FG games without maps?

[doseyclwn]

Hey Folks,

Do any of you ever run games (or played in games) where maps/tokens are not used? We don't use miniatures in my face to face games, so I was just wondering about that.

[LordEntrails]

I don't, but I know others do. You'll still want to use the combat tracker. Did you have questions on how to do this or...?

[tfoxsail]

"Theater of the mind" games seem to work (watched some on Twitch and YouTube) just as well in Fantasy Grounds as they do on table-top. Back in the early 80's when I first started playing D&D, we used pocket change for a visual marching order and that was it. pretty much everything was in your mind's eye. In fact, I find them refreshing. Sometimes I feel an abundance of maps can get in the way of the overall story.

I suppose it all just depends on your players and DM.

[Hector Trelane]

Hey Folks,

Do any of you ever run games (or played in games) where maps/tokens are not used? We don't use miniatures in my face to face games, so I was just wondering about that.

Kind of. Yes to games that lack battlemaps but I just ran a game where I included an area map anyway to give players some sense of layout for what they were exploring. Plus visuals are fun.


"Theater of the mind" games seem to work (watched some on Twitch and YouTube) just as well in Fantasy Grounds as they do on table-top. Back in the early 80's when I first started playing D&D, we used pocket change for a visual marching order and that was it. pretty much everything was in your mind's eye. In fact, I find them refreshing. Sometimes I feel an abundance of maps can get in the way of the overall story.

Agreed on theater of the mind. It very much is a style and mood thing. How does the GM evoke the mood, and invite players to co-create that mood, for a given genre? What works for combat-heavy fantasy is different than what works for atmosphere- and investigation-heavy Cthulu. damned just ran a FG Con 8 Trail of Cthulu game in which I played in which most of the atmosphere was his verbal description of the action. It worked quite well (and creeped me out at several points).

[Zacchaeus]

damned just ran a FG Con 8 Trail of Cthulu game in which I played in which most of the atmosphere was his verbal description of the action. It worked quite well (and creeped me out at several points).

Wow; are you suggesting damned is creepy? :)

[doseyclwn]

It just seems that most of the delay that's been experienced has been due to maps during combat encounters. I always loved playing without maps. Think I'm gonna try that.

[Hector Trelane]

It just seems that most of the delay that's been experienced has been due to maps during combat encounters. I always loved playing without maps. Think I'm gonna try that.

Image time to load is proportional to file size. The GM can optimize any graphic by exporting an image file from GIMP (free) to a lower-kb file.

(No doubt there are other methods too.)

[doseyclwn]

No, that's not what I mean. It's not delay because of image load time. It's delay 'cause people are all worried about the battle map. Plus, if I could run without it, I could probably run a game tomorrow.

[damned]

depending on what game im running Ill use more maps than others. i generally do use some maps although these are often not traditional maps. in the Trail of Cthulhu game with Hector we just sketched a single map at the time we needed it - it was very crude indeed. in Dungeon World its less tactical and exact than 5e or Pathfinder so I often use images like in these screen shots. They are tiny images - 30-80kb in size. I still lay a grid on them but you can see its not an exact science :)

in general I will keep all images to under 500kb - i try for much less. I might have a big important overview map that is larger but that is very rare.

https://www.fg-con.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/dungeon-world.jpg

https://www.fg-con.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/dungeon-world-2.jpg

[tfoxsail]

No, that's not what I mean. It's not delay because of image load time. It's delay 'cause people are all worried about the battle map. Plus, if I could run without it, I could probably run a game tomorrow.

I think either way you can't go wrong as long as you, the DM, is comfortable with it. If you are descriptive enough in painting a mental picture, then an encounter map is just icing on an already awesome cake.

[damned]

Wow; are you suggesting damned is creepy? :)

Hey! I just saw this!

[Trueshaft]

I remember when I got back into tabletop gaming our GM almost never used maps unless the encounter was particularly big and involved. I loved that.