Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="D+1" data-source="post: 1689355" data-attributes="member: 13654">IME that's only because it becomes redundant - everyone has already SEEN the character leap across the table, swing from the rope, or whatever because those things have been placed on the table as props or drawn onto the Battlemat, etc.  Even then, people STILL describe their actions when it's technically unnecessary.  Even though the placement of the table is well established next to their miniature, when they take a 5' step and move on top of it they'll still say, "Aha!  I leap onto the table with a flourish and attack."YMMV of course.  But to repeat, IME miniatures (along with battlemats, what-have-you) have never subtracted anything from a game I've ever been in.  On the contrary, they have added much to visualization, immeasurably eased the job of explaining position and room details to players (especially the MORE detailed, complex, and/or crowded the room is), and generally facilitated the roleplaying aspects of the game by removing so much of the verbal gruntwork from the players and DM.  A picture is worth a thousand words.  If you can save 750 by SHOWING other players the mere basics of where things are and what happens instead of laboriously describing it all, how can that be a bad thing?  If you insist on voicing another 750 words it can all be TRULY descriptive rather than explanatory verbiage of rock-basic positionings and distances.If you have players who completely clam up because they can move a miniature 5' instead of verbally stating it and describing it the problem is NOT with miniatures but with a player.  I would even go so far as to risk speculating that such a player came to rely upon the mistakes and confusion of purely verbal play to manipulate things to their personal advantage and amusement.  Having lost that avenue of exploitation their reaction is to say nothing unless it is to voice subtle complaints about "disadvantages" of miniatures.  But given time I'm sure they'd come back around.Honestly I cannot see a GAME-functional disadvantage to miniatures.  Their sole drawbacks are meta-game: miniatures cost money, may take time and drudgery to paint, and some people can mistakenly get it into their heads that unless you have a SPECIFIC miniature for any monster/character you're using that you're not doing it right.Certainly that last one holds no water with me.  I've used miniatures for D&D since Day-1 some 25+ years ago, so my perspective here is undoubtedly biased somewhat in their favor.  But down through the years we've used and re-used miniatures almost more often for what they are NOT than what they are.  In fact we had a stock phrase back in the earlier days of our gaming: "Are them what they are?"  Because we'd have to substitute miniatures we'd still have to explain that, "the Ral Partha orcs are actually orcs, the LoTR orcs are orcs with bows, and the goblins are actually kobolds," or that, "the Red Dragon is NOT a dragon, it's simply a large McGuffin about the size of this dragon miniature."Okay I'm rambling now; the engineer has derailed my train of thought.  I think I need a nap.</blockquote>

Verification