No, you do not NEED a grid. You WANT a grid, because that is what you are used to. Gaming survived from 1970 to 2000 (when dnd 3.0 came out) without having a strict grid.

You haven't played with my group - yeah, we need a grid Without a clear layout people will keep asking where people are over and over, say how that guy all of sudden doing "X" is cheap, etc.

Besides, I have been using them since the 80's - the old versions of D&D listed ranges and movement for everything, so we used them since forever. I like the strategic element, and so do my players.

I will probably go with the ranges being base to base, 12, 24, 48, and 96 - since my table is 71" by 59" across, this will cover the entire battlemap. Characters can move 6" per maneuver. These are similar number to what you see in Savage Worlds, so they should work fine.

Yeah, I find 12 a good number to work with I think, not only does the core rules say short range is "about a dozen meters" but it's easily divisible for different scales (2, 3, 4, and 6). I haven't had the need to use it enough to say whether it actually works or not with the system, but I've had my players question movement and position enough to warrant looking into and considering options. My players might not come out and say "cheap" but they have raised eyebrows at certain things to justify needing to know just where people are, the game seems to have 'issues' with regard to movement in relation to more than one thing (it kinda assumes the players are all moving as one group, which with mine is rarely the case).

I agree. If an encounter is ran involving the PC's, 50 stormtroopers, 10 rebels, and is supposed to result in the PC's making a fighting retreat cause they are outnumbered - everyone is going to need to know where everyone is. Characters out in the open are going to be swiss cheesed, so making use of cover to limit who can shoot at them, etc is going to be important.

And, let's say Darth Vader shows up. I can guaran-****-tee you every single one of my players is going to want to know exactly where the F he is and where there they are.

Yep, though it's the movement rather than the positions I find to cause the most issue. As I said, the game seems to think the PCs are all going to be moving together, once they split up things can get messy. One maneuver allows you to move from short to medium for instance, but in relation to who? I've had a couple of situations where that has led to 'interesting' movement and discussions.

In relation to their current position. You guys are way over thinking things. All I do is have a basic idea how many inches or cm or whatever a range band is. But those edges to the range bands are fuzzy.

In relation to their current position. You guys are way over thinking things. All I do is have a basic idea how many inches or cm or whatever a range band is. But those edges to the range bands are fuzzy.

To be clear, my players have no issue with the style of play (most of them have played a variety of systems over the years and in some cases decades, including White Wolf's Storyteller system, Ars Magica, Cyberpunk), and we quite often don't even use a map depending on the situation and how detailed we need it, other times we will use a gridless map. We just find that movement seems to be where we have the most issues with this system and was warning the OP as that is where he will probably find the most issue with what he plans to do. All systems have odd quirks to watch out for, this is what we find Edge to have.

You haven't played with my group - yeah, we need a grid Without a clear layout people will keep asking where people are over and over, say how that guy all of sudden doing "X" is cheap, etc.

We do this in my group. But, we don't have a grid. We have a map of some sorts and miniatures placed upon it. It's clear where people and objects are. It's the grid that doesn't work with this system. Map's are great and large ones meant for play (with tokens included!) are in each beginner set. There's just no counting out squares to see if that Stormtrooper is in range of your blaster. There are of course still ranges and limits to movement, they just are performed with range BANDS instead of X number of squares/hexes.

In general our campaign doesn't do maps. However, my player notebook has exactly three rough maps drawn in for particularly complex battles/scenarios.

This campaigm has been going on for a year now and that's all we've needed. And that was primarily because of particularly complex layouts or similar.

Players' starting positions are marked with movement noted for each turn and NPCs are marked in a similar manner (I use subscripts to show different minon groups or rivals). There's no really range on them, it's more used to denote relative positions, cover and escape routes (all three encounters had either players or NPCs attempting to escape in some way shape or form).

No, you do not NEED a grid. You WANT a grid, because that is what you are used to. Gaming survived from 1970 to 2000 (when dnd 3.0 came out) without having a strict grid.

You haven't played with my group - yeah, we need a grid Without a clear layout people will keep asking where people are over and over, say how that guy all of sudden doing "X" is cheap, etc.

No, you really don't. I've played with my group, and they started out like your group, so you aren't a special case. You can wean them off it, it's not that hard, in fact it's essential. In my case, it was just obvious pretty quickly that the setup time just wasn't worth it, and most of the time we were off the map within a couple turns. With a battle map you can't easily split the party, or have a chase that spans a city, a desert, and a forest all in one encounter.

Split the party. Did you read that right? Yes you did! That used to be a GM's greatest fear, and considerate players would change their actions to prevent it so as to save the GM trouble. Each split meant double the maps, double the grids, and the sometimes seemingly impossible task of coordinating everyone's actions. But this game facilitates splitting the party. The first few times the possibility came up my players declined (they are pretty considerate ) and I had to encourage them to try it out. Now we don't really think about it.

For maps, the most I will do is draw a quick sketch of the current situation for the affected scene. I have a dry erase board for quick placements, and that's about it.

Remember, this is Star Wars, not the HitPointGrind that is D&D. The scene is supposed to move, not turn into a static slugfest. This is partly encouraged by the fact that PCs are relatively easy to Incapacitate, even if they are hard to actually kill. Reliance on maps will only bog you down and make their incapacitation happen more quickly.

Reliance on maps will only bog you down and make their incapacitation happen more quickly.

I partially disagree. I'd say Reliance on maps increase the risk of bogging down and ... The bogging down is not 100% certain thing to happen when maps are used (ok, this may be semantics). This also, depends much on what kind of gamers players are. Otherwise I agree with you whafrog.

Well, not 100% it depends how you use them. Ultimately I think it's a matter of resolution: I sound "anti-map", but I actually love maps, in general they are great, and I draw them and use them all the time (along with lots of other visual aids). But when I make them their resolution is so high that if I had to put it on a grid with miniatures it would be the size of my house. This is why battle maps with a standard 1" grid are terrible: they don't have a high enough resolution to handle an iconic Star Wars encounter. Battle maps constrain the action. If somebody wants to go outside the "play area" either the GM has to draw a new map or find a railroady way for it to be impossible. This might be fine in game systems where you have your 6 squares of movement, you can almost get away with a 24"x36" map (even then it feels pretty tight). But on the whole I think it's a detriment in this game and genre.

The closest I've come to an "enclosed" space was an asteroid containing a small smuggling operation, but even that had a hangar the size of a football field* and several levels. Way too much to map at high res, especially if the players never go back. So for all intents and purposes the encounter space was big enough to handle whatever the players wanted to do. Those "Maps of Mastery" type battle maps are works of art, but just aren't that useful in this system (other than as eye-candy).

So I think it's worth it to learn how to not need maps and grids, it makes this game a far better experience.

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* even a ship as small as the Millennium Falcon takes a maneuver to get from one end to the other.

Well, not 100% it depends how you use them. Ultimately I think it's a matter of resolution: I sound "anti-map", but I actually love maps, in general they are great, and I draw them and use them all the time (along with lots of other visual aids). But when I make them their resolution is so high that if I had to put it on a grid with miniatures it would be the size of my house.

Sounds so familiar.

In our SLA industries campaign I almost mapped a whole sector of Mort city (100km squared block of lower/lowest levels of coruscant type of city). After sanity check I ended up mapping only key encounters and few red herrings. We played online in roll20, so table space was not a problem. But yeah, I love maps. In that game I draw simple line drawing maps with vector graphic software, in EotE I have gone full Photoshop, and I'm pursuing beginner box level art. Still falling very short, but slowly improving.

This is why battle maps with a standard 1" grid are terrible: they don't have a high enough resolution to handle an iconic Star Wars encounter. Battle maps constrain the action. If somebody wants to go outside the "play area" either the GM has to draw a new map or find a railroady way for it to be impossible. This might be fine in game systems where you have your 6 squares of movement, you can almost get away with a 24"x36" map (even then it feels pretty tight). But on the whole I think it's a detriment in this game and genre.

What's the difference between a beginner box map and battle map? I'm asking because I'm actually not sure what battle map is (if it's something else than map with a grid).

Personally I love maps in rpgs, but hate maps with grid. Usually I have maps of dirrerent scale to use. General map, and prepared encounter maps. It's quite a job to make them, but I'm drawing them constantly, so I'm building a library, from which to get them as needed. Some day I have to print all my maps to poster sized prints.

Battlemat is only good for drawing a rough map to which PC and NPC tokens/minis can be placed. I'd actually like to have a battlemat without a grid, to which I could draw those rough maps with non permanent marker (i.e. white plastic tablecloth, stupid me).

By the way, if PC(s) goes outside the map I just change to theatre of mind, and maybe use post-it notes as maps. I.e. write a location name to post-it and place token on it. And keep post-its to same order as locations. That way everyone always knows where they are.

Way too much to map at high res, especially if the players never go back. So for all intents and purposes the encounter space was big enough to handle whatever the players wanted to do. Those "Maps of Mastery" type battle maps are works of art, but just aren't that useful in this system (other than as eye-candy).

Every map can be reused later. I'm beginning to think I have exceptional player group, because with them I could easily use any size map succefully. Maybe it's because we have played together more than 20 years.

So I think it's worth it to learn how to not need maps and grids, it makes this game a far better experience.

It's good to know how to not need maps and especially grid. Friend has a saying: "It's not ok to need, but it's ok to want."