For the Love of Counters

Counter Sheet from GDW's Snapshot

When I entered the hobby in late 1979, its connection to wargaming, especially miniatures wargaming, though more tenuous than it once had been, was still not completely severed. One way that this was apparent was that fact that many boxed RPGs included both cardboard counters and maps among their components, with the expectation that they'd be used to adjudicate combat and movement on the tabletop. Four games I distinctly recall taking this approach were TSR's Gangbusters, Star Frontiers, and Boot Hill and GDW's Traveller, by way of its boxed supplement Snapshot.

My friends and I didn't always use the counters and maps when we played these game but we did so frequently enough that, whenever I think of them, my memories include pushing little pieces of cardboard across a poster-sized map. What's interesting is that, to a lot of people involved in the old school renaissance nowadays, this is anathema, much like the use of miniatures and dungeon tiles/floor plans. Back then, though, we never gave it a second thought, since not only was this the way these games were "supposed" to be played -- otherwise, why else did the games include these components? -- but that's how we saw them and, indeed, many other RPGs being played.

Counter Sheet from Star Frontiers

Even more interesting, I think, is that, lately, I've found myself longing for that way of playing RPGs. Some of it is clearly nostalgia, as I associate those games with a particularly great time in the hobby and my involvement in it. But it's more than that, as it so often is. For me, counters and maps represent a time when publishers and players alike still remembered that RPGs are games, right down to having pieces like both wargames and boardgames. The term "tabletop roleplaying" is of a much later vintage, after computer games calling themselves "roleplaying games" had appeared, but the very existence of the term suggests that, to many people, a tabletop was an essential component to the hobby and not just as a surface on which to roll dice.

I bring this up not just as a trip down memory lane, though I won't deny there's some of that at work in this post. I mention it as a mild corrective to the notions many of us have about the place and utility of miniatures and other similar representations in RPGs. I suspect there's some degree of contrariness at work here, since, in recent years, the use of miniatures has come to be associated with the post-TSR editions of Dungeons & Dragons and in a decidedly negative way. I think that's too bad, if only because I think it further divorces current discussions of old school gaming from part of how these games were played in the past.

Counter Sheet from Universe

And of course, I also wouldn't mind seeing a revival in the use of cardboard counters and maps in old school gaming. I think their use helps to lend a little tactical complexity to things like combat and it helps remind us that there's more to this hobby than sitting around with friends pretending to be an elf. At the very least, the greater use of counters (or miniatures) and maps might go some way toward reminding us all that there's nothing at all antithetical to roleplaying about their use. Indeed, some might find, as I did as a younger man, that their use can contribute greatly to roleplaying. Plus, sometimes it's just fun to push around a little cardboard square to represent your character's grav car as he chases after space pirates on an alien world. What's not to like?