For the most part I looove the abstract movement concept where everyone's a distance from everyone else. The only downside is that when certain characters/npcs are specific distances from each other and aren't the 'focal center' of the encounter.

For example, you want to track how far the elf in the tree is from the overturned wagon in the road AND how far he is from the approaching beastmen, coming up the road opposite the wagon. That's fine you have markers indicating the distance to the wagon for the elf and wagon to beastmen. Count them up and it's how far the beastmen are from the elf. Simple.

What about when you have multiple characters within close range of one another, but each grouping is spaced out in such a way that group A is perhaps close to group B, but neither is the same distance to C (oddball, but it could happen).

I happen to have a bunch of these from a custom project I worked on a while ago and I think they'll be finding new uses during our gaming sessions.

www.litkoaero.com/page/LAI/PROD/TS/TS043-RED

They come in an assortment of colors and can have custom text printed on them (say you want to avoid the multi-counter fandango, print SHORT, MEDIUM, LONG on them and use one for each distance instead of multiple counters).

If I used range, I would totally use these. Thanks for the post. I will pass it along to my local game store for the group that plays there and see if they are interested.

Those are neat! I may pick some up because my players often have a hard time keeping up with how movement works. I'm not sure if we'd use them or not, but I am the doodad queen, so having a box of 'em around can't hurt, can it?

I tried running the shilling short without them last night. We got to the end of the first encounter with the coach as the 'central point' and one Ungor broke from the party and headed opposite them and the coach. Of course, the way he was running put him medium range from the COACH, but the party was on the other side of the coach (it wouldn't run into the same band they were in, obviously) so I needed to track his distance from the coach and the character close to it, and the party. The arrows were exactly what we needed to designate how far he was from the PARTY as well as from the central point (the coach).

I think that's the tighter way I'll wind up running the abstractions. It seems like the rules are written from the perspective that there's a focal point for every encounter and most of the action takes place to one side or the other of the focal point, but not where groups can be a distance from the focal point and a different distance from each other.

For example, when we started the encounter with the coach the coach was the focal point, two ungors were engaged with it (kicking on the doors), a third was engaged with it (rifling through the luggage), the Gor was engaged with the Roadwarden at close range to the coach. The party came in at long range from the coach, but on the other side of it, putting them at extreme range from the Gor and Roadwarden. It worked out pretty nicely, until the Ungor tried to cut loose.

Love the abstractions, need to get a handle as a GM on how to work them in oddball situations.