While an official announcement will happen after I know what I'm talking about, but we ARE going to do character figures for PD.

I'm meeting the sculptor later this week to get the ball rolling.

One question is one of scale. What size to do them?

Plan is four $10 packs (Feds, Romulans, Klingons, aliens) of three figures each for summer, maybe Origins, two more packs shortly thereafter. Then a pack or two every other
month until people quit buying them. Might also do $40 packs of 12-15 characters.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 09:07 pm: Edit

Scale?

Fits on the published gride-lines I guess.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 09:09 pm: Edit

Anything from one inch to two inches will fit. What is the best scale? I realize that is like asking a bar full of drunks what is the best drink, but give me your thoughts.

By Mark Costello (Kosov) on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 09:20 pm: Edit

Steve,

The most popular character-based figure size is 25/25mm. That's the long time RPG and skirmish-tabletop standard. 15mm figures are also quite popular for wargaming. Some folks, myself included, use 15mm figures for some RPGs as well. Others will no doubt chime in about 20mm, 6mm, 2mm, and 54mm scales, but none of those are really popular enough to justify a support line for PD. My strong suggestion: go with 28mm.

Who's your sculpter?

Mark

By Matthew Pulido (Talison) on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 10:10 pm: Edit

Doesn't D&D/D20 use 35mm?

By David Keyser (Riov_Tafv) on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 10:13 pm: Edit

As someone who paints RPG figures, the 25mm scale is what I prefer to work with. Small enough to get a lot of figures on the game table but large enough to handle easily while painting and moving themduring the game.

By Tony L Thomas (Scoutdad) on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 10:33 pm: Edit

SVC, while not a professional (although I do play one...) - I would think that the 25 / 28 mm scale would be the best. Most RPGs use 25mm and GW uses figures that are about 28mm for WH.

These are the scales that 90% of your customer base (remember, if the quality of the minis is good... they will be purchased by non-PD players for use in their games also...) is used to seeing.

Additionally - those scales are close enough to the widely available 1/35th scale military miniatures that you could easily adapt many of those vehicles / accesories for use in a PD game.

just my 2 quatloos

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 10:39 pm: Edit

What ever the old Ral Partha figures were would be great. I think thats the 25mm ones.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 10:40 pm: Edit

Man, Mike Rapers gonna be up to his ears in painting begs!

By F. Michael Miller (Fmm) on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 11:05 pm: Edit

Scotch & soda with a twist.

Oops, wrong question.

By William F. Hostman (Aramis) on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 11:16 pm: Edit

25-28mm is most popular, 15mm is a good second, and are really close to ground scale for 1.5m:1" or 5':1" (Current D&D ground scale), and undersized for 1"=1yd (Which is pretty much GURPS ground scale).

Reaper and GW do 28mm. Most old D&D figures are 25mm. Most new are 28mm.

52mm is recently catching on, but it is TOO BIG for most roleplay groups.

15's are especially good for 1.5m:1/2". They are far too heavy, far too much detail, and quite a pain to find scale stuff for.

Military minis are really popular in 15mm, and many are sci-fi. The 15mm vehicles available make it doable. (15mm is usually about 1:85 - 1:90. The old Traveller minis were in this scale) They are about half the size, though., and HO scale train stuff works pretty well...

My personal preference is for 15mm. (Smaller, lighter to ship, easier to tote about, and I need smaller maps, which, since I seldom play around a table, means the average coffee table works for spreading them out.)

Also nice would be a font with figures.... and would serve all scales.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 11:45 pm: Edit

It depends upon how far you want to take it.

If you are just planning on providing character miniatures, for use in role-playing, then 25mm is the way to go.

However, if you plan on adding Ground Combat Vehicles, Shuttles, Tanks, etc. to the mix, then you may want to consider 15mm so that those kits are not as large and expensive [I mention this because you want to publish your Starfleet Assault game which would, I presume, use these miniatures - you want these minis compatible with the RPG ones].

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 01:07 am: Edit

The choice is 25/28 and 15, as has been said above.

For RPGs, I'd do 28 mm.

If you want to get into SF miniatures skirmish rules, I'd do 15 mm....but I'd do them later.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 02:37 am: Edit

15mm is too small for single figures; that scale works better in mounting four to the base for wargames.

25mm works for either. I think D&D figures are 25mm or 28/30mm (probably the latter).


Garth L. Getgen

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 06:08 am: Edit

I don't know much about the minis of ships so I have a question.

Are these lead-tim alloy minis or plastic?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 10:01 am: Edit

Pewter (mostly tin, no lead in US minis in a decade due to New York being snippy about it).

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica) on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 10:34 am: Edit

Yup. When New York added put miniatures in the toy category with regard to lead ('91? '92?), that pretty much drove Grenadier (and a number of others) out of business, and seriously hurt Ral Partha. 'Course, having been through the fun of lead poisoning, I can see their point...and the darned things do look like a toy to any kid that can get his hands on them.

By Darren Kehrer (Kehrer1701) on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 11:02 am: Edit

Reaper minatures scale is what most game buyers are looking for as that scale is what rpg creators base a lot of their stuff on.

By Will Culbertson (Willc) on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 11:21 am: Edit

So these are going to be standard minis then? I think one of the best things WoTC did was to do the pre-painted mini's for both D&D and Star Wars. Granted, the collectable random packs are a bit of a pain but it gets me buying minis again. I don't have the time to paint a bunch of minis for games so having these pre-painted ones are a big help. I have no idea on their cost basis since it's an entirely different sale model but it got me back into minis after I spent way too much time and money on Warhammer.

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 11:42 am: Edit

Make them the same size as the GW mini's (25/28mm) as this size is the most popular.

They are easy to paint (as DavidK said).

But also at this scale, and detail, people can use them for any generic SciFi RPG, not just GPD, PD20, etc.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 11:54 am: Edit

I am well aware of the concept of selling these things to non-PD gamers for generic use. (When I played D&D, we used all kinds of minis for just about anything.)

The pre-painted minis have to be ordered out of china in quantities that exceed the sales of the top ten SFB products (total, all ten) for the last ten years.

By Chris Mannall (Cmannall) on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 02:35 pm: Edit

The pre-painted minis might be great for people who can't or won't paint their own, but round here no-one has bought them, and there was quite a bit of anger at WotC for dropping the old metal mini line when they introduced their prepainted ones. When you're used to painting your own, and you've gotten quite good at it, the prepainted ones look *awful*.

Count me in as happy that the prepainted ones are outside of the realms of possibility.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 02:43 pm: Edit

Me too.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica) on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 03:33 pm: Edit

True enough. The only pre-painted minis I've ever seen that were worth a darn were the Oriental Blades series marketted by Crystal Caste; everything else has been just dreadful.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 04:10 pm: Edit

I think we can agree that pre-painted isn't going to happen (for now) and just move on. Seems like everybody says 28mm and I'll see what the sculptor says when he drops by.