Zoe's Reflections: Theater of the Mind vs. Battlemaps and Prep

Hey gang! 

So, it's easier to make battlemaps than ever before -- whereas people used to often just use grids or whiteboards and draw as they went, anymore it's a lot easier to set up fancy lighting on a virtual tabletop, or do all sorts of fun stuff. And for people who are looking for an in-between, there's tons of battlemaps available online.

This raises an interesting question -- can you adjust the "battlemap meta" -- and should you?

By the "battlemap meta," I mean that players typically know they are entering a significant combat encounter simply because you bust out the battlemap. Oftentimes, this in itself can be a good thing -- for professional 'gamer-performers,' often times the 'reveal' of the battlemap is an exciting moment in the session.

In this sense, having a battlemap ready for when you're ready for the big combat encounter makes sense.

However, with the ease of using battlemaps as visual aids, you could create tension in an otherwise straightforward scene.

To explore this idea, I thought I'd reflect on my first game session, and my use of visual aids.

In my session one, the main session idea basically can be broken down as:

-Establish the players in the world and their goal (retake the iron mine on the island)

-The players land on the island and make their way to the mine

-The players combat the kobolds which are currently holding the mine, leading to a second combat inside the mine itself with the dark elves that were working with them.

Obviously, if I want to do combat with minis to keep track of positioning for tactical combat, then I might want a battlemap for the third bullet point. If you wouldn't even do a battlemap for the two big combats, then the question I'm posing here is moot -- you almost certainly use a battlemap anywhere else.

Let's consider how we handle the sequence between landing on the island and arriving at the fight though. It's nice to get the buildup before the characters are fully in combat. With that in mind, it's nice if they spot a clue, like a boat that has drifted down river, reinforcing the sense that those at the mining camp have met their demise. I include a letter from the miners here, reinforcing that they were living thinking people.

For a short scene establishing the players finding a note in an abandoned boat, you certainly could just do theater of the mind. Describe the scene, move on, as short and sweet as your players want it to be -- obviously anything can become a full scene if they choose to play something out.

Option two would be to use a visual aid, something that establishes the scene. This 'slideshow' style can work very well to keep all the players on the same page as to what's going on. Here's one I might use for the scene in question, and indeed the one I did use:

This effectively captures the jungle environment of the island, while also making it clear that there's no risk or complication to searching the boat.

However, I do have another map that I could use here, if I so chose:

 Here, I shift things slightly -- rather than the boat being immediately up on shore, it's slightly more in the middle of the river, albeit with some shallows nearby. I might establish that medium-sized characters can get to within ten feet of the small boat by wading, and after that they'd need to jump or swim.

The fun thing here is that, in having a map but not being committed to it being a 'battle map,' I can make exploration feel more threatening. If the players do succeed their checks, then they can feel more confident knowing that they avoided a combat -- which might be rewarding for them. Likewise, I might indicate there's crocodiles further out in the river. This might make the druids or rangers feel like they have more opportunity to interact with the environment, if they want to try some animal checks so that even if they fall into the water or swim to the boat, that they can still get the note.

If they do a lot of checks, I might also add a small reward other than the note, such as a pending payment for couriers to deliver the message.

In this sense, it's all about pacing, and rewarding the specific combination of players in your group -- have druids and rangers? Maybe lots of crocodiles! Have no druids or rangers? Well, maybe there's no crocodiles visible, but there might be one nearby.

In this sense, the "battlemap meta" is a way that you can play with the feeling of exploration in your game world. What do you think? How would you run this session: pure theater of the mind, the 'slide show' reference of the visual, or the battlemap giving the impression there could be combat coming up?