Hi all.
I wanted to share my counter idea with the gaming community, for those of us that would rather not buy random miniatures hoping to get the one you need…
I print out my monsters and PC’s in one inch circles on high quality glossy photo paper, then punch them out with a 1” hole punch you can buy at a craft store like michael’s… I then use a kids glue stick to stick them on metal 1” washers (about .18 cents each at home depot). They are heavy, durable, look really cool, and will not blow away at the table like cardboard cutouts do…
I made the other side of the counter a “bloddied” version of the character, so as a DM I can keep track of who is bloody at the table easier…
I am not done yet with all the KOTS monsters, but here is a sample that you can begin using for the earlier encounters with kobolds, although there is a kobold version there that isn’t in the module, I was going to throw it against my PC’s. Hope you find it useful, and I will post all the finished monsters when I’m done…
Already when I played 3e I took a bunch of worthless cards and cut out pictures (using a coin as a ruler) and glued them on thick cardboard. I still have a ton of goblin and orc counters plus lots of zombies etc.
For the characters we tend to use miniatures, but I do have random “unique” tokens for PC’s and NPC’s.
Magic cards tend to have pictures that are just the right size and the material is good for the tokens too.
I did have (and still do) a ton of MtG cards. I mostly used commons and worthless uncommons for the tokens.
Actually, using magic cards is a great idea. But you wouldn’t even have to destroy the cards to get the picture. You can get them right off their site. Example:
What? I like elves. *shrug*
Fiery Dragon Productions has been making such counters for RPGs for a few years now… they have a $27 collection that includes every counter (over 2100) they’ve done up through mid-2006. (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=12265&it=1 don’t believe the description of it being a CD ISO… it’s just a zip file now.)
They also have a free set for all the monsters and unique characters from Shadowfell…
Some people don’t like the “cartoony” style, but I really do… they’re very clear on the map. They also include a space to write numbers… I really like that, as I can clearly label my monsters. (The Fiery Dragon counters are square, but I use a utility to rip the images out of the PDF and re-lay them out in Inkscape, putting a circular label space on the bottom edge. Then I glue them to a wooden disk.)
I used to use cardboard standups and occasional miniatures, but because of this set I decided to try out the counters, and I really prefer them. The cardboard standups are pretty, but the counters are more functional… I can easily see what they are, and I can stack status tokens directly on top of them. (I use red mini-skulls from http://www.litkoaero.com/ for bloodied, florescent green for ongoing damage, etc.)
I just wish my players would use counters instead of D&D Minis that kinda sorta might remind me of who is who… “That green fish guy with the spear… that’s your great-axe weilding dragonborn fighter, right? Oh, no, that’s the dragonborn wizard. The dog-faced boy with the pike is the fighter. Right?” I would much rather have a flat counter that better represents the character.
Wow, good job ebertran, I esp like the flip side being bloodied. I am going to have to print these out for my group.
I would love a PDF that can DL and print out.
I like the fierydragon ones as well, but I think ebertran’s get higher marks at my table because 1) they are round and I like the washer idea, and 2) they have a bloodied side.
Glad you like ‘em, hope you get some use out of ‘em…
I hope I catch no trouble for the artwork not being mine though…
The washer works well because it is durable, and heavy at the table to hold down maps as well… a bag of 8 runs about a buck at home depot…
And seriously, go to Michael’s craft store, or any craft store in your area, and spend 8 dollars on a round 1” hole punch… they come out so perfect, they fit right over the washer… printed on high gloss photopaper, they look like they could be sold at a gaming store!
I am working on the counters for a bunch of monsters, but i am working in order of encouter… it may take me a little while…
if you want, tell me your pc’s races and stuff and maybe i can whip something out for you in the meantime…
As an alternative to just tabletop counters, might I suggest trying standees (Paper miniatures)? WorldWorks Games, for example, has a host of different standees available:
I actually prefer the flat counters for reasons stated by ravenx99.
We did ok by using minis for PC’s and counters for enemies, as it makes the PC’s stand out well and because most of the status tokens (small dice etc.) is going to be on the enemies.
I did destroy a lot of magic cards, but they were crappy cards anyway and I did not have to print. A good quality color printer is something I don’t have, plus I could skip editing the pictures.
Andorax, I’m personally not a big fan of the paper tokens (as I have a lot invested in minis and Alea tools), but the 2D terrain seems like something I would be interested in. Do you know of anywhere that sells it pre-printed?
You know, I was aware that 1” hole punches existed but never thought to use them for this purpose, even after trying to cut some 1” circles out by hand for another project. I feel kind of stupid now.
ebertran: I saw your posts over on the WotC boards and thought it was a pretty clever idea. Would you be willing to post the image you’re using for bloodied status? I’d like to give it a shot for some tokens of my own.
In regards to the Magic: The Gathering art, there’s a few extra goodies you can use if the pictures from Gatherer (WotC’s MtG database) aren’t large enough for you. One is checking through their archive of Magic wallpapers.
Another, and a pretty nifty one, involves a program called Magic Workstation that was designed to play MtG online. Basically, there’s a project going on where high quality scans of card images are being collected to be imported by the program. The good news is you don’t have to do anything with magic to get these images. Check out this post on another forum for information on downloading the HQ card scans. As a word of warning, the FULL torrent set is about 3 gigs in size. You can cut that down by only getting the Crops\etc images instead of the Full\etc images.
Here’s a sample of the image size differences:
Gatherer:
Do you have photoshop?
I have it as a psd file, I use it as a transparent layer over the tokens…
I guess if you don’t I can give you a png or jpg, although I’m not sure if they will remain transparent… I’m no expert on these things, I just learn by playing around…
But sure, I’ll attach it later tonight, I’m at work producing olympics on spanish tv until 1am eastern....
