A Note on Miniatures

This is important, so sit up and pay attention. I don't use miniatures in my game. To tell the truth I don't know anyone who uses miniatures in their games. I don't like them. In fact, I will go as far as saying that miniatures have no place in a roleplaying game. They are distracting, they extend and overly complicate combat and they detract from the actual business of the game: the roleplaying.

Picture this: the GM hauntingly invokes the dank and squallid conditions in the long-abandoned monastery of Saint Crispin the Divine. Long ago the monks who once dwelt here were driven off by a tribe of slack-jawed savages, that now prey on the near-by caravan route. The players have immersed themselves in the atmosphere; they are a little jumpy - they don't know what to expect, and they're uncertain whether they are up to the challenge. Suddenly, the guards are alerted and the GM yells, "Right, clear away the books so I can put my grid down. Everyone get your figures out and tell me where you are."

Ye gods. Mood broken. While you're setting up the combat one player goes to the toilet, another phones his girlfriend and the third puts the kettle on. Oh, and did I mention that this raiding band is actually a cult worshipping Cthuloid deities from the Far Realm, and that the grand finale involves the PCs doing battle with an entity the evil shaman summons? Unfortunately the GM doesn't have a figure for Gthathaazus the Unblinking because he used his imagination and made it up, therefore he's having to use the back of cereal packet cut to the right dimensions. It doesn't matter how closely the GM describes Gthathaazus's multi-faceted horror, the PCs don't take any monster seriously if it has "Alpen" written across its back.

Do you begin to see my point? I prefer my combat rules to be a little more fluid. A quick scribble on a white-board might sometimes be necessary to give all the players an idea where everything is in relation to everything else, but beyond that……. it's a game of imagination for crying out loud! You do not need props! If the GM is doing his job well enough, then his verbal descriptions are all the players need.

Wait, you have questions about the rules don't you? There are four dozen feats built around the fact that your character can only move thirty feet in a round. How can I possibly adjudicate attacks of opportunity if I don't know where every character is to the inch? Trust me. You don't need to know things down to that much detail. If you have to stop the game to find an answer, then the answer isn't worth finding. The flow of the game is far more important.

In writing the 3.5 version of the D&D rules, Wizards of the Coast have claimed that the use of miniatures is essential to the game and that it cannot be run effectively without them. I haven't read such out-and-out nonsense since the last time Reader's Digest claimed I'd won £100,000. To my mind the greater integration of miniatures into the latest D&D rules is little more than a cynical ploy on the part of Wizards to sell their new miniatures range.

The rest of the combat section goes on to explain how attacks of opportunity, flanking and all those other things fit into a game without miniatures. I've been running D&D successfully without miniatures for more than a decade and third edition every week since it was released. I've never run a game for anyone who thought miniatures was a good idea, but if you're one of those people I hope I manage to convert you.