What's wrong with Mini-Centric?

[Lord Zardoz]

I like the presence in the game mostly because I actually like what AoO's bring to the game.

Combat in 2nd edition without mini's of any sort typically resulted in two options in combat for non casters. Use a bow, or do not use a bow. There were essentially no combat choices that required movement other than the Charge.

On top of that, it seemed that every spell a caster wanted to use ended up being able to hit every bad guy without hitting any good guys.

The use of the miniatures preempts every possible argument about ranges for bows and spells, area of effect spells. It also makes it reasonable to adjudicate the following:

- AoO for movement within threatened areas
- Reach weapons and monsters with reach
- Flanking rules for size mismatched characters
- A meaningful method of penalizing a character when you cut off their ability to move away from you easily (a caster or archer who cannot 5 foot step out of melee range is penalized unless certain feats or skills are used).

In addition, the following game elements are made meaningful

- Spring Attack and Ride by Attack can exist without being unfair or tactically over powered.
- The use of buildings and hard cover to partially block ranged attacks makes fighting in towns interesting.
- Line of Effect / Line of Sight rules for spells
- It is easier to utilize 'difficult terrain' to strategic effect when you can see where it is relative to yourself and your enemies.

Miniatures simply keep everyone honest. It is easy for a player to demonstrate of a building would prevent him from shooting someone with Mini's. It is about a 2 minute discussion of with the DM that would often degenerate to sketching out a crude map without Mini's.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

In my experience, there are far better games than D&D if you don't want to use minis or want to deemphasize combat.

I play D&D and its close relatives specifically to emulate the experience of a console Tactics/RPG - a series of (hopefully) awesome and tactically interesting encounters wrapped up in a (hopefully) awesome and intriguing story. d20 is the best tabletop tactics/RPG I've played, especially in its Star Wars Saga incarnation.

If I want more melding of combat and non-combat events, or to focus more on the style or theme of a combat than on the tactics, I want a game like Spirit of the Century, which does abstracted combat in a way that is also totally awesome, albeit quite different.

Playing D&D for cinematic, thematically-weighty encounters with little dice rolling strikes me as inefficient at best, just as playing SotC for deep, tactically challenging combats where every roll counts does.

 

[werk]

Sorry, don't buy it. Even in sessions where all we do is roll dice and whack monsters, we're roleplaying just as much as the sessions where dice aren't picked up once.

I'd disagree, but again, I'm not saying there's anything wrong about your type of fun.

Also, rolling dice does not equal combat, like you seem to be implying. We roll plenty of dice outside of combat.

 

[Umbran]

Yes, they have alwys been a part of the hobby, but you did not need them to play. Today, you do.

Hm. I disagree. They are not strictly necessary, but the rules don't make it easy to do without. I run more than half my combats without minis pretty well. But it does take some extra attention to some things, I admit.

To a point a few have made now - to me, that they've always been there is not a compelling argument for linkage today. If the real point of the game were minis, we'd never have seen any movement away from the original wargame roots, and RPGs would not have been born. As it is now, rpgs have evolved far from those roots, such that there are players for whom the minis roots have nothing to do with why they play, and what they're looking for from the game.

 

[werk]

Sounds like your view of this issue has more to do with how much gameplay is combat, rather than how much gameplay uses minatures.

I think they are fairly synonymous in this regard.

Minitures facilitate tactical table-top combat.

When/why would you use a mini outside of combat?

 

[Clavis]

I've found that the use of mini's draws all player attention to the battlemat, and away from the DM and each other. It works against roleplaying, by emphasizing the tactical aspect of play. I am not saying that a tactical game is in any sense "wrong" or "bad", just that it's not the game style I enjoy. Ideally, the ruleset should be modular, and able to support both a narrative style of combat and a tactical style. The designers working on the recent editions obviously favor the tactical style, which seems to require minis. (I know many people say they run 3.x ed without mini's, but I've never found it practical in my experience).

Another problem I have with mini's is that they actually create unrealistic combats. Real-life hand-to-hand combat is not orderly, and you don't really tend to get opportunities to create perfect tactical situations. You certainly don't have the benefit of a "top-down" view of the field! Movement and position are constantly changing in a way that the battlemat cannot, and will never be able to, accurately represent. For one thing, people move in more than 8 directions!

 

[Psion]

When/why would you use a mini outside of combat?

Pretty much the same way I'd use them in combat: as a visual reminder and everpresent statement of where the PC is.

If I there is exploration going on and I need to know who is in an area without tipping players off.

When the players are in a city and going about various activities, I draw circles on the mat and place all the figures of PCs that are going together in them. That way, if it becomes important who is where, I know immediately.

 

[Darkwolf71]

Hm. I disagree. They are not strictly necessary, but the rules don't make it easy to do without. I run more than half my combats without minis pretty well. But it does take some extra attention to some things, I admit.

Exactly my point. Sure, it can be done. But in order to make it work you need to houserule or fudge things.

 

[ivocaliban]

Cost, limited use and the "never-enough" factor are the main issues for me regarding minis. When it comes down to either buying a new book or buying a handful of random miniatures (or paying more for individual minis via eBay or what have you) I always go with the books. I simply can't afford both.

That Huge Red Dragon mini might be used once or twice in a year long campaign...and I can't really see paying $40+ for the thing on eBay when it has such a limited use. A book like the Draconomicon or Dragon Magic, however, offers a wide variety of "dragon related" things that you can add to your campaign. It's not a one trick pony like the mini...which essentially just sits there and looks pretty.

Some people think minis bring the game to life. For me, they just limit one's imagination. Particularly because 9 times out of 10 there isn't a mini in the world that looks like my PCs or the NPC I want to introduce. Minis require that you own dozens, hundreds, thousands of them before you really feel like you've got everything covered....and then you still don't really have everything covered.

 

[danzig138]

Exactly my point. Sure, it can be done. But in order to make it work you need to houserule or fudge things.

Then you shouldn't have expressed your point as being that they are necessary today, because they aren't (expected use doesn't equal necessary use). One is one point; one is another point. I've seen plenty of posts on these and other boards from people who apparently play 3/3.5 with ease without using miniatures. I generally use minis - have from day one (in fact, I'm still using many of the same actual miniatures as when I started playing 19 year ago). But I still run the occasional short or small combat without them with no particaulr difficulties. Personally, I'm inclined to think that for some of the people who want to, but can't run 3/3.5 without miniatures, the problem isn't with the game.

As for the game being "mini-centric". . . whatever. If I need rules for minis and a game doesn't have them, I insert them. If I don't and it does, I work around them. Mangling rules is all a part of the art of being the GM. Concerning complaints about it, well, people need to vent sometimes about things they don't like. Some folk don't like the heavy use of minis in 3.5 (or skills, or feats, or whatever), and they complain, some in hopes of finding like-minded folk to feel pally with. Some just hack the game to their liking, and some play different games. I do find the original question to be slightly disingenuous though. I think the OP's been around long enough to have seen the various posts on this basic topic - certainly enough to know the whys of why some folk don't care for the more-minis-based rules.