Imagine, no Battlemat...

[Mighty Halfling]

The battlemat improved our game drastically. I'm happy to have it, and have no desire to do without again.

What he said.

 

[genshou]

And some people *gasp* hate mats and see them as reducing the game to some sort of board game where you move your piece around the field and, and strip all of the roleplaying out of the game, not being able to see anything but the "monopoly boot" on the board in front of them.

Some people like me.

Then start using checkers pieces and maximize your Jump skill for defeating your enemies, because apparently using a battlemat makes it only a board game instead of the exact same rules as would be used without the mat.

where's when you need it?

My point is merely that using a battlemat makes things neither easier nor harder to imagine, but it only serves to enhance the mechanical aspect of play. And if enhancing the mechanical aspect somehow causes hoodoo magic to destroy your ability to role-play, then perhaps you should just give up D&D, because the combat mechanics are still going to be there without the battlemat. Having the battlemat there is like having covers on–and illustrations in–a book (and not necessarily a novel, but also other kinds of books).

 

[Crothian]

My point is merely that using a battlemat makes things neither easier nor harder to imagine, but it only serves to enhance the mechanical aspect of play. And if enhancing the mechanical aspect somehow causes hoodoo magic to destroy your ability to role-play, then perhaps you should just give up D&D, because the combat mechanics are still going to be there without the battlemat. Having the battlemat there is like having covers on–and illustrations in–a book (and not necessarily a novel, but also other kinds of books).

Actaully it does make things harder. And it makes things easier. Just to different people. Some people like battle mats some people don't.

Battlemats to some people are distracting, and just because that is so doesn't mean they dhould give up the game; that's just foolishness. Just like people who use minis in non D&D games should quit the game they play just becasue they use minis.

Is it so hard to believe that some people don't like the mat? And is it so hard to believe that some people like the mat?

 

[genshou]

Actaully it does make things harder. And it makes things easier. Just to different people. Some people like battle mats some people don't.

Battlemats to some people are distracting, and just because that is so doesn't mean they dhould give up the game; that's just foolishness. Just like people who use minis in non D&D games should quit the game they play just becasue they use minis.

Is it so hard to believe that some people don't like the mat? And is it so hard to believe that some people like the mat?

Right, and pizza at the game table is even more distracting, to a wider group of people. So should we stop?

NEVER!

But some people don't like pizza. I don't hate them because I'm not a fan of pizza either. However, it's the best food for some social functions.

I will have to agree to strongly disagree with most of the anti-battlemat camp. It is a valuable resource for preventing player-DM arguments in complex combat situations, but just like pizza is not good for everyone, some people just don't want to use a battlemat. That's fine. I just can't agree with claims that a battlemat makes imagining the scene harder. That's like saying you can smell a flower better if you've never seen it. Utterly false according to the way the human brain maps memories.

 

[woodelf]

woodelf, have you ever tried hunting with a bow? If you can't look at a distant deer and instantly gauge both distance and angle, you're never going to hit anything. I think that's part of the training characters receive in spellcasting: knowing how to perceive distance to foes, so they are aware of whether or not they can target that opponent with short, medium, or long spells. In some cases I might require a Spellcraft or Spot check, but not usually.

I'm not talking about determining whether someone is within short/medium/long range. I'm talking about having 4 people roughly in a visual line from you, all more than 100 feet away, and moving around, and trying to gauge whether two of them are 10 or 15 feet from one another. Sometimes, that'll be easy--you can see their feet, or their shadows, or things they're standing next to that help to gauge. Other times, it may be hard.

No, i've never hunted with a bow. But i have shot one, and the problem is much like throwing things a long way. In both cases, you are more likely to misgauge distance (too far or too close) than to miss right or left, assuming you have some skill. Are you saying that a skilled bow-hunter never overshoots or undershoots? Or that when they do so it's not due to misjudging the distance?

Let me toss out a counter-example. I'm pretty good with a frisbee. For long throws, you have to arc the trajectory. Every now and then when we're out playing, someone hits a branch of an intervening tree because they misjudged its longitudinal position relative to the target.

 

[woodelf]

I will have to agree to strongly disagree with most of the anti-battlemat camp. It is a valuable resource for preventing player-DM arguments in complex combat situations, but just like pizza is not good for everyone, some people just don't want to use a battlemat. That's fine. I just can't agree with claims that a battlemat makes imagining the scene harder. That's like saying you can smell a flower better if you've never seen it. Utterly false according to the way the human brain maps memories.

Two elements i've quoted. First, it's an extraneous resource if you don't have player-GM arguments to prevent.

Second, as for it being distracting. Let me try an analogy. I find LARPs to be harder to get into character than RPGs, because of the presence of the player as the character. That is, it is easier for me to picture Michael (a big, bearded guy) as a female pixie-fairy when i'm not in any way trying to conflate the player and the character. So, in an RPG, i can immerse myself, because we're not trying to represent any part of the imaginary world with physical elements, so there's nothing to contradict the imaginings. In an RPG, i have to imagine a female pixie-fairy is hovering in front of me. In a LARP, i have to not only imagine a female pixie-fairy is hovering in front of me, i also have to imagine that Michael isn't standing in front of me--or, worse from my perspective, that Michael with glittery fairy wings and a tutu isn't standing in front of me. The contrast between the real and the imagined makes it harder to immerse in the imagined, for me. It's not that i can't do it, just that i have to exert more effort to do so.

While i don't have that particular problem with a battlemat or miniatures, i can certainly believe that some might, and the moreso the more the battlemat or miniatures clash with the imagined world (starting with being 2-D and probably poorly drawn [since most GMs probably aren't also masters of perspective plan drawing], and probably having miniatures that only mostly match your character image). I think i see it in some of my players, frex: a couple have a tendency to latch on to elements on the battlemat, even when i've explicitly said that they are symbolic rather than representative. I think it's that the physical objects are more concrete, so they reflexively fall into incorporating the physical elements into the imagined world (things like assuming that one goblin is bigger and tougher than the others, when i run out of goblins and use an orc miniature). For this group, i've found the best solution is to use rough sketches--clearly not "maps" but more like "diagrams"--and use dice or pennies rather than miniatures. These elements are so clearly symbols, divorced from the imaginary world they're representing, that they don't interfere with "conflicting images"--no RPer is gonna assume that the orcs are short, flat, and coppery, or that they all look like Abe. (Or, at least, i've never run into it.)

Does my analogy and hypothesis make it any easier to comprehend how a battlemat might serve as a distraction for some?

And, as for brain function to support the hypothesis: it could be a bit like the bright green tshirt that says "red" in big letters on the front. Perfectly literate, intelligent people, if asked 5min after the tshirt has left the room might tell you that it said "green" on it. When your brain has conflicting signals, it sometimes resolves them in interesting ways. Assuming that having the verbal description and a visual representation conflict couldn't possibly lead to the brain adopting erroneous elements of the visual representation is silly. And if that's true for some people, then all but the very best miniatures set-ups are gonna interfere with imagining for those people. No matter how smart or imaginative they are.

 

[genshou]

In a LARP, i have to not only imagine a female pixie-fairy is hovering in front of me, i also have to imagine that Michael isn't standing in front of me--or, worse from my perspective, that Michael with glittery fairy wings and a tutu isn't standing in front of me.

Dude, that is an image that I really didn't need to have in my head right now.

I do understand your point better after reading that, thanks for taking the time to elaborate just for my sake (as we seem to be the only two still hashing this out). I think we'll have to agree to disagree about just how much a battlemat can skew perception or make players imagination-lax, but I'll concede that this is definitely the case.

As for the archery issue, no I'm not saying you'll be perfectly accurate. But you can gauge distance like this a lot easier than you're making it sound. That doesn't mean your attack roll is any easier; just that you can tell how far away they are. Determining whether two or more targets 100 feet away are all within 15 feet of each other?

Roll a Spot check.