Why I Collect: More Than Just Miniatures

Something a little different today. This isn't going to be a comic review, a hobby tutorial, or another deep dive into some bit of fictional lore. Instead, I wanted to give you a little more of an inside look at me, why I collect, and what actually drives me as a hobbyist.

Hopefully, by the end of this, you'll understand a little more about why I do what I do here at Adventures with Peps.

Where It All Started

Like a lot of people of a certain age in this hobby, my journey started with HeroQuest. I was probably around ten years old when I discovered it at a car boot sale. I remember being instantly hooked by the idea of it all: elves, orcs, dwarfs, heroes, monsters and high adventure. It didn't take much to get my friend hooked either. Before long, we were playing together and finding other like-minded people who were just as fascinated by these little worlds as we were.

Looking back, I think that was probably my golden age of gaming. As I got older, I moved through all sorts of games and systems. Warhammer 40,000 2nd Edition, Blood Bowl, Necromunda, Gorkamorka, and classic Space Hulk... if it involved miniatures, dice and a good story, chances are I was interested. During summers we played games almost every week, sometimes on beds and sometimes in the backyard, what a great time to be alive.

I still remember my 2nd edition Iron Warriors army and my Goliath gang from those days. They weren't just collections of miniatures. They were my armies, and I had stories for them, I had names, I even had a couple painted haha.

Then, as tends to happen, real life got in the way. We got jobs. We had bills. Our regular hangouts became more about painting and drinking than actually playing games, and eventually I moved away. That move really killed my gaming time. I was in a new town without the connections I'd built up over the years, and if I'm honest, I didn't really have the time either. Life was moving on. But I never completely left the hobby.

I painted. I converted miniatures. I read the books. I still followed the games and read White Dwarf and I kept one foot firmly in the worlds I loved.

Twenty Years Later...

Fast-forward roughly twenty years and I can probably count the number of games I've played on two hands. That's not an exaggeration and yet I still love these games. These days I’ve shifted heavily from Warhammer 40,000 into the worlds of Judge Dredd and 2000 AD, particularly the Warlord Games system and Games Workshops RPG. But something has changed within me. For me, it's no longer about actually playing the games. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to play more. But I've realised that the thing I get most from the hobby now isn't rolling dice across a table. It's the escape, be it in reading a novel, reading a comic, building a miniature, converting something, whatever it is. Getting a paintbrush out and spending an evening working on a figure. There is something incredibly calming about it. It's fun, it's creative, and most importantly...It's mine.

Everything Needs a Story

I think I've reached a point where everything I collect needs a story. A miniature is no longer just a miniature sitting on a shelf. It's not just some random Judge miniature I painted, he's an undercover Judge working in a local bar somewhere in Sector 102. Suddenly, that miniature has a reason to exist. He's part of something. He's got a job, a location and a story, and that's become a huge part of what I enjoy about the hobby.

My Sector 102 project has grown into my own evolving little corner of the Judge Dredd universe. I can build locations, create characters, invent organisations and then find or make miniatures to represent them. The stories come first, and the miniatures help me bring them to life and out of my head. My renewed interest in 2000 AD, its comics and novels has only made this worse! And I mean that in the best possible way.

And the same thing has happened with my Warhammer 40,000 collection. I still collect even though the passion has waned. I don't simply collect Aeldari from Iyanden. I collect the House of Ulthanash. That's my force! Every squad painted has a story or some kind of background. The leaders have ships with names. There are characters I've created who exist whether they ever see a tabletop battlefield or not. I've even got a list of miniatures I want to build that will probably never be used in a game and I'm completely fine with that. Because those models aren't there to win a battle. They're there to tell part of the story.

I've moved past the dice rolling and into the storytelling. I suppose, in some ways, what I'm doing now is closer to RPG worldbuilding than traditional tabletop gaming, and I absolutely love it.

The Hobby Is My Escape

I think that's probably the biggest change for me. When I was younger, the hobby was about getting people together and playing a game, be it a wargame, a skirmish or just a boardgame. Now it's about creating something. It's a way to switch off from everything else for a while. I can sit down with a miniature and spend an hour speed painting, another hour or two creating a story and then a few hours to mash it together into a video. Then before bed I read a comic or a book and suddenly get an idea for a character. I can be halfway through a novel and think, that's going in Sector 102. It’s so refreshing and freeing and I love it.

There's no pressure.
No score.
No opponent.
No need to win.

It's just me, my imagination and whatever I want to work on that day and honestly, that's pretty special.

Passing It On

There's another part of this that has become increasingly important to me. My children are growing up, and they're starting to take an interest in my "toys". So I tell them the stories, I explain who the characters are, I show them the miniatures and tell them what they're doing, where they live and what adventures they've been involved in and I love seeing their imaginations kick in. Because ultimately, that's what this hobby gave me all those years ago when I first opened up HeroQuest. It gave me a doorway into another world. I truly hope that, one day, my kids might want to step through that doorway with me and if they do, I don't want them simply to carry on what I've created. I want them to change it, add their own characters, build their own stories. Take my little corner of the worlds in directions I never imagined. That's the really exciting part for the future hopefully.

So, Why Do I Hobby?

That's my story. I started with HeroQuest, moved through years of gaming, drifted away from playing, and somehow ended up back where I started, surrounded by miniatures, stories and imaginary worlds. Only now, I don't really need the game. I need the story. So I'm curious about you…

Why do you hobby? Is it the painting? The gaming? The lore? The collecting? The worldbuilding? The social side?

Maybe it's simply the chance to sit down after a long day and disappear into something that belongs entirely to you. Whatever it is, I'd genuinely love to hear about it. Drop a comment below and tell me what keeps you coming back to the hobby, or reachout through Discord and let me know. Want to write a blog post about yourself and your hobby reachout! Let's get chatting.

Cheers for reading!