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<blockquote data-quote="Mark Hope" data-source="post: 4486785" data-attributes="member: 27051">Simply put, TSR and other companies did provide the PCs with concrete ways of determining where they were withing that 3D space.&nbsp; Elaborate battlemats and dungeon tiles may not have been as widespread as they are today, but they certainly existed, as did accompanying miniatures.&nbsp; I have several sets of vintage dungeon tiles (although they were called different things) that date back to the early days of the hobby.&nbsp; The 1e DMG (page 10) outlines the use of miniatures in the game.&nbsp; It advises against using floorplans for routine dungeon movement but recommends using them for encounter areas, and says that sheets of 1&quot; squares are the best for such situations.&nbsp; So while TSR was not producing tiles or flipmats or the like, it was clear that they considered it possible or likely that some DMs would draw their own encounter areas and use minis to play out those encounters.&nbsp; We used minis in that way from time to time and the chief reasons we didn't do it more often were cost (lead minis weren't cheap for a 12 year old kid) and space (no huge gaming tables back in the day).It's also not the case that combat was purely narrative.&nbsp; Right from the start of the game, spells have had areas of effect measured in precise increments - early versions of D&amp;D took into account differing ranges for outdoor and dungeon environments.&nbsp; Characters likewise had movement rates measured in inches and the DMG had plenty of diagrams for dealing with issues like flanking, seeing where your grenade-like weapon fell, etc.So while I agree that the use of minis is definitely more widespread these days, it isn't true that it was absent from early D&amp;D games.&nbsp; It had its place - supported by rules - then, just as it does now.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mark Hope, post: 4486785, member: 27051"] Simply put, TSR and other companies [i]did[/i] provide the PCs with concrete ways of determining where they were withing that 3D space. Elaborate battlemats and dungeon tiles may not have been as widespread as they are today, but they certainly existed, as did accompanying miniatures. I have several sets of vintage dungeon tiles (although they were called different things) that date back to the early days of the hobby. The 1e DMG (page 10) outlines the use of miniatures in the game. It advises against using floorplans for routine dungeon movement but recommends using them for encounter areas, and says that sheets of 1" squares are the best for such situations. So while TSR was not producing tiles or flipmats or the like, it was clear that they considered it possible or likely that some DMs would draw their own encounter areas and use minis to play out those encounters. We used minis in that way from time to time and the chief reasons we didn't do it more often were cost (lead minis weren't cheap for a 12 year old kid) and space (no huge gaming tables back in the day). It's also not the case that combat was purely narrative. Right from the start of the game, spells have had areas of effect measured in precise increments - early versions of D&D took into account differing ranges for outdoor and dungeon environments. Characters likewise had movement rates measured in inches and the DMG had plenty of diagrams for dealing with issues like flanking, seeing where your grenade-like weapon fell, etc. So while I agree that the use of minis is definitely more widespread these days, it isn't true that it was absent from early D&D games. It had its place - supported by rules - then, just as it does now. [/QUOTE]

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