D&D 5E Do you use miniatures during your games?

[atanakar]

When I go full scenery for some (not all) combat scenes. The PCs at the bottom have a wash of brown ink on them. Its a quick process and makes them stand out in combat.

 

[bedir than]

In our group we use a bunch of props, including minis. The combat may be theater of the mind, but the character inspiration of minis, the base maps, the initial "load" of a tactical map, and other items inspire our play

 

[Len]

It depends what game we're playing. For D&D/Pathfinder we use minis on a battlemat or dungeon tiles. We have lots of the pre-painted minis from the D&D minis game, but that doesn't mean we always have exactly the correct ones. Any BBEG is likely to be represented by the Aspect of Orcus.

For Traveller we did TotM, except for a climactic space battle. I painted up a mini for my character because I wanted one, but we never used minis for combat.

For some other games we've done a mixture of minis and TotM depending on the encounter. For example, in FFG SW if a combat gets complicated, minis can be helpful to keep track of who's at short range or medium range, who has cover, etc.

 

[ccs]

We use a mix. Everything from Theater of the Mind - to completely 3d terrain. (theater & chessex mat + minis being most common) Often within the same evening. Depends upon who's DMing, where, what kinds of encounters, how lazy we're feeling atm, etc.

 

[The Green Hermit]

I find that if a situation is at all tactical, it's helpful to have a map out, though I don't bother trying to make every miniature correspond exactly to what's on the map, and I use lots of dice as tokens.

We use Risk pieces.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I've used all of the methods offered (as well as VTT, even for live-game support), but I find that minis are best in most cases. More detail than that isn't really worth the effort unless you enjoy terrain-building for its own sake.

TotM is fine for simpler battles, of course.

 

[Charlaquin]

TotM is fine for simpler battles, of course.

Personally, I think TotM is not just fine for simpler battles, but that there are tangible benefits to using it where it won’t get in the way. My experience has been that over-reliance on visual aids can lead a DM’s descriptions of the environment to suffer, as they start letting the visual aids do the work, which can in turn cause a breakdown of the basic conversation of the game. Obviously this isn’t the case 100% of the time, there are plenty of DMs who use tons of visual aids and still describe the environment sufficiently for the players to have confidence in their decision making. But I’ve observed a strong enough correlation between the overuse of visual aids and insufficiently detailed environmental description that I’ve come to believe it’s good policy to lean on visual aid only as necessary.

 

[dave2008]

We typically use miniatures (we have since the 80s), however a "play mat" is optional. I using when i have time to make one, but we can often do a hybrid miniature / theater of the mind. Miniatures for basic location and distance, then I just describe the rest (possibly with some point to indicate locations)

 

[Tallifer]

My friends and I all run and play in each other's games. I run with sketched scenes and pictures and the occasional squiggle to represent players; one friend runs completely theatre of the mind because we play on-line and his internet connexion is crappy so it's just voice; while another friend runs in his university office where players bring foam battle dioramas and he has a huge box of miniatures for us. Dungeons & Dragons works in all ways.

 

[akr71]

Does this site have a DIY for TTRPGS list somewhere?

I don't think so, but maybe we should petition to get a sub-forum. I'm on a the Table Top Crafters Guild FB page, but Facebook sucks for that kind of thing - well, for a whole lot of things. It was put together by a bunch of YouTubers I follow.