Traveller Minatures?

[zozotroll]

Quick note on scales. More or less accepted by the historicals, who are much bigger on it than RPG gamers.

1/72 = 20mm
!/64 = 25mm
1/56 = 28mm

Many WWII gamers use 1/64 or 1/56 troops and 1/48 vehicles. Works OK as long as everybody does the same.

The biggest problem for xxmm is that it is not a very exact scale as what exactly does it mean? Many use it as a hight to a persons eyes. Others place it at a different spot.

If you ever game 15mm WWII you can find figures from 12 mm up 18 mm all claiming to be 15mm. There is no true mm because there is no universal standard. Now if everybody went to a numeric scale, where you went off of the size of a rifle, which is a known size, instead of a person, this might disappear. But mm scales allow a figure maker to get it a bit wrong, and still be OK within the current system.

 

[Sturn]

Thanks for coming to my defense Tbeard (that wasn't as hard as I thought it would be) :wink: .

Heh. Do not mock hardcore colonial miniatures players, for they have strange and terrible castings.

Hopefully he doesn't take it as a jab, was simply trying to mend fences.

 

[Bishop Odo]

For years I have been preaching the need for Traveller figures and ship miniatures. Yet, every time I do so someone pulls a list of what available and says there are plenty out there and the thread digress into a debate on scale, style, and the fact that some people have no grasp of what the difference between Traveller and 40K is. After all, some folks are happy using GW space marines in there Traveller game as PCs, but I’m not. I did remove the player from my game, who tried to pull off the GW fig thing. He just did not get it.

I’m kind of a miniatures snob, I like them, I collect them, I like to paint them, convert them, and I’m almost compulsive about them. But scale drives me nuts, I hate to use my old WEG, Star Wars and Star Grunt 25mm minis even the Grenadier Traveller boxes sets because of scale and the cartoon style, big heads you know. I could start over again with 15mm, that Star Grunt has, they are sweet,it’s the most complete line thus far, but I have to many various 25-30mm scales so I think it would better to start with them. I think, I will convert my own, did I mention crazy somewhere in this post.

I would rather just buy them.

 

[EDG]

I did remove the player from my game, who tried to pull off the GW fig thing. He just did not get it.

Personally, I don't care about miniatures - to me all they are is a way to represent your character on a tabletop, so a scrap of paper with an arrow on it and your PCs name would work for me, a GW figure or anything else would work too - what matters is that you know it's representing a given PC. Heck, we used random Mage Knight and D&D minis for our D&D game, and when we faced a bunch of monsters we just used a load of quarters (as in the coins) with numbered paper labels stuck on them. It worked fine.

If nothing else, I don't and never did have the time or the inclination to sit down and meticulously paint minis, and certainly never saw the point of spending a small fortune just to get "the real thing". Maybe this player you "removed" felt the same way, and kicking him out from a Traveller game (which doesn't even need miniatures to play it) just because he wanted to use something else seems really harsh to me.

That said, you're a self-admitted "miniatures snob" so I shouldn't be surprised - when I played 40K with some of my friends years ago they'd grumble similarly about how I didn't use "proper" miniatures or didn't paint the ones I had - but at least they understood that I wasn't going to spend a lot of money just to do it "properly" when stand-ins worked perfectly well.

 

[AKAramis]

For running L5R, I use 1/72'd scale Zvezda and Ceasar lines. the soft plastic makes them damage resistant, hot water reshapable, and cheap to ship.

Plus it makes 1"=6' both ground and figure scale, and 1"=2m pretty close.

I've noticed that the 1/72 plastic minis tend to be much closer to each other in scale (once painted, you have to either know the line or pick up the figs to tell which are Zvezda and which are Ceasar), and they have plenty of detail.

Most merc games can get away with using moderns in 1/72 and 20mm. 20mm accessories and sci-fi figs are out there, mostly in the UK. So are some 1/72 scifi stuff...

As noted before, 20mm is less precise than 1/72.

 

[tbeard1999]

Thanks for coming to my defense Tbeard (that wasn't as hard as I thought it would be) :wink:

No problem. It seemed like an amazing stretch to conclude that you were bashing anyone. I guess the guy was just looking for an argument. He should be more calm and considerate...like me for instance

I did not mean to "slam" Wizards minis at all. I like miniatures from many different companies including Wizards. I said, "TRUE" merely to denote the size difference in order to answer the question I was responding to. As Tbeard said, many old gamers refer to the older, somewhat smaller 25mm lines as "true". I didn't come up with the term, the gaming community did.

I also meant that the true, older 25mm would look like 12 year old children when compared to the newer Wizards scale (28-30mm as Tbeard pointed out). Perhaps I didn't explain it completely.

Well, given that it's a pretty ubiquitous term, you shouldn't have had to explain it. Interestingly, I came across some ancient Grenadier "Dungeons and Dragons" figures from the late 1970s. These are considerably stockier than contemporaneous figures from (say) Ral Partha. But even they are a little smallish compared with modern "28mm" figures.

On a funny note, I ran a Star Wars RPG campaign a couple years ago using Wizards minis. One of the PCs played an, "escaped Wookie slave boy". I used an old metal 25mm Wookie for him; its reduced size worked nicely.

Making lemonade from lemons, I guess.

 

[tbeard1999]

Personally, I don't care about miniatures - to me all they are is a way to represent your character on a tabletop

As a hardcore miniatures wargamer, I don't find that miniatures are usually worth the trouble in most RPGs, except to very generally indicate marching order. And way too often, the presence of nice miniatures and scenery leads GMs to yield to temptation and turn the RPG into a miniatures wargame. That usually fails miserably because few RPGs make a more than passable miniatures game.

In my Traveller campaign, I tend to run a lot of military type adventures. And there will usually be one major battle (usually an assault on a fire base to steal a top secret fighter, rescue an important person, get the MacGuffin) that I will kida go over the top on. As I use Striker as the basis for my Traveller combat rules (though this may switch to a T4 type system in the future), I already have stats for vehicles, heavy weapons, etc., from MegaTraveller and the Adjutant series (as well as my own efforts).

One of the best resources for mercenary style campaigns has been the map boards from the Squad Leader wargame. I even use SL counters to show enemy units.

But most of the time, I eliminate miniatures and grids and simply describe the action. Combat moves quickly and the players can get on with the adventure.

I think that's why I was so disappointed with the MGT combat system. We already have detailed and fiddly Traveller combat system -- GURPs, TNE, and T20 (the best of the bunch IMHO) for instance. Don't need another one IMHO.

 

[GamerDude]

You seem to be going out of your way to find offense here. In any case, the term "True 25mm" is commonly used by wargamers to refer to the original 25mm scale, which was roughly 1/72 (or 1"=6'), give or take.

Ironic that... you missed I quantified my post with "IF true is 25mm = 5 ft", which was intentional since I hadn't heard the term before.

You also state that "was roughly 1/72 (or 1"=6'), give or take." Roughtly isn't much of a standard. What's the deviation on that 'roughly'?, is it that 25mm can vary between 5.5 and 6.5 feet? What is the precise size of any WotC mini that says it's off scale? Is there a 6ft mini that is 25mm tall, or 30 mm tall? When you use categories that have a min and max height, how can anything be classified as "oversized"

I just take extreme exception to vague negative comments about any company/product.{NOTE: I don't know what I was thinking, but yes AAM were done at 15mm not 25mm. That what happens when I violate rule #7 - "NEVER post when you have a migraine building" My appologies for that total misstatement on my part}

Games like SW/D&D minis have always been 5ft = 1 inch (25.4 mm) and make no bones about it. Are they a little big for 25mm = 6 feet, yes but they never claim to be that scale.

SJ Games makes/made miniatures for games, and their scale for Traveller is 1" = 1m (or 3.25 ft) and yet there minis are/were too tall for that scale. Oh well, guess they just aren't a big enough company to be noticed.

 

[-Daniel-]

Early Axis and Allies miniatures (AAM) were stated to be "25mm" for the vehicles, but were actually too small.

Early Axis and Allies miniatures figures were advertised as 15mm and the vehicles were even too small for that. When did they say 25mm????

Daniel

 

[GamerDude]

Thanks for catching that. I edited/corrected the post annotating my screwup.

 

[-Daniel-]

Thanks for catching that. I edited/corrected the post annotating my screwup.

Oh, Ok. Not a problem.

Back on topic, I have used various miniatures over the long history of my RPGing life. From paper chits, to Steve Jackson's Paper fold ups, 10mm, 15mm, 25mm, and even lego people and the StarWars figures.

In the end the miniatures were less important them you might think. One player used his lego man even whn the others went to 25mm painted stuff. He sai it did not matter to him because the character was in his minds eye and no miniature would be a close enough match anyway.

I guess my point is, I am interested to see what they come out with, if they do. But it will not make or break my game either way.

Daniel

 

[AKAramis]

According to the best sources I've seen (The Miniatures Page references several of the sources I'd read before their stuff, and matches my assortments of minis), 25mm is 1"=5'6" (eye height of a 5'8" male human), or 1:66, to 1"=5'10" (top of hat for same said 5'8" human), or 1:70 scale.

20mm ranges from 1:70 to about 1:80.

 

[Takei]

I took a look and really like what they did with the Battlefield Evolution line. They are pre-painted (I used to pride myself in my painting ability, but have less and less time for this), look realistic, and include vehicles!

I think many Traveller fans would LOVE Mongoose to treat the Traveller line with such a set of miniatures. Imagine buying a group of "ships crew" with an air raft or a squad of Marines with an Intrepid grav tank to back them up.

I think they would appeal to the Traveller fans that are not necessarily grabbed by the flavour of B5 or Starship Troopers.

 

[tneva82]

Ground Zero Games has an excellent line of 25mm and 15mm sci-fi miniatures.

Is there btw any COMPREHENSIVE picture gallery of their products? I just hate trying to order miniatures blindly and they have VERY few pictures there...They should spend bit time in beefing up store with pictures :-/

Ordered small group of models blindly to see some sample(and hopefully get bunch of useful models for traveller. Assuming order itself succeeded...) but I sure would love to have some sort of visual guide on the models.

 

[Sturn]

Is there btw any COMPREHENSIVE picture gallery of their products? I just hate trying to order miniatures blindly and they have VERY few pictures there.....

I recall a downloadable PDF catalog. There were lots more pictures on it. Not sure if it is still on their site, but I would assume so. I still have the catalog (possibly outdated?) saved somewhere if you can't find it.

 

[Takei]

The Ground Zero Games catalogue does, indeed, have a lot more pictures and is available here.

 

[-Daniel-]

The Ground Zero Games catalogue does, indeed, have a lot more pictures and is available here.

Also you may want to revisit their store. They have been working hard to get many pictures up.

Also the kind oflks over at Eurika have pictures for most of the GZG stuff as well.

Daniel

 

[tneva82]

The Ground Zero Games catalogue does, indeed, have a lot more pictures and is available here.

Also you may want to revisit their store. They have been working hard to get many pictures up.

May have been working but there's still like 3 pictures from 58 eurasian 25mm models, no pictures from israeli troops etc.

So still lots of work to do!

But thanks for the catalogue.

 

[-Daniel-]

The Ground Zero Games catalogue does, indeed, have a lot more pictures and is available here.

Also you may want to revisit their store. They have been working hard to get many pictures up.

May have been working but there's still like 3 pictures from 58 eurasian 25mm models, no pictures from israeli troops etc.

So still lots of work to do!

But thanks for the catalogue.

Did you visit Eurika as well?

dfc

 

[-Daniel-]

With today's news release from Mongoose I guess we can say clearly no minis are going to come out from Mongoose. If they are going to kill off B5 and SST minis I do not see them starting up a Traveller line of minis.

Oh well. Too bad.

Daniel