[RPG] How to use battle maps in combination with large, open spaces such as a town square

battle-mapdnd-5emap-making

I recently came across this problem when I DM'd a ready-to-use oneshot – its main battle took place on the town square, and the map supplied with the rest of the campaign guide would have required me to use 4 flipchart-sheets (which are already at ~1m² each).
I ended up ignoring that map and just drew a custom map on one flipchart-sheet, but that town square was only around 20 squares across – and 100ft. / 30m is not that huge for a town square.

Anyway, since I'll be starting a real campaign next week (as the DM), I figured I might run across this problem again, eventually. Of course, I could just avoid planning battles in big, open spaces, but I don't want to limit myself or the story plot because of issues like this.

Just using an empty flipchart-sheet or no map at all is of course also always viable, if the space really is just wide open, but that might not always be the case. Also, I love drawing maps, so if there's a solution that allows me to use maps without having to use under-proportionally small town squares or similar, that would be great, so – thanks for any suggestions in advance!

Best Answer

D&D 5e does not need a battlemap ... but you knew that already, right?

However, to take it further, a bettlemap adds to D&D 5e for close range (melee) combat but adds next to nothing for long range combat. Unless and until the combat reaches a range where melee combat is a possibility, just do without the map until that happens.

Instead, keep track of how far the groups are from each other until the range closes. You can do this precisely if you like or, for normal movement creatures (20-40 feet) if you just keep track of how far apart they are in 30 foot increments and each time a group uses movement (or Dashes) to close the distance, reduce the range by 30 feet. In general, most groups will want to stay in support distance of each other so they will move at the speed of their slowest member. If some do want to dash ahead or stay behind, just break up the group into as many as you need.

If you like, you can get each side to set themselves up 6 squares apart in the relative positions they want and write the range between them, when it reaches 0 they are in melee range and use the map normally.

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