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<blockquote data-quote="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost" data-source="post: 5206763" data-attributes="member: 4720">I think people forget or downplay the accuracy angle.Doing complex positioning accurately in your head is, frankly, bunk.&nbsp; But it's a form of bunk that a group will buy into if they trust their DM.&nbsp; If the group has all bought into it, they don't care about the lack of precision.&nbsp; Maybe they make very loose use of terrain, so it doesn't matter.&nbsp; Or maybe their DM is very good about adjudicating things in his head so that it feels fair to everyone involved.&nbsp; But that social skill is not something you can design a game toward.Personally, every time a disagreement about the mental model of the combat comes up, I start digging around for coins, bottle caps, and what have you.&nbsp; Maybe this is because I mostly played in my youth with very tactical people who enjoyed things like knocking people over bars or cliffs and making use of high ground and so on, and knowing which of those options works best depends on a strong common image of the battle rather than constantly referencing the DM's imagination through clumsy, imprecise linguistic means.&nbsp; So we broke out my bottle cap collection and fought over the cool ones to be our character before we got down to playing.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost, post: 5206763, member: 4720"] I think people forget or downplay the accuracy angle. Doing complex positioning [I]accurately[/I] in your head is, frankly, bunk. But it's a form of bunk that a group will buy into if they trust their DM. If the group has all bought into it, they don't care about the lack of precision. Maybe they make very loose use of terrain, so it doesn't matter. Or maybe their DM is very good about adjudicating things in his head so that it feels fair to everyone involved. But that social skill is not something you can design a game toward. Personally, every time a disagreement about the mental model of the combat comes up, I start digging around for coins, bottle caps, and what have you. Maybe this is because I mostly played in my youth with very tactical people who enjoyed things like knocking people over bars or cliffs and making use of high ground and so on, and knowing which of those options works best depends on a strong common image of the battle rather than constantly referencing the DM's imagination through clumsy, imprecise linguistic means. So we broke out my bottle cap collection and fought over the cool ones to be our character before we got down to playing. [/QUOTE]

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