It is, of course, well established that roleplaying games as we know them today grew out of the hobby of miniatures wargaming. I suspect that's why 25mm miniature figures continued to be made and sold for use with RPGs, even though, in my personal experience, very few people had much use for them at the table. That was certainly the case for me. Despite this, lots of games continued to recommend the use of miniature figures as an aid to play, including some rather unexpected ones, like Call of Cthulhu.
Call of Cthulhu quickly became one of my favorite roleplaying games and I acquired all of the support products for it that I could both find and afford – like the miniatures sold by Grenadier Models. After losing the AD&D license in 1982, Grenadier tried to maintain its presence in the RPG world by picking up licenses to produce figures for other popular roleplaying games, like Traveller and Call of Cthulhu. They also tried their hand at publishing adventures for both games, with very mixed results.
I owned the two boxed sets of Call of Cthulhu miniatures, the first of which was dedicated to adventurers (though the box says "adventures," which I assume was an error). Here's the cover, showing Indiana Jones, Al Capone, and Professor Plum preparing to burst into the room behind a closed door.
I have a few miniatures, none painted (though I would like to try my hand at painting some sometime). I don't use them much, except on occasion to establish where the players are in cases where line of sight becomes important. The younger people I sometimes play with use them a lot more, which I put down to 3e D&D being their intro to RPGs. I should also note that I'm quite likely to grab bottlecaps, coins, binder clips, etc. rather than minis for establishing "who's where."
ReplyDeleteFor our D&D (5e) sessions, we *always* use miniatures. We maneuver them on (parts of) a hand-drawn map (on a battlemat) by the DM as we progress through the dungeon/area. Especially during combat, where things like line-of-sight and distance/range/area-of-effect-spells matter a lot: are you close enough to that goblin to hit them with a 30-foot range weapon/spell ? If not, can you move close enough to them on your turn to get intro range (with the 'speed'/movement that you have) ? One person in our group has a lot of mini's, and he always brings them to the sessions (although on occasion, we had to do with other tokens like chess pieces, which worked equally well).
ReplyDeleteAnother (perhaps unrelated) reason to have a lot of mini's is because you just like to assemble and paint them as a thing-in-itself, without the intent of ever using them in any kind of game. But that's not what you were talking about.
Never used them as a teen in the 80s, but use them extensively now. They actually expedite/facilitate play by serving as irrefutable evidence of character position during combat. Without minis, we were always (re)explaining where we stood and what we would do. Minis mitigate that and explain for you. They also encourage the DM to draw the map "as you go" which helps everyone visualize the setting and avoid constant (re)explanations of room dimensions, exits, features, etc. They really help move the game along. - Always the Ranger
ReplyDeleteI still have dozens of miniatures that I painted, but used only very rarely. The younger brother of a friend had hundreds, and at some point I believe we did some wargaming with them. We also had them on the table for a few D&D sessions, but we didn't use them very often or very effectively.
ReplyDeleteAt one point I tried to create a model castle/dungeon using cardboard. I got a good bit of it done, but it didn't look as good as I wanted and I never used it in play. It was fun to do at the time, though.
I have thousands of miniatures and use them in almost every session that involves combat. For the first 4 years or so of gaming I had no miniatures. When we weren't using TotM we'd use chits (taken from Melee, Wizard, and various adventures). I got into miniatures because a colleague was getting married and wanted to get rid of his. I bought the whole lot - a couple hundred minis, I estimate - for $20. It took me a couple more years to get into painting them. Since then I've bought many more.
ReplyDeleteHaving the right figure for a PC or important foe adds to the game IMO. Having any sort of placeholder avoids "but I wasn't standing there" sorts of arguments, but having visually interesting placeholders is a big plus.
Minis have been part of my hobby experience since before my first roleplaying experience. I played my first historical wargame using a loaner army from an older friend, and my first D&D game about six months afterward. The two go together naturally for me, and a significant number of my characters over the years have been inspired by a sculpt I particularly liked and wanted an excuse to buy - and when that wasn't the case, I'd frequently convert a figure to fit my mental image of my latest PC. Even in RPGs where we aren't using minis there's usually a mini-me sitting on the table to remind the table what I "really" look like in the game.
ReplyDeleteI grok that not everyone's into them, but I'm most comfortable around other miniatures enthusiasts regardless of their other gaming interests - and even if they don't game at all and simply like collecting figures for their own merits. Minis don't need a "use" beyond existing any more than a oil painting does. Sculpting and painting and modifying them is an art form. It just happens to be a very practical art form for people who use them in games.
"Indiana Jones, Al Capone, and Professor Plum" exactly what our party would be playing CoC as a teenager in the early 90s. The only issue is we were flush with BARs, Tommy guns, and sawed of shotguns.
ReplyDeleteMy brother and I collected miniatures for many years, but I rarely used them except to show a party's marching order and occasionally to aid with combat on a battlemat. And we never bought them because we were "supposed" to. We just enjoyed them as works of art that could be useful. I always wanted to amass armies I could use in miniature wargaming, but the prohibitive cost in money and the time required to paint them was an obstacle I couldn't overcome.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I still have both of those Call of Cthulhu boxed sets. Still unpainted and in mint condition. I think I bought them just because I admired the idea of them and their execution. I never intended to run Call of Cthulhu as a tactical skirmish game.
ReplyDeleteI'm very much in favor of miniatures. I actually rejected D&D when I first saw it, choosing Tractics instead because D&D didn't really look like a miniatures game despite mentioning miniatures on the cover. Once I understood the game after my friend got Holmes for his birthday, I bought into it whole hog, and pretty quickly started acquiring miniatures. I did go through some phases of using counters instead, and now that I game online, tokens are the way of life, but the fundamental idea of a representative token or miniature is important to me, and mostly the games I enjoy most are ones where you can set out a battle on a grid (Burning Wheel being one exception). I also enjoyed the painting hobby, though my time for that dropped off after graduating from college. While running Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, I got heavy into the D&D collectible miniatures, trying to collect a good set of monster and PC miniatures, but I also made use of counters (buying several Fiery Dragon Counter Collections).
ReplyDeleteI have, quite literally, thousands of miniatures. However, that is for tabletop wargaming, rather than for RPGs.
ReplyDeleteBack in the early '80s when I was actively playing RPGs we did use miniatures to help keep track of where everyone was in combat. I had a fair-sized collection back then, but got rid of most of them a few years ago.
It wasn't a "common feeling" then, for my group anyway. There were no miniatures (other than metal or plastic toy soldier figurines) to be found in our area, and even if there were, none of us could shell out for them. The books (and later, the modules ) were expensive enough. None of us were wargamers when we started playing OD&D (somebody's older brother brought it home from college). Only 3 years later (80/81ish) with some gaming stores popping up did I see minis and then some other groups at the after-school and library clubs use them. None of my later groups used them either. I dont think any of us ever gave minis much thought, really. Everytime I've played in or run a game with minis or counters or pawns or standees over the last 30 years or so it's turned into "Analysis Paralysis:The Board Game" which drives me nuts. I think some of them look great and I even have some 3.0 era WOTC plastics, but I've always found them an oddity for RPGs (wargames are something else entirely). Maybe we 15 or so gamers that were playing back from 77 through 84 were the oddity.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason it posted as anonymous- this was me. I knew the recent posting "fix" would mess things up ;)
DeleteI never really got into miniatures. But my brother was/is crazy about them. He even ran a small business making them for a while called Raven's Forge, but he has let it lapse I think.
ReplyDeleteNo kidding, your brother was the guy behind Raven's Forge? Is he okay? I remember when the news about them shutting down went around in 2007 it was supposed to be due to a workplace injury.
DeleteAnyway, wish him well. I remember stocking the whole Battle Cattle range back in the day, they sold pretty well to our Battletech crowd. They seemed to enjoy the spoof.
Looking at the Lost Minis wiki, Raven's Forge apparently had the rights to the TOON minis line too but didn't release them before shutting down. If you think of it, can you ask him if he's still sitting on them somewhere? I know someone who might be interested in getting them into production again.
Raven’s Forge also kept some of the lines from TAG Industries in production, notably their Egyptian and Norse figures (which were excellent)! If your brother isn’t planning to continue with RF, Ernst Wilhelm of www.dndlead.com has been buying older lines to bring them back into production, and might be interested in the molds and rights.
DeleteAllan.
For D&D I’ve always found them useful. So many things require fairly exacting measurements that it just works better to have them and a grid-based map. For other games (CoC, Vampire, FATE) I’ve never once used them and never felt the need to.
ReplyDeleteI just read the introduction to Hero Quest 1st ed. which probably is the poster child for the most narrative free form style of game, and even there Greg suggests you optionally might want to use minis. It's pervasive all over the hobby!
ReplyDeleteFor big combats, we always get some models onto the tabletop. The party may be carefully chosen miniatures, beautifully painted, while the monsters tend to be dice (the d4s over here are the blink dogs, the green d8 is their handler, etc..).
ReplyDeleteFor a party of 12, some kind of visualisation is essential.
I have hundreds of miniatures, and even had quite a few before I bought into the first 3 Reaper Bones kickstarters. I think it’s interesting that my miniatures collecting and my D&D started independently of each other, though I’m sure one had an influence on the other.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started D&D, we didn’t use miniatures. We didn’t use them when we just had a couple random books that we didn’t know what to make of, and I didn’t use them when I taught myself D&D via the Red Box. Or when I made my younger cousin play with me as I got to the other Mentzer boxes.
Then I saw pewter miniatures for sale when I would go into Mr Paperback to buy books. The minis looked like the character types from all the fantasy novels I read (especially wizards). I bought them when I could, and displayed them on shelves.
Then, during my D&D heyday playing with a group of people and not just my cousin, we used all types of roleplaying aids: dry erase mats, miniatures, and even some homemade terrain at times. My two collections/hobbies were able to merge. This is how we play to this day. I’ve bought terrain maps within the last couple weeks, and I just bought some more minis a few minutes ago. Did you know WizKids makes painted minis of some of the D&D Cartoon characters?
Miniatures have been a cherished part of my gaming since the beginning of my play in 1977, and I still love to paint and use them at the table. Grenadier was across the bridge in Philly, and supported locals conventions as a vendor, and by running games in their Visual Dungeon. My first exposure to EPT was also through miniatures, as Barker took his large Temple of Vimhula model on tour in the early 1980s (I preserved the handout at https://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/temp/temple_of_vimuhla.pdf for the curious).
ReplyDeleteThat said, most of my gaming these days (that isn’t at conventions) is online, so we the minis don’t get as much use as I’d prefer….
Allan.
Sigh: the Grenadier/Tekumel comment was me.
ReplyDeleteAllan.