Do any of you use miniatures in your shadowrun games? I play in Redjack's game and we use them fairly often. Lately I've been converting some miniatures for our group which got me going on a larger Shadowrun project.


You can find my Shadowrun stuff on my Blog.

Personally, I use Maptools, which is especially handy since my group is scattered all over the USA at the moment for the winter holidays (New York, California, Maryland, West Virgina), but even in person, I just host it over the apartment LAN (also has built-in support for SR4E dice rolling, which is very, very useful.)

We stay in narrative, without using maps...

We use woodcraft spools and a laminated one inch grid square, with dry erase markers for tactical combat. Because my laminated grid square is 2 foot by 4 foot I also write down dates, weather notes, windage, etc....as well as draw a variety of maps on it. Combines with Google Maps and Google Earth I am able to produce a large quantity of materials relevant to the game really cheaply.

Woodcraft spools cost about a buck for a bag of twenty plus, and come in eight plus sizes. (Which coincidentally is the basic size system used by D&D....) I keep them in a cheap plastic craft box, that is transparent and cost me just over two dollars. I can literally draw a city street and populate it if need be, with almost a hundred people for a tactical combat.

We use wet erase markers on a battle map I picked up at Gen Con a few years back. We have pulled out everything from toy cars to wood blocks in addition to miniatures, but we really like Ironworker's miniatures.

I have a battlemap that I use when running a D20 game, but something about that just hasn't seemed worth it for shadowrun. Though it might be interesting to give it a shot once, but I think in the long run, I'd need several maps because of the likely hood of groups of players splitting up.

We used to use minis a lot more. Mostly it was Micro Machines and 1/72 scale plastic figures, because that's what I had left over from my childhood. Nowadays when we play we generally don't bother with it. Combat is either narrative or when things get complicated, we'll use a map.

I have a mini of my character Nas that came all the way from Germany.

Iron Wind Metals still sells the "official" metal Shadowrun Miniatures.

for Shadowrun and other future-based games, I have personally used stuff by Hasslefree Miniatures, Infinity, and Warmachine.




-k

I can see this one being used a lot, KI.

Wow. Almost 5 bucks a pop for miniatures?

Yeah. Minis used to be a lot cheaper before people started whining about using lead and the companies switched to pewter. If you think those prices are bad, though, look up Games Workshop.

Soon they'll be made in China and we'll be back to Lead.

I know GW all too well. I used to own 14,000 points of Eldar models (~$3000). As for Shadowrun I am working up a lot of stuff from World Works Games, "Streets of Mayhem" paper terrain, and painting up a lot of minis from Wargames Foundry's "Street Violence" range. Some of the models are actually sized well enough to double as Works with a good paint job. A couple would work as Trolls with some minor conversion work.

Time to bust out the "green stuff".

GW doesn't sell minis, it sells belonging to the community. Hence the prices.

Long ago, when I was poor & had trouble painting mini's... a very nice GM of mine used to draw our characters then cut them out & tape them to bottle caps with cardboard backings. Cheap mini's. While not fancy, each was individual & looked how we described our characters. I miss those mini's still.

Wow! Those are both great sites and the prices are enticing, compared to the competition.

To be honest, I don't know how we could use standard miniatures in Shadowrun. In D&D, where ranges are fairly short, sure, but the size of table you'd need to be able to fit our typical Shadowrun battle on at anything like the correct scale would be ridiculous. And we usually artificially limit the size of battles, to keep from running out of room! If we regularly did 1500 meter engagements...

There are times when a team is running towards the edge of the map, sniping, etc. At those times we place them on the edge of the map and track distance to the edge. It definitely changes the dynamic of getting to melee from a sniping distance.

We'd make do, but yeah it'd be a pain in the ass.

Come to think of it, for those who use miniatures, what scale do you use on your maps?

1" = 1m

Depends on the mood. I like mini's, but I also hate how you get this omniscient view of the fight. When doing narrative the GM has more control over what the player's character knows and sees, which can build more tension and drama. But with mini's you get a chance to as a player to flex your tactical muscles a bit more, satisfying the war game itch. As far as what I use, I keep it simple, hex based battle mat with dry erase. If I have time, I create transparent sheets with rooms / floors already drawn on them to lay on the mat. I use 2 meter hexes as far as scale goes.

Being bored for a few... Days. My group made a giant table that's a full square grid.

Too bad the sharpie wore off.

I can't believe that someone took over mini production.

That's ... awesome, really. Even with the old molds and the teensy scale (25 mm... been a while!), the notion of grabbing a few up is hard to overcome.

I think everyone mileage varies-I can definitely see your point as being a valid concern. It's an issue we grapple with every time we draw a map-and luckily for me my players are pretty good at keeping the metagame separate from character knowledge.

Is there a MapTools shadowrun ruleset?

Nevermind, typed the question before my eyes caught up with the reading. It's part of the base package you say? Didn't know one existed, thanks!

Neither did I. Toying with it now. Thanks.

No problem. Here, you might find these links useful: Maptools Dice Expression Notation and SR4 Maptools Framework (framework not as useful to me, but some people will probably want to use it). Also, I uploaded the dice macro files (that I spent a good chunk of time encoding) to my wiki:
SR4 Dice Macros
SR4 Edge Dice Macros
SR4 Gremlin Dice Macros
SR4 GM Dice Macros
SR4 Macro Template

Feel free to use them.

Cool, thanks. I don't often play online-but this might be a nice way to change that.

Infinity Miniatures. Just found these. They look interesting & if cannibalized for parts or bits, I could see major potential.

We use miniatures occasionally, but mostly we don't bother.

A few years back we made extensive use of them, though, and thanks to that I have nearly every shadowrun miniature ever made (Grenadier and Ral Partha).

Range problems can be dealt with and it depends on your play style. Our current group is pretty close quarters. If you are in buildings or underground complexes then you are usually at short range for assault rifles anyway.

Miniatures are not useful for every encounter but some times they can be quite helpful.

I'm a miniature gamer and always have been so I use them a lot. Sometimes I use elaborate Terrain set ups. Sometimes I use maps or a wet erase battle grid. Depends on the encounter. For me they are a lot of fun and that's the main reason I play any game.

There are a lot of sci-fi and modern minis out there right now. Too many to name. If you know how to work the scale game which is quite varried then you can make just about any kind of character. Of course this can cost a lot of money. It cost me about $35 to build two miniatures for my main character but that's pretty unusual. He looks like I want him to though.

There are a lot of good companies to use for conversions or just as is. Of course Trolls and Dwarves are the hardest. Orcs are not that hard if you look around. Humans and Elves are easy.

Here is a short list of companies that currently produce sci-fi and modern minis that work well for Shadowrun:

Wargames Foundry's Street Violence: This line has a quite varried scale. Some are big enough to be Orcs. Some are small enough to be elves. The War Store carries this line at a really nice discount for U.S. customers.

Infinity: I don't have any of these yet but they look like a really good match for Shadowrun. I definately want to get some. Lots of drones and a few bikes even.

Reaper Chronoscope: I have a lot of these miniatures. In fact their fantasy lines have a number of half orcs that I have used for head swaps. It's pretty expensive though since the average half orc is $7.00. That's a lot for just a head.

Pig Iron Productions: Lots of nice "Security Team" type figs. Lots of useful bits too.

Copplestone Castings Future Wars: Lots of good stuff here. Some figs are big enough to be good Orcs. Quite a bit of this line is also carried by a company called EM4 and last time I checked they offered pre-painted versions.

Hasselfree Miniatures: They have a lot of good stuff. A lot of "Zombie Hunter" types. They also have an extensive line of sci-fi dwarves called "Grym". I don't own any minis from this company but I hear they are on the smallish side of 28mm which could be a good thing.

Herasy Miniatures: Lots of cool sci-fi and modern types. I don't own any and I've heard they are similar to Hastlefree in scale.

Merc Miniatures: Expensive but pretty spot on for the 6th world. I have one and it's very nice. I want more but my budget it kind of tapped at the moment and I have thousands of minis.

Games Workshop: Not so much their 40K line but if you check out their Specialist Games "Necromunda" line you can find a lot of good Shadowrun type figs. They are kinda expensive.

Ironwind Metals: The origional Shadowrun line in all their 25mm early 90s glory. There are other 25mm lines out there if you look and some smallish 28mm lines. Good thing with 25mm is that any 28mm could be an Orc and the 30-35mm lines out there could make good Trolls.

I could keep going but that would take forever.
Here is a pretty good list of miniature companies out that. That site also has an extensive list of miniature hobby sites.

Small miniature companies are often run by the sculptors. Being an artistic type I know that artistic types usually don't make good business types. I would look for a distributer rather than going through a smaller company line. The War Store is a pretty good one. Cool Mini or Not also has a store section that carries a lot of obsure lines and even a few one offs.

I've been trying to convince Reaper to do some meta types. There is no way anyone can copywrite the concept of Orc with an AK. They do have one dwarf in their Chronoscope line.

I have a character that this Mini would work great for. Too bad I can't RP him.

1m = 100cm

1:1 Scale???

Shadowrun LARP?!

Jeez, those Iron Wind miniatures look like ass. Some of Hasslefree ones are good, but some are awful, like sculptor had a bad day (I mean, compare things like that bald military guy with a headset or Dirty Harry clone and that Asian schoolgirl with a katana). Infinity figures are very good, though.
Too bad the Warzone figures aren't made anymore, I have over 2000 points worth of Capitol and I just ordered the core of my 1000 point Semai army from a local store that still has some (although very limited choice, for example they don't have any Capitol figs left). Some of those (Cybertronic, Capitol, Cartel, some Legion) would fit right in (I have a converted Cartel field agent that could work as a biker - I got it without the flamer, so I just turned his hand 180 degrees, spackled the cut with Green Stuff and gave him a Bolter from my friend's loose Space Marine bitz).

I have my old SR minis, picked a buttload of them up in Florida at some big game store from their 'bargain bin'. Like 75 cents a package. Score!

The toxic spirit with the HUGE spider head is awesome.

We used them some, but nothing super detailed. Just for a general idea of where people were in relation to each for LOS purposes, etc.