All: I'm a touchy-feely kind of guy and like lots of crap on our table during our games. Rather than just Vis-a-Vis markers, pencils, dice and white paper, my tabletop games look a lot more like Warhammer Fantasy Battles terrains. I've got rocks, foliage, cottages, burned-out cottages, temples, all kinds of Dragon Tiles, etc. For those of you who do the same, do you use "seasonal" foliage?

E.g AUTUMN .

SUMMER:

Winter:

Spring:

Also, what are you guys using for your cities? Iv'e got a bunch of those old cardboard cut-out cottages from various TSR products (and a couple by pegasus hobbies).

no I don`t use anything like that.

for cities I use maps if available.

We are alle males in my group, so decorations don`t come natural for us. We use candles at times. but we are cautious if doing so, ever since the Great Curtain Fire of 98.

Mal Reynolds said:

lol i wnaa know about this fire!! and yeah i dont use flashy stuff either...just a BattleMat from crystal caste

Mal, the Great Curtain Fire sounds like a fine scenario for a Pyromancer - ever considered publishing it?

However, we use a battle map and (pre-painted D&D) minis if we switch to combat rounds. Otherwise, there is eventually a city or region map on the table. I do not use 3D stuff - my basement is so stuffed with games, I won't find the place to keep all these things...

I use words.

I try not to use minatures as it makes people focus on them and make them think like a tactical minatures game rather than a roleplaying game.

I use flat maps where the guys can place their minis; once they've placed them they must act as best possible from that position

And after all I think Jay owes us a session demo video

I only have green trees and hedges, but I do use a large sheet of white felt for snowy ground, instead of my regular earth/rock boards (hill sections can be placed underneath the felt). I'm also planning to flock the reverse sides of my gaming boards with more "springtime" colours.

i do use game mastery stuff...but thats about it...and reaper and GW minis

phobiandarkmoon said:

That works for small skirmish combats where the opponents are roughly as many as the player characters.

But when you reach mass combats with up to and well over 20 or so combatants, miniatures can really help out in visualizing the situation.

It's just a visual tool, it doesn't necessaily make anyone confusing the game with a miniatures game. It's just that it can be pretty hard for both players and GM's alike to keep track of more than 20 combatants at once. Just imagine:

Player 1: I make a charge move against that guy.

GM: Which guy? That guy behind the wall, the guy behind the barrel, one of the three guys standing 40 feet away shooting at you with crossbows, the iffy mage-looking guy on top of those stairs seeming to prepare a spell, the five guys flanking you from that alley, the guy clambering over the fence or the guy with the cape?

Player 1: Erm.. Wait! I thought the guy in the cape were the one standing on top of the stairs trying to cast some sort of spell?

GM: No, the guy in the cape is the guy standing sort of behind two of the guys coming from the alley.

Player 2: Wait a minute. I thought the guy behind the wall was the one who accompanied those five guys coming from the alley.

Player 3: I don't know what the hell is going on at all actually.

GM: Erm...

In my opinion, combats in roleplaying games should be fast paced in order to emulate the sense of stress and urgency that comes with real world combats. When the average combat round takes up to an hour in order to explain where everyone is standing in relation to eachother and making sure that all the players get it, that fast paced sense is sort of lost. When you use miniatures all the players have to do is take a quick glance and act accordingly and stay in-character pretty much the full time.

Of course, if you know of some awesome and near mythical way of keeping track of mass combat between more than 20 combatants without having to turn the NPC's into charging idiots and the combat premises always constitutes the PC's standing on one end of an open battlefield and the NPC's always stand on the other end and they can all take pot-shots and charges against eachother in an unnaturally convenient way, while at the same time making sure that the players all get exactly where everyone is located without any confusion and STILL make sure that the combat plays out in a fast paced and stressful manner. Then please share this method with me, because it would certainly be helpful.

Yeah. Don't have combats with more than about 12 people.

Yes, minatures are more or less needed (or at least a map with relative positions drawn on it or similar) when you have that many people in a fight, but I don't see a need for a combat that big in my games. If it's really that huge, I focus on the current action and have the rest of the melee swirling around them (i..e in the background)

phobiandarkmoon said:

I wish it could be that simple in games like Dark Heresy, where PC's can reach ridiculous power levels.

I kid you not when I say that our group fought against 100 Nurgle Plague Bearers... And won!

My point here is that sometimes you simply have to send in large numbers of hostile NPC's in order to give the player characters a reasonable challenge.

And also, since we're talking WFRP here, what if the player characters run into a tribe of goblins? Goblins are usually not the meanest fighters around and normal humans could kill a few of them without breaking a sweat. So the only way for the Goblins to provide ample challenge would be to give them a strength in numbers, and if you have a player group of four people, I don't think eight goblins would put up much of a decent fight.

Besides, it can actually be quite fun to spring a huge number of enemies on the players. Most of the time they believe that you as a GM won't really have the strength to manage hundreds of enemies at the same time, which of course make it all the more surprising when they are suddenly faced with a hundred Orks, Goblins or whatever.

Emirikol said:

Using "foliage" is great for Warhammer rpg combats, if you have a good mini combat system for this. Unfortunately WH 2nd ed is not good for is. Its quite boring and clunky to play out bigger combats. Savage Worlds is much a better choice for this. I use it for my Warhammer games since some time and its a full success. While WH 2nd ed is gluey and slow, SW is fun and fast and combatants are moving in a rewarding tactical way.

As it stands now 3rd edition dont have mini support, so there is also no reason to use 3D terrain or minis in the upcoming edition. (3rd ed has terrain location cards instead) Possibly it would be better to open a thread in the FFG 2nd ed. subforum.

For wonderful and cheap terrain you can use Fat Dragon Games 3D Terrain and Worldworks Terrain. A little bit assembling is required. Eg. I have rebuilt half of Altdorf with the Dragonshire line for really big urban combats like citizen riots etc.

http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/index.php

http://www.fatdragongames.com/fdg0072.html

As it stands now 3rd edition dont have mini support, so there is also no reason to use 3D terrain or minis in the upcoming edition. (3rd ed has terrain location cards instead) Possibly it would be better to open a thread in the FFG 2nd ed. subforum.

In what way does 2nd edition support miniatures better than 3rd edition? The only difference I can see so far is that you don't need a battlemat to use miniatures in 3rd edition as the range system is more abstract.

I'm actually looking forward to using more miniatures and scenery in 3rd edition for this very reason. I've never really liked battlemats etc in roleplaying games and have usually prefered a more loose play style, and since exact scale isn't really important in the new system it'll be easier for me to make an interesting location without having to "break the rules". If I wanted something more exact and count how many squares the characters can move I'd play Descent instead. But of course, it's different for different peple.

However, I really do think that 3rd ed. will actually get more people to use miniatures in their game, because of the standups and simple terrain location cards you mentioned. I think most people will consider these stand-ins until the can get some actual miniatures and scenery ready.

For some reason, I thought that Emirikol meant if we like to decorate our homes in a seasonal theme.

For a second, I was worried that his wife/girlfriend/mother took over his computer and posted in the wrong forum! HA ha ha!

Necrozius said:

LOL ...that would be odd lol but yeah...i think i might use some terrain...maybe....they guys in my group seem to like that idea

Necrozius said:

By Nurgles boils, you're actually spot on... My wife gets into the decor..I think she's on the department store schedule, because I've got an odd mix of halloween and xmas decor up...

jh

PzVIE said:

he he.

Not really, it still brings bad memories. we had taken a break, eating some snacks in the kitchen, candles still on, window ajar, a breeze, moving curtains. Fire. The curtains were heavy and expensive, my GM screen caught fire as well. Worst thing I thought I smelled something burned, but one of my friend`s said its probably the pizza. A scream, my friend`s mother detected the fire. she battled it fiercly, but to no avail the curtains could not be saved .

I still sometimes wake sweating and screaming "watch the curtains! my precious GM screen!" We played the Doomstones campaign at that time. Somehow we ended up blaming the wizard for not taking better care of the fire stone After all it was cursed by Tzeentch

And by the way stop being to condescending towards Emirikol, because Emirikol is a cool dude in fact he is EmiriCOOL. You know who you are so stop it.

A period I was into those flashy lamps, like ligthing spheres and lava lamps and such. but we had to ban them since they distracted some of the players. They should have come with a label saying: warning do not display in front of small children or weak-willed since the procuct may appear to have a transfixing effect. enough said stupid lava lamp.