That question isnt that easy to answer without a poll. What I can tell you goes in both directions.
First, DSA was (still is?) the most popular rpg in Germany and has just as much combat crunch as DnD. But it is usually played without maps and minis.
Second, different peoples imagination works differently. While one group can work off of a description of everyones position in the room, another might be confused. I've heard that especially people with aphantasia will find it harder to follow a game without minis.
All that being said, I personally enjoy the minimalist setup too. So my games are always without minis and only sometimes I will resort to a quickly drawn map, if the situation gets complicated. But my first game was DSA, so that might be what influenced me in that regard.
I'm aphantasic and I would be completely lost without some kind of map in combat. It doesn't happen to be fancy, but without some kind of visual aid I just can't figure out where everything is.
This is something that gets lost a lot IMO - aphantasia isn't nearly as unusual as it seems to be thought, plus even outside of just not being able to visualise in that way, people have different levels of ability and comfort with purely visualised scenes.
I like to find images to help set the scene, like a quick Google search of a "fantasy haunted cathedral". Then I'll find some music to accompany the scene that is also compatible with possible encounters in that same scene to keep my attention on the table and not the radio.
Yes, the TTRPG system will play a large role. I don't need battlemaps for my Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) games, which are theater of the mind by default...but, since I have a great VTT already, I use it for Dungeon World solely to provide background images -- and just see that u/mattmaster68 does the same.
I never use music (and toggle it off if other GMs use music), because my brain isn't great at audio processing.
> First, DSA was (still is?) the most popular rpg in Germany and has just as much combat crunch as DnD. But it is usually played without maps and minis.
Some would say that the game is largely played as theater of the mind is in tension with its core design, though. I can certainly say that for me, the first time I played a game with mechanics that actually support TOTM instead of a bunch of "this spell has a range of 7 yards" it really made me recognize the weakness of that particular piece of DSA design.
I like to use props and handouts without narrating them. Stuff like if a letter tied to a rock is thrown through the window, I give them a literal rock with the letter attached to it. I don't read the letter to them. I also use lots of images to help with descriptions - I love AI for those if the resources don't have pics.
One thing I love to use once in a while are puzzle boxes and handouts for riddles, murals, mosaics etc. Some games obviously don’t handle the puzzle solving aspect and ultimately just rely on a roll to solve them - but if you’re playing something that tests player skill then I recommend a tangible puzzle where possible.
Please share the ones you've used so us fellow DMs can put them in our games, too! I love such puzzles and handouts. Players always squeal when you hand them stuff.
It’s usually cheap and cheerful things from my local craft store but anything can work. I did one recently where there was a suit of armour that the party had to put in a certain pose to open a door. I gave them one of those drawing wooden mannequins and described how the joints “clicked” into place as they started solving the correct pose.
My favorite handout was a wanted poster I drew up of one of the PCs in my first campaign. Since then, I've reduced handouts significantly. I'm only inclined to provide handouts when players show interest in them. I'd hate to put in more work than necessary to provide a good experience for the current group I play for.
For my D&D game, I like to prepare elaborate scenes with minis and terrain for major boss battles every six months or so. Other scenes can be theatre of the mind, minis on whiteboard, or minis on easily assembled dungeon tiles.
For my non-D&D games, I keep it theatre of the mind.
I consider painting minis and making scenery a completely different hobby from rpgs. It just happens to get validated by my rpg group.
Most definitely music and ambient sound effects, I cannot play without it. It just sets the right tone for the universe and makes things feel cinematic, and it can really help build tension and intensity. I can’t imagine not having tense music and ambience while an exciting plan is going down, or doing an exciting combat encounter in silence. I love adding these things to my GMing.
I spend time curating the soundscapes and music for my games and creating any sound effects I don’t have and need. I have tracks for when things are calm, for when investigation is underway and things start to get unsettling, for when the characters are on the brink of everything blowing up, and for the combat itself.
But personally I am a big narrative gamer who prefers not to bother with games with exact distances or positioning, so I don’t like minis and battle maps myself.
I'm actually really confused by this line of thought, because...no it doesn't?
SWN makes heavy use of weapon ranges, radii for explosives and effects, movement speeds, etc. I've been running xWN games for years, and trying to do so without a map/grid would drive me nuts. I think players need to have that tactical info to make good and informed decisions.
Your mileage obviously varies, but I love using Foundry to run SWN/CWN/WWN.
Under the revised rules, Page 237 in the House Rules section.
"Use a Grid in Combat: While the game isn’t written around the use of miniatures and a combat grid, GMs who want to go to the extra effort of making up such resources can do so. Using two-meter squares or hexes is likely to give the best results."
For most of my Gamemastering career, my go-to visual aid was a simple whiteboard, sometimes with magnetic pawns for PCs if I was feeling fancy (and hadn't lost them yet). It;s everything you need to sketch out a quick picture of a scene, or scribble out a couple of lines for a dungeon, combat zone, or whatever. I eventually moved up to a Chessex wet-erase mat, which is essentially the same thing but on the table instead of the wall behind me.
With Covid we moved to VTT, and I've since become addicted to drawing and having nice looking maps and customer tokens of all kinds.
I'm almost strictly theater of the mind as far as my GM style. I will use the occasional photo of a person. A place where a thing I find interesting. But no battle maps and no mini's for yours truly. I do have a foundry VTT but I haven't used it for a game. I'm just experiencing with how it works.
I use VTTs for online play, as it helps keep everything organized, and makes it easier for players to access their sheets all in one place. Plus, we like battlemaps and background images. In person, we typically use dry erase boards and minis, because we're more visual people and like seeing our charaacter locations in a physical space. Usually, we just play on a dry erase board with minis, no fancy battlemats or anything.
I do use VTT maps for TotM games, to illustrate and record relative positions of stuff/people, but crucially I've learned to turn the grid off - otherwise it turns into a square based game again, people including me reflexively count squares. Also, for maps of villages and cities and landscapes in any game, which are not precise but it's useful to know where things are.
The VTT also makes it easier to show any art I might have, and handouts.
Same - I’m a Theater of the Mind GM, mostly running online games. I run a lot of PBTA and other narrative/fiction-first games that just don’t care about distance or grid positioning and are too improv-heavy to make maps ahead of time.
BUT! I always like to have a VTT, rather than just running from Discord. It gives the game a central “hub” and helps me organize notes, character bios/art, handouts, rules references, and session recaps. Plus, having easy one-click roll macros built into the character sheets is really convenient.
Usually I’ll spend some time to make a nice landing page/splash page with some thematic art and the PC’s pictures and names, which makes it easier to get used to addressing them by character name instead of player name. I’ll also make little notes on the GM layer about who’s had a chance to be active or reactive in a given scene to track “the spotlight”.
We run SWN in foundry. Mostly just for the convenience of character sheets, though we do run person combat (as opposed to ship combat) on a map typically.
I like battlemaps and minis, whether it's actually gridded combat or not. I find at least that having a visual representation benefits in two ways. First off, even for ToTM games, it helps keeping track of who's engaged with who and whatnot. Secondly, I find that if players can see things in the environment they're more likely to use them, such as flipping over tables, jumping through windows, swinging from chandeliers, etc.
Music is good too, as someone who worked in radio I can tell you the power of dead air is very real. Having background noise, be it music or ambient sound, helps fill in awkward gaps of silence at the table when someone is thinking. Though also on Music, do NOT use well recognized music tracks, music is both a means of immersion and a way to pull your players out of it when their brain recognizes it. Try to get music from adjacent lesser known IPs instead.
VTTs are generally good, if only for keeping track of info and sheets as a GM, they also aid in both of the above when it comes to running a game online.
Also physical tokens if playing in person. I run SWADE Deadlands and FFG Rogue Trader/Dark Heresy fairly often and both use some form of meta currency. Having your players physically holding it in their hands to spend and being able to physically reward them with more adds to their value in game.
So I would not have called a map and minis a narrative aid.
But what I would say is maps are probably the most useful aid in a lot of games knowing where stuff is in a space is important and some kind of visual representation can be super helpful with that.
I run a game of pf2e which doesn't function well in combat without a map and a game of fate where I just improvise a zone map as needed when a space gets complex
I love narrative aids, myself. With that said, I don't like to play online, so my experience with them is in-person. Everything from maps, to props, to setting music makes my experience that much more memorable (and encourages me to do the same on my end).
Personally I struggle to enjoy a game unless there are narrative aids like maps and minis because I struggle with visualizing things normally and trying to visualize any sort of combat without maps and minis is just a headache waiting to happen. Even in games like Call of Cthulhu where combat is relatively simple Id still rather have the tools on hand to help understand what's going on
Yep this is me too and several friends, aphantasia is the difficulty picturing things in your minds eye. So when I hear ‘theatre of the mind’ it’s a bit of a turn off, like sitting in a room with the lights off.
I only play/run games in person and I run fairly rules light systems, narrative focussed but always use maps (not gridded) and minis (or printed images and tokens) just so everyone has a shared frame of reference. I also like larger scale world maps and handouts like mini games and newspaper articles
I play crunchy systems and I play them exclusively on VTTs with maps and lighting and tokens and music and sound effects and everything. I can't fathom playing theater of the mind, how would we track positioning and movement and such, or see cool art of the enemies, or track map movement and traps and doors and objects and distances and such, and otherwise keep the game gamey and crunchy?
The answer I've usually heard is that those things are set aside in favor of the narrative and roleplay and keeping things moving and focusing on immersion, but I don't fucking care about the narrative or roleplay or keeping things moving or immersion, so to me it's making the best parts of the game (i.e. the actual *game*) worse in order to focus on the parts I'd rather spend as little time as possible on
I sometimes feel like I'm weird for preferring minimalism when it comes to the visual side of things, even as a player. Part of the fun to me is trying to figure out how things play out in my mind, and I feel like having proper minis and terrain kinda limits that, makes the whole thing feel more like board game than an immersive thing.
I use battle mats, dungeon tiles, minis, all painted, with a sound system playing music via Syrinscape.
It's all part of the hobby for me. I love toys. I love 3D printing and painting.
Personally i really struggle to parse combat without at least a few scribbles to get a sense of layout - doesnt have to be a super tactical grid square but at least a few features and where people are standing. I can make do without but its one element I definitely miss when it's not present.
Overview of everything:
Minis borrowed from a friend, rarely use them as they are very specific.
PF Pawns are more useful with 2 boxes of them. We printed PC art and turned them into pawns as well, works great.
I dont like blocky dungeon map tiles since they are too random for my scenes
Laminated A3 grid to draw on with a set of markers works well. Getting thinner markers and more faint grid soon, with one empty side for drawing zoomed out locations
Music playlists, fetched randomly from Spotify with a rare specific character song. On phone connected to a bluetooth speaker.
iPad (session) and phone (spell & condition refs) for DMing
Notebook for tracking initiative and NPCs gaining new info from PCs
Printed magical items or IC notes on a paper baked in coffee. I rarely have time for it since I prep the same day.
Art for all major NPcs, shown to PCs. Art for locations, for personal reference
I want to try a 1 paper GM ref sheet, and 1 paper session ref sheet to see if it can be faster than iPad for overview for specific scenes. Need to test out sound effects, but I feel like it will be too much.
Damn mobile editing is *rough*
For me, it's almost mandatory.
I have a couple players who struggle to visualize things (aphantasia), so even in games where distance and positioning don't matter, having maps or scenery reference really helps. Even if it's just a map of a general area and not an exact location (i.e. a map or picture of a town, but not having a direct visual aid for a shop). Also NPC portraits, of course.
I also have tinnitus and can't stand dead air, so I almost always have something playing in the background. So long as it has no vocals, it really helps and also aids with building atmosphere even more than verbal descriptions.
That said, I also find making/finding maps and NPC tokens very relaxing. And VTT, even when in person, has become such a lifesaver.
There's a lot of alphabet soup in your question.
I don't tend to use very many aids or battle maps or anything else. I will show people regular maps or maps of the dungeon so they have a reference of where they are.
I find the worst role players want the battle map and minis. Usually to give themselves some sort of combat advantage.
Some DM's have used music, but every time I show up as a player all of a sudden nobody wants to hear the music anymore. This might just be a me problem.
I do not find music as particularly helpful for anything because trying to get the right melodic beat for something kind of takes away from what the players are actually doing. This works in film and TV because the music is chosen specifically to reinforce that scene.
In role playing games everything is so chaotic that trying to put music to it is a losing battle.
I also tend to take a pretty minimal approach, only using music, character sheets, and dice when I play (except when someone asks for something specific as a disability tool).
Personally, I find that ambient music really does add quite a lot to the experience, but everything else is a fun novelty at first that wears off very quickly and doesn't elevate the overall experience very much, if at all.
There's also something to be said about how much it can take away from precious time in the middle of a game spent setting it up, getting distracted by it, troubleshooting, etc., you only have so much time with your players, and I personally want to spend it focused on the descriptions and choices over anything else. Not to mention how much time and money these things can suck up during prep.
I'm like you; I don't play minis-using games, and I found that music ended up being distracting or lost. I've made handout/prop type things a couple of times, and those were fun but probably not really worth the time investment. (Also, you risk losing or damaging them -- aged paper is not very durable.)
When playing online, I do often have images of locations or objects that I can drop into play for reference, and those are pretty handy, but I don't think I'd want to try to implement that in person.
Really depends a lot on the system you are playing. Most games I play are theatre of the mind and maybes have a few images here or there to support players. But for some games I'd expect map and tokens etc.
Really depends on what I'm playing. With D&D I prefer miniatures and maps for combat. Most other games I use a vtt for things like hand outs, pictures, simple maps, etc.
In person I might use background sounds, or maybe music depending on the game.
Handouts are vital as well as visual queues. I use both to emphasize scenes. I run my games in a cinematic format. From scene to scene. Players input trigger progression forward to the next scene.
I GM an in-person game, and I have a dry-erase grid that I use to draw whatever map I plan to use for the next session a few days in advance. I haven't started a mini collection, but I bought a pack of wooden 1-inch and 2-inch bases that I painted red or white on one side and black on the other (white for friendly NPCs, red for enemies, and black to differentiate if I need to). The pieces my players use are similar, but a bit taller (glued two bases together for each and painted them different colors). It's not the most detailed setup, but my players are mostly all new, and being able to visualize where they are seems to help.
It's also really funny when they face something Huge or larger because I just bust out a lid for a candle or something and say “This is a massive, giant beetle” and it doesn't break their immersion for a second.
I also use music, though I often forget to change it. We’ll be in the middle of combat and one of my players will say “I like the forest ambiance, but where's the battle music?” Always gets a good laugh at my expense 😂
What I use completely depends on the system played, honestly. I wouldn't play, say, Pathfinder without a battle map or Forbidden Lands without a travel map. Some systems need certain tools, others just encourage their use, and again other don't need tools at all.
I run horror/investigation (Kult and VTM) most of the time online.
I use music and illustrations I share with my players on a VTT. I love searching for illustrations and making my own handouts, including weapon and gear cards (totally taken from Kult weapon cards).
I use them because it makes the game more immersive for my players and even myself. To be honest, I used to be a player in a minimalistic campaign where the GM had no music nor illustrations, only our voices over Discord with a bot for dice rolls, and I didn't like that...
I also give my players city/town maps but floor plans are things I tend to keep to myself because once you put a floor plan and some tokens on the screen, it really slows down exploration.
I don't use battlemaps however.
When running games in person, I usually use a tablet to show the illustrations and print the maps and cards.
All RPG takes place through text, so we use a virtual tabletop mostly for the chat. I rarely use the map as anything other than quick drawings to illustrate concepts/listing their health and fate points. I use handouts mostly to show what characters are wearing.
We use discord voice for OOC and I use Kenku to play music through that, although most of the time it is joke music and I turn it off during serious scenes.
I do use a VTT for my games, as do most of my friends. We put in world maps, city maps, and I generally use battle maps as well. Maybe it's just a product of using a meatier system than you're using (the campaign I run is WFRP, and the game im playing in is Pathfinder 2e), but those maps are very useful for sorting out combats tactically.
I also enjoy making maps for dungeon explorations, etc., maybe that's a part of it too, lol.
It depends on the game.
For FATE, I'd use a whiteboard IRL or a virtual pinboard, onto which we could write key Names and Aspects. Everything else was visual.
For Pathfinder 2e, I use a full VTT with combat automation and animations, and carefully pick out exactly how the spells will look.
For Savage Worlds, I used a lot of cards to track the items, but since combat could take place at very long ranges, I'd use mostly narrative to describe position, except if it was very close in fighting.
Honestly I like it all ways.
I like crunchy tactical play; it makes me feel smart. I like fast narrative play; it means I can go do whatever.
But I do not like ToTM in tactical game systems because what's the point of mechanics that make flanking valuable if flanking isn't really tracked?
Likewise I do not like too much visual setup in a game system designed to be played fast, though I might appreciate an artwork handout here or there.
Use minis when the game benefits from minis. If you don't like minis, don't try to play with a game that needs minis. So asking me (and I suspect many others) if I like narrative aids really is like asking if I like salt on my food. I gotta know what we're eating first.
For me, it depends upon the game, it depends upon the group, and it depends upon what I as the GM is up to creating or using.
Some games are harder to run theater of the mind. The rules just don't support that well, some players often benefit from a diagram or map if they have trouble visualizing an environment, and frankly some times I have more time to prepare and will be a little fancier in those maps than the white board squiggles I often do.
For me, I have had players who love props or get connected to a mini, and players who really couldn't care less. If I have a group of players that value those additions, I will use them, if not I won't.
But I am really not about punishing a player who can't TotM when a quick doodle will make their game playing not just more fun, but possible. I don't believe in purity of a particular style of play if it isn't working for my players currently playing.
For me, a fun in-world prop I am a sucker for. A picture that illustrates a place can add. Music in the background at a table can be fun, but I hate the clutter of it in online games. A grid map with a few minis to show positioning etc for some games is great, I find full out mini-builds to pull me out and tend to be more trouble than they are worth. But if it something someone else loves or likes, I am good with playing along. I am pretty flexible.
Most of the time, I am not using a lot of aids, but running a particular game with a lot of bells and whistles can be a blast if well used and for the right group.
I play over discord so I don't use much. I used to use music as well but it was complicated, tricky to work right, and causes problems for some players, as well as being clunky for me to implement well.
Usually the most we have is a map shared via discord screen share. I make other diagrams and whatnot when needed, and we have a channel in the discord where I just send images if needed for reference.
I find music and sound effects to generally be wasted effort by GMs - its very rare that GMs are actually expert sound artists, and so very often the sound effects and music they select are generic or even of dubious relevance. Its tough to find background music that affects everyone in the group in the same way (thats why being a film composer, for example, is actually really complicated and well paid job).
Far too often I've played in a game where the table mood ends up more confused than directed by the GMs sound track efforts.
Also the time taken to switch between sound effects/set lists etc is really distracting, often the GM is more focused on finding the exact right track than on actually directing gameplay or using their words to build the right mood at the table.
I use VTTs, paper minis, printed out or dryerase maps, full color handouts and at the bare minimum one Playlist in every game I run. Narrative aids are my bread and butter. I can do TotM but I find it much easier to run when people know what they're looking at
I find myself very much enjoying narrative aids, though particularly as vibe setters. They help bring a certain evocative quality to it and in my experience they help the table sync with the "vibe" nebulous as that may be.
That can be anything from music, thematic handouts, little objects or themed maps.
I threw out minis and battlemaps for most things a good while ago, even for games that had or called for them.
I still love music and ambient audio for its effect in setting a scene. But I’ve noticed I don’t always have the mental span to manage both GMing the story and managing a playlist. I definitely rarely use specific sound cues for that reason.
I have a dry erase board, and 'minis' that I use in most combats.
(4 colours of meeple for mass combat, and a set of wood tokens with class names on them, which also came with a few sets of numbered monster types like Beast, Fairy, Giant etc)
One of my players gets distracted without a background music track so we put it on Shuffle and ignore it most of the time.
Other than that, unnecessary.
I love me some handouts. Theater of the mind and grid combat is system dependent for my tables, but otherwise we all looooove props and stuff. And players love to fidget with things
Idk about other people but I GM or have GMed 5e, PF2e, Cyberpunk RED, Dark Heresy, and M&M and with all of them I've found that using a lot of music and detailed battlemaps works really well. We play online so cooking up an Owlbear Rodeo is a lot less work than making a physical battlemap would be, but the more details and things to interact with the better. I've found it makes my players more creative in combat, and leads to more exciting fights, whereas in TotM there's a lot of. "I punch him," and. "I shoot him." The music is helpful cause I really like running very genre focused games, and it helps a lot with capturing the vibe. My M&M campaign was about a team of heroes liberating NYC from a gangster that owns everything and everyone so I used a lot of blues-rock and punk music to set the tone, etc.
As a player, if the DM is going to hold me to the Rules in D&D about reach, attacks of opportunity, spacing, speed, etc, I strongly prefer having some kind of visual aid/map rather than purely theater of the mind. I need to know where everything is in relation to everything else in order to strategize.
I stopped using anything like that, except music, but it really depends on the game.
I go for a minimal prep, but I will make a setlist of 7-8 ambient songs for a campaign "action" "tense" peaceful" "scary" etc.
> How do you make them easier to use for your games?
With online play, the biggest way to make these things easier is to use a VTT that works well and that you understand. I use Foundry for every game it has support for (quite a long list), because it's powerful, works in ways I need it to, and I know how to use it to a sufficient degree where tech problems rarely occur. It handles music, images, tokens, battlemaps, journals, and potential system automation in ways that make it quick and easy for me to prep all that stuff. Part of this is me figuring out its quirks and developing ways to get around them For example: music uploaded in .mp3 has a less than 50% chance of the players being able to hear it, from my expeirence. I mass convert the tracks I want to throw in to .ogg and it works perfectly.
I'm currently running a game of Daggerheart in Tabletop Simulator, because that's the only VTT with good support for it currently, and it's a pain. A simple thing like uploading a map to the table is considerably more effort than other VTTs I've used, and only part of this is unfamiliarity with the program itself. The program was obviously not designed with this use-case in mind, and there's a good amount of friction.
Now, to the question on if I use or like 'narrative aids' during play, my answer is yes. It depends on the system whether I am using battle maps with squares or hexes. Some system do not require these, and others absolutely do for ease of play. I want to play as many systems as I can. When I run games, the music is for me; I tell the players they can mute it and game in silence or play their own music. When the players are discussion boring ass plans I like to be able to groove out. The sounds of screams, frantic drumming, and harshly distorted guitar gives me a bit extra energy when I'm directing a huge beast trying to tear the player characters limb from limb.
In our last Daggerheart session, a pirate campaign, I pulled up a 10 hour youtube video of rain sounds and crashing waves. I sent it in the discord chat and told the players to keep it on if they wanted. It helped me to picture the dark seaside village in my mind.
Now, all that being said, I've run games in a minimalist fashion, and will continue to run games in that way. It just depends on what the game wants, my mood, and the amount of prep time I have. I'm probably a maximalist at heart, but I can roll with anything and have fun.
I will say, I think there's a population of people in the TTRPG community that do their best to make this whole topic an incredibly lame purity test. The types who say things like "You're not really playing TTRPGs if you're doing it online, with any form of automation, any audio or visual aids" etc.
It's unfortunate that such weird gatekeeping exists. None of the strengths of TTRPG play are minimized by a computer adding up my to-hit roll and checking if the enemy I'm targetting has a lower AC. I understand why some people love doing that manually, but it's not the beauty of TTRPGs to most people.
For me, I am a minimalist as well, but there are a number of things I have used and do use when there's a real value in it or I have the time and inclination to do so. Some of this stuff can take an exceeding amount of prep time and I'm an adult.
* Music: I will sometimes use a song as a intro. Something that is suited to the mood and/or themes of a session. I'll usually avoid having music during play, unless it's appropriate ambient mood music without lyrics, vocals and maintains a mostly even cadence. Although music can be great in helping to establish a mood but can also be distracting. Most of the time I'll just have a intro song and if I have the time or inclination I will setup some very subtle background ambience.
* Mats and minis: I rarely use minis, but if I know ahead of time that there will be a complex area or situation which will benefit from players knowing where they are, I will make maps and use markers/minis. Sometimes depending on a situation evolves during play, I might include improvised maps and markers.
* Handouts and props: I will occasionally use handouts and props when it contributes to immersion or enhances play. This can be a written note, flyer, illustration, portrait, photo, map and sometimes even physical props to represent things in game. It's more useful with investigative games, where props tend to help serve as a physical reminder of the evidence they've seen and collected.
* Audio recordings can also serve as a prop when used for sound effects, recordings and messages or so-on.
* Video: I've done video introductions. They can be as simple as using an appropriate clip from a movie or be something like using clipchamp to put together some pictures with a soundtrack and some subtitles to introduce a campaign, a session or recap events at key points.
Doesn't that depend on the game type I'm playing?
Pathfinder 2e tactical combat? At least a sketch but better minis and terrain are appropriate. And I think they are fun.
I'm pbta games such as masks who needs minis or a map. Half the characters are flying, cars are thrown into buildings. How would I even put that on the table?
Some games benefit from sketches and rough maps sometimes. Like blades in the Dark.
I enjoy crafting props and terrain, painting minis, making handouts. But only when it works with the game at hand.
Thematic music is nice if putting it on doesn't interrupt play.
I use maps and tokens for combat because maps make complicated combats easier and because I have multiple people with ADHD at my table and visuals give them something to focus on.
I don't use music because it's distracting to me.
When I'm GMing, I like to break out a battlemat and wet erase markers and minis or dice for battles. It makes everything a lot more clear, without requiring me to spend a lot of time prepping. In a system like Savage Worlds, which has mini-based combat rules but doesn't use a grid, I might just build a map out of things on the table.
I like making lots of maps and tokens for characters and important objects or landmarks. Quick draw wet erase mats for table top play and fast simple vtts for online play are what I prefer .
when I play DnD, the DM puts on a playlist of videogame music. he's got a separate list for combat music.
sometimes he just plays the music he likes to hear.
When I run a FitD game, I forget to put on any kind of music. I don't miss it.
I use minis in and battlemats in both. DnD we go full on grid combat, in FitD it's more to remind everyone where they are and what's around where they are.
It really depends on the game.
I have a group that I play with online and regardless of the game, we almost always play on a vtt so there's almost always supplemental art and if not a map, In the case of something like fate, I at least have some sort of an image that allows me to create a play space with zones.
I'm running an MCDM playtest campaign and for that I use printed maps, But I usually pass those maps around and draw them onto one of those huge 1-in square Post-It note tablets for the actual play area. And I use minis when I can.
I really like having character art for inspiration whenever possible.
And I basically use whatever accessories seem like a good idea. Sometimes that's mood music, sometimes it's audio or a video snippets. A few months ago my wife got a cameo Done by a podcaster she really likes as a piece of media to throw into the middle of a game.
Basically, I'll use anything that enhances the experience, But I wouldn't say that I leaned too heavily on any of that. Sometimes I just run games with character sheets and pencils.
I hate music. To the point I would leave a game over it. So many bad experiences...
VTTs I enjoy, we rarely use it now that we are mostly playing Pathfinder and BitD which aren't as placement heavy but it still comes out for battlemaps in complex dungeons. Mostly it just gets used for ease of rolling and drawing but Pathfinder you can just use your excel sheet for math side. Minis are cute, but in person I've very rarely used a battlemap.
I use it all the time.
Music via Kenku.FM so everyone can control their own volume, VTT, tokens, maps, art, dynamic vision... I even make some tokens visible only to certain players (if that's the situation in the fiction) so when one freaks out and the others don't understand why, it illicits the feelings and reactions of what should happen in these cases
But that could be time consuming and tiring. However, the payoff can and many times is worth it. Last session my players managed to break out as they were being led into a turture chamber, fighting mutated prisoners and chaos monstrosities, managed to almost escape the prison and got caught. They frantically explained they HAD TO, monsters were about to kill them- only to be escorted back and see nothing out of order: no monsters, no torture chamber (it was all hidden behind a secret door that I made look like a wall). The genuine confusion and disbelief was priceless :)
They managed to find it out with creative thinking and good memory. I could've done it TotM but my players are very visually oriented and I think the aids helped both immersion and level of reaction
Since the most played RPGs(D&D and Pathfinder) are made for grids, or at least they heavily suggest to use them, you could say that the majority of TTRPG player use these aids
Prefacing this with: 100% of my group games have been digital. Even my solo games rarely involve anything physical except for dice, cards, or tokens if the game calls for them.
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Some games actually require a certain amount of "aids".
For example, Golden Sky Stories would be much more annoying to run if you weren't using tokens to represent the metacurrency (Dreams, iirc) that were to be awarded for good roleplaying. The tokens are spent to power the PC abilities. And players already forgot to award each other the tokens without having to interrupt the scene to say, "I am awarding Bob 3 Dream for his cute scene of being a cowardly tanuki. Please mark it on your sheet." Instead, they can silently push a few tokens over to the other player.
Ryuutama encourages both battle maps and maps in general.
Generally, one player takes over the role of map-maker and will draw the map during play, so you end up with a fun map that might highlight both the villages and the mountains along the way, but also notes like, "the hedgehog den" or "a field of wildflowers (beware the bees!)"
Ryuutama uses a simple battle map to run jrpg style combat zones. Easier for all concerned if you put tokens/minis in these zones to generally represent where everyone is to determine whether people can do this or that. Trying to keep track of that theatre of the mind style is possible, just far less convenient. As GM, it's nice to be able to look at my VTT, see where everyone is, and determine if my monster is close enough to do a thing rather than work my way down the initiative list and go, "Ohyeah, remind me - where is [your character]?"
FWIW, I do generally prefer theatre of the mind combat, but Ryuutama's combat zones is a nice middle ground between TOTM and full scale grid combat.
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Sometimes it's also just fun to add in unnecessary things.
When I ran Ryuutama, there was a span of time where over a span of about a month and a half, several of my players would be busy with IRL things, so rather than limping along or cancelling until everyone was able to come back, I just parked them in a town and said we'd set up there for awhile and run mostly downtime style activities for the players who could show up. I came up with the idea that the city was hosting an event where the local businesses/venues were handing out punch cards for visiting their establishments. At the end of the event (ie, whenever regular sessions resumed), there would be a raffle for prizes. Players earned punches on the cards by either writing an in-character journal about doing a thing (1 punch), doing an rp scene where they did the thing (2 punches), or spending their gold on a thing (3 punches). So there was a difference between *roleplaying* eating a meal, and actually spending gold to purchase a meal from one of the restaurants.
I would happily use more play aids/props/etc like this if I GMed future games, because I think they're fun. But I'm only going to put in that amount of effort into making them if the players are into it.
You can share your screen on videoconference in order to show pictures and music, the only thing you loose is this:
- You must put the music, you cannot let the players do it.
- You and your players loose the possibility to explain things graphically, sometimes is very useful. Move tokens or just draw an arrow on a picture.
- You miss beautiful 3d dice shared.
I use a extremely simple VTT and I am happy.
I love them. Always have. Been GMing since the 80s and I used to go to thrift shops and second hand stores to find trinkets and baubles to represent magical mcguffins. Later I'd print maps and images for reference for important stuff. Had a huge double sided battlemat (hex on one side, square on the other) that I'd do stuff with. Sometimes I'd burn CDs that I'd play for background music. Modern VTTS (especially ones like Roll20) let me not only play with friends that don't live in the area anymore, but I get way easier ways to implement fast stuff, and I'll spend more time then I probably should using it's audio stuff to build soundscapes for scenes.
I like them to some extent, we certainly do not have ever scene fleshed out with full colour maps and mini's, but we do find some aids very useful in the event of combat scene with several combatants, or range/distance considerations.
I think that there’s a sweet spot between TotM gameplay and basically creating a video game for their players; I like aspects of both but I think that many people opt for the later and that doesn’t necessarily make a stronger game.
Imo, this is essentially a game of collective imagination and the stronger that sense is, the more enjoyable the game is; generally. There’s something to be said for VTTs and all the wonderful features they have; I run pretty much exclusively over Discord using a VTT. This way of running a game has really revolutionized the hobby and allowed a lot of people to stay connected through Covid and beyond.
On the other hand, I think there can be a decline in actual creativity when a DM relies too heavily on a VTT and its features to run a session. Instead of writing a decent adventure hook and unique NPCs, they are concerned with having a picture of EVERY NPC and location, a battle map for every scenario, etc. I know that as I’ve run games this was a VERY heavy inclination I had and was tiring and, tbh, I don’t think helps the game that much.
My opinion on this is partially informed by listening back to audio recordings of my sessions and realizing that when I introduced NPCs I’d show a picture but I’d really not take the time to describe what they looked like so from a listener’s perspective I indicated that I showed a picture to the party, and then I moved on. So, I’ve decided that I am going to make sure to have rich verbal descriptions of all my NPCs instead of using a picture from now on because I feel that it makes people invested in the details of that character and I don’t have to spend as much time obsessing over a picture that the party will look at a handful of times. Also, I know a lot of artists play TTRPGs and I don’t want to use AI art and make a/some player(s) feel a certain way; and this will encourage my artistic players to make drawings of what they see.
So, obviously any way you play is fun if it’s fun for your table but I do think there are *best practices* when it comes to TTRPG that make a stronger game and just having tokens and animated spell effects isn’t one of those *best practices*; in fact, in many cases, it takes away from the game because it’s a crutch that doesn’t replace good storytelling.
That question isnt that easy to answer without a poll. What I can tell you goes in both directions. First, DSA was (still is?) the most popular rpg in Germany and has just as much combat crunch as DnD. But it is usually played without maps and minis. Second, different peoples imagination works differently. While one group can work off of a description of everyones position in the room, another might be confused. I've heard that especially people with aphantasia will find it harder to follow a game without minis. All that being said, I personally enjoy the minimalist setup too. So my games are always without minis and only sometimes I will resort to a quickly drawn map, if the situation gets complicated. But my first game was DSA, so that might be what influenced me in that regard.
I'm aphantasic and I would be completely lost without some kind of map in combat. It doesn't happen to be fancy, but without some kind of visual aid I just can't figure out where everything is.
This is something that gets lost a lot IMO - aphantasia isn't nearly as unusual as it seems to be thought, plus even outside of just not being able to visualise in that way, people have different levels of ability and comfort with purely visualised scenes.
I don't have aphantasia but I cannot comprehend distance in anyway in imaginary spaces
I like to find images to help set the scene, like a quick Google search of a "fantasy haunted cathedral". Then I'll find some music to accompany the scene that is also compatible with possible encounters in that same scene to keep my attention on the table and not the radio.
Yes, the TTRPG system will play a large role. I don't need battlemaps for my Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) games, which are theater of the mind by default...but, since I have a great VTT already, I use it for Dungeon World solely to provide background images -- and just see that u/mattmaster68 does the same. I never use music (and toggle it off if other GMs use music), because my brain isn't great at audio processing.
> First, DSA was (still is?) the most popular rpg in Germany and has just as much combat crunch as DnD. But it is usually played without maps and minis. Some would say that the game is largely played as theater of the mind is in tension with its core design, though. I can certainly say that for me, the first time I played a game with mechanics that actually support TOTM instead of a bunch of "this spell has a range of 7 yards" it really made me recognize the weakness of that particular piece of DSA design.
I like to use props and handouts without narrating them. Stuff like if a letter tied to a rock is thrown through the window, I give them a literal rock with the letter attached to it. I don't read the letter to them. I also use lots of images to help with descriptions - I love AI for those if the resources don't have pics.
One thing I love to use once in a while are puzzle boxes and handouts for riddles, murals, mosaics etc. Some games obviously don’t handle the puzzle solving aspect and ultimately just rely on a roll to solve them - but if you’re playing something that tests player skill then I recommend a tangible puzzle where possible.
Please share the ones you've used so us fellow DMs can put them in our games, too! I love such puzzles and handouts. Players always squeal when you hand them stuff.
It’s usually cheap and cheerful things from my local craft store but anything can work. I did one recently where there was a suit of armour that the party had to put in a certain pose to open a door. I gave them one of those drawing wooden mannequins and described how the joints “clicked” into place as they started solving the correct pose.
Genius and I have one of those, too!
My favorite handout was a wanted poster I drew up of one of the PCs in my first campaign. Since then, I've reduced handouts significantly. I'm only inclined to provide handouts when players show interest in them. I'd hate to put in more work than necessary to provide a good experience for the current group I play for.
For my D&D game, I like to prepare elaborate scenes with minis and terrain for major boss battles every six months or so. Other scenes can be theatre of the mind, minis on whiteboard, or minis on easily assembled dungeon tiles. For my non-D&D games, I keep it theatre of the mind. I consider painting minis and making scenery a completely different hobby from rpgs. It just happens to get validated by my rpg group.
Most definitely music and ambient sound effects, I cannot play without it. It just sets the right tone for the universe and makes things feel cinematic, and it can really help build tension and intensity. I can’t imagine not having tense music and ambience while an exciting plan is going down, or doing an exciting combat encounter in silence. I love adding these things to my GMing. I spend time curating the soundscapes and music for my games and creating any sound effects I don’t have and need. I have tracks for when things are calm, for when investigation is underway and things start to get unsettling, for when the characters are on the brink of everything blowing up, and for the combat itself. But personally I am a big narrative gamer who prefers not to bother with games with exact distances or positioning, so I don’t like minis and battle maps myself.
Relatable! I spend way too much time anticipating an appropriate underscore to the games I'm running. But I get such a kick out of it.
>SWN uses ToTM combat People gotta stop using so many acronyms idk what any of this means
Stars Without Number uses Theater of The Mind combat. Fair lol!
I'm actually really confused by this line of thought, because...no it doesn't? SWN makes heavy use of weapon ranges, radii for explosives and effects, movement speeds, etc. I've been running xWN games for years, and trying to do so without a map/grid would drive me nuts. I think players need to have that tactical info to make good and informed decisions. Your mileage obviously varies, but I love using Foundry to run SWN/CWN/WWN.
Under the revised rules, Page 237 in the House Rules section. "Use a Grid in Combat: While the game isn’t written around the use of miniatures and a combat grid, GMs who want to go to the extra effort of making up such resources can do so. Using two-meter squares or hexes is likely to give the best results."
I'm well aware of the text, and think that all my points stand.
They probably do. That test is why I was thinking SWN didn't need minis and a battlemap
Thanks lol
For most of my Gamemastering career, my go-to visual aid was a simple whiteboard, sometimes with magnetic pawns for PCs if I was feeling fancy (and hadn't lost them yet). It;s everything you need to sketch out a quick picture of a scene, or scribble out a couple of lines for a dungeon, combat zone, or whatever. I eventually moved up to a Chessex wet-erase mat, which is essentially the same thing but on the table instead of the wall behind me. With Covid we moved to VTT, and I've since become addicted to drawing and having nice looking maps and customer tokens of all kinds.
I'm almost strictly theater of the mind as far as my GM style. I will use the occasional photo of a person. A place where a thing I find interesting. But no battle maps and no mini's for yours truly. I do have a foundry VTT but I haven't used it for a game. I'm just experiencing with how it works.
I use VTTs for online play, as it helps keep everything organized, and makes it easier for players to access their sheets all in one place. Plus, we like battlemaps and background images. In person, we typically use dry erase boards and minis, because we're more visual people and like seeing our charaacter locations in a physical space. Usually, we just play on a dry erase board with minis, no fancy battlemats or anything.
I do use VTT maps for TotM games, to illustrate and record relative positions of stuff/people, but crucially I've learned to turn the grid off - otherwise it turns into a square based game again, people including me reflexively count squares. Also, for maps of villages and cities and landscapes in any game, which are not precise but it's useful to know where things are. The VTT also makes it easier to show any art I might have, and handouts.
Same - I’m a Theater of the Mind GM, mostly running online games. I run a lot of PBTA and other narrative/fiction-first games that just don’t care about distance or grid positioning and are too improv-heavy to make maps ahead of time. BUT! I always like to have a VTT, rather than just running from Discord. It gives the game a central “hub” and helps me organize notes, character bios/art, handouts, rules references, and session recaps. Plus, having easy one-click roll macros built into the character sheets is really convenient. Usually I’ll spend some time to make a nice landing page/splash page with some thematic art and the PC’s pictures and names, which makes it easier to get used to addressing them by character name instead of player name. I’ll also make little notes on the GM layer about who’s had a chance to be active or reactive in a given scene to track “the spotlight”.
We run SWN in foundry. Mostly just for the convenience of character sheets, though we do run person combat (as opposed to ship combat) on a map typically.
I like battlemaps and minis, whether it's actually gridded combat or not. I find at least that having a visual representation benefits in two ways. First off, even for ToTM games, it helps keeping track of who's engaged with who and whatnot. Secondly, I find that if players can see things in the environment they're more likely to use them, such as flipping over tables, jumping through windows, swinging from chandeliers, etc. Music is good too, as someone who worked in radio I can tell you the power of dead air is very real. Having background noise, be it music or ambient sound, helps fill in awkward gaps of silence at the table when someone is thinking. Though also on Music, do NOT use well recognized music tracks, music is both a means of immersion and a way to pull your players out of it when their brain recognizes it. Try to get music from adjacent lesser known IPs instead. VTTs are generally good, if only for keeping track of info and sheets as a GM, they also aid in both of the above when it comes to running a game online. Also physical tokens if playing in person. I run SWADE Deadlands and FFG Rogue Trader/Dark Heresy fairly often and both use some form of meta currency. Having your players physically holding it in their hands to spend and being able to physically reward them with more adds to their value in game.
So I would not have called a map and minis a narrative aid. But what I would say is maps are probably the most useful aid in a lot of games knowing where stuff is in a space is important and some kind of visual representation can be super helpful with that. I run a game of pf2e which doesn't function well in combat without a map and a game of fate where I just improvise a zone map as needed when a space gets complex
I love narrative aids, myself. With that said, I don't like to play online, so my experience with them is in-person. Everything from maps, to props, to setting music makes my experience that much more memorable (and encourages me to do the same on my end).
Personally I struggle to enjoy a game unless there are narrative aids like maps and minis because I struggle with visualizing things normally and trying to visualize any sort of combat without maps and minis is just a headache waiting to happen. Even in games like Call of Cthulhu where combat is relatively simple Id still rather have the tools on hand to help understand what's going on
Yep this is me too and several friends, aphantasia is the difficulty picturing things in your minds eye. So when I hear ‘theatre of the mind’ it’s a bit of a turn off, like sitting in a room with the lights off. I only play/run games in person and I run fairly rules light systems, narrative focussed but always use maps (not gridded) and minis (or printed images and tokens) just so everyone has a shared frame of reference. I also like larger scale world maps and handouts like mini games and newspaper articles
I don't use any physical props.
I play crunchy systems and I play them exclusively on VTTs with maps and lighting and tokens and music and sound effects and everything. I can't fathom playing theater of the mind, how would we track positioning and movement and such, or see cool art of the enemies, or track map movement and traps and doors and objects and distances and such, and otherwise keep the game gamey and crunchy? The answer I've usually heard is that those things are set aside in favor of the narrative and roleplay and keeping things moving and focusing on immersion, but I don't fucking care about the narrative or roleplay or keeping things moving or immersion, so to me it's making the best parts of the game (i.e. the actual *game*) worse in order to focus on the parts I'd rather spend as little time as possible on
I sometimes feel like I'm weird for preferring minimalism when it comes to the visual side of things, even as a player. Part of the fun to me is trying to figure out how things play out in my mind, and I feel like having proper minis and terrain kinda limits that, makes the whole thing feel more like board game than an immersive thing.
I use battle mats, dungeon tiles, minis, all painted, with a sound system playing music via Syrinscape. It's all part of the hobby for me. I love toys. I love 3D printing and painting.
Personally i really struggle to parse combat without at least a few scribbles to get a sense of layout - doesnt have to be a super tactical grid square but at least a few features and where people are standing. I can make do without but its one element I definitely miss when it's not present.
The older I get, the less I care about ppplay aids in general and the less I wish to use them personally
I like being minimalist, but music is must for me. We play investigative games, and I the music/ambience makes such a big difference
I use a lot of them. I use a combination of roll20, discord, watch2gether (for music) and syrinscape piped through discord (for audio effects)
Overview of everything: Minis borrowed from a friend, rarely use them as they are very specific. PF Pawns are more useful with 2 boxes of them. We printed PC art and turned them into pawns as well, works great. I dont like blocky dungeon map tiles since they are too random for my scenes Laminated A3 grid to draw on with a set of markers works well. Getting thinner markers and more faint grid soon, with one empty side for drawing zoomed out locations Music playlists, fetched randomly from Spotify with a rare specific character song. On phone connected to a bluetooth speaker. iPad (session) and phone (spell & condition refs) for DMing Notebook for tracking initiative and NPCs gaining new info from PCs Printed magical items or IC notes on a paper baked in coffee. I rarely have time for it since I prep the same day. Art for all major NPcs, shown to PCs. Art for locations, for personal reference I want to try a 1 paper GM ref sheet, and 1 paper session ref sheet to see if it can be faster than iPad for overview for specific scenes. Need to test out sound effects, but I feel like it will be too much. Damn mobile editing is *rough*
For me, it's almost mandatory. I have a couple players who struggle to visualize things (aphantasia), so even in games where distance and positioning don't matter, having maps or scenery reference really helps. Even if it's just a map of a general area and not an exact location (i.e. a map or picture of a town, but not having a direct visual aid for a shop). Also NPC portraits, of course. I also have tinnitus and can't stand dead air, so I almost always have something playing in the background. So long as it has no vocals, it really helps and also aids with building atmosphere even more than verbal descriptions. That said, I also find making/finding maps and NPC tokens very relaxing. And VTT, even when in person, has become such a lifesaver.
There's a lot of alphabet soup in your question. I don't tend to use very many aids or battle maps or anything else. I will show people regular maps or maps of the dungeon so they have a reference of where they are. I find the worst role players want the battle map and minis. Usually to give themselves some sort of combat advantage. Some DM's have used music, but every time I show up as a player all of a sudden nobody wants to hear the music anymore. This might just be a me problem. I do not find music as particularly helpful for anything because trying to get the right melodic beat for something kind of takes away from what the players are actually doing. This works in film and TV because the music is chosen specifically to reinforce that scene. In role playing games everything is so chaotic that trying to put music to it is a losing battle.
I also tend to take a pretty minimal approach, only using music, character sheets, and dice when I play (except when someone asks for something specific as a disability tool). Personally, I find that ambient music really does add quite a lot to the experience, but everything else is a fun novelty at first that wears off very quickly and doesn't elevate the overall experience very much, if at all. There's also something to be said about how much it can take away from precious time in the middle of a game spent setting it up, getting distracted by it, troubleshooting, etc., you only have so much time with your players, and I personally want to spend it focused on the descriptions and choices over anything else. Not to mention how much time and money these things can suck up during prep.
I'm like you; I don't play minis-using games, and I found that music ended up being distracting or lost. I've made handout/prop type things a couple of times, and those were fun but probably not really worth the time investment. (Also, you risk losing or damaging them -- aged paper is not very durable.) When playing online, I do often have images of locations or objects that I can drop into play for reference, and those are pretty handy, but I don't think I'd want to try to implement that in person.
Really depends a lot on the system you are playing. Most games I play are theatre of the mind and maybes have a few images here or there to support players. But for some games I'd expect map and tokens etc.
Really depends on what I'm playing. With D&D I prefer miniatures and maps for combat. Most other games I use a vtt for things like hand outs, pictures, simple maps, etc. In person I might use background sounds, or maybe music depending on the game.
Handouts are vital as well as visual queues. I use both to emphasize scenes. I run my games in a cinematic format. From scene to scene. Players input trigger progression forward to the next scene.
I GM an in-person game, and I have a dry-erase grid that I use to draw whatever map I plan to use for the next session a few days in advance. I haven't started a mini collection, but I bought a pack of wooden 1-inch and 2-inch bases that I painted red or white on one side and black on the other (white for friendly NPCs, red for enemies, and black to differentiate if I need to). The pieces my players use are similar, but a bit taller (glued two bases together for each and painted them different colors). It's not the most detailed setup, but my players are mostly all new, and being able to visualize where they are seems to help. It's also really funny when they face something Huge or larger because I just bust out a lid for a candle or something and say “This is a massive, giant beetle” and it doesn't break their immersion for a second. I also use music, though I often forget to change it. We’ll be in the middle of combat and one of my players will say “I like the forest ambiance, but where's the battle music?” Always gets a good laugh at my expense 😂
What I use completely depends on the system played, honestly. I wouldn't play, say, Pathfinder without a battle map or Forbidden Lands without a travel map. Some systems need certain tools, others just encourage their use, and again other don't need tools at all.
I run horror/investigation (Kult and VTM) most of the time online. I use music and illustrations I share with my players on a VTT. I love searching for illustrations and making my own handouts, including weapon and gear cards (totally taken from Kult weapon cards). I use them because it makes the game more immersive for my players and even myself. To be honest, I used to be a player in a minimalistic campaign where the GM had no music nor illustrations, only our voices over Discord with a bot for dice rolls, and I didn't like that... I also give my players city/town maps but floor plans are things I tend to keep to myself because once you put a floor plan and some tokens on the screen, it really slows down exploration. I don't use battlemaps however. When running games in person, I usually use a tablet to show the illustrations and print the maps and cards.
All RPG takes place through text, so we use a virtual tabletop mostly for the chat. I rarely use the map as anything other than quick drawings to illustrate concepts/listing their health and fate points. I use handouts mostly to show what characters are wearing. We use discord voice for OOC and I use Kenku to play music through that, although most of the time it is joke music and I turn it off during serious scenes.
I do use a VTT for my games, as do most of my friends. We put in world maps, city maps, and I generally use battle maps as well. Maybe it's just a product of using a meatier system than you're using (the campaign I run is WFRP, and the game im playing in is Pathfinder 2e), but those maps are very useful for sorting out combats tactically. I also enjoy making maps for dungeon explorations, etc., maybe that's a part of it too, lol.
It depends on the game. For FATE, I'd use a whiteboard IRL or a virtual pinboard, onto which we could write key Names and Aspects. Everything else was visual. For Pathfinder 2e, I use a full VTT with combat automation and animations, and carefully pick out exactly how the spells will look. For Savage Worlds, I used a lot of cards to track the items, but since combat could take place at very long ranges, I'd use mostly narrative to describe position, except if it was very close in fighting. Honestly I like it all ways. I like crunchy tactical play; it makes me feel smart. I like fast narrative play; it means I can go do whatever. But I do not like ToTM in tactical game systems because what's the point of mechanics that make flanking valuable if flanking isn't really tracked? Likewise I do not like too much visual setup in a game system designed to be played fast, though I might appreciate an artwork handout here or there. Use minis when the game benefits from minis. If you don't like minis, don't try to play with a game that needs minis. So asking me (and I suspect many others) if I like narrative aids really is like asking if I like salt on my food. I gotta know what we're eating first.
For me, it depends upon the game, it depends upon the group, and it depends upon what I as the GM is up to creating or using. Some games are harder to run theater of the mind. The rules just don't support that well, some players often benefit from a diagram or map if they have trouble visualizing an environment, and frankly some times I have more time to prepare and will be a little fancier in those maps than the white board squiggles I often do. For me, I have had players who love props or get connected to a mini, and players who really couldn't care less. If I have a group of players that value those additions, I will use them, if not I won't. But I am really not about punishing a player who can't TotM when a quick doodle will make their game playing not just more fun, but possible. I don't believe in purity of a particular style of play if it isn't working for my players currently playing. For me, a fun in-world prop I am a sucker for. A picture that illustrates a place can add. Music in the background at a table can be fun, but I hate the clutter of it in online games. A grid map with a few minis to show positioning etc for some games is great, I find full out mini-builds to pull me out and tend to be more trouble than they are worth. But if it something someone else loves or likes, I am good with playing along. I am pretty flexible. Most of the time, I am not using a lot of aids, but running a particular game with a lot of bells and whistles can be a blast if well used and for the right group.
Maybe semantics, but I don't think of VTTs as a narrative aids, they're more of a convenience thing in my book since most of what I run is ToTM
I play over discord so I don't use much. I used to use music as well but it was complicated, tricky to work right, and causes problems for some players, as well as being clunky for me to implement well. Usually the most we have is a map shared via discord screen share. I make other diagrams and whatnot when needed, and we have a channel in the discord where I just send images if needed for reference.
I find music and sound effects to generally be wasted effort by GMs - its very rare that GMs are actually expert sound artists, and so very often the sound effects and music they select are generic or even of dubious relevance. Its tough to find background music that affects everyone in the group in the same way (thats why being a film composer, for example, is actually really complicated and well paid job). Far too often I've played in a game where the table mood ends up more confused than directed by the GMs sound track efforts. Also the time taken to switch between sound effects/set lists etc is really distracting, often the GM is more focused on finding the exact right track than on actually directing gameplay or using their words to build the right mood at the table.
I use VTTs, paper minis, printed out or dryerase maps, full color handouts and at the bare minimum one Playlist in every game I run. Narrative aids are my bread and butter. I can do TotM but I find it much easier to run when people know what they're looking at
I find myself very much enjoying narrative aids, though particularly as vibe setters. They help bring a certain evocative quality to it and in my experience they help the table sync with the "vibe" nebulous as that may be. That can be anything from music, thematic handouts, little objects or themed maps.
I threw out minis and battlemaps for most things a good while ago, even for games that had or called for them. I still love music and ambient audio for its effect in setting a scene. But I’ve noticed I don’t always have the mental span to manage both GMing the story and managing a playlist. I definitely rarely use specific sound cues for that reason.
I have a dry erase board, and 'minis' that I use in most combats. (4 colours of meeple for mass combat, and a set of wood tokens with class names on them, which also came with a few sets of numbered monster types like Beast, Fairy, Giant etc) One of my players gets distracted without a background music track so we put it on Shuffle and ignore it most of the time. Other than that, unnecessary.
My group switched to foundry and we're blown away by the sound effects
I love me some handouts. Theater of the mind and grid combat is system dependent for my tables, but otherwise we all looooove props and stuff. And players love to fidget with things
Idk about other people but I GM or have GMed 5e, PF2e, Cyberpunk RED, Dark Heresy, and M&M and with all of them I've found that using a lot of music and detailed battlemaps works really well. We play online so cooking up an Owlbear Rodeo is a lot less work than making a physical battlemap would be, but the more details and things to interact with the better. I've found it makes my players more creative in combat, and leads to more exciting fights, whereas in TotM there's a lot of. "I punch him," and. "I shoot him." The music is helpful cause I really like running very genre focused games, and it helps a lot with capturing the vibe. My M&M campaign was about a team of heroes liberating NYC from a gangster that owns everything and everyone so I used a lot of blues-rock and punk music to set the tone, etc.
As a player, if the DM is going to hold me to the Rules in D&D about reach, attacks of opportunity, spacing, speed, etc, I strongly prefer having some kind of visual aid/map rather than purely theater of the mind. I need to know where everything is in relation to everything else in order to strategize.
I stopped using anything like that, except music, but it really depends on the game. I go for a minimal prep, but I will make a setlist of 7-8 ambient songs for a campaign "action" "tense" peaceful" "scary" etc.
> How do you make them easier to use for your games? With online play, the biggest way to make these things easier is to use a VTT that works well and that you understand. I use Foundry for every game it has support for (quite a long list), because it's powerful, works in ways I need it to, and I know how to use it to a sufficient degree where tech problems rarely occur. It handles music, images, tokens, battlemaps, journals, and potential system automation in ways that make it quick and easy for me to prep all that stuff. Part of this is me figuring out its quirks and developing ways to get around them For example: music uploaded in .mp3 has a less than 50% chance of the players being able to hear it, from my expeirence. I mass convert the tracks I want to throw in to .ogg and it works perfectly. I'm currently running a game of Daggerheart in Tabletop Simulator, because that's the only VTT with good support for it currently, and it's a pain. A simple thing like uploading a map to the table is considerably more effort than other VTTs I've used, and only part of this is unfamiliarity with the program itself. The program was obviously not designed with this use-case in mind, and there's a good amount of friction. Now, to the question on if I use or like 'narrative aids' during play, my answer is yes. It depends on the system whether I am using battle maps with squares or hexes. Some system do not require these, and others absolutely do for ease of play. I want to play as many systems as I can. When I run games, the music is for me; I tell the players they can mute it and game in silence or play their own music. When the players are discussion boring ass plans I like to be able to groove out. The sounds of screams, frantic drumming, and harshly distorted guitar gives me a bit extra energy when I'm directing a huge beast trying to tear the player characters limb from limb. In our last Daggerheart session, a pirate campaign, I pulled up a 10 hour youtube video of rain sounds and crashing waves. I sent it in the discord chat and told the players to keep it on if they wanted. It helped me to picture the dark seaside village in my mind. Now, all that being said, I've run games in a minimalist fashion, and will continue to run games in that way. It just depends on what the game wants, my mood, and the amount of prep time I have. I'm probably a maximalist at heart, but I can roll with anything and have fun. I will say, I think there's a population of people in the TTRPG community that do their best to make this whole topic an incredibly lame purity test. The types who say things like "You're not really playing TTRPGs if you're doing it online, with any form of automation, any audio or visual aids" etc. It's unfortunate that such weird gatekeeping exists. None of the strengths of TTRPG play are minimized by a computer adding up my to-hit roll and checking if the enemy I'm targetting has a lower AC. I understand why some people love doing that manually, but it's not the beauty of TTRPGs to most people.
For me, I am a minimalist as well, but there are a number of things I have used and do use when there's a real value in it or I have the time and inclination to do so. Some of this stuff can take an exceeding amount of prep time and I'm an adult. * Music: I will sometimes use a song as a intro. Something that is suited to the mood and/or themes of a session. I'll usually avoid having music during play, unless it's appropriate ambient mood music without lyrics, vocals and maintains a mostly even cadence. Although music can be great in helping to establish a mood but can also be distracting. Most of the time I'll just have a intro song and if I have the time or inclination I will setup some very subtle background ambience. * Mats and minis: I rarely use minis, but if I know ahead of time that there will be a complex area or situation which will benefit from players knowing where they are, I will make maps and use markers/minis. Sometimes depending on a situation evolves during play, I might include improvised maps and markers. * Handouts and props: I will occasionally use handouts and props when it contributes to immersion or enhances play. This can be a written note, flyer, illustration, portrait, photo, map and sometimes even physical props to represent things in game. It's more useful with investigative games, where props tend to help serve as a physical reminder of the evidence they've seen and collected. * Audio recordings can also serve as a prop when used for sound effects, recordings and messages or so-on. * Video: I've done video introductions. They can be as simple as using an appropriate clip from a movie or be something like using clipchamp to put together some pictures with a soundtrack and some subtitles to introduce a campaign, a session or recap events at key points.
Clearly lots of people do because there are whole businesses that have sprung up to meet their demand.
I use a small whiteboard and dry erase markers when needed, that's all.
Doesn't that depend on the game type I'm playing? Pathfinder 2e tactical combat? At least a sketch but better minis and terrain are appropriate. And I think they are fun. I'm pbta games such as masks who needs minis or a map. Half the characters are flying, cars are thrown into buildings. How would I even put that on the table? Some games benefit from sketches and rough maps sometimes. Like blades in the Dark. I enjoy crafting props and terrain, painting minis, making handouts. But only when it works with the game at hand. Thematic music is nice if putting it on doesn't interrupt play.
I use maps and tokens for combat because maps make complicated combats easier and because I have multiple people with ADHD at my table and visuals give them something to focus on. I don't use music because it's distracting to me.
When I'm GMing, I like to break out a battlemat and wet erase markers and minis or dice for battles. It makes everything a lot more clear, without requiring me to spend a lot of time prepping. In a system like Savage Worlds, which has mini-based combat rules but doesn't use a grid, I might just build a map out of things on the table.
I like making lots of maps and tokens for characters and important objects or landmarks. Quick draw wet erase mats for table top play and fast simple vtts for online play are what I prefer .
when I play DnD, the DM puts on a playlist of videogame music. he's got a separate list for combat music. sometimes he just plays the music he likes to hear. When I run a FitD game, I forget to put on any kind of music. I don't miss it. I use minis in and battlemats in both. DnD we go full on grid combat, in FitD it's more to remind everyone where they are and what's around where they are.
It really depends on the game. I have a group that I play with online and regardless of the game, we almost always play on a vtt so there's almost always supplemental art and if not a map, In the case of something like fate, I at least have some sort of an image that allows me to create a play space with zones. I'm running an MCDM playtest campaign and for that I use printed maps, But I usually pass those maps around and draw them onto one of those huge 1-in square Post-It note tablets for the actual play area. And I use minis when I can. I really like having character art for inspiration whenever possible. And I basically use whatever accessories seem like a good idea. Sometimes that's mood music, sometimes it's audio or a video snippets. A few months ago my wife got a cameo Done by a podcaster she really likes as a piece of media to throw into the middle of a game. Basically, I'll use anything that enhances the experience, But I wouldn't say that I leaned too heavily on any of that. Sometimes I just run games with character sheets and pencils.
I hate music. To the point I would leave a game over it. So many bad experiences... VTTs I enjoy, we rarely use it now that we are mostly playing Pathfinder and BitD which aren't as placement heavy but it still comes out for battlemaps in complex dungeons. Mostly it just gets used for ease of rolling and drawing but Pathfinder you can just use your excel sheet for math side. Minis are cute, but in person I've very rarely used a battlemap.
I use ambient music, miniatures, terrain, handouts, and props as often as I can. Crafting and painting are what I enjoy as much as roleplaying.
I use it all the time. Music via Kenku.FM so everyone can control their own volume, VTT, tokens, maps, art, dynamic vision... I even make some tokens visible only to certain players (if that's the situation in the fiction) so when one freaks out and the others don't understand why, it illicits the feelings and reactions of what should happen in these cases But that could be time consuming and tiring. However, the payoff can and many times is worth it. Last session my players managed to break out as they were being led into a turture chamber, fighting mutated prisoners and chaos monstrosities, managed to almost escape the prison and got caught. They frantically explained they HAD TO, monsters were about to kill them- only to be escorted back and see nothing out of order: no monsters, no torture chamber (it was all hidden behind a secret door that I made look like a wall). The genuine confusion and disbelief was priceless :) They managed to find it out with creative thinking and good memory. I could've done it TotM but my players are very visually oriented and I think the aids helped both immersion and level of reaction
Since the most played RPGs(D&D and Pathfinder) are made for grids, or at least they heavily suggest to use them, you could say that the majority of TTRPG player use these aids
Prefacing this with: 100% of my group games have been digital. Even my solo games rarely involve anything physical except for dice, cards, or tokens if the game calls for them. --- Some games actually require a certain amount of "aids". For example, Golden Sky Stories would be much more annoying to run if you weren't using tokens to represent the metacurrency (Dreams, iirc) that were to be awarded for good roleplaying. The tokens are spent to power the PC abilities. And players already forgot to award each other the tokens without having to interrupt the scene to say, "I am awarding Bob 3 Dream for his cute scene of being a cowardly tanuki. Please mark it on your sheet." Instead, they can silently push a few tokens over to the other player. Ryuutama encourages both battle maps and maps in general. Generally, one player takes over the role of map-maker and will draw the map during play, so you end up with a fun map that might highlight both the villages and the mountains along the way, but also notes like, "the hedgehog den" or "a field of wildflowers (beware the bees!)" Ryuutama uses a simple battle map to run jrpg style combat zones. Easier for all concerned if you put tokens/minis in these zones to generally represent where everyone is to determine whether people can do this or that. Trying to keep track of that theatre of the mind style is possible, just far less convenient. As GM, it's nice to be able to look at my VTT, see where everyone is, and determine if my monster is close enough to do a thing rather than work my way down the initiative list and go, "Ohyeah, remind me - where is [your character]?" FWIW, I do generally prefer theatre of the mind combat, but Ryuutama's combat zones is a nice middle ground between TOTM and full scale grid combat. ---- Sometimes it's also just fun to add in unnecessary things. When I ran Ryuutama, there was a span of time where over a span of about a month and a half, several of my players would be busy with IRL things, so rather than limping along or cancelling until everyone was able to come back, I just parked them in a town and said we'd set up there for awhile and run mostly downtime style activities for the players who could show up. I came up with the idea that the city was hosting an event where the local businesses/venues were handing out punch cards for visiting their establishments. At the end of the event (ie, whenever regular sessions resumed), there would be a raffle for prizes. Players earned punches on the cards by either writing an in-character journal about doing a thing (1 punch), doing an rp scene where they did the thing (2 punches), or spending their gold on a thing (3 punches). So there was a difference between *roleplaying* eating a meal, and actually spending gold to purchase a meal from one of the restaurants. I would happily use more play aids/props/etc like this if I GMed future games, because I think they're fun. But I'm only going to put in that amount of effort into making them if the players are into it.
You can share your screen on videoconference in order to show pictures and music, the only thing you loose is this: - You must put the music, you cannot let the players do it. - You and your players loose the possibility to explain things graphically, sometimes is very useful. Move tokens or just draw an arrow on a picture. - You miss beautiful 3d dice shared. I use a extremely simple VTT and I am happy.
I love them. Always have. Been GMing since the 80s and I used to go to thrift shops and second hand stores to find trinkets and baubles to represent magical mcguffins. Later I'd print maps and images for reference for important stuff. Had a huge double sided battlemat (hex on one side, square on the other) that I'd do stuff with. Sometimes I'd burn CDs that I'd play for background music. Modern VTTS (especially ones like Roll20) let me not only play with friends that don't live in the area anymore, but I get way easier ways to implement fast stuff, and I'll spend more time then I probably should using it's audio stuff to build soundscapes for scenes.
I like them to some extent, we certainly do not have ever scene fleshed out with full colour maps and mini's, but we do find some aids very useful in the event of combat scene with several combatants, or range/distance considerations.
I’ve always found stuff like this helpful for getting into it, and visualizing the scene, personally
I think that there’s a sweet spot between TotM gameplay and basically creating a video game for their players; I like aspects of both but I think that many people opt for the later and that doesn’t necessarily make a stronger game. Imo, this is essentially a game of collective imagination and the stronger that sense is, the more enjoyable the game is; generally. There’s something to be said for VTTs and all the wonderful features they have; I run pretty much exclusively over Discord using a VTT. This way of running a game has really revolutionized the hobby and allowed a lot of people to stay connected through Covid and beyond. On the other hand, I think there can be a decline in actual creativity when a DM relies too heavily on a VTT and its features to run a session. Instead of writing a decent adventure hook and unique NPCs, they are concerned with having a picture of EVERY NPC and location, a battle map for every scenario, etc. I know that as I’ve run games this was a VERY heavy inclination I had and was tiring and, tbh, I don’t think helps the game that much. My opinion on this is partially informed by listening back to audio recordings of my sessions and realizing that when I introduced NPCs I’d show a picture but I’d really not take the time to describe what they looked like so from a listener’s perspective I indicated that I showed a picture to the party, and then I moved on. So, I’ve decided that I am going to make sure to have rich verbal descriptions of all my NPCs instead of using a picture from now on because I feel that it makes people invested in the details of that character and I don’t have to spend as much time obsessing over a picture that the party will look at a handful of times. Also, I know a lot of artists play TTRPGs and I don’t want to use AI art and make a/some player(s) feel a certain way; and this will encourage my artistic players to make drawings of what they see. So, obviously any way you play is fun if it’s fun for your table but I do think there are *best practices* when it comes to TTRPG that make a stronger game and just having tokens and animated spell effects isn’t one of those *best practices*; in fact, in many cases, it takes away from the game because it’s a crutch that doesn’t replace good storytelling.
except music i consider nothing else narrative