Today I want to talk about the design decisions behind some of the game's positional considerations. Largely these choices came out of my own game experiences and personal preferences, so I'm going to do my best to explain those, in detail.
My experience with RPGs in general is that they are largely two-dimensional in nature (whether that be a Diablo game or a D&D game.) The main thing I noticed when playing D&D, was the tendency for the action (in combat) to crowd into whatever was the most spacious open area of the battlefield. I can recall in a session of 3.5 once, our DM had built some simple structures from popsicle sticks, to provide cover and elevation -- but still this tendency held true, and the terrain was mostly ignored.
Our opponents had one archer up on a rooftop, and so I (playing a Monk) made it my objective to scramble up there and fight him toe-to-toe. Once I had, the verticality completely lost its impact, and we found ourselves once again in regular old combat, albeit slightly separated from the rest of our respective parties.
While I liked 4th Edition's use of the grid, and movement abilities on powers, I felt like it relied too much on making an interesting map, in order for these sorts of powers to feel potent and meaningful. From the DM perspective, managing or homebrewing monsters and encounter groups on its own felt like enough work, without having to build creative arenas to make every fight interesting or challenging. Particularly since I've always been more compelled by the storytelling aspects of running the game, I came away feeling like the system was asking too much of its DMs.
I should also take a moment here to mention a change that I didn't particularly like, from 3.5 over to 4e: the Acrobatics skill. Essentially what this tried to do was combine skills like Balance, Tumble, and Escape Artist into one. The problem with it was that originally Tumble had been used to avoid opportunity attacks, while moving around the battlefield -- but instead, 4e hung that function onto "shifting." In and of itself, that's not necessarily a bad thing, however, it had the knock-on effect of making the Acrobatics skill ...not actually do Tumble -- making it a bit too niche, in practical application. I had enjoyed using Tumble (particularly on the aforementioned Monk character) and so with TNP I decided I wanted to sort of turn back the clock, and make that skill matter again. (I should add that while I like 5e's decision to use "movement speed" as something you can spend over the course of your turn, rather than "move actions," it simultaneously fails to have either a "shifting" mechanic or a Tumble skill -- which I find completely baffling. There are feats and class features that allow movement without provoking opportunity attacks, but the lack of a baseline maneuver with which to do so, is outright strange, in my opinion.)
Now, one thing that I think is important to look at with 4e is how range was handled. Specifically, ranged weapons and spells typically could hit targets within 10 squares; coincidentally, your average character's move speed was 6 squares, with the "Charge" action letting them move their speed and make a basic attack -- effectively letting them move 12 squares. So we can see that melee and ranged combatants were meant to have comparable targeting capability; 4th Edition's relatively shorter distances (in addition to features like Prime Shot) worked to keep the party fairly close together, in combat. This is something that 5e forgot about, instead opting to gate Charge behind a feat (for some reason) while giving even the most basic cantrips a range of 120ft (effectively 24 squares.)
If we look at 13th Age, they've completely done away with the granular measurements, in favour of relative positioning. Generally speaking, all combatants will be no more than 2 move actions away from each other, within this system. To me, this makes sense; any further away, and you shouldn't really be considered part of the encounter, or be taking turns within initiative. TNP streamlines this a little further, effectively assuming that all combatants are "Nearby" -- barring things like cover or high ground. I borrowed fairly heavily from 13th Age's execution on positioning, because I feel like it produces similar outcomes to a traditional grid system, just without all the minutiae. Some people who were following TNP's development wanted more tactical options and verticality, so things like "prone" and "high ground" would eventually find their way into the designs, however I feel like these things are likewise executed a bit more simplistically than in traditional D&D.
Where TNP starts to set itself apart, is by making the PCs the focus of the action; this is done by using the mechanic of the maelstrom. All combatants are defined by whether they are "open" or in a maelstrom. So rather than having to say "well I'm behind this guy, but in front of that guy" or "I'm one move away from X but two moves away from Y" the system instead assumes that everyone is in open space, until they become engaged in melee. Each melee group then becomes almost a unique feature of the map; combatants can enter or leave the maelstrom, but who is where at any given time is defined in terms of these melee groups. A maelstrom including any number of enemies, but only one PC, is therefore defined as belonging to that character -- the combat scene effectively centering around them.
What this accomplishes "at the table" is that it allows most encounters to be depicted using miniatures alone; a map with terrain features (but not necessarily with a grid on it) can be helpful and immersive, but it is not mechanically required. Similarly, an intention of this mechanical framework is to help facilitate play-by-post games; positioning can be handled entirely by text (or perhaps even using something as simple as a spreadsheet) without any need to attach images of a map, and having to constantly update them. I've often enjoyed both of these methods of play, but I felt the necessity of a grid (in some games) became a major detriment to "PBP" in particular.
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Apologies for the somewhat scatterbrained nature of this post; hopefully it at least gets the intent across. Check for the next post on November 20th.
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