Flipping the Table: Did Removing Miniatures Save D&D?

Dungeons & Dragons is doing better than ever, thanks to a wave of nostalgia-fueled shows like Stranger Things and the Old School Renaissance, the rise of actual play video streams, and a broader player base that includes women. The reasons for this vary, but one possibility is that D&D no longer requires miniatures. Did it ever?

Picture courtesy of Pixabay​

Wait, What?​

When Vivian Kane at TheMarySue interviewed lead rules designer for D&D, Jeremy Crawford, about the increased popularity of D&D, here’s what he had to say:

It’s a really simple thing, but in 5th, that decision to not require miniatures was huge. Us doing that suddenly basically unlocked everyone from the dining room table and, in many ways, made it possible for the boom in streaming that we’re seeing now.

In short, Crawford positioned miniatures as something of a barrier of entry to getting into playing D&D. But when exactly did miniatures become a requirement?

D&D Was a Miniatures Game First (or Was It?)​

Co-cocreator of D&D Gary Gygax labeled the original boxed set of Dungeons & Dragons as “Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures.” Gygax was a wargamer himself, which used miniature games to wage tabletop battles. His target audience for D&D were these wargamers, and so use of miniatures – leveraging Chainmail, a supplement he created for miniature wargaming – was assumed. Miniature wargaming was more than a little daunting for a new player to join. Jon Peterson explains in Playing at the World:

Whether fought on a sand table, a floor or a yard outdoors, miniature wargames eschewed boards and the resulting ease of quantifying movements between squares (or hexagons) in favor of irregular scale-model terrain and rulers to measure movement distance. Various sorts of toy soldiers— traditionally made of wood, lead or tin, but by the mid-twentieth century constructed from a variety of alloys and composites— peopled these diminutive landscapes, in various attitudes of assault and movement. While Avalon Hill sold everything you needed to play their board wargames in a handy box, miniature wargamers had the responsibility and the freedom to provide all of the components of a game: maps, game pieces and the system. Consider that even the most complicated boardgame is easily retrieved from a shelf or closet, its board unfolded and lain across a table top, its pieces sorted and arranged in a starting configuration, all within a span of some minutes— in a pinch the game could be stowed away in seconds. Not so for the miniature wargamer. Weeks might be spent in constructing the battleground alone, in which trees, manmade structures, gravel roads and so on are often selected for maximum verisimilitude. Researching a historical battle or period to determine the lay of the land, as well as the positions and equipment of the combatants, is a task which can exhaust any investment of time and energy. Determining how to model the effects of various weapons, or the relative movement rates of different vehicles, requires similar diligent investigations, especially to prevent an imbalanced and unfair game. Wargaming with miniatures consequently is not something undertaken lightly.

D&D offered human-scale combat, something that made the precision required for miniature wargaming much less of a barrier. Indeed, many of the monsters we know today were actually dollar store toys converted for that purpose. It’s clear that accurately representing fantasy on the battlefield was not a primary concern for Gygax. Peterson goes into further detail on that claim:

Despite the proclamation on the cover of Dungeons & Dragons that it is “playable with paper and pencil and miniature figures,” the role of miniature figures in Dungeons & Dragons is downplayed throughout the text. Even in the foreword, Gygax confesses that “in fact you will not even need miniature figures,” albeit he tacks onto this “although their occasional employment is recommended for real spectacle when battles are fought.” These spectacular battles defer entirely to the Chainmail rules, and thus there is no further mention of miniatures in any of the three books of Dungeons & Dragons other than a reiteration of the assertion that their use is not required. The presence of the term “miniature figures” on the cover of the woodgrain box is, consequently, a tad misleading.

James Maliszewski states that this trend continued through Advanced Dungeons & Dragons:

Even so, it's worth noting that, despite the game's subtitle, miniature figures are not listed under D&D's "recommended equipment," while "Imagination" and "1 Patient Referee" are! Elsewhere, it is stated that "miniature figures can be added if the players have them available and so desire, but miniatures are not required, only esthetically pleasing." The rulebook goes on to state that "varied and brightly painted miniature figures" add "eye-appeal." The AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, though published five years later in 1979, evinces essentially the same attitude, saying "Miniature figures used to represent characters and monsters add color and life to the game. They also make the task of refereeing action, particularly combat, easier too!"

Gygax himself confirmed that miniatures weren’t required in a Q&A session on ENWorld:

I don't usually employ miniatures in my RPG play. We ceased that when we moved from CHAINMAIL Fantasy to D&D. 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. The GW folks use them a lot, but they are fighting set-piece battles as is usual with miniatures gaming. I don't believe that fantasy miniatures are good or bad for FRPGs in general. If the GM sets up gaming sessions based on their use, the resulting play is great from my standpoint. It is mainly a matter of having the painted figures and a big tabletop to play on.

So if the game didn’t actually require miniatures and Gygax didn’t use them, where did the idea of miniatures as a requirement happen? For that, we have to look to later editions.

Pleading the Fifth​

Jennifer Grouling Cover explains the complicated relationship gamers had with miniatures &D in The Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games:

The lack of a visual element may make spatial immersion more difficult to achieve in D&D than in more visually oriented games; however, this type of immersion is still important to the game. Without the visual component to TRPGs, players may have difficulty picturing the exact setting that the DM lays out. Wizards of the Coast's market survey shows that in 2000, 56 percent of gaming groups used miniatures to solve this dilemma…Because D& D combat rules often offer suggestions as to what you can or cannot do at certain distances, these battle maps help players visualize the scene and decide on their actions…Even though some gamers may get more interested in the visual representation of space by painting and designing scenery such as miniature castles, these tools exist more for showing spatial relationships than for immersing players visually.

In essence, Third Edition rules that involved distances seemed to encourage grid-based combat and miniature use. But the rise of Fourth Edition formalized grid-based combat, which in turn required some sort of miniature representation. Joshua Aslan Smith summed it up on StackRPGExchange:

The whole of 4th edition ruleset by and large is devoted to the balance and intricacies of tactical, grid-based combat. There are exceptions, such as rules for skill challenges and other Role Play aspects of the game (vs. roll play). To both maximize the benefits of 4th edition and actually run it correctly you need to run combats on a grid of 1" squares. Every single player attack and ability is based around this precept.

This meant players were looking at the table instead of each other, as per Crawford’s comment:

Part of that is possible because you can now play D&D and look at people’s faces. It’s people looking at each other, laughing together, storytelling together, and that’s really what we were striving for.

It wasn’t until Fifth Edition that “theater of the mind” play was reintroduced, where grids, miniatures, and terrain are unnecessary. This style of play never truly went away, but had the least emphasis and support in Fourth Edition.

Did the removal of miniatures as a requirement truly allow D&D to flourish online? Charlie Hall on Polygon explains that the ingredients for D&D to be fun to watch as well as to play have always been there:

Turns out, the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons was designed to be extremely light and easy to play. Several Polygon staff have spent time with the system, and in our experience it's been a breeze to teach, even to newbies. That's because D&D's 5th edition is all about giving control back to the Dungeon Master. If you want to play a game of D&D that doesn't require a map, that is all theater of the mind, you can do that with Skype. Or with Curse. Or with Google Hangout. Or with Facetime. Basically, if you can hear the voice of another human being you can play D&D. You don't even need dice. That's because Dungeons & Dragons, and other role-playing games that came after it, are all about storytelling. The rules are a fun way to arbitrate disputes, the maps and miniatures are awful pretty and the books are filled with amazing art and delicious lore. But Wizards of the Coast just wants you to play, that's why the latest version of the starter rules is available for free.

D&D’s always been about telling a good story. The difference is that now that our attention – and the camera or microphone – can be focused on each other instead of the table.

“What 5th edition has done the best,” according to game designer Kate Welch, “is that idea of it being the theatre of the mind and the imagination, and to put the emphasis on the story and the world that is being created by the players.” That’s the kind of “drama people want to see,” both in their own adventures and on their screens.

If the numbers are any indication, that makes D&D a lot more fun to watch.

 

[pemerton]

Rolemaster uses 10 second combat rounds... and does NOT define a result doing damage as a single hit, either. The term given for damage is "concussion hits" - which implies multiple hits. The combination of time, the ability to shuffle OB into DB, and the term hits being used for damage, all imply it's not one attack=1swing.

RM combat is ambiguous in some respects. The 10-second rounds, together with the parry mechanics, suggest a round of jostling for advantage just as Gygax (in his DMG) described for 1-minute AD&D rounds.

But other features of the system - the crit results, the Bladeturn spell - suggest that what is being deleivered, or defended against - is one particular blow.

And in any event, where there is no ambiguity is in the fact that suffering a loss in combat - that is, being "hit" - corresponds to a clear state of affairs in the fiction, namely, taking some definite injury (blood loss, brusing, and other physical trauma).

This feature of RM is also relevant to the discussion about "cooldowns", MMOs etc.

There are three main components that contribute to the basic appeal of the "process sim"/"purist for system" FRPGs like RM, RQ, etc. They are summed up in the slogan "Get Real, Get Rolemaster!"

One of those components is the one I was just discussing - in place of an AC/hp method of resolving hand-to-hand combat, they have a parry-and-injury based system, with armour providing some form of damage reduction (literally in RQ; in RM, via its place on the weapon charts and its role in resolving various crit resuts). This can cause issues for gameplay, given the tendency for combat to be a central feature of FRPGing (ie the reasons Gygax gave in his DMG for favouring a hp approach aren't silly one), but it nevertheless is a key element in the appeal of RM, RQ etc.

A second component is the replacement of class-based PC build with "open" PC building: fully open in RQ, while RM still uses "classes" but as devices for establishing the points cost for particular abilities. This non-class-based approach to PC building brings with it generic skill lists, and the inclusion of combat ability and (moreso in RM than RQ) magic ability as just another skill to be developed. This is a complete rejection of blanket rules like "wizards can't use swords or armour" and "only thieves can pick pockets".

The third component is the replacement of D&D's "Vancian" spell system with points-based casting (RM takes this further than RQ). Playing a spell caster no longer involves assembling a "hand" of resources which must be managed over the course of an episode of play.

What is striking to me is that the respects in which 4e is called out as "being like an MMO" are all respects in which it utterly repudiates the RM/RQ approach and instead doubles down on the alternative D&D approach. So we have no injury system; instead we build on the hp system by adding in a healing surge mechanic that further reduces the long-term consequences of hit point loss and turns them primarily into an encounter resource rather than an "expedition" resource.

We have no spell point system but instead keep the "hand of resources" model and generalise it across all classes. And, as with hp, make the encounter rather than the expedition the focus for managing those resources.

And so far from having "open" PC-build, the importance of class to PC building is reinforced, with each class having its own mostly unique set of abilities (powers, feats, etc) that favour the creation of recognisable archetypes, or - if one prefers - game pieces with clearly distinguished roles to perform. (Much like Gygax's apparent vision for character classes in his PHB and DMG.)

This is why I find that particular line of attack on 4e from D&D players so weird. It would make sense coming from players of RM, RQ or similar games, because it is a reinforcement of all the core elements of D&D that those systems are built on recting.

Whereas I can't make sense of D&D players posting as if D&D already answered to the concerns of "purist for system" RPGing up until 4e was published. Maybe this has some connection to [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]'s idea of "backwards simulation".

(There is one fearure of RM that is very close to 4e martial encounter powers: Adrenal Moves, especially in conjunction with rules for sustaining them, which I thin may frist have been in RMC IV. I remember discussing these as a precedent for martial encounter powers on ENworld back in 2008.)

 

[Tony Vargas]

Er...no. Spellcasting is a class ability: the ability to cast (arcane or divine, by class) spells.

Distinction w/o a difference. A caster is his spells.

For my part, the argument I had wasn't the dailies but the "encounter" reset; mostly because trying to define exactly what constituted an encounter would in many instances be like trying to nail a cloud to a tree.

Combat Encounters conceptually go from surprise or the rolling of initiative until one side is vanquished or contact broken...

Encounter powers were recovered on a short rest, of 5 min.

Effects that weren't sustained, save ends, or end-of-next-turn, were typically to the end of the encounter, or, again, 5 min.

5 minutes is not an unfamiliar, unintuitive, or complicated period of time.

 

[Jhaelen]

As I mentioned in the part of my post you didn't quote - and what Hussar I feel has been right all along, a lot has to do with 4e's presentation. The fact that there were power cards very much blew away any vagueness for many of us.

Do you feel that FFG's Star Wars RPG was inspired by CCG's, as well?

 

[Sadras]

Do you feel that FFG's Star Wars RPG was inspired by CCG's, as well?

Sorry, I cannot comment because I have never played or looked at the FFG's Star Wars RPG. It is probably blasphemous to say this on these boards (not going to make any friends), but I was never interested in playing a Star Wars RPG - thematically the fantasy space opera never appealed to me. I prefer the harder sci-fi settings.

 

[Lanefan]

Distinction w/o a difference. A caster is his spells.

A caster who for whatever reason knows no spells at the moment (e.g. has run out for the day) still has the 'spellcasting' ability.

Combat Encounters conceptually go from surprise or the rolling of initiative until one side is vanquished or contact brokem..

Encounter powers were recovered on a short rest, of 5 min.

Effects that weren't sustained, save ends, or end-of-next-turn, were typically to the end of the encounter, or, again, 5 min.

5 minutes is not an unfamiliar, unintuitive, or complicated period of time.

I don't remember seeing the 5-minute qualifier anywhere for duration - was that in a later DMG? (I only got the first one) If that had been there all along I'd have just been saying "make everything 5 minutes and have done with it" and not arguing nearly as much, but as that never came up I suspect it wasn't in 4e's DMG1.

The 5-minute rest to reload I vaguely remember, but did I only hear about that here?

I remember when 4e came out and this same topic arose on these boards, I put forward four or five reasonably-common situations* in which it would be difficult to clearly tell where a combat encounter began/ended; and about the best answer I got amounted to "wing it".

* - some of these were, in brief and to the best of my recall:

- PCs are laying an ambush for a known and visible group of approaching foes who aren't quite here yet and want to use E-abilities before the ambush as well as during it, can they?
- one or more PCs get separated from the party during a combat and can no longer interact with it even though it is still ongoing; do their E-abilities run out before the other PCs' do?
- a normal combat is just winding down when the next (unrelated) set of foes shows up, do E-powers sustain even though it's not the same battle any more?

And there were others. Simply saying "5 minutes, no matter what" would solve all these...and as a side effect would, if desired, allow these abilities to be used in other non-encounter situations.

Lanefan

 

[pemerton]

the argument I had wasn't the dailies but the "encounter" reset; mostly because trying to define exactly what constituted an encounter would in many instances be like trying to nail a cloud to a tree. If they wanted a short duration for stuff then they should have given it an actual duration, measured in actual game-based units of time like rounds or minutes

I gather you're not familiar with the following passages from the PHB (p 15, under the heading "Attack Powers and Utility Powers"; and p 278, under the heading "Durations"):

You can use encounter powers many times during a day of adventuring, but you have to rest a few minutes between each use, so you can use them each once per encounter.

Until the End of the Encounter: The effect ends when you take a rest (short or extended) or after 5 minutes.​

Page 263 also tells us that "A short rest is about 5 minutes long", and renews encounter powers.

It's not that uncertain.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I don't remember seeing the 5-minute qualifier anywhere for duration - was that in a later DMG? (I only got the first one) If that had been there all along I'd have just been saying "make everything 5 minutes and have done with it" and not arguing nearly as much, but as that never came up I suspect it wasn't in 4e's DMG1.

Since you're curious about the early state of the game, PH p278, under, of all things, 'Durations, '

"The effect ends when you take a rest (short or extended) or after 5 minutes."

So, yes, it was there from the beginning.

The 5-minute rest to reload I vaguely remember, but did I only hear about that here?

Amazingly, resting also has an entry, helpfully under that heading, PH, p263, "A short rest is about 5 minutes long."

(Yeah, 'about,' still flirt'n with 'natural language's back then.)

I remember when 4e came out and this same topic arose on these boards, I put forward four or five reasonably-common situations* in which it would be difficult to clearly tell where a combat encounter began/ended; and about the best answer I got amounted to "wing it".

That's the best answer to just about any 5e question, today.

(That's a DM Empowerment plug, folks.)

PCs are laying an ambush for a known and visible group of approaching foes who aren't quite here yet and want to use E-abilities before the ambush as well as during it, can they?

You could use an encounter power out of combat. Mostly, it'd be pointless to do so, in the situation you describe, since they don't tend to have sustain or end of encounter durations, and it would take a 5min short rest to recover them.

You could certainly use a daily power with a sustain or end of encounter duration, but if the enemy dawdled for more than 5 minutes, it'd've been wasted.

one or more PCs get separated from the party during a combat and can no longer interact with it even though it is still ongoing; do their E-abilities run out before the other PCs' do?

If they start a rest before the others do, sure.

a normal combat is just winding down when the next (unrelated) set of foes shows up, do E-powers sustain even though it's not the same battle any more?

Adding foes to an encounter is likely to extend the encounter. It seems unlikely it'd ever get to 50 rounds and run up against the 5 min limit, though.

There's also a discussion on when encounters end in the DMG1, p41.

In retrospect, cracking the PH I haven't needed to consult in years, the rules are starkly clear. Or maybe its contrast from running 5e.

Maybe the source of confusion was from folks offering speculation or not checking the book while still unfamiliar, or maybe it was jumping to interpretations and parsing tangential entries for implications as we were used to doing in 3e, rather than just finding and accepting a simple, one-sentence rule under a bold, relevant, heading?

 

[Manbearcat]

While I agree with you, and I don't think it's been mentioned yet, there's also a similar similarity to certain card games. In fact, 4E was the first time I'd ever seen anyone print out power cards to keep in their hand for quick reference, and it instantly made me feel like I was playing Magic when I was at the table.

Saelorn,

This is a little weird. I brought this up in significant detail. My post regarding 4e and MtG was actually the genesis to this conversation angle. You either responded to that post directly or responded/XPed posts that were in response to it.

I think that it is quite interesting that two people can look at the same data and not only draw the opposite conclusions but also accuse the other of being disingenuous.

Its not that interesting...

Me
edition warriors who had contempt for one or both games and were ignorant of one or both paradigms because it could be easily weaponized to call 4e shallow and get like-minded ignorant and angry edition warriors to disingenuously repeat the meme.

...that you misconstrued or mischaracterized what I wrote. I didn't accuse Saelorn (or anyone else I've been conversing with) of being disingenuous. Yes, I did lay out the factually correct information that he was confused over (thereby revealing ignorance of continuity and paradigm), but I didn't remotely question his integrity.

I guess you are right that the game has changed with the new Video Gamer mentality so that you no longer have any serious injuries. In ADnD however that was not the case and if you were knocked into negative hps you required weeks to recover.

So yes if 5e is your basis of looking at HPs, AC etc I can see how you may get the impression that they correspond to nothing in particular.

Now this is indeed interesting.

Two of the major rubbish edition warrior attacks against the 4th edition of D&D and the players who liked it were invoking things like:

a) "the new Video Gamer mentality" as an epithet.

b) "tactical skirmish boardgame linked by freeform roleplay" as an epithet

(A) was the angle that certain folks used to decry other folks (and a perceived attendant gaming paradigm) that were/was said to standardize "entitlement", "munchkinism", and/or "ezmode"

(B) was about shallowness in gameplay where there is no "relevant fiction"; eg components of a shared imaginary space become irrelevant to action resolution and therefore the trajectory of play.

So...like I said earlier; "weaponized" for edition warring. Thanks for the apropos example.

 

[Shasarak]

Its not that interesting...

I can see how you can come to that conclusion. And on the other hand you have someone presenting all the different powers and their cool down times in intricate detail and then concluding that is why those WoW powers are not at all the same as those in 4e.

Well of course they are not exactly the same; one is a computer game and the other is a RPG. Can you imagine if an RPG had powers that cooled down in real time, that would be crazy.

...that you misconstrued or mischaracterized what I wrote. I didn't accuse Saelorn (or anyone else I've been conversing with) of being disingenuous. Yes, I did lay out the factually correct information that he was confused over (thereby revealing ignorance of continuity and paradigm), but I didn't remotely question his integrity.

No one ever claimed that you did question Saelorns integrity.

Now this is indeed interesting.

Two of the major rubbish edition warrior attacks against the 4th edition of D&D and the players who liked it were invoking things like:

a) "the new Video Gamer mentality" as an epithet.

As you yourself have proven in detail, it is not a rubbish edition warrior attack to point out a fact that no one can dispute. I mean you have the designers themselves saying that they drew on video games as inspiration for their work on 4e.

b) "tactical skirmish boardgame linked by freeform roleplay" as an epithet

(A) was the angle that certain folks used to decry other folks (and a perceived attendant gaming paradigm) that were/was said to standardize "entitlement", "munchkinism", and/or "ezmode"

(B) was about shallowness in gameplay where there is no "relevant fiction"; eg components of a shared imaginary space become irrelevant to action resolution and therefore the trajectory of play.

So...like I said earlier; "weaponized" for edition warring. Thanks for the apropos example.

I must admit that the only people that apparently seem to have a belief that things like Stats, HP, AC etc correspond to nothing in particular are 4e players where in fact the stats of a Creature have more to do with their level then any other intrinsic factor.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

4e fans often get upset when its referred to as a skirmish miniatures game you can tack role playing on when that is how I've had it described to me by fans of the game in the past and reading the books didn't make me go "those guys were clueless!"