User blog:Dragokar62/Battle Maps vs Theater of the Mind

Battle Maps vs Theater of the Mind

This is one of those areas where everyone has their own opinion on which they prefer, and that’s fine, we all have those opinions. When I first started playing way back when, we didn’t have miniatures and battle maps, so it was all theater of the mind and that was good with me. When I first began as a Dungeon Master, I felt the same way, preferring to use theater of the mind to handle combat and conflicts. It wasn’t until later that I came to see the benefits of battle maps and miniatures, and now I use them almost exclusively. That’s not to say that this is my favorite way of doing it, but it has made combat much smoother with less conflicts.

First, let me explain the two. Theater of the mind is where the DM gives the players a good description of the battlefield and positioning of the enemy, along with the positioning of the characters so they can formulate battle strategy. During combat, the DM needs to take into account the movements of all combatants so that this can continue. It can be taxing, but with a good imagination and good direction from the players, the DM can keep up with this fairly easily. Battle maps just give everyone a visual as to where things are, where the enemy is moving to and just what monsters are doing battle with what characters. Now let’s discuss each in more detail.

Theater of the mind combat can be difficult in closed quarter settings, such as dungeons and underground passageways. Limited spaces create headaches for a DM when a player wants to use a particular spell that would cause mass damage to everything, including party members. For example, you have a battle taking place in a 10’ wide and 8’ high corridor. The wizard wants to cast Fireball. Fireball is an area of effect spell and if one of the party members is in the blast zone, they take damage, too, so this is where distance comes into play and doing it with just your imagination can lead to misunderstandings and a terse discussion on where everyone is and how they can avoid being hit by it. I’m not saying that it won’t work, I’m saying that everyone at the table needs to be confident in their ability to use theater of the mind or it can result in confusion and disappointment for everyone.

Being descriptive is a must when using the theater of the mind method. Using good positioning of the enemy, describing the layout of the battlefield and adding any information that could be a good thing for players or a bad thing for players, such as boulders, stalactites and stalagmites or water features. This helps everyone get a good mental picture of the battlefield and they can sometimes use those terrain features in their combat strategy. For the players, they need to be very descriptive when it comes to where they move, how they move and what they are going to do so that the DM can get a good mental picture of that. If they just say “I’m moving up to Monster A and swinging”, that doesn’t really tell anyone much at all and this forces everyone to try to figure out where that player is in reference to where they are.

I used to run nothing but theater of the mind campaigns. I didn’t own a battle map and miniatures were too expensive to buy, so I had little choice. With the advancement of the digital age, I found that I could use software to print out maps of cities, dungeons, even battle scenes I was planning to use. As soon as I did this, not having a battle map was a hindrance to me. I liked having that visual to fall back on so that I could avoid those disagreements about positioning and room to maneuver. So I bought a battle map and I highly doubt I will ever go back to theater of the mind. That’s not to say that it can’t be done, but I have my preference now.

You don’t have to have a fleet of miniatures to use a battle map, either. You can use coins, dice, monster tokens which can be downloaded for free and printed out. A battle map isn’t overly expensive, either. I bought mine for around $20 and got markers that would wash off with water and a paper towel and I like it. I have been able to collect a few miniatures to use, but my collection is not as vast as I wish it was, but again, they aren’t cheap.

So that is the debate in a nutshell. Whether you like theater of the mind or battle maps, try to make it an enjoyable experience on all of those at your table. ​​​​​​​