Hierarchical scale in RPGs

From the Narmer Palette
(photo by Keith Schengili-Roberts)

Hierarchical scale is a common feature in art. Important people are big and unimportant people are small. Look at any medieval tympanum or ancient Egyptian tomb painting, and you'll see it.

When we look at ancient or medieval artworks, hierarchical scale hardly registers. It's clear what's meant, and the unnatural proportions are easily accepted because they help the artist to tell a story.

Might this work in miniature-based RPG games too?

I like to use miniatures in various scales in the same games. Usually, though, I'm using them to represent creatures of unusually large or small size. For example, 28mm goblins make good 15mm ogres and trolls:

And 28mm kobolds work as 15mm gnolls:

And I have 25mm black orcs that work as ogres in 15mm and small goblins in 28mm. 

But what I'm thinking about here is something different. A couple of posts ago, I mused about the attractions of 1/72. The ready availability and cheapness of suitable figures for town guards, baronial soldiers and ordinary civilians makes that scale very attractive for RPGs. There are a lot of ancient civilians available, for example, and the cost of assembling a crowded marketplace, say, would be a fraction of that involved in 28mm. And the time taken to paint them would be an even smaller fraction. 

So I'm starting to wonder how it would work to have  - for example - an RPG encounter in a village square in which most of the populace were in 1:72 but the heroes and villains were in 28mm. It might be odd at first, but perhaps no more so than a game in which some characters are represented by miniatures and others by paper 'pawns' or even counters. 

There might even be advantages other than convenience and cost. Smaller miniatures need smaller bases, which means that you could get real crowds in a way that's impossible with conventionally based 28mm figures. And you might get a clearer visual dynamic too, from the fact that protagonists and antagonists tower above the 'extras'.

Wargamers often accept this sort of thing, of course - especially when a high figure scale's involved (one figure = 100 men, but the general's just the general, or whatever). The size of buildings and terrain becomes a matter of aesthetics as much as consistency.

In the photo below, then, the 28mm ratman wouldn't necessarily be bigger, merely more important. I think it might just work ...