Without Miniatures; who is going to admit that they are right in front of the Red Dragon, when he breathes fire?

Quote from: Jam The MF on May 25, 2021, 05:19:03 AM
Without Miniatures; who is going to admit that they are right in front of the Red Dragon, when he breathes?

His orthodontist?

Quote from: Ratman_tf on May 24, 2021, 12:54:56 PM

Quote from: Reckall on May 24, 2021, 03:56:56 AM

Quote from: Altheus on May 23, 2021, 04:39:30 AM
I prefer theatre of the mind for most things, because it allows players to get creative, swinging on the chandelier, kicking the tables over for cover, that kind of thing, but mini's are great for keeping track of big complicated fights.

Theatre of the mind for the same reason: imagination and creativity. I never used miniatures (something that, BTW, I find very limiting: What if there are 20 orcs but you only painted 10? What if you want to throw an Abyssal Dragon into the mix but you haven't one painted? What if your elf is everything but what the miniature shows?)

We have a few smallish boxes of minis, for both fantasy and sci fi. We do a fair amount of proxying and try to get ones that roughly match. Large minis usually get proxied.
Most of my collection are singles from the D&D collectible series. Prepainted and relativley cheap. I also paint my own to fill in the gaps, especially for player characters.
I also have some plastic stands that hold paper so that I can print out fold ups, both purchased and cut out of images from the internet.
So a lot of proxying and sometimes making paper tokens. The important thing is to make each mini clear in what it is (Orc 1, Orc 2, etc...) and how much space it takes up on the grid.

When I was in college we just used a big bulletin board and graph paper. I'd just write in the corner what each color push-pin was for that encounter.

You certainly don't NEED matching minis to run with a map.

Quote from: Jam The MF on May 25, 2021, 05:19:03 AM
Without Miniatures; who is going to admit that they are right in front of the Red Dragon, when he breathes?

Cute quip, and perhaps inadvertently illustrative of the idea that play format should follow from the game rules. If monsters in your game can attack specifically-defined areas, then players will want to use the same level of specificity strategically. A ToTM game might do better tailoring the level of specificity to verbal description.

How about "zones"? "Kitchen," "Living room," "Hallway," etc. or "Sparse woods," "Open Clearing," "Deep Brush," "River crossing."

Sort of generic, very TotM but has the possibility of nailing specifics down for the purpose of area effects or range a bit better than 'pure' TotM. Can also be drawn out as a loose "map" of zones to illustrate rough positioning, or you could even position "zones" over an existing (more detailed) map.

The main issue I have with zones is deciding what sort of size/scale is appropriate for a given conflict and combat area; too small and you might as well be using a regular hex grid, too big and zones either stop mattering or character actions make zero sense (everyone in the "Open Clearing" zone can all of a sudden interact with any other character inside it without moving? What if they're battling like 20 people, can everyone just teleport through the mosh pit to get to where they want to go?).

Edit: Oh and to answer the OP, I usually do TotM accompanied by rough sketches and positioning, sometimes rough "range bands;" I do keep hex maps around just in case though, or for special occasions. I usually just use tokens and such with them though, not really a big minis collector. I'm too financially strained to buy them, have too little space to keep them as well as too little time to paint or assemble them.

Quote from: Antiquation! on May 26, 2021, 04:13:40 PM
... I'm too financially strained to buy them, have too little space to keep them as well as too little time to paint or assemble them.

You may like Tabletop Simulator then. Addresses all those issues, except you have to purchase it.

QuoteWithout Miniatures; who is going to admit that they are right in front of the Red Dragon, when he breathes fire?

Simply - if dragon roll wells he just swing his neck round in arch and reach whoever he wants to reach, unless they took cover before.

Quote from: Wrath of God on May 27, 2021, 03:10:26 PM

QuoteWithout Miniatures; who is going to admit that they are right in front of the Red Dragon, when he breathes fire?

Simply - if dragon roll wells he just swing his neck round in arch and reach whoever he wants to reach, unless they took cover before.

Naw man, I was much farther back.  I was standing behind that "x".

It has really long neck. Like segments moving in and out.

Huh, I think this is the first time I've ever seen a topic appear first on the GameFAQs "Pencil+Paper RPGs" board of all places before appearing on one of the more major RPG forums. Strange. I'll give basically the same answer here:

In general, I prefer theater of the mind. In most of the games I've played, that's what you do. I'm not huge on grids, but have used them on occasion. GURPS is fine if you only use the basic combat. Fantasy Craft was fun, but we played theater of the mind so I don't know if I'd be okay playing it with a grid. D&D 3e and Pathfinder can fuck right off. D&D 4e looked competent enough, at least pre-Essentials, but I'd be hesitant to commit to more than a one-shot. It's got enough of the 3.x DNA that I wouldn't expect to like it very much.

I think a nice middle ground are those systems that kind of just abstract your distance from each other(like Legends of the Wulin), where you're like close, mid-range, far, etc. with each having its own bonuses and/or penalties. I'm also super used to abstracting things, so if the given distances don't add up as literal distances(A is close to B, and B is close to C, but C is very far from A, for example) I'd just say "they're not technically that far away, but there's an obstacle or something(in this case, maybe B's big fat head) of equivalent penalty value so don't take it too literally."

So theater of the mind preferred by a good bit, but I'm totally willing to use maps and grids sometime, though I can't say for sure what all factors go into whether I'll be fine with it or not. I just know that sometimes it's fine and sometimes I hate it, but rarely do I particularly like it. "This is fine" is about as good as you're likely to get from me there.

I used to do 100% TotM, so I know it can work, but it does have drawbacks as other have mentioned. When sitting together in a face-to-face game my preference is to use miniatures to show general location: who is up front, who is back using a bow, who is sneaking around the side, etc. Generic range bands can work well too, particularly for outdoor encounters.

When the pandemic hit, I went to online play for the first time and that changed my perspective. Given the available visual space of Roll20, I realized that I didn't need to draw my dungeons on graph paper anymore. I could just go digital and put them on the big screen that was already in front of my face. Then I realized that if I drew the dungeon to scale, players could use it both for exploration (using fog of war) and combat, too. So now I am doing full grid-based combat, at least for online games.

For face-to-face I would probably drop the grid and go back to using figures with range bands or general areas, but for now I am enjoying the grid.

I like theater of the Mind, with one caveat: I prefer exact measurements (25 feet etc.) to abstract "zones" etc. 13th Age, for example, says "Combat is dynamic and fluid, so miniatures can't really represent where a character 'really is".  These things do not help, but constrain me. I'd prefer imaging PCs have actual positions.

When in doubt, I let PCs choose (who is in front of dragon? Well, if fighter doesn't want to put himself in danger, I'll choose randomly! Or just let the dragon choose, which makes more sense)

I have used both a grid and miniatures without a grid in the past. They all have their pros and cons.

It is a matter of preference; supposedly, Gygax himself didn't use minis, but Arneson did.

Interestingly, 3e, 4e and 5e have very different views on minis; I think 5e is the best for grid-less combat.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2017/03/does-d-require-miniatures-3e-versus-4e.html

Quote from: Jam The MF on May 23, 2021, 02:02:57 AM
Which do you prefer, and do you enjoy both?

I have found that I don't care for using a grid; but I do have a slight preference for having miniatures on the table, vs running straight TotM.

I prefer using a grid and Minis, mostly because I just like little guys to represent monsters and the visual it represents. Not to mention you get less confusion on monster positioning, who you're taking opportunity attacks from, etc.

Still, since Covid we have been playing on Discord using completely TotM style in our 3.5, 4e, and 5e games and aside from having to be better at describing the scene, it's been fine. Even 4E, when ppl complained that it required a grid....it did perfectly fine. I added more description to monsters to help people decide who to target and that worked wonders.

I started using miniatures when I moved to SPI's DragonQuest, which has hex-based tactical combat, from AD&D1E, and continued when I switched to GURPS later on.  I still use miniatures often, but I don't paint miniatures, so I use cardboard figures or tokens.  Often I just use numbered blocks for the opponents.  I prefer 3 foot wide squares or hexes, so it is easy to count yards or meters in science fiction games. 

However, I sometimes use Theater of the Mind, depending on the situation.  If I'm running something like B/X D&D or Labyrinth Lord, I usually use Theater of the Mind.