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Post by DnDPaladin on Jan 4, 2015 2:43:50 GMT
Hey people, i was waiting for a few sessions to have passed by. now i can finally say that i understand what gridless is.
i had only one player who didn't want to play gridless, he was the kind of rule lawyer to boot. so his game was more board game with role play involved. when he decided he had enough of my houserules. i decided to take the time to go gridless. so i created those 4 sticks. the 6 square and the 4 squares. and never looked back.
it all started on a boat i had made for another game and i didn't have time to actually grid it. so we played without a grid. at first it was feeling weird, then it quickly became fater game play because somehow i wasn't even really looking at how fast a character moved. one would eyeball his movement based on the size of his base. yeah sometimes those players would sneak a square more just to get in range. but what the hell, we're trying this after all. but things got better and better, once the sticks were made. players were starting to use them to know their distances. i still have to remember them though that the stick is 6 squares and that if they go from one end of the stick to the other end that would be 7 square. hey thats them trying to sneak a fast one on me. aside fromt hat after about 4-5 sessions, some of my players started using the sticks only to know the distance between them and the further enemies. moving by eyeballing it. and somehow we dont have problems eyeballing it.
overall some encounters became much easier. others became much more tactical. line of sight became much easier to pull. and AOE are also kinda easier to do. so i cannot in good conscience go back to grid play. but i am not going to say it was useless to start gridplay to begin with. i'd say my players were able to make the switch with that much ease cause of it. they kinda have the grid stamped in their mind and it really helps them understand the distances. without grid play first, i am not sure my new players would of been able to understand how it worked. then again the sticks really helped. another thing that really got better was flying stuff. somehow it suddently became much easier to track then it was. not sure, that might just be me getting used to it. but i will say that i had an encounter with a young white dragon that ws flying around them and somehow it was just better fit without a grid.
so heres my rating of the gridless system... - didn't see much difference between grid and no grid when it came to movement. (still using squares anyway) - much better targeting system (each creature having its own grid instead of a general static one) - placements are just betterly done. - the rest seems unchanged.
i'd say thats not muchof an upgrade versus grid play, but since there is no drawback, any small upgrade is better then none. so i'd say yeah the gridless experience is just better then grid play. gridless also drops the feeling of board games. so it feels much more like D&D and not like a board game. so yeah i really recommend people to do the switch. as i said, its not really a big difference. but there is no drawback to it. well... thats not true, the only drawback i saw was that you now have to check your players correctly in order for them not to pass a fast one on you. like moving 9 squares instead of 8. but aside from a bit more job to the DM... its not so much as to not do the switch.
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Post by sgtslag on Jan 6, 2015 18:03:23 GMT
I've never played D&D on a grid, as in 4th Edition. It was not until I came to this forum that I learned of it. I see the reasons behind it, but I would never play D&D on a grid as it would be like playing a board game. DM Scotty's use of measuring sticks made me chuckle: been using them in miniatures games for more than 20 years. I love how things go back and forth between mini's games and D&D, which was born out of mini's games. Cheers!
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Post by DnDPaladin on Jan 7, 2015 6:00:59 GMT
sgt, easy for a war game veteran to say. but i never liked wargames, i never played them and i totally dislike having those sticks to calculates. unfortunately they are necessary. thats the one part i hate about it. it might ake the game more like a board game but at least you dont need a fucking ruler to play the game. i've seen far worse thogh, when you need a compass, a ruler and measuring tape to play your game, then you know something is awefully wrong there.
i'm dead serious, look at the warhammer compass tool they sell to mesure stuff up. i swear that thing looks like an old sky mapper thing on old boats. i hate war games with a passion. i didn't remove the grid for those reasons... i removed it cause i preffer it to be on the character, that way each character has its own measuring integrated into them. unfortunately, i dont see myself sticking a grid onto each characters. so i have no choice but to play with a fucking ruler.
this is why i love video games... with them these problems do not exists. they calculate everything for you. as i said, the gain barely noticable... to be honest the grid play or the gridless play doesn't make any real difference. you still play in squares. otherwise you'd not need that stick. but the very little subtelties that it gives when it comes to line of sight is something not to be laughing at. there are a few small things like that, it actually ugrade from... those are are better then nothing and thus the game gets a tad bit better.
you guys also have to remember that D&D as always been a virtual reality game, and that those miniatures they sell, were made for skirmishes which are active war games. so its normal for the game to look like a board game. otherwise, you still have the option of thinking it all without any figurines or any thing showing except a sheet with you drawing stuff up. after all, thats how the original game, and even 5e comes to play. minis are totally optionnal and totally not mandatory.
the day we decided to use minis, is the day we decided on our own that the game would become a tactical board game. but im not against that, i still think its better to see the actual combat then just imagining the places where the charcaters are.
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Post by sgtslag on Jan 7, 2015 16:42:06 GMT
Wow. I did not mean to strike a nerve. D&D was born from miniatures games, and with Gygax, it was an extension of his war gaming pursuits, using miniatures for tactical reasons. Gygax was quoted in an interview saying, "If I wanted role playing, I'd join the local theater group at the Lake Geneva library." Arneson was more of a 'theater of the mind' guy, gleaning his role playing ideas from the Brauenstein (Braunstein?) games he played under another referee. OD&D came out of Gygax's Chainmail rules' fantasy supplement. Gygax developed OD&D from that fantasy supplement, with assistance from Arneson. There are a few histories of D&D online, as well as a few published books. One I've read is, "Of Dice and Men." There a few others in print, as well. Some accounts are more detailed than others, but they tell pretty much the same story of how it came together. 'Theater of the mind' can be used exclusively, if you prefer. No measuring devices are necessary. They are only needed if you want more precision. Many folks play a more "heroic" fantasy game without any measuring tools, figures, or mats. The game is open to all approaches. The only needed thing is that everyone is having fun. Cheers! PS: In a WW II naval mini's game I played several years ago, we had to use trigonometry to calculate a percentage chance to hit a target ship with a torpedo! I never did it, but one player made several calculations, using Cosine, and ArcTangent equations, only to learn he had a 7.29% chance of success -- after five minutes of calculating trig equations, and three seconds of rolling the percentile dice, he failed to hit his target... That is the worst I've ever seen in a game. Most mini's games are NOT that precise (read: ridiculous!). RPG's have nothing on mini's games for stupid 'precision', or attempts to 'simulate' reality. And I am very thankful for that. Ever heard of Arm's Law/Claw Law/Spell Law? RPG's have attempted to be more precise in combat simulation, but most of those systems died back in the 1980's -- RIP, say I.
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Post by ashrothedm on Jan 7, 2015 17:46:57 GMT
If you use a virtual grid that you don't actually write down on the tile, you're still using grid play.
In gridless, there are absolutely no squares, or virtual squares.
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Post by DnDPaladin on Jan 8, 2015 2:28:29 GMT
ashro, then why are you needing the stick for ? whatever happens, you are using a grid, may it be virtual or real. virtual grids do not shows anywhere they are in your head and used to measure things from point a to point b. this is what we do when we say an inch = 5 feet. we're basically creating a grid right away. grids are everywhere, including in real life. of course we're not forced to follow the said grid. but we're still using it. as soon as you use a measurement equivalent you are creating a grid. now where things changes is how you view or use the grid. people say wargames do not have a grids, but i beg to differ. they do at all times. because they need it to measure their distances. the difference comes from you not viewing the said grid. and the grid actually moving with your characters. thats why i said i preffer the grid on your character then having a static one. remember a grid can be also be circular, it can be hexagonnals, it can be triangles. so it doesn't matter... if you would take that pick, calculates your distance from your char (point a) and then go for 3 inches later (point b) and do that all the way around your character... you'd end up with a grid like pattern. with your character being the center point. now the fun part of having the grid on your character, is that each grid becomes independant of each others and thats what gives you the impression of free play. that means you can have two grids overlapping each others and yet have the character only use his grid and ignoring the other. if you didn't have a grid, you'd not need to measure your ways, you wouldn't need the stick at all. and you wouldn't need any measurements of any kind. and even there i can swear that you'd be using grids. because thats how our minds calculates things.
sgt, you did not i assure you. maybe its the way i used the f word, which im now regretting... but now you know why im not playing wargames... as for gygax... me and him would be total oppositions... hes the kind to think wargames and do not care for story... at least how you make him seems... yet i learned he would wing everything he does. including the players rolling the dices. hes the kind of guy that to me liked to be the DM cause he liked the power and the audience. p^retty sure he wouldn'T like to play D&D now with all the players wanting to play by ruling instead of "the mind" im not like him, i love the coop story, i love the role playing, what i dislike the most is war gaming and to top it off i'm totally against cheating my players off just to make the story better. so yeah, we'd probably be enemies.
to be back onto this thread which is about gridless play... as i said, im still recommending to anyone. having the character as the center point at all time just makes things better. mind you though, its not all that big a difference. if it was, we'd not be able to change from one another with that much ease.
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Post by DMScotty on Jan 8, 2015 4:58:20 GMT
The real magic to "gridless" is the aesthetic feel of the table and the mechanics are secondary.
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Post by DMNate on Jan 8, 2015 5:35:14 GMT
I adore gridless play. I have not seen a single downside to it (and I looked for it and asked around) and so many upsides! My players feel so much more free to try different things. They aren't counting squares, but are instead sizing up the situation. It makes it feel like less of a board game and more like an interactive story. Not to mention it makes crafting SO much easier. It's more immersive. More tactical, and easier for new players to get into the action.
All good.
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Post by adamantinedragon on Jan 8, 2015 6:00:09 GMT
I've played with grids and I've played gridless. I like 'em both. I find that in my case at least, neither of them have any significant advantage when it comes to "role playing" vs not "role playing." Gridless is more in line with "theater of the mind" and allows a more casual system of movement with a lot less square counting. Grids allow much easier recognition of tactical situations without having to get out string or sticks or measuring tape. When I first played D&D back in the late 70s my first GM didn't even use a MAP unless we had something very critical to show. We sat around the living room and just described things for each other. However, we had a fair number of times when players and/or the GM saw things differently in their mind and we spent a fair bit of time (and some emotion) in settling situations. When I did my first GM situation I used maps to keep track of where everything was. Soon after that I decided that grids also helped to reduce the number of disagreements about measurements or range, so we started using grids.
I constantly hear people say that grids reduce role play. I simply cannot fathom what they even mean. Grids or gridless has never had any impact whatsoever on role playing my characters. I don't even see how it could. Role playing is all about creating a persona and acting in accordance with abilities, skills, backstory and motivations. None of those have anything whatsoever to do with a grid or the lack thereof.
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Post by thedmg on Jan 8, 2015 13:00:31 GMT
The way I built movement into 7DSystem is that you can move anywhere in the area you are in in any direction in a straight line. The moment you want to change direction your move ends. When you run, you get to move a second time and up to the limit of the next area. When you sprint you get to move a third time up to the limits of the third area. When you move through a table you have to check if you are able to vault over it. If you fail, you are stooped before the table. Areas are defined as within the room you are in, the corridor until it turns or changes. In open areas it is defined by instances of cover, trees, bushes, rocks etc. When people chase you you contest each other against physical skills. If the chaser fails they are left back just out of combat reach. The only real measuring is done for ranged weapon attacks to assess which range advantages to use. Even then it is basic. It speeds the game up immensely. Most of the time I just rule on range rather than it being precisely measured.
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Post by DnDPaladin on Jan 8, 2015 13:40:43 GMT
Scotty i agree, thats what brought me to gridless play. that and the fact i dont have to lose 30 minutes drawing a grid on my few tiles that i use. unfortunately i dont have the patience to paint the cracks in my dungeons tiles. back to the matter, yeah its much more aestetic and thats what so beautifull about it... much less mechanic im not sure of though... one could argue that mentally your players are still calculating their stuff. and as for the DM (aka me in this case) i think it gives me more work. because on grids players would only count the squares and i wouldn't need to check, all i needed was them counting up. now i need to check up, cause sometimes my players wing it to their advantage. like advancing 10 feet more then usual. i ahve seen a player say shit, stopping by half a character to his target, he looked at me and then pushed his character to the monster and said i attack, sorry but if i dont liek cheating, im not tolerant for that kind of stuff, so i had to give him the warning for it, said he was short of getting there. and did give him a chance at doing something else. he found it stupid to make double move just for half an inch... but i said, half an inch is half an inch pal.
DMnate i wonder how many advantages you are gonna say comes back to the same... i have seen like only 3-4 advantages and they were small advantages to begin with. still advantage is better then none. so its cool, but... then again one could argue that the cheating that may occur due to the removal of the grid by players winging it in their favors could be said to be a disadvantage in itself.
adamantine i beg to differ with less counting... some of my players like to stay in the far back and kill thing in the limit of their range, those guys always have the measuring stick in hand. heck they even asked me longer then 6 inch sticks because he found ways to augment his range to 8 and now he hates moving the stick. the counting unfortunately has nothing to do with the board state, it has everything to do with the players. if the players likes counting and calculating stuff, then grid or no grid, he'll be calculating his stuff.
i know what you mean by no views, when i was young thats how we played, at school during ad&d2nd thats how we played... but its so much better to show as a DM then it is to describe stuff. losing time trying to make everyone understand their position was the thing that made games too long. back then a 2 hour game was strickly impossible, people would have to dedicate at least 6 hours to play a real game. i swear, doing a campaign back then was a 3 year road at school. thats when i realise i needed stuff to write on to show people. accelerate the gaming process in order to be able to finish campaign in 1 year. like you thats why i liked grids, still do for that... no need for anyone to bring anything, its right there for everyone to use.
as for roleplaying, it all depends on their conception. for most gamers roleplaying is now the act of leveling a charcater with stats. for them thats role playing. thanks to video games the term changed completely. much like how beat em up games changed to action and fighting games now. seems to me that those who say that about role playing, only thinks of combat aspect of the stuff and not the actual role play of the character. perhaps to them, grids make them look like on a board game and unlike in video games, they dont think its epic enough. thats why diablo and hack and slash works so much... because people in there can just get in there and slash everything feeling like mighty gods. i must agree, grids do not make you feel that without your DM making the sound effects. which i do by the way.
DMG sooooo... people who wants to move behind a wall 10 feet of them 5 feet behind them cannot without taking a dash ? chasing as its own section in the 3.5 book. it does involve constitution checks. because characters who sprint auto gets fatigued after the sprint. then it becomes constitution saves to determine who can go longer then the others. i think 4th and 5th edition do have those kind of things as well. to be honest the more i hear your system, the more i think you reduce too much for the sake of speed.
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Post by ashrothedm on Jan 8, 2015 21:58:19 GMT
While on a philisophical level, the entire universe can be broken into an infinitely complex and tiny grid, that's not at all what takes place with gridless and grid.
In gridless play, you can stand on the lines, and entertain angles and distances that are not integer steps from your origin. You can move in any number of directions and distances.
You need the stick for scale, not for a grid.
If the scale of the surface is 5' = 1", and I can move 30' in a move action, then I need to know how many inches that is. I can move 6", along any path and with any angle. A 6" stick would be the limit of your move.
If I place a coffee cup on the table, and my miniature runs around it, you should appreciate the stick. You will have different, although fundamentally similar results if you did the same thing on a grid. The mini should be in approximately the same location.
Forget the stick. If you would prefer to manipulate it, try string cut to length.
With 360 degrees of freedom, if you were to increment the angle of movement 1 degree and move 6", you will land in 360 different destinations. That would be abysmal to represent on a grid. When you nudge the resulting movement into a destination that fits into a virtual grid, you are playing on a grid.
I'm just saying that electing not to draw a grid does not alone make the experience gridless. Your remarks of "sneaking a square" "still using squares anyway" etc. make it seem like you didn't really remove the grid.
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Moving half of an inch "extra" does not mean cheating necessarily. People make honest mistakes. It seems paradoxical that you both abhor rulers and measuring to play a wargame, but hold strong to the move limits without allowing the occasional half of an inch or so variance. I would have expected someone who has such a strong distaste for rulers to be more lenient when it comes to measuring movement distances. Of course, acknowledging that they can't reach, and then suddenly reaching, seems deliberate. I'd probably have just let that go.
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Post by DnDPaladin on Jan 9, 2015 4:02:53 GMT
ashro... you didn't understand the explanation i did...
you say the stick is for scale only, i wonder, whats a scale really ? if not just a down sized version of a system we already use. now you say we can walk on the lines... thats only if you play on a static grid. aka i put a mat on the floor with grid and move according to that grid which never moves around.
now imagine that grid stuck to you. when you move it moves with you. will you ever walk on those lines ? never, because the grid moves along with you. the army uses sectors, which by definitions are grid to determine their position and where they need to fire. that grid allows them to better pinpoint where the canons will fire. that measurement is necessary otherwise you'd have to guess everything you do. thats how calculating our mind is. everything is up to sizes, it doesn't matter which size it is. exemple of my players winging it, they still are calculating that grid by doing so. because they look at the base of the creature and moves along how many of that base would be needed to move to the desired position. by definition that is using a grid. because you just imagined the size of the base and created your own grid.
now when i said the grid moves with you, its actually a two step process... first while you move the grid stays there, then once you are finished it moves to your new position. thats means you can step over the lines of your opposing characters. but it doesn't matter cause their grid is theirs while yours is still yours. all grids works for each individuals. you even creates grid in your daily life by judging the distances based on objects around you. thats how your mind estimates the distances.
now saying i still with grids.... of course i do, we all do. because whatever we do, everything is math related. the only way to remove the grid is to do what DMG did... have no restriction on distances. as soon as you put a distance or a scale or a size of an object... you give those players a way to calculate their distances by mapping a grid in their heads. but a game with no distances involved might barely ever work. because, how else do you want to calculate what happens. like how he has a need to calculate for range.
everything is math, you may not notice it, but your brain is always calculating and when he does judge distances... your brain created a grid based on the size of an object you know the size of in order to calculate the distance compared to the size of that object. basically how many of that object is needed to get there.
as for me warning of the half inch, thats not me worrying about distances and the likes... thats me enforcing rules against cheating. cheating is taking advantage by ignoring a rule set to gain an advantage over the others. the same kinda thing hapenned. when another player actually pushed into the right distance, but pushed his character into the melee when there was not enough space between the other players. at that point i placed back the other players which were shoved aside to give him place. and said... so, you would push your allies in battle and even destroying their posture just get a hit on a creature ? he said yes ! and thus i gave his two allies flat footed because they were suddently pushed out of their stances and lost their balance due to the shove. and him to his attack, a minue 4 cause he didn't have an attack ready because he first needed to push his friends.
those are part of what happens when you play without a grid. this wouldn'T have hapenned at all if i was playing with a grid. because switching the grid t the stick to the player, things gets out of sync with everything else. the grid only syncs to you, not others.
your 360 degrees again missed my point... even if it is a circle... you still create a patern ! take that rope, pin it to the character and draw your string 360, you just created a patern. move to the end of that string then do the same. you just created another pattern thats now indepedant of the first one. take 2 strings and check your distances... you now have two circles. still a pattern that resembles a grid, a circle grid, but still a grid. but again enforcing my grid independencies.... when you move, that pattern moves along with you leaving only a shadow of your former pattern. by definition a pattern is a pattern... may it be a square grid, a triangle grid, a circle grid... that is still a patttern that is used to measure stuff up.
the only thing you should agree on, is that having the grid on you instead of static, opens up much more possibilities of stuff hapenning. but isns't much more harder to calculates.
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Post by thedmg on Jan 9, 2015 9:39:47 GMT
Speed is an important factor. The faster you can move the story along, the better. A lot of games get bogged down. DnD gets bogged down when wizards have to start selecting spells or a player has to roll a new character... It is not about just being fast, but being efficient. 7DSystem is very DM light. It takes a huge amount of adjudication out of role-playing. It gives the DM more of an opportunity to focus on story and be more creative with monsters in combat.
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Post by bloodchoke on Jan 9, 2015 12:11:40 GMT
I think we should just paint squares on the ground everywhere, since all movement takes place in a grid anyway. And then we can be all snarky to people who step on the lines. And we can make them take an extra half step if they want to walk diagonally, because Pythagoras.
Basically, this:
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Post by DnDPaladin on Jan 9, 2015 19:02:26 GMT
ignorance is bliss, isn't that how the saying works.
if you are fine thinking there is no grid or calculation involved in your gridless game, then all the better to you. as scotty said, the goal is to hide the limits.
DMG, i dont doubt that speed is important... but why stop there, forget all the character sheets, forget all the rules at all. play theather of the mind, everything in your mind. describe the game and let the players describe their actions, no more rules, no more sheets, no more calculation, just people talking and acting.
all im saying is that when i look at the end result of us removing and removing... the game seems much less attracting to me.
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Post by DMNate on Jan 9, 2015 19:47:49 GMT
Dude, you're going to odd extremes with this. Making the game faster regardless of the affect on the game is not the goal. Just like how adding things to the game, even if they are awesome, might be a bad idea if they slow things down too much. It's all about maximizing the enjoyableness of the game by balancing things to make it move quickly and feel in depth.
For my group, they felt bogged down by the combat mechanics, and felt like it simply took too long, so I gutted it. My group now plays a homebrew version that has many small pieces simply removed. It works great for us because it increased the fun the group was having. If your group enjoys grids, then keep them, but I haven't found any player that preferred grids to a gridless system.
I will still hold that if there are no play DISadvantages with going gridless, it is worth to go gridless for no other reason than the time it saves while crafting. Sure, it's not DIFFICULT to put grids on everything, but it sure takes time, especially if you want it to look nice. That alone makes it well worth it for me.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2015 20:07:53 GMT
When you remove the grid you are left with hit ranges and move ranges. Players are no longer forced to move 5 feet with every square moved on the tables grid. This opens up a lot of options for positioning and strategies within the game that a grided system can't offer IMO. And a grid by definition is parallel lines that forms squares or rectangles.. Thus playing grid less = no grid period. Creatures are left with hit circles.
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Post by thedmg on Jan 9, 2015 23:04:55 GMT
Actually they are left with hit arcs. One would assume they cant strike behind
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2015 23:36:59 GMT
thedmg Would you mind explaining burst to me then because I seem to misunderstand the rules completely. Edit: as well as this..Melee Attacks: You need line of effect between the origin square and the target's space. You do not need line of sight to make melee attacks.
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