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]

One way to handle this IC, though, is to have some means to exchange/sell/make magic items. This means an unwanted item can be turned into something else. I get why people who fear the excesses of CharOp and RAW wielded like a weapon like the plague don't want exchange/sell/make, but one thing is does a good job of is keeping things in character. Wish lists, by contrast, are totally out of character.

A game in which PCs find fitting items may, at least in that respsect, resemble LotR.

A game in which the PCs reduce iems to residuum and/or trade them at the Sigil item mart resembles LotR not at a all!

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

But, I thought magical abilities got a free pass and were always acceptable explanations for anything?

Heh, well it does help insofar as things declared "magic" explicitly break the "rules" of mundane reality.

Seriously, though, there is a style of DMing (and I say D rather than G for the obvious reason), in which maintaining a sense of mystery on the player side of the screen is paramont. What's best for the game in that style is something the DM must divine without collaborating (directly or openly) with the players. He can't just ask "what kind of game do you want" "what kind of enemies are you interested in" "what kind of magic item best fits your character" or anything like that. He shouldn't even take too-obvious hints. Because any sense on the player side that the DM has 'changed' his world (even though he's most likely making it up as he goes along so there's nothing to change) to cater to the PCs(players) breaks that sense of mystery and undermines the style.

I think you've got the intention somewhat wrong, my intention. I really want people to stay in character as much as possible. A sense of mystery is important for that. I will play with the fourth wall a bit, of course, recognizing that it's really a bunch of players sitting around a table/logged into a VTT, but I work pretty hard for it to be there and avoid breaking immersion.

This means that games that have a lot of things that break me out of that---lots of tedious arithmetic, bookkeeping, or chart consultation during the course of play would be examples---are problematic. If every turn I have to read the powers for important details, I'm constantly context-switching and not staying in the fiction.

Same goes for DMing. I tend to keep track of player desires and the general direction they want their character to go in. I'll throw in opportunities for them of course, often based on conversations we might have had off-line. Players can also mention things they're looking for IC. Say, when entering a new town, the player might say "Hey, I'm interested in seeing if such-and-so merchant is here. I need to get some of that newfangled plate armor." and the bard's player says, "Sure, I'll ask around for you to see if I can get you a good deal." This happens IC. Maybe Ye Olde Towne doesn't have a good armorer... why is that? It might suggest there's an issue, or provide a direction to go. "Ye Olde Towne used to have an armorer, but Baron Sir Duke drove him out, so he moved". Of course, for something really mundane I won't waste table time on it. "I want to buy some standard adventuring gear." No need to keep track of it unless the feel of the game requires that to reinforce it. If I were playing "Fallout: The Low Level Years" then, yeah, buying rope is a problem. "Sourcing the table" gives the DM a ton of information and new directions; a skilled DM knows how to do it to keep the fiction going.

You mentioned abstraction up-thread. I don't disagree that a TTRPG is abstract, but the more I'm having to fight with complicated rules (for whatever reason... badly written spells such as 3.X's Dispel Magic to impeccably written and game-balanced powers that require getting the details really right, such as many 4E powers), the more I get pulled into thinking about these things.

I'll make a close analogy: I've done a good bit of home musical recording. It's very hard to flip back and forth between "engineer" mindset, which is focused on getting a quality recording free of unwanted noise and "artist" mindset focused on getting a quality performance that hits all the notes right and evokes the desired emotion. This is why it's often helpful not to have to do the engineering when you just want to play. If the tools are really good at getting out of the way, it's possible to handle both roles. If not, it's better to let someone else do part of it.

Some scaffolding really helps both the player and DM. For example, one reason I like some item creation rules is that they save me from having to just make things up on the spot... "What goes into a healing potion?" "Uh... <scratches head, what did I say last time?>". As I said in a different post, I totally understand that WotC fears the CharOP/RAW rules lawyer mindset and wants to support DMs trying to avoid that, but IMO their way of fighting it by not publishing anything in certain areas isn't the way I'd go about it and has ended up being one of the more frustrating aspects of 5E.

There is, of course, a sweet spot that's different for every person: Enough of the right kinds of detail, but not too much. Insufficiently detailed mechanics become boring. So for me having rules that really support and work with keeping the game IC as much as possible is the thing.

Based on your posts, I think you're more of the "it's a game" kind of person.

And just because I can't think of an example of a worse sort of RPGing off the top of my head doesn't mean that it's the worst sort possible....
...I'm sure there's something.

"Roll D20 for d*ck length...." Yes, I've actually heard that. I left.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

A game in which PCs find fitting items may, at least in that respsect, resemble LotR.

A game in which the PCs reduce iems to residuum and/or trade them at the Sigil item mart resembles LotR not at a all!

I don't intend my game to look like LotR, so I don't really care about that---not sure why you think that's particularly important, at least to me.

The Sigil Item Mart can be TONS of fun with many RP opportunities. It's an undertaking to get to Sigil for one. Once you're there you have to work to get access and make deals. For instance, if you're buying from The Friendly Fiend, well... he often wants payments in other than mundane coin. You may or may not be able to come to a deal for what you want to trade or obtain. So you can look for other options, but that may involve other unsavory deals or various quests to get in with different Factions. IMO it's one of the best ways to have a fairly player-directed campaign arc!

Similarly, residuum was a good idea. It's the universal magical reagent, but it's costly to sack an item to make it. Again, lots of RP opportunities: Ever read Master of Five Magics?

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think you've got the intention somewhat wrong, my intention. I really want people to stay in character as much as possible. A sense of mystery is important for that. I will play with the fourth wall a bit, of course, recognizing that it's really a bunch of players sitting around a table/logged into a VTT, but I work pretty hard for it to be there and avoid breaking immersion.

Nod. You're saying that the sense of mystery is helpful in achieving the goal of immersion, I'm saying that a sense of immersion is helpful in achieving the goal of mystery (or maybe I should say 'uncertainty' or 'disocvery' or 'wonder'). Six of one, half-dozen of the other.

The point is, you can't go letting players make a magic-item 'wish list' OOC, that the DM will even take into consideration. They could, IC, learn about and decide to quest for specific items, of course.

This means that games that have a lot of things that break me out of that---lots of tedious arithmetic, bookkeeping, or chart consultation during the course of play would be examples---are problematic.

And here's the problem I so often encounter when defending this style to someone who doesn't appreciate it, someone who does will come in with claims like this that won't make sense to the other side, at all. We are talking about a minor/optional difference evinced by one ed of D&D, and you just ascribed an intractable level of the same issue kind of issue in every edition of D&D, especially the classic ones where this particular style arguably orginated and was used with the greatest enthusiasm.
And that's going to seem like a blatant contradiction of any point I may have managed to make in explaining the issue with "wish listing" items...

If every turn I have to read the powers for important details, I'm constantly context-switching and not staying in the fiction.

Again, you're introducing a blatant contradiction: compared to going through spells in any ed or the rules for maneuvers in 3.x/PF, parsing a power is fast & unintrusive.

You mentioned abstraction up-thread. I don't disagree that a TTRPG is abstract, but the more I'm having to fight with complicated rules (for whatever reason... badly written spells such as 3.X's Dispel Magic to impeccably written and game-balanced powers that require getting the details really right, such as many 4E powers), the more I get pulled into thinking about these things.

Funny thing is, you just game an example of a complicated vs a simple rule as if both were complicated. Sure, the latter might have been comlicated for the designer to create in the context of the whole, more 'balanced,' game, but as far as understanding an resolving one power, it's about as simple as you can get without an even greater level of abstraction: like 'roll hit,' 'roll damage.'

For example, one reason I like some item creation rules is that they save me from having to just make things up on the spot... "What goes into a healing potion?" "Uh... <scratches head, what did I say last time?>".

The problem with too-specific rules for item creation is that they can set you up with the same problems as a wish list. If a healing potion requires treant sap or troll blood, for instance, those monsters had better be fairly common in your world if healing potions are going to be fairly common - what's more, if the players gain OOC knowledge of the rules-dictated ingredients, they can meta-game to manufacture opportunities to manufacture items.
OTOH, if it's just Xgp of materials, you just need a basic economy set up to determine availability. You can fill in the details of what the materials are for color to match your world. And, yeah, if you're winging it, should maybe write it down - though magic is supposed to be pretty wonky...

There is, of course, a sweet spot that's different for every person: Enough of the right kinds of detail, but not too much. Insufficiently detailed mechanics become boring. So for me having rules that really support and work with keeping the game IC as much as possible is the thing.

Having had many of these discussion, I've reached the conclusion that there's no objective level or degree of abstraction or detail or whatever that is, however subjectively, a line that, once crossed, is too much. Rather, it appears the issue with a given mechanic getting in the way of the style of play is subjective to the point of being entirely arbitrary, and if there is a consistent determinant, at all, it's long familiarity with and acceptance of working around the mechanic in question to get the desired feel from the game.

While that's not an invalid issue, trying to design a new game (or meaningfully improved version of an existing game) around it is futile. It's, at it's least destructive, an unfortunate source of innertia in the hobby.

Based on your posts, I think you're more of the "it's a game" kind of person.

It's nothing to do with the kind of person I am, and I do often enjoy & run the style we're defending. (I do also enjoy playing & running in others, as well, which is a source of consternation in these debates - I look like I'm 'waffling' or arguing both sides just to argue.)

It is just, in objective fact, that a TTRPG is an actual game. No matter how avidly we may persue a style that tries to evoke a genre or model an imagined reality, the tools we are using to do so remain the rules & trappings (& inherrent limitations) of a game.
That or we end up played by Tom Hanks in the movie adaptation. ;P

Like I actually said, though, I appreciate that kind of style, which is why I often find myself defending it to pemerton &c. I'm just not as convinced as some of my fellow adherents that a game must be mechanically lacking in order to facilitate it. Hidden from the players in the old Gygaxian sense can certainly help, though.

"Roll D20 for d*ck length...." Yes, I've actually heard that. I left.

Once again, FATAL saves D&D from being the worst RPG of all time. ;P

And, its rediculous: if you're running an ocean-going adventure, you should know who big the dock is before the party tries to moor its boat.

I don't intend my game to look like LotR, so I don't really care about that---not sure why you think that's particularly important, at least to me.

I suppose LotR was just an example. Residuum & magic-item economies won't resemble any other classic fantasy sub-genre, either. It might harken to comic book supers or sci-fi, a bit, with Residuum taking the place of Marvel's Vibranium or Dune's Spice or whatever sort of unobtanium is smoothing over the throwaway details.

The Sigil Item Mart can be TONS of fun with many RP opportunities. It's an undertaking to get to Sigil for one. Once you're there you have to work to get access and make deals. For instance, if you're buying from The Friendly Fiend, well... he often wants payments in other than mundane coin. You may or may not be able to come to a deal for what you want to trade or obtain. So you can look for other options, but that may involve other unsavory deals or various quests to get in with different Factions. IMO it's one of the best ways to have a fairly player-directed campaign arc!

Well, we can agree to disagree on that one.

Similarly, residuum was a good idea. It's the universal magical reagent, but it's costly to sack an item to make it. Again, lots of RP opportunities: Ever read Master of Five Magics?

I quite liked it: it had a very scientific, or at least practical, attitude towards magic and the workings of the five different kinds were delved into in some detail. The sequel got more than a little wierd, though. However, I don't recall any analog to Rediduum.

I do agree that it was a neat/simple idea for dealing with the issue of making/re-making/liquidating magic items, though. Though more on the "it's a game," pro-abstraction, level...

 

[Tony Vargas]

I was always quite torn over the whole build thing. ...I think there are two basic things I found different about it that changed things. The first is the books were much more written for the players rather than the GM and there was a baked in assumption that worked its way into the gaming culture over time, that if it was in the books, the players have access to it.

The Cult of RAW, yeah. That's not so much an artifact of build systems, in general, as the 3.x approach to it still being so very... well Core-D&D-experience-like, actually. In older versions of D&D, you had no real direct/voluntary control over how your character developed after choosign race/class, the DM might decide that the magic pool you drank from turned your skin purple, or you might get a magic item that made you superhumanly strong, or swapped your assigned sex. While, in 3e, you had a tremendous lattitude to customize your character with MCing and with make/buy items, you still had this dependence on the items and options being arbitrarily spelled out - by designers in a published book rather than by the DM, but you still needed exactly the right option to be published to be able to use it. You couldn't customize to a deeper level (or granularity) like you could in the ground-breaking build systems from the early 80s.

It was still very much a compromise between a player-mediated build system and an arbitrary, DM mediated path of character development (with da rulez stepping on the DM's toes a bit).

The other aspect was that in order to enjoy the game, you really had to know how to make a build and enjoy maximizing a given character's potential within the system. That isn't for everyone.

The magnitude of that issue is directly related to the complexity & balance of the build system. It was a very serious issue for 3.x/PF because the swings in effectiveness of a build could be so extreme, but even in that case, the DM could limit the problem - but only by limiting options (restricting everyone to Tier 3 classes, for instance). Of course, the GM could 'take back control,' and alievate this second issue, as well, by auditing & approving builds, by doing pre-built 'packages' or even doing all the builds, himself (still to player concepts, so some of the advantage of a build system could be retained).

 

[Bedrockgames]

The Cult of RAW, yeah. That's not so much an artifact of build systems, in general, as the 3.x approach to it still being so very... well Core-D&D-experience-like, actually. In older versions of D&D, you had no real direct/voluntary control over how your character developed after choosign race/class, the DM might decide that the magic pool you drank from turned your skin purple, or you might get a magic item that made you superhumanly strong, or swapped your assigned sex. While, in 3e, you had a tremendous lattitude to customize your character with MCing and with make/buy items, you still had this dependence on the items and options being arbitrarily spelled out - by designers in a published book rather than by the DM, but you still needed exactly the right option to be published to be able to use it. You couldn't customize to a deeper level (or granularity) like you could in the ground-breaking build systems from the early 80s.

It was still very much a compromise between a player-mediated build system and an arbitrary, DM mediated path of character development (with da rulez stepping on the DM's toes a bit).

The magnitude of that issue is directly related to the complexity & balance of the build system. It was a very serious issue for 3.x/PF because the swings in effectiveness of a build could be so extreme, but even in that case, the DM could limit the problem - but only by limiting options (restricting everyone to Tier 3 classes, for instance). Of course, the GM could 'take back control,' and alievate this second issue, as well, by auditing & approving builds, by doing pre-built 'packages' or even doing all the builds, himself (still to player concepts, so some of the advantage of a build system could be retained).

3E's strength is its customizability. But I think on most days, that isn't what I was looking for in D&D. And I definitely wasn't looking for player customization to have such an impact on the setting itself (which it often would in my experience in 3E). I am not knocking the system. I played it for its duration. But my assessment of it by the end, and after going back to AD&D, is that the latter gave me more of what I was looking for from D&D. If I want customization, I would prefer something like the 2E class kits to what we ended up with in 3E. That said, I'd certainly use 3E again for the right campaign.

 

[Tony Vargas]

3E's strength is its customizability.

Of characters, by the player, yes. While 5e's is the customizability of the campaign by the DM.

Makes it dreadfully hard to say which is difinitively the better game.

But I think on most days, that isn't what I was looking for in D&D. And I definitely wasn't looking for player customization to have such an impact on the setting itself (which it often would in my experience in 3E).

Yeah, that definitely seems like an artifact not of customization, but of how it was delivered: in a 'list based' fashion, through an ever-growing selection of supplements & player-facing options, each very specific in fluff/flavor. If a player reeeeallly wanted a particulare function, effect, combo or whatever on the mechanics side, he might be 'forced' to bring in conflicting or campaign-inappropriate 'flavors'; if he wanted a particular flavor, he had to wait for it to get a mechanical reprentation and hope it meshed with the rest of the build, or create a build around it.

In either case, it dovetailed with the need to have RAW respected in order to play what you wanted, to result in players sometimes wanting to bring in characters that would add to or re-define aspects of the campaign setting, just so they could exist.

It was different from earlier eds only in that, then, it would have been entirely up to the DM to add something different from the usual suspects.

If I want customization, I would prefer something like the 2E class kits to what we ended up with in 3E. That said, I'd certainly use 3E again for the right campaign.

2e kits were a little unfocused. Some were more like Backgrounds in 4e/5e, just where your character came from before gaining his class, others were more like 4e Themes, who the character was as he continued to adventure, and some more like 5e sub-classes, changing how the class worked or what it represented. One mechanic trying to do too much, perhaps.

 

[Bedrockgames]

.

2e kits were a little unfocused. Some were more like Backgrounds in 4e/5e, just where your character came from before gaining his class, others were more like 4e Themes, who the character was as he continued to adventure, and some more like 5e sub-classes, changing how the class worked or what it represented. One mechanic trying to do too much, perhaps.

I may have liked them due to their wide application and what you describe as a lack of focus. For me it was about the right level of customization for D&D. They also leaned more on flavor than crunch, which I liked.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I may have liked them due to their wide application and what you describe as a lack of focus. For me it was about the right level of customization for D&D. They also leaned more on flavor than crunch, which I liked.

It was quite a range. There were Thief Kits that were a sentence or two and a minor bonus, Fighter kits that were a paragraph of flavor, and at least one Wizard kit (Mystic, IIRC, I played one for a minute or two) that was a page long and gave a couple of significant special abilities. Later kits in, like, the Complete Boook of Elves were notoriously broken, too.

I can't recall: could you take more than one Kit, if you were cleric/wizard elf could you take an Elf Kit, Cleric Kit, & wizard Kit?

 

[pemerton]

Nod. You're saying that the sense of mystery is helpful in achieving the goal of immersion, I'm saying that a sense of immersion is helpful in achieving the goal of mystery (or maybe I should say 'uncertainty' or 'disocvery' or 'wonder'). Six of one, half-dozen of the other.

The point is, you can't go letting players make a magic-item 'wish list' OOC, that the DM will even take into consideration. They could, IC, learn about and decide to quest for specific items, of course.

Making a "wish list" is at odds with the GM telling the players a story. But it's not at odds with immersion.

Having had many of these discussion, I've reached the conclusion that there's no objective level or degree of abstraction or detail or whatever that is, however subjectively, a line that, once crossed, is too much. Rather, it appears the issue with a given mechanic getting in the way of the style of play is subjective to the point of being entirely arbitrary, and if there is a consistent determinant, at all, it's long familiarity with and acceptance of working around the mechanic in question to get the desired feel from the game.

That seems true.