was very fun for two years. However, there was at least an argument or a "discussion" at least once a session about where a particular player was and where the npc was. There'd be arguments about where someone was hiding, where someone was flanking.

The next campaign I was in I enjoyed a bit more because the DM used battlemaps for almost everything. Everything was predrawn and few time if any was spent drawing room or corridor after corrodor. It enhanced the enjoyment of the game. It allowed me to concentrate my imagination on my halfling rogue savagely plowing through githyanki as opposed to dedicationg part of my imagination to trying to read the DMs mind as to where people are and whose doing what.

I've played really good mapless mutants and masterminds and All flesh must be eaten games, but in hindsight I bet those games would have been slightly different with a map. Especially my mutants and mastersmind game, where I found myself a couple of times lost in the action trying to figure out which opponent had the item we needed at the time.
Currently, I use an assortment of battlemaps. I preprint and render a ton of stuff using DUndjinni. Oone creates beautiful battlemaps and dungeon rooms I use for special encounters. And for those hard to computer render maps I use tact-tiles with a good marker.

Nice Henry, you beat me to it.

Imagine there's no battlemat
It's easy if you try
Nothing to kill or die on
On the table, only die/ce...

Thinking about it I have used a battlemat of some kind or another nearly the entire time I have been gaming. For nearly every system too (Call of Cthulhu is the one exception I can think of since fights don't last long and it's hard to judge which way the PCs will flee), Shadowrun, Traveller, D&D (every edition including OD&D), Vampire, Silver Age Sentinels etc etc. I like being able to see where the action is and knowing exactly where my PC (or monsters) are in relation to everything else. I would be hesitant to play in a game without a battlemat nowadays but I have in the past.

S'mon said:

Nice Henry, you beat me to it.

Imagine there's no battlemat
It's easy if you try
Nothing to kill or die on
On the table, only die/ce...

Click to expand...

OHMYGOD!!! I just finished typing up my own "imagine" parody, but you guys beat me to it! Poor form, I know, but I'll post it anyway just 'cause I wasted four whole minutes on it:


Imagine there's no battlemat
It's easy if you try
Nowhere to blow our money
No minis we have to buy
Imagine all the gamers
Living ruler-free ...

Imagine there's no AoO
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or fight with
That gets free attacks on you
Imagine all the gamers
Actually having time to play...


Sorry. Must’ve failed my John Lennon save.

I've never actually done a game with out some form of grid for combats. I use A1-A3 sized 2cm squared paper rather than buying the other expensive grids. It means you can sketch up anything on the go, rub out that bush that just got roasted, and draw things as events go on. I also like to give my players tea stained nicely drawn ones as maps, (presumeing they find or obtain one somehow) which means I don't have to draw everything twice in certain awkward areas (caves and caverns for example), and the map can double as the grid.

Instead of minitures which ive never used, I use the plastic bases (from my brothers spare warhammer supplys) without the models, and put on sticky labels to show whos who. This also means players imagine their characters looking and acting how they should; rather than dwarves always looking like tordek, etc. We also paint them different colours to make it easy to recognise groups and misc stuff. The players have learned to fear the single 'red-1' placed amoung a the others.

It just all make the game more versitile and gives more options to a DM, say when you don't have the right mini. Of course if you do the full imagine it style games then you have even more versitality, but for those who like the tactical part too, I think this works best. Cheep, easy, doesn't take long.

I'm kinda split on the issue:

On one hand, I find the battlemat slows things down, and makes (aside from the gross time increase) for a 'clunky' game sometimes. On the other hand, I remember 2E debates that threw the session while we argued over who was where (fireball !), and personally, I like the tactics a battlemat encourages, and for 3.X, think there are some fights for which it is essential.

So: for smaller, or just simpler (30 rounds against 1 opponent) fights, I advocate skipping the battlemat. For big fights, or numerous opponents, I advocate using the battlemat. As my bias is against the mat (it needs to be a Big fight) and another player's bias is towards the mat (1 orc vs L19 party - get the mat!) it works aout about even.

Rassilon.

Sigh. NO, the battlemat is not fundamental. We used to use pennies and paper and scrawled notes in earlier editions. It worked, never once looked in the back of Dragon Magazine and drooled over all the lead minis they advertised in their little faux-settings. Couldn't have afforded it.

Now, in the era of 3.x, with more money, and unfortunately, credit cards, and even MORE unfortunately, a seemingly inexaustable supply of neat little metal and plastic critters, i find that i like to play on battlemats. But no, it's not fundamental, and in some way detracts from the imagination. On the other hand, i could argue that having a 4" demon towering over your puny halfling thief could inject something that the imagination can't. Maybe it's all about perspective.

And i respect the advanced combat techniques that AoO meant to incorportate, but they bog the game down too much if you use EVERY single one. So, we're sort of selective about that and combat is greatly sped up.

Rassilon said:

I remember 2E debates that threw the session while we argued over who was where (fireball !), and personally, I like the tactics a battlemat encourages, and for 3.X, think there are some fights for which it is essential.

So: for smaller, or just simpler (30 rounds against 1 opponent) fights, I advocate skipping the battlemat. For big fights, or numerous opponents, I advocate using the battlemat. As my bias is against the mat (it needs to be a Big fight) and another player's bias is towards the mat (1 orc vs L19 party - get the mat!) it works aout about even.

Rassilon.

Click to expand...

I sort of agree here too. Small fights don't warrant the mat, although i've done it just to be evocative of the terrain. I recall one time in a 3E game, and this really pissed me off as a DM, the players were involved in two combats in a huge room. Dim light, smoke and fire everywhere, and ONE spellcaster 90' away from the other group wanted to count out squares and drop a fireball precisely to catch all the enemies and not a fallen friend inside a tiny little area. Of course, arguments ensued. I'm sure this has happened plenty of times, the DM doesn't think that such precision is justified in the middle of hectic combat. A reason NOT to use battlemats...

...still like 'em though.

I've actually tinkered a bit making my own. Just needs a little fiddling around in Photoshop. Here's two that i made to 1" scale. They are useful for invoking mood and determining balance checks and such just from a glance.

I seem to recall that Monte Cook had adressed that question on his old website. I've been trying to find the article again without luck.

I seem to recall that he maintained that it was entirely possible. Naturally some rules might be applied differently, AoO for exemple, but it required very little adaptation.

This is all from memory, however, so do not take my word for it.

Anyway, like others have said, it is entirely possible to do it.

Good luck,

[happy tears]Those are beautiful Lennon filks, guys[/happy tears]

As to battlemats, until 3e I never used them in my own games, though I played in other games where they were used. I can say that battlemats add very little to the game. On the one hand you add an element of "fairness" in that everyone can see where they are and can plot out precise movements, but on the other hand real combat is not fair.

Okay, the closest I've been to "real combat" is some time in the SCA and with paintball guns, so the fear factor is nonexistent. Other than that I've talked to a lot of veterans (WWII Pacific, WWII D-Day, Korea Inchon Landing, Vietnam-Cambodia, Desert Storm, etc.). Combining these factors I have come to realize how amazingly unrealistic most rpg combat is, in that if you use a battleboard you know exactly where all your buddies are, you never mistake friend for foe, you know what is around the next corner, and can watch the general ebb and flow of combat very easily. On top of this you can plan. As such, I find battlemats less and less satisfying with time in that they are not mapping what I wish to map in a game.

Been gaming for 30 years. Used a battleboard sporadically over the last 5. Happily dropped for the most part and willing to drop the rest.