Imagine, no Battlemat...

[EditorBFG]

So, I tried Iron Heroes a bit last weekend, but we all kind of assumed the guy whose house we played at would have a battlemat, or something with 1" squares on it, but he didn't. We fought some, but the whole thing folded after a while, because everyone said we couldn't do it without some kind of visual representation of what squares our guys were in and what-not.

We're not a heavy miniature collecting/painting group, we use a lot of pennies and dice and the shoe from Monopoly and stuff for markers, but with any d20 game we always have the battlemat for flanking, attacks of opportunity, movement and just general knowledge of what's going on.

But on the drive home, my friend was talking about a year and half long Exalted game we recently finished, a very combat heavy game, and we never once had a battlemat when playing Exalted, or anything like it. GM sketched the basic shape of the battlefield once or twice, but that was it. We never wondered where our guys were, we all visualized it and it worked. Is that a difference in game systems or what? Now that I think about, I was in a Mutants & Masterminds game a year or two back with no maps-- it seemed to work.

So, this is all a roundabout way of speculating about the possibility of d20 without miniatures. Is anyone doing it? Do you just get rid of attacks of opportunity or what? Or can you keep AoO and still do without knowing where the 5 ft. squares end and begin? Or, more generally, do you need a slimmed down, reworked d20 system or just the same game and more imagination?

Can we live without the battlemat?

 

[Nomad4life]

In 15 years of gaming, I have never used any tools beyond imagination. Nothing else is really necessary.

Minis and battlemats do help some players kill things, but this hardly seems worth the effort, time, and money spent to set them up and fool with them to me

So yes, it is very possible to run d20 games without such props.

 

[the Jester]

I've used a battlemat almost the entire time I've played 3e, but it isn't necessary. IMHO, anyway- YMMV, and IDHMBIFOM IYKWIMAITYD.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Been playing D&D since I was 9, in 83. Never once used a mat until 3E. I still prefer not to use one, and in any game I'm running, the mat only comes out when a fight is very complex, with many, many opponents.

Do I ditch AoOs? Not at all. We just don't bother much with AoOs for maneuvering. You still draw one for performing certain actions, for trying to close on or move past a critter with reach, etc.

I do, however, play in one particular group that prefers to use them, in addition to the one I run for. I know other people disagree, but my experience over the past two years is that using the mat slows down combat and encourages people to think mechanically, rather than creatively and descriptively. As always, YMMV.

 

[Li Shenron]

We played 3ed without a map only a couple of times. We didn't ditch any rule, but it all relied on the trust between the DM and the players, because it's always the DM who has to say if your PC can reach a point with its move, if there will be an AoO, or how many monsters will you get with the Fireball.

Some players don't accept that, they want everything defined exactly so that they can use precise tactics. If your players are like this, it's unlikely that a map-less game will last.

OTOH, playing without a map (or playing with a map but without the exact squares on it) can be more realistic, as it introduces some little unpredictability in the result of what you do, specifically area spells and movements. And after all, this is what happens all the time in computer games (like NWN or WCIII) which never use a battlemat grid.

 

[wedgeski]

You don't *need* the battlemat, but without it you're just the DM trying to apply battlemat-reliant effects like AoO's, reach, area effect, etc., on an invisible battle-mat in your head. Even before the 1 inch grid and the miniatures etc. we were using a scribbled map with various letters of the alphabet on, or a piece of graph paper with the little widgets from Cluedo or Monopoly laid down on them, for our 1st and 2nd Edition scraps. We now use a full Battlemat and a range of sweet-looking miniatures for the same purpose.

Where the BM becomes key for me is allowing the players to strategize without them having to ask me myriad questions, and subsequently without me having to remember what the hell I've just said. If they see a kobold standing near the edge of a precipice, they can announce a Bullrush without me having to plant some egregiously blatant 'the kobold teeters near the parapet' into my combat descriptions. If they see a chance to split the bad guys in two with a well-placed wall of force or other effect, they can execute that plan without me having to calculate just who is where at that moment. And the same, of course, applies to me. If I decide to Bullrush one of the PC's off the top of Brindinford clock tower with a gargoyle, the player cannot argue with his PC's placement, and I don't have to feel guilty about whether or not his character was really standing where I thought he was.

In other words, consistency and fairness comes with zero effort.

Now you just smooth a layer of whacky narration over the top of these maneuvers, and you have an extremely well-designed game-within-a-game, a tactical diversion before you get back to the roleplaying. It all works for us.

 

[Zappo]

We use a battlemat, but could do without.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Never used a battlemat and I doubt I ever will.

 

[Berandor]

We don't use maps, and the DM (me) adjucates AoO, Range, Reach, etc.

Now and then we make an auciliary sketch of a situation, but generally, no battlemaps for us.

 

[KenM]

I perfer a battlemat. in 3rd ed and 3.5, alot of the feats, ect. assume you are using a mat. The one time I played a game without a mat, the DM kept skipping people in combat and ignoring initive turns. The group said they perfered to play it in they're heads. Since i was skiped over 3 rounds in a row, I left and never went back.