The Guide to Dungeon Mastering: Get Rid of Those Grids!

Welcome to an informal chat about DM basics. I'll be giving tips and tricks that I've learned over the years.

I began my adventures in tabletop gaming playing exclusively using theater-of-the-mind. I say this because everything went weird when we started using grids.

Now it started out fine, we had a means to visually track character locations and ranges but something just felt off about the entire thing. At the time I was never able to figure it out but that is the magic of looking backward; hindsight is 20/20 after all.

I figured out that the problem was the grids. Gridded lines on a play surface are a good abstraction but everyone instinctually places their figures inside the lines. This is not how things would normally operate as grids do not appear in nature. Nothing is nicely organized by neat 5-foot squares!

It's not an issue for everyone but I've found that it can be immersion breaking which is why I have removed grids from my game. I have not removed miniatures but that is a separate issue.

This is the point I am making:
You can use miniatures without a grid!

So, how do we make this work? The biggest thing to worry about is scale, most editions follow a simple setup (1-inch = 5-feet) but you are free to use any scale you want. The trick is to make it consistent and base it around a 1 inch rule.

Why 1-inch? Because that is the default size of a standard mini base. Make something relevant to that size and your system will be applicable to all minis.

The next thing to worry about is movement speed. Thankfully most editions give this stat in feet as opposed to grids (major exception being 4e) so the best method I have found is to make something to measure movement.

For example: I use the standard system (1-inch = 5-feet) and the standard movement speed of a medium sized character is 30-feet. I do some simple math and that equates to 6-inches, so I cut a length of string or measure a stick and use that as a base. Repeat as necessary.

That method also works when measuring range for attacks and other things. All told a very small amount of work is required to make this work. It just needs the players to get on board and that is the easy part.

In short, getting rid of the grids will make your games far more immersive.

Next time: I'll be talking about increasing that immersion for your group!