Swords & Wizardry Light - Forum

Sunday, May 13, 2012

An OSR Styled Abstract Combat Map For Your Review

Ian Dimitri was kind enough to take me up on my challenge in regards to an OSR styled Abstract Combat Map.  I really do like the resulting "map" Ian came up with, and I may start experimenting with this in my Google+ Hangout (using Tabletop Forge for the VTT) ACKS Campaign.

Shane Magnus also pointed me to one that he had created that was inspired by  3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars, but I think Ian is closer to what I need in an OSR style game.  Thanks for the peek Shane, I appreciate it.  I think yours works better with other system, and I may experiment with it when I run an Savage Worlds or Hollow Earth Expedition game.
Ian explains his suggested use as follows:
In this version you could represent folks sneaking into a position by putting them all the way to the left and those in position to deliver a backstab by putting them in the "Behind" row and to the left of the enemy's position in their area. The enemy area is also arranged from closest to farthest. I would use simple tokens placed next to the characters or enemies to represent things such as "high ground", "in cover", "prone" etc. Very simple. Very usable.
So, thoughts?  Feedback?  Suggestions?  Other Abstract Combat Maps to add to the equation?

6 comments:

  1. Eerily similar to Ancient Odysseys' "conflict action map".

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  2. It should look like the AO CAM, as I had two blog posts about it this past weekend, including a pic of the CAM itself.

    I asked if anyone could use the AO CAM as inspiration for an OSR styled CAM and this was a result.

    Believe me, nothing eerie about it ;)

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  3. That's a boo-boo on my part.. didn't notice those two previous blog posts (fast browsing in the office workplace, heheh).

    A thought though: when I heard about abstract combat map, one of the first thing jumped into my mind was Chris Perrin's MECHA RPG bullseye battle map. Could translate to fantasy gaming with a little work.

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  4. I like it. And it's halfway to me finally making sense of classic Traveller's "range band" system.

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  5. I gave it an initial try here:

    http://crowbarandbrick.blogspot.com/2012/09/but-tonight-we-dance.html

    I'm going to revisit it at a 'battle map' sized page sometime soon so I've got room to delineate my areas more.

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  6. This sort of thing highly reminds me of the battlemat in use for 3:16.

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