Comments on: Planning a Gaming Marathon at Home and a Surprise For My Players

By: Deadshot

Deadshot — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:18:38 +0000

@Tenach – Welcome to the blog and thanks for commenting! I agree that the need for mapping and miniatures has gotten a bit out of hand as D&D has moved through its various editions. Through my high school and college gaming career we usually had a piece of graph paper and everyone got represented by a letter. We still had an amazing time and figured out what was going on through the GM descriptions. Perhaps its the widespread appeal of video games that gave us such dazzling visuals that made us gradually move to a more 3D layout of mapping.

By: Tenach

Tenach — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:43:00 +0000

The GM of the gaming group I’m part of does not map things out for us, but he does word things in such a way that everyone sees things more or less the way he is wanting us to. Well, he does map the general “what you see” during a battle, and our miniatures consist of unused dice. Honestly, I have not seen a need to go any further, unless you were really having a hankering to spice up the look of the visuals. While nice and all, I think it really just comes down to 1) what the GM wants and 2) what the players want.

The GM will usually just take each person’s perspectives, as you know those will come out by their actions, and rolls them together (if feasable and only if it’s the asthetics of the world).

By: Deadshot

Deadshot — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:48:58 +0000

Thanks Donny for stopping by!

I agree on the dungeon tiles. I have never seen the draw to using those simply because they look so familiar if you use similar settings. (Didn’t we pass that dead guy before?) I have a couple of the Flip Mats which I like to use for the actual battles saving the Tact-tiles for the overall maps. These are especially great when the overall map is a larger scale and we can blow it up on the flip mat.

My little one likes to roll daddy’s Big D20 and to sit with all the boys but eventually she uses her claw claw attack to take off with the players’ miniatures.

By: Donny

Donny — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:35:42 +0000

great post! I SO hear you on the young one angle. Rest assured, eventually they grow old enough to wake up and go watch TV ; )

Visual representation is an often overlooked part of the game. Each player sees the world a little differently, and it’s YOUR job to make sure they are at least in the same chapter. Battlemats can be handy, but there is only so much detail you can free hand without it becoming a tragedy come eraser time.

WoTC tiles are not really very drawable(?) and Paizo’s flip mats are VERY generic. I usually end up with a combination of all three as the night progresses. Kudos to you for going the extra mile for your gamers!