D&D General The Grid vs. Theater of the Mind vs. a Mix [a poll & discussion]

[Crimson Longinus]

@Crimson Longinus : Just have to say, those maps and tokens are amazing looking. I didn't even see the grid at first. What do you use to create your maps?

I printed one inch hex grid and then redraw it by hand with a lightbox using a brown marker. (So it would look hand drawn and I could just partially draw it to be less obtrusive.) Then I took copies of that. The maps are just drawn with marker pens and then some watercolour is added. The tokens are wooden tokens I found at a hobby store; I painted them with acrylic paints.

 

[BrokenTwin]

I printed one inch hex grid and then redraw it by hand with a lightbox using a brown marker. (So it would look hand drawn and I could just partially draw it to be less obtrusive.) Then I took copies of that. The maps are just drawn with marker pens and then some watercolour is added. The tokens are wooden tokens I found at a hobby store; I painted them with acrylic paints.

Wow, I assumed you were using a stock grid template, maybe tweaked in Photoshop. A lightbox redraw is multiple steps above what I was expecting. The results (especially with the tokens) are incredibly atmospheric for a fantasy game. And I always love a good hex map.

 

[Li Shenron]

Minis, no grid

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've used some sort of map and markers (of varying degree of quality) for my entire 40+ years as a GM; my spatial memory and imagination is too poor to get any kind of good result with any game that cares at all about position and movement without it. I think one of the few games I ran without it was Scion 1e, because movement and ranges were so large generally it was pointless not expecting people to bypass cover or the like, and there were very few area effects to contend with.

These days its all VTT maps and tokens, and that predated COVID; it'd become impractical placing a map where everyone could both see it and manipulate whatever we were using for markers because of play area layout some time before.

 

[Wolfram stout]

I have been using some sort of physical representation since late 1st/early 2nd edition, when one of my DMs went off the deep end. Good friend, and he had been a pretty good DM, until one season where he went all over the place. All of a sudden, during fights he was rolling randomly for which PC each monster would attack (without regarding to any sense of engagement), he was narrating enemies going from far distance to hand to hand without allowing PCs any intermediate actions.

Rather than call him out, I apologized and ask him to start setting up either hand drawn maps or using props because I was having a hard time following what was happening. As soon as we did, the combats went back to a logical flow and I have never went back to pure TOTM.

 

[Neonchameleon]

So, I have several groups, my answer to the poll question is my best attempt at averaging over them.

I was thinking much the same thing - which group am I playing with and which game are we playing? Because both have a large impact. Any D&D however I at least default to the battlemap.