For the Love of Minis

[Ahnehnois]

*With no disrespect to anyone who uses them*, I've never liked miniatures and don't really use them. Occasionally we'll pull out a battlemap adn the players might have some generic miniatures, but we've never really customized them; they're more counters. Even in that case, I don't like them.

I've had friends who did wargames with miniatures, and that's fine, but to me D&D is a collaborative storytelling game that takes place in our imaginations, and any kind of physical props are potentially distracting and pulling us out of our headspace. I also never wanted to invest the money to get anything beyond the square battlemap that comes with D&D, let alone all the crazy monster minis that are out there. I also don't have any kind of artistic atlent to be working on painting them myself and such.

I did this thread a while ago asking how many people used miniatures and was quite surprised at the overwhelming response.

Again, I'm sure that they can be fun, but I personally find them antithetical to my style of gaming.

 

[avin]

On 2E AD&D I remember using minis just only, as a player.

During 3.0 we used some board game markers, and then, on 3.5, played around with some ral partha minis, as player. As DM we stick to markers.

On 4E always used minis.

Now that I have tons of minis I'm using it for another games, in special GURPS, it's very good for advanced combat.

 

[ffy]

dont use minis since we cant afford them. though we dont use tokens either, we use mini-standins (chess pieces and the like). using various pieces of other game equipment feels more natural than using flat 2d tokens. would love to use minis though!

 

[Keith Robinson]

I've always used minis, from 1ed back in the eighties through to now. They've always added something to my games.

The battlemat isn't something that got added until 3ed and I think it's this that a lot of old-timers don't like, due to the more tactical element it introduces. Personally, I love my battlemat. Again, it brings nothing but positives to my game.

 

[cyderak]

I own 400 pre-painted minis give or take 30. We use the pre-painted for monsters, villains, and Plot-integral characters.
Otherwise we use hand painted minis for PC's. Its likened to the ego-feed that Warhammer 40,000 guys get when they put their professionally painted armies on the table and people go, "Wow thats cool", but on a lesser scale. We don't pay nearly as much as some guys do on the e-bay auctioned minis you see on coolminiornot.com. I can get ahold of a professionally painted mini for about $25.00. Not show quality, but damn close. I'm a perfectionist and I'll tell you right now I am always impressed with his work.

My wife calls em dolls just to get a rise outta me. Little does she know, we used one of her classic collector barbie's for a female hill giant one night.

HA.........how you like me now!!!

 

[CharlesRyan]

I've certainly used them more consistently in 3/4E, but I've always used minis to one extent or another. Even when a game is not as tactically rigid as 3/4E, I find them a great illustration technique. And they give the game session a focal point.

 

[Almacov]

Does LEGO count?
When I first started playing (fairly young) we'd sometimes use lego blocks to represent things visually. Not the fancy people-shaped ones either, just the oldschool brightly-coloured rectangular bricks. We weren't too picky about maintaining things like scale then though.

In more recent times I use whatever's on hand and convenient.
From loose change, bottle caps, garbage from snacks, empty glasses, pepper shakers, etc. to dungeon tiles, illustrated tokens, and the decently large collection of prepainted miniatures I have.
It all depends on where I'm playing and whether I have something tailored to what I want to describe.
(Noteworthily, early in my DMing days I started investing in large pads of gridded chart paper from office supply stores. They've caught on as sort of a standard, and now many of the players in my group who host or DM on occasion keep a pad in their house.)

 

[El Mahdi]

Love em'. Always use em'. Can't play without em'.

 

[scourger]

I love miniatures. I didn't use them for my games in the 80s or 90s, although I had a few at various times. I really started using them after 2000 with 3e and other games. I've custom painted my own, used pre-printed counters, made little paper stand-up models, bought pre-painted minis and even used green army men on the table top.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Does LEGO count?

Man, I WISH I still had my LEGOs.

I had HUGE green and grey flats for grass or stone bases.

Those little single cylindrical or square ones would be fine for size M creatures...and the half-thickness ones for gnomes & halflings!

*JEALOUS*