Quote from: Windjammer;440935Don't get out minis or a battlemat/grid at all. Don't even draw up stuff behind the screen. Have a rough idea of what's happening, winge the rest. You, the GM, and the players need to be comfortable though with you winging it. Winging it means that lots of rules get glossed over (nearly all of timing and positioning), and that you've gotta make the calls by yourself. Your players need to trust you (especially if there are PC casualties, which there inevitably will) and you need to trust your own capacity.

It works wonders when it does, and works regardless of which game system you use.

This. No minis, no grids.

At most, we'll have a simple sketch of the layout, if the layout is complex enough. But the sketch has to be completed extremely quickly, and even it comes out only if the players appear to be having problems visualizing the layout.

But minor details really don't matter. There's no reason to make sure everyone is picturing the cashbox on the same end of the bar, or whatever. It doesn't even really matter that you mention it's there. It's a bar, people probably know what those look like, and if a PC has an idea that requires a cashbox nearby, just say yes when they ask if there is one.

Quote from: RPGPundit;440994I should note that I have no idea if the above holds true in the grotesquerie that is the alleged "3rd edition" WFRP game.

RPGpundit

3rd edition supports minis if you want or works equally well just narratively describing the scene.

But even when using mini's the general method is to just use them as place holders and as a rough interpretation of keeping track of what's going on.

So in a typical encounter where the combat is spread out and with multiple things going on, more so then I can easily just sketch out on paper.  I'll grab a handful of stand-ups.  And basically just drop them around the 'area'.  So there's a group of beastmen over here.  They are long range from this group over here.  There's a building in the middle, the forest fringe is here and you guys are here - about long range from either group.

That's actually a fairly simple setup that you could do narratively but you get the point.  No tactical battle maps.  No range rulers, no counting off squares of movement.  Just sweet simple counters to ground the narrative a bit.  Then you just start calling out what your doing knowing it'll take you one round to get to position x.  There's no debate on only moving 5 squares instead of 6 because of some ranged attack or because you know your opponent can move 7 and catch you off guard.

No basically if you are in long range - your opponent is in long range and it takes you the same time as it does your opponent to close the gap.  The question then is do you want to close it quicker and fatigue yourself or march forward and risk being peppered with arrows.

Because I'm already on the pedestal after playing WFRP 3 for over a year now it's a much better experience then both previous editions of WFRP in every way.  Which isn't to say that I don't have fun with the past game.  But the times I've been playing them or Dark Heresy I can't help but constantly find myself thinking - how much more I'd rather being playing WFRP 3 rules.

Quote from: jeff37923;441003I think the same way, but I also started playing Games Workshop stuff with the likes of Blood Bowl and Space Hulk.

Yeah I just can't get my head around the "no minis" thing - in, of all places, Warhammer FRP.

Quote from: jirisan;441011Thanks for good advice, and thanks for the pool. I`ll try the pool out this weekend and give you some feedback.

When it comes to combat in WFRP I`ll try a combination of narrative and minis. None of the PCs are warhammer miniature fans/experienced. I`ll print out maps over combat areas when they are presented in the scenario (town square in "through the drakwald" campaign), and make simple drawings of terrain layouts when a map is not already included. I`ll use an approximate yard/inch to measure distance (not using a tape measure, rather go for eye-measure), not a square grid (thats too much board game for us I think).

It sounds best to use coins n other small items to represent heroes and monsters. I have plenty of plastic figures from Descent - journeys in the dark boardgame. But Im afraid too detailed figures will ruin the imaginative part of play.

So again, thanks for all the advice, and I hope to contribute more in the forum once Ive got some experience.

I bought a big plastic bag full of 6-sided dice in varying sizes and colors at my local gameshop for less than $20. This really works well for positioning markers, etc. Yours might have something like this.

is a must for all newbie roleplayers out there. I finally got to try it out. it works great. nice way of introducing people to roleplaying without too many rules too worry about.

Quote from: jirisan;441011It sounds best to use coins n other small items to represent heroes and monsters. I have plenty of plastic figures from Descent - journeys in the dark boardgame. But Im afraid too detailed figures will ruin the imaginative part of play.

Tokens vs. Minis is six versus half dozen.   The Descent minis are pretty cool and translate nicely to Warhammer.   If you are going to use some physical representations, I think you gain more from minis than coins and brickabrak.

The big advantage of the Descent minis is knowing which one is You and which one is The Monster so you avoid "Is the Cheeto the Troll?  No, the crunched up tissue is the Troll.  The Cheeto is the Chaos Warrior. Oh crap, I meant from my Trollslayer to attack the tissue."

Quote from: thedungeondelver;441000I must be some kind of weirdo because I think WHFRP goes hand-in-hand with minis like politics and corruption.

I wouldn't say "you're doing it wrong" or something; minis in this case can add to the detail of combat, and perhaps in that way to the action and the grittiness.  But I think that WFRP combat, even minis combat, is best done "fast and loose".  Often, the moment you put minis on the table, you're pulling out rulers or counting squares, and the whole flavour gets killed in the process.

RPGPundit

I agree with you RPGPundit, I tend to play my WFRP combat "fast and loose"

my powergamer player sometimes has issues with this but a bit of heavy dice rolling and he is happy.

used miniatures with 1e but for 2e just draw on my maps and describe the scene

Quote from: RPGPundit;442627even minis combat, is best done "fast and loose".  Often, the moment you put minis on the table, you're pulling out rulers or counting squares, and the whole flavour gets killed in the process.

That mirrors my experience.

When there were miniature demos and tournaments in the game store I was wondering what exactly it might be that drove all those customers to the diorama boards. It couldn't be the diorama/minis themselves because more than half of them played with unpainted minis.

I was looking at all those Confrontation skirmishes, thinking "I've had better, more fluid, more exciting combats in more involved scenery in my AD&D and Midgard campaigns"...

I like miniatures skirmish games like Confrontation quite a lot... but that's definitely something different from what I want in RPG combat.  
Sometimes I think a lot of RPG players would be happier with skirmish wargames though.

I like using minis to give more of an overall view of what's happening.  It cuts down on a lot of questions involving distance, time, cover, who's standing where when X happens, prevents the "I'm always in the center of whatever's happening, except when it's a grenade" syndrome and basically helps make sure that the little movie playing in everyone's head is roughly the same.  As far as counting squares, etc... goes, we don't usually play to that detail unless we are playing a game that has rules to along with that level of tactical detail.

For WFRP 1 and 2 we used minis, but for basic purposes, a lot of the old WFRP stuff came with such cool area maps, it would have been too hard not to use them as actual battlemaps.