D&D General Creative Minis (-OR- what we used when there weren't any)

[Sacrosanct]

A week or so ago I found a boxed game of Battleground: Crossbows and Catapults!. I had that game as a kid and we played a lot with my brother. Great fun! And it got me thinking (after being flooded with nostalgia) when I looked at the game pieces, in particular the orc and barbarian figures. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, there weren't a lot of minis available. We had to drive over an hour into a town big enough that had a store that sold them (and those were the old grenadier ones made from lead), so we had to be creative. Or order those generic toys that had ads in the back of comic books. So we used anything that looked like it was remotely fantasy and had a fairly similar scale. For missing ones, I recall spending hours drawing the side profile of a creature on paper, then folding the paper and cutting out the profile so you ended up with one of those triangle type paper minis.

To be honest, I'm less interested in folks who used popcorn, or dice, or something similar to represent minis. I'm more interested in creative ways you used "minis" for your game back in the day when actual minis weren't widely available.

For us, there were plenty of boardgames that we could paint (usually with Testors model paints), such as:

(Oh! and by the way, I got the game, and proceeded to play it with my girlfriend's 4 year old, how absolutely loves it! )

 

[Stormonu]

I must be lucky, as I started with Holmes and had minis even back then (Grenadier models), for both PCs and monsters. I remember being so happy when Ral Parthia came on the scene.

I do remember using legos for town guard (We had the old castle sets), as well as trying to use LEGO bricks for dungeon walls.

I also remember subbing in plastic Dino’s for dragon-like creatures, and like everyone else with a 70’s bag-o-saurs, we had a plastic rust monster, landshark(Bulette) And owlbear mini.



I also had the old MPC Dungeons and Dragons “Dungeon Invaders” model kit, which had a bunch of monster and adventurer models.

 

[aco175]

I loved Crossbows and Catapults. I recall using better rubber bands to make the catapult shoot farther and harder.

I remember my father having the smaller army soldiers, maybe the 1/72 scale that come on the plastic sheet that you punch out. He ended up mailing away for the knights and barbarians and romans. They look half the size next to the lead minis from the DnD store, but worked well for monsters. I painted the romans white for skeletons and said the armor and shields were from the old empire.

There was also another toy that had a mold for making animals with some sort of rubber. We melted the rubber in the brick sized kiln and it poured over the mold. If we have not burned ourselves by then we could take out the hot tray and have the animals that were about twice the size of the minis so they worked well for giant animals.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I loved Crossbows and Catapults. I recall using better rubber bands to make the catapult shoot farther and harder. .

I think that was the first thing every kid did when getting that game

 

[aco175]

Creepy Crawlers was the name of the hot plate with a plastic mold. Apparently it was from the 60's but not banned until later. Something about fumes and dangerous burns, who'd thunk

 

[Nebulous]

Many moons ago, in 2e, I didn't have minis, but we would play on graph paper and use pennies and whatnot, but I DID have Jar Jar Binks, and I hated him. He was the BBEG in every scenario, and when he died I always relished popping his lego head off.

 

[Richards]

The Monster in my Pocket line saw a lot of use in my AD&D 2E campaigns.



Johnathan

 

[Warforged DK]

I end up repurposing my son's toys. He has a ton of Skylanders, and they make great giant sized baddies. I've used his toy snakes and crocodiles too. Scale is a little off, but it works out fine. My players have laughed when facing off against a Little people gorilla and croc.
I've used an Imaginext Gorilla Grodd for the Giant ape polymorph and that ALWAYS gets some smiles.
I once used a Parallax toy from the Green Lantern that we don't talk about. It was a BBEG far realm invader that my players stomped way too fast.
I like reusing toys, planning on using a toy ship for an airship fight tomorrow night!

 

[Li Shenron]

We use Lego minifigs. It's not really creative but rather obvious, but they are gorgeous.

 

[Oofta]

I mentioned this elsewhere but I still use Bag O' Zombies, Bag O' Zombie Dogs, cheap plastic spiders and other cheap plastic toys. Sometimes I'll dab paint on them to differentiate between them, so I'll have a zombie painted black, one black and red, etc. I also print out tokens for monster, especially when I want hordes.

Other things I use are blocks made out of air dry modeling clay. I make 1 inch, 2x2, 3x3 and 1x4 blocks and use them any time I want a 3-dimensional effect. They're short enough that thy don't totally block line of sight, but tall enough to give the idea.

I also have wooden tokens I made from pieces of 1 inch wide strips you can buy at hobby stores. I use them to indicate special effects (walls, etc) or fires (add another token as the fire spreads).

I used to use colored paper clips bent into triangles for different effects, but use them less than I did in 4E. I still use the rings from plastic bottles to indicate marks, curses and other ongoing effects.