A Referee Rumbles, To use miniatures or not use miniatures that is the question!

Miniatures are a tool, you can over use them. Verbal descriptions are a tool. Some DMs are good at only using one, others can combine both to create a superior game session, others are poor at both. The key point is to figure out which combination of techniques works best for you and then hone them.

For myself I use miniatures with dry erase board and a minimum of props. I have a lot of standard stuff, (orcs, men-at-arms, undead, etc) that are readily accessible. For example I a set of what I call "official guard figures". They always represent city guard, noble retainers or other military forces,



The same for the props I throw onto the board after drawing the room. I use props because the ones I found setup faster then me drawing it. I tried using Dwarven Forge stuff but it took long in the setup department and too prone to jostling and then falling down.

Other DMs have their own techniques ranging from no miniatures, miniatures for purposes of marching order, to the full blown Dwarven forge setup. The quality of their game was independent of what technique they used. In short DM wer bad or were good regardless whether they were verbal only, or used the full dwarven forge experience.

However if a DM was verbal only, or a DM used Dwarven Forge there were certainly dos and don't for each technique. For example most Dwarven Forge DMs typically had the most detailed sections prebuilt and covered them until needed. Using only standard pieces for stuff built on the fly. Good verbal DMs are methodical and well organized in their descriptions and made sure each player described clearly what and where they were doing.

Referee Rumblings: Putting it all together

Today's post conclude this series of Referee Rumblings with 'Putting it all together'
Note the square boxes are folk thinking rather than speaking out loud. To see the full size comics just click on each image.

Referee Rumblings: Miniatures

The use of miniatures is one area that gamers are divided about. For me I am a GM who loves using miniatures. But as the picture shows below those are those with a different opinion about the use of miniatures.



I have some tips and trick for using miniatures without bogging down your game. But first off yesterday Alex asks how I keep my tiles sorted. To the left of where I sit when refereeing is this bookshelf.



Yes I REALLY like GURPS. That beside point. The second shelf down is where I keep a lot of the tiles I use during the game.



I use mainly just the really big tiles and a selection of the smaller bits. I keep the big tiles stacked up on the ends of the shelf. The Wizard's Dungeon on the left and the Chaosium Path tiles on the Right. In the baggies on the right are the smaller Chaosium tiles along with the baggies with the dungeon tile bits I use.

To the right of bookshelf you can see the my miniature storage cases. Below is a closer view.



Over 30 years of gaming I collected quite a few. Recently Tim of Gothridge Manor gave me his sets doubling my collection. I must confess I don't really use every miniature there. The one on the left is monsters and humanoids while the one on the right is used for NPC and PCs.

Also I have to confess that I use the smaller dungeon tiles rarely. I have manage to collect a bunch of plastic, plaster, and resin pieces I use for dungeon dressing.

The plastic ones I keep in my Dice box.



They come from the various Mage Warrior Dungeon Sets. They were good prices too and I wish I had more of them. Note the empty compartment are storage for miniatures when I referee away from home.

This is the box of plaster and resin dungeon dressing I use.

The top two are pillar bases, bottom left are tents. The next one to the right is a stone fence and supply barrels. Then in the bottom middle are my tavern pieces, above that is a door and a fireplace. Then to the right are bedding both regular beds and floor mats. Upper right are fireplaces and the lower left are low stone walls.

I could have gotten all kinds of crazy stuff but I choose these items because they are used in 90% of the encounters I run in fantasy games.

And that key to using miniatures and dungeon dressing. It isn't a matter of having all your stuff sorted but having the stuff you use 90% of the time easily accessible. Out of all the miniature boxes the following four are what I use the most often

This is the box where I store large quantities of the same miniatures. I basically got most of these from sales on stuff for miniature wargames. Out of this box what I use the most is in the lower right corner, the peasant/normal folk area. Here are figures presenting well .. normal people. So when I need a mayor, a barmaid, or anything similar I pull it out of here.

Next are my Official Guard Figures

When you see these guys coming you know your characters are in trouble. The Red guys are my Official Guards and the Blue Guys were Tim's Official Guards.

Next is my Orc box. Nothing but Orcs. Circled are the miniatures I use the most often for Humanoids. I have goblins, bugbears, and kobolds but no where in the quantity of my orcs. So I throw the guys in the upper left in to flesh out the few I have.

In the monster box below I use the circled miniatures a lot. They are various four legged wolves, dogs, and great cats. Useful for any mundane four legged carnivore. As you saw previously I have the herbivores covered as well. Those were gotten from a model railroad shop.

As for the remaining miniatures I set some of those aside for important NPCs. If the next series of adventures involves say undead, or giants. I will pull those figures out so they are handy. The way my games goes usually I can prepare for a session or two ahead of time. Beyond that who knows where the PCs will end up. The players have the run of the PC boxes to find just the right figure for their character.

Next post putting it all together.

Referee Rumblings: Dungeon Tiles

In the last post in this series I talked about Battlemats. The problem with Battlemats is that they are either totally blank in which case you need to spend time drawing what you want. Or they are specific to one encounter or one type of encounter. Is there a middle ground?

Dungeon Tiles

The above picture probably is recognizable by the majority of gamers as belonging to one of Wizards of the Coast Dungeon Tile sets. They have good art, durable, and somewhat inexpensive. In addition to Wizards of the Coast, there are many third party outfits producing dungeon tiles and their 3D variants. It is a staple product for many PDF publishers as you can see when you browse RPGNow's top 100 list.

Dungeon Tiles have been with the hobby since the early 80s. Probably their original inspiration was the Geomorph series from TSR. Once the geomorphs were out there it was natural to expand them to full scale for 25mm minatures. (1" = 5').

Some of the early set were quite gorgeous for the day. Chaosium produced Fantasy Paths, Village Paths, and Castle Paths.

I found them difficult to use because they don't really fit together well. But they had some great individual tiles that I used over and over again. The tavern on the lower right is probably got the most use.

There were others.


I don't know who the two. The one in the upper left was designed with a magnetic base and designed to fight on to a metal board. Unfortunally a decade the glue holding the base deteriorated and half them are missing the base (along with the board). The one on the right is the one I used the most. It was a bit of pain because the small 10' by 10' tiles had borders you wree supposed to use in laying out the dungeon. Never had enough corners to do what I want. Plus it slowed down deployment unless I had everything sorted just so.

Of the early tiles only the doors I continue to use

In general I find Dungeon Tiles, regardless of sets, useful in limited circumstance. The main problem is keeping them properly sorted for deployment. The current generation is way better than what I started out with back in the day. What I like about today's dungeon tiles are the "bits" As shown below.


They are little pieces of scenery that I toss out to dress up something I drew on the plexiglass. They are easier to keep sorted because their small size. I find myself using the real large pieces as well. It is easy enough to keep them on a nearby bookshelf to pull and assemble into a battleboard.

I think the best use of tiles is still the traditional dungeon drawn on the grid. The pieces are similar enough that sorting is rarely an issue and I find tossing out tiles can be faster than drawing.

Referee Rumblings: Battlemats

If your reaction to using miniatures is this

Then this post is probably not for you.

However if this is how you view using miniatures

Then I got some useful info for you.

One the key elements for using miniatures at the game table is the battlemat. Basically a flat sheet marked in squares or hexes used to regulate movement. Many have the ability to be drawn on with either dry erase or wet erase markers.

My preference is for hex maps. I never really like the grid and quickly switched to hex maps even when I was playing AD&D. The fact that GURPS uses hexes was one of the things that initially made the system appealing to me. While a bit of a paint to draw dungeons on hex maps make counting range a snap and offers more freedom of movement because of the six possible direction. I am sure that starting out with the old hex and counter wargames made it seem natural.

For a long time this rather plain battlemat was my favorite.

The main reason is that the scale of 3 feet per hex was accurate for 25 mm figures (the kind most often used for D&D). Which is was important to me considering considering I use props with my miniatures.

I tried used a Chessex soft mat. The main reason I didn't use is because no matter what type of marker I used it stained very easily. Rolled up nice. Of course I got the deluxe wargamer version with hexnumbers and line of sight dot in the middle of the hex.


But then two years ago I got this battlemat.




Which became my main battlemat. One reason I like is that it is sturdy, folds up rather than roll up, and has square on the other side if I need them. I not sure if the folds will take years of use, I will let you know in a decade or so.



This illustrate what I mean by scaling. If you are using 3 ft hexes then the one of the left works better than the one on the right. The 1" square grid and hex maps work out better for D&D as each square/hex represent 5 feet.

I also have some specialty battlemats I use in various situations.

This is from a Steve Jackson product for GURPs and use it a lot for outdoor encounters.

Some other handdrawn battlemats.

Below the top map represent the best of my handdrawn battle map. Remember these were drawn in the late 80s/early 90s way before D&D 4th edition. I got to admit tho the 4e maps are pretty nice looking.
The bottom map in the picture above is handdrawn by Tim of Gothridge Manor. He has a distinctive style that I always found pleasing. I case you are wondering these were used for our GURPS version of the village of Hommlett. The top map is the Inn of the Welcome Wench and the bottom map is the Village of Nulb (Knolb in our version). It was set on the Tharian Coast northeast of Elxier for those who know your Wilderlands.

If you own a battlemat and want to keep it for two decades I recommend rolling it up unless it is been specially designed to fold. If for some reason you own something with map drawers then store it flat. You may be able to get away with using two square boards sandwiched between a shelf in the wall. Make sure you use something smooth like plastic and slide the map between. You want to make there is a slight amount of pressure to keep the paper from sliding down.

As you can see in the picture of the handdrawn maps folding them doesn't do much for durability. I suspect I will tape them up and get them laminated solving the problem for the long term.

Finally on corner of the map test your markers to make sure they will work. Even if you use the recommended type some brands will still stain the mat.

Finally a new product called Gaming Paper was released. It is marked out in 1" square but the price look good and the reviews positive. You just tear off what you need and draw.

Referee Rumblings: Maps at the table.

Referee Rumblings are going a series of posts on my personal style as a referee of RPGs. Observations and tips on refereeing RPGs for the past 30 years. With a particular focus on the fantasy genre.

Prompted by comments by Alex and Timeshadow on my Kensla post yesterday I am going to talk about using maps in front of players.

I was a geography minor in college and the big emphasize of the curriculum was using maps to convey information. Done the right way they can shortcut minutes of verbal or written description.

In addition I was (and still am) a big fan of Harn. Harn had a three map system. The first map was color and had only a few important and obvious features labeled. The second was the same as the first but greyscale for photocopying. The last was a greyscale version that was keyed for the referee only.

The idea is that you show the players the color version when they arrived at the locale. If they want to take note you hand a photocopy of the greyscale version. During play (or prep) you refer to the keyed version.

The player map does not have complete information. It represents the general sense of a site that can be gathered when first journeying there.

I immediately adapted this to my own Majestic Wilderlands and used it ever since. It saves a lot of time describing locales to players. For stuff that is off the cuff I will sketch a quick line and block map on the whiteboard.

Understand this doesn't take away from the mystery of a locale. To the players is looks like a bit of a terrain and bunch of white blocks. What in those blocks is still a mystery.

As for getting lost in a city. Just about every group I ever ran knows the right hand method of running through a maze. Plus medieval cities are not that big. Within game minutes it is not that hard getting back to a main street.

Below is the map I used for City State. Until a encounter requires the battlemat this map lies in front of the players with tokens or figures representing the locations of the various party members.



On the table



What I use in my DM's notebook.



For spur of the moment stuff I use a notepad or whiteboard to show something like this


The scribbles are cropland.

The key thing to remember is that the map you show players to cut down on your verbal description doesn't have to be the same map that behind your screen. Nor do you have to do a map every time if you don't think it will save you time or convey the information any faster.