RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Is chocolate better than vanilla?
They not decrease immersion for me. YMMV.
Mark your datebooks...
Bugley and I agree.
Hell has frozen over.
I prefer it for 'important' battles, but part of that is the 'teleporting halfling syndrome' where the halfling ends up where she needs to be if there's not a map.
It's a lot easier to *show* why she can't vs argue.
My take, use the board when doing combat.
Don't bother with it when not.
That never sits well to me because it detracts from my sense of fairness and cohesiveness. Rules are rules for me, and while i dont mind editing them, at my table unless a rule doesnt fit, it is followed. Why is it that Bob the barbarian can charge 100 feet instead of 60 just this turn? What I do however allow is the expenditure of hero points (recently added to my game) to overcome things like this, representing an additional heroic effort to do the seemingly impossible.
Next time an error occurs, try not to correct it. Just roll with it and see where it takes you.It'll take some work at first, it is a learned skill, but I think you'll find the game much more fun in the end.
It's how I run Feng Shui and I've had people begging me to run the game again and again and again.
It's also notable that LilithsThrall mentions Feng Shui... and I wouldn't run Feng Shui, an extremely cinematic wire-fu kind of game, on a battlegrid any more than I would run Pathfinder without one. (I might still sketch a quick picture if someone was having trouble visualizing the scene.)
I believe using battle maps if done in the spirit of producing a piece of art (just don't scribble lines) adds to the value of the game, but miniatures over time detract, especially if your budget is limited.
If all you have is humanoids and a couple sets of monsters, it is hard to sell to players that the skeleton before them is a naga, or something similar.
That is why I am interested in the remergence of tokens to represent creatures, and let the players imagine what is happening during the encounter. If you are totally hooked on miniatures, as least paper tolkeins are affordable (for special encounters).
There are products on the market that even let you print your creatures on paper and place them in stands from litko systems.
For those who haven't seen it.
my mind has just been boggled.
He's not running 100 feet instead of 60 feet just this turn. Rather, the monsters actually were 40 feet closer than you thought they were.
And there you go why I find the lack of mini-based play to be immersion-breaking. A sliding reality that alters itself based on what I - or another player - or the DM remember being said or interpreted as being intended... is just bafflingly un-real. No thanks.
Obviously this is one of those personal preference things. Nobody's going to convince anyone else of anything and nobody's going to change their minds. The OP has their answer: it depends.
Oh. And the paladin was in the wrong. <Grin>
I think the only time minis and a mat detract is when the GM allows it to. Instead of saying, "The barbarian roars menacingly and brings everything he has to bear as he swings his great axe at you," the GM will point at a mini and say, "This guy power attacks you." The players will merely fall in line with this method of playing, and the game simply becomes a minis game.
Also, I don't think minis and a mat should come out unless the stage is fully set and initiatives have been rolled. Otherwise, those tools become an indicator that "fight time" is about to begin. Alternatively, make sure that minis and the battle mat are out regularly, even if there won't be any combat. That will keep players from assuming.
Last, when using a mat, make it look cool. If you just use a black marker to squiggle "general" lines in "roughly the right place," it's not very exciting. Using different colored markers to draw in shrubbery, water or rubble will enhance the map and make it visually appealing. Or, use Dungeon Tiles and 3D effects like toy trees and dollhouse furniture. That makes for some cool looking battle maps.
Otherwise, I fully agree with James. Make certain you're using as accurate a mini for the bad guy as you can. There's nothing quite like a GM putting out a poker chip on a blank battle mat and telling you it's a war dog attacking you in a swamp to keep you from being immersed in the game.
Not so, I will often use flowery language when describing action scenes, and get "I attack that guy" in response, it's pretty disheartening.
Even when I allow bonuses for great combat descriptions, the power gamers that didn't need a +1 TH would just say I attack that guy...
He's not running 100 feet instead of 60 feet just this turn. Rather, the monsters actually were 40 feet closer than you thought they were.And there you go why I find the lack of mini-based play to be immersion-breaking. A sliding reality that alters itself based on what I - or another player - or the DM remember being said or interpreted as being intended... is just bafflingly un-real. No thanks.
Obviously this is one of those personal preference things. Nobody's going to convince anyone else of anything and nobody's going to change their minds. The OP has their answer: it depends.
Oh. And the paladin was in the wrong. <Grin>
If you want reality, DnD is not the game for you. In fact, I'm not sure there is a role playing game that will be a good fit for someone seeking reality.
What I want out of a game is excitement and escapism, not a math optimization problem.
And D&D is not for you. Luckily there are games for that.
In the same way it doesn't offer reality.
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That's a bit absurd, Cartie, 'ol buddy 'ol chap. The game is played in the realm of one's imagination, satisfying the "excitement and escapism" requirement. Characters can be optimized or not, as preferred by the player. Hardcore math optional.
It doesn't offer realism, because, stop me if you've heard this one, it's played in the realm of one's imagination. It is by definition not real, thus cannot offer reality.
That's a bit absurd, Cartie, 'ol buddy 'ol chap. The game is played in the realm of one's imagination, satisfying the "excitement and escapism" requirement. Characters can be optimized or not, as preferred by the player. Hardcore math optional.
of course LT isn't talking about character creation. They are talking specifically about the "math" used to during tactical combat.
It doesn't offer realism, because, stop me if you've heard this one, it's played in the realm of one's imagination. It is by definition not real, thus cannot offer reality.
I physically played D&D just the other day!
What is my imagination ? Am I real ? Is the world around me real ? WHAT IS THAT PONY DOING OUT THERE !
It's wondering what you are doing in there!
Which is pretty tightly connected to the math of character optimization - for example, a wizard running into melee.
of course LT isn't talking about character creation. They are talking specifically about the "math" used to during tactical combat.
Oh please. Character optimization and character movements in combat are wholly unrelated.
I physically played D&D just the other day!I had no idea you were a LARPer.
Who said I was? I physically placed miniatures representing characters on a map representing the location they were currently located.
Yet another nonsense statement you've made.Optimizing character movement has everything to do with the character's abilities which has everything to do with optimizing character creation.
A character moving into melee isn't an optimized movement if that character was optimized during character creation to be a wizard.
Laughable and holier-than-thou. Unsurprising.
I can have a 30 Int Wizard or a 15 Int. Either way, Fireball still has a range of "Long" and a 20ft explosion radius.
Human of 20 Str or 12 Str, I still have a 30ft movement speed in Chainmail while having a 10' reach with a Halberd.
When was the last time you played a wizard character who regularly ran into melee?
Will you please tell me where this even came from (other than you making it up) or how it matters at all?
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I physically placed miniatures representing characters on a map representing the location they were currently located.
...located in an imaginary dungeon (or wherever) that doesn't actually exist, no matter how well you draw it.
I can draw a diamond ring on this piece of paper in front of me, it doesn't mean that there's a real diamond ring there. Our ability to represent a concept in two or three dimensions does not give it reality. Gaming on a battlemat is, at best, an abstraction of an abstraction. I'd hardly call that reality. The reality is, you sat and ate pizza with your friends while playing a game. The game is real, sure, but it relies as heavily upon the imagination as it does the character sheet, the pencils, or the dice. If not for some modicum of imagination, this particular game would not exist, would never have been conceived of, would be impossible to play.
In fact, the same logic is true for any number of entertainment mediums. You don't actually think you're physically transported to a Land composed of Candy when you're playing Candyland, do you? You don't actually think that Sigourney Weaver flew into space and met Aliens at any point, right? Then you should be able to appreciate that the abstraction of your Fighter on the battlemat doesn't mean that there's a real fighter out there somewhere, duking it out with monsters at your behest. The battlemat represents what's going on in your imagination - an abstraction of an abstraction. Hardly real.
I'm with LT - I'm all set, here. Have fun. To the OP - good thread, sorry it got eaten.
...located in an imaginary dungeon (or wherever) that doesn't actually exist, no matter how well you draw it.
But I'm not playing the game wholly in my mind. It is occurring right in front of me. The action may be imaginary as well as the locales, but the game isn't.
And it doesn't offer realism? I can't role-play the shopkeeper of the store down the street? I am now going to stamp my feet and complain about character optimizations ruining my role-playing.
In the same way it doesn't offer reality.God, I'm such a sucker, but - "realism" and "reality" are two different things. You said "reality". The game does not offer "reality". It can (though does not necessarily need to and is not a particularly optimal way to) offer "realism".
Which further serves to point out how obtuse LT is being.
Or are you going to agree with the implication that it is ok for mobile goalpost gameplay because you can't have "reality" in D&D?
Mark your datebooks...Bugley and I agree.
Hell has frozen over.
And here I thought we were just enjoyed a respite from the AZ summer! :P
Hate to break into the Cartigan/LT show, which I'm sure everyone is enjoying immensely, but thought I might offer some thoughts.
I understand where the folks who think miniatures can detract from immersion are coming from. I remember, back before I could afford miniatures, having a thoroughly good time playing without them. We enjoyed it for the same reason my daughter tells me she prefers books to movies, because she enjoys being able to create the scene in her mind, and the efforts of others to put those scenes on film usually paled in comparison. I think this style of play can still work for those who are playing less combat-driven games, even with the inceasingly combat-heavy rules architecture of Pathfinder. You also need the right kind of players, who have the imagination required and the desire and willingness to use it. They also need to be people who aren't heavy into the combat rules and the math behind them, in my opinion.
That said, as soon as I was gainfully employed, I started buying miniatures, eventually amassing a collection that leads some to question my sanity. I love them, and I love using them to represent combat and some other situations. Our group loves their combat something fierce, and we find the use of minis makes our combats easier to visualize and act out, particularly in more complicated areas with large casts of combatants. It also tends to eliminate tiresome arguments about line of sight or whether something proposed is physically impossible or not. We use an old hex-based battlemap (conversion of rules to hexes actually pretty simple), which we think provides for more realistic combat movement and area of effect, and a set of markers. Occasionally I'll draw something ahead of time, but usually just scrawl something quickly. I'm not a great artist, but it isn't hard to draw something decent looking in just a couple of minutes.
It doesn't offer realism, because, stop me if you've heard this one, it's played in the realm of one's imagination. It is by definition not real, thus cannot offer reality.
Actually it is played "in the realms of several individuals' imaginations". Which is part of the problem with not having some kind of objective representation for all to draw from. While each imagination will of course be different to any degree no matter what, being able to objectively state, "The fireball will only hit one of the party members." Is beneficial.
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Actually it is played "in the realm of several individuals' imaginations". Which is part of the problem with not having some kind of objective representation for all to draw from. While each imagination will of course be different to any degree no matter what, being able to objectively state, "The fireball will only hit one of the party members." Is beneficial.
You'll get no arguement from me, my group uses a battlemat.
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I'm now running Kingmaker with 7 players (an 8th joining in a couple months, and a possible ninth if her work schedule changes again) - In order to keep them in line with XP and treasure, I'm often doubling the number of enemies they would face in the AP encounter (additional adjustments will be needed as well).
I'm sure part of this is a shortfall on my part, but I could not manage such large combats by word and description alone. Part of this is that I am a very visual person. While I love writing and imagining scenery, I am simply better at running combat smoothly with the visual representation in front of me.
I didn't start playing until 2004, so I've never played in a system before 3.5 (except for the old gold box games in the late 90s). I did play one game without miniatures, and it invalidated much of my fighter's ability to use things like attacks of opportunity and made feats like Mobility pretty useless in combat - so useless I and the DM decided to remove it from the game entirely. I had a hard time understanding where we were from simple descriptions, and often ended up frustrated by not understanding where I should go to block or impede enemy progress to the other members of my party, etc.
I can understand frustration with perfectly placed fireballs and other area effects. I'd love to do something like an attack roll to hit the intended intersection in the random craziness of combat. But given the current structure of combat, I think battlemats remove many more problems than they introduce - especially for a large group.
I don't think I have much interest in "chaotic" combats.
As for dynamic or energetic, certainly people tend to be a bit reserved, not taking unnecessary risks which can seem to be boring to some. But I fear, and this is from personal experience, that some GMs that want more "excitement" actually want more "gotcha" moments. In a game with an objective representation of the game situation, it much harder to have situations where a player says, "I charge the spellcaster" only to have the GM say, "Well the ogre that was standing beside the spellcaster smacks you, you know the ogre that you forgot about since last round." Sadly, some GMs love that aspect and so love for a subjective representation that only they know exactly what is going on.
Which if you think about it is kind of silly. It is not like the characters are walking around with blindfolds with little angels and demons on their shoulders whispering what is going on. You aren't going to have people do radically stupid behaviors most of the time if they truly valued their existence.
I certainly think players can take too long of a time deciding where to place effects or what is the best possible movement when using a game mat, but I'm not sure if no mat is more desirable for myself. I just try to model behavior of beings making quick decisions and living with the consequences if it was not the best use of their resources.
I used to play without a mat and minis. Throughout 2nd edition, old WoD, and the BGC RPG, I've played without miniatures. In some instances, it worked really well. But in many instances, I ran one too many times into players going "but I wasn't there, I was over there! That fireball shouldn't have hit me" or "I just move around the thing and hit him from behind" or any of a number of different alternatives. In some games, where positioning is less crucial, it's not a big deal. I wouldn't really use a map when running a WoD game or BGC, because PCs don't have area of effect attacks that take up a 40' diameter sphere, nor are there rules for attacks of opportunity.
When 3.0 came out, I didn't use miniatures. My mind being stuck in older games where they hadn't been as needed intimated to me that I didn't need them. And then, I had a player introduce them to the group. He may have otherwise been a psychotic that started creeping us out by the end of the second session, but he had a good idea. I finally understood how Attacks of Opportunity worked. I didn't have to get into debates with players about where they were in relation to the monsters they were fighting. And combat became much more of a tactical experience rather than just a mess, which I find really a lot of fun. I wouldn't ever go back for this game, because it's very much designed to benefit from miniatures.
Do I always have a miniature that's representative of what the party is fighting? Nope. Do I care? Not really. I like having figures that match what the PCs are facing, but I'm not torn up about it. And it allows for some memorable jokes, such as the fact that Strahd von Zarovich was the bartender of the Golden Goblin because that was the mini that wound up on the table at the time.
Personally, I don't find that it ruins the immersion. I find that it makes combat a lot less "I shot you! No you didn't! I had cover!" and much more "I shift slightly to get into a better vantage point, but I'm also worried about getting flanked myself." I wouldn't give up the tactical aspect unless I absolutely had to.
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Jess Door, with that many players and monsters and a battlemat, I doubt you've got anything close to an immersive experience. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm betting your combats are slow - probably taking hours to complete - and your players often end up paying only partial attention to what's going on from round to round. They get bored with waiting a half hour or longer between actions. Further, it may even be true that you, as the GM, are getting frustrated that combat all too often feels like a grind with only brief sporadic moments of excitement.
Am I right? Because, if I am, I claim that if you are somehow able to spend less time in resource management, if you let combat be more fluid, if you get rid of the mat and minis, you'll find a lot of those problems go away.
You'll have to talk to my players, I guess. This week we only had 4 players, but 6 PCs (2 planned absentees asked fellow players to keep their characters in the game, one didn't show) and 9 enemies lasted less than an hour. I didn't time the battle, but it probably took about 45 minutes.
Wolfthulhu and Silverhair are the two more forum-active players in the game right now. If you really want to ask you can post your question in the campaign journal: The Wild Kingdom: A Kingmaker Journal.
Maybe it's just a shortcoming on my part, but I couldn't keep track of that many combatants in my head and grant my players' their planned abilities' full effects, keeping track of thrown weapon range, whip tripping range, line of sight in the forest...I would be hopelessly confused and flustered. I can only imagine it would be a hundred times worse for my players.
Since most of my players and I are all warhammer table top players, we have tons of minis all around. We all paint, and enjoy it.
I find that picking out and painting a model for my character really helps fix them in my mind. I know a lot of people do portraits for their character, but I can't draw for crap. I can however convert models and paint.
If you have models on hand, setup is actually quicker than it usually takes me to describe the area.
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The major issue I have time to set-up, as already been noted by someone. You set the scene for an exciting encounter and then... 10-15 minutes of setting up the dungeon tiles or defining the limits of the room and looking for the miniatures (which are sometimes in the car) = losing interest people.
If I can get past that initial set-up phase then I usually end up annoyed by the 'square counters'. I move somewhere only to be told that if I move to square X then I'll get +2 and the other player will get +1 and local baker in town will get a synergetic +4 to his next bread making attempt. Ebb and flow replaced by detailed tactical calculation just removes some of the fun of an RPG for me. Arguments about exact placement do arise in narrative combat now and then but I have never found this as intrusive as the 'square counters' during a game.
Opinion above is mine, and mine alone,
S.
Edit: The 5'-step killed narrative combat. <shakes fist at 5'-step>
The major issue I have time to set-up, as already been noted by someone. You set the scene for an exciting encounter and then... 10-15 minutes of setting up the dungeon tiles or defining the limits of the room and looking for the miniatures (which are sometimes in the car) = losing interest people.
Miniatures or not, poor planning by the GM can make an otherwise exciting game into an exercise in waiting while bored.
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Can nothing be said for "If you like it that way, enjoy yourself"?
Why does it have to come down to "You must not have a very good time at your game because you use miniatures and a battlemat, I'll bet your players have an awful time"? The selling point of the Pathfinder game system is that it can accomodate and appeal to varying groups of players with varying playstyles and varying experiences. Reading this thread has been rather disheartening for me, with so much condescension coming from the anti-mini side. Seems counterproductive for such a community-driven game.
Yeah, you get that a lot here. If you use miniatures, you play the game wrong. If you use battlemats, you don't understand how to immerse yourself in the combat. If you care about the math and modelling involved in system analysis, you take the fun out of the game for everyone in a 100 mile radius. If you enjoy tactical combat at least as much as you enjoy roleplaying, then you don't know how to roleplay and your character is nothing but a soulless collection of numbers.
I remain polite and move on. Some people will be like that, especially on the internet. What matters is who you play with.
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The major issue I have time to set-up, as already been noted by someone. You set the scene for an exciting encounter and then... 10-15 minutes of setting up the dungeon tiles or defining the limits of the room and looking for the miniatures (which are sometimes in the car) = losing interest people.Miniatures or not, poor planning by the GM can make an otherwise exciting game into an exercise in waiting while bored.
It's a lot of work to DM well. Prepare maps ahead of time, be familiar with unfamiliar or little used rules that could easily come up in a specific situation, get your minis ready for a quick roll out. Be familiar with NPC motivations to handle curve balls the players may throw at you.
That's part of why Kingmaker is especially brutal. I have to be nearly completely prepared with the entire book - as well as failsafes for wandering off the map - for nearly each session. And as an exploration game, I not only need to have set piece combats ready, but I have to roll up weather for a number of months, and prerolling random encounters (and coming up with some ideas for context for those encounters) is a bit of work as well. Modding it, on top of that, for 7-9 players means I have plenty to do between sessions!