D&D blog: goblin care only about your axe

[Gryph]

Fair point, but humans are notably bad at judging distance and size by eyeball. Most of the fiction in-genre is notably lax about such detail, as well, AFAICT.
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Trained humans are pretty damn good at it. A well trained marksmen is very good at estimating distance at ranges much further away than is typical for D&D combat.

An in-fielder would never make the throw to first if we didn't have a great instinctive grasp of relative distance.

My point is, someone doesn't have to be able to say "there's 33 feet between the goblins and Rogar" to make an accurate determination that he has room to drop the fireball. Just like the shortstop doesn't say to himself "the first baseman is 110 feet away" before he makes a good throw.

 

[I'm A Banana]

You're forgetting one of the main reasons they're making grid-optional: With increasing costs, selling minis is now a questionable exercise. In 3e and early 4e days, selling minis was a sound business plan (therefore making the game "need" minis was a sound business plan).

I don't think you're totally wrong, but I also don't think it's JUST a marketing decision.

I think it's sort of a left brain/right brain thing.

Some people (like maybe [MENTION=6182]Incenjucar[/MENTION]) really appreciate -- nay, REQUIRE! -- a precision and level of detail that others (like me) find annoying to the point of not being able to enjoy a night of gaming with it.

Most folks are probably somewhere in the middle, with a slight preference for one other the other, but nothing worth griping on a message board about.

But it's hard for us folks on the fringes to coexist. What one needs, the other finds they can't stand. What ruins the game for one, the other finds essential to their enjoyment. And it's not a logical argument that can be made to "win someone over." It's not a mistake, it's just the way we think about our games.

I'm tentatively OK with the idea being floated in the blog, as it is elaborated on here (I kind of like the idea of "PUSH" being a single keyword effect, much like "SLOW" or "STUN"), but I'm not ever going to be OK with picking up a piece of plastic and pushing it around a board and using that to anchor my imagination. Others won't ever be OK with a game that makes them NOT able to do that.

WotC needs to split the difference if it has any chance of being played by BOTH folks like me and folks who think otherwise about their game.

This has the potential to do it...but it's still a concern that it'll cut off everyone and please no one. It'll require a grid too much to please me, and it will be too inexact to please the other side. If that happens, that's a problem. If they can avoid that, then they have a real chance at getting what they want here -- a big umbrella.

 

[Ratskinner]

An in-fielder would never make the throw to first if we didn't have a great instinctive grasp of relative distance.

My point is, someone doesn't have to be able to say "there's 33 feet between the goblins and Rogar" to make an accurate determination that he has room to drop the fireball. Just like the shortstop doesn't say to himself "the first baseman is 110 feet away" before he makes a good throw.

Instinctive grasp of relative distance, as you note, is quite different from "its 15 ft away." I think many that object to a grid default, find that its easier or more immersive to keep things at that "Do I think I can fit the fireball in there?" level. Others, of course, disagree. Humans, go figure.

 

[Incenjucar]

There's the faint possibility of an icon-based system that indicates whether a power is Mapless-Friendly or Grid-Recommended (and a bunch of other icons for other things...). Mapless players would have to suck up some wasted pages, but the system could remain tactically robust, and players could at least make informed decisions on whether or not a power is going to require more DM opinion. Chain Lighting, for example, would likely be Mapless-Friendly, since you can pretty much just target whoever. Fireball would be somewhat neutral. A power that forced or allowed a whole bunch of small movement would be Grid-Recommended.

 

[Ratskinner]

Maps and references that describe the environment, or maps and references that are also marked and updated during combat to track positioning and movement?

For the former, I don't think the article assumes those away.

Actually, I think it does. I checked, through the article again, the author never mentions a map of any sort existing between a "grid" and "mental". Zone combat is ignored, as is open measured. He also compares "gridless" metaphorically to mental chess. He uses "grid" interchangeably with "map." Clearly, he is only concerning himself with maps that have grids on them. I don't read the blog, so maybe there's some big history or "out" there, but I don't get that impression from this article.

To run this without a grid would require each player, and the GM, maintain, in their minds, from round to round, a minimum of 182 values, namely, the relative positions of each character relative to 13 others, plus the positions of the static objects (columns, statues, etc, as to whether they blocked line of sight to any of the other 13 objects in the room), all of this on a mental map of a room with many features that could impact movement or visibility, such as someone ducking into an alcove, or racing down a corridor from the outside.)

This is, of course, facetious. At worst, the DM (assuming, as the author does, that all this is in the DM's head) would only track the positions of each character relative to the map. The distance between characters A and B is only generated ("calculated" seemed to generous) when it becomes relevant for a task. For those that use narrative, abstract combat, these concerns usually aren't even relevant. (Which he sorta seems to get...but doesn't seem to believe...) Its quite easy to handle this well on on a sketched map without a grid.

For the latter, the combat isn't strictly TotM any more, and starts resembling grid-based combat more.

IME, there is a large gap between "I have a map, and we move markers or minis on it to make keeping track of things easier" and "grid-based combat." YMMV, of course, but I find that much closer to TotM, and ran 2e that way for years. That's not even getting into Zone combat systems like FATE or Old School Hack. (Which, BTW, I think would be a great compromise default.)

 

[I'm A Banana]

This is, of course, facetious. At worst, the DM (assuming, as the author does, that all this is in the DM's head) would only track the positions of each character relative to the map. The distance between characters A and B is only generated ("calculated" seemed to generous) when it becomes relevant for a task. For those that use narrative, abstract combat, these concerns usually aren't even relevant. (Which he sorta seems to get...but doesn't seem to believe...) Its quite easy to handle this well on on a sketched map without a grid.

It's comments like the one you quoted that make me a little nervous. It's a bit like the dev team is made up almost entirely of people who want minis, or who fundamentally misunderstand why people don't want minis (and how an argument about how "minis are sometimes better" isn't going to convince them).

That's got the potential to make their thing go all wahooni-shaped, if they can't see the other side of the coin very well.

 

[Incenjucar]

It's comments like the one you quoted that make me a little nervous. It's a bit like the dev team is made up almost entirely of people who want minis, or who fundamentally misunderstand why people don't want minis (and how an argument about how "minis are sometimes better" isn't going to convince them).

That's got the potential to make their thing go all wahooni-shaped, if they can't see the other side of the coin very well.

It's fairly natural that they're going to have a lot of options available to them that aren't universal. Nobody at WotC is going to be significantly limited by space or access to miniatures. Did you read about how the gigantic size of 4E cleric late-game turn undead was because they failed to realize that game tables don't get larger as you hit epic tier?

 

[variant]

Seems to me that most of that article is directed at mapped vs. unmapped, rather than gridded vs. gridless. I don't think the majority of TotM folks work totally without maps or references of some kind. (I know I rarely did.)

Considering the unpredictable nature of players, I quite often went without maps or references.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's fairly natural that they're going to have a lot of options available to them that aren't universal. Nobody at WotC is going to be significantly limited by space or access to miniatures. Did you read about how the gigantic size of 4E cleric late-game turn undead was because they failed to realize that game tables don't get larger as you hit epic tier?

That's the kind of thing I'm a little concerned about!

I've got confidence that they're looking at the problem, but aside from telling us that they're on it, they haven't given us any indication as to how it's gonna work.

But I suppose in a few weeks we'll find out.

 

[Incenjucar]

That's the kind of thing I'm a little concerned about!

I've got confidence that they're looking at the problem, but aside from telling us that they're on it, they haven't given us any indication as to how it's gonna work.

But I suppose in a few weeks we'll find out.

It would be rather interesting if they tried environment-based testing. This is probably a disadvantage to them being on the East Side of the Seattle area, where there's generally a lot more space to be had than in places like Seattle itself, where space is extremely limited. The Kinect faced similar issues, possibly for that reason, and now they have Kinect lens adapters for people with smaller places to play.