Starting TTB - some Beginner questions

[Steve-El-Tragger]

Hey guys and girls,

Playing malifaux for some time, and now, some Friends gave me the ttb Core rules book as a birthday present, so expect a lot of questions in the Future.

One Thing that Really interestes me is, if it is possible to Play ttb as a Pen and paper, so completley without miniatures? And if yes, how do you handle Things like melee ranges or  distances in general, especialy  during dramatic Time?

Would love to get some Tips for a completley beginner.

Thanks

[Steamtastic Vagabond]

I don't use the miniatures at all, and combat is really quite simple, just keep track of approximately where things are relative to the Fated. Say the Fated have a range of 12 with all of their weapons because they somehow have the exact same model of pistol. The monster they are hunting is 16 yards away, so they take a Walk action and close the gap by 5 meaning that the monster is now within range. This means that the Fated are 11 yards away. Say the monster has a Walk aspect of 4, and no athletic skill. This means that the monster will have to make 3 walk actions and will have a single AP left over (unless it charges).

This gets even easier with melee on melee since the two only need to reach each other to get to fighting. Say both characters have Walk and Charge 4 or Speed 0 in this case. The Player and monster are 12 yards away from one another. The Fated takes his Walk actions and closes the gap by 2 meters because he wants to Charge when the monster is in range. The monster not knowing this, takes his Walk Actions and reduces the distance by 8 leaving the distance at 4. When the initiative cycle comes back around, the Fated charges.

This is a simple example of running an encounter with out miniatures.

[gribble]

Yep, I have had no issues at all running without minis. You need to be able to keep things straight in your head, but when you're only talking about typically < 10 characters (Fated and opponents) it's not so hard. Plus, the players will usually remember how far they were from the opponent(s) they were interacting with.

Sometimes it can help to sketch out a rough map, but I'd only usually consider minis (or some other type of token) for a particularly large or complex encounter.

[bedjy]

Same, I play most of my games without using models. Sometimes, anyway, i may set up a table when it could be difficult to explain and keep track of everything (successive waves of nephilim attacking a village).

The use of models will sometimes avoid some comprehension problem anyway.

Sometimes, a single map can help people understand a situation.

[Steve-El-Tragger]

Thank you all for your replies.

Gonna build all the Charakters the next weeks and hope that i can then Start the First session between the years. 

Prepare for more questions to come 😉