Comments on: Howling Tower: Rise of the Miniature

By: Steve Winter

Steve Winter — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 21:47:46 +0000

Warrior Rogue & Mage is a cool game. I’m glad to read that it’s actually being played.

By: brindy

brindy — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 14:47:28 +0000

I’ve been playing in a 3.5 game for about two years now and haven’t used a mini-once.

I’ve also DM’d a lot of 4th edition and yep, absolutely can’t get away from using minis, IMHO. Even when playing with some of the same people who play the 3.5 game they insisted on battle-mats and minis for combat encounters because the rules are just so coupled to it that you can’t even being to play a theatre of the mind game.

I also play a regular Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay v2 game and we rarely use minis there, but for larger combat scenes we’ll often turn up at the GM’s house to find a huge battlefield ready to go and to be honest, my heart sinks because I pretty much hate wargaming these days. But that’s a rarity, so I put up with it without complaint.

In general, I like skirmish games (and that’s a big feature of what I like about D&D 4th), but on the whole prefer RPGs without minis.

Side note: slightly hypocritical, but I’m actually developing a ‘tactical combat’ supplement for Warrior, Rogue and Mage which should be published this year (or early next). WR&M has no concept of minis or tactical combat (until now) and I think it’s one of the best RPGs out there because it’s so light. I’m hoping my supplement doesn’t weight it down too much.

By: mordicai

mordicai — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 14:43:45 +0000

I’m very much a fan, despite the fact that I run a campaign heavy on the “role” side of the equation. First: “hey shoot, this mini is awesome” is a great tool; minis can be props. Second, for simple spatial awareness. Even outside of combat– I use minis for parties, a lot, actually. “Oh, Weird Cape Dude, Crazy Cultist Guy & Bad Ass Archer Lady are all in a clique over here, & so they can’t hear me plotting with Mischievous Gnome over here, good…”

By: The Bull

The Bull — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:33:34 +0000

Another question of taste and once more it all depends on the people you play with. Being familiar with classic tactical wargames (I played with may grandpa), rpg without using miniatures, tactical rpg (Cadwallon RPG which sprung from Confrontation a Skirmisher Miniature Game), pbem rpg, pbf rpg I can only say that using miniatures (or tokens) at the right moment helps clarify the situation. I opt more for tokens (even if I still have some unpainted minis laying around for over 10 years now) as they don’t narrow down your imagination to the miniature presented before you. When you use a token (the once my girl used to learn maths and have a blue and a red side) you get all the advantages of minis and none of their hindrances.

Still I adore minis even if I neither have the patience nor the skill to ever paint mine. The are great to look at.

Just my two cents.

Have fun doing it your way!

The Bull

By: Brian Suskind

Brian Suskind — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 04:02:58 +0000

You know, it’s funny. I learned D&D in second edition but really didn’t play a lot until 3.5, so I cut my teeth using miniatures. For a long time, I scoffed at the idea of not using them.

For almost a decade now, I’m a regular (3 games a month) GM. I have tons of miniatures, more dwarves forge tiles than I care to admit, wire templates, battlemats, and terrain for almost any occasion. But I’ve noticed something.

The longer I GM, the less “stuff” I feel like I need.

I still love using miniatures for big battle scenes or set pieces, but I find my games somehow freer just using imagination for smaller encounters.

The trick, of course, is that with 3.5/pathfinders games a great deal of the spells rely on miniatures and battlemats. If you are not a “letter of the law” type you can work around it, if you are…well…not so much.

-Brian

By: Dave C

Dave C — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 02:37:19 +0000

Started playing with minitures in 0e and never stopped. The fact that the wife liked painting minitures and made up some battle mats to go with them helped alot. I always found drawing the dungeon out on a battle mat was quicker and easier than the verbal room descriptions I used to slug through in my college games. It also gave the rest of the players other than the designated “mapper” a sense of what was going on.

By: Troy

Troy — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 19:24:50 +0000

I think minis breathed new life into my gaming life. Mainly because it gave me a side hobby to explore when I wasn’t gaming. I could paint mins (and terrain) and still feel like I was playing.

By: Steve Winter

Steve Winter — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 18:37:16 +0000

Interesting use of an overhead projector. I’ve heard of people doing similar things with digital tables like Maptool and WotC’s ill-fated tabletop, projecting them onto a wall-mounted TV that doubles as a monitor. I’d love to try that sometime, but first I’ll need to get a wall-mounted TV that doubles as a monitor.

Of course, replacing miniatures with tokens, dice, or projected images is still playing with miniatures. They just take a different form. The real question to me is whether using representations of any sort — 3-D, 2-D, or virtual — is a plus or a minus in people’s gaming experience.