"Grid-Based Games are Faster" Topic

Don't care. Games are to be played. Not raced through.

Not especially. Some parts of the mechanic can be faster, but the real chokepoints are in the player decision process, not the physical mechanics. In our measuring games, a lot of the time, we don't have to measure every move because we know where spots are within move range based on prior actions; with grid games you kind of feel obligated to count out each figure's movement.

No measuring so at least the movement portion is faster compared to a game with the same mechanics but no grid.

I find that they are not always. They could be, because you might be cutting out the measuring part, but people make that argument about pre-measuring too and I don't find that is helpful either.

Sometimes when you are just counting grids, hexes or whatever you get those players that count the distance to move then the distance to fire and to each target so it actually makes it longer with each movement carefully thought out so that it takes into account the maximum benefit to the shooting to the intended target with the minimum penalty to being shot at by potential enemies.

I once GM'd a game where this happened and when the one player started doing it the other player responded in kind. It took almost 20 minutes for one of the players to move one tank.

I played a fair bit of PBI at one point and I can honestly say the grid didn't speed up the game at all. But it WAS an excellent system. It's just nobody else in my group joined in and I got tired of being the only guy with forces and the wherewithal to put them on the table so I sold everything off.

I do think it speeds up a little bit, though it's not a huge amount.

I voted "no opinion" because I haven't played a grid based game so I can't compare the two. That should have been a voting option.

I voted yes because given an otherwise comparable level of detail/complexity then the need not to measure distances and angles is generally faster.

However just being grid based isn't necessarily a guarantee to faster play.

Yep. Especially if the game doesn't involve having to look up or deal with things like melee, firing, morale, etc.

Assuming the rest of the rules you are comparing are exactly the same then yes, grid based movement would be faster than measuring and moving.

I've played a couple of grid-based games by Peter Pig. I would say that they do run faster because of the lack of measuring and the inability to sit just a 1/4" off.