Bases & Spaces

As I've been slowly sowing the seeds of an old-school RPG campaign (probably using White Box, supplemented with things from the Swords & Wizardry Complete Rules and various other sources), my mind has turned to the question of miniatures. I like collecting them (though not painting them), and several of my players find them extremely helpful in play. But the current vogue for RPG minis - 28mm tall, with a 20mm circular base - makes enforcing detailed facing difficult.

I can't use 1" square bases with 1" square spaces on a mat; if someone needs to face diagonally (which will probably happen a lot), they'll be partially blocking all four cardinally adjacent spaces. I thought about hexagonal bases, but the problem of front/flank/rear spaces - or rather, assigning them so they'll be consistent between figures with symmetrical, wide, and long bases - gave me several days of headaches a little over a year ago before I just decided to drop it. So as far as shape goes, I've got two main ones: square (for obvious reasons) or octagonal.

Why octagons? Simple: they fit just as snugly as square bases of the same size, but allow for easy 45-degree rotation. The downside of octagons is that they aren't nearly as common as squares or hexes, but this site has a good selection of them, plus a handy custom-build option that lets you choose your material and size. An option I've been considering (octagons made of clear acrylic) runs under $8 USD for a 25-pack.

Now for the size... 3/4" square bases are a great option for a number of reasons. They don't overlap 1" spaces as much, they're easy to find (I grabbed a big bag of wooden squares from a chain craft store's woodworking section), and they're the size used for a number of games - including Battlesystem, vintage Warhammer, and Daniel Collins' rather excellent Book of War. And something else I realized: if I go with 1 1/2" spaces on the tabletop (to more closely model oD&D's 1"=10' scale), then up to four figures could fit in a single space if packed tightly enough. The downside of 3/4" bases is that some of my minis have a bit too wide of a stance to easily fit on a square that small - hence my consideration of 1" octagons.

Having said all of that, as much as I like Fitz's mat of offset squares, it wouldn't play as nice with octagonal bases. They could still work, but I'd be a bit miffed at two whole sides going unused. And 3/4" octagons would be even harder to fit some figures onto.

I honestly don't care if this meme is dead.