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Using Miniatures For Dungeons and Dragons in the 1980s

captcorajus (RPG Retro Reviews)

18,780 views

Taking a nostalgic look back at miniatures in D&D from the 1980s, and the Classic Grenadier Gold Line for the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game, as well as some newer miniatures with an 'old school' feel.

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20 Comments

@captcorajus Creator 1 year ago (edited) Pinned

I do want to make a statement and an apology about my critique of Other World miniatures in this video. I spoke poorly, no doubt. Clarifying... a practical one man operation, and shipments to the USA which are notoriously unreliable certainly were the major factors in any poor customer experiences in that regard. Retirement from the business was the primary reason Other World ceased operation. I hope that clarifies things a bit. I'll do my best to do better in the future.

@michaelernest1076 1 year ago

I will be 60ys old soon but been collecting the old miniatures from back in the day just out of nostalgia I do love my time painting miniatures

@JohnHarvey-s1y 5 months ago

Pretty new in the community, learning stories like this has been so fascinating! Mainly since the majority of the collection is from this past time, and my entire painting journey has practically been owed to those little guys from that time! Thanks for making a review on these! Nice vid!

@cpet4618 1 year ago

I loved my Ral Partha Miniatures from the 80's. I haven't played since the mid 80's as a kid but could still vividly tell you what my long lost Ranger Miniature looked like!

@dane3038 1 year ago

I like not having to play 20 questions with the DM when I want to move my thief into position for a backstab.

@wrider07 8 months ago

I started playing AD&D in 1981. There was always a game or two going on in the laundry room in our barracks. No one used miniatures, so we would use whatever we had. Pencil erasers, extra dice, matchsticks. I never used miniatures until around 1990, but even then, only PCs were miniatures. Everything else was just some kind of token. The game was always theatre of the mind with pencil and paper sketches.

@mithraisaugustus6421 1 year ago (edited)

One of the reasons I love Army of Darkness is that every character looks like a Ral Partha mini. It's also basically Keep on the Borderlands.

@robcharette1915 1 year ago

Still love collecting miniatures 42 years later. Those lead minis really brought the game to life. Couldn’t wait till the weekend to ride my bike miles to the hobby store with my Dungeon Master Doug to buy a new blister pack just about every week. Then spend all weekend holed up playing the game . Those were the good old days.

@thatswinelord9155 5 months ago

The art for woodland adventures had know trees in the backround!

@davidparker1508 1 year ago

I’ve been digging in my basement and found some of these miniatures a few days ago.

@jimmd68 1 year ago

It's interesting how most of us old farts have similar journeys in gaming, yet each one is unique to each of us. I still have almost all of my early minis as well as everything since then. The three big manufacturers for me were Minifigs, Ral Partha and Grenadier. Interestingly, many of the Grenadier molds are owned by Mirliton Miniatures in Italy and are still in production. We actually made a homemade battle mat before they were commercially available. A sheet of white posterboard, some pen-drawn gridlines and some stick-on clear lamination and we were off and running!

@Se7enBeatleofDoom 1 year ago

AD&D-era miniatures have a distinctive style that is difficult to adequately describe without seeing them firsthand. They possess a more traditional, old-school appearance compared to Warhammer miniatures from that period.

@brooksrownd2275 1 year ago (edited)

The Grenadier sets were as large a part of the aura of my early D&D as the books and modules were. The box art was indeed fabulous and inspiring. The muscled Grenadier Orcs defined the orcs in my games, the Grenadier Dwarfs were also very well done (including the duo with the crossbow), and the Grenadier Wizards often became my mental image of various Magic Users. I had about 8 sets which was a LOT for a poor kid that only got spending money by squirreling a way the $5 a week I was given to supposedly spend on school lunch.

@davidwasilewski 1 year ago (edited)

I distinctly remember, back in the early 1980s, in the U.K., sitting on a school bus with an American friend (Danny, who introduced me to the game) and leafing through the newly released AD&D Monster Manual and chatting excitedly about how awesome it would be to have painted miniatures and a painted 3D Dungeon to play games of D&D with. Little was I know that I would go on to own exactly that, as a middle aged man! I own a couple of thousand painted miniatures - including many, many from the Otherworld lines. Happy times painting, collecting and using them all.

@MikeEagling 1 year ago (edited)

I take exception with your take on Otherworld Miniatures: Richard, who all but single-handedly ran the company before he retired, was one of the nicest people you could meet and his customer service was exemplary given it was just him. Also, delivery times were entirely normal if you lived in the UK, where the company was based. Poor shipping to the USA has more to do with the USPS in my experience. As mentioned by others, a lot of the Otherworld figures have been acquired by Crooked-dice games so these great miniatures live on. Aside from this criticism I enjoyed your video and will watch more 👍

@MrMegamike2k 1 year ago

When I got into d&d I was a huge lego medieval fan. We used lego minifigs for our figurines. My brother and I had ideas for dwarves, elves, orcs, monster lego minifigs decades before they were brought out by lego. 😅

@sgt-slag 1 year ago

This really brought back a lot of memories. Started in 1980, with the Holmes Basic D&D set: no dice, we had to cut apart paper chits, shake them in Dixie Cups, then draw one out to see what number we "rolled" on the "die". We HATED those chits! The chits were soon replaced by the soft, TSR plastic dice: the d20's were nearly round spheres within a year, rolling off the table way too often... Had several Grenadier figure sets, painted them using Testor's Enamel model paints... UGLY! Got into 2e BattleSystem war gaming in 1992, really started collecting miniatures after that. Love mini's war gaming; love to use figures at my 2e AD&D table today, to eliminate sooo many arguments about who was where, when magic hits the fan. Makes DM'ing much easier. Loved the video. Thanks! Cheers!

@williamarthur4801 1 year ago

Still have citadel catalogue from 1981, falling apart, remember the excitement of opening an order when it arrived.

@Bhenderson0001 1 year ago

I think d&d should be encouraged in school to promote a healthy childhood. Love the video.

@robertmcdonald1419 1 year ago

Wow what a trip down memory lane. Started dnd about 1978, such good times. We instantly gravitated to the miniatures as we were tabletop wargamers too. Grenadier played heavily into our miniatures. Ral Partha and others. Strapped for cash we split responsability for the books and modules. It was the best of times. Now after over 30 years away from the game we are back. Zoom games over the pandemic brought us back and having a blast playing again. Thanks for posting this!