D&D (2024) My preferred way of playing D&D 2024 is... miniatures or not?

[DrJawaPhD]

I actually prefer Theater of the Mind but then I also love 3D-printing and spend more time printing and painting minis than I do playing DnD so that makes me vote for playing with Miniatures.

If there was a way to combine TotM with minis I'd vote for that

 

[MockingBird]

I didn't vote, because...we played a hybrid type of theater of the mind and minis. But (there's always a but) we have moved to dndbeyond. The maps feature has been super awesome. The minis have been side lined recently. Big boss battles usually get the dwarven forge and minis though just for dramatic reasons.

 

[jdrakeh]

Not, but mainly because I'm poor and even a modest counter collection with any real degree of variation costs a not small amount of money these days. This is the one thing that certain VTTs have gotten right over the last few years.

 

[Burnside]

Ok, I have to ask. How? There are so many encounters in that module (I just happened to have run it recently) that I couldn't imagine trying to do TotM. Cragmaw Castle? How did you track like 20 (ish) combatants between four or five locations that all react to the PC's being found? Or the incorporeal undead in Wave Echo Cavern that can move through walls to attack from several different directions? Yikes.

I remember when they went into the Redbrand Hideout and things kicked off. I had the NPC's moving through multiple locations, tracking about four or five different encounters at the same time as the NPC's moved an alerted other groups of NPC's. I couldn't imagine trying to do that TotM.

As an aside, and this is 100% not directed at you @Burnside, just something that twigged in my brain - I wonder if there is any correlation between TotM DM's and the complaint that 5e isn't lethal enough. That the DM, by eschewing the more tactical elements of using minis, lighting, LOS, positioning, etc. results in the game being less difficult. I know that using a VTT and Lighting and LOS makes a HUGE difference to the difficulty of the game and it really hits home when things like Darkness or various other obscuring effects come into play.

I don't think TotM is less deadly (we had a TPK in Cragmaw Hideout, for example). I think complaints that 5E is too easy don't have a universal answer, but often boils down to some combination of three factors, none of which have to do with TotM vs minis/battlemaps/VTT:

• Player skill level/system mastery means a difficult encounter for one table will be easy for another
• DM gives out too many magic items
• Long rests occurring more frequently than designers intended

As to how you run something like Cragmaw Castle in TotM, the short answer is that TotM leans into a more cinematic, less granular/tactical style. When the Fellowship is passing through Moria, we see only what they see. We're not worried about exactly how many goblins are in Moria, and where precisely they are relative to the party. With Cragmaw, I basically decide that if the party "alerts" the castle's inhabitants, creatures start moving towards the source of the disturbance and arrive in such-and-such number of rounds based on their starting position. I might have a note that the goblins partying in the dining hall never get alerted unless a creature actually enters their area, because they are making too much noise. I will have some notes to track this - TotM doesn't mean I have to track everything in my head, it just means that not everything has to be visually represented. I'm not saying that tokens/battlemaps/minis don't offer a kind of fun that you don't get through TotM, because with TotM the tactical aspects are necessarily simpler. But TotM also offers much faster and much more flexible play; the DM can be very responsive and add new physical ideas and twists and features on the fly because it's all just verbal - you don't have the rigidity of a physical map to adhere to. If I suddenly have an idea mid-session that Cragmaw Castle has a secret elven prison hidden beneath it that you can access through King Grol's wardrobe, then I can instantly add it - I don't need to worry that it's not on the map, or that a map for that whole prison area doesn't exist, or that I don't have a token for the banshee in that prison.

 

[AlViking]

What do you mean by this statement? The game originated from war games that relied on miniatures. Minis have always been a thing in D&D. We used them when I started playing in the mid '80s and have never stopped. Have we always used detail battle maps or terrain? No, but we always used minis.

The people who played those war games DnD started with may have used miniatures. But there was no mention of the grid in the OD&D books that I remember. It was probably discussed in the 1e DMG. There were no battle mats or minis in the stores I got the books from.

So for us it was before the grid was really a thing.

 

[dave2008]

The people who played those war games DnD started with may have used miniatures. But there was no mention of the grid in the OD&D books that I remember. It was probably discussed in the 1e DMG. There were no battle mats or minis in the stores I got the books from.

So for us it was before the grid was really a thing.

The discussion was on using minis, not a grid and maps though wasn't it? The comment of yours that I quoted definitely only discussed minis, no mention of grid or maps. Nor did the OP ever mention a grid and maps. When we started playing D&D (1e & BECMI) we used minis - without grids or maps. The expectation was to measure distances, if that was important to you, not use a grid. That is why movement and spell ranges were in inches. Heck, range weapons were also in inches. Notice the footnote about miniatures below this table in the 1e AD&D PHB:

Here is the spell with a range of 3" - that only makes sense if you are measuring with minis

Or monsters movement oy 9"/18"

So, in 1e you could play the game without miniatures, and we did, but a lot of things didn't make sense if you didn't use them and you had to do some converting to make it work. That is pretty much the same, to some degree or another, as every edition of D&D. If anything 5e is less reliant on minis as at least all range, aoe, and movement is in feet now!

 

[dave2008]

If there was a way to combine TotM with minis I'd vote for that

That is what we mostly did in 1e, and sometimes in 4e & 5e. We have the minis on the table to show basic position an distance, but there is no map or terrain - we just describe the environment and picture it in our minds.

 

[AlViking]

The discussion was on using minis, not a grid and maps though wasn't it? The comment of yours that I quoted definitely only discussed minis, no mention of grid or maps. Nor did the OP ever mention a grid and maps. When we started playing D&D (1e & BECMI) we used minis - without grids or maps. The expectation was to measure distances, if that was important to you, not use a grid. That is why movement and spell ranges were in inches. Heck, range weapons were also in inches. Notice the footnote about miniatures below this table in the 1e AD&D PHB:

View attachment 397246


Here is the spell with a range of 3" - that only makes sense if you are measuring with minis
View attachment 397247

Or monsters movement oy 9"/18"
View attachment 397248

So, in 1e you could play the game without miniatures, and we did, but a lot of things didn't make sense if you didn't use them and you had to do some converting to make it work. That is pretty much the same, to some degree or another, as every edition of D&D. If anything 5e is less reliant on minis as at least all range, aoe, and movement is in feet now!

As I said no minis were sold at the stores the books were sold at, no battle mats, no mention of minis or grids in the old book that I remember. I'm sure some people used them we did not initially. I'm also dredging up memories from nearly half a century ago. When we started we used theater of the mind exclusively and then started using miscellaneous tokens from different board games or pieces of paper to indicate positioning and distances. I'm sure other people handled things differently.

 

[Li Shenron]

One of the bigger splits in the D&D community is about whether or not to use miniatures. And they have a definitely effect on how the rules are written.

So, just for fun - where's your preference? Running D&D with miniatures (or VTT tokens, etc.) or using Theatre of the Mind and just describing the action.

I do know that many people go between the two - I do myself - but where's your preference for most play?

(A long time ago, for me it was Theatre of the Mind, but a lot of play with people who are unable to visualise combat has put me in the miniatures camp).

Cheers!

Minis: yes
Grid: no

 

[dave2008]

As I said no minis were sold at the stores the books were sold at, no battle mats, no mention of minis or grids in the old book that I remember. I'm sure some people used them we did not initially. I'm also dredging up memories from nearly half a century ago. When we started we used theater of the mind exclusively and then started using miscellaneous tokens from different board games or pieces of paper to indicate positioning and distances. I'm sure other people handled things differently.

Interesting, I always got my D&D books from a hobby store that also sold minis (and models) so it was very natural. Heck, some of the shops even held wargamming events and painting mini sessions. D&D is a very regional experience and everyone's is different!

When we started we used TotM and minis (they are not mutually exclusive). No battlemaps or grids though.