Imagine playing on your battle maps, with your meticulously painted Hero figures battling hordes of Goblins and other assorted monster Miniatures which you cast at home the night before from your favourite chocolate. And as your PCs slay the horde, you get to eat one of your enemies as you remove their Miniature from the board.
What would the product be like?
Executing this idea is relatively simple: There are plenty of silicone food grade moulds which you can use to make chocolate coins, dice, and so on - but none for D&D Miniatures. Using 3d modelling software, we could easily create some suitable monster miniatures and convert them into silicone moulds. Due to the variety of characters, you would probably want to make sheet-moulds with many characters. For instance, a Goblin sheet with Axe-wielding and Archers Goblins, a human sheet with typical human NPC such as Sword, Archer, Magic Staff, Unarmed, etc.
To allow home-casting the figures without too much breakage, etc they will have to be slightly simpler and less details than your typical high-detail expensive lead figures. Casting can be with chocolate, white or dark - or even white chocolate with e.g. green food colour. The end product would be reusable silicone moulds which the DM can use prior to a big battle to cast lots of enemy figures. And the added bonus is that you can add a house-rule that whoever kills an opponent, gets to eat its chocolate mini figures. Was there ever a better reason to cast Fireball on a horde of Goblins?
You could either do individual moulds - which would allow you better details, or make a larger sheet-mould (probably better for more but less detailed figures). This might need some chocolatey experimentation to perfect the process.
What would we need?
A few people with 3D modelling skills to design the characters/monsters/figures.
Someone with basic knowledge of engineering and/or 3D printing to turn the individual figures into moulds.
Finally, either some people to make the casts and sell them directly, or find a commercial supplier who could upscale the production.
I personally would expect most of this can be done via free 3D software, and would not be much different to doing some 3D printing. So the upfront investment is really in time and a few 3D prints. The actual silicone moulds could then be cast from the original negative 3D print repeatedly so your variable per unit is pretty much just the silicone and time. If you do this at a reasonable scale (buy a big batch of food-grade silicone) you should be able to produce these for peanuts, and sell them for a nice profit.
Who is going to do it?
Not me, unfortunately. I would be happy for someone else to run with this idea if you think you have the time! Hence why I posted it here.
I've heard of people doing something like this around Halloween time, since you can get little chocolate skulls or gummy spiders or things like that. I feel like it's too niche of an idea to really be worth the effort for the average person. You could probably get some decent, if crude figures by basically just pressing an existing figure into some powdered sugar and then pouring molten chocolate into the mold.
The real problem is that making even poorly detailed chocolate figurines is harder than you think. And forget about projections like weapons, ears are hard enough. Look at the chocolate trees, Santas, rabbits. They tend not be very poorly detailed except for a foil covering. Worse, it is hard to get them thick and not flat on the back, so standing up is difficult.
Forget about making it at home, would take professional baker skill. At least if you wanted the kind of detail for the chocolate that looked like the nutcracker.
Even that professional baker version would be too expensive to actually buy and eat once a week.
Instead, I would suggest a business that made basically that 'worst' example from the first link that could stand on their own. Then wrap them in a variety pack of tin foils that looked like monsters. So you play with them wrapped in foil, remove it when you kill them, then eat the chocolate thing. This I could see selling a pack of 20 for maybe $30 or so. Paying mostly for the foil design.
Leaning more into the tin foil idea... I think you could do something where you basically make chocolate coins, but each coin has an image of a creature on it, similar to the character icons you might see on VTTs. That could be something interesting... where you basically just sell a box of "mooks", like goblins and zombies or whatever, and there could be more premium models that still probably wouldn't be particularly complex.
That said... I mean, I wouldn't buy these. It seems like it would be fun for a silly gimmick one-shot, but it's not something I would invest a lot of money in. Like I said before... I'd probably just buy a bag or two of cheap Halloween candy rather than pay a premium for single-use high-end chocolate figurines.
Could be fun as a gift, but it's definitely not something I would play with regularly.
This would not actually be as hard as the above folks are thinking - silicone moulds for chocolates are really common and can be bought at countless craft stores. One likely could not do an actual miniature given how brittle chocolate can be (especially if not worked by a professional), but you could easily do something like “smiling goblin head” or other faces from popular public domain creatures commonplace to D&D. You could do larger bodies, but you’ll run into an issue where they might be longer than a one-inch square (or be something tiny as to have no detail) and likely not capable of standing up on their own due to general fluctuation in home production processes. That would make them less useful for their intended purpose, which is why a face would likely be the best balance of detail and size.
But, while production is not the problem that the above posters seem to think it is, there is a substantial problem you have not taken into account - melting and sanitation.
For these to be homemade, they’re not going to be wrapped - you’d pop them out of the silicone mould and they’d be done. Once playing with them, you’ll have to put them on the bafflement rather than a plate, which…. Gross. I keep my battlemats really clean, but I wouldn’t really want to eat off a surface everyone is constantly touching and drawing on. Not to mention the DM is getting their hands all over the chocolate players are expected to later eat.
Even if you ignore the “ick factor”, the reality is chocolate melts, especially when handled a bunch by, say, a DM moving the pieces around. Melting chocolate will make a mess of the game board, make the pieces less appetising, and likely would turn a fun game night idea into a sticky mess for the DM to clean up.
So, while fun in theory, I think it is one of those ideas that probably would not work in reality. One could still make fantasy creature moulds to make D&D-themed chocolates to serve on the side of games, but moving those chocolates off the plate and onto the battle map is only going to cause problems.
Thanks all. I take the points on fine detail and weapons. Although I have seen quite finely patterned chocolate surfaces, so presume some middle ground between just foil wrapper and a real miniature exists.
The melting I don't think is a major problems most climates. If I break off a piece of chocolate and use it as a game token it never melts from the occasional touch to move it. That being said, I'm in the UK - so this may play out differently if you're nearer the equator.
I think the idea of tokens/coins is quite good. Chocolate coins are pretty detailed (the UK ones even show the fine writing quite clearly) and you wouldn't need to worry about weapons breaking off.
Ick factor is something I hadn't really considered, but is a fair point especially in a larger group. So you would probably have to make them foil-covered like the actual chocolate-gold-coins you can buy, but DnD themed. As I mentioned, the coin ones I am familiar with are very finely detailed so you could get away with quite fine drawings.
Our GM set a fight against slimes and jellies using various lollies as the monsters, with giant fluffy marshmallows as the gelatonous cubes. Whoever struck the killing blow got to eat the lolly. :-)
As the player of the cleric I did argue that I should get to eat the marshmallows because my bless spell stopped people getting absorbed and damaged by acid. The players all said "yep, fair call". Yummmm.
Thanks for all your thoughts on this. Based on the discussions, I actually think I've come up with a good solution on this.
No doubt you're familiar with the "Order of the Stick" (if not, go to their website and start on page 1, you won't regret it!). The artist who does that also has some paper figures (printed, fold-in-half, with a coin at the base to give them weight and keep them stable).
So I'll just print some of those, but instead of metal coins simply use chocolate ones! So then we will have elaborate and beautifully drawn miniatures (albeit printed in 2d), with a standard chocolate coin which is hygienic and safe, non-melted, and yummy to eat.
Ok, I don't know where you all live, but if I leave chocolate (wrapped or unwrapped) on a table it does not melt. So let's just say my idea is limited to climates where room temperature can be reasonably expected to remain <25 Celsius. If you set up your battle map in a Sauna, that's whole different ballgame of course.
Seems kind of a moot point to be honest because I do not see any businessman seriously considering doing this. No money to be made.
It's was never about making money. This is not a kickstarter. It was about how one could get a fun new table-top feature. Like any features, some people can make money from these if they want (just look at the hundreds of workshops making customised dice), but that's not really what I was after. The point was to work out how I could get chocolate minatures to play with.
And from that perspective, I think I have solved the problem:
Thanks for all your thoughts on this. Based on the discussions, I actually think I've come up with a good solution on this.
No doubt you're familiar with the "Order of the Stick" (if not, go to their website and start on page 1, you won't regret it!). The artist who does that also has some paper figures (printed, fold-in-half, with a coin at the base to give them weight and keep them stable.
So I'll just print some of those, but instead of metal coins simply use chocolate ones! So then we will have elaborate and beautifully drawn miniatures (albeit printed in 2d), with a standard chocolate coin which is hygienic and safe, non-melted, and yummy to eat.
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Product Idea: D&D Miniature Chocolate Moulds
Imagine playing on your battle maps, with your meticulously painted Hero figures battling hordes of Goblins and other assorted monster Miniatures which you cast at home the night before from your favourite chocolate. And as your PCs slay the horde, you get to eat one of your enemies as you remove their Miniature from the board.
What would the product be like?
Executing this idea is relatively simple: There are plenty of silicone food grade moulds which you can use to make chocolate coins, dice, and so on - but none for D&D Miniatures. Using 3d modelling software, we could easily create some suitable monster miniatures and convert them into silicone moulds. Due to the variety of characters, you would probably want to make sheet-moulds with many characters. For instance, a Goblin sheet with Axe-wielding and Archers Goblins, a human sheet with typical human NPC such as Sword, Archer, Magic Staff, Unarmed, etc.
To allow home-casting the figures without too much breakage, etc they will have to be slightly simpler and less details than your typical high-detail expensive lead figures. Casting can be with chocolate, white or dark - or even white chocolate with e.g. green food colour. The end product would be reusable silicone moulds which the DM can use prior to a big battle to cast lots of enemy figures. And the added bonus is that you can add a house-rule that whoever kills an opponent, gets to eat its chocolate mini figures. Was there ever a better reason to cast Fireball on a horde of Goblins?
You could either do individual moulds - which would allow you better details, or make a larger sheet-mould (probably better for more but less detailed figures). This might need some chocolatey experimentation to perfect the process.
What would we need?
I personally would expect most of this can be done via free 3D software, and would not be much different to doing some 3D printing. So the upfront investment is really in time and a few 3D prints. The actual silicone moulds could then be cast from the original negative 3D print repeatedly so your variable per unit is pretty much just the silicone and time. If you do this at a reasonable scale (buy a big batch of food-grade silicone) you should be able to produce these for peanuts, and sell them for a nice profit.
Who is going to do it?
Not me, unfortunately. I would be happy for someone else to run with this idea if you think you have the time! Hence why I posted it here.
I've heard of people doing something like this around Halloween time, since you can get little chocolate skulls or gummy spiders or things like that. I feel like it's too niche of an idea to really be worth the effort for the average person. You could probably get some decent, if crude figures by basically just pressing an existing figure into some powdered sugar and then pouring molten chocolate into the mold.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
The real problem is that making even poorly detailed chocolate figurines is harder than you think. And forget about projections like weapons, ears are hard enough. Look at the chocolate trees, Santas, rabbits. They tend not be very poorly detailed except for a foil covering. Worse, it is hard to get them thick and not flat on the back, so standing up is difficult.
This is likely the worst example, but people sold this thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/ExpectationVsReality/comments/7nfn5w/opened_my_chocolate_santa_this_is_incredible/
This is probably what you want, if a little big: https://diabeticfriendly.com/6-inch-tall-nutcracker-soldier-sugar-free-solid-chocolate-3-d-about-5-5-oz-handmade-individually-wrapped/ But to get that detail, they had to make it 6 inch tall. And charge $13 for it. I have seen similar detailed santas for about $5-$8, apiece that were much much smaller.
Forget about making it at home, would take professional baker skill. At least if you wanted the kind of detail for the chocolate that looked like the nutcracker.
Even that professional baker version would be too expensive to actually buy and eat once a week.
Instead, I would suggest a business that made basically that 'worst' example from the first link that could stand on their own. Then wrap them in a variety pack of tin foils that looked like monsters. So you play with them wrapped in foil, remove it when you kill them, then eat the chocolate thing. This I could see selling a pack of 20 for maybe $30 or so. Paying mostly for the foil design.
Leaning more into the tin foil idea... I think you could do something where you basically make chocolate coins, but each coin has an image of a creature on it, similar to the character icons you might see on VTTs. That could be something interesting... where you basically just sell a box of "mooks", like goblins and zombies or whatever, and there could be more premium models that still probably wouldn't be particularly complex.
That said... I mean, I wouldn't buy these. It seems like it would be fun for a silly gimmick one-shot, but it's not something I would invest a lot of money in. Like I said before... I'd probably just buy a bag or two of cheap Halloween candy rather than pay a premium for single-use high-end chocolate figurines.
Could be fun as a gift, but it's definitely not something I would play with regularly.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
This would not actually be as hard as the above folks are thinking - silicone moulds for chocolates are really common and can be bought at countless craft stores. One likely could not do an actual miniature given how brittle chocolate can be (especially if not worked by a professional), but you could easily do something like “smiling goblin head” or other faces from popular public domain creatures commonplace to D&D. You could do larger bodies, but you’ll run into an issue where they might be longer than a one-inch square (or be something tiny as to have no detail) and likely not capable of standing up on their own due to general fluctuation in home production processes. That would make them less useful for their intended purpose, which is why a face would likely be the best balance of detail and size.
But, while production is not the problem that the above posters seem to think it is, there is a substantial problem you have not taken into account - melting and sanitation.
For these to be homemade, they’re not going to be wrapped - you’d pop them out of the silicone mould and they’d be done. Once playing with them, you’ll have to put them on the bafflement rather than a plate, which…. Gross. I keep my battlemats really clean, but I wouldn’t really want to eat off a surface everyone is constantly touching and drawing on. Not to mention the DM is getting their hands all over the chocolate players are expected to later eat.
Even if you ignore the “ick factor”, the reality is chocolate melts, especially when handled a bunch by, say, a DM moving the pieces around. Melting chocolate will make a mess of the game board, make the pieces less appetising, and likely would turn a fun game night idea into a sticky mess for the DM to clean up.
So, while fun in theory, I think it is one of those ideas that probably would not work in reality. One could still make fantasy creature moulds to make D&D-themed chocolates to serve on the side of games, but moving those chocolates off the plate and onto the battle map is only going to cause problems.
Thanks all. I take the points on fine detail and weapons. Although I have seen quite finely patterned chocolate surfaces, so presume some middle ground between just foil wrapper and a real miniature exists.
The melting I don't think is a major problems most climates. If I break off a piece of chocolate and use it as a game token it never melts from the occasional touch to move it. That being said, I'm in the UK - so this may play out differently if you're nearer the equator.
I think the idea of tokens/coins is quite good. Chocolate coins are pretty detailed (the UK ones even show the fine writing quite clearly) and you wouldn't need to worry about weapons breaking off.
Ick factor is something I hadn't really considered, but is a fair point especially in a larger group. So you would probably have to make them foil-covered like the actual chocolate-gold-coins you can buy, but DnD themed. As I mentioned, the coin ones I am familiar with are very finely detailed so you could get away with quite fine drawings.
I once ran a Christmas one-shot and used Hershey's kisses for the baddies that the players could eat.
Our GM set a fight against slimes and jellies using various lollies as the monsters, with giant fluffy marshmallows as the gelatonous cubes. Whoever struck the killing blow got to eat the lolly. :-)
As the player of the cleric I did argue that I should get to eat the marshmallows because my bless spell stopped people getting absorbed and damaged by acid. The players all said "yep, fair call". Yummmm.
Thanks for all your thoughts on this. Based on the discussions, I actually think I've come up with a good solution on this.
No doubt you're familiar with the "Order of the Stick" (if not, go to their website and start on page 1, you won't regret it!). The artist who does that also has some paper figures (printed, fold-in-half, with a coin at the base to give them weight and keep them stable).
So I'll just print some of those, but instead of metal coins simply use chocolate ones! So then we will have elaborate and beautifully drawn miniatures (albeit printed in 2d), with a standard chocolate coin which is hygienic and safe, non-melted, and yummy to eat.
They would melt, huge issues with hygiene and not to mention how on earth I would I add them to my Roll20 maps.
Ok, I don't know where you all live, but if I leave chocolate (wrapped or unwrapped) on a table it does not melt. So let's just say my idea is limited to climates where room temperature can be reasonably expected to remain <25 Celsius. If you set up your battle map in a Sauna, that's whole different ballgame of course.
Seems kind of a moot point to be honest because I do not see any businessman seriously considering doing this. No money to be made.
1 shot dungeon master
It's was never about making money. This is not a kickstarter. It was about how one could get a fun new table-top feature. Like any features, some people can make money from these if they want (just look at the hundreds of workshops making customised dice), but that's not really what I was after. The point was to work out how I could get chocolate minatures to play with.
And from that perspective, I think I have solved the problem: