Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[robert4818]

[SavageGamerGirl]

I like to use figure flats.

My players like to make up their character pictures using Hero Machine:

http://www.ugo.com/games/superhero-generator-heromachine-2-5

It doesn't always have everything they might want, but there are enough options that they can get close enough to their character concept to turn out a good picture.

I then use their image to make figure flats so they can have "minis" that look exactly like their characters.

It's worked well enough so far!
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'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here.'
The Order of the Dice... OF DOOM!

[Shadowdragon]

[jpk]

[Pariah74]

Never played and RPG where anyone cared about painted or not. We have used pennies before so painted is really a luxury.

Now Blood Bowl is a different story.
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"Games give you a chance to excel, and if you're playing in good company you don't even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game. "
~Gygax

[jpk]

Intellectually, I can sort of appreciate the whole Games Workshop "must be painted, must be painted right" nigh-mania. Emotionally, it sort of creeps me out, like kindergarteners with manicured nails. There's something just a little wrong about the whole thing.

[Pariah74]

Well never did it for GW's sake. It was only because in that game unpainted minis can be hard to differentiate, and what position a player is is important.
As far as GW's "must be painted and must be painted right" stuff? Pppft. Never worried about it. I don't play their games anyway (no, Blood Bowl doesn't belong to them...they only think it does. lol)

But really for RPGs painted or unpainted never has been an issue. Actually up until d20 we rarely used minis anyway, and I didn't play d20 that much.
Savage Worlds has been my first real experience with an RPG that "requires" minis.

Lots of the people in my gaming group seem to have large collections of D&D minis tho, and I have an old Hero Quest set and a bunch of cheap Hero Clix and Star Wars minis so we get by.
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"Games give you a chance to excel, and if you're playing in good company you don't even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game. "
~Gygax

[OJ]

I personally would benefit from getting a rare mini. Sometimes I base stories on odd minis or props that I happen to come by. Inspiration can come from the "bottom up" as it were...

[Jordan Peacock]

(Re: Letting players use unpainted miniatures.)
If players actually provided their own miniatures, I would not begrudge them the right to use unpainted minis, though I'd personally recommend at least going to the trouble of base-coating it and giving it a wash or a quick drybrush job just so that the details can come out. Otherwise, with some figures in bare metal, it's hard to pick out those distinctive details.

For my own games, I paint the minis, though sometimes I have to go with a real rush-job when time is short. For my Pirates RPG game I'm running at the Armadillo Game Shoppe, I've volunteered to paint up any PC miniature that a player purchases through the store. (So far, only one player has taken me up on that, with a Reaper #3252 "Anatole, Male Pirate Harpooner." The others have been content to just borrow a pirate from my collection.)
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[jpk]

As a lazy man, I'd be all over any offer to have my minis painted for me.

Come to think of it, I've got a number of them at a friend's house hours and hours away. She's a little compulsive and needed something to do with her hands. Being a good friend, I obliged. I'm such a nice man.

[Sean-Khan]

I think collectible games appeal on several human instincts. Instict to collect and hoard things (especially beautiful or rare things) and to make one more competitive. And people tend to be optimistic about what they draw, so they'll easily buy boosters. I bought boosters when I know I'd be happy about most things I pull, after that I went for singles.

I've collected miniatures games for both rpg and the game itself, and I'm happy I'm not perfectionist. Still, many rares are just so cool or possibly important for the rpg, or because it is Obi-Wan Kenobi or some other personality I haven't played too competitively so I haven't hunted just very good ones, but many rare minis have brought very interesting aspects to the game. A game attached to a miniatures line is good business as people may get interested in it and buy more minis because of it, or may get in rpg after getting familiar with the miniatures game.
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Shaper & Maker - modelling, gaming & a lot of other stuff

[sjmiller]

I use a lot of different things in my game to represent PCs, NPCs, and items in locations. I use some DDM pre-painted minis, some painted and unpainted minis from Reaper/Grenedier/Ral Partha/etc., glass beads, cardstock tokens and standups, and whatever else is handy.

I have no problem with people bringing unpainted minis, because some of mine are not painted. That is because I have to have others paint for me, as I am rather allergic to certain VOCs in paint. Really sucks when you are a gamer, I tell ya!
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Stephen J. Miller
Co-author of Gaslight Victorian Fantasy Campaign Setting
Available now from Battlefield Press, Inc.

[SavageGamerGirl]

Oh! And I have three sets of colored d6s that I use for NPCs and monsters. It helps me keep track of the opponents. Red 3 is attacking you, Janette! Blue 4 is moving into cover... etc.
_________________
'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here.'
The Order of the Dice... OF DOOM!

[jpk]

[Wiggy]

Prepainted minis preferably, painted minis otherwise, but right now we're playing Hollow Earth Expedition with LEGO minifigures. I guess they are prepainted minis as well.
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Wiggy
Creative Director Triple Ace Games

[warrenss2]

I use a LOT of clix miniatures. HeroClix, HorrorClix, MageKnight, D&D Plastic Miniatures, DreamBlade.

I go here -
http://www.trollandtoad.com/Miniatures/1285p1n10.html
Dig around till I find something that could work for what I want. Remember, they're easy to modify and repaint.

My Doc Savage consists of Doc Samson's torso and a thugs legs, with a green stuff torn up shirt added.





Size comparison To Bob Murch's 28mm Doc.


Hey... Doc was nearly 7 foot tall in the books.
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[Sean-Khan]

[mac40k]

While I would always prefer to use painted minis (and I have a huge collection of GW figs), the older I got, the less time I was able (willing) to invest in painting and the more I tend to use other things. Certainly if I have the unpainted minis, I'm more likely to give them a base coat and just throw them down on the table, especially for things like hordes of goblins, zombies, beastmen, whatever, where the invidual figures/details don't really matter so much since they all have the same stats and are just Extras anyways.

I've come to really appreciate figure flats, especially for genres where my mini collection falls short. These are easy to use, I can always print more for larger hordes, and many of the unique opponents/monsters have an actual picture that is appropriate, whereas if I were to use a mini, it would be a proxy anyway.

I have also used tokens, but even printed out on cardstock I found them difficult to handle. It never occured to me to stick them to washers to give them some added depth. I actually like Joel's idea of the two-sided tokens to show Shaken status over throwing a separate Shaken counter down next to a mini that has to move with the figure. May have to give tokens another try. Especially since my game storage space has gotten so over crowded that it is getting difficult for me to find anything (dang it, I know I have an Elf with a Long Sword somewhere), the idea of a few trays of tokens and my flip mat collection fitting into a 12" square space has a certain appeal.

I never invested in prepainted minis, so other than a few random figs that I've picked up for one reason or another, I don't own that many.

The one thing I generally don't do is mix mediums. If I'm using figure flats, it's figure flats all the way, even if I have some mins that might be appropriate for some of the opponents/monsters. If I'm using minis, I'll use proxies for figs I don't have rather than resort to a token or figure flat. I may mix painted and unpainted minis, but that's about as far as I'll go.

[Pariah74]

[Jordan Peacock]