How to Run Better Theater of the Mind Combat in D&D
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- Опубликовано: 15 сен 2024
- I love maps in D&D 5e and all TTRPGs, but sometimes they can get in the way. Theater of the mind encounters can be a great way to keep the flow of your session going, and to simplify and speed up your minor combats. Here are some tips for running better theater of the mind combat encounters so that your players will always understand the layout.
Size reference chart:
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A great one I use is zones. If the fight takes place in a house, each room is a zone and it takes your movement to get into another zone. As long as you are in the same zone you can attack and see everything else in their. If you Dash you can get to the zone after. Simple to understand for the players and removes a lot of discussion about distance.
That's a really great idea!
Daggerheart is using a similar idea it seems
Love your channel! Your videos seem so kind and comfortable and do a great job of getting to the point without it feeling rushed
Thanks so much, really appreciate it!
I never use actual measured distanced in TOM . I tell the players "they are close ", "far". Etc. Unless someone busts out a yard stick that's all they get from me. I give approx.
I wish I could enjoy theater of the mind, but with aphantasia it's super hard to reason and keep track of more than a few combatants.
These are great! I exclusively use theater of the mind mainly because I hate remembering experiences in D&D as me sitting around a board game. With theater of the mind I remember them as if they were actual events. It's also just easier to not have to make tokens or maps or anything. But these tips are super great. Subscribed!
Dude I'm 100% with you on this. Maps and minis completely break my emersion. But I feel so alone as someone who strictly plays theater of the mind 😂
Hey man, I've been checking out a lot of your content for the past couple hours, after finding your channel a few weeks back. Great stuff! I particularly like how you introduce some dry humor without going overboard. While watching this one, during tips #2-3, I wondered.. could you show how you run encounters on paper (tracking distance, hp, etc)? And furthermore, how you prep and how you generally track/manage things in real time? Stuff like exploration, roleplay, obviously combat, etc, but from a technical how-to perspective. Anyway, just a thought. And again, great channel dude, keep it up!
I think the design of D&D combat is always going to clash with theater of the mind play, since D&D is so concerned with precise distances. ToM generally requires more work for the DM as they now have to retain all the positions of all involved characters. This might be fine for a small brawl with 1-4 enemies but as enemies increase its going to get much harder to keep track of. You end up having to do a lot of extra bookkeeping of distances if you don't abstract down the units of distance. It's just hard to maintain battlefield awareness with ToM.
Good stuff
Haven't actually tried this but I wonder if using some regular graph paper as a tiny map for yourself, putting player initials in the boxes as they move. I know you said to keep it 2D, but it might be easier to visualize enough to give a good description if you have a simple reference, instead of focusing on numbers. You could have the player and monster speeds listed on the side as a rough reference (but like, if someone is 5ft off you can let it slide, you don't have to be strict to the foot). Then if a player says "can I get to the enemy next to the chest" you can glance down and say "yeah you can get there" or "Not quite, but you can get closer to the other one by the stairs". So it'd kind of be a hybrid where its ToM for players, still keeping your descriptions mostly 2D and easy to understand, so they don't have to get too technical and can just use imagination, but you're loosely keeping track on a grid.
All nice and interesting but why is there a cooking book in front of him
You're the first person to notice! I feel like I should give you a prize 😂 I just put it there because I thought it would be a fun Easter egg
Alright! Definitely rolling a nat 20 next game 😂 sucks for my players..... bwahaha
I'll be honest, I don't really get this one, why the anchor is relevant. I might be too far behind for it to be helpful (not knowing the problem it's solving).
This one might not be good for everyone, but I just found that when some players were advancing, while others were retreating, and then the monster was also moving, it helped me to track everyone's movement on a piece of paper in relation to one spot. If the monster starts at the zero spot, and the players start at -30, then in the first round player 1 advances 30 feet, so now they're at 0, player 2 retreats 30 feet so they're at -60, and the monster moves away 30 feet so they're at +30. Now when player 2 asks how far away the monster is I can look at my paper and easily find 90 feet.
Hope that makes sense! Not sure it's the best way, but it has been quick for me to jot that down during combat
@@powerwordspill Yeah, that helps clear it up. I think I was imagining with only 1 player, or not realizing if it's all relative to the monster, and the monster moves, everyone's distance would have to be updated. Or something. It's so clear I'm not sure what I was thinking, lol.
I'd love you to do a colab video with Wil from DnD Shorts
Nope I dont theatre of the mind. I need situational awareness.