So, it’s worth saying that 4E has gotten me into playing with miniatures like never before. A confession: I was never a big fan of the minis. I think it had something to do with never being very good (or at least FEELING like I was very good) at the pure, tactical minis stuff. Too many times getting my head blown off with an Autocannon 20 while standing in water, or something.
But inject a little roleplaying into the mix, with the kind of entertaining dynamism the 4e powers-sets have, and I’m off to the races, it turns out. But sometimes I’m a little too much off to the races. The props that now come with my D&D experience contain a certain dark power that draw me in, and make me forget about the other things I should be doing.
This wizard I’ve read about talks about how knowing something’s name gives you power over it. So with that interest at heart, I am hereby going to name a couple of my “enemies”:
Mapnosis. I’ve talked about this on That’s How We Roll, and I still like it for its accuracy. Mapnosis is what happens when you put the map down on the table before you need it to be there. Watch what happens to the players’ attention spans once a map rolls out: it’s big, it’s interesting, it’s often chock-full of information about what’s coming ahead. For all of this and more, it’s distracting. Almost hypnotic. And that can be a dangerous thing for all of the play you’re looking to have before that map gets into the action.
The cure here is a simple one: avoid rolling out the map until absolutely necessary. If you’ve got a lot of Dungeon Tiles or the like you want to lay out in advance and aren’t looking to put the game on hold while you set it up, think about separating your map-play area from your roleplay area. Do the talky in the living room; do the fighty in the kitchen. Or if you’ve got a flip-mat map going on, buy yourself a cheap rectangle of plexiglas at Home Depot, put your map under that, and then put your books and snacks and stuff on top of it until it’s time to get to the minis action. It can make a world of difference for the roleplaying side of it all.
Mini-Mizing. This is a more recent thing I’ve noticed myself doing. When it’s time to get into the combat action, and I’m bringing the minis out, I often find myself letting the minis themselves do the talking. There’s a part of this that’s good—it’s nice to have something as illustrative as a painted (pre- or otherwise) mini to give a sense of what’s going on.
But the bad part, for me at least, comes in the form of letting that illustration do all the work. I end up mini-mizing the description of things. I let the descriptive elements of storytelling fall by the wayside, because I have something to lean on and allow a little laziness. The zombies don’t colorfully drool ichor; the dialogue is minimal; the fanatic cultists don’t rush forward babbling, they move six squares and execute a charge attack.
I’ve got to get better about that. Because, yeah, the maps and minis are fun, but if I’m not also working the storytelling angle, I’m not really doing all of my job as a DM.
What bad habits can you identify and give a name to? And how will you conquer them?
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