If you're like me and love playing Dungeons and Dragons, or any tabletop role playing game for that matter, with a grid and terrain, getting into the world of miniatures can be an expensive or difficult if you don't have much storage space. I personally live in a small one bedroom apartment, so buying and painting miniatures isn't feasible, so I was looking for a storage friendly alternative, which also happened to be quite frugal as well.
I create flat tokens using a combination of adhesive felt furniture protectors, printed artwork on 200gsm paper and a 25mm hole punch. I live in Australia, so I purchased all of these from local stores as I found them much cheaper and walking distance from where I live, but ordering them online if you live in USA or Europe may be more cost effective. I paid a total of $6 for around 160 furniture protectors, $2 for a few colour printed sheets on 200gsm gloss paper and $10 for the hole punch. All of this works out to 15 cents per miniature.
For artwork, I subscribe to a couple of different Patreon pages that create paper miniatures. Both of these pages are also really affordable options if you're looking for standing miniatures rather than these tokens, but I just enjoy the artwork so I decided to use them with my token miniature approach. But realistically, you could use any art work you want, even the official Dungeons and Dragons artwork from the books you purchase here on D&D Beyond.
For actually creating the round token artwork, I found a really useful online tool that gives you a huge number of customization options like border and background colours, even the shape of the token itself. I think they also have the option to add filters over your artwork.
Wow! I had never thought of this. Will probably use this in a campaign sometime.
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Luke, you can destroy the Emperor. He has foreseen this. It is your destiny. Join me, and together, we can rule the galaxy as father and son! Come with me. It is the only way.
I use a simplified version of this. Wooden discs of various sizes, painted white, with packaging tape on them. I use a dry erase marker to label each disc with the monster/npc and use it on a grided map. It works out pretty well, though it's not as nice looking as the original post.
What program or tool do you use for printing sheets with the tokens are the correct sizes i.e. 1 inch diameter for medium creatures?
Is there a simple program I can use to for that print layout where I can put in say a goblin token and tell it to print 5x copies of it at 1 diameter each?
I've used Google Docs for this purpose before. Simply import the image, then use the rulers to scale it to the proper size. In fact, you can even create a token in Google Drawings.
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Hey fellow DnDers,
If you're like me and love playing Dungeons and Dragons, or any tabletop role playing game for that matter, with a grid and terrain, getting into the world of miniatures can be an expensive or difficult if you don't have much storage space. I personally live in a small one bedroom apartment, so buying and painting miniatures isn't feasible, so I was looking for a storage friendly alternative, which also happened to be quite frugal as well.
I create flat tokens using a combination of adhesive felt furniture protectors, printed artwork on 200gsm paper and a 25mm hole punch. I live in Australia, so I purchased all of these from local stores as I found them much cheaper and walking distance from where I live, but ordering them online if you live in USA or Europe may be more cost effective. I paid a total of $6 for around 160 furniture protectors, $2 for a few colour printed sheets on 200gsm gloss paper and $10 for the hole punch. All of this works out to 15 cents per miniature.
Felt furniture protectors:
https://www.amazon.com/X-PROTECTOR-Premium-GIANT-Furniture-QUANTITY/dp/B01MQI9IBY/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?keywords=1+inch+furniture+pads&qid=1554236220&s=gateway&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1
Hole punch:
https://www.amazon.com/Fiskars-Inch-Thick-Punch-Circle/dp/B018HBA3BE/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=fiskars+hole+punch&qid=1554236176&s=gateway&sr=8-5
For artwork, I subscribe to a couple of different Patreon pages that create paper miniatures. Both of these pages are also really affordable options if you're looking for standing miniatures rather than these tokens, but I just enjoy the artwork so I decided to use them with my token miniature approach. But realistically, you could use any art work you want, even the official Dungeons and Dragons artwork from the books you purchase here on D&D Beyond.
https://www.patreon.com/PrintableHeroes
https://www.patreon.com/paperforge
For actually creating the round token artwork, I found a really useful online tool that gives you a huge number of customization options like border and background colours, even the shape of the token itself. I think they also have the option to add filters over your artwork.
https://rolladvantage.com/tokenstamp/
If you have any questions, feel free to comment below and I'll do my best to answer them for you!
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InsiderThank you for taking the time to write this all up! We enjoyed the details you posted on Discord, but it's good to get even more here!
Find me on Twitter: @OboeLauren
I have quite a fair collection of miniatures, so I don't use tokens, but if I did, this is a great idea! Keep up the good work.
These are a great idea. Thanks!
Wow! I had never thought of this. Will probably use this in a campaign sometime.
Luke, you can destroy the Emperor. He has foreseen this. It is your destiny. Join me, and together, we can rule the galaxy as father and son! Come with me. It is the only way.
This is a great idea and would be much easier to transport than traditional minis.
I use a simplified version of this. Wooden discs of various sizes, painted white, with packaging tape on them. I use a dry erase marker to label each disc with the monster/npc and use it on a grided map. It works out pretty well, though it's not as nice looking as the original post.
What program or tool do you use for printing sheets with the tokens are the correct sizes i.e. 1 inch diameter for medium creatures?
Is there a simple program I can use to for that print layout where I can put in say a goblin token and tell it to print 5x copies of it at 1 diameter each?
I use Microsoft Word, but if you are looking for a free tool, you could probably use Google Docs as well.
I've used Google Docs for this purpose before. Simply import the image, then use the rulers to scale it to the proper size. In fact, you can even create a token in Google Drawings.