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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 5370926" data-attributes="member: 99">So first let me say that I have run, and will in the future run, many a game that uses tactical movement on a battlemat.  It is fairly straightforward and fair.  But it does impose some limitations that go away if you use a looser format for tracking location on the battlefield.A recent passion of mine is the game <a href="http://www.oldschoolhack.net/" target="_blank">Old School Hack</a>.  It uses a system of "Arenas" for tracking location in combat.  It sounds to me like it could answer a lot of the issues you're having.(This is going to sound a little complex but once you understand it and use it, it really is very simple.  Trust me.)Basically an "Arena" is a portion of the battlefield that is discernibly different from other areas on the battlefield.  Several such Arenas effectively make up your combat area.  The way that these are connected indicates how the combat area is shaped.  So in the Phantom Menace example, you might have the "Catwalk Arena" and the "Force Field Hall Arena" and the "Room With The Big Deep Shaft That You Just Know Somebody Is Going To Fall Down Arena" and you should probably make "The Big Deep Shaft That You Just Know Somebody Is Going To Fall Down" its own Arena.These would be linked linearly, per the action scene in the movie.  So if you want to get from the catwalk to the room with the shaft, you've got to make your way through the force field hall.In Old School Hack it usually takes one Move action to move from one Arena to Another.  But it might also require an attribute (or skill) check to do so.  Thus in the Phantom Menace situation it may require some kind of Athletic or Acrobatics check to hurry and squeeze through that force field and make it to the room at the end.  Or, if you want to make sure that the characters spend at least one round in the force field hallway, you can divide it into multiple Arenas.For the conveyor belt situation you could have a particular conveyor belt be one Arena or divide it into multiple Arenas based on what happens there.  In that scene from the movie there are obviously various hazards going on.  Being in a certain part of the conveyor belt would result in trying to evade attacks or make skill checks specific to that Arena.  Rather than require that a PC make a Move to get to another Arena then you could have them involuntarily moved to each successive Arena unless they take a Move to stay in the Arena they are in, thus simulating them running against the movement of the conveyor belt.Representationally on the battlemat you can draw these Arenas in as much pictorial detail as you like, so long as they are recognizably distinct from one another.  Then you simply draw lines from one to another to show which are connected.  Once you get the hang of it then it is very easy to envision what areas are distinct Arenas and what properties those Arenas should have.If this sounds like something that you're interested in then I am happy to try and provide more illustration.  But I will note that the folks that played Old School Hack at GenCon immediately groked how the Arena system could be applied to other games and I know of several folks who did so immediately and with very few other rules changes required.</blockquote>

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