Imagine, no Battlemat...

[Mystery Man]

I sort of agree here too. Small fights don't warrant the mat, although i've done it just to be evocative of the terrain. I recall one time in a 3E game, and this really pissed me off as a DM, the players were involved in two combats in a huge room. Dim light, smoke and fire everywhere, and ONE spellcaster 90' away from the other group wanted to count out squares and drop a fireball precisely to catch all the enemies and not a fallen friend inside a tiny little area. Of course, arguments ensued. I'm sure this has happened plenty of times, the DM doesn't think that such precision is justified in the middle of hectic combat. A reason NOT to use battlemats...
.

Actually as a DM I want that kind of precise...ness, especially from wizards. It stops a lot more arguments than it should start.

The problems with a battlemat start at higher levels when you have all kinds of crap flying around everywhere. You almost need a battlecube and the entire room (depending on how big your room is) to use the rules effectively in 3 dimensions. This is where battlemats become useless.

 

[yangnome]

I never used a battlemat or minis prior to 3e. After starting 3e, a player in a group brought in minis and we started using them. I got caught up in the mini thing, ordered a bunch and started painting them, which was an enjoyable experience. I even bough t some dwarven forge stuff.

Later on though, I noticed that the minis and mat seemed to alter teh flavor of teh game. No longer were the players focused on the story, they were focused on the toys in front of them and their exact position on this 1 inch grid in front of them. A few of us noticed that this seemed to slow down the game and took some enjoyment away.

At first, we blamed it on D&D and tried other games (minus the minis). We recaptured our sense of story, but I don't think it was D&D that was at fault. I think it was a shift in focus of the game. It shifted from a shared imagination experience, to more of a board game. Sure, we still had stories and plot, but the focus always shifted to the toys on teh table rather than the events in the story.

Now, I'm not using miniatures to represent battle and we have that good feeling back. People are involved in teh story and the moment. For the most part the DM (me, or whoever happens to be DMing) adjudicates whether something happens, either by suggesting it, or the player asking if it is possible. Sure, it is a bit arbitrary and decisions are made with some approximation on my part. However, our shared imaginary space doesn't have a five foot grid running across the world which would allow a character an exact view of what will and won't work either.

Anyway, I'm sure everyone else's views may vary, but mine are right.

 

[wedgeski]

Okay, the closest I've been to "real combat" is some time in the SCA and with paintball guns, so the fear factor is nonexistent. Other than that I've talked to a lot of veterans (WWII Pacific, WWII D-Day, Korea Inchon Landing, Vietnam-Cambodia, Desert Storm, etc.). Combining these factors I have come to realize how amazingly unrealistic most rpg combat is, in that if you use a battleboard you know exactly where all your buddies are, you never mistake friend for foe, you know what is around the next corner, and can watch the general ebb and flow of combat very easily. On top of this you can plan. As such, I find battlemats less and less satisfying with time in that they are not mapping what I wish to map in a game.

Now that's an interesting point. There have been a few games that have tried to recreate the 'fog of war' effect but with limited success IMO. I think in our games we tend to subliminally build it into the proceedings, in a limited fashion at least, by not allowing the players to lean over the BM and start counting grid squares when they want to, for example, launch the fireball, as well as by imposing the 'chess move' mentality whereby, once you've put your mini back down, you've moved. No take-backs!

In this way mistakes can and do happen, by player and DM alike. Allies do get caught in area effects, PC's do find that their move action ends one square shorter than they thought it would and they're in big trouble as a result... It all adds up to an exciting and less predictable game.

 

[Jdvn1]

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?

It's not a difference of game system, it's a difference of GM style. Personally, I think it's a good GMing skill to be able to run a battle without a grid of any sort. Not all battles are suited for it, but a grid can sometimes mess with the flow of a game if you run a story-based game. Otherwise it can seem like a Final Fantasy console game where you're doing things in the world and suddenly a battle screen appears.

Without a battlemat, you force yourself and players to visualize the battle. This was done to very good effect the first time I played a Werewolf game--we were in what basically amounted to a Silence field on a snowy mountain, fighting huge black spiders. Lots of white, black, and red was everywhere. Very artsy.

Just because you don't have a battlemat, though, doesn't mean you throw mechanics out the window. Instead of choosing which square you want to be on so you can flank, you just say, "I move to flank" or "Can I move to flank without provoking an attack of opportunity?" Or instead of having to figure out exactly where you Fireball is going to explode you say, "I'm going to shoot a fireball so that I can hit (creature) and (creature) but not hit (ally)." If it's not possible the GM goes, "There's not quite enough space to do that." Or something.

And my imagination looks cooler than any miniatures I've seen.

 

[Nebulous]

Later on though, I noticed that the minis and mat seemed to alter teh flavor of teh game. No longer were the players focused on the story, they were focused on the toys in front of them and their exact position on this 1 inch grid in front of them. A few of us noticed that this seemed to slow down the game and took some enjoyment away.

At first, we blamed it on D&D and tried other games (minus the minis). We recaptured our sense of story, but I don't think it was D&D that was at fault. I think it was a shift in focus of the game. It shifted from a shared imagination experience, to more of a board game. Sure, we still had stories and plot, but the focus always shifted to the toys on teh table rather than the events in the story.

Now, I'm not using miniatures to represent battle and we have that good feeling back. People are involved in teh story and the moment. For the most part the DM (me, or whoever happens to be DMing) adjudicates whether something happens, either by suggesting it, or the player asking if it is possible. Sure, it is a bit arbitrary and decisions are made with some approximation on my part. However, our shared imaginary space doesn't have a five foot grid running across the world which would allow a character an exact view of what will and won't work either.

That does sound great. Glad it worked for you, and I think the same tactic might bring back some of that lost "feeling" for me too. DnD full force on a battlegrid is not the DnD i grew up with. It's different, still fun, but frickin too expensive. It's all a matter of perspective and it's amazing how the focus does shift. I've run plenty of CoC games without a grid and they go just fine, although at times i've brought out the mat to scribble stuff down.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Does 3e require it? No, not really. The mechanics prefer it but not necessary. Do some GMs and players require it? Yeah, we do.

I (the GM) cannot deal with anything spatial based on verbal information. Sorry, not happening.

So I use battlemats, maps and markers and have been doing it for decades simply b/c I have no choice. As a player I map things out as the DM speaks so I can track what the heck's going on. It drives some DMs nuts, mainly the ones who didn't map anything out and I start finding cthuloid-type impossible angles.

 

[WayneLigon]

I have played without one, but we almost always use one for any game, be it D&D or not. It's just always been that way and I've been playing for about 25 years.

 

[Peter Gibbons]

Can we live without the battlemat?

I'm sure you could. Personally, I'd have little or no interest in playing D&D without some kind of tactical display. The games I've seen (since 1980 or so) that didn't use miniatures were...uh, I'll be polite and just say "not to my taste."

 

[pogre]

We rarely use a battlemat...

We use Mastermaze and hirst arts pieces with carefully painted miniatures.

D&D can be played without a mat naturally and without minis - but it's part of the game we really enjoy.

 

[Artellan]

Seems to me there are two issues here - gaming without a battlemat, and gaming without any minis / representations at all.

Personally I don't feel the battlemat adds much to a miniatures setup, and prefer just using a ruler when needed (1" = 5ft). All those squares make the table look artificial, whereas without them you can imagine real terrain. Throw some 3D props onto there (they don't have to all be expensive either - sticks and stones from the backyard look great as fallen trees and boulders) and it looks great. I find having real objects representing terrain really gets your imagination into the environment, and players do things like climbing onto boulders, hiding behind trees, etc.

Here are some pictures of our setups:
http://www.houseoflucas.com/mike/dnd/MikesCampaign/april27/page_01.htm
http://www.houseoflucas.com/mike/dnd/MikesCampaign/dec28/page_01.htm
http://www.houseoflucas.com/mike/DnDIndex.htm

We do have a cheapo battlemat which was a bit of tablecloth material purchased at a fabrics shop, in a green/white checkerboard pattern. It's alright.

I do prefer to keep the miniatures out of it until the point where people are actually wondering where things are in relation to each other. That way you can set up the scene in people's minds ahead of time.