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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 9012523" data-attributes="member: 93670">Look at it this way.  Ever hear a player say words along the lines of "well if I had known that I would have done [something different] instead" or "well I have $reason, I should have seen that & not knowing it changes what I would have done"?  I don't think I've ever been in or had a group for any length of time longer than a session or two where phrases along those lines didn't come up at some point.  Those phrases are friction for the GM to deal with & they are the entirely predictable result of the GM needing  to shrink down a 20 foot radius circle for abilities with ranges amounting to ten feet of tablespace.When players have abilities that expand out to ten feet of real world table space & technology comes along to shrink that down into a lightweight & portable device that fits on the table with ease  it's still a bunch of abilities spanning excessive ranges the problems & miscommunications coming from shrinking it down don't simply go away. Some players will want to see the map instead & it places a huge burden on the GM to manage so much mapspace because of these abilities.  Other players will be ok but feel more justified in saying  those "well if I had known..." statements with the expectation of replaying the ToTM bit back in one of two ways...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Either the player engages in retcons & expects the opponents to behave exactly as they did the first time (ie run into a web they can clearly see or whatever)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">-OR- both the player & the opponents start engaging in retcons as the entire ToTM segment is replayed in the grueling grid map covering ten feet of tablespace that just now happens to scroll in a 20ish inch box.   So Alice casts web wall of fire blade barrier or whatever obvious thing in the gigantic span between her and the opponents  but the opponents move around it causing bob to say "well I would have seen that and done [this] instead"</li> </ul>Either way the GM faces this friction & either avoids it by  doing it in the grid start to finish  with out of place "terrain" that coincidentally turns the great outdoors into a dungeon/puppets the PCs/etc  or they just shut down all of those friction generating statements with something like "but you didn't (because I refused to show you what I could have trivially shown)" & that underlined bit starts straining the social contract if anything goes bad because it's too unreasonable to say yet known to be true for everyone at the table</blockquote>

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