Is gaming without map and minis really bad?

[Kahuna Burger]

You're right....the DM couldn't simply add hp to the guys you're ambushing equal to the amount of damage you do, thus creating exactly the same situation no matter how many rounds of fire you got. Minis prevent this completely.

Seriously, No minis =/= More DM control, though minis might create the illusion of player control. If you trust your DM, not an issue. If you do not, why are you playing in his game?

Little bit of a strawman. With or without minis a DM can take control and nerf a player plan. But the point that was brought up was that without minis there are cases where the DM has control thrust upon him whether he wants it or not. When a player wants to use a tactic, or item or spell that the DM hadn't been thinking about when (roughly) mentally positioning combatants and asks "Is there a spot where X Y and Z are all true" the DM isn't just answering, he is deciding. This is not the simple "two PCs are flanking so obviously there is no way to place an area effect that won't get one of them" but for instance "two PCs each are flanking two foes who are far enough apart that the PCs could move between foes if they had to, and a PC wants to place a line effect so that it hits the two foes and no more than one of the PCs." Can the PC do it? The DM doesn't know. He simply hasn't been keeping that detailed a spatial map in his head. He has to decide. Or maybe he can randomly roll some dice to decide, though for many that won't be much more satisfying. (and he has to decide on what probability he wants to give those circumstances, which is again control over the player's plan he didn't take but was given by the circumstances.)

I agree with Madman that there are systems where these sort of tactical plans should by design be a dramatic decision / tradeoff by the GM, but if you want a game where the DM sets up the situation and the players cope with it within clear tactical rules, I would think you would want to let the tactical situation be as concrete as possible, so that you don't have to take control over whether a player plan suceeds when you prefer to "let the dice fall where they may".

If you don't want a very tactically detailed game, that's cool too, but as a player I would prefer to know the defacto house rules before I design my character with choices based on the default combat model for that system.

 

[Professor Phobos]

Player: "We hide in the alley on opposite sides of the streets and pull out our bows ready to ambush them when they get in sight."
DM: "Ok, they are in sight, and they take attacks of opportunity on you for using your bows on them."
Player: "What? We're in the alleys, hiding!"
DM: "The street is 5 ft wide and the alleys are 5 ft long. You should know all streets in the country of BLAH are narrow and the buildings small."
Player: "We didn't know that!"
DM: "Well, too bad, you said you were taking the action and you are!"

In this case, a good GM would say, "Oh, okay, sorry, forgot to explain the local architecture. You might want to try setting up in an abandoned building overlooking the street instead..." (suggests roughly equal alternative without violating setting principle; hello simulationists!)

Or, I'd probably just quickly scratch off "Streets are narrow" in my campaign notes and run with it. The PCs declared to me that their setting up an ambush. As far as I am concerned, they set up an ambush. I'm not going to play Captain Nitpicker with them.

I agree entirely that if you want a more tactical feel, minis are important. I disagree entirely with this "GM Power" tangent we're on. It's an irrelevancy.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Or, I'd probably just quickly scratch off "Streets are narrow" in my campaign notes and run with it. The PCs declared to me that their setting up an ambush. As far as I am concerned, they set up an ambush. I'm not going to play Captain Nitpicker with them.

I agree entirely that if you want a more tactical feel, minis are important. I disagree entirely with this "GM Power" tangent we're on. It's an irrelevancy.

Maybe you won't play Captain Nitpicker, but a number of DMs I've played with WILL. They don't want their enemies being ambushed. They are proud of their bad guys and want them to win(or at least survive until when THEY want them to die). If the players outsmarted them in a way that they can't think of an answer for, they will be more than willing to use any advantage they can to fix that. Even if it means springing details on the PCs like the streets. They may or may not even be doing it consciously.

To me, it's a major concern and the reason I use minis. During my second edition days when we didn't play with minis, we used to argue nearly every session about misunderstood descriptions and changed details from round to round.

It was not uncommon for things like:

Player 1: "Ok, how far away am I from the enemies?"
DM: "30 feet."
Player 1: "Alright, I shoot him with an arrow."
Player 2: "Ok, where am I?"
DM: "Right beside Player 1."
Player 2: "I move forward and attack."
DM: "Sorry, you are too far away from the enemy to charge this round."
Player 2: "What? I'm 30 feet away!"
DM: "No, you are 50 feet away."
Player 2: "You just told Player 1 that he was 30 feet away, and I'm right beside him, so I should be 30 feet away too!"
DM: "No, I told Player 1 he was 50 feet away."
Player 3: "I think the DM is right, I heard 50."
Player 1: "Actually, he did tell me thir..."
DM (Interrupting): "I said 50. That's it, can we stop arguing about this?!?!"

Repeat this discussion about some stupid detail or another about 100 times and that's the reason why I like to use minis.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Little bit of a strawman. With or without minis a DM can take control and nerf a player plan. But the point that was brought up was that without minis there are cases where the DM has control thrust upon him whether he wants it or not.

Not sure what post you were reading, but the one I was responding to didn't have anything to do with whethere the DM wants contrrol or not. It had to do with the DM specifically using the lack of minis to screw the players. And, it's easy enough to point out that minis don't prevent this at all.

OTOH, most DMs I've known have wanted their players to succeed (albeit not too easily). Which speaks to my point:

If you trust your DM, this isn't an issue. If you don't, why are you playing with him?

RC

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Not sure what post you were reading, but the one I was responding to didn't have anything to do with whethere the DM wants contrrol or not. It had to do with the DM specifically using the lack of minis to screw the players. And, it's easy enough to point out that minis don't prevent this at all.

OTOH, most DMs I've known have wanted their players to succeed (albeit not too easily). Which speaks to my point:

If you trust your DM, this isn't an issue. If you don't, why are you playing with him?

RC

No, if you trust your DM its less of an issue, but in a tactically detailed system the issue is still there. I suppose I could have written that point even bigger than yours, but that would be silly, no?

 

[an_idol_mind]

I haven't even taken the battle mat out of the back of my DM's Guide. I've never gamed with minis, and my games still run perfectly smoothly. For complex battles, I break out my popular InstaMaps, which consist of rough pencil sketches of the area on pieces of scrap paper.

 

[Professor Phobos]

Maybe you won't play Captain Nitpicker, but a number of DMs I've played with WILL.

Then they are bad DMs.

To me, it's a major concern and the reason I use minis. During my second edition days when we didn't play with minis, we used to argue nearly every session about misunderstood descriptions and changed details from round to round.

I guess what I don't understand is...if the group is so dysfunctional you need minis to resolve disputes, why bother playing with them in the first place?

Hmm, I suppose one trick is- if you're not playing with miniatures, don't act like you are. Don't give exact distances. Play it fast and loose. Say yes unless you have a compelling reason to say no. And so on.

 

[maddman75]

It does give him MORE control.

With minis, the DM has control over the creatures stats (and maybe his die rolls if he rolls behind a DM screen).

Without minis he has control of all of the same things as with minis PLUS he can now change distances between objects, arbitrarily decide whether someone has cover or not, and add in or remove obstacles from round to round, and decide what the players see.

If you use metagame mechanics players can do that too.

With minis, you can look at a map and say "Ok, I'm 30 feet away from the enemy, I can make it there this round". Without minis, the DM may decide you are 50 feet away this round. I've actually seen distances between things change from round to round (and even from player to player), and not because the DM was purposefully making it harder or easier, but simply because he forgot what number he said 5 minutes before hand.

Do you remember the fight with the orcs and the Cave Troll in the Lord of the Rings movie? Did you have a map handy? Can you tell me how many feet Legolas was from the door when he started firing? Or where Gimli was relative to Sam when he started beating orcs with his frying pan? Unless you were working on the set, I'm guessing the answers to all these questions is no. Yet, most of us are perfectly capable of understanding the fight, because the above questions aren't important. They are only important if you were replaying it in a tactical game, and there is no requirement to do so.

Plus, miscommunication happens all the time just because people view things differently. For example:

Player: "We hide in the alley on opposite sides of the streets and pull out our bows ready to ambush them when they get in sight."
DM: "Ok, they are in sight, and they take attacks of opportunity on you for using your bows on them."
Player: "What? We're in the alleys, hiding!"
DM: "The street is 5 ft wide and the alleys are 5 ft long. You should know all streets in the country of BLAH are narrow and the buildings small."
Player: "We didn't know that!"
DM: "Well, too bad, you said you were taking the action and you are!"

Bad on the DM. He seems very confrontational and wanting to put one over on his players. This style of GM is much better suited for tactical games.

There was a related discussion about this in a thread from a long time ago. Basically, there are hundreds and hundreds of different "powers" in the game. Some of the above are examples: Being able to decide a monsters hit points, deciding what ac the monsters have, deciding where the lantern is, deciding what dice to roll to hit, etc.

Each "power" either falls into the DMs control, the Player's control, or the Rules' control.

Using minis is just one way to move some "powers" from the DM to the rules. Thus making it more "fair" since all of the players and the DM should be able to agree and understand the same thing more easily.

You are also making the assumption that 'where the monsters are' or 'what the terrain is exactly like' is a) important and b) impossible to give to the players. Neither of these assumptions is accurate for all games.

You have to trust that a DM won't blatantly cheat or you are right, there's no reason to play. However, I don't trust DMs to be perfect and never make a mistake. If using minis, I know there are now 5-7 people looking at the movement to make sure none of the enemies move too far or double move then attack. The DM is less likely to make a mistake.

If you're running without minis, you have to be willing to admit when you make a mistake. As a corollary that just occurred to me, in the games where I don't use any kind of physical representation the PCs have explicit (or nearly so) plot immunity. So the players aren't going to lose a character just because of a bad call on my part.

Maybe you won't play Captain Nitpicker, but a number of DMs I've played with WILL. They don't want their enemies being ambushed. They are proud of their bad guys and want them to win(or at least survive until when THEY want them to die). If the players outsmarted them in a way that they can't think of an answer for, they will be more than willing to use any advantage they can to fix that. Even if it means springing details on the PCs like the streets. They may or may not even be doing it consciously.

These GMs sound best suited to tactical games, and are probably better off using minis than not. That doesn't mean that all games are like that. I love it when my players surprise me, and generally let them get away with their clever schemes (with unintented consequences usually)

 

[Professor Phobos]

Bad on the DM. He seems very confrontational and wanting to put one over on his players. This style of GM is much better suited for tactical games.

I agree with everything else, but I'm not sure "adversarial GMing" is well suited to tactical games either. I would think the fun in GMing a tactical game is providing a heck of a challenge legitimately, not gaming the system, tricking the players, etc, into defeat.

I know if I ran a tactical game, I'd want my villains to kick butt* because they had a great plan, not because I misled my players as to the nature of local urban planning.

*Which, of course, means "Just enough butt to make the players challenged, not enough butt to annihilate them outright". A tactical game would depend on roughly balanced encounters- there has to be a potential for defeat and a potential for victory. An adversarial GM takes steps to eliminate legitimate avenues of victory available to the players in ways unfair. This kind of makes the whole thing pointless, to my mind.

 

[Raven Crowking]

No, if you trust your DM its less of an issue, but in a tactically detailed system the issue is still there. I suppose I could have written that point even bigger than yours, but that would be silly, no?

It doesn't matter that the system is tactically detailed. 1e is tactically detailed, after all, in in several cases (facing, for example) moreso than 3e. Yet many, many gamers have played 1e for decades without requiring minis. What matters is the players and the DM, how they view the system, and what they want it to do.

Remember, the OP isn't asking "Can minis help make the game more tactically sound?". Rather, the question is "Is playing without minis wrong?".

I would say that the answers to these questions are Yes, and No, respectively.