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

[Dausuul]

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.

There are a couple of ways to handle that if you don't want to measure. The simplest is 4E's "a square is a square" approach, if you don't mind square fireballs. More realistic is 3E's "square and a half diagonals," which is not one hundred percent accurate but comes close enough to not matter in 95% of cases.

IMO, there's really no sense using the 4E approach in 5E. Exact positioning is no longer a big deal, so if you're willing to handwave diagonals, you might as well handwave the whole grid. I can see using the 3E approach if you're looking for precision.

I do think it's funny that gridless is both the most precise (if you measure every move) and least precise (if you eyeball it) option for battlemat play.

 

[Tormyr]

I do think it's funny that gridless is both the most precise (if you measure every move) and least precise (if you eyeball it) option for battlemat play.

And, in my opinion, the most fun.

 

[KarinsDad]

The grid helps adjudicating corner cases faster I suppose, compared to a grid-less mat. But its geometry also restricts options, and delivers a gamist feeling. The best thing about the grid for me is only that it helps visualizing and remembering where is who, and what is the environment around like. That is not because of the grid geometry however, so I'm thinking what can happen in the game if I "lift" the geometry and try to work with continuous locations and distances.

For a square grid, I tend to agree with you. It feels clunky.

But for a hex grid or an offset square grid, not so much.

I prefer hexes for RPGs because I can put whatever map or drawing I want on it (or under it) and everyone at the table knows exact distances, when their PC is adjacent to another creature, etc. There are no clarifications needed.

A simple rule of 2/3rds of a hex counts as a full square, less than that can be squeezed into, and 1/3rd of a hex is too small to stand in during combat solves all of the partial hex problems for me.

There were a lot of complaints that one could not draw a square room in hexes, but that's invalid. One can just as easily draw any shape on hexes, it's just a matter of which hex a PC can fight in or not.

One can also have semi-circular fireballs, etc.

It doesn't feel too gamist to me, but then again, I've used hexes for a lot of games since 1E. 4E is the only game where I begrudgingly moved over to square grids.

 

[Nine Hands]

I ran the first part of the Starter Set using a Surface Pro 3 and One Note. I was able to draw the map, then move images around the "board".

It worked out pretty well except I wish the "paper" was re-sizable or able to be stretched sideways instead of just up and down.

 

[Joe Liker]

I think no grid and the occasional map is the best way to play 5e.

^^ This.

Our DM draws the occasional outline to help us visualize a room, but for the most part we are all TotM, all the time.

We might do something different for big important boss battles, but I'm starting to doubt we'll even do a grid then.

 

[Tony Vargas]

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?

Not atm. But, that's how we played AD&D back in the early 80s. Minis (or dice or whatever was handy) on a bare tabletop, with pencils arranged to represent the walls of rooms and corridors. Cheap ghetto wargaming, I guess - no wonder the greybeards, with their meticulously painted Napoleonic armies and elaborate terrain, looked down on us at the time.

I did run an Essentials game at a con, using the first-ever published adventure (Temple of the Frog from Blackmoor - 0D&D supplement 2), in exactly that style though, using a pocket tapemeasure for distances and areas, and painted minis for PCs (sadly, Reaper rather than Ral Partha), dice and other odds and ends for monsters, and, yes, pencils for walls. Worked surprisingly well.

There's no doubt you could do the same with 5e, just pick a scale (the 1"=5' of 3e & 4e, or the old-school 1"=10' (or 10yds outdoors) that never remotely matched the scale of the 25mm figures that seemed to be the de-facto standard, or whatever you want so long as you have some way to translate all the ranges and movement and geometric areas given in feet to the tabletop).

 

[Li Shenron]

There's no doubt you could do the same with 5e, just pick a scale (the 1"=5' of 3e & 4e, or the old-school 1"=10' (or 10yds outdoors) that never remotely matched the scale of the 25mm figures that seemed to be the de-facto standard, or whatever you want so long as you have some way to translate all the ranges and movement and geometric areas given in feet to the tabletop).

I'm planning to use the L-scale: 4studs = 5ft.

 

[KidSnide]

Two other bits of advice:

- Like any other ToM-style game, it's important to be generous with your players when it comes to saying yes. If ranges a little fuzzy, you want to give the players the benefit of the doubt when it comes to "how many orcs can I fit in this fireball", "is the wizard in range" and (most importantly) "can I move there in one turn." The map will make this a little easier than pure ToM, but you still want to say yes most of the time. If it doesn't quite seem plausible, allowing an ability check is a good idea.

- I like to use a standard (gridded) battlemap for this sort of thing -- I just don't worry about figure placement or drawing to fit the lines. That lets me adjust the scale (e.g. "for this battle, each square is 10 feet") to match what I want while also making a little easier to eyeball distances. It's important not to think of positioning as precise, but it will help players get a better idea of what their characters can do.

-KS