Ye Old Grid

[Infiniti2000]

Nice graph, Frank!

 

[frankthedm]

http://www.benchmarkkitchens.com/design/grid[1].gif

They supplied the grid. paint supplied the lines, circles & squares

 

[Ranger REG]

Kisanji, thanks for the advise. I like the idea of minis and definetly want to use them, I just don't undersdand why you can't use a ruler with 1cm equally 1 square? It's the same diff isn't it? Only it seems to me it would be easier, and not to mention more natural looking, to use a ruler.

You can if you want to, but it usually takes longer because you have to measure your path to make sure you don't go over your speed per round. It's a lot easier to just count the squares.

 

[Shin Okada]

Wargames (in this case, mini-based wargames, not the ones using hexes), do not use grids mainly because of terrain models. It is much easier to make terrain models without grids. And some modelers hate having grids or hexes on their terrain models.

On the other hand, grids (or hexes) makes a game much faster and much easier to handle. Combats take less times to solve as you don't need to physically measure distances. And you never hear that famous "my knight has successfully charged onto the dragon!/No ! another half inch" type of arguments. Also, flanking rule and such are much easier and clearer on grids. At fast, 3.0e combat rules were written with non-grid battlefield in mind, and grids were optional rules. But in the cause of development, WotC found that using grids is the way to go. Detailed rules for flanking were in Song and Silence (3.0e supplement) but that rule was already written only gridded battle mats in mind. And now in 3.5e the combat rule is written for grids.

If you like to draw maps in free hand, use some kind of battlemats with grids which can be usable with dry-erase marker pens. You can just draw maps and terrains on it.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

On reading the dummies guide to D&D it struck me as a little strange that a grid should be used for combat: movement is limited to horizontal and [diagonal], and [diagonal] costs twice as much to move, which is unatural for critters and time consuming to count.

Wouldn't it be better to ditch the grid and use a ruler (i.e. 1cm = 1 square) so that things can naturally wander out radially?

Much of the point of using the grid is to eliminate ambiguity. Areas of effect, lines of sight, lines of effect, etc. all these things in D&D are now configured to conform to a grid. If everything is on the grid there is no argument as to where things are, what is affected and where. Using a ruler and a blank surface leads to questions of where things are measured from, if they are being measured accurately by the individual, and so forth.

Does anyone play like this? Am I a total noob? Please help.

Lots of people play like this - lots of people don't. As others have suggested start with the Rules as Written and once you're used to them, and perhaps understand them better because you know how and why they work the way they do during play, THEN start to question whether you want to try things differently.

 

[Nail]

Much of the point of using the grid is to eliminate ambiguity. ......(snip).....Lots of people play like this - lots of people don't.

Lots of people play without grids? Are you sure? All the groups I've played in or know about locally use [square] grids.

We should do a poll......

 

[Masquerade]

Lots of people play without grids? Are you sure? All the groups I've played in or know about locally use [square] grids.

We should do a poll......

I've personally gone both ways and prefer non-grid.

 

[Rath the Brown]

I never played with grids or minis until 3rd edition; we always just used a free-form sketch and maybe some tokens to denote in a very general way where creatures where, and then only when there was an argument on where every creature was. Now, we always use grids and minis for combats and I prefer it that way. As others have stated, it takes out the ambiguity and gets rid of arguments like "I should have been able to get all of the goblins in the fireball! Look how bunched together all the tokens are!"

 

[diaglo]

I've personally gone both ways...

TMI.


you can always rotate your grid 45 degrees.

but as an old wargamer i prefer tape measure, string and a protractor.

 

[fiddy]

I've only played in games that use either minis + grids or no minis at all. I've never tried the tape measure approach. One thing that I think I'd have to do if I tried that is make some disks that tape to the bottom of each mini to show the areas they threaten or something similar (assuming of course that I was playing in a game where such things mattered).