Hey Dungeon Masters, how you run combat? Do you use grid maps and miniatures or online tools to represent the battle map? Or, do you rely on description only?

If you go with the latter, you’re running “theater of the mind” combat! Let’s talk about it.

What’s “Theater of the Mind”?

“Theater of the mind” refers to the practice of running D&D combat without using miniatures or other tools to represent the scene.

I run combat this way because, well, it’s cheap and easy for how I run things. Right now, I run a group online through Discord, so pulling out a map and minis isn’t very practical. Most of the games I’ve played in have also used theater of the mind.

I like that theater of the mind doesn’t require a lot of set-up to pull off. It makes scenes more fluid, between rolling initiative and starting negotiations (and, perhaps, from negotiations breaking down to the re-drawing of weapons).

Running combat is hard! And, no matter how you run it, there will always be challenges and weird edge cases that come up during play.

Here are some pointers I keep in mind when running theater of the mind combat!

Help Your Spellcasters

I say spellcasters because, in my experience, this comes up the most often with spellcasting characters.

As allies and enemies move around, hide, fly up in the air, etc, your players with spells like fireball or shatter will want to know how far away everyone is from them (and each other). They want to know how many enemies (or allies) they might hit with their big area-of-effect spells. This also applies to characters with healing or support-oriented spells—am I close enough to cast haste on the fighter? What about healing word?

The basic rule here is to keep things consistent. You’ll probably have to remind players how far away a given combatant is, but try to get everything straight in your head first.

Track the Battlefield

How are you supposed to keep track of things when it’s all conceptual? There are two methods I use to help myself keep everything on track.

Narrative-style notes help me remember what I said two rounds ago about how tall this building was, how much movement it took for a character to do something, and so on. These are harder to keep coherent, because combat takes a lot of DM brainpower to keep going. So, I usually employ these alongside…

A sketch of the area in the notebook next to me. “Hey, doesn’t theater of the mind avoid maps and stuff?” Yes, but visualizing space is hard! When I mean a sketch of the area, I really mean “a blob with marks on it.” It’s usually messy and hard to read by anyone who isn’t me. But, it helps me remember that, say, the rogue moved up thirty feet and is hiding, the bard moved back, the monster moved up into the NPC’s space. Then, when the bard’s player asks how far away the rogue is, I can give a more informed answer.

This also helps me do the next thing, which is…

Recap What Happened

This is a good thing to do either at the end or beginning of the round. It really doesn’t have to be long or super-detailed, just remind everyone what the state of the battle is. Something like…

“Okay, so Rogue dashed forward and killed one of the kobolds, then took a few hits from the surrounding enemies, Cleric healed them, Fighter moved up into the fray, and then the bugbear just engaged with Fighter.”

That can help everyone keep track of what’s going on, especially when your group is discussing possible plans of action. You can even give this job to one of your players!

And, last but not least,

Don’t Be Afraid to Get Weird

It’s Dungeons & Dragons! The sky is the limit! Go on, make that weird-as-heck combat encounter. Disbelief has already been suspended. It’s all narrative, so you can go as crazy as you want with strange descriptions and conditions.

Fighting a cloud giant on a literal cloud? Go for it!

Illithids with gravity-altering powers? Sounds memorable!

Even in the basic game, magic and other class abilities have reality-warping powers, so you can go as fantastical as you want!

What do you think? Have any other tips and/or tricks for running theater of the mind combat? Any cool stories to share? Drop them in the comments!