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4e rules will make some games much harder to run
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<blockquote data-quote="Magus Coeruleus" data-source="post: 4112343" data-attributes="member: 1704"><p>I, too, don't really like battlemats overall. Yes, they help clarify combat and reduce misunderstandings but for me they ravage immersion. Combat also take a LOT longer given the time it takes me to set them up and because it seems to encourage optimized boardgame thinking by players and doting over the mat, counting squares, etc., rather than doing what they feel their characters would do. </p><p></p><p>Even though you'd think everyone wants to know precise distances due to range constraints etc. I've always found that if as DM I am reasonable in my adjudication, players are fine with just asking, for instance, "How many orcs can I get in one fireball" and me just making an estimation on the fly and saying "6 if you include Bob the rogue there, 4 if you want to make sure he stays char-free."</p><p></p><p>I DMed BECMI and never AD&D1 or AD&D2 and never used mats. As many have said, 3.x has rules (like flanking) that make mats more difficult to avoid. I eventually settled into a compromise where any battle I thought could work without a mat and were the stakes weren't too high (high stakes meaning things like players really need to know how this is set up to avoid getting totally creamed) would go without one. This was pretty good, but it does kinda suck to have some of the most interesting or dangerous fights be the ones with the weakest in-character memories. I also do think that previews of 4e suggest more, not the same, level of difficulty going mat-less. I can't prove this but given fey step, shifty, white raven onslaught, etc. it seems as if it is going to matter a lot more where people go relative to each other. This is not bad, but I do think it will make matless harder.</p><p></p><p>I can appreciate the suggestion by some to find another game system but I'd like to think that many of the promised innovations of 4e can be used, the whole game in fact, perhaps with some alterations specifically to facilitate matless play. I have an intuitive but practically useless sense that there ought to be a way to keep the mechanics of 4e but revise some rules, powers, etc. to work in terms of what rob626 called "<em>restructuring...into narrative space</em>" instead of squares? Since matless narration relies a lot on DM guesstimation and adjudication, it would be perfectly fine for such a system to be based partly on probabilities, what fits the story well, etc., and not necessarily try to model space in the same way a mat does. Like Umbran said, maybe there could be a supplement aimed specifically at varying the rules specifically to accommodate this type of game.</p><p></p><p>If anyone has bright ideas or experience doing such a thing, please share!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Magus Coeruleus, post: 4112343, member: 1704"] I, too, don't really like battlemats overall. Yes, they help clarify combat and reduce misunderstandings but for me they ravage immersion. Combat also take a LOT longer given the time it takes me to set them up and because it seems to encourage optimized boardgame thinking by players and doting over the mat, counting squares, etc., rather than doing what they feel their characters would do. Even though you'd think everyone wants to know precise distances due to range constraints etc. I've always found that if as DM I am reasonable in my adjudication, players are fine with just asking, for instance, "How many orcs can I get in one fireball" and me just making an estimation on the fly and saying "6 if you include Bob the rogue there, 4 if you want to make sure he stays char-free." I DMed BECMI and never AD&D1 or AD&D2 and never used mats. As many have said, 3.x has rules (like flanking) that make mats more difficult to avoid. I eventually settled into a compromise where any battle I thought could work without a mat and were the stakes weren't too high (high stakes meaning things like players really need to know how this is set up to avoid getting totally creamed) would go without one. This was pretty good, but it does kinda suck to have some of the most interesting or dangerous fights be the ones with the weakest in-character memories. I also do think that previews of 4e suggest more, not the same, level of difficulty going mat-less. I can't prove this but given fey step, shifty, white raven onslaught, etc. it seems as if it is going to matter a lot more where people go relative to each other. This is not bad, but I do think it will make matless harder. I can appreciate the suggestion by some to find another game system but I'd like to think that many of the promised innovations of 4e can be used, the whole game in fact, perhaps with some alterations specifically to facilitate matless play. I have an intuitive but practically useless sense that there ought to be a way to keep the mechanics of 4e but revise some rules, powers, etc. to work in terms of what rob626 called "[I]restructuring...into narrative space[/I]" instead of squares? Since matless narration relies a lot on DM guesstimation and adjudication, it would be perfectly fine for such a system to be based partly on probabilities, what fits the story well, etc., and not necessarily try to model space in the same way a mat does. Like Umbran said, maybe there could be a supplement aimed specifically at varying the rules specifically to accommodate this type of game. If anyone has bright ideas or experience doing such a thing, please share! [/QUOTE]
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