D&D (2024) My preferred way of playing D&D 2024 is... miniatures or not?

[Clint_L]

And yet while I have a bunch of terrain options, my favorite thing to use with my minis is a wet-erase chessex battlemap Cuz I can make it "whatever" with imagination and some colored markers.

I have just about all the terrain options imaginable, but I’ll never denigrate the chessex battlemap. Way too many awesome memories, and as you say, it can be anything.

 

[MNblockhead]

For in person play, I have come to prefer a digital battlemap with physical miniatures. I have a TV in a case that I can place horizonally on a table. I can easily put up a battlemap for just about any situation and apply fog of war with little prep or set up. I scale it to 1" = 5' and players put their minis on it. Currently, I have to run most of my games online and that has made me lazy when it comes to monster and NPC minis. It is just easier to use digital tokens for them. But if in person, I don't want all the players sitting with laptops in front of them, so it is just easier and more pleasant to have them use physical minis for the PCs.

 

[Lanefan]

With minis, yes. With everything snapped-to-grid, no.

The grid is there just to give us a distance reference and scale, and if you happen to put your mini on the intersection of two lines rather than wihtin a square then so be it, I don't care, and that's where you are. If distance or range matters that much (e.g. are you in or out of the fireball that'll kill you even on a made save) we'll measure it straight-line somehow.

EDIT: noticed after posting the question is posed as specific to the 2024 edition; to me it's edition-agnostic, and I'm answering from a very not-2024-edition point of view.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Naturally, the vast majority will say they do in fact play with miniatures.

Yet they'll complain 'til Kingdom come if you design rules that "expect" miniatures.

I do not understand this seemingly contradictory behavior. But it is observable.

 

[MerricB]

With minis, yes. With everything snapped-to-grid, no.

The grid is there just to give us a distance reference and scale, and if you happen to put your mini on the intersection of two lines rather than wihtin a square then so be it, I don't care, and that's where you are. If distance or range matters that much (e.g. are you in or out of the fireball that'll kill you even on a made save) we'll measure it straight-line somehow.

EDIT: noticed after posting the question is posed as specific to the 2024 edition; to me it's edition-agnostic, and I'm answering from a very not-2024-edition point of view.

I'm happy for you to answer it.

Cheers!

 

[DragonLancer]

1st and 2nd edition we never bothered. I think that was because combats were less tactical in their execution. The D20 system changed all that and battle map with minis became a necessity. We've stuck with them ever since.

 

[NaturalZero]

I started really playing DnD instead of just dabbling during the summer 3.5e came out, back in 2003. I DMed the first campaign I was ever involved in and, right off the bat, I made my own tokens. I used photoshop to make grids showing the exact art of whatever NPCs, PCs, or homebrew monsters I wanted to use, printed the documents out on 8.5x11" label stock, and punched out the circles after sticking the label onto poster board. Every week I'd have fresh sheets of monsters tokens punched out and I stored them in old film bottles. I strongly prefer this over minis for my own in-person games because I can have pieces that show exactly what I want, no matter how exotic or original.

 

[Bae'zel]

I love to collect and paint miniatures and terrain, and use them whenever possible.

The added visuals are really appreciated by my players who have aphantasia.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm a big fan of minis on a grid map to the point that I use them on a touch enabled tvbox as the grid map.

At some point groups shifted to using fingers and tokens rather than fingers in minis on tokens because it allowed the grid to be moved around and resized more easily without the need to pickup minis. I wouldn't stop a player from using a physical mini§ and have seen a few continue bringing fancy painted minis even without using them

§barring metal and similar ones likely to scratch the plexiglass

 

[Hussar]

Joined a group a while ago that tries to play D&D TotM and I have learned to hate it. Managed to convince them that TotM causes more problems than it solves.