Hello, I'm preparing to GM for my first time ever, and was wondering how often you use miniatures in your games? I've gone through and made some models for some of my player characters and was wondering if recurring NPCs should have their own models as well.

My plan is to play through the adventures in the book and the supplements before I attempt to write my own. For GMs that write their own material how heavily do you draw on the Dark Heresy Source books and/or Deathwatch?

I'm planning on keeping track of our progress on my website . Here are some of the characters I've made so far:

I rarely use minis, and even then only when GMs or other players really want to use them. I prefer chalkboards, paper or abstract descriptions. But whatever works for you, go for it!

I never use minis for personal level gaming (although a well painted/converted one of their character will earn a player bonus XP, as would a well written backstory, or a carefully done character portrait*), although I do use minis and tokens for ship-to-ship combat. I've found it helps a lot for most people to have something they can visualise/refer to when the fight is going on over several hundred thousand kilometers (and many of them have trouble holding relative vectors in their head... this isn't star trek, ships don't turn on a dime, dammit!).

*Adjusted for the player's ability in whichever of those attempted. Not everyone's 'Eavy Metal quality, or a great artist, and half my players are at least mildly dyslexic. What I'm looking for is effort . Hell, I've even had players cosplay as their character for the XP.

In your case, yes I would use mini's. They look great!

But besides ship to ship combat, using minis is not that important for this game. Though it can help to use them for visualization purposes. Detailed positioning of pc's and npc's is not really needed here.

If I had really good minis, I would.

But no.

If I had a collection of minis, I wouldn't use them. But then the system is so heavily laden with range and the bonuses from close quarters shooting are so important when you start with 25-45 in BS, adjusted by oh so many little fidgety things. My players have a lot of crunch in front of them, and they get it, so they want to be able to use it. Narrating where they are just breaks down when they start moving around and want to use range bonuses/penalties.

GW makes money selling minis, and the rights over to FFG to make RPG lines, as it were. So the system makes use of minis, heavily. Is it possible to play without? Sure, but unlike FFG's 3rd Ed fantasy Warhammer, it isn't built to play without SOMEthing representing the players and enemies. I've made some paper standups for my game, then donated them to my current GM (even though he won't use them, it was important to show him how much I appreciate his game. We narrate skirmishes, and clunkily use a whiteboard for space combat).

But you minis look great! If you don't break your bank, go with it. If it isn't fun for you or the players, move away from it. All my fights with Eldar got the players excited since I bought a few farseers and pathfinders, but never did get to use my Chaos Marine. Maybe another campaign.

Minis are a must for my group! There's only been a handful (being generous too) of times we haven't used minis, and those are mainly more RP and story sessions, and even then I do draw out the general lay of the land for the situation at hand.

We use them for tactical combat and space combat as well. For my group, they're essential.

jordiver2 said:

I'd actually argue there aren't many fiddly things in close-quarter firefights. Most "close" combats, and ambushes will essentially take place close enough that one bonus will apply all through (even with pistols), unless someone deliberately closes for Point Blank.

Hell, I'd argue that the system is built to play without minis, but has an add-on system to make use of them (it was particularly obvious in WFRP2e, which I vastly prefer to 3e, but that's a rant for somewhere else). GW has made a similar scale game designed to need minis (=][=nquisitor, the rules for which are still available free from their site), and while that is also possible to play without, it becomes much fiddlier. Range modifiers are much more problematic in that, depending wholly on the accuracy code of the weapon *shudders*.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy =][=nquisitor, and give it the respect it deserves for acting as predecessor for the current range, but **** that was crunch-heavy (and arguably unfinished).

Alasseo, I'd definitely agree that I've seen crunchier games out there (Inquisitor, GURPS, Alpha Omega for the way out there awesome stuff, or even Exalted/Scion), it's just that the 40k RPG is on the other side of my line that reads "too crunchy." At least with the way we've played it around here, where your PCs tech, or plethora of items with micro bonuses, amount to half of your PCs capabilities.

Either way, I do not believe that system requires anything, minis included, I just see a strong supporting system for some form of representation. And 1 range being used throughout an entire encounter? It's funny, that's more or less what happens in our games too, of course until SOMEone decides to play a sniper.

Minis are not necessary, but if you have them (and correponding terrain), I think they add an extra level of fun to the games. I'll give you the same advice I always give about using minis in WH40KRP games: I started out using 1" = 1 Meter scale, but that made the battlefields too cramped (the kitchen table is only so big...), so I switched to 1/2" = 1 Meter. I find that works much better (at least for outdoor combat; indoors, where conditions will be cramped to begin with, 1" = 1 Meter is fine).

I don't use minis. If we have to, I made some simple carboard tokkens.

You know it all in prefrence to what you want to do, I use minis manly becaus e my players need a visual rep. to get whats going on.

Decessor said:

I do exactly the same. Using models often just turns things into a mini-wargame, and I''d play 40k for that!

We were using minis, but I didn't like the range of stuff I had. I'm going to be experimenting with using Legos, actually. Built in ranges (1 dot = 1m), plus the ability to reuse materials for different environments/ships/characters without having to rebuy all sorts of stuff makes it nice. There are plenty of custom Lego sites to cover some of the more 40k-ish stuff, and it helps I have a Legoland nearby. When we get more established maybe I'll post photos.

I just ran a large-ish scale combat. It was too big to use our standard minis and 3-D terrain, so I drew out the battlefield on cheap brown wrapping paper (a long piece slightly smaller that the table) using a Sharpie. Then I made counters out of cardboard, using a hole punch for individuals and coin-sized disks for units, and proportionate rectangles for vehicles. I painted all of the pieces different colors according to faction and labeled them (a single letter on individual markers, and writing out what the counter is on larger ones). I was trying to impart a sense of scale larger that our typical mini-based battles, but I was worried that my players might find it too hard to identify with a simple counter; fortunately they rated it a big success. So, yeah, whatever works…

While I don't use miniatures at the moment, I may end up using them for larger space battles.

It's so hard to argue with the visuals of a well painted mini.

We just proxy miniatures on a battlemat, with 1 cm = 1 m, and base to base contact is point-blank range/melee. Works well enough most of the time.