On using minis in D&D - approach of AD&D1 vs. D&D3

[Greylock]

My first experience with AD&D was entirely minis-free, but once we gathered as a regular group around a table, minis were in constant use. In fact, my DM from back then still has his massive collection, in original paint.

What was different, and what I have only seen pointed out once so far in this thread, was that the minis were used for strictly illustrative purposes. To give a sense of life to characters on the table, or to show relative positions. There was no grid, no facing, no measurements, no "line-of-sight", no moving the wee men around like chess pieces, none of the wargaming aspects of miniatures play that became prevalent in 3.x. They were a visual aid, nothing more, and that's what the suggestions from the AD&D books recommend their use for.

In 3.x, it did suddenly become a combination of roleplaying and fantasy chess. When our group moved to C&C, in the first several sessions, to help break us of our 3.x habits, we went entirely minis-free, just like in the old days, and it was refreshing and liberating. Now that we are back into the more free form swing of things, we've got minis back on the table, but whole combats can go by without our remembering to move them. They are strictly illustrative again, which is darned nice.

 

[Nikosandros]

You (yes you), fall into one of two camps:

The group that primarily used miniatures with D&D, or
The group that primarily didn't use miniatures with D&D.

(You, the person who played with both kinds of group... you don't count. Go away! )

More seriously, regardless of what the books said or implied, it's my observation that players get introduced to one way of playing D&D - with or without minis - and generally stick with that. I'm in the no-minis school... even though I do use them from time to time these days, there are lots of times I don't think it worth it.

Heh... as I posted above I'm the kind of person that should go away...

Are my experiences really so uncommon?

As I've already said the specific game I'm playing dictates the choice. I don't use miniatures with AD&D or HARP, but I have a very hard time playing 3e without them.

 

[grodog]

I've always used minis in our D&D games; when I was first introduced to the game in 1977 by a kids down the street, we used stratomatic football players for minis, repainted them different colors to indiciate which were monsters vs. PCs, and such.

My brothers and I swiftly shifted into buying Heritage and Grenadier figures, often at local conventions, and incorporated them into our games. Some games would simply consist of one of us creating an encounter area on our large living room nook table, and then battling it out (using D&D rules as wargaming rules, basically). Some of the regional cons in the northeast in the early '80s included the old Grenadier Visual Dungeon by WM Frog: for $1 you bought into the game, and you kept your PC figure and whatever figures you were able to kill during the session. That ran for several years, and was always a blast to play (the dungeon was large, probably over 8x8 feet square, perhaps even as big as 8x12 or so, and constructed from wood, with wooden lids on the rooms; when you entered the room, you saw the monster(s) and reacted accordingly).

Most of the time we used minis in our day-to-day campaign play, though not always. We never used a battle mat (though sometimes we'd pull out a chessboard for a tactical combat area; more often we'd just draw it on some scrap graph paper), and I didn't own one until sometime in the late 90s or so.

Anyway, certainly for us, some of the fun of the game was painting the minis, too, as well as using them in games.

 

[Blustar]

My first experience with AD&D was entirely minis-free, but once we gathered as a regular group around a table, minis were in constant use. In fact, my DM from back then still has his massive collection, in original paint.

What was different, and what I have only seen pointed out once so far in this thread, was that the minis were used for strictly illustrative purposes. To give a sense of life to characters on the table, or to show relative positions. There was no grid, no facing, no measurements, no "line-of-sight", no moving the wee men around like chess pieces, none of the wargaming aspects of miniatures play that became prevalent in 3.x. They were a visual aid, nothing more, and that's what the suggestions from the AD&D books recommend their use for.

In 3.x, it did suddenly become a combination of roleplaying and fantasy chess. When our group moved to C&C, in the first several sessions, to help break us of our 3.x habits, we went entirely minis-free, just like in the old days, and it was refreshing and liberating. Now that we are back into the more free form swing of things, we've got minis back on the table, but whole combats can go by without our remembering to move them. They are strictly illustrative again, which is darned nice.

Unless, of course, you happen to like that bit about a combination of roleplaying and fantasy chess! Oh yeah we also played 3.5 without minis and it was very easy to adjudicate. So, yes, you can play 3.5 quite successfully without minis and it actually speeds the game along, so we sometimes only do the minis for the "major" combats.

I love playing OAD&D too but not because it's liberating but because its fun. 3.5 is very fun too, you can go either way with either edition too...it was liberating to know I could play 3.5 the way Iwanted to.

 

[HelloChristian]

They were a visual aid, nothing more, and that's what the suggestions from the AD&D books recommend their use for.

Our group played in a very similar manner, although we often used a blank sheet of paper for tracking. Each character was represented by a letter, the bad guys by numbers, and arrows and dotted lines showed direction of movement. It ended up looking like a football play.

Looking back, it's amazing to me that our combats ran so smoothly.

 

[phadeout]

Being introduced to D&D through first the Red Box, then 2E Ad&d and playing primarily 2E... We never used minis. We used a normal sheet of square graph paper to graph out dungeons/locations, and just used pencil marks to say where we were (sometimes we would use little tokens). I loved the abstract combat of 2E, we didn't have to worry about anything except for adjudication of a backstab (and that was easy as pie...).

3E really irked me once I started playing do to it's assumed use of Minis. The combat requires you keep track of your character and every monster down to 5 feet, and the rules just piled on... The nice thing with abstract combat is you get to spend more time coming up with creative descriptions and fun combat ideas, rather than trying to figure out how to do "X" and how will it effect rule "Y" and what rule "Y" is and then if rule "Z" comes into play... bah.