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.
Definitely miniatures on a hex grid. Or more usually, miniatures for PCs and decorative glass beads in various colors for the monsters. Putting combat on a grid adds tactical complexity to the game that I haven't been able to replicate with TotM play.
Quote from: Mishihari on May 23, 2021, 02:05:42 AM
Definitely miniatures on a hex grid. Or more usually, miniatures for PCs and decorative glass beads in various colors for the monsters. Putting combat on a grid adds tactical complexity to the game that I haven't been able to replicate with TotM play.
The ability to define who is where, in relation to "x"; is why I prefer to have miniatures on the table. However, I don't insist upon having a lot of granularity. Ex: You are in front of, or behind "x". Not; you are 15 feet NW of "x".
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.
Both. Theater of the mind has the advantage of no setup, and faster moving.
Minis (And I'm assuming any kind of gridded tactical combat counts, like using tokens for characters and monsters) tends to create interesting combat situations that TOTM might miss. A 25 foot move versus a 30 foot move really counts, for instance.
I started seriously using minis with 4th edition D&D, and prefer it nowadays. I like tactical games like X-Wing Miniatures, Warhammer 40k, etc, and like to steal ideas from them for RPG scenarios.
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.
I like miniatures because they nail things down and keep that one guy from constantly trying to argue his way out of fighting. "No, I was over here, not over there! He can't hit me!"
I like both.
Theater of the mind works well with small quick combats while miniatures work well with any combat that lasts longer than a couple of rounds. Plus I tend to use minis that are around 1/72" scale so that a map the size of a sheet of paper is significant and a whole table sized map can have armor units on it to scale.
I really lean towards theater of the mind, especially in person. I supplement it with a large-grid wet erase mat in case something needs to be sketched out.
I like both within the same game, same day, even same fight. In extreme situations, I've started TotM and switched to miniatures halfway through a fight and vice versa. According, I prefer rules that can be adapted easily to that.
There is, of course, a degree of miniature use as well. It's not uncommon for me to use the token (bead, die, random thing at hand) and plop down on the table with no grid, with the tokens only representing rough positioning. That gives you a hefty chunk of the benefits of miniatures without a lot of setup.
I've also found with the typical players in my group that the occasional use of full-blown miniatures makes it easier for the players to run with other options. The same holds true for TotM. There's a marriage of understanding rules/tactics while keeping the imagination and visualization of the fight going at the same time. Not all players get that if you run the same way all the time.
I strongly prefer TotM for RPGs. I like miniature battle games too, but I approach them quite differently. I find that TotM helps keep players (including me) in their characters' heads better than "top-down" miniatures battles.
Theatre of the mind for most things, but battlemaps are useful for tactical combat.
Definitely minis. I enjoy games with an element of tactical combat which is hard to do with TotM. Plus, if you're going to be fighting more than 1-2 foes, minis make it easier to track where everyone is.
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on May 23, 2021, 12:55:38 PM
Plus, if you're going to be fighting more than 1-2 foes, minis make it easier to track where everyone is.
I have found that can be a flaw with minis rather than a feature when you're trying to roleplay the fog of war and the uncertainty of the foes numbers & maneuvers. Sometimes showing the players far more (and more precisely) than their characters can/should be witness to is damaging to the overall play experience.
Quote from: HappyDaze on May 23, 2021, 01:14:00 PM
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on May 23, 2021, 12:55:38 PM
Plus, if you're going to be fighting more than 1-2 foes, minis make it easier to track where everyone is.
I have found that can be a flaw with minis rather than a feature when you're trying to roleplay the fog of war and the uncertainty of the foes numbers & maneuvers. Sometimes showing the players far more (and more precisely) than their characters can/should be witness to is damaging to the overall play experience.
Agreed. There are various ways to start to capture the fog of war in a game, but minis on a board is a great way to dispel it completely.
Quote from: HappyDaze on May 23, 2021, 01:14:00 PM
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on May 23, 2021, 12:55:38 PM
Plus, if you're going to be fighting more than 1-2 foes, minis make it easier to track where everyone is.
I have found that can be a flaw with minis rather than a feature when you're trying to roleplay the fog of war and the uncertainty of the foes numbers & maneuvers. Sometimes showing the players far more (and more precisely) than their characters can/should be witness to is damaging to the overall play experience.
You can maintain the fog of war somewhat; by only setting out what would be right in front of the PCs, or else easily visible to them. As they work their way through the first wave, set out the second wave. Don't let them know how close or far away they are from victory.
I used to want to have miniatures on a board but these days unless I'm playing a legitimate board game like 4e where you need it to even play, I'd rather not have it. Square-by-square movement is a lot of micromanagement and forces me into thinking about things as a board game rather than trying to engage my imagination to picture the scene.
What I use in lieu of grids is simply defining abstract regions. "In the middle of the road", is one step from "End of the corner block" is one step from "By the nearby bridge." Characters drop into different regions as needed to give a sense of space without having to specify static spatial relationships like a grid does.
I like using miniatures, and have a ton of Dwarven Forge and self-printed terrain to put them around on. However, for the most part it is abstracted. I play AD&D and the scales don't work right with modern minis and DF, so it's just to look very cool :)
Quote from: Jam The MF on May 23, 2021, 02:02:57 AM
Which do you prefer, and do you enjoy both?
Roleplaying without minis.
For me it depends on the system. If it's very crunchy/defined by positioning (Dark Heresy, Iron Kingdoms, DnD 4E, etc) then I'll err on using miniatures. If it's designed with 'story play' in mind (no pun intended) I'll quite happily use theatre. I have no real preference.
Greetings!
I have hundreds and hundreds of miniatures in my collection. It's kind of weird thinking about how I have been collecting miniatures, painting them, and using them in games since 1978 or so. Yeah, I like using both Theater of the Mind and Miniatures. The party is always on the table, at least ready for whatever miniature action that may take place, even if most of the session remains Theater of the Mind. The miniatures are always ready. Of course, in other sessions, the legions of miniatures make more of a prominent showing, it just depends on what is going in with the game session.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
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 miniatures or the like. Makes it much easier to show where someone is facing or what threats are closest. TOTM though works fine for 'net games.
Quote from: Jam The MF on May 23, 2021, 03:24:14 PM
Quote from: HappyDaze on May 23, 2021, 01:14:00 PM
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on May 23, 2021, 12:55:38 PM
Plus, if you're going to be fighting more than 1-2 foes, minis make it easier to track where everyone is.
I have found that can be a flaw with minis rather than a feature when you're trying to roleplay the fog of war and the uncertainty of the foes numbers & maneuvers. Sometimes showing the players far more (and more precisely) than their characters can/should be witness to is damaging to the overall play experience.
You can maintain the fog of war somewhat; by only setting out what would be right in front of the PCs, or else easily visible to them. As they work their way through the first wave, set out the second wave. Don't let them know how close or far away they are from victory.
Yeah, this. I've never had difficulty doing the fog of war with miniatures,
Depends on the gamesystem and the group.
Having a battleboard and little minis just feels like part and parcel of the D&D game and it's wargame history. I've had a few TotM games where some spells cast like fireball in a dungeon room should have likely killed as many of the players as the monsters in melee but these days kind of doesn't matter. It still feels like we're missing a part of the game when we don't use a marked string and little figures on an erasable.
Of course these days, I'm more likely to pull out an iPad and use OwlBear or something similar as it's more convenient or when resorting to online games.
Like mentioned, it does reduce the amount of confusion of who is where and can hit or avoid what: also helps aid the DM in keeping track of everything when dealing with larger encounters. That's probably why there is so much hand waiving about radius and missile ranges: it's just too much to keep track of with TotM.
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?)
If needed we use sketches on a sheet of paper, or even dice ("The white one is the paladin, the green one the ranger...") but only to clarify a confused moment. Theatre of the mind all the way.
I used to use miniatures exclusively back in the 3e days, but since going back to OD&D, I've made my combat system more abstract to make it faster and easier (thanks to Empire of the Petal Throne) so that fighters can kill multiple enemies in one attack. Now you attack "the goblins" rather than individual opponents.
All of the things people say are advantages to miniature use; exact positioning and tactical maneuvering, have turned into limitations.
TOTM most of the time, and a combat place if it gets very elaborate.
I use digital maps, so software provides fog of war.
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.
Having things mapped out with at least "representative" miniatures can be a big help to me. It's easy to get things turned around when multiple people are involved.
TotM provides the details to the "representative" things.
Luckily, with Tabletop Simulator, there is no shortage of miniatures or terrain to work with. Just need a screen to show things with.
I can and have used all the choices. I prefer miniatures with no grid for four reasons.
1. Clearly showing the general positioning of the PCs gets everyone on the same page and avoids wasting time with discussions about who is in front of or beside whom and who was next to the door, tree, horse, etc. and who was far away from that thing. I've encountered very few people who can get and keep a clear mental picture of a combat with more than about four participants (not PCs, participants) in their head and I dislike conversations like, "you can't get a clear shot because the wagon is in between you and the evil necromancer." "But I thought I was over by the trees." Those talks are the adult version of "Peww, peww. Your dead!" "No I'm not, you missed me."
2. People often forget about that non-player characters such as that NPC they were escorting, the minion they recently hired, a pet animal or familiar, or their horse or mule. Having a physical representation on the table helps everyone (me included) remember those things.
3. Well done miniatures are nice to look at. If they stay in the tray in the box, nobody gets to see them.
4. Minis and rough sketchs on blank paper or an erasable mat are much faster to create and can easily be done on the fly compared to something like Roll20. That is way less work for me as the GM and it eliminates any extra desire I might have to push for a combat because I spent 4 hours preparing a location in Roll20 and I don't want the time to be a waste.
Due to GMing exclusively over Skype and Roll20 it's been a very long time since I could use any of the hundreds of miniatures that I do own. :(
Depends on the system.
World of Darkness and WEG Star Wars are always theatre of the mind.
My d6 Star Trek variant used theatre of the mind for personal scale and 1v1 ship combats, but used miniatures (one advantage of a laser engraving business was being able to etch and cut top down ship profiles out of colored plastic complete with peg stands that I think made a lot of difference in keeping attention on the battles as it's a lot easier to visualize when everything is represented by a piece that actually looks like itself and was (within reason) cut to scale (I used about 1"/500' for capital ships and about 1" for a cluster of 4 for fighters and such).
When I was running Mekton on the regular, that was entirely mini-based.
For my own fantasy system, it's built to use minis, but movement and ranges use the naturalistic "paces" (based on the Roman passum which happens to be about 5') so that it's fairly easy to adapt to theatre of the mind. In testing, people said they could easily visualize when something was said to be 6 paces away a lot better than 6 squares or even 30').
For Palladium Fantasy though, it's absolutely theatre of the mind and a reminder that despite the clunky conversion described in the system of (Spd x 20 = yards/minute), your Spd attribute is actually just straight up feet/second which is SO much easier to use in conjunction with actions and a 15 second combat round (the calculation is way more relevant in 1e when melee rounds were actually 1 minute, but in my experience every GM just ignores that and uses the 15 second rounds of literally every other Palladium game).
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.