Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6590069" data-attributes="member: 996">You only have to map out the 5' squares that matter.  In a running battle, for instance, terrain can 'move,' much like scrolling on a video game - or, if there's a vehicle involved, it's the part that's mapped.   It's still handy to track relative movement and positioning.In general, though, using a grid is a convenience, it's easier than using a plain play surface and measuring everything, which is easier that tracking lots of relative positions in your head.  TotM is also a matter of what's convenient - if you have no play surface, or if, in game, there is no defined area where things are happening, or relative positioning and the like just isn't important.  When a group does lean towards one or the other, they'll favor different sorts of encounters an tactics. Mostly-TotM campaign will tend towards small (few enemies) encounters in simple environments that lend themselves to only a couple of meaningful positions (next to the Big Bad, far away from the big Bad; holding the doorway, in the room, in the corridor; holding onto the dragon; flying after the dragon, on the parapet; etc...).  A campaign that tends to use a play surface will tend to have larger battles with more enemies and more detailed terrain - but to limit itself to areas that fit on the surface one way or another.None of that has much bearing on whether the game 'supports' one style or another, though.  A game that gives out definite distances, ranges, areas, speeds, and positioning rules - whether it does it in scale inches, in-world feet, 5' squares or 2m hexes - works better with a play surface, and needs to be ballparked, ignored, or otherwise adapted to TotM.  A game that uses more abstract concepts of areas/position/movement facilitates TotM, but can be adapted to a little more precision using a surface, you just have to add to it or improvise a bit on the details.  5e, like all editions of D&D, is the former sort of game. Frankly, I think that's a good decision, because it's easier to ballpark and ignore detail when necessary, than to manufacture more detail and the rules to handle it on the fly.</blockquote>

Verification