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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5208812" data-attributes="member: 18280">And, I am saying that which types of detail matter is based upon situation and preference.  For some of us, for most combats, the grid doesn't provide enough bonus to outweight the negative (in terms of time cost).  For others, it does.Well, there's more where that came from!  <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=";)" />There is a "some cavern encounters" thread here somewhere, and a "faerie encounters" thread.  There is a thread with a ruined mausoleum that could probably be converted to 4e without too much difficulty -- the main villians are [spoiler]swarms of dread ghoul mice[/spoiler].  I think some of the faerie encounter stuff in particular would be cool if reworked into the skill challenge format; feel free to post to that thread if you want to do so!Not everyone agrees that it is to the better.  I think that depends, very much, on what you want out of a frpg.  Clearly, though, there are a lot of people who do think it is to the better.  AFAICT, they are not complaining.(But I would like to see what a 3pp could do with the system, if it was under the OGL, to make a version ammenable to faster play without a grid.)As an aside, I will also agree that "slower combats" =/= "grind".  If the combats aren't boring to the players, then there is no grind, no matter how long they take.  It is only when the players feel that the combat is taking "too long" that "grind" sets in.The problem with long combats, IMHO, is that they reduce the number of encounters per session, so that each encounter must bear more of the weight of the session's success.  Longer encounters means each encounter is load-bearing to a greater degree, and a single "meh" encounter can seem as though it sucks to a disproportionate degree.I encountered a good example of this when running the WLD under 3.x.  In the early part of WLD there are [spoiler]lots of fiendish darkmantles to worry about[/spoiler].  This should have been cool (and is cool when run under a faster system!), but it took up too much of the game time under the 3.x ruleset for my group.  It's fun to have the players groan "Oh no!" when they see the monsters coming because they are concerned about how the encounter will play out in-game (Will they win?  Will they lose?  Will precious resources be used up?); it is not so much fun when the players groan "Oh no!" because they are concerned about how much of the session the encounter will suck up, thus preventing them from getting more done.In yesterday's game session, I had a ghoul rogue paralyze 2 out of 3 PCs, before being slain by the final PC.  It was fast, and tense.  I had a running encounter that took place in two complicated three-dimensional spaces.  I drew a small map to give the players a general idea of the layout because the space was very complicated.  A picture, or a photograph, would have worked just as well.  No grid was needed.OTOH, for some battles (set pieces), minis are definitely useful (or fun).  PCs in a fortified position against hordes of goblins; multi-level cave complex with cultists, extra rooms, prisoners, and a sacrificial pit; a room filled with moving gears and complex parts.  Things like this are sometimes fun to use minis with.   I can run them without, but, for me, the use of minis in these cases adds something greater to the presentation than the time cost of using them.I want to use minis only when I wish to use them, because an encounter is truly worth lingering over.  I don't want to use minis for every encounter, nor do I want to eliminate minor encounters because they take too much time to resolve.YMMV.Different strokes for different folks and all that.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />RC</blockquote>

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