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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6652170" data-attributes="member: 996">The difference is really pretty minor.  When you run a game that has a lot of detailed rules that leverage a grid or mini placement or whatever, you can always take it TotM by dialing that detail down and ignoring some of it.  When you have a game that lacks such things, you can always add them in, going by natural language interpretations of whatever it does present, translating that to reasonable measurements, and taking it from there.It's up to the DM to handle such variations. You can.  And your players can worry about the fact that you just pictured a 20' diameter, when fireball is a 20' radius. Then the player targeting the fireball wants to know where everybody is relative to everyone else so he can place that 20'r sphere were it'll do the most good.  Then maybe pi comes into it.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  Conversely, if you're playing 13th Age, the fireball affects something like 1d4 close enemies, more if you cast 'recklessly' and risk hitting allies.  No need to picture a 20' diameter or radius sphere superimposed over visualized position of PCs & monsters on the imagined panorama of the imagined battlefield. Is just giving you more for use with minis.  Taking that away isn't supporting TotM - it might be making the decision to use TotM, instead, easier, since the system gains less from using minis, but that's not the same thing.    I know for a fact you're wrong, because I've done it.   In fact, 4e squares - and, particularly, the infamous square fireballs - are a little more convenient than you might expect for TotM, since they make visualizing what can 'fit' in a given area (be it an AE, room, corridor, etc) a little simpler.  Less granular measurement simplifies such things, a bit. I gave my - positive - opinion of running 5e TotM, you dragged 4e & 3e into it.  It's true that 5e threw away or exiled to the option ghetto some stuff 3e and 4e did to make determining positioning, range & area easier using minis and a grid (& incidentally give players more options that leveraged that).  But all 5e did was wind back to natural language and feet as the level of granularity.  That's not facilitating TotM.  It's not facilitating anything, really, which is entirely in keeping with being a little more style-neutral and trying to be 'modular' (open to variants, not modular in the programming sense).  It also took away some player options, which isn't inconsistent with it's goal of promoting DM empowerment.Clearly, since the majority of respondents to this pole are using minis rather than TotM.  I have to say, I didn't expect to be in the minority.  But I'm not going to lie and pretend that 5e actively facilitates TotM with it's mechanics.  It doesn't:  check out 13A to see what facilitating TotM looks like.   You've probably never seen a game that does anything to make running TotM more convenient, so you figure just taking options away is all that's required. One cool thing about RPGs is that the GM has complete flexibility, regardless of whether the system 'allows' it or not.   I like that games like 5e admit instead of deny that.  But what I really appreciate about 5e is the way it's projected that attitude.  3e, for instance, also admitted (Rule 0) that it couldn't force anyone to play by the RAW - but the community went ahead and obsessed over the RAW, anyway. Again, you're trying to make it into a war.  I'm running 5e & 4e, /and/ playing 4e & 3.5 - it's all D&D, and it's not like playing one edition is 'jumping ship' from another.   When it comes to 'well designed,' 4e and 5e - not coincidentally, I think, both with Mike Mearls on board - have broken D&D's long, poor track record when it comes to hitting design targets.  4e was designed to be better-balanced and to fix many perceived issues with 3.5, and it succeeded.  5e was designed to head off controversy, attract AD&D hold-outs, and empower DMs.  And, it's succeeded brilliantly.  But, in the case of being 'designed for TotM' (ie, rolling back the controversial improvements 3e and 4e made to the use of a grid), that was never really the goal.  The goal was to capture that classic D&D feel, which meant not having rules like 5' steps or flanking, but still having rules for spell AEs that cried out for precise measurement.  So it doesn't facilitate TotM the way games actually designed to do so have:  it still can't stop anyone from playing TotM - or with minis - and people are happily doing both.   Not because it's as good at either as a game actually designed to primarily do one or the other (or even, optionally, do either equally well), but because it succeeds (brilliantly) in /being/ D&D in that classic sense that makes us all want to play it (and not heap unwarranted abuse on it) again.  When you really want to play a game, and can easily bring together a group to play it, you'll make it do for the way you want to play.  Especially when it goes out of it's way to promote your Empowerment as a DM.</blockquote>

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