Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clavis" data-source="post: 4979886" data-attributes="member: 31898">I wonder if the use of miniatures doesn't have something to do with culture and socio-economic class. The people I played AD&D when I was younger were mostly working-class metalheads. A lot of us simply didn't have the kind of disposable income that allowed for large miniature collections. Many players didn't even own the books. We played the way we did almost by necessity. Once we got out of High School and into our 20s, we wanted a game our girlfriends would be interested in. So we played Vampire, mostly live action (which we had already started doing a little in AD&D anyway). So, even today when I play 3rd or 4th Edition with miniatures, it feels a little "wrong." I never use miniatures when I DM, but I only DM pre-WOTC D&D or Castles & Crusades (none of which require miniatures at all). As DM I keep track of monster and player positions by writing on my maps, or in particularly difficult cases, drawing a diagram.Even though I never DMd with miniatures for reasons that were partially economic, now I see other reasons not to use them. For me, immersion, immediacy and excitement are necessities in combat. A fight scene ought to make the player excited, and too much time spent on tactics and working out perfect combos takes away from the adrenaline rush. When I DM, I make it clear that players must react quickly to events in combat, whether or not they are ready. If a Classic D&D round is 10 seconds, the players shouldn't get much more than 10 seconds to decide what they re doing. If you hesitate too much, it means your PC hesitated. I think the top-down miniatures view usually (although not always) works against the adrenaline rush by introducing too much careful reasoning into the mix. The one thing you don't get to do much of when a yard of steel is heading towards your face is careful reasoning.Of course, for many people, tactical combat and the intellectual workout it provides are exactly what they want from the game. For them, play without miniatures lacks the very things they enjoy. I understand that. I simply suggest that play without miniatures promotes a different kind of combat experience, where the thrills are more primal than intellectual.</blockquote>

Verification