D&D COMBAT House Rules: Grids vs. No Grids 

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While we play pathfinder, we started out theatre of the mind. But it basically bogs the session down with constant questions of "can I see X?", "how many enemies can I catch in my fireball?", "how far am I from Y?" because the truth is only the GM has an accurate mental image of the battlefield. Now that we play with a map, all those questions can just be answered by players looking at the map, and everyone shares the same model of the battlefield. This then also allows us to employ more clever tactics and strategy. I would never go back.

My favorite explanation of ranges comes from Mothership - it reinforces the vibe of Alien-style sci-fi horror, by listing: - adjacent (it can touch you) - close (it can get to you) - long (you can shoot it) - out of range (you can hear them scream)

Gelatinous cube: the only creature that adapted to the evolutionary niche of a 1"x1" grid.

Friendly reminder that many wargames and skirmish games use gridless combat that is also very tactical! It's just a matter of measuring distances with a ruler or tape measure

You could also have included hexes. I sometimes seamlessly replace the square grid on battlemaps with hexes of roughly the same size. Works wonders, especially outdoors where there are no 90 degree corners.

Big fights that are central to the plot are played on a grid. Small fights are played theatre of the mind in a "close, near, far" style.

In my group, it's a whiteboard and going "aaarh, I guess that's about 30 feet."

We routinely use grids with painted miniatures, scenery, buildings, etc. All of us enjoy the hobby of making the miniatures and scenery and have quite a collection built up.

8:46 the DMG has a table to help definitively determine how many enemies an area of a spell effects when not using a grid, in the Combat section of Chapter 8. It’s helped me a bunch to quickly answer “how many creatures can I hit with X” and I can easily control the pace of combat by adding or subtracting from the total, or offering to hit more enemies if the caster also hits an ally (the melee characters unironically love this).

I use a lot of homemade terrain without grid, so I made a 2 foot flexible folding ruler with foot measurement side by side with square count. Ditching the grid and measuring directly when needed meant no hem hawing over targeting something airborn or figuring out diagonal movement

I remember one time about 10-15 years ago I was playing in a Pathfinder game at the local game store, and the DM mentioned he hoped we didn't get into any combat that session because he forgot to bring his dry-erase grid mat. I pointed out that we were all tabletop wargamers with years of experience with Warhammer, WarmaHordes, Infinity, etc. and were all well familiar with using a tape measure instead of squares to measure distances and area effects. We still didn't end up in any combat that day, but it blew the DM's and a couple of the player's minds that we wouldn't really _need_ a grid.

Miniatures are one of my favorite parts of the hobby, so I use them for play by default. I also use dungeons terrain and tiny furniture, or wargame terrain for overland adventures. However, I don't always use a grid- we often go old school with tape measures (1"=5'), which is faster and more convenient than counting squares.

I run all my combat on a square grid, it makes things MUCH easier to deal with as there's no need to have any kind of tape measure, you just count the number of squares you can move, and its easy to tell if something is within range for an attack or not.

A map, even a gridless map, is a huge help. It allows everyone to easily visualize where everyone is, how far you can move and what's in the way. There are no arguments regarding if something is possible and no speculation. I am also notoriously bad at remembering stuff in the heat of the moment, so having a visual representation of who is being engaged with whom is a must. The advantage of a gridded vs ungridded map is the quantum nature of distance, and ease of positioning everything. No more arguments in the vein of 'you are off by quarter of an inch' that are so prevalent in competitive wargaming. On the other hand, the advantage of a gridless map is that it feels more natural and less staged, plus you can move at any angle.

There are few moments in D&D that are as satisfying as watching a group of enemies align themselves in *Fireball Formation™.*

I think the main reason that the grid variant rule is accepted as the default by many people is that the other rules actively encourage/require it to function. Take simple movement for example, it is defined in feet. The most common speed is 30 feet per round, which would be fine on its own, but then there are variants, such as races that can move 35 or 25 feet, and abilities that give similarly small increases. If speed was defined as a simple distance unit (e.g. the enemy is "one movement" away from you) it would be easily possible to run games in a theatre of the mind setting. You could say "You have to move twice in order to arrive where the enemy is" or stuff like that, assuming that one movement is 30 feet. But then, how do you handle dwarves. If you tell everyone else that the enemy is exactly one movement away, you'd need to tell that player the enemy is 1.2 movements away and that is just weird. What it comes down to is that the small differences in speed are very impractical in theatre of the mind play. Ignoring them makes certain traits irrelevant, and making them relevant can quickly turn into singling out the slow player. And it is the same for spell effects. The level of detail in spell descriptions is cool for playing on a grid, but impractical in theatre of the mind, since knowing all the details naturally makes the players want to strategize in detail which is just not easily possible. TLDR; If the rules of DnD where designed to be less detailed and more intuitive, it would be much easier to get away from the idea that playing on a grid is the norm. E.g. define distances in terms of multiples of one "movement", or defining discrete sizes for spell effects like for creature size. ("I cast a huge fireball into the small room" is just much easier to describe as "I cast a 20 foot radius fireball into the room, excuse me how big is the room again? How far away are all the opponents in feet? Oh yes, I forgot, can I hit all of the opponents without hitting my allies?..."

For me it's not about the GRID, it's about the MAP. Hex, Freeform, I don't actually care what we're using to denote distance as long as we actually ARE. In my experience theatre of the mind is frustrating. Yes, even in most systems that're designed for it, at least when dealing with things like combat. Nobody's going to have the same scene in their head leading to confusion, it leads to constant questioning every turn that could usually be solved with a glance downward, and it leaves the DM with even more to keep track of. The DMs I've seen prefer it are always either insane at multitasking and improv or NEED absolute control over everything. Usually the latter, to take our senses hostage and change things on the fly to ensure the scene goes "right."

Default in my games is PDM's UDT, but with small adjustment. Middle circle is divided into 4 zones and outside one into 8. Movement from zone to zone and from circle to circle takes usually one turn of running.

I love playing casters, and looking at a battlemap like I'm looking at a chess board. It's one of the main appeals of the game for me. I don't care what kind of measurement you use (grid, hex, gridless, ...) as long as it's a clear measurement that I can clearly see and comprehend. My biggest issue with theater of the mind is that what my character can do is no longer limited by the world, but instead becomes limited by what the DM will allow, and a victory that comes from convincing god to let me add another goblin in the radius of my fireball doesn't feel like a victory to me. If anything it intensifies arguing. To me a map with measurement is the difference between being able to plan things in advance or not. If I want to be 60ft away from an enemy, 65ft away from the caster next to him, without walking off the side of the bridge, but being fine standing on the railing if I have two and still know how much movement I have left afterwards. I want to be able to calculate that myself during other people's turn, not have to wait for my turn so that I can ask 30 questions and try to "make a case" for the actions I was planning on taking.

Using a VTT, I use grids where every other diagonal costs 10 ft movement, which the vtt calculates for you, so nobody needs to keep track of it.

Oh man this takes me back like 35 years. We started with theater of the mind and played D&D. It was fun of course and we were young teenage boys with overpowered characters fighting overpowered monsters and going in crazy dungeons that make zero sense when you looked at a layout. What did we find out after playing? It took an incredible amount of time to answer this question over and over. "Where was your character?" A fireball goes off and the thief says "I wasn't in the room". He believes it but the trigger to that trap was that everyone was in the room. This happens time and time again. The thief is being honest (most of the time), as with other players. Then "if" I as a GM ever said "well who is in the room", this would sidetrack in to a long discussion and everyone would assume something bad was about to happen. Then we got grid paper and some of us opted to pick up min's. All those problems went away. We still did theater of the mind for some stuff but dungeons and stuff like that we now got to see what was going on. It was incredible! I can play a game that is theater of the mind but I know my current group would never go back to just that. Then we get in to the tactical part that you glossed over a bit. Things like cones and blasts. There will always be a discussion about it, but with grid paper that argument goes away. Oh and then there is the times when you can try and line up dudes and it works out. This is like comparing listening to a story on the radio vs watching it in a movie theater. Both are good, but most agree after time that one is better.

My issue with gridless play is constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY having to ask and answer questions about range and positioning. "Am I close enough to this bugbear? Yes. Can I get around the bugbear to the goblin shaman behind him? No. Can I leap over this gorge? What is your character's strength?...14? Not quite. How wide is this bridge anyway? 15 feet wide. Can I see around the pillar here to the goblin shaman there? No, but if you move to the side a little you can. Wait, back up... when that bugbear moved to this point from this point, did he pass through my reach? Shouldn't I have been able to attack them? Yes, roll your attack. Oh, you hit him? And you have Sentinel, so he shouldn't have been able to get that hit on the mage. Oh, shoot, let's rewind." Just put it on a grid, they can see just by looking the answer to all those questions. A cheap reusable battlemap is $20, and for the people who are using paper for maps anyway, parchment paper is like, $3 for a roll, comes with 1" segments highlighted, and you can draw on it to your heart's content with a built in exact scale. My issue with systems with highly abstract movement of many of the other games you talk about is the worthlessness of movement abilities in those systems. If I'm entirely in the mind, and it's just an action to change distance from an enemy, there's no real design space for fun teleportation powers unless they're just a bonus to attack with a different flavor if it lets me get bonus hit or damage chance from the 'surprise' of my sudden change of position or whatever. If I'm entirely theatre of the mind, and the DM has described two enemies at Medium Range shooting guns at me, and I move to be adjacent to one, questions must be answered about whether I'm now at Close Range with the other shooter, or if he was in a 90+ degree different position from my original place and the first shooter, and now I'm actually at Long range from the second shooter. Again, answered INSTANTLY on a grid, without having to pick up any object and hold it up to the map to compare. I cannot comprehend why anyone would not want a grid to at least be present on a map, even if it wasn't snap-to-grid for positioning.

Great video! Now you need some Ultimate Dungeon Terrain!!!

Loving the fact that you're bringing more attention to other games than 5e with more and more of your videos. And the fact about the Gelatinous Cube being as wide as a narrow corridor in old-school dungeons was a real great piece of trivia.

Most of my current groups use theatre of the mind, mostly because we enjoy more narrative play. As you said, it mostly comes down to trust between the GM and players. "Hey, GM, can I catch all the goblins with a surprise fireball?" "Let's say you can catch all but the two nearest the door, who are gonna start bolting further down the hallway for reinforcements." "Oh, well - there's more fireballs where that came from. Eat flame, gobbos!"

During combat it is not the grid slowing us down, but it’s everyone relearning their characters every turn that slow us down… 😂

I love ALL Bob World Builder videos!

Agreed! I love the gridded shirt you wore over the gridless tshirt too!

Using a grid makes things so much easier. When I make terrain it is easy to just include tiles on floors, or floorboards that equal 2 squares, or rocks that conveniently have 10 foot flat perches....etc. I also use the rule of cool, stretch whats allowable every once and a while to allow players to live out the fantasy.

As i understand it, DnD is intended to be played without a grid, but with a ruler or measuring tape.

Gridless map FTW! Less rules, less counting, and quicker play. Thanks for the video.

When I first started running in middle school, everything was theater of the mind. I would draw dungeons out on grid paper, but typically that was for my own reference so I knew what was happening. Then I began putting 1 inch grid paper inside of plastic sheet holders, using a dry erase marker to draw combat maps on. In my "third stage" of map making I recently purchased a 250 ft long roll of 1 in grid paper, and every week I cut out a couple large sections and draw the maps on there in colored pencil. That has definitely worked the best for me, as I can draw squares with lines through them to indicate difficult terrain, or change colors for things like water, as well as draw physical barriers/walls. I think the grid paper works best for me because it's a definite space where I know how far the character can get. Not saying it's more difficult to run without a grid, I just think it's harder to keep to scale.

Great vid! I think you missed a couple tricks for gridless maps. The first one is Professor DM’s Ultimate Dungeon Terrain which uses zones to indicate melee/range. The other is using rulers on gridless terrain. If and inch is 5 feet, you can literally move in any direction you want 6 inches from your current position

We start with gridded maps. But, we also use colored sticks (green-normal, red-disadvantage) to measure ranged attacks. Sticks are also used for angled movement and running. So the answer is: we use both.

I run BECMI (since 87) and use theater of the mind. These days, I use a dry erase board without any grid for my encounters. Sounds like you started playing with one of my compatriots. Great stuff as usual. Thanks Bob and congrats on your contribution to Mr Welch’s 50th D&D birthday video. BECMI Forever! Long Live King Elmore!!

Back in 1E we used square or hex grids depending on who brought the battle map that night. Theatre of the Mind depends on the person. So people could not handle Theatre. I would like to see more dry erase hex maps.

Every map in every official adventure I've seen has a grid printed over it. That's a pretty inflexable way to print maps if it's an optional rule.

I love Bob's content so much. Whenever the flute comes in I'm out of breath with laughter

Love the outdoors thing Bob!

Dude I love the wall snail! 🐌 Makes me even happier that I backed DELVE!

My current online group uses a hexagonal grid in combat for most fights, though when the adventure started it was TOTM.

I am definitely in the gridless camp, but I do think the preference is tied to preferred system and the type of game a person wants. I ended up quitting my friends pathfinder group because it was mostly fighting, working out of a module, figuring out the nitty gritty on a grid and looking up the exact rules. Me, in my narrative, rules light ideal, was dying. I didn't want to spend 15 min looking up a rule, I wanted to say "ehh that's close enough." I don't think either route is "correct" but I do think grid v. no grid is a function of your larger play preference

I really like the Dead End Snail concept from Delve! - Snailed it! 🐌

i find physical terrain really good when you make it yourself out of cardboard and stuff. It’s fairly easy to make and when you paint it up it looks really nice. And it’s mostly free if you already have paint and hot glue.

I've always used a grid for TTRPGs. I didn't even know it was an actual rule, it was just easier than worrying about actual measurements

Since 2020 I've mostly played D&D on-line (we know why that started...) 📈The map came with grids, square or hex, and even did the diagonal calculations for us. Easy to use. ♦However, once in a while I turn the grid feature off and players can move naturally. It surprises them, but leaves tactics and position completely open. I like the confused (but usually happy) sounds they make.

I always played on a laminated sheet of A3 paper with a grid printed on it, using a marker to draw on it and easily wipe away. Never had real minis, we used pieces of cardboard or just drew on it. It's pretty much all the advantages of an abstract map that you listed plus the grid for measuring distances.

I play reverse gridless now: instead of gridding out a whole room, I have index cards be representative of a room or an area in a dungeon. I don’t sketch out anything, in fact my info for the room is often on the back of the index card (because it’s easier to write on during the day). When I have a big combat, I have obstacles or lanes of movement on index cards, so “the AC ductwork” that allows a player to get around without being seen is not actually written down, but just an index card saying “AC ductwork.” When a player is in the ducts, I have them put their mini-figurine in the ducts. We often use LEGO minifigs alongside DnD minis, makes it more fun to customize a character. So no drawing of squiggly lines, no time spent mapping out a whole corridor or a series of obstacles. I put the cards down and tell my players to run for cover! (We often do modern-style games with guns, so ranged combat is a huge obstacle and players need to see sight lines and evade enemy fire.

I Love ALL Bob World Builder videos! Theatre of the mind with Close/Near/Far range groups.

If you like grid-less maps but still want scaled distances you can quickly measure you could give the PCs a length of string with a two pushpins/toothpicks at each end representing a commonly used distance like 30ft for movement. And that could be used for straight lines, movement around objects, and radiuses of a circle

I play and run games strictly online and use gridless maps. The VTT I use, Shard Tabletop, allows me to have the best of both worlds. My players can still measure out their movement and AoE spells have tokens to see how many baddies they can hit. All that and more with the benefit of a more open interpretation of distances. Its pretty damn great. Its also fun to sometimes be cheeky in combat saying "You are just a foot to slow to catch the retreating enemy".

I like that you've been doing outdoor videos, subtly encouraging people to go outside more.

I use a hex mat and break the scale down to 1 meter, or 1 yard, as they are almost interchangeable at 39" (meter) or 36" (yard). The hex mat allows everyone to see who and what are located where in an encounter. My dungeons are smaller and I will draw out each room on a large hex paper (1" hexes) and plop that down as you look into or enter a room. I buy a 4ft hex or square graph tablet to draw rooms up to 40m by 30m. AMAZON sells those tablets at a reasonable price.

My groups have 2 methods. For 1 or 2 enemies in an encounter, we use theater of the mind, but 3+ enemies we use the grid.

Since I play exclusively OSR, I use a mixture of theater of the mind and gridless maps. This is for both my in person and online games. From. My experience running 5e for a 3 year long campaign and leaving it for Shadowdark, OSE, and even DCC, the OSR games require abstract, imaginative, creative thinking that with a grid will always tell the player to think within those confines. I have seen much more outside the box thinking without the grids and it's just so much easier.

I find theater of the mind is easier for players to get more creative during combat. For example, a monk makes an acrobatics check to leap on the back of the dragon as it strafes the party with its breath weapon!

Absolutely with a grid, I started out with no-grid but as the DM I just couldn’t keep track of where everything was. My brain couldn’t keep it straight so being able to see what the layout and distance actually is was amazing

Nice video! I think for the type of players in my groups, having a map with grids is needed for combat to have things move smoothly. One thing I did experience last session was when I used a hand-drawn colored map instead of a fancy Dungeon Alchemist map, my own imagination of a location was doing a lot more for me during the session. :-)

Our Pathfinder 1E and Starfinder 1E games use a grid! I didn't use a grid for my first 8 years of gaming, but when i joined a group after being kicked out of the Navy in 1990 for a blood disorder, they used a grid to help a couple of players that needed a grid to be able is visualize the combat!

Low key the most wholesome channel on RU-vid.

Girdles with a map. I got some cheap unpainted minis that are the race of each of my players and most are their class or something that is close to what they picture their character looking like. I use colored tokens for enemy NPCs and extra minis for friendly NPCs so my party remembers they are there. I try to get minis for bosses or will use very distinct tokens for bosses. I really like using the abstract map idea since I can sprinkle in things that can change the battle flow quite easily such as a fallen tree or fire trap etc

We haven't done much combat yet, but we usually do either theater of mind or our DM draws a quick sketch to help us visualize where everything is. We also do a combination of these. As far as I can remember, we haven't used grids at all yet.

In the words of Patrick Henry, I’ve always been a “ give me grids or give me death” kind of guy 😎

OMIGOSH, even if I didn't love everything Bob World Builder makes, that 1.5 seconds of Minecraft D&D got such a huge laugh out of me that i would've had to like this video regardless.

Nice ambience soundtrack

The DM that introduced me uses theater of the mind, with gridless combat on a whiteboard for when things get really complex.

I really like these "man on the move" out in nature videos lately. Great content, and really switches up the look and vibe. Hike on!

The one way that you overlooked, which is the way I have done several campaigns to great effect is gridless but with a scale map and miniatures. My gaming group also played tabletop war games, so it made sense to us. One inch is 5 feet and you just use a measuring stick. I found it quite easy and really rewarding. It's a trade off though.

I don't use a grid in my in-person game, but it's not abstracted to the level you're talking about. We're still using minis, measuring our movement, using templates for spells, and it's making things so much more immersive. It helps that I've collected a considerable amount of physical terrain from my years in the hobby

Thanks for the video! I’m going to give that style a try in my next session.

I really like that you've been doing lots of outside videos. Definitely feels a lot nicer and reminds me to get outside. I'm sure it's great for your mental health too

Great video, thank you for your insight!

Here's an alternative idea: abstract grid. Rules are interpreted in terms of spaces, but the distance and time vary depending on the context. Fighting in tight quarters, make spaces and rounds 1m and 1s. Fighting in a large open battle field, make it 10m and 10s instead!

Great video! I’ve played D&D since the ‘80s and we’ve always been mostly theater of the mind, only bringing out grids & minis for big battles/boss fight type stuff.

I do like having a grid, but one of the thing that comes up when you make your map is how to put a grid on it if it isn't already a grid, like if you make terrain on a piece of foam or cardboard or some other kind of crafty thing. At the end of last campaign I used a 2'x2' piece of foam and added a river(lf lava, turns out) down the center, some hills on the sides, some ruins, and a bridge over the river (again, of lava). The ground was either grass or igneous rock. I wasn't going to draw a grid on "my masterpiece," but I did have a small ruler with me and I used the combat tiers, and basically stuck to a true map, gridless, but still a map where distance mattered and I could put a graphic circle over an area to show how big a fireball was, or how far a lightnight bolt would go. In short, I don't mind going without a grid, but it takes some extra steps. Players generally know about how far they can go though, and they can ask me if they aren't sure and I can measure it, or one with a ruler can.

We mostly use grids for combat maps. Sometimes, we accidentally get into a fight on a gridless map. I dont care because I use the ruler. I wouldn't like theater of the mind if I was a skirmisher that took mobile or was a rogue, monk or barbarian.

For my family game, we play online with a VTT, and for this most recent campaign decided to experiment with using the gridless option for our maps. It doesn't change how I _make_ those maps much since I still tend to scale things to how the grid _would_ be, but it's definitely made movement and ranges and whatnot feel a bit more freeform and engaging. People squeezing together around enemies, or having to line up differently to fully block choke points. It's also been helpful because we've got some pretty major size discrepancies in players (a Rune Knight and a player who's Tiny), so not having to ensure everyone fits properly to a grid is great.

Interesting video. Here’s how my journey in D&D combat went. 1. Got the basic set in the early 80’s as a kid. Everything was theatre of the mind. We made up tons of cool things we did in combat. Loved every minute of it. 2. Sometime in 1e we started playing on the infamous chessex battle map. You mean no more arbitrary choices on who got hit or over the top goofiness in combat? Sign me up. This was game changing and we never looked back. Loved every minute of it. 3. Several years ago I bought a cheap tv to try digital maps. Wow. Detailed scenes that gave everyone of the players the exact same detailed picture. No more dealing with constantly drawing with sloppy wet erase markers. Built in fog of war, secret doors etc. Sign me up. This was game changing and we never looked back. I’ve loved every minute of it. 4. Sometime in the future. A cool new innovation that improves the immersion and reduces GM prep time while providing a “realistic” simulation of battle. Sign me up. That will change the game and I’ll never look back. I’ll love every minute of it. What you play doesn’t matter as long as you love it………..now gimme my cool as digital tabletop the way my group loves it. Theatre of the mind and abstract maps will never give me the experience I am looking for, but if it does for others I’m just glad they are having fun playing TTRPG’s.

Consider the following option I've play tested a few times with my friend. 6" popsicle sticks, bought in bulk from craft stores. Using the usual metric of 1" = 5ft, a popsicle stick is 30ft. You can use them to measure distances on a flat using most average size miniatures and the sticks. Terrain being made of whatever you have around the room.

I started playing in 1977 and used grids for over 30-years (OD&D, AD&D, and D&D3e). I have awesome grid based systems and terrains from that era. I used dry erase when it was still $50 to buy the pens - I had battle map wallpaper that was 4' by 8' from official military sources with 1/10th inch grid and 1" bold - I also had a proper executive conference room table to play on with drawers for every player - my players & father helped cover those costs. Around 2007, I started running TTRPGs without a grid - using movement & area of effect templates - suddenly, combat was faster, movement was easier, and players genuinely enjoyed playing more. It was less fiddly. A few years ago, I've moved to a variation of Dungeon Crafter UDT and then only needed simple movement based on the distance from index finger to pinky... 🤘- effectively 25' to 30'. My ranges are adjacent and visible (on the battle map - about 10" from center or 50') - my area of affect is single-target or all adjacent to 1-target. This all works like a charm. This year, my UDT & battle maps are actually on a flat portable monitor that goes in my backpack to conventions. I still use my extensive collection of minis and scatter terrain on that. I don't recommend using grids anymore. Continuous experimentation and iteration has been wonderful. GO GRIDLESS!

wall snail is amazing idea

Always ready to learn something new

A method we've tried a couple of times is doing a battle map without a grid. Instead we use a measuring tape like in Warhammer. Where you can move in any path as long as it doesn't take more then the total amount of movement you have. We have printouts that are the size of common spells to check them to make them quick and easy to check.

Good video! A lot of the DCC stuff does have maps and grids included and i like to use them but with some abstraction. I am not a fan of flanking and opportunity attacks but like to use them when it feels natural. VTT have made maps so easy. Last in person game I used a blank flip-mat and paper minis to great success.

I'm happy for anyone who plays with a group who enjoys exclusively Theatre of the Mind, but that is not anyone I have ever played with. Way back in 1981 playing AD&D we used grids. In fact we quickly changed from square to hex grids because diagonal movement was easier to measure. All the games I've played since have used grids except for very simple encounters -- "You are ambushed by two goblin archers..." The only exception is my recent flirtation with Mothership, which uses adjective distances; close, near, etc. Even then, I started using a grid at players' request because there was too much debate and confusion about positioning. Other comments here have gone into detail about such discussions/debates/arguments and I completely agree. Again, if Bob or anyone else plays with a group which is so chill that they are cool with Theatre of the Mind for any and all situations then I am very happy for you! I admit it would certainly save money and leave more room on the table for pizza. But that's just not the way most players I know like to roll. ;)

I made maps by hand for the Phandelver campaign (at the start of the campaign). About to start a new level 1-12 dungeon crawl and I bought and printed out a Dungeon23 map set by Tomb of Salvatore. Then I drew up a series of like 12 Index Card Dungeons from Dyson Logos on 1” grids. Add an acrylic screen on top for dry eras and I’m prepped for a while and we have grids! For both of my groups!

Back in my AD&D 2nd Ed days, theater of the mind, or simple position references (ie: "these d6 dice are the enemies and the d8s are the party") was enough. No flanking, no attacks of opportunity, occasionally "me, the fighter, blocks the orc from getting near the wizard". Simple and fast.

Great video as always! I certainly used to use grids back in 3.5 and Pathfinder, but since getting back into RPGs around 2019, they've been mostly theater of the mind. I'm currently playing D&D with friends on Discord plus a Kids on Bikes game in person and theater of the mind works just fine.

I've been playing TTRPGs since 1997, been part of at least a dozen groups, and played close to a hundred campaigns and one-shots of various games (D&D, BESM, Rifts, Star Wars, Vampire the Masquerade, etc...) I've played games with grids, hexes, and theater of the mind (sometimes with an abstract map), but not a single game with "gridless, but measured" combat.

I have maps and art for everything I possibly can. Battle maps and grids for every type of combat - small and large. «Theatre of the mind» is not for our player/gm group at all. It’s just as much a board game as rpg in our sessions.

We play on a grid for combat (& some exploration encounters). I enjoy painting minis and building my own tabletop scatter terrain and scenery. My players get a kick out of the crazy models I craft to help with their immersion and it is just another facet of the game and hobby to me.

I think most people learn the game from people who already know the game, which means a lot of practices get handed down. Grid-based movement has been the standard since at least AD&D first edition. And measurement by increments of 5 or 10 runs throughout almost every facet of the game, from movement to spells, to weapon range. I don't know how anybody would apply those rules without using the grid system. I've been playing 5e for years, and if you're telling me that the books say that grid-based measurement is an alternate ruleset, that's news to me. Also thanks for the video. Good stuff.

Wizard Kids had a tactical pirate game back in the early 2000s that had ships that you punch out of a credit-card-sized plasticard and you measured movement and weapon range by using either the short or long sides of the cards.

Been working on the mapping of my game, using "Zones." Providing a generic list of what might constitute a divide between zones, or what might be a new zone altogether...It's been really good so far, but I've played the game exclusively in theatre of the mind so far, and it hasn't been an issue (I love TotM, even in 5e). This video helped me come up with some additional information and solutions to what I want in this project, so thankyou!

I find myself going to the squares only when certain things get disputed or need more clarification (and that's only if there is a grid on the map), otherwise I'm with you on the no-grid more trust approach. And the funny part as you kind of hint off with your approach to 5E: people would be surprised how much you can leave out (or throw out) and the game still work and be fun! I joke with people around here in the Colorado Springs (which it seems that D&D 5E rules this place) that if I ran D&D at my local game shop, they would throw me out (lol). Which is why I love running these games for kids since I can teach them my philosophy: story over rules ;-) BTW, I love your backdrop! Great video and keep being awesome!

Depends on the Encounter. Some are more suited for the theater of the mind, and other on a grid. I love making Battlemaps, so that's a large part of it.

I will only ever use theatre of the mind as a last resort, and always use a gridded map wherever possible for one reason; some players have aphantasia and literally cannot picture in their mind the things you are describing/the positioning of the scenario and TotM can be a nightmare for them. As soon as I learned one of my players had aphantasia and just had a flat out worse experience when we weren't using maps I've never gone back.

You seem be be combining gridless map and abstracted maps into the same category. With gridless there is should an assumption that you're going to measure distance with the Cartesian coordinate system, just without the rounding of distance to a uniformed grid. Many popular Tabletop Skirmish/Wargames for instance are girdless, but still very much use defined measurements for distances. DnD5e are writes in defined measurements. Not in abstract terms that we see in Shadowdark of "near" or "far".

I've been running most of my games online, using perspective images, not top-down maps, and I think it works fine. Players get a sense of where everything is without a perfect measurement being used. In person, I will do TotM with some anchor images, or I will use wooden block toys and Jenga pieces to quickly build the terrain - again, with no grid. Works great!