Hexagonal Playing spaces.

[forbiddenreaper]

Would you recommend using playing maps when in firefights or trying to explore a room instead of just playing it through with the GM describing the area you are in? Also is there any software you can use to make these hexagonal playing areas?

[Craig Oxbrow]

I hate doing that as a GM, so no... I find it slows down the action at the best of times, lessens connection to characetrs as they are viewed as pieces on a board, and prevents heroic stunts as people work out distances rather than asking if they can dash across the corridor and dive through the closing blast door... Not my style. And using it outside of combat, like searching rooms, would drive me insane...

Still, if you want to run Doctor Who in this style, try the old FASA rules, it had movement rates and the like in its combat system. Which I never used when I ran it...

There is such software, however, HERE is an example and there are probably free ones around too.

[stahlman]

Well sometimes a mix of maps and figures with storytelling works quite well.
However the talkers,doers,movers,fighters method of extended conflict works very well for Dr Who and that is more suited to a non map solution.

[fmitchell]

I'm partial to "zones" from Spirit of the Century. The GM of a SotC game I was in drew a rough map of a location on scratch paper, and made marks as each PC or NPC (group) moved from one area to another. Too many marks can get confusing; tokens would be better.

Warhammer Fantasy Role-Playing 3rd edition uses something similar: a card to denote a location, and standups to represent the NPCs. Tokens between standups denote ranges between characters: short, medium, long, etc. The locations in questions were roads, forests, and other wide spaces; spaceships, Sontaran bases, and so forth probably need a good old fashioned map ... but no squares or hexes. At most I'd put in dotted lines to denote boundaries between zones or areas.