Apr 20, 2012 -- 9:24PM, Azzy1974 wrote:

Apr 19, 2012 -- 1:05PM, Pashalik_Mons wrote:

Seems like community isn't going to give up calling mapless "Theatre of the Mind".  In the interest of equal pretentiousness, I'd like to start a motion to refer to map combat as "Tableau Vivant".  

I'm onboard.

I am too.  However, I fear the theatrical arms race.

They develop "Theatre of the Mind," we come back with "Tableau Vivant."
They respond with "Dramatic Scene Resolution" (using only RP for social encounters), and we up the ante with "Unfettered Aesthetics" (reskinning.

Where does it end?  A mushroom cloud of dice, and pretentiously labelled character sheets.  It's the "keyword [cold] war."

Apr 20, 2012 -- 10:02PM, Azzy1974 wrote:

Apr 20, 2012 -- 9:51PM, MechaPilot wrote:

Apr 20, 2012 -- 9:24PM, Azzy1974 wrote:

Apr 19, 2012 -- 1:05PM, Pashalik_Mons wrote:

Seems like community isn't going to give up calling mapless "Theatre of the Mind".  In the interest of equal pretentiousness, I'd like to start a motion to refer to map combat as "Tableau Vivant".  

I'm onboard.

I am too.  However, I fear the theatrical arms race.

They develop "Theatre of the Mind," we come back with "Tableau Vivant."
They respond with "Dramatic Scene Resolution" (using only RP for social encounters), and we up the ante with "Unfettered Aesthetics" (reskinning.

Where does it end? 

In a White Wolf-esque game.

(joke)

Coming in 2014...

Dungeons: The Dragonning

Features new diceless Drama Séance Resolution, Thirteen Pillars Role Playing, Bon Vivant and Theatre of The Soul!
You the actor-director sculpt the genre that your persona exists within, with modular options for constructing dice!
As your persona grows you get extra self-actualization motes to spend on combat emotions.
Based on the novels of Jack Vance!





(/joke)
..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />
Talking of Visual vs Verbal:
penny-arcade.com/2012/04/20/a-matter-of-...
Now that's some terrible stuff right there. Bet they wish they'd gone with Am-Dram of The Psyche instead of relying on grids and minis!





Seriously though, I'm excited for 5e and hope that it fully supports all styles of play and allows the quick changing back and forth between grid and verbal and everything in between ... because sometimes you want to get the minis out for the exciting battle and sometimes you just want to creep up and backstab a lone orc using a minute of description and a couple of rolls.

I hate "theatre of the mind" also, it comes across to me as implying that when I use a grid of some sort that we aren't using any imagination, like we are playing a board game, while not using a grid is the "real" roleplaying. 

Ah.  I see.  The term Theatre of the Mind is too superior a term.  :-).

See, the problem I have is everything so far implies that using a grid takes away from your descriptive nature of your game, and that playing a "grid free" game is very descriptive and imaginative.

It's not.

I've been in gridless games that basically boiled down to "I'm going to move up to the orc and hit it with my sword".  That's not any better than playing with a grid and going "I move 5 squares and hit it with my sword" 

Both use the same amount of imagination, the "gridless" combat isn't any better, at best combat might just flow faster since there is less set up time.

At the same time, playing gridless, you may have players say "I'm going to run towards the orc, as I do that I'm going to pull out some blinding powder and throw it in his face while doing a back flip over him. Then I want to stab him in the back".  That's great, I can imagine the whole scene.  But I can do the same thing with a Grid.  

My theory then is there are two scales: Accuracy & Narrative

'Low' Accuracy means you aren't using a grid, you don't even have anyone really keeping track on a piece of paper of locations, in fact you don't really care you just "get to do" your actions - in video game terms its like playing some of the older JRPGs where you have the monsters lined up on one side and players lined up on the other.  'High' Accuracy would probably go beyond just having a grid, it would be full on model of the battle field that is done to scale so you can better determine who has cover, line of sight, and hwo far light may spread.

I'm sure most games from all editions fall more in between the two extremes - even most AD&D games I played in without a grid still had the DM roughly tracking locations. 

Then there is Narrative.  'Low' Narrative is what was stated above "I attack the orc" no thrills, not even a slight description of how it works.  It's just simply what action is happening. 'High' Narative would be at the other extreme - in theory you could get down to describing the scene - the sweat dripping down your characters face as she runs past a torch, the sound of her sword being drawn, etc.  

One is NOT mutually exclusive of the other.  You an have a very accurate, narrative game.  You can have no accuracy and no narration.

I think that is what annoyed me about that article, and about the discussion as a whole.  Will I admit that some people (many people?) have issue being as good with narrative once a grid is put down? Sure - but I'm sure there are people who have a hard time with narrative without the grid becasue they want that level of detail to accurately explain what they are picturing in their head.

So when you have a single line scale that has Narrative at one end and grid based combat at the other, it annoys me because it implies that grid based combat can't be narrative