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<blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 6355016" data-attributes="member: 54710">I've done this for years.&nbsp; Gaming with a whiteboard (and no minis) was the traditional way we played until 3e brought us to the grid in 2000.&nbsp; (And even then, gridless maps are great whenever you want a scale that isn't the usual 5' squares.)&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; I don't find that this wastes time because the interchange is still faster than waiting for my players to count squares.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Because there's no flanking by default, exact square positioning isn't important to allowing rogues to do their thing.&nbsp; That makes ToM and it's cousins (a gridless map is really ToM with a visual aid) much easier to play.-KS</blockquote>

[QUOTE="KidSnide, post: 6355016, member: 54710"] 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 [/QUOTE]

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