Playing Without Miniatures

[Gale]

I’m wondering how common the use of miniatures is in D&D and other games. I personally don’t own any nor do any of my friends. We mostly get by using dice as tokens to represent characters and terrain. I happen to own a map from Chessex but I never bothered to get around to buying anything else. Is this a common thing? How do people usually get by without the miniatures?

[Yora]

Playing games that don't use miniatures. Like... well, I think anything but D&D 3rd and 4th edition.

[JFahy]

I’m wondering how common the use of miniatures is in D&D and other games. I personally don’t own any nor do any of my friends. We mostly get by using dice as tokens to represent characters and terrain. I happen to own a map from Chessex but I never bothered to get around to buying anything else. Is this a common thing? How do people usually get by without the miniatures?

I didn't play for about ten years, and when I came back the group I joined was
using miniatures so I've been doing it since then. I don't mind much because
it keeps me busy painting things that I might not have tried otherwise.

Do I think it adds a ton to the game? No, not really. In non-miniature games
the DM has to give the players enough information that they can understand
the tactical situation, and work with them when they get an idea for a maneuver.
This can work perfectly well.

If you want to try the miniature thing - we did a couple campaigns using
Lego to represent characters and scenery, and it worked fine. It might
disrupt the mood if you're playing Call of Cthulhu but we did it for a lighter
D&D campaign and a RuneQuest campaign and it worked great there.

(Unlooked-for observation: I think of rulesets as lying on a spectrum - towards
one end are "less rules, more trust" systems like D&D5 and (closer to the end)
Fate, where the rules are less specific and the GM has more discretion; at the
other end are "more rules, less trust" systems where the GM doesn't have as
much discretion because the rules cover more. Miniatures are more helpful
in the second group, where they ensure that everybody knows distances and
facings precisely and thus the expectations are clearer. In the first group, positions
are more fuzzy and there's more give and take to the combat, and in that case
the miniatures are mostly just to remind other players what your character
looks like, or maybe to establish marching order.)

[Feddlefew]

I use those small glass dome-lens-thingys people use to make jewelry with a picture glued to one side. It's much cheaper but still gives you something to look at. I also have some wooden tiles somewhere for larger monsters.

[goto124]

Food.

Use chocolates, biscuits, gummy bears (for bugbears), etc.

Defeated an enemy? Eat it!

[Lacco]

We usually game without miniatures. As mentioned above, the player-GM trust needs to be higher and the information provided needs to be more precise.

Of course, if we need to discuss tactics/placement we use quickly drafted maps (once on a napkin), place any tokens (once Star Wars chess figures, but M&Ms are popular due to...well, see reply from goto124).

It helps we are using arbitrary distances (we don't count meters/yards, we only eyeball the distances) and only relative positioning is important.

I prefer the no-map, no-token, information-only approach. From my point of view, it helps my players to get into the head of the character, instead of the strategy/tactics view. "You see four men, closing up on you. Behind you is the rope bridge, to your left a small pond." makes a relatively clear image and provides the player with the information as seen by character. Map, tokens and precise information (meters/yards) always make the strategist come out in my players...

...also, the "fog of war" may be applied better.

[Zombimode]

Playing games that don't use miniatures. Like... well, I think anything but D&D 3rd and 4th edition.

... and GURPS and Savage Worlds and DSA and probably a whole bunch of other games. The idea of using a battle map to aid combat encounters is not confined to D&D. The reliance on the map of course differs.

[Gamgee]

Never use them. If they need a rough map really bad I'll draw one up on the spot to help them get their bearings.

[Maglubiyet]

We tried them with D&D when I was young, but the cost was prohibitive (shoveling snow and mowing lawns doesn't allow you to buy many figures). Plus, it was a pain to paint all the monsters. We used a big sheet of plexiglass to draw the emerging dungeon on as the PC's explored it.

Eventually, everyone just ended up having one figure for their own character that would sit on the table amongst all the dice. Decorations, basically.

Since then we've never used them. Like other posters here, I'll sometimes draw a rough map for the players when it helps describe the tactical situation.

[Anonymouswizard]

... and GURPS and Savage Worlds and DSA and probably a whole bunch of other games. The idea of using a battle map to aid combat encounters is not confined to D&D. The reliance on the map of course differs.

Bolded is the one game where I noticed an improvement with minis. But even then, for a game that isn't focused on combat, they can just clutter up the table that may already have 4+ character sheets, dice, and Jaffa Cakes on it, and so I find it's just faster to draw a map on plain/graph paper, draw symbols on the map for characters, and just eyeball distances.

Note that even when using a map my group mainly uses theatre of the mind, as long as you're near an enemy we let you attack it.

[Deridis]

I used to use those little token things from dnd 4th but mostly I just give the players some graph paper now :D (less space taken it up on my little table).

[Jay R]

I use paper and cardboard miniatures found online. It tales a little work to print them on light cardstock and glue a weight to the bottom, but they work really well.

Here are some.

Lots of monsters here.

Plastic toys are much cheaper than standard minis.

Also I routinely check the toy shelves at dollar stores. About one trip in five I find something useful.

[VoxRationis]

Playing games that don't use miniatures. Like... well, I think anything but D&D 3rd and 4th edition.

People overstate the importance of miniatures in 3.5. My table uses them about half the time, but we manage just fine on those times when we don't.

In any case, buying actual official miniatures is nice if you have a lot of extra cash, but far from necessary. Legos are good, and as a bonus, close to the same scale as miniatures. Small toys, bits of food, colored dice... Anything that's reasonably-sized and distinguishable from other things on the table.

[BWR]

We like minis becqause they're fun, but dice, bits of glass, LEGO figures, pieces of paper with names and/or numbers written on them etc, are all used.

[EdokTheTwitch]

I use paper and cardboard miniatures found online. It tales a little work to print them on light cardstock and glue a weight to the bottom, but they work really well.

Here are some.

Lots of monsters here.

Plastic toys are much cheaper than standard minis.

Also I routinely check the toy shelves at dollar stores. About one trip in five I find something useful.

Well, my friend, you have just become my favorite person on the internet. I always wanted a site with these, but never really put in the effort of looking them up. Thanks a lot

On topic, I personally never even tried playing out a combat situation without miniatures, I can't even imagine how it would work... Although, I predominantly play D&D 3.5, so it kinda makes sense?

[VoxRationis]

You basically just describe the setting to a sufficient degree that players can imagine where they are well enough. For most cases, it's not that difficult:

"The room is 30 feet long and 30 feet wide, and has a waist-high altar, 10 feet long, on a dais on the far side. There are two cultists in robes by the dais and two cultists in armor standing ten feet from the door you stand in."

For a lot of fights, exact positioning isn't that important, besides "I am within this guy's reach" vs. "I am not within this guy's reach."

[Jacob.Tyr]

It wasn't until maybe 5 years ago that I started playing with miniatures (I've been playing D&D for at least 3 times that long). It was 4e that got me to make the jump, and I have to say I don't really think it makes that big of a difference.

The first miniatures I used were sockets and bits from my tools. Worked great. Sometimes drill bits for walls. Now I use paper minis, and feel I should plug the site I get mine from: http://iheartprintandplay.blogspot.co.uk/

[Honest Tiefling]

I use those small glass dome-lens-thingys people use to make jewelry with a picture glued to one side. It's much cheaper but still gives you something to look at. I also have some wooden tiles somewhere for larger monsters.

Might I ask what you are talking about exactly? I too, have found it cost prohibitive and annoying to try to find anything remotely similar to my PC, especially when myself or other players use the more exotic races. I think I'll adopt some method of using printouts of art from the web for my next pathfinder game, if I make it.

[Keltest]

I have a bunch of lego figures around that can me used to make most anything I want them to represent, should we ever have a desire to actually use miniatures.

[Aedilred]

I've never played a RPG with miniatures, per se (although I have played other miniature-based games, so I have nothing against them in principle). In my D&D groups we generally used squared paper and just wrote on the initials of the people involved. With combats in small spaces and lots of moving about we sometimes used chess pieces, which worked rather well for the most part.

When I GMed a PbP campaign I was initially concerned about how combat would work without a visual aid, but in the end it worked out fine, and probably got the players to engage more with the setting and pay more attention to the descriptions than if there had just been a map or grid. It did require, as people say, slightly more trust between players and GM, and I had to be prepared either to be questioned on certain points or pre-empt said questioning ("is this guy in range? How many can I hit with this weapon? If I charge at them can I get there?" and so on, but we worked that out very quickly and it also made it easier to fudge distances slightly if the balance needed readjusting mid-combat.

[Zazax]

More often than not my group doesn't use miniatures, but when we do (for important fights, or ones that would be difficult to visualize) we usually just use things that are lying around. Occasionally we use some of the Warhammer models one of our group has, but most of the time we just use Chess pieces (they're even team-colored!), with Jenga blocks making up any sort of notable terrain. Works great, as long as everyone can remember that Player X is the Bishop and Player Y is the Knight.

[TurboGhast]

My IRL group uses laminated graph paper and erasable markers. It works fine, and doesn't take much in the terms of resources.

Also, if your erasable markers aren't erasing, scribble over the spots and erase the scribbles until it erases.

[oxybe]

Is this about actual miniatures or just a physical representation of the scene? the former we've been using for years since D&D 3rd ed had it's minis game and the cost for buying adequate prepainted sculpts became feasible but i've been using stuff to represent the action in games for years, since at least 2nd ed.

I know I use minis (which from now on mean "a thing that represents a character, object or part of the scene") whenever possible. It might not be 100% accurate (the purple Kinder Surprise monster is Oxybe's mini and the red pop caps are kobolds while the blue ones are orcs.) and sometimes it's not a picture perfect representation of the movement and whatnot, but it saves everyone a lot of time on the "who's where and what can I reach/run towards/I thought you said two orcs were near not three/etc...", so I use them regardless of system.

This is partially because I also tend to run combat as set-pieces... the "you bump into 4 orcs on a featureless plain" is a boring as all heck and something I actively avoid.

[Jay R]

My experience is that having a single player who likes to collect minis is a great asset to the game. I don't want to do it, but I'm grateful that Wil does.

Similarly, April's husband likes to cook. Once he shaped sausage meat to serve the gaming group rats on a stick.

[Knaight]

You basically just describe the setting to a sufficient degree that players can imagine where they are well enough. For most cases, it's not that difficult:

"The room is 30 feet long and 30 feet wide, and has a waist-high altar, 10 feet long, on a dais on the far side. There are two cultists in robes by the dais and two cultists in armor standing ten feet from the door you stand in."

For a lot of fights, exact positioning isn't that important, besides "I am within this guy's reach" vs. "I am not within this guy's reach."

A lot of times you don't even need the exact dimensions. Games which assume precise movement ranges require them to a greater degree, but for a lot of games that sort of thing could be described as a large room with a short and elongated altar on the far side, flanked by a pair of robed cultists with a pair of armored cultists between them and the door. Generally breaking that into multiple sentences helps, but the point is that the general descriptive flow that would be used for surroundings in general is often sufficient.

[PrinceOfMadness]

My two cents:

Miniatures are helpful when exact positioning is important, but generally i find that using miniatures tends to slow things down, as players try to optimize their positioning (this was a big problem I had in 4e). I almost never use them anymore - though I will break them out occasionally to mix things up a little (for those scenes, where, as I mentioned earlier, positioning is vital).

[Blackhawk748]

Might I ask what you are talking about exactly? I too, have found it cost prohibitive and annoying to try to find anything remotely similar to my PC, especially when myself or other players use the more exotic races. I think I'll adopt some method of using printouts of art from the web for my next pathfinder game, if I make it.

I recommend Reaper minis, their Bones collection is cheap (averaging around 2-3 bucks American) but they are unpainted, still look sweet though.

I have minis, lots and lots and lots of them. Hell i have a Colossal Great Wyrm Red Dragon, oh and Icingdeath too, and a lot of undead (i play Vampire Counts in WHFB) So ya my group uses them, we also use them for the Warhammer 40k RPGs from Fantasy Flight, though we dont use a grid there. Personally i prefer to use battlemat or some sort of terrain and minis as that way its much harder to get confused as to what the DM is talking about.

[Anonymouswizard]

I recommend Reaper minis, their Bones collection is cheap (averaging around 2-3 bucks American) but they are unpainted, still look sweet though.

Painting miniatures is the best part, I still have my WHFB high elves with brown 'adventuring' robes. I don't use them since it's an hour's walk to get to where we play and I'm too cheap to take the bus.

[Blackhawk748]

Painting miniatures is the best part, I still have my WHFB high elves with brown 'adventuring' robes. I don't use them since it's an hour's walk to get to where we play and I'm too cheap to take the bus.

Ya lugging minis around sucks, but thats why DnD is usually at my place, all of my minis are on a shelf 3 feet from the table

I think the reason my group prefers minis is that almost all of us are tabletop wargamers so we like seeing what we're doing and moving the minis around.

[Ettina]

We play far too varied characters to be able to afford miniatures for them. Even our flat tokens often only vaguely resemble the characters (eg the human bandits might be represented by zombie tokens because they were handy). That's when we even bother with any tokens at all.