Gaming with Minatures

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Yup, I've found that D&D3e works very well as a miniatures skirmish wargame (a pure Gamist game) with linked bits of 'roleplay' to get from one fight to the next.  It's fun in a way that most RPG combat isn't.  For a GM, though, it's hard to do right...

I agree, on both counts.  

Using a battle grid and minis or counters is the best way to bring out the tactical depth and wargame-like excitement of DnD 3.x combat rules.  Unfortunately it tends to work best when as the DM you're sailing very close to the wind in providing a difficult challenge - which tends to result in PC deaths a lot of the time.  

This conflicts with another facet of the game - developing and playing exciting and engaging, star-type characters.  When you keep losing PCs, you end up not investing in them byond the mere mechanics.  

With our group's play style, both facets are important, and both are interlinked.  Without engaging PCs who make meaningful choices, combat feels bland and meaningless, a pure mental exercise.  Without challenging combat, players will slack and lose interest in the game over time.  I'd say in our group we all more or less enjoy the wargame aspect of DnD, yet all more or less want to play PCs with actual personalities and conflicts and choices.  Both Simon and I have found this, with subsets of the same group in both his DnD homebrew game and my DnD Midnight game (although not in his Conan game so much, perhaps - I look forward to seeing some gridless combat in that game!).  

After too many deaths of too many cool star-potential PCs in both our games, Simon and I have now introduced (limited) Fate Points mechanics to enable players to turn their PC's death into a near-death experience.  The players have actually asked to not get too many FPs, they wanted some insurance against losing a PC but didn't want to lose the feeling that their characters might actually die.  

Fate Points as a buffer between the two opposing yet interrelated facets of our games ...  Wargame and character-centred play.  
It's essential to the style I've developed in my Midnight game.  It's a game set in a war zone (more specifically a continent currently occupied by orcs and human baddies), yet it's also a game about heroism and heroic acts and growth and choices.  


There's no way I'd give up using a battle grid and minis/counters in my Midnight game when the PCs and allied forces storm a fort for example, as they did only recently.  I feel we all need the wargame edge for that  - but as with many forms of excitement, it's a dangerous edge.