Gaming: "On the Grid"

I have been an avid Dungeons and Dragons fan since my very first experiences with the game when I was 13. If you know anything about my personality at all, it wasn't long before I started DMing and tinkering with the mechanics of the game. Allot has changed in the world of D&D since the glory days of TSR. While I am referring to the rules by which the game are played, I am addressing a less obvious change in the system.

For the most part when running any game I have run the majority of my scenarios "off the grid." By that I mean that my games are heavy in role playing and not as much in combat. Because of that I am usually able to get away with not pulling out the trusty hex map every time I tell the group to roll initiative. Not that I don't enjoy a good grid battle (I am a dedicated Heroscape player) it's just that most of my scenarios either aren't epically elaborate or it's an ambush and I don't particularly want the players to have a knowledge advantage by being able to meta-game the map accidentally. (Such as seeing a blank area on the map not drawn yet, but instantly knowing the dimensions of the building just by running around it in combat.)

However, as much as I like running games off the grid, I also love running games On the Grid. In my experience in allot of cases (especially with allot of things going on) it helps solidify what a character can and can't do, in some cases speeds things up (players don't have to constantly ask what their surroundings look like in detail) and with the most recent rules for D&D, helps everyone understand exactly how attack of opportunities work. Also, I get to draw maps which is always a plus.

First off deciding to run a game on a map board is a big deal when most combat is run without one. Why, you ask? Because almost completely destroys the GM's ability to fudge combat rules in terms of mechanics and especially with attacks of opportunity. Since everyone can see what's going on, it's like putting a giant magnifying glass on the GM showing exactly how everything is working in their head.

So recently I planned and ran a game using a map board for the first time since 3.5 was introduced. I had noticed before that the standard for the game had changed from hexes to squares [from second edition to third edition] but never really cared until last weekend. Not that big of a deal, just flip the map over and boom, I got squares. What did surprise me is how well the rules work and react with squares rather than hexes. I had always figures the six sided space would be more accurate for combat, but WOtC really improved the standard grid combat. As a side note, I do think attacks of opportunity would be better served on a hex map since a character would only have 6 adjacent spaces to them rather than 8.

I had decided to go ahead and run the scenarios on the grid because of the sheer amount of combat that I was going to be putting into the game. Because of where the characters left off last time in the story (right before a surprise attack in the prison district of Neverwinter) and the events that would follow (because of decisions made by the characters in the previous game.) Using pre-fabed maps were obviously the way to go.

So three weeks, a pirate ship map (covering four pieces of poster board), a market square map, an underground sewer map, and a brand new vinyl roll out map board later I was finally ready to call the group out to play the next game that I had labored over three weeks to create. I was psyched. I knew all my rules, had my bookmarks ready, made some house rule notes, and we were ready to roll. I thought it would be the game of the year. Plot, combat, miniatures, and caffeine.

In theory the game was great, unfortunately after almost 10 hours of real time only 15 minutes of game time have passed. Because of the tedious nature of the beast, six seconds [one round] of combat managed to take almost 20 minutes. By the end of the night we had only managed to make it about a quarter of the way through the second battle of the scenario. The group and I were so worn out (at about 3:00am) by the end of night, as the DM I finally just cleared the three remaining baddies off the map pf the ship deck the characters were exploring [so we wouldn't have o place them again when we picked up the following game] and called it a night.

In the experience I have learned a lesson about map campaigning. Do not run two combat scenes back to back on the grid. While the grid takes all of the guess work out of combat it seems to slow combat to a crawl, and heres why. Since the technical aspect of the game is sped up due to visual confirmation of surroundings and measurements, it allows the entire group more freedom to utilize special rules that give their PC's and NPCs abilities that aren't normally considered as options. This means more time is spent going to the books checking to see exactly how tasks are resolved, spell effects, special abilities, feats, and exactly what provokes AoO's (Attacks of Opportunity.) Because of the more technical approach that the game was taking, the group followed suit with their play style. (Somehow the grid even managed to bring table chatter down to a minimum.)

In the past I have run back to back combat without a problem. It has served as a good medium for teaching over confident characters a lesson about depleting their "combat stock." It's always interesting to see what a group can accomplish on half health, low ammo, and a depleted spell list. However, not in a technical game. Looking back I should have ran the small encounter off the grid and only brought out the maps afterward for the larger second encounter.
One comment that was made by myself and later by one of the players is that we should have used an egg timer to limit the turns. While i think the idea has merit, I don't know that this would help as it was not always the decision making process that was taking forever, but the time it took to decipher the effects the actions would have after being filtered through the D20 system.

There are some things that can be done to make combat run a bit more smoothly. First off, in my experience in many private groups, tournament groups and my own personal groups is the use of the secondary initiative rules where each round requires an initiative roll. While I really enjoy the realism that this method reflects and recommend using a variation of it in any "Of the Grid" combat scenario, grid combat for sake of sanity might should take a different approach. Rolling initiative order only once may not be realistic combat, but would significantly speed up the time it takes to count down turns. By making this predefined combat order list, a GM can simply go down the same list every time streamlining the turn taking process. It should also help your group to be more ready for their action knowing exactly when their turn will come again. This is just another situation where maybe sacrificing a little realism for the sake of easy mechanics isn't such an unbalanced trade-off.

Another great technique for keeping a game moving is breaking up multiple actions. This one sounds a little strange. It would seem that if a character has two attacks that by rolling them one after another and resolving them together would be quicker. This isn't the case. A round is only 6 seconds long. By resolving both actions together you are using the characters FULL ROUND ACTION. Any character acting after that one basically takes a step back in time causing a pause while the DM resolves the action in their head to explain the scenario. If multiple actions are broken up into turns, it gives the effect of freezing every second to add something else in as it goes. Thus a scenario where 4 people attack the same monster are resolved allot faster as the creature is actually pummeled WHILE being knocked down, rather than being knocked down and the next character rethinking his attack action in response to what WILL happen at the end of the round. Also this will help a DM with damage resolution managing HP in smaller doses, making the over all effect a more precise, clean, and quick combat round.

My final bit of advice for the DM. Creatures can run away. I have seen many a DM make the mistake of forcing their creatures to fight to the death. I have no problem ending combat when a creature has realized it's defeat. Awarding the characters experiencing for defeating a creature has just as much merit as killing it. Combat can end much sooner when bad guys retreat. not to mention it can add an element of realism to the game, especially if the characters insist on chasing it down to kill it after it has given up. Murdering anything that has given up and is no longer a threat to the character can always be considered an evil act. Of course if your running an evil campaigns, this doesn't much matter, but a creature at the point of retreat should be killed quickly out of the combat phase.

So while there is merit to playing a game on the grid be sure that you take the steps involved in managing your game well. My case should prove that while great preparation is the key to streamlined gaming, even that can fail at keeping a game from dragging. The only things a DM or player can do to keep a game moving are done at the table with the help of the players and DM alike.