Combat Grids/Maps

[Carthrat]

Cor is totally lame and won't past this himself, thus making me look like the ultimate hypocrite for not doing this myself (yet. >_>)

But, basically we talked a bit about more visual representations of combat. If we're going to be going through dungeons a lot, it's bound to be fairly linear the majority of the time, and given that at least one party member has a reach weapon, it may be wise to toss up little maps when we're playing so we're always sure of relative positions.

It wouldn't be hard, you could just have some generic grid as a base, and draw walls (or whatever) across it. It wouldn't even need updating if there were coordinates, you could just tell us them by hand each turn.

Thoughts, from both GM-sama and player-sans?

[Corwin]

Rat is a hypocrite. And a loser. *nods*

Anyway, it's not just the reach, but also me pondering stuff like difficult terrain which knights can affect and would make life difficult for enemies (but not to us or Eb, one should hope  >_>). And there's also me not really being able to visualize anyone's position well. I kinda hope that wasn't just me.

Oh, and Rat, I stabbed you about this re:BF a long time ago, so get to it.

[Anastasia]

I'm against this.

It adds another layer of management and upkeep that descriptions can do well enough. I mean, really, do we need to turn this into beancounting over exact distances? That blows.

[Carthrat]

But descriptions don't handle it well enough. :/

Having to ask 'what can I hit with fire spell x' kind of sucks, from my point of view, and actually knowing where bad guys are always helps. If we have to eyeball this, it makes tactics yet more difficult; I can't, for instance, easily approximate what I'll be able to strike over the next couple of rounds, or if I should move back *this* round so I don't get swamped *next* round.

As far as 'beancounting distances' goes, I'm pretty sure having a map actually removes lame beancounting aspects, where we trawl over the last page of descriptions to figure out just how far away some bad guy is.

I can symphasize with it being more upkeep, though...

(This is an excellent chance for me to plug OpenRPG, a tutorial on which I should write. Will write. Probably.)

Edit: Hell, it's not even necessary for every fight. If there are only a couple of terrain features or something... but when you're in a dungeon with twists and turns and whatnot, I'd say it's important.

[Dracos]

I don't really want to deal with this.  I'm with Ana here.

Dracos

[Iron Dragoon]

Unless there was some kind of network program where we could connect to it and Usagi has direct control, and allows him to place simple shapes and move them on some kind grid plane...

I'd say way too much upkeep, too. If I were a GM, I sure as hell wouldn't want to deal with it.

[Carthrat]

There totally is such a program. www.openrpg.com ftw. I was thinking more of just having one grid+details uploaded on imageshack, and we just use that as a visual guide.

But this is cooler.

[Ebiris]

I downloaded that OpenRPG and don't have a clue how to work it.

Honestly, while I can see the appeal of having a combat grid, it really is too much work and not something I want to deal with at this point.

Consider this an invitation to post a tutorial for OpenRPG, by all means, Rat.