From the minis thread:

Quote from: Melan;520183Switching to minis has improved my ability to add character mobility and spatial variety into battle a lot.

Finally ditching them after six years of playing that way has allowed me to be even more fluid and add a 3d component to what's going on - nowadays, I sketch out the battle location, and let players and NPCs run away with the possibilities (our last session featured a very 3d battle in a crumbling pleasure-palace; with its parapets, rooftops, galleries and ground level wings, all played fairly abstractly).

So, in my case, it has been an important transitory step. But I have given away most of my miniatures now, and am also happy I don't have to lug a boxful of them around anymore.

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BTW, delver, please remove that table-breaking image.

Quote from: Settembrini;520192Miniatures prevent what I call the collapse of the spatial wave function. As Melan says, true freedom 3D is better achieved with sketches in conjunction with descriptions.
But using grids and tokens guarantee the affair stays at least two dimensional. Whereas descriptions alone very easily collapse into the one-dimensionality and linearity of language.

Thus is the nature of the discretization of space.

Just reading these posts gave me some ideas, but I'd like to hear more about how you do this (input from everyone appreciated).


Alternately, I can go back to telling Ben how wrong he is about D&D.

Quote from: Aos;520371Alternately, I can go back to telling Ben how wrong he is about D&D.

You wish, mofo!

I prefer descriptions with the occasional sketch. My players generally love the freedom of movement it gives them. Jumping over barriers, running up things. All fun

quick sketch with a description was the way i always ran it, excepting the 3.x campaign i ran.  but that group had a first-time gamer in it who loved the whole grid, count squares, etc. side of things.

traveller was my main game for the longest time, which i felt lent itself well to such abstraction.

How does grid/no grid change how you think in terms of dimensions used?

I typically use grid-free illustrations (and zone-based movement rules that mostly amount to 3.5 stuff with fudged distances) myself. Illustrations shared with the group only if my descriptions are unclear.

Not an immersion thing, I've just typically run games at other peoples' house, and don't want to lug around minis. Also I've run for large groups and needed to keep track of things.

I think it partially has to do with the limitations of language. Language seems to excel in temporal descriptions, but lags spatially. Perhaps some here have heard Noam Chomsky's interesting linguistic challenge, "Imagine meeting someone who has never seen a spiral. Now describe a spiral going down just using words, no hand gestures."

I therefore agree with Settembrini that there's a conceptual facet going on with each verbal and somatic communicative process. Intriguing to speculate.

Quote from: Aos;520371Just reading these posts gave me some ideas, but I'd like to hear more about how you do this (input from everyone appreciated)

It is not as huge as you might have thought - I simply jot down sketches with the major terrain features, draw in the initial positioning, and let the players and the opponents loose on it. The lack of a grid and the high mobility of the characters stops it from becoming a board game, and allows degrees of freedom between more and less abstract combat. Where it becomes 3d is that

• My environments are often 3d to begin with, with cliff faces, bannisters, rooftops and stuff. They are "dramatic" scenery.
• I encourage the players to interact with this environment, and use the rules fairly loosely to let them get away with stuff (of course, failure is still on the table).

Because a thread like this is worthless without concrete examples, here are two. The lines represent PC or NPC movement of some sort.

#1 Fight in the shallows: the lair of a succubus demon. Cliff faces, treacherous routes, shallow seawater covering much of the ruins; lots of cover to hide behind and use for ambush. A small domed structure with more opportunities. The opponents (Kheteira the succubus and the ape demon she was lucky enough to summon) could fly, adding another hazard to the fight. On the other hand, the PCs had lasers, which kinda helps in these situations. Full writeup here.



#2 The ruins of Barzon: a jagged 3d environment to start with, dominated by a crater-like bay, and towering buildings atop the escarpment. It is better to read the story on my site; this was a high-level party with very powerful items and spells at their disposal. Featuring reconnaissance while polymorphed into a giant wasp; destroying terrain features; assaulting a tower structure with a summoned demon (and picking through the wreckage) and so on.