to map combat or not to map combat.

[Edsel]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

We map out about 95% of our combats. Often in pretty great detail so there is no doubt about what cover (or potential thrown missiles) are nearby. The only combats that don't get mapped out are those in which the outcome is not in doubt, or those which are intended to be specific plot devises (the outcome is pre-ordained).

 

For instance if our powered-armor hero (350+ points) for some reason is going to mix it up with a trio of 50 point street thugs, there is little point in mapping it out.

 

Thinking back on it there have been a couple of one-on-one battles that we have resolved without the use of maps. But mapless combat is the exception in our games.

[hooligan x]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

For your sreet battle, I'd just print up some hexpaper (I think there's some in the Hero Links) and tape them together. A standard city street won't be more than 10 hexes wide. save some blanks in case someone gets knockbacked through a wall or doorway. Only map the interiors of buildings when and if you need them and you'll save a bunch of time.

[Kirby]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

In my previous group, we used to map out combat a lot, but not all the time -maybe three fourths- for our first year or two. With only one exception we always had 1 hex = 2 meters scale. When our gaming group became larger than the table, we used our imaginations instead (with the previously noted exception).

 

I had a verly large hex-marked battle map that I was just waiting to use, but I stopped gaming with that group for several years and gave it away to someone who would be able to use it. About a year after that, I was able to start up a game again. I miss it now.

 

For the group I started last year, we have only mapped out combat once, on grid paper, and that's just because there were about a dozen or so supers involved (and only three were PCs). I will draw buildings to let them know the set up, but it's never perfect straight lines and such.

[Vondy]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

I only map combats that occur in complex surroundings or include large numbers of characters.

[GoldenAge]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

Is this what you mean by map?

 

Cuz we do... big time!

 

We use converted Heroclix figs for characters... But because we always go 3D we forego the hex map. Instead I hand out mini-tape measures to everyone (3 ft key rings). 1" = 2 meters.

 

All of the cars and construction equipment are just about to scale. Playing out big battles on home made mountains and construction sites is loads of fun!!!

[aylwin13]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

Is this what you mean by map?

 

Cuz we do... big time!

 

We use converted Heroclix figs for characters... But because we always go 3D we forego the hex map. Instead I hand out mini-tape measures to everyone (3 ft key rings). 1" = 2 meters.

 

All of the cars and construction equipment are just about to scale. Playing out big battles on home made mountains and construction sites is loads of fun!!!

Dude, I so want to be in your group! This is the type of Champs game I've been looking for all my life!

 

[GoldenAge]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

Thanks!

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

Hide owns a hex map, so we map out our combats in hero, we find it helps alot especially for those with higher momvements

[Corven_Ren]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

I have always mapped out whenever possible, it helps me as both a player and a gm to know what is going on and where. My main props however are jenga blocks. I use them for wallsand to mark where the sidewalk ends and the street begins. I also have alot of the old plastic & cardboard furniture from the Hero Quest game. It also had little tiles to put under your figs so you know who was flying, invisible, webbed etc. So I use those as well.

[Guest Strassenzauber]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

I have always mapped out whenever possible' date=' it helps me as both a player and a gm to know what is going on and where. My main props however are jenga blocks. I use them for wallsand to mark where the sidewalk ends and the street begins. I also have alot of the old plastic & cardboard furniture from the Hero Quest game. It also had little tiles to put under your figs so you know who was flying, invisible, webbed etc. So I use those as well.[/quote']

 

A cannibalized Hero Quest set is a truly invaluable item to have for PnP games.

 

If you need one, fellow players, simply go onto EBay and get whichever one still has all the pieces, but costs the least.

 

Bonus if you use goblins, orcs, zombies, skeletons, giant gargoyles, evil sorecerers, barbarians, dwarves, elves, or sorcerers in your camapigns.

[sinanju]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

I don't map combats, and haven't for years. At most I'll sketch out a quick and dirty map to clarify a situation if the players are confused. But mapping tends to turn role-playing into wargaming and that's not what I'm interested in. It also tends to slow combat to a crawl as players count hexes and plot and calculate and minimax and generally (again) treat the battle like a wargame rather than a fast-paced combat in the tradition of comic book superheroes.

 

But I also believe in quick n' dirty combat resolution, so I don't pay a lot of attention to the sort of nitpicking details that make mapping necessary. YMMV, IMHO, etc.

[Lord Zod]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

It's not champions but this might be helpful. I played in a Fantasy Hero setting that due to it's epic nature had a couple of pretty huge scale battles. In some cases there would be thousands of warriors in an area with mountains and valleys and other terrain obstacles. Yet we had to keep the scale to a size where the PCs can have a direct influence on the outcome of the battle.

 

The GM came up with a mass combat system that was in many ways a quick and dirty version of the regular hero system rules, with a unit of men with identical stats represented as one figure with a body score representing unit cohesion. Unique figures, like PCs, were units of one. We used two different scales for both distance and time. We uses a standard sized hex map for the big battle, and allowed each turn of combat on that scale to represent a minute of regular scale combat. If a PC and an important NPC moved into the same hex for a personal duel they would drop out of the big battle, and fight out one turn of combat on the personal scale.

 

Okay I guess that was a little long winded, but in my experience the best way to handle large scale combats is to use two maps. One for the bigger area using a larger scale and one using the standard scale for characters occupying the same hex of the larger map. Kudos to Onyxclaw for devising a simple way to manage two scales.

 

I have to admit though, that a standard scale champions battle filling an entire room would be pretty memorable.

[Onyxclaw]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

Kudos to Onyxclaw for devising a simple way to manage two scales.

 

Thnx Zod, it was the best I could come up with for the training rooms...especially since the ship is so big.

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

i think it comes down to genre some times. in a fantasy game where you lead armies, sometimes it is a war game, and should be mapped out, however in champions it's not always nessisary

[Onyxclaw]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

i think it comes down to genre some times. in a fantasy game where you lead armies' date=' sometimes it is a war game, and should be mapped out, however in champions it's not always nessisary[/quote']

 

that's also very true. I would agree that mapping a fight is not as necisary in some genres or in a lot of champion games. It is a prefarence/style issue.

[Kirby]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

But mapping tends to turn role-playing into wargaming and that's not what I'm interested in. It also tends to slow combat to a crawl as players count hexes and plot and calculate and minimax and generally (again) treat the battle like a wargame rather than a fast-paced combat in the tradition of comic book superheroes.

I agree here and would like to give an example. In my previous group, the wife of one of the GMs was a 'sum of her parts' player. Her characters were always their abilities, not their personalities (with the only exception of her disads, she would play those a bit, but that's it). In a campaign where I didn't use mapping, I would tell people approximately how far away their opponents were. For her, every time the opponent would be in range modifier vicinity, she would get upset because she didn't know exactly how many hexes away the opponent was (I don't recall her *ever* buying range skill levels). I might say the opponent is between 10-15 yards away. She'd want to know further, I'd ask for a roll (either PER or INT) to give her a better estimate, and if she'd fail she stop because she didn't know what to do, such as "Should I make a half-move, or should I fire with a possible penalty. If I half-move three hexes, I'm going to be too close." (She wouldn't do a 1" half-move because that was a waste of movement. )

 

Anyway, I know where you're coming from.

[zornwil]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

I often won't map out smaller combats or very simple ones.

 

As to the question on how to do something like the warehouse, I don't have any great advice except for going virtual, using Kloogeworks (sp) or similar or a projector, as mentioned elsewehre on the boards. I have made some huge maps just on paper, it's a pain...and you do tend to be incented to reuse it!

[John T]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

I don't map combats, and haven't for years. At most I'll sketch out a quick and dirty map to clarify a situation if the players are confused. But mapping tends to turn role-playing into wargaming and that's not what I'm interested in. It also tends to slow combat to a crawl as players count hexes and plot and calculate and minimax and generally (again) treat the battle like a wargame rather than a fast-paced combat in the tradition of comic book superheroes.

 

But I also believe in quick n' dirty combat resolution, so I don't pay a lot of attention to the sort of nitpicking details that make mapping necessary. YMMV, IMHO, etc.

Over the past several years, with the same group, this has been my approach. Honestly though, it's not the game or the setting that decides this for me, it's the Players; if the majority responds best to mapped combat, that's what I go with. My current group is very "internal" in this regard, and I'm very adept at keeping track of relative positions of a LOT of objects and characters in my head and describing it all in a way that my current group can easily "see". I do, however, map a lot of areas in a general way for my own reference.

 

John T

[input.jack]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

I generally encourage the mapping of combats, both as a Ref and as a Player. Mostly because, for whatever reason, I seem to -always- picture things "backwards" from how everyone else had things pictured in their head. If everyone thinks the Big Bad Villain is to the right of the door, I had him pictured on the left. If I think my character is sitting next to the Dark Lord of the Sooth, I have my character pictured to the left.....but everyone else (Ref included) thought I was on the right. Darn near every time.

 

That, and some of the Refs in my game group (I wont name names, but the initials of the worst perpetrator are IEPA) are notorious for having a...shall we say...loose grasp on distance. Im told someone is "far away, clear across the huge cavern", but they are upon me and in hand-to-hand on their next move. People appear out of nowhere ("Wait...I didnt NOTICE 10 heavily armed stormtroopers in full armor standing in the open, to the left of the gangway?"). Characters who are widely spread out in a non-mapped combat are suddenly all affected by an AOE spell with a 3 hex radius...

 

Maps solve alot of my problems with envisioning things in the same way as everyone else.

 

However, I do have a story to relate. (I wasnt in this game, but I know the Players who were and they all said the same thing happened).

 

One of the game groups was being run through a Fantasy campaign, wherein the characters were about to assault the forward encampment of the enemy army. Carl, the Ref, laid out the battlemat, with this comment:

 

"This...is a well-run, well-organized military encampment. It is laid out along sound, tactical lines, and is well-defended, and well thought out. Everythig is where it should be, considering the leader of the forces here is a military genius, and knows exactly what he is doing....

 

....But this is the map that we're using"

 

(Carl is NOT a tactical military genius. But Im more and more impressed with his Reffing)

[Markdoc]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

I map most combats, but often have two (or more) maps - a detailed one for "the combat area" and a simpler one sketched on grid paper, so I can keep track of things happening in the general area.

 

That way - to take the big docks area example - the area map will have various cool bits marked in (the cranes, the ships, the warehouses, etc) but I'll do smaller detail maps of just one crane, a ship, a section of warehouse, etc. That way someone can hide on a rooftop and shoot at someone on the crane, even though it's 100" away: I can keep track of the range modifier, and I know how long it'll take to cross that distance, but there's no need to lay it all out - I just mark people's locations on the area map.

 

For many conflicts - even quite complex ones - the area map is all I prepare in advance. I just sketch out the detail maps on a battlemat as I need it and as the players run from place to place.

 

It helps a lot because many of my fights are 3-D, involving walls, roofs, underground tunnels as well as the surface - all at once. They also often involve (literally) hundreds of participants (I'm mostly an FH GM). Trying to deal with that without maps - or trying to map it all on a flat surface - involves simply too much awfulness to contemplate.

 

cheers, Mark

[zornwil]

Re: to map combat or not to map combat.

 

Markdoc, I haven't really thought of quite that approach, nice, thank you!

 

I would add, I did an experiment once which I was fairly happy with. I took a slanted top-down view (qv at http://www.realschluss.org/x-champions/x-champions_issues/flatiron-main.jpg) and put that out on the table so the characters could see where things were over a 3-D area a bit hard to hex-map out. Basically (this makes more sense if you see the aforementioned pic) the top of the bulding was being used by the bad guys, while there defensive allies were spread out around the building, from the air to the street.

 

Would have been good to meld Markdoc's idea and have some of it hexed but the mobility was high and besides I was simply running low on time, but next time I will plan out doing something like this Markdoc's way.