Fantasy RPG Player Miniatures: Total Coverage

I would like to propose here my concept of Total Coverage for Fantasy Role-Playing Games player character miniatures.

If you catalog the races and classes in the World's Most Popular Role Playing Game, you will find that there are 7 races and 11 character classes.  The races include: Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings, Humans, Half-Elves, Elves, and Half-Orcs.  The classes include: Barbarians, Bards, Clerics, Druids, Fighters, Monks, Paladins, Rangers, Rogues, Sorcerers  and Wizards.  Some races have favored classes, and these favored classes are emphasized by miniatures manufacturers, so you'll find a lot of elf rangers, dwarf fighters, and halfling rogues.  But what do you use for a miniature if you have a half-orc druid?  What if you have a gnome paladin?  These combinations are underserved by folks in the miniatures business.  Surely there must be a need.

Total Coverage here means that every race, class, and gender is physically represented by a miniature.

Before I get into the math, I will assume that there are only 2 genders.  I appreciate that there are many who do not feel comfortable in the dominant culture's 2-gender system, but the infinite spectrum of genders we live in is impossible to thoroughly represent with a necessarily fixed number of clothed 1-inch figures.  I hope that all reading this can be content to fantasy role-play using a miniature intended to represent one of two genders, with some possible user-instigated modifications to the physical miniature.

So, with 7 fantasy races, 11 character classes, and 2 genders, we would need 154 miniatures to represent everybody.

That's a lot of sculpting!  But we might be able to reduce this, by making some reasonable substitutions.

For starters, what is really different between a Wizard and a Sorceror?  To most people, the term is interchangeable.  But gamers know that Wizards study their spells from a book and use spell components, whereas Sorcerors are relieved of that burden.  As adventurers, however, both Wizards and Sorcerors can reasonably be expected to carry around some equipment, such as a change of underclothes, trail rations, rope, a tent, etc., so both can plausibly wear a backpack large enough to accomodate the Wizard spellcasting gear which the Sorceror doesn't need.  Therefore, we combine the Wizard and Sorceror miniature to make the Arcane Spellcaster, and we only have 10 classes to represent.

Similarly, what is visibly different between Paladins and Fighters?  Both wear the same armor and carry the same weapons; so visibly the only difference should be the Paladin's holy symbol, which doesn't need to be all that big, and there's no reason a Fighter can't also wear a holy symbol.  Maybe the Paladin has a brighter paint job.  Let's combine the two classes into the Warrior, and now we have only 9 classes to represent.

Now things get a little delicate: how different is a half-elf from a human or an elf?  How different are they at about 1/64th scale?  Sure, an elf's ears can really poke out of a hairdo, but what about a half-elf's ears?  For the sake of argument, let's imagine a miniatures spectrum without explicit half-elves.  Could a player get by using an elf or a human miniature in place of a half-elf?  If we can substitute this, we cut our races down to 6.

Running the numbers now: with 6 races, 9 classes, and 2 genders, we only need 108 miniatures to represent everybody.  That's almost a 30% reduction in sculptures from our original 154.

We can attempt to reduce this further, but it gets tricky.  Sure, most races are going to look similar in full plate armor with their helmets on.  But the whole point of this is that everyone should have some identifiable form of physical representation.  Halflings are different from Gnomes in that Halflings have fuzzy feet.  Bards need their musical instruments.  Barbarians need to look savage.  Rangers need bows.  Druids need to look nature-y.  Monks need to look like they came out of a kung-fu movie.  I think the 108-figure system is a reasonable compromise.

Crystal Shine My Little Pony

I went to my local big box retailer and picked up 2 "blind bag" My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic figurines; to parents, these are bluish foil bags about 4 inches x 5 inches with a single pony figurine inside.  The previous line featured pinkish foil bags.

I'm not so fond of these Crystal Shine ponies.  These are made of a sturdy-yet-flexible vinyl material similar to the pink-foil-bag ponies, but whereas the pink bags featured opaque ponies, the blue bags have translucent ponies.

I suspect these translucent colors are intended to look very glasslike, but to me the matte surface makes them look gelatinous; your toy looks like a Gummy Pony.  You can also see where the head is attached (glued?) to the neck stalk through the figurine's translucent head, which is somewhat interesting, and reduces my desire to take them apart.

I am somewhat reminded of the tragic disabled sister in Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie," who has little glass toy animals.  Somehow, the glass unicorns get bumped and lose their horns, and having lost their magical features, they are mere horses.  This reflects (glass--reflects--Ah almost had a joke there, son) the sister's status; she is a young woman in her prime and she should be considered as radiantly beautiful as her Southern Belle peers, but her deformity (like a unicorn losing its horn) relegates her to ordinary, plain, non-magical status.  Of course, her self-image as unlovably flawed is largely imagined; there, I spoiled the play for you.

Of course, the flip side of this is that these sturdy ponies are flexible enough to survive any number of reasonable bumps and not lose their fine appendages; if only that sad sister had Rarity or Twilight for unicorns!  Those horns aren't breaking off any time soon!  On a similar note, if there are any teen girls out there, you are way prettier than you think you are; bug your folks to sign you up for Karate practice and your instructor can teach you special moves wherein you develop deep inner reserves of self-esteem.

Regardless, if the maudlin "Glass Menagerie" comparison is not enough to sour you, the gelatinous appearance might remind you that much of the gelatin in gelatin-based treats comes from boiling the flesh and bones of hooved animals ("Soylent Gummy Bears are made of PONIES!  Maybe.").  Oh, did I mention that I'm a vegetarian?

But besides that, they're just plain weird-looking: you can see right through their skin and any skeleton and organs and muscles they should logically have.  It makes me wish I could actually see a nice, healthy skeleton inside the figurine, with healthy eyeballs and organs and blood vessels and so forth.  In fact, maybe you could see how the pegasus wings attach to the equine body's skeletons, which would answer a lot of questions.  Unfortunately, their all-gelatinous appearance just emphasises the fact that these toys are dead.

What?  You just bought a bunch of these for your daughter?  Ah, don't worry about it; she probably won't think about that.