Quote Originally Posted by Imbalance View Post
When we talk about theatre-of-the-mind and a lot of folks complain that minis and a map thwart that somehow, do character sheets do the same?

I ask because they do for me. Few things are as immersion-breaking as someone having to pause and look through three sheets of paper or tap through however many screens to find a feature or a spell, or a stat modifier, or some piece of equipment they didn't remember trading away. In my experience, the tabletop representations serve to bring all focus back to the present situation after that distraction is resolved.
I'm not really bothered by that sort of thing. Sometimes, it takes a while to make a move, and that's fine. The delay isn't part of the scene. I suppose that the ability to separate out this "noise" varies a lot between people, though. (Things that are annoying, like a player not paying attention and having to be caught up, do break my concentration.)

The problem with high-detail miniatures and terrain (and a lot of visual media) is overspecification, that is, providing details that don't matter to the story, but that do contradict possible mental images people might have of the story. When you're telling a story, you don't need to describe everything in the scene; a character can simply be "regal". However, when you're drawing the character, you (usually) apply the same level of detail consistently across the image. You're not just drawing the character's "cold, dark eyes" and the scar here and the magic earring there, but you're also showing the (regular) boots, the (common) backpack, the (uninteresting) scabbard, and so on. If we both heard the story, and my idea of what that character looks like doesn't match yours, we might never find out, as long as we use the same words to describe the character. If we both draw a picture, however, we'll see all sorts of details laid out that just look wrong. You might even be forced to add details that don't mesh with your own idea of the character.

Battlemats and character sheets specify what is necessary for the gaming to work*, and the rest is left open. Likewise, narration specifies what you need to make the story work, and leaves the rest open. Everyone may fit their own mental image to the story/game.


*"To work" is deliberately vague. "Produces few enough inconsistencies that everyone's happy to suspend their disbelief (or, on the game side, their sense of fair play) and carry on" might cover it.