game board

[vong]

How many of you use a game board when doing combat, or just let the players use their imagination.

and if you do use a board, do you use a hex or square grid.

ive always been curios as to what people like to use. i was always in the use your imagination to dictate the fight, but recently in my D&D endevours i have found that they prefer the board.

just curios what other gamemasters like to do, and ways of trying to sway away from the board for players who like the board.

[Gry Sarth]

I don't use boards, and I don't much like them. The most I use is quick sketch of the place with some dots representing where everyone is, to help my players visualize the action. The problem with using boards and miniatures is that it encourages the group to forget about the roleplaying aspect of the game and turn the session into a Miniatures game. We once use a board and miniatures fr a D&D game and that's exactly what happened. Suddenly all everyone was thinking about was who to attack and what movement to make. We were no longer visualizing the infinite possibilities provided by the environment, or contemplating other methods of dealing with the obstacles besides "I shoot him".
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[Krayt]

When my group gets into combat, we usually use a square battle grid, using WotC minis (I know... heresy) that are good enough, and use a 1 square = 5 meters scale when on foot. When in space or in vehicles, we usually use square based grid and paper counters (also on land combat when no minis will work). The board works fine for us, it's just a peice of copy paper with 1 ince squares in a 7x8 configuration, and I just copy it a bunch of times.

And I can only wait to get my hands on an AT-AT mini someday. But that would really make me need to make poster board sized maps.
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"Your lack of faith disturbs me." - Vader

[vong]

Krayt - what do you do for space combat then
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[Krayt]

Well, we usually use said paper cards/tokens to represent units (or squadrons) and a scale of 1 square = 1 starship point of movement (Ie, the Falcon moves 7, so it can move 7 squares. We usually have to use a lot of map sheets for that, but it's good enough until WotC comes out with Starships set .
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"Your lack of faith disturbs me." - Vader

[vong]

lol, but space is 3d
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[Krayt]

true... true.

My group is rarley paying enough attention to do 3D menuvers. When the do, I usually don't count the ships being a bit above or below. When it IS important, I usually just make a note of who is at what level ( level 0 being the starting level of the heroes ship. And if they try anything REALLY fancy, I just tell them what happens and update the grid as best I can. Space combat is a bit harder then foot combat anyway.
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"Your lack of faith disturbs me." - Vader

[vong]

that it is.but then again if you watch the star wars movies, they have 90% of combat on a flat plane.

death star 2 battle: "they have us surrounded" look, they are in a ring around us... we cant go up or down..

yea i can see how they were just at the hyperspace entries but still

3d combat is really hard to visulize anywho, so most default to a flat plane
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[Krayt]

Amen. So, as long as the dont have to, my players just stay about level (give or take a few meters). Besides, with a moded YT-1300 with 5D hull, 4D sheilds, and 3 5D double lasers ... what's there to worry about?
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"Your lack of faith disturbs me." - Vader

[Gry Sarth]

I remember reading some official text ellaborating on the difficulties of thinking in three dimensions. It said that most species fought space battles in a planar fashion because that's simply how they see the world, and they have a real hard time using the three dimensions effectively. It said that species used to zero gravity and moving threedimensionally have a good advantage in space combats and tactics.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[Krayt]

Yep.

The only time we ever got into a major engagement in space, the PCs lost because they forgot 3D and didn't go down to avoid the star destoyer rush . Thankfully they still had escape pods
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"Your lack of faith disturbs me." - Vader

[garhkal]

Space wise, i have not, though at times i will place things on the table to help out 'visualise' what is where. For ground combat, i will (if asked) use battle mats (mostly hex based) and figurines.
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[Pel]

Can't say as I've ever used an official board or minis for SW. Just a quick sketch every now and then seems to work fine. No need for anything more elaborate. We don't even use sketches for space combat. I just make some general notes for collision avoidance purposes and point out where everyone is prior to each round. Seems to work ok.
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Aha!

[garhkal]

[masque]

On the rare occasion that I use minis, I usually have some kind of board set up. Last time I used one of the Endor maps that came with some of my minis as a stand in for the bunker they were raiding. I don't use them often, but I'll bust them out for large combats, so we don't get confused as to where things are. I haven't done it for any starfighter combats though, just ground assaults.
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