Tags
Dungeons & Dragons, Fantasy, Grid, Labyrinth Lord, Maps, OSR
I’m working on a commission for a pretty damn cool adventure, and we’ve been talking about the use or non-use of a grid on the maps.
Personally, I’m basically 100% divorced from the grid in my games – but I play pretty old-school where melee is an “area” where people are all swinging and fighting instead of actually tracking individual positions.
But I understand that not everyone is so divorced from the grid. So I’m playing with the grid on my maps. Below is a map I posted recently, along with a version that includes a grid.
What do you think? Grid or no grid?
Resolute Caves without Grid
Resolute Caves with Grid
I’ve recently come (back) around to gridless maps and I don’t think I’ll ever go back! They really stifle the immersion and imagination for me.
I like the grid, since I would use it in play.
I must admit I like the grid.
The grid can be handy, but I really like the gridless maps in the old MERP modules, which your maps remind me of. I’d stay with gridless.
The grid just doesn’t seem natural to the map to me. When I’m walking through the day-to-day world, I very rarely see a regular grid on the ground beneath me.
Besides, as far as gaming goes, it reduces the utility of a gaming product: if I need to scale up an encounter, having a grid in place pretty much defines the space the encounter is going to take place in with regards to 5’/10′ squares. With an ungridded map, I can scale it up or down, print that, and overlay any grid I need at the table.
I like both.
I agree with carlson793, the grid produces a forced scale on the adventure/map. I’ve always enjoyed your maps gridless because I can imagine for myself whether it’s a smallish retreat or an epic, cavernous dungeon.
I’m gonna have to say (type actually) that no grid is better. Carlson793’s point about scalability is quite a good one actually, but mostly I just really don’t care for gridded, hyper-tactical, new-school combat. I find that minis and a grid dissuade theatre-of-the-mind combat.
Plus the grid isn’t really even helpful for minis’ combat. That hallway in the middle is full of half grids. You’d basically have to grid each room separately or plan off of a grid from the beginning to do it properly.
I much prefer a simple scale marker and just sort of eyeball the rest of it.
If you put grids on your maps I would love you forever. They’re awesome regardless, but lordy it would so much easier for me.
simple suggestion/solution: drop a couple layers into Photoshop, or even Copy/Paste to MS Paint and draw over it. Another quick fix guys I know have used is to place an onionskin print over a normal battlemat, or a regular xerox print, but the mat lines don’t show through as well
I prefer grids in general. For your type of maps though the grid is pointless for several areas. In general my maps have a grid that is determined by the corridor or room layout. I just can’t seem to describe it right though. Take a look at my map for The Lost Temple of Tyrandraxu. Each corridor that breaks off of the grid from the room before has a new grid. On that map a 45 degree 10′ wide corridor that is 30′ long is really that. Not like the snap-to-grid type that you would find in the AD&D1e DMG.
I really like your take on the grids.
If you have large areas, you need a grid for 4e. And as above, each room need a grid oriented to it. The ‘forced scale’ is an issue; I’d have to subdivide the example grid (when it does fit) to get the 5′ to the inch.
Exactly what I was trying to say. Thank You.
The most useful maps for me have their grids in the proper orientation for the individual rooms and corridors.
I’m ambivalent about it. I kind of like having it both ways.
I tend to work not only without a grid, but without showing the players anything beyond rough sketches. I figure that most PCs don’t have a hyper-precise feel for distance, and that both characters and creatures in combat tend to be far more mobile that is usually implied by grids and minis. They get rough measurements like “twice as far away as you are tall” or “just within bow-shot” or “within arm’s reach,” and I tend to be relatively lax and forgiving about their placement and motions. The only reason I can see for a grid at all is if you’re specifically using it to draw a precisely-engineered space, and then only for the drawing phase.
Artistically, I prefer gridless maps. But for actual play I find a grid or at least a scale somewhere to be very useful. It provides a useful perspective.
Even if grids aren’t used for combat, they’re wonderfully helpful for the GM to properly describe the dimensions of the areas the PCs are traveling through. Please include them.
Seconded.
On that note, I would prefer, and recommend, merely adding a scale marker as is found on real-world maps.
Absolutely this! I play old-school too and don’t use combat grids. But I do use player mapping and that’s hard without some sort of scale. Fair enough, I could do overlays and all those other suggestions, but I’m pressed for time as it is and that’s why I use your (amazing) maps in the first place. Every additional step I have to take reduces their utility.
Doesn’t stop me from loving them, or buying your book, but I would love you forever if they were gridded. 😀
This.
Also, I don’t get the scale issue. Each square can equal 5′, 10′, 20′, 40′, etc… The grid can help me gauge differences between sizes of rooms.
+1 for the grid for me.
But if I’m using the grid for combat, the room needs to have enough squares to move around in. It’s fine as is for descriptive scaling. But at 5′ per square the above map is of a pokey little hole where people have to pass single file for the most part. If it’s 10′ per square, I have to subdivide it to make it a combat map. Effectively, I have to draw another grid parallel to the given one.
For straight up art and inspiration gridless, but there’s no way I could communicate room and corridor sizes to my players without a grid. And drawing the map for them during play seems lazy. I want them to make a map themselves and if it resembles my original, then I’ve won at cartography.
I usually insist some characters hands have to be occupied with pen and paper, otherwise there’s no map to speak of, a lack of planning that is immediately to be used by a teleport trap + evil wizard combo.
Funnily enough, I don’t use the grid for combat, that’s all gridless and oldschool.
I prefer gridless. Not only because I don’t use them, but because it also forces one to impose specific distances onto a scenario. If I’m in the middle of a natural case for example, there isn’t actually a grid on the ground, nor would I visualize the cave system in terms of X vs. Y squares of distance. Imposing a grid also imposes a board game like perspective on the scenario. Another good thing about gridless maps is that a grid can be overlaid on it should one prefer a grid – the reverse is not true.
I personally don’t think the grid as-presented “falls ” very nicely on the rooms in the map, because it’s got a lot of neat non-perfect 90-degree turns. It would be helpful to have a sense of scale, but perhaps the rooms should be “grid”-ed individually? Just my 2cp
No grid. I use VTT software for my games, and grids make it a pain to use. Lining up the in-software grid with an existing grid is a pain. So on balance, no grid is better.
Is this a printed project or an ebook? If it’s an ebook, then simply provide both gridded and ungridded versions. Let the user decide which one to use. I think having both is a great feature available when something is published digitally.
If you must choose between the two, I’d ask for a gridless version with a scale marker out of the way.
I’d prefer hexes to grids, but prefer blank to both.