What I Gained with a More Minimalistic Game | RPG Mainframe

[@CrusaderCool]

Theater of the Mind has served us best since 1981. Welcome to the party!

[@aureliomanalo]

I don't care what people think when I'm playing out somewhere. Dnd people are gonna be interested no matter what toys you have.

[@MGunnarson]

I love this episode. I've started out campaign with full 3D printed and painted stuff, doing ultimate dungeon terrain (IFKYK), but then slowly backslid to 2D minis and terrain pieces, and now have backslid further to dry erase boards and a horde of meeples, and I've watched the IMAGINATION at the table go up and up in direct contrast to the simplification of the table toys. EDIT: I missed putting the point of my comment: I've been feeling guilty lately for downplaying the table presentation, and my players say they sometimes miss it, but I've really been holding fast to the prioritization of imagination and description.

[@incerto9257]

theather of the mind and minimalism for me means: freedom freedom from complex rules freedom from heavy or expensive prep freedom from the grid freedom from predetermined combat/encounter/railroading

[@seangibbons4713]

This is one of the best episodes yet. I started following you way back when you were doing crunchy D&D content and covering books like Burning Wheel. Its super interesting to hear your take as you move away from what people associate with you: minis and crunch. ICRPG started to do this with distance abstraction and streamlined rules. Now it seems like Crown & Skull offers you the narrative story without sacrificing on mechanics and world. Keep up the great content and hello from Seattle/Tacoma area! Total side note: the audio quality in this recording is great. Perfect amount of fidelity.

[@kgeo2686]

6:10 Nah I totally envisioned you guys rolling dice in the middle of a Friday night party 😂 Weeknight corner makes more sense lol

[@SaintSolo]

listening to this made me think, im excited for past hankerin to find out about his brick and mortar store, be patient my friend good things are heading your way!

[@epee11c]

I wholeheartedly agree with this in general. I think the atmosphere of my games is so much stronger with numbered tokens than with miniatures. Minis are still cool, but my game is amazing and far less expensive with just some numbered tokens and a wet-erase marker.

[@007nikster2]

I really enjoyed this one. It gave me some inspiration to continue a minimalist style instead of pursuing all my miniatures and terrain

[@MrPansophy]

It seems the minimalistic style is what I always did over the decades. I never had a lot of miniatures and terrain, they never felt necessary, because we play a lot of Call of Cthulhu where combat is not an important thing. What I feel is necessary, though, are good props and handouts. Those things act as my campfire and replace figurines and maps. Recently I created a GM toolkit, basically a plastic container that holds my notebook, dice, pens and a few coins, markers and wooden meeples from an old Monopoly game board. The lid acts as a dice tray and with a dungeon floor in it, should we need to visualise distances. Most times we just put them out on the table, though. The remaining space is used up by a deck of GME cards and a deck of playing cards, as well as the TN in card form. Some Initiative cards I nicked from Vaesen. Overall, everything fits into an A5 plastic box, which is quite portable.

[@kgeo2686]

I don’t think theatre of the mind means no campfire. I think theater of the mind works BEST with a campfire! Definitions aside, this is EXACTLY what I needed. This I how I want to run. No crutch of physical over representation. Just a campfire to anchor the shared imagination space 🙌

[@TheShadowKarl]

Great topic and I agree with the results you were seeing. I have played both sorts of games and I enjoyed the games that were more in the mind with great descriptions than the ones with tons of miniatures.

[@omchi888]

Theater of the Mind is the single best thing for me, and has been that way since 1984.

[@joseCV2391]

I think that without realizing it, you have summed up very well the transformation that role playing games have undergone historically :D

[@MemphiStig]

When I began playing, and especially when I started DM'ing, I thought I needed everything, in spite of much advice otherwise. But bigger is better, right? Yet the more experienced I've become, the more I've realized that I need a lot less than I thought I did, and like you say, it only makes it easier and better. It's like recipes, too. The best ones are very often the simplest. Less is more.

[@xKingLx]

I like theater of the mind, but a little visual representation isnt always cumbersome. I bring a lineless art pad/dry erase pad and some colored pens or markers, one for each player and a few for me and we play on the art pad/small dry erase board. A little bit of both ways.

[@BF-rn3oz]

I appreciate your proper pronunciation of gunwhales.

[@timothygutierrez]

Living here in Japan, I feel you. One of my best last sessions was at a TGI Fridays.

[@seanfsmith]

I've been reading the Sword World 2.5 rules, and their combat ranking is real good ─ you've the central skirmish and a backline for each side

[@kellvalar8573]

As a Dwarf Fortress player since around 2006 or so, I heard something interesting back then, something I can only deeply agree with: Less information = more imagination. Be it visual or something different. I describe a man to you. With a big bushy beard, a scar on his cheek and hollow eyes. Everyone one of you has a different picture in mind, but in the same direction. Now, I give you a picture of that guy. Zero imagination. Zero brain activity. IMHO, you need imagination for immersion. And if there is a lot of visual clues, the imagination department never boots up, because there is no need. Because you see all information. You do not ask questions or anything - real immersion can not happen. In these decades of playing video games, I was always immersed more in roguelikes or games with minimal visual representation. The triple A games never did that to me. I was in the *zone* while playing the games, but that is not what immersion is.

[@Grimlore82]

Funny anecdote here. I heard Jeremy Crawford say the new PHB has rules for all sorts of stuff. Like "how to break a mirror" 😅😅😅 Definitely going to keep the minimalism mindset.

[@Dyundu]

This is well-timed-currently wrestling with how I’m handling weapon damage in my design work, and unsure if I want to go oldest school-style d6 for everything, or different dice for everything, or somewhere in the middle (normal d6, large 2d6, small “d3”). Looking forward to listening to this in full within this context.

[@Dyundu]

Post-listen lessons learned: didn’t expect this to focus on material minimalism, but there are still some abstract ideas I can work with here in terms of transferability . The idea of maintaining some form of fidelity at the table/campfire/gathering point makes sense within a rules-based context in that TTRPGs can’t really work without the framework of the mutually agreed-upon rules, so in that instance, the rules can be, in part, part of the milieu. High fidelity rules are likely going to have differentiated dice for weapon types (d4 for tiny dagger, d6 for short sword, 2d6 for big-ass sword, etc), and likely also have a lot of features for weapons dependent upon their nature (reach for spears, versatile for some swords, off-hand weapons, light weapons, etc), much like how high-fidelity terrain and tabletop trappings are going to be highly detailed and differentiated in their own rights. Low fidelity rules are probably going to look like D&D in 1974-damage is damage, dead is dead, and thus everything is a d6, because getting stabbed with a tiny dagger is ultimately no different than being hacked in half by a big-ass sword-dead is dead, so why not simplify damage down to a d6 and keep things simple, similarly to how quick and easy drawings with simple tokens can do a lot of leg work in terms of abstraction. The more fidelity in the rules, the heavier the rules become (like lugging the huge plastic crate of stuff between session and home). Both styles of rules have their merits, and I can see why people would like either the fast abstraction of everything being a d6, or the mechanics-inspiring-narrative elements of the differentiated dice (when the GM drops that d12, that’ll cause more panic than just a d4, for instance). Ultimately, the environment in which the game takes place is the most important factor, which in this case, is the minds of the players, so I guess I can (and should) run it by my groups. Thanks!

[@MatthewBrpg]

@@Dyundu My current homebrew iteration uses damage by skill rank with keywords for certain weapon traits. IE, if you have studied martial arts for years then you may do 2d10 with all weapons, including fists, whereas a white belt does 1d4. However, a dagger is weak (decrement the damage die) and easily concealed, whereas a great axe is vicious (extra die on crit) and heavy (-2 hit, +2 damage). Feels like a good balance point between the 2 extremes.

[@argentascorpio]

I hope your books will be found on Amazon so I can get them here, outside the US.

[@juauke]

I love theater of the mind play My table is TotM with a whiteboard and my players loved it I am looking for a way to do sort of this online (I'd love to motivate some of my players to play remotely soon-ish) Never played with minis (except if you call online with a 2D VTT as such but this sounds odd to me)

[@Xepent]

Before watching the video: I have not watched this video

[@Yeldibus]

These are so great to listen to on the commute. I hope THE PERSON READING THIS gives you a sub! :D Seriously, thank you for your work.

[@georgeokalahan5442]

I find this podcast really, really troubling. It could mean the end of TTRPG capitalism! ;-P

[@kgeo2686]

I sold hundreds of dollars of dnd stuff. I now use one brown blank grid mat and some colored tokens. THAT'S IT. I love it.

[@john-lenin]

I disagree completely. I used to do it the way you're talking about, but tt was your early videos with the abstract boards, scatter terrain, and miniatures that inspired me to change

[@Runehammer1]

yep! I do both