"Theater of the Mind" or Map and Minis?

[Gardens & Goblins]

ToM & online images, hastily cobbled together maps in MS Pain, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

We exclusively game online these days, via Discord. All our game texts are digital.

Occasionally, a player will roll their own dice in real life, for the fun.

 

[cmad1977]

Both.

 

[Vymair]

For D&D, we use the Grid and have since 3e. We have tac-tiles which have proved a great boon to us. Sadly, I don't think they are in production anymore. There are some other systems we played theatre of the mind.

 

[robus]

We've recently adopted the Roshambo approach to TotM combat and it's working well for us. The players are no long fretting about exactly how far away they are from certain things - they're either far, near or engaged and things flow quite smoothly.

 

[BookBarbarian]

I hastily sketch things out on a whiteboard, but I got a Pico Projector to project grid maps down on the whiteboard to try and save myself time, and my table from looking at my terrible sketches.

Haven't tried it out yet though.

 

[the Jester]

Sometimes on a grid, sometimes on a hex map, sometimes neither.

 

[Tony Vargas]

We've recently adopted the Roshambo approach to TotM combat and it's working well for us. The players are no long fretting about exactly how far away they are from certain things - they're either far, near or engaged and things flow quite smoothly.

That sounds like how 13th Age handles it (but 'close' instead of 'near'), along with AEs affecting a random number of enemies at either close or far, instead of having to plot out AEs.
What it has to do with rock-paper-scissors, though, I've no idea...

 

[Harzel]

Both. Depends on the situation, size of the encounter, how important/tactical it is, whether the terrain is important, all sorts of things. Basically I use the best tool for the job at hand.

Sorry, this is a bit unclear to me. Could you briefly sketch a combat encounter in which terrain is not important? Or describe a general set of characteristics that render the terrain unimportant?

 

[Satyrn]

Sorry, this is a bit unclear to me. Could you briefly sketch a combat encounter in which terrain is not important? Or describe a general set of characteristics that render the terrain unimportant?

I can list several.

Everyone's flying high above the ground.

It's an empty 10 foot square room.

Saskatchewan (Did I ever tell you 'bout the time the orc ran away? It took three days)

 

[flametitan]

I prefer TotM, but my players prefer minis.

I find TotM is better for my immersion, though the odd scenery picture is super useful. The bird's eye view of the map makes it hard for me to accept that the map isn't a fixed location, but that its contents are malleable.