So this might not be the most exciting or impressive form of "arts and crafts." It's actually pretty simple and doesn't take long to do, but I've been doing it a lot and I thought these could be of use to players.
Unfortunately I'm not much of an artist so while I can craft a really good backstory and make a great character in writing, I don't have very many options when it comes to visualizing them so often I have to rely on Google images. This project started when I got to thinking that it might be easier if, instead of constantly having to search Google for a picture that fits what I imagine for my character every time I join a new game, I put together a library of tokens I could go through. When I found good pictures I could save them, make them into tokens, and then I could pick from what I had. So this started as an idea to make tokens to use for future characters, and it kinda grew from there.
Eventually I started to realize that these might be helpful for other people, and next thing I knew I was going from making player tokens that I could use to also coming up with tokens for a Dungeon Master to use. I started creating NPC tokens of various sorts, trying to imagine potential characters they might want to bring in. Then I started thinking about making tokens for monsters. And I've just been thinking that some people might find these useful so it seemed appropriate to share them.
Generally these should be good for Roll20, as well as similar websites that allow virtual games like Owlbear Rodeo. The majority of the pictures were obtained through Google image searches and are not my own creation, I just converted them into tokens. The one exception is the "animals" folder, which contains tokens made out of wildlife photography that I actually took. Three of the tokens in the "deities" folder were also pictures I took in Immortals: Fenyx Rising.
I made these using a free app called Token Tool which makes it easy to build virtual tokens for online roleplaying- you just need to insert the picture and choose a frame.
Here is the large collection I've been putting together. I know it's not the greatest accomplishment on this board but I can't seem to stop making them so hopefully you can put some of these to good use.
I’ve been compiling an overly and often needlessly large collection of tokens in the last year. I’ll be happy to check out your token tool this evening when I get back to my ‘puter.
I've got all kinds of things just in case someone needs it. Now I've got a pretty good collection of deity tokens, which includes a strange mix of deities from different mythologies as well as official DND gods and Lovecraftian ones.
I use my tokens in roll20. When I stamp the tokens, I choose the color of the border based on their character’s status: PC, monster, NPC, spell effect, etc. if there was a way to change the color in roll20, I’d made them without a border so I could change it as needed. Not a big deal honestly, just an “in my perfect world” thing.
I have a somewhat similar system. There are a lot of options for borders in the Token Tool I've been using. For player tokens I'll switch between different ones. Different borders look better with different designs, and sometimes the way the picture is made may make thicker or thinner ones more practical.
For NPCs, on the other hand, I've got a few conventions I've developed. There's a simple wooden pattern (referred to by the tool as "Stucco") that I use for civilians- peasants, craftsmen, friars, bartenders, etc. and a "rock" pattern for town guards as well as patterns for different types of enemies (which at the moment only includes cultists and bandits).
There are a couple of fancier-looking patterns I use for nobility. I have a golden frame I use for nobles and a silver one for knights, plus a really fancy regal-looking border I can use for ruling monarchs (kings, queens, sultans, emperors, etc.)
There is a "splash" border I've been using for fantasy creatures and rather conveniently it comes in three colors- red, blue, and green. So I've experimented with the idea of color-coding them according to the creature's usual alignment (red for evil, green for neutral, blue for good).
Finally for Deities I've been using a more sci-fi-looking border labelled "target acquired." It looks a bit out of place with some of the other fantasy characters but it seemed fitting with the usual role of deities as highly advanced beings and makes them stand out a bit more.
That’s cool. Definitely more involved than my system! Mine is yellow= PC, red=enemy, green=NPCs, familiars, etc. Tjiugh I guess I have expanded that a bit. Vehicles have a tan border and spells effects light blue. The only other I have is a light purple border on my DM token that I use for exploring the maps and seeing how lighting and lines of sight work out. It’s a pic of the 80s cartoon dungeon master.
I apologize that I still haven’t checked out your token tool. I haven’t opened up my laptop n a few days. Sometimes after I run a session I need a few days to mentally relax.
That sounds like a pretty straight forward system. The only thing I could see is the status of some NPCs being context-dependent, which might make it harder to assign a specific alignment in advance. For instance, town guards could be an ally, enemy, or entirely indifferent to your presence depending on the exact circumstances of the game. I suppose that could be countered by having red and green versions of each token, though that might be a bit more work.
The NPCs certainly be friendly or not, but I decided to not worry about it. Would be nice if I could change the color on the fly though.
That's a pretty sophisticated piece of software you made! The number of options was overwhelming at first but I made sense of it out after a few minutes.
Oh, sorry for the confusion. I didn't actually make the software. I just got really good at using it. Trust me, I wish I had those kinds of computer skills but attempting to learn any sort of programming usually just overwhelms me.
That's alright. It's still a simple but really effective app for stamping tokens. It's got some nice options so you might be able to come up with some cool ideas for how to use some if its borders.
I use my tokens here. When I stamp the tokens, I choose the color of the border based on their character’s status: PC, monster, NPC, spell effect, etc. if there was a way to change the color in roll20, I’d made them without a border so I could change it as needed. Not a big deal honestly, just an “in my perfect world” thing.
I've been making tokens, and I prefer the 1" fender washers to the wood discs; the discs I have are slightly smaller than 1", so the printout tokens hang over by a fraction. It's not a big deal; the washers simply fit better. I look up "dungeons and dragons" plus whatever monster name I need on Google Images. This usually yields a plethora of art from 3e and 4e monster manuals, as well as a variety of other sources. I'll also use my phone to photograph an image from one of my books on occasion.
I would love to see some standard tokens for furniture and generic towns people. If you are going to have a mapping tool, being able to decorate it seems logical. Also have available generic maps for homes, inns, wilderness, etc. I already spend to much time setting up the encounter to have to worry about lighting, walls, etc.
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So this might not be the most exciting or impressive form of "arts and crafts." It's actually pretty simple and doesn't take long to do, but I've been doing it a lot and I thought these could be of use to players.
Unfortunately I'm not much of an artist so while I can craft a really good backstory and make a great character in writing, I don't have very many options when it comes to visualizing them so often I have to rely on Google images. This project started when I got to thinking that it might be easier if, instead of constantly having to search Google for a picture that fits what I imagine for my character every time I join a new game, I put together a library of tokens I could go through. When I found good pictures I could save them, make them into tokens, and then I could pick from what I had. So this started as an idea to make tokens to use for future characters, and it kinda grew from there.
Eventually I started to realize that these might be helpful for other people, and next thing I knew I was going from making player tokens that I could use to also coming up with tokens for a Dungeon Master to use. I started creating NPC tokens of various sorts, trying to imagine potential characters they might want to bring in. Then I started thinking about making tokens for monsters. And I've just been thinking that some people might find these useful so it seemed appropriate to share them.
Generally these should be good for Roll20, as well as similar websites that allow virtual games like Owlbear Rodeo. The majority of the pictures were obtained through Google image searches and are not my own creation, I just converted them into tokens. The one exception is the "animals" folder, which contains tokens made out of wildlife photography that I actually took. Three of the tokens in the "deities" folder were also pictures I took in Immortals: Fenyx Rising.
I made these using a free app called Token Tool which makes it easy to build virtual tokens for online roleplaying- you just need to insert the picture and choose a frame.
Here is the large collection I've been putting together. I know it's not the greatest accomplishment on this board but I can't seem to stop making them so hopefully you can put some of these to good use.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgzwCqYZDA30uOcJo4BFBX5tEx_pEQ?e=VWsDZx
I’ve been compiling an overly and often needlessly large collection of tokens in the last year. I’ll be happy to check out your token tool this evening when I get back to my ‘puter.
I know, right? It's strangely addicting and hard to stop doing.
I now have these tokens posted on Pinterest and Imgur:
https://pin.it/4j4kisG
https://imgur.com/user/Chickadee42/posts
I've got all kinds of things just in case someone needs it. Now I've got a pretty good collection of deity tokens, which includes a strange mix of deities from different mythologies as well as official DND gods and Lovecraftian ones.
I use my tokens in roll20. When I stamp the tokens, I choose the color of the border based on their character’s status: PC, monster, NPC, spell effect, etc. if there was a way to change the color in roll20, I’d made them without a border so I could change it as needed. Not a big deal honestly, just an “in my perfect world” thing.
I have a somewhat similar system. There are a lot of options for borders in the Token Tool I've been using. For player tokens I'll switch between different ones. Different borders look better with different designs, and sometimes the way the picture is made may make thicker or thinner ones more practical.
For NPCs, on the other hand, I've got a few conventions I've developed. There's a simple wooden pattern (referred to by the tool as "Stucco") that I use for civilians- peasants, craftsmen, friars, bartenders, etc. and a "rock" pattern for town guards as well as patterns for different types of enemies (which at the moment only includes cultists and bandits).
There are a couple of fancier-looking patterns I use for nobility. I have a golden frame I use for nobles and a silver one for knights, plus a really fancy regal-looking border I can use for ruling monarchs (kings, queens, sultans, emperors, etc.)
There is a "splash" border I've been using for fantasy creatures and rather conveniently it comes in three colors- red, blue, and green. So I've experimented with the idea of color-coding them according to the creature's usual alignment (red for evil, green for neutral, blue for good).
Finally for Deities I've been using a more sci-fi-looking border labelled "target acquired." It looks a bit out of place with some of the other fantasy characters but it seemed fitting with the usual role of deities as highly advanced beings and makes them stand out a bit more.
That’s cool. Definitely more involved than my system! Mine is yellow= PC, red=enemy, green=NPCs, familiars, etc. Tjiugh I guess I have expanded that a bit. Vehicles have a tan border and spells effects light blue. The only other I have is a light purple border on my DM token that I use for exploring the maps and seeing how lighting and lines of sight work out. It’s a pic of the 80s cartoon dungeon master.
I apologize that I still haven’t checked out your token tool. I haven’t opened up my laptop n a few days. Sometimes after I run a session I need a few days to mentally relax.
That sounds like a pretty straight forward system. The only thing I could see is the status of some NPCs being context-dependent, which might make it harder to assign a specific alignment in advance. For instance, town guards could be an ally, enemy, or entirely indifferent to your presence depending on the exact circumstances of the game. I suppose that could be countered by having red and green versions of each token, though that might be a bit more work.
The NPCs certainly be friendly or not, but I decided to not worry about it. Would be nice if I could change the color on the fly though.
That's a pretty sophisticated piece of software you made! The number of options was overwhelming at first but I made sense of it out after a few minutes.
Oh, sorry for the confusion. I didn't actually make the software. I just got really good at using it. Trust me, I wish I had those kinds of computer skills but attempting to learn any sort of programming usually just overwhelms me.
I was the confused one! You wrote “I made these using a free app called Token Tool“ but my brain saw “I made a free app called Token Tool”.
That's alright. It's still a simple but really effective app for stamping tokens. It's got some nice options so you might be able to come up with some cool ideas for how to use some if its borders.
These are so good, friend! :D Thank you.
I've been making tokens, and I prefer the 1" fender washers to the wood discs; the discs I have are slightly smaller than 1", so the printout tokens hang over by a fraction. It's not a big deal; the washers simply fit better. I look up "dungeons and dragons" plus whatever monster name I need on Google Images. This usually yields a plethora of art from 3e and 4e monster manuals, as well as a variety of other sources. I'll also use my phone to photograph an image from one of my books on occasion.
THANK YOU
I would love to see some standard tokens for furniture and generic towns people. If you are going to have a mapping tool, being able to decorate it seems logical. Also have available generic maps for homes, inns, wilderness, etc. I already spend to much time setting up the encounter to have to worry about lighting, walls, etc.