Evolution of your game - minis, markers and whatnot

[Stormonu]

Back when I got into D&D (around 1979), within a week of having scored the rulebooks for Christmas, the first thing I got my hands on were two sets of miniatures - Grenadier's Tomb of Spells (5004, 2nd version) and Woodland Adventurers (5003). My brother and I confiscated our mother's cardboard pattern sewing cutting board (36" X 60", I believe - similar to [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Cardboard-Pattern-Sewing-Cutting-Board-36/dp/B000G6DY2Y?tag=wwwtopharleya-20"]this[/ame], but without the extra lines) and using markers, turned into a miniature kingdom with a castle, haunted forest, minotaur maze and lava-strewn badland. For a nine-year-old and his brother who were big into action figures like Star Wars, soon-to-be GI Joe and the like, it was a Testor's-enamel-painted-lead-miniature heaven.

It was great until we realized that since we'd used markers to map the "world", we couldn't change it.

A little later on, we tried using our castle legos to build dungeons. The advantage was we could actually build the traps 'n stuff, but the problem was there wasn't many monsters that scaled well to it, and blocks-made-monsters looked rather sad.

By the time I was in college, I finally had enough money to buy a laminated grid mat - and was still expanding my lead/metal miniature collection. It was getting to the point I could cover just about every monster with it's correct miniature or a close proximity. If I didn't have it and couldn't proxy the creature with another mini, Sorry pawns or poker chips would fill in the ranks.

A few years later, on a trip to Seattle (to the WotC/TSR campus), I discovered Dwarven Forge. Over the next few years, I began to build up a large collection and set out several sprawling dungeons at the local Cons I attended. With the beauty of the DF pieces, using proxies (or unpainted minis) felt like a sin, and by then if I couldn't produce the correct mini or proxy it, it wasn't worth using the creature. (To this day, my kids love pulling out and building dungeons with DF pieces. They're not allowed to play with the lead minis, though).

However, toting two plastic file cabinets worth of Dwarven Forge stuff to a game became too much. When I was away from my house, I'd use a Chessex mat for my game. Sadly, I was very poor at taking care of them and more than once ruined them either by accidentally grabbing a dry erase marker or leaving red marker on the mat for one game night too many.

Next, WotC came out with the plastic minis. I began to replace my horde of painted and so-many-primed-I'll-never-have-time-to-paint minis with the much lighter, prepainted minis. I still occasionally paint minis for BBEG's and PCs, but I tend to use the plastics for everything else.

The next big shift was the arrival of Dungeon Tiles. With plastic minis and dungeon tiles, I finally hit my 3D medium. I have and still use them.

For a short stint in 3E, the RPGA group I was playing with used d12's glued to round bases for minis, whiteboard for the maps and tape measurers to track distances. It felt a little bizarre - like I was playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but it was fun in small doses.

I did try "papercraft" dungeons - I have a large collection of Fat Dragon Games and Worldswork Games print-your-own-tiles, and while they look great, they take more time to print out, cut and assemble than I generally have time for. I use them on occasion (I did put together Worldswork game's The Maiden for my pirate campaign) and they fill in some gaps that Dungeon Tiles just doesn't provide, but I can't say they've replaced my dungeon tiles.

Likewise, I've picked up several of Paizo's flip maps and WotC's DDM/map pack maps. They are beautiful set-piece maps, but the only problem I've run into is they tend to be good for one location; it can be difficult to reuse them in a way you really get your money out of them.

In the end, I think since I used to play with action figures so much in my youth, it's fun for me to set out minis and play with them at the table. While I've done stints without them and I tend to play every other RPG besides D&D without them, in the end I really like minis - to the point if I just had my character's mini sitting in front of me during a game I'd be pretty darn happy.

What has been the evolution of your use of mats, maps and minis? How have they affected your games and your interest in the game?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I started off in 1977 with a couple of minis- a Ral Partha Elf w/Spear (lost & replaced the spear, still have the mini) and a human w/2Hd sword (lost).

I became addicted to minis for all genres of RPGs. My collection is immense. I use them on mats, and with such Dwarven Forge as I have. I also bought a fair number of plastic minis- covering all genres.

And the thing is, the current DM usually uses glass counters for our foes, since he doesn't want to tell me what to retrieve for him, nor search for himself.

 

[Lanefan]

Back in the day we used metal minis for the PCs and whatever we could find for the monsters (usually little cut-up bits of wood); we had a very few metal monsters but they were costly.

The map has always been laid out on a gridded chalkboard with the grid being about 2" for 10'.

Later, we had the bright idea to put the chalkboard on blocks to raise it off the table thus leaving room for character sheets, drinks, etc. underneath.

A long time ago I bought a bunch of cheap/incomplete chess sets - the pieces, particularly the pawns, were great for representing opponents.

The WotC plastic minis gave us much more variety in monster figures but I never got enough of any one piece to make a decent horde, so for masses of foes I still use beads or pawns. For small groups or singles I'll pull out the plastic minis.

But the rule remains even today: PCs use metal minis.

I've slowly built up a collection of other props:
- the little plastic stands in the middle of a pizza box are great for showing a character that is flying
- small mesh bags (cheap Easter eggs come in these) for "web" areas
- various interesting bits that can serve as dungeon dressing
- some round paper cut-outs that are the right size to represent various radii of area-effects (these don't get used often of late, we just eyeball it)
- some things that were originally balloon holders, they work great as trees or other obstacles
- about the only "marker" we ever use is a penny under the character piece of someone who is invisible

Lanefan

 

[S'mon]

Age 11 (ca 1984): No minis, freeform or Fighting Fantasy rules.
Age 12: Lead minis, cardboard maps, and a homebrew d6 rules system that looked a lot like Warhammer - with which I was unfamiliar.
Age 13-26 (ca 14 years): AD&D 1e, no minis.
Age 27 (2000): 3e D&D, lead minis, bits of Advanced Heroquest for floorplans.
When WotC went to plastic minis I started using those, and I've largely phased out metal minis over the past decade, tending to use them only for PCs and major NPCs.
I bought a bunch of WoTC Dungeon Tiles but always find them a pain to use. Now I rarely use them, unless I am running a Dungeon Delve that uses tiles I own. Even then, drawing it in marker pen on a blank flipmat generally looks almost as good if I do it in advance of play, eg from Dungeon Delve 7:

(from Loudwater: Session 23: (23/10/79) "To sleep, to dream, to rise again..." - Olaris Vlakos the Transmuter, M10 1479 DR ) - and is far, far quicker and convenient.

The exception is the 3D terrain, I use the stairs and raised areas quite often for big set-piece encounters such as the brilliant climax of Dungeon 155's 'Heathen'.

From Loudwater: Pillars of Night - The Death of Naarash

When I discovered Paizo flipmats I was a happy camper; I use two blank Paizo drywipe maps for the bulk of my gaming. With the preprinted ones, if I can get a 3-4 hour session out of one side of a 'dungeon' flipmat I am happy enough, but the most useful ones are the generic wilderness scenes that can be repeatedly reused. The art standard on the flipmats is constantly improving, the latest ones look absolutely brilliant - but be careful to check whether they have art on both sides!

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Very similar stories.... I started playing in around 77, and we played without minis. When we discovered minis and started buying them, it vastly improved our game experience. Then, my brother started painting the minis, and that was awesome -- even if the rest of us were not as good as he was at painting them.

Didn't game much in college ... started experimenting again in grad school.... once I was out of school, started getting back into gaming....shortly after than 3.0 appeared on the scene.

The Innovations that have appeared since have been great -- pre-painted plastic minis probably most of all (still not much for painting minis), then the various mapping options.

About 6 years ago our group managed to score a projector and we started using that for maps a lot of the time -- with a smattering of other tools, too. -- including some of the awesome Malfeaux line of 3d terrain stuff. I have a lot of dungeon tiles, flip maps, etc. We use a combination of Alea tools discs and Dark Platypus status flags.

I'm like an addict buying new condition marking systems and tools.

Recently, we've upgraded from the projector to a 50" LCD TV laid flat on the game table. We don't use metal on it -- plastic only -- but it provides an excellent map and is a lot more quiet, kicks out a lot less heat, etc.

One funny side note: Like any other part of the game, I've tried all kinds of solutions for initiative tracking. For years I was a huge proponent of index cards that I flipped through as DM, but I've tried the Gamemastery magnetic initiative board, Turnwatcher software and other software tools, and the best option we've come up with is still a very low-tech solution -- little tents cut from cardstock (about 1"x2" folded in the middle to make a tent) for initiative. Our group does a LOT of initiative manipulation, and we need a system that makes it easy for the players to see the order so they can be strategic about how to manipulate it, and the DM needs to be able to adjust it quickly and easily. And nothing makes both of those easy the way the initiative tents do. I've seen a variation that uses cards folded over a DM screen, but I don't DM with a screen (I'm short and they piss me off).

-rg

 

[Ulrick]

I started playing D&D around 1989 when I was ten. I didn't bother with miniatures for a couple years. I had my players write down their marching order on paper.

And then I got my hands on HeroQuest. And later, Dragon Strike. Warhammer Quest finally rounded out my collection.

I've used the miniatures from those game many, many, times over the years. Sometimes I'd use the game boards but for the most part I'd use the miniatures for placement in combat. Occasionally I'd buy some Ral Partha miniatures, but they were true 25mm and looked a bit odd next to the warhammer stuff.

I lived in a small town in Iowa and we really didn't understand the intricacies of collecting and painting miniatures nor did we want to spend a lot of money.

In fact, it really wasn't until 3e that I fell like I needed to collect miniatures for my games. And boy did I. I bought some reaper miniatures, and nearly collected all of the miniatures for the Chainmail line. I even started getting into wargaming. Basically, I was young, had disposable income, and just didn't know any better. I had underestimated how long it would take for me to paint them up to a decent standard...yet I kept buying more. Some of my lamentations about that time can be read in this thread: Miniature Painting.

Oddly enough, although I spent hundreds of dollars on miniatures, I was cheap on the battlemats. I laminated the one in the back of the DMG and used that for years. Or, I would use some old battlemats for terrain from issues of Dragon or Dungeon.

When the D&D miniatures line first came out, I didn't buy any of them. I didn't think they looked good. I had plenty of miniatures anyway. It wasn't until the War Drums line that I started buying them occasionally. They started looking decent, and had some cool miniatures you couldn't get elsewhere, like the Sorcerer on the Black Dragon. I eventually stopped buying them because I got annoyed with how they were randomly distributed.

Dungeon Tiles were the next money trap. At first, I thought they were cool. Mostly they're just a pain to use. You have to have them pre-sorted before the session if you want to keep the session moving. I now only use them for climactic or other special areas. I don't think they really add much to the gaming experience, however.

Now I just use a regular vinyl Chessex battlemat and wet erase markers. I still have all of those miniatures and use them, too. When I run my next campaign, I plan using the battlemat even less.

 

[Stormonu]

Has anyone come up with a good organizational system for their dungeon tiles? Short of presorting them for a game, I haven't found a good system that lets me efficiently store AND sort them for easy use. It seems to be a case of one (good organization) or the other (efficient storage).

 

[Ulrick]

Has anyone come up with a good organizational system for their dungeon tiles? Short of presorting them for a game, I haven't found a good system that lets me efficiently store AND sort them for easy use. It seems to be a case of one (good organization) or the other (efficient storage).

An Enworlder shared this solution about three years ago. The transparency might might help with ease of use, but I don't know.

 

[falcarrion]

I started off with miniatures and a chessex battlemat.
then dwaven forge.
then Hirst molds.
then created a portable game table when a friend spilled a drink and almost ruined a printed map.
the portable table holds the map above the table.
then i adapted the table to be used with a projector setup.
I recently adapted it again to hold a 40 inch lcd tv.
next step is to get a multitouch overlay for the tv to make it multitouch.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I started out in 2e using a battlegrid regularly; mostly computerized. When I took up DMing 3e, I didn't use anything like that. Occasionally, a basic grid with markers worked its way into the mix, there have been miniatures for the PCs once or twice.

That said, I've pushed back away from it again. I find it detracts from the game. It makes people think too much about what they're doing, it encourages metagaming based on a bird's eye view with precise markings that the characters don't have access to, and it is frankly just a waste of time and money. I very much value D&D as a cheap hobby that doesn't require a lot of equipment and a storytelling experience with an occasional combat for fun, and I have come to strongly dislike the miniatures aspect. I rarely use grids these days.