The announcement from Wizards of the Coast that they were canceling the PH Heroes line of miniatures, and had a new “vision” for their D&D minis, prompted me to share my strategy were I product manager. In the spirit of full disclosure, however, I have to admit that I’m planning to move from minis to tokens as representations of monsters in the games I DM.
This is primarily a financial decision. Buying singles in the quantities necessary to run an encounter can be hard on the wallet. And you’re not always guaranteed the existence of a mini that resembles the monster. Should WotC drop their random packs and offer some of the set types I suggested, I may return to using minis.
In the meantime, I’m opting for tokens. Fiery Dragon’s various Counter Collections are the leading candidate, but I am also considering just scanning in art from the MM. I already have an idea of how I’m going to construct the tokens, thanks to my 3 years of graphic design education, but for those DMs that struggled through Arts & Crafts at summer camp, NewbieDM’s excellent tutorial can walk you through the process.
I’m interested in hearing from you readers what you prefer: minis or tokens. Vote on the poll below and share your reasons in the comments.
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Both. We tend to use mini’s for the PC’s and tokens or paper mini’s for the monsters/NPC’s. Sometimes the artistic memebers of our group make custom paper mini’s for the PC’s.
I use mini’s extensively in my games. But, I play at a local gaming store and the owner has a huge collection of them. I have some mini’s, but I would use tokens if need be. The tokens that come in the 4th edition starter set are pretty nice.
i think adventures should come in 2 series. 1st ist he basic adventure. then you can get the advanced one that gives you the cardboard tokens for everything you need.
As a figure maker, I obviously prefer minis.
However, unless you actually have exactly the right monster figures for your encounter, figures are just placeholders and using tokens makes a lot of sense.
One major advantage of tokens is that you can make large, huge, gargantuan sized ones very easily. We use squares of graph paper for this and for when the party digs out the Enlarge spells.
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As an additional note, when I first started gaming we used d6’s. They were cheap and easy to come by. “OK, guys. The green ones are orcs. The black one is the orc shaman and the red one is a troll!”
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Your suggestion (not to steal your thunder) is something that several of us in my gaming groups have been throwing out as an improvement from a DM/Player perspective over the current system for several years now. So I’m right there with ya man … totally agree. As for using chits/markers/counters … it varies with the group. I personally use minis when I run games, but some of the other DMs in our group do not. I’m a fan of minis and consider myself a miniature gamer (40K, WHFB, etc.) as much as a RPG fan … but I have a large miniatures collection with reaper, games workshop, along with other manufacturers minis and a smattering of the WOTC plastic collectible stuff. I know that WOTC finally bit the bullet and has come out with D&D heroscape stuff … so I’m wondering if their “new vision” has something to do with that? Perhaps not full on heroscape only stuff … but maybe minis that slot into the heroscape bases or something … or maybe just a shared mini manufacturing where they make minis and use them for both and just base them accordingly.
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Yeah, I’ve wondered what kind of impact Heroscape would have on the future or the D&D Mini line. I read over on Critical Hits that the word at D&D XP is WotC is going back to the fully disguised random packs. If that’s the case, I’d like to see 4E adventure publishers include token sheets with the adventures. I know Fiery Dragon has produced a line for the Paragon series of WotC modules (P1, P2, P3).
I think that One Monk Miniatures is a great alternative to both–it provides the visual effect of 3d with a price near that of tokens. Plus, they’ve got great lines for fantasy and sci fi, so most of my dorkdom is covered
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Am I the only one who doesn’t care if the miniatures are WUSIWIG? (What you see is what you get)
I hate D&D minis because everyone in the RPGA has switched to them and I can’t tell the apart as they are all in the same dark browns, the same size, and the same style. Back when everyone bought there own metal minis then each was a different colour style, size etc.
Also you’d get cool things like chocolate for monsters, whoever killed them got to eat it, which lead to silly fun likea fireball in a large mook fight as a player had skipped breakfast and wanted the snaks.
I also dislike the time DMs spend sorting through the boxes of minis they have looking for the ONE air mephite.
When my Dad and I play we do use some D&D minis that he’s gotten as DM support at cons: We use a the right ones if we have them, and close enough if we don’t. Dire bears for Ogres? Sure, it works. Saves time and keeps the game moving.
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What i would really like to find is printable sheets of cardstock with punchout circles. Then i could make tokens as i needed them. So far i haven’t been able to find any. Does anyone here know where i might look. And please, i’ve already heard the suggestion to cut them out by hand one at a time, i’m hoping to do better.
@Canageek: I tend to pick the minis for an encounter out ahead of time, so I don’t waste the players’ time sorting through my collection.
@dr. pepper: about the closest I can think of are the business card sheets by Avery. You might try your local crafts or art supply store.