New book I would like


Product Discussion


First, I think the designers of pathfinder, and every addition of D&D, Runequest, mutants and masterminds, World of Darkness are all smarter and better game designers than me. I can't hold a candle to them. That's why I want them to write the book for me, lol :-)

I would like a core book that tells how to play the game without miniature. To many skills and feats and abilities require miniatures to use properly. Make a version that is easy to play without mini's. I doubt it will ever happenm but that's my wishlist item. Is there any DND like game out there designed to play without mini's at the moment.


Arnwolf wrote:

First, I think the designers of pathfinder, and every addition of D&D, Runequest, mutants and masterminds, World of Darkness are all smarter and better game designers than me. I can't hold a candle to them. That's why I want them to write the book for me, lol :-)

I would like a core book that tells how to play the game without miniature. To many skills and feats and abilities require miniatures to use properly. Make a version that is easy to play without mini's. I doubt it will ever happenm but that's my wishlist item. Is there any DND like game out there designed to play without mini's at the moment.

AD&D 2nd Edition!


Can I Call My Guy Drizzt? wrote:
Arnwolf wrote:

First, I think the designers of pathfinder, and every addition of D&D, Runequest, mutants and masterminds, World of Darkness are all smarter and better game designers than me. I can't hold a candle to them. That's why I want them to write the book for me, lol :-)

I would like a core book that tells how to play the game without miniature. To many skills and feats and abilities require miniatures to use properly. Make a version that is easy to play without mini's. I doubt it will ever happenm but that's my wishlist item. Is there any DND like game out there designed to play without mini's at the moment.

AD&D 2nd Edition!

We still play AD&D 2nd edition on occasion. We wrapped up a game of that not long back. And will do a campaign there again. But AD&D is a completely different animal than the 3.x games. 3.x has more hit points, different skill, feat, saving throws, etc. But I have thought about merging 2E with 3.x. But I don't have the genius.

Grand Lodge

Arnwolf I completely understand. The best games I ever played back in the day, were without minis. We used to go to the game store, see all these minis and wonder why there were so many. It was, in my opinion, more exciting to IMAGINE the action taking place rather than "seeing" it on a battlemat. We could do all kinds of fun things and climbing, jumping and all manner of 3D things were possible.

Now the rules are designed in such a way to kill that use of imagination. In a newer group I used to try crazy fun ideas and they thought I was nuts because it was not optimizing the rules. It was better to stand in one place and exchange blows with the monster rather than try to climb a a group of rocks and try a dazzling leap across the chasm to land on the troll's back and plunge my two swords through its neck to but its head off.

Nope, just roll to see if you hit it... roll your damage...

no epic story to tell. I just stood there and killed a troll through attrition of hit points. Next boring battle please! Please, whatever you do don't try to do anything imaginative, the rules sort of prohibit that. Just follow the script and roll the dice like a good fighter.

*sigh* I DO miss the good old days of actually USING my imagination.

When I GM PFS games, I tell my table the only rule I absolutely enforce is they have FUN. Have a crazy idea... DO it! But the rules box you in, so no one ever does...

Grand Lodge

BTW, nice avatar... a handsome selection if I do say so myself.


Krome wrote:
BTW, nice avatar... a handsome selection if I do say so myself.

I remember one of my early adventures with my Dwarven Fighter, Arnwolf. There was a green dragon in a huge room with balconies. I went up on the balcony and jumped on top of the dragons head and started hitting it with my battle axe. Another time we found some greek fire. We ran into a wight. I poured greek fire on my battle axe and started fighting it. I jumped in to the ocean to attack a kraken that dragged our mage underwater. I was wearing all my armor. I figured the armor would help me stay down there and fight and not float up (i was a stupid teenager). The DMed rolled and I sank on top of the Kraken and started hitting it with magical daggers. The mage was cut loose and swam back to the surface. I managed to kill the kraken, but drowned in the process. They manage to fish me out when the wizard cast waterbreathing on the thief who had the swim proficiency. He had to remove my armor and gear to drag me back up. I almost didn't get raised that time. Sometimes I think we lose something when we calculate the odds and place a statistic on everything. My best times playing were when I did not understand the rules and just did stuff. I know this is off topic. But you sent me down memory lane. Our DM (years later) said sometimes he didn't know what to do with our crazy action and just gave us a 50% chance for trying.


I'd buy that book.

But I've read all the time on threads complaining about this issue that some people play this game just fine without resorting to miniatures. I sort of wonder then whether this requires an entire book.

Perhaps all we need is for someone with enough time on their hands to go through and point out all the rules that are going to be inconvenienced by a loosing of miniatures. It might not turn out to be all that big a deal.


Arnwolf, I quite agree with you. I once wanted a system with the simplicity of BECMI - and more specifically, with what I call "abstract combat" (i.e. combat that doesn't need a map) - but with the balance of 3.X. In fact, I wanted one so badly that I decided to try to edit a BECMI/3.X amalgamation myself. I wrote up rules for the core mechanics, races and classes...

...and then I got to spells. Hoo boy! I wrote up a list of 288 spells to include in the game, edited descriptions of 218 of them, and then gave up in disgust, concluding that my system had neither simplicity nor balance.

But the point is that THAT'S how badly I wanted such a game. Alas, writing a decent game engine is a lot harder than it looks. I guess that's why professional game designers make the bi-... uh, paltry bucks.

Interestingly enough, many people on these boards say that they run abstract combat using 3.X and Pathfinder. When resolving questions like "Do we flank?" "Can we get out of this melee with only a 5-foot step?" or "Am I in a position to do this without provoking an AoO?" the usual approach is to give whatever answer is in the PCs' favor.

Peronally, I could never GM that way; it would require me to keep track, in my head, of everyone's position relative to each other, and I'm just not that smart. But many on these boards evidently are.


It would be interesting to see such a thing. I happen to like a battlemat, but such a system would be useful for things hard to represent on a matt, such as chase scenes, aerial battles, or large scale combat.

Dark Archive

Several RPGs use abstract combat...such as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (3rd edition), where you are either at a certain range (Long, medium, close, engaged)...perhaps you could use something similar.


Bruno Kristensen wrote:
Several RPGs use abstract combat...

Only several? Gee. Except for 3.X (and Pathfinder,) I've used abstract combat in practically every RPG I've ever played.

I once looked into True20, because I heard it was like D20 but with abstract combat. But when I looked at the free sample of the system on the net, I found that the wound system was more complicated. You had to keep track of whether someone was wounded in the last round or before then. I couldn't keep track of all that in my head. Just imagine combat against many NPCs. "Okay, thug number two is still stunned... oh wait a minute. Thug number 4 is also wounded, so maybe HE's the one who was wounded last round. Or was it...?" In order to keep track of THAT, I'd have to keep a round-by-round log of who got wounded, and to me, that's even more trouble than a battle mat.

But you might feel differently, Arnwolf. If you do, you can read some quick-start rules for True20 here, get a free D&D-like adventure for it here, and find lots of other freebies and previews of the rules and such here.


Bruno Kristensen wrote:
Several RPGs use abstract combat...such as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (3rd edition), where you are either at a certain range (Long, medium, close, engaged)...perhaps you could use something similar.

That sounds like it would work pretty well, actually.

I don't use minis in my home game (because the last thing I need is to obsess over minis :P ), so I rely upon descriptive language to help the players out in their decisions. Only rarely have I had to break out the graph paper.

Liberty's Edge

i have learned that playing with minis soon becomes an strategy game, not an RPG... so I try to avoid it as much as I can... it slow things in an insufferable way for me
and be damnend whoever don't like it.

i like descriptions
and i love minis... i am just tired of people calculating the AoO if he moves there or not... some years ago in Queretaro we began using a rule with a sand watch... if by the end of it you haven't acted... well you pass until the next round.

Dark Archive

Aaron Bitman wrote:
Bruno Kristensen wrote:
Several RPGs use abstract combat...
Only several? Gee. Except for 3.X (and Pathfinder,) I've used abstract combat in practically every RPG I've ever played.

Yes, several...as in more than one. I can bring out the old Merriam Webster, if you need something more concrete.

Grand Lodge

Bruno Kristensen wrote:
Several RPGs use abstract combat...such as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (3rd edition), where you are either at a certain range (Long, medium, close, engaged)...perhaps you could use something similar.

I really really really like this idea.

For a LOT of things I think abstract works. Flanking... is the Rogue fighting the same opponent as the fighter? Yes... okay flanked.

And yeah the thing about spell casters plotting the exact space they are going to stand in so the area template lands JUST right... I have seen stuff where there is a random roll to the template (change distance or size or something just a bit) to eliminate this and make it more random.

And Arnwolf, I know just what ya mean. Sometimes just doing what feels fun and not having rules get in the way of the fun makes for a more memorable game. I have played in some REALLY good 3.x games, but the best games were back in the AD&D and GURPS age when we just hung around in the living room and had the wildest adventures!

I mean deciding to run at the black dragon, slide under its belly and grab its tail to climb up its back... come on you just can't do that with a map! It would take forever! BTW dumb idea... the black dragon saw me coming and sat on me. But it was fun to try! LOL

AHHH memory lane...

Dark Archive

Arnwolf wrote:

First, I think the designers of pathfinder, and every addition of D&D, Runequest, mutants and masterminds, World of Darkness are all smarter and better game designers than me. I can't hold a candle to them. That's why I want them to write the book for me, lol :-)

I would like a core book that tells how to play the game without miniature. To many skills and feats and abilities require miniatures to use properly. Make a version that is easy to play without mini's. I doubt it will ever happenm but that's my wishlist item. Is there any DND like game out there designed to play without mini's at the moment.

Castles and Crusades by Troll Lord Games is a rules light D20 based game. You can easily use the rules without ever touching a mini. My gaming group has had alot of fun with it. Its a nice break from normal 3.x and its pretty easy to convert both 2nd and 3rd edition material to the system, should you want.


Krome, my nephew turned 10 recently and we think he may be ready to play some D&D. We think we will teach him with the old Rules Compendium. Can't wait to see what he does.

Dark Archive

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Harvesters just released from Troll Lord which uses C&C, but presents the theme of playing animals in place of the traditional races. It's geared for young people and would be a way to introduce kids to gaming. It uses all the classes found in C&C, which are basic D&D archtypes. I should point out that Harvesters is also self contained as far as using it as a handbook so players don't need anything else and though it comes with everything a GM needs more advanced and further adventures might require other books. Not sure how much they plan on developing it.


So has anyone tried to figure out how much of the game would change if you made combat abstract?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Pathfinder #35 has some very abstract no-minis-required rules for mass combat. They're pretty simple, and I suspect that it'd be possible to actually use them with a bit of work for normal one-on-one (or a few-on-few) combats.

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