When I was a pup, I used to enjoy trimming and painting lead miniatures from Grenadier, Ral Partha and TSR (there were others, too, but I don’t remember the companies right now).
So, feeling nostalgic, I did a search on e-bay. Wow! The prices on those old sets have skyrocketed!! I kind of figured that with time, the “lead” part of these sets would fall out of favor, but it looks like maybe no one is making miniatures anymore?
Does anyone know what happened to this hobby? Are there companies still making cheap D&D (and/or Marvel, DC, Traveller, Shadowrun, etc.) figures? What happened to the old ones?
There’s still a pretty good-sized market for unpainted metal minis for RPGs (though they’re now usually made from pewter, not lead).
The big manufacturer these days, for minis specifically for RPGs, from what I see when I go to the game store, is Reaper, though there are also a number of other smaller manufacturers. The quality on their sculpts is light-years better than the stuff we had in the 1970s and 1980s, though there’s also been “scale creep” over the years, and minis are just taller now, in general. I believe that Ral Partha is still out there, though they’ve gone through some ownership changes.
And, there are several companies that make metal minis primarily for non-RPG miniature games (Games Workshop, of course, plus Privateer Press, among others).
But, the big change for RPGs was when WotC (which bought TSR in the mid 90s) discontinued their metal D&D minis line in the early 2000s, and went to pre-painted plastic minis. Both WotC and Paizo (working with WizKids) make lines of pre-painted minis, the quality of which is often surprisingly good. For most gamers, it’s easier to just find a plastic mini than it is to paint (or have painted) a metal mini for your character.
I still have a lot of metal minis, and I hire someone to paint metal minis for my characters (he does a much better job than I could ever do). But, when I go to conventions, nearly everyone I play with uses a pre-painted plastic mini.
Back in the late 80s, early 90s there was a push to ban lead miniatures. The state of New York passed a law prohibiting their sale and so manufacturers were forced to switch to other materials. The law was eventually rescinded but, by then, the change had happened and I imagine the manufacturers were gun-shy of another large state doing the same.
There’s still a lot of miniatures being produced, either from other (non-lead alloy) metals or from types of plastic. 3D printing of miniatures is taking off as well since you can create the exact look you want, or very close to it.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there’s MORE miniatures being produced today than when I was young. Back then, almost every campaign I played in was “mind’s eye” where you just described stuff. Now it feels as though every campaign has a big grid map being used and minis showing everyone’s location.
I’d backed one of these companies (Hero Forge) when they started with a Kickstarter campaign; they make really cool stuff, and the level of customization is pretty awesome.
The big thing that caused that change was 3rd Edition D&D, which was released in 2000. 3E (and all of the d20 games that followed, including Pathfinder) had the underlying assumption in their rules that the players were using a grid map, and some sort of minis or tokens. This has also meant that the market for “battlemats” (gridded mats, on which you can draw erasable maps with markets) exploded, and several companies also make pre-printed maps with various sorts of terrain and dungeon maps on them.
On the other hand, the current edition of D&D (5th) bills itself as not needing miniatures. Honestly, I don’t see much actual difference in the rules (you can do theater-of-the-mind in 3rd, or miniatures in 5th, just fine, and if anything 5th seems to need maps a bit more than 3rd), but that’s the way it’s billed.
Agreed on 3d printing being the current big thing. It’s mostly plastic rather than metal (though you can get things 3d printed in a variety of metals), but the technology is well-suited for small production runs (the reason why the old minis were so expensive), and the market is well-suited for customizability.
One factor is the market has shrunk. The OP doesn’t mention his or her age (D&D miniatures? I’m going to assume his) but I grew up in the sixties and seventies and I remember when RPG’s were a big thing. But now it’s a much smaller niche market. The people who would have been playing RPG’s thirty or forty years ago are playing video games or Magic or tabletop boardgames today.
My guess is that the old sets on eBay are expensive because they’re collector’s items. You can find new minis online or in gaming stores at relatively reasonable prices (considering inflation). A really good mini for a character is around $5-10 depending on brand and complexity.
And the quality is much better now, as was mentioned. Better than the ones I used to buy in the late 80s/early 90s. And there’s more variety, I can afford to get really picky about having the details closely match my character and I’ll probably find a match. There are minis for so many genres too.
Honestly, RPGs have always been a niche market…but it just so happened that, for a couple of years in the late 1970s and early 1980s (i.e., the time frame of “E.T.” and the first season of “Stranger Things” ), D&D was a bit of a cultural phenomenon.
Collectible card games like Magic and Pokemon had their first wave of popularity in the late '90s, when the RPG market was at its nadir. The introduction of 3E D&D revitalized the RPG market, however.
4E D&D (introduced in 2008) was WotC’s attempt to create a version of D&D that could attract MMO players, by making the game feel more like an MMO, mechanics-wise. It was very polarizing, and a lot of players who liked 3E / 3.5 D&D hated it, and jumped ship for Pathfinder (which was essentially an expansion of the 3.5 rules).
By all accounts that I read at that time, Pathfinder surpassed 4E D&D sales, and WotC finally realized that they had a dog on their hands. 5E D&D was an attempt to return to D&D’s simpler roots, and from what I’ve seen, both D&D and Pathfinder are doing fairly well (though I wouldn’t be at all surprised if D&D has never returned to the size it was during that initial boom).
I don’t even mini game (I’m a board gamer) and I can name Malifaux and Guild Ball, not mention pre-painted mini games like X-Wing. Boardgames with minis (Scythe, Blood Rage, Mechs & Minions) are quite popular as well
Most gaming stores (with which I have been familiar) have two primary income sources.
Source 1) Collectible Card Games. Specifically Magic and Pokemon.
Source 2) Miniatures. Specifically Games Workshop. - that’s your Warhammer stuff.
And that’s pretty much it. They live and die on those sales. A lot of these stores probably make more money selling snacks during Pokemon tournaments than they do selling board games or rulebooks. So yeah, still a decent market for miniatures.
Anyway, my gaming group has been using LEGO minifigs for a long time. We love being able to customize our characters on the fly.
A number of years ago, one of our players placed a big order from an unofficial online store and bought a ton of modern/scifi weapons and minifigs. Between those, my childhood collection of classic parts, and a a few Star Wars packs I’ve bought over the years, we can make pretty much any kind of character we can conceive.
My understanding of WotC’s business is that they still make the vast majority of their money from Magic; D&D is far smaller in their portfolio. And, for WotC / Hasbro, D&D is possibly more important for its intellectual property (primarily sales of novels set in the Forgotten Realms) than it is for sales of actual D&D books and accessories.
Counting from when I first started gaming (instead of merely poring through my Basic Set and wishing I was gaming) in 1990, I would say that RPGs are much less of a niche market than I’ve ever known. It’s true that collectable card games are pretty much paying the rent at your Friendly Local Gaming Store, but that has exposed a lot more people than ever before to the world of gaming. And the selection and quality of miniatures is extraordinary. Yes, I’ve got some of the older sets like the Grenadier Goblins and a lot of old Star Frontiers boxed sets and blister packs. But they look so blobby and crude compared to the miniatures you can get now, plus the lead bends easily. The Reaper Bones line makes a lot of their excellent designs available with somewhat diminished casting quality but really cheap. But even plastic minis like the line Wizkids are doing for D&D are starting to make the pewter jobs from 20 years ago look like they were roughed out in playdough.
I think we’re in a golden era. Yes, the excitement of the d20 OGL era has played out. But the variety of games coming out is more than I can keep up with, and the hobby of miniature painting is doing well enough that there seems to be more competition just in paint brands than I’ve ever seen before.
Pathfinder (D&D 3.75) is pretty huge in the Twin Cities. I could play Pathfinder Society 22 days in November if I didn’t mind driving to all the different locations - and there are multiple same-day events 2-3 times per week.
On of the people who DMs PFS for us uses starbursts (the candy) for bad guys. Different colors for the different types on the board. Kill the baddie, you get to eat him.
), D&D was a bit of a cultural phenomenon.