How do you make miniatures matter (other than combat)?

[CombatBunny]

Hi Everyone =)

I hope you are alright.

This is the situation: My group isn’t very oriented to combat; we like to tell stories focused more on drama, self-discovery, moral dilemmas, intrigue, etc. So we just use combat as a change of peace or for very specific circumstances.

Having said that, my current GM has run several sessions in which combat doesn’t arises a single time in the whole game, and because of that the miniatures are just displayed on the table, but we rarely do anything with them, so they end up more like a distractor and annoyingly occupying space on the table.

For an adventure I'm currently working on, I want to keep embracing the philosophy of planning adventures avoiding as much combat (Physical combat) as I can, but at the same time I would still like to use miniatures and make them matter, for no other reason that I love miniatures. Over the years I have spent a considerable amount of money on them and want them to be used, but I don’t want to end up as my fellow GM, just laying the miniatures on the table for each scene, but not actually doing anything relevant with them, or using them in a way that they don’t add value, so that it would be the same using them than not.

So, which other ways can you make miniatures matter other than combat? Do you have other creative ways to use them in your table?

[Flickerdart]

Miniatures are useful to mark location, so think of situations where placement would matter outside of combat.

If you have a world map, you can place minis on it to represent armies, important NPCs, or nations. If you have a city map, you can show the same things, with the addition of the PCs (in case they split the party). Inside a single building such as a tavern, you can have your characters placed relative to NPCs, so even without combat you can see where someone would walk past and how easy it would be to overhear what they are saying. Finally, even without a map, you can use bunches of miniatures to represent a side in a conversation, to help the PCs imagine who they are speaking to.

[Taet]

One of the Shadowrun players brings a box of minis and then the GM picks out the ones with the best poses for the NPCs. So when we had a run to bodyguard a teenager he picked out one and described her clothes but it was the mini pose all straight and arms crossed that said she was going to be not happy to see us. It is body language without taking up more describing time.

Minis guy even had 1980s punk rockers with guns minis for the punk rock band. We did not need to roll to see that the other group coming at us with guns was not with the band.

When we first made the group we were using a grid and dice and tokens. Those are saying the same thing about where people are. But with the minis and some of the shop terrain it is easier to see which ways people are looking and which ways they are not seeing things. I did not hear any "so which way am I looking, did I not see this?" since we started to use the minis and terrain. Oh I almost forgot. Cameras and spirits are still tokens because they see in all directions. Only things with eyes and blind spots use minis. I guess watching spells would be tokens too?

This is not very creative. But it works for us.

[valadil]

One of the Shadowrun players brings a box of minis and then the GM picks out the ones with the best poses for the NPCs. So when we had a run to bodyguard a teenager he picked out one and described her clothes but it was the mini pose all straight and arms crossed that said she was going to be not happy to see us. It is body language without taking up more describing time.

This.

I used to dabble with random NPC generators for those times when I just didn't feel like coming up with a description for an NPC. Now I treat my big box o' minis as a random NPC generator. Whatever I pull out of the box is EXACTLY what appears in the game.