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Post by lwizardl on Apr 16, 2014 3:20:35 GMT
Hello everyone, and DM Scotty.
I was playing AD&D 2e from about 1993-1997. Our DM had his books stolen so we stopped playing. I have been gathering books that i can find locally for a decent price. With the goal of starting a group of my own. While deciding to do that i got interested in making Miniatures and found the youtube channel. After watching the channel for what seems like a year now I have finally decided to try my hand at it. Joined a few of the facebook groups for fantasy rpg gaming.
Here is one of the posts I made on one of them.
"I'm looking to get into making my own custom miniatures, tiles, etc and was wanting to know of guides exist for sizing them to be compatible with others. Like say mix and match with pathfinder etc. I have been watching videos on youtube and reading things from google searches but nothing really helps on that so far. I have considered just buying a few of each and using those to be the scale."
James
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Post by adamantinedragon on Apr 16, 2014 4:20:28 GMT
James, you have come to one of the best places on the internet for advice, tutorials and commentary about how to be a GM without taking a loan out on your house. I recommend that you roam around the boards here and watch the tutorials and read some of the threads. When I decided to get back into RPGs I also wanted to do it cheaply. For miniatures I used everything from pennies to game pieces from other games or dollar store army men. After a while I wanted more specific miniatures and bought some Sculpey clay and started sculpting kobolds, goblins, orcs, and anything else I needed. Over time I got better as a sculptor and eventually moved up to epoxy putties, but I still use Sculpey when I need a lot of cheap minis that don't have to be perfect. You can get hundreds of minis from a box of Sculpey. For terrain I just started cutting up styrofoam from boxes. My friends still bring me styrofoam when they come over to play. I now use Hirst Arts plaster casting molds but I sitll use cardboard and styrofoam as well. As far as size is concerned there has been a steady creep upwards in size for years. The "standard" used to be a one-inch or 25mm miniature for a heroic human figure. Today it is not uncommon to see human heroic minis that are 30mm or larger, which make the old 25mm minis feel like gnomes or halflings. Exact size isn't that important I've found. My first kobolds were twice as big as they should have been, I use them as "lizar men" now. Same with my first goblins, which are mostly used as orcs now. The important thing is to start developing the skills needed to make the stuff you need. Over time you'll master the sizing of minis. You can also purchase pre-made armature to build your minis on, but those are almost as expenive as the minis themselves. Check out eBay. Sometimes games that have gone out of business or lost their audience provide a windfall of miniatures for savvy RPG buyers. It used to be fairly easy to find hundreds of Mage Knight minis for $20 or less. I bought over 500 of them for less than $60. You can also sometimes find usable minis at thrift stores. I do a lot of shopping at dollar stores and then modify and repaint superhero figures into heroes. I also purchase a lot of animal miniatures, dinosaurs, bugs, spiders and sea creatures from stores like US Toy. I create a lot of minis by "Frankensteining" animal parts together. You can check out my blog at rpgobsessed.wordpress.com Click on the "miniatures" category or scroll through the posts to find examples of what I mean.
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Post by beetlewing on Apr 16, 2014 4:26:10 GMT
Hi James, and welcome! Here are 2 ways you could approach scale... 1. Use the scale of a particular game. 1" = 5 feet, etc 2. Take the scale of your miniatures and work from there. If you're using 28mm figures, divide by an average height of 6 feet. This gives you a scale of 4.6mm = 1 foot I use option 1. Also keep in mind that scale doesn't HAVE to be perfect, especially if you're playing gridless. Things like coffins can easily be eyeballed for size. And this is fantasy - look at video games like skyrim and world of warcraft... many times their scale is off, but it still works. Experience will also teach you a lot as you really get into building things. Intuition will also kick in sooner the more you do it. Hope this helps.
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Post by lwizardl on Apr 16, 2014 5:20:24 GMT
Here is what i have for miniatures so far. I also have a couple of the plastic wotc D&D minis from about 2006ish, and a couple misc metal ones that I grabbed from a yard sale. These I think was from the "Classic Dungeon" board game from TSR These I got from the "Fighter's Player Pack"
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Post by dragon722 on Apr 16, 2014 5:29:18 GMT
welcome to the forum. Nice old school minis
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Post by thedmg on Apr 16, 2014 8:41:11 GMT
I have to plug my new YouTube series DMG's MiniMagic which will be starting soon...
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Post by lwizardl on Apr 16, 2014 17:22:36 GMT
I just subbed to your channel like 3 days ago, I'll keep an eye out for the videos
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Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2014 22:55:13 GMT
I think scale is relative, but more importantly just a guide. for example when you make a doorway, it has to be wide enough for the mini's base, thus it can look "fat" and out of scale. Just keep things close and it will work.
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Post by adamantinedragon on Apr 17, 2014 5:05:39 GMT
I also frequently remind myself that this is a game of imagination and one of the most frequent criticisms of the game's evolution is that accurate terrain and miniatures reduce the use of imagination, so I just say my not-to-scale minis are examples of encouraging imagination.
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Post by dragon722 on Apr 17, 2014 6:55:15 GMT
I agree totally Adamantinedragon. The worlds view is upto the imagination of the creator.
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Post by runningwolf on Apr 17, 2014 12:02:41 GMT
I had asked the same question about scale..
Have to agree with Beetlewing... general rule of thumb is 1i=5f and to a lesser extent 1i=3f.
You don't have to be exacting when it comes to scale for the tile. "that room is 16f 3in by 24ft long". If you're off by a little bit it doesn't matter. The tiles, at least for me, are there for another level of immersion. It's easier to look on the tile and see there is a table between you and Mr Bad Guy that might act as cover.
Plus there are times when you might have something so huge or so small that to have it in scale would mean a piece that is as big or small as a grain of sand or a house cat. That's not to say you shouldn't try to scale things how YOU like them.
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Post by lwizardl on Aug 10, 2014 0:35:07 GMT
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Post by beetlewing on Aug 10, 2014 1:55:05 GMT
Great start on supplies! Here's what I did a little over a year ago when I decided to get back into gaming after a very long hiatus: My wife (then girlfriend) had never played a tabletop rpg, and I had lost all my stuff years ago, so I bought a used copy of the 3.5 PHB & DM guide. For minis, I printed out heads on sticker paper, with an arrow denoting direction the mini was facing. I then cut them out and slapped them on beer bottle caps. I would flip the cap over for corpses. Spiders: Undead: Orcs: Goblins: Chests & Keys: (Keys were handed to her, not placed on the map) Player & NPC Classes: Misc NPCs & creatures: Not the fanciest setup, but we had a blast. The Arrogant Bastard was used as an annoying recurring NPC, Guiness for bards, the one with 3 barrels for an innkeeper, etc etc. A year later, we've moved to real minis and my collection is growing pretty quickly, but I'll still occasionally need extra goblins, etc and will grab some of these. Nothing wrong with starting humble, and even staying there if you like it and it works for you. As for crafting, I'd suggest starting by making a dungeon tile set, for 2 reasons: - you can make everything to fit that set - once you make a bookshelf, table, etc you'll want to put it somewhere :-P Hope all this helps, and good luck on your new journey! Edit: the bottle caps are also just about the same size as a mini base, which worked out nicely on a grid
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Post by beetlewing on Aug 10, 2014 2:01:55 GMT
I'll see if I can find the PDF I made of these stickers and post it in the resources section tomorrow.
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Post by Jason on Aug 10, 2014 2:02:34 GMT
Welcome! There are a lot of great builds and ideas on this site. Everyone here is super helpful. So if you see something that you like and have questions, just ask.
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Post by skunkape on Aug 11, 2014 14:34:36 GMT
Welcome to the forums.
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