Quote from: Son of Warvan;1071466I've used minis ever since I started playing back in the '70s.
I am an avid mini painter and I also craft terrain, set pieces and creatures.
Here is an example of a purple worm I made

Really awesome, man. Good stuff!

I've been using minis since AD&D 2e so their inclusion to the gaming systems of 3e and 4e were just a natural progression IMO. We did a few 3.5 sessions using TotM and it was fun but that's primarily because we were just glad to play at that point.

We actually did a 4E session at my work with TotM because all we had were sheets of lined paper and one phone with the PDFs. I had some prebuild chars ready and we gamed for a few hours. It wasn't as hard as I thought despite 4e's focus on movement and position.

Quote from: Razor 007;1071120If you use Miniatures, how significant of a financial commitment have you made to Miniatures, Terrain, etc.?

To answer this...I have no idea, anymore. I have a bunch of these storage bins from Walmart, as well as the shorter/thinner ones.

I've got a dozen of the bigger ones filled with most of my Dwarven Forge collection. We didn't have enough space to fit everything from the dungeon Kickstarter, and there's a castle my daughter keeps in her room because she loves playing with it.

We use the thinner ones mostly for minis, but some contain the doors and dungeon dressing. We have a couple water cavern sets that fit within them, as well, which is nice because we didn't want to chip the paint on the flat water pieces.

Now we do have another dozen of the larger bins, but those are for the Huge minis we get. Most of it is D&D prepaints, but we also use them for Reaper minis. We're more careful with them since we paint them, so they don't cram them in like we do the prepaints.

Most of the rest of the minis fills some 30+ of the thinner drawers. We ran out of space so a bunch of the newer D&D prepaints are heaped into a couple of cardboard boxes.

We also have the Reaper version of Tiamat, the all of the gargantuan D&D dragons, the red colossal, the Kraken thing with the boat, a box of Reaper stuff we haven't gotten around to, and we backed Mythic Pantheon, the Conan boardgame, and Rising Sun purely for minis.

And here are some pics:

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Drawers are missing because of our daughter. They're currently stacked around our gaming table, where she has skillfully drawn a most certainly comprehensible dungeon map.

To answer the thread title: it depends. With our online games we don't, but with our kids we often do because they like looking at/playing with them. Even playing with them for not RPG-purposes.

No minis, but I tend to draw out big combats and mark locations with dice if necessary.

Quote from: 3rik;1072036I agree with this, but I'm not sure how I would pull that off.

Piece of paper and a pencil behind the screen. If a character temporarily or for the duration of the combat has the ability to see the entire area, then I show it to that player.

Obviously it depends on the scale of the combat. A party vs. three creatures? You can just describe it. Large scale (see Battle of the Bastards in GoT for example of chaos)? No way anyone is keeping track of who's where. You just fight whoever ends up near you.

And if the scene has insufficient illumination, then it gets really interesting.

I just bought more miniatures.  Today's fix feels good, too.

I've never ever used minis.

Over time I've come to the view that minis and esp gridded maps are more hindrance than help. They're cool and all, but Totm is my preference. Quick, flexible, zero cost. Yes it doesnt suit highly tactical games, but if a game needs that level of precision, it's probably not my kind of rpg. On the other hand, I love a good boardgame.

Quote from: Psikerlord;1073450Over time I've come to the view that minis and esp gridded maps are more hindrance than help. They're cool and all, but Totm is my preference. Quick, flexible, zero cost. Yes it doesnt suit highly tactical games, but if a game needs that level of precision, it's probably not my kind of rpg. On the other hand, I love a good boardgame.

I don't want to make the game be all about granular levels of detail.  I am more concerned with the general positioning of PCs, NPCs, and Monsters.  If an Owlbear ambushes the party from behind; when I set a mini on the table, everyone can clearly see that he is right behind Dave's character.  Poor Dave.....

Quote from: Razor 007;1073452I don't want to make the game be all about granular levels of detail.  I am more concerned with the general positioning of PCs, NPCs, and Monsters.  If an Owlbear ambushes the party from behind; when I set a mini on the table, everyone can clearly see that he is right behind Dave's character.  Poor Dave.....

This. My players can empathize more with each other when they can see placements. And they have "their" character's mini.

It also prevents rehash of "who is where and who can I reach to help". Not everyone has great memories and having the visual reminder really helps.

And I like painting minis. And 6mm are pretty cheap.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1073442I've never ever used minis.

Wow! I am surprised.

I thought you were Old School when Old School was just a babe in arms. Maybe Really Old School was before miniatures became popular.

Quote from: soltakss;1073953Wow! I am surprised.

I thought you were Old School when Old School was just a babe in arms. Maybe Really Old School was before miniatures became popular.

I am beginning to think that the old school era was OD&D through 1st Edition AD&D.

And people used Dice, Miniatures, and Terrain back then.....

Quote from: Razor 007;1074046I am beginning to think that the old school era was OD&D through 1st Edition AD&D.

And people used Dice, Miniatures, and Terrain back then.....

Personally I didn't use minis for 1e AD&D in The Old Days. Switched to minis only with 3e in 2000.

Quote from: S'mon;1074064Personally I didn't use minis for 1e AD&D in The Old Days. Switched to minis only with 3e in 2000.

Yeah I didn't use miniatures with 1E back in the 1990's.  Nobody I knew wanted to spend the money, or really didn't have it anyway.

I use miniatures and maps. My players in both games that I run actually get really confused when I attempt to use theater of the mind.