Playing without Miniatures

[Herremann the Wise]

Hello Everyone,

Back at High School playing AD&D, we played around a table without minis and from what I can barely remember we always had a complete blast. Twenty Five years later, my gaming group has altogether about 10,000 minis and we have been wedded to the battlemap for so long through 3e/4e/PF that if I tried to go back to playing without minis, I think I would be lost.

In his excellent Runeward blog, AeroDM has started focusing on the idea of zones; and crafting a more formal structure and organization for playing sans minis. From this, I have checked out the Harry Dresden RPG/Fate system and have got an inkling of the amazing design space available here in terms of a formal structure of miniless-gridless play.

Are there any other game systems that have a well developed formal structure for play within the landscape of the mind?

Any ideas welcome and if this is of interest, check out that Runeward blog as there are some great ideas being bounced around there.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Mark CMG]

When (O)D&D first came on the scene, there weren't a ton of minis to choose from aside from the decent variety of fighting man figures from Medieval lines for miniature wargames. Nevertheless, some games ran without minis, some with minis that included fairly detailed combat and movement, but many games simply used the minis to keep track of things like marching order and the positions of individuals when camping (laying down the minis of the characters who weren't on watch).

Currently, one of the games I am running is Prince Valiant The Storyteller Game. It's all in the mind, except for the character cards and the dice (we use dice instead of flipping coins as the game usually uses). We're playing the basic game at the moment so we have just a single storyteller (me, for now), but it is definitely a good way to sharpen that aspect of GMing that requires strong descriptions of place, interaction with and characterization of NPCs (and PCs), as well as keeping up the pace since there's not much on the cards and little need to have your nose in the book (Yes, just one rule book!).

 

[AeroDm]

Someone pointed out to me today that Old School Hack uses "arenas" (basically zones) with an arena being a fairly large area of the battlefield. Movement allows you to move to an adjacent arena so it is fairly constrained, but since that is the intent of OSH, it is pretty perfect. Different arenas have different traits that make different weapons or characters function differently. It is a neat and simple approach that still provides some interesting tactics.

 

[Bluenose]

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd edition deals in zones. You're eeither in melee, or at one of several positions in relation to that melee; or, I think, in a different melee. 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars tracks ranges by band. Traveller has often had that sort of option among others. Pendragon is pretty abstract about positioning, and Heroquest usually even more so. Almost all iterations of Fate would be the same. D&D has had it - the battle rules for Birthright divided the battlefield into zones. I'd actually suggest keeping track of precise movement isn't the default in RPGs. And it's a common concept in wargames and boardgames.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I play some games with minis and some without. Both have their advantages and disadvantages but i think i prefer no minis.

 

[Umbran]

Are there any other game systems that have a well developed formal structure for play within the landscape of the mind?

Depends on what you call "well developed".

For example, look at the old classic (FASERIP) Marvel Superheroes game. It shipped with a map, and counters to use on it, and a system for moving those counters around. But they weren't for what 5' square you were on - they were more about what room or section of street your were in.

The game used "areas" as the basic unit of movement. "Areas" are not a well-defined measure - it's a room, or the street for one city block, or the like. Basically, true to the comic book form, an "Area" was roughly what you'd expect to fit in one frame on a comic book page. The concept slides seamlessly into play without a mat - you can tell if two characters are in the same area if you'd imagine they'd be pictured in the same frame.

It was (and still is) a brilliant representation of movement for its genre. It is well-developed, in that it was developed well. It is not well-developed in the sense of being deep or involved or tactically interesting.

 

[Piratecat]

Go google and grab Old School Hack. It has a nice concept of arenas that make miniatures unnecessary. Basically:

- an arena is a space you can fight in
- there are different sorts of arenas (wide open, cramped, cluttered, etc.)
- different weapon types are better in certain arenas
- it takes an action to move from one arena to the next
- once you're in an arena, you can move wherever you like with no action
- players are encouraged to spend their awesome points to create (and describe) a new arenas

So if I'm fighting goblins in twisty little passages, I'm at an advantage using a dagger. I can spend awesome points to create a larger cavern (unless the GM has already done so), spend an action to move there, and then swing my greatsword with gleeful abandon. No minis required.

 

[Umbran]

Go google and grab Old School Hack. It has a nice concept of arenas that make miniatures unnecessary.

When I played it, tactical minis weren't necessary, but a map and tokens showing who was in which arena was extremely useful.

 

[Traveller From Afar]

Ew gawd, I don't think I've ever used miniatures. Scribbles on a notepad were plenty, usually.

 

[AeroDm]

The no-minis but minis are still useful for illustration of complex situations is the general theme I've been using in developing zones. To date I'm pleased with the results.