I took a 1 inch hole punch from hobby lobby and took bulk magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, flesh and blood cards and just punched out the art for characters and enemies.
The one inch hole punch is my go to tool. I also have a bag of 1 inch felt pads to prevent furniture legs from scratching your floor. They have a self adhesive side. I print a picture, use the punch, and stick it to to felt. Super fast. Super easy.
My hack is taking screenshots from the front and back of hero forge characters, or DL monster illustrations, printing them, plastify them to make standies. Super cheap, durable, you can make any humanoïd you want. You just need an iron, some plastic sheets and standies bases.
I use Lego minifigs and legos. The cool part is that the PCs minifig can develop with the character, new weapons, new armor etc. I mostly just use simple blocks for monsters, but some times I will try to build some of the bosses. You can usually get bulks of used lego for a decent price.
A nice mid-range option is heroforge's new/returning color standees. I just got one for my son's character and I'm very happy with it. They are 2-sided color prints on 1/8" acryllic with stands for 12.99. That's probably not an option for bulk monsters, but this might be my go-to for PC characters at this point.
Hero Forge is WAY too expensive. I pay 20 bucks if they gave me the entire character generator. And I'd use them once in awhile if I could get a 20 pack for ten bucks or something. Last time I looked it was eight bucks for an STL file. After only a few purchases, it would be cheaper and easier to pay somebody to make the few modular pieces I would need for an open-source/free mini. I can get better results doing the pose in the slicer and/or printing pieces out separately so I can magnetize them. AI Text to 3D model is already a thing. It's not a great thing yet, just give it a few weeks. And you could literally scan/ocr your character sheet and get an instant 3D model, 2D art, and a deepfake voice generator/changer. Heroforge could have been the standard, they were just too focused on maximizing profits when they should have been growing their business. And there's absolutely no excuse, they sell a digital product?! The cost to produce the product should be equivalent to a rounding error. Instead they missed the boat. Makes the capitalists in me sad.
When my group first started (in 1985) we started with Monopoly pieces. I can still remember people fighting to be the shoe or the dog or the thimble... but by 1988 we had moved on to the "white metal" and lead/pewter combos.
Years ago when my friends and I wanted to start playing rpgs I, as the one to be the master, bought a sack with 5 kits of 7 dice on the internet. Along with it I bought 5 blank D6s the same color as the dice kits to represent the players, and a lot of black 16mm D6s to represent the enemies. It's been a cheap way to play and I have used it for almost 10 years. The D6s representing the monsters are particulary good cause I can divide them into monster/minion squads using the numbers on the dice and whenever the players kill a monster we turn the dicenumber to 1 so we can represent its remains for looting.
I use Tome of Summoning. It’s a 2D printed monsters that you can put in a book and have a reference card to put on your DM screen. It’s pretty expensive to get everything I listed, but you can also get a pdf of most of the monsters from the monster manual. That’s 390 monsters that you can print out or make into digital tokens for your VTT. It also come with templates to use to make your own! This option does cost $50, but they do have sales. I think I bought for Christmas for half price!
In my younger day ... I had 450 markers cut and engraved in plastic engraving stock. The players liked them so much they took them home and I lost many. There was: the letters Aa to Zz for characters (both sides engraved; back side was marked with •Aa to indicate if the character was about to die. These would have been better if one side was red and the other black Ani 1 to Ani 20 for animals (horses. and familiars) Obj 1 to Obj20 for room props and objects Adv 1 to Adv 20 for adversaries There was also a set to dungeon tiles too! 40 3 x 3 inch squares 10 3 x 3 inch triangles Right now I am looking for a online alternative and not finding much. I may go back to OwlBear to look at that again.
I bought a set of minis for pretty cheap (most of them are half warthogs for some reason) but I don't have a play mat. After watching this video for about a minute, I looked to my left and remembered I own a quilting mat! It's plastic and has a grid on it so you can cut fabric straight, and it's massive! I dud technically buy a pair of sorcerer mini figs too, but they're just cool. My Dragonborn fighter is going to have to be half warthog
Beer bottle caps. DM rolls for random encounter... "3-18 goblins." Rolls 3d6. Counts out tokens, "Oh crap. I'm going to need y'all to open another 6-pack."
Shrinky-Dinks work wonders. You don't even have to be a good artist, just get the clear ones and trace your Monster Manual, I use it to make ones for 3rd party books. Also great if your artistic players want to make thier own, kids LOVE these things. While I LOVE my pathfinder pawn collection, what I usually use for mooks is 2 colored sets of bulk dice I picked up for shadowrun back in the day, and a set of d10's I grabbed for Changeling: the Dreaming. If there are more than 22 mooks on the field I can find something else, but there are probably bigger issues XD And for PC's, heartily recommend little figurines. I got old pokemon ones everyone loved using, and once people started moving on I just used them for bosses and such. Red dragon, big charizard with launchable flame, basically the same thing!
Owlbear rodeo is still going strong. Use it a couple times a week. They just released a beta for their 2.0 version. Nothing really fancy there, just a prettier version of the free site, an option for plugins and a paywall. Would recommend Owlbear wouldn't recommend the 2.0 version
I have a set of character tokens with the basic monster types numbered on squares of thin plywood designed for a 1 inch grid. They're quite good, but I should get another set for initiative tracking.
Okay, ready for my take? I buy wooden plugs for woodworking, about 1 Euro for 20 pieces (And that already seems quite high, one surely could find an even cheaper option) in 25mm. Ich print round token images from Google or Kickstarter or my homemade with Token Stamp in 24mm and just glue them on. They are the perfest size, have a nice weight and the 5-7mm high wooden base allows to write something on the side (I always have a few goblins, kobolds and thugs wit A, B, C,... in the box)
@@WASD20 bonuslevel: I looted two big metal shelf floors from a furniture related reorg at the Company so I can pin down flimsy map cutouts and handouts down with Magnets. You can place little magnets in the wood plugs with that setup to Keep them in place.
I am off topic. I am hopeing to find some bit of free art that I could include in the header/ footer for my session 0 players guide to a horror-esk SLATMARSH campaign setting. Nate, anyone else got suggestions. I would really appreciate them. Thank you in advance. -Patrick
I took a 1 inch hole punch from hobby lobby and took bulk magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, flesh and blood cards and just punched out the art for characters and enemies.
That's a brilliant idea!
The one inch hole punch is my go to tool. I also have a bag of 1 inch felt pads to prevent furniture legs from scratching your floor. They have a self adhesive side. I print a picture, use the punch, and stick it to to felt. Super fast. Super easy.
A 1 inch stamp and a 1 inch wooden round, usually with a felt backing, works well and can be used indefinitely.
If you are neer the sea the most cheap alternative is just using flat round stones and you or the kids can also color them 👍
My hack is taking screenshots from the front and back of hero forge characters, or DL monster illustrations, printing them, plastify them to make standies. Super cheap, durable, you can make any humanoïd you want. You just need an iron, some plastic sheets and standies bases.
I like to use chess pieces for the enemies, works pretty well for the players differencing then
hit up dollar tree, they have minis (pixar, wwe, he-man, etc) for $1.25, i played my first game using a StarScream mini.
I use Lego minifigs and legos. The cool part is that the PCs minifig can develop with the character, new weapons, new armor etc. I mostly just use simple blocks for monsters, but some times I will try to build some of the bosses. You can usually get bulks of used lego for a decent price.
Good point. Sounds fun.
For candy creatures, my table uses Starburst. Individually wrapped.
Yum! Great idea.
A nice mid-range option is heroforge's new/returning color standees. I just got one for my son's character and I'm very happy with it. They are 2-sided color prints on 1/8" acryllic with stands for 12.99. That's probably not an option for bulk monsters, but this might be my go-to for PC characters at this point.
Oh nice! I didn’t know those were returning.
Hero Forge is WAY too expensive.
I pay 20 bucks if they gave me the entire character generator. And I'd use them once in awhile if I could get a 20 pack for ten bucks or something.
Last time I looked it was eight bucks for an STL file.
After only a few purchases, it would be cheaper and easier to pay somebody to make the few modular pieces I would need for an open-source/free mini.
I can get better results doing the pose in the slicer and/or printing pieces out separately so I can magnetize them.
AI Text to 3D model is already a thing. It's not a great thing yet, just give it a few weeks.
And you could literally scan/ocr your character sheet and get an instant 3D model, 2D art, and a deepfake voice generator/changer.
Heroforge could have been the standard, they were just too focused on maximizing profits when they should have been growing their business.
And there's absolutely no excuse, they sell a digital product?! The cost to produce the product should be equivalent to a rounding error.
Instead they missed the boat.
Makes the capitalists in me sad.
When my group first started (in 1985) we started with Monopoly pieces. I can still remember people fighting to be the shoe or the dog or the thimble... but by 1988 we had moved on to the "white metal" and lead/pewter combos.
Years ago when my friends and I wanted to start playing rpgs I, as the one to be the master, bought a sack with 5 kits of 7 dice on the internet. Along with it I bought 5 blank D6s the same color as the dice kits to represent the players, and a lot of black 16mm D6s to represent the enemies.
It's been a cheap way to play and I have used it for almost 10 years. The D6s representing the monsters are particulary good cause I can divide them into monster/minion squads using the numbers on the dice and whenever the players kill a monster we turn the dicenumber to 1 so we can represent its remains for looting.
I use Tome of Summoning. It’s a 2D printed monsters that you can put in a book and have a reference card to put on your DM screen. It’s pretty expensive to get everything I listed, but you can also get a pdf of most of the monsters from the monster manual. That’s 390 monsters that you can print out or make into digital tokens for your VTT. It also come with templates to use to make your own!
This option does cost $50, but they do have sales. I think I bought for Christmas for half price!
For quick drawn maps I use paper blocks for Flipcharts. They come in a light grad of 25mm, whitch is SO close to an inch.
I've been subscribing to Dungeon in a Box's Skinny Minis and like them quite a bit. I'm thinking I'll check out your sponsor too. The art looks great.
In my younger day ... I had 450 markers cut and engraved in plastic engraving stock. The players liked them so much they took them home and I lost many. There was:
the letters Aa to Zz for characters (both sides engraved; back side was marked with •Aa to indicate if the character was about to die. These would have been better if one side was red and the other black
Ani 1 to Ani 20 for animals (horses. and familiars)
Obj 1 to Obj20 for room props and objects
Adv 1 to Adv 20 for adversaries
There was also a set to dungeon tiles too!
40 3 x 3 inch squares
10 3 x 3 inch triangles
Right now I am looking for a online alternative and not finding much. I may go back to OwlBear to look at that again.
What might be cool on a token (probably for PCs) would be drawing a coat-of-arms to differentiate, maybe for a medieval adventure
For travel kits, I like to use D6 dice with symbols. Like Steve Jackson Skull dice or monster rocks.
I bought a set of minis for pretty cheap (most of them are half warthogs for some reason) but I don't have a play mat. After watching this video for about a minute, I looked to my left and remembered I own a quilting mat! It's plastic and has a grid on it so you can cut fabric straight, and it's massive!
I dud technically buy a pair of sorcerer mini figs too, but they're just cool. My Dragonborn fighter is going to have to be half warthog
I don't know if you brought up shrinky dinks yet.
But shrinky dinks are the goat.
Beer bottle caps. DM rolls for random encounter... "3-18 goblins." Rolls 3d6. Counts out tokens, "Oh crap. I'm going to need y'all to open another 6-pack."
😁 I’d play that! Con saves!
ICRPG has great print and fold minis
I started teaching my roommates Dnd. And one of them gave the idea to use Lego figures too for the encounters
Shrinky-Dinks work wonders. You don't even have to be a good artist, just get the clear ones and trace your Monster Manual, I use it to make ones for 3rd party books. Also great if your artistic players want to make thier own, kids LOVE these things. While I LOVE my pathfinder pawn collection, what I usually use for mooks is 2 colored sets of bulk dice I picked up for shadowrun back in the day, and a set of d10's I grabbed for Changeling: the Dreaming. If there are more than 22 mooks on the field I can find something else, but there are probably bigger issues XD
And for PC's, heartily recommend little figurines. I got old pokemon ones everyone loved using, and once people started moving on I just used them for bosses and such. Red dragon, big charizard with launchable flame, basically the same thing!
Thank you for making this content. It really helps.
Excellent! I appreciate the feedback.
I just bought a bag of wooden beads to color as the players want and popsicle sticks to make borders for rooms
Owlbear rodeo is still going strong. Use it a couple times a week. They just released a beta for their 2.0 version. Nothing really fancy there, just a prettier version of the free site, an option for plugins and a paywall. Would recommend Owlbear wouldn't recommend the 2.0 version
I have a set of character tokens with the basic monster types numbered on squares of thin plywood designed for a 1 inch grid. They're quite good, but I should get another set for initiative tracking.
Gtg sounds cool
You can use skylanders, army men and railroad miniatures.
No mention of hero forge standees?
Okay, ready for my take?
I buy wooden plugs for woodworking, about 1 Euro for 20 pieces (And that already seems quite high, one surely could find an even cheaper option) in 25mm. Ich print round token images from Google or Kickstarter or my homemade with Token Stamp in 24mm and just glue them on.
They are the perfest size, have a nice weight and the 5-7mm high wooden base allows to write something on the side (I always have a few goblins, kobolds and thugs wit A, B, C,... in the box)
Sounds great!
@@WASD20 bonuslevel: I looted two big metal shelf floors from a furniture related reorg at the Company so I can pin down flimsy map cutouts and handouts down with Magnets.
You can place little magnets in the wood plugs with that setup to Keep them in place.
@@zeugenberg 😲
:) i use character artwork on 2 inch round epoxi stickers as tokens
I had to ban lego figures from my game. They always fell over and they take up more space than a mini making combat confusing.
Makes sense! They don’t fit that well on traditional 1 inch grids, but if you are using more loose positioning, I can see them working well.
What does WAS stand for?
I am off topic. I am hopeing to find some bit of free art that I could include in the header/ footer for my session 0 players guide to a horror-esk SLATMARSH campaign setting. Nate, anyone else got suggestions. I would really appreciate them. Thank you in advance. -Patrick
just bottle caps with the moster or character printed and stuck onto them
Don't use washers or wood discs, use smart book discs instead.
666 likes, quick tap, 667, phew I have just saved you from eternal damnation. 😃
😂