D&D 5E Why I love 5E - the renewal of Theater of Mind

[aramis erak]

Meh. D&D was never "meant to be theatre of the mind." I question whether that was even a serious intent of 5e.

you should listen to Dave Wesely discussing Braunstein... It undercuts your argument heavily. As does Dave Arneson's comments on how dungeons were run. And Gygax's comments. Anyway, the gist is that Braunstein was played more as a LARP than as a minis wargame, even tho' it was nominally a minis wargame. And Braunstein lead Arneson to Gygax.

Now, Professor Barker is shown using minis on 3d terrain... but many of Gygax's players note that minis were not used for combat, and that, while the minis combat rules were legit, weren't used in Gygax's play except for actual large scale engagements. (But note: I've read reports of 20-player games, with 3-5 henchmen and 1-2 characters per player on some of the adventures, in some of Gygax's early sessions.)

Likewise, I've run TOTM semi-RPG sessions of Car Wars (SJG) and Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader (the original GW one) and Inquisitor (also GW)... it's quite doable to use minis rules in non-minis play.

As for 5E, Mearls explicitly stated that being well suited for TOTM style play was in fact a design consideration in one of the 5E-playtest era posts.

Now, there have always been some groups that do more boardgamish play, and some that are mostly TOTM, and a few that are pure TOTM. [MENTION=82779]MechaPilot[/MENTION] 's list of reasons why TOTM groups might delve to minis is pretty good.

 

[Cadriel]

Historically, while Gygax didn't use minis in his RPGs, Arneson did. So this goes back all the way, and it has always been a question of personal preference.

My group uses TOTM, and it got a little bit stretched yesterday because there was an encounter where one opponent was 10' away and a group of opponents were 150' away. But I just wrote the distances for everybody next to their initiative, which I track on a whiteboard, and it all worked out. There was one moment where I had to note that one of the druid PCs had actually gotten closer to the enemies than everybody else just to make sure it was clear, but generally it works very well for me.

I agree with the idea that with minis, you sometimes get into looking at the minis and aren't picturing as vivid of a fight in your mind's eye. Melee sometimes should be a bit chaotic and unpredictable; having figures tends to make it too static, like people in a fight aren't moving relative to each other.

 

[houser2112]

I have nothing against the use of miniatures, but they are generally impractical for long and free-wheeling campaign play where the scene and opponents can vary wildly in the course of but an hour.

He might've felt differently if he had access to a dry-erase battle mat. I'd agree with him if playing with minis required constructing sets out of foam core, or something like that.

 

[Cadriel]

He might've felt differently if he had access to a dry-erase battle mat. I'd agree with him if playing with minis required constructing sets out of foam core, or something like that.

Gary had a sand table in his basement, and players who had no problem with terrain. His generation of wargamers weren't doing foam settings.

 

[Queer Venger]

I have a big collection of mini's (a collection that grows each week as I add to it). That said, I love using mini's and dungeon tiles/flip mats in certain combat scenes. But one thing that hooked me with 5e is that I can again enjoy theatre of the mind and that it is supported by the rules. It lets me shift back and forth. With small encounters or one-on-one encounters I enjoy the freedom of DMing the combat and its improved my skills as a DM. It is the way I run World of Darkness and Call of Cthulhu stritcly using theatre of the mind; being able to aply it to D&D is a liberating thing.

 

[Mercurius]

Meh. D&D was never "meant to be theatre of the mind." I question whether that was even a serious intent of 5e.

I don't think I ever stated what D&D was "meant" to be, only that I started with TOM and prefer that mode as primary. But I do think that TOM was firmly in the minds of the designers as they were creating 5E.

I think Celtavian said it really well:

Nice quote. A lot of people want to cite some excerpt to claim D&D was this or that.

Gygax always seemed to be of the mind that D&D was what your group wanted it to be. He made the rules for a playable game. He never considered the rules chains. He looked at them more like guidelines he created to loosely simulate a possible action choice by a player.

Gygax wanted to have a game to bring to life the fantasy worlds and characters he loved reading about. The vehicle he created for doing so was D&D. He shared it with all of us understanding we would use it as best suited our particular idea of fun. It was always meant to bring stories to life as a group, not some miniatures game to be played by absolutist rules. Never felt that was Gygax intent in all the thirty plus years I've been playing.

Exactly. D&D is "meant" to facilitate a number of play styles. I'm not sure how well 5E facilitates grid-based combat as I haven't tried it yet, although believe the DMG gives guidelines for it, but it certainly better facilitates TOM than the previous couple editions, at least in my experience.

 

[Mark CMG]

When D&D first came out in 1974 and we added it to the gaming rotation in Northern IL, we used minis or game pawns/pieces (sometimes just coins or paper scraps) to show where our characters were in the marching order and sometimes for combats to show relative positions. We did not have a grid nor did we measure our movement with tape measures as we did in our fantasy minis games. At my first Gen Con in Lake Geneva in 1975, this is how I recall things were handled at the D&D tables.

 

[fba827]

While I can totally respect that TotM works for some, it is not a good fit for my group.
The adam can explain things til he's blue in the face but sometimes someone's theater in their mind is just different than the other players, leading to lots of back and forth "but I thought this .... " " but you said this ...." "I really should have been able to get at least half of them in my spell area...." "I thought I could cover than distance with a single move. This changes everything and I wouldn't have started this tactic last round if that wasn't the case..." Disagreements start and hurt feelings if someone feels something wasn't clear. So just one person having a different setup in their head leads to difficulty, let alone if everyone has a different setup in their head which is possible since that is the nature of communication and how it is said and how it is interpreted. The more tense the battle where every misstep makes a big difference, the more some visual representation is needed for my group. But then if you only whip out a sketch every time it's a tense battle then there is less concern or motivation when the sketch isn't drawn out.

Furthermore, We have some low attention span people in the group, having minis gives them something to focus on and their mind wanders less to their phone texting or whatever. There is less "eyes glazing over listening to the DM speak for every description" if there is a visual component.

Anyway like I said I totally respect (and perhaps envy in some ways) that it works for some but in practice it does not work well for my group and some visual representation contributes to our experience in a far more positive way.

 

[Celtavian]

Our group likes minis as well and we use an erasable mat for combat. It makes things easier on everyone and more consistent. We played with graph paper when I was young drawing out maps and marking movement. We didn't bother with encounters that didn't involve combat. We always described what we were doing. It was always a combination for us. The minis and graph paper was to make it easier to see where everyone was. We didn't bother with extra hexes or the like for things like sideways movement or difficult terrain. We made up what the effect of those environmental factors were. Very fluid play back then. 5E seems to have brought that back. I like it a lot. 3E was a bit too legalistic with rules involving just about everything. I much prefer the focus on resolving with narration for most situations. Makes everything much more interesting.

 

[Aribar]

Is there actually anything in the PHB or DMG that helps people play TotM combat? From skimming through the DMG at release, I don't recall seeing anything that makes it more viable now than it was in 3E or 5E... Still tons of really awkward positioning and area of effect rules, especially if you get into feats and abilities like Sentinel. I played AD&D and 3.5 for years in TotM, but that was in spite of the rules, not because of them. It'd be nice if my group could use our whiteboard for general "this is where people are at" stuff for ease of play.