D&D 5E Theatre of the Mind or Miniatures?

[MerricB]

Merric-
I'm not sure how to reply to the survey. We 100% never use miniatures, but we use paper maps or drawn maps on graph paper with written pencil notations, erasing & rewriting as people move around. I wouldn't really consider that theater of the mind. It's map-based, tactical movement & environment interaction, but no miniatures & on a much smaller map than the 1 inch square scale maps.

Miniatures = precisely know where combatants are at all time.
No miniatures = don't precisely know, but may use aids to give a rough idea.

Cheers!

 

[Louis Brenton]

Miniatures = precisely know where combatants are at all time.
No miniatures = don't precisely know, but may use aids to give a rough idea.

Cheers!

Thanks for the clarification. I'll respond to the poll according to those parameters.

 

[redrick]

My early 5e games were theater of the mind. I switched to playing on Roll20, and moved towards minis, as it is easier to prepare maps in advance and I found the conference-call environment favored offloading as much information into visual aids as possible. I used a faint overlaid grid (to give a sense of scale, as maps varied dramatically inside), but urged players (and my monsters) to think of the space as gridless. We've been playing tabletop for the past several months, mostly with minis, but I used only sketches and theater of the mind for the last several sessions and really liked it. I'll probably do more that way in the future.

The sketch lets me communicate general layout visually, while allowing the specific character placements to have that fluidity that I like with non-minis play. I find I sketch a little faster when I'm not worrying about squares, and it allows us to work with much larger areas without having to constantly erase and redraw (or flip over, or swap out) wet-erase mats. Combat enters and exits more seamlessly when you can use the same map for fighting and exploring. And paper and pencil is much easier to carry on the subway than minis and wet erase mats.