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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aberzanzorax" data-source="post: 5747071" data-attributes="member: 64209">I've found that minis enhance understanding at the expense of visualization.  We played 2e and early 3e without minis. It was a ton of fun, and my imagination filled in lots of great gaps (which was excellent in the same way reading a book can be better than a movie or a horror movie is scarier if you DON'T see the monster). We spent more time thinking about the story and even acting things out to help make things more clear.  But the problem was that so much was up to random adjudication. How many trolls can I hit with my fireball? Exactly where are they standing? Are players standing within the same area? Sure, this could all be somewhat done off the cuff with die rolls, dm adjudication, simple "assume everyone is in the best spot" as a constant player advantage, etc. etc. But, in the end, it's nice to know what's going on, who is in what room, a glance of how many foes there are, and so on.  It's a question of what matters most, and whether the same pros and cons that applied to my group (one group) will apply to another group.  In some ways this goes to the "after the fact" description that appeals to some DMs and players. There have been threads about the meaning of hit points and healing surges. Within these looooooong threads, one point resonated with me: Some people like their gaming fairly "concrete" in that the rules say what happens, then they narrate based upon that (I'm dropped to -1 hp, I've been stabbed in the gut). Some people like their gaming fairly "fluid" in that they like to narrate along with the rules, with the rules only shaping part of the story (I'm dropped to -1 hp--I've been stabbed in the gut....I use a healing surge--wait! It only appeared to be a stab wound, I was actually tricking the enemy.) Without minis, I see the concrete side losing some of their fun in that the number of trolls hit by a fireball "exists" outside of narrative, but I see the fluid side gaining, in that unknown possibilities (is there a chandelier? SURE, why not!) become possible.  Pro's versus Con's and gaming style and whatnot. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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