How important are figurers too your game

[dingle]

Chris (My friend) doesn't need too actually make a living on this as he has other web sites but an extra $300 a month would mean he can pay the mortgage and other bills and even make a bit of extra spending money. Then he could concentrate on D&D miniatures and adventures which has always been his goal (instead of eating away at savings). At the moment the sales are pretty bad. You can check the figures out on Catalog
They are very good but there is not that many at present. His idea is to produce adventures (free?) which includes the miniatures he has created.
Ready painted miniatures could be an option though...

 

[zendruid]

I am a miniature painting fanatic. I hunt through about five different miniature sites for all the minis I paint. I mod most and spend upwards of 5 hours on each one (if anyone is interested I do commission painting, rates varying on detail and level of expected quality I'll send you info on request).

All the minis I normally paint are all characters that have, will or wish I could play in my groups' campaign (some I just couldn't resist and bought purely for aestetics).

There are several manufacturers that make great quality sculpts. I especially love the sculpts from rackham confrontation (too bad they aren't making any more white metal unpainted ones). Reaper has some great figures and some awful ones. In any case, I just took a look at your friends minis and they aren't something that I'd normally purchase (not enough detail and fairly generic).

There is a market for unpainted minis that aren't part of huge armies but it is fairly small and mostly occupied by dedicated connoisseurs. My advice to him is figure out how to cast in plastic and hire some sweat-shop laborers to paint them. As we have seen with the rash of plastic prepaints in recent years we know there is a much larger market for those.

 

[Jhaelen]

I don't worry too much about accuracy when using minis. For monsters anything with the correct size will do. For character minis I use whatever fits best and - even more importantly - stands out when compared to the other pc minis.

I don't like using duplicate minis for monsters, though. If a group is attacked by four trolls and I only have one troll mini, I'll use an ogre, a hill giant, and a marid for the other three.

 

[Shin Okada]

I always use minis for playing D&D. And often use minis for playing other games.

But today, about 90% of the monster minis are of DDM line. And PCs in one-shot games are usually represented by either D&D mini or some metal minis I already have.

For long-run campaigns, I and some friends of mine paint, and even modify, metal or plastic minis to give PC minis better look. Also, from time to time I buy and paint metal mini which is not in DDM line or when that mini is really cool .

When I run Red Hand of Doom campaign, I converted and hand-painted metal minis for representing all the Wyrmlords and some other important NPCs and monsters.

But I don't dare to buy and paint minis unless those are at least in similar quality as minis from Reaper.

 

[loki8481]

can't say I've ever used minis... a grid-lined whiteboard and some dry erase markers has always done me just fine.

 

[rgard]

They are very good but there is not that many at present. His idea is to produce adventures (free?) which includes the miniatures he has created.
Ready painted miniatures could be an option though...

Paizo does something similar with the minis plus encounter:

http://paizo.com/gameMastery/compleatEncounters

Also Crystal Caste does pre-painted (EM-4) minis in sets of 5 with dice:


Crystal Caste: eM-4-Miniatures

These should give your friend an idea of how to price those two ideas.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Dyson Logos]

We don't use them at all. Found no need for them in classic D&D and every edition up to and including 3.x - I've only played 4e once and did it without minis so I can't see switching to using minis in our RPGs any time soon after 30 years of gaming without them.

 

[Bumbles]

I'm the type who uses card stock rather than minis because

A) I hate losing them

B) I really really really hate stepping on the things.

C) It's cheaper

D) Did I mention how much I hate stepping on the things?

But I know folks who sell custom-painted minis for hundreds of dollars. I know folks who have hundreds of dollars worth of custom minis in their collection.

Can your friend make a profit on this? I don't know his expenses. I don't know his quality. But it is not inconceivable.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I generally try to match my mini to my PC, and have even been inspired to build a PC based on a mini. I don't mod any of mine, though.

This is me, but maybe more so.

In our "Age of Worms" game, I almost didn't take and use a +5 mithral breastplate (as opposed to the +4 mithral chain shirt I had) because it doesn't match my professionally repainted half-ogre mini (or my Storn Cook character portrait). That's pretty geeky, right?

To answer the more general question, I think minis are extremely important to use. We think of the battlemat or map, and minis, as a miniaturization of the environment, so we like things to match as closely as reasonably possible. Since I own somewhere around 3000 minis, we don't have to proxy a whole lot.

(There are weird holes in the DDM line, though. Making a BBEG lately, I realized there are no mace- or morningstar-wielding evil female clerics. Most of these holes are PC-type minis.)

 

[billd91]

I don't use minatures. I use Fiery Dragon's counters or make some cropping picures and printing them out on paper. Very inexpensive.