In my last article we talked about the tools we need to run our D&D games. We glossed over one giant topic, however, the topic of miniatures.
When we say “miniatures” we’re really talking about the physical objects we use to represent the characters and monsters in our D&D games. The options are vast.
Groups don’t actually need to use anything to represent monsters or characters in Dungeons & Dragons. We can use a gameplay style known as the “theater of the mind”. When running D&D in the theater of the mind, the DM describes the situation, clarifies it from the questions of the players, listens to what the players want their characters to do, and describes the outcome. It is the same for combat as it is for exploration or roleplay.
Ever since D&D game out forty years ago, however, players and DMs have often used some sort of miniature to represent their characters or monsters. Back then it was often lead or pewter war game miniatures, sometimes painted and sometimes not. The use of miniatures has evolved in the four decades since, but even today there is no perfect solution for representing monsters and characters at the table. We have a wide range of options, from no cost at all to thousands of dollars, but none of these options are perfect.
No matter which of the paths we take or products we buy for D&D miniatures, we’ll always make tradeoffs. Sometimes it’s money, sometimes it’s time, sometimes it’s physical space, sometimes it’s the flexibility of our game. Even if we spend thousands of dollars on miniatures, as some veteran DMs have, finding the right miniature can take too long to make it useful when running a game. No matter how many miniatures we own, we still will not have exactly the right one or exactly the right number for every battle. While no perfect solution exists, we can mix and match a few ideas together to design our own personal best-case solution for representing characters and monsters in combat.
The Free Options and the Theater of the Mind
As mentioned, we can describe combat and use the occasional paper sketch to help players visualize what is going on. This method is fast, free, and doesn’t break the flow of the game from scene to scene.
Running combat in the theater of the mind means we can run any sort of battle we want. With a zero cost comes infinite flexibility. We can run a battle atop a massive titan's skull surrounded by a thousand screaming ghouls if we want to. We can run a ship battle in the depths of the astral sea fighting against a pair of githyanki warships. Whatever sort of battle we can imagine, we can run. Even if we do choose to use miniatures, keeping this gameplay style in our toolkit gives us the option when we want it.
Combat in the theater of the mind isn’t for everyone. When battles get complicated, some representation of the characters and monsters helps. We can start by representing them with whatever we have on hand. Game pieces from other games, dice, coins, glass beads, LEGOs, and a any roughly one-inch-square object can serve as tokens for characters and monsters. This is a fine option when starting to play D&D that may serve you well for your entire D&D career. Even if you do end up getting more miniatures and better representations, keeping some generic tokens on hand can help set up an improvised battle and save you a lot of time.
Low Cost Do-It-Yourself Options
Some crafty DMs learned how to print paper versions their own miniatures either as tokens or as stand-ups. This is a low-cost solution but does take time to build them out. Enrique Bertran, the Newbie DM, wrote a popular guide to making tokens with print-outs, a one-inch hole punch, a washer, and some glue. More recently he posted a great trick of making one token per monster type and then using generic tokens to represent the rest of those monsters. These hand-made tokens are a wonderful and scalable solution that won't break the bank.
The folks over at Alea Tools have a wonderful suggestion for making tokens out of old Magic the Gathering cards. They suggest punching out the card art you like with a one-inch punch, and sticking adhesive one-inch epoxy stickers to the top to make it feel like a hard plastic token. I spent a weekend making about one hundred such tokens and the look and feel great. The epoxy stickers, originally designed for bottle cap necklaces, work just as well on printed artwork like in NewbieDM's solution above. The one-inch punch and epoxy stickers can make just about anything into a great usable D&D token for pennies. A few generic tokens made this way can also augment our miniatures collection by representing additional monsters whose miniatures we don't own.
Many other creators have published PDFs of tokens and stand-up paper miniatures. Trash Mob Minis and Printable Heroes are two such creators. These print-out miniatures require your time and the right equipment, which can get expensive if you don’t already have it, but offer a nice pocketbook-friendly solution that gives you the exact type and number of miniatures you want.
Pawns and Flat Plastic Miniatures
For those who would rather save time and are willing to spend more money, we come to cardboard pawns. The most popular of these are the Pathfinder Pawns Bestiary collection which offers a large number of cardboard stand-up monster tokens for a low price. Though designed for Pathfinder, these tokens work just as well for D&D.
Other producers like Arcknight Games have come up with flat plastic miniatures that cost more but, in my opinion, look much better on a table and pack light since they’re considerably flatter than cardboard stand-ups (full disclosure, I have a curated set of Flat Plastic Miniatures available through Arcknight Games).
These flat stand-up miniatures are a great way to build a large collection of monster representations without breaking the bank.
The Wide World of Plastic Miniatures
We now come to the large topic of plastic miniatures which come both painted and unpainted. Pre-painted miniatures often come in random booster boxes while specific unpainted miniatures can usually be purchased in non-random blister packs. Some sets of individual painted miniatures exist for heroes which is a great way to build up a small collection of hero miniatures without resorting to random selections.
Unpainted miniatures can be used as-is or painted. Painting miniatures, of course, adds the cost of paints, brushes, and other painting accessories on top of the time it takes to paint them. Painting miniatures is a fun hobby all on its own but it isn’t for everyone. Backing the occasional Kickstarter by Reaper for unpainted “Bones” miniatures is one way to get a large collection of miniatures for a relatively low cost-per-mini.
Pre-painted plastic miniatures are, by far, the most common solution. Wizards of the Coast and their partner, WizKids, released thousands of miniatures over the past fifteen years. They’ve almost always been in randomly assorted packs but the price per miniature has changed dramatically over the years, and not in the direction we’d hope for. DMs collecting for many years might have large collections but building one today costs more than it did ten to fifteen years ago. If random boosters aren’t your bag, you can buy miniatures on the secondary market but the cost per mini will be about $3 to $4 per mini on the low-end. Miniatures for our heroes and boss monsters might be worth it but it’s probably not worth getting a warband of twelve orcs together for $36.
An Evolving Marketplace
The world of tokens, stand-ups, and miniatures continually changes. New ideas, like printable paper stand-up miniatures, pop up quickly and become very popular while older solutions like cardboard tokens or cheap pre-painted miniatures tend to fall out of production. Sometimes one can buy cardboard stand-ups easily and other times they’re out of print and selling for four times the cost. This all points to the same core truth of miniatures: no miniature solution is perfect.
Terrain
If you thought miniatures were the end of the D&D money sink, you are mistaken. The top of the line D&D accessories include 3D terrain to go with all of those miniatures. These fantasy terrain arrangements look absolutely stunning, showing off full three-dimensional maps and areas including dungeons, cities, towns, and castles. The most popular vendor for these accessories is the venerable Dwarven Forge and their creator Stefan Pokorny. These are the setups that everyone drools over on Pinterest and Twitter. Matt Mercer uses Dwarven Forge on Critical Role.
The costs for these elements of terrain are as high as the sets are beautiful. A table-sized representation of a complicated castle or dungeon can run thousands of dollars.
There is also a hidden cost with this terrain. The time to set up such an arrangement leaves little flexibility for the game to go anywhere else. If you set up a castle, the characters are definitely going to that castle. Likewise, the terrain takes up a lot of space to store and time to set up. I am a huge fan of Dwarven Forge and own many sets myself, but it is not a requirement to run a great D&D game.
For now, admire the pictures people put on the web but stick to your blank battle-mat for a lightweight, cost-effective, and flexible alternative.
Some Final Recommendations
Given the imperfection of the D&D miniature market, I have no clear solution but a few recommendations.
First of all, even if we don't use it all the time, running combat using the "theater of the mind" offers us infinite flexibility and no cost. Even if we do have a collection of miniatures, we don't have to use them all the time. Keeping this style of play in our DM toolbox keeps our game fast and flexible.
Players love to have nice miniatures for their characters. Character miniatures can show their marching order when heading down a hallway, who is on watch, and a variety of other non-combat situations on top of their obvious representation in combat. They’re also just plain fun to play with. Investing in a good set of character miniatures, either as full miniatures or stand-up tokens, can help bring the characters to life.
As far as monsters go, sticking with cheap representations of monsters with whatever objects you have on hand is just fine. Hand-made tokens are fast, flexible, easy to transport, and cheap. Plastic and card-board stand-up miniatures give us a large collection of monsters for a reasonable cost. Painted or unpainted miniatures look great at the table but the costs are high. Choose which ever of these options best fits your budget and the type of game you want to run.
What are your favorite solutions for representing monsters in your game? Leave a comment below or chat it up on Twitter.
About the Author
Mike Shea is a writer, technologist, dungeon master, and author for the website Sly Flourish. Mike has freelanced for Wizards of the Coast, Kobold Press, Pelgrane Press, and Sasquach Games and is the author of the Lazy Dungeon Master, Sly Flourish’s Fantastic Locations, and Sly Flourish’s Fantastic Adventures. Mike lives in Northern Virginia with his wife Michelle and their dire-warg Jebu.
Binder clips make great stands for paper printouts - the small and medium clips are essential the same size of small and medium based minis.
My wallet started crying after seeing Dwarven Forge. Oh man, so many good sets!
Ahhh, the plural of Lego is Lego, ahhhh. *pushes up glasses*
I like to use Hero Forge for custom miniatures. They are a tad expensive, so as a player I wait to get one until the character has become high enough level. It ends up being a kind of celebration of accomplishing a major goal. As a DM I buy a custom mini for my Big Bads, the kind of villains or antagonists who are the target of the player's ire. I've also bought one for a major NPC in the past.
Ultimately I've bought maybe 5 minis from them over the years, but my gaming groups have jumped on board and now the anticipation of getting a character "leveled enough to deserve a custom mini" is driving a kind of a meta-game goal. It's been a wonderful tool for generating interest in ongoing campaigns.
If I ever get a character to level 20, I am saving money for a bronze miniature of them!
When I first started playing in college, we used pennies/quarters/nickels/dimes/other weird stuff like that for the PCs. The enemies usually ended up being tootsie rolls or some other small candy. Who ever got the kill got the candy... it was a fun easy and cheap solution, stuff we just had laying around the dorm room.
My problem with miniatures was always storage space, and having the correct mini, or enough of the correct mini when it got down to game play. Then (back in the day) I used the Steve Jackson paper minis (similar to the PF Pawns). This cut down on storage space and had the benefit of some of the pieces being objects like those for Dungeon Tiles. Later I when to the flat round chits and dungeon tiles, but again it came down to having the correct "fig" for all situations. I started trying to simplify. I started just taking penny's and spray painting them different colors (I also used a some copper like Chinese coins because I could get them cheaper than a penny a piece). That way I could have different colored tokens represent different types of NPC's and monsters when the battle started up. This had the upside of being able to use those same colored tokens and counters and such when I was playing MtG. Withing the last few years I switched to using PennyGems and was a backer for his kickstarter. Unfortunately he is currently going out of business. For the PC characters I would usually still have them use a regular mini, so it really represented their PC, and it really stood out on the board.
My current set up. I have some 1" dowels that I cut about 1 1/2 inches long and then painted them white, and then used Modge Podge glue to stick the PC's portrait and name on the piece so that it really stands out for the players compared to the monster chits I use. Then for Monsters of small and medium size I use the different colored PennyGems, but I also supplement this with a home made version of PF Pawn that I put out for the Players to see (just print character/monster images I find on the internet on cardstock and fold it or attach to something so it stands up). For larger monsters and again print out a character portrait on cardstock, but I cut it out as a circle so it lays flat to represent the size of the monster. The benefit is two fold, I'm usually ably to find the picture on the internet of the monster/NPC I really want to use as a representation, and I can just find the picture and print them out as needed for each game session. This cuts down a bit on storage space, and if they go missing it is easy to reprint them.
I circled back around. I started with AD&D2dEd in 1983, it was all theater of the mind. I got out of *playing* RPG's for a time. Eventually I got into miniature wargaming and I had always been a scale model builder & painter, so collected and painted up my various wargame armies & terrain. Even hired myself out painting mini's for about 15yrs. I've since dropped wargaming and paint-for-hire, come back around to playing RPG's, and have a large painted fantasy mini collection & terrain left over from the wargaming days.
I use my collection, printed terrain bought off online sources & I also cast, build & paint terrain using Hirst Arts Molds.
I really like Hero Forge. it allows for custom minis, and can do a wide range of minis, with more stuff added pretty consistently. They can also sell you the 3d files for printing yourself if you don't want to have them print the mini for ya.
Using plastic minis definitely doesn't fulfill all the needs. Right now I am in search of an elf warlock, and can't find one. But that's ok. Collecting them and painting them is so much fun!!
And theater of the mind is always a fun way to go.
As I always say, why use minis when you can use these CHEAP alternative products:
• D4s!
• Lego Construction Workers!
• That one Chaos Space Marine you haven't got around to painting!
• Battleship pieces!
• Lint!
• Pebbles!
• Houses from Settlers of Catan!
• Shadowrun Minis! (Just pretend it's a sword.)
• Plastic Army Men!
• Two outstretched fingers to make legs!
• A door stop!
• The little mini paint container you were going to use to paint one of your real minis!
• Nickels!
• Play-Dough Blobs!
• Ripped-off Corners of Paper!
And Many many more! Order now from "Random Crap Around the Size of a Mini!"
Seconding what Arvital says - he’s my DM (& husband) & I love my heroforge minis. I have three for myself with a fourth one coming soon. They’re so well made and they are constantly coming out with more ways to customize your character. Highly recommend them.
I love minis (used to be a wargamer) but money + setup/teardown time means that for 5E I'm using theatre of the mind.
I do try to do a rough to scale (-ish) sketch on paper and we use little 5mm colored dice to mark characters/enemies. It just gives a rough measure just to show relative positioning. I find that this way if the dwarf is 'about' 30 foot away but she wants to charge, well that 25 movement with gritted teeth will get her within striking distace, whereas with miniatures & grid its 5 squares, no wiggle room if you're short. Basically my players trust me not to screw them over (too much :P) at the cost of a little accuracy but on the other had I can give them a bit of leniency because it's not a 100% accurate representation.
I hope that makes sense!
I'm surprised digital miniatures were not covered here.
I DM via Roll20, full with maps and minis and additional bells and whistles (namely Dynamic Lighting, which is utterly amazing for dungeon crawls and general combat with cover) to enhance the game.
When it comes to minis on Roll20 you can buy a pack for $4.99 or $5.99 typically and it would have anywhere from 10 to 30 digital minis in them. That value might be beaten elsewhere at face value, but since they're digital you can literally copy & paste them, for unlimited goblins, skeletons, mariliths, and liches, all already 'painted' and 'stored' neatly into a well organized drop down system in Roll20. Some of the packs can even be downloaded for personal use, thereby contributing to a couple other mentioned methods above via printing.
How does it compare in terms of time investment? I don't know anything about 3D printing and assume there's a learning curve, plus the time it takes to actually print. The customization options look so appealing though.
Wiz Kids all the way. Can't want for Set 9 (unknown name). I hope it's Dragonlance!
Nothing happens quickly in 3d printing.
On my Anycubic, it takes about 3-5 hours to print. With DLP it doesn't matter how many things you have to print at a time, only how many layers it's going to be.
With FDM/SLA, the more you have, and the higher in complexity, the longer it takes.
I recommend starting with a simple FDM printer. Again, I can't sing the praises of the Da Vinci Jr. enough. It's smallish (150mm^3 build area), cheap ($200-$250 from Amazon, or see their website for additional deals), and easy enough to work with. While you can (and I have) get some catastrophic failures, they're fairly rare. I wouldn't recommend printing characters on it, as its resolution isn't terribly good (because FDM), but you can print thugs and monsters 'til the cows come home. Oh, and don't use tape like they recommend on your build plate, it doesn't work very well, get some cheap glue sticks and use that instead. It's so much better. Don't be cautious with its application either.
For FDM, you'll want some glue sticks, window cleaner, a decent hobby knife, some good hobby snips, and a reasonable investment in a small paper towel company. (For DLP/SLA, I recommend investing in a large paper towel concern.) Pick some simple things to print, and learn. Overhangs are your enemies. Using supports sucks (but is a necessary evil sometimes). Having a hair dryer around to heat up the plastic in the event you can't get it to detach from the build-plate is always a good thing. Don't rely on it too much as it can cause the print to warp. Just use the window cleaner to break up the glue, give it a moment, then gently try to work the hobby knife under the print and carefully break the seal.
I could go on, but this isn't really the place for it.
Check your local library or maker space if you don't have one on hand. I found that our local library system maintains two 3D printers and you can send in models to have printed for you. The current cost is $1 for processing + $0.05/gram. It can be cumbersome, but I'm able to batch together a handful of minis for a couple bucks.
There are several sources for free 3D models that you can use too.