This topic came up on the 2 GMs, One Mic news thread and starting it here so we don't derail it.

Basically I have always found miniatures disruptive to immersion. I just get hung up on those little pieces at the table and my imagination simply goes on autopilot or something. This isn't something I believe everyone has a problem with, I lots of gamers who find miniatures help them get into the game. For me they shift my mind just enough that it becomes a barrier.

I shall repost my opening argument then:

QuoteI find it very odd - when I was younger, I did consider "minis" to be fit but for the foolish games of DnD, and that real RPers need not such things. Now, I consider them a great aid - and it's a bit weird for me, BB, no offence. Character sheet gives you no problem with immersion I presume, and that's after all just another piece on the table.

Quote from: Rincewind1;520055I find it very odd - when I was younger, I did consider "minis" to be fit but for the foolish games of DnD, and that real RPers need not such things. Now, I consider them a great aid - and it's a bit weird for me, BB, no offence. Character sheet gives you no problem with immersion I presume, and that's after all just another piece on the table.

No offence taken:)

I am not sure I have a well thought out response to this. It isn't an issue I thnk too much about, just something I have noticed pretty consistently. When I first started we used miniatures a lot, but when we stopped for a while I noticed I just got deeper into the game somehow. Over the years I have played a lot. Some campaigns used miniatures, some didn't and some were a mixture. But without fail when the miniatures go on the table I get really focused on the miniatures themselves and less focused on the imagined reality they are markers for.

I suppose character sheets are another piece at the table, but you reference them sporadically and they don't physically resemble anything going on inside the gameworld, so that is probably why they have never presented an issue for me. Miniatures indicate something pretty concrete: where your character is physically. The other part of it is there the act of shifting from non combat to combat becomes more strongly split by miniatures. It feels like one moment everything is going on in my head, but the moment combat starts we start managing things on the table with the minies.

Again, I don't doubt that others are fine using miniatures and not getting tripped up like me. This has just always how they end up impacting my experience of the game.

No worries Brendan - I think this is mostly a matter of taste anyway. This however struck me kinda interestingly, and pardon my play at armchair psychologist:

QuoteI am not sure I have a well thought out response to this. It isn't an issue I thnk too much about, just something I have noticed pretty consistently. When I first started we used miniatures a lot, but when we stopped for a while I noticed I just got deeper into the game somehow. Over the years I have played a lot. Some campaigns used miniatures, some didn't and some were a mixture. But without fail when the miniatures go on the table I get really focused on the miniatures themselves and less focused on the imagined reality they are markers for.

Perhaps this has to do with Pavlov conditioning, so to speak?

The first GM I saw use minis, was also one of the best I played. I also played a lot of NWN, with a lot of great GMs, which coded a bit in me that graphic aides help a lot, so to speak, but they aren't necessary and they do not choke the imagination.

On the other hand, you say "When I first started" - our first games quite often are not too well. Perhaps you simply had a chance to play in better games where there were no minis (because of better players/GMs), and you wired the idea that "No minis = good games" somewhere? Kinda like I played one terrible WoD larp, and played 2 - 3 bad WoD games, and wired myself "WoD = TERRIBLE".

Of course, this theory will fall like a house made out of cards, if you say that first games were just as awesome .


And I think that minis can indeed "choke" some of the games - CoC being one such an example to me.

Quote from: Rincewind1;520061No worries Brendan - I think this is mostly a matter of taste anyway. This however struck me kinda interestingly, and pardon my play at armchair psychologist:



Perhaps this has to do with Pavlov conditioning, so to speak?

The first GM I saw use minis, was also one of the best I played. I also played a lot of NWN, with a lot of great GMs, which coded a bit in me that graphic aides help a lot, so to speak, but they aren't necessary and they do not choke the imagination.

On the other hand, you say "When I first started" - our first games quite often are not too well. Perhaps you simply had a chance to play in better games where there were no minis (because of better players/GMs), and you wired the idea that "No minis = good games" somewhere? Kinda like I played one terrible WoD larp, and played 2 - 3 bad WoD games, and wired myself "WoD = TERRIBLE".

Of course, this theory will fall like a house made out of cards, if you say that first games were just as awesome .


And I think that minis can indeed "choke" some of the games - CoC being one such an example to me.

the games themselves were pretty good. So i dont think that was the issue. And many of the games I have been in since that used miniatures have been excellent as well. Just something about the miniatures i think.

I know exactly what you mean and experience  the same thing. In fact any kind of tactical game disrupts my immersion in the imagined space and makes me think in terms of the game on the table. I've found the best systems for preserving immersion simply dictate the final outcome and allow the players to role-play to it in whatever fashion they deem best.

When it comes to miniatures on the table, there are degrees. In the 4e game I'm in now, we use a slide projector and the character and monster tokens are pretty abstract--they're just a coloured circle with the initials of the character or monster on them. I actually find this less disruptive to imagining the events than more detailed figures. Something that often happens when using actual figurines is that the specific figurine for a given opponent isn't available. A random monster of the appropriate size must substitute for the actual monster being used. This always seems like an especially difficult hurdle to overcome.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;520062the games themselves were pretty good. So i dont think that was the issue. And many of the games I have been in since that used miniatures have been excellent as well. Just something about the miniatures i think.

I suspected so - so much for my RPing a psychologist . It may be something with the miniatures, as well as "immersion threshold" - at which point, due to amount of factors, our immersion will break to the point we no longer enjoy the game so much as we'd otherwise, if we're all about immersion.

For some that's minis, for some - that's narrative mechanics. For me...well, hard to say. I think too crunchy mechanics combined with foolish GMing.

No, they do not disturb my immersion. I can imagine what my character sees from his standpoint, and "be him" as he is represented on the diorama, IF the rules themselves allow for that space to exist in my mind.

What disturbs my immersion is gaming the system extensively or having tactical rules that actually do not represent the game world in meaningful ways, including effects and decision-making that only makes sense from the rules' standpoint. i.e. I want to think tactically about the game world, not the rules.

One aspect of being a referee is about effectively communicating the details. While there are some broad generalizations that are useful everybody works different in listening as well as describing.

For me, miniatures work great in conjunction with a verbal description. The miniatures, which includes props like tables, allow me to describe area in greater detail in less time it would be verbal only. It has the added advantage of being a persistent reference point.

However it not as simple as bringing a box or bag of miniatures to the game. It how I use miniatures that makes it work for me. In general, I have a small number of generalized pieces. A standard guard, table props, livestock miniatures, boxes, chests, etc. I am very selective about what goes into this and honed it over 30 years of refereeing. Outside of this I have somewhat large collection. The PC miniatures are mainly for the use of my players and the specialized monsters I try to pick out before the session begins. Due to running my games as a sandbox sometime I have to go and pick out a different selection because the players did Y not X.

In general I aim for setups that can be completed in the time it takes me to normally describe the scene verbally. In most cases there very little time added. Also I selectively use miniatures, my sessions are a mix of verbal only and miniature setups.

Once in a great while I will do an elaborate miniature setup and there is a good reason for this.

Again the advantage of miniature isn't to play a tactical boardgame but rather to clearly denote everybody's position and as aid to remember the description of the room.

This is not for everybody. Some may feel better to rely on miniatures to a greater degree than I do. Some find the verbal only effective. The fallacy is to assume that one methods works for all people and all situations.

And like tactical combat details, it is better from a design standpoint for a tabletop RPG to have miniatures as an option than make them part of the core rules. It easier to tack on miniatures than it is to take them away.

When you "use minis", are they well-painted minis that accurately reflect what your character looks like or are they a 20-year old hunk of lead that gets grabbed out of a shoebox?  I find for me that makes a difference.

Quote from: CRKrueger;520068When you "use minis", are they well-painted minis that accurately reflect what your character looks like or are they a 20-year old hunk of lead that gets grabbed out of a shoebox?

See, that doesn't make any difference in my mind because the imaginative component is there. I can abstract the placement of miniatures or caps on the table to imagine what's going on as my character. As long as I can do that, and describe what's happening and what I do as my character meaningfully without the rules themselves representing an obstacle to that immersion, I'm good as gold.

I sometimes use dice if no minis/pogs are available. For me, it just helps with referencing where the enemies are, rather then visualisation aid, so to speak.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;520054Basically I have always found miniatures disruptive to immersion. I just get hung up on those little pieces at the table and my imagination simply goes on autopilot or something.

As long as the minis are just used for a battle order display and aren't constantly being fiddled with, they don't bother me much. But actually using minis (or tokens or whatever) on any type of tactical display for combat or the like where they become the focus of what's going on and I loose immersion (and usually shortly thereafter, loose interest).

Quote from: Benoist;520066What disturbs my immersion is gaming the system extensively or having tactical rules that actually do not represent the game world in meaningful ways, including effects and decision-making that only makes sense from the rules' standpoint. i.e. I want to think tactically about the game world, not the rules.

And here I don't find this doesn't matter to me at all. Once i'm thinking in terms of bonuses or penalties to the roll, moving pieces around on a grid, and etc, it really makes no difference to me whether the rules are associative or dissociative. In both cases, the tactical aspect must be stepped around in order to get to the imagined events. I suppose this is why i'm so flummoxed by people who complain about the transition between 3e and 4e. To me, they both "felt" the same in terms of interacting with the rules, but the imagined events in 4e were much more dynamic and entertaining.

I think they work best when there are very many available to choose from so that a horse is not being used as a dragon or the same cleric used for the last twenty priests. One may as well use dice as figures in those cases.

More importantly I don't think they should be used fussily or with exact placement on battle maps or grids. The reality of action in the game is much more fluid so place them representatively on large sketch maps and move them around *randomly* each round to get across the chaotic movement of a fight.

I have found that players like looking at them and fidgeting with them during play the way one might handle an album cover while listening to it.