Do TTRPG’s need Physical Mini’s?
“Imagine the scene - you sit down with your closest group of friends, ready to band together and face off against the BBEG (Big Bad End Guy - aka the Boss of the campaign you have been playing). The Game Master, from behind the screen, describes the environment, the smells and sounds, the taste in the air as your character looks towards the quarry you have been chasing over the past 10 sessions. Suddenly, the boss turns, looking towards the group as they realise you have entered. Combat Begins…”
When you see this in your mind’s eye, does the GM (Game Master, or person running the game) now reach down and pull out a battle map, placing a physical scene constructed from plastic, wood, plaster and paint in front of you, with tiny mini’s to represent each of your characters? Maybe they pull out some grid paper, sketching out the locations, environmental elements and player positions in pen or pencil, maybe even using small tokens such as bottle caps or coins? Or does the scene continue with players using nothing but their imagination to help tell the story of how they will at least try to defeat the evil in front of them?
If it's the first or second, that likely means you have used physical minis to play with in the past. If it's the latter, then you have likely played TTRPG’s (Table Top Role Playing Games) using a process called “Theater of the Mind”.
Theater of the Mind
Theater of the mind is a term used to describe the location of battles that are purely fought out using your imagination and the dice. There is no physical representation of the landscape you can see or reference, and is effectively a shared imaginative experience where everyone can see the world in their mind's eye and can see what everyone is doing within it. It has its heart in the root of Dungeons and Dragons, but is used to great effect in a lot of TTRPG’s.
The alternative to this is to use physical minis or figurines within a tactical battle map, so that all players can see a central representation of the image they have in their mind's eye. Sitting in a central location that everyone can see, interact with and share in one space. Players, enemies and environmental effects are represented and can be picked up and moved around as the battle progresses.
Physical Minis are for a lot of people a very large part of the hobby, both in what they enjoy about it and also the majority of where they spend their time. In this post I am going to use the term “Minis” to mean lots of physical things that could be useful at the table, including but not limited to, minis that represent characters, NPC’s or allies, Enemies, status effects, terrain, buildings, conditions and even timers or initiative trackers. Each of these can be lovingly crafted, with hours upon hours poured into each by a hobbyist, but for the sake of simplicity I will group them all here in one bunch.
Why do people enjoy using the physical minis?
Firstly, it's an excuse for some hobbyists to paint and play with the mini’s that they love to collect. Speaking from experience, there is a lot of joy in spending time painting a model that you know is going to have an impact when it hits the table, and is a really easy and fun way to share your hobby and art with those around you.
On a more practical and mechanical level, physical minis allow for potentially more tactical battles to occur, with players being very specific about where they can or cannot place themselves, and work with the terrain around them. It stops some of the confusion where a player thought they were within range for a spell but in the DM’s mind they are in a different location.
It can also help some players who struggle to visualise or imagine really get a solid grasp of what is going on. That doesn’t mean the battlemap has to go the whole way and be all they can imagine, but the prompt of the landscape, the colours and the settings can really help with some peoples immersion and support any descriptions that the GM/DM gives whilst at the table.
Finally, having the mini’s on the table can help to reduce or even remove the level of confusion that can occur between players. It can really ramp up the tactical nature of battles, allowing players to point at where they think the AOE’s (Area of Effects - i.e. effects that target an area rather than specific creatures) would be the most useful, or where they should look to set up traps or block entrances and which enemy they should be targeting.
So Why Are Mini’s Not Mandatory?
Having Physical Mini’s at your table can be great, for the clarity, the tactics and the impact you can have on your players, but there are a lot of GM’s that do not bother or actively prefer not to - so why?
Firstly, mini’s can have the impact of breaking the immersion or visual of what the players and GM had in their head. Have you ever seen a movie based on a book you love, and when the main character or iconic scene appears on screen there is a feeling that something is a bit off, it wasn’t what you had within your head? The same can be true at the table, perhaps the DM has painted a wonderful picture, but the model or map they bring out just doesn't quite fit. Perhaps what they have envisioned just isn’t possible to make in a real world - quite often a lot of these games are based in a fantastical setting, either in the future or with some elements of magic.
Secondly, the act of having a map in front of you can encourage metagaming in players without them even realising. Metagaming is when you as a player know more than your character and you use that to influence the decisions you make in game, and can be a controversial topic online to discuss. Imagine you have a map of a dungeon in front of you that your character is exploring, looking for lost treasure said to be at the heart of this crypt, and it is a square. You are butted right up against one side of it, and your character has the option of two paths, one heading in towards the centre of the square and another heading towards the edge. Most players will take their character towards the centre, as logic suggests that's where the treasure will be, but that could be seen as metagaming as in the world your character has no idea where the centre of the square is. The same is true of things like secret doors and traps, where the GM wants to have them on the map but can’t put them there for fear of alerting the players etc.
Thirdly, the act of having a battle map can force GM’s to create very specific types of battles so that they can be represented well. For example, you want a battle on rocks floating through a river of magma, with each turn rocks moving and breaking as the fire of the inferno melts the stone beneath your feet - that's really difficult to physically represent. The same can be true of showing elevation or flying creatures on a map - which can lead players to always facing enemies on a plain flat battlefield. There are of course ways of avoiding this, and GM’s can create very dynamic and interesting encounters whilst still adhering to the laws of gravity in the real world, but it does add an extra challenge that does not exist if you were told to imagine a fight on the backs of dragons, swooping through the air firing off spells at each other through the clouds.
Finally, creating physical battle maps is really hard, especially if you want them to be incredibly detailed and immersive. The amount of hobbying hours required to make the map can and will vastly outstrip the time the party actually spend fighting within it, sometimes by 10-15 times if not longer, and that's without thinking about the minis, the enemies and anything else like handouts or other items you may want to add on. A lot of players just don’t have the time to be able to create that to a schedule to support multiple battles per campaign session as real life gets in the way.
Concluding Thoughts
It is never a black and white decision - different people will look at the points above and draw different conclusions based on what is important to them as players. Many GM’s want to provide vast, immersive physical battle maps and handouts but can’t commit to all the time involved, so have looked to try and find a way to save time, either by creating very modular terrain that can be rearranged into multiple configurations, by having generic items that can fit a variety of scenes or by buying some terrain pieces ready made and constructed if funds allow for it (but this can get very expensive very quickly).
Some GM’s enjoy the hobbying and creating of the elements to the point where they love crafting the epic map pieces, in some cases even more than the games they play with them. Others use digital battle maps, saving time and cost by quickly creating scenes from images, also allowing for more fantastical battle maps and ones that don’t require everyone to be at the table at the same time enabling online or remote play.
Ultimately it’s down to what fits with your game - the players, the GM (who is also a player, but likely the one having to do a lot of the prep work as well), the budget of the group, the hobby time and what you as a group of passionate like minded players and hobbyists enjoy. If physical mini’s are the decision you make as a group, make sure they help the experience at the table, and don't hinder the gameplay or cause stress for those creating the experience beforehand.
