To the OP: I completely understand your dissatisfaction. There is a serious disconnect from narrative to combat perspective when using minis.
This Thursday night our group is giving mapless/gridless 4ed a try- over Ventrilo! We will be using maptools to help with dice and MAYBE the occassional rough sketch of any particularly confusing environments but the intent is to divorce the mini-skirmish game mentality from the rp-mentality.
We intend to use description and a somewhat fuzzy or mutable narrative space and yes, it will take cooperation between the players and dm to pull it off. If we have even one person that is unable to adjust or has problems with some give and take then this experiment will not succeed.
I will post a review of how the session goes.
This Thursday night our group is giving mapless/gridless 4ed a try- over Ventrilo! We will be using maptools to help with dice and MAYBE the occassional rough sketch of any particularly confusing environments but the intent is to divorce the mini-skirmish game mentality from the rp-mentality.
We intend to use description and a somewhat fuzzy or mutable narrative space and yes, it will take cooperation between the players and dm to pull it off. If we have even one person that is unable to adjust or has problems with some give and take then this experiment will not succeed.
I will post a review of how the session goes.