Adventure up a flight of narrow wooden stairs to the second floor of the historic Hillyard United Building and you'll meet an unusual sight: hundreds upon hundreds of fantastical plastic beings.
Carefully grouped along shelves stretching from floor to ceiling are dragons in every size and color, their wings frozen mid-flight. A tentacled beast from the deep emerges from one spot, while above a fiery phoenix's red-orange wings are outspread above other elemental forces of nature. Hordes of trolls, ogres, orcs, kobolds, bugbears, demons, golems, goblins and wolves are in evil company alongside several menacing beholders — huge floating eyeballs with gaping mouths of needle-sharp teeth.
Dispersed among these fearsome beasts are some friendly and familiar forces, too, like teeny tiny chickens smaller than a fingernail that can populate a realistically bustling village outpost in the infinitely creative tabletop role-playing experience that is Dungeons & Dragons.
All of these creatures reside inside Bear Totem Table & Tankard, a game shop that opened in northeast Spokane a little over a year ago and boasts what's undoubtedly the area's biggest collection of D&D miniatures. The store has a gamepiece for nearly all of D&D's 2,000+ officially defined creatures, plus custom creations and minis borrowed from other tabletop games like Pathfinder.
"I'm close to having a miniature for everything," Bear Totem owner Seth Miller says. "Even the weird stuff, like if you want a boar animal companion."
Besides its massive range of Dungeons & Dragons' allies and foes, Bear Totem has hundreds more tiny figures, each just an inch or two high, to represent players' unique characters from gnome bards to elven rogues; dragonborn artificers to human pirate wizards.
"So say you're playing a male character, and they have like a medium set of armor on," Miller says. "OK — here's 40 miniatures. Pick something you kind of feel like would work."
Lucky for the rest of us, he's willing to share: "We just get so much more joy out of sharing it than actually using it."
Local dungeon masters, or DMs, and their players are welcome to use pieces from Bear Totem's massive mini library to run campaigns in the store for a modest fee of just $6 per person. Custom gaming tables outfitted with felt-covered tops and drink holders — even one with a flat digital screen for DMs to load custom game maps — are set up throughout the cozy space, which also hosts other tabletop role-playing games plus card games like Magic: The Gathering.
Grab some snacks, a pint of fresh beer or cider on tap at the counter and settle in.
In Dungeons & Dragons' modern age, when virtually questing with far-flung friends has never been easier thanks to online platforms like Roll20, Miller believes the experience of playing with physical game pieces around a table is still unmatched.
"When it comes to what makes miniatures special, we're not really talking about miniatures," he says. "What we're talking about is what makes tabletop role-playing games in person special. When you're playing online, it functions, but when you're playing in person it opens up this whole new avenue for creativity."
"That's not to say that miniatures are necessary for input," adds Andrew Watson, Bear Totem's social media manager who also custom paints minis for fellow players ($20-$45). "They are an augmentation — they help with the immersion. And, you know, you want something that kind of looks like what you're fighting. It helps people visualize what's going on."
Terrain props to create settings like caves, cliffs, forests and even robust villages bring even more visual creativity to the game. Bear Totem has the supplies to set up everything from a seafaring adventure on a ship to a dragon guarding its treasure hoard — practically any setting a DM can imagine for their players. And since all miniatures
officially produced by the game's publisher, Renton, Washington-based Wizards of the Coast, are crafted to scale, a gnome paladin will be, quite literally, dwarfed by a half-orc barbarian or, say, an adult blue dragon.
"For me personally, I will just walk over to the wall as a DM and everything on that wall isn't a lump of plastic or a stat block," Miller says, referring to the unique traits of each enemy creature that players may face in a game. "Everything there represents a character. Like, I walk up to the wall and now I have this massive cast list. I can go up there and look, and little stories will just emerge from looking at the minis."
As Dungeons & Dragons hits the half-century mark, another recent technological advancement that's been a boon for players is the ability to 3D print just about any character imaginable as a physical mini.
Websites like Hero Forge and Eldritch Foundry feature interfaces for users to customize everything from their character's race (i.e. human, dwarf, elf) and class (wizard, rogue, warrior, etc.) to their outfit, weapons, equipment and pose. Depending on the service, have the miniature mailed to you, or download a file to create it yourself on a 3D resin printer. Some of these online services even offer custom painting. Or you can do it yourself at home or even at Bear Totem.
Along one wall of the gameplay area, four workspaces beneath a row of windows are stocked with all the supplies needed to paint game minis.
"You can bring your own mini and paint it here, and I have a bunch of unpainted miniatures," Miller says. "The thing about miniature painting in general is that it is expensive to jump into as a hobby."
It's only $15 to use the shop's painting supplies, which includes a pint of beer and a small- to medium-sized mini (bring your own and it's only $10). The paint dries quickly, so Miller says it's easy to try again if there's a mistake.
"For me personally, miniature painting is a very relaxing hobby, and I like being able to introduce people to it without them having to spend hundreds of dollars on supplies just to try it out," he says.
Whether you're new to collecting minis, painting them, or playing Dungeons & Dragons altogether (check Bear Totem's Instagram for info on beginner events and more), Miller hopes to continue sharing his love of the hobby with players of all ages via his vast collection.
"I remember being a kid wishing I could just go nuts, like I had everything available to me and I could just go crazy," he says. "And of course you can never do that as a kid because it's not prioritized by your parents the way it's prioritized by you. But somewhere along the way, you know, you get to be an adult and you get to choose where you spend your money and we just decided to go crazy." ♦
