D&D 5E Do you play on a grid?

[Klaudius Rex]

if so, how involved do you get with your grid?

do you collect a bunch of minis? craft terrain and objects?
or just slap a few lines and circles on a chessex map and hope for the best?

i want to know how intricate...and more importantly how much work do you go through preparing for these mapped out scenarios?

 

[cbwjm]

We just draw in the terrain.

 

[Zardnaar]

Draw it in fairly basic most of the time.

 

[Sunseeker]

Yes I typically use a grid for combat and dungeon exploration. I love minis, but terrain pieces are typically a pita, they never stay where they need to be (unless you use some putty or magnets or something). Usually I draw on the board for terrain, I have various markers and each one represents a different thing (green=shrubs and trees, blue=water, red/orange=fire, brown=rocks, etc...)

How much detail depends on the situation. I tend to be "loose" with my wilderness detail, towns and dungeons are more specific because they include specific things in specific places, forests and stuff, not so much. I will usually map out detailed areas on notebook graph paper and translate it over later, but I'm considering drawing up the maps of relevant areas on larger one-inch graph paper and just laying it down as needed. How much "work" is this? Well it's not really hard for me so, not much work.

 

[Shiroiken]

I normally play on Roll20, so we use the built in grid. When I play IRL, I prefer TotM instead, with maybe a sketch to describe the scene.

Roll20 makes thing different with a grid, as opposed to IRL, because you don't have to spend a lot of time drawing it at the session. You have to do all the work in advance, so you probably spend a bit more time overall.

 

[GameOgre]

Theater of the Mind 75%.
Battlemat and Miniatures and more 25%.

 

[Ath-kethin]

We don't use minis in my games. If I wanted to play a board game I'd whip out my old HeroQuest set.

 

[Bitbrain]

The main DM for my group uses a grid, the secondary DM uses theater of the mind.

in my experience, theater of the mind seems to result in a faster paced combat

 

[TheLoneRanger1979]

Only sometimes (in 5E). We either use the big grid board and draw the environment over it, or (on even fewer occasions) use specially drawn maps (often not even "gridded") for some very special spatial encounters. We don't have minis yet. We use tokens generally. I made some minis back in the day for our 4E out of plastic clay, but they were never painted and are not suited for our current party composition.

 

[ehenning]

Currently, we use Roll20 with detailed maps on a preset grid in my campaign. In another campaign, we use sketches, minis and ToTM. One of our group is building a gaming table with an HD monitor. The goal is to merge the two, using minis on top of digital maps with a cool gaming table

Step after this is holographics...maybe use the new Red Hydrogen phone...