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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grainger" data-source="post: 6649016" data-attributes="member: 6779234">I find that with minis, people look at the minis, and don't visualise it enough. Maybe if we played with minis all the time, this would wear off, but I don't want to go through the gauntlet of non-immersiveness to get out the other side.To put it another way: the minis (or stand-ups), and attendant maps, dictate what your game-world looks like, instead of the DM's descriptions doing the same job (the players are staring at the minis for the whole encounter, long after the DM has set the scene). I suppose I could get round this by just using plain counters - a different colour for each character - strangely, though, advocates of minis rarely want to do this, even though they stress the utility of minis as the main reason for using them.Also, unless it's a very large mini (e.g. representing a giant upwards), I always find them strangely unimpressive and small, which is not the effect I want when the party are attacked, for example, by big Orcs. The PCs would be very aware that these are powerful, large warriors attacking them, but the players are looking down on piddly little lumps of plastic, metal or cardboard. For me, there's a threshold where minis begin to look impressive (at the regular scale people use) - which is about the size of a small giant. Anything above this looks good, at least when compared to a PC. Anything below it is underwhelming, except maybe if you're throwing down swarms of foes. I can't have every encounter be Against a Giant just because I don't like smaller minis.I think minis work well visually for war games (if you want to go down this route) - because there you're less concerned with how the individuals look, but rather the overall effect (except maybe for skirmish wargames). In an RPG, the details are very important, both for PCs (as players want to dictate their characters' appearance), and for foes, because the PCs need to glean information from that, and also because RPG encounters are so much about atmosphere. Presenting minis, and then saying "um... but he doesn't actually look like this, but I couldn't find the right mini - just imagine he's taller, and doesn't have a beard" doesn't really work, because everyone is looking at the mini, so that very quickly over-writes what the player or GM said.So I suppose my issue with minis is not so much their practicality (although I also prefer the streamlined nature of ToTM), but because I don't minis are remotely good enough, visually, to do the job they're meant to do. Ironically, a more abstract representation would be more accurate, because no-one would visualise their Fighter or Mage as a glass bead, so they would be more likely to remember the description given by the GM or player.</blockquote>

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