I happen to agree with the AngryDM's rant about D&D's rule set (5th ed included) and 'Theater of Mind' play. After looking at spell ranges, points of orgin, movement speeds, etc, my opinion is that its a poor system for this.
I was wondering, do advocates of gridless play think 5th ed is the best system they could have come up with to support gridless play? What would you like to have seen? Will you be making any adjustments or houserules to make it easier on players and DM (less PCs asking the DM, and less DM micromanaging ranges or just guessing)?
http://www.madadventurers.com/angry-rants-theater-of-the-mind/
"no matter what Mike Mearls wants to insist, every edition of D&D is built on a grid. Yes, even the new one that says that it isn’t. You can tell because of the amount of precision built into the game. Everything is built on precise measurements, there are line-of-sight and cover rules, precise ranges, zones of control based on distance between creatures, and so on and so forth....If you want an example of actual gridless play, look at Star Wars: Edge of the Empire or 13th Age. They built imprecise terminology about positions, ranges, and movements directly into the game to get it off the...grid. "
I think they were trying to come up with a version that supports both. So it couldn't be too abstract, or you wouldn't know how to use a grid. But it includes some conceits, so it is easier to adjucate gridless. You might just have to remember how close or how far something is, or be willing to fudge it and just use the 'numbers' as a means to gauge impact.
I'm a maps and minis guy, when it comes to set piece encounters. I love the grid but I don't "snap to grid."
when I go grid less, I run combats like DW and 13A, playing fast and loose with distances (and scrapping initiative).
There really isn't anything different between 5e and 3e in terms of ease gridless play. In fact, there isn't a whole lot different between 5e and 4e in terms of ease of gridless play. Sure, 4e had a lot of powers that were made easier by use of the grid, but 5e has things like thunderwave, shoving as a bonus action, creatures spaces counting as difficult terrain for allies, and so on that are all made easier by use of a grid.
We tried gridless for a while, but found it ultimately took longer to run combats in the end due to the constant questions about relative position, the size of AoE spells (which all use discrete 5 ft blocks), and cover. In short, I also agree with AngryDM.
Lawolf wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
bawylie wrote:
I think trying to run any combat purely through imagination takes a lot more work than I, personally, want to put into a thing I'm doing to relax. Even in the 13th Age game I ran and some of the Savage Worlds games I played in, neither which promotes battle maps like D&D does, my group still used a dry-erase whiteboard to roughly figure out where everyone was in relation to everyone else.
I grew up on the grid so it is a challenge to play without it at times. I have been dipping my toes into it though, trying to gain a feel for it. I also find it convenient for impromptu or small slash and dash encounters that parties seem to always start or run into.
I however, love, LOVE making up a map on my grid mat of a random market or Inn or some other actually safe place, just to through my group off, instead of the traditional "Here comes the matt, guess we are fighting today."
To stay on topic however, I think there is a certain sense of gridless play that comes with 5e, for now at least. And I agree that the wrote the spells and actions in such a way that grid play will be easily used as well.
Shasarak wrote:
Gridless or with the grid, 5E is too basic for my tastes. I can play either way, but I want more depth to the game.
To answer the original question we have to see what the DMG offers. The PHB should use exact measurements, and if the DMG offers advice on TotM like close, short, long range and small and large AoE to help rulings then I think it is best yet. If it doesn't appear then no, they blew it...
I grew up playing 1st ed DnD, never using mini's/ grids. and my most memorable games are from that era. I still play in a group who uses 2nd ed as well as TotM. and enjoy it alot.
I have also played/dmed all versions except 4e. recently i began dming a group from 5e, and am attempting to introduce TotM to the players (who all began playing 3.5). they were skeptical at first and several times i had to remind them to put down the mini's. they are seeming to enjoy this new style of play, though its almost like they are going through a 12 step program lol. in short D&D 5e is perfectly tailored to either style of play. I'm just convinced that the younger players who started playing post AD&D, have had the 'tactical' style of play drilled into their beings, as the only way to play, and don't get the TotM style.
The general feedback i'm seeing is to ignore the 'precision' baked into the core rules when playing TotM. That is why I felt they could have offered somthing better for TotM play.
"You might just have to remember how close or how far something is, or be willing to fudge it and just use the 'numbers' as a means to gauge impact."
"when I go grid less, I run combats like DW and 13A, playing fast and loose with distances (and scrapping initiative)."
"When I run AD&D, I'll often sketch a brief map of the area on a piece of square paper, but I won't keep detailed track of movement speeds and ranges"
"TotM is limited in terms of creating simulationist battles where distances and position are tracked precisely,"
"We would sometimes use miniatures only to give a general sense of how players and enemies were positioned"
"Precise distances rarely matter in play"
"We never bother with precise positioning and such. If character trys to do something cool and flashy,he can do it. "
DM12345 wrote:
The tack I've been taking with 5E, even when my DM is using a map and minis is to say,
"My character wants to do this, can he?"
And then just letting the DM adjust the map as he likes. I've seen some other players get hung up on the map and specific spacial stuff, but it just bogs the game down. The model of ask, throw dice, pass turn keeps combat really fast. I like that.
Some examples:
"My druid would like to transform into a bear and move into the middle of all the bad guys, then attack two of them."
"I'd like to hit as many enemies as possible with my dragon breath while staying out of melee"
It's not quite TotM, it's not quite grid; it's using the map as a guide, a hint to what's going on in TotM. It works really well. Getting hung up on tactics and positioning are only really important if you're against a killer DM where every point of damage is required just to survive. That's not really the type of game I like to play though.
I like 5th edition. I find too many abilities impossible to adjudicate without the gid. I wish their was an official way to play the game gridless. I have idea's on how to rewrite rules and change some class abilities to do it, but it is not a simple thing and it changes several class features and many spells and the rules on movement. But so far I find this game easier with a grid than other games.
er...i've certainly seen people denigrate gridded play as lesser than T/M. indeed, i've met gamers who abhor minis & battlemaps.
am i really the only person in these forums who's had that experience?
blake_marlowe wrote:
blake_marlowe wrote:
arnwolf666 wrote:
How would 5e have done things differently for a purely gridless system? The other TotM D&D systems that I've played (Cyclopedia and 3.0/3.5) also give fairly precise measurements for everything, same as 5e does.
The angry rant linked in the OP captures my feelings regrding gridless combat with uncanny accuracy. And its funny as well. Well done AngryDM!
blake_marlowe wrote:
I think theatre of the mind best describes the style and is not even remotely pretentious. It just describes the style best.
"Gridless" doesnt paint the same emphasis on imagination, and sounds like a lesser version of gridded play, which TotM is not. Im not sure if narrative combat covers it either, maybe, but doesnt narrative mean other things like playing without dice and so forth...?
So currently, TotM is currently the best label in my opinion.
Psikerlord wrote:
Games that use the grid on the table are called Tableau Vivant.
I agree with the assertion that D&D is on the grid whether you play with one on the table or not.
Theatre of the Square? Sounds like an independant pro-wrestling event...
iserith wrote:
iserith wrote:
Captain_Kobold wrote:
Bluenose wrote:
grendel111111 wrote:
5e works fine on a grid (as well as any other edition of D&D). But it doesn't do anything to support to 'ToTM' style of play. I mean, you can run combat like that, but there is nothing in the system that actively supports it. Everything is expressed in precise real-world measures and there is no abstract way to adjudicated positioning or targeting.
On the plus side, it shouldn't be too hard to apply some kind of method from other games that handles this.
If anything I don't think 5e is in need of a grid module, but a ToTM one would be handy indeed.
Atheosis wrote:
Uchawi wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
Uskglass wrote:
Uskglass wrote:
grendel111111 wrote:
grendel111111 wrote:
Uskglass wrote:
iserith wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
Atheosis wrote:
Minds eye theatre edition would be great. One of the things I like about Numenera is the design for gridless play.
Atheosis wrote:
iserith wrote:
I don't see a real conflict here, TotM isn't hampered by precision, a dm largely decides positioning and cone rules. The big question in TotM without a grid becomes "is the PC in position to do what they want to do?" Obviously there are no hard a fast rules that govern this, so as a TotM dm, I would examine the original encounter distance and base a lot of my judgment on what the PC says they are doing...quickly players get the idea of telling me "I'm moving this round to get the bad guy in my blast area, but I'm avoiding the thief." Whether they can do that is entirely up to the DM (but its a really good place to say "yes...and, or yes...but).
The grid in this sense gives more player agency, but only if you construe the games as player vs DM (or at least where the playstyle relies on players using rules mastery to thwart DM obstacles (as in the agon rpg). Really TotM should give as much of more player agency.
One thing I think is important to stress is that using a grid does not preclude TotM, the grid is just a fancy way of allocation positions, the action and scene are still played out in players heads. The saddest choice 5E makes for me is to articulate a meaningful difference between these two play styles, which makes them seem vastly different. The grid is simply one tool available to the dm to facilitate the story. It saves time in creating scale males and is easier to use than the tape measure. DnD had its origins in wargaming, and initially it was imagined all the positioning details would be worked out with a tape measure and a ground scale.
Captain_Kobold wrote:
iserith wrote:
No edition of D&D has had rules that specifically supported ToTM, but some editions had rules that didn't prevent ToTM.
4e, and to a lesser extent 3e, had rules that weren't outright hostile to ToTM, but made the DM jump through more mental hoops if they wanted to pull the game off the grid.
It's been a very long time, but I think OD&D and BECMI were difficult to run off grid. I certainly used a grid when I played them, but I don't really remember all the facets of the rules. Someone else can correct me.
2e was the edition I largely played sans-grid. No minis, no squares, no measuring tape. But even then, there was a pseudo grid in our heads.
"Can I attack the troll?" "Well, he was X feet away, and you could move Y, but you had to go around Z, so that cost you some movement. You can attack the troll with your javelin or dagger if thrown. Next round you should be able to close the distance and attack with your axe."
AoE effects were the same way. Whenever someone created area effects, the DM had to figure out how many targets were in range/area. The DM and/or the group is keeping track of positions all the time.
Compare against 13th age, where area of effect spells target 1d4 targets within range (and range is "engaged, close, far, or very far"). No relative positioning is required beyond range zones. No one is too the left, or right, or anything. It doesn't matter if one player had a different vision than another player of what the scene looks like. The rules can cope with differing views because the specificity isn't important.
DM12345 wrote:
iserith wrote:
DM12345 wrote:
Atheosis wrote:
I remember when I first started playing that "the grid" was always used to draw maps on.
Later on some hipster told me that you could also use it for fighting using miniatures.
I greatly prefer TotM style play, and in most situations it seems to work just fine with 5e, even with 'specific' ranges on spells and movement. I do however find that the inclusion of abilities such as the pole arm master feat tend to cause my players to desire more precise positioning data. This and similar abilities are similar to 3.5's flanking rules and various feats that dealt with positioning, or 4e's push/pull/slide mechanics. Their inclusion in the game tends to push players away from TotM style play. Alternatively, players are made to feel like they've made a bad decision taking those feats or powers if they end up not being very useful due to TotM style play.
Granted, every edition has had options that are dependant on a DMs playstyle. For example, in 4e, the various marking and opportunity attack powers/options were either more or less useful depending on how the DM played the NPCs. A DM that played the NPCs 'smart' and always had them avoid triggering opportunity attacks made feats that granted multiple attacks per round or extra damage on an opportunity attack wasted character options, because they would never come into play. Alternatively, marking was a more 'powerful' option in games where the DM would never have a creature ignore the mark, due to the negative penalties imposed. So this is nothing new, but things like this do seem a bit anachronistic in 5e when the focus clearly seems to be towards TotM style play.
DM12345 wrote:
viper5 wrote:
I prefer 5e TotM to the more abstract 13th Age vague distances (eg engaged, nearby, far away). I actually find 13th Age is too abstract and that this leads to misunderstandings about what "nearby" means, for example.
So I like hearing concrete distances called out, eg he's about 30' away, or he's up the stairs, say 20' up and 100' from you, etc. If you need a more precise location for some reason - you just ask the DM for that info, or ask more directly what you want to do - where are they exactly? Or more directly: how many guys can I hit with my fireball if I put it near the table? Or I line myself up for a lightning bolt, can I get 4 guys in a diagonal line?
Its fast, flexible and immersive - the exact characteristics I want from my combat.
Interestingly the descriptive style can also help the DM balance an encounter. If things are going poorly, heading towards a TPK, and a player says "I fireball them - how many can I get?", the DM has more latitude to say you catch 6 rather than 4 foes in the explosion. You dont have that flexibility on a grid. I guess this can work the other way, too, but I find it a positive more than a negative.
iserith wrote:
Psikerlord wrote:
Psikerlord wrote:
DM12345 wrote:
DM12345 wrote:
Atheosis wrote:
Atheosis wrote:
iserith wrote:
iserith wrote:
DM12345 wrote:
Lawolf wrote:
Lawolf wrote:
Wuzzard wrote:
grendel111111 wrote:
DM12345 wrote:
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Hmm, 15 minutes of arguing how many people your Fireball hit, or 15 minutes of counting and recounting squares to see how many people your Fireball hit.'
Decisions, decisions. 
viper5 wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Wuzzard wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
iserith wrote:
Why is theater of the mind even considered a good thing? I've spent hundreds of dollars on minis. My friend loves painting minis why the heck would we ever not want to use them?
Shasarak wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
Psikerlord wrote:
Sauurman wrote:
Sauurman wrote:
Sauurman wrote:
Sauurman wrote:
iserith wrote:
Atheosis wrote:
eleran wrote:
dmgorgon wrote:
dmgorgon wrote:
Bluenose wrote:
I haven't read the entire thread so apologies if this has been suggested, but my favorite RPGs for Theater of the Mind play are The One Ring and Dungeon World. I've been playing in several TOR games and we've yet to use a grid for anything. It works equally well for F2F, VTT, and PbP.
When we play with miniatures we use chess pieces, checkers, monopoly pieces, and I have a big bowl of pennies for goblins and other enemies. I use quarters for the Ogres. I have at times used a checkered table cloth for a grid.
On the very rare times we need something more defined than descriptive play, we just use a flat surface with minis and, in cases of movement and range questions, a laser pointer, and a ruler (my DM plays a lot of Warhammer and sort of taught some of the basic movement stuff to us). It's a little slower, but the game is helped by not having people trying to count out maximal movement on a perfect grid so much that it becomes a game of chess instead of a quick visual representation of battle.
Of course, he also uses facing, so there is that. 
I disagree with the angry rant that the OP links us to...
Sauurman wrote:
Sauurman wrote:
Bluenose wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
iserith wrote:
Tony_Vargas wrote:
Drycanth wrote:
This really is a case of "we can't think outside the grid, so no one else can either"
I could just as well say no one plays with a grid, it's all just vectors and distances even if they pretend to use a grid.
I do find this the most backwards day thread ever.
People who use the grid are telling everyone else they are using the grid, too, because that is the only way they can visualise it.
The people who can do ToTM and realise that putting distances instead of vague catagories is best for the game over all, are saying they are perfectly happy.
But it is like people (who want gridded play) are insisting the other people must demand that ToTM is only played in one way (the way they want). and so only vague distances be put in the game.
How does that help the people who want gridded play (other than having something else to complain about).
We currently have a very playable solution, The DMG will have suggestions to push it more to gridded play and more towards ToTM play. But the designers needed to start from a middle ground, that lets you use a grid but doesn't tie you to the grid. I think they have done this well.
I feel like this is a bunch of blind people trying to tell sighted people what color something is.
If you try theater of the mind, you immediately understand why using feet and minutes rather than squares and rounds is better for it. You get why normal geometric shapes works well with it. Why opportunity attacks and no flanking required for sneak attack are super helpful for that style. These are concepts that make perfect sense when you actually do it.
But if you try to theorycraft it after years of just playing gridded play and not actually bothering to try gridless, apparently it's difficult to grok.
So just friggen try it, and then come back to this thread and tell us whether it worked or not. Stop trying to theorize about something you know you don't fully understand, when you could be trying it and seeing if the claimed experience matches the actual experience.
Mistwell wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
grendel111111 wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
Drycanth wrote:
DM12345 wrote:
grendel111111 wrote:
Drycanth wrote:
DM12345 wrote:
dmgorgon wrote:
Captain_Kobold wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
DM12345 wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
Bluenose wrote:
Orethalion wrote:
Yeah, they will sooner have specific "grid" action before specific "TotM" action.
Uskglass wrote:
DM12345 wrote:
I generally only use TOTM when:
1) The encounter occurs when a social encounter goes south in a big way, and no combat was expected. ("Screw the Vizier and his evil plot. LET'S DO HIM!!")
2) The space is confined (so movement distances are irrelevant)
3) The opponent is a single creature (so all distances can be based on "Who is next to the bad guy?")
4) Or the outcome is a foregone conclusion, but the players still want to roll some dice and kill something. (oh you poor, poor unlucky back door guards.)
Anything else I use a grid and minis/tokens. Doesn't matter the edition, though I did find 4E required a greater deal of precision.
Cyber-Dave wrote:
dmgorgon wrote:
Cyber-Dave wrote:
DM12345 wrote:
Shasarak wrote: