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

[MNblockhead]

One point worth considering from the post you reply to refers to "the grid" rather than minis in particular - which I don't think Chainmail or OD&D reference at all.

Chainmail was being played as a traditional wargame with miniatures - so measuring tape and rulers, but not a grid.

If anyone can find me references in an official rulebook to using a grid for combat before the 1995 Combat & Tactics book, I'd appreciate it. I'm sure people did do it, as play was so varied,

I'd also be interested when rules were first published assuming gridded battlemaps. I think that using grids (e.g. Chessex battle maps, reverse sides of wrapping paper, etc.) probably started to become popular when modules publishing gridded maps (was Keep on the Borderlands the first instance of this?). I think it is natural to want to represent what one saw in the module on a larger scale with minis.

 

[Lanefan]

I think I said this earlier, but, I mostly played AD&D without minis because the system lacked any real need for minis. There were virtually no rules for tactical positioning or movement.

It was - and is! - still quite important to know where the characters were at any given time, however, to a) determine who got hit by AoE effects and who did not; b) determine who was in line of sight for targeting purposes, and c) determine whether or not someone was within spell or missile range.

Doing this by TotM would have led to endless, and I mean endless, arguments around these things.

 

[dave2008]

I think I said this earlier, but, I mostly played AD&D without minis because the system lacked any real need for minis. There were virtually no rules for tactical positioning or movement. Combat was largely just rolling dice until the bad guys fell down because there was very little else you could do.

I never understand this line of thinking. You could always do more than that, we sure did. There is nothing we can do now that we couldn't do then it was just not written down in a book before. A player just asked and the DM adjudicated as it made sense. Now, is that very DM dependent - yes it is. But that type of play is fundamental to D&D IMO.

 

[Nebulous]

View attachment 397307

Maps and minis and tokens all the way! I even have little pieces of cardboard and removable adhesive for elevation changes.

That's a nice setup

 

[Hussar]

It was - and is! - still quite important to know where the characters were at any given time, however, to a) determine who got hit by AoE effects and who did not; b) determine who was in line of sight for targeting purposes, and c) determine whether or not someone was within spell or missile range.

Doing this by TotM would have led to endless, and I mean endless, arguments around these things.

Most of that didn’t matter. If someone was in melee with the baddies, outside shooters shot random targets. If you dropped an aoe effect on a melee, you hit everyone. And spell and missile ranges are so ridiculously long that if you could see it you were pretty much guaranteed to be able to hit it with a spell or missile weapon.

It’s not until you get battle maps and pixelated circles that you see casters spending endless time placing a spell just right.

 

[Maialideth]

I started using minis, when the pre-painted D&D minis came out for 3e. I don't think the AD&D 2e books mentioned using minis, so it never occurred to me that it was an option. Besides, Warhammer 40k took all my budget for minis anyway.
Now, I only use theatre of the mind for small, spur-of-the-moment encounters. Seeing the expression on the players' faces, when I reveal a terrifying monster mini and a Dwarven Forge / Dungeons & Lasers / dry-erase map battlemap is worth every second of building and taking down the pieces.
Plus it really helps for those of us with ADD, to have something to focus on when we have trouble concentrating (I have a couple of players, including myself with ADD/ADHD).

 

[Mannahnin]

One point worth considering from the post you reply to refers to "the grid" rather than minis in particular - which I don't think Chainmail or OD&D reference at all.

Chainmail was being played as a traditional wargame with miniatures - so measuring tape and rulers, but not a grid.

If anyone can find me references in an official rulebook to using a grid for combat before the 1995 Combat & Tactics book, I'd appreciate it. I'm sure people did do it, as play was so varied,

It's in the 1981 Moldvay Basic rules. It doesn't go into much detail on the use of a grid, but on B61 on the second page of the Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art appendix of suggestions and advice, under PLAYING SURFACE, we find the first recommendation of using large sheets of graph paper with a 1" = 5' scale, for combat specifically. This is an optional suggestion, though, not an official "this is how to play" rule. This combined with the combat and movement rules (particularly Encounter Movement and Defensive Movement on B24-25) is enough to run combat movement on a grid, although there is no discussion of distances on the diagonal like there was in 3rd ed. Interestingly, The Haunted Keep, the sample mini-adventure in that book, also uses a 1" = 5' grid scale, unlike most other TSR publications.

I'd also be interested when rules were first published assuming gridded battlemaps. I think that using grids (e.g. Chessex battle maps, reverse sides of wrapping paper, etc.) probably started to become popular when modules publishing gridded maps (was Keep on the Borderlands the first instance of this?). I think it is natural to want to represent what one saw in the module on a larger scale with minis.

Gridded maps date back to the very first published adventures. Dave Arneson's Temple of the Frog from Supplement II: Blackmoor (1975), Jennell Jaquays' F'Chelrak's Tomb, and Wee Warriors' Palace of the Vampire Queen (both June 1976, the first third party published adventures), as the earliest examples.

Whether these constitute the "battlemaps" you're thinking of I'm less clear on. The maps for Temple of the Frog are rough, don't have a grid scale printed on them, and clearly squeezed from letter size sheets to fit into the digest-sized booklet. The first (large area exterior) map seems to be at some larger scale- quite possibly 15' squares. the interior ones look to be roughly 10' squares, but the map is imprecise and doesn't conform exactly to the grid.

The published scale for stuff going back to the 70s was mostly 10' per square on graph grids with a 1/4" square print. IIRC F'Chelrak's Tomb is an unusual exception, and is actually printed with a 5' grid scale, so Jaquays may once again have been ahead of the curve. I know she was into painting and playing with miniatures, but I don't know if that was true all the way back in '76.