IKRPG Has Ruined Me for D&D

If you're a hardcore roleplayer who finds the combat system of an RPG to be tedious, stop reading now.


When I first started playing D&D a few years ago, I was enamored with how well a combat situation could play in to a story. From the tactics enemies took, to the terrain the fought in, to interactions with terrain pieces, everything let me tell a story while also trying to kill my friends. I know many people criticized 4th edition for those reasons, but I grew up on video games and THEN discovered D&D, so a good story + good combat was ingrained.

After seeing several months of the "Edition Wars," where fans of the various D&D editions would... well, wage writter war with one another, I decided to take a gander at some gameplay of the various editions out there to see how different they were.

Basically, my version of D&D enjoyed visual combat more heavily than other versions. There's more to it, but I never realized that D&D could be played without a grid and miniatures, and it seemed that the big complaint was that people didn't want to be pressured in to that play style.

For veterans of the game, I could absolutely see where they were coming from. 4e was my true intro into pen and paper roleplaying, so to me D&D was about cool combat encounters that were strongly supported by the rules, and then out-of-combat storytelling that didn't rely on rules as much as player interactions.

That's what appeals to me about the IKRPG. The combat is tight, creating unique fights that allow me to use terrain dynamically. The story aspects of the rules are light, but I think that allows the players and GM to create a story together, rather than having a situation in a story that characters need to "beat" to progress.

After playing my second game of IKRPG last night, I realized that just as 4e made it hard for me to play without miniatures, IKRPG has made it nearly impossible for me to be locked to a grid ever again. In 4e, combat is played out on a grid of 1" squares, like a giant game of chess with terrain. The problem with that is that everything eventually becomes very exact. A hallway is usually 4" wide, a table is usually 1"x2"... nothing can exist at an angle without causing logistical problems.

On the other hand, here's where my players had a shootout last night:


I'll explain the situation in my story writeup, but look at how simple and unrestricted terrain layout can be. Although much of the terrain is squared off for sake of realism, it didn't matter how things were placed. If you look at the top, you can see a hill and a circle of shubbery. Likewise, the green balls ("hay bales") were placed with reckless abandon.

I love setting up and using terrain for the IKRPG because my only concern is how fun it is for the players. Instead of a weird 8-bit blob, I can actually use circles for circular terrain. Or an oval... I mean really, the geometric possibilities are practically endless!

And that's why I may never go back to a grid-based system. I love my combat, and I love my combat to exist in a 3-dimensional world.

See you tomorrow!