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If you use Miniatures, how significant of a financial commitment have you made to Miniatures, Terrain, etc.?

I decided to move to Miniatures last year, and it created a hole in my wallet.......

I was conservative, to an extent.  I bought a bunch of Dinosaurs. (Hey, Dragons need a reliable food source.)  Otherwise, I just tried to cover as many bases as I could on a budget.  I mostly bought unpainted Reaper minis, but even that adds up after a while.  I spent hundreds on minis.  Then bought the Pathfinder Bestiary Pawns.  Then some Wilderness Dungeon Tiles.  Then some Dungeon Maps.

Turns out Miniatures and Terrain get expensive fast.

I just say no to minis.

Quote from: Razor 007;1071120Turns out Miniatures and Terrain get expensive fast.

They do, but you can do a lot on a budget, and with proxying.
We have a couple of small storage containers worth of minis for RPGs. (I'm not going to count specific wargame miniatures I have) I covered most of the base sizes, and general types. Undead, humanoids, player character types, monsters. Sometimes I get a few that just tickle my fancy, and I'll go ahead and convert and paint a mini for a specific purpose.

I got most of my minis for RPG purposes from the various D&D collectible wargame things that have been released over the years, buying singles from miniature market.

Depends on the game. Savage Worlds? D&D 4e? Always. OD&D? 50/50. CoC? Traveller? Rifts? Close to Never.

I love minis and I'm a cheap bastard. My solution has been eBay. I have a significant collection of prepaints from Mage Knight and WotC that I bought at 1/10th to 1/5th retail. How? I buy in lots and sell back duplicates I don't need

I also play Warhammer and 40k and I do the same thing. I can't paint worth shit so I buy other people's painted armies, usually at the price of an unpainted box or less.

Back when I was a penniless gamer, I used cardboard minis and plastic toys. Honestly, I don't find the more expensive stuff that meaningful.

Quote from: Razor 007;1071120If you use Miniatures, how significant of a financial commitment have you made to Miniatures, Terrain, etc.?

Turns out Miniatures and Terrain get expensive fast.

1: surprisingly very little for the amount I have. But I got in on minis when prices were more sane. And Aside from a brief foray into collecting a Warhammer skaven army prices were sane.

2: Not unless you are just buying willy-nilly from overpriced companies. The main thing is to look for minis from like Reaper and such who tend to price their stuff reasonably and with great quality. The other thing is to look for minis from board games that can be press-ganged into use.

I got really lucky and ended up with a bunch of HeroScape sets for dirt cheap and that garnered alot of minis that can be used for various projects as needed and there is the modular terrain which is great.

Better yet. Hasbro put out a D&D line for HeroScape and if you can get ahold of the starter set thats alot of minis right there. Then there are the now 4 or 5 D&D Board games, each with quite a few minis for PCs and monsters.

As for terrain. I use the heroscape tiles and DIY dungeon tiles.

Though I use minis in sessions only rarely.

Been buying minis since age 12 (recently turned 46) and I have quite a few thousand. I pretty much always use minis for tabletop play these days; online gaming I use theatre of the mind.

You can get nicely sculpted hard plastic minis for the fantasy market in bulk very cheap, eg Mantic/Kings of War http://www.manticgames.com/games/kings-of-war.html and Warlord. Mantic's undead are particularly nice, I like their orcs too.

For running D&D, I would recommend investing in some individual painted 'dungeon vermin' minis - these tend to show up a lot especially in older editions. Oozes, spiders, beetles, snakes, that sort of thing. Also wolves. A reseller of WoTC minis like Auggies or Tritex is usually best for these.

I use miniatures and Dwarven Forge, and as to cost, trust me, if you have to ask...

Both - depends on the game and whether I have appropriate minis.

One of our players has a collection in miniatures and likes painting them, so we just use his.

Personally, I prefer paper minis, as they are easier to produce, but he hates them.

We use 6mm miniatures, whatever "extras" I bought because I wanted to paint them, and a dry-erase hex/grid board on which the map is drawn. So we use a lot of both.

I have come back around to almost full TotM and find it far more enjoyable, liberating, and entertaining.

We used minis back in the 2nd ed days (I have the Dark Sun minis collection to prove it).  But after years of playing on the grid between Savage Worlds and DnD3, I decided I didn't care for grid-based tactical play.  And it really came to a head when I started running games over Roll20 and discovered just how much of a time suck building tricked out maps, tokens, and all the other bells and whistles became.  I (personally) feel RPGs are more fun when the action plays out inside your head, and got really tired of players being married to the board.

Don't get me wrong, we still use tokens and cards to represent heroes and opponents.  We just don't use a map, grid or otherwise.  All the utility, none of the fuss.

Doing minis on a budget isn't hard, but you have to make compromises.  First up, forget all the tiles and premade maps.  Just get yourself a Chessex battle mat (or something similar) and a pack of vis-a-vis markers (don't use the red ones though--they'll stain your mat).  Invest in minis for the PCs (or encourage your players to do so) and the occasional important boss monster.  Skip the big boxes of PF pawns (unless you get them at Half Price Books or a good discount) and invest in PDFs of paper minis and cardstock (Or buy PDFs of the pawn boxes!).  Or a pack of 1" counters (https://www.amazon.com/SmartDealsPro-Learning-Counting-Counters-Chips-Random/dp/B00W5MUYI4/ref=asc_df_B00W5MUYI4/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=167133777536&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=3289960400063534756&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9026950&hvtargid=pla-316283347675&psc=1) and a 1" hole punch (https://www.amazon.com/CADY-Crafts-1-Inch-punches-Circle/dp/B013NESBKK/ref=sr_1_9?s=office-products&ie=UTF8&qid=1547136782&sr=1-9&keywords=1+hole+punch) and go to work.  Yes, the production values aren't as pretty, but you'll save a fortune, keep your significant other happy, and never have to worry about where to store terrain.  Plus, it gives you almost infinite flexibility.

Tom

Quote from: thedungeondelver;1071143I use miniatures and Dwarven Forge, and as to cost, trust me, if you have to ask...

Same here, tell it how it is brother!

On a more serious note, the primary reason I use miniatures is that I am 50% deaf that is nerve damage which has impacted clarity was well as loudness. So using miniatures helps greatly with me understanding what players want to do with their characters at various points in the session.

However I can and do use theater of the mind and switch freely between the two modes. For example I may have a map of City State laid out with the player's minatures on the map to show where they are in the city. If they enter a shop or anything else that results in something social happening then I just roleplay it out.

I only lay out something if combat ensues or some other encounter where is important to see or know what the locale is like in detail.

Here is some example of my use of miniature when I go all in.

A small dungeon after it been completely explored
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The center of the City State of the Invincible Overlord on an ordinary day
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The above laid out from this portion of my CSIO map

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A riot breaks out after the Archbishop called for rebellion against the Invincible Overlord
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The aftermath
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Cool.

I go in and out of miniatures, theater of the mind, and counters.

My initial reaction to D&D was that it wasn't a miniatures game, so I passed on it and bough Tractics instead, despite "miniatures wargame" being on the cover.

Then I saw it played, and then my parents got me some fantasy minis for Christmas. I came to have a large enough collection that between miniatures and books, I was lugging a 40-50 pound back pack 1 mile to the bus stop and then two buses, a subway, and a several block walk to MIT for gaming. It was a relief when my parents started letting me take the car.

In college, I used some minis and some theater of the mind. When we started playing Champions, theater of the mind wasn't going to cut it, but minis were sort of out, so we used counters (players would decorate their own 1/2" counter - I still have these). I then started using counters for my Cold Iron play, at least for monsters, during this time, I took several colors of counters a numbered each set 1-10, 1-20, and one set 1-50. That made it easy to distinguish monster types in mixed battles and keep track of which creature was where.

Post college counters mostly dropped out so either miniatures or theater of the mind.

In the 2000s, with Arcana Unearthed/Evolved (D&D 3.x base), I used some miniatures but also heavily invested in counters (making my own when needed).

Post that period, the primary face to face play was Burning Wheel which is theater of the mind.

And since getting married my play has all been play by post (so far mostly theater of the mind) and Roll20 (combination of theater of the mind and using the grid - last night we had a major RuneQuest battle played theater of the mind).

Frank

Quote from: Razor 007;1071120If you use Miniatures, how significant of a financial commitment have you made to Miniatures, Terrain, etc.?

Over my entire life, I bet I have bought $1000 of miniature monsters and adventurers because I think they're super cool, but have found that I rarely if ever use them. Someday, I keep telling myself. Someday.

I use TotM, but often players really, really want a battlemat and minis, which is fine as long as they supply them and draw out everything on the battlemat from my paper maps.

Now if I had players that insisted that I supply any of the physical supplies necessary to accommodate minis play, well they can go find a new DM. I'm sorry but the DM spending minutes/hours with wet erase markers, dungeon tiles, dwarven forge, whatever is usually just a giant waste of time that could be used actually playing the game.

My biggest issue is that, when the minis come out, I play like a mini wargamer. This is particularly problematic if I'm DMing, as I tend to be a pretty cutthroat wargamer.

You can use Miniatures without a Grid or Map.  I like to use them to illustrate positioning, and distance in general.

2 Wolves are attacking Billy.  A Dire Wolf is circling Bob, and is in between Billy and Bob at the moment, etc.

Quote from: Chainsaw;1071163Over my entire life, I bet I have bought $1000 of miniature monsters and adventurers because I think they're super cool, but have found that I rarely if ever use them. Someday, I keep telling myself. Someday.

Same.  I love using them, but don't have time to paint them, or desire to haul them around to games.

I will say that minis and teaching kids how to play go really well together.  The visual aspect helps them put it all together.

Quote from: Razor 007;1071120Do you use Miniatures, or do you use TotM?

No minis. Never.

I ran D&D 4th mostly as TotM, which should tell you which way I tend to favor. :)

I've generally terrible with any kind of tiny crafting (e.g. painting miniatures).  I've also run a lot of games without a convenient table.  So I tend to run any game such that miniatures are not necessary--even if I need to change the rules some to make that work.

That said, I'll use Lego miniatures, cardboard minis, tokens, etc. from time to time, when it helps with understanding.  I don't always use them according to the rules of the game.  I might simply have the players use them to show rough, relative positioning.  For example, in our 3E days, we were generally sticklers for people being consistent about what was in their hands when the trouble landed.  So whatever your Lego figure had in its hands, was what the character had.  I've also handled that exact same requirement (in a heavily house-ruled, mostly Hero System game) where an item was on an index card, and were put on a particular place on the character sheet.  We didn't exactly care about positioning, but we did care about people swapping equipment all the time.  Now that doesn't bother us.  So we tend to leave the Lego figures in the box.  

More often, but still rare, the battle is just complex enough to need that rough understanding, but not necessary to play out according to the strict rules for movement.  Plop the miniatures down on the table to show generally how things stand.  If the player "runs over there", move the mini.  Otherwise, leave them in place.  That kind of thing.

Very rarely do I make something specific JUST for an RPG - I'll make shit for other miniatures games, and if it's appropriate for other usage then it gets drafted.  If it's not appropriate, it'll probably get drafted anyway.  Many a cleric has been represented by a space marine.

I'm a big fan of a gridded vinyl play mat so I can draw out the battlefield and write profanities and then wipe it off when we're done.

For Dnd 5e, minis, well, when there's a combat anyway.

For everything else, less so.

I almost always use miniatures and hand drawn terrain.
I don't even know what TotM means?

Quote from: DocJones;1071240I almost always use miniatures and hand drawn terrain.
I don't even know what TotM means?

Theater of the Mind.

Quote from: Razor 007;1071241Theater of the Mind.

Interesting.  I've been playing with miniatures since the 1960's, if you count the plastic army guy sets, cowboy and indian sets, knights, and dinosaurs I had.
But at that age 5 or 6, the rules of play (if any) were the theater of the mind.  ;-)

I really don't want to know how much I've spent on minis over the years, I have bought hundreds, probably in the low thousands of minis.


I like using minis, and even if not using them for tactical combat they are still useful for showing party order, or who is close together when searching an area etc.

I also enjoy painting them so an extra side hobby.

Not a fan of minis, though I appreciate the artistry that goes into them. :)

Quote from: Thornhammer;1071195I'm a big fan of a gridded vinyl play mat so I can draw out the battlefield and write profanities and then wipe it off when we're done.

Same here. The profanity element is extremely important for our games.:-)

We tend to use minis.  At a minimum, battle mats and counters representing characters.

I easily dumped a couple grand on D&D minis towards the end of the run, and bought some of the Pathfinder minis early on, and probably have 2-3 thousand minis, if not more.

Most of the D&D Minis that I've got were cheap, due to people dumping their collections in bulk lots, so I've got pretty decent representation of at least 75% of the Monster Manuals from 3E/3.5.

That said, we tend to use minis, mainly because we have them.  We've certainly gamed enough times using TotM, and have never felt that any system we've gamed with has required battle mats and minis/counters.  We just like minis.  My gamer friends and I all have a pretty decent collection of Reaper minis, and I've bought a few Privateer minis that fit our games as well.

Quote from: Thornhammer;1071195I'm a big fan of a gridded vinyl play mat so I can draw out the battlefield and write profanities and then wipe it off when we're done.

Yeah same here.
I have a 25+ years old large Chessex Vinyl square gridded Battlemat I've been using. It's pretty stained over the years with old ink, but perfectly serviceable.

Quote from: soltakss;1071148One of our players has a collection in miniatures and likes painting them, so we just use his.

Personally, I prefer paper minis, as they are easier to produce, but he hates them.

Maybee they just haven't seen any good flats yet? The ones from Onemonk are really good for example and they even did some 3d and semi-3d stuff.

I use (and have almost always used) flat TFT-style cardboard counters. Very cheap, easily made (especially these days. with the Internet, image editors, and printers), and they don't have the physical issues minis have with storage, body piles, positions on horseback, etc.

GURPS and TFT aren't satisfying/interesting to me to run combats without showing the location and where people and things are - that's where much of the gameplay, tactics, and cause & effect (and for me, immersion and enjoyment) are!

Quote from: Omega;1071388Maybee they just haven't seen any good flats yet? The ones from Onemonk are really good for example and they even did some 3d and semi-3d stuff.

Cardboard counters are functional, and are a very good substitute for figures from a practical view point, but it isn't an issue of "good or bad flats". There is just no way that they can compare to actual 3-D figures for those who like figures for the visual and tactile feel that they offer. Some of the true diehards won't even accept plastic as a figure material.

I'm not above using cardboard figures, but strongly prefer real figures when they are available. There are many advantages to using cardboard, cost, weight, availability, figures are rather limited beyond fantasy settings.


An exception is paper models. There are some excellent paper models that can be quite satisfying for buildings, vehicles, large monsters etc.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1071414Cardboard counters are functional, and are a very good substitute for figures from a practical view point, but it isn't an issue of "good or bad flats". There is just no way that they can compare to actual 3-D figures for those who like figures for the visual and tactile feel that they offer. Some of the true diehards won't even accept plastic as a figure material.

I'm not above using cardboard figures, but strongly prefer real figures when they are available. There are many advantages to using cardboard, cost, weight, availability, figures are rather limited beyond fantasy settings.


An exception is paper models. There are some excellent paper models that can be quite satisfying for buildings, vehicles, large monsters etc.

Those diehards are welcome to buy me some new miniatures, if plastic bothers them so much.

I've used minis ever since I started playing back in the '70s.
I am an avid mini painter and I also craft terrain, set pieces and creatures.
Here is an example of a purple worm I made;
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Quote from: Razor 007;1071457Those diehards are welcome to buy me some new miniatures, if plastic bothers them so much.

In fairness, most that I've run across who feel that strongly about it do step up and provide for their group.

I have a preference for minis, but am practical enough to accept cardboard. They do the job, require less logistics and are far more economical. As far as I'm concerned the level of detail on modern plastic figures is indistinguishable from metal until you pick them up. Plastic has opened up options for figures that were economically and in some cases technologically unfeasible in metal.

Only pointed out that attitude to highlight that it isn't a lack of seeing good cardboard minis that keeps them from using cardboard.

Quote from: Son of Warvan;1071466I've used minis ever since I started playing back in the '70s.
I am an avid mini painter and I also craft terrain, set pieces and creatures.
Here is an example of a purple worm I made;
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Neat worm, what do you make figures from, modelling clay, Milliput?

Quote from: Son of Warvan;1071466I've used minis ever since I started playing back in the '70s.
I am an avid mini painter and I also craft terrain, set pieces and creatures.
Here is an example of a purple worm I made;

Very good.

Is it me, or does the Purple Worm look like the Penisaur from Flesh Gordon?

Quote from: Toadmaster;1071500Neat worm, what do you make figures from, modelling clay, Milliput?

Thank you. It is made from cardboard, paper towels, and a lot of hot glue. The jaws are formed from Crayola clay and the teeth from toothpicks, the base is sand and pebbles.

Quote from: Son of Warvan;1071573Thank you. It is made from cardboard, paper towels, and a lot of hot glue. The jaws are formed from Crayola clay and the teeth from toothpicks, the base is sand and pebbles.

Wow, serious old school, or perhaps more appropriately pre-school. :D

It looks great and very creative use of simple products.

Thanks again.
But, credit where credit is due, the idea came from a Youtuber who goes by the name DM Scotty. His channel is https://www.youtube.com/user/theDMsCraft.
He does a lot of these type projects and his work is quite impressive. This is my take on his own purple worm project.
Discovering his site really influenced me and got me into the crafting hobby.

No minis. I keep track of PC/NPC locations behind the screen. Unless a character is in a position to have a constant tactical overview of the situation, I don't believe it makes sense for them to have a minis-like view. Combat is messy and confusing.

Instead of minis we use cheap plastic gaming pawns in various colors. I'll often quickly sketch a rough floorplan with no grid. All just to show relative positions.

Quote from: TheHistorian;1072032No minis. I keep track of PC/NPC locations behind the screen. Unless a character is in a position to have a constant tactical overview of the situation, I don't believe it makes sense for them to have a minis-like view. Combat is messy and confusing.

I agree with this, but I'm not sure how I would pull that off.

Quote from: Son of Warvan;1071466I've used minis ever since I started playing back in the '70s.
I am an avid mini painter and I also craft terrain, set pieces and creatures.
Here is an example of a purple worm I made

Really awesome, man. Good stuff!

I've been using minis since AD&D 2e so their inclusion to the gaming systems of 3e and 4e were just a natural progression IMO. We did a few 3.5 sessions using TotM and it was fun but that's primarily because we were just glad to play at that point.

We actually did a 4E session at my work with TotM because all we had were sheets of lined paper and one phone with the PDFs. I had some prebuild chars ready and we gamed for a few hours. It wasn't as hard as I thought despite 4e's focus on movement and position.

Quote from: Razor 007;1071120If you use Miniatures, how significant of a financial commitment have you made to Miniatures, Terrain, etc.?

To answer this...I have no idea, anymore. I have a bunch of these storage bins from Walmart (https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sterilite-3-Drawer-Cart-Black-Available-in-a-Case-of-Two-or-Single-Unit/479718793?athcpid=479718793&athpgid=athenaItemPage&athcgid=null&athznid=PWVUB&athieid=v0&athstid=CS020&athguid=261a02fb-e9d-1686c76e17bee8&athena=true), as well as the shorter/thinner ones.

I've got a dozen of the bigger ones filled with most of my Dwarven Forge collection. We didn't have enough space to fit everything from the dungeon Kickstarter, and there's a castle my daughter keeps in her room because she loves playing with it.

We use the thinner ones mostly for minis, but some contain the doors and dungeon dressing. We have a couple water cavern sets that fit within them, as well, which is nice because we didn't want to chip the paint on the flat water pieces.

Now we do have another dozen of the larger bins, but those are for the Huge minis we get. Most of it is D&D prepaints, but we also use them for Reaper minis. We're more careful with them since we paint them, so they don't cram them in like we do the prepaints.

Most of the rest of the minis fills some 30+ of the thinner drawers. We ran out of space so a bunch of the newer D&D prepaints are heaped into a couple of cardboard boxes.

We also have the Reaper version of Tiamat, the all of the gargantuan D&D dragons, the red colossal, the Kraken thing with the boat, a box of Reaper stuff we haven't gotten around to, and we backed Mythic Pantheon, the Conan boardgame, and Rising Sun purely for minis.

And here are some pics:

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Drawers are missing because of our daughter. They're currently stacked around our gaming table, where she has skillfully drawn a most certainly comprehensible dungeon map.

To answer the thread title: it depends. With our online games we don't, but with our kids we often do because they like looking at/playing with them. Even playing with them for not RPG-purposes.

No minis, but I tend to draw out big combats and mark locations with dice if necessary.

Quote from: 3rik;1072036I agree with this, but I'm not sure how I would pull that off.

Piece of paper and a pencil behind the screen. If a character temporarily or for the duration of the combat has the ability to see the entire area, then I show it to that player.

Obviously it depends on the scale of the combat. A party vs. three creatures? You can just describe it. Large scale (see Battle of the Bastards in GoT for example of chaos)? No way anyone is keeping track of who's where. You just fight whoever ends up near you.

And if the scene has insufficient illumination, then it gets really interesting.

I just bought more miniatures.  Today's fix feels good, too.

I've never ever used minis.

Over time I've come to the view that minis and esp gridded maps are more hindrance than help. They're cool and all, but Totm is my preference. Quick, flexible, zero cost. Yes it doesnt suit highly tactical games, but if a game needs that level of precision, it's probably not my kind of rpg. On the other hand, I love a good boardgame.

Quote from: Psikerlord;1073450Over time I've come to the view that minis and esp gridded maps are more hindrance than help. They're cool and all, but Totm is my preference. Quick, flexible, zero cost. Yes it doesnt suit highly tactical games, but if a game needs that level of precision, it's probably not my kind of rpg. On the other hand, I love a good boardgame.

I don't want to make the game be all about granular levels of detail.  I am more concerned with the general positioning of PCs, NPCs, and Monsters.  If an Owlbear ambushes the party from behind; when I set a mini on the table, everyone can clearly see that he is right behind Dave's character.  Poor Dave.....

Quote from: Razor 007;1073452I don't want to make the game be all about granular levels of detail.  I am more concerned with the general positioning of PCs, NPCs, and Monsters.  If an Owlbear ambushes the party from behind; when I set a mini on the table, everyone can clearly see that he is right behind Dave's character.  Poor Dave.....

This. My players can empathize more with each other when they can see placements. And they have "their" character's mini.

It also prevents rehash of "who is where and who can I reach to help". Not everyone has great memories and having the visual reminder really helps.

And I like painting minis. And 6mm are pretty cheap.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1073442I've never ever used minis.

Wow! I am surprised.

I thought you were Old School when Old School was just a babe in arms. Maybe Really Old School was before miniatures became popular.

Quote from: soltakss;1073953Wow! I am surprised.

I thought you were Old School when Old School was just a babe in arms. Maybe Really Old School was before miniatures became popular.

I am beginning to think that the old school era was OD&D through 1st Edition AD&D.

And people used Dice, Miniatures, and Terrain back then.....

Quote from: Razor 007;1074046I am beginning to think that the old school era was OD&D through 1st Edition AD&D.

And people used Dice, Miniatures, and Terrain back then.....

Personally I didn't use minis for 1e AD&D in The Old Days. Switched to minis only with 3e in 2000.

Quote from: S'mon;1074064Personally I didn't use minis for 1e AD&D in The Old Days. Switched to minis only with 3e in 2000.

Yeah I didn't use miniatures with 1E back in the 1990's.  Nobody I knew wanted to spend the money, or really didn't have it anyway.

I use miniatures and maps. My players in both games that I run actually get really confused when I attempt to use theater of the mind.

Still buying miniatures.  You always want more.....

Quote from: Razor 007;1074071Yeah I didn't use miniatures with 1E back in the 1990's.  Nobody I knew wanted to spend the money, or really didn't have it anyway.

Hmm, my experience with gaming back in the 70s was minis were definitely popular in my gaming.

My parents got me some minis for Christmas of '77.

When I started gaming at MIT, minis were a big thing. My first gaming experience was running a game at their summer con where I ended up with 16 payers, including some regulars from the MIT D&D gaming. They used dominoes to lay out dungeon walls. The game was a blast. Later I also did some gaming with Glen Blacow who also used minis. So at least in the MIT gaming sphere, minis were regularly used.

On the other hand, these days, I run my OD&D play by post theater of the mind...

Frank