Is gaming without map and minis really bad?

[Raven Crowking]

YMMV, but I find the battle system in Testament (Green Ronin) to be useful for large-scale battles in D&D, and it doesn't require minis.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

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.

True. However, I'm referring to D&D. I've never used minis in any other game, to tell you the truth. All the versions of the D&D rules I've seen have been extremely tactical and required that you know things distances to your enemies, what objects were between you and the enemy, whether that enemy could reach you, which direction they were facing...all of which was needed to be known to know if you could use certain powers or abilities. 3.5e being the most tactical of them all.

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 only play D&D, so these are the experiences I've had with DMs. I have PLAYED other games in the past, but never for very long, and all of them that I can think of had a strong tactical element to them(Star Wars, Shadowrun, GURPS, Hero System). All have benefited from minis at various times unless we were trying to breeze through the combat.

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.

True, probably because I've almost never played a game where the basic questions of combat: "Can I hit the enemy with my weapon?", "Will I get any penalties due to circumstances?", and "Will I hit any of my friends?" were not important.

When we didn't use a map back in the 2nd edition days, often our combats WERE reduced to "Your Turn" "I hit AC -3 for 27 points of damage. Done." Battles went fast, but they were boring due to a complete lack of tactics.

Any time someone attempted to USE tactics....well, see above for the sort of situations that created.

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.

Admitting mistakes is not one of humanity's strong points. Most "mistakes" are caused by misunderstandings. If I believe that EVERYONE knows something, I will not mention it. If I am incorrect about that belief and I am the ONLY one who knows that...it is a mistake. However, I'm much more likely to believe that I'm sitting at a table full of idiots that I am to accept I might be wrong.

As for plot immunity. I hate it. If I know I can't die for one reason or another that's entirely the whim of the DM, it ruins any immersion I had in the setting and the game. I play the game knowing the dice may kill me each round if I make a wrong move or am unlucky. If I even get a whiff of the DM using his authority to keep me alive...It just ruins the game for me.