Using the grid

Both inside and outside of combat, players use a grid of at least three by three squares. Each square in the grid represents a location. While moving around in the game, players should move character identifiers of the characters they control, to indicate the current location of a character. During combat this helps to get a general feeling of where characters are in relation to each other and their surroundings. Outside of combat the grid helps players to keep track of where all the characters are, and thus who they can talk to.

Locations

Every square in the grid represents a location. One square could be "north of the forest" or "in building A" or "In town X". Outside of combat it does not even matter if the squares are in the same relative position to one another. You can easily have adjacent squares representing locations that can only be reached by moving through a different square. Outside combat the GM designates empty squares as new location available for characters to enter. The squares in a grid do not indicate any specific size, but rather a location. Different locations have different sizes.

Squares in the grid are identified just like on a chessboard, going from A1 to C3 (in case of a three by three grid). GMs can choose to use a larger grid if they find the number of characters in play can't accurately be represented on the grid. For a normal four player game the three by three grid should be large enough.

Borders

Characters are free to move anywhere within a location. Locations are separated by borders. So to go from one location to another, you have to cross the border between those two locations. Outside of combat, a location can have any number of borders. During combat, each location has no more then four borders; the squares up, down, left and right. Borders often represent barriers. A border could be a door leading to another room, a road leading to another town, a castle wall or a river. All barriers in the game must be borders between two locations.

There are three types of barriers. Barriers like doorways, that limit the number of people who can move through them at the same time. These are called movement limits. Secondly, there are barriers that are crossing challenges, such as a rope bridge, which require players to make a dice roll to see if they can pass it. And thirdly there are structural barriers, these are things like walls. Which you will have to either bust through or climb over. Details of barriers are given in the chapter on Environment.

Combat grid

During combat, all locations represented on the grid are in the same relative position as the squares are on the grid. This means that if two characters move in the same direction (for instance north), the character identifiers will also move in the same direction, regardless of which square they move to. So if moving left on the grid means a character moves to a location in the north, any character moving to north will move their character left. And any character moving south will move their character identifier to the right. This makes it much easier to retain an overview of the combat situation.