Did the first players even use miniatures? If they did, how did they acquire such things?
The main reason I'm asking is because I'm looking for a cost effective way to create my own miniatures. I've looked into pewter molds and different polymer clays and things like "green stuff".
The world of mini making is daunting. If you're the kind of person that likes making their own tabletop games, borrowing from another game is way easier than crafting your own, especially with all the options to choose from.
It occured to me that the first game, the first real fantasy tabletop game wouldn't even have a game to borrow from. How did they do it? Where did all these techniques come from? Did they just use tokens when they wanted to use anything that didn't come from the Chainmail game they played back then?
Best Answer
Role playing came out of wargaming, virtually all of which used miniatures. Chainmail was just one of hundreds of miniature-driven wargames, mostly historical military in nature. Sci-fi and fantasy wargames became popular in the 1960s and 1970s, especially in the wake of the popularity of The Lord of the Rings, so there were many products to choose from.
In fact, at the time, wargame rules tended to spring up around miniature products and not vice versa. Gary Gygax originally became interested in 40mm Elastolin miniatures in the late 1960s and participated in writing various historical wargames to use them prior to Chainmail. A detailed account of this evolution is available in the Chainmail Wikipedia entry.