I would turn the issue of getting exactly what you want around: the D&D minis were full of weird builds nobody wanted (there's a hilarious thread around here somewhere about it), whereas companies like Reaper make so many minis in such long, endless variety you're bound to find what you want in there somewhere.
I'm a minis/modeling junky, but I will say it can get expensive collecting them. (You don't have to paint them, by the way: we spent years with just the metal on the table and nobody complained - or you could just ink or primer them to show off definition.)
But I digress. My point was to recommend ditching the heavy washers idea and the need to collect something as esoteric as buttons and recommend - surprise! Minis bases.
You can get tons of them cheap. Plastic bases are the cheapest part of the hobby, after all. And they come - not surprisingly - in the right size to fit on your battlemat. GW, GF9, and a few others make 25mm and smaller round bases and 25mm square bases, and all sizes up to 50mm and larger. Or you can get the nice lipped 30mm bases from Reaper, Wyrd, PP, etc.
You should be able to find them dirt cheap, and you can glue or tape your cardstock figs to them, and, in the words of my boss who is so darned fond of saying this, you won't have to "reinvent the wheel."
In reality, I find you don't even need the washers. Using the token tool and printing on photo paper, you get a nice glossy token which you can copy multiple times in Photoshop or GIMP, then print on a cheap inkjet printer. The canon I bought for $40 works fine for this. Since the tokens are on thicker stock, they hold up fine if you take care of them. Store them in a plastic sandwich bag when you're done. Of course, you CAN put them on washers if you want, but I've never found it necessary personally.
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I purchased some punch out circle makers from a craft supply store (Hobby Lobby, Micheals, Joannes, something like that) and I punch out foam circles to keep track of conditions. They would also work fine for punching out card stock if you wanted.
I understand that buying minis can be expensive, and that painting them can be a chore. I managed to get around both of those problems very simply.
I bought some sculpey clay and some aluminum wire and some basic paints and brushes. I make wire armatures and cover them with sculpey clay and then bake them to make what I need. If I need a dozen goblins, I just make up a dozen goblins.
The trick is to lower your expectations. Or at least it was for me. My goblins are simple stick figures with big ears and a simple green/brown paint job, green for the gobin skin and brown for their clothes. Kobolds are red/blue. They are instantly recognizable and because each is made by hand, they have plenty of individuality. "I'm attacking the pot-bellied goblin" is one of my favorite moments from one of my gaming sessions.
I can literally whip up a dozen goblins in less than an hour, while watching TV or listening to music. When I'm making stuff like that I don't try to get fancy, I just do the basics to make them recognizable and then bake and paint them. Bingo, done. I've got about 60 or 70 minis I've made this way and I still haven't used up my original box of sculpey clay or my paints.
Now, it is true that on occasion I will try to get fancy. I'm working on a Beholder right now. So I bought some mold making material and casting resin to make multiple heads and I spent about an hour on sculpting the head alone. I've now cast two copies of the head and am thinking about casting a third. This all was because a friend of mine asked for a Behoder mini and I made a simple one in about 30 minutes and decided I wanted to do something more detailed and interesting.
I am no artist. I just don't mind if someone laughs at one of my minis. They aren't for sale, or for my personal ego gratification, they are to make gaming as efficient and clear as possible. One thing I hate is to say "OK, the two troll minis are trolls, and the three bugbear minis are also trolls because I ran out of trolls, and this orc marauder is an orc marauder but these two are orc soldiers..."
It's not hard at all to make simple, effective minis with the polymer clay, and it won't be long before you've got a nice collection of minis that you made yourself.
In reality, I find you don't even need the washers. Using the token tool and printing on photo paper, you get a nice glossy token which you can copy multiple times in Photoshop or GIMP, then print on a cheap inkjet printer. The canon I bought for $40 works fine for this. Since the tokens are on thicker stock, they hold up fine if you take care of them. Store them in a plastic sandwich bag when you're done. Of course, you CAN put them on washers if you want, but I've never found it necessary personally.
Today my 6 hobgoblins were represented by 6 white chess pawns, and the troop leader (obvious because he was shouting orders) was a black one. I've also used draught counters (is that checkers in US?). A red one makes a satisfying marker for a flaming sphere spell. Quite adequate, and very easy, if not pretty.
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I use the cheap alternative: cubes made out of wood, in different sizes, with an arrow drawn on top to represent the direction the monster is watching. Then I declare which cube is which monster and that's it. It's cheap, it's ugly and you can buy the cubes by the dozen in online wood stores. I even have a cube for a huge creature we call "Hugh Blockman".
But, even so, I wish I had some decent minis. That would be really nice.
I am a long time mini collector , but then the recession beat me down. I tried buying WOC plastic mini packs , but got real sick of high prices and random figures that never got used.
Nowadays my group uses coins, chess pieces and glass beads. I save my money for the big minis ( like my blue dragon ) and we have enough old figs to rep our characters for the time being.
As for the battle map we swapped it out for illustrated battle tiles.
Large scale combats take some planning , but the smaller fights are easy to set up.
Ahh minis and combats , if only there were a app for that :)
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Gnome Stew, a DMing blog, has a pdf file to make your own paper minis, which you can find here: Print and fold minis
I find they work best when printed on heavier paper like card-stock.
If you really, really, really want to do this on the cheap, get a bag full of multi-colored flat glass beads used to fill vases or bowls. You can get a whole bag for just a few dollars, and then you will at least have lots of different colors. Then you can draw arrows on them or do whatever you want, and they are at least easier to pick up and move around than flat card stock circles. I use them for large battles when I don't feel like making a bunch of one-use minis just for one battle.
I also have a bunch of multi-colored "pawns" like you use in "Sorry" or other games.
But making minis with sculpey clay (or other polymer clay brands) is so cheap and effective that it amazes me that RPGers typically don't do it just as a matter of course..
Gnome Stew, a DMing blog, has a pdf file to make your own paper minis, which you can find here: Print and fold minis
I find they work best when printed on heavier paper like card-stock.
I tried this and actually found the poly clay approach to be faster and more satisfying. And cheaper too, that card stock isn't free.
Plus, I don't have to cut anything out or glue anything.
OK, enough on the poly clay.... But seriously folks, you should try it.
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I use GIMP to crop token images from Pathfinder PDFs, then print and stick-glue them to some scrapbooking cardboard my wife had laying around. I love the resulting tokens. They're almost free, functional, and I get to utilize Paizo's stellar artwork. It's espeically awesome for NPCs and BBEGs because the players can see exactly what they're up against just as I, the DM, see it.
Buttons are a cool idea. I'd never thought of that.
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so, to the point, what's everyone's experience trying to find alternatives to metal minis for combat encounters?
Coins.
We started with a pile of pennies. After a while I bought a set of stickers from an office store that were round. We stuck the stickers on the coins and wrote a number on each. That made it easy to track which coin was who, especially for the DM in a mass-bad-guy combat.
We also grabbed some old lego to build our map on top of the battlemat. We've got a number of flat bits that are six bumps by six bumps, which works out to 2 squares by 2 squares perfectly. Stick one of those down and drop a coin on it and now you've got a Large creature.
Over the years we migrated to actual minis both painted and plastic, but coins are where it started. Cheap and readily available.
I just bought a bulk lot of 200 25mm wooden circles that are maybe 3mm thick... should work amazingly
oh yeah , the numbers definitely help. even if you use figs
Well in Iron Claw you just print out minis
http://greywolf.critter.net/gallery/ironclawgallery-icsu04.htm
Once you print those out and glue them together you got yourself a mini.
On the table I've seen tons of stuff be minis. One guy played with some metal frog for the longest time. Another guy used a legoman, another used some small plastic baby. Coins, buttons, bottlecaps, can tabs, gummiebears, cookies.. Hell one time I grabbed a deflated basket ball and used that for a gargantuan size mini.
Assylum is slowly developing a large collection of prepainted platic minis. I suggest getting a few of these guys.
Well in Iron Claw you just print out minis
http://greywolf.critter.net/gallery/ironclawgallery-icsu04.htm
Once you print those out and glue them together you got yourself a mini.
This is what I was going suggest.IF you wanted to go cheap... personally I LOVE minis... I started with Heroclix and Mage knight... moved on to W0TC versions... Painting what I wanted.. Cutting and switching weapons as needed...
it was SOOO much fun to have a figure with YOUR hair color, YOUR armor and YOUR weapons...
Now I've moved on to the Reaper metal versions... the sculpts are more detailed.. their more challenging to paint... Though I can't seem to 'modify' the sculpts the way i used to. :(
However TSR's original Marvel superhero game had a BUNCH of three sided paper tokens that looked just like the ones above. You just folded them into a triangle, glued (or taped) and you were ready to go :)
If you've got photoshop you should be ready to go with just about anything you'd need... and you may STILL be able to get that 'indiviual' feel for the minis :)
Instead of washers, my GM uses beer bottle caps. Similar in size, a lot lighter.
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I use Photoshop (though the free program GIMP would work fine for this as well).
I figure out what creatures I need for the combat and find some pics online to represent the monster or character.
I import that image into photoshop and crop to a 1 inch x 1 inch square (or whatever size is appropriate) then arrange all the tokens I need for a fight on a page and print it to card stock.
I cut the card stock out into squares instead of circles. Squares are easier. Then I use these for the game. I try and save the tokens for later use, but a lot of times I "award" the token for a really spectacular kill. Sort of a trophy if you will.
For Bosses, if possible I use an actual mini so it stands out. Otherwise I make a cool border for it.
I find that using flat tokens makes it a LOT easier to differentiate between PCs and NPCs. And it is economical and easy to make a million of them. :)
I've used pennies with numbers marked on them for large encounters, like ships full of enemies and other battle scenarios. The PCs can use nickles or quarters to stand apart.
Cheap, but it works.
Developer
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Back in the early days, before we were using minis, PCs were d4's, each player had his or her own color. If you were fine, you were 4, if you were prone or unconscious, 1. Enemies were d6's. We also had d30's that worked very well for large opponents.
Minis are better, but when you don't have the cash, dice are an option.
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so, to the point, what's everyone's experience trying to find alternatives to metal minis for combat encounters?
The best thing I've ever found - & I really recommend this - is to buy those flat marble/glass gems. Just google flat clear gems or flat marble gems, & you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
They come in a seriously infinite amount of colors, & are extremely cheap. Everyone can pick their favorite color from a few individuals you get, then buy a large amount of a different color you don't think anyone will want (maybe two or three colors. I find white, or gray work great here, but it depends on your mat) that you can use for NPCs & foes.They also come in more than just the small size (the small is perfect for the battlemats for PCs). Right now I am playing a purple glass flat marble gem as my druid & my large lion is one of the bigger purple gems (when he was smaller we used a blue one, but now it helps to know he's my animal companion with the other person in the group, just in case anyone forgets)
Everyone writes their color on top of their character sheet or wherever, & you as GM/Storyteller definitely want a little index card or something with a list of the PCs & what color they are, including familiars & companions/bonded mounts/eidolons/etc. Everyone should stay the same color throughout the campaign because you'll quickly associate them with the color, sometimes easier than remembering which mini is which (depending on the person).
Here is one of thousands of sites, with more info on them & pictures. You have definitely seen these before in your lifetime haha.
http://www.mosaicartsupply.com/glassgemmarbles.htm
Enjoy! 4 cents per beats 5 bucks per miniature haha
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Many of the suggestions listed are great ideas; one thing I would suggest is that if you plan on using "non-standard" counters for your Player Characters, you might want to make sure with the people that you're playing with if they're okay with it ahead of time. Otherwise, I've found that most people are more forgiving with "monsters" being represented by things other than miniatures/tokens.
Many of the suggestions listed are great ideas; one thing I would suggest is that if you plan on using "non-standard" counters for your Player Characters, you might want to make sure with the people that you're playing with if they're okay with it ahead of time. Otherwise, I've found that most people are more forgiving with "monsters" being represented by things other than miniatures/tokens.
One suitable figure for each player char isn't such a big deal - its the wide range of NPCs and, especially, monsters, often in quantity, needed by the GM that's the major expense. Griffins, shocker lizards, skeletons, bat swarms, dire bats, violet fungi, shriekers, a gargoyle and several hobgoblins just in the last few encounters. Can you even buy violet fungi and shriekers?
For new players, or even new characters, it's good to establish that you don't have to wait for (or even get) a figure before you can start playing, it's ok to grab any suitable marker and dive in, and take your time finding what you want. I'd expect people to be tolerant of a temporary marker or even lend you something suitable.
I'm doing 2 things for my group.
First, for the player characters, I'm drawing a rough representation of each person's character in Inkscape, in the Order of the Stick art style. I'm then printing these on Shrinky Dinks and shrinking them, so they become hard plastic. I'm putting miniature binder clips on the bottom (with the silver parts removed) so that they stand on the mat. This requires some work, and a lot of measuring, but I think it should be fun for everyone.
For NPCs, Monsters, etc. I'm doing the same thing with the binder clips, but using heavy card stock (so as to fit more per page, and be able to produce large numbers for cheap)
Originally I was going to shrinky dink everything, but I can only get like 3 goblins per page doing that and shrinky dinks are about 11 dollars for 10 pages. Not really cost effective.
Also: When the session is over each player can just binder clip their mini to their character sheet.
...
so, to the point, what's everyone's experience trying to find alternatives to metal minis for combat encounters?
Once we used beer bottle caps. But the challenge there is that you need a few varieties - to keep track of what's what - and you need to drink them, too. That shouldn't be a problem, right?
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I found an alternative to minis in Legos. Their pretty expansive these days. And if you want you canorder a lot of the accessories from Lego itself. In the long run, it costs about the same. Though my players got a kick at having custom minis and dungeons.
Though, on the cheap though we used grid paper and thumbtacks.
I'm doing 2 things for my group.
First, for the player characters, I'm drawing a rough representation of each person's character in Inkscape, in the Order of the Stick art style. I'm then printing these on Shrinky Dinks and shrinking them, so they become hard plastic. I'm putting miniature binder clips on the bottom (with the silver parts removed) so that they stand on the mat. This requires some work, and a lot of measuring, but I think it should be fun for everyone.
O.O
They still make SHRINKY DINKS!!! That is an AWESOME idea!!
(Still like painting my minis... but Awesome nonetheless...)
Before WOTC started up with their pre-painted stuff... we used to use the lego versions. it was fun, but i also 'repainted' mine in that too ;)
Now while we're waiting for me to finsih the newest batch of heroes, we usually use dice. 12 sided for our heroes (which we have plenty of 12s nobody will miss...) and often 6 sided for bad guys... having the number up makes it easy to figure out which one your talking about :)
A box of gumdrops.
There are multiple colors.. they don't roll around...
And you get to eat what you kill.We've been known to use Combos as well.
Trust me, nobody cares what they look like, as long as they are edible.
Done that too.
Now while we're waiting for me to finsih the newest batch of heroes, we usually use dice. 12 sided for our heroes (which we have plenty of 12s nobody will miss...) and often 6 sided for bad guys... having the number up makes it easy to figure out which one your talking about :)
What happened to the goblins that were moving up from the side?
Ummm, they were killed by a fireball.What!? That was targeted over on the other side of the room!
Yah, but I needed the D6's....
We used dice for a while, but you need to pay attention to what's a monster, and what's just a die sitting on the table. Especially when the battle mat is the only flat surface to roll on in the room.
Lots of good ideas in this thread.
Cheap = Notebook paper, were someone drew horazonal & vertial lines, to make it into checkered paper. Then we used pennies as tokens.
At one point we did get fansy. Grabed 10 chest boards together, with square pieace of paper, as walls, doors, shurbs, etc. Blank squares, were used to write stuff on like Orc 3, hp 15, AC 9, +1M Sword. That we moved around, althought we still used pennies to hold the stuff down, Heads alive, Tails dead.
...................................
To be honest tho. The best times i remember, were without maps, hex boards, or etc.
Just some graph papper, good DM, and a little out of cheacter chatting. Fast, fun, and easy was the goal.
Now while we're waiting for me to finsih the newest batch of heroes, we usually use dice. 12 sided for our heroes (which we have plenty of 12s nobody will miss...) and often 6 sided for bad guys... having the number up makes it easy to figure out which one your talking about :)What happened to the goblins that were moving up from the side?
Ummm, they were killed by a fireball.
What!? That was targeted over on the other side of the room!
Yah, but I needed the D6's....We used dice for a while, but you need to pay attention to what's a monster, and what's just a die sitting on the table. Especially when the battle mat is the only flat surface to roll on in the room.
Lots of good ideas in this thread.
We've got a couple players with MASSIVE quantities of dice... hasnt' been an issue yet :)
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We use minis for the PCs (but they're pretty much random...my gnome dragon shaman is usually represented by a goblin skeleton with a shield), but we use Clue pieces for NPCs and monsters, and poker chips for Large monsters, and those little pizza "tables" for everything from markers for invisiblity, platforms for flying, and terrain markers for forests.
Somebody already came up with dices?
You have them already at the table and the numbers can be used by the GM to seperate monsters, to track their stats more easier.
little structured combat = dice plus everything there is on the table (pencils for walls for example)
more structured combat = chess, white for party, black for ennemies. small problem, space is limited, but if you have a nice set it has a good feeling about it.
I would recommend "abstract" minis, so players can still envision those the way they want. It's like movies vs. books.
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Paper or cardstock miniatures are my new friends. One Monk has lots of critters and undead. One Monk also has bases.
Scissors and glue, and a bit of patience. Dragons, trolls, ogres, giants . . . heck, I've even found some wagons and carts.
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One thing I used to do, before the poly clay bug bit me, was use origami for miniatures. I made origami dragons, monsters, carts, etc... Since I used to make origami during boring meetings at work, I always had a bunch of origami laying around...
I should dig out some of my old boxes and bags of origami and see what I have that I can still use...
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I've been using LEGO minifigures and brick-built monsters for RPG minis for about two decades now. Some years back, I started a blog that mostly focuses on my LEGO and RPG hobbies. For example, I have a series of Building the Bestiary articles that share tips on building LEGO minis for various types of monsters.
Of course, not everyone has the budget or the time to amass the kind of collection I have. I've also posted a column on Makeshift Minis, with advice on finding cheap alternatives to traditional minis.
Another idea our group had (not implemented yet but we'll try it) is to use jelly beans for monsters and NPCs. When a player kills a monster he gets to eat the jelly bean!
The only possible issue I can see is that it can be kind of gross if a monster is brought back from the dead. ;)