>>97900833
Concrete ranges:
>Better for games on an actual battle map where the granularity of PC positioning actually matters.
>Ranged weapon effectiveness needs to be balanced around it somewhat.
>Has an annoying dilemma where often it can't be both realistic and balanced at the same time.

Nebulous ranges
>Better for games played in the theater of the mind.
>Favors melee since movement in these systems tends to fall into mother may I or "if there's nothing in the way" for closing to melee.
>Requires the GM to do extra work describing the arena and positioning, or else there's a high risk of misunderstandings about where people are.

Just my two cents. I somewhat prefer concrete ranges but it's not a deal breaker. I like Genesys in most regards but when playing the Star Wars RPG with it I routinely got annoyed by its semi-abstract ranges, which don't mesh well with how combat typically goes in the setting.

>>97900833
Really doesn't matter. Should work well with the rest of the rules. Looking at some minor aspect of a rules system in isolation seems pointless. Handwave ranges to "in range" and "not." Count squares on a grid. Have different "zones" characters move between. Handle it all in mind's eye. Whatever. If it's cohesive with the rest of the rules, and the rest of the rules are good, it's good. If it's not or they're not, then boo.

>>97900833
Range bands tend to work fine, especially since such range bands usually come with a ballpark estimate for how far away a particular range band is.
Concrete distances work better if you want some really meticulous grid-based combat, but unless a system actively cares about the difference between someone being 10 feet versus 15 feet away, then just saying someone is at "short range" is plenty.

At higher power levels like you would get from superhero games or OVA, it almost becomes necessary, since the scale of abilities tends to be high enough that whether your character can sprint 200 feet in a round or 205 feet stops being meaningful and instead just becomes annoying to track when you can just say it's "medium range" and call it a day.

>>97900833
I like concrete ranges personally. I feel like it lends to stuff like hazardous terrain or other location-specific effects better compared to the more 'loose' nature of nebulous ranges.

I do occasionally use nebulous ranges, but that's usually for combats with low stakes or without much room to maneuver in the first place.

Concrete ranges can be easily converted into vague bands, but not vice versa, so I prefer the former.

>>97900861
Quality post. I think that TotM vs. Battlemap is an important distinction. One of the things I dislike about 5e is that is wants to pretend like it's good for TotM but in practice it's awful.

Shadow of the Demon Lord is made so you can do either.
I definitely prefer having concrete numbers though, it makes things easier to visualize

>>97900861
This.
concrete with battle maps, nebulous for theater of the mind.

Nebulous, because it makes no fucking sense that a weapon can hit at its maximum range of 60ft just fine but you start taking penalties if the enemy takes one more step back away from you. Not to mention it's annoying as hell to remember which projectile weapons do 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 etc ranges. NOT TO MENTION it's pretty much all useless anyway because most GMs end up shoving all your characters into rooms that never get bigger than like 50-60ft across anyway.

I only use concrete measurements when I'm using a grid map and need to figure out if the guy with the Reach weapon should get an extra square of length, but otherwise it's all just nebulous range bands. You're either hitting something at range that's on the other side of the room, or you can hit something multiple rooms in length.

>>97901483
This, everything works in theater of the mind, do not over complicate this shit OP.

Nechronica did it best no I'm not a wren shut up

File: missile_fire_ranges.png (18.9 KB)

18.9 KB PNG

in B/X, characters are basically always at short (+1 bonus) range with the typical missile weapons. it's not something you often have to think about, really. but it's a bit strange compared to other D&D editions and games.

i can't remember if it was for D&D 4E or D&D 5E, but a blogger came up with a system of 'zones' rather than caring about squares or distances in feet. the idea was you'd write on 3x5 index cards: 'grand hall', 'stone dais', 'side alcoves', etc. then arrange them on the table instead of drawing a map. a character's movement lets him travel to an adjacent zone. he can melee in the same zone, weapon and spell ranges are converted to zone distances, etc.

it's a nice idea for theatre-of-the-mind, set-piece D&D, while keeping some tactics with regard to positioning. the problem was my players got annoyed because then stuff like movement speed or weapon range trade-offs ceased to matter.

also, it created weird contradictions. i can't remember off the top of my head, but edge cases where if Alice had to move through the grand hall to get to the side alcoves to shoot at Zardoz on the stone dais, then Bob should have triggered Zardoz's spell in the grand hall when he went in for the melee, otherwise how could...blablabla.

still: mite b cool if you're good with abstraction while wanting weapon ranges. mite b awful if you get annoyed whenever the action in a novel has confusing/inconsistent geography.

https://slyflourish.com/fate_style_zones_in_5e.html
(pretty sure this was the author and system, but this is some newer version.)

>>97900833
> Better
Depends on how crunchy the system is, really. But I don't dislike your picture related, nor Warhammer Fantasy's... quick and easy.

The genre also matters. Turns out a lot of Sci-Fi I played had ranges pulled out of their behinds. When I started going into details on current day ballistics, I was shocked to realize the actual effective range between a decent pistol and a rifle don't matter that much in most combat encounters. Line of sight does. Armor penetration does.

>>97900861
fpbp that's /thread.

>>97900833
I like my games to have somewhat of a tactical approach, and I feel having consistent measures of distance helps create a layer of tactical thinking.
Although, I do favor something somewhat abstracted, where every space is 10×10, but what's in the space isn't necessarily tracked to the exact positioning, and melee attacks are treated more as hit-and-run strikes, but one space is still one space, there is no "well your whirlwind greataxe strike doesn't hit any of the goblins surrounding you because you aren't close enough but then they're all close enough to stab your barbarian in the throat with daggers fuck you he's dead now" shit.

>>97900833
>How do you feel about ranges in ttprg systems?

Ranges pretty much necessitate using miniatures and I will never bother with that shit, so I'm against them by default.
Only exception is VERY abstracted ranges ("are you in hand's reach or not").