Fiddly Bits: Feet of Movement

[I'm A Banana]

Including measurements (in feet, squares, or whatever) doesn't stop you from using theatre of the mind.

Not including an alternative does.

It does so first because any measurement in feet is something I instantly have to somehow envision. I don't have a database in my head of what 90 feet vs. 30 feet looks like from the perspective of a character in the world. I don't know how big a boom that is. Is it small enough to only hit one kobold? Big enough to hit some but not all? Tremendous and capable of killing all the demihumans in the room? No idea. Especially not when I also don't know how big the room is, how big the monster is, how wide the river is, how deep the pit is...

It also does so because it makes me feel like I am boning a player by not taking their abilities and strategies into account. Just because I don't want to hassle with bits like space and reach doesn't mean I don't want to know if the rogue can get behind the ogre for a possible Sneak Attack, and it doesn't mean I don't want the fighter to be unable to shove things around. It does mean I don't care about precision, but I still appreciate things like how this impacts the action economy and targeting, and I need some sort of supplement for how to judge that if I am not using precise measurements.

Leaving that information out is fine for you, but makes my game much, much more difficult.

Like I said, I wouldn't want to take them away from those who love them.

I just want an alternative. Because measurements don't work for me.

So what edition are you playing now that doesn't use squares (I loves this) or feet ?

I mostly play 4e and die a little inside whenever I have to measure radii or move my token around the incredibly detailed (but never really utilized) grid.

I also run FFZ, which does NOT care where the heck you are. But while that's in-genre for the wahoo cinematic anime ridiculousness of Final Fantasy (there is no distance you cannot travel in however long it takes you to look awesome doing it), it's not very in-genre for the more grounded D&D, so I need something more like a middle ground that can give me a finer granularity but that doesn't require me to fiddle with grids and measurements.

I mean, yeah, I could build one from scratch myself or yoink some other system's stuff, but I still want one when I sit down to play D&D on Monday, and I ain't got one. WotC wants me to care about 10 feet instead and I do not care about 10 feet and 10 years of trying to make me care about 10 feet is not working in the slightest, guys, for real.

 

[Jester David]

Slightly askew of the main point.

Whatever you call the thing I have to count, and how ever much "real world" distance it represents, it is something I do not want to count, and it is something that I do not care about how much "real world" distance is covered.

Ahhh, what you need grasshopper, is to work on your SARN-FU.
Complete with handy table tent for reference.

 

[dkyle]

The OP is absolutely right that absolute measurements like "feet" or "squares" have no place in a theater-of-the-mind system.

The problem is that D&D has never been a theater-of-the-mind system. Not really. It has always been either a miniatures game with ruler measurements (early D&D used measurement in inches after all), or a grid-based system. Theater-of-the-mind in D&D has always been either a houserule, or a sloppy alternative rule suggestion.

So actually designing D&D Next into a proper theater-of-the-mind system (using zones, arenas, and the like) goes against the traditions of every D&D there's ever been. And that is absolutely not something the designers of this game are willing to do.

I'd love to see a D&D with a proper theater-of-the-mind design (even as a 4E fan). But that's not on the agenda, outside of a module that we might see, that will likely be barely functional considering how deeply ingrained mechanics unsupportive of proper theater-of-the-mind are in the core game.

 

[Chronikoce]

I'd like to go for

Adjacent (within 5' for you grid-counters, arm's reach for everyone else)
Point Blank (within 30', or a standard move action)
Close (within 60' - charge distance)
Medium (within 120' - full-tilt run distance)
Long (about 240' - something you need an archer for)
Extreme (about 480' - ya need a sniper)

So, a push no longer makes the foe adjacent (enemy has to use a move action to get back up next to you, or gives you breathing room for a spell or missile attack).
Shifts give you a positioning advantage if you're already adjacent (give up your move to gain advantage or give your opponent disadvantage; they can counter-move on their turn to cancel (or perhaps as a reaction if they didn't move their turn, if you want to track that), or perhaps the fighter can spend a CS dice to counter - suddenly you have fighters "circling their opponents").

This. I actually have never really enjoyed counting squares but saw it as inevitable. I may actually just steal this and start using it because I really like it. I have to say I never really enjoyed how different speeds between characters effected play. Halfling in full plate in 3.5 just means the entire party better wait for their ridiculously slowly tank lol

 

[KidSnide]

I guess I just disagree with the OP. When I do theater of the mind, I vastly prefer feet over an abstract measurement. Unlike "squares", distances like 20 feet exist in the game world.

Yeah, I don't really sweat the difference between 25 feet and 30 feet unless two characters get into a footrace, but I'd rather speeds and distances be expressed in a real world measurement than with an abstract rule mechanic.

-KS

 

[Greg K]

I tend to run theater of the mind and feet has never been been a problem. It has also never been an issue when playing under other DMs running theater of the mind.

 

[I'm A Banana]

When I do theater of the mind, I vastly prefer feet over an abstract measurement. Unlike "squares", distances like 20 feet exist in the game world.

So, for me, 20 feet doesn't exist in the game world. I can't easily envision what 20 feet looks like in the game world. "20 feet" might as well be "2,543 Smilparns." They have just about the same amount of meaning to me. Blame the American School System and my lack of left-braindedness.

What does have a meaning to me is a more concrete relative measurement. Is the guy I want to hit HERE or is he OVER THERE or is he WAY THE HECK OVER THERE? And is he close by other mooks?

Ultimately, that's what the feet measurements are used for anyway. I just kind of want to cut out the middle man and make it easier to parse in the moment. NEXT TO has some concrete value for me. "5 feet away" might as well be "Arrogant goldfish quahogging widdershins" for all it tells me about what's actually going on in the game world.

 

[KidSnide]

So, for me, 20 feet doesn't exist in the game world. I can't easily envision what 20 feet looks like in the game world. "20 feet" might as well be "2,543 Smilparns." They have just about the same amount of meaning to me. Blame the American School System and my lack of left-braindedness.

Then, yes, I expect this is just a difference of how we process space mentally. To me, "the orc is 20 feet in front of the fighter and the gnoll is 15 feet to his left" is enough for me to have a decent sense of whether I can catch both of them in a fireball. Particularly, if we're playing with a not-to-scale whiteboard map.

YMMV (and obviously does).

-KS

 

[MarkB]

So, for me, 20 feet doesn't exist in the game world. I can't easily envision what 20 feet looks like in the game world. "20 feet" might as well be "2,543 Smilparns." They have just about the same amount of meaning to me. Blame the American School System and my lack of left-braindedness.

What does have a meaning to me is a more concrete relative measurement. Is the guy I want to hit HERE or is he OVER THERE or is he WAY THE HECK OVER THERE? And is he close by other mooks?

Ultimately, that's what the feet measurements are used for anyway. I just kind of want to cut out the middle man and make it easier to parse in the moment. NEXT TO has some concrete value for me. "5 feet away" might as well be "Arrogant goldfish quahogging widdershins" for all it tells me about what's actually going on in the game world.

I hate to say it, but this is starting to look more like a difficulty that you, personally, have with mentally envisioning distances than any general "theatre of the mind" playstyle issue.

If that's the case, then whilst it would certainly be appropriate to formulate some useful set of house rules (such as Stormonu suggested), it doesn't seem like this is an issue the official game rules need to address.

 

[Li Shenron]

What I WOULD like is a simpler distance measurement system, one where the difference between 25 feet and 30 feet is as insignificant as it is in my brain, but where the difference between SLOW and FAST and NORMAL and the difference between FAR and NEAR and CLOSE and NEXT TO are drawn a little tighter.

I've both played with maps and without, and I would definitely like to see an option like you suggest.

When using a battlemat I like using feet but since they are always multiples of 5 (which in my country is ~1.5m) I wouldn't also mind to replace the 5ft measurement unit with something valued 1. The only problem is that talking about "squares" makes me cringe for some reason. I'd like it if it was called a "step" (not a walking step, a fighting step).

For disengage I believe the action description could be simplified into "you step back just enough to get out of your opponent's threatened area without provoking an OA" + maybe a note that for creatures larger than size X you need 2 disengage actions to move away.