Image Source: Fiery Dragon Productions
A few months ago, while reading the most excellent, and sadly concluded, DM of the Rings webcomic, I came upon a very inspiring strip. I wrote a forum post about it but I’d like to re-edit it here instead of letting it fall off the 20th page.
Shamus’ cynical comments under the strip are often as funny as the strips and, sadly, too true. This one defines too many D&D games I’ve had in the past. When a fight starts, there’s often a whole ceremony of shuffling sheets off the table, setting and (heaven forbid) drawing the battle map, perusing the manuals, etc. In effect, this can literally kill any tension you may have been working up to as a DM. It’s quite probably the same for other RPGs that use battle maps like Gurps, Savage World, etc
I’d like to share the tricks I now use to avoid this. During pre-game preparations, I take one Ziploc bags per encounter I plan on having in a gaming session (and a few more than that). In each, I put the minis/chits to be used and I sometime put in the stats blocks on a folded piece of paper. The Fiery Dragon Battlebox has a great little pad where you can cram 3 stat blocks per sheet. I also add whatever I might need (props, tiles, etc) to the bags. Lastly, I try to pre-draw the battlemaps (when I use a published adventure) or use one of the many D&D minis battle maps or tiles when I design the encounter.
When the fight starts, I place the pre-drawn battle map on the table , dump the Ziploc’s content on the map and voilà, instant fight! In our last game, I actually hid all the battle maps, stacked one over the other, underneath our old battered Vinyl Battlemap-turned-playmat. Setting up was so flawless we never skipped a beat and we managed to cram 3 full scenes in one evening.
Another trick is to speed up initiative tracking and opponents Hit Points. For this I started using Paizo’s Combat Pad. This simple as hell 8,5”X11” vinyl coated metal sheet is the absolute best accessory I have ever bought. (Honest, Paizo does not (yet) pay me to say that). Just look at the picture and let me save on 2 paragraphs of semi-incoherent raves.
It works really well. What about your tricks?
Currently, my D&D DM uses the combat pad, and it works well. We do go through the ‘clear off the mat and draw’ pause. One of the things we do to keep combat moving is that when the next PC’s turn in announced (“Neri, you’re up…”) it’s followed by who’s next (“Lucius, you’re on deck…”), so they can get themselves ready, and not waste so much time hemming and hawing over the map when they’re up. 🙂
For the most part, though, I’ve come to the conclusion that (for me), and RPG shouldn’t have a map. I’ve found it to be limiting, and a distraction. As soon as the map is out, players are thinking in terms of ‘How many squares away is the monster’ or ‘How do AoOs work again?’ and less on ‘What would cool and fun and in-character to do here?’
When I put together a great verbal tapestry of the environment, it just feels…wrong to use a bunch of quickly-squiggled lines of marker on an oyster-colored grid map to represent it. The pause it takes to make up the map just isn’t worth the time and interruption of tension for me. Without a map, I can have anything happen, it can be scaled to any dimension, I can do anything I want.
Combat works better, too. In the end, it’s the relationships that are important. Are you in cover, or not? Who’s faster? Can I reach the target before this or that happens? It’s a lot more tense and fun to have those things not be able to be counted out in sterile squares, but to be resolved by good ideas of the players (and perhaps a few skill rolls).
Now, granted – a game like D&D simply doesn’t work without a map; far too much is dependent upon it. But that’s okay, I’m moving away from D&D more and more, at least in what I run.
This is way cool with me Noah, as it should be. 🙂
We like miniatures a lot in our group and the full color maps we use are absolutely awesome.
But I can understand where you come from. I remember that BESM and Paranoia were an absolute blast to play with no maps and miniatures.
“How far can I run away in a turn Phil?”
“Why would you care, you just threw a Thermonuclear hand Grenade?”
“A shoot, call clone number 4!”
I do admit that I’m a big fan of the D&D Miniatures game – it’s a lot of fun. Some of the miniatures are superb, and it’s great to be able to get a lot of kobolds really cheap. 🙂 And oh, my, are those dragons pretty…
The maps produced for it are excellent. They’ve currently become cannibalized for the Star Wars Miniatures game I run now and then for my oldest son – the Republic Commando Delta Squad have had some very strange missions.
For all my objections to using a map in an RPG, I still do, of course – I’m one of the few that feels that way in my group, so I live with it. There’s enough other great stuff that I laugh and move on. I’ve also started to improvise some with the map and what my character does on it; in one recent example, Neri (sneaky elf chick) was charged by some Huge, horrible horned demon-thing, and it rammed into her with it’s horns. Dealt out something like half her hit points, or more in one smack. Technically, she’d just stand there and take it.
I had her fly back three squares and land prone; the DM loved it.
We currently use the combat pad, and I absolutely love it. Dante is able to keep track of initiative and there’s no more bickering about who goes next. It had really made a difference in our battle experience.
On the subject of maps, we seldom use maps unless it is a difficult situation to picture. Even then, it’s usually a quick, hand-drawn-on-scratch-paper map to give everyone a quick idea of the layout. It works for us.
Well, I’m not currently DMing but when i was. I usually used the same technique then Stupid Ranger’s group the “hand-drawn-on-scratch-paper map” Being the cheap skate that I am (I don’t even buy new sets of dice at the start of new campaign 😉 ).
I only had one blank vinyl battle map. But i did bought a few transparent acetate sheets on which I would draw my maps… Need a map pop the sheet and lay it on the battle map… Quick, reusable and cheap what’s not to love… 😉
It was used in most university for their retro-projector. With the progress in projector it might be a little bit harder to find.
Here’s how we keep combat flowing. These especially apply to Microlite20 games, where the action is supposed to be as fast as possible, but they all apply to “straight” D&D too:
1. Don’t roll initiative, but fight in attack bonus order. That’s one less dice to roll, and gives everyone a fixed order from the start; the players know where they fall in the marching order. That’s especially useful when the characters get multiple attacks per round – a Fighter with +6/+1 would get one attack at the start, then another one close to the end of the round. That’s what we do in Microlite20, but we’re slowly moving toward playing like that in D&D too (supplanting our Init = REF save House Rule).
2. As GM, I keep a Hit Point pool for groups of monsters rather than track individual totals. When there’s enough in the pool to down one of the critters, I pick one (usually the most dramatically applicable), and he’s dead. Reset the pool, and start counting. It sounds like this is going into 4th Edition, which is cool.
3. Alternatively, for low-level mooks use the Minions rule from Mutants & Masterminds – any successful hit drops the foe. This is especially useful if you want the PCs wading through hordes of week foes – say, an army of Goblins when the PCs are 9th level. The week critters might still get a lucky hit, but otherwise it’s just fun, with minimal dice rolling.
4. Don’t use figures, miniatures, battlemats and the like. We found they did more to slow down play (and encourage fidgeting) rather than improve the game, but YMMV. Instead, use imaginitive play, wave your arms, point, shout and generally throw yourself into the game. Encourage the players to do things that would be impossible to represent with plastic figures (when was the last time you saw one swing on a chandelier?). If you absolutely must use figures to show relative position, use jelly babies. One bag give yous enough colour coded figures for a **huge** battle (green for orcs, black for drow, red for demons, etc), and the victor gets to eat the vanquished. Which is nice.
5. Multiply criticals rather than rolling additional dice. This makes a battle-axe’s x3 or mounted lanced a potential show stopper – and a great memorable moment 🙂
6. Prepare a crib sheets before the adventure with the name, saves, AC, hp and combat details for the characters and monsters. Calculate the Average Party Level, and put the XP value of each monster/encounter in there too, so it’s easy to toss them out at the end of the encounter. Otherwise, give c. 300XP out to each player per encounter, adjusted for difficulty. Don’t stall things working this stuff out in-game. Pre-calculate, or fudge it and move on.
7. If you need time to think or get your bearings, let the monster do something dramatic that doesn’t call for a dice roll. They could beat their chest, leap onto (or under) a table, curse, yawn, or whatever. Give them a +2 AC for something tactically clever, or -2 AC if it’s dumb. Again, this keeps the game moving while at the same time making the monsters more believable.
Phew! I’m done 🙂
There seems to be a growing movement away from the maps&miniatures. I can understand that. I’ve grown so used to them that I can’t imagine going without them.
I really like the concept of Hit point pools for mooks… or the minion rules… consider them stolen for my game. Anything to make my DMing crunch simpler so I can focus on the awesome.
Greywulf, I am grabbing all the MicroliteD20 I can find at this very moment…this is great stuff!
noah, thanks!
If you’re feeling brave, take a dive into this thread on ENWorld if you want to see how the whole Microlite20 thing snowballed!
Oh, man…M20 is a whole plateful of awesome. The presence of M20 Modern sealed the deal for me.
That EN World threat is an interesting read, it’s good to see the thought processes that led up to the present form of the game.
Personally, I might add in a few feats to put a bit more flavor in the crunch, but I’m not sure yet.
More important is statting up a Kobold SWAT team (“How many just fast-roped down from the chopper?!”).
Oh, and the Mass Combat Made Easy is inspired!