Saturday, January 7, 2012

Tossing out the Grid

Listening to The Walking Eye Podcast actual play recordings of Dungeon World lately. I love AP recordings of old-style D&D games. Dave's game gives me a very vivid impression of the landscape of the Grundloch dungeon that comes in the Dungeon World Red Book which is nevertheless really different from how I imagine the same space. I think part of this is a benefit of tossing out the grid and using more freeform dungeon maps (disclaimer: I drew the map for the adventure, hence I'm inclined to interpret it as pure awesome). Without the grid, you're free to imagine the dungeon space more thoroughly. Does anybody have similar experiences that back up or contradict that observation?

So toss out the grid already?

3 Comments:

Blogger Munin said...

Yes!Get rid of the grid!!!

January 8, 2012 at 2:54 PM

 
Blogger John Harper said...

Using a grid-dungeon as an organizing tool, a flowchart, makes perfect sense to me. Kind of like the London Underground map. The tube lines don't really look like that, but it's a clear way to communicate where they go.

When it's time to communicate the feel and style of the place to the players -- to immerse them, I guess -- a gridless, more richly descriptive style (as a Bloodstone Idol style map drawing and/or evocative words) is good.

January 9, 2012 at 1:28 PM

 
Blogger Unknown said...

yeah, that's a good point. When I think of the "grid", I think of the graph paper. Somehow measuring weapon ranges and movement rates through the dungeon seemed so important back in the day.

"London Tube Map" raises some interesting possibilities for mapping out games.

January 9, 2012 at 2:06 PM

 

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