Quote from: LordVreeg;790784oh, no, please at least understand, I rarely use them.  Been years since I really took the trouble, since I seem to do ok with combat anyways, when we have them.  I was just remarking that back in the day, they were completely ubiquitous.   Not about a game, more about a time.

I think it depends on what the local population of gamers is interested in. In my  hometown in rural northwest PA. The town was just big enough support a store with a small selection of miniatures, and just close enough to a major city like Pittsburgh that if you really wanted to get a better selection you could. But the barriers were just enough the local gamers were evenly split between those who used miniatures, like me, and those who didn't. And there were more than a few who took pride in NOT using miniatures.

Quote from: LordVreeg;790841Good Lord, yes.
No, the point wasn't at any point to say that you needed them to play the game or that everyone did, I think I made that clear.  Not every group I played in or ran did, but they came out often. But they were an optional part of the game and very, very prevalent in the zeitgeist of the game, and that is the Historical Point I am making.

Don't forget the wall of Ral Partha, Grenadier, Citadel etc. minis that dwarfed the measly selection of books.

Quote from: LordVreeg;790799"The wargames from which Dungeons & Dragons evolved used miniature figures to represent combatants. D&D initially continued the use of miniatures in a fashion similar to its direct precursors. The original D&D set of 1974 required the use of the Chainmail miniatures game for combat resolution.[58] By the publication of the 1977 game editions, combat was mostly resolved verbally. Thus miniatures were no longer required for game play, although some players continued to use them as a visual reference.[59]

Quote from: Bren;790802The bolded bit is just wrong.
I played and DMed D&D starting in 1974 with the original brown booklets. You didn't need miniatures. None of our group of 20-30 people used miniatures. That being said, most of those people knew what miniatures were - they were something used predominantly for Napoleonics and Civil War battles. So the ubiquity of miniatures is right on target.

Actually Vreeg, Bren right.

Aside from the subtitle on the front cover we have this.

QuoteRECOMMENDED EQUIPMENT:
Dungeons and Dragons (you have it!)

Outdoor Survival (available from your hobby dealer or directly from Avalon Hill Company, 4517 Harford Road, Baltimore MD 21214)

Dice — the following different kinds of dice are available from TSR
1 pair 4-sided dice
1 pair 20-sided dice
1 pair 8-sided dice
1 pair 12-sided dice
4 to 20 pairs 6-sided dice

Chainmail miniature rules, latest edition (available from your hobby dealer or directly from TSR Hobbies, POB 756, Lake Geneva, Wi. 53147)

1 3-Ring Notebook (referee and each player)

Graph Paper (6 lines per inch is best)

Sheet Protectors (heaviest possible)

3-Ring Lined Paper

Drafting Equipment and Colored Pencils

Scratch Paper and Pencils

Imagination

1 Patient Referee

Players

Miniature themselves are not a recommend piece of equipment.

And in the forward we have this

QuoteIn fact you will not even need miniature figures, although their occasional employment is recommended for real spectacle when battles are fought.

The use of miniatures for D&D was downplayed. And probably for very practical reasons. Gygax was looking to sell a 1,000 copies of this game. A game focused on a genre, medieval fantasy, that was not the most popular type of miniature games being playing. Building miniature armies is expensive. By deliberately designing the game so that miniature were not required or needed he vastly expanded his potential customer base.

I don't have any primary sources or anecdotes support the above but from what I read about Gygax in Playing at the World and other sources this is seems to be the type of thing he would take into account.  

We definitely know that Arneson used a lot of miniatures in his Blackmoor campaign while Gygax did not in his Greyahwk campaign. Since Dungeons & Dragons was written from the rules used in Greyhawk it reflected that.

Now D&D wasn't designed to omit miniatures either. It could be played either way and Gygax acknowledges this.

QuoteMiniature figures can be added if the players have them available and so desire, but miniatures are not required, only aesthetically pleasing; similarly, unit counters can be employed — with or without figures — although by themselves the bits of cardboard lack the eye-appeal of the varied and brightly painted miniature figures.

I'm baffled as to what Wick may intend by "game balance," but it seems divorced from conventional usage. Such obscurantism puts one in mind of a certain Mr. Edwards.

World data such as a weapons list is not inherently concerned with game balance. The raw material typically originates in sources that have no interest in game design at all.

Game design adds two kinds of information:
- game-mechanical, translating behavior of the prototype to behavior of the game model
- game-balancing, keeping the contest (between player and what- or whomever) interesting

It makes no fundamental difference whether the prototype is real or fictional.

Faithful modeling does not necessarily produce a balanced game. France 1940 with historical deployment and doctrine is notably unbalanced. Barring certain stipulations (kryptonite, red sun, magic) so is Mike Tyson vs. Superman.

There are two ways to make a balanced game from such a prototype:
- Allow a player to win or lose the game (e.g., on points) even though victory or defeat in the situation may be foregone.
- Make an unfaithful model; perhaps in our game Tyson can KO Superman.

When players construct the scenario itself, they can be allowed so many points with which to purchase elements. We can balance the cost of a 105mm howitzer against the cost of a bunker, and so on. Less rigorously, we can have a probabilistic balance. That may produce some very unbalanced rare instances, yet most of the time come within acceptable bounds.

It is in this last sense, applied to player-character generation, that game balance is typically involved in RPG rules-set design. And so far from being opposed to "spotlight" balance, that is commonly just the very kind of balance being pursued.

Quote from: estar;790856Actually Vreeg, Bren right.

Aside from the subtitle on the front cover we have this.



Miniature themselves are not a recommend piece of equipment.

And in the forward we have this



The use of miniatures for D&D was downplayed. And probably for very practical reasons. Gygax was looking to sell a 1,000 copies of this game. A game focused on a genre, medieval fantasy, that was not the most popular type of miniature games being playing. Building miniature armies is expensive. By deliberately designing the game so that miniature were not required or needed he vastly expanded his potential customer base.

I don't have any primary sources or anecdotes support the above but from what I read about Gygax in Playing at the World and other sources this is seems to be the type of thing he would take into account.  

We definitely know that Arneson used a lot of miniatures in his Blackmoor campaign while Gygax did not in his Greyahwk campaign. Since Dungeons & Dragons was written from the rules used in Greyhawk it reflected that.

Now D&D wasn't designed to omit miniatures either. It could be played either way and Gygax acknowledges this.

Well, Far be it from me to argue the exact text.  I knew, from quotes from Gygax, that he was not a big one for the minis.  The quote about not needing them is the deciding one, though, in dealing with the quote from the Wiki entry.
Without that, I'd feel pretty comfortable with the fact that 'Chainmail' is recommended, therefor so are the miniatures.  But that quote changes everything.  
However, as I mentioned, I believe that the normal combat resolution was per Chainmail, and the alternate version was where we first see our friend the d20.  So as to the quote about not needing them, I would say that is referencing the alternate rules and some of the non 1:20 rules.  But, same as you, I am working from conjecture now, as the quote could mean more or less.  We always used them then, but I was much younger than and was not in charge of that part.  Hell, I remember getting desperate a few times and dragging chits from Melee over.

And yes, it makes perfect sense that in trying to move away from the miniature-heavy wargame to what were are terming a Fantasy Role Playing game, any author would streamline the requirements.

Quote from: LordVreeg;790860Without that, I'd feel pretty comfortable with the fact that 'Chainmail' is recommended, therefor so are the miniatures.  But that quote changes everything.

Remember what was needed most out of Chainmail was the Man to Man and Fantasy Section.  Both of which don't quite need miniatures in the type of game D&D was detailing.

Quote from: LordVreeg;790860We always used them then, but I was much younger than and was not in charge of that part.  Hell, I remember getting desperate a few times and dragging chits from Melee over..

I was a heavy user of miniatures since I got ahold of my first Grenadier boxed set. Partly for practical reasons, I am half deaf and hearing aids only go so far in small room with multiple people chattering. Miniature cut down the miscommunication for my games. Partly because I just plain like the spectacle.

I am very much a proponent of miniatures. But since I been at this for more than 35 years I don't knock the other point of view.

Yea! A settled question in an Internet thread.

When I started playing in 1974 none of us had miniatures suitable for D&D. For me using a Scottish Highlander, a French Voltigeur, and an English Redcoat to represent a Fighter, a Cleric, and a Magic User would have been worse than no miniature at all.

We all used the D20 combat system in the OD&D rules, not Chainmail. In part that was because I bought OD&D first and Chainmail second. We didn't really use Chainmail much as it seemed clearly designed for miniature armies not the sort of action our PCs were involved in for their first six levels or so - which was predominantly dungeon crawling, bar fighting, and henchman and ally recruiting when in town (typically the recruiting occurred in a bar, see bar fighting). Chainmail did get more use than the map to Outdoor Survival, but that isn't saying much.

A final word on using miniatures. I like using miniatures. I like the spectacle. I like knowing relative positions. I like the visual ability to facilitate everyone at the table seeing the same scene. I have tons (really a hundred pounds or so) of minis for Fantasy/Medieval/Ancients, Star Wars/Sci Fi, and Call of Cthulhu. The only RPGs where I haven't used minis are FASA Star Trek (though we did use post it notes and counters for ships) and Honor+Intrigue (my current free time does not allow for the painting of 1620s Musketeers, duelists, and pikemen while playing via Skype does not facilitate seeing and using minis). But I'd like to be able to use minis for H+I.

Having watched about 10 mins. of the John/Zak video, a couple of observations:

1) Not every distinction is "hair splitting." Without distinctions, we have no subject for a story. In a role-playing game - as in a story, and as in real life - the distinctions that are important are those that matter to the subject. Playing a character means assessing things from that character's perspective. If a Panther is just the same as a Panzer II, that's not faithfully representing a WW2 commander's perspective.

2) A game necessarily implies variation in outcome. Maybe somebody wants a game in which failure of the third Billy Goat Gruff to overthrow the troll is not a possible outcome. That's okay, but then what possible variations do make it a game? It's not okay to claim that a game must be constrained to follow a pre-conceived story, or else it's not a role-playing game; that is aptly enough called a "crazy" insistence.

3) If a world is presumed to be "real" to its inhabitants, then we have some reasonable expectations as to their behavior based on what they observe and therefore expect. This ties together the preceeding observations. It identifies a distinction between a role-playing game and an author-playing game. Characters regard themselves as free agents in a real world, subject to variations in outcome due to laws heedless of whether they conform to the demands of a "good story" (never mind a particular story).

Quote from: estar;790865Remember what was needed most out of Chainmail was the Man to Man and Fantasy Section.  Both of which don't quite need miniatures in the type of game D&D was detailing.

No, D&D included replacements for those, and most people agreed with Gygax that the replacements were better.

What were most needed were from the regular rules: missile ranges (added to D&D in Supp. I); initiative, combat turn sequence and rate of fire (added in cumbersome fashion in Supp. III).

QuoteI was a heavy user of miniatures since I got ahold of my first Grenadier boxed set. Partly for practical reasons, I am half deaf and hearing aids only go so far in small room with multiple people chattering. Miniature cut down the miscommunication for my games. Partly because I just plain like the spectacle.

I am very much a proponent of miniatures. But since I been at this for more than 35 years I don't knock the other point of view.

In early games of my experience, those who had miniatures painted and displayed them - but neither they, nor any other marker pieces, were commonly used with precise positioning. The D&D rules simply did not take into account anything requiring that.

With 3e, the kind of elaborations introduced in the 2e book Players Option: Combat and Tactics became standard. With 3.5 and 4e, more emphasis was placed on conformance to a grid. The shift was really to a board game mode, miniatures per se being quite as superfluous as with The Fantasy Trip or Champions.

Villains & Vigilantes was actually written, like OD&D, in miniatures-game style (distances instead of "spaces" such as hexes). It could likewise be  played with cardboard pieces or none at all, but the typical interactions of movement and timing of actions made markers of some sort more often almost indispensible.

Quote from: Bren;790880Yea! A settled question in an Internet thread.

When I started playing in 1974 none of us had miniatures suitable for D&D. For me using a Scottish Highlander, a French Voltigeur, and an English Redcoat to represent a Fighter, a Cleric, and a Magic User would have been worse than no miniature at all.

We all used the D20 combat system in the OD&D rules, not Chainmail. In part that was because I bought OD&D first and Chainmail second. We didn't really use Chainmail much as it seemed clearly designed for miniature armies not the sort of action our PCs were involved in for their first six levels or so - which was predominantly dungeon crawling, bar fighting, and henchman and ally recruiting when in town (typically the recruiting occurred in a bar, see bar fighting). Chainmail did get more use than the map to Outdoor Survival, but that isn't saying much.

A final word on using miniatures. I like using miniatures. I like the spectacle. I like knowing relative positions. I like the visual ability to facilitate everyone at the table seeing the same scene. I have tons (really a hundred pounds or so) of minis for Fantasy/Medieval/Ancients, Star Wars/Sci Fi, and Call of Cthulhu. The only RPGs where I haven't used minis are FASA Star Trek (though we did use post it notes and counters for ships) and Honor+Intrigue (my current free time does not allow for the painting of 1620s Musketeers, duelists, and pikemen while playing via Skype does not facilitate seeing and using minis). But I'd like to be able to use minis for H+I.

Bren,
I'm frankly into actually get stuff done on the webz.  We've had a few good ones.

Just watched the Zak/Wick video too. I think the poker analogy is a good one. Just because you can play poker without bluffing doesn't mean that bluffing doesn't become what the game is about, even though it's not in the rules....
So too with D&D.... You can play something using only the rules, but the rules being put into action with "tactical infinity" (I like that phrase) leads to roleplaying....
While it was an interesting, measured, and non-psychotic conversation, I do think that John Wick was trying a bit too hard to "prove" that D&D isn't an RPG.
His example of his Fightor character who goes around naked and has no physical appearance, nine of which impacted his game, sounds pretty specious, and like he was doing it because he had a grudge against the game. Any game that ever includes any social interaction in a world with any social mores, someone else would be sure to mention something ("so... You have no clothes. And what's with your name? ").
Also, naked is bad for your AC. mechanical effect as well...

Quote from: Phillip;790882Having watched about 10 mins. of the John/Zak video, a couple of observations:

1) Not every distinction is "hair splitting." Without distinctions, we have no subject for a story. In a role-playing game - as in a story, and as in real life - the distinctions that are important are those that matter to the subject. Playing a character means assessing things from that character's perspective. If a Panther is just the same as a Panzer II, that's not faithfully representing a WW2 commander's perspective.

Yeah, maybe watch the rest because my point is what I call "hairsplitting" can be good and important:

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2012/09/when-is-hairsplitting-worth-it.html

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;790837That was a very interesting conversation Zak. I think away from the craziness of online back and forth, you guys managed to have a real discussion. Thanks for posting it.

Yeah some people just don't handle typing well, I guess.

Quote from: Zak S;790925Yeah some people just don't handle typing well, I guess.

Sadly, some of us don't handle listening but do handle reading.  If a transcript comes into existence later, I'd love to read it.

The most necessary thing from Chainmail for D&D is MORALE!!!!

Also:

I NEVER saw Gary Gygax use miniatures when he reffed D&D.

I NEVER saw Dave Arneson NOT use miniatures when he reffed D&D.

SO:  Miniatures are required for D&D, except when they're not.