so I've got two more D&D sessions before my players will be ending this current campaign and starting a new one with D&D Next (playtest). 4e was my first edition of D&D which as you know is very visual with grids, maps, terrain, and minis. While I love the 3D elements and whatnot, I'm thinking about trying to move to a more old school D&D with the "theater of the mind" kind of deal.

My players are used to a bunch of 3D stuff, or at least something cool to look at. I'm all about the props and whatnot, so I don't think I would just go completely old school and not have any visual whatsoever, but I'm just curious as to what others have done? This question could apply to D&D players of older versions of course, so...what do you guys do about the visual? Since my first edition was 4e...I have questions about how you deal with:

1. where monsters are in relation to players? do you just say, the monster is 5 feet away? what about positioning? does that become a problem without a grid and/or measuring sticks (grid less)?

2. do you still put maps down on the table for representation?

Personally I am more the 3D kind of guy. I love my minis and terrain. But! Currently I am running a Game of Thrones without any thing but pencil and paper. I keep mentioning the stuff I build and paint, referring them to my Facebook page where I have photos of some of the stuff I have built. No one seems to mind the [i]Theater of the mind[i] stuff. That might be because I am a visual kind of guy, I paint a picture with the words I choose. I try to give a sense of what they would see, or smell, or hear. Giving them those tactical clues seems to be enough for most players I have found.

Still, I long for the days of my towers and castles. Most of the main PC's and NPC's have corresponding minis on shelves at home. I can't help it.

To help make the shift, I would suggest starting off with your standard map heavy setup for the first encounter or two then once people are reasonably comfortable with the rules running a smaller encounter mapless.

Yes, I describe something like this: you are walking down the cluttered alleyway between the inn and a shop, you see at least three goblins about 40 feet away, breaking into a Pile of crates of some kind. One of them has his feet sticking into the air and head in the middle crate while the other two are holding his feet.
The alley is about 10 feet wide and very muddy, and extends at least another 70 feet past the goblins befor opening into another small road of some sort.
What do you do?

Then when the players ask for a map, I would say no we don't Need one, lets try this fight without it.

Just be sure To say yes, when they ask if logical stuff that you might not have specificaly said is there. (Eg. Is there a barrel close to us I can hide behind)

Also, unless you are using AoO (which I don't remember being in next) just keep a vague mental map and you will be fine. Know who's in front and how far between groups. The rest is really just just distance to see if a spell can reach and making logical assumptions about cover. (If hiding behind something, they get cover from anything ahead of them, and no cover from anything behind them.)

Yeah, I realized recently that we've all gotten quite spoiled as gamers over the last 10 years or so. It used to be back in the day that you didn't get anything laid out for you. You all had to imagine the situation. And we could all sit around a 5' diameter table and do it. Nowadays, my gaming table is about 10' x 4' and there's a battle mat and minis and sometimes a cardstock dungeon taking up most of that space.

Personally, I don't want to go back to the way it was before, but we definitely have gotten used to seeing everything laid out in front of us.