Miniatures

Miniatures are a tried-and-true gaming tradition. Any tactical situation can be better depicted with miniatures used to represent a player’s character. Whether painted or unpainted, these carved pieces of lead or plastic can be a helpful aid to any campaign.

Often, various companies carry a line of Star Wars miniatures, and there are many other science fiction and fantasy miniature lines that can easily be converted to your Star Wars adventures.

Painting miniatures is a fun hobby, and some truly amazing results can be achieved with practice. There are a wide variety of magazines and books that illustrate painting techniques.

Beyond miniatures, scenery can add a lot to representations of scenes. Anything from small boxes to plastic model parts to empty plastic bottles can be cut, glued, and painted to make buildings, power generators, or other Star Wars scenery. Use of poster-board and tape and a bit of artistic creativity can create buildings, barricades, or hedgerows.

Plastic model kits are a great way to spice up a scene. Why describe an AT-AT walker chasing the characters when you can put the plastic model on the tabletop and show it looming over the characters’ figures?

Gamemasters are encouraged to think about building dioramas for non-combat scenes as well. Your players will be surprised and delighted if you present a detailed cantina complete with miniatures, furniture, painted walls, and miniature speakers running off an audio player that plays the “Cantina Band” theme. These kinds of dioramas lead to fun nights of heavy-duty roleplaying, where the gamemaster characters inside the cantina are more important than combat.

Of course, building dioramas takes a lot longer than simply writing adventures, but the resulting prop is often worth the effort. If one of your players enjoys this kind of construction, these kinds of dioramas can be built by him or her instead, without giving away too much information about the adventure.

Best of all, after the diorama is used, you’ve got a showpiece for your bookshelf or a prop that can be used over and over again with minor retouches.

Source: REUP:183