Who uses Miniatures?

[greydown]

You know I was wondering if I was the only GM who does not like to use miniatures. I mean sure I like to have them to put them out and have players delcare marching order. Or how they are sleeping around the campfire. But when the blades start swinging and the spells start flying I like to make it come alive in my players minds. Miniatures seems to mechanical for me. But I know a lot of groups use them in everything they do. Especially D&D with all the "attack of opertunity" stuff.
Am I the only one who avoids using miniatures?
Is there a way to still make it "action packed" and "edge of your seat" with miniaturs and I'm just an idiot?

Advise would be great.

 

[GlassJaw]

I don't know why you think minis take away from anything. I think they add to the action. Everyone can visualize what is going on and it adds to the scope of the battlefield.

From a rules standpoint, it's also a disadvantage to those characters that invested in feats based on space and movement like Spring Attack, Combat Reflexes, and imp Bull Rush.

 

[Dwarven Godfather]

Benefits for miniatures

I love to use miniatures, because it helps the party visualize who and what they are next to. I tried not using them and when you have a big party or combat it would be easy to lose who and what is by a party member. It also helped me when I ran Forgotten Realms game and knocked unconscious half the party when they were first level going up against simple Orcs and Gnolls.
I got lucky that night and had alot of natural 20s and converted over to doing alot of double damages and knocked half the party out and gave them time to lick their wounds after the y finally was able to defeat my miniature orc with spear.

 

[reanjr]

You know I was wondering if I was the only GM who does not like to use miniatures. I mean sure I like to have them to put them out and have players delcare marching order. Or how they are sleeping around the campfire. But when the blades start swinging and the spells start flying I like to make it come alive in my players minds. Miniatures seems to mechanical for me. But I know a lot of groups use them in everything they do. Especially D&D with all the "attack of opertunity" stuff.
Am I the only one who avoids using miniatures?
Is there a way to still make it "action packed" and "edge of your seat" with miniaturs and I'm just an idiot?

Advise would be great.

I think miniatures have a tendency to detract from realistic combat scenarios, but they don't have to. Alot of people have subpar spacial relations to deal with imagining a complicated battle and can't determine AoO and things like that in their head. I don't have a problem with it, but in complicated combats it can still be very difficult to describe the situation to a player who cannot picture it. Miniatures really help in these situations. Miniature, in my opinion should only be used once a similar conversation ocurrs:

Player 1: Wait, I thought the worg was over by Player 2
DM: He is; you moved over there your last turn, remember?
Player 2: But my monk (with speed 40 ft.) ran last turn. Player 1 couldn't have kept up with me.
DM: Right, but Player 1 was already over near the upturned table, which was half way there.
Player 1: I never move to the table
DM: Not explicitly, but by the time you got down the stairs and moved around the edge of the room to avoid the blade barrier, you were over by the table nonetheless.
Player 3: The blade barrier shouldn't have been in his way, I'm next to the barghest
DM: You mean the barghest that bull rushed you into the middle of the room?
Player 4: Are you guys talking about the table I'm on? When did it get knocked over?
DM: Like 3 rounds ago. No, you are on the other table, the stone one with weird etched patterns in it. It would take like 4 people to flip that table.
Player 5: So did I hit the worg or not?
DM: *looks at dice for third time* Yes. As I originally said, you hit the worg and its attention turns away from Player 1 who it was eyeing hungrily.
Player 6: *comes back from kitchen with dinner tray and seven glasses of pop, along with two bologna, cheese, and mayonnaise sandwiches* Am I there yet? How much longer till I get there; I was only like two rooms away.
DM: Yeah, I said 2 rounds, it hasn't even been a round yet.
Player 6: It hasn't even been a round? What the hell have you guys been doing?
Player 7: I was sleeping. I think that makes me more productive than the rest of the group.

Yeah. At that point, it's usually best to just get out some chits and draw a quick diagram at least. I prefer doing football style diagrams, with letters in circles representing the players, letters without circles representing monsters and lines and arrows to show where movement has ocurred.

 

[Wombat]

I have never felt the need for minis. I still paint them, but they are more as player favours or generalized tokens ("Nigel the Black sits here") rather than anything else. Then again, we have streamlined the combat rules, getting rid of most of AoO rules (and attendant Feats, etc.), which makes the whole thing run much fast and, for our group, more exciting and fun.

If you want to use all the rules in the PHB, you probably want minis, but if I wanted that kind of game, I'd dust off my old WRG or Chainmail (yellow cover) rules again and just admit that I am running a miniatures wargame.

 

[Bagpuss]

Am I the only one who avoids using miniatures?

Nope. I've found since using miniatures that the games are more like a wargame, less descriptive, less enjoyable and less fun. Players take their figure and move their 5ft step, rather than describing themselves leaping across tables, swinging from ropes or whatever.

 

[Cergorach]

We've been using miniatures like forever, there was a period i dmed without, but that became rather stressfull for me. I had to make judgemnt calls, is he in range, if he is he's probably dead, if he's not... I returned to using minis because it made combat more fair, we tend it to use it only for combat situations, not for moving through a dungeon (although ometimes the DM asks for a formation setup).

The whole combat description thingy gets really old really fast, i prefer rare inspiring actions, so that when they happen and they do succed it has everyones attention.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I enjoy miniatures. I enjoy painting them and collecting them too though, so my opinion isn't 100% unbiased.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I love using mini's for combat and marching order.

I find that the use of mini's cuts down on the ambiguous stuff that can occur during a game. I played D&D for many years (I started when I was 14, I'm 32 now) without mini's mostly because of finacial constraints but now I really cant see playing without them. I mean I can for some smaller skirmishes but for most fights mini's are the way to go for me.

 

[Henry]

Chalk another one up to miniatures use, no matter the system - except for Feng Shui. Feng Shui is so fluid and placement has so little to do with the action that I don't bother.

However, with D&D, Modern, or even games like GURPS, placement can be important to understanding how someone does something, what order something occurs, etc. For us it HELPS the descriptions rather than impedes them, because we can understand who is hit with what area effect, etc. Usually too many disruptions emerge when someone disputes where their character would have been.