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]

I wasn't active online during 3.X. I'd dropped off in the early '00s.

well, then you missed jillions of gigapoops of...
...nah, you didn't miss anything.

I'd played or run so many other skill based games I'd long since used things like SCs.

Skill based systems go all the way back to Traveler & RQ, but skill-challenge-like structures were more a 90s new-wave innovation, not even Storyteller quite went there, so by D&D standards, adopting a radical new idea after less than 20 tears was wildly innovative..

Yeah, D&D has always been niche-protected, and certainly it is the case that 4E was just up front about it.

It also changed conceptual access to the niches, you didn't 'need a cleric' anymore, if the odd player out 'stuck' filling the role was allergic to religion he could play an Artificer or Warlord...

...or the party could do without - everyone still had surges & second wind.

I'm not sure I agree with the fact that you didn't need to know the system. IMO you needed to know it pretty well, certainly once you got over about 10th level

I ran Encounters for years, and introduced many brand-new players to the system. Without preconceptions, it was startlingly easy to do so. The presentation of the characters, whether off-line CB or Encounters pregen seemed intuitive enough (It wasn't to me: if it wasn't a dense form on goldenrod, it wasn't a D&D sheet!).

), 4E had some things that mitigated against player engagement, most notably excessive turn length.

It did add up. Every character had something useful/interesting, and sometimes a bit involved to do most rounds. Until Essentials, nobody took as long as prior-ed casters could, but everyone took longer than "I attack, hit/miss, n damage."

I think we'd long since allowed multiclass rogues, so my memory of a rogues-only type game was a bit skewed.

You mean MC'd humans? Well, even humans had the character-with-two-classes option...

Regardless, 4E really assumed that party roles were filled and it was quite challenging not to have them filled IME.

it assumed more than it nerfed, really. I've run a long 4e campaign that's mid-Epic at this point, and they haven't had a defender in like 12 levels or so. The controller role was broadly accepted as dispensable, everyone had surges, and everyone did damage, so niether leader nor striker functionality was ever entirely lacking.

And, each class had a 'secondary' role - a party with a WIS cleric wasn't that hurt'n for control, a paladin could do quite a bit of healing &buffing, warlord builds could off-tank, and so forth.

Again, many years experience with Encounters: even at low level, when secondary roles were least developed, you could throw together parties if whatever folks wanted to play, have different players each week and generally do fine...

...though there'd be times a role was missed, it wouldn't lead to a TPK or adventure-halting hard fail the way niche protection could

In that sense, the party roles were definitely influenced by MMO roles

Again, every edition had niche-protection, and absolutely needed certain classes (and, often, magic items), MMOs /coppied/ that.

As to healing surges, IMO that was one of the good idea of 4E. I really wish they'd differentiated the bard from the cleric healing by having the bard do things like activate hit dice (bad WotC! foolish name for that).

The key trick of surges was that they powered most healing, so you could do without the cleric, and if someone actually wanted to play one, they never had to choose between a cool spell and yet more healing...

But I'm not at all a fan of the bard as a full caster.

The poor bard, it had such a long slog to viability. At least it made progress every ed ..

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Skill based systems go all the way back to Traveler & RQ, but skill-challenge-like structures were more a 90s new-wave innovation, not even Storyteller quite went there, so by D&D standards, adopting a radical new idea after less than 20 tears was wildly innovative..

D&D sure doesn't get into innovations. Storyteller had the extended action, which I recall relying on a lot. It's not a massive conceptual leap towards allowing some degree of teamwork for that. As elaborate as SCs? No, I'd agree, not really, but IMO one of SCs' very problems was how elaborate they were.

It also changed conceptual access to the niches, you didn't 'need a cleric' anymore, if the odd player out 'stuck' filling the role was allergic to religion he could play an Artificer or Warlord...

True, although I think some of that was happening in 3.X already.

I ran Encounters for years, and introduced many brand-new players to the system. Without preconceptions, it was startlingly easy to do so. The presentation of the characters, whether off-line CB or Encounters pregen seemed intuitive enough (It wasn't to me: if it wasn't a dense form on goldenrod, it wasn't a D&D sheet!).

Interesting. Not what I would have expected. Your point about 4E being more open to alternative parties is interesting as well. That doesn't jive with what I recall from when I played it, but different tables behave different ways and the DM can often adapt. The times I saw a non-combined arms party seemed to involve people loading up on strikers and they had problems.

Still, one of my favorite games I ever played in was 2E where the party was a thief, fighter, paladin, and custom bard class (based on the Bard's Tale bard). The DM in that campaign was very, very good, though.

It did add up. Every character had something useful/interesting, and sometimes a bit involved to do most rounds. Until Essentials, nobody took as long as prior-ed casters could, but everyone took longer than "I attack, hit/miss, n damage."

Yes, the things I'm mentioning could be examples of good things, but turn length could get to be a problem. It happened in every 4E game I played in, particularly for characters built around either off-turn actions (e.g., the original 4E bard) or turning minor actions into an attack (e.g., the barbarian or avenger). It was a HUGE issue for some players, who seemed to suffer from choice paralysis, math issues, or both. 3.X really hit with math issues, especially at the medium to high levels.

When I ran 4E I kept it down but only by being quite draconian about turn length and highly encouraging Essentials characters. I really didn't enjoy running 4E, though partly that might have had to do with the fact that I was having some fairly serious health issues at the time which often involved a good bit of "mind fog", something that is very hard to describe unless you've experienced it.

Still, as I said in this thread to pemerton, one thing that really didn't occur to me now was how gamist with a side of narrativist 4E was; I derive a good deal of what I find enjoyable for DMing from feeling like there's a consistent and logical world, which was something 4E really didn't emphasize at all. It also seemed to bring out the rules lawyers in many players I knew.

You mean MC'd humans? Well, even humans had the character-with-two-classes option... it assumed more than it nerfed, really.

Yes, we allowed MC'd humans. Actually we played with fairly different MC rules, much more based on the way BECM treated the elf. Probably best I hadn't even raised this.

Again, every edition had niche-protection, and absolutely needed certain classes (and, often, magic items), MMOs /coppied/ that.

4E was pretty clearly a case of the teacher learning from the student. It has lots of influence of MMOs, MtG, and fantasy minis games, all of which were pretty clearly influenced by D&D in various ways.

The key trick of surges was that they powered most healing, so you could do without the cleric, and if someone actually wanted to play one, they never had to choose between a cool spell and yet more healing...

Yes, that's true, and it's something I think is missing, though in combat healing is much rarer in 5E in general.

The poor bard, it had such a long slog to viability. At least it made progress every ed ..

I'm not saying the bard should suck, I just don't like that they're forced to be primary casters. Both Rangers and Paladins are half casters, though I'd be happier if they were less so. They are both divine casters, and there isn't a half caster arcane character. I'd really have liked the bard to be able to do things like activate healing surges and have other interesting class feature (but not spells!) buffs, with spellcasting being more of a sideline for them. An artificer as a half caster arcane character would be pretty cool. In fact I think they might have been able to make one class and have those two be archetypes, though maybe that's too much of a stretch.

 

[Tony Vargas]

D&D sure doesn't get into innovations. Storyteller had the extended action, which I recall relying on a lot. It's not a massive conceptual leap towards allowing some degree of teamwork for that

Now that you mention it, I do recall Storyteller had a cooperative successes rule of some sort, I remember using it in M:t's. But it was like the complex skill checks of 3e, same skill, accumulating successes.

As elaborate as SCs? No, I'd agree, not really, but IMO one of SCs' very problems was how elaborate they were.

Not elaborate, so much, it is still just accumulating successes. The mechanucal differences are that multiple skills are involved, and the 3 failures.

The conceptual difference is more pronounced in that it's not a single task, but a cooperative effort, in the abstract. You can put a lot of interest into an SC, with incremental effects for failure & success - the best ones were like mini games in themselves. You can also leave it at flat accumulation of successes & failures that's pretty blah.

And the math was badly off at first, and the early examples had some issues.

True, although I think some of that was happening in 3.X already.

Yep, the Druid got cure light at 1st instead of 2nd, the bard joined the ranks of healers...
...and then there was the WoCLW...

Interesting. Not what I would have expected. Your point about 4E being more open to alternative parties is interesting as well. That doesn't jive with what I recall from when I played it, but different tables behave different ways

Yep, there was a stark divide in teactions between new players & storyteller/indie types, OT1H, and longtime & returning D&Ders on the other.

. The times I saw a non-combined arms party seemed to involve people loading up on strikers and they had problems.

One optimization theorem was that the all-Striker party was supreme. It didn't play out in practice, they were viable, but 'brittle.'

, particularly for characters built around either off-turn actions (e.g., the original 4E bard) or turning minor actions into an attack

Off turn actions really kicked in at Paragon, the first time a group got that far, it was taxing, but you got a handle on it before long.

When I ran 4E I kept it down but only by being quite draconian about turn length and highly encouraging Essentials characters

Essentials did take the game back to more varied turn complexity. A mid-heroic wizard(witch) early in my campaign was notorious for 15-min turns, while the Rogue(thief) in the party went faster.

Still, as I said in this thread to pemerton, one thing that really didn't occur to me now was how gamist with a side of narrativist 4E was; I derive a good deal of what I find enjoyable for DMing from feeling like there's a consistent and logical world, which was something 4E really didn't emphasize at all.

If you use D&D as a simulation, you get a very strange world - but we had a long time to get used to some of that weirdness, and 4e whipped it out from under us.

I've found worlds to feel more real early in an ed, before I've completely sussed out the new system. I noticed that with both 3e & 4e, but the latter didn't take nearly as long.

It also seemed to bring out the rules lawyers in many players I knew.

It was as nothing compared to rules lawyering I was accustomed to in 3.5 - or was guilty of in 1e.

Yes, we allowed MC'd humans. Actually we played with fairly different MC rules, much more based on the way BECM treated the elf. Probably best I hadn't even raised this.

Nah, common variant, no worries.

I'm not saying the bard should suck, I just don't like that they're forced to be primary casters. Both Rangers and Paladins are half casters, though I'd be happier if they were less so. They are both divine casters, and there isn't a half caster arcane character.

There's the AT & EK, they're 1/3rd casters.

I'd really have liked the bard to be able to do things like activate healing surges and have other interesting class feature (but not spells!) buffs, with spellcasting being more of a sideline for them. An artificer as a half caster arcane character would be pretty cool. In fact I think they might have been able to make one class and have those two be archetypes, though maybe that's too much of a stretch.

I think we've seen a sort of half-caster Artificer.

Full casters are a better chassis for any sort if support class, though, and that pattern is more 5e-apropriate than the original magic-item factories...

 

[pemerton]

I'm kinda sorta simulationsist, though not a hard core one. This is especially true when it comes to world design, which I always felt was the weakest part of 4E. It didn't have an economy I could follow, for instance. It was super gamist---witness how little detail was presented in the original Monster Manual as an example, just stats---and then the adventure designs were a mix of gamist and narrativist, with essentially no simulation or world-building at all. They didn't even bother to lay out their world, though they constantly mentioned Nerath and its backstory!

I derive a good deal of what I find enjoyable for DMing from feeling like there's a consistent and logical world, which was something 4E really didn't emphasize at all.

I'm going to disagree with this - not with your preferences, obviously, but with this take on 4e.

First, it's simply not true that the 4e MM has "just stats". Just off the top of my head, the Demon and Devil entries set out backstories and details of the Abyss and Nine Hells respectively, the Goblin entry has a whole history of goblins and their relationships with one another, the Spider entry has backstory on Lolth, etc.

Second, I also like a "consistent and logical" world, but it may be that my measure of consistency is different from yours. In a fantasy RPG, especially a cosmological fantasy of the sort that 4e is by default, I want thematic coherence, which locates all the little local conflicts and loyalties within a larger cosmological context. 4e is the only version of D&D that does that. (The next closest I know of is AD&D OA, but it's cosmology is less clearly presented.)

Third, the absence of a map of Nerath, and a timeline, is a boon, not a weakness. It means that the thematic elements can be brought into play as needed, to drive the fiction forward, rather than the fiction being cabined within someone else's conception of what makes for an exciting geography and history.

I found the 4e cosmology and "setting"/backstory, which is presented first and foremost in the PHB and MM, inspiring as a GM.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Now that you mention it, I do recall Storyteller had a cooperative successes rule of some sort, I remember using it in M:t's. But it was like the complex skill checks of 3e, same skill, accumulating successes. <snip> The conceptual difference is more pronounced in that it's not a single task, but a cooperative effort, in the abstract. You can put a lot of interest into an SC, with incremental effects for failure & success - the best ones were like mini games in themselves. You can also leave it at flat accumulation of successes & failures that's pretty blah.

And the math was badly off at first, and the early examples had some issues.

I think once I got the idea for the extended action and some idea of accumulating success before failure I'd managed to add in other skills. I did that a lot, for instance for chases or other non-combat contests even in 2E.

4E SCs often had other skills being a real reach---they were clearly designed for game play to pull in other characters. Admirable but often ham-fisted.

Yep, the Druid got cure light at 1st instead of 2nd, the bard joined the ranks of healers...

Some of that was in 2E.

...and then there was the WoCLW...

??? Not sure what that is.

One optimization theorem was that the all-Striker party was supreme. It didn't play out in practice, they were viable, but 'brittle.'

Yes, they were super brittle.

Off turn actions really kicked in at Paragon, the first time a group got that far, it was taxing, but you got a handle on it before long. Essentials did take the game back to more varied turn complexity. A mid-heroic wizard(witch) early in my campaign was notorious for 15-min turns, while the Rogue(thief) in the party went faster.

I felt Essentials returned some more classic feeling characters like the Slayer, who didn't have the standard package of powers. As to off-turn actions... IME some players really never got used to it.

If you use D&D as a simulation, you get a very strange world - but we had a long time to get used to some of that weirdness, and 4e whipped it out from under us.

Full on simulation, of course not but I guess at some level I'm an aficionado of what's been called Gygaxian naturalism, to some degree. 4E threw that completely out the window in favor of a cosmological drama. Ironically, I've done my share of cosmological things, but that's stuff I want to design, not have baked into the finish.

Another thing I didn't much like was how tiered things were, e.g., orcs for every tier! Again, that breaks with the general idea of Gygaxian naturalism and feels very MMO and gamist. The adventures WotC published were... wow they were a mixed bag at best. There were some good ideas, of course but a lot of them really just felt like elaborate setups for a miniatures set piece.

Full casters are a better chassis for any sort if support class, though, and that pattern is more 5e-apropriate than the original magic-item factories...

What I don't like is that the same basic mechanic---spellcasting, from selections of the same lists---is used for too many classes. There are also relatively few higher level buff spells. The high level lists in general kind of suck, though.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I'm going to disagree with this - not with your preferences, obviously, but with this take on 4e.

First, it's simply not true that the 4e MM has "just stats". Just off the top of my head, the Demon and Devil entries set out backstories and details of the Abyss and Nine Hells respectively, the Goblin entry has a whole history of goblins and their relationships with one another, the Spider entry has backstory on Lolth, etc.

I think that was later MMs, not the first one, which was notoriously thin on details. I don't know if I still have a copy of it.

Second, I also like a "consistent and logical" world, but it may be that my measure of consistency is different from yours. In a fantasy RPG, especially a cosmological fantasy of the sort that 4e is by default, I want thematic coherence, which locates all the little local conflicts and loyalties within a larger cosmological context. 4e is the only version of D&D that does that. (The next closest I know of is AD&D OA, but it's cosmology is less clearly presented.)

They did a massive change to the cosmology, just massive. It was a cool take, but that's one of those changes we didn't ask for.

Third, the absence of a map of Nerath, and a timeline, is a boon, not a weakness. It means that the thematic elements can be brought into play as needed, to drive the fiction forward, rather than the fiction being cabined within someone else's conception of what makes for an exciting geography and history.

See to me those are narrative elements. They don't lay out the world, they lay out narrative. I often get inspired by things like maps and timelines and I figure out what kind of stories I want to tell from there, though I'm not usually a really heavy narrative DM. I got bupkus. What was south of the Nentir Vale? No clue.

 

[cmad1977]

I play on roll 20 and don’t always use tokens so...

5e works great without minis. Works great with minis.
Unlike some games where minis and grids are mandatory.

 

[Lanefan]

??? Not sure what that is.

WoCLW = Wand of Cure Light Wounds.

See to me those are narrative elements. They don't lay out the world, they lay out narrative. I often get inspired by things like maps and timelines and I figure out what kind of stories I want to tell from there, though I'm not usually a really heavy narrative DM. I got bupkus. What was south of the Nentir Vale? No clue.

If they're going to try and present a setting but not bother to do the heavy lifting of producing a decent map of it (meaning I have to do it myself) then count me as unimpressed.

Which is too bad, as one thing I thought 4e did quite well was its base "points of light" setting idea.

Lanefan

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

WoCLW = Wand of Cure Light Wounds.

Ah, yeah. I recall that. It was a very good out of combat healing tool in 3.x.

If they're going to try and present a setting but not bother to do the heavy lifting of producing a decent map of it (meaning I have to do it myself) then count me as unimpressed. Which is too bad, as one thing I thought 4e did quite well was its base "points of light" setting idea.

Yeah, I agree that it had some interesting potential, but like a lot of things in 4E, it seemed never to go anywhere due to the team's propensity to flail around.

 

[pemerton]

If they're going to try and present a setting but not bother to do the heavy lifting of producing a decent map of it (meaning I have to do it myself) then count me as unimpressed.

I agree that it had some interesting potential, but like a lot of things in 4E, it seemed never to go anywhere due to the team's propensity to flail around.

Here are some examples of what can be done with a setting that is theme, and striking elements, but leaves the structure (in terms of detailed geography and history) unsettled.