I read a lot of webcomics. One of them is called "Up to 4 Players" and is about a group of tabletop gamers. Their current series focuses on a campaign playing Savage Worlds.
With today's post, their blog entry that accompanied the comic talked about tabletop maps and use of minis. It's an issue that I've considered for a while, with differing thoughts on it. Here's the part that stood out to me:
"The group is using an erasable play mat (I personally use this one, from Paizo), with some meeple-like things to indicate who’s who. That’s not very high-tech, but that’s intentional – I find that if I use maps of specific settings or miniatures of specific creatures, the players’ imagination is fixed on these forms and go back to them even if I say “this orc-like mini represents the one-armed bandit”. If there’s no mini, but just a red token, their brains know it’s a representation of something, not an example of it, and so they can imagine whatever it needs to be."
