New podcast...

[SaffroN]

Ever tried gridless combat? It requires that the players be willing to trust the DM's assessment of the layout, but if you have that, it's a blast. So much faster than grid combat, and a lot more emphasis on imagining the scene and coming up with crazy maneuvers and clever tactics. At least in 3.5E, I find that grid combat makes everybody's board game instincts kick in, and they settle down to play it out strictly by the book.

Don't get me wrong, combat with minis is fun too. But it certainly doesn't suck to do it the other way, not even in crunchtastic 3.5E.

Yeah, my last post sounded a bit pigheaded.

Now that I've relaxed a bit. Yeah, its defiantly possible to have fun with no battlemat /grid. I do actually play non-grid combats from time to time. It does have its benefits such as being quicker among other things.

However, sometimes you need to settle down to play it out strictly by the book. I've played in games where players get annoyed at having blast attacks influenced by me, or not understanding the situation correctly because of miscommunication. Having a grid stops all this. So it makes sense that the grid has become so heavily tied the rules. Its the stomping ground of the rules.

You can only take gridless combat so far.

 

[Irda Ranger]

I wonder if you could design an alternative system that didn't use the grid, but cards or something. Completely abstract.

Burning Wheel does something like this. There are six distances: Closest, Close, Medium, Far, Farthest and "at Range." I think those were the words, but you get the idea. A pike was "Farthest" with daggers and fists at Closest. Anyway, you made opposed checks to "close" with the enemy or to back away. If you were at the wrong range for your weapon there was an attack penalty.

Burning Wheel didn't have Fireballs or Attacks of Opportunity though. And there was really no way to add them in.

 

[Lackhand]

I, influenced by burning wheel, did come up with the idea of Nodes.

I haven't playtested this yet.

For each encounter area, draw a connected graph of Nodes, which represents areas in which characters can be. This isn't that complex -- "over by the door", "in the middle of the room", "by the altar", for instance. Each node has some capacity -- a character can't enter a node if it's choked through to capacity. One can only enter adjacent nodes (being able to fly, of course, redefines "adjacent"), and each character in a node has some placement score (initially 0, and any character entering a node gets a score equal to the current lowest score).
At the beginning of each character's turn, their placement drops (if necessary) so that it is higher than their closest competitor by no more than that character's speed. This is to prevent a guy standing in the middle of the room and getting the best placement ever.

Any move action spent within a node lets you add your speed to your current placement score. Anything that would move people around modifies their placement score by the appropriate quantity.

Determined by the specific node's qualities (how large is it?) the top half of the placement ladder all have combat advantage against the bottom half. Everyone is considered in melee with everyone else who 1) they've attacked at melee range, 2) has attacked them at melee range, 3) has a placement score no more than 3*squares of reach greater than them.

Reach also lets you reach into adjacent zones, so long as it's not stupid that you could reach that far.

This means that what the DM has to record is room description (well. Duh.) and the hit points and current (abstract) placement of monsters. I'm gonna try this out when I get up the effort for it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Minis combat is icky, has cooties, and smells like butts.



I use FFZ's Rows system, which is pretty simple. You're either in the Front Row (and in melee with everyone else in the front row), or in the Back Row (and at range to everyone). Switching Rows is a move-action.

The DM defines the traits of the battlefield (things like if cover is available, if there is difficult terrain, etc.), and the characters can gain benefits for these traits if they make an Agility check and spend a Move action. Some abilities let characters move others into hostile terrain, too.

And That's All.

Regarding the Podcast, it IS really cool to hear that all the old locations in the multiverse are still "in," just rearranged. This makes my PS4e campaign VERY viable, since the Great Wheel was only ever just a model.

(monty python)
It's only a model
(/monty python)

 

[Firevalkyrie]

Mearls confirmed something that I've suspected ever since the end of DDXP:

The designers are high-fiving each other (at least metaphorically) that people have grabbed onto their work and run with it. Personally, I expect to be seeing people coming up with temporary advancement rules and new exploits/spells/prayers for 2nd and 3rd level even before Keep on the Shadowfell hits, and I'm looking forward to comparing those with the "street-legal" versions we find in KotS and the D&D Core books.

The "Monsters & More" PDF has also inspired me to write up a 4th-ed compatible version of my "Kobolds at the Feast" adventure that I ran at CONvergence last year, ESPECIALLY since kobolds are now considerably nastier... and I think I'll change up the name and turn that Goblin Picador into a Kobold Picador...

 

[Glyfair]

Finally listened to this tonight. Most of my observations were noted here. However, one thing that caught my attention was that they didn't know if the D&D XP adventures would be released online.

If WotC is listening, I would highly recommend it. Even if I didn't run it directly, I would like to see them to get an idea what the DMs were working with at the D&D XP (and thus give a foundation to design my own).

 

[breschau]

Finally listened to this tonight. Most of my observations were noted here. However, one thing that caught my attention was that they didn't know if the D&D XP adventures would be released online.

If WotC is listening, I would highly recommend it. Even if I didn't run it directly, I would like to see them to get an idea what the DMs were working with at the D&D XP (and thus give a foundation to design my own).

The podcast was recorded on 4 March 2008, at that time the adventures were not going to be released. They are available to RPGA Herald-level DMs though. If you sign-up to run an RPGA event then you can download them a few weeks before the release of the core set. Otherwise, you're out of luck (for now at least).