The Danger of Miniatures

As most of you know I have recently returned to playing 2nd edition D&D after a long stint playing 4th edition. Forth edition is a very solid game, mechanically, but it does require the use of miniatures more than any other edition of the game so far. I don't want to say that this is a totally bad thing. I love pulling out my Dwarven Forge Dungeon sets, and filling a table with miniatures as much as the next guy. However, I have noticed the effect that this has had on the way we game in general and that is that I want to talk about today.

When I was younger, I used to play D&D with nearly nothing for miniatures. When they were absolutely needed, we would sometimes just use dice to represent where each character was in relation to each other. Generally, we were able to keep things straight in our heads. This did sometimes lead to confusion, but it also lead to a more free form way of looking at combats and promoted more general creativity in the players actions.

Since we began playing 4th edition, I had noticed a tendency to be more concerned about squares of movement and spell areas and more concrete rules. This seemed to limit (or at very least downplay) creativity in player actions. When their turn came around, the players were busy counting the squares of movement to reach the next enemy and rarely came up with the sort of off the wall ideas that characterized games in my youth.

I do not want to remove miniatures from the game, as I feel that they are nice to help avoid confusion, as well as aiding in immersion when everyone can see what your character looks like. (Not to mention that painting miniatures is a lot of fun.) So to combat this, I have told my players that the minis and battle mats we are using are purely relational. By that I mean, I am not focusing on counting squares of movement, and I am more eyeballing the area of effects for spells and the like. This change in focus has helped them break from the board a little. My players are spending less time counting squares and more time focusing on playing their characters.

Like many hobbies, Gaming can suffer from too great a reliance on accessories. It is important that the players and DM remember that those accessories are only there to support the purpose of the game: to have fun. When the accessories threaten to limit that fun, instead of support it, then it is the DMs job to change the way he is doing things to bring the focus back where it belongs.