Dave’s back in town, but swamped with work, so I’m filling in for the Inquisition this week. Kicking off spring the best way we know how, last week we looked ahead at the coming summer movie season to find out which movies are the most anticipated and the most people are excited to go see! I’m actually quite surprised that the new Star Trek movie came out at #1 with 66% of the voters wanting to see it. Even more surprised to me is X-Men Origins: Wolverine in a close second place with 63%, especially considering it was recently leaked digitally. Third place goes to the upcoming Harry Potter movie with 47%, followed by Terminator Salvation and Transformers 2 tied in fourth with 44% which are probably the two movies I’m most excited to see! The bottom was rounded led by G.I.Joe, followed by Pixar’s Up, with Inglorious Basterds and Public Enemies as the lowest.
Since Dave was gone for a week at The Gathering, he told me he usually posts about boardgames immediately afterward. As I mulled over some topics on boardgames, my mind was still wandering back to the D&D game I ran on Saturday, so today we have a topic that spans between D&D and boardgames!
[poll id=”121″]
In an effort to keep the poll simple, I didn’t include anything about which edition of D&D you play, so feel free to share in the comments. I’m probably most interested to find out if many of you play 4th Edition without miniatures, something that we’ve proven can be done but haven’t really tried regularly yet!
My group uses MapTools rather than minis. It’s allowed our core group to play on even when some of the guys can’t make it. (Damn real life getting in the way of our gaming.)
Ameron´s last post: Reputation (Part 3)
I use miniature since the old D&D when the miniatures are lead made.
franciolli araujo´s last post: Desafios de Perícias 3 [Skill Challenges]
What about the “sometimes yes sometimes no” option? :p
My online Star Wars Saga group also uses MapTools rather than minis. The DM sometimes grids out encounters, and sometimes we just wing our way through them. While he’s not always right on (the grid tends to bog down starfighter combat as there isn’t a lot of moving or interest, and he’ll sometimes forgo the grid when it really would help explain positioning), it generally works out. Star Wars doesn’t require a lot of tactical movement–we tend to just run for cover and then blast people.
My last 3.5 D&D game (run by the same DM) used minis almost exclusively. They didn’t detract from the game (except for the 15 minutes spent drawing out the various terrain features), but they often didn’t add all that much. Really while the minis were helpful for determining where things were (especially with the highly mobile characters in the group and the DM’s penchant for wide-open battles that us lumbering tanks had to spend 3 rounds to actually get to…), the terrain didn’t really make the game more interesting.
The 3.5 game I’m currently running hasn’t used minis or even a grid in a number of sessions–while I’ll occasionally draw things out on my mini whiteboard to explain relative position, I tend to just move things along using narrative. Everything works out quite well.
That said, in the 4e pbp I’ve just joined it’s pretty helpful to have a map, particularly as my character involves sliding people around a lot. I think you could do 4e without map and minis, but I haven’t had the chance to try it around a table 🙁
I’ve used miniatures (or markers, or scale maps) since the first edition. Nothing beats these tools for avoiding common “are you in line of sight” questions. Simple, but effective. I rarely use miniatures during a role-playing event, but might lay down some tiles for a tavern as a stand by (you never know when a fight is going to break out).
FYI…I play 4E at the current time. I would find the game difficult (but probably not impossible) to play without minis.
Dead Orcs´s last post: WotC and the Disappearing Portable Document Format
I voted “No”. We have on rare occasion used minis, but that was back in the 1e days. We played 3.0 and 3.5 completely without minis and haven’t found any compelling reason to start now with 4.
Dyson Logos´s last post: 48 Hour RPG Challenge
I’ve been playing D&D since the beginning and I’ve been using minis for most that time. Even when they aren’t needed, like in non-combat scenes, they come in handy to help my players to visualize the situation. If nothing else, they really help with keeping track of marching order and/or initiative order.
Rook´s last post: My Foray into 4E: Playing outside your comfort zone
Ok, I lied in the poll – we don’t use minis, but we use self-made wooden placeholders instead. The tend to have a few advantages, while perfectly longliving solution which keeps you bag small and light. We’ve created parts for mostly any size and I refine them currently laminating pictures onto the surfaces. The chips have another advantage over common miniatures, besides being easily replaceable, virtually unbreakable these hardly ever limit visibility on the board for anyone.
I can only recommend using wood-chip-miniature-replacements to anyone who is not always playing at the same part of town ;). For everything else miniatures are of course a lot more beautiful.
Since 4e restored in me that child’s pleasure of playing D&D (I started with old D&D Basic Set 15th printing — the big black box with the huge red dragon) playing with minis and maps immediately sends me back to that old nice feel of the Zanzer’s Dungeons and the myriad of adventures I’ve run as a kid.
I leave the “hard-core immersion in roleplay” for other RPGs.
Marcelo Dior´s last post: Dragonball Evo
It sounds like there are actually a few people who play 4E without minis, that’s very interesting!
@highbulp: Sorry I left out the multiple choice or “both” option, but I figure there’s probably one you do more than the other so just go with that. 😀
When I start to play with my old group they already have played the Zanzer’s adventure, but I always curious about that dungeon and its papers miniatures.
For more than 2 years I keep the box here at my home and often I look at him to see how I start simple.
Franciolli Araujo´s last post: Nova Casa do Mago
Nearly 2,000 D&D minis, a shelf of pewter minis, 2-3 copies of every dungeon tiles, and all of the fantastic locations maps later; I use minis for all combat encounters and my group loves them.
Even back in my early 2e days I was intrigued by the minis. I did my best to paint them (read: best not good enough) and used our paltry collection in our games (that lion-person, dragon-person, and goblin are all orcs).
Thankfully, my funds increased and my collection expanded. With 4e, we use the minis quite effectively in combat, alongside the aleatools magnetic markers (for conditions, lasting effects, marks, etc..) which increases speed at the table.
Count me as a lover of the minis.
I use plastic minis–and we used to have hand-painted metal, but they always got scratched, and who could afford an army of monsters [as DM]? I use the Dungeon Tiles from Wotc (which actually can be written on with dry-erase markers if you clean them immediately afterwards) and tons of plastic minis. I also use map packs and flip maps from Paizo, and I shop the local chain Pet stores for really cool extra terrain features.
My D&D games have always been 2/3 intensive roleplay, but sometimes the characters needed that little itch to kill things satisfied… and in 4e, I feel like I can give them both. I’ve used minis, maps, terrain, etc. ever since I can remember, and I’ve been gaming for 25 years now.
GrecoG´s last post: Controversial Trek
We use MapTools, like so many others, due to a minor case of geographic displacement. When we used to roleplay face-to-face, we tried using minis and often didn’t bother.
It was the table, you see. We had a low coffee table and people were having to move too far to move the minis. In the end, it was the DM (usually me) doing all of the moving and the players whining (after the fact) that the DM had placed them within range of the monsters. It also didn’t help that I ended up paying for all of the tiles and minis…
Prince of Cats´s last post: Roleplay servers in MMOs; then and now…
Been painting and using minis since BECMI
We just got given a whole collection of Heroscape stuff. We’re gonna be using it in our 4e games. I also have just begun using Lego people for our ongoing Stargate campaign.
Vulcan Stev´s last post: RPGBN Shared World Invitation: Unique Magic Items.
At the moment I’m running a D&D 4e game, but most of my gaming in recent years has been GURPS, and we use minis there as well. I also played in some D&D 2e games, and they all used minis, too. I’ve gamed without minis, but I find using miniatures avoids a lot of confusion in combat. they obviously serve no purpose outside of combat, except as pretty things to look at, but in combat, they make things much easier, in my experience.
If I play with TheGame then we have minis and maps galore. When we don’t I usually cobble together some old mage knight stuff, random D&D minis I have, and whatever the host has with a crusty old battle map. I love minis play, but the cost is somewhat daunting.
I play without minis…marks on graph paper maps are definitely sufficient for us…
Reverend Mike´s last post: 8 o’ clock classes
Minis were used to make a somewhat abstract event (ie: an encounter) easier to understand through clear visualization of the battlefield. Now that 4th Edition is more tactical in nature, I don’t see how you couldn’t play it without some kind of visual representation.
In the misty, formative days of my youth, we played 2nd Edition D&D (yeah, not a member of the Old Guard, but no less wise :)without mini’s or a battlemat. As a teenager, our gaming group dismissed D&D 3.0 in lieu of our own flavor of 2nd Edition with the combat & tactics player’s option rules. This is when we really stuck with using mini’s and never looked back. I recently just picked up the fierydragon.com counter collections, so I think we’ll actually be using their counters as opposed to minis – which should be interesting!
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