As of late, having switched mostly these days to virtual tabletop gaming, I have come to notice the great difficulty in running on 5' square maps with 5' square tokens. It is a simple enough explanation in the rule books -- that the 5 foot square is the fighting space for a single party member. Still it bugs me. In the older D&D tomes, you can find reference of a "3 wide shoulder-to-shoulder in a 10 foot hallway" reference and even 3 1/2 foot per inch squares in some OSR allowing 3 to fight side-by-side in a ten foot hallway. On VTT this really doesn't need to translate to a new grid, but just smaller tokens with a bit more zoom. Change noted.
As I move through my own home now, investigating the use of space, especially as we look to pick all these items up and move them to a new home in a new layout with a new sense of space, I don't find many mythical 5 foot squares left. In this house, built in the 60s, there was space enough for things, but more along the lines of a 3 foot square or perhaps even a 2 1/2 foot square. We have filled much of the space, to the edges and to the seams, even with two daughters leaving. Like an ideal gas, we expand to fit the shape and size of our container.
The mythical 5 foot square now becomes a problem as we attempt to clear to the lower half of our home for painting and new carpet. A five foot square in the garage holds spare desks. A five foot square where we flipped over our dining room table holds a gelatinous cube-sized pile of boxes and miscellaneous items from the girls' bedrooms. Closets hold boxes. Walkways through the garage are overtaken by boxes. There are no more five foot squares left.
As I think ahead, to the new house, I am starting to size it up in 5' squares, and this time, to avoid this, I think I shall plan out some empty five foot squares, just like in a good dungeon. It is good to have space, to move, to breath, to escape the clutter of things. A good battle doesn't have all its foes lined up one-by-one to be killed, but instead engage across the party all at once. Similarly the flow of a home should allow movement outside a single walk-through path. Space should have an opportunity to tug and draw one, on foot and in the eye.
This same principle, I will apply to new maps, as I find them, and as I make them. Five foot squares for everyone! As the Darklands open up on Fridays, let the space open up and envelop them, just like that gelatinous cube, living in my dining room, made of the living junk, excavated from the bedrooms below.
As I move through my own home now, investigating the use of space, especially as we look to pick all these items up and move them to a new home in a new layout with a new sense of space, I don't find many mythical 5 foot squares left. In this house, built in the 60s, there was space enough for things, but more along the lines of a 3 foot square or perhaps even a 2 1/2 foot square. We have filled much of the space, to the edges and to the seams, even with two daughters leaving. Like an ideal gas, we expand to fit the shape and size of our container.
The mythical 5 foot square now becomes a problem as we attempt to clear to the lower half of our home for painting and new carpet. A five foot square in the garage holds spare desks. A five foot square where we flipped over our dining room table holds a gelatinous cube-sized pile of boxes and miscellaneous items from the girls' bedrooms. Closets hold boxes. Walkways through the garage are overtaken by boxes. There are no more five foot squares left.
As I think ahead, to the new house, I am starting to size it up in 5' squares, and this time, to avoid this, I think I shall plan out some empty five foot squares, just like in a good dungeon. It is good to have space, to move, to breath, to escape the clutter of things. A good battle doesn't have all its foes lined up one-by-one to be killed, but instead engage across the party all at once. Similarly the flow of a home should allow movement outside a single walk-through path. Space should have an opportunity to tug and draw one, on foot and in the eye.
This same principle, I will apply to new maps, as I find them, and as I make them. Five foot squares for everyone! As the Darklands open up on Fridays, let the space open up and envelop them, just like that gelatinous cube, living in my dining room, made of the living junk, excavated from the bedrooms below.
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