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Greetings all-
I use a lot of minis when DMing with the my D&D club at school and I was wondering what other folks use for props (other than more minis). I just bought some 'treasure' from Dwarven Forge, which is cool but a little expenseve. I also found a bunch of just-the-right-size farm animals at my local school supply store for a lot less than any made-for-the-game animals I've seen (technically, they're 'math counters'). I'd love to get more props but can't think of where to look.
So, what does everyone else use, and where do you get it?
Thanks!
One of my friends uses warhammer stuff. The other option is stuff from model train stores. Or you could use those cutout markers that are in the back of the DMG (?).
Or you can make your own if you are feeling adventureous. He makes houses from those wooden lollipop sticks and then adds texture and paints them. The results are really good.
Pinecones for trees. Styrofoam shipping protectors (like those big ones that computers and printers come with) can be carved, melted and molded into pretty cool buildings and ships.
I bought a generic "jenga" set at a dime store for $3 that included several dozen wooden blocks that were perfectly 5' x 10' at 1" scale.
Decorative river rocks make great natural cavern walls. If there's a Hobby Lobby in your town you can go crazy with decoration stuff for your D&D miniatures. I'm not an artsy guy by any means, but that place is very cool.
Try the 'dollar store'. I have purchased trees (in the train set area). You can also find bags of rubber/plastic spiders and insects for the giant bugs. As for terrain check out reapermini.com and look in 'the craft' link. They have some really good instructions for making walls.
http://www.reapermini.com/TheCraft/19
They turn out really great!!!
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I have a lot of toy donosaurs. I glue them to poker chips or frozen juice can lids for bases.
I have a bunch of counters from old products for mounts, swarms, furniture, dropped items and dead bodies. I like counters because you can put a miniature on them.
I also saved a bunch of those plastic things that come in some pizza boxes to support the lid. I use those as height markers for flying or climbing characters/creatures. You can put a mini on top and most medium minis can also go underneath.
I also modified the little plastic egg from a kinder surprise into a ring of fire that I use for 'flaming sphere' spells.
I have a lot of toy donosaurs. I glue them to poker chips or frozen juice can lids for bases.
I have a bunch of counters from old products for mounts, swarms, furniture, dropped items and dead bodies. I like counters because you can put a miniature on them.
I also saved a bunch of those plastic things that come in some pizza boxes to support the lid. I use those as height markers for flying or climbing characters/creatures. You can put a mini on top and most medium minis can also go underneath.
I also modified the little plastic egg from a kinder surprise into a ring of fire that I use for 'flaming sphere' spells.
those are sweet ideas! who would have thought that those plastic pizza box things were actually useful? (apparently Rambling Scibe). And flaming spheres! Awesome!
igi
I like to use those table-looking things that often come in pizza boxes. We put minis on them when someone is flying or levitating. The clear plastic case that dice come in work well, too.
I print up some walls that I glue together every once in a while, but that's about it for props.
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So, what does everyone else use, and where do you get it?
I'll mention that museum and zoo stores are pretty good places to find animals (including extinct animals) for use with miniatures.
I also find that the terrain I use most is a selection of small hills and trees. You can find the latter in stores that sell model railroad supplies. (BTW, the closest Model RR scale to 25mm minis is S scale, if you want stuff whose size matters. Unfortunately, S scale is pretty uncommon.)
Hills are pretty easy to make by carving styrofoam. A rasp is your friend here, but only until it's time to clean up after carving. If you use a hot-wire foam cutter, make sure you have good ventilation. Also, if you want to use spray paint (or spray-on rock texture, a personal favorite), you'll need to prep the hills before spraying, because the solvents will melt styrofoam nearly instantly.
If you want to go totally over the top, the Dwarven Forge dungeon terrain is great. Unfortunately, it doesn't really become very useful until you've spent north of $200 US. Also, it's a pain to set up. But it sure is pretty.
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Hi all,
I just posted a photo of some of my previously mentioned props in action. First time I've done this, so I hope it works.
I try to buy good dinosaurs in 1:60 scale which of course matches 25mm. This triceratops skeleton came in a pack of two from the dollar store, but the size matches my other 'live' model.
The orange and yellow fire thing is the modified kinder egg, and of course, there's the pizza table.
http://ca.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/musketeer1638/detail?.dir=/1292&.dnm=e 271re2.jpg&.src=ph&.tok=phgRoYEBSxLeK7k9
edit: My link didn't work well. If you paste it into your address bar you may need to delete the space generated by the line break.
A cool place to find castle walls ruins and Greek columns is the local pet store. The have ceramic pieces prepainted in the fish section. I haven't bought any yet, but the thought has crossed my mind.
If there's a Hobby Lobby in your town you can go crazy with decoration stuff for your D&D miniatures. I'm not an artsy guy by any means, but that place is very cool.
Yeah I love that place! I once bought one of their model rocket engines to simulate a fire trap. My test run went badly though so i decided not to use it.
I like our new cat better anyway though.........
A cool place to find castle walls ruins and Greek columns is the local pet store. The have ceramic pieces prepainted in the fish section. I haven't bought any yet, but the thought has crossed my mind.
I found an Oriental style house, a sunken ship, skulls, various masonry walls - a good resource, excellent suggestion! The fake greenery could be useful as obstacles, as well.
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If you have time, I use castle molds from HirstArts and cast my own scenery pieces and whatnot. I have an entire 13 room with corridors gothic-type dungeon with lots of style and its modular like dwarven forge so i can arrange it any way I want. I only bought 2 molds for that. since then I bought many more molds and have made cottages, prison towers, ruins, etc. I can't say enough good about the stuff. Do a search on Hirst Arts or Castle Molds and you'll find the site. It's worth at least a look through.
FH
I have a question (I don't use Minis).
When I play, I just use a magnetic white board with pre-made one inch squares on it. I draw the room the PCs are in, with some adjecent corridors. I purchesed magnetic letters and numbers (you know, from when we were children) and use those as the monsters and players.
Do you guys actually use all this miniature stuff during gameplay? Or do you just make up cool scenes, take pictures and do more scenes?
Just curious.
Ultradan
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Ultradan,
I do use all that stuff during game play. I never used to use minis that much until D&D minis became available. I actually started using counters for 3.0, but now I've got enough minis to cover most situations.
I've thought about putting magnets on all of minis and using a white board, but I pretty much always play on a large stable table. I have a few battle mats; I had the paper ones from the minis laminated, and I draw on them with a china marker, or if I feel like being fancy I use watercolour crayons.
I also got excited by steel squire's spell templates until I found out how much they cost, so I made a few of my own out of coat-hangers. I should make up some more. Actually, I bought a special wire bending tool from Lee Valley after I made the first ones then never made more.
I find this very funny because I remeber when I was using pennies, counters and an occasional unpainted miniature and folks were saying that the palstic prepaints would lower the standards of miniatures. Now I hate having to use a stand-in, like the other night we had to use some draconians as lizardmen. And I've painted more of my od miniatures in the last two years than I did in the previous 25 years during which I accumulated them. They don't go on my table unpainted anymore.
So my lesson for you is this: If you are happy with what you have, don't start buying the miniatures or this expensive and time-consuming hobby will become more-so!
I don't use Minis
I don't use minis either, UltraD, for the same reason I don't play Warhammer - I'd spend WAAAAAAY too much money on minis & terrain - time & effort I could better spend on other things.
I do LOVE painting minis, though.
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Luckily, I have a descent amount of free time (stay at home dad to 2 lil' goblins) so I get to invest an hour or 2 a day into different projects (usually while they nap). As a result, I have lots of minis and lots of "set" pieces, most of which I painted/made. Still never enough time for everything that I WANT to do but more than some can sacrifice. Working on a homebrew world on and off too. Anyway, on topic, I've foud that alot of packing material can be altered to make hills, dungeon rooms, cliffs and other things. I have a bunch of stalagtites/mites and rocks that were part of the packing for my DirecTv system. Inspiration strikes, I try to respond in kind.
FH
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If you're REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEALLY serious about making scenes this way, i saw something called "realistic water" at my local gaming store. it's a liquid that you pour into a sculpted scene, and it hardens to look like water. I've never used it, so I don't know who makes it, but it looks great. I'll check.
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You can get the liquid water at Michaels crafts or A.C. Moore also. It makes beautiful effects, with practice. Add a little paint for a tinting effect, swirl it as it sets for ripples, fishing line to look like streams of water pouring from a statue's urn and it makes a realistic fountain. Yup, I love the stuff.
FH
I say: yay HirstArts! My girlfriend and I have nearly all the molds available...we sold all our dwarven forge stuff on ebay and built our own, and we like it more! And I also paint lots.
The Steel Sqwire stuff is great, though I would have made my own with wire coathangers if I hadn't found the Sqwires on sale (used, got several sets for less than the price of one new), and we also use the Alea Tools magnetic marker discs for status effects.
In the past five years, we've graduated from a homemade dry-erase grid board to the puzzle-piece-like Tact-tiles to dwarven forge to HirstArts...and now we use a combo of the tact-tiles and the hirstarts. We have lots of the D&D Minis, but I also paint a lot as well; our PCs are almost always custom-painted minis, now.
I love the pizzabox stand thingy idea! Now I just need to order a pizza...
This is such a great hobby...I swear, if it weren't so wet outside right now, I'd build a house out of HirstArts and save money on rent...so I could buy and paint more minis. Isn't that sad?
I always wanted to take my dad's model railroad set that he built and lead an assault on the town that was in it. Had a great trestle bridge that would be a good choke point, a river, mill, all sorts of neat stuff.