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.

 

[Tony Vargas]

What's the difference between having no role playing rules because you'll assume everyone will just freeform it versus having no roleplaying rules because you think it isn't important?

I'm not sure what you even think a "role-playing rule" /is/, so that's hard to answer. 13A, 4e, & 5e all have rules that define the character concept & tie it back to the setting (backrounds & icon relationships; backgrounds & Themes/Paths/Destinies; and backgrounds & personality traits, respectively) and rules to resolve challenges out of combat (backgrounds, skill challenges, and attribute checks, respectively). All three use alignment in some form.

Ultimately, though, they are Role-Playing Games - everything you do in one of them /is/ roleplaying, and all their rules support that.

It shares some similarities with 13th Age, after all. And people who have similar play styles to mine are seeing things in the game that I didn't. I still have my books, so I would like to give it another shot.

13A is actually a lot like 5e - no really, I can explain - not in design or implementation or even in presentation, but in that it hits many of the same goals, albeit from an entirely different angle. 13A combats are faster, not because options & monsters are paired down and set on easy mode, but because of the ingenious 'escalation die.' 13A evokes much of the 'feel' of the classic game, not by re-hashing its flaws but by lampshading & rationalizing the oddities those flaws led to that have become emblematic - the stand-out example, IMHO, is the conceit of the 'Living Dungeon,' but a more cogent one is the class designs, which harken to the problematic resource imbalances of classic D&D, but impose day-length arbitrarily (full heal-up after every 4th encounter, or campaign loss) to neatly solve them, where 5e just presents a guideline. 13A supports TotM, not by saying it defaults to it, but by having workable rules throughout that facilitate that style of play. One could go on and on.
But for not legally being able to put 'D&D' on the cover, 13A could be one of the best versions of that game, ever (OK, it's rather like PF, in a way, too).

Conversely, 13A bears strong superficial mechanical resemblances to 4e - recoveries & rallies are rather like surges & second wind, it uses 4e's attacker-rolls-vs-defense scheme instead of AC & saving throws, monsters/NPCs are mechanically different from PCs, etc - but it doesn't retain as much 3.x-style customizability as 4e did, nor does it prioritize balance in the same way. FWIW.

But, to get back to the table-flip topic, 4e, 13A & 5e can all be run without minis. 13A, as already alluded to, has solid rules built in from the ground up that work smoothly with that mode of play. Ranges & areas (and, critically, who's caught in them), movement & melee can be run in an abstract, easy-to-track way, or they can be placed on a grid for ease of handling greater precision. 4e states everything in 'squares' and areas are neatly abstracted to squares (or cubes) as well - intentionally or not, that lends itself to much easier tracking of movement/positioning and who gets caught in what AE, even when you're /not/ using a grid. 5e, OTOH, approaches everything in terms of concrete feet: you move a certain number of feet, your range is so many tens of feet, areas are handled with a variety of precise geometric shapes to the foot. It's easy enough to divide by 5 (or even 10, almost everything is in increments of 10), create some 3.x-style templates, and run that on a grid, but it doesn't lend itself well to "TotM" unless you just toss it and ballpark everything under the rubric of DM's judgement (which, honestly, is exactly what you're expected to do - and for a lot more, besides).

I think D&Ds success, this long-anticipated come-back finally materializing, is largely because it's threaded the needle between being accessible (not intimidating, say, before you even try it) to new players, but acceptable to the old guard wining their endorsement (or at least, placating them enough that they refrain from actively campaigning against it). It's the same conundrum as faced comics franchises and any other properties with a very nerdy, committed fanbase when trying mainstream. If you just go forward with the status quo, you have something that's intimidating to the masses, and even if they try it, only a few will stick with it. If you change it enough to be more appealing to the vanilla set (once they try it), the existing fans will pan it, and fewer people will even try it ("wow, if the people who loved this hate it, it must not be worth even a look"). That's double true of a come-back property that was a huge fad in decades past: if you're going to try it, don't you want to 'see what all the fuss was about' with an 'authentic' version, rather than a modernized 'better' version that the few existing fans openly hate?
3.5 with 'back to the dungeon' & lavish rewards for system mastery appealed to the hard-core hobbyist, but was intimidating as heck to the potential new fan, while 4e was easy to learn/play/run for new/casual players (and didn't give system-masters too overwhelming an advantage), but utterly repugnant to the hard-core.

5e navigated between that Charybdis & Scylla - and it's success in doing so had nothing to do with nominally defaulting to TotM.

 

[Manbearcat]

There's no disputing that combat is a major focus of the 4e rules. If you think that combat is an alternative to narrative development, rather than a possible site of narrative development, 4e may not work for you.

From my point of view, 4e is the only version of D&D that comes at all close to supporting free descriptor-style resolution (of the sort found in systems like HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling, and other indie or indie-type RPGs). This might seem an odd thing to say about a mini-&-grid combat system, but here are two links to actual play reports that illustrate what I've got in mind.

Part of what lets 4e support this is the same thing that underpins its status as the only version of D&D with systematic non-combat conflict resolution (of the sort found in all sorts of scene-based indie-type RPGs): a consistent and robust scheme of player-side resources and a mathematically reliable system for framing action difficulty.

The weakest part of 4e, in my experience, is bridging between combat and non-combat. The 4e players on these boards have talked a lot about ways of managing this. (This is [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s schtick in particular.)

I think the Skill Challenge is a microcosm of a lot of 4e's problems with the D&D player-base. We've seen it for years and years in the past and you see it again in this thread; people decrying the SC mechanic as an arbitrary practice in (mostly) fiction-irrelevant dicing. Which is not what it is. At all (which we've covered a jillion times over).

I wonder if in DMG 1's initial explanation of SCs if they would have just pointed to indie, scene-based predecessors (say Dogs in the Vineyard or Fate), how much more success there would have been in staving off the "Skill Challenges are just stale dice rolling." Just 9 months later, DMG2 did a fantastic job of better relaying the fundamental principles of closed scene resolution for non-combat challenges/conflicts. Then the RC in '11 or '12 put it all together succinctly (yet still didn't mention any indie games).

Now, anyone who has played/run modern indie scene-based games like Cortex+ (any of them) or Blades in the Dark (competing Clocks), will understand precisely what a 4e Skill Challenge is architecturally (dramatic arm, pacing, locked-in resolution by way of system machinery) and they'll understand the principles/techniques that guide its resolution (eg "Establish Goal/Stakes", "Fiction First", "Task and Intent", "Change the Situation", "Fail Forward").

But folks smuggling in 3.x or AD&D serial exploration expectations into 4e's scene resolution mechanics are invariably going to be very , , and perhaps

---

As an aside, I still don't understand the video game stuff. 4e's combat machinery is quite clearly inspired much more by Magic the Gathering (each Role as a Magic deck archetypes; eg Control, Aggro, Mid-Range)...which is, of course, WotC...so it seems the intuitive extrapolation.

I'm sure they were thinking something like "wow, if we could get the massive amount of Magic players (which dwarfs D&D players), D&D players, some modern video game players (sure WoW but especially God of War and the Diablo player-base as the "World on Fire" PoL mythology/setting is a match), and entice the indie RPG community (due to its tightness of design, narrativism, and scene-based paradigm)...holy cow that would be THE BIGGEST THING EVER."

But that didn't work out because there is less overlap than they thought when it came to a lot of D&D players and those other games (or at least a large segment of D&D players that want their D&D gated from those other influences).

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], another curious thing about responses to 4e is this idea of "DM-proofing". There's a very strong ethos, I think, among D&D players that the GM's job includes deciding outcomes. Which also underpins at least some of the discussion about TotM vs minis/grids.

 

[Imaro]

I think the Skill Challenge is a microcosm of a lot of 4e's problems with the D&D player-base. We've seen it for years and years in the past and you see it again in this thread; people decrying the SC mechanic as an arbitrary practice in (mostly) fiction-irrelevant dicing. Which is not what it is. At all (which we've covered a jillion times over).

I wonder if in DMG 1's initial explanation of SCs if they would have just pointed to indie, scene-based predecessors (say Dogs in the Vineyard or Fate), how much more success there would have been in staving off the "Skill Challenges are just stale dice rolling." Just 9 months later, DMG2 did a fantastic job of better relaying the fundamental principles of closed scene resolution for non-combat challenges/conflicts. Then the RC in '11 or '12 put it all together succinctly (yet still didn't mention any indie games).

Now, anyone who has played/run modern indie scene-based games like Cortex+ (any of them) or Blades in the Dark (competing Clocks), will understand precisely what a 4e Skill Challenge is architecturally (dramatic arm, pacing, locked-in resolution by way of system machinery) and they'll understand the principles/techniques that guide its resolution (eg "Establish Goal/Stakes", "Fiction First", "Task and Intent", "Change the Situation", "Fail Forward").

But folks smuggling in 3.x or AD&D serial exploration expectations into 4e's scene resolution mechanics are invariably going to be very , , and perhaps

---

Of course if it's the level of abstraction that is the issue with SC's for a few/some/many... a better explanation wouldn't have really helped. Some people just want finer granularity and tighter action association in their task resolution and mechanics. The other issue I saw was that 4e tried to have it's cake and eat it too in this respect which may have caused some dissonance with the mechanics (the same way some people just don't like there being a minion version of a monster and a regular version)... on the one hand we have very granular and hardcoded DC's for things like picking a lock... but on the other hand you could pick that same lock in a SC and the DC could be different. This type of design speaks to a specific sort of playstyle and I'm not sure it was what the majority of D&D players wanted. All IMO of course.

As an aside, I still don't understand the video game stuff. 4e's combat machinery is quite clearly inspired much more by Magic the Gathering (each Role as a Magic deck archetypes; eg Control, Aggro, Mid-Range)...which is, of course, WotC...so it seems the intuitive extrapolation.

I'm sure they were thinking something like "wow, if we could get the massive amount of Magic players (which dwarfs D&D players), D&D players, some modern video game players (sure WoW but especially God of War and the Diablo player-base as the "World on Fire" PoL mythology/setting is a match), and entice the indie RPG community (due to its tightness of design, narrativism, and scene-based paradigm)...holy cow that would be THE BIGGEST THING EVER."

But that didn't work out because there is less overlap than they thought when it came to a lot of D&D players and those other games (or at least a large segment of D&D players that want their D&D gated from those other influences).

Eh, I'm not so sure I agree seeing as how their most recent console videogame... Neverwinter... actually uses the 4e mechanics and plays like a pretty traditional MMOrpg. It's been a while since I've played but if I recall correctly... Basically they've converted the at-will/encounter/daily divide into tiered cool down times for your various 4e powers in the videogame... This is exactly what I think most people are relating them too when they make the videogame comparison...the standard structure implemented for every class, categorization of power levels, and standard recharge times of 4e powers while not an exact 1 for 1 copy, it's not a stretch to see why they reminding many people of modern/prevalent mmorpg mechanics.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I wonder if in DMG 1's initial explanation of SCs if they would have just pointed to indie, scene-based predecessors (say Dogs in the Vineyard or Fate), how much more success there would have been in staving off the "Skill Challenges are just stale dice rolling." Just 9 months later, DMG2 did a fantastic job of better relaying the fundamental principles of closed scene resolution for non-combat challenges/conflicts. Then the RC in '11 or '12 put it all together succinctly (yet still didn't mention any indie games).

Those types of independent games remain highly controversial among traditional role-players. Mentioning them, whether indirectly or by name, would not have helped to sell the edition.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Those types of independent games remain highly controversial among traditional role-players. Mentioning them, whether indirectly or by name, would not have helped to sell the edition.

And I'd bet the large majority of players would have no idea who they were talking about anyway.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

And I'd bet the large majority of players would have no idea who they were talking about anyway.

Also true. It seems like one of the hardest parts of game design is that you can't just sit down and explain your whole design process.

 

[Lanefan]

I played here in the UK from about 1983 to 1992, and apart from a copy of White Dwarf once in a blue moon, never read the magazines. Thus my gaming knowledge was limited to my own social circles though school and University - none of which used grids and minis.

These things really do vary by area.

Around here, pretty much all the games we knew of back in the day (the '80s for me, earlier than that for some others) used minis, tokens, or some variant thereof. The bigger variable was what was used underneath for a grid-and-map surface...some used paper, some used washable markers either on a whiteboard or (in one case) directly onto the arborite-surfaced table, and some used - and in my case still use to this day - a chalkboard.

 

[Lanefan]

But folks smuggling in 3.x or AD&D serial exploration expectations into 4e's scene resolution mechanics are invariably going to be very , , and perhaps

which might be a significant part of why 4e never held any appeal for me. I want the exploration. I want the mapping. I want the what's-around-the-next-corner sort of vibe.

As an aside, I still don't understand the video game stuff. 4e's combat machinery is quite clearly inspired much more by Magic the Gathering (each Role as a Magic deck archetypes; eg Control, Aggro, Mid-Range)...which is, of course, WotC...so it seems the intuitive extrapolation.

I'm sure they were thinking something like "wow, if we could get the massive amount of Magic players (which dwarfs D&D players), D&D players, some modern video game players (sure WoW but especially God of War and the Diablo player-base as the "World on Fire" PoL mythology/setting is a match), and entice the indie RPG community (due to its tightness of design, narrativism, and scene-based paradigm)...holy cow that would be THE BIGGEST THING EVER."

But that didn't work out because there is less overlap than they thought when it came to a lot of D&D players and those other games (or at least a large segment of D&D players that want their D&D gated from those other influences).

And any MtG players they were going to get would have come over with 3e, not 4e.

Through the '90s WotC found massive success with a game - MtG - that as part of its design had to have a rule for absolutely everything. By 2000 the rules and rulings for that game were as big and as dense as a dictionary of the English language - I know this as I was doing (badly in) some MtG tournaments around then and had to keep up with this stuff.

And so when they designed 3e D&D there was an obvious move towards also having a rule for everything - hell, it worked in Magic, why not here? - and that was their play to attract MtG players. This may or may not have been a factor in 3e's out-of-the-gate sales success, I don't know. But to those of us used to 1e-era stuff, the MtG design influence on 3e in ths regard couldn't be missed.

@Manbearcat, another curious thing about responses to 4e is this idea of "DM-proofing". There's a very strong ethos, I think, among D&D players that the GM's job includes deciding outcomes.

There's also a strong ethos that says the DM's job includes tweaking or kitbashing the rules system to suit her own game/self/players; and 4e (and 3e for all that) was not a very kitbash-friendly system - too many knock-on effects where changing something here broke things there, there, and probably there as well.

And this was intentional on the part of the designers, as their definition of DM-proofing included kitbash-proofing. Compare this with 5e, where the specific design intention is to make it modular and thus kitbash-friendly.

Which also underpins at least some of the discussion about TotM vs minis/grids.

I don't see the connection - please elaborate.

Lanefan

 

[aramis erak]

Of course if it's the level of abstraction that is the issue with SC's for a few/some/many... a better explanation wouldn't have really helped. Some people just want finer granularity and tighter action association in their task resolution and mechanics. The other issue I saw was that 4e tried to have it's cake and eat it too in this respect which may have caused some dissonance with the mechanics (the same way some people just don't like there being a minion version of a monster and a regular version)... on the one hand we have very granular and hardcoded DC's for things like picking a lock... but on the other hand you could pick that same lock in a SC and the DC could be different. This type of design speaks to a specific sort of playstyle and I'm not sure it was what the majority of D&D players wanted. All IMO of course.



Eh, I'm not so sure I agree seeing as how their most recent console videogame... Neverwinter... actually uses the 4e mechanics and plays like a pretty traditional MMOrpg. It's been a while since I've played but if I recall correctly... Basically they've converted the at-will/encounter/daily divide into tiered cool down times for your various 4e powers in the videogame... This is exactly what I think most people are relating them too when they make the videogame comparison...the standard structure implemented for every class, categorization of power levels, and standard recharge times of 4e powers while not an exact 1 for 1 copy, it's not a stretch to see why they reminding many people of modern/prevalent mmorpg mechanics.

The character scale boardgames used a light version of 4E mechanics as well, in a coop mode.