Does miniature use inhibit roleplay?

[slimykuotoan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWpWIhE4cFw

[alcyone]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWpWIhE4cFw

When I first started, I was a kid with no money and there's no way I could afford miniatures, so we just didn't use them for anything. As far as I can remember things mostly worked out, with an occasional sketch when the positions got too much for everyone to visualize consistently. Later, I would use a whiteboard with magnets and dry erase markers and illustrate with that.

With 3.5e, grid play was baked into the rules. Technically possible to do without, but you'd be ignoring a lot of rules. In 4e I found it went all the way off the cliff for me: we were truly just playing the grid and the minis, and to me, then it was like chess, as you say (also, the temporal aspect of the initiative in which there were several ways to go on someone else's turn). Not everyone in the group felt that way though; it was just the breaking point for me personally.

Still, I own shoeboxes of minis, and will use them in person, and I use a grid and tokens in virtual tabletops, I almost always run with a map and minis. In C&C, the few combat maneuvers don't feel like wargaming to me, but lots of solutions the players come up with rely on positioning (and spellcasters who somehow know at a glance what a 15' radius circle looks like.)

I always caution, and try to remember myself: the sheet isn't your character. The token isn't your character. The map is not the territory. Visualize first, do what your character would do, but by all means use the grid when you translate it into game terms. Rarely, the game terms don't accommodate, and then we can be flexible.

I've played both ways, and I guess mostly today I use the grid when I can. It's an additional level of communication and prevents misunderstanding. I do believe it influences play, and probably makes people do things they would do differently in theatre of the mind. But it doesn't have to take you out of character, it doesn't have to replace descriptive language or imagination, and the rules written in terms of position and location are simpler to adjudicate.

Some people roleplay the hell out of their character, minis or no. Some people remove themselves entirely and treat it as a wargame. I think those people will continue to play in more or less the same way with or without minis.

I don't feel terribly strongly about it. If someone runs without a grid I'll play as long as communication is good enough that I understand what the heck is going on. When everyone at the table has a totally different idea of what is going on requiring constant clarification, it's not as much fun.

[slimykuotoan]

Totally cool answer Aergraith.

[jdizzy001]

I've played with minis, without minis, with a grid and without a grid. At the end of the day, I love to role play. Each way of playing has its strengths and weaknesses, and much like cnc, we all just need to play in the manner which best suits the group and above all, have fun!

That being said, I've never been in a group which said, "these minis are in the way! Lets get them off the table!" On the contrary they have added to the experience. I try very hard to match my encounters with the minis I own so the experience is immersive. Do minis add cost to the hobby? Yes. Is the return on investment worth it? That depends on the gamer. I would argue that one should collect minis they can use in multiple games. If I only collected rpg minis it would be a lot of wasted money as I only role play once or twice a month. However, since my collection includes a bunch of lord of the rings minis, they pull double duty and I'm able to role play with them and play gw's lotr strategy battle game.

[maximus]

I use legos in my campaign with my kids. I encourage roleplaying and the game doesn't seem to suffer because there are some movable pieces on the table. I've never used a grid or game board, but just bought one recently to try it out.

When I played as a teenager, no one used minis and the games were great. I think it's just a matter of preference.

[Treebore]

It can, but it comes down to what is focused upon. If you focus upon character, and realistic reactions, etc... then you role play. If you focus upon miniatures, and tactics, then your roll playing. So I think its a natural reflection of what players focus on when they play.

[alcyone]

Slimy also mentioned World of Darkness. When I've played Vampire I've noticed the same, minis weren't really needed most of the time, but then combat wasn't really about chaotic melees most of the time, and the games weren't about combat most of the time. Of course, we know that a C&C game can be the same way, but usually isn't: we often learn to play by going through these monster hotel dungeon crawls and that's the form most games take, with the occasional city intrigue adventure thrown in for good measure.

One thing that irks me, and gets me a little defensive, (and not something Slimy said), is when people imply or state the following:

1. You can't REALLY roleplay in D&D. The system prevents it.
2. "Good Roleplaying" is the grail in an RPG; everything else is a waste of time.
3. You are a bad DM if your games are not descriptive, detailed and cinematic.
4. You are a bad player if you aren't immersed in roleplaying.

Corollaries include:
1. In the OD&D days, everyone just wargamed at the table: it came from Chainmail after all, so no wonder D&D doesn't have roleplaying.

Though of course, many people from those days say they didn't use Chainmail for D&D and went straight for the Alternate Rules, and say when Gary ran games in his office, he didn't use minis: he opened his file cabinet and sat behind it so no one could see his maps, and he narrated (I am sure throughout his life he used both methods).

Blog of Holding (relating a story from Mike Mornard:)
"Mike gave a fascinating account of a typical early D&D game, with a peculiar detail that I’d never heard before. Gary never used maps or minis: maps and minis were Dave Arneson’s thing. Gary ran games in his office, which was provided with chairs, a couch, and file cabinets. While playing, Gary would open the drawers of the file cabinet and sit behind them so that the players COULD NOT SEE HIM. They only experienced the Dungeon Master as a disembodied voice."

What's also interesting: Dave "damn the rules" Arneson, the heart of D&D, who might be looked upon as the one who brought role playing to wargaming in the first place, WAS THE ONE WHO LIKED MINIS.

Of course, Tekumel's MAR Barker had elaborate minis and buildings he created, which I assume he used in his rich setting, steeped in culture and language and certainly more than hack-and-slash.

(Though as long as I am ranting, the other one I hate is:
"The founders of the hobby know more about how to have fun than you do."

Though they can legitimately counter with

"How do you know how much we know about having fun, child?")

[jdizzy001]

My son is very tactile so I'll roll play all-day long if it fosters a love of RPGs in him. Today, in fact, after we finished our latest session of Castles and Crusades: Quest for the Tesseract he took all my monster manuals and M&Ts to his room to look at all the pictures, but I digress. At the end of the day its all about having fun with your friends. If you want to use minis, then make the investment and use minis. If you would rather hide behind a filing cabinet and bask in the theater of the mind then do that. There is no wrong way to role(l) play.

[Treebore]

My son is very tactile so I'll roll play all-day long if it fosters a love of RPGs in him. Today, in fact, after we finished our latest session of Castles and Crusades: Quest for the Tesseract he took all my monster manuals and M&Ts to his room to look at all the pictures, but I digress. At the end of the day its all about having fun with your friends. If you want to use minis, then make the investment and use minis. If you would rather hide behind a filing cabinet and bask in the theater of the mind then do that. There is no wrong way to role(l) play.

Yeah, thats what I mean by what they focus on. They focus on what they like, what draws them to play the game. If that is the aspect they enjoy the most, Role or Roll play, more power to them, as long as they respect each others motivation for playing at the table, its all good.

[finarvyn]

Nice post, Aergraith. You addressed many of the incorrect things that folks say about D&D that have always annoyed me.

Corollaries include:
1. In the OD&D days, everyone just wargamed at the table: it came from Chainmail after all, so no wonder D&D doesn't have roleplaying.

My take on this is that D&D didn't have rules for backgrounds and such so we spent more time making that stuff up. When I played D&D back in the 1970's we did all sorts of role playing, and I think it's because the system didn't get in the way. Heck, we did lots of role playing when we played Boot Hill and that isn't a real RPG at all but really just a miniatures rules set. Back in those days we had been reading Conan and Lord of the Rings and Elric and all those other Appendix N stories, and we wanted to play those characters. Even when the rules weren't designed to "encourage" role play, we acted out all kinds of stuff. It was never a dry, boring, minis battle.