I'm curious, because I'm not sure how much mapped combat is a thing in pre-AD&D OSR style games. I ran a 6 month AD&D 1E game with fairly from the book combat rules using minis and the ADDICT document from Dragonsfoot in a short sandbox, but I'm curious as to how mapped combat plays out from folks who use rules sets based on earlier editions (like S&W, ACKS, and etc)

Much thanks!

I ran a Labyrinth Lord game a few years back that used minis from the onset; I supposed that's close enough for the purposes of your question. We had all been playing 3.X for about 4-5 years before the game, so that was our mindset going in.

At first it was great: no ambiguity about who was where, etc. We'd count squares for movement, get precise distances for spells and missiles, all that sort of crap. After a while, it got REALLY annoying and we transitioned to using the minis for marching order and to get a rough idea who was where. Being too specific actually became pretty disruptive and slowed the game down significantly.

I've run AD&D for two sessions using ADDICT before I decided it was a complete waste of time. I have ASL for tactical wargames, AD&D is for roleplaying.

I began gaming with B/X, and I never saw anybody use minis for anything other than vague marching order until D&D 3 came along. I'm not saying it never happened, but it certainly didn't seem to be the norm. It always got under my skin when defenders of 3rd and 4th edition would claim that D&D was supposed to be a minis game, and people that didn't do it were some kind of aberration.

I find minis have a distancing effect on players. They spend a lot of time thinking about the optimal way to move their piece on the board rather than thinking about what they would do in a situation.

We played The Fantasy Trip. Hex maps with terrain. Dropped weapon counters. No piles of hit points. Where you move and which way you face and what you do etc in TFT is pretty much the focus of play.

Quote from: Baulderstone;851301I began gaming with B/X, and I never saw anybody use minis for anything other than vague marching order until D&D 3 came along. I'm not saying it never happened, but it certainly didn't seem to be the norm. It always got under my skin when defenders of 3rd and 4th edition would claim that D&D was supposed to be a minis game, and people that didn't do it were some kind of aberration.

I find minis have a distancing effect on players. They spend a lot of time thinking about the optimal way to move their piece on the board rather than thinking about what they would do in a situation.

Weird.
I started playing in the early 80s we all(in my local area) used miniatures.

Interesting insights. Some of the reactions I've heard from friends of mine when I've tried to show them during our old school nights (AD&D 1) when we discussed whether or not to use maps was "no maps? who wants wooby wooby storygame nonsense stuff like that? Keep it sandbox!" Of course, I tried to disabuse them of this notion. When I ran my AD&D 1, I did the hexcrawl, encounter tables, etc.

*shrug* I guess people have different definitions.

Do the old school rules sets have "no maps" as a default? That seems to be what you guys are implying to me.

We always had miniatures around back when I was first playing D&D but we never used them in RPGs that much (they were mostly for wargames).
In the first games I ran every player had a miniature representing themselves which we'd use for a quick visualization of who was where... but it was on a larger scale of where they were in a city or a house, for the sake of being able to interact in conversations or whatever. We'd use them in larger combats to see who was fighting who but there weren't many of those and we weren't very precise about it, there was no grid.
At least one person had their miniature melted down when their PC died in a really stupid way.
 
The vast majority of RPGs I've played/ran had no miniatures at all. Quick drawings if necessary.
Lately I've been playing a lot on Roll20 and while I was impressed with the virtual tabletop there... advanced functions like interactive lighting and such... I've noticed that people begin to rely on it a lot and it starts limiting the game... one Call of Cthulhu game I was in ended up feeling like a game of Clue.
Something like Vassal works well for wargames but isn't my taste for RPGs. I much prefer the guys that go with a white board that can be drawn on as necessary... and put up the occasional illustration.

AD&D isn't pre-AD&D, but ...

One of the things that makes AD&D work (IMO) is that combat is quick -- 20 orcs vs 6 PCs, 4 henchman and 6 men-at-arms; combat over 10 minutes later. Tactical use of minis doesn't add anything to the game (again, IMO), and would slow things down dramatically.

Back in the day (mid-late 80s for me), when I played a bit of BECMI, we didn't use minis either. Nor for Rolemaster. There was one guy in my circle of gaming friends who ran WHFRP mainly, and he did use minis, but I don't recall anyone else that did.

I first started using minis when I picked up 3E. Got really used to it, so much so that I actually used them when I ran a bit of Rolemaster again. When I started up my AD&D game, it was the first time I hadn't used minis in many years.

I currently am using them for Hackmaster, but won't be using them in my soon-to-start Pendragon game.

I lived in the sticks, no game shops or anything nearby when I first started out. We played completely without minis and wrote marching orders on paper. I had been playing for a little over 8 years before collecting and painting my first minis.

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;851282I'm curious, because I'm not sure how much mapped combat is a thing in pre-AD&D OSR style games. I ran a 6 month AD&D 1E game with fairly from the book combat rules using minis and the ADDICT document from Dragonsfoot in a short sandbox, but I'm curious as to how mapped combat plays out from folks who use rules sets based on earlier editions (like S&W, ACKS, and etc)

The grid is just a easy to use ruler. If the RPG* gives you how far things move, shoot, and hit. Then you can use a grid, map, and miniatures for combat.

The only question remaining is whether the system has rules for facing. With classic D&D every edition except for three book only OD&D has rules for backstabbing because of the Thief/Rogue class. That your modifier for rear attacks.


*Some RPGs like Fate Core give movement in terms of abstract areas.

Have always used scratch paper to scribble down the basics of the area and approximate locations of people without caring about specific distances and often not updating the "map" for a round or two if we're in the thick of things, works OK as a middle ground.

"Pre-AD&D OSR" looks like an oxymoron, but anyhow the matter didn't and doesn't change in my experience just because of AD&D. If anything, Blackmoor and Eldritch Wizardry -- and The Arduin Grimoire -- add more detailed positioning concerns than the 1st ed. PHB and DMG.

Thing is, it's always a question of what our priorities are in treating the situation at hand. It's not like a board game that functions only with everything conforming to a grid and such.

A map can be a helpful medium of communication, and it can vary in composition. There's just no arbitrarily mandated form, and we can use other media as convenient.

Sometimes the kind of map routinely deployed in other games gives too widely and precisely informed a picture, a "helicopter and radar" view. The word melee connotes confusion, which is by most accounts the usual state of men in battle at least in the sense of only what's most immediately at hand being clear.

Quote from: estar;851336The only question remaining is whether the system has rules for facing.

I was surprised when someone pointed out to me that Harnmaster has no facing rules per se. But it makes sense considering the length of turns, and arguably with the interactive fluidity of combat, "hard" facing is over-detailed. Instead as in HM you can just use a modifier for being outnumbered, on the assumption that two opponents will naturally move to outflank a single figure.

Whe it comes down to surprising an unengaged enemy, there's probably some other abstraction you can use. Well, I know I basically handwaved it in D&D. Actually I had a few ways of doing D&D, in brief:

Abstract "ranks" of combatants to determine who could use a melee weapon and who could be attacked.

DM keeps a hidden map on paper but describes things from each PC's perspective.

Figures showing rough position.

Chalkboard showing rough position.

I did also play The Fantasy Trip and it was great. Both the mechanics and the way they were written (terse, clearly defined procedures) facilitated the use of the hexmap.

Gary Gygax never used miniatures for D&D.

Dave Arneson always used miniatures for D&D.

Gary Gygax never used a map and counters/figures for AD&D combat at conventions, or for any other D&D version I ever saw him run.