When I played years ago, it was before miniatures were all the rage, now many decades later I am learning to GM for my family to have a game together, and so far its been a lot of fun for everyone! mostly because of this community here, answering my noob questions. So thanks again guys!
I went and got a 30x50 "train table" for Thomas the train used on Craigslist for like 30 bucks (has two big pull out drawers too!) this thing is great for miniatures I think and I haven't even started yet.
This will be our gaming table for now, it sits low enough for little kids which makes it great for in front of the couch :) with out having to invade moms kitchen space with castles and toys "dad said we could leave out :)
So I have a 30x50 area, I can use to game on. My plan is to print paper minis first, and play that awhile, then buy real minis as we get around to it and better know what we want.
But I am kinda lost where to start, and before I just start printing things random, I thought I would touch base with you wizards first.
I thought maybe I would start with griding off the whole table, but then what sized squares would best fit the minis and such, I see a LOT of trial and error here id rather not be arsed with, if someone else has it down to a science...
I know this was long winded, thanks in advance for you assistance.
The pathfinder minis and pawns are scaled for a 1-inch grid, where one square inch is a 5-foot square.
There are sites for printing grids on standard a4 paper(or other materials, like transparents to place atop printed maps), and glueing or taping them together is a good and very cheap way to start. These also have hex-grids if you want something different.
[[Advertisement: The Pathfinder Pawns are great for a fast base of minis(cardstock).]]
Using paper maps and grids under a plexiglass(don't recall the generic term) plate allows you to use dry/wet erase markers - quite handy. This can also be accomplished with certain types of paint, using a permanent marker to draw your grid.(this also applies to white-boards)
I think the answer you were looking for is "1-inch grid for standard RPG minis."
Paper min cost alot do to ink cost of color ink. They blow off the table real eazy. The celling fan or box fan has reset many of my fights. I suggest useing glass beads You can get huge mixed bag of color ones for about 5 bucks at craft stores like Hoby lobby or Michaels. Then save you money for Mine or figs you want. Both Pathfinder and WoTC put out good prepainted figs. If you do not want to paint. I hate painting I want to game not do arts and crafts. But I do have folk that are in my group that paints very well.
For that matter get roll of penny's 50 cent all fig you ever need and paint some with old paint.
Yes, most minis are scaled for 1" = 5' or there abouts. As for making the paper pawns 'heavier' try rubber cement and some flat tokens, such as poker chips (of course, no larger than one inch across!)
As far as getting minis you want, wait and see what you play. For example, I go out of my way to get LARGE models, because my games have lots of giants and such. Also, get the models for your players first ;) You said the kids are having fun, so go internet shopping with them to get the minis that best represent their characters :)
Best of luck and your table sounds pretty awesome!
GNOME
Start with minis for each of the PC's and for the the main bad guys. You can use washers, coins, etc. for everything else. As a matter of fact, I still do this a lot, even though I have a ton of minis at my disposal.
Too many minis can make a battle map too cluttered.
I have taken to using the flat glass beads from my daughter's Mancala game as markers for minions, etc. because I can write on them and the marker wipes off easily. Sometimes I number them, so I can keep track of damage, etc. on a sheet of paper. Sometimes I'll put a red dot on them to show they've taken more than half their HP in damage, etc.
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Last year, Reaper Minis had a HUGE Kickstarter for their new 'Bones' product line (plastic versions of their pewter minis) and they are nearly finished shipping out all the rewards. While you've missed out on that golden opportunity, you'll probably be able to score lots of good deals on eBay from backers who are selling off pieces they don't want or need. As of right now, I see at least 1 seller auctioning off the entire reward package — you might luck out.
Failing that, there are now boxes of 'pawns' for both Bestiaries 1 & 2, and for the NPC codex. (You would need at least 1 of those three products to acquire the plastic bases into which you can also slot the pawns sets released for recent adventure paths.) The pawns are of thick cardstock (~1mm), and appropriately sized for the 1" = 5-ft grid. Compared to the cost of pewter or plastic minis, the pawns will give you the greatest variety for your dollar.
Alternately, there are the paper minis which are a PDF product that you'll print out and assemble yourself. Having them blow away IS a concern, but you can easily weight them with a nickel if that proves to be a problem. The biggest advantage to the paper minis is that you can print up as many as you need.
Good luck, and have fun!
Popular Collections often has mini's for sale for less than a dollar a piece. And anything over $100 get's free shipping. This is really good for things that aren't popular, but are good for GMs, such as a dozen skeletons for five bucks, or a ton of human fighter figs.
Ebay sometimes has people selling job lots of mini's for under a hundred as well.
If you live near the St. Louis area, there is a game store chain there that does auctions every 3-6 months. There's often large lots in those auctions. Also check your local gaming stores.
As Laithoron mentioned I can't recommend Reaper enough. They make great minis and are a great company.
That said one decision you'll need to consider is if you want to get into the miniature painting hobby. It's lots of fun but not something everyone wants to deal with. Painting figures can be another opportunity for family time however.
As others have mentioned using the printed or card stock tokens is probably the way to start. If that works for you then take a look at the pre-painted miniatures available from Paizo, Reaper and others. They're a nice way to get some decent miniatures without the need to invest time cleaning/gluing/painting. From there if you want to expand things a bit you can invest in unpainted models for your player characters and important NPCs.
The miniatures side of the hobby is a lot of fun and adds a lot to the game (in my opinion). Just take it slow especially around the unpainted stuff as you can overwhelm yourself with work pretty fast :)
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As someone already said, you want 1 inch squares.
If you want to get fancy, you could cut out an insert that sets into the table, and then you could grid one side squares, and the other side 1" hexes, so you can use it for hex grid game systems as well.
As far as minis go, paper minis with good bases are pretty durable. The pathfinder pawn series on the left hand side of the page is pretty good, though I wish they would have scaled them a little more precisely. You can either buy the box, or you can buy the PDF, print each sheet separately (instead of back to back) and glue each side to a sheet of thin chip board and then cut out the pieces. This will give you nice durable pieces. Of course, once you buy the bases, you will have spent more money than just buying the boxes. (The advantage of the PDF is that if I need 20 orcs, I just print more of that page.) I have been using paper minis for over 15 years of playing and GMing, and with good plastic bases have never had a problem. Paper Minis also store really easily.
The other advantage of paper minis is that if you have a character that is mounted on a horse, you can cut a slot on the horse mini, and a slot on the bottom of that character, and then the character can be mounted, or dismounted as necessary.
By the way, Lego Minifigs also make good minis.
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As for paper minis and tokens....here are some options on this site alone.
BattleStudioLLC are available in sets of 20 group by race and cost $1.49 each set (mostly). They all have great reviews. Great value but only PC and NPC races, no real monsters so you would have to get them elsewhere.
Pathfinder Paper Minis are a bit more expensive but you seem to get a larger amount and can get all the minis for a particular adventure path that Paizo produces. They also have a free instruction set for their paper minis so you could check that out and see a bit more on what the minis are like without purchasing anything. They have a slightly "toonish" look to them which you may or may not like.
Pathfinder Pawns are what I would suggest though. They are about 1/8" thick cardstock with the image printed on both sides and they stand up on a plastic base that holds the cardstock image upright. For $40 you get the entire Bestiary of monsters, which is over 300. Then with another $40 you can pick up the NPC Codex which has 300+ minis that can cover any non-monstrous badguys and all npcs and PCs.
That last one is the route I would suggest for a newcomer to the mini hobby. It will serve you very well for the foreseeable future.
I don't know your financial status but if you can afford the $80 for the Bestiary and the NPC Codex, that is my suggestion and with fantastic reviews to back that up.
If you need to pare that down a bit I would do the Bestiary for $40 and the BattleStudio paper minis for your PCs and NPCs.
I say stay away form paper min. By the time you buy the image, then buy the card stock, then buy the base, then buy color ink, then buy the glue then buy chip board and all your time to cut paste and put it together. You spent more than you would if you just bought a plastic minins in the fist place.
I am 40 years old have 2 kid that take up my time. So I do not want to spend 2 or 3 hour printing cuting pasting stuff. I want to play D&D not do arts and crafts. Keep it simple When I go to con I use box of 1 inch colored 10 colors glass beads 5 bucks for about 200 total. And I use Warsher 2 inch and 3 inch for larges and Huges. I have about 10 huge 15 large for about 7 bucks. So For 12 bucks total I all the minins I need vs 120 bucks or more for paper.
Shoot for 120 bucks I can put together a nice set of prepainted plastic figs.
Paper gets wet, spilled drinks, sweet and oil form hands smuges image you print.
Paper rips easy.
Paper blows easy off the doard by fans.
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I say stay away form paper min. By the time you buy the image, then buy the card stock, then buy the base, then buy color ink, then buy the glue then buy chip board and all your time to cut paste and put it together. You spent more than you would if you just bought a plastic minins in the fist place.
I am 40 years old have 2 kid that take up my time. So I do not want to spend 2 or 3 hour printing cuting pasting stuff. I want to play D&D not do arts and crafts. Keep it simple When I go to con I use box of 1 inch colored 10 colors glass beads 5 bucks for about 200 total. And I use Warsher 2 inch and 3 inch for larges and Huges. I have about 10 huge 15 large for about 7 bucks. So For 12 bucks total I all the minins I need vs 120 bucks or more for paper.
Shoot for 120 bucks I can put together a nice set of prepainted plastic figs.
Paper gets wet, spilled drinks, sweet and oil form hands smuges image you print.
Paper rips easy.
Paper blows easy off the doard by fans.
Nobody said to buy the PDFs of them...I said to buy the $40 Bestiary and NPC Codex s. They are a hard product of 1/8"thick, punched out, cardstock that comes with their plastic bases that they slide into. Even the BattleStudio ones are printed out and just need to be assembled. Both require no arts and crafts, although the Battlestudio ones may need a dab of glue to put together.
I offered the easiest cheapest way to get a good supply of minis.
Try eBay for “lots” of “D&D miniatures” . You can get a good start that way. Note that the Pafthfinder Pre-painted minis, esp the starter set, are exceptionally nce.
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Technically, I said you could buy the Premade Pawns, or you could buy the PDF.
I then gave my view of the advantages of both.
If you are buying color ink, cardstock, chipboard, etc, all for a single set of pawns, then yeah, that would be stupidly expensive. And I did point out that PDF + Set of Bases costs more than boxed set.
On the other hand, if you are like me, and you *have* the card stock and chip board, etc, the cost is trivially cheap (I buy in bulk for projects like this and for other projects.) And you only need the bases you want. Plus I like the storage and the ability to get as many of any given fig as I want.
Time is a cost, and it depends how much time you are willing to spend. On the other hand, if you have kids, you *could* always make gluing pawns together an arts and crafts activity with them. Of course, if you buy unpainted plastic, you could also make painting minis an arts and crafts activity depending on the kids ages. (It all just depends on the kids.)
As far as cutting stuff out, I use a rotary slicer which works nice and fast, and while it is another cost, it is a cost I already invested in for other projects. I am seriously considering borrowing my brother's cricut so I can get *really* nice pawns with most of the white space cut away.
If people are spilling drinks at the gaming table, I have other things I am going to be *way* more upset about than the cardboard pawns (which are mostly up on bases and probably relatively safe)
I do suggest staying away from the all paper minis, unless you are willing to convert them to cardboard pawns.
For me, the ability to have minis ride their mounts and the ability to clip condition tags onto minis and have identical NPC minis numbered / color coded for tracking means I will usually prefer cardboard minis.
If you are willing to *really* put in the time (as in an hour a week or so over many months, you can do what I am doing now, which is download the PDFs, Extract the images, Rescale them so they are the proper scale height, Remount them in publisher, and reprint them. (One current defect in the pathfinder pawns is that the 7.5 foot angel is the same height as the 4.5 foot dwarf.) But then, when you prep for game night, you can say "Oh, I need X of these" and just print any that you don't already have. (I did that for an army of giant ants for a hive my players were exploring. They had already encountered a few ant scouts. The look on my players face, when they arrived early and watched the growing pile of ant pawns was awesome.)
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By the way, if I ever get around to picking up a 3D printer, and anyone starts putting out a decent line of 3D printable miniatures, I expect to be all about the plastic minis again :)
I would love to see the different lines that would be available....
Zelda-esque 8 bit minis, Order of the Stick type minis, Anime' style minis, Cartoonishly Disney type of minis....would be kinda cool to see some stuff like that. Also would love a fairly easy 3d program to create your own using stick figures and filling them in or something. I would love make a Wumpus mini that way.
Thanks for all the advice guys, love the idea of a plexi glass table top, and the many ideas for "make shift" markers..
Oldcat, check out eBay for lots of old Mage Knight miniatures. I bought literally hundreds of them for roughly fifty cents each. They are perfectly usable as Pathfinder miniatures.
Also, go buy some Sculpey clay at your local Hobby Lobby and you can make your own very cheaply.
You can also find tons of great miniatures at toy stores that are completely suitable for gaming, especially things like animals, dinosaurs and mythical creatures.
Dollar stores are also a great place to look. I've found some insanely well made miniatures at dollar stores.
Finally, just keep a bunch of colored glass pellets of the type they use in floral arrangements around. I've run dozens of encounters with different colored glass pellets representing orcs, kobolds, local villagers, etc.