Using Miniatures - GM Toolbox
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- Опубліковано 11 вер 2024
- Here's some reasons and ways to use minis and mats in your TTRPG. As with any Game Master tool, there's times when they enhance the game, and times when 'Theater of the Mind' is more appropriate.
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Peter Cushing being a miniatures painter and wargamer (He apparently played Little Wars, the ruleset made by H.G. Wells!) was what I needed to make my day today. Thanks Seth!
There are some downright dapper photos of the man himself at 0:58!
@@shaddonon Absolutely smashing if I say so myself
Holy moley! Good catch! Grand Moff Tarkin himself painting up shelves of Napoleonic Heavy Foot, Hussars, and Curassiers!
@@dutch6857 Yeah there's a whole ad of him with his minis!
Somewhere on UA-cam here is a small documentary about his "toy soldiers". He made many of them himself out of wadded paper! You can also find H.G. Wells' "Floor Wars" out there on the net.
People seems to miss out that we are using theater of the mind, aka imagination, while using miniatures. Best of both worlds!
Yeah. I use minis because I have trouble remembering the basic layout of a room and the characters when keeping track of the numbers and others stuff during combat. That, and they look cool AF.
Minis are also useful in serving as creative "prompts" for character creation when helping new players create characters for themselves. Simply bring out some miniatures and the let the player choose which one is most interesting to them. "Ok, the Elf archer. Are you interested in being a quick, dexterous fighter that can shoot multiple times in a turn, a sneaky rogue archer that does deadly sniping from the shadows, or a ranger stalking through the brush?" "Ah, the old bearded man with the robe and a staff. Do you want to be clever wizard, a sinister warlock, or a shape-shifting druid?" "The tall lady in the heavy plate armor with a mace and shield? She'll make for a strong Fighter, but if you want to do something with more of an emphasis on spellcasting she can also be a Cleric. Can't decide between those two classes? Perhaps you can be a Paladin and have the best of both worlds."
It's also so annoying that people straight up be acting like everyone has a "minds eye".
I literally get so bored or disconnected during radio shows or drawn out exposition, I can't picture anything.
I use either as needed to suit what I need to show, both have a best place for use.
@@Seth9809 Interesting. I'm the opposite. I get pulled from the immersion when using miniatures. It all has to be theater of the mind for me or I feel like I'm playing an RTS instead of an RPG.
Unless its a theatre of the mind; then it's pretentious.
I can't tell you how gleeful the thought of Grand Moff Tarkin's personal quarters being set up for mini painting makes me.
Beeing a cheapo I recently just print circles with portraits of the creatures, glue them onto a bit of cardboard and have flat tokens to move around the battlefield. They are also quite comfortable to transport and sort into little plastic bags. Lots of "tokens", little space. And if they get damaged or smudged on, it is hella easy to replace them.
I have done trhat but I use foam sheets instead of cardboard and I have a inch hole punch for after I glue them.
Most of the minis I use in my games are basically just straight out of the Pathfinder monster-box set of cardboard pawns. I don't even play Pathfinder, but that's like 90% of the D&D Monster Manual in there and I got it for under sixty bucks.
Honestly I just use token maker then buy the furniture foam circles for hardwood floors. They come in many sizes and have a sticky back.
I did the same, but used some thin metal washers, so that I could attach stuff using earth magnets. Unfortunately the weight was not manageable.
I'm also a cheapo and I love this idea.
As a wargammer as well, it is very strange to me how little crossover between dnd and miniature painting hobbies there is. I feel they are so compomentarly hobbies. Minis do so much heavy lifting in terms of description for me as a GM that it helps me focus on what really matters. Cool tellings of oozing pus from the monsters wounds!
Even stranger thinking about how lax some wargamers can be with allowing proxy models and then turning around and finding out that somehow there are roleplayers out that that have never heard of the blessed "counts-as" rule.
6:00 This reminds me of a quote about writing, that your story doesn't have to be consistent with the real world, it has to internally consistent.
I definitely think the right balance between minis and Theatre of the Mind is ideal. I've oscillated over the years between the two, but both are important.
I think most actual battlefield strategy requires a good sense of the placement and location, where miniatures help a lot. Especially if there a multiple goals in an encounter
It also depends a bit on the game. A game like Warhammer fantasy roleplaying really requires miniatures and preferably a nice printed background or 3D tiles. In something like Vampire or Amber you don't really need it at all. The setting and play style matters as well, you certainly need it more for a dungeon run then for court intrigues.
Even the GM and players matters, certain players tend to be a bit cheaty if they haven't a placed mini while others do fine without them.
I do think visual aides help roleplaying, but a picture (or customized mini) of an important NPC can be just as important as miniatures and background. At least my players tend to get more attached to BPC they know how they look more then a vague description.
It is however important that the minis help the gameplay instead of taking away time from it. There is nothing more boring then waiting 20 minutes for the DM putting a room together with tiles while the players sit and wait. Either prepare what you need from the start, be super quick or just skip it instead of taking up valuable time messing with stuff.
Minis done right is a great tool for any DM, done wrong it is just a waste of everyone's time.
Metal Minis tipp the scale in my opinion, but it's All Theatre of the Mind!
I love the pageantry of the gears aka role playing in the gameplay and that is better with mini. THere nothing that says they can not use mini in the theatre of the mind.
I love miniatures. Incredibly useful for combat. Particularly when you are playing crunchy games like Warhammer RPG. One odd thing I have noticed though, the more time and effort I put into painting a PC, the more likely they are to die the next session.
The words, "Now that I've painted it, my character is probably going to die this session," are very (and painfully) familiar to me.
@@SSkorkowsky This would make a great video-- even if just a short one. Just saying.
Ah, the curse of the fresh painted mini, the bane of wargamers everywhere!
I used to draw my characters when I got to play, if I ever finished the drawing the character died. The only exception is one that I delayed finishing because I wanted the character to live. He died before I finished it.
A bonus ideas i've picked up for mini uses: old card game art (like MtG cards) plus a button maker. Found an old youtube video on this one; basically you get some of those old beat up MtG cards you find in large boxes at card game shops (usually 10 for a $1), a button maker, and some circular wooden chip pieces. pop out the art from the cards with the button maker, then glue them to the wooden chips.
I just got an idea from the robot devil. It seems like a good idea. Should I be worried? I feel like I should be worried.
@@gmradio2436 this idea is how you end up popping a hole through a very expensive black lotus card.
@@ShiftyMcGoggles Why would I use a Black Lotus? Print off the art and use that.
@@gmradio2436 You might not, but someone did. I've seen the results.
@@gmradio2436 It's probably the reason why robodevil is sharing this useful tidbit of information.
Those little pizza savers (the white tripod things) are perfect for elevation marking.
We use those. We also use, for status markers, those safety seal rings from various drink containers. We have somewhere around 7-10 different colors of them.
I'd never considered the plastic rings from drink containers. Brilliant.
I'm always up for quick, cheepass solutions. Many thanks for the tip,
@@SSkorkowsky You can also find all manner of plastic rings hoops in most big craft stores - I think they're intended to be worked into cheap earrings or something, but they also make decent status markers and the bigger ones can be convenient for marking lingering spell effects, burning napalm, rifts in the fabric of space-time, and similar "crap on the map" AoE stuff.
@@MonkeyJedi99 I do something similar. My daughter got a big pack of different coloured pipe-cleaners when she was young and never used them. I cut a bunch of small sections and made rings that would fit around a minis neck. Blue is blessed, green is poisoned, black is stunned, etc., etc.
As for removing squares and having "squishy" movement, what some games do is have "zones" that you can move to, typically one zone per turn or two if you dash. What the zones usually represent is things like a wall for cover, an empty space, the first room of a house and so on.
Zones are great, basically eliminating the multiple small squares or hexes for single large ones. Saves repeated counting. I think Seth had difficulty coming to terms with them in his first experience in the Conan RPG, however, since the core rules didn't provide visualization of how it worked. Although it sounds like he was already pretty much using a zone-style system ad hoc. Perhaps he fingered it out, later, with a different rules set that uses it.
Zone Mechanics are like Hit Points. They can mean completely different things in different games. In some systems, Hit Points can mean stamina/luck that quickly replenish. In other games, they mean physical injury that takes a long time to recover. Some games have good Zone rules and they work well for that type of game. Other systems have either bad Zone rules, or simply Zone rules that aren't an appropriate fit for whatever type of game it is. Some games work better with Zones, while others work better with Distance/Range. The 2D20 Zone Mechanics didn't work for us with Conan or Achtung! Cthulhu because those specific mechanics try very hard to be both loosely and strictly defined, sometimes in ways that contradict each other.
My approach is a lot like my approach to minis. When it comes to the "Minis vs Theater of the Mind" debate, I use minis, but I'll also use Theater of the Mind when it's more appropriate. So with "Distance/Range versus Zones" I prefer Distance/Range, but will use zones when it's more appropriate.
I'm not sure I still understand the whole "zones" thing whereas distance/range is extremely simple to understand (for me). Distance/range also gives me a lot more consistent experience when that 50 meter range is always 50 meters not 5 to 5000 depending on the zones. Even if you don't use squares as a game master you definitely have an idea how large that room is that you drew so when a player says they want to run 40 units of measurement you have a pretty good idea where they can get.
Zones can get goofy when they start trying to combine Movement and Attack Ranges. Like, "Debris covering the floor makes it difficult to cross, so that's a Zone Boundary," but then acts like the condition of the floor should affect my rifle's ability to hit that dude standing on the far side. Add in that sometimes cover means "cover" which has special rules for firing at the badguy behind cover. But cover could also mean it's a Zone Boundary, which has entirely different rules for both accuracy and movement. No clarification is ever given as to when it's cover or a Zone Boundary.
My personal favorite version of Zones is the weapon ranges from Kult. Being Powered by the Apocalypse, the game has no movement speed or even Combat Rounds. But weapon ranges are listed as Arm/Room/Field/Horizon. It's nebulous enough to allow a lot of GM interpretation, but also gives a mental image of how far that is.
I kind of think zones are better than distances and range if you are not playing a war game. It cuts out the useless talk about how to do the thing and just gets to players declaring how to do the thing, ie, "I want to run for cover" or "I want to flank the ghoul." The talk about running for cover Seth did is how exact distances can convolute the situation, in my mind, and the conversation would have gone quicker without the assumption that the map had a precise scale to it (kind of his point).
The movement in rpg's also tend to assume all movement is level ground with ideal situation. A character can can take 3 tight turns moving at the same distance than a straight run because your dwarf can move 25 feet always. Zones are a better way to represent rougher terrain or obstacles without convoluting the rules with a straight line bonus or something while still representing it.
Generally, the hp comparison is pretty good; people used to playing with hp hand wave the problems with games with hp has within a game (ie, I can fall 300 feet, land in a crouch and keep running because I got hp for it) but are quick to point out problems with alternative systems because they are not used to them. Complaining about ranges in zones is ridiculous as most range based systems give penalties to rifles at their optimal range so that the combat is not decided by a single sniper in a party based game where everyone else is playing melee characters. You are basically doing the same thing just not having to draw out 6 tables of empty space.
Generally, it is the whole, "is French a hard language," debate. If you grow up speaking it, other languages are harder by comparisons, but if you started speaking Chinese, it is probably unnatural sounding and strange. Harder to teach old dogs new tricks.
Love Miniatures and Mapping. Had a buddy in high school who used to paint Napoleonic miniatures. Really find miniatures work for plotting out large combats. For a big pack of enemies like wolves or goblins I used to use pennies.
I want to know where the monsters are. Way easier to visualize when its actually there in front of you.
Geezer here....
Recently scrounged a few dozen good old fashioned 1inch wooden blocks. Clearance section, less than 3 bucks. Will still use whatever is at hand, but these little devils are gold.
Gaming on.
Finding out Peter Cushing collected and painted minitures might be the final push that gets me into this hobby.
What's really cool is seeing figures I have, that you have painted in different colors. Makes me wonder if others have a different set of colors in mind when looking at the same blank mini.
My group likes minis when table space permits. We some times use them with city maps to track where players are. Two of us at the blacksmith's, paladin is at the temple, and the rogue doing rogue stuff. Helps everyone track what is happening.
LEGO minis are my preferred for RPG games as they can be easily customized to represent different characters, or loadouts. There is something quite satisfying in handing a player a new weapon to use on their mini to represent something they found. Also offers cool before and after photo opportunities showing how much the characters have gained over time. For one campaign the spellcaster ended up with handcuffs after she went insane and was carted off to an asylum by the party.
Recently exhumed my old minis from the toolbox they'd been in since the 80s. Very satisfying giving the gestalt mass individual identities again. Some date back to the late 70s! Each has or had a story. Intent is to repaint them ('00s) - but not sure how well my eyes will cope now!
get magnifying goggles - my old eyes love them
I've hit the age where I need the magnify goggles with the LED light. There's no way I could paint without them. Worth every penny.
the best recommendation I can say when it comes to assembling plastic miniatures is to use plastic glue (or some companies call it plastic cement too, I think) instead of normal super glue as it creates a stronger bond between the parts by essentially melting the plastic bits together. It also helps that it doesn't stick to your fingers like super glue so it's not the worst experience ever to clean, which is a plus in my book.
I really enjoy generic looking minis to use imagination for what it really looks like. For NPCs I would use chess pieces and for the player characters there are these game pieces from a board game called Tokaido, each a different color, I loved using. Now I have a box of Peeples. They're perfect!
Seth, I never thought about dating my minis and gosh what a simple and cool thing to do... thanks man!
We have A LOT of the same minis! 😄 We mostly use minis for combat, but there are some softer systems we use in which we don't even do that. Minis also might be used just to indicate which "zone" or room the characters are in on a map that isn't to scale with the minis. And yes, always date your painted minis.
I liked the plastic minis they did for the d@d around 3rd edition but the big dragons and other huge minis took up too much space and were annoying to move around but still appreciate how they looked just like the picture
I have all of those - still haven't used the Colossal Red Dragon yet!
I agree that theatre of the mind sounds pretentious, but it isn't a bad way to play. And minis can be fun too. What I like about minis is they add a hobby to your hobby. Painting can be a creative outlet
I DM Dark Heresy (Warhammer 40k) and back in the day, we player Warhammer fantasy rp. I love to painting and collecting them, even started to create terrain.
It enhances sessions immensly.
I have been running a Call of Cthulhu campaign for almost two years online (I live overseas and my players are in Australia) and while I would love to run it on a tabletop simulator program, I know that my players computers and Internet connection would not be able to handle it, so we do Theatre of the Mind. However, when a day comes that we do get back into being able to play on a tabletop, my friends are ready with their mini's. I think a balance is great, and no one way is superior to the other. Whatever gives you and your players the most fun...that is what gaming is all about!
Good points
I like using minis and the battle mats. I use the 5’ to 1” squares.
I like theater of the mind with minis in combat. I do the same with multiple monsters that I don’t have minis for but I like being able to drop a Kraken on the table to attack the boat they’re on.
A lot of good points in this video! We use mini's primarily for marching order, facing and distance between characters and opponents/NPCs. The players will ask "is that a zombie" and the DM will not say anything until close contact is made: "looks like it but now you realize it's a juju zombie!" Same with mimics. We use theater of the mind to envision the whole scene, or things we see in the distance, and extra detail the DM describes.
I don't generally like using miniatures for RPGs because some players tend to want to make the game into a tactical wargame when they're used. But I really appreciate the well thought out counter arguments. Great food for thought.
It's true that for a lot of games breaking out the minis and grid map every time a scuffle breaks out It's just an extra step you don't need, but I'm constantly astounded by how many people don't realize just how deeply D&D's wargame roots go while making absolutely no effort to move to a system that supports noncombat play outside of a handful of skill rolls.
I used to use Lego Minifigures for pcs and important npcs, but poker chips in different colors numbered 1-X to represent bad guys. The giant Lovecraftian horrors were made of at least 10 chips side by side to make up how big their feet were.
Miniatures are a perfect enhancement to theater of the mind. Not necessary only preferred as long as it does not slow the game down!
Figured out a fun way to use minis for Call of Cthulhu on a battle map, that let's the base speed be used. I scale down the map 1/2, and then I allow "half squares", where minis sit on edges or vertices
Miniatures and Theater of Mind are both very useful in different situations,
Being a fully digital GM at this point, I love using maps, grids and tokens whenever I can. Especially in more "tactical" games like Pathfinder, I can't imagine running combat without it, since the system is so dependent on accurate range and position. And using a VTT in those situations is a huge boon for any GM imo.
Theater of mind still is very useful for other systems like Call of Cthulhu since those don't tend to focus on combat as much, or in any scene that doesn't need perfect representation of the surroundings
I use a free easy to use computer program for my group called owlbear rodeo to quickly draw out locations for encounters in my homebrew games which mostly are just done in theater of the mind. If I'm doing a prewritten I can get any predrawn maps into owlbear and like you, I always turn off any grids and do approximate distances to be more thematic than exact.
Man, that electricity trap with the pillars is so cool, I'm stealing it for my next game
Your videos are always a bright spot on my day
The big reason I use minis is to help players that have difficulty in picturing spacial relationships between characters and terrain. Also cuts down on player teleportation both intentional and accidental
Once I started playing with minis it just made things flow smoother. It's not for everyone but regardless of whether it's miniatures, or counters, or meeples, or whatever I honestly think everyone should atleast try it once.
Enjoyed seeing some of the minis in your collection Seth, especially those older ones that we share in common. 👍
As someone who has a large Miniature and Dwarven Forge collection, I have found that my homebrew campaigns have benefited GREATLY by the inspiration of just looking at pieces and playing around with setups. I can't even begin to say how many ideas I've gotten from the visual of both minis and terrain. Painting them is my passion so even though I don't pull out Dwarven Forge for every situation, painting and playing around with different scenes is so enjoyable. I do stress that we don't use terrain unless the party is going to be in a particular place for a few hours.
Was that a picture of the great Peter Cushing painting miniatures? That is awesome.
Cushing was a massive wargamer.
Nothing quite beats the reactions of the party when you drag out some truly horrifying home-made abomination of a mini, especially if you've kitbashed it together from some cheap plastic toys with a custom paint job.
Any game becomes a horror game with one of those minis introduced.
Some advice for folks who are having trouble transport multi-part or fragile figs to and from their game nights:
Go to a sports card store and buy a single small cardboard card box - they come in sizes ranging from (IIRC) 150-5000 count (that's cards, of course) and the 300 count ones can easily hold most any PC figure. Costs about a buck at the high end, less from a good store and/or when bought in bulk. Loosely wrap the fig in tissue paper to protect the paint job, then nest it in just enough material from one of those horrible one-use plastic shopping bags so that the whole cocoon fills the card box. If you can hear the figure moving around inside the box with a shake test, you need a little more bag material. The resulting package should keep all but the heaviest or most fragile of figs safe and in one piece in transit, and it only takes a minute to wrap or unwarp the whole setup. I've had multipart metal figs packed that way fall down three flights of stairs without any parts detaching, and the box only suffered a dinged corner.
It's as close to indestructible budget figure packaging as you can get, and the US Postal Service has proven that for me thousands of times over. Plus you're recycling those damn bags.
I have met a couple people that insist they don't like miniatures because it hinders imagination of the players. I like them because they look cool and keeps everyone honest and everyone on the same page.
I used rubber ducks to depict dragons.
They're actually a really good size.
🐤🐤🐤
15:35 Not just practical tips and suggestions, but ones for personalizing minis and building memories. That extra bit goes a long way
I use them for battle scenes. It just makes dnd a lot easier. Would be interested to hear if you use them for space or sea battles.
I've used tokens for space battles (in RT), but then that game has space combat turns lasting 30 minutes IGT so pitch/roll/yaw don't need to be very exact and doesn't in fact exist in the rules (well, they do in a way because you need to get to your new heading but they don't exist as independent things).
I remember when my friends and I played our first ever game of dnd, for a while we used spare dice as place holders for minis and would quickly sketch out battle maps when the time came. Good times
This was almost about why maps and floor plans are useful in gaming, but I'd still happily see a separate video about that. :)
Minis are great for combat scenarios where you don't want to have to start every turn with a player saying, "Okay so where is everyone how many enemies are there which ones have been killed or damaged" that really kills any tension or suspense and grinds the whole game down to a snails pace
I was waiting for an 'eye-twitch counter' with a freeze frame and a ding every time the words of pain were recited. :^)
As somebody who took up miniature painting this year, I've fell in love with the hobby. I make all my characters, I even buy and paint models for my friends. I'd like to add that not only are Models good for combat, but they're a good way to get somewhat immersed in your game. Everybody at the table can look at your model and understand what they look like which can help with roleplay and such. It's a great way to personify your character!
FYI: If the miniature is plastic and you use plastic glue/cement to build them those points are not weaker. Plastic glue/cement is a solvent which causes the plastic of the one piece to wield with the plastic of the other piece. Once all of the glue/cement has "dried" the miniature is single piece of plastic.
Great video (particularly for me were the pictures of Peter Cushing painting his collection [that led me to find out how much of a miniature player/hobbyist he was in life]).
I am an avid miniature hobbyist and wargamer. I totally understand the concerns about multi-part models. From a hobby standpoint, there are ways to secure your models such that they can withstand the rigors of gameplay. That is not meant as a criticism or "attack"; your concerns are 100% valid.
Thanks again for helping educate with your content.
as a 20+ year player and 15 year DM, I neber thought about about putting a date on the bottom of my fig. Wow, what a cool tip!
I've become a big fan of paper minis. There's lots of free stuff available online, they come colored or you can get them in black and white and they're easy to store and make more of when you need them.
I even designed some bases for my 3d printer so now I have all the sturdy bases in whatever color I need.
For one campaign I designed a bunch of NPC mercs in Hero Forge then took screenshots of them and made them into paper minis. They came colored and had fronts and backs. As a bonus, they were free!
I use silhouetted cut out and fold "minis" similar to the ones you have for you cthulhu-game there, the main advantage of these is that I can easily make my own by just printing out a silhouette in the right size, the other advantage is that it doesn't take away from the imagination aspect of my game, I want my players to picture how an orc, a demon, a spider etc. looks like instead of the mini ruining it for them, I find it really helps, since every persons imagination is different I don't want to taint that with my mini.
I know everyone is different but that's just how I like handling things, not saying that using painted minis is wrong it just doesn't work with the way I gm.
Anyway, great video as usual Seth, you are truly an inspiration. :)
when I was in middle school playing D&D with my friends we used lego minifigures, since I already owned a wide variety of them and we could customize them to something that vaguely resembled our characters and their weapons. We also discovered that using flat 2x3 stud lego pieces was perfect for baseplates. we were using a battle mat with 1-inch squares and 3 lego studs are just shy of 1 inch, so the 2x3 flat piece baseplates would fit inside each square perfectly, while also letting us place the minifigures in the center of the piece.
re: losing the horror with monster minis
I really like the idea of the silhouette standees that were in the CoC 2e box. It would be super easy to make custom ones for whatever monster. Its just enough information to know what kind of monster it is and where it is facing, but definitely not enough to color any player's perception of how the monster looks and will allow the imagination to run wild.
I have aphantasia so having a map with minis really helps me to see what is happening. Theatre of the Mind is difficult for me because I can't visualise whats happening in my mind.
Yeah I've noticed that a lot of the super creative types who advocate for pure theater of the mind just cannot understand that not everyone has a strong enough "mind's eye" to keep track of a complex dungeon or chaotic battlefield purely in their own imagination. Refusing to use miniatures can be a legitimate accessibility issue for some players.
@@AlteredNova04 There's also the fact that every single person has different vision in their mind from the same explanation. Even the same lines drawn on the sheet paper gives people a different idea when combined with the words used to describe those lines. The difference is that with a map and minis you still have an idea as to what's happening even when the details might be different whereas purely in theatre of the mind you will be completely lost.
I tend to start most minor encounters in the mind but if the players ask I'll draw a few squiggly lines for them to help.
Exactly. I can conceptually keep track of "there's two orcs on the fighter, ones half dead, she's got this, go intercept the one heading for the sorcerer." But beyond a certain point, the inability to "see" the fight just makes it easier to note down where things are and what they are doing like some fantasy John Madden, and at that point you're basically making minis for yourself. So just accept that "using your imagination" just doesn't work for everyone.
Same here. I'm 39 and I only realized that people around me actually can see things in their mind last year. It explained a lot XD
It's something worth checking at your table before pushing theater of mind :D
@@erih2934 I was 46 when I realised people had this super power to make movies in their minds. My mind blown!
We encountered a monster in D&D that was played by a kangaroo mini (A charity for the 2020 Aussie wildfires) leading to many chuckles about this giant kangaroo attacking us. It adds a nice bit of humor to the session
1. Fold a piece of paper like this _/\_
2. Use a knife to make a cut at the middles of the two bottom folds
3. Stick a paperclip through the cuts
Presto! A paper mini that's sturdy and bottom weighted. Take out the paperclips and store them all in themed stacks.
That reminds me, if you’re not already putting dates on all your RPG work (character creation date, DM note pages, etc.) consider starting. It’s interesting to look back and know those things, too.
As a wargamer I love having complex and detailed minis around, and I'm accustomed to the issues with storage and fragility. This is something I still prefer to reserve for PC minis. That being said I love the cardboard cut outs that some games offer. With something like paizo pawns I can pack a lot of minis easily, and if the party busts into a tomb full of skeletons and zombies I can show which is which without confusion.
To do customizations on my minis I use nail polish. It quick they come with their own brush and clean up is super quick or nonexistent. As an added bonus my wife never complains about getting a new color to use herself.
100% agree, been playing various systems for 40 years and love using mini's when appropriate, always have played with scale, even using 5mm mini's for a city chase one time - which was epic.
My husband has a lot of storm-trooper minis from a previous Christmas gift. Our goblin hordes in Pathfinder are surprisingly uniform....lol
I love miniatures for all the reasons given in this video and more. I'm not a good painter, but every time I start a new in-person campaign I buy a mini for it anyway. It may not be pretty, but it's mine.
One interesting side benefit of minis is you can use them to cut down on indecisiveness while generating characters. Have the player pick the mini they like and roll that race and class, no fussing about reading all the choices, just what they need.
I collect minis for Age of Sigmar. My Soulblight Gravelords are perfect for representing undead found in ancient crypts.
Arguably the best ghost sculpts ever made, but they don't pass the durability test very well.
@@richmcgee434 I was talking about the skeletons, but now that you mention it the ghosts (Nighthaunt, I think) are much cooler.
@@gavinboyer4634 The skellies are nice too, and significantly better about resisting breakage than the more spindly Nighthaunts. The flight effects look great on those ghosts, but ye gods, they do not take rough handling or accidents well.
Still not as bad as those treeman plastics with all their spindly thin vines, though.
@@richmcgee434 Oh yeah, a wise wargamer never goes to battle without glue.
Multipart figures - pinning and gluing are your friends. I do this with anything that is individually based that will be handled many times.
One thing that I've slowly expanded over the years is more for portable gaming.
Go to a dollar tree or similar, look in the toys section for the magnetic, travel board games. I started a lot with a pair of them with a chess and a checkers one that I combined. Got a magnetic sheet from a K-Mart (Walmart and a craft stores tend to have them as well) along with some chopped up coffee stir sticks, just used the adhesive on the backs of the magnetic sheet that I cut up to have a few wall options to stick on (The sticks are about the same width as the squares, and stick well to the glue backing...though, adding a drop or two of superglue is useful, then leave as is or paint them if you want) and used a sharpie to number the checkers pieces and the multiples from the chess set. I've since added a few other things to it from other, similar, games to fill a few of the things that I now stick in a pencil case with a few cheap notepads and mechanical pencils along with a couple sets of cheap dice and a deck of playing cards.
I've got a lot of other minis and stuff that I'll use if I'm planning for a game though.
Back in the old days I was trying to gather miniatures for my games on a tight budget. Individual metal minis were $5 each or more and though I still bought them occasionally for a good dragon or such I couldn’t afford to gather a large number for variety or for a large scene. One of the best ways I found was to buy on sale or even used board games that came with minis. I bought the original Heroes Quest long ago and the expansions, lots of goblins, orcs, skeletons, etc. I also got Battle Masters when it first came out and that came with a couple hundred figures. I’ve had a literal bag full of basic plastic minis ever since.
Wonderful video, Seth! I like minis and have been painting them and using them in my games since the early 90s. Like you I don't drag 'em out for every combat or interacting in an inn but they're useful for tracking large or elaborate combats.
I tend not to use miniatures for one specific reason. When you have a miniature, it feels wrong having to have it represent something that doesn't look like how the miniature looks. Even if it's something small, like if you need an NPC with ginger hair, but you don't have any NPC miniatures painted that way, something will always feel wrong about that to me, even though 99% of the time the players go by your description as a DM and not what the mini looks like (And quite rightly so!) However, they're so useful for combat I can't help but use some sort of signifier for people, so we're currently using Lego Minifigures!
EDIT: I THOROUGHLY recommend em4 miniatures Oriental Blades for Righteous Blood Ruthless Blades! They're so cheap and look pretty great!
This was a great video.
I have also been in a bunch of game systems where the ranges are nebulous and they only really care if you are in "point-blank/brawling range", "in the same section", or "two sections away".
Noting who is in each room of a haunted house or something similar is also very common. It doesn't particularly matter where in the room you are, just that you are in the room.
Theater of the Mind still needs a little help every now and then.
If I need easy "miniatures", I tend to use just printed images on paper or just cut out squares and write a letter/number on it.
"Keeping everyone on the same page" is the biggest reasons I like the use of miniatures, at least for systems that utilize fairly hard rules for distances and relative positioning like D&D. You can use pure theater of the mind for such systems, but those kinds of systems are designed with visual representation in mind. But generally speaking, that's only really for combat. A little group fuzziness on where everything and everyone is can be fine because that's usually easily corrected with minimal fuss if the GM notices a player acting incongruous to the scene as they see it (addressing someone who'd left the scene earlier, addressing the wrong person, declaring a backstab against someone who's actually on the other side of the room, etc). Especially in combat, where there are situational bonuses and effects, it's often so much easier to just look at the map and know that information at a glance rather than having to stop the game to ask things like "does that provoke an AoO?", "Am I in range?", "Does the AoE reach?" "Who has cover and who's engaged with who?". There's a lot of information that can go into a combat and the less you have to hold in memory the smoother it'll be, for players and GMs both. And sure, you can "houserule" all sorts of things to make theater of the mind play smoother, or play fast and loose with a lot of rules, but at what point are you changing so many little things to facilitate theater of the mind that you're no longer really playing the same game in anything but spirit?
Miniatures are tools to facilitate play, and some systems benefit more from them than others.
I'm a maniac of miniatures, using magnes to allow for interchangeable parts xD but that's because I paint more than I play and love modeling
Just a little of background about me to put things in perspective - 1. I'm working as character artists in the video game industry, so I'm heavily inclined towards visual representation therefore I'm very biased on this topic, but 2. the much bigger issue - I have Aphantasia, which means theater of the mind is just a blackout for me XD
Yet even without my issue, I've just seen the amount of confusion theater of the mind might bring along as everybody picture things differently. Simply example - GM says you turn around the corner - most people think its the right corner, I always first assume its the left. I guess without my condition I might have a better opinion about it, but even the other people in my group most of the times didn't agree on what the situation was the GM described.
Now last year I've taken on the role of GM for our group to try D&D. Since we live apart we started playing online and I started using Heroforge (as mentioned, I work in the 3d art field, so I was naturally drawn to it). A tool like this is can be incredibly helpful and opens up things you simply can't do with theater of mind at a certain point.
Like Seth I don't use minatures in every situation, but I put images of Heroforge creations on the table for every not utterly random NPC. You would be surprised how often players might forget a name, a description, but remember the look of the model even months later. This also gives me the option to put in hints towards what in-game culture they are from, or faction colors. I use a consistent design language and this helps my players keep track. This also removes me having to do long description of character outfits/appearances (as I suck at those, especially in stressful situations).
This approach also gives me a thing you simply can't do with theater of the mind: Hide things in plain sight.
I sometimes do scenes that actually have big crowds on the virtual table with characters hiding in it. I don't need to have my players roll or start out by describing something that they could investigate thus basically pushing them to do so, instead I just put it there and if they see it they can chose to engage it or sometimes it just foreshadowing.
So for me even if we would return to play in person, I would use a virtual table top just to have my library of minis to support my job as GM and make it easier for my to keep track who they are meeting/who is talking.
If, against Seth's advice, you do end up using a multi-part model, there's an old technique with a little pin-vice hand-drill. You make spots on either piece of the model that line up together, then use the hand-drill to put short holes where each of those markings are. Cut off a short length of steel wire, put each end of the wire in each hole, and join the pieces together with epoxy. It goes a long way toward increasing the model's long-term durability with that reinforcement.
Even though I played D&D right from the start and had miniature soldiers of all types, I didn't discover game miniatures until a pre-teen/teen when a hobby store opened up with an actual RPG section. I used them as Army Men type toys at first, but once I combined them with RPG's it was awesome once I used them as intended. The only line I actually collected though was TSR Marvel Super-Heroes, Mayfair DC Heroes and MOTU. I ended up abandoning them for TSR:MSH paper ones due to being able to have more versatility by being able to draw my own and control the needed sizes. But I still have fond memories of painting the metal and plastic figures; very relaxing and a boost of pride everytime I looked at the finished product. Though I probably handled far too many lead ones for far too long, now that I think about it.
One of the best call of cthulhu games I ran I ran using minis, and the map tiles from Mansions of Madness. The players explored around this mansion, and were trying to solve the mystery, as you do. When one of the players is attacked by a witch-like creature, and she runs away in terror, and has to go find help! Well the closest other pc was waaaaay on the other side of the mansion, so by the time they got there the witch was gone. Later someone performed a ritual and turned themselves into a Shoggoth by accident. Instead of describing what they saw I slammed the Shoggoth mini down on the table and my players went "oh shit...." Sometimes its better not to describe indescribable horror, it's better to show it!
3D printing is getting cheaper and cheaper, and makes minis just STUPID easy! Literally a game-changer :)
Sites like Hero Forge and Eldritch Foundry means you can print off and paint (almost) exactly the character you envision
Or download a generic Orc, Goblin, Skeleton, or Gnome, duplicate it a dozen times, and there's your invading army
Most slicing/editing software can easily size your minis: print off different tabletop scales, or just double the size of your character for that Enlarge spell
That tip on painting the date on the bottom of the mini is awesome, I'm going to have to start doing that.
If you paint a lot, a good habit to get into is to photograph your figures as you finish them and save them in dated files. Even if no one ever looks at the collected images but you, they can be quite an aid to memory and make it easier to match old paint schemes years down the road. Just looking back at what your work looked like ten years ago versus today can be pretty motivational toward improving your skills over time.
@@richmcgee434 I do paint quite a bit, and actually have kind of a long history of it. It sucks I didn't realize this 20 years ago when I first got into Warhammer 40k lol
Now I just do DnD mini's for me and my tables. I bought a 3d printer to churn my own cheap minis out with. So from now on I'll start dating them. Although tbh, I doubt I see too much more obvious improvement in my painting through the years. The only techniques I've heard of that I don't already have pretty well down are things like wet blending, non metallic metal, and object source lighting. Competitive level painting stuff, which Im not sure I want to spend the skill points in leveling lol
I stil really like the sound of it, for the bonus nostalgia when I go back and revisit minis
@@switch158 To be fair, even just twenty years ago it was harder to casually photograph everything. I really only started doing it around 2005-ish when I started getting halfway serious about painting figures for resale and doing commissions. At this point it's become an ingrained habit for me. My earlier stuff is largely lost to time, fire, flood, and trades. Think I painted my first fig (very badly, I might add) in 1978 or 79, following on from building plastic model kits.
I used to think I was a good mini painter. Even won a contest back in the late 90s with that Lizard Man I showed in the Troll mini example. Then the Internet took off and I saw what awesome mini painters can do and am blown away. I have no idea how they can do what they do. I can watch a video of them walking me through it and it's still like watching a magician doing a trick. I also hate taking pictures of my minis because even though I think it looks good as a little 28mm figure in my hand, when I see it blown up on a screen I cringe at how incredibly smudgy and crappy it looks.
@@SSkorkowsky It really is a matter of practice, experimentation, and repetition, much like any skill. But all that takes time, and most people don't have the time to pursue a hobby that extensively. Only reason I've gotten better and continued to improve is that I turned a hobby into a side hustle. When your income depends on meeting or exceeding buyer expectations you push yourself in ways you don't when it's just a relaxing thing to do after your real job.
I can guarantee you there's quite a few pro-level minis painters that couldn't run a TTRPG, produce high-quality youtube videos on a regular basis, or write actual honest-to-goodness books to save their lives. And many of them would look at your skill set and find it equally baffling to emulate.
Some very well thought-out points there.
I'm a big fan of miniatures whenever I'm in person because a) I'm dyspraxic so distances don't mean much to me in TotM and b) there's something very encouraging about the expressions players give me when I place the right miniatures down (the smiles when I find just the right min for their characters or the panic when a particularly cool boss-monster appears).
I knew someone who used bottle caps as minis. You can use different brands as different characters, or use just a dash of paint. Small jar lids can represent larger characters
Dangit you're a geni... real smart Seth. My players tend to forget to move their tokens/minis and end up complaining when they can't do the thing they want to do because their token/mini is in a different room to where they wanted to do the thing. I really need to do traps/surprises to maybe teach them that I want to know where their characters are and the easiest way to do that is move the dang token/mini.
Maps and minis/tokens work extremely well for "complicated" (multiple participants) combat and exploration of any location that benefits from having a map for clarity. There are times I like to make my players make their own map (or get lost), usually when exploring unmapped areas. Sure, the map they made is most likely wrong but it's correct for them. Once the players accidentally ended up in the right place by forgetting whether they should turn left or right to get to where they came from, had they made a map showing the turns they wouldn't have done that (maybe).
One thing I have to disagree with is that I would argue being on fire is not a long term condition. Still multiple combat turns most likely and thus the piece of paper or whatever is a good idea but not what I'd call a long term buff or condition.
I’m always impressed by how helpful and grounded your videos are. As someone who has been DMing since 95 and used all manner of approaches it always amazes me how extreme some of these arguments get. It’s nice to hear someone coming from a common sense balanced approach that highlights the benefits of both ways and how to use them in conjunction. It’s important that newer DM/GMs hear messages like this and don’t get caught up in the this is the only way rhetoric.
Being a mini game fan, I wish more RPGs just came with miniature combat rules. I know role players think that would be simplistic or limit their options, but the reality is if you're playing a fantasy game like D&D, Pathfinder, or WFRP, you're really just doing the same thing in a longer, less sensible, more confused way, but you don't realize it for lack of experience with both.
I usually use minis for “boss battles” or complex encounters (think 4e type of encounters). I use zones for in between encounters (stole the idea from professor dungeon master and made a UDT he uses).
Great pointers Seth.
Nicely done, as always. I've always used miniatures in my games, for exactly the same reasons you do. In Call of Cthulhu, they always came out for fights or strange situations or just keeping track of who's where in the building (I recognize the map from The Haunting at 6:33, don't I?). It wasn't until I started running online (since Covid) that I got away from that, unfortunately.
I've always dated and usually put names on the bottoms of the miniatures I've painted. I also have a notebook with those dates and names as well. But I write down everything.
Thanks for another fun video.
It is the house from The Haunting. I thought, "I need to draw a multi-story house for the example picture," and figured I might try to sketch the Corbitt House from memory. It's weird how well that floorplan is burned into brain.
I totally had that pewter paladin with the big sword you feature in the video thumbnail. Awesome!
I like minis, tokes and any kind of visual representation of the gamespace. Admittedly nowadays lot of my games happen online, but I do have some minis from older games, and some we just used proxies like dice in a pinch. These tools combined with maps are extremely helpful for people like me who have real difficulty with theatre of the mind. I have condition called aphantasia, which makes my mind's eye blind, essentially I cannot form a visual mentally. You can describe me a room, but it's basically same as comparing a text adventure to a graphical one for me, I know what's where in a list form but not in relation. Map and minis are very helpful in alleviating this and letting me focus on the scene instead of keeping list of notes in my head. This is also why I personally loathe the "range band" system in some rpgs nowadays, I literally cannot keep track of it.
Soul brother. Almost exactly my philosophy of using miniatures.
I love your bright painting style, that's how I do it too.
I also found a lot of success with printing out paper minis and using cheap stands you can slot them into, if you want to reuse the many times just glue them to a piece of cardboard cut to shape. FFG makes a set for thicker cardboard standees but there are others that accept something as thin as a single piece of paper. If you stay away from color printing its pretty cheap and you can use art you find online for personal use easily and its custom to you rather than being art from paizo or wotc.
I like using minis because it keeps everyone honest. Plus I have a blob of Great Stuff aerosol insulation foam that makes a great Shoggoth.
I played and GMed for 23 years, almost entirely without miniatures. I always owned minis, because I was a wargamer almost as long as I was a roleplayer, but I never felt the need of minis in my tabletop RPGs. Then, last year I got into 3D printing, and for Christmas, I printed and painted for my D&D and Cthulhu players their actual characters as gifts (with the help of Hero Forge). Since then, my D&D group insist to use them in evey single fight (interestingly no similar demand arose from my CoC group).
Based on the experience of the past year, our fights with minis last much longer than our fights without them, and the clerity they provide isn't really a significant factor for us. And yet, everybody loves to see those minis on the tabletop, in those specific situations... including myself.
I still don't consider them to be very useful in a technical way, but they certanly enhance our fun... and ultimately that's the only thing that matters, isn't it? :)
For my board. I've recently been doing wargaming movement. Where you can move anywhere in inches. It works well online but I haven't tried it off line. And for the horror monsters. I usually just make it a checker piece, or anything black. Showing where it is but making them do full imagination while being able to know where it is
Appreciate the recommendation to switch from TOTM to miniatures for combat or player request. Looking back, this would have stopped a few large arguments.