D&D 5E Playing with a battlemat but without a grid

[LabyrinthLord718]

I ran my B/X campaign last year w both scaled and unscaled, grid (gaming paper) and gridless paper.
Sometimes we just used a single sheet of notebook paper and jotted positions down with a pencil.
Since D&D combat relies heavily on range and scale, I prefer either a grid or no map at all and just go theater of the mind.

I have done a lot of war gaming (WH 40k -- I have several armies) and you use a tape measure for distance ; this requires an extra step of converting feet:inches:feet every turn which could get combersome but with time I think you could get used to it.

 

[KidSnide]

Is anybody playing D&D or other RPG using a visual representation of the environment (battlemat, map or hand drawing with counters/minis) but actually without a grid-like subdivision of that?

This essentially means, to play exploration & combat by keeping track of distances and positions, but not using squares/hexes, instead just using free-form/continuous measurements.

I think I've heard this is the default in miniature games like Warhammer? Any experience on using this in D&D? Pros and cons?

Do you think specifically 5e can be run effectively or easily in this way? Anybody has already tried and wants to share their feelings about it?

I've done this for years. Gaming with a whiteboard (and no minis) was the traditional way we played until 3e brought us to the grid in 2000. (And even then, gridless maps are great whenever you want a scale that isn't the usual 5' squares.) It works really well since it gives the players a quick sense of all the relative positions without spending time on measuring distances or trying to figure out if one square is better than another for avoiding (or getting) flanking or blocking a passage.

Operationally, it works just like ToM with the (small) downside that it requires a little more set up and the considerable upside that individual players are much less likely to have a radically different sense of what's going on than the rest of the group. Like ToM, it encourages a faster and looser style of combat where less attention is paid to exact positioning and more attention is paid to the narrative description of the action. Note, however, that you will need to have traditional ToM back-and-forth in which players ask DMs if they can complete long movements around obstacles and how many enemies they can hit with AoE attacks. I don't find that this wastes time because the interchange is still faster than waiting for my players to count squares. That said, groups accustomed to counting squares while the DM resolves the previous actions may not like waiting for the DM's attention.

In any event, 5e is very well suited to this form of play. Because there's no flanking by default, exact square positioning isn't important to allowing rogues to do their thing. That makes ToM and it's cousins (a gridless map is really ToM with a visual aid) much easier to play.

-KS

 

[Rod Staffwand]

I tend to use maps and tokens for flavor and rough positioning, but I don't worry about exact counting out of squares for movement or ranges (for the sake of speed, since nothing dampens a combat faster than a player taking 5 minutes to analyze EVERY single move or targeting option). This tends to work out really well as a TotM + Visual Aids sort of thing.

 

[Halivar]

I play in a weekly Flames of War game (skirmish level WWII combat), so it's already second nature to me to play on an unmarked terrain board with a tape measure in one hand. I'll have to try this out for D&D.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I am planning to experiment with gridless maps and using marked pieces of string to measure movement in cases where it is necessary.

 

[Umbran]

I think I've heard this is the default in miniature games like Warhammer? Any experience on using this in D&D? Pros and cons?

I've used this for earlier editions of D&D (1e and 2e, back in the day). It wasn't worth the effort. If you are keeping track of distances, but dont' have a grid, then you actually have to measure pretty constantly - those 1/4" slops you'll get by eye add up quickly. And havign to keep measuring was so much of a hassle that it overwhelmed the realism.

We didn't then shift to using a grid - we just reverted to theater of the mind, and occasionally laying out things to get rough relative positioning, without worrying about distances much.

 

[Tormyr]

At my table we are doing the DM Scotty gridless style. I have made several 12" long 1/4" balsa square stock that is marked off in 1" increments and labeled 0 through 60. Most of the time we use terrain that I have made, sometimes TotM and sometimes gridded map. We started measuring everything, but now just about everything is eyeballed with only the occasional meausrement on a spell range or critical movement. Everything flows really well. You still get the idea of where you can move to avoid a ranged attack penalty because of cover, which enemies you can retreat from without invoking opportunity attacks and where ongoing spell effects are, but you minis move organically around the map instead of maintining a proper 5' distance.

Once your table gets used to it, things move faster, and you get the advantages that come with a map and minis.

 

[Dausuul]

I've used this for earlier editions of D&D (1e and 2e, back in the day). It wasn't worth the effort. If you are keeping track of distances, but dont' have a grid, then you actually have to measure pretty constantly - those 1/4" slops you'll get by eye add up quickly. And havign to keep measuring was so much of a hassle that it overwhelmed the realism.

Yeah, it seems like if you want to accurately track distances, grid is the way to go.

I'm considering going gridless, but only because I'm willing to play fast and loose with distances. Is your mini's base touching the enemy mini's base? Then you're in melee range. How far can you move? About six inches, give or take, but don't sweat the details--just move your mini and get on with whatever you're doing. If you try to zoom across the whole battlefield, I'll stop you and make you measure, and it'll be a headache for everyone, so don't be a jerk. Think of it like driving: I have better things to do than pull you over for going five over the limit. If you're going thirty over, that's another matter.

5E seems like it would support this pretty well.

 

[Tormyr]

The thing is, on the surface, grids only let you accurately track distance orthogonally. There is something to be said for a 20' radius actually being a radius. Even when we use gridded maps, the minis often get placed whereever, and important diagonal movement is measured.

 

[TDarien]

I plan to run most of my encounters gridless but with a map. (rather, the grid will be there, but we'll just ignore it for everything but estimating distances)

This has worked well so far on roll20, and I imagine it will work just as well live.

I may run smaller encounters without a map at all, depending on the situation.