D&D 3.5 is unalienable from miniature skirmish battles. You literally cannot play the game correctly without minis. IMO, that's the biggest difference between AD&D and D&D 3.5. Whilst the game may have started as Chainmail, to me, my earliest memories of the game (and I'm 28) came from sitting around in a friend's basement, listening to him describe a scene, and my imagining what's going on in the fantasy world of the game.
Part of what is lost about D&D to me is the seeming subjugation of imagination. Everything is codified, every situation detailed in cold print. When I describe a monster or a character, it doesn't matter what I say, because it's essentially reduced to a mass produced blob of plastic on a dry erase battlegrid. Combats are not narrative, visceral exchanges, but instead are movement on a chessboard to avoid attacks of opportunity. What I carry to every weekly game is a dufflebag full of books, battlemats, dry erase markers, dice, and an organized, four tier tacklebox full of minis. We have a presentation board hammered onto the wall of our gaming room just to keep track of initiative.
We have to remove soda bottles, chips, homemade brownies and cookies from our table just to put out the battlegrid. The game is less comfortable, for me, for having become a miniatures skirmish game.
And I just realized last evening that I haven't used the term RPG in about 7 years. Everytime I write it or say it in conversation it's d20 (or D&D if I'm talking specifically about the fantasy RPG).
Retreater
